Wall of Serpents

by L. Sprague De Camp

  "It is a lie," said Vuohinen, but he turned his head from side to side to look at the others, and Shea felt his heart leap. He nodded solemnly in support of the detective. "That's right," said Bayard.

  "Boy!" said Brodsky gleefully. "Am I going to get a bang out of watching you cut off your own toes?"

  "Maybe we could make him take off his nose and ears, too, while we're about it," said Shea.

  "That's the dope," Brodsky continued. "None of them fried pigs' ears, either. It's gotta be fish, or else."

  The head disappeared. Shea turned to Brodsky.

  "You're a better psychologist than I am. How did you know that would fetch him?"

  "Ah, I never saw the gorilla yet that didn't fall for the yudd racket," said Brodsky, modestly. "They're so afraid of going wack, they'd rather turn themselves in."

  He seemed to have struck oil. Outside there was the sound of feet and a murmur of voices. Then there was a wait, the bolts were drawn back, and the door opened to show Vuohinen, surrounded by a phalanx of the black-bearded Pohjolan warriors. He bore a big wooden platter.

  "I told the Mistress of your outlandish custom," he said, "and though she says her magic is strong enough for any protection, she will grant you so much."

  He slammed down the platter and stamped out. Shea bent to examine the platter. There was no doubt that it was fish, and more than a little on the high side, some large member of the salmon tribe. He said, "Well, here's our harp. Walter, help me get the jawbones out of this critter's head."

  "What with? They took all our knives and things."

  "With your fingernails. We can't be squeamish. Ssh, let me think. I'll have to work out the verse for Belphebe."

  "Now," said Shea, "can you break off a few hairs, sweetheart?"

  Belphebe complied. Shea undertook to tie the strands of hair, one at a time, to the jawbone, so that they spanned its gap like the strings of a harp. In the dim light, it took some doing.

  She touched the strings and bent her head close. "It's awfully small and weak," she said. "I don't know."

  "I thought of that," said Shea. "Listen carefully, kid, and memorize after me, because you'll have to do it all yourself. Keep your voice way down, as though you were crooning, to match the harp. I'll make the passes, just to be on the safe side, though they may not be necessary."

  Belphebe seated herself on the floor, with the harp on her uplifted knees, cocked her ear down toward it, and began:

  -

  "Oh, you harp of fish's jawbone,

  Hail, you kantele of magic ..."

  -

  while Shea ran rapidly through some of the passes he had used in Faerie. She was from there, and it would probably help. Belphebe ended:

  -

  "... be you forthwith ten times greater."

  -

  And fell over on her back as a five-foot harp of fish's jawbone pushed her off balance. Shea helped her up, and she began testing the strings. "It needs tuning."

  "All right, you tune it, while I work out a verse for that polyp. Pete, what's the name of your wife, and what church do you go to?"

  In a few moments they were ready. Pete placed himself before the couple, Belphebe twanged the strings of her harp, and in her light, clear soprano sang the spell for the removal of the polyp.

  Brodsky cried, "Ouch! Damn near took my sconce off." He felt his nose and a smile spread across his face in the semi-darkness. (Outside the summer day was just ending.) "Say, Shea ..."

  Whatever he was going to say was never said. The window turned dark, and all four looked up to see Vuohinen's face peering in, bearded and furious.

  "Where did you get that?" he shouted. "Magic! Magic! I know your names! I will ..." The face abruptly disappeared.

  "Sing!" cried Shea to Brodsky. "Sing anything you can think of! Quick! I'll take care of the sorites. Belphebe, you accompany him, and Walter hold one of his hands. Now if the class A ..."

  Pete Brodsky tilted his head back, and in a tenor that would have done credit to John McCormack, burst into:

  -

  "My wi-ild I-rish rose,

  The swe-etest flower that grows ..."

  -

  Outside, beneath the piercing tenor and the twanging of the harp, there was a sound of distant shouting and running feet.

  -

  "You may look everywhere ..."

  -

  The walls of the cabin seemed to turn round and round as though they were on a pivot and only the four in the center fixed in position. And as Pete's voice rose higher and higher, the solid walls turned gray and dissolved, and with them the whole world of the Kalevala.

  -

  THE GREEN MAGICIAN

  Chapter Nine

  In that suspended moment when the gray mists began to whirl around them, Harold Shea realized that, although the pattern was perfectly clear, the details often didn't work out right.

  It was all very well to realize that, as Doc Chalmers once said, "The world we live in is composed of impressions received through the senses, and if the senses can be attuned to receive a different series of impressions, we should infallibly find ourselves living in another of the infinite number of possible worlds." It was a scientific and personal triumph to have proved that, by the use of the sorites of symbolic logic, the gap to one of those possible worlds could be bridged.

  The trouble was what happened after you got there. It amounted to living by one's wits; for, once the jump across space-time had been made, and you were in the new environment, the conditions of the surroundings had to be accepted completely. It was no good trying to fire a revolver or scratch a match or light a flashlight in the world of Norse myth; these things did not form part of the surrounding mental pattern, and remained obstinately inert masses of useless material. On the other hand, magic ...

