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BOOK ONE:

 

Myths from the
Scattered Worlds

 

 

CHAPTER ONE,

wherein the Pure Boy
invades the Sorcerer's
sanctum and is
given a task.

Though placed near the beginning of the narrative, this chapter was among the last to be input. It derives mostly from recent inputs of Sarbadathan fourth-wife tales, which give it its unique character. Sarbadathan irreverence has been thoroughly incorporated herein.
Since Sarbadathan tales are mostly thinly veiled justification for that cruel rite they call the "crucible of minds," only the account of Benadek's striving to enter Achibol's domain is included here.
(Kaledrin, Senior Editor)

 

An urchin tugged at the old man's trousers, desperately working to remove them before his victim awakened from his winy stupor—but one shaggy eyebrow already twitched like a caterpillar with hiccoughs, and a drooping eyelid struggled to open, to discover the reason behind the breeze cooling his exposed genitals.

And what genitals! "If I had even the half of this old sot's meat . . . " young Benadek marveled . . .

<If you had old Achibol's sausage, you'd be limp as a pudding and no prettier than you are now, ignoramus.>

"Huh? Whozere? Who said that?" Benadek's quick rat-eyes combed the crannied alley for the source of the resonant voice. The passageway was as empty as when he'd first arrived. The old man was still out, his eyes glued shut with road dust and sweat. Benadek tugged harder, determined to get the fancy trousers over those fine leather shoes.

<Why bother with those gaudy pantaloons, child? Get the shoes, first. Or better yet, take that shiny coin. Surely you didn't overlook it?>

Benadek was not fooled. The voice was real. But where was the speaker? No one should care if an old drunk woke up with his balls in the breeze. The urchin surveyed the alley again. There were no hiding places, but Benadek's search turned up details hitherto unnoticed: next to a nailed-shut door was a bronze-shod staff, twisted wood that resembled a muscular arm. Crumpled on the dirt was a faded cloth embroidered with odd symbols.

A sorcerer's robe! The urchin's beady eyes darted about. Sure enough, there in the shadow of the boarded-over doorway was a tall hat painted with the same symbols. Why had he not seen that before? Sorcery! Benadek had not survived back-alley life without being observant. But if the stuff had spells on it, how could he see it? And there! A shiny gold tenday piece, not even dusty. Only magic could have made him miss that.

Caution warred with greed. He stretched out a grimy hand, his earlier objectives abandoned.

<That's it, boy! Take the coin. Run away and leave old Achibol to his slumber.>

Benadek's hand jumped back as if the coin were red-hot. Again his beady rat-eyes combed the alley. Again, he saw nothing but staff, robe, hat, and the old wino with his pants down.

Complex emotions flowed crossed his mobile face. An urchin is by nature avaricious, quick to seize the least opportunity for gain: a loose-tied pouch that jingles, a hasp whose rivets are loose, a door left ajar—the stuff of prosperity, or at least of a meal or two. But such opportunities don't include disembodied voices or magically appearing coins.

The trembling in Benadek's limbs was a physical reflection of mental oscillations between warring impulses to snatch the coin and run, to ignore it and run, or to freeze like a frightened nutstealer.

His hand crept outward, beckoned by the prize that glittered atop the alley dust. His eyes darted from the old drunk to the coin, to the niches, crannies and shadows. His nose twitched like a crack-rat's; he lacked only long whiskers to make the semblance exact. His hand approached its goal. He imagined he felt heat from the rich, fiery disk.

<Wait!> The voice came from directly overhead. He stiffened into renewed immobility, a ledgebird caught in the open square. His eyes rolled upward, but they saw only his own eyebrows. <The old fart needs help. You've been paid—now get him to his feet.>

Paid? A familiar word, but not in this context: payment came after an errand was run, a message delivered. Who would give a copper minute-bit for his services, in advance? The oddity of the notion kept him from running away. He was also less than sure that the voice would not follow him, even as he ran.

