Fantasy The Best of 2001 Read online

  “No use,” said the old wizard, grinning, “you’re only wind and sunlight. Now I’m going to be dirt and stone. You’d best go on. Farewell, Aihal. Keep the—keep the mouth open, for once, eh?”

  Ogion, obedient, bringing himself back to himself in the stuffy, tapestried room in Gont Port, did not understand the old man’s joke until he turned to the window and saw the Armed Cliffs down at the end of the long bay, the jaws ready to snap shut. “I will,” he said, and set to it.

  “What I have to do, you see,” the old wizard said, still talking to Silence because it was a comfort to talk to him even if he was no longer there, “is get into the mountain, right inside. But not the way a sorcerer-prospector does, not just slipping about between things and looking and tasting. Deeper. All the way in. Not the veins, but the bones. So,” and standing there alone in the high pasture, in the noon light, Heleth opened his arms wide in the gesture of invocation that opens all the greater spells; and he spoke.

  Nothing happened as he said the words Ard had taught him, his old witch-teacher with her bitter mouth and her long, lean arms, the words spoken awry then, spoken truly now.

  Nothing happened, and he had time to regret the sunlight and the sea wind, and to doubt the spell, and to doubt himself, before the earth rose up around him, dry, warm, and dark.

  In there he knew he should hurry, that the bones of the earth ached to move, and that he must become them to guide them, but he could not hurry. There was on him the bewilderment of any transformation. He had in his day been fox, and bull, and dragonfly, and knew what it was to change being. But this was different, this slow enlargement. I am vastening, he thought.

  He reached out towards Yaved, towards the ache, the suffering. As he came closer to it he felt a great strength flow into him from the west, as if Silence had taken him by the hand after all. Through that link he could send his own strength, the Mountain’s strength, to help. I didn’t tell him I wasn’t coming back, he thought, his last words in Hardic, his last grief, for he was in the bones of the mountain now. He knew the arteries of fire, and the beat of the great heart. He knew what to do. It was in no tongue of man that he said, “Be quiet, be easy. There now, there. Hold fast. So, there. We can be easy.”

  And he was easy, he was still, he held fast, rock in rock and earth in earth in the fiery dark of the mountain.

  It was their mage Ogion whom the people saw stand alone on the roof of the signal tower on the wharf, when the streets ran up and down in waves, the cobbles burst­ing out of them, and walls of clay brick puffed into dust, and the Armed Cliffs leaned together, groaning. It was Ogion they saw, his hands held out before him, straining, parting: and the cliffs parted with them, and stood straight, unmoved. The city shuddered and stood still. It was Ogion who stopped the earthquake. They saw it, they said it.

  “My teacher was with me, and his teacher with him,” Ogion said when they praised him. “I could hold the Gate open because he held the Mountain still.” They praised his modesty and did not listen to him. Listening is a rare gift, and men will have their heroes.

  When the city was in order again, and the ships had all come back, and the walls were being rebuilt, Ogion escaped from praise and went up into the hills above Gont Port. He found the queer little valley called Trimmer’s Dell, the true name of which in the Language of the Making was Yaved, as Ogion’s true name was Aihal. He walked about there all one day, as if seeking something. In the evening he lay down on the ground and talked to it. “You should have told me. I could have said goodbye,” he said. He wept then, and his tears fell on the dry dirt among the grass stems and made little spots of mud, little sticky spots.

  He slept there on the ground, with no pallet or blan­ket between him and the dirt. At sunrise he got up and walked by the high road over to Re Albi. He did not go into the village, but past it to the house that stood alone north of the other houses at the beginning of the Overfell. The door stood open.

  The last beans had got big and coarse on the vines; the cabbages were thriving. Three hens came clucking and pecking around the dusty dooryard, a red, a brown, a white; a grey hen was setting her clutch in the henhouse. There were no chicks, and no sign of the cock, the King, Heleth had called him. The king is dead, Ogion thought. Maybe a chick is hatching even now to take his place. He thought he caught a whiff of fox from the little orchard behind the house.

