Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

“It’s by bearing mail and sword that we become strong,” Svon said, “and by bearing hardship that we become brave. There is no other way.”

“I need to talk to you, Mani.”

Mani nodded and sprang into my arms. “I require my place in your saddlebag. You’ll oblige me?”

“Certainly.” To prove it, I put him there.

“Now talk away, dear owner. Or do you want me to?”

“I want you to tell me about the Room of Lost Love. You mentioned it. Tell me everything you know.”

“I haven’t been in it.” Mani paused, his emerald eyes vague. “I believe I said that.”

“I’d like to hear everything you’ve heard about it.”

“Ulfa probably knows more,” Mani said slowly. “Pouk may, too. They were in Utgard longer.”

Gylf made a small noise, half a growl.

“They aren’t here,” I said. “You are. How did you learn what you know about it?”

“Originally? From Huld. The Angrborn never love. I suppose everybody knows. It’s the main difference between them and you. You’re both very big. They’re bigger, but you’re both big and noisy. You don’t think much, either of you. You both can talk. Which is good, I admit.”

“Tell me about the room.”

The last of the pack mules was being loaded. Marder and Woddet were already in the saddle, and as I watched Uns made a step of his hands to assist Idnn in mounting.

“Lost love’s got to go somewhere.” Mani was speaking slower than ever, and as much to himself as me. “People act as if lost things vanish. We cats don’t. I used to have a house I liked, a little place in the woods and a good place for field mice and rabbits. I left—my mistress made me—and now I hardly think of it. But it’s still there.”

Gylf looked up, plainly expecting me to say something, but I did not.

“It hasn’t gone away,” Mani continued, “unless it’s burned. I’m the one who’s gone away.”

I said, “I’m not sure I follow this.”

“I’m like love,” Mani explained. “There’s a great deal of love in every cat. Not everyone believes that, but it’s true. Dependency and fawning aren’t love.”

“I love Bold Berthold,” I told him.

“There. You see? Now suppose you stopped. You’d feel a sort of emptiness, wouldn’t you?”

“I suppose so.”

“You certainly would, if you really loved Berthold to start with. That would be the space the love used to fill. It’s like losing a tooth. If a tooth comes out, you throw it away. Very likely you never see it again. But it’s still somewhere. A peasant digging might turn it up, or a jackdaw might put it in his nest.” I nodded absently. “Gylf, would you bring my lance?”

“Love is the same, and love tends to go where it is most needed. A lost cat goes to water, if it can.”

“I didn’t know that.”

Cloud, who had been listening, filled my mind with the image of a pony splotched with white and brown, climbing hill after hill until it reached the foothills of the mountains.

“So lost love comes to Jotunland, where no love is, or at least very little—some poor slave whose cat is her only friend. Anyway, this is one of the places where it comes.”

I took my lance from Gylf’s mouth and mounted, swinging my right leg wide to miss Mani.

“It’s stored in the Room of Lost Love in Utgard. Those who’ve lost love... This is what they say. As I told you, I couldn’t get in. Those who’ve lost love can go in there and find their lost love again, sometimes.”

Mani sighed, and drew his sleek black head deeper into my saddle bag. “I haven’t lost love. Or if I have, I can’t remember what it was. Perhaps that’s why I couldn’t get in.”

Riding alone, a long bowshot in front of the main body with empty fields and woods to either side, I found myself wondering whether that door would open to me.

“That’s it,” Toug said, and pointed. “That’s where they made the picks and the shovels—all the tools.” As he spoke, he heard the deep and sometimes rasping voices of Angrborn. A moment later one lumbered around the corner of the house. He was carrying a mattock, but wore a long sword like the swords with which Skoel and Bitergarm had fought.

Svon and Toug urged their mounts forward, but he barred their way with his mattock. “STOP!”

Svon reined up. “We are on the king’s business. You halt us at your peril.”

“The king’s dead!”

“That is a lie.”

The Angrborn raised his mattock.

Svon clapped his spurs to Moonrise and shot past him, galloping toward the forge.

Toug laughed.

“You! Who’re you?”

Toug took his shield from the pommel to display its white griffin.

“One of them foreign knights.”

“Since you call me one, I’ll be a knight to you. Will you engage?”

“A month back, I killed a dozen better’n you.”

“Then we fight as we are and where we stand. Single combat.” Basing in his stirrups, Toug raised his voice as well. “Put aside your bow, Sir Svon.”

The Angrborn turned to look. Toug spurred his horse as Svon had. The war sword—drawn with one hand, wielded with both—caught the Frost Giant below the ribs, and driven by Toug’s strength and Laemphalt’s thundering speed sank to the hilt and was torn from Toug’s hands as he flashed past.

He wheeled Laemphalt and let his gallop subside to a walk. The mattock lay on the road; the Angrborn who had held it knelt beyond it, bent double above a pool of blood. His hands were pressed to his side, and momentarily Toug wondered whether he was trying to draw out the blade that had pierced him or merely trying to ease his pain.

He fell, and Toug urged Laemphalt forward until smoking, seething blood bathed his hooves, dismounted, and wading in ankle-deep blood wrestled his war sword free and wiped it with a swatch cut from the dead giant’s shirt.

An auction was in progress on the far side of the forge, attended by two score Angrborn, some of whom Toug recognized. For five minutes, he watched the bidding; then, having seen an open door and gaunt faces in the shadows beyond it, he spurred Laemphalt between two Angrborn and into the house.

“A horse.” It was one of the blind slaves from the forge. “There’s a horse in here.”

“I’m riding him,” Toug told him. “Are you afraid we’ll get the floor dirty?”

“I’ll clean it up.” A worn woman came forward and grasped Laemphalt’s bridle. “Who are you?”

Toug explained, and soon three blind, muscular men and two women were gathered around him. He cleared his throat. “Do any of you want to go back to Celidon?”

“Get out o’ here?”

“Not be slaves no more?”

“What’s this you say?”

“Yes!”

“It’s a trick!”

The last had been from one of the eyeless smiths, and Toug addressed him. “It isn’t a trick, Vil, but it may be tricky. To tell the truth, I think it’s going to be. But maybe it can be done. We’re going to try, if you’ll help.”

“They’re supposed to sell us,” one of the other men said, “after the rest’s gone. Master’s dead.”

“I killed him,” Toug admitted. “I had to. He was going to kill Etela and me.”

“You got her?” That was Vil.

A woman said, “Her ma thinks she’s back at the castle.”

“She is. I took her there last night, and your master tried to stop us.” Toug drew a deep breath. “Listen to me, because we’re not going to do this unless you’re willing. The king, King Gilling, can take slaves whenever he wants them. That’s the law. He—”

“Here you are!” It was Svon’s voice, and he strode in from another room, his shield on his arm and his sword drawn.