Chapter 26: Chapter 26: The Letter of Malta

Regret chills a summer day, bruises the crunch of an apple, steals the sweetness of cake. It had been well over forty years, yet Murtagh could remember the twinkle in his eye. How tall Naill had been, his hair always a tangled mess—there was so much of it! He called himself the hairy beast. When the masters, fawning over Murtagh, brought Murtagh to the guild, barely fifteen, Naill, five years older, had requested to be his mentor. They'd shared a room.

“I hear she got away,” Naill said, the first night when they had snuffed out the candle. With the curtains drawn, the room was darker than a moonless night.

Murtagh lashed out. “I don't want to talk about my sister.” He tried to muffle his sobs. In the morning, the looking glass gave back his puffy, red-eyed reflection.

“I'll tell them you slept in,” Naill said. “They won't mind, not this first day. I'll bring you up some breakfast.”

He'd mumbled, “Thanks.”

Naill was his passport, his letter of admittance, his shield from the others. In Naill he found both wit and comedy. He was like a god come down from Olympus who, for some unfathomable reason, delighted in him.

Often at dinner, the masters would expound and debate. Afterward, Naill would expound, pacing the length of their long, narrow room. “What idiocy! Did you hear Master Berach? Did you, Nat?”

“I believe he was implying that we should save the dragons by teaching them to eat meat.”

“Oh, now there's a brilliant idea.” He bent over Murtagh, lazily stretched out on his bed. “Teach them to eat the common person as well as the magical person.”

To the acolytes fell the physical labor of the guild. Together, Naill and Murtagh mucked out the stables, groomed the horses, reorganized the library. Once, while repairing the roof, Murtagh had fallen. Naill caught him, with his left hand, his right clasped about a brick in the chimney. Journeyman Shay had brought the ladder quickly, but not before Naill's hand had been damaged. It swelled in the night. For weeks, he couldn't hold a quill. He had laughed his way through the pain. “I suppose you'll have to clean out the stalls by yourself.” He grinned. “Sorry about that, dear friend.”

In all of it, the required memorizations and recitations, the mathematics, the reading and writing of essays, Murtagh excelled. Naill provided political wisdom. His chastisements always began with a compliment. “You make a fair argument, but well you know Old Cathal won't like it.”

“My words are true. The dragons didn't help humankind, they terrorized people; they ruled by fear.”

“Nat, you've got to tell him what he wants to hear. You know Cathal is a mage. He keeps chameleons. He's magic-drugged. He preaches the doctrine of appeasement.” He laid his broad, warm hand on Murtagh's shoulder and whispered, “You know how it is.”

Murtagh shrugged off Naill's hand. “He's pathetic.”

“And if you submit this essay, he'll mark you down; he won't advance you to journeyman.” Naill plopped down on the bed beside Murtagh, his hands cradling his head. “Before the year is out, my dear friend, he will have you cast out with a firm kick in the ass.”

Naill had been twenty-eight when he received his robe and hood. The feast had five courses, each served with wine. They had sung their way up the stairs to their old room. “Last night in this wreck of a room,” Naill said. “You know, I think it was once a hallway.”

Murtagh laughed. “Were you surprised when they gave you Master Jamie's old room? It's huge!”

His face split wide with his smile. “No.”

Murtagh fell on his bed, laughing. “Nothing is too good for the great Naill! You will be Guild Master soon.”

His head swimming with wine, his stomach full of fig tarts and roast pheasant, Murtagh hadn't expected . . .

Naill's lips were full and soft against his. Nat threw his arms around him. When Naill slid his hands beneath Murtagh's shirt, his whole body tingled. When at last they were naked, when the warmth of Naill's body was pressed against his own, he'd prayed to the gods, asking for the moment never to end.

As the sun rose, horror twisted his gut into knots. Naill still sleeping, Murtagh ran from the room, but not before carefully disturbing the linens of the other bed. He spent the day by the sea, walking barefoot in sand chilled by the surf. He found a sharp-edged shell and with it sliced open his forearm, watching the blood drip onto the sand. When he returned, Naill had moved out. His bed was gone, his writing desk, his books. They met at dinner.

“You left early.”

