Peter Beagle - Innkeeper's Song

Griga’ath over us, a blazing white sky of his own. Put me down, idiot Lukassa, but no words, no more. Nothing to do but nip wrist, hard—yelps, lets go, looks hurt, too bad. Back away slowly. Does he know us least little, old magician in there? No. Cold green eyes seeping through flames, he reaches to pick us up, gulp us both down, feed his oven heart. He can do it. If I could still take man-shape, he could still do it.

One way left. One.

How long, then? Long, long, long, even wicked magician not yet born last time I walk in my own self. No need, no use, too much trouble, fox will do. And when fox will not do, man-shape will. Now, no help for it. Old nothing would not like this. Old nothing is not here. No help for it.

Lukassa’s arms around me again, not caring if I snap or no. Trembling, shivering, holding too tight, trying to keep me from griga’ath . A calamity, that girl. I look in her eyes—let go, Lukassa, must not change in your arms, must not, believe me. Friend. My friend. Let me go.

And she does look straight back at me and let me go, as griga’ath’s hand closes on her. I reach down and in and down, shake my self awake, the deep that is no borrowing, no form, no part of old nothing even. Me. So sorry to disturb, nice nap, I hope. You are needed, me.

Never any notion of what I look like, but I see the change in Lukassa’s eyes. No cry when griga’ath takes her, no struggle in its hand—but now such terror, such betrayal, almost it would pain, except not possible. So dreadful, Lukassa, truly? Not to see me? No leavings of your fox, even in ancient thing I am? I would know you.

Griga’ath’s turn to back away, holding Lukassa up between us like a lantern. Deciding—fear, not fear? My turn to reach out, long gray arms and hands I have, a glittering edge to them, ridgy gray fingers bend the air. I say, “Put her down.” My voice a gray crushing. Lukassa covers her ears, her face. I say, “Put her down.”

A rising in me, a remembering. Water and sky, this world, when I came to be—water and sky and terrible trees and old nothing. Foxes, yes, plenty of foxes, but no humans, so no griga’aths . No magicians, not one, no magicians scuttling here, there, trying to be gods, demons, ordinaries, all together. Creatures like me, there were—other things, too, in the water, in the trees. Fox forgets, man-shape forgets. I remember.

Griga’ath remembers something. Sets Lukassa down slowly, she looks back and forth, which is more terrible? I say, “Lukassa, to me,” but she cannot bear my voice. I move toward her, reach out, she flitters away, behind me now, good. Griga’ath hisses, grins monsters at us, undecided yet. I speak to it in the First Tongue, fox and man-shape never knew. I say to it, “Behold me and begone. Dry stick, dead leaf, depart to whatever waits for you.” And I turn my back.

And for me an end of it. No more but to bring Lukassa home to that other world, hers. A skin away from this one, less, a whisper, but no coming and going, only the dead, the mad, the fox. Lukassa is not mad. Old magician’s doing, it would be—fool, fool, how could I not see? Lukassa. Poor one.

Look back a last time. Griga’ath crouches, not moving, will not attack again. A smaller fire now, under this liquid, shifting dark—instead of griga’ath consuming us, darkness is already drawing it in, drinking it down into itself. And serve you right, wicked magician, waking the dead to adore you. Even for a magician, shameful. What you have become, you always were. Justice for once to leave you here, a pleasure, too.

But Lukassa will not come.

Four steps right and around and down, that simple— but she will not. Afraid still, drive her ahead, use fear, no time and no choice. She eludes me, darts this way, that way, stupid-stubborn as a chicken, trying and trying to return to griga’ath. This is madness, what is this? I tell her to stop, come with me, but the voice makes her truly wild, she would hide behind griga’ath if she dared. She says, “I came for him.”

Always. Always. Any concern with humans, any feeling at all, there you are, telling yourself you do not know what you know. Walk right through you right now, she would—you, griga’ath , no difference, all for one wicked, lost old man. Dead, alive, an idiot, to the bone. And serve you right, idiot fox. Foolish, I clutch at her, carry her off where she belongs, be done with it. She scrambles out of reach—“No, no, I came for him! Fox, where are you? Help me, fox!” Looking at me as she cries.

Squeeze back into fox-shape to quiet her? But by now I am as stupid as she. Humans do that to you. Once more, no help for it. I turn to griga’ath , speak to it slowly, carefully. “Come along, then. Come with us.” Oh, never again, never again. Old nothing must be hurting itself with laughing.

“Come with us.” Griga’ath takes a single step. Lukassa gasps her wonder—another step, another gasp. Griga’ath halts, looks at us, eyes like green cinders. Not knowing us, can it know who it is? Can it choose? this world, that? “Come, so, come.” A blue-hot snarl, a step. Lukassa claps hands, sings hope. Never again. “Come, then.”

There is a hole in my memory, just here. I can remember the wind, the tremendous, unbelievable noise, people shrieking in the halls, and The Gaff and Slasher shuddering violently all over, like a terrified horse. I remember holding Lal’s hand, walking with her and Soukyan toward a blackness where a wall had been, a blackness that asked us in very sweetly. It showed us pictures, the blackness. I can’t say now what it showed us, but I was going there gladly. I remember that as well as I remember the griga’ath .

Then nothing—no, not even nothing, not a hole but a hiccup. The next thing, without the slightest pause, is Karsh shaking me and shouting at the top of his voice. I recognize the words by themselves, but all together they make no sense. I flop back and forth in Karsh’s grip like a dishrag, while beyond him Tikat is screaming, “Lukassa! Lukassa!” at a wall. The other wizard is there, too, watching him with a strange faraway smile widening on his lipless mouth. It is like a dream, and always seems to continue for a long time.

Soukyan stopped it. He put me behind him, holding Karsh back with one hand on his chest. I remember him saying, his voice so deep and hoarse that Karsh must surely see past any disguise to the truth of him, “Stay there, fat man, where you are.” I understood his words. He said to me, “Rosseth. Are you all right?”

Before I could reply, if I could have, Karsh was bellowing, “Well, what in bloody hell do you think I’ve been asking him, fool woman?” It gave me a fit of the giggles, I couldn’t help it. Not so much because of what I knew, as because I had never heard Karsh talk that way to a paying guest. Soukyan had to shake me a bit this time. I said, “Yes, all right, it’s all right.” I pulled away from Soukyan and turned to look about me.

The room was a ruin, window gone, and the door hanging by one hinge—Karsh’s doing, though I didn’t know then. Not that there’s much you can do to ruin a grubby little box like that, kept up mostly for bargemen to sleep off drunks; but the walls were leaning in as though the room had been pinched between some gigantic thumb and forefinger. Half the floor was seared black, warped upward into a sharp ridge by the heat of the griga’ath’s passage. I saw Marinesha’s wildflowers scattered in a far corner. They were unharmed, strangely, except that their vase was broken.

Lal was with Tikat, trying to calm his endless, heartbreaking calling. Out of the side of my eye, I could see Soukyan moving very slowly toward the wizard, Arshadin. There was death in his face. Arshadin went on smiling at no one, touching his own face and body in a kind of awful wonder. He seemed not to notice anything else at all, but it was Soukyan to whom I wanted to shout warning. But then Karsh was at me again, demanding in the same breath to know if I were truly all right and what the goat-fucking hell I was doing in the damn wizard’s room in the bloody first place. His face was red and pale by turns, and he was trembling rather like a horse himself. I thought it was the inn, the devastation of the only thing in the world he loved. I felt sorry for him.