Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

Uri rose and bowed, saying, “Lord.”

Mani coughed as cats do. “She is afraid I will slip ahead of her, as I easily could, dear owner. I won’t. I want to talk to you alone, after these others have gone.”

The blind slave stroked Mani’s back with a hand thick with muscle. “This is him?”

“Yes,” Mani said. “This is he, my owner, Sir Able of the High Heart.”

The slave knelt and bowed his head.

“It means he wants something,” Etela explained. “That’s how they have to do.”

“We all want something,” I told her, “and when I do I kneel in just the same way. What’s his name?”

“It’s Vil, and he was my old master’s just like me. Only now we’re Toug’s.”

I nodded. “Stand up, Vil.”

He rose. Etela said, “Can I still go first?”

“Sure. It’s your right, and I have another question.”

“Well, I got a bunch. You can be first if you want to.”

“No.” I took off my helmet and laid it in the armoire in which I would hang my mail. “You were here first, as you said, and I came in last.” The truth was that I hoped her questions would make my own unnecessary.

“I don’t know where to start.”

“In that case it probably doesn’t matter.” I unbuckled my sword belt, took my place on the hassock, the only seat of merely human size, and laid Eterne across my knees.

“Aren’t you going to put that away too?”

I shook my head. “I’ll hang it by my bed. Something may happen during the night, though I hope it won’t.”

Uri murmured, “I have often watched over you, Lord.” I remembered then that seamen lured to the Isle of Glas had fed the Khimairae; but I said nothing.

“Is the new king going to hurt us? Mama and me?”

I shook my head again. “I would not let you be hurt, but I doubt that he intends you any harm.”

“Toug doesn’t want to be a knight. Not anymore.”

“I know.”

“Only I want him to be one, and he’d be a real good one, wouldn’t he?”

This was addressed to Uri, who said, “I think so too.”

“See? We’re going to get married, Mama said, ‘n we slept in the same bed already ‘n everything.”

Uri said, “I don’t believe so, Lord.”

“Yes, we did! We’re going to do it again tonight, an’ I’m all washed ‘n everything. So he has to be a knight.”

I nodded. “Which he is.”

Etela’s voice rose to a wail. “You said he wasn’t!”

“I said nothing of the kind. You said that he didn’t want to be one, and I told you I knew it. When I was tending his wound, I did my best to keep him from saying what none of us wanted to hear. I may also have said he was a knight already, though no one calls him Sir Toug. I think I did—and if I didn’t, I might easily have done so.”

She tried to speak, but I silenced her. “If Duke Marder were here—I wish he was—he’d tell you there’s no magic in the sword with which he taps a knight’s shoulders. Queen Disiri, who knighted me, might tell you anything, and she commands more magic than Lord Thiazi and Lord Beel combined. But no magic can make a knight. Not even the Overcyns can. A knight makes himself. That’s the only way. Come closer.”

She did, and I put my arm around her.

“Many people know what I told you. I learned it from a good and brave knight when I was a boy. Fewer know this, a thing I learned for myself in a far country.”

Mani asked, “Where there are talking cats?”

I nodded. “Talking cats who draw a chariot. What I learned, Etela, is that a knight cannot unmake himself. A knight can be unmade. It’s difficult and is seldom done, but it can be done.”

Etela said nothing; her eyes were bright with tears.

“It cannot be done by the knight himself, however. If Toug ever ceases to be a knight, it will be because you’ve done it, I think. Though there are other ways.”

“I never would!”

I told her very sincerely that I hoped she would not.

“But he doesn’t want to, an’ what can I do?”

“What you’re doing. Be good, take care of your mother, and show Toug you love him.”

“Well, I want him to ride a white horse, with a sword—” She sobbed. “An’ one of those long spears an’ a shield.”

“I hope we’ll leave this castle tomorrow. I’m going to ask the new king’s permission, and do all I can to set Lord Beel and his folk in motion. If we go, you’ll see Toug on a horse with a sword. His arm can’t bear a shield, but the shield Queen Idnn gave him—the one that you saved from the fight in the marketplace—will hang from his saddle.”

“Will you help?”

I nodded. “All I can.”

“Mama’s better.”

“I know. She may never be entirely well, Etela. You must do whatever you can to help, every day. You and Toug.”

“I’ll try.”

“I know. You must get Toug to help you. After all, she’s his as long as we’re here. Is there anything else?”

“No.” Etela wiped her eyes with her ragged sleeve. “Only this girl is going to talk about me. She said so.”

“Then go,” I told Etela. “See to your mother, and get Toug to help if you can.”

She would have remained, but I made her leave.

As soon as the door had shut, Uri said, “You might marry her, Lord. Do you think Queen Disiri would object?”

I returned to my seat. “Of course.”

“You know her less well than you believe.”

“Do I?” I shrugged.

“Or you might wed the mother.”

I sighed. “When I refuse to consider that as well, will you suggest I wed them both? You may go.”

“I may go whenever I wish, Lord, but I will not go yet. If you do not want to see me, that is easily arranged.”

Vil, the male slave, grunted in surprise; I suppose he thought she might be threatening to blind me.

“When you speak foolishness, Uri, I don’t want to hear you. Should I quiz you about the diet of the Khimairae?”

“That would be foolishness indeed, Lord. When I was a Khimaira I ate Khimaira food. Let us leave it so. You dined upon strange fare once, when you were sore wounded.”

“I yield. You told poor Etela you were going to talk to me about her. Did you tell her what you meant to say?”

“No. Nor was I talking of her and her mother so much as of you, Lord. Would you not like a fair estate?”

“To be got by marriage? No.” I laid Eterne on the hassock and went to the window to stroke Mani.

“A crown? That lout Schildstarr got himself a crown, and easily.”

“So that I might sit a golden chair and send other men to their deaths? No.”

Uri rose to stand beside me. “I speak for all the Fire Aelf, Lord. Not for myself alone. If you kill Kulili, we will serve you. Not just Baki or I, but all of us. If you wish King Arnthor’s crown, we will help you get it.”

I shook my head. “I have to get these people and more to safety, Uri. I have to do a lot of other things too. In Aelfrice, all these things will take only a few minutes.”

“You want me to go back. In a year, Lord, you might be King of Celidon. In ten, Emperor of Mythgarthr.”

“Or dead.”

“You are dead!” Uri’s eyes were yellow fireworks. “You know that and so do I.”

“But Vil doesn’t,” I pitched my voice as low as I dared, “or at least he didn’t. Which reminds me, I’d planned to ask Etela why she feared him. Why does she, Vil? What made her start when she heard your name?”

“She ain’t feared, sir. Not really.”

“She is. Before His Majesty’s parade, Lord Thiazi told us about the distribution of slaves. You went to Toug, like Etela and her mother, and I saw her face when she heard it.”

“I’m a conjurer, Sir Able, or used to was. I’d do things for her, just little things, you know, and tell her ‘twas real magic. I guess she believed me, or sometimes.”