Fanuilh Read online

  "You're not leaving yet, Rhenford, not in this rain. At least let me send a servant with you. You'll fall in a gutter and catch your death! Wait in the hall, I'll send a servant for you."

  Liam let the merchant guide him back into the house, where he leaned against a wall. Necquer started away, then turned back, looking seriously at Liam.

  "You will come tomorrow, won't you?" There was an earnestness in Necquer's voice, but Liam was feeling unnaturally hot all over now, and waved the question away.

  "Of course, of course," he mumbled.

  "Wait here. I'll send a servant."

  Necquer strode off into the crowd and almost immediately, Liam pulled himself away from the wall and walked, stumbling slightly, into the rain.

  It was a cold, light rain, and went a long way towards sobering Liam up. He wove only slightly back and forth across the narrow streets, turning his face up to the rain to try to clear his head. By the time he had wound his way down out of the rich quarter, further inland to the neighborhood where his rooms were, his head was far clearer, the haze mostly driven out by a piercing headache, like a spike driven into his forehead.

  When he had arrived in Southwark during the spring, he had not looked far for lodging, taking directions from the first longshoreman he met. He had been directed to an establishment run by a captain's widow, and she had been glad to offer him her attic garret, the largest room she had.

  Climbing the five flights of rickety stairs, he cursed the choice, and when he slammed his head into one of the room's low-hanging beams, he cursed again, loudly. The room ran the whole length of the house, with a low ceiling and one window at the front, where he had placed a cheap table. Apart from a straw pallet and an iron-bound chest, the table and its attendant chair were the only furnishings. Several books and stacks of papers littered the rest of the room, and Liam remembered how impressed his landlady had been.

  "A very scholar, aren't you, sir? Never had no scholar here before," she had said, respect like cloying sugar in her voice.

  Most of the sheets of paper were blank, but she had not noticed that. He had wondered if Mistress Dorcas could read, and decided that she was probably illiterate.

  He managed to light a candle after several attempts, and finally sat down on the chair, which creaked ominously at his weight. He thought of writing, but dismissed the idea almost immediately, the pain in his head a warning against any attempt at serious work. Instead, he stared out the glass-paned window at the rain and offered a blanket prayer to whichever gods kept the attic roof from leaking, and to those who had kept him from throwing up on his way home.

  "No more wine," he muttered, scratching with a thumbnail at the spine of one of the books on the table. "Not for a long time."

  The candle guttered, disturbed by a crafty draft that had found a chink in the window. Liam shifted slightly and blew the candle out. He undressed in the dark, tossing his soaked breeches, boots and tunic away, and crawled beneath his two soft blankets. It was cold in the garret, and the smell of mold curled lightly into his nose. Rain pattered heavily on the roof for a while, and he thought he might fall asleep to it, but it tapered off, leaving him with a loud silence.

  Restless and uncomfortable, thinking of nothing for over an hour, he finally got off the pallet and searched in the dark for his candle. When it was lit, he opened his chest with the key hung around his neck, and dressed anew, in dry clothes. He started for the door and then, as an afterthought, returned to spread his wet clothes on the chair.

  The rain had stopped, but water still gurgled in the gutters, and the clouds had not broken. He hesitated in the street, unsure where he wanted to go. He could simply wander the city, but the Guard frowned on that, and there was nothing in Southwark he had not already seen.

  He thought of visiting his only friend iii Southwark, and then rejected the idea because it was late.

  Then again, he thought, Tarquin's a weird one, and a wizard; perhaps he's still awake. And it's somewhere to go.

  Tarquin Tanaquil was really more of an acquaintance than a friend, but he seemed to tolerate Liam, and the two got along well enough. The wizard lived outside Southwark, beyond a belt of farms and pasturage on a beach to the east of the city, fifteen minutes' ride away.

  Liam set off purposefully through the rain-glistening streets, thinking better of whistling.

  It took him almost an hour to reach Tarquin's beach on foot, and his headache was gone by the time he arrived. Happily, lights still burned in the house.

  The wizard's home occupied a bend in the high seacliffs where sand had gathered, forming a long, secluded beach. A narrow path cut into the cliffs led down to the waterfront, and Liam stood at its bottom for a minute, admiring the view.

