“Look at ‘em!” Wim burst out angrily. “How could they do all of this? They ain’t no better fanners ‘n Highlanders. In the hills you work your hands to the bone to farm, and you get nothing, stones— And look at them, they’re fat. How, Mr. Jagged?”
“How do you think they do it, Wim?”
“I—” He stopped. Good magicians figure it out “Well—they got better land.”
“True.”
“And . . . there’s magic.”
“Is there now?”
“You saw it—them smooth-bedded streams, this here road; it ain’t natural. But . . . they all look as how they’re bewitched, themselves, just like I heard. Mayhap it’s only the lords of Fyffe as have all the magic—it’s them we got to watch for?” He crossed his fingers.
“Maybe so. It looks like they may be the only customers I’ll have, too, if this doesn’t change.” The peddler’s face was devoid of expression. “Quit crossing your fingers, Wim; the only thing that’ll ever save you from is the respect of educated men.”
Wim uncrossed his fingers. He walked on for several minutes before he realized the peddler spoke like a Flatlander now, as perfectly as he’d spoken the Highland talk before.
Late in the afternoon they came to a well, at one of the farm villages that centered like a hub in a great wheel of fields. The peddler dipped a cup into the dripping container, and then Wim took a gulp straight from the bucket. A taste of bitter metal filled his mouth, and he spat in dismay, looking back at the merchant. Jagit was passing his hand over—no, dropping something into the cup—and as Wim watched the water began to foam, and suddenly turned bright red. The peddler’s black brows rose with interest, and he poured the water slowly out onto the ground. Wim blanched and wiped his mouth hard on his sleeve. “It tastes like poison!”
Jagit shook his head. “That’s not poison you taste; I’d say farming’s just polluted the water table some. But it is drugged.”
He watched the villagers standing with desultory murmurs around his wagon.
“Sheep.” Wim’s face twisted with disgust.
The peddler shrugged. “But all of them healthy, wealthy, and wise…well, healthy and wise, anyway…healthy—?” He moved away to offer his wares. There were few takers. As Wim returned to the wagon, taking a drink of stale mountain water from the barrel on the back, he heard the little man muttering again, like an incantation, “Fyffe…Fyffe…Dyston-Fyffe, they call it here…District Town Five?...Couldn’t be.” He frowned, oblivious. “But then again, why couldn’t it—?”
For the rest of that day the peddler kept his thoughts to himself, looking strangely grim, only pronouncing an occasional curse in some incomprehensible language. And that night, as they camped, as Wim’s weary mind unwillingly relived the loss of the only friends he had, he wondered if the dark silent stranger across the fire shared his loneliness; a peddler was always a stranger, even if he was a magician. “Mr. Jagged, you ever feel like going home?”
“Home?” Jagit glanced up. “Sometimes. Tonight, maybe. But I’ve come so far, I guess that would be impossible. When I got back, it’d all be gone.” Suddenly through the flames his face looked very old. “What made it home was gone before I left…But maybe I’ll find it again, somewhere else, as I go.”
“Yeah ...” Wim nodded, understanding both more and less than he realized. He curled down into his blanket, oddly comforted, and went soundly to sleep.
Minor wonders continued to assail him on their journey, and also the question, “Why?” until gradually Jagit’s prodding transformed his superstitious awe into a cocky curiosity that sometimes made the peddler frown, though he made no comment.
Until the third morning, when Wim finally declared, “Everything’s a trick, if’n you can see behind it, just like with them witches in the hills. Everything’s got a—reason. I think there ain’t no such thing as magic!”
Jagit fixed him with a long mild look, and the specter of the night in the Grandfather Grove seemed to flicker in the dark eyes. “You think not, eh?”
Wim looked down nervously.
“There’s magic, all right, Wim; all around you here. Only now you’re seeing it with a magician’s eyes: Because there’s a reason behind everything that happens; you may not know what it is, but it’s there. And knowing that doesn’t make the thing less magic, or strange, or terrible—it just makes it easier to deal with. That’s something to keep in mind, wherever you are ... Also keep in mind that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
Wim nodded, chastened, felt his ears grow red as the peddler muttered, “So’s a little ignorance ...”
The afternoon of the third day showed them Fyffe, still a vague blot wavering against the horizon. Wim looked back over endless green toward the mountains, but they were hidden from him now by the yellow Flatland haze. Peering ahead again toward the city, he was aware that the fear that had come with him into the Great Valley had grown less instead of greater as they followed the familiar-strange road to Fyffe. The dappled cart horse snorted loudly in the hot, dusty silence, and he realized it was the peddler with his wagon full of magics that gave him his newfound courage.
He smiled, flexing his burned hand. Jagit had never made any apology for what he’d done, but Wim was not such a hypocrite that he really expected one, under the circumstances. And the peddler had treated his wounds with potions, so that bruises began to fade and skin to heal almost while he watched. It was almost—
Wim’s thoughts were interrupted as he stumbled on a rough patch in the road. The city, much closer now, lay stolidly among the fields in the lengthening shadows of the hot afternoon. He wondered in which field his father—abruptly turned his thoughts ahead again, noticing that the city was without walls or other visible signs of defense. Why? Mayhap because they had nothing to fear— He felt his body tighten with old terrors. But Jagit’s former grim mood had seemingly dropped away as his goal drew near, as though he had reached some resolution. If the peddler was confident, then Wim would be, too. He looked on the city with magician’s eyes; and it struck him that a more outlandish challenge had most likely never visited the lords of Fyffe.
They entered Fyffe, and though the peddler seemed almost disappointed, Wim tried to conceal his gaping with little success. The heavy stone and timber buildings crowded the cobble-patched street, rising up two and three stories to cut off his view of the fields. The street’s edge was lined with shop fronts; windows of bull’s-eyed glass and peeling painted signs advertised their trade. The levels above the shops, he supposed, were where the people lived. The weathered stone of the curbs had been worn to hollows from the tread of countless feet, and the idea of so many people—5,000, the peddler had guessed—in so little area made him shudder.
They made their way past dully-dressed, well-fed townsfolk and farmers finishing the day’s commerce in the cooling afternoon. Wim caught snatches of sometimes heated bargaining, but he noticed that the town showed little more interest in the bizarre spectacle of himself and the peddler than had the folk they dealt with on their journey. Children at least ought to follow the bright wagon—he was vaguely disturbed to realize he’d scarcely seen any, here or anywhere, and those he saw were kept close by parents. It seemed the peddler’s business would be no better here than in the hills after all. Like hogs in a pen ... He glanced down the street, back over his shoulder. “Where’s all the hogs?”
“What?” The peddler looked at him.
“It’s clean. All them folk living here and there ain’t any garbage. How can that be, less’n they keep hogs to eat it? But I don’t see any hogs. Nor—hardly any young’uns.”