==========
On the retreat from Fentra, where the sky is pearl, we lost nine hundred men to the desert. Another six hundred died crossing the mountains.
Then, on the far side, on easy descending slopes, the air froze gray and snow took three hundred more.
The remaining seven hundred of us limped down to the warm plains. The land rolled before us, mild open hills, unsettled. Every tree and bush was a different green. When the sun edged weakly out, I heard a faint cry of pleasure from the men. Although you would think they had seen sun enough in the desert.
By then we were well starved. The mountains had fed us rocks and wind. The easy plains offered leaves.
I stood on a ledge and watched the soldiers straggle by, unsteady on their feet, moving like stick figures in a dream. Great eyes showed in their skeleton faces.
I watched them pass and kept my voice to myself. They needed to see me watching. Soldiers, like wives, need constant watching. But they needed no spoken encouragement. Not from me, a little worn fellow and thin, even in fat times, the crippled arm angled against my right side like the wing of a roasted bird. Thinking was my role in Roger’s army, not speeches.
So I stood on my ledge, quite visible, as they dragged by. Rational men would have stretched out by the road edge. And died there, too, most likely. Presently, the eyes of one of the soldiers touched mine. I saw it was Avended, a great laugher, even in starvation.
“Hey, Heron,” he called, “how long this road?”
“Long enough to take us to the next town,” I shouted. At that, his eyes left mine to peer forward, as if the next town were visible ahead, full of meat and rest. If you can offer nothing substantial, offer hope. Soldiers can do much on hope.
They stumbled along the road and I left the ledge, moving slowly back up the column to join Roger. Poor as they were, they were my men, little though they knew that. My mind directed their feet. My mind shed their blood. They were my obedient things, these starving brutes. They followed Roger, not Heron. But Roger lay willing in my closed hand, to be fingered into whatever shape I chose, given time enough. Like all rude material, he took time to shape.
When I reached column head, Roger was stumping stolidly along, chewing bark and leaves from a small limb. I saw the ivory shine of teeth deep in his brown beard.
Looking down on me, he said: “So you say there’s a town ahead?”
My casual words had already moved forward along the column.
“There’s always a town ahead. Where there’s a road, there’s a town.”
He threw away the gnawed stick. “How far, O Master of Reason?”
“That’s another matter.”
The ghost of a chuckle worked from his beard. He was still a burly big man, although hardship had shrunk him inward till his heavy skeleton showed under the skin like a face pressing against oiled paper. Even starving, he had that glow of the born leader. That personal shine that lures men from their comfortable huts and plants their feet on hungry roads and leaves their bodies in strange dust.
He had lost twenty-eight hundred men and he still had that shine. The men followed him for all his faults. He disliked thought; in that lay my advantage. And so, I followed with him, for all I am so little and cold-minded and with a crippled arm. We had been friends down the years, Roger and I. And his campaigns were often profitable.
In late afternoon, we passed around the flank of a hill and out upon its sunny slopes. It was pastureland, grazed to smooth green. Dark clots of sheep wandered across it.
I heard relief and pleasure sigh in Roger’s mouth.
To Benoir, his lieutenant, he said: “Go gently. Edge them toward us.”
But when Benoir and his men had departed, Roger said soft-voiced to me: “None of the four scouts reported this.”
“No scouts came back,” I said. “That is interesting. Shall I see?”
He nodded and trudged off to make his dispositions. Seven hundred men are not many, but with seven hundred, or seven thousand, starving or not, there must be order.
I took three men. We went carefully through the woods bordering the pastureland. Not quietly, for they fell often. But carefully. At the crest, we looked down a short slope glowing in the sun. Sheep mourned eerily beyond the trees. Across the base of the hill, two men hurried. They were tall men in brown and gray and carried long staffs. Their eyes were on the slopes where Benoir and his men urged the sheep forward. When the pair saw us, they stopped, stood like massive stones. I gave instructions to the two archers. Then Walleau and I walked down to them. I saw their eyes continually move to the sheep trotting clumsily before Benoir.
When we came up to the pair, they stared at me with faces like unsheathed knives.
“Leave the sheep be,” one said. He spoke that difficult dialect of the lands north of the sea.
“Shepherd,” I said graciously, “may you live forever in the grace of your god.”
“Leave the sheep be,” he snarled, striking his staff into the grass. “These are The Magician’s flocks.”
“A few head, no more,” I said. “We will pay handsomely.”
“Not these sheep,” he said. “It is forbidden.”
In these lands, where you must discuss half a day for a cup of water, such brusqueness was unexpected.
“Our men are eager, Most Honored Shepherd.”
“I am Priest of The Magician’s flocks,” he said, speaking as if he stood a dozen feet above us. “I forbid this theft.”
“I deeply regret your concern, Honored Priest…” I began.
“I forbid it,” he snarled, showing his black teeth. With a sudden practiced movement, he struck at my face with the end of his staff. I had expected a sideways blow, not a thrust, and moved so clumsily, the staff rammed hard against my bad arm.
I flung myself into the grass. Walleau had bounced away, thrusting out his long knife. Then the husky whir of arrows passing overhead. The Priest thudded weightily into the grass, eyes and mouth open, nicely dead. Two shafts jutted from his chest.
The other priest was in no better condition. He was stretched out long and Walleau was wiping his knife on the brown and gray clothing.
I sat up, waving back at the two archers on the hill crest.
“Nice poke he gave you,” Walleau said, putting away the knife.
“I’ll feel it tomorrow,” I said.
We salvaged the arrows. Then the four of us dragged the dead men downslope and concealed them among the trees. They should have been buried but pulling them down was work enough for our empty bellies.