  He swept out the dust and leaves that had blown in the open doorway across the floor of polished wood. He set Heleth’s mattress and blanket in the sun to air. “I’ll stay here a while,” he thought. “It’s a good house.” After a while he thought, “I might keep some goats.”

  LEGERDEMAIN

  (In memory of Robert Cormier)

  JACK O’CONNELL

  Dear F:

  I am, primarily, a reader. No, let’s be factual—I am only a reader. In all other things, I have been, let’s confess, an abject failure. As husband, father, son, brother, friend, lover, I have been a consistent disappointment. In the last letter you called me a “writer” and I reared back upon reading the word.

  I am a correspondent. No more and no less. And I come from a time when this was known to be a different avocation from “writing.” While both writer and correspondent wish to make contact, the purpose of that contact differs with each role. With each state of being.

  But today, on this one and only occasion, I do have a story to tell. Whether or not you believe the story is not my concern. I ask only that you follow it to the conclusion and try to remain open-minded and attentive. At such a late date, is this too much to ask?

  We must start the story with a disclaimer. We must offer up my motivations for what will be, very likely, my final letter. Yes, the worst has been confirmed. The third and most vigorous course of chemotherapy has failed. In some perverse and utterly characteristic way, it is a relief. No more plastic bags of useless fluids leaking into my veins day and night. No more thumbing through dense (and badly written) journals for the latest news about acute myelocytic leukemia. I checked myself out of St. John the Divine last night over the outrage of a physician young enough to be my grandson. It was as if my choice to die far from the sterility of the hospital were an affront to his newly minted degree. The young have not read enough, my friend.

  But look at whom I aim my windy summations. For years now you have read all of my discursive epistles and I need for you to know, now more than ever, how much this has meant to me. No one could guess the nature of our connection. And soon there will be only one primary source available to the historians. The blood on this page fell from my nose. Not an encouraging sign, but I won’t tear up the sheet and start again. Time is simply too precious.

  So now that you know the context, I will pass on to you all that I have to bequeath. The last tale and the best. Librarians and book clerks are not known for the enormity of the estates they leave behind. But, if they can identify the appropriate heirs, there is usually a legacy to be passed down, an antique or two of some value. Take this story with my thanks and my blessing. Perhaps one day you will tell it in my memory.

  In my youth, there was a time when I was obsessed with playing cards. At the de Sale School I was, by far, the best card player. This is no great boast, however. I came of age too late, at a time when boys had, by and large, abandoned the love of a long card game. The art of the deal and the play and the bluff was no longer inculcated in the young. After the first few times I cleaned out the rare poker enthusiasts on campus, no one wanted to go to the green felt with me. I was left to a dozen variations of solitaire and, more importantly, manipulation.

  I believe at some point I have written of my boyhood enthrallment with sleight-of-hand magic. My interest began with a young fan’s appreciation for the Masters—Arthur Lloyd, Herbert Brooks, the great Archie Tear. In due course I began to emulate my idols and found that I had a). the long, tapered fingers that are made for such a skill and b). the infinite patience and the love of repetition and the satisfaction of my own compa
ny that allows for the kind of endless practice that the skill requires in order to be elevated into art. I trained compulsively, to the detriment of my studies and my friendships, but before long I could handle a Greek Shuffle or a Mongolian Crimp with the nonchalance of a professional. I could palm and riffle, spring and jog in my sleep. I had two Svengali decks, one of which had been made in London by Elmsley himself (or so the salesman told me). I amazed my dormitory mates with a slew of vintage tricks, all of which were new to these rubes. They sat in the hallway late into the night, sipping their tonics and trying not to blink, their backs rigid against the ancient horsehair plaster as I led them like lemmings through the O’Henry and the Gemini, through Liar Liar and the King’s Robbery.

