1

An image of Caermon: a man, crowned with leaves, holding in one hand a bunch of twigs, and seated on a stone.

He found that though he came no closer to any Reason or Direction in his being, his understanding of his faculties grew, chiefly through the amazement of others. Fauconred had first noticed his hearing, in the Throat; his strength in lifting and carrying wounded Redhand had amazed the Endwives. Now Learned Redhand had observed him learn to read the modern and ancient languages in mere weeks—and remember everything he learned in them.

An image of Shen: a woman, weeping, seated in a cart drawn by dogs, wearing a crown.

The Visitor measured his growth in more subtle things: when he saw the King Red Senlin’s Son, his head low, sword across his lap, attention elsewhere, he felt still the strength in him, no less than on the field. It gave him an odd thrill of continuity, a pleasurable sense of understanding: the King on the battlefield or here at his ease is one King. When the Visitor tried to describe the experience to Learned Redhand, the Gray failed to grasp what was marvelous in it. He found it much more compelling that the Visitor could cause a stone thrown into the air to float slowly to his own hand rather than fall on its natural course. The Visitor in turn was embarrassed not to be able to understand the Gray’s explanation of why what he had done was impossible.

An image of Doth: a man carrying a lamp or pot of fire, old and ragged, leaning on a staff.

Learned Redhand’s head was beginning to ache. Perhaps he really hadn’t done it at all… This Visitor and the mystery of him grew quickly more exacerbating than intriguing, like an answerless riddle. Even in the bright winter light of the Harbor solarium, the Visitor made a kind of darkness, as though the thick ambiguity of the far past, leaking like a gas from the ancient writings he pored over, clouded him.

“These images,” the Visitor said, marking his place with a careful finger before looking up, “they’re all of men or women. Why is that?”

“Well,” Learned began, “the process of symbol-making…”

“I mean, for the names of weeks, it would seem one at least would be, oh, a sheaf of wheat, a horse, a cloud…”

“The ancient mind…”

“Is it possible that these names were once truly the names of real men and women?”

“Well… what men and women?” The Gray idea of the past, formulated like their simple, stern moral fables out of long experience with the rule of men’s minds, was simply that before a certain time there were no acts, men were too unformed or mindless to have performed any that could be memorialized, and that therefore, having left no monuments, the distant past was utterly unknowable. Time began, the Grays said, when men invented it, and left records to mark it by; before then, it didn’t exist. To attempt to probe that darkness, especially through pre-Gray manuscripts that claimed to articulate beginnings by unintelligible “first images” and “mottoes” and “shadows of first things,” was fruitless certainly, and probably heretical. “No,” he went on, “aids to memory I think merely, however foolishly elaborate.”

The Visitor looked at Learned’s smooth, gracious face a moment, and returned to his reading.

An image of Barnol carries this motto: Spread sails to catch the light of Suns.

An image of Athenol carries this motto: Leviathan.

“Leviathan,” the Visitor said softly.

“An imaginary god or monster,” said Learned. To the rational Gray mind the two were one.

Suddenly a servant stood in the solarium archway. The hall floors had been hushed with straw since Redhand had been brought home near dead; the servants moved like ghosts. “The Protector,” he whispered, indicating the Visitor, “wishes to see you.”

Leviathan…

The Visitor rose, nodded to Learned, went out behind the man and down twisting, straw-carpeted corridors.

Leviathan. It was as though the name had taken his hand in a darkness where he had thought himself alone. Taken his hand, and then slipped away. Gently, blindly he probed his darkness, seeking for its fearful touch again.

Redhand had grown older. He sat propped on pillows within a curtained bed; old, knowing servants made infusions and compresses, and the medicinal odor filled the high room. A large fire gave fierce heat, roaring steadily in the dim hush. Redhand’s dark-circled eyes found the Visitor and guided him to the bed; he patted the rich coverlet and the Visitor sat.

“Do you have a name?” The Visitor could see in Redhand’s face the unreasoning fear he had first seen in the forest; he could see too the broken body he had saved. Both were Redhand.

“They say—Visitor,” he answered.

“That’s…”

“It’s sufficient.”

“Fauconred has told me… incredible things. Which he apparently believes.” His eyes hadn’t left the Visitor. “I don’t.”

There was a gesture the Visitor had seen, had practiced privately when he had learned its vague but useful meaning. He made it now: a quick lift of shoulders and eyebrows, and return to passivity.

“You saved my life.”

“I…”

“I want to… reward you, or… Is there anything you need?”

Everything. Could he understand that?

