First of the Magi

The lake stretched away, fringed by steep rocks and dripping greenery, surface pricked by the rain, flat and grey as far as the eye could see. Logen’s eye couldn’t see too far in this weather, it had to be said. The opposite shore could have been a hundred strides away, but the calm waters looked deep. Very deep.

Logen had long ago given up any attempt at staying dry, and the water ran through his hair and down his face, dripped from his nose, his fingers, his chin. Being wet, tired, and hungry had become a part of life. It often had been, come to think on it. He closed his eyes and felt the rain patter against his skin, heard the water lapping on the shingle. He knelt by the lake, pulled the stopper from his flask and pushed it under the surface, watched the bubbles break as it filled up.

Malacus Quai stumbled out of the bushes, breathing fast and shallow. He sank down to his knees, crawled against the roots of a tree, coughed out phlegm onto the pebbles. His coughing sounded bad now. It came right up from his guts and made his whole rib cage rattle. He was even paler than he had been when they first met, and a lot thinner. Logen was somewhat thinner too. These were lean times, all in all. He walked over to the haggard apprentice and squatted down.

“Just give me a moment.” Quai closed his sunken eyes and tipped his head back. “Just a moment.” His mouth hung open, the tendons in his scrawny neck standing out. He looked like a corpse already.

“Don’t rest too long. You might never get up.”

Logen held out the flask. Quai didn’t even lift his arm to take it, so Logen put it against his lips and tipped it up a little. He took a wincing swallow, coughed, then his head dropped back against the tree like a stone.

“Do you know where we are?” asked Logen.

The apprentice blinked out at the water as though he’d only just noticed it. “This must be the north end of the lake… there should be a track.” His voice had sunk to a whisper. “At the southern end there’s a road with two stones.” He gave a sudden violent cough, swallowed with difficulty. “Follow the road over the bridge and you’re there,” he croaked.

Logen looked off along the beach at the dripping trees. “How far is it?” No answer. He took hold of the sick man’s bony shoulder and shook it. Quai’s eyelids flickered open, he stared up blearily, trying to focus. “How far?”

“Forty miles.”

Logen sucked his teeth. Quai wouldn’t be walking forty miles. He’d be lucky to make forty strides on his own. He knew it well enough, you could see it in his eyes. He’d be dead soon, Logen reckoned, a few days at the most. He’d seen stronger men die of a fever.

Forty miles. Logen thought about it carefully, rubbing his chin with his thumb. Forty miles.

“Shit,” he whispered.

He dragged the pack over and pulled it open. They had some food left, but not much. A few shreds of tough dried meat, a heel of mouldy black bread. He looked out over the lake, so peaceful. They wouldn’t be running out of drinking water any time soon at least. He pulled his heavy cookpot out of his pack and set it down on the shingle. They’d been together a long time, but there was nothing left to cook. You can’t become attached to things, not out here in the wild. He tossed the rope away into the bushes, then threw the lightened pack over his shoulder.

Quai’s eyes had closed again, and he was scarcely breathing. Logen still remembered the first time he had to leave someone behind, remembered it like it was yesterday. Strange how the boy’s name had gone but the face was with him still.

The Shanka had taken a piece out of his thigh. A big piece. He’d moaned all the way, he couldn’t walk. The wound was going bad, he was dying anyway. They had to leave him. No one had blamed Logen for it. The boy had been too young, he should never have gone. Bad luck was all, could happen to anyone. He’d cried after them as they made their way down the hillside in a grim, silent group, heads down. Logen seemed to hear the cries even when they’d left him far behind. He could still hear them.

In the wars it had been different. Men dropped from the columns all the time on the long marches, in the cold months. First they fell to the back, then they fell behind, then they fell over. The cold, the sick, the wounded. Logen shivered and hunched his shoulders. At first he’d tried to help them. Then he became grateful he wasn’t one of them. Then he stepped over the corpses and hardly noticed them. You learn to tell when someone isn’t getting up again. He looked at Malacus Quai. One more death in the wild was nothing to remark upon. You have to be realistic, after all.

The apprentice started from his fitful sleep and tried to push himself up. His hands were shaking bad. He looked up at Logen, eyes glittering bright. “I can’t get up,” he croaked.

“I know. I’m surprised you made it this far.” It didn’t matter so much now. Logen knew the way. If he could find that track he might make twenty miles a day.

“If you leave me some of the food… perhaps… after you get to the library… someone…”

“No,” said Logen, setting his jaw. “I need the food.”

Quai made a strange sound, somewhere between a cough and a sob.

Logen leaned down and set his right shoulder in Quai’s stomach, pushed his arm under his back. “I can’t carry you forty miles without it,” and he straightened up, hauling the apprentice over his shoulder. He set off down the shore, holding Quai in place by his jacket, his boots crunching into the wet shingle. The apprentice didn’t even move, just hung there like a sack of wet rags, his limp arms knocking against the backs of Logen’s legs.

When he’d made it thirty strides or so Logen turned around and looked back. The pot was sitting forlorn by the lake, already filling up with rainwater. They’d been through a lot together, him and that pot.

“Fare you well, old friend.”

The pot did not reply.

Logen set his shivering burden gently down at the side of the road and stretched his aching back, scratched at the dirty bandage on his arm, took a drink of water from his flask. Water was the only thing to have passed his sore lips that day, and the hunger was gnawing at his guts. At least it had stopped raining. You have to learn to love the small things in life, like dry boots. You have to love the small things, when you’ve nothing else.

Logen spat in the dirt and rubbed the life back into his fingers. There was no missing the place, that was sure. The two stones towered over the road, ancient and pitted, patched with green moss at the base and grey lichen higher up. They were covered in faded carvings, lines of letters in a script Logen couldn’t understand, didn’t even recognise. There was a forbidding feel about them though, a sense more of warning than welcome.

“The First Law…”

“What?” said Logen, surprised. Quai had been in an unpleasant place between sleep and waking ever since they left the pot behind two days before. The pot could have made more meaningful sounds in that time. That morning Logen had woken to find him scarcely breathing. He’d been sure that he was dead, to begin with, but the man was still clinging weakly to life. He didn’t give up easy, you had to give him that.

Logen knelt down and shoved the wet hair out of Quai’s face. The apprentice suddenly grabbed his wrist and started forward.

“It’s forbidden,” he whispered, staring at Logen with wide eyes, “to touch the Other Side!”

“Eh?”

“To speak with devils,” he croaked, grabbing hold of Logen’s battered coat. “The creatures of the world below are made of lies! You mustn’t do it!”

“I won’t,” muttered Logen, wondering if he’d ever know what the apprentice was talking about. “I won’t. For what that’s worth.”

It wasn’t worth much. Quai had already dropped back into his twitching half-sleep. Logen chewed at his lip. He hoped the apprentice would wake again, but he didn’t think it likely. Still, perhaps this Bayaz would be able to do something, he was the First of the Magi after all, great in high wisdom and so on. So Logen hefted Quai up onto his shoulder again and trudged between the ancient stones.

The road climbed steep into the rocks above the lake, here built up, there cut deep into the stony ground. It was worn and pitted with age, pocked with weeds. It switched back on itself again and again, and soon Logen was panting and sweating, his legs burning with the effort. His pace began to slow.

The fact was, he was getting tired. Not just tired from the climb, or from the back-breaking slog he’d walked that day with a half-dead apprentice over his shoulder, or from the slog the day before, or even from the fight in the woods. He was tired of everything. Of the Shanka, of the wars, of his whole life.

“I can’t walk for ever, Malacus, I can’t fight for ever. How much of this horrible shit should a man have to take? I need to sit down a minute. In a proper fucking chair! Is that too much to ask? Is it?” In this frame of mind, cursing and grumbling at every step, and with Quai’s head knocking against his arse, Logen came to the bridge.

It was as ancient as the road, coated with creepers, simple and slender, arching maybe twenty strides across a dizzying gorge. Far below a river surged over jagged rocks, filling the air with noise and shining spray. On the far side a high wall had been built between towering faces of mossy stone, made with such care it was difficult to say where the natural cliff ended and the man-made one began. A single ancient door was set into it, faced with beaten copper, turned streaky green by the wet and the years.

As Logen picked his way carefully across the slippery stone he found himself wondering, through force of habit, how you could storm this place. You couldn’t. Not with a thousand picked men. There was only a narrow shelf of rock before the door, no room to set a ladder or swing a ram. The wall was ten strides high at least, and the gate had a dreadful solid look. And if the defenders were to bring down the bridge… Logen peered over the edge, and swallowed. It was a long way down.