  I won’t go into the details of my downfall at the school. Suffice it to say that I fell prey to the magician’s oldest temptation. The audience’s adulation and frustration were not enough for me. Soon, I went for their wallets. They were all young enough to love wagering on illusion. And I was young enough to think I could strip them of daddy’s allowance without repercussion. That I spent the money on an Oriental stripper deck with its own enamel case only further annoyed the dean of discipline and it was upon receipt of his letter that my sister, my legal guardian, summoned me home to the Capital.

  So, that morning, boarding the train out of Quinsigamond, I thought I would calm myself with hours of one-handed shuffling, making Jacks vanish from sight, as I pondered ways to explain and excuse my expulsion.

  I was riding the old Portland-Columbia line—this was just a few years before it went bust. My train, the Sea-board Star, once the showcase of a more tasteful era, was showing evidence of extreme fatigue. The stained glass in the solarium was cracked and the brass moldings in the dining car were tarnished beyond any hope of a future gleam. These signs of obsolescence combined with the disgrace of my dismissal and my fear of my sister’s anger to produce in me a premier case of the blues. So, as I found my seat in the last economy coach (car 29—I’ve never forgotten), I set at once to my favorite cure-all. I put my duffel between my legs and began to rummage for a deck. And I came up empty.

  Shocked, I pulled open the mouth of the bag until the seams were ready to burst and searched again. My hand grabbed blindly; fondling sweatshirts and dirty socks, but I soon knew the truth. There were no cards to be found. In my haste to disappear from the campus, I had forgotten to pack even a single deck. I can’t convey how unsettling this discovery was. I always kept a deck within reach. The cards had become a kind of talisman for me, a calming instrument, unconsciously handled in the way others finger prayer beads or pill bottles.

  It’s true, I could have marched down to the club car and purchased a new pack. But the dean had ordered me to reimburse my marks with interest and I was sud­denly experiencing some severe economic difficulties. I had only enough money for either a skimpy lunch or one of the train’s horribly flimsy souvenir decks—the ones that sport a line drawing of a locomotive. The trip was a ten-hour ride. Though I knew that my stomach would carry the day, still, my decision, though logical, was an insult to what I saw as my calling. And so, though I knew it was futile, I allowed myself some angry rummaging before I resigned myself to my fate.

  That was when Klingman approached me. Let me take a moment to describe the man’s face as that first glimpse remains with me, just as clear, to this day. I know that I overestimated his age, a common mistake for a schoolboy. At that time, age had only two demographic categories: Youth, someone such as myself, an aspiring magician with all the time needed to learn the conjuring arts. And lack-of-youth, which meant irrelevant and musty and unintelligible.

  Klingman was, I would now guess, no more than fifty years old. His skin, however, was already giving in to the cruelties of gravity if not sunlight (he was not an outdoorsman and, today, I might speculate that he was anemic). He was short and round, a pear-shaped lump of dough. He had bushy gray eyebrows, purple caverns below the eyes. There was a long-faded scar on the bottom of his chin. Sea-green eyes and a badly cut monk’s crown of hair. There were liver spots speckling his dome. He needed a shave and a conscientious barber would have trimmed the nose hair without waiting to be asked. He wore wire-rimmed glasses of the old variety, round lenses with either a rust-colored or industrial silver frame.

  His clothes were an indignity, I thought at that time, when I was as stylish as I was arrogant. But Klingman was surely unaware of this humiliation. I can see the worn, dark suit that smelled like camphor and was many fashion-seasons out of date. A yellowed handkerchief was pushed up one sleeve. I know he wore his faded white shirt open at the neck and there was a ribbed undershirt beneath.

  He said to me, “Did you lose something?” in a tone too concerned and friendly. Too informal, as if he were an uncle I’d known since birth.

  I looked at him without responding, one hand still thrust in my duffel, though I already knew there was no hope of retrieving any cards.

  Klingman stood in the aisle staring at me as I stared back. A woman turned sideways and shimmied past him. She was carrying a sleeping baby. I remember the infant was dressed in white lace.

