Skrit appeared to consider it for a time, although it's difficult to know whether he really considered it, or just paused a good long time to make it look as if he was giving it serious deliberation.

I realized that Skrit was afraid of him. But not being willing to admit that, Skrit suddenly squared his shoulders and, for just a moment, I thought he was going to go after the newly arrived Tacit. Instead, however, he snorted derisively and said, "If you want to be pals with some crippled wh.o.r.e's son, ain't no never mind to me. You ain't worth wasting the skinned knuckles on."

It was an elegant means of saving face. If Tacit had pressed the issue, of course, Skrit would have had to run for it. But Tacit did no such thing, instead simply standing there, fists remaining c.o.c.ked until Skrit and his cronies had swaggered off. Then Tacit turned to me and looked down. "Can you walk?"

"Kind of," I said.

He hauled me to my feet. I was amazed at the strength in the slim arm; it was as if I had no weight, he pulled me up so easily. "I'm Tacit," he said.

"I know," I said, partly leaning against him as I steadied myself. "I'm Apropos."

"What did you do to get on Skrit's bad side there, Po?" Tacit was the first person to call me by anything resembling a nickname. There was an implied instant friendliness there that I found appealing.

"I'm not entirely sure," I admitted. "He called my mother a wh.o.r.e."

"Oh," Tacit said sympathetically. "That got you angry?"

"Not especially. She is a wh.o.r.e. But when I called his mother a wh.o.r.e, that got him angry. I guess it's not good to be a wh.o.r.e, huh?"

"Well . . . that depends who you talk to," Tacit said thoughtfully, scratching his chin. "If you ask a man who needs a wh.o.r.e, then it's probably a pretty good thing to be. Anyone else . . ." And he shrugged as if the sentiment wasn't worth pursuing. "Where do y'live?"

"Stroker's."

"Come on, then." He looked at my leg in fascination. "What's wrong with your leg?"

"I dunno. Born that way."

"Oh."

He guided me back to the tavern, and when we arrived there, Madelyne let out a shriek and-for a moment-thought that Tacit was the one who had been responsible for the beating I'd taken. I quickly set her straight on that, but when she asked me what sort of words had pa.s.sed between the bullies and me, I found that I couldn't tell her. I sensed-correctly, I think-that she would have been hurt by it. So I said, "They made fun of my limp." I caught Tacit's eye, but it wasn't really necessary. He was fast enough off the mark to know that utter candor with my mother wasn't a necessity.

Stroker, who was behind the counter pouring out mead, called out, "Well, you better get used to it! And where's my mug! The one you were supposed to bring from the silversmith, d.a.m.n your eyes!"

Before I could explain that I'd never quite made it there, Tacit stepped in. "I'll fetch it for you, sir," he said, and he was out the door before Stroker could utter another word.

Madelyne, bandaging my bruises and clucking over my ruined nose, looked out the open door through which Tacit had just pa.s.sed and said in admiration, "What a nice lad. You were very fortunate, Apropos, that he stepped in to help you."

"I know, Ma," I said.

She wiped away the blood with a cool, wet cloth. "Making sport of a child's imperfections. Children can be so cruel."

"I know, Ma."

"Well . . . don't you make mind of none of them," she told me firmly. "Because you . . . you're a child of destiny. You're going to accomplish great things, Apropos. Great things."

"I know, Ma."

But I was looking at her with different eyes that day. From the things that the others had said . . . even from the tone that Tacit had adopted . . . I knew that somehow my mother was lower in the eyes of people than other women were. Lower because of what she did. It was as if my eyes had been opened, even as they'd swelled shut. I watched over the next few days the way that others treated her and truly saw it for the first time as degrading. I felt anger beginning to swell within me . . . but oddly enough, not for those that were doing the treatment, but rather her for letting it be done to her.

A week later, matters came to a head one night when my mother was entertaining a customer. I'd taken to sleeping in the stables, claiming that the room was a bit too cold for me, and I found greater warmth covered with straw and drawing warmth from the bodies of the animals that were cl.u.s.tered about. Madelyne thought it odd, but didn't press the point. Consequently, I wasn't there when her bed collapsed in, I presume, mid-coitus. But I heard about it not too long afterward when I heard her angry voice calling, "Apropos!" I wasn't used to hearing that tone from her. There was generally very little I could do that got her truly angry. "Where are you?"

"Over here, Ma," I called from the pile of hay I'd staked out.

She approached me, waving one of the legs that I recognized as having been from her bed. For a moment I thought she was going to use it to club me. Then she pointed to one end of it. "What is this?" she asked, her voice steady.

"I dunno."

"It's the leg of my bed, Apropos."

"If you knew, then why did you ask?"

"It's about three-quarters sawed through. And now it broke. Why do you think it broke, Apropos?"

I stared at her as if she'd lost her mind. "It broke because it was three-quarters sawed through. You just said so, Ma."

"The point is, who sawed it?"

"I don't know."

"I think you do." She tapped it gently into her open palm. "I think you sawed it, Apropos."

I shook my head so vigorously that the room seemed to spin around me.

As if I hadn't even offered protest, she continued calmly, "Why did you do it, honey?"

