by Adele Abbot
“Well, whatever problems we caused seem to have been forgotten,” Ponderos said in a low voice. “The old man has put everyone in mood for celebration.”
“What do you think they’re celebrating?”
“Us, I’d say. A lot of primitive communities celebrate the arrival of strangers,” Ponderos sat down on a convenient stone. “Perhaps they’ll untie our hands now.”
One of the men who had brought them to the village noticed that Ponderos was sitting down. He came over and pulled the Mage up. “You do nothing First has not said to do. Do you hear me?”
Ponderos did not want to cause trouble. “Of course,” he stood up again. “Whatever er, First says.”
First stood at the foot of a tall pole, a long straight piece of driftwood at the top of which a crosspiece had been fastened. There was a small platform just below the crosspiece and on the platform was a huge fish with a great under slung jaw and a wide fan-shaped tail. Presumably this was the one First had mentioned. Three old women were manipulating ropes and lowering the fish to the ground. Now it was possible to judge the fish’s actual size—as long as a man and much rounder than even the fattest person.
“Second,” said First. “Take Fifth and Sixth, they are both good with crossbows, and Tenth too. Take our larceners and offer them to God.”
“Did I hear what I thought I heard?” asked Ponderos of Roli.
“Offer us to God?”
“That’s what I thought. I don’t like the sound of that.”
Ponderos began to wrestle with his bonds but too late. Three crossbows were aimed at them, they had a remarkable calming on Ponderos. They were marched to the base of the pole from which the big fish had been taken and there, their hands were untied.
“Climb,” Second told them.
“Up there?” Ponderos looked up to the top of the pole twenty ells above their heads.
“To the top.”
“What for?”
“Just climb.”
With the sharp tips of crossbow bolts making themselves felt, Ponderos, followed by Roli began to climb up the pole using notches which had been cut into each side. Well out of reach, Ponderos stopped and looked down.
“They’ve left us our swords and knives. That’s not so clever.” A crossbow bolt thunked into the pole below Roli’s feet.
“And what good are swords and knives up here? Climb before they do us injury with those crossbows.” Urged on by more bolts biting the wood just below them, Ponderos and Roli climbed all the way to the top.
“They have surprising skill with those things,” Ponderos said, kneeling on the platform among fish bones and feathers and stinking pieces of flesh. He looked over the edge, below them, preparations were going on apace for the party which First had ordained.
“What do you think it’s all about?” asked Roli.
“This is a guess,” Ponderos answered. “I think we have taken the fish’s place as an offering to their God. No doubt they feed their God the best and today, fish is only second best.”
“You mean we’re the God’s breakfast?”
“And loath to waste a really good meal, they are going to have a feast of baked fish.” Ponderos concluded.
“What sort of God likes fish or human beings served at the top of a pole?” Roli pressed. Ponderos didn’t answer. “I imagine we’ll find out anyway,” Roli continued.
They did, eventually. Several hours later, after the great fish had been successfully baked and cut into juicy pieces and garnished with savory potatoes and much beer had been drunk, the God came.
There was an almost inaudible sigh in the wind above Ponderos’ and Roli’s heads. Simultaneously, both looked up. The shape was unfamiliar yet archetypal, a predator out of the Earth’s youth which still spoke to some basal principal within. The two blades whispered free of their sheaths. The huge eagle cupped its wings, breaking its plunge with a thunderous double clap of trapped air. Two great clawed feet grasped the crosspiece, a large black eye moved from Ponderos to Roli, back to Ponderos. The hooked beak thrust forward, open, about to rend but Ponderos’ sword met the beak and fended it off.
The bird pulled back, unused to hostile offerings. Ponderos threatened it again but this time, the bird was ready, snapping at the milky glass blade and dislodging it from the mage’s fist. It bounced off the platform’s edge, Men and bird watched it fall, heard it clatter—long seconds later—on the stones below, among the crowd of revelers who were still now, every face turned skyward.
The God lifted its beaked head and looked again at the two humans. It reached forward toward Ponderos, its beak open. Roli’s sword caught it across the breast, opening a wound that bled rust red across the pale gold feathers. The eagle rocked back and lost its balance, it half fell, half leapt into the sky and spreading its wings to glide and then slowly pulling itself upward, upward, until it was lost to sight.
A vast groan came from the mass of villagers below.
“Thank you, Roli.”
Roli looked down at the villagers. “I think we shall be safer if we stay here awhile.” Ponderos agreed and they sat on the platform, back to back, until the God returned.
There wasn’t even a hint of sound to alert them this second time. One moment, they were alone, the next, the eagle was alighting on the cross piece and furling its wings. Two wounds on its breast and a gash across its neck were oozing thick blood.
Ponderos and Roli backed across the platform as far as they could; Roli took hold of his sword, Ponderos took out his knife. The eagle seemed content to sit there and watch them.
“Why doesn’t it do something?” asked Roli.
Ponderos watched it for some time. “I think it’s dead,” he said eventually. Look at its eyes.”
Slowly, Roli reached out and touched it with point of his sword; there was no reaction. He leaned forward and pushed with his hand; the eagle fell back, tumbling down, a sad bundle of blood stained feathers. Down below, there was hurried movement as people rushed to get out of the way of their falling God. When Ponderos turned round and looked down, the open space was empty.
“Now, I think we can go.” They climbed down, unthreatened. The village seemed deserted. Ponderos stopped long enough to find his sword and to carve himself several thick fish steaks.
“Well?” asked Roli as they left the village—which was surely wishing it had showered the two of them with oysters and sent them on their way.
“Well? Well, what?”
“You’ve not said anything about that animal,” Roli pressed.
“It was a bird. Very rare.”
“But how did it come by those extra wounds? It must have died from the slash on its neck.”
The story had reached its conclusion. Calistrope had been trying to hide a grin for some time with increasing lack of success. Now he spluttered and laughed. Finally, he explained about his own confrontation with the bird.
They walked on. Polymorph learned to match their pace and continued to ask questions, determined to understand everything there was to understand about the world it had suddenly become aware of.
“I wonder if you were made or just evolved,” Calistrope mused at one point.
Polymorph turned his grin on the Mage. “Does it matter a lot?”
“No,” he said. “Not much. Not at all, in fact.”
“What are you doing?” asked Polymorph in turn.
“Nothing,” said Calistrope.
“Is that possible?” asked Polymorph.
“I see what you mean. I’m walking, I have a task to complete. It is something we three have to do.”
Polymorph prompted for more and they tried to explain the purpose of their journey. It was doubtful whether it could comprehend the working of the solar system and its fate at this stage of its development. There were lulls in the barrage of questions, the humans accepted them gratefully, Polymorph with impatience. The pauses seemed necessary for Polymorph, or Morph as he came to be called, to digest the great banquets of knowledge it ab
sorbed.
During one such pause, Calistrope stopped abruptly. “I can smell magic,” he said.
“Magic?” Polymorph promptly became speechless as mental osmosis squeezed a whole new concept into the small skull.
Ponderos took a great breath, savoring the false odor that his brain had tricked him into sensing. “Ah, yes. Nearby. I wonder why?”
“Why?”
“Why? It is just here. But what has brought it here?” Calistrope mused.
They walked on, the sensation came and went as the etheric currents coiled and whirled. They crossed a small tributary stream on stones so conveniently placed as to seem deliberately positioned. On the farther side, Roli stopped and stared up the slope. There had been a significant amount of erosion in this area, a gentler slope backed up towards the higher cliffs. There were patches of green and, here and there, splashes of intense colors which had caught Roli’s attention. “What do you suppose those are?” he asked, pointing.
Calistrope looked up. “Flowers?”
“Flowers? Well, I suppose they could well be.”
Nearer, the stream had cut a broad depression into the sloping valley wall and a cluster of stone-built dwellings could just be seen against the background. “There’s a village up there, too.”
“Hmm,” said Calistrope and marched on.
“A village,” said Morph, sorting through its newly acquired knowledge and filling in the gaps as it went. “A place where people live together. Can we go? Can we see it?”
Calistrope gazed up the hill for several moments, tapping his front tooth with a fingernail.
“Is there any reason why we should not?” asked Ponderos.
“Well, we have lost some time at that village,” Calistrope stopped to consider. “No,” he said at last, “I don’t suppose there’s any reason we should not. None at all.”
Chapter 13
They began to climb the hill alongside the tumbling stream with Polymorph trailing behind as he continued to sort through the mounting abundance of new information and impressions.
The village was built from local stone, small square houses with timber doors and glazed windows set back from the long flight of steps which served as the main street. Between the steps and each house was a terraced plot of red earth. The ground was planted with squash or beans, onions flowered in the corners and one variety or another of a nut tree grew against each wall and blossomed and bore fruit at the same time.
Children crawled between the legs of adults to watch, thumbs-in-mouth, as the strangers passed by. The villagers were silent, blank faced. Some, hoeing a crop or painting a door, ignored the newcomers completely.
Morph pressed his hands to each side of his head. “No,” he said as if in pain. “They know less than me, nothing. They are slowly sucking out everything I know.”
Calistrope looked at their new companion with concern. “You are losing what you know?”
“No. I don’t think so. Copying, I think. Like I did with you.”
“I think it’s your mind, my friend. Soaks things up, lets things leak out.”
Calistrope smiled at one of the villagers who was standing in his way. The villager smiled like a reflection. Ponderos greeted another and the greeting came back like an echo. Both smile and greeting were taken up by others, the expression and words repeated exactly up and down the street until they had run their course and died away like an expanding ripple on a pond.
Roli grinned lasciviously at a pair of young girls. They grinned back, mimicking the precise degree of mischief in the original. One girl passed the grin onto the other; the other gave it to a neighbor and that gesture, too, went up and down the village steps.
“They seem mute in a way,” puzzled Calistrope. “They appear to just copy what we say or do but there is no understanding there.”
“No thoughts there,” Polymorph agreed. “Nothing more than a fleeting curiosity. What they took from my mind—which I had taken from yours, of course—has vanished.”
“Water passing through sand,” Ponderos remarked.
“The picture is an apt one,” Polymorph returned.