  “Because,” he said, “I could lend you one of mine.” And with that he positioned himself and lowered his bulk into the seat next to mine. Trust me when I tell you he was not a naturally coordinated man.

  My mood went from disappointed to suspicious with the speed only an adolescent can summon. Klingman pulled into his lap an oversized valise made, I swear to you, of some sort of imitation red leather. It was cracked and torn and he opened it delicately.

  “Nothing worse,” he said, “than being caught on a long train ride without your book.”

  “I was looking,” I said, delivering the words with what I hoped was the right combination of contempt and apathy, “for a deck of cards.”

  “You are a card player?” he asked and I waited a beat for emphasis before blowing a heavy gust of air out my nose and giving my head the tiniest shake. This greasy bumpkin was the last thing I needed. I was about to speed toward my sister’s fury for three days of debate about my attitude and my future.

  “My father was a card player,” he said. “Do you know the game My Aunt, Your Aunt?”

  This brought me up short. I did, in fact, know the game fairly well. But, understand, it had already fallen through the cracks of popular entertainment. It was a complicated affair, requiring both a good memory and an actor’s instincts. Some real money could be made during a night with the Aunts. But I’d never before met anyone who was an informed player.

  I sat in my seat and gave him a smile. I said, “You wouldn’t have a deck of cards in there?” indicating his bag.

  At this he laughed.

  “Cards?” he said in a put-on voice and made a little show of opening the valise and bringing his head down to its mouth. “No, no cards in here,” as if I were a child in need of amusement. At that moment I thought him less the hick and more likely an Old Mavis, as we called them at de Sale.

  He rooted in the valise and I thought for a second he was mocking me, imitating my search through the duffel. After a moment, he pulled free two books, both paperbacks. He held one in each hand and hefted them a bit as if trying to guess the weight of each. As he did this, he pushed out his bottom lip, which gave him a moronic, unevolved look. The books appeared old and second-hand. The spines were both broken and peeled in so many places that you could no longer read the titles.

  “A difficult decision,” he muttered, it seemed, to himself. “Always, a tricky choice.”

  He let his head fall back against the fibrous white paper that protected the headrest and closed his eyes, then his left arm jerked sideways and presented me with one of the books.

  Today, it interests me that I tried to decline the gift. I shook my head but his eyes were still closed, so I was forced to say, “No thanks.”

  “It’s a long trip,” he said with an annoying, sing-song delivery. It didn’t occur to me to ask how he supposed he knew where
I was headed. It wasn’t an express train. There were a dozen or more stops before we would arrive at the Capital.

  “I’m not much of a reader,” I said.

  “That,” as his eyes opened, “is a shame. But not a tragedy. Do you know why?”

  I didn’t want to have a conversation but I didn’t know how to make this clear without being rude. And so I set out immediately to be rude. I pushed my seat back in a reclining position, turned away from the man and made as if to nap.

  Of course he continued talking.

  “Because this is something you can change. This is a condition you can alter at once. Without too much difficulty.”

  I felt the book tap my arm, rolled forward and looked at him.

  “Hey, mister,” I said, “give me a break.”

  But as I said the words, I surprised myself and took the book from him. I turned it over in my hands and studied the cover. To say that it was striking would give the wrong impression, call up, I think, notions of color and flash. This was not at all the case, more the opposite I would say, but the design did intrigue me and made me want to discover what was inside.

  The title of the novel was Refugee, the word written in large, black type. Many years later, it occurred to me to attempt to replicate the presentation of the title on the page. I spent weeks with a felt pen and a sketchpad, but, as you know, I am no artist and when I took my rendering to a designer acquaintance, she offered several possibilities as to the typography. I looked up all of her speculations and the one that seemed to come closest to my memory of the title on the page was known as “Urban Remington.” It approximates an old typewriter style and upon seeing this I recalled that part of the design was an uneven distribution of the ink, some letters darker than others, but all in the utilitarian blockiness of a manual typewriter dating from mid-century.