He took a deep breath and thumped on the damp green copper with his fist. Four big, booming knocks. He’d beat on the gates of Carleon like that, after the battle, and its people had rushed to surrender. No one rushed to do anything now.

He waited. He knocked again. He waited. He became wetter and wetter in the mist from the river. He ground his teeth. He raised his arm to knock again. A narrow hatch snapped open, and a pair of rheumy eyes stared at him coldly from between thick bars.

“Who’s this now?” snapped a gruff voice.

“Logen Ninefingers is my name. I’ve—”

“Never heard of you.”

Hardly the welcome Logen had been hoping for. “I’ve come to see Bayaz.” No reply. “The First of the—”

“Yes. He’s here.” But the door didn’t open. “He isn’t taking visitors. I told that to the last messenger.”

“I’m no messenger, I have Malacus Quai with me.”

“Malaca what?”

“Quai, the apprentice.”

“Apprentice?”

“He’s very ill,” said Logen slowly. “He may die.”

“Ill, you say? Die, was it?”

“Yes.”

“And what was your name again—”

“Just open the fucking door!” Logen shook his fist pointlessly at the slot. “Please.”

“We don’t let just anyone in… hold up. Show me your hands.”

“What?”

“Your hands.” Logen held his hands up. The watery eyes moved slowly across his fingers. “There are nine. There’s one missing, see?” He shoved the stump at the hatch.

“Nine, is it? You should have said.”

Bolts clanked and the door creaked slowly open. An elderly man, bent under an old-fashioned suit of armour, was staring at him suspiciously from the other side. He was holding a long sword much too heavy for him. Its point wobbled around wildly as he strained to keep it upright.

Logen held up his hands. “I surrender.”

The ancient gatekeeper was not amused. He grunted sourly as Logen stepped past him, then he wrestled the door shut and fumbled with the bolts, turned and trudged away without another word. Logen followed him up a narrow valley lined with strange houses, weathered and mossy, half dug into the steep rocks, merging with the mountainside.

A dour-faced woman was working at a spinning wheel on a doorstep, and she frowned at Logen as he walked past with the unconscious apprentice over his shoulder. Logen smiled back at her. She was no beauty, that was sure, but it had been a very long time. The woman ducked into her house and kicked the door shut, leaving the wheel spinning. Logen sighed. The old magic was still there.

The next house was a bakery with a squat, smoking chimney. The smell of baking bread made Logen’s empty stomach rumble. Further on, a couple of dark-haired children were laughing and playing, running round a scrubby old tree. They reminded Logen of his own children. They didn’t look anything like them, but he was in a morbid frame of mind.

He had to admit to being a little disappointed. He’d been expecting something cleverer-looking, and a lot more beards. These folk didn’t seem so very wise. They looked just like any other peasants. Not unlike his own village had looked before the Shanka came. He wondered if he was in the right place. Then they rounded a bend in the road.

Three great, tapering towers were built into the mountainside ahead, joined at their bases but separating higher up, covered in dark ivy. They seemed far older even than the ancient bridge and road, as old as the mountain itself. A jumbled mess of other buildings crowded around their feet, straggling around the sides of a wide courtyard in which people were busy with everyday chores. A thin woman was churning some milk on a stoop. A stocky blacksmith was trying to shoe a restless mare. An old, bald butcher in a stained apron had finished chopping up some animal and was washing his bloody forearms in a trough.

And on a set of wide steps before the tallest of the three towers sat a magnificent old man. He was dressed all in white, with a long beard, a hook nose, and white hair spilling from under a white skull-cap. Logen was impressed, finally. The First of the Magi surely looked the part. As Logen shuffled towards him he started up from the steps and hurried over, white coat flapping behind him.

“Set him down here,” he muttered, indicating a patch of grass by the well, and Logen knelt and dumped Quai on the ground, as gently as he could with his back aching so much. The old man bent over him, laid a gnarled hand on his forehead.

“I brought your apprentice back,” muttered Logen pointlessly.

“Mine?”

“Aren’t you Bayaz?”

The old man laughed. “Oh no, I am Wells, head servant here at the Library.”

