by Wayland Drew
Ulrich made his decision then, a decision influenced by the fact that in all the long and lonely years of his sorcerer’s quest he had never seen such a natural and exuberant talent as that which sent these strange creatures tumbling about his feet, and by the fact that he deeply feared the bending of such power to evil ends, and by the fact—most poignant—that he had no heir to whom he might pass on his knowledge of the ancient, dwindling Craft. “Cure him? No. That I cannot do. I can merely govern his power. But . . .”
“Oh thank you!” The mother seized Ulrich’s hand.
The father’s brow creased. “Will it . . . cost much, this cure?”
“Nothing. But later, when the child has become a boy, I will want him to come here, to Cragganmore, to live. I shall want to teach him. That is my condition.”
Sighing, drying her eyes, the mother nodded.
“And you understand,” Ulrich added, raising a warning finger, “that it will be dangerous. It is always perilous to meddle with such power. If I should miscalculate . . . If I should cast too strong a spell. . .”
“Oh,” the mother whispered, “you couldn’t make a mistake. You’re a sorcerer.”
Ulrich smiled sadly.
“Done!” the father said. “Agreed.”
Ulrich frowned and sighed heavily, remembering.
All visions vanished. The liquid in the bowl lay still, reflecting only the flames from the braziers and the sconces, while the old man dreamed back, his tongue working at the bearded corner of his mouth. He had indeed erred, suppressing that innocent power; the charm, a dangerous one, had twisted serpentlike upon him. It had flawed Galen’s gift, leaving him bemused and easily distracted. Later, when Ulrich had begun the formal training, following the precepts of his master Belisarius, he found that the boy lacked interest and concentration. And in fifteen years—what failure! what shame!—Ulrich had not brought him even to the First Degree. After all this time the lad still could not levitate, could not transmute, could not foresee. He was unable, in other words, to perform the most rudimentary tasks. Very soon, Ulrich feared, the boy would be called upon, and then he would need help; yes, would need much help.
Stiffly, massaging his hip, the old man straightened up. He groaned and sighed. The birds stirred expectantly, watching as Ulrich shuffled toward a second table, smaller and raised on a dais at the center of the room. On it lay an object covered by a white silk cloth. It was cunningly embroidered, this cloth, colored with arcane symbols intertwined, and as the magician approached, it began to shimmer with a light which was not a reflection but which radiated intermittently from the embroidery and from the object beneath, brightening and fading with an unnatural rhythm.
When Ulrich lifted this cloth—rather, when he caused it to rise by a touch at its edges and an upward gesture—a marvelous and subdued luminescence briefly pervaded the room. The night birds blinked and stared at the object that had loosed such weird light. It appeared to be a stone, gold-set and hung on a golden chain. To the gyrfalcon’s eye it was the size of a small mouse scurrying through November stubble.
“Ill wrought!” muttered Gringe, shrinking in the far shadows of the room. Ulrich took it, enclosed it in his cupped hand, momentarily containing the light, and then gathered up the golden chain so that the amulet nestled among its coils like a small egg. Then he released the strange glow again from his cupped palms, just as it began to fade.
Seen close, the object was almost colorless, its tints of blue, white, and rose so subtle that they vanished and reappeared, like shifting and magically layered seas. An infinitesimal spark lay captured in its center, and this was the source of the undulating moonlike radiance in the room.
Ulrich bore the amulet to the table where the bowl lay, its liquid trembling slightly at his approach. He carried it with utmost reverence; candlelight glinted palely in the swaying gold of the chain. Holding it as he addressed the bowl he whispered, “Nunc, illo tempore! And now, the old, old time!”
Again the liquid swam with visions. This time they took longer to form, and they churned the bowl with a darker and deeper turbulence than before. Tiny splashes reached for Ulrich’s hands as if seeking to draw the amulet he held back into the darkening vortex of the bowl. Indeed, a vortex had formed, rotating clockwise, revealing the very bottom of the bowl which seemed at that instant, even as Ulrich watched amazed, to open farther into huge dark spaces speckled by random fires.