Urchinhood demands flexibility: no two opportunities are the same. Routine activity leads to habit, and habit to getting caught. Benadek had never been caught. He made his decision: the voice had not harmed him; it had told him to take the coin. In one quick motion he snatched it from the dirt and turned to dart back to the relative safety of the street beyond.

He never made it. The street was not there! He faced a brick wall as solid, old, and dirty as the rest of the narrow way. With sinking heart, he turned slowly, his empty gut knotted around a lump of black coal: fear. Sorcerers trapped unwary boys and turned them into beasts of burden, dooming them to lives of servitude as mules or dogs or . . .

For all his slight stature, Benadek was no coward. "Well, old man? Is this your best trick? Show me a dragon, not a beat-up wall. Show me a dragon, or let me go on my way. I could have slit your drunken throat, you know, but I didn't. You owe me."

He turned to face his captor. The robe was no longer on the ground. It was on the sorcerer, who stood facing him, staff in hand, tall pointed hat on his head so that he towered over the slight figure before him.

"Never fear, rat-child. The wall can be removed as easily as it was built. As for dragons—dream them yourself. I have trouble with simple things like talking mules. I put the wall there to stop you, else you would have left without your coin."

Benadek's fist squeezed tighter over his prize, over the golden tenday piece that . . . was no longer there. His eyes darted from his empty palm to the gleam between the sorcerer's finger and thumb. "You see? You would have forgotten it." With a careless gesture, the old man tossed the glittering disk in Benadek's direction. The boy caught it, and in the same motion backed up against the wall. He backed up one step and two, then three. In the corners of his eyes he saw the ends of the alley walls, and beneath his feet felt the cobble paving of the street.

The wall was gone! He spun about and ran as he'd never run before. Behind him, he heard a low chuckle that carried further than such a quiet sound should have. With several blocks between him and the alley, he still imagined he could hear it.

 

Achibol the Scrivener, sorcerer and fortuneteller, charlatan extraordinary, continued to chuckle as he made his way from the alley to his commodious room in the old stone inn. Once, in a time lost to all but memory, he too had been an urchin, a tiny brown face in the ghetto of a huge city, a brown face among other brown and tan and black ones, surrounded by a greater metropolis of well-scrubbed pink, yellow, and white. He sprawled in his lumpy chair, and sighed. It was not good to remember the old days, he reminded himself. Still, in an ancient, forgotten dialect, he murmured an idle paraphrase:

 

"Ain't no Jim Crow heah no mo',
Ah don't got' sit on de flo'.
No mo' sign say `Sit in back,'
'Cause dey ain't no streetcar, ain't no track.

"Ain't no Jim Crow any mo',
Dis ain't nineteen fifty-fo',
Ain't no Jim Crow Ah kin see,
Cause dey ain't no nigguhs lef' 'cep' me."

 

<When you gonna learn you can't sing, old man?> his footstool said.

<Same day he learns he ain't Huddie Ledbetter, either!> said his robe from its peg by the door.

"I wonder where that boy is now?" Achibol murmured as he dozed off.

* * *

Benadek was at that moment emerging from a gape in the rubble of a collapsed mill-house, a secret place for occasions when he did not dare risk being pursued to his more comfortable regular hideaway. He'd stashed a tin of crackers there, and a water-bottle, but had touched neither.

He had, however, not been idle. Even running away, his mind had worked something like this: "I wish I knew magic! I'd never have to run and hide again. Poots would see me with my bright clothes and my gold, and they'd lift their skirts! Benadek the Magician! Benadek the Great Sorcerer, to whom the stones whisper their secrets!"

Ignoble dreams—but don't great endeavors start with small fantasies, with base desires? Is not Art transmuted Lust, and have not the greatest bards scrawled doggerel love poems to impress objects of desire?

Benadek climbed from his hidey-hole with one goal in mind: find the old man and throw himself at his feet. Benadek, the wizard's apprentice. Benadek, assistant to the great Whatsisname. Benadek, colleague of warlocks and tamer of demons. Benadek . . .

