The Child Eater (15 page)

“Cool,” Simon said.

“You have fun?”

“Yeah. I beat Jerry two games in a row.”

Dad laughed. “Good for you,” he said, then, as if he liked the words, repeated, “Good for you.”

From that day, when reading revealed itself to him like a flood of bright water, Matyas studied constantly. He still labored for Veil, but every other moment, he read and practiced, so much so that Veil took it on herself to reassure him that the knowledge, once given, could not be taken away. “You would have to forget yourself entirely,” she said, “before you forgot how to read.”

Matyas didn't slow down. He read Veil's books, some passages two or three times when he found he could understand the words but not what they meant. Slowly, over time, he began to read more quickly, suddenly remembering something he'd encountered a month before that had made no sense to him but now fitted perfectly with a new passage. As well as the books, he studied the strange objects that filled Veil's very plain tower home. He began to recognize such things as clocks that marked the slow movements of the stars rather than the Sun's swift dash, or a feather that was in fact attached to a bird who existed in some other world entirely but for that one feather poking into our world.

Sometimes he saw the lights, the Splendor as Medun had called them, but only for a few seconds. Medun had said they were not creatures themselves but the tracks of beings so great that if they entered our clumsy world of bodies and rocks, they would break open the sky.
Once, when he saw them while he was deep in a book half as big as himself, he wondered what it would be like to enter
their
world, and then he realized, it was the first time he'd seen the Splendor and did not immediately think of the promise that he would fly. He sat there for a moment, trying to decide what he should think about that—and then he returned to his book.

He read, he studied. And he began to practice. For there were spells in the books, and tricks, and ways to change things. He could make flowers grow out of rocks, or cause a page from a book to curl up and cry like a little child. He discovered that the spell Medun had begun against him, the toad spell, was not all that difficult to do, but once accomplished could not be undone. If Medun had not abandoned it, Matyas might still be hopping around behind the stove in the Hungry Squirrel. That is, unless his father had found him, for the master of the inn detested “vermin,” as he called all small creatures, and crushed them or threw them in the flames whenever he could catch them.

Once, Matyas had made the mistake of not looking when his father had stamped his boot on a mouse. Matyas hadn't turned his head, he'd only squeezed shut his eyes, but his father must have been watching him, for he grabbed Matyas' face so hard the boy was scared his teeth would pop out to fall, all bloody, onto the dead mouse. “You don't want to look?” his father had said. “Maybe I should put my boot down on your coward face and throw you out with the rats and the garbage.”

Matyas did his best not to remember such things, to stay safe inside Veil's books and his spells, but every now and then some moment would come back, maybe something his father had said to him, or his father's hand against his face when he was eating a piece of bread, or the terror he felt just before his father's foot reached his stomach. He scolded himself when he allowed such things to interfere with his studies. The point, he told himself, was simply not to think about his father, or the Hungry Squirrel. He thought of that life as little more than a bad dream.

Sometimes he thought of Royja and when they would sneak off to imagine another world. He remembered his promise to come back to her. When he was ready, and clearly that was not now, he was just beginning to learn. And yet, he had already found a better world, a real one. How could he return to Royja, who lived in dreams and fantasies? He became angry at her, imagined her grasping at his ankle, trying to pull him down with her.

Ultimately, all he could do was banish such thoughts. He was here to learn, and practice, and become a better wizard than anyone. Better than Lukhanan, better even than Veil (though as he thought about it, Veil never really
did
much of anything, did she?). He was Master Matyas, and he was going to fly, and leave his father, and even the wizards, even Veil herself, far behind in the lowly dirt.
Don't think about the past
, he ordered himself. Don't remember things that would only distract him.
Study. Learn what matters.

He still labored for Veil. He owed it to her, he told himself, at the same time thinking how he really had more important things to do now than carry wood and buckets of water up four flights of stairs. And when Berias and the others taunted him, he imagined taking out some great scroll and reading it to them, just to see their faces. And then maybe he would open the earth beneath them, or cause their intestines to poke out from their bellies. Yet somehow he never did any of it, just ignored them and went about his business.

