Drawing a long kitchen knife from a drawer, she focused on testing it with her finger to see if the edge had dulled. Casually, she asked, “Didn’t you already talk about this with my father? If anyone in the world knows something about your acquaintance, it would be my father, true?”
Egert shrugged his shoulders drearily. “Yes. It’s just that I understand very little of what Dean Luayan says.”
Toria marveled at his candor. She ran the blade of the knife across an ancient, worn grindstone a few times; then, galled at her own complacency, she said, “That’s hardly surprising. You probably wasted all your time in swordplay. I doubt you’ve ever even read a book in its entirety besides a primer.”
She expected him to go pale again or lower his eyes or even run away, but he only nodded wearily, agreeing with her. “That’s true, but what’s to be done about it? Anyway, there is no book that can tell me how to find the Wanderer, how to talk to him … so that he understands.”
Toria pondered this for a bit and then said carelessly, playing with the knife, “And are you really sure that you need to find him? Are you convinced that without the scar you will become better?”
Only now did Egert lower his head; instead of his face, she saw a pile of disordered blond hair. For a long time there was no answer. When he did speak, he directed his words at the floor. “Believe me, I very much need to find him. There is no getting around it: I must either be freed from the curse or I must die. Do you understand?”
Quiet set in and lasted for so long that the fresh bunch of parsley, sitting in a patch of sun on the table, began to wither. Toria shifted her gaze from Egert’s lowered face to the sunny day beyond the window, and it was clear to her, as clear as the day, that the man standing in front of her was not lying, not being overly dramatic, not acting: he really would prefer to die if the curse of the scar were not broken.
“The Wanderer,” she began softly, “appears on the Day of Jubilation. No one knows his paths or his roads; it is said that he can cover inconceivable distances in the space of a day. But on the Day of Jubilation he comes here. As to why, well, fifteen years ago on the same day in the square—from this window you can’t see it—but there, in the square, in front of the courthouse, a scaffold was erected. The town magistrate had decided that, as a prelude to the merrymaking, an execution would be performed and that it would forever be associated with the beginning of the festival. They sentenced some stranger, a vagrant, for the unlawful misappropriation of the rank and title of mage.”
“What?” asked Egert reluctantly.
“He claimed to be a mage, but he was not a mage. The law forbidding that is ancient and obscure. He was sentenced to be beheaded. People gathered, thick on the ground, excited by the prospect of fireworks, carnival, a man sentenced to the block.… The executioner lifted his ax, but the condemned man surged up and disappeared right in front of the whole city. It was as if he never even existed. No one knows precisely how this happened. Perhaps he was a mage after all. It was not the Spirit Lash that saved him, as some people say.”
Egert winced at the mention of Lash, but Toria did not notice.
“From that time until now the Day of Jubilation has begun with an execution, but one of the condemned men is pardoned by lottery. They draw lots right there on the scaffold, and one is released while the others, well, they get the usual fate of the condemned. Then, Egert, there is a citywide celebration, and everyone rejoices.”
She realized that, carried away by her tale, she had called him by his first name. She frowned.
“What can you do? Heathen customs die hard. You would probably be interested in seeing an execution, yes?”
Egert averted his eyes. With barely noticeable reproof he said, “Hardly. Especially if my ability returned, as I imagine it would. So, I think not.”
Toria lowered her eyes, a bit disconcerted. She muttered through her teeth, “I don’t know why I am telling you all this. Father is of the opinion that the Wanderer has a connection to the man who so abruptly disappeared right out from under the ax. He believes that both before this and after, the man experienced considerable ordeals, and a change came over him. All this is, of course, extremely vague, but in my opinion my father thinks that he and the Wanderer are one and the same man.”
Again a long pause followed. Toria pensively scored the surface of the table with the tip of the knife.
“So every year,” slowly continued Egert, “he comes here. On that very same day?”
Toria shrugged her shoulders. “No one knows what interests the Wanderer, Soll.” She cast a glance at her companion and suddenly added with uncanny boldness, “But I think that you would interest him very little.”
