Magic Banquet (11 page)

It was a shame. Aja liked most of the
guests. Some had almost been kind to her. They could’ve become
friends, maybe even family. Leaving would mean never seeing another
course, or the next pattern in the carpet. But, no, she wasn’t
meant to stay. She didn’t belong.

Aja hobbled the rest of the way to the
doors, and she had to lean against them, fighting for air. Why did
her breathing rasp so? Exhaustion crushed her.

Something was wrong.

Straining against the door made her arms
feel as if they would break. Gold leaf designs in the wood showed
people with goat legs dancing and pouring wine over each other. She
could not budge the door.

“Let me out!”

Aja looked for a lock, a bolt, a handle. Her
vision blurred, as if from tears, but her eyes stung with
dryness.

“I didn’t drink the pomegranate elixir. You
must let me out.”

A heat flew overhead, and the djinn parted
the doors. They opened into the warehouse’s blackness.

“You may leave,” the djinn said, “but you
may not return.”

Aja took an unsteady step into the
portal.

“And you’ll stay as you are until your spark
dies.”

Something in the djinn’s voice stopped Aja.
It had sounded like a note of pity. Aja asked, “What do you
mean?”

The djinn waved a hand in a fan of
brightness. The air rippled as if in a mirage, and it bent into a
disk of glass. Within it, Aja saw the lamp-lit ballroom, the table
and guests in the distance. It was a mirror. In the foreground
slouched an old woman. A hag, a wrinkled creature, she resembled a
dried-out lizard in a white robe. She looked close to her last
breath. Aja was certain they had never met, but something about
that ancient face was hauntingly familiar.

The hag wore a bracelet of green glaze. Aja
wore the same kind of jewelry, exactly the same.

Her heart pattered, frantic and faint. She
pointed a trembling finger at the crone in the glass. The crone
pointed back.

Aja’s voice croaked. “Who is she?”

“You ate the ‘Fruit of Maturity entire,” the
djinn said. “Had you been any older, it would’ve aged you to
death.”

Aja ran a hand over her face. So rough, like
ruined leather. She groped for a strand of her hair, brought it
before her eyes. She couldn’t focus on something so near, but she
glimpsed its whiteness.

Side Dish:

THE SWORDSMAN’S TALE

If he grew up in the City of Gold, then I
did in the City of Diamonds. My grandfather was the finest gem
carver in the lands. My father, not so much. Me, not at all. Look
at these rough-wrecker hands of mine. Couldn’t carve limestone
boulders. Not that I’m complaining. Had plenty enough growing
up.

How I loved playing hot brick with my
sister. We’d run through the Bazaar of Fallen Stars. We’d hide in
the branch caverns of the banyan trees. She’d tell me to run up the
side of a ziggurat, and I would. Oh, a ziggurat is like a pyramid
with steps. I mean levels. It has steps you can walk up, too, or
maybe it’s less walking than climbing and gasping.

At the top of the ziggurat, the priest read
the future in the webs of the sacred spiders. Me, I only could see
a messy white tangle of silk, that and a songbird caught and
hanging dead. Sad, I know. The priest, though, he could see my
fate. This was what he told me when I was six years old.

“
Fosapam Chandur’s fate is bright,

His parents will be proud,

That he’ll finish his fights,

Gain or loss, he will be unbowed,

He will marry a young woman,

Eyes a’glitter, mind keen,

She will bear a strong son,

The greatest family yet seen.

Count his wealth in more than jewels,

Measure him, if you dare,

He’ll better countless fools,

And lions will run from his roar.”

Sixth Course:

SALMON OF KNOWLEDGE, ROASTED

SERVED WITH WATER OF OBLIVION

The guests looked on Aja with sorrow. Janny
saw her, twitched away, and then groaned, clutching her back. Pain
also throbbed in Aja’s spine. Now she was old, and Old Janny was
young.

