Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

“No,” Toug said. “I can’t do that.”

“I may not be able to heal you if you fall, but climbing will be easier if you take off your boots.”

“I know, but I hate to leave them here. They’re not good boots, but they’re all I’ve got.”

“I can make myself a flying thing and carry them for you.” Baki sounded pensive. “I will be terribly ugly. Will you try not to hold it against me?”

“You couldn’t be ugly” Toug declared.

Smoke poured from her eyes. “This is a Khimaira,” she said, “except that I am going to keep my face the same. They have awful faces, so I will not do that part.”

Her slender body became more slender still, her long legs shrank and twisted, and her dainty feet turned to claws. Behind her arms were black wings, folded now. “Take off your boots, Lord,” she said. Her face and voice were unchanged.

“Can you carry Sword Breaker for me, too?”

She could, and he removed his sword belt and handed that down to her. “It—it’s a famous blade. I mean, it was Sir Able’s once.”

“I will be careful. There will be no danger for me, and none for Sword Breaker. But great danger for you. The ivy will help, but the wall is nearly straight. If you slip...”

“If it’s bad I won’t do it,” Toug promised, and climbed out, flattening himself against the rough and freezing wall and finding purchase for his toes on a stout vine stem. Inch by inch he descended, moving far more slowly than Mani had toward the window Mani had entered. Wind whipped his cloak, and his new tunic seemed comfortless. When he was halfway there, a dusky thing spread wide wings and flapped from the window of the turret with his boots and sword belt. It rose, black against the sky—he could twist his head no farther, and it was lost behind him.

After that he was preoccupied with his own safety. The window was near. Very near, he felt sure, and he must reach it. Return was out of the question.

His fingers found the edge of a stone frame: it seemed too good to be true. One freezing foot was on the wide and (oh, blessedly) flat stone sill.

“As soon as you get in, I will hand these things to you,” Baki said behind him. “It will make it easier for me.”

He dared not look but muttered, “All right.”

Then he was panting on the sill, gripping the frame with one hand, and he saw Baki flattened against the wall somewhat higher, his sword belt buckled around her neck, Sword Breaker and his knife hanging down her back, and his boots held by a finger and thumb.

“You can fly,” he gasped. “You don’t have to do that.”

She smiled. “I did not like your seeing me so, Lord. Here. Take them.”

Toug reached for his boots; as he touched them, she lost her grip. Lunging, he caught her wrist. Slight though it was, her weight nearly pulled him into the emptiness below.

And then—by magic, as it seemed afterward—they were inside, trembling and hugging, his boots lost. But alive! Alive! “I am s-so s-s-sorry,” Baki said, and wept. “I nearly killed you. Al-almost killed you.”

He tried to comfort her, as Ulfa had tried sometimes to comfort him. When her sobs had subsided to gulps, she said, “I knew I could if you could. I—I made my fingers more clawy. But I was not careful enough.”

Toug nodded, wanting to say it did not matter, but not knowing how to say it.

“I want to be like you. The other half.”

He did not understand. When she began to change he jumped, more frightened than when it seemed both must fall.

Obscured by swirling smoke, her coppery skin turned pink and peach. “Do I look right now, Lord?”

“You—you’re...”

“Naked. I know. We do not wear clothes.” She smiled. “But I am the other half. This is what Queen Disiri did for Sir Able to m-make him love her, and I can do it too. See?”

Toug managed to nod.

“We will have to find clothes and boots. Here.”

It was his sword belt. He buckled it on, then took off his green cloak and put it around her.

“Thank you, Lord. It is the wrong color, but I know you mean well.”

“It’s green.”

She nodded. “Disiri’s color. But I cannot go around this castle naked, though the men are blind.”

“You still have red hair. Redheads look nice in green.” His mother had told him that once.

“Do we? Then it will be all right. And I look...?”

“You’re beautiful!”

She laughed, wiping away the last tears. “But am I of your kind? Do I look right in every way?”

“Well, your teeth aren’t exactly like ours.”

“I know. I will try not to show them.”

The room seemed to be used for meetings; it was funnel-shaped, with a flat-topped boulder in its center, surrounded by rows of benches as high as the seats of the chairs in the turret room. Its walls were hung with pictures, but these were covered with brown curtains; and even the bottoms of these were too high to reach.

Toug looked around at these things, then put them from his mind. “We ought to find Mani.”

“You like Mani better?” Baki gave Toug a sly smile.

“No.” He sighed. “But I’m taking care of him. That’s why I climbed out on that wall—I didn’t want Mani to get away. But he got away anyhow, and I nearly got us killed.”

“You should not feel badly, Lord.”

He sighed again. “You’d better call me Toug when other people are around. And I do feel bad. I’ve been trying to be like Sir Able, and look at the mess.”

Baki smiled, keeping her lips tight over her teeth. “You are more like Sir Able than you know, Toug. Very well, we will look for the cat. Perhaps we may find clothes for me and boots for you along the way. Let us hope so.”

Toug scarcely heard her. Something that was neither fog nor gray smoke was shaping itself above the great stone in the center of the room. For an instant he glimpsed eyes and teeth; they shuddered and disappeared. The light from the window, which had never been bright, dimmed, and the high, cracked voice of an old woman spoke.

“You have no lance,” the Knight of the Leopards observed. His armor gleamed beneath his fur-lined cloak. “No,” I said.

“You will fight me with your sword alone?”

He was young, I thought—not much older than I—and had probably grown his thin mustache to make himself look more mature. “If I choose to draw it, yes.”

“Is it licit to fight under such circumstances?”

“It is,” I told him, “and I will not permit you to pass this place unless you fight.”

The Knight of the Leopards looked troubled. “My squire carries ancillary lances. I’ll lend you one. You may return it when we’ve ended our combat, if it has not been broken.”

Cloud danced over the snow, eager for action, and I told her she had to stand quiet. “I do not ask it,” I said aloud.

“I’ve observed that, but my honor demands that we engage on something like equal terms.”

“Do you expect to make yourself as tall as the Angrborn? Or do you think they’ll make themselves no taller than you?”

Crabwise, Uns ran to my stirrup. “Ya gotta take hit, sar. Ya be kilt.”

“I’ll be defeated,” I told him, “not killed.”

“My squire will lend it to yours,” the Knight of the Leopards ruled. “Your squire may pass it you. We’ll take our places after that, and begin when my herald sounds his clarion. Is that acceptable?”

“I have no squire,” I explained. “Uns is my servant, not a squire.”

“Have you no one but him, and those old people?”

“No,” I said. “There are others you haven’t seen.”

“But no squire?”

I shook my head.

“Your horse appears somewhat light.”