The Return of Fitzroy Angursell Read online

  “And what, may I ask, is the Tigara? The Fen spirits?”

  We turned another corner, and came up to a kind of wall made of giant grasses or reeds. These ones went high above our heads, out of sight of the thin illumination; the stems I could see were knobbly and thick as my wrist except for the engorged joints larger than a clenched fist. I frowned at them. I think the joints meant that they were a form of grass rather than reed, but it has been a long time since I last studied botany in any way, shape, or form.

  The three men stopped. Shorty put his hand on the bicycle handles to tug me to a halt before I quite crashed into Hank.

  “We should tell you about the Tigara before we go any further,” Hank said seriously. “Stories say—you might be able to tell us if they’re true—that you never liked these Fens, is that right?”

  I decided to err on the side of an always-true if not necessarily relevant utterance. “Legends are not always inaccurate.”

  “You see,” said Shorty, in a low, satisfied hiss.

  Hank ignored him except to hang the lantern on the bicycle handlebar so that he could hook his thumbs into the waistband of the loose trousers he wore. “I don’t know if you ever heard tell of what was in here besides the tipilipi? The spirits, that is.”

  I thought of those stories from the river folk. “Hobgoblins and skinwalkers …”

  Hank coughed up another wad of phlegm and spat it into the grasses with a plop that sounded very loud in the stillness. “Not those bogeys from the river-folk. If you were listening to them, no wonder you hated the swamps. They don’t like anything that their witches can’t help them with. We have one skinwalker in a thousand years, and we saw to it, and they never can get over it.”

  “Hank,” Shorty said in a warning tone, then added to me, “It’s not good to talk about it. No offence to you—it’s private. Not for outsiders, not even you, sire. Savvy?”

  “Entirely,” I replied gravely. “But the Tigara?”

  The Tigara was clearly not in the same category as hobgoblins or other bogeys of the river-folk. Hank’s voice filled with wary pride as he described, a little haltingly, the being at the heart of the Fens.

  “In the beginning, the first men came out of a hole in the edge of the Escarpment, in a sacred cave, eh. But there were no women, and they were lonely and sad. They said, ‘How can we live like this? We have cows to milk but no women to make cheese, we have clay for pots but no women to cook with them, we have straw for our houses but no women in our beds.’”

  I knew better than to interrupt stories of the Beginning, so I merely murmured an encouraging sound.

  Hank went on. “So they spoke and were sad. But Crow came down from the Big Sky and said, ‘Go into the swamps and ask the Tigara for aid.’ The first men listened to Crow and came down from the Escarpment to the edge of the swamps. They found there much clay for their pots, and grasses for their houses, and water for their cows, but they found no women, and they muttered. But Crow came down again and again said, ‘Go into the swamps and ask the Tigara for aid.’”

  Shorty took up the story next. “The first men made a boat out of the grasses, and they took with them milk from their cows and pots from their workings, and they poled their way deep into the swamps.”

  “They did not need to worry about the Fen spirits?” I asked, when he stopped there.

  “Not then,” said Hank, with another phlegmy cough.

  “In the deep heart of the swamps the first men found a great circle of water, a lake, black and still,” Shorty said. “And there was the Tigara. They asked the Tigara for aid, for women to make cheese and cook and share their beds and so on, for they were lonely and sad without them. And the Tigara said that the women had strayed to find a resting-place, but if the first men were brave they could be found and brought home.”

  Hank cleared his throat. “The first men were afraid of the Tigara, but one was brave enough, and he said he would go find the women for them all. So the Tigara told him to dive down into the centre of the water, down and down, until he could bring up a root of the siriava plant—”

  Shorty interrupted him brusquely. “Which is a secret plant, sire, we cannot tell you more of it, but that was what the Tigara wanted.”

  From the tone of his voice I gathered that this story was not often told to those outside the community, and they were not accustomed to guarding the secret knowledge.

  “I understand,” I assured him.

  Shorty went on. “The bravest of the first men dove down as the Tigara said, and brought back the root from the bottom of the lake for the Tigara, and the Tigara taught them how to find the women and bring them home. So ever after we have honoured the Tigara.”