“There is a new King in the world. I have made him. Perhaps… it was wrong in me. Surely I have lost by it.” Take care, his father had said.Watch well. “But there it is. I am made great now in the world, and…” He moved his knitting body carefully on the pillows. “Learned tells me you learn quickly.”

“He tells me so too.”

“Hm. Well. Learn, then. As long as you like. Anything you require… my house, servants are at your disposal.” He tried to smile. “I will draw on your learning, if I may.”

A silence, filled with the fire’s voice. Already, it seemed to the Visitor, Redhand’s thoughts were elsewhere. It was odd: he felt he had come a great distance, from somewhere no man had been, and carried, though he could not speak it, wisdom they could never here learn but from him. Yet they drifted off always into their own concerns… “You were at Redsdown,” Redhand said. “You saw my lady there. She was well? Hospitable?” He looked away. “Did she… speak of me?”

“Often.”

“She wrote me of you. This… airy talk.”

The Visitor said nothing.

“I must regard you as a man.”

“It’s all I wish.”

Redhand’s eyes returned to him; it seemed they were again the eyes that had looked on him in horror in the Throat: alert with fear, yet dreaming.

“Who are you?” he asked.

Forgetful.

The Protectorate had built Forgetful as they had Old Watcher far away on the sunrise edge of the Drum, in the days after they had despaired of conquering the fierce, elusive tribes of the Outlands; built it to ensure that, if they could not conquer, at least they would not be conquered. The huge piles, strongly garrisoned, had made a semblance of diplomacy possible with the Outland chieftains; they had eventually accepted a king’s lieutenant as their nominal ruler and only occasionally tried to murder him. Red Senlin had been one such; and before him, Black Harrah. The post at the moment remained unbestowed; but probably, Young Harrah thought, it will go to Younger Redhand for his infinite damned patience…

In Shensweek Young Harrah sat within the sweating, undressed stones of Forgetful, wrapped in a fur robe; completely safe, of course, but trapped in fact: it came to the same thing. With a lot of Outlanders for company, with spring coming but no help.

“Capitulate,” he said.

“I don’t see it,” said the fat-cheeked captain he had taught to play War in Heaven—or at least move the pieces. The Outlander’s thick fingers toyed with two sky-blue stones, moved them hesitantly amid the constellations pictured on the board. “Maybe you should capitulate.”

“Move.” Red Senlin’s Son played at King in the City; the fat Queen, his father’s whore, licked her wounds somewhere in the Outland bogs, whispering with the braid-beards who adored her; and Redhand’s mastiff brother hung on here for life and would not be shaken. It had been for a while amusing to watch them out there, to make them endure a little privation before they took their ugly and useless prize, this castle. The game was no longer amusing. The Son played at King in the City… there was the game. The Outlander picked up the seven-stone, bit his lower lip, and set it down in the same place. Young Harrah sighed.

“Now, now,” said the Outlander. “Now, now.” At length he saw the trap and finessed gleefully. Young Harrah tapped his foot, his mind elsewhere, and threw a red stone across the sky without deliberating.

It was, of course, a struggle to the death. The Queen believed Black Harrah slain by the Reds. For sure she had slain Red Senlin the new King’s father, and Old Redhand too. There could be no forgiveness for that. They must, he must, struggle with the King Red Senlin’s Son till Rizna called a halt. Yes. And he could think of none else he would rather struggle with than the King’s blond limbs… With one long-toed foot he overturned the War in Heaven in a clatter of stones. The Outlander looked up. Young Harrah combed his blond hair with his hand and said, “Surrender.”

Along the wind-scoured Drumsedge, sterile land where the broken mountains began a long slide toward the low Outlands, it was winter still. The snow was a bitter demon that filled the wagon ruts, made in mud and frozen now, and blew out again like sand. Cloak-muffled guards paced with pikes, horsemen grimly exercised their mounts on the beaten ground. The wind snapped the pennons on their staves, snatched the barks of the camp dogs from their mouths—and carried from Forgetful’s walls suddenly the war viol’s surrender song, and blew it around the camp with strange alteration.

Young Harrah led the morose Outlanders down the steep gash in the rocks that was Forgetful’s front way. He rode with his head high, listening to the distant cheers of his victors. At a turning he could see Younger Redhand and four or five others coming up toward him. He dismounted and walked to where Younger awaited him. He was amused to see that there had been time during the siege for Younger to grow a young man’s mustache. The cheering troops were stilled by a motion of Younger’s hand, and Young Harrah handed his sword up to him.

“Will I see the King?” he asked.

“Forgiveness,” said the King. “Clemency.”