With a habitual gesture, Egert touched his scar. “Well, that just means that I have to find a way to interest him.”
* * *
On the evening of that same day, Dean Luayan dropped in on Egert.
Twilight reigned in the small room. Egert was sitting by the window, the book on curses lay open beside him on the windowsill, but Egert was not reading. Staring at the courtyard with unresponsive, wide-open eyes, he saw in his mind’s eye first the square, where a scaffold was swelling upward like an island in the midst of a sea of humanity; then the thoughtful eyes of Toria; then the kitchen knife, cleaving through a stalk of parsley; then finally the ax, cleaving through a man’s neck. A recollection of the dean’s ambiguous story about the mage deprived of his magical gift came to his mind; then his thoughts turned to the Order of Lash, and the Sacred Spirit broke in upon his thoughts, resembling its own sculpted image the way two drops of water resemble each other: shrouded in its robe, it descended onto the scaffold and saved the doomed man from the block.
At that moment a knock came at the door. Egert shivered and tried to convince himself that in fact there had been no knock, but the rusty hinges screeched and the dean was standing on the threshold.
In the gathering darkness Egert could not have traced the pattern of lines on his own palm, but the face of the dean, which was several steps away, was plainly visible: that face, as usual, was a paragon of passionless detachment.
Egert leapt up as if the mouth of a volcano were under him instead of just a rickety chair. The appearance of the dean here, in this wretched little room, which Egert had grown accustomed to thinking of as his home, seemed an occurrence equally as unthinkable as a visit from the moon to the nest of a wagtail.
The dean looked at Egert inquiringly, as if Egert had come to see him and was about to tell him something. Egert was silent, having been deprived of the gift of speech as soon as the dean entered.
“I beg your pardon,” the dean said somewhat sarcastically, and Egert thought in passing that Toria was strikingly similar to her father, not so much in appearance as in habits. “I beg your pardon for barging in on you, Soll. At our last meeting you said that you were ready to quit the university and that you were motivated to do so in part because of your, hmm, uselessness … that is, your ignorance. Did you say this seriously or was it just a pretty turn of phrase?”
The darkened, arched ceiling came down and crushed Egert’s shoulders. He was being turned out, and they had every right to turn him out. “Yes,” he said dully. “I am ready to leave. I understand.”
For a short time they were both silent, the dean dispassionately, Egert anxiously; finally, unable to endure the silence any longer, Egert muttered, “I truly am useless, Dean Luayan. Studying for me is like an ant taking on the heavens. Maybe it would be best to give my place to another?”
He suddenly broke into a sweat. He was horrified at his own words: his place already belonged to another. It was Dinar’s place.
The dean rubbed his temple, and his wide sleeve swayed. “Well, Soll. There is nothing wrong with your reason: you usually speak sensibly. Your academic work does, however, leave something to be desired. Even though you are an auditor, you should not neglect your studies. And so, I’ve brought you this.” Luayan took a medium-sized tome in a leathe
r binding and a smallish pamphlet bound in pasteboard from the folds of his dark garment.
“I asked Toria to select something relatively straightforward for the beginning. Fortunately, you do know how to read. When you have got through this one, turn to the other. And don’t be shy about speaking up if something is too difficult for you. Perhaps Toria might take a shot at tutoring you … though perhaps not. Sometimes it seems to me that she has no patience at all.”
The dean nodded, bade him farewell, and when he was already in the corridor, suddenly said in a dreamy tone, “You know who had a native gift for teaching? Dinar. He had a distinctive gift: he never imposed ideas; rather, he compelled his students to think. Beyond that, for him it was a game, a passion, a pleasure.… No, Soll, there is no need to go pale: I am not saying this to rebuke you. But I have, you understand, neither the time nor the inclination to teach you myself, and so I was just thinking aloud: it would have done you good to study with Dinar.… However, there’s nothing to be done about that: you’ll have to venture it alone.”
