The Wizard

Chapter 22. Lost Loves

Night blacker than the blackest night of storm enveloped us. I heard the rush of waters, as I had when I had breasted tides and dark, uncharted currents with Garsecg. There was a great pounding, swift and very deep. I tried to imagine what sort of creature might make such a noise, and the image that leaped into my mind was that of Org, green as leaves and brown as bark, alone in a forest clearing and pounding the trunk of a hollow tree with a broken limb. Under my breath I murmured, “What’s that?” And Lynnet heard me and said, “It is my heart.” As soon as she spoke, and I knew she was right and wrong, that it was my own heart, not hers. For a long time we walked through that dark, and I timed my steps and my movements to the thuddings of my heart.

The darkness parted, as at the word of the Most High God. What had been dark was pearly mist, and I saw that there was grass, such lush grass as horses love, underfoot; the mist spangled it with dew.

“This is a better place,” Lynnet told me; perhaps I did not speak, but I agreed. Sunbeams lanced the mist, and as it had made the dew, so it now made a colonnade of mighty oaks. She began to run. “Goldenlawn!” She turned to look back as she spoke, and I have, on my honor, never seen more joy than I saw in that wasted face.

Beside Sheerwall, the castle would have been an outwork—such a gray wall as a strong boy might fling stones over, a round keep prettily made, and a square stone house of four stories and an attic. It was, in short, such a castle as a knight with a dozen stout men-at-arms might have held against fifty or a hundred outlaws. Nothing more.

Yet it was a place very easy to love, and made me think, all the while that I was there, of the Lady’s hall in Skai. The Lady’s Folkvanger stands to it as a blossoming tree to a single violet, but they breathed the same air.

On its gates stood painted manticores. Their jaws held marigolds as the jaws of cows sometimes hold buttercups, and there were marigolds at their feet, and to left and right of them more marigolds, not painted but real, for the moat was as dry as Utgard’s and had been planted as one plants a garden, while manticores of stone stood before the gates.

There were servants and maiden sisters, fair young women who might have married in an instant, and anyone they chose. All were filled with wonder that Lynnet, whom they thought never to see again, should unexpectedly return; and after them, a grave old nobleman with a white mustache and the scars of many battles, and a gay gray lady like a wild dove, who fluttered all the while and moaned for joy.

“This is Kirsten,” Lynnet told me, “dear, dear Kirsten who died when I was fourteen, and my own dear sister Leesha who died in childbirth. Father, may I present Sir Able of the High Heart? Sir Able, this is my father, Lord Leifr.”

“Slain by the Frost Giants who stormed Goldenlawn,” Lord Leifr told me, smiling, and offered his hand.

“My mother, Lady Lis.”

She took my hand in both of hers, and the love in those fluttering hands and her small, shy face would have won me at once even if I had been ill-disposed to her and her husband. “May you stay with us a long, long while, Sir Able, and may every moment of your stay be happy.”

Soon came a banquet. It was night outside, and snowing, and when we had eaten and drunk our fill, and sung old songs, and played games, we walked in a garden bright with light and summer flowers. “This is mother’s grotto,” Lynnet explained, “a sort of pretty cave made by our gardeners. The fashion at court was to have a grotto when my parents married, a place where lovers could kiss and hold hands out of sight—and out of sun, too, on hot days. My father had it built to please my mother before he brought her here.”

It made me think of the cave in which I had lain on moss with Disiri, but I said nothing of that.

“Only I’m afraid of it, and I didn’t know I was until I started talking about it, I suppose because my sisters and I weren’t allowed in there when we were children. So I’m not going to go in, but you can if you’d like to see it.”

She plainly expected me to go, so I did. It was not that I imagined I might actually find Disiri there—I knew I would not. But the memory the grotto evoked was strong and sweet; and I hoped that if I went in, it might be stronger still. Filled with that hope, I descended the little stone stair, stepped across a tiny rivulet, and entered the grotto. There could be no dragon here, I knew, nor any well reaching the sea of Aelfrice. Nor was I wrong about those things.

In their places I found a floor of clean sand and a rough tunnel that seemed to plumb the secrets of the hill, and then a familiar voice that mewed, “Sir Able? Sir Able? It’s you, I know. I smell your dog on your clothes. Is this the way out?”

