The Magic of Recluce - L. E. Modesitt [82]
“It is not wrong to feed the hungry, but it is wrong to feed their hungers.”
I never liked obscure answers, and I didn’t like Justen’s. If he thought that Antonin was a showman, he should have said so. Or that he served evil by tempting hungry people. But he didn’t. Justen only smiled sadly again. Did the man ever do anything besides disapprove of the white wizard?
Antonin the white wizard faced all of us in the common area. “Come forward, those of you without a penny for food. There is enough for a small portion for all who are hungry.” His voice was hearty and friendly, and the words sounded genuine, but the real invitation was the smell of roast mutton.
First came a boy in a patched jacket, the apprentice of some tradesman. After him came a thin girl in leggings too big and an old herd coat too small. Before the shuffle of their feet had reached the trestle table, half the commons were pressing after them. Only the whiteness of the wizard kept the crowd in a line.
Arlyn snored on the table, but the man next to me and his companion in green had joined the crowd. Tempting as the mutton smelled, the odor repelled me as much as attracted me. So I munched through the rest of the hard black bread and the thin cheese wedge while the others jostled for the mutton.
The innkeeper emerged from the crowd carrying the sheepskin, the one thing of lasting value, and disappeared briefly into the kitchen with the prize, emerging quickly with a large truncheon and another man with an even greasier apron and a larger club.
Antonin sat at his table and sipped from a real crystal glass—wine, not mead or cider, glancing once or twice in my direction. I tried to ignore him as I swallowed the last of the cider.
The gray magician—Justen—stood up and pulled his cloak around him. Then he walked toward me. I stood, wondering whether to meet him or flee. Then I shrugged.
“Let us check the animals, apprentice.”
I nodded, realizing that, for whatever reason, he was offering some sort of protection, and followed him into the blizzard that separated the inn from the stable.
Whheeeeeeeeee…The howl of the wind was lower, only a half-wail compared to the shrieking that had forced me inside earlier. The needle-ice no longer fell, replaced with fine white powder so thick that it blurred like heavy sea fog.
“You near lost your soul there, young fellow.”
I wanted to leave him right then. Another person knowing better than I did, ready to preach and not explain. But he hadn’t asked anything. So I waited to see if he would explain.
He didn’t, just walked toward the stable. I followed.
XXIV
THE WOMAN IN gray watches the roadside from the bench seat of the wagon, holding her staff tightly in one hand. She tries not to think about the similarity between the rolling of the wagon and the motion of the cargo ship that had so recently carried her to Candar.
On either side of the road, the dull gray-brown of damp and rotting grass, interspersed with patches of black weeds, stretches to the hills on the north and to the horizon on the south. Beyond the southern horizon lies the Ohyde River, and the point where her journey will end—Hydolar, where the road and the river meet.
Ahead on the road, she sees three thin figures, their ragged and uneven walk like that of so many others that she and the wagon have passed.
Crack!
“Hyah…hyah…” rumbles the driver without looking at the whip he has cracked or the two draft horses pulling the now-empty wagon that had carried cabbages and potatoes. He wears a heavy belt filled with more than gold, and a cocked crossbow rests on a stand to his right. “See anything, Maga?”
On the road ahead, the two younger men ride a pair of rail-thin horses. The sandy-haired one bears a long rifle, good only against the desperate, but necessary on the road they travel.
Beyond them, beyond the three figures that the wagon lumbers around, she can sense only the emptiness