A Glimmer of Guile

by Mary Patterson Thornburg

  Meanwhile, I'd try to find out about Raym, and of course about Tedor, the young prince who was the original object of my quest. If I could get Tedor safely headed for home--whether he wanted to go there or not--and if I could rescue Raym--assuming he needed or wanted to be rescued--I could think about keeping my promise to Mani and bringing the kingdom crashing down on the heads of Maltuk and his witch.

  I had to admit these seemed like a lot of ifs. The whole scheme struck me as somewhat grandiose. I heard myself telling Tada and Fin how stupid Riga's plan had been, and mine was probably almost as bad. But I couldn't think of any way to find Tedor or Raym that didn't involve getting dangerously close to Orath. And I kept remembering the book Raym had left open, the general disarray of his cottage, the object he'd left in plain sight to aid me in my Shift. He'd attempt as much for me.

  Anyway, the worst Orath could do was kill me. There was every possibility that Harken would do that herself if she found out I'd left Maal without at least trying to accomplish the task she'd assigned to me. I was between what my father used to call a rock and another rock, and my instinct was to move forward, not back. Raym had said I'd someday be as strong as either Orath or Harken, and how could I ever be that if I let them both get the better of me now? Besides, I seemed to have inherited a bit of Riga's desire to rid the world of Maltuk's witch.

  The inn I found was the most luxurious the town had to offer. Giving my own name, I paid a week's rent in advance for a suite of rooms on the second floor overlooking the courtyard, ordered my meals sent up, hired a country girl recommended by the landlady to be my servant, and sent out for a dressmaker.

  The landlady ran to tell her husband their fortune was made, and I knew the news of my arrival would be all over town in an hour. The court would surely hear of it before nightfall. Eventually, after being fitted for three new and expensive outfits, I waited to see what would happen next.

  The first thing was a small, sweet glimmer approaching my door, along with two sets of footsteps. "Here is Kenath, my lady," said my hostess. "My brother's girl, and if she don't suit, she has a young sister at home who'd be happy to go to work for you." She gave the child, a wide-eyed youngster of about fourteen, a little push across my threshold and a look that said she'd better suit.

  I glanced sharply at them both, but both were obviously innocent. The aunt had no notion of what I sensed about the girl, and although Kenath clearly knew that something odd was afoot, she was far from sure what it was.

  I beckoned her into the room and dismissed the landlady with thanks. As soon as she was gone, I turned to the child, who was covered with road dust and streaked with sweat, the result of a hurried trip to oblige me. "Sit down, Kenath." I pointed to a chair. "Are you thirsty?"

  She nodded, looking more wide-eyed than ever.

  I'd had a pitcher of lemonade brought up while the dressmaker was there. I poured out two cups and handed one to the girl. "Now. What did your aunt tell you about me?"

  "That you're very rich, my lady," she said promptly. "And that you're the wife of a sea-captain from the East, here to meet him when his ship comes in." This was what I'd suggested to the woman, although I hadn't said it exactly.

  "Nothing more?"

  She frowned. "No, my lady."

  "But there was something more to know, wasn't there?"

  At this the girl bowed her head.

  "How long have you known what other people are feeling, Kenath?"

  She said nothing but held her cup tightly in her lap, knees together, body tense. Now I saw a tear splash into the lemonade.

  I sighed. Why is my life so complicated? "It's not a tragedy, sister," I said as gently as I could. "Do you know what guile is?"

  She removed one hand from the cup long enough to make a sign against evil. "Witchery," she whispered, and finally looked up at me.

  "Some call it that," I agreed. "It is a very great gift. From God, like all gifts. It's only bad if you use it badly, use it to do wrong. It's nothing to be ashamed of."

  She sniffled and scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her right wrist.

  "How long?" I gave her a guilish push, in case she considered lying.

  "A year, almost. Since my moontides began."

  "Have you told anyone?"

  She shook her head.

  "Have you known anyone else with these feelings, Kenath?"

  "Only Lady Klaar. She's a healer. She came to our farm when the mule kicked my brother. I felt her, then, like I feel you now. But she didn't say anything to me."

