The Way to Babylon

by Paul Kearney

  ‘You are with friends,’ he soothed her. ‘I am Phrynius. I am one of your own folk.’

  ‘What happened?’ she asked, tears crowding her eyes. ‘Where are the others?’

  ‘We rescued you,’ Ratagan rumbled. He had released her hand, and seemed embarrassed. ‘We took you from the mercenaries. I think the others who were with you escaped. They ran into the crowd.’

  The girl looked at him, deep hazel eyes under coppery brows. ‘You rescued me? Why?’

  ‘You reminded me of someone,’ the big man muttered, and then he glared around the room as though daring anyone to speak. ‘And, besides, I do not like to see women thrown through the streets like sacks.’

  The girl’s hands fluttered to her head, but Phrynius grasped them firmly in his skeletal fingers.

  ‘Leave it. I have things to do here. You have a hard skull, but a knock is a knock.’

  ‘You are the healer who was once a member of the court,’ the girl said suddenly. ‘My father spoke of you.’

  Phrynius grinned, showing empty gums. ‘The very same. And who was—’ He paused, and asked gently, ‘Who is your father?’

  ‘Mannir, the Apothecary.’

  ‘I know him. He has mixed a few brews for me in his time.’

  The girl began to weep. ‘I don’t know where they took him. Or my mother. They took them away, and they were going to throw them out of the city to the beasts.’

  Madra left her seat and put her arm around the weeping girl. The head wound oozed blood on to her robe.

  ‘You would be Mereth, then,’ Phrynius said, and the girl nodded through her tears. Phrynius became grim. ‘Your father was no magician. The Free Company is becoming less discriminatory, it seems. If they start throwing out every healer and ’cary in the city they’ll have a good few less folk to worry about governing. Madness. It’s madness. Worse than last time, if this is the way it is going.’

  ‘A witch hunt,’ Riven murmured. But the worst witch was the one who shared the Duke’s bed. He felt a pang of fury at the thought. ‘We’ll meet again,’ she had said.

  Not if I can help it.

  But then he pondered on what Phrynius had said.

  ‘Are you a magician as well as a healer?’ he asked.

  The old man paused in his binding up of Mereth’s head. The bandage was stained yellow with some antiseptic-smelling substance he had gouged from a jar.

  ‘What is a magician?’ he asked, and stared at Riven with uncomfortably keen button eyes. ‘Are you—who wears a Teller’s badge, but who speaks so sparingly, and in a strange accent—are you a magician? Your voice comes from no land I have ever heard of.’

  ‘Do you know about magic?’ Riven persisted.

  ‘What is magic?’ the old man retorted. ‘It may be that under my hands bones knit faster and skin closes quicker than with others. It may be that I can heal some of the body’s inside hurts by merely laying my hands on it. Is that magic? If it is, then it harms no one. And Mereth’s father: he heals with his potions, but there is no magic in them, just the lore he has taught himself; and the result is the same. The hurts are repaired. And here is the payment for it.’ He looked for a moment as though he might spit, but then continued with his deft work. Riven subsided.

  It was Finnan who spoke next. ‘That’s as may be, father greybeard,’ he said lightly. ‘But the rub of the matter is that the Sellswords will be here in the end, and maybe my tongue alone will not suffice this time to convince them that this house would not burn well.’

  ‘Bah!’ Phrynius exclaimed. ‘They are afraid of me, as they are, at heart, of all the Hidden Folk.’

  ‘They grow less afraid,’ Bicker put in quietly. ‘At least, the ones we encountered a while ago did not seem afraid of their charges.’

  ‘Though they were not too enamoured of cold steel.’ Ratagan laughed mirthlessly.

  Phrynius finished his work and climbed shakily to his feet, accepting Madra’s aid.

  ‘Done.’ He smiled down at Mereth’s bandaged head. ‘Now all you need is rest and peace for a while, which may be no small thing to hope for in times like these.’

  ‘What I need is to find my family,’ the blonde girl told him. Ratagan helped her on to the faded couch, and she drew her rags around her with an odd dignity. ‘I cannot stay here.’

