166 - The secrets of our illusions

I had sparred Svetkabras many times. It was odd to do so with a man who didn’t even come up to my shoulder. That is tall for a Zak, but to a Yeoli, it’s the height of a twelve-year-old, and when I sparred him I kept having to look at his wrinkles and the brilliant purple streaks in his long black hair, which were grey dyed over.

I always found myself sparring him as if he were a student, in truth, because his skill was not enough even to have got him into the elite in Yeola-e, and he would have me teach him things. But in the Ring, something would happen to his opponent that never did in sparring. They would somehow think he, or his sword, or his tzvazahn, literally “two fangs,” that double-pointed short spear that Zak use, was nowhere near where he or it actually was, so they would miss a parry or an evasion, and he’d lay them open. The better the fighter he was up against, in fact, the faster he’d win; that had come clear enough that the writers had noticed it.

I knew something of Zak, and I learned more from a book or two I had Skorsas fetch for me out of the University library. They are the people of manrauq, as they call it; they all have a gift such as being able to move things with their minds or prescience or reading thoughts. But they pay for it, in the size that they are born, and in how using those gifts ages them. Svetkabras had gone from young to middle-aged in a year and a half by doing it forty-nine times, so far, so as to survive the Mezem.

I tried all that eight-day before to think out how to be impervious to whatever he was using, when none of the other forty-nine had been. Not easy, now; shards of my thoughts would sometimes fall out just as I was in the middle of thinking them, leaving me blank and at a loss; Skorsas learned to know the look I’d get when it happened.

My mind kept returning, for some reason, to the story in the Watcher in which he’d said I’d lost my edge with my sanity, which was fair, and so he could take me. I felt like a dog able to smell only the ghost of a scent and so barely course the trail, that kept leading me back to those words of his, as if there was some clue there that most of my crippled brain was missing. Certain ones snagged my gaze.

Look, it’s no surprise. I saw the forty-nine/forty-nine coming…

Everyone in the Mezem knows it. Look, the man was seeing a Haian psyche-healer a year ago… He doesn’t speak as he did, he doesn’t move as he did, his eyes are not like they were…

Look, if I favour any side in the war, it’s Arko. Besides, it’s as I say, I will do as the kerchiefs rule, follow the colour I see.

Look, I don’t win by fear; I never did. I’ve faced a score or more of men who had no fear of me, who thought, ‘I’ll step on this little Zak,’ until they suddenly found themselves staring up at me. Loner’s lost some of his clarity, that’s what I see. He doesn’t perceive the other and the fight as well as he used to.

Haven’t you ever heard the rule of magicians, that we never give away the secrets of our illusions?

I rattled them around in my mind for the last three days, sleeping and waking, to no avail, knowing that, a year ago, I’d have seen the answer without effort.

The day of the fight dawned brilliant, and the Mezem transformed from a looming empty husk to the usual giant cauldron of madness a long-awaited fight unleashes. The best seats had gone for scores, even the odd hundred, of gold chains. All eight-day people in the streets had been wearing their Raikas wigs, or waving bears on sticks or bear-claw sistrums for Svetkabras.

He and I waited by the Weapons Trust for the fight before ours to end, and he spun his tzvazahn idly, turning it into a circular blur with the odd flash. In wrist-cuffs, I could do no more than flex my shoulders. What would happen, almost certainly, was that he would bid clean tzvazahn, I would bid clean blade, and the Judge would set us against each other just so; not exactly a Judge’s Clemency, since neither of us out-geared the other, but better for a fair fight than me taking up a tzvazahn against his when I’d had no training with one, or him a longsword against mine.

But none of that mattered, and my mind stayed on what he had said. Loner’s lost some of his clarity, that’s what I see. He doesn’t perceive the other and the fight as well as he used to.

Haven’t you ever heard the rule of magicians, that we never give away the secrets of our illusions?

I wasn’t seeing it. Maybe I could get more words out of him. Touching each other before a fight is forbidden; taunting, if anything, is encouraged. “Little one,” I said sneeringly, “you’re dreaming if you think you can take me.”

He turned to me, the weapon snapping still with a smack in his hands, and his eyes narrowed. “Look, wool-hair…”

I didn’t hear the rest of what he said, for the flash, and the breath of the singing wind. He had told me, over and over again, what he wanted me to do, that would make the mode of his manrauq work on me, as indeed he had told everyone.

“Don’t worry, Skorsas, I’ve solved him,” I said, as I took my gate, and the Mahid struck off my bonds. As the gong sounded, barely audible in the roar of voices, and the gate sprang open, I went out, drew Chirel and, as I had against Sakrent, closed my eyes. The roar of the crowd, at least closer, turned to a long “Aaaiiiigggghh! No, Raikas, what are you doing? No no no!!” Suicide, they thought, perhaps. Or madness.

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