“Yes.”

Their ranks now different, they no longer sat together. Murtagh's eyes never drifted to the head table. In the coming days, Murtagh avoided the places he knew Naill's duties would take him. When they did meet, by chance in the hallway, or perhaps Naill would take a seat near him in the common room, Murtagh quickly departed. In three years, they spoke ten words.

When the day came for Murtagh to receive his robe and hood, Naill had knocked on the door of the long, narrow room.

It creaked open.

“Master.” Murtagh gave to him the required deferential bow. “How can I be of service to the guild today?”

“Please, Nat, can we talk?”

He stood aside, to let Naill enter the room, and softly closed the door behind him.

Naill sat on the bed, his head in his hands. “I love you, Nat.”

Murtagh clenched his fists. “I'm not like you.”

“Yes, you are.”

Picking up the ink well, Murtagh flipped the ink into Naill's face. The indigo dye purpled his nose, his lips, but was invisible on his coal black robes. “In my village, they would have bound you and laid you on a dragon path to be trampled.”

Naill didn't wipe the ink away. It dripped down his face like purple tears. “I had hoped we could at least be friends. I miss our conversations. You have such a keen—”

“Get out.”

Following his elevation to master, Murtagh had remained at the guild for the required three years. The year he left, Naill surpassing many far older, had been unanimously elected Guild Master. When the feast of advancement had ended and the guild had fallen silent for the night, Naill summoned him.

“Guild Master.” Murtagh presented himself with a deep bow.

“Please sit.” Naill pointed to chair a good ten feet from his own. “Nat, I need you to return the Letter of Malta.”

Years of practice had perfected the lie. Not a muscle in his face betrayed Murtagh, “I don't have it.”

“You don't understand. Guild Master Danial died suddenly. He wasn't able to pass on the secret to me.”

“I do not have the letter.”

Like Murtagh had seen him do so many times before, he rose and paced. “Don't lie to me. You were the one magic-drugged, not your sister. To steal the letter someone had to scale a two-hundred-foot stone wall. That's a task for a thin, wiry fifteen-year-old boy. Even magic-drugged, a girl of ten would have fallen to her death. The mage chose well.”

Murtagh stood. “I don't have it.”

“Listen to me.” Naill crossed the room, fiercely grabbing Murtagh by the shoulders. “You didn't—”

Roughly, Murtagh twisted from his grasp. “Get your hands off of me!”

Naill let him go. “As I was saying, you didn't steal all of it.”

“What?”

“You've only got half. Both pieces are useless without the other. Neither one of us knows the secret. Nat, that letter is our only defense against the dragons.”

“I don't have it.” Murtagh turned and left the room, closing the huge oak door with a quiet click.

The day Murtagh left the guild, Naill again summoned him. As Murtagh entered and bowed, Naill waved his hand toward twelve books, illustrated copies of the books of the seers. “The council had these made for you. They thought to give them to you at a ceremony celebrating your heroism for betraying your sister. I told them that you would be embarrassed by such a display and convinced them to allow me to present you with the gift in private.”

Abruptly, Murtagh turned his head and vomited. As Murtagh washed his face, and cleaned the floor, Naill carefully loaded the twelve tomes in a new leather pack. “It's a heavy burden,” he said, as he handed the pack to Murtagh.

Murtagh sat at his writing desk, quill in hand.

To the esteemed Guild Master Naill Cleirigh,

I write to you concerning a matter of great urgency. A magical person, one of great power, has to come to me for help. Please send me the Letter of Malta that I might save this person. If this person is consumed, I fear the power the dragon will receive, and the terror it will visit upon the land.

Your Servant,

Master Seer Nathan Murtagh

 

When he had finished writing the letter, he read it out loud.

“Dammit.” He rubbed his chest, his left shoulder, his left arm. He struggled to breathe. He flexed the numb fingers in his left hand. Tearing the parchment, he threw it into the flames.

Why am I so tired?

From the shelf above his writing desk, he brought down Gayland. The heavy tome, in his numb fingers, fell with a bang onto the writing desk, spilling the ink. Quickly, he moved, and saved the book, but the ink purpled his hands and his clothes. He collapsed into his comfy chair, staring at his stained fingers, as huge purple drops fell from the edge of the writing desk and hit the floor, like purple tears. Drip. Drip. Drip.

