Gene Wolfe: The Wizard

“He isn’t really mine, Sir Able. He’s yours.”

“I’m giving him to you. I just did. The muleteers are supposed to be caring for all the horses, but if he’s here I want you to find him and make sure he’s been cared for. Tie him next to Cloud. Make sure his tether’s plenty long enough to let him lie down, and make sure he has clean straw.”

Toug started to leave, but stopped. “You did all those things for Cloud before I got here, didn’t you? Looked at her feet and everything.”

I nodded.

“I thought so. If I’m going to be knight, I have to see about the man who knocked me off, too, don’t I?”

I nodded. “Sooner or later.”

“I want to do it before I sleep. I will if I can, as soon as I’ve seen to Laemphalt.”

As Toug vanished among the milling animals and men, I called, “Wash his legs when you’ve seen to his hooves. Warm the water.”

Some time after that, when I lay on the floor in what had been Bymir’s front room, Mani left Idnn to stretch on my chest. “Are you awake?”

Gylf raised his head to look at him, but did not speak. I said, “Yes. What is it?”

“Do cats ever get to Skai?”

I thought awhile. “Maybe. The Lady of Folkvangr’s got four. How’d you know I’d been there?”

“Oh, I know such things.”

I thought about that, too, and since I had been more than half asleep when Mani came, the thinking took a while. Finally I said, “I won’t try to make you tell. I know you’d ignore an order. But if you won’t tell me, I won’t answer any more questions.”

“I probably shouldn’t.”

“Then don’t.” I yawned. “Go away.”

“I have important news.”

Gylf yawned, too, and laid his head between his paws. I said, “What is it?”

“Why should I answer your questions if you won’t answer mine?”

“You didn’t answer mine,” I reminded him. “Go away.”

“I wanted to. It’s a delicate matter.”

“Better not to touch it. You cats are always knocking over cups and stuff, and I’ve got to sleep. We won’t ride early unless I’m up with the sun.”

“It was my old mistress who told me, you see.” Mani paused, studying my face. “Surprised you, didn’t I?”

“Of course you did. She’s dead.”

Mani grinned; his teeth, which were white and as sharp as heck, looked red because of the firelight. “So are you, Sir Able.”

“Hardly.”

“I won’t argue—it’s beneath me. Is it a nice place?”

“Skai? Very.”

“Maybe I’ll see it someday. This isn’t. I mean, it’s nice sometimes. But in general...”

“It isn’t,” I muttered. “No argument.”

“You can’t have been there very long.”

“Twenty years or so.”

“You only rode away a few days ago.”

I sat up, catching Mani and settling him in my lap. “Tell me how you talked to your mistress, and I’ll tell you a little about my time in Skai.” Looking at Toug, who lay with his eyes tightly closed, I added, “I’ll tell you some anyway. Nobody can cover twenty years in a conversation.”

“You must be explicit,” Mani hedged.

“Okay. I will be.”

“If you’ll tell me about the cats there, I’ll give you my important news too. But you first. Agreed?”

“No, because I don’t know much about them. Suppose I tell you everything I know. Will you say it’s not enough?”

Mani pressed an inky black paw to his inky black chest. “Upon my honor as a Cat, I will not. That is the highest oath I have. But you have to tell about Skai as well.”

“All right. Time is different there, just like it is in Aelfrice. I’m not a learned man, but it seems like time runs really quick in Skai. A month there is a few hours here, or less. Something like that.”

“That’s not like Aelfrice.”

“I think it is,” I said. “Time goes slow there. Toug over there spent a few days in Aelfrice, or that’s what he thought. But it had been years here. The rule seems to be that time runs down, slower and slower as you get deeper and deeper. Skai’s the third world, Mythgarthr’s the fourth, and Aelfrice the fifth.”

“I knew that. How did you get to Skai?”

“A nice girl named Alvit brought me. The Valfather collects heroes more or less as some men collect armor. His daughters and some princesses get them for him, princesses who’ve died nobly and been picked by the others. Alvit’s one of those. The Valfather accepted me and gave me the cloud-colored mount you probably saw me riding today and my shield, with some other stuff. Is that enough?”

“No. What did you do there?”

“Feasted, sang, told stories, practiced the arts of war, and fought giants, the Giants of Winter and Old Night.”

“Lady Idnn fights giants, too,” Mani said proudly. “She put an arrow in the eye of one today.”

“Hooray for Lady Idnn,” I glanced at her across the cavernous room, “but the Frost Giant she blinded was nothing like the giants we fought. Let me tell you about a raid I went on. It’s always cold and gloomy where they live, and that time it was windy, too. We took refuge in a cave.”

“So would I,” Mani declared.

“I’ll bet. It was a big cave with five small ones branching off from it. They were all dead ends, and empty. We made a roaring fire in the big one and slept comfortably enough, with one or another keeping watch.”

“I would have gone scouting. You never know what you may find.”

“Exactly. I had the last watch, so I was up before the others. When my watch was over I woke them up, and I thought I’d have a look around. There was a range of hills to the north, and I climbed one. It was your lying on my chest that reminded me of all this.”

“Do tell.”

“I will, and I’m telling the truth, no matter what you think. When I got to the top, I saw a great big face to the west with its eye shut. The beard was like a forest, the mouth was like a pit, and the nostrils were like a couple of tunnels. I looked downhill, and saw my friends leaving the cave. I saw, too, that it wasn’t really a cave at all, but the glove of the giant I was standing on.”

Mani licked his left paw thoughtfully.

“I doubt that you believe me, but there’s more. Want to hear it?”

“Go ahead.”

“Our leader made himself bigger when I told him. Bigger and bigger until he was as big as the giant I’d climbed, and his hammer and helmet and everything else that was his grew with him. Seeing him, the rest of us made ourselves bigger too. I hadn’t known I could, until he did it. But when he did, I understood how it was done and did it too. I couldn’t make myself as big as he was, none of us could. We could make ourselves very big, just the same. And we did. I won’t tell you the rest, because you’d never believe it.”

Mani completed the licking of his left paw and licked his right for a time, and at last said, “Tell me about the cats. As much as you know.”

“They belong to the Lady of Folkvangr, just like I told you. She’s one of the Valfather’s daughters, I think the youngest, and she’s... Well, nobody can say how beautiful she is. There aren’t any words for it.”

Mani grinned. “I noticed you choked, just thinking about it.”

“The first time you see her you fall on your knees and draw your sword, and lay it at her feet. I did that, and I saw a lot of others do it, too.”

“Touching.”

“She smiles and makes you get up, and tells you very sweetly that she understands you’d die for her, and swears she’ll be your friend always.”

“That happened to you?”

“To all of us. It was a wonderful, wonderful moment. I’d be tempted to say the most wonderful moment of my life, if it weren’t for a moment that was even more wonderful. But honestly, Skai’s full of wonderful moments. May I tell you what it’s like?”