After a long pause, I nodded. “Agreed.”
“Then we shall never speak of it again.”
That day we hired a small team of mules and made other arrangements for the next leg of our journey, and the day after that we left Tyre and headed for Babylon.
As the mules carried us up the well-worn road toward the Lebanon Mountains, we were both quiet and pensive. How, I wondered, could a man such as Antipater, ordinarily so wise, have been such a fool as to let himself be deceived by the likes of Kerynis? And why was he so certain of the value of the Books of Secret Wisdom, which had turned out to be useless? This lapse in prudence had something to do with returning to his hometown, I thought. Half-forgotten dreams of boyhood heroes had stirred the naive child inside him and laid waste to his hard-earned wisdom.
As for any lapse in judgment on my part, I could only plead that I was nineteen and susceptible to persuasion, far from home and in the midst of a long journey. The places I visited and the people I met continually surprised me, and I continually surprised myself.
At last, Antipater spoke. “On our first night in the Murex Shell, Gordianus, you remarked that nowhere else in our travels have you encountered the legends of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and you asked why that was so. I have given that question considerable thought. Why have two figures of such remarkable interest been so scanted by the annalists and historians, so overlooked by philosophers, poets, and priests? I think it may be that they were, to put it bluntly, too disreputable. They were too stubbornly independent to give allegiance to a single city and thus become subject matter for a civic epic. They were too often involved with demons and sorcerers to appeal to the staid philosopher and too shifty to please the sober historian. In short, they were rogues, and rogues have no place in the lists of kings and demigods and heroes. It may be that no poet shall ever write of them, alas!”
For a long while we were both quiet, as the road grew steeper and the mules trudged onward.
“I wonder …”
“Yes, Gordianus?”
“Do you think that someday a poet will write of our adventures, Teacher?”
Antipater smiled ruefully. “Alas, I doubt if I’ll live long enough to do so.” Typically, at the mention of the word “poet,” Antipater thought immediately and only of himself.
“Perhaps I’ll do it,” I said.
“You, Gordianus? But you’re not a poet. And your Greek is barbaric!”
“Must every poem be in Greek?”
“Any poem worth reading.” Antipater was showing his anti-Roman sentiment again.
“I wonder, Teacher, would this poem show us as heroes or scoundrels, as wise men or fools? Or as rogues?”
“Ha! I should think the rogue in our latest encounter would be your bedmate Kerynis!” Antipater saw the chagrin on my face and laughed aloud. “Can a man not be all those things at once, as were Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser? That’s what makes them so fascinating. Some men are one thing on the surface and another underneath. The true poet shows not just the exterior of his subject, but all the contradictions within, and lets the reader draw his own conclusions.”
I looked at my snowy-haired tutor and smiled, feeling a great affection for him. “I shall remember that, Teacher, when it’s time to write my memoirs.”
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are copyrighted by the estate of Fritz Leiber and are mentioned with permission of Richard Curtis Associates, Inc., agents for the estate. Leiber’s books are published by ereads.com.
Garth Nix
New York Times bestselling Australian writer Garth Nix worked as a book publicist, editor, marketing consultant, public-relations man, and literary agent before launching the bestselling Old Kingdom series, which consists of Sabriel, Liraeclass="underline" Daughter of the Clayr, Abhorsen, and The Creature in the Case. His other books include the Seventh Tower series, consisting of The Fall, Castle, Aenir, Above the Veil, Into Battle, and The Violet Keystone, the Keys to the Kingdom series, consisting of Mister Monday, Grim Tuesday, Drowned Wednesday, Sir Thursday, Lady Friday, Superior Saturday, and Lord Sunday, as well as stand-alone novels such as The Ragwitch and Shade’s Children. His short fiction has been collected in Across the Walclass="underline" Tales of the Old Kingdom and Beyond. His most recent books are two novels written with Sean Williams, Troubletwisters: The Mystery and Troubletwisters: The Monster, a new stand-alone novel, A Confusion of Princes, and a new collection, Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz: Three Adventures. Born in Melbourne, he now lives in Sydney, Australia.
Nix has written a popular series detailing the adventures of Sir Hereward, a roving knight, and his companion Mister Fitz, a millennia-old sorcerer who happens to be an enchanted puppet. Here Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz reluctantly undertake a spot of housebreaking, only to find everything they were not looking for, including some very deadly surprises.
A CARGO OF IVORIES
Garth Nix
“We should have purchased the monkey,” whispered Sir Hereward, as he balanced precariously on the ridge of the tiled roof, which was shining bright under the moon and had become extremely slippery, the result of the squall of needle-sharp rain that had just blown through and over the erstwhile knight and his puppet-sorcerer companion, Mister Fitz.
Neither looked the part of knight or sorcerer this night. Sir Hereward was garbed in the soot-stained leather vest and breeches of a chimney sweep, the latter cut short at the knee, with a coil of rope over his shoulder and a dagger at his belt rather than a sword; and Mister Fitz had assumed the disguise of a sweep’s boy by putting a ragged and filthy hood over his pumpkin-shaped papier-mâché head and child-sized leather gauntlets on his wooden hands.
“The monkey was insufficiently trained, and its mind not well formed enough for the impressing of sorcerous commands,” Fitz whispered back.
“It stole my purse easily enough,” countered Sir Hereward. “If we had bought it, then it would be here, and I wouldn’t be wet and cold and—”
“The matter is moot, as we did not purchase the monkey, and furthermore we have arrived at our point of ingress.”
Sir Hereward glanced ahead at the huge brick chimney stack that protruded six or seven feet from the roof. Halfway up the stack, a thin ribbon of gold had been affixed to the brickwork, the metal etched with many malevolent-looking runes and sorcerous writings.
“The monkey could have jumped straight to the top of the stack and avoided those curses,” said Sir Hereward. He shuffled forward a pace or two, wincing as his bare feet found a sharp edge to the copper that sheathed the ridge.
“Jumping to the top would not avoid them,” said Mister Fitz. His piercing blue eyes reflected brightly in the moonlight as he studied the gold ribbon. “The architect-sorcerer who made this place was well versed in her art.”
“I trust you can counter the spells?” asked Sir Hereward.
“It were best to leave them in place but render them less efficacious,” replied the puppet sorcerer. He rummaged in the pouch at his belt as he spoke, withdrawing a number of long pieces of onionskin paper that were heavily inscribed with runes, written in an ink the color of dried blood, in close lines.