It had worked. The healed sang his praises and the dead never complained. By his third year he was sought all over the east. And then he had heard that Helgi was seeking a new physician. Like a fool, he had been pleased when the king had chosen him, not realising that a healer relies as much on his luck and reputation as on his skill.
He looked down at the child beside him. She was hot enough to set fire to the roof. She would burn him up too, for sure, if he didn’t cure her. It occurred to him to simply jump from the tower to save himself the pain of the flames. He had nothing more to give. His last hope had been to take her to the roof, to show her to the eyes of Tengri the eternal sky, but it was failing.
But then he remembered he had been taught a charm by a stranger who had joined him on the road to Kiev. He’d been travelling with a party of Khazars who were heading west. They’d kept their fire going all night because there was a rumour that a wolf was stalking the road. The healer had no liking for wolves and had found it difficult to sleep. Of course there always were wolves — he heard their howling in the hills — but to be told one was nearby and had raided a camp, taking only a goat when it could have taken a child, unsettled him.
Eventually, in the blackest part of the night when the clouds ate the moon and the only light came from the campfire, he had drifted off, slumping to the ground from his sitting position. A low snarl tight by his ear had snapped him back to consciousness. The wolf was sitting close by his side. He had started to scream but suddenly a hand was across his mouth, silencing him.
A voice: ‘You were about to cry wolf but which wolf is it that gives you alarm? The one that sits by the fire or the one who dwells in here?’ He felt a sharp prod in his chest, and when the hand at his mouth was released he turned to see a very strange fellow indeed. The man was tall, pale and beardless, with a shock of red hair protruding from beneath the bloody pelt of a wolf, worn as he had seen some shamans wear them, its head over his head, as if the creature had crept up behind him and sunk its teeth into his skull. Apart from that, he was entirely naked, his pale skin writhing with snakes of firelight.
The healer looked around for the wolf. It was gone.
‘There was a wolf here,’ said the healer.
‘Now it is here,’ said the stranger and drove his finger into the healer’s chest again.
‘I do not take your meaning, sir,’ said the healer.
‘Ambition is a wolf, is it not, that chases us on to who knows what heights? So I say again, here is the wolf.’ Once more the stranger’s finger jabbed hard into the healer’s chest.
‘Do desist from poking me so, sir,’ said the healer. ‘I bruise easily.’
‘Do you not have a salve for bruises?’
‘I do not.’
‘What can you cure? For I see you are a healer by your charms and philtres.’
‘I-’
‘Headache?’
‘Yes.’
The man cuffed the healer hard about the head.
‘Ow!’
‘Vomiting?’
‘Yes, I-’
The man thumped the healer hard in the stomach, so hard that his dinner came back up and he was sick on the ground.
‘Broken limbs?’
‘I have some skill-’ The man raised his hand but the healer quickly added, ‘-though not in that area.’
‘Ah, the gift of healing is so rare nowadays. It is hard to tell the honest man from the charlatan.’
‘I am a truthful man.’
‘All the best liars are. You are the king of charlatans because the first person you deceive is yourself. You are sincere in your insincerity, truthfully false. Liars have more truths in them than all the honest men of the world. You lie to yourself so much that you empty yourself of them. Then, when you tell the people you can heal them, that cannot be false, for all you have left in you are truths, so men must believe them. You eat lies and belch truth, such is the way of the self-deceiver. Sincere thieves are the best ones, I tell you most earnestly. The gold ring you wear on the chain about your neck, I need it. Pass it to me.’
‘Need it for what?’
‘It is a cure for the lying tongue.’
The healer had thought at the time that seemed a reasonable explanation and had taken off the chain to give it to the man who, if he recalled correctly, had dangled it above his lips before lowering it into his mouth and swallowing it whole.
‘That was my ring,’ said the healer.
The strange man leaned towards the healer and it seemed that his head became that of a gigantic wolf which opened its mouth improbably wide and said, ‘It prettifies my bowels now. Reach in and tickle it out!’ He spoke with such force that the healer flinched away from him.
‘You will bite my arm,’ said the healer. For some reason it didn’t seem odd that this man had become half wolf.
‘You see,’ said the half-wolf. ‘I have cured the liar in you, for now you speak the truth.’
‘What shall I have for my ring?’
‘Advice,’ said the wolf-headed man, smacking his lips with his tongue as if savouring the taste of the fine gold ring.
‘What advice?’
‘Go north.’
‘For what?’
‘To wait upon the lord of deceit himself. He who lies lying in Ladoga. That priest of pretence, hierophant of hypocrisy, monarch of mendacity, the tricky sticky fellow, the fakir of fakement, the wolf in wool, oath-breaker, foreswearer and god. King Shit himself. I am his servant, you know, but like all servants I hold my master in cold contempt. I will better him one day, though it may take me a year or two. Today we give him what he wants; tomorrow he may not be so lucky.’ The half-wolf’s tongue slapped around his muzzle as he spoke, and the healer feared the creature might fly into a rage.
‘You’re talking about Helgi the Prophet?’
‘Helgi? Do you know his physician has found all ailments’ surest cure? You should hurry to that king’s service.’
‘I cannot compete with a man who holds such knowledge.’
‘This is the cure!’ said the half-wolf, and from somewhere he produced a hangman’s noose tied with a tricky triple knot. ‘Surely you can hang as well as he. There is no talent for hanging, my fine fibber, no skill to it — the most untutored farm boy takes to it as well as the highest king.’
‘I do not wish to hang,’ said the healer.
‘Only he wishes to hang. Only he.’
‘Who is he?’
‘He is three.’
‘Three what?’
‘People!’ He cuffed the healer across the back of the head. ‘A triple knot like this, waiting to be tied. And what is a knot that is not tied? Not a knot? Not so. For if a rope is not a knot then all things are not knots that are not knots and that is not a useful distinction. However, a rope that has been a knot but is a knot no more is more not a knot that one that has never been tied, which nevertheless is still not a knot. So we have degrees of notness matching our degrees of knotness, former, present or future, the triple knot of time. When something has once been something else, can it ever be what it once was again? I think knots. And what is a knot unknotted? Not a knot. And if the knot is retied? It becomes not not a knot, that is a knot once more. This is not a knotty problem, though it does concern knots, does it not? Three of them.’ The creature seemed exasperated, as if he had explained the obvious to the healer and found him simply too dim-witted to understand.
‘You are a man of the Christian god. I have heard their tales of three in one but I prefer my own gods for the luck they have brought me,’ said the healer.
