Innkeeper's Song

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.”

For the first and only time since I have known him, my Man Who Laughs could do nothing but splutter, briefly but totally speechless with outrage. I patted his leg. “There,” I said. “We are not the children you knew, and we were never fools. And we know something anyway about dealing with wizards. Tell us where Arshadin lives.”

He sulked. There is no other word for it. He folded his arms and sank back against the pillows, staring somewhere past us. Once again, Lal and I began speaking at the same time. Lal concerned herself with assuring him that we would track down Arshadin with his help or without it, but that it would be a good thing to find him before he found us. I had a number of things to say about stubborn, arrogant, ungrateful old men, and I said them all. Neither approach made the slightest difference, as both of us could have predicted. He simply closed his eyes.

Then Lukassa spoke. Since we came into the room, she had done nothing but make over him, uttering no sounds—once she stopped weeping—distinguishable from the sigh of blankets or the soothing murmur of soup. Even I had almost forgotten she was there, and I was usually very much aware of Lukassa, silent or not. Now she said quite clearly, in that south-country baby-bird voice of hers, “White teeth—white, white teeth. The white teeth of the river.”

From Lal’s expression I knew that, like me, she thought Lukassa must mean the river from which Lal had raised her drowned body. The Man Who Laughs tried out a soft snore, but no one was deceived. Lal said, “That was long ago, Lukassa. There is no river where we are now.”

“In the mountains,” Lukassa said. Her voice was stronger, as fiercely insistent as it had been in the cold, empty tower. “In the mountains he gives the river fine presents to make it sing. The dharises nest on his windows, and the great sheknath fish along the banks below, and the river sings hungry, hungry, please more, please.” She was breathing hard and roughly, as though she had been running.

When we looked back at the Man Who Laughs, his eyes were wide open, still drained pale but bright enough for all of that. I said, “There are things she knows.”

“Obviously,” he said, forcing a yawn. “As I know that outside this door, one of the boys who helped me up the stairs is lying hurt. Not the one who brought the food, my dear Lal”—for she was already across the room—“the other one. Bring him in and see to him, and then we will perhaps talk a bit more about Arshadin. Perhaps.”