Otherwise: Three Novels by John Crowley Read online

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…”

  2

  It was as if, that spring, all eyes and ears turned Inward to the City on the Hub within its ring of mountains.

  The King’s appetite for shows, triumphs, displays grew larger; unappeased by the ragtail pageant-carts that on glum street corners gave shows everyone knew by heart, he commissioned his own, drawn out of ancient stories by eager young men, stories full of new wit and unheard-of spectacle. Guildsmen of the City put their tools to strange uses building the machinery for abductions, enthronements, clockwork miracles—and the cleverest of them were paid well, in bright coinage the King had struck showing not a crude denomination but his own profile—too lovely almost to spend.

  He was, though, his own most striking show. With his crowd of young Defenders, all handsome, all proud, with a canopy over him and men-at-arms before him with fantastical pikes and banners, he rode through the City weekly, visiting the guildhalls and artisans’ shops, viewing construction of arches and the preparation of plays, of The Sword Called Precious Strength or The Grievances Brought to King Ban; always on his right hand Young Harrah, on his left Redhand, Master of the City, with his shadow Secretary all in red domino; and behind, close behind, his brother Sennred.

  The King’s brother Sennred was as small and dark as the King was tall and fair; some said another man than Red Senlin must have been Sennred’s father, that when Senlin was King’s Lieutenant in the Outlands, some other… but none said it to his face.

  Sennred’s right shoulder was higher than his left, and they called him stooped for it; but it was only constant practice with the sword that made it so: practice that had made him a match for any man living, though not, he thought, therefore worthy of his brother’s love.

  The banner carried before Sennred in these pomps was the Dog; he had chosen it himself; he had made himself watchdog to his brother, and when the counselors departed, and the bodyguards slept, and the King was drunk and went abroad looking for his lover at dead of night, there was still one who watched, mute as a hound.

  Who watched now, half-hearing the banter between Young Harrah and the King, and Redhand glum and unfashionable beside them.

  Redhand. Sennred had once mistrusted Redhand, had thought that when danger came Redhand would turn on the Senlin clan. Then their fathers had died together at Forgetful, and Sennred had fought beside Redhand at the Little Lake: and he had yielded up to Redhand a share of his dark love. It hurt him now to see his brother turn from Redhand; hurt him more to see he turned to Young Harrah.

  That Sennred longed to shed Young Harrah’s blood, wound him in secret places, none knew, for none asked Sennred’s opinions. It was as well.

  They wound down Bellmaker’s Street slowly, moving through throngs of people eager to touch the King (few had ever so much as looked up from their work to see Little Black pass); eager too for the new coins he dispensed.

  It was as well. For Sennred knew where the King’s love lay, and he would die rather than harm it. But Redhand… Now the tolling and tinkling drowned out the laughter of the King with Young Harrah; Sennred saw them turn laughing to Redhand, who turned away. Sennred pushed forward, waving aside the pikemen, and took Redhand’s arm in the strong grip of his sword hand.

  “There is another joke,” he said to Redhand beneath the bells’ voices. “They ask at court who holds the King’s scepter now.” He stared up at Redhand unsmiling. “Do you understand? Who holds the King’s scepter now.”

  Angry, red-faced, Redhand pulled himself from Sennred’s grip and forced his way out of the procession, through the curious crowd, out and away down the Street of Goldsmiths, his Secretary close behind him.

  A great yellow Wanderer came full that night and shone in the streets of the City, on closed carriages, on late carousers in rumpled costumery; calm, female, it stroked the narrow streets and high houses with pale light. It shone on two walkers, one in domino, turning their red to neutral dark.

  Since being made King’s Master of the City, Redhand had often walked away sleepless nights along its arching streets; had learned it like a footpad, knew its narrow places, its silences, its late taverns and late walkers—watermen and whores, watchmen and those they watched for, lovers alone together: found a comfort in it he never found in the silences of his Redsdown parks. No Master of the City knew the City as Redhand did; Black Harrah, when he went from the Citadel to his estates, went in a closed carriage.

  They looked down, Redhand and his Secretary, onto the soundless lake from an ancient arched bridge.

  If you kick me I will bite you to the bone.

  In the row of shacks along the water’s edge one light was lit. From that doorway a slim, tall figure came carrying a bundle, put it in a small boat and pushed off onto the lake, where the Wanderer’s light trembled.

  “The King,” the Secreta
ry began, “and Young Harrah…”

  “They must know,” Redhand growled. “They must know I will kill him if I can.”

  That Wanderer had set; another, palely blue, had risen when she reached the far margin of the lake. She nudged her boat in among the small craft sleeping there, and, stepping from deck to deck as though on stepping stones, came out on the wharf. Someone called out, and she answered in a waterman’s singsong call; the someone needed to know no more, and was silent. She waited a long moment in the shadow of a winch piling, listening for other sounds than the lake’s; heard none, and went quickly up the water-stairs to where they joined the highway into the mountains. There she did not approach the guardhouse for permission to enter the road, but, with a silence learned elsewhere than on the water, dropped into the brushy woods that ran along it.

  The guardhouse torches that lit the road’s wide mouth were far behind when she again stopped for a long moment, listening for other sounds than the forest’s. Again she heard none, pulled herself up by the tangle of brush at the road’s edge and stepped out onto the smooth blue highway, elated, walking with long strides at deep midnight.

  Her name was Nyamé and the name of her name was Nod. Her Gun’s name was Suddenly. She carried Suddenly in a pouch of oiled goatskin at her side, the kind watermen carry their belongings in, for she was a waterman’s daughter: that is, Nyamé was. Nod was Just. Suddenly had said so.

  Wet winds had bridged the days where Fain met Shen, and then had turned warm and dry; now beneath her feet the pavingstones were green with moss, and by the roadside tiny star-shaped flowers had sprung up. The hood of her no-color traveler’s cloak, that covered goatskins, Gun, and all, was thrown back, and the nightwind tickled her shorn blond head; it seemed to speak a word in the budding forest, a word she could almost hear: awake, yet not that either. It bore her up; almost without knowing it, in answer to the hushing wind, she began to sing.

  The tunes were tunes the Folk had always sung, so much alike that one slid into another at a change without her choosing. The words, though, were the Just’s: mournful and hopeful, silly and sad. She sang of old, old things, of gods long asleep, of the Fifty-two, unborn, sky sailors; she sang, skipping a few steps, rhyming puns that mocked the King and all his lords, made them dance a foolish dance before they fell down dead, as fall they all must one by one: for she sang too of her Gun and its hunger. She sang of the Deep and its beings, of Leviathan curled around the pillar of the world, dreaming all things that were, old and memorious when even the Grays were young. She sang, tears starting in her eyes, of being young, and brave, and soon to die: