The Lion Returns f-3

by John Dalmas

  Hauser returned the coin to his pocket, and the two men shook hands. Hauser laughed. "I almost told you to write, and let me know how you're doing."

  Macurdy added his own laugh, then the conductor called, "All aboard!" The two men shook hands, and Macurdy swung aboard the train. Hauser waited on the platform till the car began to pull away. They waved good-bye to each other through a window, then Hauser left.

  9 Injun Knob

  It was a considerable hike from Neeley's Corners to the conjure woman's tiny farmhouse at the foot of Injun Knob. The road was better than it had been in 1933. It was graveled and graded. Macurdy took no luggage, carrying nothing except the coins, and the sheath knife Arbel had given him. He wore jump boots, a set of army surplus fatigues, a surplus field jacket and fatigue cap. He needed none of it to keep him warm-he drew on the Web of the World-but he'd long preferred not to be too apparent about it.

  It was twilight when he approached the cabin, the roof and walls of which were built of shakes. The only conspicuous change was a cross in the front yard, taller than Macurdy. He was still a couple hundred feet away when a large farm dog rushed raging and roaring from beneath the stoop, to dance around Macurdy not six feet distant, showing lots of teeth, forcing him to stop and pivot, and keep facing it. He'd about decided to shoot a plasma ball at it when a man stepped onto the stoop, shouting angrily. Reluctantly, the growling dog drew back, then trotted off behind the house.

  Macurdy continued to the cabin. The waiting man appeared to be in his thirties, and looked gaunt but strong. "What can I do for yew?" he asked.

  "I've walked from Neeley's Corners," Macurdy told him.

  It wasn't an answer, but the man stepped back. "Well c'mon in. I expect yer hungry." Macurdy entered. "Flo," the man said, "we got us a visitor. A hungry one. Fry up some eggs and fat back."

  Without a word, she put aside her mending and went into the kitchen. "Sit," the man told him, and gestured to a homemade cane chair. "What brings ya into these parts?"

  Macurdy sat, realizing he hadn't concocted a covering story. "To see the old woman that used to live here," he said. "I knew her when I was a boy. Wondered if she was still alive."

  "She's not," the man replied. Scowling now. "Dead a dozen years. She was a witch, and the Devil finally took her." He got up, turning to the kitchen. "Flo, hold up on those eggs and salt pork." Then he faced Macurdy again. "What sort of truck did yew have with her?"

  Macurdy looked coolly up at him. "She introduced me to the mountain. Injun Knob." An impulse struck him. "The holy mountain."

  The man flinched as if struck, and his answer was a startling near shout. "It was a cursed mountain, while she was here! The Devil come to it every month! Took living sacrifices, held orgies! When we first come here, we built the cross agin it in the front yard, and prayed morning and night! We still pray daily to God to keep it clean!" His eyes flared. "Holy mountain! If that's what yew think of it…"

  Standing, Macurdy cut him off. "Mister," he said calmly, "that old conjure woman was twice the Christian you are." He paused, while the man stared bug-eyed. "I'll tell you why I came here. I'm going up the mountain and open it up again. I've been through it before, and others like it. And I'll tell them on the other side…"

  The man roared with anger, then stepped toward the fireplace, reaching for an old shotgun hanging there.

  Macurdy gestured, and instantly the shotgun's barrel and metal fittings were searing hot. When the man took it from its pegs, he squealed with unexpected pain and cast it from him. The shell in the chamber went off spontaneously, pellets gouging a wall. Terrified, he fell to his knees, his blistering hands cupped in front of him.

  "Bring water!" Macurdy said to the woman who stared in from the kitchen door. Then he turned and walked out. The dog didn't appear. As if it knew better.

  ***

  Macurdy was in a state of self-disgust as he started up the forested knob. You're lucky that shotgun didn't blow a hole in you, he told himself. Would have served you right, after mocking and insulting that poor ignorant sonofabitch. He only did what he thought was right. If you're not careful, you'll turn into another Margaret.

