teach and more, for the student must kill his master in order to graduate.
These things I did, over months or years or perhaps in the blinking of an eye. When I closed my master in a room filled with fire and mirrors, and leaned expectantly against the door, my hands and cheek burning from the heat, he spoke to me in my own voice and said, “Do you understand? Do you remember?”
When he was dead, I opened the door and waded ankle-deep in his ashes. A thousand like myself walked within the flawless mirrors.
“Yes, I remember and I understand,” I said to them, and they to me.
Did I? I was seduced and consumed by what I had seen, what I had learned, an ever more willing captive of what I had become. The sorcerer’s lust, Evoragdou had called it once, that madness which engorges the mind, which changes and erases everything the sorcerer might have once been.
So, lustful, swollen with magic, I filed my former self away, like a book in a cubbyhole, in one of the uncountable rooms of my house.
For my house is my memory, ever growing, ever changing, each object, each window, each key in a lock, turning, each sound of groaning wood, each mote of dust another mark or swirl or curve in that delicate yet indelible script which is sorcery, which is the sorcerer’s mind.
Once, a peasant broke in, shouting for vengeance, waving a useless sword. My repartee with him was witty, then sad. He demanded that I reveal my secret to him, so he might slay me. Ah, if only it were that simple.
I left him stumbling about in the dark on a mission of eventual self-discovery.
I knew perfectly well who he was. It remained only for him to find out.
This incident too aroused a mote, a speck of memory. My mind stirred. I sat up suddenly on a pallet of straw in a room filled with carven, marble trees. I felt the sudden and subtle pang of an old sorrow.
“Khamire, my son,” I said aloud. “Come to me now.”
Bare feet shuffled on the marble floor. I reached out, caught hold of a thin arm and drew the boy to me, weeping, embracing him.
He struggled at first, but I spoke his name again and calmed him. Then we went out onto a porch, and looked out over the muddy flood-plain of the still receding Great River. The full moon shone overhead, and the spring stars.
I dropped to my knees before the boy, holding his frail wrists in my hands. He was so gaunt, so dirty, his clothing no more than a few ragged scraps. I think he had already been on his journey a long time.
“Why did you go into the sorcerer’s house?” I asked him. “Why did you begin all this?”
“I came because you called me, Father,” he said. “I didn’t begin anything.”
“No,” I said slowly. “I do not think there even is a beginning. That is the greatest mystery of all, lives reflected again and again like something seen in a thousand mirrors, but without any initial cause, any solid thing to cast the first reflection.”
“I don’t understand, Father.”
I stood up. I ran my fingers slowly through his hair.
“Nor do I.”
We stood in silence for a time, looking out over the fertile earth. “I am not your father anymore,” I said after a while. “Pankere is one of many names meaning ‘tiller-of-the-field.’ How very appropriate for such a man as your father. But my name means ‘clutter’ or ‘forgetting’ or ‘accumulation’ or perhaps ‘many dreams.’ All these, too, fit. My name has many meanings, like hidden rooms. It changes like foaming water, utterly different and yet the same from one instant to the next. It contains everything and nothing. It is not so simple as ‘Pankere’.”
He shook his head. His wide eyes gleamed in the moonlight. Tears streaked his muddy cheeks. “What shall I do…Father?”
I lifted him up. He didn’t resist. I marveled at how light he was, like a bundle of sticks. Gently, I lowered him down over the porch railing, until his toes touched the newly deposited mud. He sank almost to his knees, clinging to the railing, gazing up at me.
“I want you to go back home,” I said, “and tell everyone what you have seen.”
“Yes, Father. I will.”
“Khamire, do you know who I really am?”
He did not answer me, but turned away and waded through the mud, his feet making sucking sounds as he struggled toward higher ground. I shouted my true name after him. I told him who I was, once, twice, three times, as loud as I could. The third time only, he looked back at me and screamed like a lunatic, then hurried on with renewed desperation. At last, I saw him in the distance, running in the moonlight, wheeling his arms.
When he was gone, I went back into my house, climbed a spiral staircase I had never seen before, of beaten silver, then emerged onto an unfamiliar balcony, and surveyed what might have been almost the same landscape, but now a ploughed and planted field. Brilliant stars gleamed in a moonless night sky.
Near at hand, a few reeds clustered along an irrigation channel. Someone was hiding there.
“Pankere, I know you are out there,” I said, “for I am Evoragdou, and I remember.”
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