I started to tell her that I hadn't, but I found that I wasn't able to look her in the eyes as I did so. It is a rather disconcerting and annoying thing to discover that one cannot lie to one's parent. "I felt like it," I said, which was certainly true enough.

"All right, you felt like it. Why did you feel like it?"

"Because when you're with those men in bed, you're a wh.o.r.e, and you shouldn't be a wh.o.r.e because that's a bad thing."

Slowly she put the wooden leg down. I wasn't sure, as the words had all come spilling out of me, how she was going to react. I antic.i.p.ated anger, or hurt. But she just seemed a bit sad. "Why do you think it's a bad thing?"

"Because . . ." I hadn't actually been able to wrap myself around the concept fully, and so I fell back on having my world defined by peer groups. "Because the other boys say so."

"I see. And do you always believe what the other boys say?"

"If they believe it enough to beat me up over it, I kind of do."

She shook her head sadly and sat down on the straw next to me. "And that's why you're sleeping out here now." It wasn't a question, and I nodded my head. "Apropos, you're going to have to learn sooner or later that you can't just let other people decide what the world around you should and shouldn't be."

"Why?"

"Because you have to make of the world what you want to make of it."

"Why?"

"Because," she said for what seemed the umpteenth time, "you have a destiny."

I sighed and flopped back down on the hay. It was quite clear to me that we weren't going to get any further that night. The destiny business was what my mother always trotted out when she had no answers. She tended to trot it out a lot.

To her credit, Madelyne didn't endeavor to press the point. Instead she simply sat next to me, running her fingers through my hair as if she wanted to reaffirm for herself that I was still there. When morning came, I awoke to find that she had fallen asleep next to me. And I realized that, as the sun shone down on her face, I still loved her, even though I vaguely understood that I should by rights be ashamed of her.

She'd slept with me, and I loved her. I pulled the coin out of my tunic, the one that I'd found on the street a week previous. I'd been trying to decide what to do with it, and at that point I knew precisely what it should be used for. My mother's hand was lying open, and I pressed the coin into her palm. Her fingers automatically wrapped around the coin, even in her sleep.

I was officially a wh.o.r.e-lover. It didn't feel too bad.

Chapter 5.

Tacit was the one who taught me how to steal.

I enjoyed going about with him. I quickly learned that he was an orphan, and there was something attractive about that status. He answered to no one save himself, and whenever he came into town, it was always with a confident swagger, and coins jingling in a small leather bag that dangled from his belt. That self-confidence clearly translated into someone whom no one wished to cross, and it always amused me to watch the other kids give him a wide berth. I endeavored to imitate that swagger of his, but naturally with my lame and twisted leg, I was not overly successful.

Tacit walked a remarkably fine line with me. Since the day we met, he never made any mention of my handicap. One would have thought that he didn't notice it at all. However, when we walked about in the woods, he would always manage somehow to slow down, allowing me to keep pace with him, without ever giving me the impression that he was holding back himself. He never wanted me to feel as if I was a burden.

He maintained his home in the Elderwoods. This alone was enough to give him a certain cache, for the Elderwoods was considered a sorcerous place, where creatures of myth were known to gallivant about. It was said once that an entire army of weavers was set upon in the Elderwoods and was, to the very last one, slaughtered by a mad king who had vowed to rid the land of weavers once and for all. Although he had supposedly annihilated them, they unleashed a curse upon him so comprehensive, so frightening and so terrible, that the mad king's name of so long ago had been forever erased from the annals of mankind. His name disappeared from all histories, his image from all tapestries. He might just as well have never been born. A rather sad fate, really, for someone who set such store by trying to achieve fame for great deeds.

The slaying of wizards is a foolish endeavor, and should only be undertaken by those who are of a mind to commit suicide on a cosmic scale.

So supposedly the ghosts of the wizards strode the Elderwoods since that time. Tacit said that he had resided in the woods most of his life and had never seen any such evidence to support the rumor. He was not above, however, making use of this belief where he saw fit. For a number of shorter paths lay straight through the Elderwoods, and any number of travelers were inclined to brave the haunted forest for the purpose of saving some time. As a result of this tourist trade, Tacit would set traps and snares. But he was most adept at making his traps practically invisible, so that they could be ascribed to mystic forces.

Once, for instance, there was a rather portly merchant who was making his way through the Elderwoods with a most confident stride, until he stepped into a snare that hauled him upside down. Tacit had camouflaged the snare in such a way that it simply wasn't visible against the backdrop of the trees overhead-particularly difficult to spot when one was upside down and thrashing about. Convinced that he was in the hands of implacable spirits, the merchant did the only honorable thing under the circ.u.mstances and pa.s.sed out. Relieving him of his purse of coins was but the work of a moment. Tacit cut him down before we dashed off into the woods, leaving the terrified merchant unconscious on the ground.

"Why'd you let him go?" I asked.