  It occurred to Macurdy then to wonder about the efficacy of prayer. Did it actually work? Sometimes, he decided. When the cause is just. But still-

  What would he do if the gate didn't open anymore? He himself had destroyed the Bavarian Gate, though by nothing as mild as prayer. He wondered if Hithmearc, the land it had led to, was in the same universe as Yuulith. There was, he decided, no way to know. Meanwhile, if the man's prayers had shut off the Ozark Gate, maybe he could find the Kentucky Gate.

  At the very top of Injun Knob, another cross had been raised. Midnight was hours away. He sat down and leaned against it, feeling somehow soothed and relaxed. There was a promise of hard frost in the air, and he thought the formula that tapped the Web of the World for warmth.

  He was, he told himself, wise to go back to Yuulith. He had friends there. And people were used to the idea of some folks not aging, because the ylver and the Sisters didn't age. Not till they'd lived close to a century. Then, of course, they went downhill like a runaway buggy with a stone wall at the bottom.

  He closed his eyes, wondering if just possibly he could connect with Vulkan psychically from where he sat. But nothing happened, and his mind wandered. He thought of Omara. What might she think of marrying him? Would the Sisterhood allow it? Would she still feel the way she had about him? But first he'd look up Varia. Maybe Cyncaidh had died. Of course, if he had, Varia might have married someone else. She had no reason to expect him back.

  He realized what he was thinking, and it struck him as disloyal to Mary, so recently buried. But the thought lacked teeth. He was on the doorstep to another world, another universe. Continuation of another life.

  Then he slipped into sleep, and dreamed good dreams that he wouldn't remember.

  10 Wolf Springs

  There was a moment of startled nightmare as the gate sucked Macurdy in, then spit him out, to roll across last summer's wet grass and leaves.

  The crossing had wakened him like a tomcat dropped into a pit of bulldogs. But the transit was familiar now, and the fear a momentary reaction to being jerked violently and unprepared from sleep. On the Oz side it was drizzling, and daylight, the noon nearest the full moon. (The phases of the moon were in synch with the phases on Injun Knob, but day and night were reversed.)

  He got to his feet and looked around. Four Ozian warriors stood a little way off, watching him and speaking quiet Yuultal. They held their spears ready, for clearly this was no ordinary victim, sick in guts and limbs, or likelier comatose.

  Macurdy folded thick arms across his chest. "I'm Macurdy, the Lion of Farside," he announced in their own dialect. "I've come back. Take me to the headman."

  ***

  It was actually Arbel whom Macurdy wanted to see, but it was politic to visit the headman first. His march to the village was unlike that first one. The corporal in charge walked beside him. It was clear from the man's aura that he was awed. The others followed, equally impressed. No one jabbed him from behind with their spear, harassing him, making blood run down the back of his legs. It was obvious his reputation still lived, perhaps exaggerated even more than before.

  He'd half expected there'd be no warriors waiting to see what or who came through. If anything did. With the old conjure woman a dozen years gone, there'd be no sacrificial gifts put out, and perhaps no reckless rural adolescents, waiting on a dare for "the spirit to come a-hootin'." As for the Sisterhood-he had no idea whether they still used the gate.

  The district headman's residence seemed unchanged, but the old headman had died. His replacement had been a soldier in what was now being called Quaie's War. "I saw you on the march," the man told him, "and at the Battle of Ternass. And when you came back to Wolf Springs afterward. You have the long youth." Then he offered Macurdy the hospitality of his home, and his choice of slave girls.

  Macurdy answer
ed that he'd come to Oz for a purpose. He'd soon be leaving for the east, and wanted to consult with Arbel, his old mentor.

  The headman was relieved. How do you entertain a legend? It was easier to have them go away, and tell stories about them afterward.

  ***

  Macurdy had arrived with no actual plan, only a few intentions and hopes. When he'd left seventeen years earlier, he'd intended to return someday-an intention forgotten, once he'd met Mary. Vulkan had said he'd know when Macurdy came back; that they had things to do together. Meanwhile Macurdy felt no urgency. Who knew how far Vulkan would have to come. Or whether, after so long, other things had come up.