“I am Bayaz,” came a voice from behind. The butcher was walking slowly toward them, wiping his hands on a cloth. He looked maybe sixty but heavily built, with a strong face, deeply lined, and a close-cropped grey beard around his mouth. He was entirely bald, and the afternoon sun shone brightly off his tanned pate. He was neither handsome nor majestic, but as he came closer there did seem to be something about him. An assurance, an air of command. A man used to giving orders, and to being obeyed.

The First of the Magi took Logen’s left hand in both of his and pressed it warmly. Then he turned it over and examined the stump of his missing finger.

“Logen Ninefingers, then. The one they call the Bloody-Nine. I have heard stories about you, even shut up here in my library.”

Logen winced. He could guess what sort of stories the old man might have heard. “That was a long time ago.”

“Of course. We all have a past, eh? I make no judgements on hearsay.” And Bayaz smiled. A broad, white, beaming smile. His face lit up with friendly creases, but a hardness lingered around his eyes, deep-set and glistening green. A stony hardness. Logen grinned back, but he reckoned already that he wouldn’t want to make an enemy of this man.

“And you have brought our missing lamb back to the fold.” Bayaz frowned down at Malacus Quai, motionless on the grass. “How is he?”

“I think he will live, sir,” said Wells, “but we should get him out of the cold.”

The First of the Magi snapped his fingers and a sharp crack echoed from the buildings. “Help him.” The smith hurried forward and took Quai’s feet, and together he and Wells carried the apprentice through the tall door into the library.

“Now, Master Ninefingers, I have called and you have answered, and that shows good manners. Manners might be out of fashion in the North, but I want you to know that I appreciate them. Courtesy should be answered with courtesy, I have always thought. But what’s this now?” The old gatekeeper was hurrying back across the yard, greatly out of breath. “Two visitors in one day? Whatever next?”

“Master Bayaz!” wheezed the gatekeeper, “there’s riders at the gate, well horsed and well armed! They say they’ve an urgent message from the King of the Northmen!”

Bethod. It had to be. The spirits had said he had given himself a golden hat, and who else would have dared to call himself King of the Northmen? Logen swallowed. He’d got away from their last meeting with his life and nothing else, and yet it was better than many had managed, far better.

“Well, master?” asked the gatekeeper, “shall I tell them to be off?”

“Who leads them?”

“A fancy lad with a sour face. Said he’s this King’s son or something.”

“Was it Calder or Scale? They’re both something sour.”

“The younger one, I reckon.”

Calder then, that was something. Either one was bad, but Scale was much the worse. Both together were an experience to be avoided. Bayaz seemed to consider a moment. “Prince Calder may enter, but his men must remain beyond the bridge.”

“Yes sir, beyond the bridge.” The gatekeeper wheezed away. He’d love that, would Calder. Logen was greatly tickled by the thought of the so-called Prince screaming uselessly through that little slot.

“The King of the Northmen now, can you imagine?” Bayaz stared absently off down the valley. “I knew Bethod when he was not so grand. And so did you, eh, Master Ninefingers?”

Logen frowned. He’d known Bethod when he was next to nothing, a little chieftain like so many others. Logen had come for help against the Shanka, and Bethod had given it, at a price. Back then, the price had seemed light, and well worth the paying. Just to fight. To kill a few men. Logen had always found killing easy, and Bethod had seemed a man well worth fighting for—bold, proud, ruthless, venomously ambitious. All qualities that Logen had admired, back then, all qualities he thought he had himself. But time had changed them both, and the price had risen.

“He used to be a better man,” Bayaz was musing, “but crowns sit badly on some people. Do you know his sons?”

“Better than I’d like.”

Bayaz nodded. “They’re absolute shit, aren’t they? And I fear now they will never improve. Imagine that pinhead Scale a king. Ugh!” The wizard shuddered. “It almost makes you want to wish his father a long life. Almost, but not quite.”

The little girl that Logen had seen playing scurried over. She had a chain of yellow flowers in her hands, and she held it up to the old wizard. “I made this,” she said. Logen could hear the rapid pounding of hooves coming up the road.

“For me? How perfectly charming.” Bayaz took the flowers from her. “Excellent work, my dear. The Master Maker himself could not have done better.”

The rider clattered out into the yard, pulled his horse up savagely and swung from the saddle. Calder. The years had been kinder to him than to Logen, that much was clear. He was dressed all in fine blacks trimmed with dark fur. A big red jewel flashed on his finger, the hilt of his sword was set with gold. He’d grown and filled out, half the size of his brother Scale, but a big man still. His pale, proud face was pretty much as Logen remembered though, thin lips twisted in a permanent sneer.

