The Child Eater (29 page)

Matyas knew very little about the College of Trees, only that it occupied the eastern slope of a small mountain in a country across the Northern Sea. The Unwilled Stride could hardly take Matyas over water, and so he realized he would have to negotiate passage on a ship. And that of course would require money, more than his precious ten florins. He made his way to the port, a place he'd never seen, however many times he and Royja had talked about it, and took lodging in a large inn near the docks.

The inn was called the Green Lion, a title that intrigued Matyas, for in the Transmutation of Metals a green lion was said to appear and devour the outer form of base metal to release what was called True Gold. For two days Matyas sat on an outdoor terrace, sipping tea and thinking how if he'd only studied the Transmutation he would not have to sit here like some sort of performer waiting for a patron.

He sipped marigold tea and tried to ignore the inn owner's nervous looks at the empty tables—who would sit next to someone who could freeze your tongue in your mouth if you talked too loudly, or turn you into a frog if you blocked his view of the Sun?—or the people who turned their faces away as they hurried past him, or the boys who dared each other to go and speak to him but always ran away. Matyas did not
care about such things (or so he told himself). He only cared that he was still in the wrong place. He tried to pass the time by imagining what a True Ladder might be but nothing came to him.

Finally, a man in black and gold livery approached Matyas' small table. Tall, and very thin, with slicked-back gray hair, he made the usual sign of protection, but more as a mark of respect than fear. His employer, he said, was in need of a Man of Knowledge, and might it be possible to beg the Master's help? Matyas had no idea if he was supposed to feign a lack of interest, or maybe even offense, so he simply stood up and allowed the servant to walk him to a black and gold carriage drawn by six black horses with gold bridles.

Matyas never learned the name of the woman who'd sent her servant to hire him. A shield on the gate to the tall, narrow building on top of a hill bore the name “Storkhaven,” and indeed, at least four of the stone building's seven chimneys appeared given over to stork nests. The woman herself, however, gave no name or title, nor did she ask exactly who it was she had hired. Matyas had no idea if people here in the port city had heard of “Matyas the Young.” Tall and thin, like her servant and her house, the woman wore a plain, pale yellow dress with a simple gold chain. Her long white hair was held behind her by an ivory clip in the shape of a swan. Matyas wondered if she didn't tell him her name, or ask his, for fear that such an exchange would give him power over her. As if he would need to know who she was to place any of twenty spells on her!

What she wanted turned out to be almost childish. She hoped to expand her business, she said, and an opportunity had caught her by surprise. Her analysis, or rather the analysis of her experts, told her to trust the enterprise and the man who had presented it. But she was a cautious woman, used to acting slowly, and analysis was not enough to change a lifetime's habit. She wanted knowledge, not just opinion.

Matyas tried not to laugh. He was searching for the secret of flight, and this—this merchant . . . He told her to bring him a clear glass bowl, a pitcher of fresh water and two swan eggs. She was about to send her servant when Matyas told her she had to do it herself. Her face stiffened into a blank mask and Matyas wondered if she guessed he'd just made that up, but she didn't challenge him.

The “investigation,” to use the proper term, took no more than five minutes to uncover the information that she needed certain commitments and then everything would go smoothly. The only real challenge
for Matyas was when she asked his fee. Nervously he said two hundred florins, and immediately regretted it, for her eyes widened and she immediately said yes, of course, and sent her servant for the money. All the way down the hill, and then the next day as he paid his bill at the inn and found a ship to give him passage, he experienced over and over the humiliation of that moment, her contempt at how cheaply he valued his services. Even as he was settling into his cabin on the boat, he was wondering if he should have said he'd made a mistake, he'd meant to say
five
hundred. And as the boat slipped from its moorings and he saw a pair of storks overhead, he had to fight the urge to take control of them and send them to attack her house. He knew it was unimportant—two hundred was certainly enough, given that the passage was only fifteen, and it was clearly very easy to earn more—so why did it bother him so much?

