The Carpet Makers (15 page)

“Robbers?”

“Hair-carpet robbers.” So his uneasy premonitions had been right. Of course, here just before the only pass over the nearly endless Zarrak Mountains, here was the ideal place for an ambush.

“You mean they want to steal the hair carpets?”

“They sell them to other traders,” Tertujak explained hastily while he was searching feverishly for a way out of this catastrophe. “For as long as anyone can remember, there has been a set number of carpets that a trader must present when he returns to the Port City from his route. If he can’t fulfill that quota, the honor code of the traders requires that he take his own life.”

“And the robbers sell the stolen hair carpets to traders who are having difficulty with their numbers, but are fond of staying alive?” the rebel guessed, and his eyes now glistened with complete attention.

“Exactly.”

A thought was suddenly clawing at the back of the trader’s mind, an ancient voice from the dust, saying, You lent the heretic your ear, and he has seduced you. You believed him, you really believed him—now take the punishment you deserve!

Tertujak picked up the photo of the dead Emperor and handed it to the prisoner.

“Don’t you have a weapon?” the stranger asked, and pulled uneasily at his chains.

“I have soldiers.”

“They don’t seem to be of much use.”

Yes, thought Tertujak. This must be the end.

The battle sounds came closer and closer, wild bellowing and the blows of steel on steel. A bone-chilling scream rang out, and something that sounded like a human body struck the wagon. The broken fragments of his thin necklace slipped from the trader’s fingers, fell to the floor, and disappeared among the pelts.

For a terrible moment, everything was quiet. Then the wagon door was ripped open, and in the light of a sooty torch, they stared into blackened, bloodstained faces.

“Greetings to you, Trader Tertujak,” the first man boomed out derisively, a bearded giant with a knotty scar across his forehead. “And please forgive us for disturbing you so late in the evening.”

He vaulted into the interior of the wagon, followed by three accomplices. The scornful grin disappeared from his face as though it had been too much trouble. He directed no more than a passing glance at the prisoner, then pointed at the hair-carpet trader.

“Search him!” he commanded.

The men fell over the trader, tore open his clothes, and fumbled through them until nearly everything hung from him in tatters, but they didn’t find what they were looking for.

“Nothing.”

The ringleader stepped up to the merchant and gave him a vicious look. “Where’s the key to the hair-carpet wagon?”

Tertujak swallowed. “I don’t have it.”

“Don’t tell me any fairy tales, you sack of fat.”

“One of my men has it.”

The bearded man laughed out loud in disbelief. “One of your men?”

“Yes. A soldier I trust completely. I ordered him to flee if we should be attacked.”

“Damn!” Enraged, the leader punched him in the face so hard, his head flew sideways. The blow split Tertujak’s lower lip, but the trader made no sound.

The other men became nervous. “What’ll we do now?”

“We’ll take the entire wagon with us,” suggested one of them, a stocky man whose right arm was crusted with blood that didn’t seem to be his own. “Somehow we’ll get it open—”

“Crap!” the bearded one shouted at him. “Why do you think the wagon is armored? That won’t work. We need the key.”

The robbers looked at one another. From outside, the sound of occasional fighting could still be heard.

“At daybreak we could search the whole area,” suggested another. “A man without a mount can’t get far.”

“How do you know he doesn’t have a mount?” the stocky one asked.

“We would have noticed—”

“Shut up!” the leader ordered with a surly wave of his hand and turned again to the hair-carpet trader, whose lip was dripping blood. “I don’t believe you,” he said in a dangerously quiet tone. “I don’t believe that a trader would let the key to his hair-carpet wagon leave his body.” He looked at Tertujak with suspicion. “Open your mouth.”

The trader didn’t react.

“I ordered you to open your mouth!” the bearded one shouted at him.

“Why?” Tertujak asked.

“Because I think you’re trying to trick us.” With sudden, brutal force, he grabbed the trader’s chin and forced his mouth open.

“I see a couple of fresh cuts in your throat,” he announced, and gave the trader a sympathetic look. “I don’t believe in your soldier. Do you know what I believe? I believe you swallowed the key!”

