The Magic Goes Away

by Larry Niven

  Evening came, and most of them disappeared to their dinners. For those who stayed, the Warlock tried the spell he had used at the inn in Prissthil for the diners’ entertainment. In the darkness the colors were dimmer yet, like the Northern Lights brought to earth. The children loved it.

  The next morning brought a cluster of angry parents.

  The Warlock was exhausted. He had to let Clubfoot deal with them. He lay on the straw with his eyes closed, listening to Nordik anger and Clubfoot’s tones of bewildered hurt. He wondered what had gone wrong.

  “…turn them into magicians? My son will grow up to be…”

  “…corrupting our children…”

  “…wiser to learn our customs before you…”

  “…too dazzled to do their work, now you’ve filled their heads with…”

  Came the noon meal, and they were left alone. “I wasn’t a lot of help, was I?” the Warlock said miserably. “How much trouble are we in?”

  But Clubfoot seemed thoughtful rather than worried. “Not as much as you’d think. I got one old woman talking for the rest of ’em. She’s the ring-bearer’s mother.” The gift of tongues informed the Warlock that the ring-bearer was the lord of the hall, effectively the mayor. “Her name’s Olganna. Warlock, a lot of the parents are delighted we’ve got the kids interested in something. And the children are all on our side, of course.”

  “What in the gods’ names was bothering those people?”

  Clubfoot’s grin flashed. “Magic was always used against the Nordiks, never for them. They didn’t have any. The tales they tell their children today are all about brawny Nordik warriors against evil magicians. Justice triumphed, and now there’s no more magic.”

  “Oh.”

  “So now the kids are constantly bothering the Frost Giant servants at their work, and they don’t do their own chores either. They want magic. Only Frost Giants make magic.” Clubfoot dipped bread into stew, and said, “I learned some things. The Frost Giants really did have a god named Roze-Kattee, and his powers did hold off the Nordiks for a hundred years or so. Then the god’s powers waned, and the Nordik berserkers swarmed all over the Frost Giant warriors.”

  “So that much was true, at least. What else did you find out about Roze-Kattee?”

  “Olganna couldn’t seem to tell me what the god was doing to the Nordik armies. I think it’s been forgotten. Maybe they never knew. One thing, though. Do you know what a berserker is?”

  “Not by that name.”

  “A berserker sort of goes insane before battle. He froths at the mouth, he chews his shield, he charges the enemy and keeps going until he’s actually hacked apart. He doesn’t notice wounds, even lethal wounds. What I want to know is, did the Nordiks have berserkers when they were driven out of the Fertile Crescent?”

  “Yes. A lot of tribes developed that technique when it got to be so difficult to raise actual zombies.”

  “Well, the Nordiks didn’t use berserkers until the actual last battle. Olganna said so and they all backed her up.”

  “That’s funny. I wonder why…god of love and madness?”

  Clubfoot nodded vigorously. “That’s what I thought. The Nordiks couldn’t fight because Roze-Kattee kept bringing the Nordik berserkers to their senses. One more thing. The Frost Giants still worship Roze-Kattee.”

  “What? But they’re slaves!”

  “Interesting, isn’t it?”

  They emptied their stew bowls and set them aside. Presently the Warlock said, “Have you thought what will happen to these people if Wavyhill and Mirandee can bring back magic to the world?”

  Clubfoot shrugged. “They’re swordsmen.”

  “Well, yes…Meanwhile we’ve got to cool off the irate parents somehow.”

  “We can change our tune. There are tales where magic really was used for evil. Wavyhill’s zombie servants, and the demon-sword Glirendree, and the raising of the dead in the war against Acheron.”

  “That’ll help. What about a magic show?”

  “What?”

  “Let the kids get it out of their systems. The adults too. I’m sure we can work something up.”

  “Maybe. I’ll ask Olganna what she thinks.”

  The magic show had been a huge success. The Warlock had pretended to call up the dead: phantasms that Clubfoot animated with his thoughts. Clubfoot had read minds, discreetly, and told the contents of locked boxes. The Warlock had told futures, again using some discretion.