"Because we're more effectively served if he returns and speaks of his horrifying encounter with invisible creatures, rather than to speak of the cleverly camouflaged cable which snared him. Indeed, by the time he's finished telling and retelling the story, I guarantee you he will have been accosted by twenty decapitated ghouls all pelting him with their severed heads." He let out a low whistle as he emptied the contents of the pouch into his hand. Forty gold sovereigns poured out, the face of King Runcible looking at us in profile on each one of them. The coins glinted in the noon sun. "This," he said, "was a wealthy individual." He poured a little under half into his hand and offered them to me. "Want your share?"

"My share?" I looked at him askance. "Why should I get a share? You did all the work."

"Maybe. But you shared the risk. We're partners now, you and me. Partners and friends." He chucked me on the shoulder. "Or haven't you noticed."

Truthfully, I hadn't. I had simply taken to hanging about with Tacit, and as months had rolled over into years, I had always a.s.sumed that he kept me around more to kill boredom than out of any sense of loyalty or interest or any enjoyment of my company. "We're friends?" I said, which was probably not the most brilliant comment to make.

"Well, sure we are! What'd you think?!" Seeing that I wasn't reaching out for the coins, he took my wrist, opened my hand, and poured the coins into my palm. My fist closed reflexively on them and he smiled approvingly.

"Why are we friends?" I asked. "I mean . . . why are you my friend?"

"You don't know?"

I shook my head. "You do most of the talking," I said. "I just sort of follow you about. I limp. I'm not much use."

"How can you say that!" He perched on the edge of a rock and regarded me with open incredulity. A small insect nattered about in his face. He brushed it away without giving it any thought. "Why, you and me, we're . . . we're . . ."

"We're what?"

He appeared to give the matter a good deal of thought. He scratched the side of his head and pondered the situation for a time more . . . and then he looked up and pointed. "Do you see that?" he asked.

I looked where he indicated. All I could see was a hawk flapping gracefully through the sky. "You mean the bird?" I asked.

He nodded, brushing a hank of his hair from his face. "Do you know how it flies?"

"It . . . flaps its wings."

"And beyond that?"

There were certainly scientific answers to the question, but I had no clue as to what they might be. "It just . . . I don't know . . . it just does. It flies."

"It's the same thing with us, then, isn't it," said Tacit. "There's no reason to wonder why we're friends. We just . . . are. And you know what I see in you, Po? That hawk."

I flushed slightly at the thought. "That's silly."

"It's not silly. That's you, Po. That hawk." The creature swooped and dove over us. "I can see it in you. You're going to fly, Po. What matters a lame leg when you're going to wind up soaring over all of them."

"That's what my mother's always saying. That I have a destiny."

"Well, perhaps your mother knows what she's about, then."

At that moment, a large splotch landed smack on my head. As I felt its warmth dribbling down the side of my face, I didn't even have to wonder for a moment what it was. The hawk had shat on me.

To his credit, Tacit didn't say anything. If he wanted to laugh, he did a superb job of suppressing it. Instead he pulled out a cloth and handed it to me, and I wiped the bird c.r.a.p from me as best I could.

I looked up at Tacit and noticed that he had stiffened. Tacit's instincts were second to none, and something had attracted his interest. His nostrils flared. Clearly he scented something. I tried to sniff the air but I detected nothing.

"Not great, heaping snootsful," he chided when he saw me trying to detect whatever it was that he had noticed. "You have to be more attuned than that. Just relax, Po. Don't think about smelling it. Don't think about anything. Just relax. Relax and let the forest talk to you. When there's danger, it will tell you right enough."

We had had talks like this in the past. Tacit seemed determined to transform the limping wh.o.r.e's son into a woodsman like himself, and the more I protested the uselessness of the endeavor, the more he seemed bound to proceed.

Once more, I tried to do as he said. I sat with my left leg crossed against my right thigh and tried to relax. There was a soft breeze blowing about me, and as I noticed the breeze, I also heard a gentle rustling in the trees and bushes. My imagination began to wander, and I forgot the immediacy of the situation. Instead I could almost begin to fancy that I heard the Elders of the woods whispering to me, speaking secret things of destiny and fate, of craft and wisdom, of smoke . . .

. . . smoke . . .

"A fire," I said slowly. "A big one." And then I started to hear voices as well. "And a crowd."

He nodded when I mentioned the fire, and then nodded again when I further opined that there were people about. "These are my woods," he said, sounding rather possessive. "If people are loitering around, I want to know why. Besides, the last thing I'm interested in seeing are drunken fools letting a fire get out of control and level the Elderwoods. Haunted or not, trees hereabouts still burn."

I couldn't disagree with that. I shoved the coins into the pocket of my jerkin and followed Tacit as best I could. As always, he moved effortlessly. When he would push brush aside to pa.s.s through, it made no noise. Wherever he crossed, be it gra.s.s or dirt, he left no footprint.

There was still a great deal about Tacit that I couldn't begin to understand. His woodcraft was like nothing I'd ever experienced. It was almost magical, but he claimed no knowledge of weaving and indeed I'd never actually seen him perform any actions that could be ascribed to magic. I knew little about his early days, and one time I'd decided to press him on the matter. "Well," he had said, "you've read tales of infants being abandoned in forests and raised by wolves?"

I nodded, and then had looked at him skeptically. "You're saying you were raised by wolves?"

"No." And then he had smiled impishly and said, "Unicorns."