The Wordsmiths and the Warguild (20 page)

       
As the days went by, he
had fewer nightmares.

       
Sometimes he saw sails
in the distance, but he had no desire to join their journeys.

       
"Time is my
journey," he said.

       
And, having said it,
wondered if he would become a philosophical hermit living out his days amidst
wind and rocks.

       
A day later, he was
sunbathing when something shaded out the sun. Opening his eyes, he saw a
stranger standing over him. A man. Black hat, black beard, black coat. Weapons?
A dagger. Black strides, black boots, black bootlaces. A weatherbeaten face.

       
"Hello," said
the stranger, in a barbarous accent.

       
"Greetings," said
Togura.

       
Then closed his eyes, to
make the hallucination go away. When he opened his eyes, the hallucination was
still waiting patiently.

       
"Are you
real?" said Togura.

       
He meant the words to
mean what they meant in his native patois: do you truly exist? But the stranger
interpreted them to mean what they meant in mainstream Galish, which was,
literally, "Is your presence sincere?" and implied "Do you
really wish to make a bargain?"

       
"Boy, I've said
nothing of trade," said the stranger.

       
"Neither have
I," said Togura.

       
"Where is your
keeper, boy?"

       
"What do you mean
by that?" said Togura, speaking slowly, and with some difficulty; he had
fallen out of the habit of language.

       
"Have you no keeper,
then?"

       
"What would I need
a keeper for? Do you think I'm simple or something?"

       
"If you're not
simple, then how else do you explain yourself?"

       
"I don't explain
myself at all to nameless earth-walkers," said Togura. "Name yourself."

       
"My name is
Jotun," said the man, meaning "dwarf."

       
"That's a strange
name for a fellow of your height," said Togura, for the man was the same
size as he was.

       
"Truth to tell, I
guard my name amidst strangers. But whatever you are or aren't, you look honest
enough to me. So I'll give you my true name, which is Soy Doja. I'm a healer by
trade; I'm on this coast to look for the plant they call Moonbeam. Very rare.
Do you know it?"

       
"No," said
Togura, who had never heard of it. He felt it was now time to name himself,
but, since the other had lied about his name - and was, incidentally, still
lying - Togura decided not to trust him with the truth. "I'm Parax Gemenis
myself," said Togura. "I'm a fisherman from many leagues along the
coast. There's a feud in my village which threatens my life, which is why I'm
here."

       
After telling each other
a great many more elaborate lies, and exchanging a considerable amount of
deliberate and accidental misinformation, they did a little trading. Togura
sold the traveller some sun-dried fish, accepting in payment a small coin which
bore the head of Skan Askander.

       
The traveller stayed the
night in Togura's cave. He had a tinder box, so they had a fire; when the
traveller moved on the next day, Togura kept the fire burning. He would need it
in the winter.

       
Now that he had fire, he
should have been happier still, but he was not. He was restless all day.
Brooding. That evening, he sat by the fire, turning the coin over in his
fingers. Part of the new coinage minted by the Suets, it brought back memories
of the wedding feast in Keep. Of the cakes baked in the shape of coins. And of
Slerma, who must surely be dead by now.

       
Overwhelmed by
homesickness, he remembered, with an intolerable sense of longing, the
pleasures of his former life. Drinking, jokes and conversation. Real shoes.
Horses which would carry you over the league-roads and eat out of your hand.
Hot meals cooked by women. Women themselves, their eyes alive with temptation,
their breasts hot and swollen beneath their clothes, their reception waiting.
Real blankets. The welcome of friends. Lying in bed in the morning, dozing.
Spending days being utterly idle. Eating real bread. Shutting out the wind at
night. Cock fighting.

       
Togura knew what he had
to do. He had to return home. He would be reconciled with his father. He would
beg his father's forgiveness, and would become a true brother to Cromarty. They
would live together happily ever after.

     
  
Enthused, animated and excited, he
could barely sleep. He rose at first light, tied his bow, spears and arrows
into a bundle he could carry over one shoulder, ate the little bit of dried
food he had left after dealing with the traveller, knotted the traveller's coin
in a bit of bark then knotted the bark to his waist and was ready to go.

       
"Goodbye
cave," he said. "Goodbye rocks. Goodbye tower."

       
He spent some time
sentimentalising in this manner, then turned his back on the place and trudged
along the coast, heading in the direction his itinerant stranger had come from.

       
He was making for
D'Waith.

Chapter 16

       
The weather broke up;
Togura Poulaan travelled through storm, wind and rain, enduring the worst which
summer could bring. Once, the night caught him out in the open; he huddled in
the lee of the largest rock he could find, and shivered there, sleepless, until
dawn. Once he slept in a sea cave, and was washed out of it by the high tide.
The next evening, harried over a hill by an electrical storm, he was close to
despair when he surmounted the summit and saw, on a clifftop at the bottom of
the hill, a ruinous cottage near an ancient horned cairn.

       
Togura went bounding
down the hill and went burrowing in through the door of the cottage. It was
cold inside, with rain dripping through rotting thatch, the wind blowing in
through windows now without shutters, and turbulence playing piffero in the
chimney. Nevertheless, it was a vast improvement on the world outside, where
thunder exploded across the sky, and forked lightning - hot as molten silver
and as bright as sunrise - stabbed down through the slashing rain to the
laundering sea.