He had an opener ready: "Sir," he would say, "I'm back to perform your service. I'm sorry I ran, before—your skill and your demon voice terrified me but I, Benadek, will be your apprentice, your good right hand. My wage? Merely throw me the odd tenday piece when my purse grows light, and I'll bend all effort in your behalf. I'll utter the spells you teach me, to save your own throat from strain, and will taste the fine meals you surely demand, so no evil dose passes your lips . . ." Firing his resolve with such thoughts, Benadek the Urchin strode toward the alley whence he had emerged in terror only hours before.

Expectedly, the magician was no longer there, and no voices spoke from the stones, wood, and tile. Nor were there tracks in the dust. Magic, he determined, not knowing that it had rained while he hid, laying the dust and washing the cobbles.

There was only one inn in the neighborhood, surrounded by a wall twice Benadek's height. From a thief's apprentice, he knew it contained not only dwelling rooms but an alehouse with four porches and a stable for thirty steeds. Against the stable leaned an enormous haystack, its top just below the enceinte wall.

A guard stood at the gate—a honch of menacing demeanor. Blue leather failed to hide rippling muscles. His clothing was a-jingle with chains and shiny buttons, and his belt sagged from the weight of a nutwood club and a sword. Benadek was loath to approach him.

Further along the wall a chokefire vine had established itself. The inn's proprietor, unwilling to touch a noxious plant which bled acid sap when jostled, that filled the air with lung-burning fumes when seriously disturbed, had let it grow. After all, it was no help to a wall-scaler. But Benadek was no average thief. He picked up a broken laundry-pole and probed the thick vine. His eyes burned, but most of the fumes rose straight up. He poked and prodded until he had jostled every branch. Beads of milky sap formed on twigs and leaves. The main branches and stems remained uncontaminated.

It was the work of a moment to slip into a greengrocer's shed to steal a pair of sharp scissors—the screws holding the door's hasp were loose. Benadek had dined on the vendor's produce before.

He clipped twigs and leaves from low branches, letting them fall to the ground. A second tier of foliage and a third followed. In short order, Benadek stripped the thick vine as high as he could reach, and hardly caught a whiff of acid vapor from the exhausted plant.

Gritting his teeth against the possibility of stray drops of acid on the stems, he pulled himself as high onto the vine as he could without touching his head to the foliage above or his hands to the stubbed branch-ends, which wept copiously. From one side of the vine he trimmed the other, dodging deadly falling leaves. He shifted to the cleared side and clipped an arm's length more. Finally, he raised himself to the next level and began cutting again, one side and then the other, ascending the chokefire vine, then climbing atop the wall. He dropped safely into the haystack.

Unfortunately, he had little view from his hiding place. He would have to wander about, looking for the magician, and risk being apprehended and the guard called.

No one was in the courtyard. No one sat at the porch tables either. Should he enter the common room? Benadek sank into the shadow of a well house to think. If he had a message, and the name of someone to deliver it to . . . Did he know the name of anyone who might be here? Some prominent citizen, perhaps? No, the inn staff would be alert for such deception. He was not the first boy to enter under false pretenses, but he was determined to be one who got away with it. Minutes passed, and by the time he caught the first glimmer of possibility, he had been seen!

A fat, common fellow approached—a cook, by his once-white apron and the great cleaver dangling in one hamlike hand. "Here then, youngster!" the cook bellowed. "Come forward or I'll call the guard."

What had the sorcerer said? Had he spoken his name? Reluctantly, Benadek obeyed, trying all the while to remember.

"A message, good cook! I have a message for a gentleman here."

"So you all say," the cook said, shaking his head. His jowls flapped back and forth. "And who're you seeking? The lord mayor? The constable? I can find him quite promptly."

