A Wizard In Midgard

by Christopher Stasheff

  "If you've all dreamed of him," Gar said, "perhaps all of Nibelheim has."

  "Or will?" Bekko gave him a wintry smile. "Perhaps indeed."

  He shrugged off the whole issue with a visible effort. "Well, there will be time for us all to talk of this in council. For now, the day begins. Shall we see what food there is with which to break our night's fast?"

  They left down the winding road that led up to the village, turning back several times to wave to the dwarves who stood thronging the gates, hands raised in farewell, Bekko, Retsa, and Saret at their front. Finally the curve of the road took them in among trees, and they turned away, Alea blinking moisture from her eyes. "How can I feel more welcome among dwarves than among my own kind?"

  "Do you mean the bandits we visited?" Gar smiled. "Yes, they weren't terribly hospitable, were they? Besides, we'd seen how well the giants respect their women, and the bandits didn't look very good against them."

  "No," Alea said, her voice hard, "they surely didn't."

  She looked around at the trees and the empty road ahead, and suddenly felt a bleak despair seize her. To banish it, she said, "Well, we've seen Jotunheim, we've seen Nibelheim, and we've both seen far too much of Midgard. Where shall we go now?"

  "Back to the clearing where we met the dwarves," Gar answered.

  Alea stared at him. "Why?"

  "Because something is waiting for us there," Gar said with absolute assurance.

  Alea eyed him narrowly. "What's this? More of your magic?"

  Gar looked at her, astounded. "How did you know?" Alea hadn't, she'd meant it in sarcasm, but wasn't about to let him know that. Let him think she was the mindreader for a changes She kept her face carefully immobile and said, "How else could you know what lies in a clearing miles away?"

  "So you guessed." Gar smiled, his gaze warming. "Only it wasn't just a guess, it was deduction-very clear thinking' from a few facts."

  His gaze was so admiring that Alea had to look away, shaken again. Any other man giving her that look would have been devouring her body with his eyes. Gar was admiring her mind. It was very flattering, and she was glad he wasn't thinking of her figure. At least, she thought she was glad of it. She needed a change of subject. Not looking at him, she asked, "How can the dwarves so love children twice their size? Wouldn't such offspring remind them too much of the ones who cast them out?"

  "You'd think so, yes," Gar agreed. "Maybe, though, the first dwarves were bound and determined not to treat their children the way their own parents treated them-and those children, when they grew up, never thought of not loving their offspring, no matter how big they grew."

  "I suppose that makes sense," Alea said doubtfully, "but I suppose I've grown too hard in my heart to believe people do things only out of love, or a determination not to return cruelty for cruelty. Couldn't there have been a more practical reason?"

  "Of course there could." Gar's eyes warmed again.

  Alea kept her eyes turned resolutely ahead. Then she realized with a bit of a shock that they were walking side by side, and she hadn't even thought of being afraid. How long had that been going on?

  "Perhaps it has something to do with the. constant danger of those early years of exile," Gar suggested.

  "With wild pigs and bandits and wild dogs about?" Alea nodded. "Yes, I can see that people so small would have lived in constant fear. Their only protection would have been banding together, wouldn't it?"

  "Yes," Gar said, "and every dwarf lost would make the group that much less able to protect itself. Life probably became very, very precious to them."

  "So precious that they cherished every single child," Alea finished. "Perhaps that's also how the male dwarves came to respect their women so well."

  "They certainly needed every single pair of hands to be stay alive," Gar agreed. "Gender would have mattered less than number and social skills. Interesting how much stronger and more important the goddesses were in their version of the Ring of the Niebelung, wasn't it?"

  So, chatting about safe topics, they made their way off the road, through the trees, and finally to the meadow where the wild pigs had attacked them.

  There, Alea halted, staring in amazement and fear, for the clearing was filled.

  It was huge, it was golden, and it filled the clearing all by itself. It was, Alea thought, like a huge wagon wheel with a great soup bowl upside down to cover the spokes and the hub, and another beneath it. There seemed to be windows up high, there toward the center, and strange lumpy things with holes in them here and there-but what attracted her attention most was the ramp that led up into the doorway that opened in its underside.