A little later, we found their hut, very comfortable, with quantities of dried food. The meat was like stone and the cheese harder. But you could suck life out of it.
I posted guard and gave each a wad of mutton. Then I prowled the priests’ hut. It was full of uninteresting stuff, neatly stored. Nothing you’d wish to pack off. Walleau dug into a big leather box. A chunk of dried mutton projected from his mouth like a dark tongue.
I poked and fingered through the hut. In the back, on a stone altar, sat a small box covered with fleece. Inside it, I found a hand-sized chunk of brown bread, hard as a wood carving.
From the sheath strapped to my left forearm, under the sleeve, I slipped my little knife. It is a lovely thing, the blade only as long as my hand and thin and gray as a rat’s tail. But strong. The point I searched into the bread. It was only stale bread, nothing more.
While I was puzzling whether this was an offering or stored food, Walleau snorted sharply. He held up a knife in a black scabbard attached to a horsehide belt. “Benos,” he said around his mouthful. “His knife.”
I went over and pried through the box with him. A blanket smelling strongly of sweat and a black robe and hood, heavily soiled.
“Take the knife and come on,” I said. “It’s a long walk back.”
“And uphill,” He glared at the knife. “Well, I never thought old Benos would go. He was lucky. Let’s burn this place.”
“No, no,” I said. “We’ve done enough. We’ve killed two of them. If we burn the hut, too, that’s telling the jay there’s trouble walking. Let the hut alone and nobody will be sure for a while. The Magician will roar loud enough when he finds his priests dead. Don’t wake the wasp till you’re able to run.”
He thought about that while the anger settled out of his face. “There’s some sense in that, Heron. Slippery. But sense.” ,
We collected the archers and turned to the long, panting trudge up the hill. It was darkening and the western sky glowed orange and rose, like a vast ripe fruit. The wind smelled of hot grass.
As we climbed, I thought of our four lost scouts and the priests and The Magician they served. I’ve traveled many countries and seen men of all colors and beliefs. And I’ve seen many magicians. But no real magicians. They do tricks, yes. But magic? No, I don’t suppose I’ll ever see magic between the sky and the green grass. Not ever.
Still the world is fat with people who believe in magicians. Which is a different thing. People can believe anything, real or not. Belief is strong and very dangerous.
I don’t believe in magicians but you must consider them; their followers believe and that makes the difference.
==========
When we finally labored to the top of the hill, it was full night. You could smell cooking meat a mile off. It was like walking into a sea, the smell getting stronger and thicker and richer with each step. That rock of cheese in my cheek got well lubricated, let me tell you.
Walleau’s sardonic voice by my ear said: “Hunt with Heron and miss the feast.”
“There’ll be bones left,” I said, giving him malice for malice.
More than bones were left. There had been a great slaughter of sheep. However, starving men have large expectations and little stomach. Many more sheep were cooked than eaten.
Fires blazed along the hill crest and down the back slope. The valley beyond was peppered with clusters of orange light. It was full of smoke and that ragged drone of many men come together.
We limped unchallenged through the first line of fires. Once again, as at Fentra, Roger’s genial slovenliness was echoed by his soldiers. A handful of altar virgins could have captured the whole army. Men sprawled blindly on the turf, some asleep, some sick, precious few watching. Every man’s hands and mouth were stuffed with meat.
We filled our hands and mouths, too. I left Walleau and the archers to gobble beside a fire. I picked my way slowly down the hill, my joints loose with fatigue, a deep red glow of pain where the staff had struck.
Down in the valley, thick with smoke and litter and the smell of burnt meat, I found Roger.
He was chewing mutton, his beard well greased. His eyes glittered in the firelight. “Eat and talk. What did you find?”
I told our adventures. Told them slowly and accurately, for all the thick exhaustion settling closely over my mind. When finally I saw the fires doubling and blurring, I said: “I must sleep.”
“I suppose,” he said slowly, his mind fumbling with the thought, “I suppose you had to kill the priests.”
“They struck. We struck back. You don’t need guards for dead men.”
“So,” he said, “the sum of it is that the sheep are The Magician’s and the priests are The Magician’s and we’ve killed both.”
“What’s two more?” I said. And rolling over, instantly slept.
======
Once later I woke. Deep night. Cold mist blurred the sky. The dull campfire illuminated nothing. I thought that a dark figure sat hunched in a fringe of night. Sleep confused me. I could see no details. Only long-fingered hands, fretting and worrying at themselves.
“Heron, Heron,” the figure whispered to its hands. I lay stupidly, blinking my eyes.
“Heron, Heron,” it whispered. “The Magician must be paid. Pay is required, Heron.”
Just that. And silence. I felt remote regret that my mind, a lump of tallow, would not respond. I did not speak. When my eyes opened again, the eastern sky had grown transparent and the figure was gone.
======
Three days we stayed in camp, resting and eating. The Magician’s flocks were further thinned and the air reeked with their death.
I kept silent about the dark figure that had spoken in the night. Sleep and shadows had been mixed. I might have dreamed, although I seldom dream in that vein.
On the third morning, I said to Roger: “Give me ten men. I want to find the town.”
He thought on that, locking hands across his stomach and rocking slightly, as he did when forced to decide. But I am unfair; when he trusted his muscles, he was quick enough and most often right.
He said: “The scouts are posted the second ridge west. I spoke to them this morning, while you snored under your bush.”
“They saw priests and sheep?”
“They saw nothing. They dreamed dreams.”
“Dreams?”
“They dreamed the darkness spoke to them.”