“Mani?” I stopped and felt him rub my leg. “I didn’t know you were in here. This is a strange place.”

“I know,” Mani told me. And then, “Pick me up.”

“Some of these people are dead, and it doesn’t seem to make any difference.” He only mewed in response to that; when I picked him up and carried him, he was trembling.

I will not speak of the time I spent in the grotto. The time of Skai is not the time of Mythgarthr, nor is the time of Aelfrice. The time of the Room of Lost Loves is different again, and perhaps not time at all, but merely the reflection of time. Etela said none of us had stayed inside long.

Mani raised his head and sniffed. Hearing him (he was cradled in my arms) I sniffed too. “I smell the sea.”

“Is that what it is? I’ve never been there. Your dog talks about it. I don’t think he liked it much.”

I said, “He was chained in Garsecg’s cave under the sea. I’m sure he didn’t like that.”

“That’s all right,” Mani told me, “it’s only wrong to confine cats.” He leaped from my arms; soon I heard him ahead of me: “There’s light this way, and water noise.”

Before long I could see it for myself and hear the surge and crash of waves. I felt that I was coming home.

The gray stones of the grotto appeared to either hand, and I (recalling its mouth and the rivulet across which I had stepped) paused to look behind me, for it seemed possible at that moment that I had become confused and was walking back the way I had come. Faint and far was the mouth behind me. Faint and far, but not nearly as faint or as far as it ought to have been. I had walked the better part of a league; and yet I could see the rough circle still, and glimpse rocks and ferns beyond it.

“There’s a woman here!” Mani called.

I knew then, and holding up Eterne I ran.

Parka sat spinning as before, but her eyes left the thread she spun for a moment to look up at me as she said, “Sir Able of the High Heart.”

I felt that I had never known what that phrase meant until I heard it in her mouth; I knelt and bowed my head and muttered, “Your servant always, My Lady.”

“Do you need another string?”

“No,” I said. “The one you gave has served me well, though it disturbs my sleep and colors my dreams.”

“You must put it from you when you sleep, Sir Able.”

“I would not treat them so, My Lady. They tell me of the lives they had, and hearing them I love my own more.”

“Why have you come?” she asked; I explained as well as I could, not helped by Mani, who interrupted and commented more often than I liked.

When I had finished, Parka pointed beyond the breakers.

“It is out there? What I seek?”

She nodded.

“I can swim,” I told Mani, “but I can’t take you. Nor can I take my sword or my clothes.”

He said, “That mail would sink you in a minute.”

It was not true, but I agreed. “Will you remain here with Parka and watch my things ‘til I return?”

“Your possessions,” Parka told me, “are not here.”

Nevertheless I stripped, and laid my mail, my leather jerkin, my trousers and so forth on a flat stone, and put my boots beside them. Parka spun on, making lives for we who think we make them for ourselves.

How good it was to swim in the sea! I knew then that much of my sea-strength had left me, for I felt it returning; and although I knew Garsecg for a demon, I wished that he were swimming at my side, as he had in days irrecoverable. It is well, I think, for us to learn to tell evil from good; but it has its price, as everything does. We leave our evil friend behind.

To what I swam I did not know. Seeing nothing ahead, I swam a long way under water, then breached the surface and swam on, still seeing nothing. The bones of Grengarm lay in this sea, and somewhere in it dwelt Kulili, for the bottom of the sea of Mythgarthr (and I felt I was in Mythgarthr still) lies in Aelfrice. I resolved to go to the bottom before I was done, and come to land in Aelfrice, and search there for Disiri. For I did not know then that one finds none but lost loves in the Room of Lost Love, and my love for her—love fiery as the blood of the Angrborn, yet pure—could not be lost, not in the Valkyrie’s kiss or the Valfather’s mead.

Surfacing again, I saw the Isle of Glas. What love, I asked myself, did I lose here? None, surely.

For a time I was filled with thoughts of Garsecg and Uri and Baki. At last it came to me that had I been able to recall that love, it would not be lost. Lady Lynnet, in her madness, had forgotten her parents, her sisters, and her home, had remembered only marigolds and manticores and the fighting tradition of her family, which had been in her blood, not in her wounded mind. Thus it was that although her mind had failed, her hand had itched for a sword, and found one in the whip.