With that the dean left. Only then did Egert fully realize that all around him there was a darkness so deep that it should have been impossible to distinguish a human face or clothing or books. Covered in goose bumps, Egert thrust his arm out toward the table. The books were there, but the leather binding felt cold, and the pasteboard felt as rough as sackcloth.
The books were titled The Structure of Creation and Conversations with Young People. The author of the first book was a boring, stern old man who set forth his thoughts concisely and clearly, but required constant effort on the part of the reader. The writer of the second book adored long digressions, which continued on in the notes. He addressed the reader as “my dear child,” and Egert envisioned him as an amiable, somewhat sentimental, rosy-cheeked, and corpulent fellow.
The pages of the pasteboard-bound book bored Egert, and he scrambled through the chapters of the leather-bound tome as if they were prickly thickets. His eyes finally became accustomed to daily reading and no longer teared up. In order to stretch his tired back Egert got into the habit of walking into the city every morning. He issued forth leisurely, with ambling steps and the look of a man who had not yet decided where he should direct his feet; nevertheless, every day his feet brought him by diverse paths to the bazaar that was situated not far from the university. There he wandered among the stalls, successively tasting bacon and cream, fruit and smoked fish, while amongst the flickering hats and headscarves he searched for the black-haired head of Toria.
She noticed Egert immediately, but she pretended that she was fully engrossed in her shopping and that she had no wish to turn her eyes to the side, not for any reason. Passing from stall to stall, pointing and bargaining, she gradually filled her basket with food, while Egert strolled nearby, never losing sight of Toria, but also never appearing directly in her line of sight.
Having finished her shopping, Toria would set out on the return trip. Every time, Egert had to overcome his awkwardness when, having run in an arc to get ahead of her, he happened upon her path home as if by chance.
Toria always received him coolly and without surprise; taking the curved handle of the basket from her arm, Egert was always covered in goose bumps.
They always returned to the university in silence. Casually glancing to the side, Toria would see next to her a round shoulder and an arm with a rolled-up sleeve. On this arm the basket seemed as light as a feather, and the muscles under the white skin, untouched by sunburn, played only slightly under its weight. Toria would avert her eyes and they would pass through the courtyard to the household annex, and just as silently, they would part ways in the kitchen, after Egert had received in reward for his labor sometimes a roll with butter, sometimes a dripping fragment of honeycomb, sometimes a glass of milk. Carrying away his loot, Egert would return to his room and, with a light heart, sink into a book with the hard-earned delicacy sitting ready at hand in anticipation of the moment when it would finally be eaten.
At the dean’s request, Toria did try to tutor Egert two or three times. These attempts, unfortunately, were a decided failure: both tutor and student went their separate ways annoyed and exhausted. The joint lessons were discontinued after one memorable episode when Toria, beginning to enjoy the philosophical discussions about creation and mortality, exclaimed, leafing through the pages, “But that isn’t so, Dinar, it’s—”
Stopping short, she met Egert’s terrified gaze and immediately said her good-byes. That evening the two of them, in different parts of the massive, dark building, abandoned themselves to the same oppressive thoughts.
In all other respects, a tepid neutrality now held sway between Egert and Toria. Toria taught herself to nod when she ran into him, and Egert learned not to blanch when he heard the light tapping of her heels at the end of the corridor.
In the meantime, melons, pumpkins, gourds, and squash appeared in the stalls in the city, the heat of the day gave way to the chill of the night, and the studious youths, sunburned and plump from home cooking, gradually began to return to the university.
The annex was revivified. The dust was chased from the corridors, halls, and auditoriums. The cook returned and commenced her work, so there was no longer any reason for Toria to walk to the bazaar every day. A cleaning woman fluffed pillows and feather mattresses, and down flew about in clouds, as if a horde of geese and ducks had gathered in the university courtyard for a fateful battle. In the mornings two or three youths with bundles over their shoulders usually gathered in front of the grand staircase: these were prospective students who had traveled to the university from far-off cities and townships.