Matyas expected the sailors to try to avoid him, the way the patrons of the Green Lion had done, maybe even refuse to sail with a wizard on board. Instead, they looked pleased, even saluted him as they went past where he was standing at the rail. It took him some time to realize that sailing was a dangerous life and a Master meant a layer of protection. It surprised (and disturbed) him how good that made him feel.

When Matyas first arrived at the College of Trees, he thought he must have made a mistake—that, or the wood spirits he'd conjured to guide him had misunderstood, for while the mountainside they led him to was dense with trees, there were no buildings he could see. The trees were old and bent, twisted like a net, making it hard to see more than twenty yards or so in any direction. It reminded Matyas of the dark grove, but without the sense of malevolence. Nor could he detect a hidden light or song that might have signaled the presence of an imprisoned Kallistocha. (If he found one, he wondered, would he feel some need to return home and tell the High Prince he was not alone?)

There
was
something there, something complicated that he could not quite understand. Despite the bright sunlight of a summer morning, a chill moved through him. He'd charged his robe with a spell to keep him warm or cool, as the season required, but now he still hugged the fabric against himself.

It took him a while to notice the people. It wasn't just the way they moved softly in and out of the trees, or the way their robes appeared to be made out of twigs and leaves, or even that there were so few of them.
They simply took no notice of him, did not appear to care that a stranger had invaded their world.

Matyas stood and watched. Because of their rigid robes and their long hair worn down and uncombed, Matyas found it hard to tell if they were male or female, young or old. They moved at varied speeds but never in a straight line, and when they stopped their bodies settled into odd angles, never convoluted, but never just upright. Like trees. They'd lived in the forest so long they'd started to imitate the trees—no, not an imitation. The more he watched them, the more he could sense some energy or intelligence flowing between the people and the forest.

He stood, and waited in what he hoped was a respectful manner, but no one moved to greet him, so finally he just strode up to someone who had stirred from the odd postures they all took on when they were standing still. He thought this one might be younger than the others, and probably female by the softness of her face under the tangle of hair. Moving quickly, to catch her in the open, he said, “Greetings. I come in search of the College of Trees.” She said nothing, only nodded slightly. Behind her, two trees rustled their branches. He said, “My name is Ma—”

“Matyas. Of the tribe of Florian.”

Matyas' eyes widened. He'd never thought of himself that way, but he liked it. “Yes. Will you help me?”

“Help you how?”

He took a breath to control himself. Did all female wizards twist everything into riddles? If he shook her, he wondered, would leaves and berries fall out of her hair? He said, as patiently as he could, “Help me find the College.”

She said, “I cannot help you do something you have already accomplished.” When he just stared at her, a quick smile softened her face. “This is the College of Trees. You are standing in it.”

“But there is nothing here. Where do you all live?” She shrugged, and he imagined them all sleeping among the branches, plucking leaves and small red berries for their meals. “Then where is the library?” he asked. “Where do you study? Where are your texts, your secrets?” He could not bear that he had come all this way just to meet a group of deranged people who imitated trees. Another wrong place.

“Look,” the woman said. She turned away from him and moved her head from side to side, slowly, as if asking Matyas to follow her gaze. He
stared, trying hard to see what she did, angry at himself for his dullness and at her for exposing him, until suddenly he saw it. The trees! The trees themselves were the College. Words appeared, coded into the branches, stored in the trunks, sung in the leaves. Matyas laughed and clapped his hands. The humans here appeared insignificant because they were. Here were trees whose knowledge stretched back before the Academy, before Florian, before even Joachim. The right place! He turned to thank the woman but she'd already blended back into the trunks and branches.

Matyas spent most of the summer on the mountain. It took him only a few days (but a very uncomfortable few days) to learn how to recognize food, or sleep among the leaves. It took quite a bit longer to grasp what really mattered, how to follow the ancient mind of roots and branches. That too came, the first glimpses building on each other, until he began to see patterns and structures. The great library at the Academy, the piles of books in Veil's tower, these were all written by people, compiled by people, used by people. Here was something very different—wonders and secrets, and a whole way of seeing the world that was ancient when the Kallistochoi first migrated to the Earth.