  “The Tigara is very old now, and very big, eh, they say,” said Hank. “In the old days the Tigara ruled the tipilipi, what you call the Fen spirits, and they were …”

  There was a pause, before Shorty offered, “They were always dangerous, but not as dangerous, in the old days. Not to our people, anyways.”

  It was my understanding that the Fen spirits were more than the mischievous will-o’-the-wisps of other marshes, and not only drowned but also enslaved the souls of their victims as means to ensure their own reproduction.

  I confess I was curious. “Were you unhappy with the Last Emperor’s work?”

  “Oh no, no,” said Shorty. “We’d lost some of the old knowledge, see, over time, and the Tigara had fallen asleep, deep deep asleep, so we didn’t know … We only ever came to the edge, to get the clay and the grasses, and then only for special ceremonies when you really can’t use the regular stuff. We didn’t like what the tipilipi had become either.”

  This was a relief. I had obviously missed a few major items in my preparatory work, but at least I didn’t feel obliged to re-do (or at least, attempt to re-do) the bindings on behalf of offended locals.

  The charming origin story did not explain the need to set the Fens on fire, however, though my three present companions seemed to think it a sufficient explanation.

  “Thank you for telling me that story,” I said, recalling the manners appropriate to someone not the Last Emperor of Astandalas, or indeed not necessarily not the first, and then, when they seemed set to keep walking, added, “Ah—the fire?”

  “Oh,” said Shorty, in audible surprise at my density.

  “The Tigara is very old and very big, like,” said Hank, “and needs help to shed its skin. The shamans said now was the time.”

  “It’s an honour,” said Wat, the first time he had spoken, in a voice that made it suddenly very clear to me that they had not expected to survive their night’s work.

  While I have encountered dragons, sea serpents, monstrous lizards, and any number of large snakes—what sort of magic-wielding folk hero hasn’t?—giant intelligent serpents from the dawn of time were new to me.

  It was more than a little humbling to realize that despite being well-learned in the ways of odd, obscure, and frankly arcane magics—not to mention being personally responsible for the magical state of the world—I had never even heard of the Tigara before, let alone encountered it.

  “Oh,” I said as we came around the wall of grass and found the circular lake, the waters black and still as promised, and coiled up just under the surface a creature of gold and black and bronzy green. “Isn’t it magnificent.”

  The Tigara was enormous. The coils were wide as a horse, filling the lake with layer upon layer of smooth, shining serpent, until nothing was visible but the glass-like surface and the curves of the great creature.

  The tiny scales on the massive coils were jewel-bright from an internal glow, for neither the sky nor Hank’s thief’s lantern illuminated more than our immediate surroundings. The sky was invisible and the water was black, but a few feet under the water the serpent glowed with its own radiance.

  I took a few steps away from the others, forgetting about the bicycle until it clattered down onto the boardwalk. I wished I could touch the scales, which were surely smooth as polished metal and soft as fine leather. I could not help myself from letting my magic rise to greet the power here, so very distinct from anything I knew as emperor or as lord magus.

  This was not a being of the Schooled Magic of the Empire, or even of the hybrid magic I had wrought since the Fall. The Tigara was one of the Ancients of Days, and it tasted of the Wild.

  I made it a quarter of the way around the lake before I came to the end of the boardwalk. I stopped there, and looked back at the three men gathered next to the bicycle, three upright shadows half-outlined by the thief’s lantern. The Tigara’s light did not reach upward out of the water; nor did the surface ripple.

  The surface did not ripple, and I saw no movement, but nevertheless the Tigara lifted its head out of the water to regard me.

  The head was a serpent’s, not a dragon’s: it bore no horns nor ruff nor ears, and its tongue, when it tasted the air, was forked and flickering. Its eyes were dark and lidless and intelligent. It regarded me, tongue flickering to take my scent, and I knew it had felt my magic stir, and recognized it.

