"Makes sense in a left-handed way. An insight, 1 think. I always wondered why he never put the knife work on us. Yes."
Mocker did a most un-Mockerlike thing. He pushed his chair back while food remained on the table.
Ragnarson started to follow him to the front of the house.
"Don't get involved with Haroun," said Nepanthe.
"Please?"
He searched her face. She was frightened. "What can I do? When he decides to do something, he gets irresistible as a glacier."
"I know." She bit her lip.
"We're not planning anything, really. Haroun would have to do some tall talking to involve us. We're not as hungry as we used to be."
"Maybe. Maybe not." She began clearing the table. "Mocker doesn't complain, but he wasn't made for this." With a gesture she indicated the landgrant. "He stays, and tries for my sake, but he'd be happier penniless, sitting in the rain somewhere, trying to convince old ladies he's a soothsayer. That way he's like Haroun. Security doesn't mean anything. The battle of wits is everything."
Ragnarson shrugged. He couldn't tell her what she wanted to hear. Her assessment matched his own.
"I've made him miserable, Bragi. How long since you've seen him clown like he used to? How long since he's gone off on some wild tangent and claimed the world is round, or a duck-paddled boat on a sea of wine, or any of those crackpot notions he used to take up. Bragi, I'm killing him. I love him, but, Gods help me, I'm smothering him. And I can't help it."
"We are what we are, will be what we must. If he goes back to the old ways, be patient. One thing's sure. You're his goddess. He'll be back. To stay. Things get romanticized when they slide into the past. A dose of reality might be the cure."
"I suppose. Well, go talk. Let me clean up." She obviously wanted to have a good cry.
vi) An owl from Zindahjira
Ragnarson and Mocker were still on the front step when darkness fell. They were deep into a keg of beer. Neither man spoke much. The mood was not one suited to reminiscing. Bragi kept considering Mocker's homestead. The man had worked hard, but everything had been done sloppily. The patience and perfection of the builder who cared was absent. Mocker's home might last his lifetime, but not centuries like Ragnarson's.
Bragi glanced sideways. His friend was haggard, aging. The strain of trying to be something he was not was killing him. And Nepanthe was tearing herself apart too. How bad had their relationship suffered already?
Nepanthe was the more adaptable. She had been a man-terrified twenty-eight-year-old adolescent when first their paths had crossed. She was no introverted romantic now. She reminded Bragi of the earthy, pragmatic, time-beaten peasant women of the treacherous floodplains of the Silverbind. Escape from this life might do her good too.
Mocker had always been a chimera, apparently at home in any milieu. The man within was the rock to which he anchored himself. What was visible was protective coloration. In an environment where he needed only be himself, he must feel terribly vulnerable. The lack of any immediate danger, after a lifetime of adjustment to its continual presence, could push some men to the edge.
Ragnarson was not accustomed to probing facades. It made him uncomfortable. He snorted, downed a pint of warm beer. Hell with it. What was, was. What would be, would be.
A sudden loud, piercing shriek made him choke and spray beer. When he finished wiping tears from his eyes, he saw a huge owl pacing before him.
He had seen that owl before. It served as messenger for Zindahjira the Silent, a much less pleasant sorcerer than the Visigodred who employed Marco.
"Desolation and despair," Mocker groaned. "Felicitations from Pit. Self, think great feathered interlocuter maybe should become owl stew, and tidings bound to leg tinder for starting fire for making same."
"That dwarf would be handy now," said Ragnarson. Both ignored the message.
"So?"
"He talks to owls. In their own language."
"Toadfeathers."
"Shilling?"
"Self, being penurious unto miserhood, indigent unto poverty, should take wager when friend Bear is infamous as bettor only on sure things? Get message."
"Why don't you?"
"Self, being gentleman farmer, confirmed anti-literate, and retired from adventure game, am not interested."
"I ain't neither."
"Then butcher owl."
"I don't think so. Zindahjira would stew us. Without benefit of prior butchery."
"When inevitable is inevitable... Charge!" Mocker shouted the last word. The owl jumped, but refused to retreat.
"Give him a beer," said Ragnarson.
"Eh?"
"Be the hospitable thing to do, wouldn't it?" He had drunk too much. In that condition he developed a childish sense of humor. There was an old saw, "Drunk as a hoot owl," about which he had developed a sudden curiosity.
Mocker set his mug before the bird. It drank. "Well, we'd better see what old Black Face wants." Bragi recovered the message. "Hunh! Can you believe this? It says he'll forgive all debts and transgressions—as if any existed—if we'll just catch him the woman called Mist. That old bastard never gives up. How long has he been laying for Visigodred? Tain't right, hurting a man through his woman."
Mocker scowled. "Threats?"
"The usual. Nothing serious. Some hints about something he's afraid to mix in, same as Visigodred."
Mocker snorted. "Pusillanimous skulker in subterranean tombs, troglodytic denizen of darkness, enough! Let poor old fat fool wither in peace." He had begun to grow sad, to feel sorry for himself, A tear trickled from one large, dark eye. He reached up and put a hand on Ragnarson's shoulder. "Mother of self, long time passing, sang beautiful song of butterflies and gossamer. Will sing for you." He began humming, searching for a tune.
Ragnarson frowned. Mocker was an orphan who had known neither father nor mother, only an old vagabond with whom he had traveled till he had been able to escape. Bragi had heard the story a hundred times. But in his cups, Mocker lied more than usual, about more personal things. One had to humor him or risk a fight.
The owl, a critic, screeched hideously, hurled himself into the air, fluttered drunkenly eastward. Mocker sent a weak curse after him.
A little later Nepanthe came out and led them to their beds, two morose gentlemen with scant taste for their futures.
THREE: The Long, Mailed Reach of The Disciple
i) A secret device, a secret admirer
Elana rose wondering if Bragi had reached Mocker's safely. How soon would he be home? The forest was a refuge for Itaskia's fugitives. Several bands roamed the North Road. Some had grievances with Bragi. He took his charter seriously, suppressed banditry with a heavy hand. Some would gladly take revenge.
She went to a clothing chest and took out an ebony casket the size of a loaf of bread. Some meticulous craftsman had spent months carving its intricate exterior. The work was so fine it would have eluded the eye but for the silver inlay. She did not know what the carving represented. Nothing within her experience, just whorls and swirls of black and silver which, if studied overlong, dazed the mind.
Her names, personal and family, were inset in the lid in cursive ivory letters. They were of no alphabet she knew. Mocker had guessed it to be Escalonian, the language of a land so far to the east it was just a rumor.