The Magician of Karakosk, and Other Stories

  When Tai-sharm did not answer, he went on, “Come, your mother’s at least as shrewd as half the courtiers in Baraquil. Why should you be any different from her, tell me that? I don’t believe you are any different.”

  “Oh, if only that were true,” said Tai-sharm then, so softly that the Chief Minister had to bend close to hear. “If only that could be true.”

  Something about the simple words, about her voice, made the Chief Minister uneasy in his yellow robe. He spoke no more to her for the day and night that remained to their journey, but rode ahead from then on, leaving her under the constant watch of three of his attendants. But Tai-sharm made no further attempts to escape—and just where should she have fled, after all, who’d never been farther from home than her uncle’s house in the hills? She came along in silence, watching the ground.

  It was well past moonrise when they reached the palace at last, so Tai-sharm was not taken to the King that night. She was met instead by his own royal servants, who greeted her kindly and escorted her to a high room carpeted with sheknath pelts and hung with portraits of fierce men. There, in a tub as wide as the stockpond behind her village, and deeper, she was firmly scrubbed until she protested that her skin was coming unraveled. She was then put into a bed so splendid and so soft that she felt she was drowning in down, being crushed in a winepress of fur and satin. Barely had the servants bidden her sleep well and closed the doors when Tai-sharm had scrambled down to the floor and scratched a bare place for herself on good hard wood, as she was used to sleeping at home. Not that she slept so much as a minute, nono, would you? She lay very still in a corner, her back curled against two walls, but she paced constantly back and forth in her mind, just as we see our half-wild hamadris do in their pens each night—back and forth, round and round, with the moon on their horns. So Tai-sharm, inside, until dawn.

  The servants found her in the big bed, waiting with her eyes wide open. They drew back the curtains, fed her heartily, then bathed her again—ai, our poor Tai-sharm, who could count the baths she’d had in her life if she thought about it a bit. And after that, she was perfumed until she sneezed and had her black hair braided and twisted and piled a foot high on her head; she was dressed in clothes she could never imagine, even while she was wearing them, and she was taken to the King.

  What, has Choushi-wai not described to you the marvels of the palace, and of Baraquil, as was promised by the Chief Minister? Bide, bide, Tai-sharm had yet seen no more of these prodigies than you have, weary and lost and frightened as she was. Oh, she had observed them, if you like—the old suits of armor, the great mirrors, tables, bureaus, the hangings covering entire walls—but she had not seen them, nor had they seen her, do you understand? There had been no Tai-sharm truly there for them to see.

  Well, and so. The servants withdrew. Tai-sharm heard a familiar voice speaking welcome, and finally looked up to see the Chief Minister, and with him a man as tall as himself, but much differently made. This man was shaped like a block of building stone, everything thick and wide and gray. Even his jeweled crown looked gray in the shadows of the throne room.

  “Approach, Tai-sharm,” said the King. It was an order, but his voice caught Tai-sharm’s ear for its dark gentleness—sadness, even. He is not all the one thing, she thought, finding the courage to walk toward him. The Minister was still talking, but Tai-sharm paid him no heed.

  Near to the King as I am to you, she stopped and waited. The King said in that strange voice of his, “Girl, have you ever seen a king before?”

  “And where should I have seen such a thing?” answered Tai-sharm to his face. She had no wish to be impudent, but she was old Sharm’s daughter, and her mother never could stomach a foolish question. To her wonder, the King smiled a little.

  “Where, indeed? Far easier for me to meet a peasant, yet have I? So we are one another’s first, then, which gives us at least that much in common.” He sat down on his throne and turned to the Chief Minister, who was rubbing his hands, cracking his knuckles, looking anxious one moment and the next as vain as a jejebhai with two tails. “Well,” he said. “You may tell me about this one, Majak.”

  Tai-sharm was surprised to realize that the Chief Minister had a name like anyone else. He showed the King every one of his teeth now, petting Tai-sharm as though she’d performed some remarkable trick standing there. Said he, “My lord, as to breeding, she was born, there’s the best I can tell you. But she has spirit, she is strong enough to bear you many strong sons, and I must say I find her comely in a completely unauthorized way. And as you specifically requested, she seems quite intelligent. Unschooled, mind you—you said nothing about schooling—but definitely intelligent.” He pushed Tai-sharm’s hair back a little to show the King her forehead, and she slapped his hand.

  The King laughed at that. It was a sudden bark of a laugh, almost a cough, so painful it sounded. “Perhaps—” he began, but Tai-sharm broke in just as she had interrupted her mother, crying, “No! No, Your Kingship”—Aye? And which of you knows the proper way to address royalty, then?—“It is not true! I’m nothing but a common country wench, and stupid as a doorknob to boot. Anyone at home will tell you, I’ve no wit, no grace, no conversation—my manners even embarrass my mother. Lord, if you are as wise and good as he keeps saying, have pity and send me home.”

  She tried to fall on her knees before him, but the gown his servants had laced her into was too tight for that, and Tai-sharm stuck halfway down. The Minister quickly righted her, while the King kept looking and looking, heavy chin propped on his fist. Abruptly, he said, “Majak. Go away.” Like that.

  Well, the Chief Minister! His little nailhead eyes popped wide—his nose rushed up to join his eyebrows, but they were already hiding in his hair. He wanted to speak, but what came out? Noises like a leaky teakettle, like eggs frying in too much grease. The King did a little flick with one finger and the Minister left, giving Tai-sharm a stare to singe the razor feathers on a nishoru.

  And there they were, Tai-sharm and the King.

  Neither one of them said anything for a while. Tai-sharm looked around the room, carefully, as though maybe it was not allowed, and the King watched her doing that. She began to realize just how huge it was: any two huts of her village would be lost between these walls—aye, and throw in the common granary while you’re about it. What Tai-sharm would always remember about that throne room was not the great tapestries picturing the King’s triumphs, nor the battle trophies—there were skulls on pillars, set in gold and silver, like jewels—but the ancient shadows in the corners. Solid as stone, they were, but hairy and breathing too, like big animals. That’s an old palace, that one in Baraquil, and many kings have dwelled there.

  “Little Tai-sharm,” the King said presently. “I like you.”

  “Oh, sir, you never would, not if you knew me,” Tai-sharm answered him. With the Chief Minister gone, she felt curiously safe speaking to the King like that, almost as if he were a friend from home, someone she’d grown up with. She said, “Sir, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but you are much too old and splendid for me, and I’m far too stupid and ignorant for you, take my word. You want a real queen; you want to marry a lady who would fit this room, who would know how to sleep in a bed like the kind you have here—”

  “I do not want any sort of a queen, Tai-sharm,” the King interrupted her, “even you.” He smiled at her, and she saw he was a bit of a handsome man in his dour fashion. The King said, “Girl, I no more wish to wed than you do, but what are we to do, the pair of us? Majak says I must look to my heirs, and about this, anyway, he is quite right. I can yet father children, and if your blood is humble… well, so was mine once on a time, I’ve no doubt of it. And I’ve said I like you, which is the most I ever hoped for. Is it so impossible that you might come to like me in time, do you suppose?”

  “I do,” Tai-sharm stammered back. “Anyway, I think I do, only—only not—”

  “Not in that way.” The King nodded. No, he was not angry; his s
mile grew more gentle, if it changed at all. “Very well then, that’s understood. But you will still have to be my queen, Tai-sharm. I am sorry, but there it is.”

  “My mother’s forever saying that,” whispered Tai-sharm. “There it is, there it is. As though looking straight at a thing always meant you could bear it.” And she burst into tears.

  “Don’t,” said the King, looking as uncomfortable as any plowboy. “Ah, don’t, please, Tai-sharm. I wouldn’t expect you to be honored, marrying me, but it’s not generally supposed to be the end of the world.” But here’s our Tai-sharm, far from home and flat up against her future, weeping and weeping, and nothing the King can say or offer will make her stop. Horses, hawks, servants and suites of her own, a brace of hunting shukris, dresses of finest Stimezst silk and a seamstress brought all the way from Fors na’Shachim to run them up—nothing worked, nothing helped. At last, desperate and practically in tears himself, he shouted, “A year! A whole year, then, before the wedding will take place. Surely there’s time enough to grow accustomed to a new life, to a strange place—even to a strange old man. I will give you that year, Tai-sharm, on one condition.”

