The Haunted Wizard

by Christopher Stasheff

"Ibile?" Meg looked up, eyes wide with excitement.

  "Theirs is my native tongue," Mama hedged.

  "She has come a long way, Judy," another woman said.

  "Very long." Mama wet the cloth and the soap.

  "What could have brought you so far?" a fourth woman asked.

  "This is not the safest of times," Judy added.

  "Indeed not, with the poor queen locked up in her castle!" Mama said indignantly. "But when my husband's father was young, he was a footman at the castle of Petronille's father, the old Prince of the Pykta, and would never forgive Ramón if he did not go to deliver what help he could."

  "A noble thought, Alys," Judy said.

  "Aye," Alys answered, "but a foolish one, for her husband has come too late to be the queen's soldier."

  "Why would he bring you with him on so perilous a journey?" a grandmother asked, frowning.

  Mama gave her a dazzling smile. "You do not think I would let him go without me, do you?" She turned back to rub soap into the shirt. "Besides, our son is grown, and I waste away at home."

  "You are young to have a grown son!" a fifth woman exclaimed, staring.

  Mama gave her a wink. "It is more a matter of washing the skin every day, and staying out of the sunlight whenever you can."

  "Only the one son?" The grandmother spoke in tones of pity.

  "Only the one child," Mama sighed. "We wished for more, but God gives as He gives, and Heaven knows I am grateful that He gave me my Matthew!"

  "Indeed, each child is a blessing." The older woman looked smug. "I have five."

  "And your husband still lives, Jane," Alys reminded her. "We're all blessed in that, especially with another war just rolled past us."

  "I have heard it was your queen who brought that war," Mama said, frowning. "I could not believe it."

  "As you should not!" Jane exclaimed indignantly. "Was it Queen Petronille who took one lover after another? Was it she who tried to deny her second son his heritage?"

  "The Pykta was her birthright," Judy maintained. "By what right did the king give it to his youngest?"

  "Aye," Jane agreed. "Any woman would be right in taking any measures she could, to defend her child so!"

  "And punish so wayward a husband," Alys said darkly.

  Meg only listened, eyes wide.

  Mama could almost see her revising her ideas about marital love, and interjected quickly, "Did Petronille lend no fuel to the quarrel? I have heard she has a sharp tongue." Had heard that tongue's sharpness herself, in fact, but she didn't say so.

  "A queen should have a sharp tongue, if her husband seeks to lord it over her!" the grandmother said stoutly.

  "We are poor, defenseless creatures," Judy said, "and must try to make our way through this world in any way we can."

  "I cannot agree to so sweeping a statement," Mama said. "I have heard her sons were lacking in chivalry, except for Brion."

  The women exchanged glances. The grandmother said, "I have never thought it good to lavish praise on one child, and tell all the others that they should seek to be like the favored one."

  "It is true," Alys said. "She did make Brion most obviously her favorite, paying little attention to Gaheris and almost none to John."

  "Who can blame her for that," Judy argued, "when the eldest is so odious, and the youngest such a horrid little man?"

  "Perhaps they would not have been," said the grandmother, "if she had given them more love."

  "It was amazing she gave as much as she did to Brion," Judy countered, "considering that her husband was forever dragging her all about the realm, and off to the Pykta or Deintenir with no warning. It was all she could do to bring one lad with her!"

  "The others were safer here at home, in Dunlimon Castle," Alys agreed.

  Meg, listening wide-eyed, shivered at the thought. "To be separated from her babes for so long!"

  "They had excellent nurses," Judy told her.

  "Still, she might have let them take turns accompanying her," the grandmother pointed out. "She is skilled in healing, after all—surely she must have some notion of the hurts given the heart!"

  "She is a wise woman, not a witch," Alys said scornfully, "a healer, not a sorceress."

  "Could not a woman so skilled heal also her sons' hearts?" the grandmother countered.

  "There are skills, and there are other skills," Mama said. "Skill with herbs does not mean a woman has the skill to read the hurts that do not show."

  "There is some truth to that," the grandmother admitted. "Still, she is supposed to be so very adept, even in elf-lore and spirit-lore, that I should think she would be skilled in the matters of human spirits while they are still within their bodies."