       
"Hello,
house," said Togura.

       
"Hello, Togura
Poulaan," said the house - not by means of a voice, for it had none, but
by embracing him with a load of rotten thatch.

       
"Pleased to make
your acquaintance," said Togura, brushing thatch from his hair, neck, eyes
and ears; he sneezed, expelling it from his nose.

       
"Gronnammadammadamyata,"
said the thunder, shattering the sky with a blast which shook the cottage, or
what was left of it.

       
"That too,"
said Togura, vaguely, not sure what he meant by his own words; he was
exhausted, and very close to collapse.

 
      
But, in a
way, happy. For the cottage helped prove the existence of the world he
remembered, which was the world he belonged to. He was approaching
civilisation; soon, he would be back in the society of men - and women, too -
and his disfellowship would be at an end.

       
He moved to the driest
spot he could find, and very shortly was asleep. And dreaming. Outside, as the
thunder slowly blundered away into the distance, and the rain eased, the last
of the light subsided to the sea, and was gone. Swift-moving clouds rucked
across a sky of absolute darkness. At the foot of the cliff, sullen waves
heaped themselves against the rocks of the Ravlish Lands, pounding home with a
beat too deep, heavy and protracted for any drum to match it. Togura, accustomed
to that sound, did not notice it; the surf did not figure in his dreams.

       
Instead, Togura Poulaan
dreamt of Day Suet. Her breasts winked at him lewdly through holes cut in the
dolman which fell weeping to her feet; her eyes and her lips were smiling. She
stretched out her arms to him, but he found himself floating in a meditative
sea, watching the underwater world. A fish went by, hideously maimed, crabbing
through the sea with blood and clear fluids scuppering out of old, old,
ulcerated wounds in its flanks.

       
"Kill it for
pity," said Day.

       
"We can
negotiate," said Togura.

       
Then woke, and wondered
what he had meant by that. Then, alarmed, wondered who was touching his neck
with such a cold, cold bony hand. He looked around, startled, tumbled head over
heels like an acrobat, reached the safety of the furthest corner of the
cottage, then picked up a heavy stone which he could use as a weapon. His hair,
if it had not been so crabbed, knotted and dirty, would have been standing on
end.

       
"Who are you?"
hissed Togura, menacing the glimmering skeletal figure which confronted him.

       
It addressed him in a
foreign tongue. Its voice was old and watery. He could see through its
pearl-white armour, through the shadowy outlines of its flesh, through the
harder white of its bones, and out to the walls of the cottage beyond.

       
"What are
you?" said Togura, attacking the phosphorescent manifestation with
questions. "Where do you come from? What are you saying? How? Why?"

       
The phosphorescent
apparition did not flinch, diminish or withdraw. It was not an ilps. It might
well be a ghost.

       
"Vara vinklet
venvindaanaas telyauga zon makovara," said the spirit-thing.

       
"Up yours
too," said Togura, recklessly.

       
The spirit-thing
beckoned to him. He could see, quite clearly, the bones of its hand
articulating within its spectral flesh.

       
"No," said
Togura. "I'm not going with you. So cut it off and pickle it."

       
The spirit-thing did not
seem to understand his refusal, or his gratuitous obscenity. Its vocie became
louder and more demanding. It took a step toward him.

       
"Okay, okay,"
said Togura. "I'm coming."

       
He discarded the stone,
chose a short stabbing spear from his meagre bundle of possessions, and
followed the phantom out of the cottage and into the night.

       
The sky was pitchblende
black, but for the light, as cold and pallid as the frigid starshine of
glow-worms, which flickered around the horned cairn. That ancient burial mound,
a barrow raised by forgotten peoples in the long ago - time out of mind! -
seemed to be burning with cold, cold flames, which failed to consume its
substance.

       
A door had opened in the
nearest flank of that cold-burning tumulus. Togura could see down a curving
gem-bright hallway, leading down into unknown depths. He caught a whiff of
roasting rotch, heard the chimes of an uncanny music, and the shouts of bright
brave voices glittering with laughter.

       
The phantom entered the
hallway then paused and gestured with a hand now positively imperious.

       
"Come!" said
that gesture.

       
And Togura Poulaan knew
he was confronted with a challenge fit for a hero. To dare the unknown! To
brave the perils of the land of death or faery! To rouse great warriors from
their sleep!

       
Or, perhaps - and this
was experience talking - to be slaughtered without warning, and eaten.

       
The phantom, growing
impatient, advanced to claim Togura. He hurled his spear at it, saw it miss, then
turned and fled to the night. He ran till exhaustion checked him, and then,
unable to run any more, he walked. Dawn came, but he did not stop; he walked
through the day to dusk, and into the night beyond.

       
During the course of his
flight he lost his one and only coin. He was now penniless, but that, for the
moment, was the least of his worries.

Chapter 17

       
Togura Poulaan was cold,
wet and hungry, but his spirits were high, for he could see D'Waith in the
distance. It was a small walled city set on a hill about half a league from the
sea. He could not make a beeline for it, as swathes of barbarian thorn blocked
the most direct route; instead, he was forced to follow the coastline.

       
The weather was the
worst he had seen so far on his journey. He was astonished to see a boat on the
sea, and was not surprised, shortly afterwards, not to see it. He stumbled
forward through the wind, which hazed and harassed hyim. He was cold to his
bone marrow.