One day, as he was returning from the market with the moldy old cheese Veil liked, he saw a group of students arguing about a spell. It was a simple thing, a trick. You drew a picture of a bird on a flat stone, inscribed one of the Four Hundred Lesser Names, spoke the name in the right way and the bird would rise off the rock to flutter in front of you and sing exquisitely, at least for a minute or two. It was nothing, really, but the apprentices kept trying, and getting it wrong, and one of them, a skinny redhead named Caudfinn, looked ready to take his stone and smash it against the courtyard bricks when Matyas set down the cheese and walked up to them.

Berias rolled his eyes in that thick head of his that always reminded Matyas of a tree stump. Matyas ignored him and approached Caudfinn. “You do it like this,” he said, then touched the other boy's drawing and spoke the name “sideways,” as Veil put it, a kind of intonation that was neither the way the word looked, nor any of the obvious variations. Sideways. Instantly, all the pictures took flight and the air was filled with brightly colored see-through birds, their chirps so loud that even some of the Masters threw open the windows of their studies to listen, and wonder how so many clumsy students had accomplished something so tricky all at the same time. And Caudfinn and Berias and the others could only shift their stunned faces from Matyas to the birds and back, their jaws opened so wide that Matyas could not help but think of the abyss he'd once wanted to open beneath their feet.

He picked up the wheel of cheese and willed himself to walk at his ordinary pace, with his face blank, until he was inside the tower. Then he grinned and hopped up and down.

He calmed his face again when he reached the top of the stairs. What would Veil say, what would she do? Would she be proud of him, or angry for wasting time on a silly game? Or had she even noticed? It would be just like her to have been staring into some book the whole time and have no idea of the special thing that had happened out in the lowly world where she sent her apprentice out to run errands like a kitchen boy.

In fact, he found her, not with her eyes in a book but nowhere at all. That is, she was doing that strange thing where she sat in her small rocker, so still it might have been nailed to the floor, and looked straight ahead, at nothing. Matyas thought how lightning could strike the tower, throwing the two of them into the air amid a hailstorm of books, and Veil would not even know her body no longer sat in a motionless rocker.

He sighed and brought the cheese over to the white porcelain box that would keep it cool and fresh, then sat on the floor with a book, a small but difficult work bound in marbled red and blue and yellow leather. The work, by a Master named Florian, described the “color harmonics of the planets within the sky and the true body,” and Matyas found it more confusing than anything he'd read in months. It wasn't just how difficult it was—it was certainly that—but something else. When he read Master Florian's words, he felt a strange energy that appeared to open up the very air in front of him and yet somehow threatened everything he was doing, like some strange trap.

At times he wanted to shove the book away, even run from it, and yet he kept studying, trying to understand it, for even without knowing exactly what it said it produced those strange sensations. Such sensations were new for Matyas. With all the previous books he'd studied, all that mattered was what he could do with them. Spells to cast, tricks, knowledge to raise him above everyone else. And ultimately to fly. What else was magic for? But this—this Master Florian—it opened layers and layers.

He was deep in the work when Veil stirred herself from her vacant stare. “Ah, Matyas,” she said. “I trust that Esau gave you a good price on the cheese?”

Stupid woman
, Matyas thought. Cheese! What color were the birdsongs on Jupiter?
That's
what mattered. He grunted an answer and stared
at Florian's strange descriptions. Veil walked over to the small window where Matyas had originally seen her all those months before, when he was so desperate for someone, anyone, to take him as a student.

Might he have been better off with someone else (assuming anyone would have had him)? Of course, Veil knew more than anyone else, that was clear. And she had taught him to read—well, “taught” was hardly the right word—and now that he could read and had access to her books, he learned more every day. And true, sometimes she actually sat down and taught him something, such as how to speak sideways. But she still treated him like a kitchen boy. And she still insisted she knew nothing of how to fly.

And she never said anything about all his achievements. “Get the cheese, fill the bucket, build a fire,” but never, “You did that very well, Matyas,” or, “If anyone could understand Master Florian, it certainly would be you.”

He felt color rise in his face at such thoughts and made sure he was turned away from Veil, lest the old woman catch him. Certainly he had never cared what anyone said about him at the Hungry Squirrel. If he could keep out of range of his father's fists, that was enough. But Veil was, well, different. And so was he. He knew things now, he had power, and he was sure it was only a matter of time before he learned how to fly.