  Once Macurdy had finished his courtesy call on the headman, he walked to Arbel's house. It looked as he remembered it, except the whitewash was fresher. It was long and linear, its walls a kind of stucco-four large rooms plus storage rooms, with a full-length loft. Moss and grass grew on its steep roof. There were windows in every room, with translucent membrane-the abdominal lining of cattle-stretched across them in lieu of glass, to let in light. In summer, fine-meshed fabric would replace the membranes, admitting breezes but not mosquitoes. When storm threatened, the shutters would be closed. Just now, smoke rose sluggishly from two of the four chimneys, then settled and flowed down the roof.

  Macurdy knocked, and a young man opened the door, frowning uncertainly at the formidable figure in peculiar clothes. "Who are you," he asked, "and what do you want?"

  "I'm Macurdy. I've come to see my old teacher."

  The young man's jaw fell, and for a moment he simply stared. "Macurdy? Just a minute! I'll tell my master!" Then turning, he hurried out of sight, leaving Macurdy smiling on the stoop.

  Within a minute, Arbel himself was there. At sight of Macurdy, he grinned broadly, a facial expression he seldom indulged in. "Macurdy!" he said, stepping aside. "Come in! Come in!" Macurdy entered, and Arbel closed the door behind him. "I dreamed of you last night," the old man told him, "but it did not feel prophetic."

  He ushered him through one room and into another that served as workshop and storeroom. A young woman was there, pestling dried herbs, and looked up as they entered. "Do you know who this is?" Arbel asked Macurdy.

  It took only a moment to recognize her: dark complexion, large dark eyes, thin curved nose and narrow mouth. And poised. At Macurdy's last visit, seventeen years earlier, she'd been Arbel's twelve-year-old apprentice. She was of average height, not tall as she'd promised to be, and wiry now instead of gangly. To a degree, her aura resembled Arbel's. Arbel's marked him as someone whose interest was in learning; healing provided a focus. Her central interest was in healing; earning provided a means. Both were patient and tolerant, she more than Arbel, Macurdy suspected. But her tolerance, like Arbel's, was underlain with firmness.

  An interesting pair, he thought. She'd be twenty-nine, and Arbel near seventy. Maybe they knew an herb that kept him frisky.

  "You're Kerin," Macurdy said, answering Arbel's question. "His assistant now, I suppose."

  "And his wife," she answered. "He insisted you are one of the unaging. Obviously he was right. But you haven't gone untouched by life."

  She reads auras too, he decided. "Untouched?" he said. "Beaten up by it, from time to time. No worse than lots of others, though."

  No worse than lots of others. Having said it, he realized its truth, and wondered if she'd led him to it.

  ***

  Macurdy spent several weeks at Wolf Springs. It was Arbel who dealt with the cases brought to his home. Kerin rode the rounds of the district, making house calls. Usually she was home for supper, but sometimes it was later. The cooking was done by the slave who'd met Macurdy at the door.

  Arbel chuckled, talking about it. People expected prompt service when they brought the patient in, and expected it from the old master himself. With house calls they were less demanding. "Kerin has great gifts of insight and intuition," he said. "It's rare these days that I can do more for them than she can, and there are cases she handles better than I. But prejudice is hard to argue with."

  He was interested in Macurdy's stories of healing in World War II, and invited him to sit in on his sessions. Macurdy accepted gladly. They would add to his own skills.

  But his mornings he spent in physical activity. After an early breakfast, he'd saddle a horse to ride the country lanes and forest trails. His old war horse, Hog, was still alive and sound, though twenty-eight years old, and no longer much for running. Hog had belonged to Macurdy all those years, but been Arbel's to use. For some years, Arbel had used the big gelding on his rounds of the district. Then Kerin had taken over that duty, and Hog carried her. Now Arbel traded for him, became Hog's actual owner, in return for a splendid eight-year-old named Warrior.

  In a fey mood, Macurdy renamed his new horse Piglet, though it was nearly as large as Hog. It was easy to laugh now, as if passage through the gate had finished healing the trauma of Mary's death, though the scar would remain.

  He rode about swordless. Instead, in a saddle sheath, he carried a woodsman's ax, and on his belt, the heavy knife Arbel had given him so long ago. He'd stop awhile in a river woods, and practice throwing both knife and ax at sycamores, silver maples, gums and cottonwoods, renewing skills that had served him well in Yuulith. And in Oregon had led to his marriage.

