Beyond the Hanging Wall (25 page)

Maximilian had barely raised a sweat.

Cavor stepped back, drawing desperately needed breath into lungs screaming with abuse, then wasting it all in a scream of rage as he lunged for Maximilian again.

“
Truly!
” the Manteceros muttered under its breath, then turned its head and nuzzled Ravenna. The girl’s face was pale and damp with sweat; even though Maximilian was holding his own, she did not know how he could possibly manage to best Cavor.

“Sweet lady,” the Manteceros said quietly, “I
must
administer the ordeal. This clashing of swords will accomplish nothing—save, perhaps, the death of the true king.”

Ravenna dragged her eyes away from Cavor and Maximilian. Was the Manteceros admitting some preference for Maximilian?

“Egalion stands between me and the two men, Ravenna. Can you pull him back? Then stay with me, bury one hand deep within my mane and stroke my neck with the other, and give me the courage to administer this ordeal. It is very painful.”

“But you said that it wouldn’t harm them!” Ravenna cried.

“Not them,” the Manteceros replied, and Ravenna could see that it was close to tears, “but
its sadness will plunge a sword into my own heart. Now, do as I ask.”

Hesitating, Ravenna tugged at Egalion’s arm. The man jumped. All his attention had been on the two fighting before him.

“Please,” Ravenna mumbled, and indicated that he should step behind her and the Manteceros.

Egalion blinked, turned to look at Maximilian and Cavor, then nodded, his shoulders slumping wearily. He stood at Cavor’s back, but he watched the battle as if he stood at Maximilian’s. He did not want the prince to die.

Ravenna flinched at the tortured rasp of metal against metal as she and the Manteceros drew as close to the men as they dared.

The creature coughed, then cleared its throat.

Neither man took any notice.

“Only the ordeal can determine the true king,” the Manteceros said softly, reaching deep within itself for the strength to do what it had to. “Not this ridiculous duel.”

The Manteceros lifted its head, but its voice remained soft. “Listen to me. Listen to the sadness I must relate. Live it.”

Neither man paid this any attention either. Cavor had driven Maximilian to his knees with a parry of strokes that seemed deadlier than any he’d struck before, and Ravenna cried out softly as Maximilian barely managed to regain his feet. For the first time it appeared the prince was tiring.

“Listen to me,” the Manteceros repeated. “
Live
it.” Its eyes were now far distant, looking at something far sadder than the battle before it.

“Once there was a woman, married to a blacksmith in Ruen. As wives are wont to do, she waxed great with child, and one afternoon her time came. Her husband sent for the local midwife, but she was busy elsewhere, and the midwife from the neighbourhood next to theirs answered the call. She was a short woman, stout, and she had a hunched shoulder, a twisted arm, and wall eyes that stared at deviant angles. When she entered the birthing chamber, the wife cried out in shock and terror, and the midwife took affront.”

The swords clashed in fury, and a shower of sparks cascaded to the floor. Ravenna did not think either man heard the Manteceros. But she…now she was there in the birthing chamber with the woman struggling with the new life within her.

“In spite the midwife sat back when the woman bled, and let her life’s blood drain into useless pools in the bed. And from these cooling pools she lifted a baby girl even as the mother took one last shuddering breath and died. ‘I curse you,’ the midwife cried to the infant, ‘to a sad life!’ Then she picked up her instruments, laid the infant down by her dead mother, and left the room.”

The Manteceros paused, and as it did so Ravenna roused enough to notice that Maximilian and Cavor also paused. Perhaps they were listening.

But the next moment their swords met again, and both grunted with the effort of dealing each other death.

“The blacksmith mourned his wife, for she had been useful, and blamed his infant daughter for his loss. He put her out to a wet nurse, begrudging every
coin he had to pay to let his daughter suck at the woman’s breast, and only reluctantly took her back into his house when she was four. The blacksmith already had three older sons, and he did not want this daughter, but he was obliged to take her.”

The Manteceros took a great, shuddering breath, and through the mists that wrapped her mind Ravenna heard Maximilian cry out softly. Had he been hurt?