Ulrich found himself again gazing into the Past—not merely the few millennia of human history, but the time for which there were no records but enigmas buried in the earth, buried in the troubled myths and dreams of men. At first it appeared as an undulating mass of plasma, gray and black and purple relieved by streaks of pale white, then brown, then orange, then finally yellow, broadening and fluctuating until at last what appeared were the irregular horizontals of sky and earth and water. Through these moved the first life, amorphous and ponderous shapes, lifting monstrous snouts through the scum, dragging themselves down hopeless paths. Then, later, gaunt frames were lifted on updrafts of ceaseless storms, coupled clumsily, spilled young; they died and were swept away to become rock at last, flesh liquefied, bones pulverized by pressure.
Ulrich watched wearily. He had long known, had long understood. But what now occurred within the bowl was new to him, and despite the clamoring pains in his back and legs he eagerly leaned closer to watch.
He saw a man first, a man clad in skins, poised in a sorcerer’s stance that Ulrich knew well; it was the stance taken when attempting a spell beyond one’s reach—determined, yet wary and defensive. Even as the vision clarified, the spell passed from that other sorcerer, leaving him drained and weak, and at the same time the scene shifted so that Ulrich saw the effects apparently through the eyes of his fellow.
The charm had been directed at the earth and had entered it. At first it seemed that only a minor tremor would result; bushes shook and pebbles rattled down a rocky grade. But then the agitation grew, and very soon the earth, which was in places like a scaly hide, undulated rhythmically. Fires pocked its surface in cones and opening fissures, and tiny rivulets of fire snaked down the slopes. Streams of water vanished in sudden steam.
Even as the sorcerer reeled back from the heat, a fissure wider than any others spread magenta lips, and from between them a creature emerged. Two sets of talons came first, and then a leg, and then the membranous tips of incandescent wings. It was a winged lizard, cowled heavily with a ropy brow. The head was bejewelled with ruby encrustations, the snout surmounted by a gray-brown shield. Its thick tongue was pure scarlet, like a gross red pepper. Embryonic horns knobbed the skull. As far as Ulrich could see, it had two legs only. The end of its tail was clenched in the corner of its mouth. Shreds of a membrane hung upon its scales, and from it there spread the stench of unearthly amniotic fluid. Its eyes had opened and were apparently sealed open, utterly unblinking. The slit pupils were horizontal, and looking into them was like staring across the horizons of time itself.
Around and beneath, the earth gradually subsided, the trembling diminished. There was still the hissing of steam on hot rocks and a deep complaining as the last small rockslides occurred and the land composed itself. From the far distance came the fear-and-mourning cry of a strange bird. Incredibly, Ulrich heard these sounds distinctly, although what he was watching was but a vision.
Then the small dragon roared. It was a monstrous sound, like the scream of a gutted horse, and the sorcerer recoiled from it just as Ulrich recoiled from the vision in the bowl. Again came the roar, and again, more jubilant as the man was driven back, and the beast lifted scrawny arms in triumph. Fleeing, the man turned to face Ulrich, and Ulrich saw the frozen mask of horror and despair that was his face, and saw too, as clearly as if it were graven on the stone of the bowl the thought that was in his mind: Have I done this? What have I done?
Ulrich was profoundly shaken by this vision. He gripped the table, and he found that he had trouble breathing, and that a strange, circ
ling pain was teasing the center of his chest. But there was more to come. Before the images vanished forever, he saw the skin-clad sorcerer a final time. It seemed that some years had passed. The man was thin and haggard and perhaps very close to death. His energies had clearly been almost totally drained from him. He was kneeling and he was offering to a boy, whose hand was outstretched to take it, the very amulet Ulrich held, which shone with eerie luminescence. But the sorcerer was looking at neither the newly crafted stone nor the boy. He was pointing into the distance, and following his line of sight Ulrich could see approaching, very low above the horizon, the awesome silhouette of an airborne dragon.
“So,” Ulrich said, nodding slowly. “So.”
The liquid in the bowl clouded, calmed, cleared, lay inert.
