The wizard at home tst-2

by Rick Shelley

  Two tall chairs, of wood so dark with age that it was almost black, stood between the bier and the far wall. Silvas's tiger-sized house cats, Satin and Velvet, stood vigil over their fallen mistress. They had the colors and markings of Siamese cats, but despite their size, they were indeed pets. And more. They looked toward Silvas and Maria but did not move.

  "Give me a moment," Silvas said. When he crossed to Carillia, Maria remained by the door.

  Silvas stopped three paces from Carillia and stared at her face with an intensity that might have suggested that he harbored some deep fantasy that she might indeed only be sleeping. Her face had always looked serene, but now it was as static as marble-and as cold.

  "You are truly dead, my love," Silvas whispered, almost choking over the grief his words produced. "I never thought this day would come, that I would stand and mourn you. I always feared that it would be the other way, that you would survive me."

  He walked to Carillia's side and leaned over just enough to let his fingers brush her cheek. It was cold, as he had known it would be.

  "Where are the words?" he whispered. It took a considerable application of will to hold firm, to keep the flood of emotion dammed within him.

  "Maria?" Silvas extended his right hand. Maria came to him, and they took their seats behind the bier.

  "Koshka," Silvas said, as softly as he had spoken before. A moment passed before the door opened. Koshka looked in, his face and manner tentative, as if he had not truly heard the summons.

  "It is time," Silvas said. "Let our people come."

  "Aye, lord."

  Koshka ducked back out of the room. When he returned, he walked to the bier and stood by Carillia for a minute, lifting his head to share a look with his lord before he walked to the side of the room, to stand under the windows. There was a line of people at the door. In the next hour, everyone who lived and worked within the walls of the Seven Towers came. Even Bay made the pilgrimage, with Bosc at his side. By the time the last of the castle staff had filed through the room, the first of the people from the village had arrived. Carillia had been their lady as well, and a favorite for untold generations. The sun had set before the last of the villagers filed past her. Bay, Bosc, Koshka, and Braf Goleg returned then, to stand in vigil for a few minutes more.

  Then Maria stood, sensing Silvas's need to be alone with Carillia. For an instant, she stood with her hand on Silvas's shoulder. "We will wait for you," she said.

  "It may be some time," he replied absently, his attention focused almost totally on Carillia. "I have a lot to deal with here."

  "I know." Maria gestured to the others, and they all filed out of the room, except for the cats. Satin and Velvet would not surrender their positions.

  Before Maria closed the door, she looked across at Silvas. "No matter how long it takes," she said.

  CHAPTER TWO

  As soon as Silvas was alone with Carillia and the cats, he got up and snuffed half of the candles and all of the torches in the long parlor. He used his fingers to snuff the candles, but dousing the torches with a thought was an old magic. Even before he received Carillia's final gift, Silvas had been able to see in almost total darkness, as readily as the cats could. Now, Silvas suspected that he needed no light at all. But he left some lights burning because total darkness might invite interruption.

  "We don't need so much brightness, do we, my love?" Silvas stood over Carillia and looked at her face. "In any case, there's no light that can penetrate the darkness in my heart, now that you're gone."

  A deep sigh forced its way out of Silvas's mouth. He knelt at Carillia's side and grasped her shoulders. Slowly, he bent over her face and kissed her cold lips with a passion that suggested that he might be trying to call her back to life. There was no resilience to Carillia's lips, but Silvas was beyond noticing. His emotional dam overflowed and burst, and grief poured through. Tears and deep, wrenching sobs shook his body and soul. His teardrops fell on her face and ran down her cheeks, making it look as if she too were crying.

  Silvas lost awareness for a time that could not be measured in hours, minutes, and seconds. It was a fraction of eternity, and any fraction of an infinite is infinite. He scarcely breathed during this time that was not time. His heart was almost as silent as Carillia's. "You have always been my heart," she had told him just before she died. Now, for one last time, they were intimately together.

  The oblivion could not last, though Silvas might not have sorrowed had it endured beyond the final judgment. Slowly, awareness returned to him-the silence of the room, a soft draft that touched his cheek, the press of the stone floor against his knees, the unnatural coldness of the dead goddess he held. His eyes ached. He had gone long without blinking, and the flow of tears had long since stopped, leaving his eyes dry. He blinked over and over until moisture returned. Then he took a deep breath and became fully part of his body again.

  "Carillia." Silvas kissed her lips again, softly, briefly. Then he released his hold on her, stood, and took a long, slow breath. He turned slowly, scanning the room. Nothing had changed. Satin and Velvet remained where they had been, moving rarely and little. Each cat met Silvas's eyes in turn, one blinkless stare meeting another, as if sharing understanding.