He threw his reins at the woman churning milk then strode briskly across the yard, glowering about him, his long hair flapping in the breeze. When he was about ten strides away he saw Logen. His jaw dropped. Calder took a shocked half step back and his hand twitched towards his sword. Then he smiled a cold little smile.

“So you’ve taken to keeping dogs have you, Bayaz? I’d watch this one. He’s been known to bite his master’s hand.” His lip curled further. “I could put him down for you if you’d like.”

Logen shrugged. Hard words are for fools and cowards. Calder might have been both, but Logen was neither. If you mean to kill, you’re better getting right to it than talking about it. Talk only makes the other man ready, and that’s the last thing you want. So Logen said nothing. Calder could take that for weakness if he pleased, and so much the better. Fights might find Logen depressingly often, but he was long, long past looking for them.

Bethod’s second son turned his contempt on the First of the Magi. “My father will be displeased, Bayaz! That my men must wait outside the gate shows little respect!”

“But I have so little, Prince Calder,” said the wizard calmly. “Please don’t be downhearted, though. Your last messenger wasn’t allowed over the bridge, so you see we’re making progress.”

Calder scowled. “Why have you not answered my father’s summons?”

“There are so many demands on my time.” Bayaz held up the chain of flowers. “These don’t make themselves, you know.”

The Prince was not amused. “My father,” he boomed, “Bethod, King of the Northmen, commands you to attend upon him at Carleon!” He cleared his throat. “He will not…” He coughed.

“What?” demanded Bayaz. “Speak up, child!”

“He commands…” The Prince coughed again, spluttered, choked. He put a hand to his throat. The air seemed to have become very still.

“Commands, does he?” Bayaz frowned. “Bring great Juvens back from the land of the dead. He may command me. He alone, and no other.” The frown grew deeper still, and Logen had to resist a strange desire to back away. “You may not. Nor may your father, whatever he calls himself.”

Calder sank slowly to his knees, face twisted, eyes watering. Bayaz looked him up and down. “What solemn attire, did somebody die? Here,” and he tossed the chain of flowers over the Prince’s head. “A little colour may lighten your mood. Tell your father he must come himself. I do not waste my time on fools and younger sons. I am old fashioned in this. I like to talk to the horse’s head, not the horse’s arse. Do you understand me, boy?” Calder was sagging sideways, eyes red and bulging. The First of the Magi waved his hand. “You may go.”

The Prince heaved in a ragged breath, coughed and reeled to his feet, stumbled for his horse and hauled himself up into the saddle with a deal less grace than he had got down. He shot a murderous glance over his shoulder as he made for the gate, but it didn’t have quite the same weight with his face red as a slapped arse. Logen realised he was grinning, wide. It was a long time since he’d enjoyed himself this much.

“I understand that you can speak to the spirits.”

Logen was caught off guard. “Eh?”

“To speak to the spirits.” Bayaz shook his head. “It is a rare gift in these times. How are they?”

“What, the spirits?”

“Yes.”

“Dwindling.”

“Soon they will all sleep, eh? The magic leaks out of the world. That is the set order of things. Over the years my knowledge has grown, and yet my power has diminished.”

“Calder seemed impressed.”

“Bah.” Bayaz waved his hand. “A mere nothing. A little trick of air and flesh, easily done. No, believe me, the magic ebbs away. It is a fact. A natural law. Still, there are many ways to crack an egg, eh, my friend? If one tool fails then we must try another.” Logen was no longer entirely sure what they were talking about, but he was too tired to ask.

“Yes, indeed,” murmured the First of the Magi. “There are many ways to crack an egg. Speaking of which, you look hungry.”

Logen’s mouth flooded with spit at the very mention of food. “Yes,” he mumbled. “Yes… I could eat.”

“Of course.” Bayaz clapped him warmly on the shoulder. “And then perhaps a bath? Not that we are offended of course, but I find that there is nothing more soothing than hot water after a long walk, and you, I suspect, have had a very long walk indeed. Come with me, Master Ninefingers, you’re safe here.”

Food. Bath. Safety. Logen had to stop himself from weeping as he followed the old man into the library.