  Finally she found her voice. "Was this what you knew was here?"

  "Yes," Gar told her. "It's a ship for sailing between the stars."

  The implications hit her like a hammer blow, but they roused too much fear. She would have to get used to them. For the moment, to hide that fear, she thrust them aside and concentrated only on the anger, the very rightly deserved anger. "Why didn't you warn me?"

  Gar was silent.

  "Because you wanted to scare me," Alea said, letting the anger show, letting more of it show as she turned to face him. "You wanted me to be afraid, wanted me to'run screaming away Didn't you?"

  "I knew you wouldn't run," Gar said. "You've proved your courage time and again. But if you were going to be afraid of me, of what I am, this was the time to learn that. If you were going to turn away from me in disgust and loathing, this was the time to learn that, too."

  He was trying to hide it, anyone else would have seen only a granite face, but Alea had been traveling with him too long to be deceived by that basilisk countenance. She frowned, looking more closely, her own fear and anger receding as she stared into his eyes, saw the bitter determination there, the courage to face the truth. Compassion flooded her, and for the very first time, she reached up toward his cheek, almost touched it, held her hand a hair's breadth away. "Why would I loathe you? You, who have fought to defend me, listened to my grief, offered more comfort than I was willing to take! How could that disgust me?"

  Relief lightened his eyes, but he was still braced, still cautious, even though he smiled. "Let's go inside, then."

  He started up the ramp, but she stared at him, appalled. "Can you just walk away from it? Can you talk to these people about peace -and harmony, can you tell me you'll free the slaves, and just walk away and not do it?"

  "It has begun," Gar told her, "but it will take a hundred years or more to complete. Come inside, and look and listen at what is happening in your world."

  But Alea stood rigid as the implications of that ship came crashing back in on her, no longer to be ignored. "How do you know what is happening?"

  Gar turned back, gazing down at her gravely. "Because the dwarves weren't the only ones to dream last night. The slaves in Midgard dreamed of the Wizard too, and he told them to band together, fight their way free if they had to, and flee to the dwarves or the giants, whichever was closer."

  "How do you know this?" Alea asked in a harsh whisper. Gar only gazed down at her, his face drawn, his eyes bleak. "Because you are the Wizard!" she hissed. "You really can do magic, and you planted that dream in everyone's mind!"

  "One for the giants, one for the bandits, one for the dwarves, one for the slaves, and one for the Midgarders," Gar confirmed. "The Midgarders alone refused to believe any of it, or to talk to their neighbors about it. They will, though. They'll remember, and when things start to change, they'll begin to believe. At the very least, they'll tell it to their children as a fairy tale-and the children will remember it when they're grown, when they need it."

  But Alea's mind had jumped to the next conclusion. "If you can push dreams into people's minds, you' can pull thoughts out! You really are a mindreader, a genuine mindreader!"

  "Yes," Gar said gravely.

  "That's how you escaped, isn't it? That's why the bandits ran, all except Zimu! That's why we were able to fight off the dogs, why t
hey ran in fear! That's how you were sure we could beat off the pigs!"

  "Yes," Gar said again.

  "That's how you knew when hunters were coming! You could read their thoughts a mile away!"

  "Yes."

  "And that's how you calmed me when we met! That's how you knew what to say! You've been reading my thoughts, too!"

  "Only when we met," Gar said, "and only surface thoughts, the things you would have spoken aloud. I did that because I felt sure you would have wanted me to, if you had known me, known that I wanted to help you."

  "Never since then?" Alea asked, with ferocious intensity. "Never since," Gar repeated, very firmly. "I don't read friends' minds-unless they want me to, or would want me to if they knew the need. I don't even read enemies' minds unless there's a good reason."

  "How can you say that, when you always knew exactly what to say, how to reassure me, how to comfort me?"

  "Because other people have been hurt as badly as you," Gar said, "and wise people have taught me how to care for the wounded heart."