Cold unease touched my skin. “And perhaps it warned of payment to The Magician?”
His shaggy eyebrows rose and he glanced sharply at me, face alert. “And spoke to them by name.”
“We’re soldiers, not dreamers,” I said, rising. “Give me the ten.”
“You know about this, Heron?”
“I know nothing. When I see the town, I may know more.”
He studied me long, working his mouth on indecision, rocking his body.
At last he said: “We’ve seven hundred men here and all of them not worth three hundred in fighting shape. So be careful, Heron. No killing. Use that easy tongue of yours. Save killing till we must.”
“Softly, softly,” I said, smiling at the fool.
I left him standing there, his long face netted in worry, and we were on the road before the sun was a hand higher.
======
It was early evening when I returned to the camp, riding in alone through that calm gray light you see before darkness.
When Roger saw me, his face also became gray.
“Where are the others?”
“Coming,” I said pleasantly. “An hour behind, perhaps. But coming. All in good order. All accounted for. And carrying provisions bought from The Magician. A dangerous purchase, I suspect.”
He let out his breath and looked more cheerful. “You saw him then?”
“The Magician? Oh, yes. We met. Now,” I said, taking his thick arm as a father takes the arm of his child, “let me find a softer place to sit than this mule. I have a good deal to tell you before Walleau brings up the pack train.”
“Trouble?”
“Some. Insignificant. The real trouble is still an hour off. But let’s start at the head of the snake, not his tail. Let me tell you from the beginning.”
We sat close together by Roger’s campfire. Just within earshot, many men suddenly discovered work for their hands. Their eyes flickered toward us in the gray light, like leaves blowing in the wind.
Stretching my legs to the heat, I began unstrapping the knife sheath on my left arm. “Here’s a sorry thing,” I said sourly, tossing the sheath down. “Playing the fool as your ambassador and now my precious knife is gone.”
He looked pained at that, for he loved craftsmanship in weapons.
“We’ll watch for it along the road. Offer the finder a bit of gold. Now begin.”
“You’re very generous,” I said, gauging the impatience that thinned his eyes and hardened his mouth. “Perhaps half a bit of gold.”
“Begin,” he cried urgently, smacking his knee.
I drank beer. “It’s a simple story. We rode all morning. When the sun was overhead, we came to Durhena…”
======
Two rivers rushed together forming shallow cliffs and a massive single stream. In the blunt angle between the rivers sprawled a good-sized town of three or four thousand. Stone and plastered houses, wood frames showing through. Angled roofs of some dark material. Streets of finely broken stone.
Around the city, from river to river, arced a wall of rough rock slabs, solid but not high. Short ladders could easily scale them. At the bottoms of the open gates clustered thick weeds, like the fringe on a fine lady’s gown.
Outside the walls, roads branched right and left, entering the town near each river. No closed gates there, either. Men idled in the shade of the walls, peering hard at us and jabbering to themselves. A rabble of dogs raced to bark as we tramped into town. Only dogs. No swords. No arrows.
Roger scowled at that and hunched up his big body. “They are confident of their magician, then.”
“So it would appear,” I said. “Or perhaps they’ve gone fatly careless. Judge for yourself. Our road, you see, plunged straight into the city, changing from dirt to stone, twisting away among the buildings…”
======
The few people looked curiously at us, without fear. As in any town the air was full of stinks, some original. You notice that when you’ve been in the field. Until you get used to it again, you wonder why men willingly live with each other’s garbage. But then you forget.
The street turned and we found ourselves in a little bright square. The enormous statue of a ram faced us, gilded horns intense in the sunlight. A black covering was fastened around its body. From underneath the black drapery, the gilded hooves glittered. The head stared over us, arrogant and unseeing.
At the foot of the statue, some dozen men in brown and gray stood watching. More priests, stiff-faced and silent, holding their staffs. One took a step forward, stood waiting solidly as I moved slowly toward him, feeling a tender itching in my back. Doves cooed and fluttered at the far side of the square.
I looked up into his face, corpse-still and corpse-white, and said: “We are travelers from across the mountains. We come to seek the wisdom of The Magician.”
“You are murderers and thieves,” he said. Big jaw, fat cheeks, and eyes like dagger points. “We will escort you to The Magician’s justice. Lay your arms by The Ram.”
He jerked away, snapping out instructions to the other priests in a voice of hard command. He had been in the field, that one had.
When he found that I hadn’t moved, he whirled around, frigid with anger.
“Did you not understand my command, thief?”
“Honored priest,” I said pleasantly, “these few soldiers and their arms offer no threat to a magician as mighty as your ruler. Surely such power as his…”
“What do they call you, little cripple in black?”
I made a small movement with one hand and watched his grim face harden as behind me arrows were nocked.
“Heron, honored priest. And what do they call you?”
He looked past me to the arrows waiting, judging them, testing me. The doves cooed.
“I am Seydras, the Priest of priests, the Voice of The Magician.”
“An honorable position,” I said. “Has he no voice, himself?”
“You will see,” he said, unmoved, cold and big. But nothing more was said about throwing down our weapons.
They led us across the square, through a flapping turmoil of doves. We entered a broad, low building studded with ram statues. We clattered through a long dim room smelling of burnt fat and cold stone. Four priests held black draperies aside, revealing an enormous set of stone stairs, torch-lit, plunging into the flickering darkness.
We descended. The air was cool, fresh, moist, and we made an infernal racket going down.
Walleau whispered at my ear: “Heron, is this wise?”
“We must do it. But remember our seven hundred in the hills. We are safe if magicians can count.”