  ‘You must,’ the old man snapped, the gentleness flitting from his eyes. ‘How far do you think you would get out in the streets? If a mercenary did not pick you up, you would faint within a quarter-hour. So let us hear no more of this foolishness.’ He flicked an imperious finger at Ratagan. ‘You, big man, take her upstairs and put her to bed, since you are so intent on rescuing her. And Finnan, take her would-be nurse up also.’

  ‘At once, wise one,’ Finnan said, and he offered Madra his arm. She looked at Riven, and he felt his face burn, but did nothing. The foursome left the room, Ratagan carrying Mereth in his arms and looking oddly content, Madra leaning on the river pilot’s shoulder. Riven caught Bicker watching him quizzically, and grimaced.

  Phrynius collapsed on to a high-backed armchair beside the glowing brazier and produced a deeply curved pipe, which he proceeded to light with a taper. Soon a blue haze writhed around his grey head, and he sighed deeply.

  ‘You—dark man—you are a lord, or I know nothing. The giant man—he is also. Myrcans and a Hearthware travel with you, and there is old blood on your clothes, and the rents of teeth.’ He puffed a moment, his face seamed with lines and his black eyes glittering. ‘And with you is a Teller who says little, but whose face says much. I never yet met a storyteller who could shut his mouth for more than a minute at a time, but this man has no such trouble. I would go so far as to say you are bound on some errand, perhaps north of here.’ He grinned toothlessly. ‘Maybe it is none of my business, but you might have brought ruin to my door, so I am understandably curious. What say you?’

  Bicker met his gaze. There were faint clumps from those upstairs and the fainter sounds of voices out on the street. Isay and Corrary were still keeping their vigil in the hall and Luib had not moved from his post at one wall, though his hard eyes missed nothing.

  ‘You guess well,’ Bicker said at last.

  ‘Whither are you bound?’ Phrynius asked him,the humour gone. He was like an enquiring stoat.

  ‘Into the mountains. To seek the Dwarves, and maybe scale the Staer.’

  ‘On what errand?’

  ‘A high one. To save Minginish, maybe.’

  Phrynius sat back in his chair. ‘So,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘A high errand indeed.’ His eyes shifted to Riven. ‘And you with the scarred face and the old pain in your eyes. You are at the centre of it, are you not?’

  ‘How do you know that?’ Riven asked. He found he was relieved at Phrynius’s shrewd guesses.

  ‘Some say I have dwarven blood in me,’ the old man said. ‘At any rate I can smell strangeness when I meet it. There is something about you that is at odds with the very air in the room. And there is magic in you, as bright as day to those who can see it.’

  Riven could not conceal his astonishment, and the old man nodded.

  ‘But you have not seen it yourself. Interesting.’ He puffed at the leaking pipe once again, seemingly untroubled.

  ‘We must leave Talisker at once,’ Bicker said, ‘but we need supplies; pack animals, maybe.’

  ‘These injured young women you keep chancing across will not be fit to travel for a week or more,’ Phrynius said implacably.

  ‘Then they must be left behind.’

  Riven started. Leave Madra behind? The thought brought with it a strange pain, but he said nothing.

  I don’t own anyone.

  Phrynius seemed to consider this. ‘Finnan spoke truly, the whelp. The Sellswords will come in the end. I am too well known, and if you are found, then nothing will stop them putting this place to the torch—and me to the pyre, no doubt. I know places in Talisker—in the Upper City—that are yet untroubled by this madness. Places too near to the cour
t to be touched by these animals. If we can move our two pretty patients there, they will be safe, for a while at least.’

  ‘And you?’ Bicker asked.

  ‘I am good at weathering storms.’ The old man’s eyes twinkled, and for a second Riven was sure that his magic, if that was truly the word for it, extended farther than the healing of wounds.

  ‘How has the Free Company gained so much power in the city?’ Bicker asked. ‘And how is it present in such numbers? Where are the ’Wares of the city? We’ve only seen a few since we arrived.’

  And killed two of them, Riven thought.

  ‘Godomar has hired over a thousand of the Company to aid the ’Wares in the policing of the city and the surrounding fiefs,’ Phrynius explained. ‘But men like Quirinus do not care to see Sellswords patrolling their lands, so the city’s ’Wares have for the most part been given duties outside the walls, leaving Sergius and his minions in Talisker to do what they will.’