Only—

Nothing in these vast wonders taught him what he'd come to find out.

After months of frustration, he finally sought out the woman who'd first revealed the College to him. “Please,” he said, then thought to fall on his knees and grasp her legs, something he'd seen the people do with the trees. “My time has been blessed by wisdom. Thankfulness fills my heart.” She said nothing, did not appear to react at all to his body against her legs. Matyas said, “And yet, there is one small thing that eludes me. It is the thing I came to discover but cannot seem to find. Please—where can I find the secret of flying? Where can I find a True Ladder?”

She looked down at him now, and Matyas thought he saw a flicker in her eyes.
Finally
, he thought. Then suddenly she lifted her head and laughed. Matyas jumped to his feet as the branches shook wildly. All around him people he couldn't even see were laughing! The woman said, “You came
here
to study flying?
Here?
”

Matyas stared at the trees, the solid trunks, the low branches that always twisted back toward the ground, and above all the roots—clutching the Earth, embedded deeply in the dirt and the rock. He tried to say something, only to feel all the words empty out of his head.

He left that day.

Thus began what later scholars and wizards would call the Great Journey, or even NUAB, the New Union of Above and Below—though, as the more cynical would point out, if Master Matyas had found the means to extend his journey
above
he would have ended his travels and all the mysteries he revealed would have stayed hidden, all the doorways remained closed. “Failure is the doorway to success,” the more pious Matyasans would answer. And yet they never could exactly delineate just what the Master himself experienced, for the fact was, Matyas never wrote anything down, never passed anything on directly to students. It was only later, when wizards, adventurers and historians attempted to retrace the Journey, that the Secret Wonders found their way into books and oral teachings.

He traveled to great centers of learning, huge libraries of stone or glass, some with Masters so old and deep in study they were barely visible. In one place, each wizard perched alone, naked, on top of a stone pillar engraved with ancient texts; in another, the teachers themselves had long ago vanished, leaving only anthills to protect their scrolls and parchments. He dived into a lake whose surface was so still it served as a mirror of the sky for scholars to study the Sun without blinding themselves. At the bottom of the lake, he came to a library that only wizards might enter, simply because no one else could maintain a single breath long enough to reach the entryway and step into a dry courtyard filled with flowers.

On a mountain halfway around the world from the College of Trees, he found a library that changed its shape whenever he turned his back on it. After a time, he realized it was made out of people's thoughts, those of the ancient wizards who'd created it, but also the attentions, expectations and random distractions of anyone who wished to enter it. Any laxness of attention could cause it to change shape or disappear altogether. Matyas stayed there three weeks.

Again and again he followed rumors, stories, promises of a new, greater, more secret center of learning. In a desert where water had to be magically summoned from the dry rocks, he found a community of scholars without any books at all. Convinced that writing caused true learning to evaporate, they took in orphans (according to some, they “encouraged” the orphaning of bright children) and taught them to memorize texts that on paper would have run to thousands of pages.

In all these places, Matyas found himself drawn into wonder and beauty and the joy of knowledge. And yet, in each place there would come a moment, whether in the middle of the night, or while reading a text, or lifting a spoonful of soup to his mouth, when he would remember—abruptly, as if someone had slapped him—just why he had come to this place. Then he knew it was time to ask the great question.
How can a man fly?

No one could answer him. It was always the wrong place. The wrong people.

He gave up on centers of learning and sought out hermits, wise beggars, teachers who had abandoned teaching and lived in caves, or slept in doorways of buildings they scorned to enter. He located a sorceress who had found the Secret of Endings when she was five years old and made sure never to get any older. He met an old man who limped every day through the dirty streets of a grand city, collecting scraps of cloth and paper which he endlessly arranged and rearranged, for each configuration, he said, described a different way the world might die, and each time he created such images and then destroyed them, he was closing the door on another calamity.