  Alea started another denunciation, but caught herself and looked more closely at his eyes. She bit back the retort-that he was one of the wounded ones, too, that he had known how to treat her because he had needed the same care as she, perhaps still did.

  But no one had given it to him....

  She vowed that she would, that she would think of what she needed and give the same care and compassion to him that he had shown her. The anger vanished, but she remembered something else. "You said I could learn to work magic, too." Her voice quavered.

  "You can," Gar assured her. "It will take hard work, and a lot of it, but you have the talent. You can learn it."

  To read other people's minds! For a moment, Alea went dizzy with the thought, so dizzy that she stumbled, leaned against something hard. That made her push the dizziness aside, and she looked up to see that the hard thing was Gar's side, and his arm was around her shoulders, his face anxious. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I should have warned you."

  She looked up into his eyes, feeling both drained and filled at once, knew her own eyes were wide as she said, "No. You shouldn't have. You did have to know if I would turn away."

  She gathered her nerve and pushed past him, on up the ramp. "Come, then. Let's see these wonders that you say are happening all over the world."

  She felt his eyes on her back, felt the heat of his admiration, the depth of his gratitude, but told herself it was just her imagination, that she couldn't be reading his mind yet, he hadn't told her a thing about how to do it, and she went on up into the doorway.

  She emerged into luxury she could not believe.

  The room was circular, thirty feet across, with one huge window and several smaller ones. Her feet sank into a thick rug that almost seemed to embrace them. It was a deep winered, and the more satin on the walls was rose. The ceiling was an even darker red, almost black, pierced by holes that bathed the individual pieces of furniture in soft, mellow light, but left the spaces between them dim. There were two chairs with reading lamps next to them on small tables, lamps that wore flat, circular hats with holes in the tops to let the light out above as well as below-but no smoke arose from them! Alea wondered what kind of oil they burned.

  The furniture was all large and padded, far more heavily than any she had ever seen. In fact, the whole piece was padded, not just the seat or the back! There were five of them, and another that was long enough to seat three people at once without crowding. Every chair had a table beside it, and a long low table stood in front of the long chair.

  There were pictures on the walls, actual oils by the look of them-but even as she watched, one of them changed. It was a landscape of autumn woods, but the leaves were falling from the trees. She could actually see them flutter down, and wondered if, when the branches were bare, there would be snow.

  She stood at the doorway, frozen by both the richness of the place and the magic of it.

  "Don't be afraid," Gar said at her shoulder. "It isn't magic, not really, and it's certainly something you can learn to understand in a few days."

  Alea looked about her and saw that the other pictures were moving, too. One showed fish swimming by, another showed a shepherd watching his flock in a summer meadow (and the sheep were moving as they grazed), and a fourth showed brightly costumed people moving about among huge buildings covered with marvelous and colorful decorations. A boat drifted in the foreground, and the city seemed to have rivers instead of streets.

  "It's beautiful," she said.

  "Thank you," Gar said gravely. He stepped past her, set his heels one by one in a boot jack and yanked off his boots, then slipped his feet into soft, backless slippers and went to stand by one of the armchairs. "Come, rest yourself."

  "I'm not that tired." But Alea did kick off her own boots and came in slowly, looking about her wide-eyed. She did sit, slowly and at length.

  "The chair will adjust to fit you," Gar told her. "Don't be alarmed."

  She squealed, for the chair felt like a living thing as it moved under and about her. Then she laughed with delight and stroked the arm. "Is it a pet? Does it have a name?"

  "No, it's not alive." Gar grinned. Then that grin vanished and he said, quite seriously, "But this ship does have a name, and a sort of guardian spirit to go with it."

  Alea went rigid.

  "It isn't really a spirit," Gar said quickly, "only a machine, like the computers you saw the dwarves building, though much, much more complex. But it does take care of us, and watches over us."

  "What is its name?" Alea asked through stiff lips. "Herkimer," Gar told her, then lifted his head. "Herkimer, may I introduce you to Alea Larsdatter."