  Silvas paced for hours, making uncounted circuits of the room, scarcely watching where he was going. He did not even stare at Carillia's body all of the time. Mostly, his gaze was vacant, unfocused. His thoughts had moved inside his mind, leaving his body to find its own way around the room. Outside, night had fallen. The village was asleep. Few people stirred even within the Seven Towers-sentries on the walls, a few domestics who had not yet gone to bed. Koshka was with Maria; Bosc was with Bay.

  As the night progressed, Silvas's pacing slowed. Coherent thoughts started to intrude on the pastel softness of the kaleidoscope in his head. He returned to his chair behind the bier and lowered himself to it again.

  Carillia. Merely a thought this time. Silvas looked at her face. He could no longer shut out his memories, but the most intense emotion had been drained away. The ache was bated, leaving only a background emptiness that affirmed what Silvas would have instinctively claimed: You're gone, but I will never forget you.

  Silvas could recognize no physical difference between himself as he sat looking at Carillia now and himself as he had been when he first saw her, more than 400 years before. His image of self was constant. The differences were in experience and attitude. The latter had been shaped largely by Carillia. Silvas smiled, and the memories took possession of him.

  – |Britain had been a backwater in the early years of the ninth century following the birth of Christ, of scant importance to any but a few of its own inhabitants. The world was being shaped in far distant venues, in the spreading world of Islam, in virtually unknown Cathay, and-nearer at hand-in the German and Frankish kingdoms to the east and south. The British peninsula was contended over by Angles, Saxons, Picts, and Celts. The Norse onslaught that would drive the tribes and kingdoms of the peninsula to unite had not quite begun in earnest. There were forays, from time to time, but the Viking scourge was only beginning. In some of the old towns, there were still traces of the old Roman way of life, but decayed, and the last Roman-style warlord had been gone for more than a century. Christianity was a religion of the towns; it had no sure hold in the countryside. Druidism and other tribal religions still flourished, too far from Rome or any other seat of Christian power to fear systematic persecution.

  Silvas had been riding his circuit for generations of men even then. He had known the brief glory of Camelot, though he had steered clear of the Cornish castle as much as possible. Merlin had been a touchy sorcerer, far too willing to challenge any other power who came too close to his stronghold in the far northwestern district of the peninsula. Avoid entanglements had been Auroreus's advice, and it had become so natural to Silvas that he rarely questioned it. "I have an oath I have sworn," he occasionally reminded himself in those days, whenever the temptation came to take ti
me to himself. "I must stay fit for whatever my Unseen Lord may require of me."

  It was a spring day, spent riding from nowhere to nowhere, as the days always were. Perhaps the skies seemed bluer, the forests greener, in memory.

  Silvas whistled tunelessly as he rode through the seemingly endless forests that separated the villages of the midlands, his mind flitting from image to sound and back. Bay followed a rough track that could by no means be described as a road. Three hours before, they had come out of the pillar of smoke that connected them to the Glade. Silvas had uttered the words that dissipated the smoke, and the day's ride had begun. When the branching of the path gave alternatives, Silvas took whichever way seemed right. He had no idea where he was bound. As usual, he simply followed the call of the moment. Eventually, in a few days or many, he would come to some village or town that needed his services. He always did.

  Overgrown thickets pressed together, almost closing off the path. On both sides, Silvas's legs were scratched by thorns as Bay threaded his bulk through the narrow opening.

  "They prick me as well," Bay grumbled when Silvas cursed the sharp stabs.

  "But your hide is much thicker than mine," Silvas rejoined.

  "Then you should have asked to be born a horse," Bay told him, his voice pitched too sourly for a jest.

  "I have problems enough as it is," Silvas said.

  Just beyond the thicket, the path turned sharply left, sloping down into the shallow valley of some creek that Silvas and Bay could hear and smell but not yet see. The thicket continued along the left, between them and the water. To the right, the trees started to thin out, marginally. For the last hour, the forest canopy had been almost unbroken. Now, they could see an occasional patch of clear sky.

  And they heard music.

  Silvas pulled gently on the reins, one of the rare occasions when he used the leather to direct Bay, and the giant horse stopped. Silvas leaned forward and rested his forearms on the saddle boss, listening to the clear tones of a solitary singer.

  "An angel, by the sound," Silvas murmured after a moment. Bay snorted and shook his head, not necessarily in negation, but more in mock disgust at Silvas's words.

  "We can at least try to espy this angel with the heavenly voice," Silvas said, paying not the least heed to Bay's sarcasm.

