Cat Tales (2 page)

Prove it…

Aris cursed the cozy inn whose potent ale had
made him utter that boast and then have his bluff called. Wyn and
Allyc, the two fellow gleemen who had provoked his words, were at
this moment no doubt ensconced beside another warm fire in some
congenial hostelry, nursing mulled wine and laughing quietly over
Aris's stubborn insistence to honor the rash boast he had made.

Spend a winter in Ghulkit, come back with
wealth, and he could return and spend many a satisfying evening
telling avid listeners across the length and breadth of all the
Kingdoms how one gleeman had dared to defy almost impossible odds.
He would get rich in Ghulkit, and then get rich all over again
telling stories of Ghulkit in the tame lands afterwards. No other
gleeman could compete….

Aris allowed himself a grim smile as he
struggled through the snowdrifts on the lonely back road. Spend a
winter in Ghulkit. He should have known there was a good reason why
people did not do this. He had already found out – the hard way –
that if he was not totally focused on the road he was travelling he
could find himself mired in innocent-looking snow banks which were
hip-deep or worse. At least once he nearly lost his harp in the
drifts; and even without that, he could almost physically feel the
effects of the killing cold on the fragile instrument. Whenever he
gained some sort of sanctuary and obtained a spot to ply his trade,
he would have to thaw out the harp for half an hour or more before
he could usefully employ the instrument to assist him in the
simplest of songs.

This day was worse than many a day before it,
because often the cold would be ameliorated by a thin and watery
kind of sunlight which would even manage, weak and etiolated as it
was, to render the muffled, frost-sparkling landscape beautiful in
Aris's sight. That, at least, had been a sort of gift – he had
composed several songs about the beauty of the snow country – but
after a while even that had not been enough to make him forget how
cold he was. And this morning – this morning it had started
snowing. By the time he had hit the road it was not just snowing,
it was snowing heavily; he should have stayed another day where he
was, at the village where he had been given adequate if not lavish
hospitality. But he had thought it a flurry. The locals could have
told him it was not, had he thought to ask – but he had not asked.
The blizzard had grown steadily worse; in the white light Aris lost
all track of time and could not have possibly said if the sun was
meant to be overhead or setting. He only knew that he had been
walking for hours, that he was on the verge of losing all feeling
in his feet, that he could see no further in front of him than the
length of his outstretched hand, and that he was in real
trouble.

Spend a winter in Ghulkit.

If he was not careful, he was in real danger
of spending eternity here.

He could have missed the house by the
roadside altogether, so camouflaged was it in the snowdrifts; and
in his snow-blanked mind Aris had been focused for so long on just
putting one foot in front of another that he would have had
considerable trouble recognizing even familiar things, let alone
something that barely differentiated itself from his frigid
environment. But he retained enough wit to pause briefly when he
smelled what he thought was smoke; even so, he almost did not see
what lay right before him and it was quite probable that he could
have shrugged the smoke smell away as a hallucination of his
fevered brain and struggled on. But even as he halted, a black hole
suddenly yawned in the nearest "snowdrift". It took Aris precious
moments to realize that someone had just opened a door.

"Whuh…" he muttered, in a cold-cracked voice,
through lips that seemed to have stiffened into icicles.

"You walk to your death, stranger," said
another, lighter voice. It sounded very young. "This is not a day
for travelling. I have a fire inside. Come."

"Whuhuh… thhhan…thank you," Aris managed to
force through chattering teeth.

He allowed himself to be guided through the
doorway. When it closed behind him, he found himself in close
darkness, and fought a rising panic – but then, a moment later,
what appeared to be a heavy curtain was lifted at the far end of
the hall and beyond it Aris could see the inviting red glow of a
fire. An involuntary sigh escaped him at the sight, and his host
chuckled softly at this.

"Come inside," he said. "Let's get you out of
those wet clothes."