  "I am pleased to meet you, Miz Larsdatter," the voice said, from everywhere and nowhere.

  Alea jumped, then grew angry with herself and tried not to let either the fear or anger show. She said, very evenly, "And I. am pleased to meet you, Herkimer. Are you really the spirit of this ... it seems so strange to call such a thing as this a ship!"

  "It is like a ship, at least," Herkimer told her, "for it flies between planets-worlds-as a ship sails between islands. As Magnus told you, I am not really a spirit, only the computer that sails the ship for him."

  "And cooks my breakfast, and keeps the ship warm inside, and does the laundry and the dusting." Gar smiled, amused. "But I will not pick up after you, Magnus," the ship reproved. "I wouldn't know what to keep and what to throw away, after all."

  "Magnus?" Alea stared at him. "Is your name really Magnus?"

  "It is," Gar told her. "I apologize for having introduced myself to you as Gar Pike-but when I step onto the surface of a world, I use the nickname someone else gave me."

  Alea gave him a stony look. "Gar you were when I met you, and Gar you will remain, at least to me. Why bother using a false name, anyway?"

  "Enemies who know my real name may be watching for me."

  "But you hadn't been to our world when you first used that name, had you?" Alea said suspiciously. "After all, you said you use it whenever you set foot on a new world."

  "Even if I hadn't been there before, enemies might have come before me," Gar explained.

  Alea felt a twinge of alarm. "Have you so many enemies, then?"

  "Anyone who tries to free slaves and raise up the downtrodden makes enemies," Magnus answered. He sat down in a chair near hers and pointed at the huge window in front of them. "That isn't really a picture."

  Alea looked at it. It showed a huge blue and green ball with swirls of white covering most of its surface. "What is it, then?"

  "A view of your world, as seen by a sort of magical eye Herkimer left high above us," Magnus said.

  Alea stared, completely astounded. Magnus waited.

  Finally Alea asked, "Is it a ball, then? The Midgarders teach their children that the.world is a plate, and the sky is a bowl turned upside-down over it!"

  "No, it's a ball," Magnus said. "I don't think that's a deliberate lie. Let's call t
he picture by a magician's word, though, 'electronic' instead of 'magical.' We can look at any part of the three nations with it. We can also listen to their radio messages. Herkimer, may we hear the Midgarders?"

  Voices cascaded from the screen, sounding tinny and distant. "The giants have formed a wedge! They're smashing through our army as though we were made of paper! In the name of Wotan, send whatever help you can!"

  "I apologize for the quality of the sound," Herkimer said; then with a note of disdain, "Their equipment is inferior."

  "Forget the quality!"Alea sat galvanized. "Can we see what they're talking about?"

  "Of course." The picture of the world went cloudy, then cleared to show a view that made no sense.

  "What's that?" Alea cried.

  "We're looking down on them," Gar explained, "as though we were one of Wotan's ravens, flying overhead."

  The whole picture made sense then. She was seeing a town, and the roadway that led to it. Hundreds of Midgarder warriors stood blocking the road, but the giants had simply swerved around them, and the warriors were running to intercept them. Their swords and battleaxes only bounced off the giants' legs, though, and they kicked the smaller men aside without even breaking stride.

  "They seem to be wearing chainmail leggins," Gar noted. Alea stared. "They have never done that before!"

  "They have never really raided before," Gar explained, "only fought off the Midgarders' raids. Now and then they may have smashed through to free some prisoners, but I don't think the Midgarders were able to take many giants home with them."

  "No." Alea's face hardened. "They killed them where they lay."

  "Is this what is happening now, Herkimer?" Gar asked. "No, Magnus," the voice said. "I showed you the recent past, so you would understand the radio messages."

  The radio voices were still squawking at one another in alarm and dismay. The picture seemed to jump, then showed two giants smashing in the side of a slave barracks. The slaves came running out, and the two giants herded them off to the road, where other giants were driving in their own packs of slaves. They assembled all the village owned in a matter of minutes, then turned and strode back the way they had come, the slaves running to keep up, afraid of being stepped on by the giants behind them.