  But they were still in the cell when the day of the public sauna dawned.

  He drowsed face down on the wooden bench while talk floated around him…sent a plague that killed most of his worshippers…His knuckles brushed dry earth. Why? Stingy with their sacrifices…understandable. Baal took every first-born child…The bench was harder than cloud and he was naked, but the air was warm and dry and pleasantly scented with wood and woodsmoke. Started as a war between men…eventually split the whole pantheon, with gods fighting on both sides…boredom. Sure, the gods had their squabbles, but it was boredom…flattened both cities before…Clubfoot was still talking about gods. The Warlock dozed. Mostly they worshipped out of fear. Why else would the…

  Some phrase caught the Warlock’s attention and pulled him awake. He sat up. He felt good, better than he’d felt in days.

  “There’s no mystery to it,” Olganna was telling Clubfoot. Her hair was white and wispy-thin, she was small and withered and wrinkled, but she still looked like she could climb a mountain. Deep stretch marks on her belly told of her eight sons and eleven daughters. “They simply wouldn’t surrender unless they were allowed to serve their god. Our forefathers could have killed them all, of course, but what for? This Roze-Kattee hadn’t helped them. We let them have their way.”

  The Warlock sat up. Nobody seemed to think it strange that he had dozed off here.

  “I wonder what makes them so loyal,” Clubfoot said.

  “Why, they just…are. Or stubborn,” said Olganna. She seemed unaware that two Frost Giants, man and woman, were drying themselves on the far side of the room. “Once in my life and once before I was born, we got tired of their taking so much time off for their ceremonies. In my time it was a crop that had to be got in. We postponed the ceremonies. They stopped work, all work, till we gave in. It was a hungry winter.”

  “But don’t you find that strange? All the old tales tell of gods striking mortals down for some casual mistake, or as part of some godlike game, or just for being proud of their own accomplishments. Sometimes the prayers and sacrifices were bribes for service, but usually they were just to get the god to let them alone: no more floods, no more plague, no more lightning, please. What did Roze-Kattee do for the Frost Giants?”

  “I’ve wondered.” Olganna frowned. She looked about her…

  They might have been father and daughter, or uncle and niece, or man and wife; their ages weren’t that different. White hair, pale skin, eyes the color of ice, spare frames seven feet tall: they looked very much alike. They sat together, with Nordiks comfortably close on both sides of them, in the egalitarian style of the sauna, and they rested in the peace that follows the heat.

  Olganna called across the room, and the entire village must have heard her. “Gannik, Wilf, just why do you still serve a god nobody’s seen in a hundred years?”

  The old man flinched. Certainly he had not come to the sauna to be cross-examined. But some are more equal than others, and Olganna’s son was the ring-bearer, the lord of the Hall. The pale young woman beside him didn’t help matters; she was looking at Gannik as if she too expected an answer.

  He shrugged and answered. “Those who do not worship do not marry, do not love, are not loved. It was always that way. If one loses faith after a long and successful life, his wife will desert him, his children will not speak to him, none will help him when he is sick and aged. If Roze-Kattee frowns on a man, he is impotent; on a woman, her lovers are impotent. We knew this long before you came to live in our land.”

  Clubf
oot had been clever, telling his tales of gods. So now we have our answer, the Warlock thought. Roze-Kattee’s power lay in the taking. He took the madness from a berserker, and the power of love from an apostate. But if the god himself had been impotent for hundreds of years…

  With a thrill of horror the Warlock saw that it didn’t matter. For thousands of years only the devout had had children. Roze-Kattee had bred the Frost Giants for loyalty to Roze-Kattee.

  And while this flashed through his mind Olganna was nodding dismissal to Gannik. She was satisfied. To Clubfoot she said, “My nephew tells me that you came here to search out Roze-Kattee.”

  The Warlock flinched. Clubfoot said, “We came searching knowledge of Roze-Kattee. How could we not? Roze-Kattee may be the last living god, and knowledge is power to a magician. Usually.” Ruefully, “This time it was a mistake. We have lost power.”

  The pair of Frost Giants seemed to have lost interest. But slaves had always been good at that.

  The ridged back of the mountain chain was an easier path than Orolandes had expected. These mountains were old, worn to smooth rock and rotted to soil that could hold the occasional grimly determined tuft of grass; and the towering peaks were all to the south, behind them. Mirandee’s hair remained white, but she was strong.

  Yet the journey had its difficulties. Their boots wore out, and they lost half a day summoning rabbits and skinning them for new boots. Always as they walked, they had Wavyhill for their entertainment. Unhampered by the need to draw breath, Wavyhill talked constantly of the ease with which magicians used to travel, and the precautions they could and should have taken to save this grueling walk. His life story was a chain of enemies made and defeated, and they had it all in detail, until Mirandee threatened to move his felt tongue to the backpack. “What makes you so garrulous?” she demanded. “You never needed company when you were living all alone in those fortified castles.”

  “Oh, blame it on the Warlock, dear. I was deaf and dumb and blind for thirty years. You’d want to talk too.”

  “He could have revived you earlier, if you’d told him your true name before the battle,” she said, and Wavyhill chortled hollowly.

  But he woke her that night by saying, “Kranthkorpool. It’s Kranthkorpool. Just in case.”

  It took them six days.

  The last few miles were the easiest, a wide, rounded ridge of smooth rock sloping gently downhill. Mirandee’s hair went dark and light as if cloud-shadows were passing. It was late afternoon.

  The slope dipped more drastically there at the end, until it was a vertical drop. “Wavyhill? This way?”

  “Yes! Get us down there, Greek!” Wavyhill was almost indecently eager.

  Orolandes motioned Mirandee back. He stood at the edge of the drop, looking around, taking his time.

  From the lip it was thirty feet to flat dirt. The rock face must slant inward; he couldn’t see it.

  The drop could be made in two stages, by way of what looked to be a congealed river of lava. It was twenty feet high and thirty-odd feet wide, a rounded ridge of smooth gray rock with big potholes all over it, and it ran beneath Orolandes’ feet. Ten feet down, then another twenty feet to dirt. But the lava river itself was rounded to vertical all along its length, and it ran further than he could see, twisting into the broken foothills.

  “It’ll be easier just to moor the line and climb down here. Here—” He showed Mirandee how to slide with the line around one ankle and clutched between the feet. He slid down first, then stood underneath, ready to break a witch’s fall. She did fine. He caught her anyway, for pleasure.

  They stood before the mouth of an enormous cavern, under the edge of the roof.

  “In there,” Wavyhill whispered. “I was right. I wasn’t sure until now.”

  Orolandes dropped the pack and drew his sword. “Stay behind me, love.”

  Wavyhill laughed. “Do you have any idea what to expect?”

  Orolandes boosted himself to the top of a chest-high buttress of stone. “Tell me.”

  Wavyhill didn’t answer.

  Orolandes pulled Mirandee up. They looked into the cavern.

  “Don’t go any further,” said the skull.

  The entrance was big, but it widened even further beyond the opening. In the darkness they could see vertical bars, stalactites and stalagmites of prize-winning size. The twenty-foot high river of grey stone ran deep into the darkness…or it had run out of there, glowing, long ago.

  “It’s big,” Orolandes said. “Do you know what this dormant god looks like? How big it is?”

  “Don’t go any further. I mean it.”

  True, he’d been edging in. Mirandee asked, “Why not?”

  “We have a decision to make,” Wavyhill said. “Do we risk this without Clubfoot and the Warlock? Or shall we try a Great Summoning, now?”

  “That’s no decision at all. We don’t have the power.”

  “I think there might be enough to—”

  “Wavyhill, I’m surprised at you! The mana is here, but it’s too diffuse. We need the last god first. You know what would happen if we tried a Great Summoning and failed.”

  Orolandes waited. He didn’t have to trust Wavyhill. In one second his sword could split that skull, and without scratching Mirandee’s shoulder.

  “Mirandee, it only strikes me that we might not know enough between us to—”

  “I will not try any Great Summoning until we have the power to do it. And you can’t make the gestures.”

  Wavyhill gave a barking laugh. “You win. All right, Greek, put the sword down and go in and find the dormant god.”

  Mirandee said, “Alone?”

  Orolandes said, “Put down the sword?”

  “I said that, yes. Of course, neither of you has to take my orders.”

  It was dark in there. Menacing. The sword’s weight felt comfortably normal in his hand.

  “Leave it here. Otherwise it’ll kill you. Snap out of it, Greek, this is your big moment!”

  He didn’t like Wavyhill’s obscene grin; but Orolandes had made his decision long since. He set the sword on a boulder. He turned and walked into the darkness.

  Stalagmites stood thicker and taller than he was. He had to duck the points of the longer stalactites at first, but then the cavern’s roof became too high for that.

  Wavyhill’s echoless voice followed him. “I don’t know the size or shape of what you’re looking for. You’ll find it on the other side of that stream of smooth rock, probably far back.”

  He turned and called, “All right.”

  It happened while his head was turned. Motion exploded around him. Things swatted his head from two directions. Orolandes threw himself flat and rolled over clutching for his sword. Things screamed all around him, their voices excruciatingly high-pitched.

  Still fluttering, still screaming, they wheeled away from him. Dark shapes swarming around the roof. Bats. Orolandes got up and moved on, breathing heavily.

  The lava flow ran along the side of the cavern. It ran the full length, back to a deeper blackness at the end. Orolandes’ exploring hands found smooth rock marred with potholes. Strange to find potholes here where there was no rain. And in the sides, too.

  Strange but convenient. He climbed the potholes, up the rounded side of the rock. Stalactites hung low over the top.

  Between the back side and the cavern’s wall was a three-foot gap. Orolandes walked toward the back, ducking stalactites, looking into the gap.

  The deeper blackness at the back: could it be another cavern? He might have to search that too. Should have brought a torch. But there was a shadow far back along the gap, a big shadow. If that was the god, it was too big to be moved. Even if it wanted to be moved.

  From the beginning he had wondered if it would fight him.

  Wavyhill’s shout came jarringly. “Orolandes! Come back! Come back now!”

  “What for?” Orolandes’ own shout echoed around him.

  “Now! Obey me!”

 
He didn’t trust Wavyhill worth a troll’s curse. But he trusted the panic and anger in that command. He dropped lightly from the lava flow, caught himself in a controlled roll, stood up and jogged toward the entrance.

  The entrance flamed with daylight. Orolandes jogged around stalagmites with his eyes on the chancy footing and his head lowered to avoid the down-pointing spires.

  Mirandee leaned casually against a smooth rock wall, seemingly watching him. It was hardly a scene of panic. Orolandes called, “What’s the trouble?”

  He knew that when his muscles locked. He teetered on a rigid forward leg, then toppled on his right side in running position. He tried to cry out, but his voice was locked too.

  Mirandee didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t blink.

  The sword was on the boulder where he had left it, a tantalizing arm’s reach away.

  The skull on Mirandee’s shoulder said, “I’m sorry. My mistake, and it was made right at the beginning.” He raised his voice. “Piranther! Where are you?”

  “I’m just over your heads.”

  Piranther floated like an autumn leaf into the bright entrance.

  They should have thought of it. Granted that the Warlock was sick with age and Clubfoot was trying to keep them both alive with old stories; there was more to it. Sorcerers have a blind spot, and that blind spot is—

  “—swords. They keep appearing in your old tales,” said Harric. The burly redhead was dressed casually now, in leather and flaxen cloth. “Are these magic swords all a thing of the past?”

  Harric’s invitation to dine at his table had surprised the Warlock. Less surprising was the presence of another guest, their young guard, Poul. Two other men struck the Warlock as fighting men; their arms were thick with muscle, they bore healed scars, and they walked as if they didn’t expect anyone to be standing in their way. Now he began to understand.

  “Wavyhill had a magic sword,” Clubfoot was saying. “It didn’t help against the Warlock. And there was a demon forced to the form of a sword: Glirendree. The Warlock killed it. In fact…Warlock, I guess you’re our expert on magic swords.”