  Far out over the sea, the clouds had broken, and the moon turned the horizon silver. Closer in, all was dark, the massive breakwater a looming shadow, the sand black. Only the wizard's home was lit, a warm and cheery presence. It was a villa, a rich-looking house: one-storied but long and deep, white plaster and red tile roof with only a slight peak. A broad, stone-paved patio lined the front with steps leading right onto the sand. The wall of the house facing the sea was almost entirely glass, more glass than Liam had ever before seen in one place. Warm yellow light spilled out onto the patio.

  Liam sprinted across the sand, packed down with the rain, and sprang up on the breakwater. Broad as a roadway, it led him along the beachfront to a spot directly in front of Tarquin's door.

  It was the breakwater and the beach that had led him to meet the wizard. The coastline near Southwark was almost entirely high cliffs; larger, more stolid cousins to the Teeth. In his early explorations, Liam had learned that there were almost no places where one could swim in the sea, except for Tarquin's cove. Mistress Dorcas had told him about the magician, spouting the normal warnings and superstitions, but one day he had gone down the path, strolled up to the door, and asked if he might swim from the wizard's beach.

  The white-haired old man grudgingly gave permission, and from there a sort of suspicious acquaintance began. As the summer wore on and the weather grew hotter, Liam's visits to the beach grew more frequent, and the occasions when the busy wizard recognized his presence grew as well. One time he invited Liam to sit on the patio with him, and they had spoken briefly. From there, it had only been a short while before he was invited in, and their conversations had grown longer.

  Standing on the breakwater, alternately looking out to sea and back at the villa, Liam thought that he would never have woke the wizard merely to tell how he had gotten drunk and could not sleep. But since the house was lit, he felt it would be no imposition.

  He hopped off the breakwater and strolled across the sand to the patio and the glass-fronted house. He rapped once on one of the thick panes, and waited. There was no reply, so he opened the door, more of a window that slid aside in grooved wooden tracks, and stepped inside.

  Though it was chilly outside, the house was warm. Sourceless light filled the entrance hall, bringing out soft highlights in the polished wood of the floor. Corridors and more sliding doors, these of solid wood, led off the room.

  "Tarquin?" Liam asked softly, and a shudder ran through him. He had never been further than the entrance hall and one small room off it, a sort of parlor overlooking the beach.

  "Tarquin?" he called again. The sound of the waves lapping against the breakwater sounded louder inside than out.

  Boldly, he strode down one of the corridors leading towards the rear of the house, and found himself in a stone-paved kitchen, with a huge wooden table and a cavernous baker's oven. No wizard. He noticed that the table was unscarred, the sanded planks unmarked by use.

  "Tarquin?" he called again, raising his voice. No response.

  He left the kitchen and returned to the entrance hall, choosing the second corridor. Two doors opened off it, one open. More of the sourceless light spilled out, and Liam saw the foot of a bed.

  Filled with a dre
ad as sourceless as the light, he approached the door slowly. Then he plunged into the room, awaiting a shock, something loud and frightening. Nothing happened, and he breathed a sigh. Tarquin was in his bed, his hands clasped on his chest. His full white beard spread luxuriously over his scrawny chest.

  The room was small, meant to hold nothing more than the bed, which was broad and canopied, carved with dancing figures and covered with a red blanket. There was nothing on the walls, no rugs or rushes on the floor. Only the bed, and its solitary occupant.

  "I'm sorry, Tarquin, I didn't know you were asleep."

  Liam paused, his relief dissipating. Tarquin had not moved, though his eyes, sunken in the mass of wrinkles that served the wizard for a face, were open, and Liam would have sworn they were not when he first came in.

  "Tarquin?" He tentatively put a hand to the wizard's shoulder and pushed. Even through the blue cloth of the robe, Liam could feel the chill.

  A trance, he hoped, let it be a trance.

  He pushed again, this time at the wizard's hands. They fell away to either side in what might have been a gesture of supplication. The palms were stained red. The hilt of a small knife jutted from his chest. The blue robe was dark with blood, and the ends of Tarquin's beard were red, like the bristles of a brush barely dipped in paint.