  "Or perhaps out of them," Judy said darkly.

  The women fell quiet, and the grandmother looked up, frowning. "What rumor have you heard that we have not?"

  Judy glanced about, as though to make sure no spirits were listening, then whispered, "I went to the wise woman yesterday, for her potion to ease my monthly pain—and she told me that Prince Brion was not quite dead when the marshal left him under guard on the battlefield. She said that it was Queen Petronille's men who stole him away, and that when the battle was done, she fanned the coal of his life to a flame."

  "Surely you do not mean that she was so skilled a healer that she could raise the dead!" Mama exclaimed—but also in a whisper.

  "She said the prince was not quite dead," the grandmother snapped.

  "Not fully dead," Judy agreed, "nor could the queen bring him fully to life. She sent his body secretly to the cathedral at Glastonbury, where he sleeps while he waits for a greater wizard to waken him."

  Half an hour later Mama was walking down the road toward the next town, telling all the gossip to Papa, who seemed somewhat dazed by it. He did manage to say, though, "Thus legends begin."

  "And thus they grow," Mama agreed, "as they are passed from person to person."

  Papa smiled, amused. "Before long, they will have the sleeping Brion be waiting for love's first kiss to waken him."

  "No doubt," Mama agreed, "at least, according to Rumor."

  Matt never knew where Buckeye had hidden his peasant's clothing. He only knew that he looked up toward a nightingale's song for half a minute, and when he turned back, the bauchan was wearing his disguise. Matt blinked, but knew better than to ask. Besides, it would probably gall Buckeye no end when he didn't.

  An owl hooted almost overhead, making Matt jump, but when he looked up, he couldn't see any kind of bird anywhere. He shivered and walked a little faster, a little closer to Buckeye—he wasn't the only spirit abroad in the wood that night.

  Then it occurred to Matt that the deeper they went, the nearer to primeval forest they came—the forest that had been there a thousand years, oaks that had harbored mistletoe for the original druids. He shivered again and stepped up right behind the bauchan, wishing for a little light. It occurred to him that if Buckeye really had a nasty sense of humor, the bauchan could just disappear and leave him stranded in the midnight forest.

  Fortunately, the bauchan seemed to be planning on a more elaborate joke than that. He led Matt silently onward until suddenly the wood opened onto a broad clearing with a ghost floating at one end, surrounded by fairy lights. Ancestral superstitious fears yammered in Matt for a second before twentieth-century skepticism came to his rescue and made him look more closely. The fairy lights were of course only fireflies, and the "ghost" was a synthodruid in a white robe made luminous by moonlight, standing atop some sort of pedestal or platform, as dark as the huge old oak behind it. Matt stared—that certainly was a grandfather of a tree, at least five feet thick, its branches covering the whole far end of the clearing.

  He scanned the rest of the open space, noticing there were fireflies all through it—then saw what else was there, with a nasty shock. Faces, scores of faces. Moonlight-scatter showed him their clothing, a darker mass beneath their faces. There was at least a quarter of the village there.
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  "A comforting sight, is it not?" Buckeye asked, grinning.

  "For whom?" Matt demanded. "Belenos?"

  "Is that what they would call the human who has organized and begun this travesty of the Old Faith?"

  "I don't know." Matt turned to him with a frown. "What would you call him?"

  " 'Your Majesty,' perhaps?" the bauchan suggested.

  Matt stared, then said, "I very much doubt it."

  But it did make sense, when he thought about it. The Church always had been the biggest single obstacle between the Crown and absolute tyranny—a counterpower that served as a restraint upon the despotism of a monarch. How more easily to remove that obstacle than to replace it with a religion of your own, securely under your control?

  Of course, that was assuming that after the synthodruids became established, they wouldn't try to assert their power themselves, to counteract the king's—maybe even to try to control him. On second thought, it seemed like a long shot.

  The druid raised his hands and called out, "People of Belenos! For so you are; your forefathers were, and you are of them, so you must be of Belenos, too."

  The people murmured to one another in surprise, then apparently decided they were indeed people of Belenos, and turned back to the druid with a bit less wariness.

  "People of Belenos! It has been long since anyone from this village worshiped as you should! Therefore I shall lead you in prayers to the Old Gods, and you who do not understand the rituals may watch without the need to pray."

  "Good way for him and them to pretend they belong here, when they're really just feeling it out," Matt muttered to the bauchan. There was no answer, and Matt glanced over at him, surprised to discover that Buckeye had disappeared. He couldn't suppress a shiver of apprehension, and wondered what kind of mischief the bauchan was preparing.

  "Do you know this song?" the druid asked, and sang for them,

  "Summer is a-coming in,

  Loud sing, cuckoo!

  Groweth seed, and bloweth mead,

  And springs the wood anew."

  The people stared, then nodded, and a few began to sing with the druid.

  "I see that you know it!" Banalix cried. "Sing it with me, then!"

  The people joined in for the second verse and a chorus.

  "That is a song of the Old Gods!" the druid cried, and the people exclaimed to one another in wonder.

  Matt wondered, too—at the man's audacity. "Lhude Sing Cucu" had been a hit song only a hundred years before, and the druids had known it about as well as they had known Gothic cathedrals.

  Banalix let them talk a few minutes, then cried out, "Aye, of the Old Gods, a song for May Day, a sacred festival! But since it mentions none of the Old Gods by name, your Christian priests let you keep it! Sing it all, now!"

  He led them in a rousing rendition of the song, and Matt had to admire his musical abilities, or those of whoever had arranged this particular version—it had a driving beat he would never have expected.

  When they finished, the "druid" cried, "Belenos!"

  The people fell silent.

  "Come, come," Banalix urged, "if you do not believe in them, you are only making noise! Shout their names with me! Belenos!"

  "Belenos," some of the people muttered.

  "You can call more loudly than that!" Banalix urged. "Belenos!"

  "Belenos!" the people answered.

  "I cannot hear you!" Banalix cried. "Louder, now, louder! BELENOS!"

  "BELENOS!" the people thundered.

  "Good, good! Now see if you can call as loudly for the rest! TOUTATIS!"

  "TOUTATIS!" the people cried.

  Banalix pulled a flask out of his robes. "Behold the holy elixir, the mead of the gods! Drink of this brew, that it may elevate your spirits!" He tossed the wooden bottle down to the front row. A man caught it, unstoppered it, sniffed suspiciously, took a sip, then took a longer sip. His neighbor took it from his hand and drank even more.

  "Another for you, and for you!" Banalix pulled bottle after bottle out of his robes, tossing them down to the people. "Pass them from hand to hand and quaff as you chant the names of the gods! LUGH!"

  "LUGH!" the people shouted.

  "MORRIGAN!" Banalix caroled.

  "MORRIGAN!"

  He led the people in roaring out the names of the gods as they drank from the bottles of holy elixir. Curious, Matt stepped in among them and noticed that Banalix kept tossing down bottle after bottle from an apparently unlimited supply—though he was taking them from a pile in the shadows now, not from his robe. Someone passed him a bottle, and Matt sniffed warily, then took a sip and let it roll across his tongue as he passed the bottle on. It was sweet, very sweet—Banalix hadn't been kidding when he called it mead. It did seem to be made of fermented honey, but the aftertaste flared along Matt's esophagus and lit a glow in his stomach. The drink may have been honey wine at some point, but it had been boiled and condensed into something much stronger, a sort of honey brandy. Matt wondered who had invented distilling here, and had a notion it hadn't been the real druids.

  Banalix had worked the crowd up to a regular chant now, reciting the names of the Druid gods, not shouting, but calling only a little louder than their normal speaking voices, with a hard driving rhythm, and Matt realized what Banalix had done. The ceremony thus far had been carefully designed to make the people stop thinking as individuals and start thinking as a mob. They'd be much less likely to worry about right and wrong now.

  "The gods have given you their blood!" Banalix called. "They have given it to you in the bottles you have held, and it has been sweet. See, now! I give of my blood to the gods!" He produced a twisted dagger, carved to look like a snake, and pricked his finger, then squeezed and let the blood drip down to the grass of the meadow.

  A murmur of wonder ran through the crowd.

  "Those of you who wish to give in return for what you have gained, do likewise!" Banalix called. "Step forward, those of you who have the courage to give of your blood to the gods, so that all may see and honor you!"

  That was obviously too much. No one would go that far so soon, Matt was sure—until he remembered the liquor. Even so, he stared in disbelief as half a dozen men stepped forward right away and pricked their fingers, then let blood drip onto the grass.

  "Behold the holy libation!" Banalix cried. "Who else wishes to do as they have done?"

  A dozen more men stepped forward, and even three wild-eyed girls, old enough to be caught up in the communal mania, young enough not to know better. Knives pricked in the moonlight; drops of blood welled to the grass.

  "Honor what they have done!" Banalix beckoned, palms upright. "Hail, O Grateful Ones! Hail, they who give for us all! Hail! Hail!"

  "HAIL!" the crowd roared. "HAIL!"

  Matt had always known some people would do anything for attention, and Banalix made sure they received it. A score more of people stepped forward, drawing their knives, but Banalix was moving on. "Now dance," he cried, "for dancing pleases the Old Gods! It is part of the worship they desire! Dance like this!" He held his arms curving up, snapping his fingers as he moved left foot across right, then right behind left in a chain. He stepped back and reversed the chain, then stepped forward, completing a rectangle. "It is simple, but it honors the gods!"

  The ceremony, Matt realized, had been made up out of whole cloth, and the pattern-maker had designed it like a television commercial, showing all the good things about the "old religion" and none of the unpleasant ones they might find distasteful. Well, not none—there was that bloodletting, but it was minor, and no one had really seemed to mind. In fact, they had started competing for the honor and the praise of their fellows. But step by step Banalix was leading them away from reason and independent thought, and into a group-mind, group-body state. How far would he lead them tonight? He had brought them from group chanting to individual bloodletting, but now was leading them on into group movement, the dance inducing everybody to move as one.

  Banali
x jumped down off his platform—only a very wide stump, Matt realized—and strode out into the midst of the crowd. "Form a circle about me! Aye, for the circle is the sign of the whole and of emptiness, of totality and annihilation, of all and of nothing!"

  Murmuring in wonder and confusion, the people lined up in an oval, filling the clearing.

  "Music!" Banalix cried.

  A piper stepped from the crowd with a small set of bagpipes—dance pipes, not the great drones of war—and began to play.

  "Fancy just happening to have a piper at hand," Matt muttered, then remembered that the bauchan had disappeared, and foreboding struck. After all, who else knew he was here, let alone where he was? Matt began to move around the clearing as silently as he could, but didn't for a minute think he was fooling Buckeye.

  "Dance, then!" the druid told the people. "Dance to honor Toutatis!"

  They stared, amazed at the notion of dance as worship—but this jury-rigged ceremony was so alien from anything they knew as religion that they began to move their feet as he had shown them, in time to the slow urging of the pipes.

  "Move around the circle as you dance!" the druid cried, and indicated the direction of turning with a finger. "From west to east, so that you may move time back to the days when the Old Gods held sway!"

  The people swayed indeed, and the whole circle began to rotate slowly, opposite to the sun's path—but Matt knew that direction as widdershins, and its associations with evil magic. The bottles passed from hand to hand, too, also widdershins, faster than the people danced. The piper began to play faster and faster, and the circle accelerated with the music. The druid danced with them, smiling and nodding. Then he gestured to the piper, and the tune ended. The circle stopped, the people murmuring, confused.

  The druid held up his hands. "O People of Toutatis! Let not your cares mask the joy of life that rises within you! Sing and dance, caress and kiss! Know that life should be pleasure, and pleasure lively!"

  Murmurs of incredulity ran through the people, and beneath it, concern.

  "I know, I know, you are troubled by the thought that children might be born of your pleasure, and bring shame upon you!" the druid cried. "But for the Old Gods there can be no shame in a child coming into the world, for the more people there are, the more worshipers they have! Dance, drink, laugh, and love, for this pleases Toutatis, pleases Belenos, pleases all the gods of the Gaels!"