We descended deep to stand in a chilly vault cut from the stone roots of the city. Behind squat pillars waited darkness. A spreading hollow here, echoes said. You could wander here, tasting darkness in your mouth, feeling your blood cool and your bones melt, hearing whispers at your back. Waiting the clutch of silent fingers at your eyes.
We thirty men, soldiers and priests, clattered through echoes in the fragile torchlight. The darkness gripped like that pressure when you are deep in water.
======
At that description, Roger stirred uneasily, rasping his great hands together. Darkness muddled him; he could not think without light. For my part, I love those shadowed places where a man may glide and strike and never be seen.
“We’ll need torches, then,” Roger said.
“The temple’s full of them,” I told him. “More than we can burn.”
The thought of light cheered him. “Good,” he said, bending toward the fire for reassurance. “And then?”
======
Down in the mazy darkness, we turned and turned again, following the right wall. Even in darkness this way could be retraced. But the soldiers fingered their weapons and stepped as if the stone underfoot were mire to gobble them. Once I smelled the bitter reek of rotting grain. Finally we stopped before a metal-faced door across which lay a vast wooden bar. In the smoky light, the door seemed to tremble. Eagerness lifted in me.
“Now,” Seydras said. He held out a ram’s skull, gripping the gilded horns. From the crown of the skull projected a thick black candle. A priest touched torch to the candle, as two others grunted down the door’s bar.
They heaved the door open. Seydras strode through into blackness-thick as packed velvet. The candle flame illuminated nothing, darkness ravenously sucking the light.
The door thudded shut.
To the priest at my side, I said: “You bar your magician in?”
“What do bars matter?” he muttered, as if he believed it.
We waited.
And presently, Seydras strode back to the doorway, his face glimmering like a dead man’s in black water. “Heron only,” he said.
I told Walleau, “I’ll return very soon. Circle the priests. Keep the torches lighted. If they try to leave or put the torches out, kill them.”
His eyes jerked and the sweat ran past his nose. “Yes, sir.” His voice was very loud.
“It’s all show, old friend,” I said, patting his arm.
And followed the scowling white face through the doorway.
======
Darkness dense as the unforgiving heart. Cold air stirred, smelling of distant water. The ram’s skull with its single flame sat on a small stone table. In its meager light at the table’s edge, a pair of white hands lay exposed.
Behind the table sat a figure, dark in the darkness. He was wrapped in black and only the white face showed, masked by white beard. A powerful nose. A slitted mouth within the beard. The lean planes efface, grooved and hard, the eyes closed.
The eyes opened and looked at me.
“This is Heron,” Seydras said. “One of seven hundred. They have killed five hundred sheep and two priests. He waits judgment.”
I stepped forward and Seydras, making a shocked sound, thrust out a rigid arm.
“Don’t be a fool, man,” I said, pleasantly enough. “Save yourself the trouble of these ceremonies.”
I said to The Magician: “If this is your city, we didn’t come here to attack it. We’re passing through from the mountains. Seven hundred men require food and the sheep were there. We will pay for them. We will pay for them, as honorable men pay for what they take. If we are attacked, we’ll fight. Your priests refused us food and attacked me. They died. I regret that, and may find some way of expressing our regret. In the meantime, we wish only peace and safe passage to the far side of the river. And the opportunity to buy food.”
The Magician was silent, and his white hands lay motionless on the table edge.
I was silent, too, in that chill black place, and the sound of my heart beat in my ears.
Finally one white hand raised from the table. One long finger, like a sliver of bone, rose and crooked toward Seydras, and The Magician’s eyes, hot points in the darkness, shifted.
In a firm, low voice, as matter-of-fact as a tradesman at his business, The Magician said: “Seydras, send fifty loads of bread and such produce as they wish.” The points of light shifted to me. “The price will be one-half your weight in gold. You may buy fish and fowl in the city. No mutton.”
“And for the sheep eaten?” I asked.
“For five hundred sheep and two dead priests, other payment. Within two days, Roger and yourself—of your own free will—must return to judgment within this room.”
“And if Roger will not come?” I asked.
“In two days, one hundred of your men will go mad. Then another hundred. Until you come, each day a hundred will laugh and scream on the slopes of Durhena.”
“That’s a hard bargain.” I said.
“I do not bargain,” he said, firm as stone. And closed his eyes.
======
Even in the firelight, I could see the flush rise on Roger’s face. Anger came out of him like a black sweat. Heaving his great shoulders forward, he snarled: “Insolence. Threats and insolence. So he will not bargain.”
“He commands,” I said.
“I think we must meet, this magician and I,” Roger said, spitting out a syllable of laughter like the edge of a knife. “We might learn from each other. Then what else? More commands?”
“Then we were treated to a bit of parlor sleight-of-hand,” I said. “Very amusing. It went like this. First The Magician closed his eyes and extended his hands…”
======
The white hands pressed together and parted. In the palm of the right hand lay a thick lump of brown bread. The long fingers tore this in half, held out a portion to Seydras. Who bowed his head, whispered rapidly to himself, thrust it into his mouth.
“One by one,” The Magician said.
Seydras pushed back the door, spoke. A priest entered, approached the table, head down. Again The Magician broke the bread and extended a piece as large as that given to Seydras. The bread remaining in his hand seemed no larger or smaller than it had before. The priest bowed, mumbled, ate, left.
Pushing past Seydras, I called: “It’s all right, Walleau. Let them in, one by one.” I saw him nod, his face strained and wet in the unsteady light. I turned back to the table, positioning myself by its side.
As another priest entered, Seydras gripped my arm with his hard hand. “Back.”