It is not the weapon that wins, no, not even Eterne.

The beaches of the Isle of Glas are like no other. Perhaps they are gems ground fine—certainly, that is how they appear. Nor are its stones as other stones. Its grass is fine, soft, short, and of a green no man can describe; and I believe that Gylf, who could not see colors well, could have seen that one. I have seen no other trees like those along its beaches; their leaves are of a green so dark as to appear black, but silver beneath, so that a breath of wind changes them to silver in an instant. Their bark appears to be naked wood, though it is not.

When I think back upon the moments I came ashore, it seems to me I cannot have had long to admire the beach, or grass, or trees; yet it seemed long then. The sun stood fixed, half visible, half veiled by cloud; and I, with all eternity at my disposal, marveled at the grass.

“Oh, son...”

It was a peasant woman. I had seen many fairer, though she was fair.

“You are my son.”

I knew that she was wrong, and it came to me that if I were to lie upon the ground, and she to bend above me, I would see her in the way I had just recalled her. Then I understood that she was the fairest of women.

“You and Berthold suckled these breasts, Able.”

I said he was not here, and tried to explain that he would not have forgotten her, that he had been old enough to walk and speak when she vanished. “Read this.” She held out the tube of green glass.

Shamefaced, I admitted that I could not read the runes of Mythgarthr, only the script of Aelfrice.

“This is not Mythgarthr,” she said, “it is the country of the heart.”

I unrolled the scroll and read it. I set it down here as I recollect it. You will wonder, Ben, as I wondered, whether she was not our mother as well as Berthold’s and his brother’s. I think that she was both.

I asked whether I might take her scroll to read to my brother. She said that nothing I took from this place would remain when I left it, and cast her scroll into the waves.

After that we sat long on the beach, naked together, and talked of the lives we had led, what it was to live and what it was to die. “I was taken by the Aelf,” I told her, “to be playmate to the queen, for the Aelf live on, but few children come to them and any child born to them is a queen or king, as if every Aelf of the clan were mother or father.”

“You were a king to me,” she said, “and to your father and your brother also.”

“We played games in a garden wider than the world, and I sat at lessons with her, and talked of love and magic and a thousand other things, for she was very wise and her advisors wiser. At last they sent me into Mythgarthr. All memory of Disiri and her garden left me. Only now has it returned.”

“You loved them.”

I nodded. “Mother, you are wise. I knew I would not find Disiri here, for my love for her has not been lost. But those were lost—as lost as your scroll.”

“Which is not lost. It remains on the Isle, where you found it.” She took up the green glass tube that had held it as she spoke, and removed the stopper. “Do you want to see it again? It is in here.”

The tube was empty; and yet it seemed to me that there remained something at its bottom, some scrap, perhaps, of paper, a pebble or a shell. I tried to reach in, although it was large enough to admit only two fingers. My whole hand entered, and as it sought the bottom, my arm.

I found myself drawn into a tunnel whose sides were green glass. At once I turned and began to run back the way I had come, troubled (until I caught and held her) by Eterne, whose weighty scabbard slapped my leg. Soon I found a pale door. I opened it, and had no more stepped through than I was followed by Lynnet and Mani.

“I thought you would stay in there a while, Mama,” Etela said. Lynnet only smiled and stroked her hair.

Thiazi said, “None of you need tell me what you saw. Should you wish to, however, you will find me an attentive listener.”

None of us spoke.

Toug said, “Everybody got to ask questions before you went in, or anyhow that was what it seemed like. Now I’d like to ask one and all of you have got to answer just this one question. There isn’t one of you that doesn’t owe me.”

Lynnet nodded and took his hand, at which Etela looked astonished.

“Here it is. Did it work? Did you really find love you had lost in there?”

I told him I had, that I had found a mother whom I had forgotten utterly. To myself I added that her bones lay on the Isle of Glas, and I would not rest until I had interred them and raised a monument, as I now have.

“What about Etela’s mother?”

I nodded, and was about to explain; but Lynnet herself spoke: “I did, and saw women dead and men who fell when the Angrborn came to Goldenlawn. I celebrated the winter feast, and danced the May dance, and cut flowers in our garden.”

