Ars Magica

by Judith Tarr

  “Would he permit it?”

  Hatto quelled the spark of triumph. It was not yet — not quite — won. “Would you ask?”

  Ibrahim stroked his long silken beard. “You tempt me, clever infidel. Oh, you tempt me. True power is as rare as rubies. If he can bear to face its presence...if he can master all our bitter disciplines...what a mage he would be!”

  At last the bishop allowed himself to smile. “Will you ask?”

  The Moor’s brows met, but his eyes bore no anger. “I will ask,” he said. “I will never compel.”

  Hatto nodded. “That is enough,” he said.

  2.

  “Moors?” Brother Rodolfo stopped even pretending to copy the bishop’s letter. “Of course I’ve seen the Moors. We have them in our city.”

  Gerbert swallowed impatience. “I know that. I’ve seen them, too. They’re everywhere. But why? How can your lords allow it? They’re the enemy.”

  “They live here.” Brother Rodolfo was patently enjoying himself. No doubt it was a favored sport, to shock young newcomers from darkest Frankland. “Our lord bishop is their faithful patron.”

  “That’s not so!” said Gerbert, outraged. “His Christian excellency would never sink so low.”

  “Don’t let him hear you say that, Brother. He has dear friends among them. Haven’t you heard the story yet?”

  Gerbert scowled and said nothing. Rodolfo took that as permission. He settled to it with great contentment, and with a tale-teller’s flourish. “When my lord was still a young priest, before he had his bishopric, he took sick. He was a perfect Christian then; he detested the infidel as any good believer should. His illness was dire, and the doctors all agreed that it was mortal. They had all despaired of him.

  “The worst of it for him was not that he would die. It was that he would die blind. He could face death, but death in the dark was more than he could bear.

  “At first he had refused the ministrations of Moorish physicians, though there were and are none better in the world. As his case grew more desperate, his friends prevailed upon him to suffer the touch of unbaptized hands; but none could give him more than a few moments’ surcease. He was dying still, and he was still blind.

  “Then at last, as he began to sink into the utmost dark, one came with hope. If he would take it. For that hope resided in one man in Barcelona, a Moor and, worse by far, a magus. When my lord heard that, he closed his ears and his mind. Not for his very life’s sake would he submit to sorcery — not if it would cost him his soul. He turned his head away from all pleading and composed himself for death.

  “As he stood at the gates with the oil of anointing on him, a voice spoke out of the night. It was a man’s voice and no angel’s, but none had seen him come. He was simply there, a turbaned Moor clad all in black. It came as no little shock that he was young. Little older than you, Brother, but strong for all of that, and possessed of a remarkable presence. No one moved or spoke as he approached the bed and stood looking down.

  “He said again what he had said as he came, quietly as before, neither gentle nor harsh, as one who states a simple truth. ‘You are a fool, sir priest. Ignorance may excuse you. It will certainly kill you.’

  “My lord was dying, but he was not yet dead. He turned toward the sound of that voice; he raised himself. With all the breath that was left him, he said, ‘My body may die, but my soul will live.’

  “‘Ah,’ said the stranger. ‘Does your faith permit suicide, then?’

  “That brought my lord almost to his feet, and all but slew him, casting him into the stranger’s arms. The man was slender, but he was strong; he bore easily that weight of anger and of death. He laid my lord down again, for all that he could do, and said, ‘I have been sent to heal you, and so I will, resist me though you may.’

  “‘No,’ my lord said, the merest thread of sound. ‘Before God, you will not.’

  “‘Before God, I must.’ And the stranger laid hands on our lord, and not one of his friends could stir to his aid. The man prayed over him — infidel prayers, but prayers they were, and no curses or invocations of devils. He prayed long and long. Years, it seemed to those who watched, held helpless by his power.

  “Slowly, so slowly that at first they were scarcely aware of it, they realized that something had changed — was changing. My lord was healing. The pallor of death lad left his face. And as he grew stronger, the mage grew weaker, until the balance held level between them. Then the mage fell silent. Their hands had locked. And their eyes. My lord could see. The fire that had burned in the mage now burned in him.