Making my voice as contemptuous as possible, an easy matter, I said: “As a simple traveler, I am interested in this rite.”
I felt his fingers jerk. He did not leave my side, but we stood silently together until The Magician had torn the bread in half for each of the priests. Its size remained unchanged.
When the final man returned to the corridor, the white hands released the remaining chunk. It fell into the shadow of the ram’s skull, and it was no smaller than before.
I said: “A final request, most honored Magician. I wish Seydras to return with us to receive the gold. Only Seydras.”
The shining eyes remained closed. The white hands stretched immobile on the table’s edge. “Seydras will go with you,” the calm voice agreed.
“Your bread delights me,” I said. “Given skill enough, it could feed an army.” As I spoke, I picked up the chunk of bread and brought it into the candlelight, bending over the table so that, if I had wished, I could have struck those still white hands.
As I lifted the bread, Seydras vented an outraged roar, a bear feeling the spear. “Drop it,” he shouted. His fat hand tore at my fingers.
The magician leaned forward, his robe falling open to expose his beard and narrow chest.
I struck aside the priest’s snatching hand and jerked back.
“Desecration!” he bellowed. “You starveling thief…”
“Take it, then,” I cried, not quite laughing. And hurled down the bread. It bounced past the candle and tumbled into the shadows of the floor. Seydras snarled, bent, groped.
The Magician gave a sharp cry and his white hands slapped peevishly against the table. I saw the shaggy shape of his head, the harsh nose and harsher eyes.
Seydras reared up clutching the bread, his face contorted. “You’ve polluted…” He came at me. “Your filthy touch…”
Grinding fingers locked around my arm as he forced me toward the door. “Leave. Leave.” His voice was harsh with rage. The Magician did not move, his hands white upon the stone table.
At the doorway, I watched as Seydras seized up the ram skull. His eyes glared death at me across the wobbling flame. He elbowed me into the corridor, followed, the smoking candle trailing gray vapor. Fury bent furrows around his mouth.
“To touch the bread,” he snarled.
I said to Walleau: “The Magician has allowed us to collect supplies and return to camp. Seydras goes with us. Are you ready, Priest of priests?”
I smiled up at him and heard his teeth grate behind his rigid lips.
Then we returned through the corridors, leaving The Magician behind his barred door, sitting silent, white hands extended, in a darkness as final and unrelieved as death.
======
Roger looked sharply at me, alert as a red wolf.
“That was an ill-considered prank,” he said. “You’ve hammered at me often enough not to interrupt somebody’s ceremony.”
“Curiosity,” I said. “And, perhaps, I too dislike being commanded in shouts.”
Thought twisted his face. “A poor time to be curious, Heron. We may speak of this later. Well? And then?”
======
Then as we passed through the corridor, Seydras said to me: “One thing I will show you. One thing.”
His voice was edged flint.
We left the rest of them at the foot of the great steps. Holding up a torch, he led me down a short corridor. Every movement of his body was a sneer. We stopped before another barred, metal-stiffened door. In the upper panel was set a viewing window secured by a short timber.
Seydras unlatched this, swung it wide, thrust the torch at me.
“Look your fill.” Something deeply hateful fluttered the corners of his mouth.
Rising on my toes, I thrust the torch through the opening, keeping head and hand well back for safety.
And there they were, our four missing scouts.
Alive but changed. Unfettered but naked. In a little straw-strewn room smelling of festering filth, twisting their bodies in mindless pain, like chopped worms. You could see the stains where they had torn themselves with nails and teeth. When the light touched them, they began to shriek. It was the sound men make when their teeth have mangled their tongues. Their eyes rolled white. Their mouths ran foul. Their bodies knotted, jerked, twisted, brown worms on pale straw. And mad. I hope they were mad and did not know.
Then I withdrew the torch and closed the viewing window. Giving them darkness was an act of mercy.
“Profoundly interesting.” I said to his elated face, bright with hatred of me. “They find light painful. It must be a considerable magic—or a powerful poison.”
“One hundred a day,” he said, his words precise and with that quality of terrible, quiet joy. “Until you return to The Magician. And to me.”
I would have killed him then. But it was not the proper time. I felt the sweat creep along my crippled arm and my head floated with longing. But it was not time. Every action has a season of ripeness and his death was yet green.
It was not yet time.
======
In late afternoon, we left Durhena. The holy, honest sun was hot. Dogs barked after us and people whispered, and their Magician, for all we knew, sat silent in his terrible dark.
As our mules cleared the gates, I said to Walleau: “Bring the supplies back as fast as you can. I’ll go ahead.”
“So you run away again and leave me with the mules.”
“Your proper place,” I told him. “I also leave you the Priest of the priests.”
And, riding closer, I added: “He is mine, Walleau. Make no mistake about that.”
What he saw in my face startled him. “As you say.”
“One thing more. No one samples the bread. Not a crust or crumb. Tell the men and make sure they hear you with both ears.”
I left him sour-faced, for it would be no child’s play to keep the men from twenty bags of bread. Urging the mule to a trot, I hurried toward the sunny hills.
======
Roger stared morosely at me, rocking from side to side in thought.
So I said it over again. “They knew we were coming and they prepared. Hardly an hour after I spoke to The Magician, the pack train was loaded and ready. Too quick. Unless they were loading it before we entered the city.”
“You tell me these small things?” he asked harshly. “I think of our four men in the dark. Good men. Benos, Arron…”
“I know their names,” I said. The great fool. “Listen to the small things, Roger. Ask why they prepared the pack train before we arrived.”
“Who knows the way of magicians? He foresaw…”
I said: “There are no magicians. Only men.”
