Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

“I have to refuse it again. I beg you not to offer it a third time.”

“Very well. We must have your liege here. Will you fetch him for us, Hela?”

“And Sir Woddet, Your Majesty? You know that I must tell him all I hear, and he ask me. Would you send me out when I have brought the duke?”

Svon muttered, “I am with Hela, Your Majesty.”

“Sir Woddet, too,” Idnn agreed, “as quickly as may be.”

When Hela had gone Idnn said, “We mean to examine you. Hela prompted it. The sister’s mind is as sharp as the brother’s is dull, we find. She’s the edge of the blade—he’s the back. We’ve given her mother to Woddet, too, and he’s loaned her to us.”

I smiled, and she graciously smiled in return.

“Sir Svon has told us of Aelfrice. How he went there with Sir Garvaon and found you with a fleet that vanished. About his squire as well—how Squire Toug had gone down a stair between worlds in a haunted spire, where fair women had been held to draw mariners to its summit.”

“Sir Svon knows much of Aelfrice,” I said.

Svon coughed. “You must wonder how I learned it.”

“From Toug?”

Slowly he shook his head. “Toug will scarcely speak. When His Grace comes we’ll ask about the matter you and I spoke of in the wood. I might as well tell you. It wouldn’t be right for us to surprise you with it.”

I said that I had surmised as much.

Idnn said, “We’d hoped to question you as a vassal. Your honor might not let you evade my questions then.”

“It wouldn’t, of course, Your Majesty, if they were questions yours let you ask me.”

Svon said, “I’ve questions too, about Aelfrice. You told me you’d been knighted by an Aelfqueen. Remember?”

I shrugged. “It’s true, though Sheerwall mocked me.”

“When we camped by the river.”

“You went to the inn. Pouk and I camped there.”

He flushed. I saw that the boy still lived in him and liked him better for it.

Idnn said, “Do you mean the ladies mocked you? It was to get your attention. You may trust me here.”

I shook my head. “I don’t believe they did. Perhaps they pitied me. The men mocked me, save for Sir Woddet.”

“Who’s here with me,” Marder said. “Did I mock you? If I did, I was drunk. We’ll engage again if you wish it.”

“You did not, Your Grace.”

Svon yielded his chair and Hela fetched a bench.

Idnn said, “He will not answer us, Your Grace. You must ask him who killed our husband. We know he knows.”

Marder frowned. “Do you, Sir Able? Yes or no.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

He sat silent until Idnn said, “Will you not ask him?”

“Perhaps not. If he will not speak, he may have a good reason. I’ll ask that instead. Sir Able, much as I respect you, I ask as your liege. Answer as you are a true knight. Why are you silent on this?”

I said, “Because no good can come of it, Your Grace. Only sorrow and wretchedness.”

At length Marder said, “We might punish him, might we not? Or her. The guilty party.”

“No, Your Grace.”

“We could not?”

I shook my head. “No, your Grace. You could not.”

So softly that it seemed he wished no one to hear but me, Mani said, “Wasn’t it for love?”

I nodded.

Idnn made a sound but did not speak, and Svon filled the silence. “There’s a question I’ve been eager to ask. I hope you’ll answer. I never questioned you enough when I was your squire, and I hope you’ll forgive that. I didn’t talk with Sir Ravd as I should have, either. I hated him for trying to teach me, and for that I will never forgive myself. I’d like not to feel as bad about you as I do about him. I told you Toug would hardly speak. This was before the fog lifted.”

I reminded him that he had just repeated it.

“Perhaps I did. It’s like what you told us about the Aelfqueen. It’s true, so why shouldn’t I say it? But—but it’s not entirely true. He said that when Sir Garvaon died, you saw something the rest of us didn’t. He thought I might have, since I’m a knight too. He said—he said...”

Marder saved him. “That reminds me. Her Majesty’s father is anxious to speak to you. It concerns young Wistan, Sir Garvaon’s armor, and so on. He asked me to mention it.”

I said that I would wait on him that night if he were still up, and the next morning otherwise.

Woddet coughed. “I’m a knight too. By the Lady, I wish to every Overcyn in Skai that I’d been there with you.”

Idnn said, “Sir Garvaon would have lived, we’re sure.”

I said, “Don’t you want to ask me why I didn’t fight Setr? All of you? Go ahead.”

Hela said, “Then I ask. It was not fear, I know.” Svon muttered, “He’d been your friend, you said.”

“He had been. But there was another reason. It was because I knew Setr had to die.” To change the subject, I added, “When heroes die, they are carried to Skai to serve the Valfather. Sometimes at least. That’s what I saw, Sir Svon—what Toug saw I saw when he didn’t and you didn’t. I saw the Valfather’s shieldmaiden descend, and Sir Garvaon rise and go with her. We humans—we knights, whether we’re called knights or not—get to Skai sometimes. Suppose that one of us, the best of us, tried to seize its crown.”

They did not understand; I waved Skai and its crown aside. “Setr had to die. For him to die, my friend Garsecg had to die too, because Garsecg was Setr by another name. Setr feared me. He could have joined me here any time, but he’d shaped me, like Disiri, and knew I could kill him.”

Idnn asked, “Is that the Aelfqueen who knighted you? What are you talking about, Sir Able?”

I laughed, and said I did not know myself. The ghost of something taken from my mind had returned to haunt it.

Hela said, “It troubles him.”

And Idnn, “Who is this queen?”

“She’s Queen of the Moss Aelf, Your Majesty, and she educated and knighted me. She did what she did for a good purpose, though I don’t know what it was. Garsecg, who was Setr, shaped me too, and thought his purpose good, perhaps. I was to fight Kulili—as I did, not long before he died.”

Hela and Woddet wanted to ask about her, but I cut them off. “Having formed me nearly as much as Kulili had formed the Aelf, he knew I’d kill him if we fought. Because he knew it, he would never have fought me. He would have fled, and I don’t believe even Cloud could have overtaken him before he got to Muspel. Grengarm was trying to get to Aelfrice when Toug and I caught up with him, but I had no griffin to chase Setr on. So I said I wouldn’t engage him and set Sir Garvaon and Sir Svon on him, hoping they would be enough.”

“We weren’t,” Svon said.

I rose. “I should’ve entered the fight in time to save Sir Garvaon. I thought he was about to rescue you. Before I could draw, he was in the dragon’s jaws—the one I’d said I wouldn’t fight. Every word of blame you lay on me I deserve. I’ll redeem myself when I can.” I addressed Idnn. “Have I leave to go, Your Majesty?”

“There will be no word of blame from us, Sir Able.”

I bowed. “May I go?”

I left the pavilion and wandered alone, thinking about a death I could have prevented, and forgetting that I was to see Beel. At last I went to the fires of the Daughters of Angr, supposing that the women would be as conscienceless and violent as their husbands. I would goad them, all would fight, and I would leave Eterne in her sheath. Larger even than their men, they teased instead like girls and women everywhere. Having heard me shout Disiri’s name in battle, they wanted to know whether I had kissed her, and a thousand other things. I ate with them, and drank the strong ale they spice with willow bark.