Maybe Veil was jealous. Wasn't he the one who could summon the Splendor? He'd never seen them around Veil at all. He remembered Medun saying how no one had ever seen them in their true form, “Except maybe for one. And if so, she hasn't told me.” Maybe he meant someone else, some other old lady. Someone who did more than just stare at nothing all day.

He was about to throw the book down—he hadn't understood a word—and stamp out of the room—maybe he ought to go and study with Lukhanan, what would she say to that?—when Veil half turned and said, “You should begin dinner. The Sun has returned, but only to say goodnight.”

Now what was
that
supposed to mean?

“Oh, and Matyas, thank you for the bird concert. I suspect even Florian would have enjoyed it.”

Matyas put his head down so she couldn't see his grin. “I'll go and cut the turnips,” he said, and dashed into the tiny kitchen alcove so she couldn't see the pride swell his chest and color his face.

Months passed, then more months. Matyas' body grew and became strong, but his magic became stronger still. Though he still slept in the alcove in the tower, and did Veil's chores and carried her messages, he began, subtly, hardly knowing it himself, to teach. If in the middle of some errand he saw students—and even, once or twice, a teacher—struggling with something, he might stop and reveal what was missing. At first, even after he'd brought the birds to life, they would try to ignore him, or snigger to each other. For wasn't he little more than Veil's slave? Didn't he always appear with buckets of water or sacks of vegetables? He ignored these slights and helped them, and after a while, he noticed that their eyes would stray to him as he passed, hopeful, afraid or ashamed to ask outright. Sometimes he pretended not to notice, but more and more he went over to them, sat down and opened the way.

One day Veil filled an envelope with shiny green powder, sealed it and told Matyas to take it to a house on the far side of the city. As always with such errands, she said nothing about what the powder was, who would receive it or why. Nevertheless, Matyas enjoyed the walk through the capital's streets, some straight and wider than the wizards' whole courtyard, others bent and narrow, with walls that leaned over so far the two sides of the street nearly touched each other. He passed women wrapped in layers of yellow silk, and boys with hair so long that small sharp-toothed creatures lived in the coils. An aged fortune teller wearing several dresses at once promised to reveal Matyas' future. He walked over and whispered a formula in her ear that locked her mouth shut so tight she couldn't speak at all until he took mercy on her and withdrew his spell.

The address Veil had given him turned out to be a narrow, plain house set amid a row of wooden mansions with turrets and balconies in bright colors. His knock on the unpainted wooden door was answered immediately, as if the woman who opened it had been waiting on the other side. The tallest, and thinnest, woman Matyas had ever seen stood barefoot on an unpolished stone floor. She wore a black shawl that covered her head and shoulders to flow into the loose green dress that rustled against her body as if moved by wind. She said nothing, only stared at Matyas until he said, “Veil sent me.” Still she remained silent. He took the envelope from his pocket and held it out. “She asked me to give this to you.”

Long fingers with sharp nails plucked it from his hand. “Thank you,” she said, then closed the door so swiftly Matyas had to jump back.
Furious, Matyas considered summoning a flame sprite to burn a hole in the door. Were all Veil's friends as crazy as she was? Why did he let her do this to him? Maybe he should just kick the door down, force Old Skinny to tell him what was in the envelope, why Veil wanted her to have it. He stood there a while then stamped up the stone street.

He stayed angry all the way back to the Wizards' Academy, determined to yell at Veil that she couldn't treat him this way. Usually, whenever he was in the courtyard and Veil had not demanded a quick return, he would look around to see if anyone was trying a spell or some other experiment. Today he wanted only to climb up the stairs and confront the old woman who treated him so badly. But then two Masters in their long heavy robes came up to him. “Good day, Matyas,” one of them said. He was a stocky man with the shoulders of a wrestler, though in fact he was a scholar—the chief scholar in a way, for this was Horekh, head of the massive stone library that filled the entire north wall of the Academy. The other was a white-haired old man named Najarian, who had once been head of the council until he was pushed out by Lukhanan and his faction.