“So you say. I’ve heard those who disagree. And what a fool I’d be to march headlong against the dark arts. You said yourself that the gates are open to the wind. No fighting men but priests with sticks. What art defends them against the hard hunger of the world, Heron?”
“No art. Poison.”
“Poison,” he snorted. “You have the mind of a snake. You see coils and twists in an arrow’s flight. Poison makes our four men mad, eh?”
He wished to believe and the wish warred with his fear of The Magician’s powers. The struggle stirred his restless hands and drummed his heel in the dust. His eyes sought the fire.
I told him: “We camp here five days without hurt. Then, at Durhena, they tell me our men will go crazy, one hundred a day. And they agree to send back supplies—some fish, some onions, much bread. See how closely the events follow. Bring in supplies: men go mad.”
“A magician’s arts are beyond understanding.”
“Poisoning, too, is an art.”
“There’s that.” He pondered the flames, deep wrinkles around his eyes. He looked weary, overcome by years. Like my father, when I last saw him, wrinkle-faced against the fireplace. The blow. The curse. Flying white droplets from his mouth. He was always a great spitter and drooled when his teeth were gone. And, as he screamed at me, the deep lines on his fallen-in lips, the rancid breath of an old man’s digestion fouling the air. And so he screamed me out with loathing and hate, his crippled feeble clever son. Of four sons. Dead as he now. Yet I was innocent of that theft. Though not of others.
“Bread,” Roger said. “If poison, then the bread. But only part of the bread.”
Surprise made a small hot shock in me and a warming sense of gratification, as if a pet dog, laboriously trained, had performed well. I had known this thing since first seeing the waiting mules, all nicely packed and ready.
But for Roger to understand so quickly…
“You are right,” I said. (You must ever flatter the slow and praise their little triumphs.) “Now I have a small idea.”
And we talked. Finally he reared back, the muscles set like iron on his face. “So. Magician or not, sly arts or not, we march on Durhena tomorrow. We’ll know soon enough what magicians can do.”
“And tonight come the whispering dreams in black.”
“Perhaps some will also stay.” Giving a great chuckle, he whacked his big hard hand on mine.
“Now,” I said, “is it agreed? Seydras, Priest of priests, must live.”
He looked at me with close appraisal, his expression not easy to read in the shudder of firelight. “You twist. Like a snake at night. But you have been a friend and brother to me, Heron. You do well.”
“Tonight, the whisperers,” I said. “Tomorrow, the city.”
“And The Magician.” That ate in his mind, the threat of The Magician.
“Yes,” I said. “We must face The Magician.”
“He’ll need arts,” Roger said, touching his dagger hilt. And rose to give his orders. I remained by the fire and thought.
======
Late in the night, the pack train arrived.
Confusion blossomed like the fire tree in summer. Hooves stamped and dust clouded up. Men reeled cursing and struggling with the packs in the darkness. After the turmoil fell under control, I posted guards over the bread and gave Walleau his instructions. Then I led Seydras into the firelight. He drew himself up, like a man walking through a sty, and twisted his lips.
“What’s this all about us going off in the head?” Walleau asked. His voice was carefully unconcerned; his eyes were not.
I said: “Fauns are afraid of every shadow. It’s only scary talk.”
Seydras said to me: “You will not be the first to scream. But you will scream, Profaner of the Bread.”
Ignoring him, I told Walleau: “I think now.” He nodded, and as he slipped away, Roger stepped into the firelight, his long chin raised, his big shoulders thrust back. He looked like a walking mountain. For all his worn clothing and tangled hair, he carried himself like the conqueror of thousands. He had that air.
I said that this person was Seydras, Priest of priests, come for payment of our provisions. Roger said welcome, for he held the rules of hospitality sacred and observed them with rigor. Seydras told Roger that he was a murderer and thief and could expect quite horrible punishment.
Roger glared at me. The Rules of Hospitality forbid that he cut a guest’s throat before feeding him. So he swallowed Seydras’s remarks as if gagging down a load of stones. “Bring this priest drink,” he growled.
“Bring the gold you promised,” Seydras said. “I want nothing else of yours.”
“You sit and you drink with us,” Roger said, with force. “Or I send you back tongueless and flayed, with the gold down your throat.”
They snarled at each other. Seydras selected a clean log and sat, holding up his robe fringe away from our dirt.
Walleau and two yawning infantrymen returned at that moment. They spilled the contents of two bread bags out on a robe by the fire.
“Mainly rye,” Walleau said. “A few wheat loaves.”
I said to Seydras: “We’re not savages here. Even rude men of war honor a guest.” I sorted among the dark discs of rye until finding the brown-gold bulge of a wheat loaf. Borrowing Walleau’s knife, I hacked off a piece of wheat bread, extended it to Seydras.
He shook his head. “I have taken the vow of simplicity. I eat only the ancient dark bread.”
“I must reserve this piece for myself, it seems.”
He said, with cold indifference: “You will find the rye more flavorful. The wheat sometimes has a musty taste.”
“So it seems,” I said, sniffing the bread. “But perhaps Walleau would enjoy this luxury.”
I extended the bread chunk to Walleau. He slipped it from the knife point and I saw Seydras’s eyes shining, hard, watching.
“Walleau,” I said, “I tremble to think of The Magician’s scorn if he learns we entertained the Priest of priests with dark bread. Offer the honorable Seydras the golden loaf again.”
“I said no,” Seydras snarled. He rose, folding his heavy arms. “Why do you delay? Do you refuse to pay your debt to The Magician?”
Roger was sniffing at the cut loaf as delicately as a fox testing a bait. “Moldy.” His diamond eyes slipped over mine. He tossed the loaf to Walleau, saying: “Feed it to our guest. Every scrap.”
The two soldiers darted forward, faces intent. Seydras performed a sudden, flowing movement, very graceful, his hand striking with a dull sound. The near soldier sprawled backward into the fire. Golden sparks whirled up.
The second soldier, clinging to Seydras’s arm, was jerked off his feet. He fell to one knee. Both hands remained locked on Seydras’s arm. The priest, bending over, struck the soldier twice on the side of the neck. The soldier’s face went gray and loose, but his hands held. Regarding him with an expression of calm interest, Seydras struck once more.
Walleau cried: “Don’t. Now don’t.” He hit Seydras on the side of the head.
Seydras fell over backward into a sitting position. Walleau hit him again. I saw the flash of the metal glove on his right hand. Bright blood showed on Seydras’s cheek as he lifted one arm.
Walleau kicked him in the armpit and fell on top of him. The first soldier crawled out of the fire. Flames stood in his hair as he squinted toward the struggling men.
He scrabbled toward them on his hands and knees. As he lurched by, I dumped my beer on his head and he began to laugh, his eyes wild.
More soldiers came running.
In time, they stretched Seydras out. They swarmed over him like flies over a corpse. Finally they rammed the bread and half a gallon of beer down his throat.
Walleau settled back on his haunches, sucking in noisy breaths.
“Priests eat too much meat,” he said, examining a bitten hand.
“Tie his hands,” I said. “And gag him.”
Walleau said: “If he spews, he chokes.”
“That would be unfortunate.”
Roger, at my side, looked thoughtfully down at Seydras. “There is a taint in all the wheat bread. What do you suppose they put in it?”
“Death,” I said.
Seydras opened one eye. He looked straight up into the fresh night sky. It was a lingering stare, penetrating far. A single water drop rolled on his bloody cheek. Sweat, perhaps.
======
Roger burned the bread. The great fire raged orange for hours, smelling deliciously of toast. Much smoke rose. I was afraid of that and stood carefully back.
Later, some of us slept. An hour before dawn, drifting phantoms in black whispered at the fringes of our camp. They murmured of madness, fear, punishment. All night the guards had waited for these voices. But black-clad men in the dark are elusive. Few died. In the morning, I counted only three cloaks, slashed and sticky with blood. They resembled the cloak and hood we had discovered in the hut of the shepherd priests.
======
In the first light, our seven hundred moved towards Durhena.
======
History is a lie and those who believe it are deluded.
What does the historian know of the real history? He sets down words. He records how cleverly you planned your great campaign. How bravely you fought for your great victory. How effortless it was. What you wish to have known and remembered, you tell the historian and neatly he writes it all down.
Of the day’s confusion and the night’s apprehension, the historian is silent. You tell him none of that. No matter that you stumbled ignorantly about. That you itched, your stool came hard, your head floated with lack of sleep. That you blundered, misjudged, forgot, left brave men piled for the fly and bird, because your stupidity was great.
======
History does not tell of that.
No, no. History tells how our great captain, Roger, saved his men from disaster in the desert. Rested his men near magical Durhena. Then led them refreshed to a glorious victory, sweeping aside the enchantments around that terrible place. So valiant and far-seeing he.
History does not record how the soldiers grew silent before the curving stone walls. How fear drizzled from Roger’s skin and his very beard grew limp as he waited for The Magician to strike.
His belly shuddered as he marched at the head of the column. As if The Magician’s threat was not poisoned bread. As if the shadow men were not priests in dark cloaks, whispering fear into unsteady minds.
I thought of these things. They were the doings of men in a firm world. At no point did the dark arts seep in. It bewilders me. All around rose a mist of fear. As if the dust of the road might swirl into a feeding mouth. As if the sweet air might splinter like struck ice, letting hairy arms grope through.
Such things never were and never will be.
======
But such is the power of expectation that Roger, and every marching man, awaited a magical blow. They plodded forward into their own fears.
Admirable in a way.
I felt a certain pride in them. Afraid or not, they marched.
Yet why did they fear? They had been in this world as long as I and seen as much. Why then did they paint this firm, true world with magic? Then shiver at their own imaginings?
I could not understand this.
I record only the true facts. Real history. We marched steadily in fear toward fear.
Seydras wept and mumbled to himself. He was lashed to a mule but his eyes were on the sky, as if some rare things floated there. He would not speak to me.
The Magician did not strike.
We walked into Durhena. It was as simple as that. The dogs came barking, although no one loafed at the open gates. The streets spread empty before us. The people had drawn silently into their buildings, as a turtle into its shell. In the square, the great metal ram gazed past us, its hooves and horns glittering in the sun. Doves swooped in shifting clouds overhead.
It was calm and silent. A great victory.
======
Roger gave his instructions. A company here, two there. Patrols paced through the silent city like ferrets through an abandoned burrow. His voice was low and full of conscious power. In action he was a fine figure, glowing with the confidence that had seeped from him, drop by drop, during the march.
“Now,” he said to me, “we keep your promise and face The Magician.” He eyed me savagely and his voice dimmed with old fears, ruthlessly checked.
“You have his city in your hand,” I said.
“I don’t have him.”
The two of us and fifty soldiers and Seydras entered the temple. We lighted many torches and the raw light flared on old stone. Roped and guarded, Seydras shuffled behind us, watching with shallow eyes. When the black draperies were torn aside, exposing the stairs down, a giggle came from his mouth. His chin was wet and what he saw seemed inside his head.
We descended amid the flare and smoke and rattle of echoes.