Between the pain in his chest and the ink that seemed to be everywhere, the fire was nothing but embers when Murtagh—his hands stained but finally clean of ink, the floor clean, his clothes tossed into a heap—sat again at the writing desk, a fresh sheet of parchment in front of him. From the narrow slit in the leather binding of Gayland's book, The Lives of the Seers, he withdrew the Letter of Malta.

Bile rose from his stomach, burning his mouth. How different was the taste of magic. When the stars had danced in front of his eyes and touched his face, cinnamon and custard had frolicked on his tongue. “There is more, boy,” the mage had whispered.

“More? Please, give me more.”

“When you return, boy. Now, bring me the letter. It has been left out for you, on the table beside the bed.”

His brains were flying in his head. Was he flying? Maybe I can fly.

“Boy! Did you hear me?”

“You want to me to climb that pitiful little wall.” He twirled in a circle and hopped into the air.

“The letter. Bring me the letter.”

“Letter? I thought you wanted me to climb a wall.”

The mage had a bump on his nose and half of one ear missing. “Boy, listen carefully . . . carefully . . . carefully.”

We must be in a cave.

“The letter is on a table beside the bed,” said the man with the echoing voice and stars for teeth.

“Beside the bed?”

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“Bring me the letter, on the table beside the bed.”

“Letter, table, bed. What about the wall?”

“Climb the wall, then get the letter.”

Murtagh sprang onto the wall like a squirrel, catching hold of the stones with his hands, hanging. He let go with one hand to swing around and wave at the man with the bumpy nose. “Up! Table! Letter!” Murtagh shouted.

“Shh. Go quickly.”

Up was ever so easy. The letter lay beside a burning candle on a table next to the bed. Murtagh took it and climbed out the window. Ever so gleeful, he fell on the way down. “Ahhh . . .”

“Half-ear, man! Half-ear, man!” He called and called. “I've got your letter.”

He woke in his own bed, in the house where no one cooked anymore and no one chided him, “Don't tease your sister.”

So hot.

The sheriff hauled him to his feet. “Where's the letter, boy?” Nat promptly pissed himself. The sheriff rewarded him by throwing him out the door. “Where's the letter, boy? You were seen with the mage.”

His head a ball of pain, Murtagh still had enough wits to lie. “I'm sick. Haven't been out of bed for two days.”

“Where is your sister?”

“Julianna? I don't know.”

“She was seen last night near the eastern wall of the guild. Is it her then, that took the letter?”

Murtagh rose and put another log on the fire.

She must have been searching for me.

The sheriff and his men tore apart the house, upending pots, turning out bins of turnips and onions, emptying the sack of flour onto the dirt floor. When he failed to find the letter, the sheriff stuck Murtagh's befuddled head in a pail of water. Murtagh opened his eyes, searching the water. Where are the stars?

Bringing him up, the sheriff shouted, “Where is the letter?”

“Letter?”

“Where's your sister?”

He shook Murtagh by his scrawny shoulders until his head almost snapped off. Still magic-tipsy, Murtagh imagined himself strong and, amazingly, broke free of the sheriff's grasp. He bounded up onto the fence, then jumped for the thatch. He fell onto his bruised right thigh, the leg he'd injured last night when he fell.

“Did you hurt your little leg?” With a grunt, the sheriff stomped down on his pant leg.

“AHHH!!!”

“Where is your sister?”

“I don't know. Please, please stop.”

Pressing down with his boot, he asked. “Did she take the letter? Did she take it, boy?”

“Yes! She's magiced.”

Not three minutes later, she walked out of the woods, carrying a basket of mushrooms. The sheriff's two men seized her. “Give us the letter.”

“What letter?”

They tied her to the fence post and ripped thatch from the roof, to stack around her.

“Nat! Nat!”

She was nothing to look at. Dull brown hair, brown eyes, painfully small. Her dress had been Mum's. Mum hadn't cut the cloth to make it fit, only hemmed it, so later she could let it out. The result would've been laughable if it hadn't been so pathetic. “We are poor, and, well, we look it,” Mum said.