  "Did she help your brother?"

  "Oh, yes, my lady. She gave him some nasty stuff to drink and tied up his ribs. Made him lie abed a long time. My father was annoyed."

  "Would your father know about you? Your mother?"

  She shook her head again. "They would be angry. I daren't tell them."

  I sighed. "You feel me now. Do you feel something else? Anything else?"

  Kenath nodded slowly. "Something awful. You must feel it too, my lady. Something very wrong." She paused. "Do you feel it too?"

  "I feel it," I said. "It's the Lady at court. Orath."

  We talked for a while. When she was calm again, and more or less trusted me, I taught her something very simple, a way to shield her glimmer. I was not afraid that Orath would sense her and want to destroy her as she had Riga; Kenath was nowhere near as strong in guile as Riga had been, and if Orath used her craft against every person of guile who came to her attention she'd have time for little else. As Raym had told me, guile itself is common. What's not so common is the person who allows it to continue and flourish. But Kenath, young as she was and with a respectable gift, though not an outstanding one, was now associated with me. This might eventually make Orath take notice; I wanted to protect her.

  When she'd learned, with remarkable promptness, to disguise what she was, I sent her to the inn's bathroom to get rid of the dust and streaks before she went downstairs to order our meal. After we'd eaten, I helped her make up her bed in the outer room of our suite. I was tired. I'd had a long day, and I guessed that tomorrow might be longer.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  While teaching Kenath to shield her glimmer, I had shielded my own at last. The next day I had reason to be glad I'd done it. By now Orath--and Raym, if he was here, although I'd felt nothing of him--had time to be aware of me and, through the gossip that must have followed my ostentatious spending in this poor country, to know exactly where I was. I expected to have some contact from Maltuk's court eventually, probably sooner than later. Truth to tell, I was just a bit nervous about this, for I hadn't a clue what sort of contact that would be.

  When it came the next morning, it was of a quite unexpected kind.

  Kenath knocked at my bedroom door and then slipped through it after waiting approximately three seconds. "There's a boy here, my lady," she said. "He's crying."

  I yawned, while taking the dressing gown she handed me. "Don't say 'my lady' when it's just us, Kenath. We're sisters in guile, not servant and mistress. Which is not to say--" I took the cup of tea she handed me--"that I don't need your help." I'd slept too late; the sun had been up for an hour at least. "What kind of boy?"

  "A strange one. Soft looking, but dressed rough. Highborn, I'd say."

  "Go give him some tea. I'll be out in a minute." Could it be Tedor?

  But the boy turned out not to be a boy at all. She was a girl of about seventeen, ridiculously got up in an ill-fitting and musty-smelling sailor's costume. From what I could see of her face, she was pretty, with a warm complexion and russet-brown eyes. A curl of dark auburn hair fell down from her cap and she shoved it back hurriedly. She was no longer crying, but her eyes were red. She looked at me with what seemed a mixture of hope and fear. "Viva?" she said in a voice that trembled. "Are you Lady Viva?"

  "Close. My name's Vivia. What's yours?"

  She glanced at Kenath, who stood pretending to look out the window.

  "Kenath, go down and order us some breakfast, won't
you? Make it plenty for all three of us." I followed her out into the hall. "And give me a few minutes alone with this--young person. I'm not going to learn anything if you're in the room."

  Kenath gave me a wise look. "She's not a boy, is she?"

  I grinned. "No, but possibly she fooled someone. So please keep your observations between you and me. Your aunt doesn't need to know about this."

  "Are you in trouble, my lady? I mean, Vivia?"

  "I will be soon enough, probably. What I intend to do is a dangerous thing, and the less you're involved in it, the better for you. Still, I'm going to want your help, and one of these days I may be able to help you, too. Now, breakfast. Go."

  When I returned to the room, the girl took a deep breath and pulled off her cap. "My name is Afron," she said. "I need you to help me."

  I sighed. She was the Red Prince's daughter, the one who, according to Horok's old cook, had seduced young Tedor.