  ‘He must answer to someone,’ Riven put in. ‘These men can’t just do what they please with an entire city.’

  ‘They do as they are told,’ Phrynius said patiently. ‘If they are told to expel those suspected of being of the Hidden Folk then that is what they do.’

  ‘But no one tells them in what manner they should do it,’ Bicker muttered, and the old healer nodded.

  ‘There you have it. And this southern lady has the Duke trapped between her thighs. Some say she has an arrangement with Sergius, also.’

  ‘She angles for bigger fish than once she did,’ Bicker said.

  ‘You know her?’

  ‘We know her,’ the dark man said heavily. ‘Another reason for leaving Talisker as soon as may be.’

  ‘You come from the south,’ Phrynius said. ‘How are the Rorims there? Is it true some are gone—overrun?’

  ‘No. Those are the lies of the Lady Jinneth. The western Rorim are united now.’ And Bicker told swiftly what had been happening in the south of Minginish over the past months, though he made no reference to Riven and his place in events. Phrynius appeared relieved, and then murderously angry.

  ‘So this hysteria is whipped farther by lies. Sometimes I think these clearances are as much political as anything else.’

  ‘Why did they happen the first time?’ Riven asked.

  The old man sucked at his pipe, but it had gone out. He cursed briefly. ‘Twenty-eight years ago there appeared strange portents in the skies, and savage beasts in the mountains. Children were born to young girls who had never known a man. The magic of folk such as I went awry. There was something in the air that defeated it. People grew afraid. Those who had powers like mine were shunned, feared, and finally hated. They were driven from their homes into the wilderness. Some were burned. They disappeared into the mountains, and there they must have stayed. Some were fortunate, and laid low long enough to escape, to ride out the storm.’ He smiled a thin smile. ‘I was one such. The rest were never heard of again.’

  Twenty-eight years ago. The year Riven had been born. ‘Christ!’ he breathed.

  ‘And now it happens again. We have winter in summer, and Rime Giants roaming our fields in the night; so it is our fault. Our unholy practices have brought ruin to Minginish once again, and we must be punished.’ Phrynius’s voice was thick with bitterness. ‘And some in high places seek to use this opportunity to garner more power for themselves, stepping over the bodies of the Hidden Folk to get to it.’

  Minginish was real, as real as his own world, and his stories were mere reflections of it—not the other way around. But something had gone wrong. Behind the books, the stories Riven had told, something else had happened. A two-way channel had been opened up. He received inspiration from this world that he had never seen, but it was affected by him also, by the events in his own life—and that was where it had gone wrong. People like Bragad had no right to exist here. And Jinneth. Something had soured the characters he had drawn in his books. Riven’s imagination was contaminating Minginish, giving it a history it should never have had. And people, too. The dark girl who wandered the mountains barefoot. Who was she? Something dredged up out of his own subconscious? He rubbed his eyes wearily. Even if the Dwarves had no answers for him, he knew now what had to be done. That channel had to be closed; he had to be sealed off in his own world again, and whatever umbilical it was that connected him to Minginish must be severed.

  He felt real, surprising grief at the idea.

  There was a clatter on the stairs as Finnan and Ratagan re-entered the room. The river pilot stretched until his knuckles scraped the ceiling.

  ‘I need some space,’ he said. ‘Unlike you folk, who have been battling mercenaries and rescuing maidens all morning, I have been locked up here—in delightful company, it is true, but locked up nonetheless. I think I will go out and sniff the air, maybe see what sort of mayhem you have been stirring up in the city since I brought you here.’

  ‘Is that wise?’ Bicker asked.

  ‘It is not I who have been knocking the heads of Sellswords together,’ Finnan snorted.

  ‘A good plan,’ Phrynius said. ‘Keep your eyes open and your nose out of too many taverns. It would be useful to know if our friends on the streets are searching the houses of the district and suchlike.’

  Finnan bowed to them. ‘Then farewell. Mayhap I’ll bring something to eat. Not all of us are like Phrynius, and can subsist on brandy and pipe smoke.’

  He left. They heard him exchange words with Isay and Corrary at the door before it closed behind him.