Ulrich’s back ached miserably. Groaning, he held the amulet in one hand and leaned on the table with the other. His knees had stiffened, and he performed a little shuffling dance to stimulate his circulation. He muttered wordlessly. He had never really learned to curse, although as a youngster among the fens he had tried hard, in Latin, and in Celtic, and in Anglo-Saxon too.
“Old rick,” said Gringe, the white raven, scrabbling across the flag floor to safety under the table.
“Avaunt!” Ulrich shouted at him, lifting his gnarled oak cane. “Get Galen!”
“Galen may win.”
“Get him!”
The raven made several obscene sounds in quick succession.
“Gringe.” Ulrich raised the fist with the amulet. “I warn you!”
The raven complained more, but he was going. One eye on the amulet, he was already scurrying past the aloof falcon and fluttering from chairback to windowsill and away into the night. A moment later Ulrich heard him chattering below at Galen’s window.
In another moment a soft knock came on the door, and Galen entered diffidently. “You wanted me, sir?”
“I sent Gringe for you,” Ulrich said, still staring morosely into the bowl.
Galen nodded, rubbing his neck. “I was practicing the new spell you gave me, and when I didn’t answer right away, he came over and pecked me.”
“Um. The fact is, he’s never forgiven you for turning him white.”
“I know. I apologized, though. It was an accident,” Galen said, louder than necessary, frowning at the raven, who had reappeared on the window ledge.
Gringe blinked mournfully.
Ulrich gestured impatiently. “Nevertheless, you were impetuous. I told you not to try that charm; I warned you there was a coda to be attached to it, a danger . . .”
“Well . . .”
“But you went ahead anyway. You experimented. And Gringe got in the way.”
“I . . .” Galen shrugged and offered a palms-up gesture. He had no excuses. He was a slim boy, eighteen now. He had an honest jaw and broad-spaced confident eyes, the green-blue of forest pools. His head, bowed deferentially now in Ulrich’s presence, was covered with curly and disheveled flaxen hair. His shoulders were broad, his stance elastic. The open-handed gesture had revealed calluses and black, broken fingernails—the hands of a laborer.
“And so,” Ulrich asked, still gazing at his bowl, “did you master the new charm?”
“No, sir.”
“The gesture? Did you practice the conjuring gesture for the present exactly as I showed you?”
“Well, sir, I thought so. I did try.”
“But, obviously, you didn’t get it right.”
“No, sir.” Galen sighed. “As a matter of fact, Ulrich—” He brushed back his hair resolutely. “I’m not sure I am a sorcerer.”
“Nonsense!”
Galen shrugged. “Oh I know that you believe that I am, and it’s true that I get an occasional charm right; but usually they go wild and something crazy happens. A tree grows fur, or flowers start laughing, or somebody passing by, like Gringe, gets turned a different color.” He shrugged again. “Last week, when we had that thunderstorm?”
Ulrich nodded.
“Well I went down to the tarn and I tried to calm the waters—a simple little charm like that! And what happened? Fish! Dozens of fish came crowding up and rubbed against my legs like cats!”
“You must try harder, Galen. You must discipline yourself! You must concentrate!”
The boy grimaced. “I know, sir. But I do concentrate. I do. And there are times when I feel almost that . . .”
Ulrich leaned forward, eyes narrowing, “What?”
“. . . that I am going away from myself. Up, somehow. And I feel that if that could happen then I could do anything. Anything would be possible.”
“And what happens then?”
“Well, I don’t know exactly. Something brings me back. I see something. Something ordinary. Maybe a bird, or a glimpse of the river or somebody walking past—and then, well . . . it’s lost.”
Ulrich covered his face. “I know,” he said. “I know.”
“But the odd thing is that right away I feel better. I feel . . . human again, and being a failed sorcerer doesn’t bother me so much. It doesn’t seem to matter, except that I let you down.”
Ulrich brushed this away, shrugged wearily, and did a little shuffling circling walk. Then suddenly his old fist began to pump the air in agitation. “And yet, you had the Talent, Galen!”
Galen looked up quickly. “I did? When?”
Ulrich’s hand faltered. “When you were small,” he said, speaking more carefully, “I saw that you had . . . potential. That you might be capable of grand events. I . . . I would like to think that that was still true.”