Murtagh had showed Julianna where the mushrooms grew, so she could get more to eat. “Look for them after the rain. But you've got to get here first. Everyone in the village knows about this patch.”

The Guild Master's arrival saved her. “I don't want her burned until we have the letter. Bring her; we've found the mage.”

The sheriff and his men took away Julianna while Murtagh sat on the ground holding his leg and crying. He crawled into the house and onto his bed. Benumbed by the magic, exhausted from the climb and the run home, and his encounter with the sheriff, he slept, only waking when the moon rose and its light shining through the holes in the thatch tickled open his eyes.

The thatch.

He searched his feeble, magic-soaked memory.

Using the poker as a cane, he hobbled to the doorway, looked at the roof, then at the makeshift pyre. Haltingly—every step hurt—he lumbered to the fence post, searching the thatch the sheriff's men had purloined from the roof. He found the letter, the single sheet of illustrated parchment, wedged between layers of long straw. He clutched the treasure to his chest, closing his eyes, imagining how the magic he'd receive would surge through him. The night before, even injured, he'd run home, hurdling the stream, walking on his hands across the bridge while holding the letter between his feet.

The ropes, still tied to the post—the ropes that had bound her—chastised him. Suddenly, he couldn't breathe.

She's dead. I've killed my sister.

He stuffed the letter where he'd hid it before, back in the thatch. If he'd had a lit wick, he would have burned it. Nana arrived at noon on the following day.

“You took it!”

“No, I—-”

Slap! Seizing the stool, raising it above her head, she advanced on him.

“The mage gave me magic!”

She'd dragged him from the house. “Where did they take her? Show me.”

“I don't know.”

Slap! He fell into the dirt.

“Probably to the guild. I think she's dead.”

“So, you've given up, have you? When yet she may be saved!”

Built in a clearing on the edge of the town, the guild was three stories of stone and gleaming, diamond-shaped, glass windows. In the courtyard, the mage was already burning, stars of silver and blue drifting upward from his charred corpse. Nana left Murtagh still hidden at the edge of the forest.

“Walk into the village, make sure you are seen,” she told him.

How she freed Julianna he never knew. He was known to be innocent of his sister's escape, because the villagers saw him sitting at the village well, unwashed, half-crippled from the pain in his leg.

They spat on him. “Never was there a worse brother.”

When news came of her escape, he stumbled home, back to the cold hearth in the empty room. Nana returned in the night, shaking him awake. “I got her out.”

He hadn't eaten in two days. His leg was a bruised mess.

“Why, Nat? Why did you accuse Julianna?” Her weary voice was yet kind. “Your Mum raised you better.”

“It was the magic.”

“No, Nat. It was you. Best you face it or the magic will never let you go.”

He bowed his head, his hands covering his face.

Oh, Julianna, I'm so sorry.

On the hearth lay Saoirse's forgotten gloves. I suppose it is a penance—and before the penance must come confession. Lifting his head, he brought out a fresh piece of parchment. The gently sloping letters that emerged from the tip of his quill were exquisitely formed.

 

To my friend Naill, Guild Master,

Enclosed you will find the Letter of Malta, which I, magic-drugged, stole from the guild when I was fifteen. I falsely accused my sister of the crime. I stood by and did nothing as the sheriff tied her to a fence post and stacked thatch around her feet to burn her. I remained silent as she screamed for help. Her rescue was accomplished by a family friend who, when my mother died, came to pay her respects to my sister and me. I am prepared to accept whatever punishment the guild should require. Only this I ask: that you reply to this letter and tell me the secret of the Letter of Malta. One last magical person has been born. This person has come to me for help. This person is of such great power that if consumed, I fear the dragon that pursues will regain its former strength and terrorize the land.

Please help. I was wrong about so many things.

I am truly sorry,

Nat

 

This letter, together with the Letter of Malta, Murtagh secured in a leather pouch. Calling for a messenger, he said, “Take this to the guild and place it in the hands of the Guild Master.” As the man turned, Murtagh grabbed his arm. “Into the hands of the Guild Master only. No other.”

 

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