  For more vigorous exercise, he cut and split firewood for Arbel. And practiced with the Wolf Springs militia-two evenings a week with the youth class, and on Six-Day afternoons with the veterans. He would, he supposed, need his old warrior skills, which had rusted considerably. Fortunately they derusted quickly, for every eye was on him, and it seemed important that his reputation continue strong.

  Meanwhile the redbud trees bloomed, then the dogwoods and basswoods. The elms and others burst buds, sheening the forest with thin and delicate green.

  They were busy days, improving his healing and fighting skills, cutting wood, savoring the progress of spring… but all were secondary to reunion with Vulkan. Vulkan would know where to take him, or send him, and what to do next.

  For the feeling had grown in Macurdy that he had a reason to be in Yuulith beyond making a new life for himself, with a woman who did not age.

  ***

  At the end of the fourth week, he was visited by a strange dream. In it he found himself wearing an SS uniform. But not in Bavaria. This was on a coast, somewhere in Hithmearc, and he was visiting a shipyard with Crown Prince Kurqosz. One minute the ships were square-rigged-barks. A moment later they'd be LCMs-World War II landing craft. Kurqosz told him he was going to take an army across the Ocean Sea in them, to conquer a land called Vismearc. Which worried Macurdy, for it seemed to him that Vismearc was America.

  Knowing the Voitusotar, Macurdy wondered how any of them could make it across the ocean alive. Kurqosz answered that he was taking an army of monsters across. "Monsters?" Macurdy asked. Then he remembered his dreams during the war, of huge monsters trampling GIs on the beach, and flailing them with anchor chains.

  Now Kurqosz was accompanied by a human woman. Macurdy asked why. The crown prince laughed. "I like their fuller curves," he said, "and their submissiveness. And when they are fertile with us, their boy children are rakutur. Very useful, the rakutur." Then the woman was Varia. She winked at him, and as if it was a signal, Macurdy woke up.

  ***

  That morning at breakfast, he told Arbel he was leaving before lunch. That he'd dreamt it was time to go. Arbel examined Macurdy's aura. "Yes," he said, "I see it is."

  Well before midmorning, Macurdy had his saddlebags and bedroll on Piglet. Along with the war gear he'd left with Arbel seventeen years earlier: helmet, saber, and a light-weight, dwarf-made byrnie, all still shimmering with Kittul Kendersson's protective spells.

  Swinging into the saddle, he gave Arbel a good-bye salute, then rode off down the dirt track that in Wolf Springs constituted the main street. Quickly he was out in the countryside, headed for Oztown, the capital.

  11 Zassfel

&nbs
p; It was early dusk when Macurdy arrived at Oztown. By standards west of the Great Muddy River, Oztown was populous, with three or four thousand people. But it was rural nonetheless, with corn patches, chickens, cows, pigs, horses… Macurdy had a mile to ride down its principal "street" to reach the chief's residence.

  Riding past a tavern, Macurdy thought he recognized a large man about to go inside. Though if he was right, the man had changed a lot. Guiding Piglet to the hitching rail, Macurdy dismounted and secured the reins. Then he cast a light concealment spell over the animal-enough to make him easily ignored-and went in.

  The place reeked of pine torches. He looked the room over. The man he wanted was bellied up to the bar, and Macurdy walked over to stand beside him. "Hello, Zassfel," he said quietly.

  The face that turned to him was fleshy, florid, and considerably scarred. For just a moment the eyes squinted suspiciously at Macurdy, then widened in recognition. "You!"

  "Me. What are you drinking?"

  It took a moment for Zassfel to answer. "Whiskey. What else?"

  At that moment, the barkeeper set a glass of it in front of Zassfel. "Five coppers," he said.

  "On me," Macurdy told him, "and I'll have one." He dug into a pocket and came up with a silver teklota. The barkeeper peered at it, then went to his scale and weighed it, returning with a smaller silver coin and several coppers.

  Zassfel's look reverted to suspicion, underlain by hostility. "What are you buying me whiskey for?" he growled. "I'm no friend of yours."

  "For old times' sake. I'm just back from Farside. Visiting old friends, and maybe curing old grudges."

  Zassfel scowled. "This one'll take a lot of curing."