Galen frowned dubiously, and when he looked up his face was pale. “The fact is, sir, I’m frightened. I don’t understand the power. I think . . . I think I would like just to be human, and to let the power go.”
Ulrich dropped his hand and drew himself to his full height. “Go? Go where?”
“Back where it came from, I guess.”
“But it comes from you, boy! From you! And if you eschew it, relinquish control of it, you will make monsters; you will loose monsters on the world! Do you not recall the first condition of the Regulae: whosoever has accumulated the power through fortune, or zeal, or labor, let him beware that the safety of it is his forever . . .”
“Yes,” said Galen. “I remember it.”
“Then . . .” Ulrich was breathing deeply. His anger had flown, and in its place had come a stealthy reptile of dread deeper than any he had known. “. . . then you must never talk of abrogating your power. Never. You must control it, and contain it, and use it. You must . . .” His voice trailed off.
He had almost said that the young apprentice must use his power for the forces of Good, and once he could have said that and meant it. But now, although he believed in Good, he was much less certain how to attain it. He had known too many charms to go awry in the name of Good, to twist like snakes and cause pain, loss, and tears. Time, he knew, was the culprit; time and circumstance and chance, but mainly time. All his efforts had sought to transcend that ambivalent whirl of time and to enter a purer ether, where intention shone like crystal, and was never tarnished by action. Gravity he had conquered, but time he had not, and the evidence of his failure was there, in the aching back and legs, the bent shoulders, the seamed and blemished face, the uncertain hands.
He sighed deeply.
Power. What was it, after all, but a conjunction of coincidences which he had not, for all his study and magic, begun to fathom? Rather, the more power he had attained, the more the conundrum had deepened, broadened, grown away from him in labyrinthine passageways; and, having no alternative, he had descended deeper into those passageways until it seemed that he had lost his grasp on any thread connecting him with the healing simplicities of sky and earth and water . . .
“I know,” the boy was saying, still musing. “I know there is something there, but it’s not like your gift, Ulrich. I’m not a great sorcerer like you, or like Belisarius, or like any of the others.”
“You might
have been,” Ulrich said softly. “You might still be.”
“Well, maybe. I don’t know. What’s the point of having power, after all? Is there anyone to help? No, I think . . .” He paused.
“Go on.”
“I think that if it weren’t for you, Ulrich, I’d stop trying. I’d travel. Maybe I’d go south, or maybe west with the next longship to come up Raggenfirth to the tarn.”
“Simpleminded stuff!” Ulrich snorted. “Diversions for bumpkins!” But for the fraction of a moment he had been thrilled by old longings of his own.
“Think of it, sir! I have heard that beyond the Western Isles, where the Christians are, there are mountains all of ice that fall into the sea and go voyaging themselves.”
The gyrfalcon moved restlessly. It canted forward on its perch and lifted its wings, staring as if it shared the boy’s free vision; but it did not take flight.
“I have heard those stories,” Ulrich said. “But do not believe them.”
“They are true! I have heard . . .”
“You have heard? From whom? What do you know? No, Galen, you must stay with me for a little time yet. For only a little time. Then you will be free to make your own decisions; to use your power as you see fit.”
“What do you mean—only a little time?”
“Come,” said Ulrich, taking the boy by the arm and leading him to the conjuring table. “Look, and you will know all that I know now.” He gestured with the hand that still contained the amulet.
The substance in the bowl again flickered with life, pale green, but the images that formed within it were less substantial than those which had appeared before, for they were the intimations of what was yet to be. Galen stared entranced, for the first thing that he saw was the very stone that Ulrich held. For only a moment it retained its present shape, and then slowly and inexorably it began to expand with terrible force, fragmenting in myriad pieces, each of which shattered, infinitely expanding, to ever-smaller particles, and finally to drift down in a cool and universal rain, which quenched all fire within the vision, leaving only the shifting greens, turquoise, and blues of a water world. Yet, at the heart of the vision, even as it lay at the heart of the amulet in Ulrich’s hand, there remained a gleam of fire.