Free Otherwise by John Crowley Page A

in the forest; he could see too the broken body he had saved. Both were Redhand.
    “They say—Visitor,” he answered.
    “That’s…”
    “It’s sufficient.”
    “Fauconred has told me… incredible things. Which he apparently believes.” His eyes hadn’t left the Visitor. “I don’t.”
    There was a gesture the Visitor had seen, had practiced privately when he had learned its vague but useful meaning. He made it now: a quick lift of shoulders and eyebrows, and return to passivity.
    “You saved my life.”
    “I…”
    “I want to… reward you, or… Is there anything you need?”
    Everything. Could he understand that?
    “There is a new King in the world. I have made him. Perhaps… it was wrong in me. Surely I have lost by it.” Take care, his father had said. Watch well. “But there it is. I am made great now in the world, and…” He moved his knitting body carefully on the pillows. “Learned tells me you learn quickly.”
    “He tells me so too.”
    “Hm. Well. Learn, then. As long as you like. Anything you require… my house, servants are at your disposal.” He tried to smile. “I will draw on your learning, if I may.”
    A silence, filled with the fire’s voice. Already, it seemed to the Visitor, Redhand’s thoughts were elsewhere. It was odd: he felt he had come a great distance, from somewhere no man had been, and carried, though he could not speak it, wisdom they could never here learn but from him. Yet they drifted off always into their own concerns… “You were at Redsdown,” Redhand said. “You saw my lady there. She was well? Hospitable?” He looked away. “Did she… speak of me?”
    “Often.”
    “She wrote me of you. This… airy talk.”
    The Visitor said nothing.
    “I must regard you as a man.”
    “It’s all I wish.”
    Redhand’s eyes returned to him; it seemed they were again the eyes that had looked on him in horror in the Throat: alert with fear, yet dreaming.
    “Who are you?” he asked.
    Forgetful.
    The Protectorate had built Forgetful as they had Old Watcher far away on the sunrise edge of the Drum, in the days after they had despaired of conquering the fierce, elusive tribes of the Outlands; built it to ensure that, if they could not conquer, at least they would not be conquered. The huge piles, strongly garrisoned, had made a semblance of diplomacy possible with the Outland chieftains; they had eventually accepted a king’s lieutenant as their nominal ruler and only occasionally tried to murder him. Red Senlin had been one such; and before him, Black Harrah. The post at the moment remained unbestowed; but probably, Young Harrah thought, it will go to Younger Redhand for his infinite damned patience…
    In Shensweek Young Harrah sat within the sweating, undressed stones of Forgetful, wrapped in a fur robe; completely safe, of course, but trapped in fact: it came to the same thing. With a lot of Outlanders for company, with spring coming but no help.
    “Capitulate,” he said.
    “I don’t see it,” said the fat-cheeked captain he had taught to play War in Heaven—or at least move the pieces. The Outlander’s thick fingers toyed with two sky-blue stones, moved them hesitantly amid the constellations pictured on the board. “Maybe you should capitulate.”
    “Move.” Red Senlin’s Son played at King in the City; the fat Queen, his father’s whore, licked her wounds somewhere in the Outland bogs, whispering with the braid-beards who adored her; and Redhand’s mastiff brother hung on here for life and would not be shaken. It had been for a while amusing to watch them out there, to make them endure a little privation before they took their ugly and useless prize, this castle. The game was no longer amusing. The Son played at King in the City… there was the game. The Outlander picked up the seven-stone, bit his lower lip, and set it down in the same place. Young Harrah sighed.
    “Now, now,” said the Outlander. “Now, now.” At length he saw the trap