  Well, at that Tai-sharm did stop crying, though much less from consolation than curiosity. The King said, “A year’s grace, if you will only tell me what makes you believe yourself a stupid woman. Fair bargain?” And he put a hand out toward her hand, as friends do to seal a pledge.

  Tai-sharm did not take it. She did not speak for a long time, but stood there in all her foreign finery, looking now this way, now that, still searching the darkness for—what? Rescue, was it? Or wise counsel? A little hope? Whatever they sought, Tai-sharm’s eyes returned to the King without finding it. They were tired eyes, hers, and older than when we saw them first.

  “I think too much,” she mumbled at last. “So. There that is.”

  “You think too much,” the King repeated carefully. Slowly, he took off his gray crown to scratch his royal head. “Tai-sharm,” said he, “this is not a common thing with stupid people.”

  “Lord,” Tai-sharm says, “I am the daughter of a hundred generations of peasants. There wasn’t a one of them ever had a day’s schooling; there wasn’t a single one ever had a thought in his head, save what to put in the ground when. They lived miserably, all of them, and they all knew they were living miserably, but they were some way contented, too, so the children were fed. Only I, Tai-sharm, I seem to be the only one who ever looked up from digging or plowing or clearing a field to think about… about fish. About what the gods have for their breakfast. About such stupid things—about songs and lightning, about sailing ships, about whether the sky is the same color on the other side of the world. About air, just air, can you imagine it? I was never unhappy, truly, but I have never been content—not as they are, my folk, my family, not like them. Plainly, I am too stupid even to be a peasant, and just as plainly there is nothing else for me to be. You’d do better to wed with a stone or a tree, Your Kingship, for at least they know themselves and ask no questions. Tai-sharm is a waste of time and bathwater.”

  The King laughed again—a real laugh this time, with no rusty rawness to it. He shook his head and slapped the arm of his throne, for all the world as old Sharm would do in her own special chair. “A year,” he said firmly. “One year, Tai-sharm, and be assured my Chief Minister himself could not have won so much from me.” Perhaps his smile turned painful as he reached out to tilt Tai-sharm’s chin and make her look straight at him? Choushi-wai cannot say if this is so, but she knows that he said then, “Girl, it will not be so bad. A king’s word on it. Go now.”

  The servants returned silently, without any summons from the King, and they took Tai-sharm back to her room, where the Chief Minister was waiting, sitting very straight with his hands gripping each other in his lap. He said to Tai-sharm, “If he told you anything that you were not to tell me, you may as well reveal it now. Because I will find out. I always do.”

  Tai-sharm answered him, “I am to stay for a year, and at the end of the year I am to wed with the King. There is nothing more.”

  Her voice was so quiet and forlorn that the Chief Minister was a little moved, and he said, like the King, “Well, and is that so ill, then? You are to be a queen after all, Tai-sharm from nowhere, as I foretold. My congratulations, and may they cheer you as you deserve. He is a good man, for a king, as you would know had you met as many as I have. You have much to be thankful for, and so do I. Let us part now and each consider our good fortune.”

  But he had seen Tai-sharm’s glance stray over the high windows, and seen her strong young legs tense and flex without her knowledge, and he gave orders when he left her that no fewer than two of the servants were to be watching her at all times, no mind if she knew or not. For the King, on his part, had already decreed that Tai-sharm was to have the free run of the palace and all its grounds, great and wide as they were, and bounded only by walls built to keep enemies out, but never a bride in. The Chief Minister understood very well who would bear the blame if the girl ran away, as she clearly meant to do. Each time he thought about that, he changed his order—three servants now to follow Tai-sharm, then four, five—until it seemed as though every eye in the palace was fixed on her day and night. For the Minister respected Tai-sharm’s will a good deal more than she did herself.

