Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

“I never saw him,” I confessed.

“Somebody out there, though, wasn’t there?”

I nodded.

“One of them giants?”

I shook my head. Gylf, who had seen him, had described him to me.

“A boy like that Toug?”

“No, a big man. As I said, I never saw him, but I heard him run away. A big man can move very quietly as long as he doesn’t have to run, but when he runs there’s not much he can do to silence the noise his feet make.”

“Your dog couldn’t run him down?”

“I’m sure he could have, but I wouldn’t let him. Do you remember when he caught you in the hedgerow?”

“Won’t never forget it.”

“Uns wanted to know what was troubling me. I said there were a thousand things, I believe.” I smiled. “That was a slight exaggeration, but one of them was the memory of Gylf’s catching you. I saw your chain, and there was a moan in my mind. Almost a scream.”

“I’m used to it, sir.”

“We’ll have it off as soon as we can find a blacksmith, I promise you, though that may be a long time. But the thing that has been troubling me tonight wasn’t your chain but that moan.” After a moment I added, “It wasn’t me who moaned. I feel sure of that.”

“If it was in your head, sir...”

“It had to be me? No. It didn’t, and it wasn’t. So who was it?”

“I don’t know, sir. I didn’t hear it.”

“I was recalling it as well as I could and trying to decide whose voice it might have been. I had just about settled on my answer when it struck me that it could have been Berthold who Gylf found. Had you thought of that?”

Gerda stirred the fire.

“Berthold’s past his prime, and blind, but still strong for a man his age. And no man I know is less liable to give way to fear. He’d have fought, and Gylf would have killed him. The man who ran from us was younger and much stronger.”

Gerda did not speak.

“There are men who should be killed. There are many more who must be killed, because they will try to kill us. But I’m not sure the man who ran from us—this very large young man I did not see—belongs to either group.”

“You think he’s mine, sir. You think it’s my Heimir.”

“I don’t think anything. It struck me it might be.”

“I don’t know, sir. Really I don’t.” She wiped away a tear. “I feel like it is, like he’s come back to me, or I’ve come to get him, sir, or however a body might say it. But I don’t know, sir, it’s all in my heart. I ain’t seen him nor heard him nor nothing.”

“We’ll let him come closer next time, if there is one.”

“That’s good of you, sir. Sir?”

“What is it?”

“If it is... You wouldn’t hurt him?”

“Of course not. Would he hurt me?”

Gerda hesitated. “He might, sir, if I wasn’t with you. I can’t say. He’s hungered, most like.”

“So are we. There’s not much game here.”

“Farther south, sir, south of the mountains—”

I shook my head. “I must take my stand at a mountain pass. We won’t go south of the mountains for a long time.”

She smiled. “I know you won’t let us starve, sir. Not even if he’s with us.”

Someone big lay on a bed of fern in a low cave; for a fraction of a second, I felt his hunger and his loneliness. I looked up. Cloud was watching me, her head and dark eye scarcely visible. Hoping she could see it, I nodded.

“You said you’d decided about the moan, sir. The moan when you first seen me. What was that?”

“It was when I saw you were chained.” Smoke drifted into my face; I fanned it away and moved a little to my left. “You probably think I imagined it.”

She shook her head. “Not if you say you didn’t.”

“I didn’t. I know the flavor of my thoughts, and that wasn’t one of them. It wasn’t you either, and it wasn’t Gylf. I can’t say how I know, but I do. There was someone else there, someone I couldn’t see. I’d been shadowed by the Aelf, and I thought it most likely that it was Garsecg.” I paused. “Garsecg is not an Aelf, but he had pretended to be. I’ll tell you more about Garsecg some other time, perhaps.”

Gerda nodded. “Now you’ve changed your mind, sir?”

“I have. You said you saw an old woman with me.”

Gerda’s nod was timid.

“I think that was Mani’s mistress. You must have seen Mani. A large black cat.”

“A witch’s cat, sir, if you ask me.”

“Yes, though he’s Lady Idnn’s cat now. The witch is dead but still earthbound. When Baki writhed in the hayloft, his old mistress’s ghost told Mani to bring help to her.”

“You think she’s haunting us, sir?”

“I doubt it. I’d guess that she went to Utgard with Mani, though I don’t know. Lie down. Try to sleep.”

“If that’s all that was troubling you, sir. I was hoping there was more I could help with.”

I laughed. “I doubt it, Gerda. Some Aelf were going to sacrifice a beautiful woman in the griffin’s grotto. Who was she and what became of her?”

“Ler! I don’t know, sir.”

“Very tall. Milk-white skin and black hair.” My hands shaped the figure of an invisible woman. “If you don’t know who she was or where she went—”

“I swear I don’t, sir.”

“I believe you. In that case, tell me this. Why would the Aelf offer one of our women to Grengarm?”

“Why, I’ve no notion, sir. Do you?”

“Maybe. Grengarm was a creature very like Garsecg, yet Grengarm seemed real here in Mythgarthr. Remember Toug? He was from Glennidam, a village where they worship the Aelf.”

“That not right, sir. Nobody ought to do that.”

“None of us should, at least. I don’t think it would be terribly difficult to explain why the people of Glennidam do, though it’s wrong just as you say. A better question, one I thought of much too late, is why the Aelf let them.”

Gerda’s face showed plainly that she did not understand.

“You mentioned Ler, mother. Suppose that Ler, with the Valfather and Lothur, were to appear before us, sacrifice to you, and offer you their prayers. What would you do?”

“I—” Gerda looked baffled. “Why—why I’d say there was some mistake or maybe they were making a joke.”

“Exactly. But the Aelf, who should say the same, do not.” I watched the moon rise above the empty landscape.

At last Gerda said, “I guess they like it, sir.”

“Lie down,” I told her. “Go to sleep.”

When the moon had risen high enough for me to make out the mountains, I got up and saw to the tethers of our mounts. Those of Berthold’s horse, and Gerda’s, were still tight, as was that of Uns’ placid brown mule. Cloud’s had never been tight, and I removed it. Already bedded down, Cloud nuzzled my face and brought to my mind the image of a wild boar, huge and savage, rooting on the other side of the little river.

I nodded, slung my quiver behind my back and strung my bow. Parka’s string sang softly beneath my fingers, the songs of men reaping and the songs women sing to children with heavy eyes, songs of war and songs roared in taverns, songs of worship sung at altars when blazing logs consumed whole oxen and Overcyns with horned helmets and hair like fine-spun gold appeared in the smoke—all these and many more blending into a single anthem of humanity, to which certain birds piped an accompaniment.

“Good pig!” Gylf licked his lips. “Want him?”

I said I did.

“Long way. I’ll drive him.”

Before I had taken two strides, Gylf was out of sight. In the blind dark under the trees, I reflected on the few, poor remarks I had directed to Uns, Berthold, and Gerda, and their questions and comments. Then, for a hundred cautious steps or so I whispered Disiri’s name.