Mouths agape, the newcomers gazed upon the iron snake and the wooden monkey, became embarrassed whenever someone asked them a question, and hesitantly followed Dean Luayan, who invited them to join him in his study for an interview. After the interviews, a portion of the prospective students, despondent, set out on the return trip home; Egert suffered and felt despicable as he watched those who were turned away: any one of them was far more worthy of the standing of a student than Egert.
It must be said, however, that the summer days spent behind books had yielded their own modest fruits; in the domain of academia, Egert felt himself to be somewhat more confident, although he was certainly not going to set the heavens aflame with his brilliance. In exchange for Conversations with Young People, he received from the dean a book of monumental proportions and extravagant title: The Philosophy of Stars, Stones, Herbs, Fire, and Water, as Well as Their Incontrovertible Relationship to the Features of the Human Body, and in addition to this weighty tome, he received Anatomy, which was full of graphic and colorful illustrations.
These illustrations shocked and horrified him, and at the same time they aroused an unprecedented interest in him. Egert marveled at the intricate network of veins, the extraordinary arrangement of bones, and how the liver, seemingly enormous and quite brown, resembled those he had seen at market. In his innocent simplicity, Egert had always thought that the human heart looked exactly like those little hearts that were drawn in the corners of love letters, and he was shocked when he saw on the page that complicated knot, resembling bagpipes, with all its chambers and blood vessels. The dreadful skeleton, which only lacked a scythe in its hand to be truly terrifying, lost all its horror as soon as Egert delved into the study of the minute explanatory inscriptions that accompanied it: detailed and meticulous, these commentaries completely dispelled all thoughts of death, evoking instead reasonable and practical questions.
While Egert was studying Anatomy, Fox returned to the university.
Their reunion was heartfelt and boisterous; Fox’s copper hair had grown down to his shoulders, his nose was burned by the sun and peeling like a boiled potato, but neither solemnity nor gravity had been added to his habits. From his knapsack appeared an entire smoked goose with dried plums, a string of black blood sausages, home-baked scones, and a variety of vegetables, prepared in diverse ways. At the very bo
ttom of Fox’s sack was nestled an enormous bottle of wine, thick as blood. The food, which Gaetan’s loving mother had collected for her son, intending them to last at least a week, was demolished within a few hours. Fox was, without a doubt, a slacker and a trickster, but in no way was he a miser.
The very first sip of wine turned Egert’s head. Grinning inanely, he watched as the room filled with familiar students. Soon there was no room left, not on the beds, or at the table, or on the windowsill. They were all laughing, clamoring, and recounting tales, licking greasy fingers and proclaiming toasts, gulping wine straight from the bottle. Having laid waste to Fox’s knapsack, the students, as ravenous as young locusts, decided to go out into the city; Egert no longer had any money, but all the same he decided to go out with the rest of them.
They visited At the Rabbit Hole and then dropped by Quench; at the latter tavern a dashing company of guards was drinking, apparently just off duty. Egert was rattled by their close proximity, but the city guards hailed the students complacently and without any distaste whatsoever, and the intoxication that had earlier spun Egert’s head around accepted their company and even dulled his habitual fear.
The two groups swapped bottles, toasts, and amiable taunts; then the troop of guards took up that ancient pastime of all armed men: they started throwing daggers at a target that was painted on the wall. The students quieted down, watching; the most skilled with a knife of all the guards was a broad-shouldered young man with a predatory look, whose hair was tied back with a leather cord. A short sword hung on his belt. Egert examined the sword with interest. No one bore such a weapon in Kavarren.
Knives and daggers whacked into the wooden wall, some closer than others to the center of the target, painted by some dabbler in the shape of a crooked apple. The guards became excited and began to play for money. The broad-shouldered young man, the owner of the short sword, was well on his way toward lightening the purses of his comrades, when one of the guards voiced the thought that it would be a good idea to challenge the tipsy students to a competition.