  “With a crack like the breaking of a world, they fell apart. My lord’s people would have fallen on the sorcerer, but my lord himself rose to stop them. He shielded the infidel with his own body. He said, ‘Who touches this man, dies.’”

  Brother Rodolfo stopped. He was silent for so long that Gerbert presumed that he was done. “And they were friends forever after.”

  The Spaniard shook himself. “What? Friends? Not precisely then. My lord was grateful — he knew his duty. But he was hardly delighted to owe his life to a Moor and a sorcerer, however white the sorcery had been. It was still sorcery.”

  “Then how — ”

  “Time,” Rodolfo answered, “and teaching. And the mage himself. Quite simply, they took to one another.”

  “But,” said Gerbert. “An infidel. A magician.”

  “A white magician,” Rodolfo pointed out, “and, by his lights, a pious man. Moors have no bishops, and no priests to speak of, or Master Ibrahim would be one.”

  Gerbert shook his head. He could not absorb it. Bishop Hatto and a black infidel. Bishop Hatto and a sorcerer. Bishop Hatto who was both an excellent bishop and, by all accounts, an excellent Christian; and, in Gerbert’s own experience, a great scholar and a great teacher. It was too much to take in.

  Homesickness stabbed him deep. No one at home had ever torn him with so many contradictions. One was a Christian or a pagan, a good man or a bad. And one did not imperil one’s soul with the sleights of magic.

  Against his will he saw again the stars from Saint Gerald’s tower, heard the laughter of witches, drowned in soft wild eyes. The power stirred in him and began, softly, to sing.

  Fiercely he beat it down. He was a man of God. If Abbot Gerald had known what in truth he was sending his brightest star to face, he would never have allowed it. But it was done. Gerbert was here. He was studying what he had come to study. With God’s help he would emerge unscathed, in body and in soul.

  But ah, mourned a hidden part of him, how sweet it would have been, to see, to know, what the power was.

  oOo

  The day after Rodolfo told his tale, Gerbert faced his lessons with thudding heart. For a long while he was certain that he could not go at all. How could he face this man, now that he knew what he knew?

  It took all the courage he had, but he did it. Part of it was cowardice: fear of his master’s reprimand. But some of it was the old craving for what the bishop had to teach. He found that he could bury himself in the cool serenity of numbers, and forget who it was who taught them. And such numbers — new ones, wonderful ones, one symbol for each that was less than ten, utterly unlike the awkward, heaping letter-numbers of the Romans: 3 for III, graceful curving 8 for VIII. One could work wonders with them. That they were Arabic — that did not matter. Some magics, even a good Christian could accept with a joyous heart.

  oOo

  Bishop Hatto straightened from the worktable and granted Gerbert one of his rare, brilliant smiles. “Yes,” he said as coolly as ever, but the smile lingered in his eyes. “Yes, that is how you do it.”

  Gerbert basked in the warmth of unwonted praise. He laid down the pen and flexed his cramped fingers, too happy even to grimace at the wandering bird-trails that were his calculations. At his best he wrote a passable hand, clear if hardly elegant. This was frankly a scribble; but it was a victory.

  He took up the pen again and reached for a fresh bit
of parchment, and waited.

  The bishop laughed, startling him utterly. “So eager still! Do you never tire?”

  “Oh, yes, my lord,” said Gerbert. “But when I’ve struggled long and hard, and then at last I understand, I forget everything but that.”

  “Indeed,” Hatto said. “Our hour was up long ago, and I have duties waiting. And a task for you, once you’ve eaten and rested a little.”

  That was nothing unusual. Hatto always had a use for a quick hand or a quick wit. Lately he had set Gerbert to work doing his accounts, and once or twice writing letters. Gerbert wondered which it would be today.

  The bishop was slow to enlighten him. “You’ve gone pale since you came here,” he observed. “How long has it been since you last saw the sun?”

  Gerbert blinked, surprised. “My lord?”

  “Too long,” said Hatto. “Obviously. We have to remedy that. Come, now: have you found your way yet round Barcelona?”

  “Yes, my lord. You made me learn, when I first came. I studied the map you made.”

  “Did you walk the ways on your own feet?”

  Gerbert nodded.

  “Do you remember them?”

  He nodded again.

  “Good,” said Hatto. “I have an errand for you.”

  oOo

  He did indeed. Gerbert was on it before he had time to think, with two servants following, carrying between them an ironbound chest. Gerbert had seen what went into it. A bolt of silk and two of fine linen. A box of medicaments from Toledo. A vial of attar of roses. Sundry oddments, all rare, all precious. A king would not have refused such gifts.

  They were not for a king. They would all go to an infidel, a Saracen: the sorcerer of Rodolfo’s story. Damn the Spaniard — had he known what the bishop intended? Had Hatto even put him up to it?

  “Today,” Hatto had said in Gerbert’s dumbfounded silence, “is the remembrance-day of my escape from death. I never forget the one who brought me back. Go to him, Brother, if you will. Bring him my gifts and my unfading gratitude. He will try to refuse them; you must persevere. When he offers recompense, let him give you the copy of Pythagoras which I had asked him to render into Latin. It’s time you had a new book.”

  Gerbert could not say a word. He could only go where he was bidden.

  A Saracen. A sorcerer. Perhaps he could simply leave the box with the porter, and come back untainted. Hatto’s punishment could not harm his soul. A magus’ presence most surely could.

  Harm? Or tempt?

  The world was a blur about him. The sun was a featureless dazzle. People passed like flotsam in a flood: a babble without sense, a jostle of bodies. Some of them must have been infidels. Gerbert neither saw nor cared.

  Sense flooded in, all unwelcome, and all too soon. Here was the street. The fountain that marked it trickled endlessly into its basin. A woman drew water from it: dark, veiled, Saracen.

  Gerbert’s throat was dry, but he could not drink where an infidel had drunk.

  This, said the cool voice of logic, is ridiculous. Here was he, armored in his habit and his faith, with his bishop’s trust for shield. There was the house, a colonnaded wall that spoke of old Rome, a gate wrought in iron with Arab intricacy. No dragons crouched within.

  Oh, indeed, no. Worse than dragons.

  Folly, said logic.

  He gathered his scattered wits and clenched his trembling fists. “God guard me,” he muttered in peasant dialect.

  And laughed, sharp and short, because both the words and the tongue were so perfectly fitted to his cowardice.

  The servants were carefully oblivious to it all. He led them to the gate and raised his hand to beat on it.

  Soundlessly it swung back, leaving him standing like a fool, hand raised to strike the air. In the shadow behind was a darker shadow, a sudden shimmer: the movement of a hand, beckoning. With the valor of the lost, Gerbert passed within.

  Sudden coolness, echoing night; sudden blinding light. His mind, independent of his will, made sense of it: a brief vaulted passage, a turn, a courtyard smitten with sunlight. There was nothing sorcerous in it, unless there were magic in the trees that bloomed in basins all about, filling the air with sweetness.

  His guide came clear before him. It was, he saw with a shock, a woman, and veiled. Her eyes were large and very dark; her brow and her hand amid the veils were the color of a marten’s pelt. A demon? A Nubian?

  He crossed himself. The great eyes glinted with mockery. The woman turned with flowing grace and led him through the court.

  It was all most ordinary, for Spain. The woman walked like a woman, if a young and remarkably graceful one; her scent was fleeting but earthly, and it was one he knew: attar of roses. The servants walked as they had through the streets, stolid, unafraid. No wonders unfolded about them, save what one expected in the house of a wealthy man in Barcelona: a man who seemed less inclined to opulence than to a studied simplicity. One of Hatto’s secretaries fancied himself a judge of elegance; he had seen fit to teach Gerbert a few of its many degrees. Therefore Gerbert recognized quality in the plainness of the woman’s robe, and in the carving of a lintel, and in the hanging of a rug on a whitewashed wall. The only magic in it was the alchemy of taste.

  Gerbert’s stride broke. He should have been glad. He was not. He was disappointed.

  So much dread, and all for naught. He would have laughed if he had been alone.

  He was almost calm when he came to the end of it: a chamber like any of the others, plain, with a rug and a table and a low divan. The woman’s gestures bade him sit. She brought him cakes, fruit, a cup of something cold and sour-sweet. Shame of his fears had made him bold. He nibbled a cake, sipped from the cup. No bolt of lightning struck him; no poison knotted his vitals. The cakes were pleasant. The sherbet was excessively odd. He tasted nothing in either that could have been sorcery.

  When he had thus accepted the hospitality of the house, the woman bowed with glinting eyes and went away. She left the cakes and the cup. Gerbert took up another of the former, wondering what it was made of. He knew almonds, but the rest was strange. One could learn to like it. He tried the sherbet again, and grimaced. Too sour, and yet too sweet. Its undertaste was bitter.

  “Yes,” someone said in excellent Latin, but with an odd accent, “that is rather an acquired taste.”

  The man had come while Gerbert was preoccupied, soft on slippered feet. He was a little surprising, even when one knew that he was younger than the bishop. One always expected a mage to be immensely old. This one was barely into middle years; his beard was black without trace of grey, his face unlined. The woman could have been his sister: they had the same eyes, and the same dusky skin. What her features were, Gerbert had not had time or wits to see. This man looked not at all like a Nubian. His lips were full in the rich beard, but his nose was thin, arched, the nostrils fine and flaring.

  He bowed with exquisite courtesy and sat on the carpet, his grace like the woman’s, but fiercer, a man’s grace. His long hand indicated the cup which Gerbert had forsaken. “The sweetness is not native to the fruit; alone, it often seems excessively bitter. It grows as lemons do, but its color is paler; it grows large, clustered like grapes on its tree. I find it fascinating.”

  “Do you like the taste?” Gerbert could not help it; he had to ask. It was that madness of his, to know. Even here, before a heathen sorcerer.

  The sorcerer smiled. “It grows on one. Would you prefer orange or citron? We have both.”

  “Thank you,” said Gerbert, “no. Sir.” Belatedly he rose and bowed. “Brother Gerbert of Aurillac,” he named himself, “in Bishop Hatto’s service.”

  “Ibrahim ibn Suleiman,” responded the sorcerer, “in the service of God.”

  Gerbert was taken aback. Somehow he scrambled himself together. “I bear gifts, sir, from my master. He says that you must accept them, in token of his gratitude that never fades.”

  “I need no token but his friendship.”

  “But, sir,”
said Gerbert, “it makes him happy.”

  Perhaps he had surprised this master of mages. The dark eyes had widened a fraction; the lips seemed almost ready to smile. “Does it indeed? Surely then he will please me by accepting a gift in return.”

  “He said you’d say that, sir. He said to ask for the Pythagoras you’ve been translating for him,” Gerbert paused. “From the Greek, sir?”

  “From the Greek,” said Ibrahim.

  “You read Greek? Is it difficult? It’s like Latin, I’ve heard, but the letters are different.”

  “Arabic is harder,” said Ibrahim. “And yes, it is remarkably like Latin.”

  Gerbert drew a breath of wonder. “Greek! Then you know Aristotle, you must. And Plato. And Hippocrates: do you know Hippocrates?”

  “Certainly. He is one of the masters of my art.”

  “Magic?”

  As soon as he had blurted it out, Gerbert bit his tongue. But the mage was calm, unruffled. “Magic, indeed, a very little. And medicine. My first training was in healing.”

  Gerbert’s cheeks burned. “Then you — you aren’t — ”

  “I am a student of the high magic, of the Art as we call it. God has ordained that my incapacity should be least evident in the healing of the body and the spirit.”

  “As you did with my lord bishop,” said Gerbert.

  “Just so.” The deep eyes were level. “Are you afraid of me?”

  “Yes.” Gerbert was. He was also calm: calm as a rabbit under the hawk’s shadow. The servants were no help. They had set down their burden when he was not looking, and gone away, abandoning him. He was all alone. “They say your arts are of the realms below.”