  "What makes you think I can help?"

  Without a word she handed me a grubby scrap of paper.

  The note, when I'd unfolded it, was scarcely legible, printed with charcoal in an unsteady, childlike hand. It was very short. VIVA KROSKEY IN, it said--"Crosskeys Inn," I judged it to mean, the name of this establishment. STRON WICH SHE HEPL YU.

  I stared at what I was holding. The writer was barely literate. But touching the paper sent a faint shock into my fingers and up my arm, like lightning so distant that one sees it pulsing in the clouds and hears no thunder. I knew who had written the note.

  "Sit down. We'll have more tea when the water boils." I sat beside Afron. "Where did you get this?"

  "The Lady's servant," she said. "She wasn't looking and he dropped it. I picked it up. I knew it was for me. It took me a long time to read it. I think he can't write very well, but I had a teacher when I was young. My mother wanted me to learn to read."

  The Lady's servant. "What is his name, this servant?"

  She shook her head. "I don't know. She calls him Frog. He's a cripple. He drags one foot, and his back is misshapen. Also, I think his mind is weak." She gave me an angry look. "She likes them that way. It amuses her. She hasn't had this one very long, but I think she likes him best of all."

  "I see." A picture came into my mind of a day long ago. I was lying in the sun on the shore of a lake, and when I heard footsteps I jumped up to see Raym running swiftly and lightly out of the woods toward me. "And what is it he thinks I can help you with?"

  "It's Tedor," she whispered. "My betrothed. Oh, my lady, she put a terrible spell on Tedor. He's going to die if you can't break it."

  "Where is he?"

  "I took him away from court. The Lady knows where he is, I'm sure. But she doesn't care anymore, now that she has what she wanted of him. I rented a little house and found him a servant, and I go there as often as I can. But it's awful, my Lady Viva." She began to cry again, but pulled herself together and stopped.

  "Vivia," I corrected her absently. "All right. Take me to him, please."

  Kenath came back and we ate our breakfast quickly. Afterward I took Kenath aside. "Stay here. I have an errand to run, but I'll be back tonight and talk to you. Meanwhile, wait for the seamstress and pay her from the black purse under my pillow." She nodded and I turned away, but after a moment turned back. I didn't want to scare the girl, but on the other hand it might be best to warn her.

  "Kenath, if I'm not back by morning, take what's left in the purse and go east. Take a public coach. Keep your glimmer hidden. Don't stop for anything. When you get to the southern port city, find a woman named Han Tada, a healer. Tell her all you know about me, about today, give her the purse, and give her this message: 'All three died quickly.' Will you remember that?"

  She nodded again, big-eyed.

  "Then do whatever she tells you to do." It was as well, I thought, to prepare for a bad outcome.

  Afron and I left. She was wearing her cap again, her disguise improved by a small spell I'd cast so that her sex and identity wouldn't be so obvious. We walked through the city to an area of small houses, old but well kept up. I didn't ask about what Orath had done to Tedor, preferring to see for myself. Eventually we came to a house where an old woman sat on the steps, smoking a pipe.

  "How is he?" Afron said, sounding as if she expected bad news.

  The woman shook her head. "No change, my lady." She glanced at me.

  "You stay out here, then." Afron opened the door.

  I stepped around her and went inside. The front room was darkened, the curtains and shutters all closed, and the place smelled--not like a sickroom, exactly, but with an odor of invalidism that was somehow familiar. On the far side of the room was a bed, and I went closer.

  Then I knew what it was that I smelled. Age. Lying in the bed was the oldest man I'd ever seen. He looked up with eyes bleared over with cataracts, first at me and then, with what seemed a mixture of relief and hopelessness, at Afron, who went to him and patted his hand gently, although I could see that it cost her some effort to touch him.

  She turned to me. "This is Tedor," she said. There were tears in her eyes again. "She took his youth and gave it to my father."

  I didn't actually believe it, not for a second. But for a bit longer than that I was stunned. This was the most powerful illusion I'd ever seen, and I'd seen some good ones. If it was an illusion, that is; maybe it was just a trick. I took Afron across the room and questioned her. "What makes you think this is Tedor?"