  I inclined my head to the serpent, as an equal greeting another. “I bid you good evening, Tigara,” I said in my most court-formal voice.

  The great serpent tilted its head to one side. The air and the water were both very still. My voice was quiet, seeming to fall into silence only a few feet away.

  “So you wear a new body now, Crow?” the Tigara said at last, amusement threading through what was otherwise a breathy hiss. “It has been long and long since you sent your people to me.”

  I have never quite figured out just what it is about me that makes people think I’m a trickster god. Even without such a story as Hank and Shorty had just told me to bear in mind—and I would never knowingly bla
spheme sacred stories told me in good faith—I have never felt it a good idea to pretend to a divinity not mine. Presumptuous I may be in many ways, but even I do not go that far.

  But oh, how I was tempted to lie!

  “I am not Crow,” I said, firmly.

  The Tigara regarded me with what I have to say struck me as an unbelieving attitude. “If you insist,” it said politely, as if this were quite a usual sort of conversation to have with Crow. “Have you a name you wish to use to go along with your current form, then?”

  Long experience has taught me to keep all sighs inward and silent. But then again—for the first time in thirty-odd (or a thousand) years I had the opportunity, even the obligation, to give my name of choice. “I do prefer Fitzroy Angursell,” I declared happily, smiling brightly at the serpent.

  The Tigara actually laughed, with a hissing, chortling sort of snicker, and its glow brightened. “I have been deep in the Dreaming,” it said, “but even I have heard that name. No wonder I felt the waters stir when you touched them! Very well, old friend, keep your secrets safe in your nest. What do you intend here tonight?”

  I felt on safer ground here. “I was asked to assist in the burning of the Fens.”

  The Tigara lifted its head, tongue flickering in the direction of Hank and Shorty and Wat. “Ah,” it said, lowering itself again down to my level. “I had thought, in my sleep, that all the old ways had been forgotten. Sleep was laid on me and mine, sleep and a soft nest, and a net to hold in place. I stirred in my sleep once, twice, but no one came to the calling, and I sloughed off my old scales as best I could and burrowed deeper into the mud to soothe the itch, and I waited.”

  “I, too, waited,” I said quietly.

  The Tigara laughed again, more softly than before. “Crow, waiting! Fitzroy Angursell, counselling sleep and a soft nest! It is long since time for both of us to shed the old skin and burn down the dross.”

  The great serpent was beautiful and perilous. I was hardly going to offer to free it from the net entirely, not when I knew so few of the stories concerning the Tigara and the tipilipi Fen lights.

  Kip, for one, would be deeply unhappy if I brought all riverside trade to a screeching halt because of a misplaced unbinding. I may be an anarchist by temperament but my odd friendship with that devoted bureaucrat has taught me some appreciation for the joys of orderly government.

  Besides, if I did something like that everyone would know I was here. There was no one of sufficient magical skill currently in Solaara to tell that I set the Fens on fire, but anyone with half a brain could figure out that the only person who could easily and invisibly change the bindings on the Fens was the person who set them in the first place.

  “These men are brave,” I said then, “and they did me a good turn.”

  The Tigara gave me a too-knowing look with its inhuman dark eyes, and it laughed again. This time the hisses set up little running whispers in the grass around us.

  My emperor has donkey ears, I thought, keeping my countenance serene.

  “They have seen me,” said the Tigara, lifting its head high and then arcing it down over the three men and the bicycle like a flash of lightning, jaws wide as its bronze tongue darted out over them, perhaps even to touch their heads. A faint cry came back across the black water towards me, and a motion as if one were swaying with the shock. But they did not fall, and they did not say anything else. With a motion fast as a whiplash the Tigara drew back to its former position next to me. The water stilled almost immediately.

  “They are brave,” the Tigara proclaimed. “And as in the past Crow has spoken for their people, and I have listened for the good to be done for me, so now do you speak for them, and I listen, for the good to be done for me. Light the grasses, Fitzroy Angursell. Shed the old skin, burn the dross, bring renewal to the waters. The people will witness, as their ancestors witnessed, and take back the news of the Ancient of Days to their sons and daughters. So shall it be.”