The High City had been shaken out like a dusty rug till it was clean of the gloom and shadows of Little Black’s reign. Great houses long shuttered were opened and aired, streets were widened and new-paved with bright stone. The City crafts, long in decline, suddenly had to seek apprentices to satisfy the needs of the great—for once more there were great in the City, their carriages flew to the Citadel, they were received by the King, they had audiences with Redhand; they were in need of all things fashionable, these Downsmen were, and their somnolent City houses were roused by a parade of tradesmen knocking at their thick doors. The cry of all stewards was for candles, good wax candles, but there were none: there were rushlights and tallows, torches and lamps and flambeaux—the candles had all been taken to the Citadel to spangle the Ball.

“No seizures, no treason trials,” said the King. “Not now.”

“If not now,” said Learned Redhand, “then never. You can’t try old crimes years later.”

“I meant,” said the King, turning a moment from his mirror, “no treason trials for these crimes. Later…”

The Ball is to be masked, a custom of ancient springs revived. The King will appear as the Stag Taken in a Grove—an image he discovered in an old Painted chamber, could not have conceived himself, there having been no stags in the forests for uncounted years—and as he was undressed and prepared he entertained Redhand and his Gray brother, and Redhand’s Secretary. Learned would not go costumed, a Gray may not; but he carried a long-nosed vizard. Redhand wore domino only, blood-red. The King failed to understand why Redhand had to have a secretary with him at a ball, but insisted that if he must be here he must be masked. So the Secretary consented to domino—even enjoyed its blank privacy.

“The Protectorate,” Redhand said, “will praise you for it.”

“I know it.”

“They are diminished in this war.”

“I will rebuild them.”

“Great landowners have been slain…”

“I will make new. Strictly”—bowing to Learned—“according to the laws of inheritance.” He raised his arms for his dresser to remove his shirt. “Why do you suppose, Protector,” he said idly, “that we have been able to do this thing?”

“What thing?”

“Pull down a king. Make a new king.”

“Strength.”

“Righteousness,” Learned said graciously.

“Strength more nearly,” said the King. “But private strength. The strength of great men whose allegiance to the old King lay only in an oath.”

“Only?” said Learned.

The King smiled. “I mean that this that we have done could be done again.” He watched in the mirror with dreamy interest as his dresser removed skirt and leggings. “I would prevent that.”

“By…”

“By making a new kind of Protectorate. One whose loyalty lies here, in the Citadel. That looks for strength less to some distant Downs and dependents than directly”—turning to them naked—“to the King’s person.”

Redhand, folded in his domino, was unreadable.

The King’s dresser, with a whisper of fine fabric, clothed the King in green, gorgeously pictured.

“The Grove,” said the King. The room’s candles played upon the stuff, making gold lights glitter in its leaves like noon sun. The King took from his dresser’s hands a great head, contrived with golden horns that were as well a crown, and hung with ribbons.

“The Stag,” he said. “The rose ribbons are its blood, these blue here its tears.” He fitted the Stag’s head to his own blond one, and was helped on with tall shoes that made dainty hooves beneath the Grove robe.

Despite himself, Redhand was moved by this splendor. Only—

“Where,” he asked, “is the Hunter?”

There is a Rose with a Worm in its Breast, who laughs with a ghastly Suicide; there is a Cheese full of Holes who pretends fear of the Plate and Knife; there are two Houses Afire who are cool to one another; there is a Starry Night, there is a sheaf of wheat, a horse, a cloud.

There is a thing not man and not woman, made in a star: but he is disguised as Secretary to the Great Protector Redhand, and the Secretary is wrapped then in red domino like his master.

Where is the Hunter? He is all in green leather, belted and buckled, he has bow and ancient darts.

When the Stag sees him, he leaps to run, striding on his tiny hooves through the startled crowd. The music stumbles; the Chest of Treasure stops dancing with the Broken Jug, who turns to the Mountain; he jostles the Head without a Body so that his cup of drink is spilled.

Beneath a great circle of candles that overhang a dais, the Stag is brought to bay. He trembles; the candles as he trembles cast glitter through his moving Grove. The Hunter draws a dart and aims.

“What mummery is this?” Redhand asks, setting down his cup.

“Will he shoot the King?” asks his Secretary.

Redhand laughs shortly and pushes through the murmuring crowd of fantasies to where he can see.

“Strike now,” says the Stag in a great voice. “I will no more fly thee; surely this day is made for thee, and thy hall shall rejoice in thy fortune.”

The Hunter hesitates. “My arm refuses my command, my fingers rebel against my hand’s wish.”

“See,” the Stag cries out, “thy spade has struck a red spring; the well is thine to make; make it quick.”