  Yes, of course she knew—would any of you not notice it if all shadows held a spy, all mirrors reflected someone besides yourself? But she discovered an odd thing as well, which Choushi-wai will tell you: when everyone is indeed watching what you do, it becomes as though no one at all were watching—as though you were in a way invisible. Tai-sharm, stolen from her home, a prisoner in that huge, hollow palace, went about from the first day like a free woman with no secrets and nothing to escape. She roamed where she chose over the grand lawns and through the rich royal parklands, and few were the inches of the King’s private domain that she left unstudied; yet she never approached the outwalls even close enough to study them for handholds. She wheedled no servant to smuggle messages for her—aye, and come to tell it, she was likely the only person about the court who did not ever. attempt to bribe the Palace Guard.

  Well, didn’t this alarm the Chief Minister? And didn’t he command then that she should be left alone as little as possible, so to have not as much as a waking hour to her private devices? So here’s our Tai-sharm suddenly surrounded by more faces and voices than she had known in all her hard, shy life, and these no muddy-tongued peasant farmers but the King’s chosen courtiers, well practiced in every sort of elegant beguilement. The women dressed and undressed and clothed her again, like a favorite doll; they did their earnest best to teach her to dance and to paint herself, and to take the country out of her talk. As for the men, they danced and chatted determinedly with her, took her riding and hunting—oh, well guarded, no fear—taught her the new card games, and even flirted a bit with her, if you can call it flirting with one eye ever out for the King. Tai-sharm never knew the difference—what she did know was that she was yet captive, dancing or no.

  Now it happened that in her straying Tai-sharm turned her attention one day to a messy quarrel of targary hedges on a hillside behind the palace. They were the stubby yellow breed that look ragged even when they’ve been properly trimmed, which these had not, not for a very long time. Spindly and straggly, thin as rain, they were, every one of them dying. Tai-sharm understood slowly that she was standing in a maze, or what was left of one after years of neglect. Not that she’d ever seen a maze, of course, but she’d heard of them from travelers, though never such a maze as this; for the original outline, as much as she could find one, seemed to be of a fish eating a fish, which had already eaten another fish. Truly, yes, and Tai-sharm thought she saw yet others devouring others. She pushed her way in a little further, snapping off dead targary twigs left and right, and it was then that she first heard the singing.

  Round and round and up and under—

  who will hear my song, I wonder?
r />   This way, that way, high and low—

  who comes seeking what I know?

  It was an odd, slippery tune, if it was a tune at all. Tai-sharm could not imagine who might be singing, for the voice has neither the deep edge of a man’s voice, nor the suppleness of a woman’s. There was something altogether not right about it, something lacking or something too extra. If a dead person began to sing, or a child not yet born, it might sound like that.

  Tai-sharm moved slowly deeper into the maze, and suddenly, right at her feet, she spied—what? A puddle? No, a pool it was, all but stagnant, matted with rotting leaves. It was from this pool that the singing came.

  Child of sunlight, child of rain,

  child of dirt and dreams and pain,

  captive to a king’s design,

  hear my call, as I hear thine.

  A sudden swirl in the foul water—a yellowish snout pushing dead targary twigs aside—a single round eye in the center of the eddy—it was a fish, her first fish at last! It was a very ugly fish, what Tai-sharm could see of it, being of a splotchy red-and-yellow color, with a tail and ragged fins too small for its thick body. The one visible eye was barely brighter than the water; the other hidden by the slimy tangle of water weeds that had wrapped themselves like a bard’s garlands around the ugly thing. Tai-sharm stood there and gaped.

  The fish spoke to her in that strange voice it had. It said, “Child, if you would be so kind.”

  “Oh,” Tai-sharm whispered. “Oh, yes, surely.” She dropped to her knees and had the fish free in no time. It didn’t flash off and vanish, but lingered between her hands for a moment, letting her feel its cool reality. Then it slipped gently away from her, and as it went it sang again: