The Drawing of the Dark

The lad bowed and withdrew. Duffy glanced curiously at the other diners scattered around the dim, lowceilinged room. The rain had apparently got them down. They all seemed depressed - no, worried - and their smiles were wistful and fleeting. Duffy took the block of wood from his pocket and, unsheathing his dagger, recommenced his whittling.

When the food arrived it proved to be a bit spicier than he liked, and it all seemed to be wrapped in leaves, but the wine - of which they brought him a full flagon - was the finest he'd ever tasted. Dry but full-bodied and aromatic, its vapors filled his head like brandy. 'Incredible,' he breathed, and poured another cup.

After quite a while Duffy regretfully decided that the bas relief he'd been cutting into the surface of the table was no good. He shook his head and put his dagger away. Someone must have refilled the flagon, he thought, when I wasn't looking. Perhaps several times. I can't remember how many cups of this I've had, but it's been a respectable quantity. He glanced blurrily around, and noticed that the room was crowded now, and more brightly lit. I must be drunker than I thought, he told himself, not to have noticed these people arrive. Why, there are even a couple of people sitting with me now at this table. He nodded politely to the two bearded fellows.

Duffy knew he should try to snap out of this wine fog. I'm an idiot, he thought, to get drunk in an unknown tavern in a foreign city.

The young man who'd served him was standing on a table, playing a flute, and most of the people in the place were whirling in a mad dance, singing a refrain in a language Duffy couldn't place. The old bearded host, too drunk now even to stand unaided, was being led around the room by a gang of laughing boys. The poor old wino, Duffy thought dizzily - mocked by children. They're probably the ones that tied those ridiculous vine leaves in his hair, too.

Duffy could hear the mill-wheel rumble again, deeper and more resonant than before, like the pulse of the earth. The high, wild intricacies of the flute music, he now perceived, were woven around that slow, deep rhythm.

Suddenly he was afraid. A dim but incalculably powerful thought, or idea, or memory was rising through the murky depths of his mind, and he wanted above all to avoid facing it. He lurched to his feet, knocking his wine cup to the floor. 'I'm...' he stammered. My name is...' but at the moment he couldn't remember. A hundred names occurred to him.

The bearded man next to him had picked up the cup, refilled it with the glowing wine, and proffered it to the Irishman. Looking down, Duffy noticed for the first time that the man was naked, and that his legs were covered with short, bristly fur, and were jointed oddly, and terminated in little cloven hooves. With a yell Duffy ran toward the door, but his own legs weren't working correctly, and he made slow progress. Then he must have fallen, for he blacked out and dropped away through hundreds of disturbing dreams.. .he was a child crying with fear in a dark stone room; he was an old, dishonored king, bleeding to death in the rain, watched over by one loyal retainer; he stood with two women beside a fire on a midnight moor, staring into the black sky with a desperate hope; in a narrow boat he drifted on a vast, still lake; he sat across a table from a shockingly ancient man, who stared at him with pity and said, 'Much has been lost, and there is much yet to lose.' The dreams became dim and incomprehensible after that, like a parade dwindling in the distance, leaving him finally alone in a land so dark and cold it could never have known the sun.

Several kicks in the ribs woke him. He rolled over in the chilly mud and brushed the wet gray hair out of his face.

'Damn my soul,' he croaked. 'Where in hell am I?'

'I want you to leave this city,' came a man's voice. Duffy sat up. He was in an empty, puddled lot between two houses. The rain had stopped, and the blue sky shone behind the crumbling storm clouds. He looked up into the angry and worried face of a priest. 'You're...' Duffy muttered, 'you're the priest who was in that first place I went last night. Where they turned me away.'

'That's right. I see you found.. .another host, though. When are you leaving Trieste?'

'Damn soon, I can tell you.' Pressing both hands into the mud, he struggled to his feet. 'Ohh.' He rubbed his hip gingerly. 'I haven't slept in the rain since I was eighteen years old. We middle-aged types would do well to avoid it,' he told the priest.

'I didn't sleep in the rain,' the priest said impatiently

'Oh. That's right. I did. I knew one of us did.'

'Uh...' The priest frowned deeply. 'Do you need any money?'

'No, actually - wait a moment.' His hand darted to his doublet, and he was a little surprised to find the hard bulge of the money bag still there. 'Huh! No, I'm flush at the moment, thank you.'

'All right. Be out of town today, then - or I'll tell eight of the biggest men in my parish to get sticks and beat the daylights out of you and throw you into the ocean.

Duffy blinked. 'What? I - listen, I haven't done any -you little cur, I'll rip the livers out of your eight farmers.' He took a step toward the priest, but lost his balance and had to right himself with two lateral hops. This jolted him so that he had to drop onto his hands and knees to be violently sick on the ground. When he got up again, pale and weak-kneed, the priest had left.

I wonder who he thinks I am, Duffy thought. I hate misunderstandings of this sort.

Cautiously he now asked himself, What did happen last night?

Very simple, spoke up the rational part of his mind hastily; you were stupid enough to get falling-down-drunk in a foreign bar, and they' beat you up and dumped you in this lot, and you're lucky you look so seedy that no sane man would think of lifting your purse. Those dreams and hallucinations were of no significance. None at all.

His teeth were chattering and he shivered like a wet cat. I've got to get moving, he thought; got to find a friendly inn where I can pull myself together, clean up a bit. Buy some supplies. And then get the hell out of Trieste.

Taking a deep breath, he plodded unsteadily back down the Via Dolores.

Two hours later he was stepping out of a steaming tub and rubbing his head vigorously with a towel. 'How's my breakfast coming?' he called. When there was no answer he padded to the door and opened it. 'How's my breakfast coming?' he bawled down the hail.

'It's on the table waiting for you, sir.'

'Good. I'll be there in a minute.' Duffy took his newly dried woolen trousers from a chair by the fireplace and pulled them on. He'd got them in Britain many years ago; and though they now consisted more of patches than of British wool, and the Italians laughed at the garment and called him an ourang outan, he'd become accustomed to wearing them. And in a late winter Alpine crossing I'll be glad I've got them, he nodded to himself. He flapped into his twice-holed leather doublet, jerked on his boots and tramped out to breakfast.

The innkeeper had laid out a bowl of some kind of mush with eggs beaten into it, black bread with cheese, and a mug of hot ale; 'Looks great,' Duffy said, dropping into a chair and setting to.

Four other guests sat nibbling toast at the other end of the table, and peered curiously at the burly, gray-haired Irishman. One of them, a thin man in a baggy velvet hat and silk tights, cleared his throat.

'We hear you are crossing the Julian Alps, sir,' he said.