The Secretary whispers in Redhand’s ear: “The words. They are a song in the Thousand and Seven Songs.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. It’s a… love song.”

“Why dost thou weep?” the Hunter asks, lowering his bow. “Have we not chased fair all the day long, and hast thou not eluded me time and again, when I thought all lost and might have departed, and is this now not well done, that I have brought thee by my strength to this?”

“It is well done.”

“Weep not.”

“I must.”

“I cannot strike.”

“Where are your black Hounds then, that have drawn so much red blood from me?”

“‘Black Hounds’ is wrong,” the Secretary whispers to Redhand. “There were no Hounds. In the song he does… strike.”

“Watch,” says Redhand. “I begin to understand this.”

At the Hunter’s signal, there leap forth seven black Hounds, who rush the Stag to worry him. From his Grove as the Stag cries out (or from the arras behind him) come forth seven red Wounds. The Starry Night beside Redhand cries out. The Hounds fall back then, covering their eyes.

“They are amazed,” the Hunter cries. “They will do no further harm, seeing you in this distress.”

“Command them.”

“I cannot! My tongue rebels against my thought to say it!” Suddenly, as though in great agony, he rushes to the dais and falls before the Stag, making obeisance. “Noble, noble beast! Each wound you take is as a wound to me. Each Hound that savages you”—summoning them with his hand so they make obeisance too—“seems to make me bleed. Forgive me this and all outrages! I will do no murder on thee nor ever seek again to draw thy red blood!” He breaks across his knee his fragile play-bow. “And these mute”—indicating his cowering Hounds—“I ask in their names the forgiveness of the mute blood they have shed.”

“Rise, brave Hunter!” cries the Stag joyfully. “Wear brown not green, for with these words my wounds begin to heal…” He makes a subtle cue, and the music strikes up; each of the Hounds embraces a Wound. “I do forgive you! You and all these brave, more than brave in this asking. Come!” He bends, takes up the Hunter; the music peals merrily. He draws off the Hunter’s mask of green leather.

Young Harrah, flushed with his acting, turns smiling to the astonished company.

They are silent. The music trembles in a void.

Redhand, stepping forward, throwing back his domino to reveal himself, begins to applaud. His applause rings hollowly for a moment, a long moment, and then the Starry Night begins to clap; then the Cheese and the Suicide, the House Afire and the Chest of Treasure. The Stag, immensely pleased, draws Young Harrah and Redhand together to embrace. The fantasts push forward applauding to congratulate.

Redhand takes Young Harrah’s arm. “Unfortunate,” he says, “that theQueen who was so eager in this same chase is not here to be forgiven.” Young Harrah looks at him, the smile wavering. “You found my brother well?”

“He found me, Protector.”

“Is he in health? I ask only because his health is not good, and the winds of the Edge…”

“Protector,” says Young Harrah with the faintest edge, “your brother came to me as conqueror, not acquaintance. I did not inquire after his welfare.”

“Well. Well. Now if I read this show rightly, we are here both made brothers of the Stag. I would have you be that to me, neither conquered nor acquaintance.”

He is granted a half-smile by the Hunter, who turns to take others’ hands.

“These others,” Redhand says to the Stag. “I think I know them. Will we see their faces?”

Dumbshow: each of the seven Hounds removes his hairy head, each of the Wounds puts back his red-ribboned cloak.

“As I thought,” Redhand says to his Secretary. “Young Black Defenders are the Hounds, younger sons of slain fathers, those who might have been marked for seizure. The innocent Wounds—is that what they were?—the King’s brother Sennred, sons of intransigent fathers, small landowners, those…”

The last Hound has shown himself. A thick, brutish head, more houndlike than his mask. It is a face Redhand vaguely knows: a certain bastard son of Farin the Black.

The Stag has begun to speak again, of love, reconciliation, a new bright order of things. Redhand turns away, pushing aside the murmuring guests, and leaves the floor.

“Sweet, come to bed.”

None sees but the eyeless Stag’s head, thrown upon a chair.

“I will not be mocked.” Young Harrah drinks off the last of a cup, naked by the curtained bed.

“No one mocks you.” The King puts off the Grove robe, lets it fall with a rustle. “Come to bed.”

“Redhand.”

“Redhand,” the King says. “Redhand is a man of mine. He will love you for my sake.”

“He would be your master.”

“I have no master.”

The room is smoky with incense; the bed hangings Harrah draws aside are fine as smoke. “None?”

“None other.” He moves impatiently within the bed. “Love. Master me.” He reaches out and draws Harrah down amid the clothes. “Master me. Master me…”