By the time he was fully in command of his
senses, Aris was a little startled to find himself wearing a
fur-edged woolen robe, sitting beside a hearth whose sheer size
made it look as though it belonged in a king's hall and not some
lost and snowbound cottage in the wilds of Ghulkit, and clutching a
pewter mug full of some hot drink. It was the mug that made him
snap back to himself because the scalding heat from its contents
had made him jerk away the palms of his hands which had been
wrapped around it. He very nearly spilled the whole mugful into his
lap, only saved by a steadying hand on his own.

"Easy," murmured his host. "That is better
inside you…"

Aris remembered his manners.

"I think," he said, "you saved my life."

And at that he looked up and finally saw the
face of his companion.

Standing beside him was a very young man,
almost a boy. His untidy shoulder-length fair hair and two engaging
dimples he produced as he smiled, together with the small hands and
the narrow child-sized hips, made Aris initially guess his host's
age as fifteen, maybe sixteen at most. But then he met the eyes of
blue fire that sat in that young, unlined face, and felt his
stomach knot. The eyes were ancient beyond measure, all-knowing,
all-seeing, old. This was someone of no age at all, or perhaps all
the ages of the world; beneath the intensity of those eyes Aris
dropped his own, utterly confounded, feeling as though all the sins
that he carried in his soul – the pride, the arrogance, the
ambition, the selfishness – were open to their scrutiny.

"Who are you?" he asked after a beat of
silence.

The other laughed softly.

"You may call me Bek. Now drink that.
Slowly."

He raised an eloquent eyebrow when Aris
hesitated, and Aris, feeling obscurely shamed, lifted the mug to
his lips and drank. The scalding liquid burned its way down his
throat, to the extent that tears came to his eyes as he swallowed.
He coughed.

"Sorry," said Bek. "It needs to be hot. You
were on the verge of snowsleep."

"Snowsleep?" repeated Aris blankly. He
suddenly roused. "My harp..! My harp!"

"Rest easy," said Bek, one hand on Aris's
shoulder. "It is here. I took the liberty of unwrapping it and
wiping it down. It is a fine instrument. You are a gleeman?"

"Yes," Aris said, subsiding, his eyes on the
harp he now saw glinting on the far side of the enormous
hearth.

"Well, then," said Bek. "Perhaps you could
honor me with a tale later. Perhaps even the one of how a solitary
gleeman came to be trudging the Ghulkit roads in mid-winter."

"Foolishness," muttered Aris under his
breath.

Bek laughed out loud. "Ah, a longer tale than
that, I think," he said. "But there is no hurry. First we get you
warm. It is certain that you will be going nowhere for a while. It
is only getting worse outside."

Aris sipped his drink and stole an apprising
glance around the room as he did so. It did not appear to have
windows; this nagged at him obscurely, as though it should have
occasioned at least one important question to surface in his mind.
He could not pin it down, however, and he let go, knowing that the
stray thought would return all the faster if not pursued. The room
was larger than it first appeared, with the far corners lost in
dark shadows. Aside from the firelight, it was lit by candles –
groups of them, placed on any flat surface with enough space to
bear them. There was a desk in a nook beside the fireplace,
overflowing with parchment, ink bottles, quill pens, and a quantity
of leather-bound books. It also bore a stuffed owl and an hourglass
which looked about to spill the last of its sand into the lower
chamber. Further out, there was an armchair which presently served
as sleeping quarters for three identical black-and-white cats who
were tangled in a knot of paws and whiskers on the cushioned seat.
More books lay in piles on the floor beyond that. Whoever the owner
of this cottage was he was no humble tiller of land – these books
were riches, even had their bindings gleamed with subtle inlays of
silver and gold.

Feeling Bek's somewhat sardonic gaze upon
him, Aris finally turned back to his host.

"I would," said Bek, his voice hiding a
suspicion of a smile, "be happy to answer questions. Within
reason."

Aris gestured. "There is a king's ransom in
books here," he said, and it was not a question. Quite.