  The mist thickened and whirled. Shea felt the pull of Belphebe's hand, clutching his desperately as though something were trying to pull her in the other direction.

  Another jerk at Shea's hand reminded him that they might not even wind up in the same place, given that their various mental backgrounds would spread the influence of the generalized spells across different space-time patterns. "Hold on!" he cried, and clutched Belphebe's hand tighter still.

  Shea felt earth under his feet and something hitting him on the head. He realized that he was standing in pouring rain, coming down vertically and with such intensity that he could not see more than a few yards in any direction. His first glance was toward Belphebe; she swung herself into his arms and they kissed damply.

  "At least," she said, disengaging herself a little, "you are with me, my most dear lord, and so there's nought to fear."

  They looked around, water running off their noses and chins. Shea's heavy woolen shirt was already so soaked that it stuck to his skin, and Belphebe's neat hair was taking on a drowned-rat appearance. She pointed and cried, "There's one!"

  Shea peered toward a lumpish dark mass that had a shape vaguely resembling Pete Brodsky.

  "Shea?" came a call, and without waiting for a reply the lump started toward them. As it did so, the downpour lessened and the light brightened.

  "Curse it, Shea!" said Brodsky, as he approached. "What kind of a box is this? If I couldn't work my own racket better, I'd turn myself in for mopery. Where the hell are we?"

  "Ohio, I hope," said Shea. "And look, shamus, we're better off than we were, ain't we? I'm sorry about this rain, but I didn't order it."

  "All I got to say is you better be right," said Brodsky gloomily. "You can get it all for putting the snatch on an officer, and I ain't sure I can square the rap even now. Where's the other guy?"

  Shea looked around. "Walter may be here, but it looks as though he didn't come through to the same place. And if you ask me, the question is not where we are but when we are. It wouldn't do us much good to be back in Ohio in 700 A.D., which is about the time we left. If this rain would only let up ..."

  With surprising abruptness the rain did, walking away i
n a wall of small but intense downpours. Spots and bars of sky appeared among the clouds wafted along by a brisk steady current of air that penetrated Shea's wet shirt chillingly, and the sun shot an occasional beam through the clouds to touch up the landscape.

  It was a good landscape. Shea and his companions were standing in deep grass, on one of the higher spots of an extent of rolling ground. This stretch in turn appeared to be the top of a plateau, falling away to the right. Mossy boulders shouldered up through the grass, which here and there gave way to patches of purple-flowered heather, while daisies nodded in the steady breeze. Here and there was a single tree, but down in the valley beyond their plateau the low land was covered with what appeared at this distance to be birch and oak. In the distance, as they turned to contemplate the scene, rose the heads of far blue mountains.

  The cloud-cover thinned rapidly and broke some more. The air had cleared enough so they could now see two other little storms sweeping across the middle distance, trailing their veils of rain. As the patches of sunlight whisked past, the landscape blazed with a singularly vivid green, quite unlike that of Ohio.

  Brodsky was the first to speak. "If this is Ohio, I'm a peterman," he said. "Listen, Shea, do I got to tell you again you ain't got much time? If those yaps from the D.A.'s office get started on this, you might just as well hit yourself on the head and save them the trouble. He's coming up for election this fall and needs a nice fat case. And there's the F.B.I. Rover boys—they just love snatch cases, and you can't put no fix in with them that will stick. So you better get me back before people start asking questions."

  Shea said, rather desperately, "Pete, I'm doing all I can. Honest. I haven't the least idea where we are, or in what period. Until I do, I don't dare try sending us anywhere else. We've already picked up a rather high charge of magical static coming here, and any spell I used without knowing what land of magic they use around here is apt to make us simply disappear or end up in Hell—you know, real red hell with flames all around, like in a fundamentalist church."

  "Okay," said Brodsky. "You got the office. Me, I don't think you got more than a week to get us back at the outside."

  Belphebe pointed, "Marry, are those not sheep?"

  Shea shaded his eyes. "Right you are, darling," he said. The objects looked like a collection of lice on a piece of green baize, but he trusted his wife's phenomenal eyesight.

  "Sheep," said Brodsky. One could almost hear the gears grind in his brain as he looked around. "Sheep." A beatific expression spread over his face. "Shea, you must of done it! Three, two, and out we're in Ireland— and if it is, you can hit me on the head if I ever want to go back."

  Shea followed his eyes. "It does rather look like it," he said. "But when ..."

  Something went past with a rush of displaced air. It struck a nearby boulder with a terrific crash and burst into fragments that whizzed about like pieces of an artillery shell.

  "Duck!" shouted Shea, throwing himself flat and dragging Belphebe down with him.

  Brodsky went into a crouch, lips drawn tight over his teeth, looking around with quick, jerky motions for the source of the missile. Nothing more happened. After a minute, Shea and Belphebe got up and went over to examine a twenty-pound hunk of sandy conglomerate.