  Liam's eyes narrowed and he leaned over the bed, looking at nothing in particular, taking in the whole. Tarquin looked like he had been laid out for burial, legs decorously together, robe smoothed. The red blanket barely registered his presence, neatly hanging over the edge of the bed, unwrinkled.

  The sound of waves slapping the breakwater suddenly intruded on Liam's thoughts, brought into focus by another noise closer at hand. A thin, dry coughing whispered from out in the corridor.

  "Fanuilh," Liam whispered. He was thinking of Tarquin's familiar, a miniature dragon. Where was it?

  Without a thought, he rushed from the bedroom. Another whispered cough came from behind the second door in the corridor. He pushed open the door and stepped in.

  He had a glimpse of a workroom, three long tables, a wall lined with books, another lined with jars of murky fluids and dried things. Another cough.

  Then there was a sharp pain in his leg, and a jolt that traveled the length of his body. The pain swelled like blossoming light, flooding to his head. Something within him was being stretched, racked beyond its limits. Pressure built and built, pulling the thing, cracks appearing in its smooth surface. Frozen upright by the pain, he felt the thing in him finally begin to split, tom in two. Absurdly, he thought part of it slipped through him and out the leg where the pain began.

  Soul? he thought, and fell.

  Chapter 2

  LIAM WOKE AT sunrise, feeling hung over. His head pounded, and ripples of uneasiness radiated out from his stomach through his whole body. He did not open his eyes for a long while, lying instead on his back on the floor, examining his aches internally.

  He noted the dull, throbbing in his ankle, and remembrance flooded in. Slowly, he forced his lids up and stifled a shout. He gasped silently, turning the shout into a longdrawn breath, and did not move.

  Tarquin's familiar, Fanuilh, was lying weightlessly on his chest, its wedgelike head curled between its paws. The little creature stirred restlessly in its sleep, dull black scales rippling, leathern wings flaring briefly to settle back against its gently heaving sides.

  "Fanuilh," Liam breathed, and the dragon's eyes flicked open. It heaved itself unsteadily up on its forepaws, slipped slightly, recovered its foothold. Liam could see the dragon's neck and belly, covered with yellow scales as dull as the black ones on its back. For a moment, they were both still, Fanuilh's yellow, catlike eyes boring into Liam's blues. A slim tongue flicked out of the sharp-toothed mouth and ran over the dragon's tiny chin, where the scales gave way to a tuft of coarse hair.

  We are one.

  The thought intruded in Liam's head, like a flash of illumination. It stayed there, his other thoughts revolving around it. For a moment he thought he might have heard it, but it remained, and did not dissipate. It was a thought in his head, but obdurate and unyielding. He tried to think other things, questions, but they could not force it out.

  We are one.

  Just as suddenly as the foreign thought had appeared, it went, and Fanuilh shuddered and collapsed again on his chest.

  Liam lay on the floor for long minutes, unwilling to touch the creature on his chest. Finally, when its breathing grew even in sleep, he forced his hands up and gently surrounded the form. Slowly, with fear as much as tenderness, he picked up the sleeping dragon and placed it beside him on the floor. The scales, instead of feeling hard or metallic, were like ridged cloth, moire or corduroy, soft and warm. As he moved it, Fanuilh exhaled, and its breath was rank and foul.

  Like a dead man's, Liam thought, and repressed a shudder until he had put the sleeping dragon down. Then he rolled away and up to his knees, feeling his stomach turn over. His hangover was well out of proportion to the amount he had drunk.

  'We are one,' he remembered and shook his head in denial. He stood shakily, and stumbled for the door of the workroom. On impulse, he stopped in the doorway and turned to look at Fanuilh. Sleeping on the floor below him, and not on his chest above his face, the dragon looked harmless, and Liam suddenly bent and scooped up the creature, cradling it against his chest as he looked for a better place to put it.

  The worktable nearest the door was empty, and Liam deposited Fanuilh there. The creature did not stir, and, after a moment staring at it, he turned on his heel and walked out of the room.

