Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

“He is,” Mani announced with a fine flare for the dramatic. With head and tail high, he emerged from the shadows and bowed. “Your servant, most noble of knights.”

“My friend, rather.” Ignoring a low growl from Gylf, I opened my arms.

Mani sprang into my lap. “Your yokel spied upon me, Sir Able, and I have no doubt you would cut his throat for it if I asked. Certainly my royal master would hang him in chains, did I so much as raise my paw.” Mani raised it, claws out, by way of illustration. “Would you prefer I forgive him?”

“Greatly,” I told him.

“In that case I do.” Mani’s claws vanished. “You are forgiven, fellow.”

“Tanks, sar!” Uns pulled his forelock.

I said, “A talking cat does not astound you, Uns?”

“Hit’s a magic cat, I reckon.”

“And you’ve seen a magic sword. Perhaps other things.”

“That’s so, sar, ‘n hit come ter tell da queen lady I been workin’ fer ‘bout how her pa’s tryin’ ter git Toug kilt, sar. ‘N I likes Toug ‘n hope ya kin make him stop.”

“I addressed Her Majesty before yourself because you had given me to her,” Mani explained. “I felt you’d approve for that reason. She has influence with her father, and it would better for him to spare Toug voluntarily. If he’s prevented by force—well, dear owner, he’s King Arnthor’s ambassador. There’s no getting around that.”

I rubbed my jaw. “Is he trying to kill Toug? Or have him killed?”

Mani, who had decided his paw needed smoothing, smoothed it. “He is not. Your opinion of my judgment must be high, I know. We have known each other for some while.”

“It is.”

“In which case you will give weight to my opinion, which is that Lord Beel won’t sully his honor with murder, whether by his own hand or another’s. He thrusts Toug into positions of danger. The stratagem is not unknown.”

“Why?” I lay down once more.

“He wishes you in his son-in-law’s service because he believes he will keep the crown with you to guard it.”

Mani waited for me to speak, but I did not.

“He believes this because my mistress, by which I mean by first mistress, has told him so. To be precise, because she told that long fellow Thiazi. You recall him, I’m sure.”

“Yes, I do. Why did she say it?”

“She no longer confides in me as she used to,” Mani said pensively. “Not that we are estranged. When one is dead...”

“I understand.”

Mani condescended to address Uns. “I myself have been dead on several occasions. We are permitted nine demises, of which the ninth is permanent. Doubtless you know.”

“Nosar, I dint. On’y I do now, Master Cat.”

“You may refer to me as Master Mani, fellow. Though I am a cat, cat is not my name.” Master Mani redirected his attention to me. “You asked why she prophesied as she did. May I hazard a conjecture?”

“Because it’s true?”

“Certainly not. I would guess she feared that my master—by which term I designate His Royal Majesty King Gilling of Jotunland, to whom my royal mistress Queen Idnn, his wife, has given me—might do you violence otherwise. Thanks to her foresight, he is instead solicitous of your life.”

“More so than I.” I shut my eyes. “You can hear my bowstring, can’t you, Mani? Even now?”

For once Mani was silent.

“I can, there’s one voice that cries out to me again and again. After I got this bowstring, I tried not to hear it. To tell the truth, I tried not to hear any of them. Now I have been listening, for that one especially. I hear it now, and I can make out a few words, and sobbing.”

“Mebbe that queen ya like, sar? Could she be, like, passed across?”

“Disiri? No. Disiri is not dead.”

For a half minute or more there was silence save for the crackling of the fire Uns fed and stirred; at last Mani said, “There is a room in Utgard, the Room of Lost Love.”

I opened my eyes and sat up. “Have you been in there?”

Mani shook his head. “I’ve merely seen the door.”

“You know where it is?”

“Lord Thiazi has a study. Very capacious, and nicely situated, in which he pursues the art. Other rooms open off it. I have been through all the doors but one, and that one is kept locked. I have climbed the ivy outside, but that room has no window.”

“You’d like to get in.”

“Perhaps.” Mani’s emerald eyes, which had been half shut, opened wide. “Certainly I’d like to look inside.”

“Have you lost love, Mani?”

He sprang from my lap and vanished in the night.

“What about you, Uns?”

“Don’ know a’ none, sar, on’y I likes Squire Toug.”

“So do I.” I stretched. “I don’t want him killed or maimed any more than you do.”

“Then you’ll stop it, sar? Tomorrer, like?”

“No. Mani told Her Majesty of Jotunland, while you eavesdropped. Is that right?”

“I never calt it right, sar.”

“Naturally not. But you did. She may stop it. Or not. Surely she’ll try. As for me...” I yawned. “Toug wants to be a knight.” The song of the string had begun, and although Gylf laid a gentle paw upon my hand, I said no more.

Svon motioned to Toug, who shut Thiazi’s door behind them. The vast hallway, always dark, seemed darker than ever; bats chittered high overhead. “That’s a bad man,” Toug said under his breath.

“That isn’t a real man at all,” Svon told him. “If you haven’t learned it yet, learn it now.”

“I know.”

“Then act like it and speak like it. Their whole race is evil, though some are better than others. The worst are monsters far worse than beasts.”

“Logi had three arms,” Toug said pensively. “I haven’t told anybody about it, but he did.”

“There was once a knight named Sir Ravd,” Svon said. He had begun to walk so fast that Toug had to trot to keep up. “Sir Ravd was sent to suppress outlaws in the northern forest from which you hail, the forest south of the mountains.”

“I remember,” Toug said.

“He was killed. I think Duke Marder thought the outlaws—the free companies, as they called themselves—would not attack a great and famous knight, though he had no comrade save his squire. If that’s what Duke Marder thought, Duke Marder was wrong.”

“I won’t tell anybody you said that,” Toug declared.

“I would say it to his face. I already have.”

Svon took a dozen strides before he spoke again. “Sir Ravd died. His squire lived, though he had been left for dead. He returned to Sheerwall, eager to tell everyone how his master had charged foes so numerous they could not be counted, how resolutely and how skillfully his master had fought, sending scores to the wolves. How he, Sir Ravd’s squire, alone and wounded, had buried Sir Ravd by moonlight, digging the grave with a broken ax, and heaping it with the weapons of the slain.”

Not knowing what else to say, Toug said, “Yes, sir.” He glanced behind him, for he felt unseen eyes on his back.

“They heard him in Sheerwall,” Svon continued, “and they slandered him. Not to his face—they were not as brave as the outlaws, who had faced Sir Ravd and his squire too, and never flinched. But he found, this squire, that he had an enemy no sword could touch, rumors that dogged his steps.”

Abruptly, Svon stopped and turned to face Toug. “I have tried to teach you in the short time we have been together.”

“Yes, Sir Svon. I know you have, and I’ve learned a lot. From you and from Sir Able, too.”

“This is my most important lesson. It took me years to learn it, but I throw it to you like a crust.”

“Yes, Sir Svon,” Toug repeated.