She turned to Thiazi who sat huge as a carven image in his chair. “Your folk destroy so much to gain so little.”

He nodded, but did not speak.

“What about Mani?” Toug looked around for him. “I saw him come out.” Etela pointed. “He went out the window.”

“That’s too bad,” Toug said. “I’d like to know if he found love he’d lost too.”

Thiazi’s voice was as dull and distant as the beating of the monstrous drums outside. “If he had lost love, Squire, he found it there.”

I said, “Of course he had love to find—and of course he found it. If he hadn’t, he would be here telling us so. He left because he’s not ready to talk about it.”

There was a frantic pounding at the door, and Thiazi roared, “Come in!”

It was Pouk, and though he did not look around I saw his living eye rest on me. “Lord Thiazi, sir,” he began, “is my old master Sir Able in here, sir? I thought I heard him.”

“He is your new master as well,” Thiazi told him. “I give you to him now.”

Pouk pulled his forelock. “Thankee, sir, an’ I hope it sticks.”

“I’m here, Pouk,” I said. “What do you want?”

“Nothin’, sir. Only I got news you ought to know. That Schildstarr, sir. He’s got th’ crown, sir, an’ says he’s king. He’s fixin’ to go out in th’ town, sir, wit’ all his men an’ Thrym an’ his guards.”

Thiazi rose, “Then I must go with him.”

I nodded. “First, Pouk, you mustn’t talk of His Majesty King Schildstarr as you just did. If you’re disrespectful I may not be able to protect you.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“Second, you’re to go to the stable at once and saddle Cloud, and bring her to the entrance as quick as you can.”

Pouk hesitated. “I ain’t no hand fer horses, sir, an’ that’n don’t know me.”

“Do what she tells you,” I said, “and all will be well.”

After that, I sent Toug to notify Svon and Beel, and armed myself.

Of Schildstarr’s parade through the town I will say little. We human beings were kept to the rear—no doubt wisely. Garvaon, Svon, and I rode three abreast, with Beel and Idnn before us and Garvaon’s men-at-arms and archers behind. The castle of Utgard might have been taken, for there was no one to guard it save Toug and Gylf and a few slaves. But there was no reason to fear it would be taken, though the crowding Frost Giants who cheered so wildly for their new king eyed us with hostility that was almost open.

When I saw their faces, I knew we would have to go, and go soon. I told Beel when we returned to Utgard. He agreed, but reminded me that he would need the king’s permission.

A dark and silent figure waited outside the chamber Thiazi had assigned me. “They’re in there....”

Recognizing her voice, I bowed. “Who is, Lady Lynnet?”

“My daughter, another girl.” For a moment it seemed to me that a frown of concentration crossed her face, that face which so seldom wore any expression. “The cat. And a man. They wanted me to...”

“You would be welcome,” I told her.

“I know.” It seemed that she would go; though I stood aside she remained where she was, her head erect, her hands at her sides, her lank black hair falling to her waist. “I will return south with you. Goldenlawn will be mine.”

“I hope so, My Lady.”

“Shall I have a husband then? Someone to help build?”

“I’m sure you will have your choice among a score.”

“They are so eager, for a little land... Five farms. Our meadows.”

I nodded. “There are many men who are hungry for land, though many have land already. Others hunger for love. If you marry again, My Lady, you would be well advised to marry a man whose desire is for you.”

She did not speak.

“There are many women, My Lady, who feel that a man who greatly desires them can’t be good enough for them. That they prove their mettle by winning one who could couple with a lady more beautiful or more accomplished, winning him with land or gold, or by trickery. I don’t pretend to be wise, but another lady whose name may not be spoken told me once how foolish that is, and how much of her time and strength was spent striving against it.”

“You?”

“No, My Lady. If I’d been speaking for myself, I would have spoken less boldly.”

She passed me without a nod or glance. I watched her erect back and slow, smooth steps until she vanished in the darkness at the end of the corridor. There are ghosts and worse in Utgard, as I knew very well; but no one was less apt to be affrighted than she, and it is possible that they (like us) thought her one of themselves.

Two girls, Lynnet had said, a cat—Mani, clearly—and a man. Little Etela would be one of the girls. The other seemed likely to be one of the slave women, somebody Toug had found to care for her. The man was presumably Toug himself, though I hoped for Garvaon.