Bek inclined his head. "Some of them," he
said, "probably were. I am a collector. Of books, amongst other
things. For example…" He rose, and fetched a wooden case from a
shelf, opening it up on a hinged edge to reveal rows of
meticulously displayed butterflies. "This one," he said
conversationally, pointing to a midnight blue specimen with silver
flecks on his wings, "I had to travel far to find. Very far. You
might say it was worth more than any two of those books."

Aris had gulped down the last of the fiery
liquid in the pewter mug, and it dangled from his hand as he
examined the butterflies with interest. Bek took the cup from
him.

"Good. Another, I think."

"What is it?" Aris, who was feeling quite
ridiculously invigorated, asked.

"Secret recipe," Bek said. "Amongst other
things, I am a healer."

Aris cast his eyes around the windowless room
again, and felt the question he had been chasing earlier coalesce
clearly in his mind.

"There are no windows," he said.

Bek, who had been pouring more steaming
liquid into Aris's mug from a kettle that had been hanging in the
hearth, nodded without turning. "This is so."

"Then how do you know that it is getting
worse outside? And how did you know that I was there?"

"One does not necessarily need to see with
one's physical sight," Bek said, "in order to observe one's world."
He walked the few steps back to Aris with the steaming mug in his
hand. "And there is no need to look quite so alarmed. It is a gift,
much like your own with the harp."

"Magic," said Aris, and could not keep his
distaste out of his voice. Aris and enchantment had a relationship
akin to that of a cat hater and any kind of cat – magic pursued
Aris, flattered him, cajoled him, tried to climb up to his lap to
be petted, while he spent all his energies trying to shoo it away
and keep it at arm's length. Using his experiences he had composed
a number of songs and tales and the irony was that he was becoming
known for his tales of magic even while fleeing it with all his
might.

All Aris had ever wanted to be was a singer
of songs, a teller of tales. He knew he was good enough to achieve
this with no magical intervention. He was just having an
inordinately hard time proving it to himself.

"If you wish," Bek said equably, "then yes,
magic. None that will harm you. You yourself just said I saved your
life. This is no less than the truth. I could show you what it is
like outside now, and it is considerably worse, if you can imagine
that, than when I called you in here. But I suspect you would think
that I was just showing off… and you would probably be right."

He held out the mug. "Drink it. I promise you
there is nothing harmful in it at all. If you have to know, it
isn't even magic." The word was emphasized, lightly, with something
akin to amusement. "It is herbal knowledge, no more."

Aris accepted the drink after a brief
hesitation. Bek inclined his head in an acknowledgement of this
acceptance, put away his butterfly collection, and on the way back
bent over to inspect Aris's harp.

"I think it has taken no harm," he said. "I
would be very grateful if you would play for me later. If there is
something here that I miss, it would have to be music."

"I owe you my life," said Aris. "A song or a
tale is small enough price for this."

"We all place our own value upon things,"
said Bek cryptically. "I may not even choose to count it as
payment. I may consider your offering something to place me in your
debt."

Aris looked at him for a long moment, and
then put down the mug he still cradled in his hands. "If you would
pass me the harp," he said courteously.

Bek did so, with infinite care and
gentleness, and Aris spent a few moments adjusting the strings and
tuning the instrument to his satisfaction. This done, he glanced
up, cradling the harp against his body.

"Is there something specific that you would
hear?"

"Whatever you choose."

Aris bent his head over the harp, strumming a
few experimental chords, letting the beloved instrument guide him,
as it had done so many times before – it almost had a gift itself,
this battered harp of his, of passing the right song, the right
tale, into his head. It did not fail him – the melody that came
flowing from under his fingers was a tale of vivid spring, of
bluebells in ancient forests, of young love blighted and lost
through blundering and malice. As always Aris lost himself in the
telling, pouring his body and his mind into his art, making his
voice an instrument of his soul. When he was done, he 'woke' back
to his surroundings as the last chord of the harp still hung
brilliant and sparkling in the air, and saw the glint of tears on
Bek's cheeks.

"That," Bek said, "could easily have been a
tale of my own youth. How could you know?"

"I, too, do not require windows to see," said
Aris.