The trader’s eyes grew unnaturally large. He was incapable of speech, and his eyes were his only confession.

“Well?” the robber rasped. “Am I right?”

Tertujak gave a strangled gasp. “Yes,” he managed to say.

Every glimmer of human mercy suddenly disappeared from the eyes of the bearded one as he reached behind him and pulled a knife with a long, sharp blade from his belt.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said quietly. “You really shouldn’t have done that.”

IX

Flute Fingers

THE NARROW STREET
was still sleeping. A light early-morning fog hung suspended between the squat gables and was mixed with cold smoke from hearths in which the fires had gone out in the night. When the first sunrays flicked across the roof ridges of the crooked little houses, everything seemed bathed in an inappropriately dreamy and delicately misty light. Like little piles of dirt, beggars lay in some dark corners, sleeping on the bare ground, ragged blankets twisted up over their heads. A few small rodents crawled dully through the garbage, feeling sated enough to circle mercifully around the sleepers, and a few of them were brave enough to sniff their way to the narrow gutter, where the water moved sluggishly along the middle of the alleyway.

They leapt aside in fright and shot back into their holes as though drawn by strings when a cloaked figure approached with rapid steps; wheezing, stumbling, and flitting from shadow to shadow, the figure finally hurried toward the house of Flutemaster Opur. Then came the sound of two dull blows with the doorknocker.

Upstairs in the house, the old man awoke instantly from a restless sleep, stared up at the ceiling, and wondered if the sound he had just heard had been dream or reality. There was another knock. Well, then—reality. He threw back the blanket and slid into his slippers, reached for his worn housecoat and put it on before he shuffled to the window to open it. He looked down onto the street, which lay there empty and forlorn, stinking of rancid fat, just like every other morning.

From the shadow below the house, a boy stepped out timidly, looked up at Opur, and pulled back the wrap with which he had covered even his head. Master Opur saw blond locks framing a face he had never expected to see again in his life.

“You?!”

“Help me, Master,” the skinny boy whispered. “I ran away.”

The sudden joy that had filled the old man’s heart gave way to painful disappointment. For a fraction of a second he had thought everything would be as it had been in the past.

“Wait,” he said. “I’ll come down.”

The boy, what had he done? Opur shook his head sadly as he hurried down the steps. He had plunged himself into misfortune—that’s what he had done. Nothing good would come of this. Opur knew that, but something inside him wanted to believe the opposite.

He slid back the heavy bolt on the door. There stood the boy, trembling and looking at him with terror in his eyes—the big, blue eyes that had once looked so trusting and enraptured. His face was marked by fear and privation.

“Come in,” the old flutemaster said, and still didn’t know whether he should be happy or afraid. But then, when the boy stepped into the narrow, dark entryway and stooped under the low ceiling, he took his arm without another thought.

“Master Opur, you must hide me,” the boy whispered, shaking with fear. “They’re after me. They’re hunting me.”

“I’ll help you, Piwano,” Opur muttered, and listened to the echo of this name in his mind, a name he had not spoken since the Guild had drafted the boy for service with the Imperial Shipsmen: of all people, they had drafted this boy—his best student and the most gifted triflutist in living memory.

“I want to play the triflute again, Master. Will you teach me?” The boy’s lower jaw quivered. He was at the end of his strength.

Opur patted him gently and, he hoped, reassuringly on the back. “Of course, my boy. But first you have to sleep. Come.”

He removed the large picture that hid the door to the cellar steps and set it aside. Piwano followed him down into the cellar, where the floor was packed clay and the walls were only roughly bricked. One of the old, dusty racks of shelves could be rotated on unseen hinges and gave access to a second, hidden, cellar room with a bedstead, an oil lamp, and a few supplies. This was not the first time in his life that the venerable flutemaster had hidden a fugitive.

It took only a few minutes for the boy to fall asleep. He slept with his mouth open, and sometimes his breathing faltered, only to restart with gasps. With jerky motions, one of his hands clenched at some unseen resistance, finally relaxing again only after a long spasm.