"The magician," Benadek squeaked as the fat man lifted him by his ear. "Ow! Please! Let me down! I have to see him. It's very important." The name. What was the name? It had sounded like a sneeze! Achoo . . . Achoob . . . "Achoobowl! I have a message for Achoobowl! Ow! Let me go." The cook relented slightly, allowing Benadek to dance on his toes.

"And what, tell me, does he look like?"

"He's skinny and wears a pointy hat. His skin's the color of an old saddle. Ow! That hurts. Let me down."

"You won't try to run away? You can outrun me, but be sure you can't outrun Pretty Face here." He held the meat knife so close to Benadek's nose that his eyes crossed. "And if you did, Hammer—that's the guard, Hammer—would catch you anyway. You wouldn't want that!"

"I won't run! I have to give my message to Master Achoobowl."

"Then I'll take you to him. You'd better pray he's pleased with what you have to say." He led Benadek up the steps to the dining porch, still pinching his ear. He kicked open the double-hinged door, and dragged him into the common room.

Benadek's eyes adjusted rapidly, and he spied the magician at a far table. "There he is, master cook! That's Achoobowl. Please let me go."

The sorcerer, hearing his name, turned and looked directly at the boy. "Ah, there! Cook, what are you doing to the lad? I've been expecting him."

An expression of surprise crossed the fat man's face. Reluctantly, he let go of Benadek's ear. The urchin gamely resisted the urge to spit on his oppressor. But what luck! He had not mistaken the surprise on the sorcerer's visage, but the old man had rallied immediately, and covered for him! Why?

"Now boy," Achibol said mildly when Benadek came close, "have you come to apologize for your sudden departure? It wasn't necessary, you know."

"Master, I owe you a service. I've come to pay my debt, or to return your coin."

"Ah, but you already did that. Don't you remember?" The sorcerer pulled a gold tenday piece from his sleeve. "See? I have it here."

Astounded, Benadek reached into his crotch-pocket for his own coin, but it was gone. Was the one the old brown man tossed from hand to hand his? How could that be?

"Master, is it the same coin? Can it be?"

"One and the same, boy. You disbelieve? Here, take it again." He tossed it to Benadek, who again caught it and held it tightly, only to feel it fade from his fingers like cool steam and to reappear in the sorcerer's palm moments later. "See?" Achibol said with a dry chuckle. "It's a magic coin, boy. You can have it, but you can't keep it. That's the way of all gold, isn't it? But is that all you wanted? To set matters right between us? If so, you may go now, with your conscience at rest."

"Master, I want to serve you," Benadek blurted, all his fine speeches fled like mist before a breeze. "Will you have me?"

"I don't need a servant."

"An apprentice, Master. I want to be your apprentice." Now that he'd said it, Benadek was amazed at his temerity. The sorcerer could call up demons to press his robe and fairies to polish his boots. Why would he need a boy? He hung his head.

Achibol did not disabuse him. "What makes you think I need an apprentice? Men like me live a thousand years, even forever. Why would I want to share anything, let alone a thousand years, with a mortal?"

The old fellow inflated his skinny chest. "I've had apprentices before—bright boys who've come oh-so-well recommended, with fat, jingling purses to pay for their keep and their training. I've seen them come—and go. Yes, go! Tender ones slunk off home, unable to withstand this old owl's hooting. Impatient smart ones, all hot to learn a few of my tricks, were unwilling to sweep mule droppings or carry water. You see?" He shook his head, his ancient, wrinkled face now a caricature of sadness. Benadek was hard put to keep up with his mercurial shifts in mood.

"Worst of all," the sorcerer continued, "were the dedicated ones—the little boys who wanted nothing but to learn my lore and perform my chores, who in spite of my temperament and my tongue came to love me. Yes, those tested me most sorely of all. Why, you ask? Because they grew up, and went their own ways, as is natural for boys. Then, having spent their natural span toadying for townmasters, priests, and wealthy old boffins, they died."

