Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

Garvaon still did not speak.

“I haven’t questioned them,” I told him, “and I won’t. What you did I judge to be no crime. Neither the first time nor the second.” Garvaon did not speak, but there was hope in his eyes.

I said, “When you left Lord Beel, did you offer to help Sir Svon search for his squire and his squire’s slaves?”

“Yes. We went out to look for them, found your camp, and thought it would be well to bring your horse along in case we found you, too. Your servingmen were packing your things, and did not object.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I owe you a lot, and this is one thing more.” I stopped to draw breath, not liking what I had to say next. “I must tell you that this blue man who speaks with us is called Garsecg. I dreamed of him, and you, once. In my dream he killed you. So it appeared.”

“Go on,” Garvaon told me.

“As you wish. If Sir Svon engages a dragon, and that dragon is Garsecg also, will you stand beside Sir Svon? You will have no, help from me.”

“I will,” Garvaon declared.

Etela whispered, “They haven’t seen them.”

“They have,” I told her. “They saw Setr as they rode up, and it is Setr they must close with. What about you, Toug?”

I do not think he had expected to be asked; he looked surprised.

“As the law would have it, you are merely Svon’s squire. You have no duty to fight, only to save Sir Svon if he falls. You’re wounded already, and the bone can’t have knit in so short a time. Will you engage?”

For the space of a breath, Toug’s eyes met Garsecg’s. “I won’t fight,” Toug said. “Never again if I can help it.”

“As you wish.” I turned my back on him and pointed to Garsecg. “There is the dragon, Sir Garvaon—Sir Svon. He has been a friend to me, and I will not—”

Garsecg interrupted me; I think now that he spoke in order to have more time for the transformation, although I cannot be sure. “Did you fight Kulili? The white dragon? You swore you would.”

“I did.”

“Did you kill her?”

I shook my head. “I never swore to take her life, and I could not have if wished to. I yielded, and she spared me.”

Just then Etela shouted, “Look out!”

Garsecg had begun to change, his head lengthening and swelling. He dropped to all fours, and claws sprouted from his hands. He hissed, and fire and smoke wreathed his mouth and great leathern wings rose from his back. So swiftly did he strike that Svon had scarcely time to raise his shield. Setr’s fangs pierced it even as his breath scorched it, and leather, wood, and iron were torn away.

I held Gylf, who would have rushed into the fight if I had not. As if in a dream I heard Vil demanding that Etela tell him what was happening; and she, with a trembling voice, struggling to comply.

Had either knight had time to mount, things might have gone differently. As it was, Setr went straight for Svon. Svon retreated, defending himself with his sword.

As he did, Garvaon attacked Setr’s left side, keeping his shield between Setr’s head and himself. Twice his sword rang on Setr’s scales. A thrust found softer hide behind a leg, and Garvaon drove the blade in. What welled forth might have been boiling pitch.

Svon came straight for Setr then. I was proud of him, even as I knew his effort doomed. He thrust at Setr’s eyes as Setr struck. His point missed by half a hand, slipping futilely along the bony plate that had been Garsecg’s face, and Svon went down.

Garvaon fought on as few men fight, cunning and bold. Setr was compelled to keep a forefoot on Svon, who struggled against it and stabbed beneath its scales with his saxe. Setr’s weight was insufficient to crush him, and his hauberk saved him (largely, though not entirely) from Setr’s claws.

Setr’s jaws closed upon Garvaon. That was a moment I would like to forget. At one instant, as brave a knight as woman has ever borne darted in to stab and slash, and out again before the dragon stuck. At the next, those terrible jaws had raised him high.

Only to open at once, so that he fell dying to the ground.

A monstrous figure to which I could put no name rode Setr’s back. A moment more and that figure had broken, becoming Etela, who had slipped from Vil’s broad shoulders and fled, and Vil, with a thousand hands about Setr’s neck. No artist could paint it; but if one tried, he would show a chain of arms and hands, living and strong, that tightened until that scaly neck burst like a blasted tree.

Setr reared in his agony, and Svon rolled from beneath his claw. Setr trembled, and fell dead.

It was over. Rapture held me while sorrow groaned in a place too deep for words.

But not for tears. I did not know I wept until I saw them fell on Garvaon’s upturned face.

“You knew,” he said. “Tell her I loved her.”

Toug was bending over Garvaon too, and Svon, and Etela. Cloud came as well; and what she felt filled my mind—that a great and noble rider had passed, leaving all steeds the poorer.

The air was as still as air can ever be; I heard a whistling wind nevertheless. Garvaon heard it, too. I saw his eyes turn upward. He smiled, that grim old knight. He smiled, and took the fair, white hand that had reached for his, and rose, leaving his stiffening corpse on the sand.

Alvit helped him mount, for she had not yet kissed him and his wounds troubled him sore. I wished them good speed. Alvit, too, smiled at that, while Garvaon waved farewell. She mounted behind him, the white stallion leaped into the air, and in less than a breath all three had vanished in that bright mist that is our own Mythgarthr.

“He’s dead, sir.” Vil knelt beside the corpse, his fingers on its wrist.

Etela laughed; there was hysteria in it, and I urged Toug to comfort her.

Svon said, “Sir Garvaon is dead, Vil, as you say. So is the dragon.”

Vil said nothing.

“You went into battle with that child on your shoulders. You’re a braver knight than I will ever be. So is she. I wouldn’t have done what she did, not at her age or any age.”

Vil said, “She told me it was like to kill you, sir. We had to do something.”

“Without a sword and without armor.”

“What I had was better.” Vil held out his hand to me. It was empty, but when he had passed his other hand across it, my bowstring lay coiled in it. “Here ‘tis, Sir Able. I know you must a’ seen it. I filched it. You know when. You want to sort me out, ask Master Toug. Only you got the right to do anything you want to, an’ I’ll tell him so.”

I took the bowstring from him and ran it through my fingers, feeling the lives of many, so very many, who dwell in America. I had passed beyond them, above or below them, and as they plowed and coded and traded, swept their floors and minded their children, we said our farewells. For a moment, my hands embraced them, and they embraced my hands.

Perhaps Vil sensed that in some unimaginable manner; perhaps it only seemed so. However that may be, he said, “There are tricks you can do with a string like that, Sir Able, lots o’

’em. Making things that ain’t there, soon’s you move your hands, an’ lettin’

’em cut it, only it’s not really cut, you know. Only when you do ’em with that’n it’s all different.” Although the air was warm, he shivered.

“No,” I said. “Hold out your hand again, Truthful Vil.”

He did, and I put the bowstring into it. “This was a gift, when I began, from a very great lady. Men name her Parka, and she dwells in our own place.”

“If you say it, sir.”

“But she is of the world above Skai, the second realm. She is thus higher than the Valfather, who serves her. Do you understand?”

“I hope.”

Etela exclaimed, “Well, I don’t understand at all!” She was standing beside Toug, her arm about his waist. Seeing them I understood that she was no longer Little Etela, and that in sober fact she had never been, in the short time that I had known her. I said, “Vil will explain it to you.”