Opur finally nodded his head with a sigh. He carefully lifted the oil lamp and placed it in a safer location. Then he left the sleeper alone, closed the secret door, and went upstairs. For a moment, he considered getting a little more sleep himself but then decided against it.

Instead, he made himself breakfast in the first light of day and ate it silently; he completed a few household chores and went up to his lesson room, to pore over the old music notations.

On this day, his first student arrived shortly before midday.

“I’m sorry about the tuition money,” she immediately began to babble on, almost before he could open the door. “I know it’s due today, and I remembered it already last week and I’ve thought about it the whole time. Well, what I’m trying to say is that I didn’t forget it.”

“Yes, okay.” Opur nodded with displeasure.

“It’s just that I have to wait for my brother; he should arrive in the city any day now—actually, he should have already been here long ago. You see, he travels with the trader Tertujak, you may know, and he always gives me the money I need when he comes back from a trip. And Tertujak’s arrival was expected by now; you can ask anybody—”

“Okay, fine,” the flutemaster interrupted her impatiently, and waved her ahead to climb up the stairs to the lesson room. “Then you can pay next time. Let’s get started.”

Opur sensed his own inner agitation. He had to find his equilibrium, as best he could. They sat down on two pillows facing one another, and after the woman had unpacked her triflute and her music sheets, Opur had her close her eyes and listen to her own breathing.

The flutemaster did the same. He felt his agitation fall away. Inner composure was important. Without inner composure, playing an instrument as difficult as the triflute was hopeless.

As was his habit, Opur first reached for his own flute and played a short piece. After that, he allowed his student to open her eyes again.

“When will I be able to play something like that, Master?” she asked quietly.

“That was the
Pau-Lo-No,
” Opur explained calmly, “the simplest of the classic pieces. It will be the first classic piece that you will someday play. But, like all the traditional flute pieces, it is polyphonic—in other words, you must first master monophonic technique. Let me hear how your drills are coming along.”

She held the triflute to her lips and blew. After Opur’s playing, it sounded like dreadful discord. And, as he had done so often, the venerable master had to muster all his self-control to keep a pained grimace from his face.

“No, no, the first drill again. Above all, you have to play the note
cleanly.…
”

The triflute was composed of three individual flutes, each with eight holes that could be covered with the fingertips. For this reason, the flutes were bent into a peculiar S-shape, so that they would fit the hands of the player and the varying lengths of the fingers. Each flute was made of a different material: one of wood, one of bone, and one of metal. Each of the three flutes gave a different timbre to the notes, and all of them together produced the inimitable sound for which the triflute had always been famous.

“You have to remember to keep your small finger relaxed … relaxed and limber. It has to be stretched out, because the construction of the flute and the placement of the holes require that, but that can’t restrict its movement.”

Long, agile fingers with prominent finger joints were an important prerequisite for a triflute player. A long little finger was a particular advantage. The technique was not like that for a normal flute, where each hole is simply covered or uncovered. That was only for beginners, in order to become familiar with the basics of flute technique and the musical theory. An advanced flutist, however, played harmony. By skillful bending and angling of the individual fingers, he produced a different note on each flute; for example, he could raise the middle knuckle of several fingers in such a way as to keep the holes on the outer two flutes covered, while the finger holes of the middle flute were open.

“Good. Now try the ninth drill. It contains a short two-part passage. Here. At this point, you raise your two lowest fingers, so that holes of the two outside flutes are free while you cover the holes of the middle flute with the corresponding knuckles. Try it.”

He was impatient today, in spite of all his composure. She really was trying hard, and when she controlled her excitement, she achieved some very acceptable passages.

“Stop, stop. This symbol means that you should block two of the flutes with your tongue, blowing only into one of them—until right here. Again now, and pay attention to the difference.”

By the end of the lesson, she was very happy to have mastered the drill to some extent, and Opur was relieved to have survived it. He managed to say good-bye without additional long-winded conversation.