“She grew, but following the midwife’s curse she grew only into sadness. Her father and brothers treated her with cold indifference that too often bordered on hostility. The girl spent her days attending their needs, never leaving the house or the forge that abutted it, keeping her head bowed, never smiling. She had no reason to smile.”

Now both men’s movements had slowed, and their shoulders dropped as if they carried some tremendous weight. Ravenna’s head was buried in the Manteceros’ mane, and her shoulders trembled.

The Manteceros continued, but great tears rolled out of its eyes and down its cheeks. Ravenna leaned even closer, rubbing, stroking, comforting, gaining comfort herself from the creature’s warmth.

“She grew into young womanhood, yet her days were as grey and featureless as they had been as a child. Her only comfort was her mother’s small collection of books which she kept under her bed and only pulled out to read once everyone else in the house was asleep. These books were her only friends. Until…until one day a young man came to the forge, bringing his horse which had cast a shoe. He spied the woman as she sought to hide in the
shadows, and managed a quiet word to her. Over the next few weeks, with increasing courage, she met him for snatched minutes in the alley behind the house, exchanging words, hopes, dreams. For the first time in her life she learned to smile.”

The Manteceros hesitated, and when it continued its voice was thick with sorrow. “Alas!”

Both Maximilian and Cavor stumbled and cried out with the Manteceros. “Alas!”

“Alas! One night she determined to run away with the young man, run to an inn nearby where they planned to consummate their love and from there move into a world of hope. But she was careless, and in her eagerness left her father’s house before she had dried the dishes washed from the evening meal. Her brothers followed her, furious at her slovenliness, and found her even as her lover’s lips were for the first time lowering to hers.”

The Manteceros sobbed, and the king and the prince let the tips of their swords droop to the floor for a moment. Both of their faces were grey with horror.

Both were so lost in the Manteceros’ story, they were hardly aware of each other.

“They seized him, crowing with fury, and bore him to the ground. They were strong men, and could have killed him quickly, but they chose to take their time, and they drew out his death until his screams shattered the night. And yet no-one threw open their shuttered windows to investigate. No-one. When he was dead they turned to their sister, and one took his knife and, as the others held her down, he put out her eyes so that she need never be tempted again.”

“Oh gods,” Maximilian whispered, and almost let his sword fall from his hand. Cavor groaned, one hand to his forehead, then both recovered and set about their battle again.

“Now even her treasured books were denied her. Long hours she would sit on her bed, late at night, feeling their taunting shapes beneath her hands, her tearless sorrow ravaging her face. There was nothing for her now.” The Manteceros paused briefly to collect itself, then continued. “Her father grew old and died, and her brothers took wives, bringing them home to live in their house. She continued as the household drudge, creeping blindly about the house, sometimes but not always evading the sharp corners of furniture deliberately moved into her path and the stabbing fingers of her sisters-in-law. Nieces and nephews were born, and they soon learned the sharp ways of their parents. The woman learned to accept pinches and punches, and she bowed her head to fate.”

Now Cavor was crying, taking huge gulping breaths as he swung his sword about in great, useless arcs. Maximilian was no better; he leaned on his sword, one hand over his eyes, his shoulders shaking.

Garth watched them with growing concern—what was going on?

The Manteceros continued mercilessly. “After some years, she became aware of a comforting presence that lingered in the back alleyway. It was a great shaggy dog, a stray, that someone had discarded. Gradually he became used to her, and accepted careful scraps from her fingers, licking them gratefully when he had finished. He was her only
friend, and somehow she conceived the idea that the dog was her lover’s soul come back to aid her. The thought comforted her. One day the dog went a-roaming, as dogs are wont to do, and he caught a squirrel, wandering madly through the back streets of Ruen. As the dog caught the squirrel the rodent bit him, and the dog yelped in surprise and let the creature go. Two days later he felt a madness building in his mind.”

The tunnel was utterly silent now, and if Cavor and Maximilian had their heads bowed in indescribable grief, then all other eyes were on the Manteceros.