Aja collapsed on a pillow and felt a knife
driving into her rear.
Ahh!
But there was no blade, only her
own bones digging into her skin. She added a second cushion.

The Banquet’s power had almost killed Aja,
and it could also cure her. She would need it to. The only other
way was to leave and accept death from unnatural old age. That, Aja
wouldn’t do.

She had chosen a seat next to the swordsman.
He could possibly give her a slice of his orange. Even if it didn’t
make her young again, she hoped it would help her breathe
better.

The swordsman glanced at her once, then
never again. He said something that she could not hear.

“What?” Aja held a hand to her ear.

“Your fruit, what was it supposed to
do?”

“Maturity,” she said.

“Guess not the kind you wanted.” He cradled
the empress’s head in his arm, squeezing another drop of orange
into her mouth.

A splintery zing shivered its way through
Aja. Could someone have ever cared for her that much? Death would
come before she found out, unless she reversed her aging. The Apple
of Youth was gone, eaten to the core, but the stewed phoenix could
replenish life as soon as it was served. On her trudging walk back
to the carpet she had asked the djinn if the phoenix was the last
course.

“No, the last is dessert.”

“Then, second to last?”

The djinn had offered no more. She had left
Aja to wonder how many more courses she would have to survive. Aja
struggled just to fit enough air into her lungs.

A mouthful of health was what she needed.
How to ask the swordsman for a piece of his orange? Aja fidgeted
with her brass bracelet, then spoke to him.

“You were wise. All that power on the table,
and you picked the fruit that’d save everyone else.”

“I’m not wise,” he said. “I just think what
the best of the royal guards would do in my place. Then I do
that.”

“That has the smell of wisdom,” Aja said. If
only she had known someone on the streets as dependable as him. The
swordsman would’ve made the best brother.

He tucked a lock of damp hair into the
empress’s shawl. “She trusts me too much.”

Aja considered if it was wrong to think of
herself, to ask for any help, to hope for better.
Who am I? An
old lady who’d never even been kissed.

The thought rotted inside her.

She didn’t even look up at the nearing
clomp-clomp sound of the Chef’s feet. Her stomach weighed her down
in a stony block. She wasn’t hungry, and she would eat nothing
until the stewed phoenix arrived.

“Food is culture.” The Chef’s voice flowed
like spiced oil. “The only way to know a culture is to eat it. To
understand the significance of each dish, its heritage, its
traditions.”

Below his massive boots, the carpet
displayed sheep grazing on a cliff bluff overlooking the sea.
Silver threads wormed around each other, and a cavern opened
beneath the rug pasture. Aja leaned forward, but that didn’t help
her aged eyes see any clearer. A river ran through the design of
the underworld, a lone boat crossing to a fearsome gate. Was that a
three-headed creature beside the yawning doors?

“To mix dishes from two cultures risks
chaos,” the Chef said, “but I do so for the perfect compliment of
entrée and drink. This salmon was roasted on a grill of flaming
swords. Seasoned with thyme and honey, enlivened with vinegar and
orange zest.”

The swordsman’s belly growled like a caged
lion.

“Think of something you want to know,” the
Chef said. “Take a bite. You’ll gain all the knowledge you desire
and more.”

Against one arm, the Chef supported a
chopping block. Pink flesh of a fish glistened. Sprigs of herbs
garnished it. He motioned with a knife to the djinn, and she
carried forward a black vase. Ghostly figures painted on it knelt
by a riverbank.

“If the salmon’s knowledge is not to your
taste, or if you have any memory you want washed away, drink,” the
Chef said. “This amphora holds water of unmindfulness. Drawn from
an underworld river, where souls forget their past lives.”

He held the knife handle first to the lord.
The blade was a spike of bronze resting against the Chef’s arm.

“Lord Tethiel, what would you learn?”

“I’m of an age where new knowledge tastes
stale.” He waved away the fish board.