  The afternoon wore on, and a tiredness crept over the company. At last, noting their nodding heads, Phrynius led them upstairs. His house was surprisingly spacious, and there was a room there that would serve to sleep them all. The company spread their bedrolls on the dusty floor and lay listening to the mice scuttling inside the walls as evening drew in and the sounds from the city outside lessened. They lit a brazier and sat dozing around it.

  ‘An old house, this,’ said Bicker quietly to the gathering dusk and the scratching mice. ‘It is an old city. There was a tower on the height by the curve of the river before ever a Rorim was raised up in the Dales of the south, and the people lived by travelling on the Great River before the forests that once covered the whole land had been cleared.’

  ‘There was magic in the forests, then,’ Phrynius said, startling them, for they had not heard him enter the room. ‘There were marvels in the deep woods, people who lived by leaf and tree and never saw a sky that was not covered by branches. But now only remnants of the Great Woods remain, and what was once hidden there has fled.’

  ‘Scarall Wood is one remnant,’ Bicker murmured, but Phrynius seemed not to hear.

  ‘There are those who say that the magic began there, in the trees, running up from their roots, coursing out of the earth itself. And there are those who say the Dwarves discovered it in the ground, and mined it as one would a vein of silver. But whatever tale is true, it is from the land itself—from the earth and the stones and the trees of Minginish—that magic comes. Folk have chosen to forget that, and to persecute those who remember it. But I do not forget.’ His pipe billowed blue smoke that spun around the ruddy light of the brazier, and his face was as lined as a walnut in the dimness. Riven wondered how old he was.

  ‘I remember a time when the whole of the world was afloat with wizards and witches, as they are named now. They were, and are, ordinary folk with a gift, no more, and they were as much a part of the land as the Myrcans, and as necessary. The Dwarves lived lower down the mountains then, in their mansions, and they held fairs to which all and sundry came to trade and gawk. But with the clearances, that passed away. People ceased believing, or were afraid to, and the Dwarves withdrew to the high ranges and the deepest of their mines. And so the world became a poorer place.’

  There was the sound of the laughter of revellers somewhere off in the streets. A dog barked, then became involved in a running battle with another. They snarled away into the night, leaving it pea
ceful.

  ‘The city is very quiet tonight,’ Phrynius said, and his head was cocked like a fox sniffing the air.

  Riven threw aside his bedroll and stood up. He ignored the inquiring glances and shuffled out of the room, stirring dust in his wake. He felt it tickle his throat, but stifled the cough that threatened. Somehow he felt an unspoken need to make no noise, as if this were the last moment of peace he would know for a long time. He seemed heavy with mortality as he opened the other door on the landing and entered the room where Madra and Mereth were sleeping.

  Two forms lying on the two narrow beds, a leaded window throwing faint starlight on to their faces. He sat on the creaking bed next to Madra and watched the slow rise and fall of her breasts under the blanket. An arm, white as ivory, lay folded across her stomach. Her hair was a dark hood that had fallen back from her face.

  She breathed softly, the bandage collaring her, the tiny scar pale at one cheekbone where a Myrcan stave had knocked her down as she fought for Riven’s life. He touched it, then brushed the velvet of her lips, her eyelids, one earlobe where the hair revealed it. And he knew that he had come to love that heart-shaped face, the stubborn brows, the level eyes, and the smile that was so grave and rare.

  How many miles to Babylon?

  Ah, Riven, be not bitter. You have loved and been loved. That’s enough for anyone.

  Enough for most lifetimes.

  The tears broke his sight so that he was blind, the girl on the bed a blur in the darkened room.

  Beggars would ride, if wishes were horses.

  He stood up, leaving her behind, and made his way through the dust to the others.

  THE NIGHT PASSED slowly and the company lay awake after a while, wondering what was delaying Finnan.

  ‘He has probably found himself a girl and is even now trying to extricate himself from her clutches,’ Phrynius said, but by the vast volumes of smoke he was pumping out, they could see even he was worried.

  They took turns at the front door, and Corrary had just relieved Ratagan when the sounds on the street reached them, and they tensed in the dim red light of the coals, their low talk frozen in midair.