  "He's talked to me," she said. "Anyway, I was there in the room. I saw it happen. I saw him change."

  "Look," I told her, "the whole point of stage magic is to make people think they saw something happen. There are ways to do that, and you can bet Orath knows them. Tell me about it, Afron. Tell me why you were there and what you saw, exactly."

  "It was very early morning," she said. "Just after dawn. My servant woke me up and told me I was wanted in my father's apartment, and I'd better dress quickly. When I started downstairs I met Tedor, and he'd had the same message."

  She glanced quickly at the wasted old man on the bed, whose eyes were now closed. He looked very weak. "Come into the other room with me, won't you, my lady? I think I have to tell you the whole story. And I don't think he can hear us, but..."

  But he made her uncomfortable. I didn't blame her. We went into the little kitchen and sat at the table.

  "You see, my father never had any sons," she began, "which was a big disappointment to him. The Lady's magic couldn't fix that, seemingly. And when my sister Celin died, he decided to get me a husband right away so he could leave the kingdom to a man."

  I frowned. "And his choice was Tedor?"

  "No. My father wanted one of his cousins, Lord Toaha. But the Lady favored someone else. So they compromised. The Lady said she'd give up her choice if Father gave up his, and they'd get someone from Monsara. That way neither of the others would be satisfied, but there wouldn't be a reason for war between them, either."

  "So they chose Tedor. Well, it makes a kind of sense." I suspected, though, that Tedor had been Orath's real choice in the first place, for who knew what reason. "But why did she kidnap him?"

  "It wasn't exactly kidnapping, at least I didn't think so at first. They'd sent messages to Tedor's father, who's the most powerful prince in that country, but they didn't like what he replied, whatever it was."

  I could imagine what Horok had said. He was far richer than Maltuk, with a stronger hold on his kingdom. It would take more than piracy, more than raids on coastal towns, to make Horok marry his only son to his enemy's daughter, especially if Maltuk expected Tedor to live in Maal and eventually rule there.

  "So," Afron went on, "we went to Tedor's father's court, the Lady and I. She had never liked me, but she seemed to be a little friendlier than usual, and anyway Father told me I had to go. When we got there she disguised herself somehow." The girl gave me a hesitant look. "And me too, but not the same way, just in clothes to look like a poor, ordinary girl. And she brought Tedor t
o meet me. We liked each other from the start."

  She looked at me again, this time boldly. "Tedor told me later that the Lady did do something to make him come with us, but that she hadn't tricked him into liking me. And she hadn't done that to me, either. That part wasn't witchery, Lady Vivia. It was real."

  "All right, I believe you. Go on."

  "Also, it wasn't witchery that Father liked Tedor. I suppose it was because he'd wanted a son for so long. When we got here, it was as if he'd been waiting for Tedor and nobody else. He was like a different man. Like he had to change to be good enough for Tedor. He wanted to adopt him."

  She shook her head, as if puzzled. "I was really glad. And since the Lady was the one who found Tedor in the first place, it seemed perfect. But instead it made her angry.

  "Maybe it was because Father had changed. Always before, she'd been his favorite. Now Tedor was. And in another day or two she went away again, by herself, and when she came back she had this servant, this one she calls Frog."

  I wanted to hear about that, but I wanted not to hear it even more. "What happened when you went to your father that morning?"

  "The Lady was there with her new servant. She and Father had been arguing. You could hear them clear down the hall. Father looked awful, like he'd been up all night drinking. The Lady looked like she always does. Scary, kind of glassy, somehow, but strong. Beautiful, I guess."

  "And the servant?"

  "He always looks awful. This time, though, she'd let him sit down. On the floor. Father was in his big chair at the table. She was pacing back and forth across the whole room. Angry."

  She frowned, remembering. "When Tedor and I came in then, they got quiet, but she was still pacing. Father called Tedor to come stand by him, and I went too, even though no one told me to. She scared me.