Did a tear glitter on the brown leathery cheek? Benadek kept his eyes respectfully downcast. The sorcerer's voice dropped to a mumble. "There's no future for my apprentices, boy. Would you wait for me to die, to inherit my books and potions and tools? Can you wait a thousand years, or two or three? I've watched faithful boys grow old and die, waiting and serving me. And even worse . . . oh, so much worse . . ."

Pulling himself out of his lachrymose slump, the old man met the boy's eyes. "See what you've done, boy? Spoiled my meal and my evening. I need no more of this—and no apprentice." As he reached for his wineglass, his still-blurred eyes caused him to misjudge, and he knocked it over. A flash of anger lit his eyes.

"I'm sorry, Master," Benadek murmured. "It was a foolish hope. With your permission, I'll leave now."

"Hmm. Where will you go?"

"Back to the warrens, where I live. If I can get past the guard on the gate."

"Ah, yes. The redoubtable Hammer. Has he set his sights on you, then?"

"I entered by a different gate."

"There is no other, boy." Achibol grinned. His bright brown eyes gleamed among nut-brown crinkles and folds. "You're not only bold, but clever and resourceful. Perhaps I can arrange for you to pass the gate, earn a less elusive coin, and do me a service as well. Would that please you?"

Benadek's hopes rose again. If he performed the service well, perhaps Achibol would reconsider, or at least retain him for such tasks in the future. "I'm at your service, Master Achoobowl."

"Then take this token to the temple priest. Tell him it's an offering from Achibol the Charlatan, who will visit his brothers in supernatural knowledge on the morrow." Achibol carelessly tossed the same (was it the same?) gold coin to the boy. "Mind you, make sure the message is delivered just as I have spoken it."

Benadek repeated the message to Achibol's satisfaction. The old man called for paper, and wrote a brief note requiring all to pass his messenger through without delay, and signed it with a grand flourish. He waved Benadek away.

The urchin approached the guard, his note at arms length. Hammer squinted intensely at it. Recognizing Achibol's distinctive rune, he allowed the boy to pass, all the while creasing his brow and wondering whether he himself had let Benadek in. But that was impossible. For all their social faults, honches' memories were perfect, a record of laws, infractions, and crimes, faces of officials, criminals, and ordinary citizens. He would have remembered the boy. Only long after Benadek had disappeared in the darkness of a narrow passage did he satisfy himself that the boy must have passed by his counterpart on the earlier watch.

 

 

 

 

INTERLUDE
The Great School, Midicor IV

 

Kaledrin shook his head. "The old man is Achibol! Saphooth will have my career for this!"

"Why?" Abrovid asked. "You don't control the biocybes' output."

"Can't you see? This Achibol is an anthro-form like Saphooth."

"So what? Lots of people choose that form. It's handy for climbing ladders. Why, on some planets, people are even born like that."

"Saphooth was," Kaledrin said darkly, "and he'll die that way too. He's an immutable."

"Really?" Abrovid's eyestalks stiffened in morbid interest. "You mean he can't change? He's stuck in that somatotype? Is it a disease?" He shuddered, and tucked his manipulator-tendrils safely behind protective chitin.

"Of course not," Kaledrin chided him. "There are hundreds just like him—stuck for life in one form or another—on every inhabited planet."

"Hundreds—among how many billions on Midicor IV alone?" Abrovid whistled derisively. "No wonder he's disagreeable. But why should he blame you? I don't see the connection."

"Because all the characters in this `translation' or fantasy or whatever it's turned into—except those stupid `mules'—seem to be two-legged, bilaterally symmetrical anthro-forms, just like Saphooth, and he'll never believe this entire tale isn't a ghastly jape at his expense," Kaledrin moaned. "I may as well start packing right now."

 

Kaledrin need not have worried. At that very moment Saphooth held a printout of Chapter One on his lap, and was chuckling contentedly. He obviously saw something in the tale that Kaledrin missed. "Benadek, Father of Humanity, indeed! The little bastard." He grinned. "I wonder when Chapter Two will be done?"

 

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