  I reviewed the phrases quickly and then agreed with all due solemnity. “So shall it be. I bid you a good renewal, Tigara.”

  The Tigara laughed again, and this time the whispers did not fade. “I bid you a good burning, Fitzroy Angursell. Do not forget your old friends for so long again.”

  Sound advice in so many ways!

  I inclined my head in farewell, then turned and walked back towards the other men. The Tigara watched me go; when I reached the circle cast by the thief’s lantern I felt a brief rush of wind and heard a nearly soundless Fly with joy, old Crow as the great head plunged past us into the water and disappeared into the endless coils.

  One look at Hank’s face in the lantern-light made it clear our voices had not carried. All they had seen was me talking to the Tigara, equal to equal.

  I grinned brightly at them and rubbed my hands together. “Shall we? The night is wearing on, and I grow hungry. The Tigara says you are worthy of carrying the night’s deeds home to your people, and grants me permission to be the fire-lighter. I trust you will not make any unnecessary confession of arson; you need only tell the truth as you have witnessed it, and blame me.”

  “But we asked you to help us, eh,” Hank said.

  It amazes me that people manage to get to adulthood without understanding the fundamental means of obfuscating a matter by telling the truth.

  I said patiently, “You came across a man who had fallen into the Fens while cycling at night. He claimed to be heading towards the River-Horse Inn, but was nowhere near the river path. Whether or not you believed his story is immaterial …”

  “I understand,” said Shorty, who was emerging as the most quick-witted of the two of them. (I had my doubts about the taciturn Wat. Of my most silent guards, one is a quite accomplished poet and, indeed, Commander in Chief of the Imperial Guard, and the other is steady as a foundation wall. You can imagine which was the one to assist me most.)

  “Very good. Shall I begin?”

  They nodded, or I thought they did. I was conscious of the no-doubt still observing Tigara, and the reputation that I apparently had even amongst originary deities, not to mention the one that has spent thirty-odd (or a thousand) years building amongst my people, and … well.

  How could I resist the advice given me by the ancient serpent?

  Burn down the dross, indeed.

  I smiled at the three men, whose body language was both apprehensive and excited. Wary, fearful, exalted: had they anticipated seeing the Tigara? Had they thought they would come to the centre of the Fens and fire the dead grass and wood around them, and hope they did the right thing according to their ancient traditions even as they burned with the rest?

  I squatted down, rather awkwardly, and laid both palms flat on the boardwalk. I sent my magic into the wood, running down the boards and the piers and the longer pieces (the stringers?) supporting the cross-pieces. The piers were indeed ancient, the boards younger, decades rather than centuries old. My magic touched the wood and laid protections along it, against fire but also against rot while I was about it.

  The spirit houses along the edges of the Fens sparkled in my mind, their magic almost alien despite being my own. So many years—generations for the river-folk—of witches bringing their salt and wine and speaking the little spells that anchored the working. Each utterance, each offering, laying a knot in the magic that was not mine, tying the net ever tighter and holding the Fen spirits within their bounds.

  I was glad withal it was myself lighting the fire, for I could ensure it did not destroy those bindings as it burned down the rest. I hoped Kip would appreciate the restraint when he realized it was me.

  As a final gesture I drew my magic around the three men and myself to protect us from what was shortly to be a raging inferno. It was visible in the air, a flurry of gold and scarlet sparks. I wished I had put back on my scarlet silk mantle but it really wasn’t—

  Oh, the hell with prudence.

  I reached into the bag and pulled it out first try, which was … useful … and slung it over my shoulder and around my arm with a flourish. It was hardly past midnight. One likes to dress the part as much as possible, you see.

  One likes to do the whole thing properly, in fact.

  I reached into my bag again and pulled out a harp. I spent a few moments checking the tuning of the strings, because playing out of tune is something I abhor. It’s not as if I were actually going to perform magic by means of music—though I have met a few practitioners of that and related arts—more that I was going to accompany my magic-working with music. For the effect, I suppose you could say.