Shrugging, I opened the door and stepped in, and saw that I had been right in some regards and wrong in others. The second girl was Uri, and not in human form but clearly a woman of the Fire Aelf. The man was neither Toug nor Garvaon but a blind slave, muscular and nearly naked, with one arm supported by a sling.

Etela said politely, “Hello, sir knight. “We came to see you. Only I was here the first.”

Uri rose and bowed, saying, “Lord.”

Mani coughed as cats do. “She is afraid I will slip ahead of her, as I easily could, dear owner. I won’t. I want to talk to you alone, after these others have gone.”

The blind slave stroked Mani’s back with a hand thick with muscle. “This is him?”

“Yes,” Mani said. “This is he, my owner, Sir Able of the High Heart.”

The slave knelt and bowed his head.

“It means he wants something,” Etela explained. “That’s how they have to do.”

“We all want something,” I told her, “and when I do I kneel in just the same way. What’s his name?”

“It’s Vil, and he was my old master’s just like me. Only now we’re Toug’s.”

I nodded. “Stand up, Vil.”

He rose. Etela said, “Can I still go first?”

“Sure. It’s your right, and I have another question.”

“Well, I got a bunch. You can be first if you want to.”

“No.” I took off my helmet and laid it in the armoire in which I would hang my mail. “You were here first, as you said, and I came in last.” The truth was that I hoped her questions would make my own unnecessary.

“I don’t know where to start.”

“In that case it probably doesn’t matter.” I unbuckled my sword belt, took my place on the hassock, the only seat of merely human size, and laid Eterne across my knees.

“Aren’t you going to put that away too?”

I shook my head. “I’ll hang it by my bed. Something may happen during the night, though I hope it won’t.”

Uri murmured, “I have often watched over you, Lord.” I remembered then that seamen lured to the Isle of Glas had fed the Khimairae; but I said nothing.

“Is the new king going to hurt us? Mama and me?”

I shook my head again. “I would not let you be hurt, but I doubt that he intends you any harm.”

“Toug doesn’t want to be a knight. Not anymore.”

“I know.”

“Only I want him to be one, and he’d be a real good one, wouldn’t he?”

This was addressed to Uri, who said, “I think so too.”

“See? We’re going to get married, Mama said, ‘n we slept in the same bed already ‘n everything.”

Uri said, “I don’t believe so, Lord.”

“Yes, we did! We’re going to do it again tonight, an’ I’m all washed ‘n everything. So he has to be a knight.”

I nodded. “Which he is.”

Etela’s voice rose to a wail. “You said he wasn’t!”

“I said nothing of the kind. You said that he didn’t want to be one, and I told you I knew it. When I was tending his wound, I did my best to keep him from saying what none of us wanted to hear. I may also have said he was a knight already, though no one calls him Sir Toug. I think I did—and if I didn’t, I might easily have done so.”

She tried to speak, but I silenced her. “If Duke Marder were here—I wish he was—he’d tell you there’s no magic in the sword with which he taps a knight’s shoulders. Queen Disiri, who knighted me, might tell you anything, and she commands more magic than Lord Thiazi and Lord Beel combined. But no magic can make a knight. Not even the Overcyns can. A knight makes himself. That’s the only way. Come closer.”

She did, and I put my arm around her.

“Many people know what I told you. I learned it from a good and brave knight when I was a boy. Fewer know this, a thing I learned for myself in a far country.”

Mani asked, “Where there are talking cats?”

I nodded. “Talking cats who draw a chariot. What I learned, Etela, is that a knight cannot unmake himself. A knight can be unmade. It’s difficult and is seldom done, but it can be done.”

Etela said nothing; her eyes were bright with tears.

“It cannot be done by the knight himself, however. If Toug ever ceases to be a knight, it will be because you’ve done it, I think. Though there are other ways.”

“I never would!”

I told her very sincerely that I hoped she would not.

“But he doesn’t want to, an’ what can I do?”

“What you’re doing. Be good, take care of your mother, and show Toug you love him.”

“Well, I want him to ride a white horse, with a sword—” She sobbed. “An’ one of those long spears an’ a shield.”

