Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

Toug shook his head.

“You may learn someday. When you do, you’ll find out that your hands speak just as your lips do now, and that the things they say are a little different. Still, you’re one whole, lips and hands.”

“You’re saying he talks like we do, but Mani doesn’t.”

“Close enough.” I raised my voice. “Gylf! Here boy!”

Toug looked around and caught sight of a running animal far away. It grew smaller as it approached, until a panting Gylf threw himself down at my feet.

“We were talking about you,” I said. “When I go back to Skai, will you go with me?”

Gylf nodded.

“That’s good. But maybe it won’t be allowed. Or you may want to stay here awhile before you join me there. In either case, you’ll belong to Toug. Is that understood?”

Slowly, Gylf nodded again.

“I want you to talk to him. I won’t make you, but I ask it. Just to Toug. Will you speak?”

There was a long silence. At last Gylf said, “Yep.”

“Thank you. Toug wonders how you change size. Will you tell him?”

“Good dog.”

We waited, and at length he added, “Dog from Skai.”

Toug exclaimed, “You had him before you went there!”

“I did. He was given to me by the Bodachan. Their reasons for making me such a gift were good but complicated, and we’ll leave them for another time. Do you know the Wild Hunt?”

Toug nodded. “It’s when Hern the Hunter hunts up in the air, like a storm. I’m not sure it’s real.”

“Hern’s the Valfather. It’s one of his names.”

Toug gulped. “I heard him when I was little. The—his horse galloping across Skai, and his hounds.”

“Then how could you not be certain it is real?”

“I thought maybe I dreamed it.”

“You’re dreaming this,” I told him; and although Toug considered the matter for a long while after he woke, there seemed to be no adequate answer to it.

“I’ve talked about the Giants of Winter and Old Night. When I did, you must have thought them human-shaped, like the Angrborn. I think I told you about one wearing a glove, and if you hadn’t thought them like us before, you’d surely have after that.”

Toug nodded.

“Many are. Others are not. There’s one with a hundred arms, and more than a few who have or take on the shapes of animals. Fenrir’s the worst. You’ve got to understand that there’s no big distinction among the kinds.”

Reluctantly, Toug nodded again.

“Ones or two at a time wander away from their sunless kingdom to steal and kill. When they do, the Valfather hunts them down, sometimes alone, sometimes with his sons or men like me, or both. But always with his hounds, who course them and bring them to bay. You heard them, you said.”

Recalling how frightened he had been, Toug said nothing.

“It sometimes happens that one of the bitches of that pack gives birth before her time. The exertions of the hunt are too great, and the pup is dropped. It doesn’t happen often, but it happens. Once in a hundred years, maybe.”

“Isn’t that thousands of years in Skai?”

“Right. When a puppy is dropped like that, or lost some other way, it may fall or wander down into Mythgarthr. Then someone finds it, helpless and alone, hungry and cold. He can kill it then, if he wants to. He can leave it to starve. Or he can take it in as the Bodachan did. Feed it, and keep it alive. If he does, he’ll have his reward eventually.”

“You mean when the Valfather comes to get it?”

“You’re pale. Would that be such a terrible thing?”

Trembling, Toug nodded.

“I guess you’re right. But a wonderful thing, too. If he finds the hound he lost loved the man who saved it, do you think he’ll hate that man? That’s not his way.”

“I hope not,” Toug said fervently.

“It isn’t. It’s the sort of thing the giants do, not the sort of thing Overcyns do, and it’s sure as heck not the sort of thing the Valfather does.”

When minutes had passed, Toug said timidly, “It’s really beautiful here.”

“Beautiful and terrible. Have you noticed how bright the colors are?”

Toug looked around, and it seemed that he looked with new eyes. “Yes,” he said. “I hadn’t paid any attention, but they are wonderful, like you say.”

“They are yours, and if ever you give them up this will be a land of blacks and grays. But that’s not what I brought you here to tell you. Nor did I bring you to explain Gylf.”

“Where is he?” Toug looked around.

“Where he was. I brought you so I could tell you about the Valfather.” I sighed. “He’s very kind and very wise, and in his kindness and his wisdom he’s a man who stands on two legs—his wisdom makes him kind and his kindness makes him wise. I told you I’d been in Skai for twenty years, even though it seemed a few days to you.”

“It was hard to believe,” Toug mumbled.

“I guess it was. It wasn’t exactly true, since years are things of Mythgarthr; but twenty years takes us as near the truth as we’re likely to get. After twenty years the Valfather spoke to me privately, something he hadn’t done since I came. He began by asking about my first life, and he saw that even when we talked about my battle with Grengarm, I recalled very little. The mead of his hall has that effect, and it spares us a lot of pain. He asked me then whether I wanted those memories restored, and I said no. The Valfather is wiser than we are.”

Slowly, Toug nodded.

“From the way I had answered him, he knew there was something more, and he asked whether I’d go back to your world if he let me. I couldn’t remember Disiri, but I was haunted by her name and the feelings I got when I said it, and said I would.”

I stopped talking; but Toug did not say anything more though minutes passed, only watching the clouds of Dream fly overhead, and a castle like a star that flew among them.

“We went to the spring Mimir,” I said at last. “I drank its water and remembered you and Gylf, and a lot of other things. I visited myself, watching myself drink water in the ruins of Bluestone Castle. Afterward the Valfather laid his condition on me. You’re a god to Baki and all the Aelf. You know that now.”

“They don’t like us being gods, and I don’t blame them.”

“Nor do I, because the fault is ours. There’s evil and folly even among the Overcyns; but it’s less, much less, than ours.” I stopped again to think. “Baki sacrificed herself to me. Did we tell you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“She did. I drank her blood and was made well. That should have showed me how things stood, but it didn’t. I didn’t want to believe I was a god to anybody.”

“I understand,” Toug told me fervently.

“In the same way the Aelf have refused to be gods to the world below theirs, preferring to give them the worship they owe you. But that’s not the point. The point is that the Valfather bound me not to use the authority that is mine. I was not to return as an Overcyn from Skai.”

“You mean you have to act like one of us?” Toug asked.

“No. I mean I have to be less than one of you. I no longer have the authority of Mythgarthr. That can never be mine again. My authority’s that of Skai. I swore not to use it, and if I break my oath I have to go back at once.”

Poor Toug could only gape.

“I think it better if you know.” I tried to keep my voice level. “From time to time I may need you—need somebody who can wield the authority of Mythgarthr for me, the way you did tonight. You need to understand why I need you.”

Toug swallowed.

“In the meantime, you’re not to sacrifice to me unless I ask. Neither are you to treat me differently in any way.”

“N-no, sir.”