How could the lord refuse another course?
Aja shook her head, and her neck clicked. An aching stomach she had
learned to live with, but this was a hunger of the mind. Night
after night she had lain awake, wondering who her mother was. Had
she died? Or had Aja walked by her in the market without
recognizing her? Her mother may have even been a queen who had lost
her princess daughter through a tragedy.

Her father, Aja remembered him well enough.
He had smelled of onions, coughed with a deep grunt like a warthog,
and tickled her with a forest of a beard. His arms had enclosed her
with such warmth she had felt snug, complete, safe. Aja couldn’t
bring to mind his face. That she regretted. Of her mother she knew
nothing.

No harm would come to her from one bite of
salmon. She didn’t see it as truly eating. Just a taste.

The lord glanced at her, and she puffed
stray hair out of her mouth. She had been chewing on it. A few of
the strands had fallen out. The lord spoke with a voice pitched to
all the guests. “You are right to fear. The problem with learning
is that you begin to understand how little you know.”

The Chef offered the salmon to another
guest. “This fish satisfies with complete knowledge of a
subject.”

The lord nodded to the amphora. “And with
forgetfulness so close at hand there seems little risk. Any fool
can learn, but forgetting, that’s a rare skill.”

Aja asked, “But you didn’t want any salmon
yourself, Uncle?”

“My pumpkin pie, you shouldn’t call me
uncle, given your newly advanced years.”

Blushing tired out Aja.

Now that she thought of it, she hadn’t seen
the lord eating any of the entrées. She told him as much.

“I didn’t come to this Banquet to eat,” he
said. “To me, the best seasoning is conversation.”

“But how could you say no to everything? The
kraken, the roc egg, it was all too delicious.”

“Alas, not to me. I’ve lost the knack of
tasting.” His face never changed expression, but the red paint on
his lips had an upward barb on the left side as if he smirked.
“Some would say I never had good taste to begin with.”

“You can’t taste? Is it because of your….”
Aja had to know. If old age had taken away his desire for food, Aja
might never taste again as well.

“My magic,” he said. “After drinking of the
black chalice, all other delicacies are dust in the mouth.”

She squinted up at the lord. Was he telling
her the truth? His features seemed too still and perfect to be
real. He had to be wearing a mask.

Aja asked, “What is your magic?”

“I hope never to show you, my intrepid
truffle.”

The lord lifted one of the wooden cups of
polished ebony. The djinn poured from the amphora. Ribbons of
purple light traveled up the flow of water. She said, “Think of
what you wish to forget, then swallow.”

The lord hoisted his cup. “To be free of
memory’s dead weight, a temptation to which I’ll boldly succumb.
Who will drink with me?”

Solin also had a pour. He balanced his cup
on a crutch and reached to knock it against the lord’s in a
toast.

“To oblivion!”

The lord drank, but Solin hesitated. He set
his cup down untasted.

Why had Solin changed his mind? Aja worked
moisture in her dry mouth to ask, but after five creaking swallows
her parched throat still pained her. “You don’t wish to
forget?”

Not speaking, he tapped his fingers over the
pillow hiding his bad leg.

“You shouldn’t ignore old ladies,” Aja said,
“it’s not polite.”

Solin’s mouth slanted downward on either
side, as hard as a tile roof. “Shouldn’t have let you eat all the
dragonfruit. I shouldn’t have done a lot of things, and I’ve no
right to forget them.”

“You’re not responsible for me,” she
said.

“But I am for my hexes.” He glanced down.
“Forgiveness must come before forgetting.”

He regretted something so much. He had one
sickly leg, and he was a hexer. The three things might be linked.
Aja cracked her mouth open then closed it again. She wouldn’t ask.
She had offended him enough.

The Chef presented the salmon to Solin. Its
steam wafted past him to Aja. She didn’t smell anything, but she
glimpsed a vision of a woman’s face. An arching brow, a tired eye,
a welcoming smile. Was it her mother?