“The woman was relieved when she heard the dog scratching at the door, and she hurried to give it a pat and a hug. But as she leaned down the dog snarled and bit her hand, and she screamed and tore loose, and the brothers and their wives and their numerous children came a-running through the house and dragged her inside, slapping her for her foolishness, and stomped the dog to death.

“But it was too late. She grew feverish, her body wracked with convulsing agony. Her sisters-in-law tended her only enough to keep her alive, but they wished they had not bothered when the woman finally struggled up from her sickbed. The fever had crippled her back and twisted one leg shorter than the other. Even as a drudge, she was useless.”

Maximilian had sunk to his knees in the rock, only his grip on his sword keeping him upright. Cavor had turned to stare at the Manteceros.

“There is not much left to tell,” the creature said, and a strange light came into its eyes. “They threw
her out to wander the streets, where she begged what food she could and slept in doorways when she was able. She accepted the abuse meted out by those who prey on the weak and helpless, and knew her time was short. Winter approached, and winter is never kind to those lacking both home and comfort.”

Now the Manteceros reared its head up to its full height. “So she curled up about her rags and sought the only answer to her pain. I ask you now,” it cried, its voice ringing with authority, “to venture the ordeal. What
was
her answer? What answer
could
she find to her pain and her sorrow?”

Cavor shifted, stumbling as he did so. “Death,” he whispered. “What answer could there be for her pain but death?”

The Manteceros stared at him. “You are wrong Cavor. Wrong,” it said, its voice now heavy with judgement, then shifted its eyes. “Maximilian?”

Maximilian slowly raised his head, and Ravenna almost cried out at the pain evident in his eyes. Did he somehow see his life mirrored in that of the poor woman cursed to a life of sorrow?

Then, unbelievably, Maximilian smiled his wondrous smile, and hope lit his features. “She laughed,” he said, then laughed himself, the sound ringing rich and vibrant through the tunnel. “She laughed. It was the only thing left for her to do.”

“Yes!” the Manteceros said, and Ravenna could feel its flesh leap beneath her fingers. She frowned. The creature felt almost hot, as if it were running a fever itself. “
Yes!
”

He turned back to Cavor. “You were wrong, Cavor, because you admitted hopelessness. A true-born
king would never do that. You are a man of no hope and, hopeless, I cast you from the throne of Escator.”

“
No!
” Cavor shrieked, and raised his sword above his head in a huge arc meant to cut Maximilian down where he kneeled.

But rage turned to puzzlement an instant later as he felt his sword seized in tight hands.

His blade had cleaved straight into the gloam above him, and now there it hung, caught in the hanging wall. Cavor struggled with the weapon, his muscles bunching and straining, but he could not shift it.

For an instant everyone stared, then, just as Egalion moved to disarm Cavor completely, the Manteceros screamed.

Ravenna was flung back against the tunnel wall by a huge surge of power and heat. She cried out, and Maximilian scrambled forward on hands and knees, pulling her away from the ball of pulsing light that had enveloped the Manteceros.

Garth shouted and started forward as well, but before he could reach Maximilian and Ravenna, the blue light resolved itself into a tall, well-built man with a head of cobalt hair and eyes that sparked with blue fire. He was almost ethereal, and his fine features were very, very beautiful.

He stared at Maximilian, and spoke low but intensely, demanding.

“Who comes to Claim? Who dares the Dream, And, daring, ------”

Maximilian returned his stare steadily, accepting the challenge. “And, daring,…
laughs
”, he finished, completing the stanza that had puzzled Garth and Ravenna and centuries of historians for so long.

The cobalt-haired man nodded. “Yes. Laughs.” An extraordinary and utterly exquisite smile swept his face. “To
laugh
is to dare, because laughter dares fate and sorrow and the weight of all injustices. You are true-blooded indeed, Maximilian, and I name you rightful king of Escator. Welcome home.”

Cavor finally let go the sword and slowly lowered his arms, still staring about in utter amazement. Then, in an instant, his demeanour changed.

“Enjoy your triumph while you can,” he rasped flatly to Maximilian, the sword still hanging over his head, then turned and fled down the tunnel.

No-one paid him the least attention.

“Who are you?” Garth whispered. “
Who?
”