The servant led me to the stable, where a single groom put the horses into stalls and ignored us as we left. Inside the house, the rooms were cold, and we passed no one. It was plain the place was designed for large companies; the emptiness made the cold penetrate even more.
But coldness was not Lord Barton's manner, and when we appeared unannounced at the door of a large study, I was struck by the contrast. In this room, a huge fire burned; in this room, the walls weren't stone, but rather were lined with books rising dizzyingly to the ceiling ten meters from the floor. Ladders were strategically placed and their treads were well worn, implying that the books were read often, though the ladders also gave the room rather the look of a building still under construction.
Barton, an aging man with a smile that overwhelmed his face frequently, welcomed me with a handshake and pulled me into the room. "Thank you, Dul," he told the servant, and we were alone.
"I've heard of you," said Barton. "Heard of you and wanted to meet you for some time, some time. Sit, please, I've moved the softest furniture up here, where I live. It's shabby and old, but so am I, and it all fits nicely when you consider that I'm the decaying remnant of a decadent line. I only have one son." That amused him, and he laughed.
I did not laugh. I looked at the titles on the spines of the books. Habits of the Humpers did not disappear overnight, and when I had nothing of importance to say, it was hard to say anything.
Barton stared at me penetratingly. "You are not what you seem."
That amused me and awoke my old manner of speech. "So many people have said that that I'm beginning to think that's precisely how I do seem. What is it I seem to be that you have now discovered that I'm not?"
"A sharp tongue, even when speaking to a lord, and a man who refuses to come when bidden until the planting's done. You seem to be a rebel, sullen and silent. But the people, say you're the Man-in-the-Wind, and you save mothers in childbirth and heal lame sheep and help simple children find their minds. Miracles, yes?"
I didn't answer, regretting my outburst of Muellerish speech. Enough of that. I was done with that.
"But the reason I asked to see you has little to do with that," said Barton. "Legends come and go among these superstitious folk, and I don't call every passing healer in to speak with me. What intrigued me was white hair like wool, as the Humpers say, and a man who seeks out hardship. A man who seems young in years but old as I am in experience. Whatever became of Lanik Mueller?"
The last question was so ridiculous, so out of place-- so dangerous-- that I couldn't hide my surprise. Barton laughed, obviously feeling very clever. "Tricks and traps. I play them even on the wise. There are rewards, you know, for seeming to be a foolish old man. Lanik Mueller has always fascinated me, you know. It's been what, four years now since he and dear old Ensel Mueller vanished into the forest of Ku Kuei, never to be seen again. Well, I don't put much stock in legends. They always seem to have a perfectly natural foundation. And I don't think people who go into Ku Kuei necessarily die. Do you?"
I shrugged.
"I think they come out again," said Barton. "I think that Lanik Mueller, the scourge of the Rebel River plain, I think he lives."
He looked at me intently. "I met you, boy, when you were eleven."
That forced me to look at him again. Had I ever seen that thin old man before?
"I was a traveler in the old days. And a bit of a historian. I picked up tales and genealogies wherever I went, trying to discover what had happened to the world in the days since the Republic set down our ancestors and their families on this paradise of a world as a punishment for their sins. And when I met you, I thought, 'Here's a boy bound to do something important.' They say you burned and ravaged and raped and killed anything in your path."
I shook my head, trying to decide whether to admit the truth of what he was saying or pretend not to know any more about Lanik Mueller than any other man might know. Ironic, that no one recognized me on the Rebel River plain, where my double had made my face well known, while here in the most obscure corner of the world I was recognized.
"But what intrigued me most was something that strikes very close to home, Lanik Mueller. I have learned that your younger brother, Dinte, is now ruling where you would have ruled."
"A figurehead, thank God, since the bastard couldn't rule an anthill with any efficiency," I said, admitting what he obviously knew.
"The child of your mother?"
"Incredible as it may seem, yes. I never saw you, Lord Barton."
"I was younger then." He got up from his chair and strode to a ladder, climbed it slowly, and reached down a book that must have weighed five kilos. When he was back to the floor, he gave it to me. "I bought this from your father, who was reluctant to part with it. But he had another copy, and when I explained how important genealogy was to me he became convinced I was a doddering idiot. He let me buy the book, though he charged me five times what he thought it was worth."
That was my father.
I opened the book. A genealogy of Mueller and a history, kept as a kind of chronicle in the hand writing of a herald. I didn't recognize the hand at the end of the book, but sure enough, the account and the genealogy ended when I was eleven. It was amusing to see what the herald had thought was worth recording. I must have been someone's delight-- every clever thing I said as an infant was there.
The expectancy of Barton's silence was pressure enough that I skimmed and rushed through to the end.
"Genuine?" he asked.
"Of course," I said. "Do you doubt it, when you got it the way you did?"
"Not at all. I just wanted your opinion before I point out an omission, a simple but very important thing left out of the book. So obvious it wouldn't occur to you to notice it was missing."
I waited.
"Your brother," he said. "Dinte."
Of course Dinte was mentioned. So many of my childhood memories were tied to him. But I glanced back to the time when Dinte was born, and there was no mention. Nor was there any mention of him for the entire duration of the journal.
"Well, maybe the herald didn't like Dinte any better than I did," I said.
"The herald didn't meet Dinte."
"He led a sheltered life in the palace, then."
"Lanik Mueller, I want you to think back to a memory. An unpleasant one, preferably. I want you to picture it in your mind."
I smiled. "No one takes psychology seriously anymore."
"It's not psychology, Mueller. It's survival."
So I thought back to the time I hed about who had lamed Rurik, the horse I was given after I had learned to ride like an adult. I had jumped him stupidly, and he had been injured, and then I walked him home and told my father that the stableboy had lamed him and that I had noticed it as soon as I was away from the stable. The boy lost his job and had a good thrashing in the bargain, particularly since he had "lied" about it and claimed the horse was healthy when I took it out. I remembered the expression on the boy's face when my father made me accuse him to his face. I remembered clearly how ashamed I felt.
"I see from your face that you've thought of something that mattered. How clearly do you remember it?"