“I hope we’ll leave this castle tomorrow. I’m going to ask the new king’s permission, and do all I can to set Lord Beel and his folk in motion. If we go, you’ll see Toug on a horse with a sword. His arm can’t bear a shield, but the shield Queen Idnn gave him—the one that you saved from the fight in the marketplace—will hang from his saddle.”

“Will you help?”

I nodded. “All I can.”

“Mama’s better.”

“I know. She may never be entirely well, Etela. You must do whatever you can to help, every day. You and Toug.”

“I’ll try.”

“I know. You must get Toug to help you. After all, she’s his as long as we’re here. Is there anything else?”

“No.” Etela wiped her eyes with her ragged sleeve. “Only this girl is going to talk about me. She said so.”

“Then go,” I told Etela. “See to your mother, and get Toug to help if you can.”

She would have remained, but I made her leave.

As soon as the door had shut, Uri said, “You might marry her, Lord. Do you think Queen Disiri would object?”

I returned to my seat. “Of course.”

“You know her less well than you believe.”

“Do I?” I shrugged.

“Or you might wed the mother.”

I sighed. “When I refuse to consider that as well, will you suggest I wed them both? You may go.”

“I may go whenever I wish, Lord, but I will not go yet. If you do not want to see me, that is easily arranged.”

Vil, the male slave, grunted in surprise; I suppose he thought she might be threatening to blind me.

“When you speak foolishness, Uri, I don’t want to hear you. Should I quiz you about the diet of the Khimairae?”

“That would be foolishness indeed, Lord. When I was a Khimaira I ate Khimaira food. Let us leave it so. You dined upon strange fare once, when you were sore wounded.”

“I yield. You told poor Etela you were going to talk to me about her. Did you tell her what you meant to say?”

“No. Nor was I talking of her and her mother so much as of you, Lord. Would you not like a fair estate?”

“To be got by marriage? No.” I laid Eterne on the hassock and went to the window to stroke Mani.

“A crown? That lout Schildstarr got himself a crown, and easily.”

“So that I might sit a golden chair and send other men to their deaths? No.”

Uri rose to stand beside me. “I speak for all the Fire Aelf, Lord. Not for myself alone. If you kill Kulili, we will serve you. Not just Baki or I, but all of us. If you wish King Arnthor’s crown, we will help you get it.”

I shook my head. “I have to get these people and more to safety, Uri. I have to do a lot of other things too. In Aelfrice, all these things will take only a few minutes.”

“You want me to go back. In a year, Lord, you might be King of Celidon. In ten, Emperor of Mythgarthr.”

“Or dead.”

“You are dead!” Uri’s eyes were yellow fireworks. “You know that and so do I.”

“But Vil doesn’t,” I pitched my voice as low as I dared, “or at least he didn’t. Which reminds me, I’d planned to ask Etela why she feared him. Why does she, Vil? What made her start when she heard your name?”

“She ain’t feared, sir. Not really.”

“She is. Before His Majesty’s parade, Lord Thiazi told us about the distribution of slaves. You went to Toug, like Etela and her mother, and I saw her face when she heard it.”

“I’m a conjurer, Sir Able, or used to was. I’d do things for her, just little things, you know, and tell her ‘twas real magic. I guess she believed me, or sometimes.”

To test him, I asked whether he had conjured up Uri.

“That’s the girl talkin’, I know. I listen, even these days when I can’t see. More’n ever these days, really. No, Master, I didn’t. I heard her and sounds like she’s crazy, but I didn’t have to do with that, neither.”

Uri grinned like a wolf.

I am afraid I smiled, too; but I told him that he was not to call me Master, that Toug was his master, not I.

“I’m main sorry, Sir Able, it slipped out. It’s square on my tongue. But you’ve the right of it, I belong to Master Toug now. Only he don’t seem to have much use for me.”

I told him that would change.

“That’s so, Sir Able. Can I ask now?”

“No. When I’ve finished with Uri here, perhaps. But before I go back to her, what was it you did for Etela that frightened her?”

“Nothing, Sir Able. Just little things, you know. Took a coin out of her ear, and a egg once. Things like that.”

Uri sniffed.

“Could you take a coin out of my ear?”

“Not now, Sir Able, ’cause I don’t have one. Maybe you could lend me? Just for a moment, you know? Gold’s best, if you got gold.”