  Shea said, "Somebody is chucking hundred-pound boulders around. This may be Ireland, but I hope it isn't the time of Finn McCool or Strongbow."

  "Cripes," said Brodsky, "and me without my heater. And you a shiv man with no shiv."

  It occurred to Shea that at whatever period they had hit this place, he was in a singularly weaponless state. He climbed on the boulder against which the missile had destroyed itself and looked in all directions. There was no sign of life except the distant, tiny sheep—not even a shepherd or a sheep-dog.

  He slid down and sat on a ledge of the boulder and considered, the stone feeling hard against his wet back. "Sweetheart," he said, addressing Belphebe, "it seems to me that whenever we are, the first thing we have to do is find people and get oriented. You're the guide. Which direction's the most likely?"

  The girl shrugged. "My woodcraft is nought without trees," she said, "but if you put it so, I'd seek a valley, for people ever live by watercourses."

  "Good idea," said Shea. "Let's ..."

  Whizz!

  Another boulder flew through the air, but not in their direction. It stuck the turf a hundred yards away, bounced clumsily, and rolled out of sight over the hill. Still—no one was visible.

  Brodsky emitted a growl, but Belphebe laughed. "We are encouraged to begone," she said. "Come, my lord, let us do no less."

  At that moment another sound made itself audible. It was that of a team of horses and a vehicle whose wheels were in violent need of lubrication. With a drumming of hooves, a jingle of harness, and a squealing of wheels, a chariot rattled up the slope and into view. It was drawn by two huge horses, one gray and one black. The chariot itself was built more on the lines of a sulky than those of the open-backed Graeco-Roman chariot, with a seat big enough for two or three persons across the back, and the sides cut low in front to allow for entrance. The vehicle was ornamented with nail-heads and other trim in gold, and a pair of scythe-blades jutted from the hubs.

  The driver was a tall, thin, freckled man, with red hair trailing from under his golden fillet down over his shoulders. He wore a green kilt and over that a deerskin cloak with arm-holes at elbow length.

  The chariot sped straight toward Shea and his companions, who dodged away from the scythes round the edge of the boulder. At the last minute the charioteer reined to a walk and shouted, "Be off with you if you would keep the heads on your shoulders!"

  "Why?" asked Shea.

  "Because himself has a rage on. It is tearing up trees and casting boulders he is, and a bad hour it will be for anyone who meets him the day."

  "Who is himself?" said Shea, almost at the same time as Brodsky said, "Who the hell are you?"

  The charioteer pulled up with an expression of astonishment on his face. "I am Laeg mac Riangabra, and who would himself be but Ulster's hound, the glory of Ireland, Cuchulainn the mighty? He is after killing his only son and has worked himself into a rage. Ara! It is raining the countryside he is, and the sight of you Fomorians would make him the wilder."

  The charioteer cracked his whip, and the horses raced off over the hill, the flying clods dappling the sky. In the direction from which he had come, a good-sized sapling with dangling roots rose against the horizon and fell back.

  "Come on!" said Shea, grabbing Belphebe's hand and starting down the slope after the chariot.

  "Hey!" said Brodsky, tagging after them. "Come on back and pal up with this ghee. He's the number one hero of Ireland."

  Another rock bounced on the sward and from the distance a kind of howling was audible.

  "I've heard of him," said Shea, "and if you want to, we can drop in on him later, but I think that right now is a poor time for calls. He isn't in a pally mood."

  Belphebe said, "You name him hero, and yet you say he has slain his own son. How can this be?"

  Brodsky said, "It was a bum rap. This Cuchulainn got his girl-friend Aoife pregnant way back when and then gave her the air, see? So she's sore at him, see? So when the kid grows up, she sends him to Cuchulainn under a geas ..."

  "A moment," said Belphebe, "What would this geas be?"

  "A taboo," said Shea.

  Brodsky said, "It's a hell of a lot more than that. You got one these geasa on you and you can't do the thing it's against even if it was to save you from the hot seat. So like I was saying this young ghee, his name is Conla, but he has this geas on him not to tell his name or that of his father to anyone. So when Aoife sends him to Cuchulainn, the big shot challenges the kid and then knocks him off. It ain't good."

  "A tale to mourn, indeed," said Belphebe. "How are you so wise in these matters, Master Pete? Are you of this race?"

  "I only wisht I was," said Brodsky fervently. "It would do me a lot of good on
the force. But I ain't, so I dope it this way, see? I'll study this Irish stuff till I know more about it than nobody. And then I got inna-rested, see?"

  They were well down the slope now, the grass dragging at their feet, approaching the impassive sheep.

  Belphebe said, "I trust we shall come soon to where there are people. My bones protest I have not dined."

  "Listen," said Brodsky, "This is Ireland, the best country in the world. If you want to feed your face, just knock off one of them sheep. It's on the house. They run the pitch that way."