“It’s a very peculiar community,” Calistrope looked up and down the street. “If there’s a headman or a mayor or some such, I don’t see him.”
“There’s his house, anyway,” nodded Ponderos. “It’s bigger and grander than the rest.”
It was but only a little bigger and a little grander. The house stood a little apart and was surrounded by a garden composed of stones and rounded cushions of moss. A small copse of ash trees grew in terra-cotta pots and a stream ran in through an archway in the wall along the farther boundary and out again through an arch in the nearer wall. The place reeked of magic, not strong magic but a lot of it: many small applications.
There was a closed garden gate in the wall. The travelers entered here and Roli turned back to close it. Beyond the wall, a few villagers stood and watched them. Roli dropped the latch and the villagers and the village vanished.
They were in a different place.
Two griffins stood either side of the gate which was now an impressive affair of black iron and curlicues. The house, still modest but rather larger than the version which obtruded into the village outside, had six windows in the front wall with a central door which itself, had a central door knob. Flower beds lined the pathway to the door, the pot-grown trees were now the nearer fringe of a great forest with the stream become a placid river reflecting a sky which had never shone over the Earth.
Calistrope looked at the griffins. “What do you see here, Roli?”
Roli looked from one to the other. Two carved stone animals, they seem a little indistinct, er…”
“Yes?”
“They’re like your gargoyle, aren’t they? Set here to guard this manse.”
“Well, yes and no,” Calistrope smiled. “Well done Roli, your extra senses are quickening. The haze you noticed is the result of mismatching the personalities to the carving, it’s only slight, not noticeable by the ordinary man. However, the gargoyle at my manse is a complete personality, it is real. These are not real. Concoctions.”
Calistrope held up a warning finger. “Don’t touch them Roli, you are not able to deal with these things yet. Nor you Morph, they may be dangerous to you. Now…”
Calistrope left the others and went to bang on the door with the brass knocker, also in the form of a griffin. The sound boomed hollowly and a score of unseen things looked out through the windows at Calistrope. He pushed lightly at the door, it opened a hand’s breadth, welcoming almost.
The Mage stood back and the door swung shut again. He returned and patted one of the griffins on the head. “Tell him that Calistrope came to see him,” he said. “Tell him I knocked and no one answered.”
“Maybe he—or she—won’t be long,” said Roli. “We could wait if you want.”
“Oh, we’ll wait,” Calistrope decided. “And it is a he.”
Calistrope indicated the several flagged pathways which led off across the garden. One led to another gate in a wall which faded out of existence an ell from either gate post. Others led over bridges into the woodland or to iron bound doors which stood by themselves where the garden merged with meadowland. One ended only a pace or two from them, at a solid timber trapdoor weighted down by a huge millstone.
“There are many places he may have gone to but my curiosity has been engaged, I’d like to wait and meet with him.”
They left the garden. The enigmatic paths, the forest and far-away meadows all vanished. The four of them were back again outside the somewhat larger house of the headman and now, a small crowd of curious villagers watched them close the gate.
“Suppose we eat,” proposed Ponderos, always ready with a sensible suggestion about his favorite subject. “We will cook ourselves a meal, make some tea. A surplus of magic lies here, so perhaps a jug of wine, too.”
They walked off to one side where there was an open area where they could build a fire.
Roli began to select stones for a hearth.
“You remember Phariste, Ponderos?” sighed Calistrope.
Ponderos screwed up his features in thought. “A tall man, broad shoulders.”
“A small man, slight of build. He considered meditation to be a useful tool.”
“And so it is. It lends idleness respectability. But no, I don’t remember Phariste.”
“This is all his work, Ponderos. I’m certain of it. He left the College many old years ago, before I last culled my memories else I’d recall him better.”
“The manse you mean? Or the village?”
“The villagers.”
“The villagers?”
“The whole place smells of Phariste, Ponderos. You know I’m never wrong in these matters,” Calistrope laid a long finger against his sharp nose.
Ponderos went to look for firewood without answering.
A little later, Roli came back with six fish from the stream. Morph followed him with a bundle of firewood and Ponderos brought back a canvas bottle of water over which he performed a certain ritual.
Ponderos tested the contents of his bottle. “Adequate,” he said. “Not a great wine but then, made in this manner, it is rarely great.”
Throughout the meal, they handed tidbits to those villagers who had grown curious enough to come and watch. Ponderos let some sip from his wine bottle which, unsurprisingly, never seemed to run out. When several of the villagers brought small cups of blue pottery to him, Ponderos poured with a will.
“Where has Roli gone?” asked Calistrope, suddenly aware that his apprentice had vanished.
“Satisfying mutual curiosities with one or two of the village girls, I imagine,” Ponderos poured a little more wine down his throat and got to his feet. “I’d thought of satisfying my own curiosity,” he continued, “though in a less abandoned manner.”
“Quite,” Calistrope replied. “Slake your curiosity by all means but beware the effect of too much slaking. I shall wait here for Phariste.”
“As you will. Till later, then,” Ponderos took his bottle and ambled away.
Calistrope was perfectly content to wait and to watch the villagers watching him and mimicking the odd action he made.