Nothing waited for us at the bottom. No armed men. No priests. Silence only and the wavering of shadows disturbed by our lights.
I said to Roger: “One thing you should see first.” And led the way left, through that echoing place, to the cell where the madmen lay.
I threw back the viewing window and held up a torch. In the warm light, I saw Roger’s iron face, lips compressed, eyes narrowed with waiting and distrust. He was alert as the deer hearing distant hounds. “This is the cell of our men,” I said. “You should see them before we go to The Magician.”
“Unbar the door,” he said in a voice like falling metal.
“They’re mad.”
“Unbar the door.”
Seydras giggled, a thin continuing sound no thicker than a thread. The soldiers crashed down the bar, heaved back the door. Roger lifted the torch, stepped forward. Stopped. I heard the breath shrill in his mouth.
“What is this? Heron, what is this?”
He dragged me to his side. Together we stared into the cell. Four bodies contorted on the straw. The air festered. They had died in pain. Their faces, locked in silent howls, were shrunken, creased like worn leather. Thick filaments clustered in their mouths and nostrils. Hung in beards from where the eyes should be. Thrust pale long wisps from the ears. These delicate growths emerging from the heads trembled in the stir of air from the corridor. Floated gently in that stink, beckoning in their own soft way.
Roger looked down on me with eyes of terrible light.
“In the bread,” I said.
Only for a moment did he stand staring down, weak and irresolute. I saw the discipline of command harden his face, moving like the shadow of winter to stiffen the warm flesh.
He pushed me back like some trivial thing. “Bring Seydras here.” His voice was slow and clear.
When Seydras was pushed forward, Roger studied his face in the torch light. “You know of this?”
No answer. The light blazed into Seydras’s eyes, but he seemed to see nothing. The black of one eye, I noticed, had shrunk to a point. But only one eye.
He giggled. It was a vague ripple of sound, without force or intelligence, as a child in the deeps of his play might laugh, unaware of his own joy.
Roger pushed him unresisting into the cell and, with a savage thrust of his arm, hurled the torch at the mounded straw.
The door slammed. The bar thudded down. Through the open viewing window, I saw the flickering rise of light. Then the window, too, was slammed and barred.
“Leave him,” Roger said, “to burn or not.”
And said nothing more, till the great metal door of The Magician’s room had been unbarred, and the door wrenched back and the thick blackness within faced us.
I took a torch and, holding it warily, tested the space at either side of the door for ambush. Then I stepped forward, holding the light high.
“We have come, Master Magician, Roger and Heron, as you wished.”
He sat immobile behind the stone table, white hands stretched on the edge. His eyes were closed. The great nose jutted and the silver beard, like an intricate metalwork, glinted in the light.
I advanced to the table and set the butt of the torch on it, so that the light leaped against his calm face. I said to him: “Your Priest of priests burns. Your city is taken. Your power fails, O Honored Magician.”
In that chill room, shaking with torchlight, The Magician sat speechless and erect, silent in his carved chair.
Roger made a small, soft, surprised noise deep in his throat. Gliding past me, he closed one thick hand on The Magician’s black-clad shoulder, pushed. The Magician rocked sideways. He moved all in one piece, rigid, as if he were a carved idol. His eyes remained closed.
Roger released the shoulder. The Magician rocked back to his upright position. One extended hand made a gentle little thud against the table top.
“Dead. Long dead,” Roger rumbled. “Stiff and dead and dead and dead.”
Holding up a torch, he bent over The Magician. At his touch, the black robes had fallen open, exposing the narrow body. You could clearly see the gray handle of my knife projecting in his chest, the circular black stain of his blood. There was not much blood.
“Stabbed straight into the heart,” Roger said. “A single thrust. Very neat. Your work, Heron.”
It was a statement, not a question. “It was difficult,” I said. “I had to juggle the bread left-handed to do it. They never thought the crippled arm could move. They didn’t watch. But there was not time to get the knife back.”
“So all this long time you knew he was dead?”
“Should I tell you I disobeyed orders? No, I waited till you saw the cell and what was in it.”
He stood over me, a powerful, big man, his shoulders slowly swaying, his breath soft on my face. “I said no killing. Why did you do this?”
“He had already ordered the slaughter of one hundred a day. I knew that when he made his threat and demanded we come to him. If he killed so easily, could I do less for him?”
Both his hands closed on my shoulders, gripping with dreadful force. I was an infant in those hands, and I felt the cold light in my mind go unsteady with fear, and prepared myself for pain and struggle.
Instead, he fetched up a long sigh of sadness, relief, and, perhaps, respect. “You are the very Fiend himself, old friend. You dart too fast for a rugged old soldier. But you did right by all you know. That’s all any man can do.”
He clapped both of my shoulders with force.
“Leave The Magician here to his darkness,” he said. “Let’s find the wealth these priests have piled away.”
He stepped off to the doorway, powerful and big, moving lightly as a shadow moves. At the door he turned, and I saw the teeth flash in his beard. “I found your lost knife,” he grinned. “Don’t forget. You owe me half a bit of gold.”
Laughter followed him into the corridor.
I cast a glance after him. The fear faded slowly from my mind, as water sinks into earth. I thought, We will not quarrel now, Roger. But we will. One day we will. And I will me the little knife.
Then I bent over The Magician and tugged out the knife, grunting with the effort, and wiped its slim length on his black robe. As I took up the torch, I glanced at The Magician. We were alone together, the victor and the victim in this cold stone place.
His eyes opened. The white of them was the color of old boiled eggs. The dead face lifted to me and the dead mouth moved.
“You will die by that knife,” The Magician said.