  He limped blindly for the kitchen, ignoring Tarquin's bedroom, his pounding head and raw throat calling for relief. He could think of nothing but cold water, and perhaps bread, or a hot bun. A type of pastry he had once eaten in Torquay sprang to mind, and his stomach rumbled unpleasantly. The sea, when he saw it through the glass walls of the entrance hall, was shiny pink with the new sun, the clouds of the previous evening gone. Morning filled the hall, streaking the shadows of the window panes across the floor like bars.

  In the kitchen, the sourceless light still ruled, banishing shadows. He searched bins and cupboards, hoping only for bread and water. Water he found in a jar by the tiled stove, far colder and sweeter than it had any right to be.

  Tarquin's magic, he thought, and grimaced, thinking of the hilt rising from the old man's chest .

  He lifted the jar to his lips and drank deeply, washing away bile and roughness, gasping with the intensity of the cold: When he put the jar back next to the stove, he felt heat on the back of his hand and stepped away from the stove suspiciously.

  Why not?he thought, and yanked open the metal door on the oven's front. Banked coals lay beneath a metal rack, on which rested four small, round buns, piping hot, just like the ones he remembered from Torquay. Hunger took over from caution, and he snatched one of them, juggling the hot pastry back and forth between his hands until he could drop it on the table.

  He picked up the jar and drank again, then put his attention to the bun. It was almost too hot to eat, but his stomach roiled, and he forced a bite down. By the time the taste registered, his stomach was quieter.

  It was delicious, exactly like the ones in Torquay, laced with currants and nuts, lightly spiced with cinnamon and something sweet and sticky he could not identify. It was wonderful—and clearly magic. The buns were certainly fresh-baked, not reheated, and the coals were as hot as if they had only been lit for an hour. More magic, he supposed, wolfing down the rest of the bun. He had never connected magic with small things like hot cinnamon buns and ice-cold water. Only things of magnificent proportions—calling forth demons, sinking ships, destroying armies. It made him think differently of Tarquin.

  Thinking of Tarquin brought him to the corpse in the bedroom, and he frowned. Snatching two more buns from the oven, he went back to the bedroom.

  Tarquin was stiffening; that much he could tell by looking. D
ead at least twelve hours, as far as his experience as a surgeon and soldier could tell. He leaned against the doorjamb and stared at the corpse, absently eating some of the delicious bread.

  "Murdered," he said aloud, and might have laughed at the obviousness of the conclusion.

  By whom? Why? He realized he did not know Tarquin well enough to even hazard a guess, and supposed the only one who might know was Fanuilh, and Fanuilh was only a brute beast.

  Or was it?

  We are one.

  The thought had not been his. And the creature had been staring at him so intently. Liam had heard stories that wizards and their familiars were bound in special ways, but that was the result of complicated spells and dealings with supernatural beings, the sort of thing reserved for those who worked with magic.

  Swallowing the rest of his second bun, he left the corpse and went to the workroom. Fanuilh was still asleep, curled up with his snout touching his hind legs.

  Like a dog, but scaled and winged and clawed and able to send its thoughts into my head. Liam winced and moved away.

  The workroom's large windows looked out onto the narrow stretch of sand separating the villa from the cliffs, and let in a gray, shadowy light to illuminate the room. The first table held only Fanuilh, the second a single empty decanter of glass, but the top of the third was completely covered. Liam had not seen it in his brief glimpse the night before, but the morning light showed the table's display, and he wandered over to it.

  It was like the sand-table models he had seen engineers make during sieges, but far more complex. It repoduced, in miniature, the coastline around Southwark; but where a mercenary engineer would have been happy with crude representations, the model in Tarquin's workroom was perfect in every detail.. The Teeth lay exactly at the center of the table; water on one side, the harbor and city on the other. The town was the most impressive part, completely detailed, right down to the Necquer's harborside porch, and Liam's own garret window. Tiny ships with full rigging rode at anchor, and Liam saw that they actually rode, swaying slightly as if on swells. Acting on a hunch, he put his finger down into the harbor. The ships were moving, and the water, when he brought his finger to his mouth, tasted of salt. What he had thought well-sculpted whitecaps proved on closer inspection to be real breakers, flowing constantly against the Teeth. The Teeth themselves were rock, and felt as cold and wet as their larger brethren.