Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

I said, “You are kind at heart, Your Highness. I think I’ve always known that.”

She nodded solemnly. “I’m a good woman, Sir Able. Fortunately everybody else is evil, so I get to treat them any way I want. It makes it much more fun. Help me up.”

I stood and helped her rise; I do not think she could have without my help. “I thought you’d like to know how all this is going to work out,” she said, “so now you do. Brush off my bottom, I think I got straw on it.” I pretended to.

“Harder, and say I’ve been a bad girl.”

Shortly after that she left, walking so well I might have thought her almost sober if I had not been aware of the effort she was putting into it.

One of my gaolers came in, bringing a basin of warm water, soap, and a towel. I laughed and told him to take them away. He did, locking my cell door behind him.

Hours passed. All the things I thought of then have filled this book, and might fill a dozen more.

At last two gaolers appeared. Addressing me through the bars as “My Lord,” they asked whether I knew what had become of Fiach, describing him. They had found boots as well as torn and bloody clothes; and although they were not sure they had been his, they were afraid they had been.

“Fiach refused to let me occupy this cell,” I told them. “That’s all you need to know. It is enough for you. Now leave me in peace and do your jobs.” I had been on the point of calling for Uri when they had come to my door.

They begged and flattered, and at last threatened. No doubt I should have smoothed things over, but I was half nuts with inactivity and told them what I thought of them.

They left, but came back not long after with a third gaoler, opened my door, and came at me with their keys. The roar of the waves filled my ears. I knocked the first one into the two behind him before he could strike, wrenched his key away, and broke the shoulder of the second and the head of the third with two blows.

It had ended almost before it begun. (They must have felt they had lost before they had begun to fight.) The two who were still conscious prostrated themselves. I put my foot upon their necks and made each declare himself my slave forever—at which point Uri appeared, laughing, to remind me that she and Baki been forced to swear the same way. She wore no disguise, but was a Fire Aelf plainly, with floating hair like flames, fiery yellow eyes, and skin like copper in a crucible. I doubt that the gaolers heard a word she said; but her appearance, with a slender sword in one hand and its jeweled scabbard in the other, reduced them to gibbering.

“I’m keeping this key,” I told them. “Since our king has seen fit to imprison me, I’ll stay in this cell when I’ve no reason to leave it. I expect you to serve me loyally and faithfully, and I promise that your first lapse will be your last. Now pick him up,” I used my key to point to their unconscious buddy, “and get him out of here.”

It was easy for me to say that, but not easy for them to do it. He was a big, heavy man, and the one whose shoulder I had broken could not help the other much. I wanted to talk to Uri; so after watching the efforts of the one whose key I had taken for a minute, I picked up the unconscious one and carried him to the gaoler’s room.

“I brought you a new sword,” Uri said as we were walking back to my cell, “and you have not even looked at it.”

I explained that I was a prisoner and was not supposed to have a sword.

“You can hide it under your bed.”

“I don’t have one. I sleep on straw, on the floor.”

“But you could get one. Those men you beat will bring you one as soon as you tell them to. We could sleep in it, and you would have something to sit on.”

I flexed the blade deeply between my hands; it sprang back straight and true.

“Do not cut yourself.”

“I’m trying not to. Is this your work?”

“Mine personally? No. How about the bed?”

“I’ll think about it, but you won’t be welcome to sleep in it. I know what I’d wake up to.”

She giggled, and I felt a sudden yearning for Aelfrice, for its crystal sea and the silent forest in which Disiri and I had run and shouted and tamed young squirrels.

There was no room to swing such a sword in my cell. I stopped outside the door, making cuts in air and thrusting between the bars. Its hilt of silver and snowy leather was simple, even chaste, its narrow blade written over in the character of Aelfrice with words too small and dim to read.

“I think it Ice Aelf work,” Uri said. “It is old, no matter who made it, and I did not get it there.”

“You stole it here?”

She looked at me sidelong. “I do not have to steal everything. You have seen this.” She smoked, and in a few seconds she was smaller and not quite so slender, and her glowing copper skin had faded to white and peach, although her nipples stayed bright and looked too hot to touch.

“I have,” I said, “and resisted temptation. Are you saying you sold yourself for this? I don’t believe it.”

“All right, I stole it.” She held out the jeweled scabbard. “I refuse to tell from whom. You would make me take it back.”

“If I could make you take it back, I could make you tell me where you got it.”

“Please do not, Lord. Listen. The man who owned it will never know it has gone. Never, I promise you. He had locked it in an iron chest bound with seven chains and seven big padlocks. Do you believe that?”

“No,” I said.

“Then you certainly will not believe he threw the keys into the sea, but that’s what my friend told me. I reached up from Aelfrice—you know how we do—and pulled it down. He will think it is still in there until the day he dies.”

I took the scabbard from her and examined it. I had expected turquoise, amber, and that sort of thing; but there were fine rubies, and the blue stones were sapphires.

“Soft wood, Lord, with thin gold over it.”

I nodded and added, “And a white gold throat. Gold and silver mixed, I suppose. It’s the only part that comes near to matching the sword.” I sheathed it. “Though it fits well enough.”

“The scabbard is your human work, I feel sure. You have better taste than we do.”

I looked around at her. “I’ve never thought so.”

“Neither have I, Lord, but you are above us.”

“I no longer have a sword belt,” I said, largely to myself, “the king took it.”

“You can push it through that belt you are wearing now. It is not a heavy blade.”

“I suppose so.”

“Besides, I thought you would hide it in our bed. I mean, when you and Her Highness were not using it.”

“You’ve been spying on me.”

Uri grinned. “Only the tiniest bit. She is not bad looking for such a big woman, is she? A powerful sorceress, too. There could be a dozen pleasant surprises.”

I went into my cell, shutting the door before Uri could follow; she slipped between the bars in her proper shape. “Unpleasant ones, too. Some sorceresses have teeth down here. You stick it in and they bite it off. Mani told me.”

I hid the sword under my straw next to the wall. “You wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“About sorceresses? Why no, Lord. Or very little, though I talked with Mani about them once.”

I sat and motioned for her to sit. “Morcaine and her brothers were reared in Aelfrice when their mother abandoned them. I’d think you’d know a lot.”

“I do not. Shall I tell you what I know, Lord? I will not lie or make fun of you unless you interrupt.”

I nodded.

“Whoever told you that deceived you. I was a Khimaira, but I have heard things, and know what makes sense. Their mother did not abandon all three. Setr was a dragon, so why should she? She kept him by her in Muspel, in Aelfrice, and here in Mythgarthr. He was her firstborn, and so the right king of this part of Mythgarthr, though I do not believe he tried to claim it.”