Having assured herself that no one was hiding in the alcove or the stairwell, she backed away into her own doorway, one silent, careful step at a time. The sword was out now, needle-thin, the least bit curved toward the tip, in the same way that her neck and shoulders were bending very slightly forward. One last long stare—not to her left, where I huddled only a few feet away, but to the right and the stair again, plainly expecting to see someone approaching, not escaping. Whoever she was waiting for, it was not me, not dungbooted riverbank Tikat. The needle-sword flicked this way, that way, like a snake’s tongue, and there was honest fear in the wide golden eyes. Then the door closed.
I stayed where I was a little longer; then crept from my doorway to listen again, as I had been when my breathing or my heartbeat alerted them inside. The old man was saying, “He knew me so well—he took advantage of my arrogance as no one ever has. I warded off his absurd little sendings as I cooked my dinner, his annoying night visitations without bothering to awaken. To my own old sense of loss there was added a great sadness for him—for my true son—never to know the true depths of his gift before he betrayed it so foolishly. There was nothing I could do for him now, but I did try not to humiliate him any further.”
He laughed then, and for a moment I heard nothing else, because it sounded so like the laughter of my little brother, who died in the plague-wind. When I could listen to words again, they were in the brusque voice of Nyateneri, the tall one. “But they got worse, the sendings, a little at a time?”
“A little at a time,” the old man whispered. “He was so patient, so patient. Not for years—not until the night when I found myself at last at bay in evil dreams and unable to awaken, did I understand how he had used me to ensnare myself. He knew me, he knew what my body and mind love most and what my spirit fears in its deepest places. Neither of you, nor anyone else, ever came near that knowledge. Only Arshadin.”
“And bloody good use he made of it, too.” Nyateneri again, a snort like an angry horse. “What happened then? He came to you again?”
I had to press my ear hard against the door to hear the answer. “I went to him. It took the best part of my strength, but I went to him in his own house. He did not expect me. We came to no agreement, and he tried to prevent my leaving. I left all the same.” Lukassa must have been close on the other side, for I could smell her new-bread sweetness as I knelt there. The old man mumbled on. “I fled back to the red tower and reinforced it against him as best I knew how. He followed, first in the spirit, with sendings that now strode through my counterspells like wind through spiderwebs—then in the body.” I lost some words when a sudden coughing fit took him, and only made out, “The rest you know. Or Lukassa knows.”
I must have caught something of the black woman’s taut wariness: anyway, I found myself turning often to look over my shoulder for whoever she had been so certain of seeing on the stair. I heard her voice, plainly angry herself now, saying, “At least we knew you well enough to follow a trail of nightmares that had you trapped howling in the arms of burning lovers, falling forever through razory emptiness, running and running from striding flowers that cried after you like babies. Were those the dreams he sent you, your son?”
Right back at her he came—no more coughing or muttering, but quick and clear as a slash of lightning. “They were not dreams. They are not dreams. Have you not understood that yet? What woke you, what brought you here—it has all happened to me, exactly as you saw it. And those were the least of them.” A small, sudden chuckle. “Do you imagine that a few indigestible dreams did this to me?”
A rustle of blankets, cloth, something. A woman cried out. I knew it was Lukassa—it was the sound she would have made if the river had given her time to call my name. I know this. I jumped up to hammer on the door, never mind what I had sworn to myself not an hour before. Something touched my shoulder, very lightly, and I turned to see what it was.
NYATENERI
And having shown us exactly what had been done to him in those dreams of ours, he decided that he was hungry after all, and bent his energies loudly to the bread and soup. After a time, I heard the scrape of my own voice. “Lukassa told us about the Others.”
“Then I have no need to,” he answered with his mouth full, indistinct but scornful. “Arshadin made the mistake of not trusting his own power. He took his mind off me just long enough to call for the help he thought he needed. That will not happen again.” He gave that new faraway chuckle that sounded like something small and frightened stirring in dry grass.
I said, “Lukassa says that the Others killed Arshadin, and that he came back to life again. Isn’t that what you told us, Lukassa?”
She looked up at him, gone mute and useless, hardly hearing me at all. He wiped his mouth and shrugged. “Since I took that one moment of his inattention to escape, it is hard for me to say what did or did not happen. There was a good deal of confusion.” He met my eyes guilelessly, knowing that I’d not give him the lie with an army at my back. “What I can tell you is that I have been fleeing him ever since, never going to ground anywhere, nor daring to contact you for fear of betraying my presence to him. As I will, sooner or later, if I have not already done so by summoning your fox friend, Nyateneri. But I was very weary.“
I had to speak briskly, to keep from thinking about what we had seen beneath the rags of his shirt. I said, “Tell us where his castle lies. We will set out in the morning, Lal and I.”
If he had been as dead as we had feared for so long, I think he would have risen at my words. He sat up so violently that the last of the soup spilled down his front. “You will do nothing of the kind! I forbid it utterly! Do you understand? Answer me, both of you—I want to hear you swear it. Answer me!”
Behind me, Lal burst out laughing. A moment of absolute astonishment—she treats that man as though he were made of moonlight, and there she was, doubling over herself until she had to sit down on the floor—and then there was nothing in the world for me to do but lean against the wall and pound on it to make the room shake. I imagine that must be part of that song about poor Karsh—“the ceiling shook and the plaster flew.” Poor Karsh. I certainly never said that before.
The old man took no notice of our impudence, nor of Lukassa trying to clean up the soup with the last of the bread, but kept shouting at us, “This is not for you! Arshadin is no river pirate, no two-horse, forty-acre baron with a stone barn full of staggering louts to do his bidding while the drink holds out. He lives alone in a house so plain you’d pass it by for a woodcutter’s hutch, and fifty like you could no more break into it than you could leave this room if I chose to keep you here, shadow and candle-end that I am. Understand me, Soukyan!” and he actually seized my arm—not lightly, either. “This is wizards’ business, and none of yours! You cannot help me, not in that way. Leave Arshadin to me. Do you hear me?”
Lal was still giggling. I sat down by him, crowding him until he shifted on the mattress to make room. I said,
“This is like one of those rhyming puzzles you used to set me—Lal, too, I suppose—and then forbid me to come back to you without the answer. Like learning to make the tea you wouldn’t drink. I thought those were all special magic exercises, just as important as archery practice, meant to show me the sinews of the universe in a drop of water. In time I came to realize that you gave them to me, not to widen my understanding, not to teach me a single thing, but only when you wanted a little time to yourself, and for no other reason. So what I learned from those riddles was not always to pay attention to you. It was a most practical lesson. I have never forgotten it.”