  "Are you certain you want to take that chance?" Bay demanded, lowering his voice now that there seemed to be an outsider somewhere close. "You might wish that you had gone on without seeing the face that belongs to the voice. She might favor a toad, or something even more repulsive."

  "Never, not with a voice like that," Silvas said. "The gods could never be so cruel."

  "Have you learned nothing, then?" Bay demanded, his voice almost bitter, but he did start walking, following the trail toward the voice.

  For several minutes, the singing seemed to get no nearer. Silvas even dared to imagine that it might belong to some formless sprite, teasing him with such promise, staying always just ahead. But then the voice got stronger, the music clearer, almost magical in its purity.

  "She might weave a mighty spell with that music, whoever she is," Silvas said.

  "I think she already has," Bay replied, very softly.

  "Perhaps. Hurry, I want to find her before the song ends."

  Bay picked up his pace, his ears bent to follow the sound. The singing seemed to come from the other side of the thicket that blocked their way on the left side of the path.

  The thicket ended suddenly, but deceptively, leaning out into the path first, as if to block it completely, but then disappearing. To the left, Bay and Silvas saw a thin stream running clear and fast over a bed of stones. Beyond the creek was a small clearing, and in the clearing, a young woman was sitting on the grass only a few feet from the water, weaving garlands of wildflowers while she sang.

  She stopped singing and looked up at them. Even though she was thirty yards away, Silvas was struck immediately by the glory of her brilliant emerald green eyes. He did not even need his telesight for that. Those eyes reached out and trapped his heart instantly. The woman's beauty appeared uncommon at a distance, and she looked ever more lovely the closer Silvas came.

  "I hope I didn't startle you," he said gently, when he could find his voice. "I heard your singing, and I had to see who had such an exquisite voice." Bay halted at the edge of the creek, giving the young lady plenty of room in case the sudden arrival of a lone man on a gigantic horse frightened her to flight.

  "I often come to sing in the forest," she said, showing not the slightest trace of fear. Even when she was merely talking, there was music in her voice. Her hair was a rich auburn, with strong hints of red where the sun touched it. She was dressed in shades of brown and green, as if she truly belonged to the forest.

  "Then you rob crowds of great pleasure, my lady," Silvas said. "I am known as Silvas. I am a wizard in service to our Unseen Lord."

  "You don't look like a wizard," the young lady challenged. "You aren't old and wrinkled, with long white hair and an evil look of power about your eyes."

  "Not all power is evil, my lady, and not all wizards are old, or look it."

  "Are you come to lay me under an enchantment?"

  "If there is any enchantment here, you have already laid it on me," Silvas said, with as deep a bow as he could manage from the saddle.

  "Would you dare to have lunch with me here?" the lady asked-and she was clearly a lady, of gentle station. "I have plenty of food, and a good vintage to help it down-if you do not fear to come deeper into my web."

  "If there is a web, it already holds me fast." Silvas dismounted and waded across the creek. The water was not deep enough to overtop his boots.

  "My name is Carillia," she said as Silvas came out of the water. "I don't place your accent. You are a stranger here."

  "I could say the same for you, my lady. But, as for me, I am a stranger everywhere. As I said, I ride circuit for my Unseen Lord."

  "Then we have nothing to fear from each other." Carillia's smile gave Silvas shivers, but not from fear-most certainly not from fear.

  The picnic lunch turned into an all-day affair. When the sun started to get low in the west, Silvas took the chance of calling in the pillar of smoke that would give him access to the Seven Towers. Carillia accepted his invitation to visit. And she had never left him.

  Until now.

  – |Silvas leaned back in his chair in the long parlor and stretched at great length. For a time, he had managed to forget the pain of his loss. But when the memories of his first meeting with Carillia receded, the pain returned, dulled and a little more bearable, but still there. He looked at Carillia's body, trying to fix their best times together in his mind as a wall against the agony of her death.

  "I know that's what you would want," he whispered. "You always tried to ease my burden. You took far more upon yourself than I ever realized." He listened for her voice within him, uncertain that it might actually be there, still disappointed when he did not hear her reply to him, even in thought.

  "What fate has done to us," he said. "I always thought that if I survived the great task that our Unseen Lord had prepared me for, you and I would have ages to relax and truly enjoy our love. I could still go out and do my wizardry, whenever my conscience would give me no peace, but there would be no exceptional danger to that, and I could keep it modest. I thought."

  He went silent then. There were new voices within him, a faint babble of strangers that might have been at an incredible distance. No one voice was strong enough to dominate the rest and make itself heard, though.

  "I have so much to learn," Silvas said, no longer looking directly at Carillia. His eyes slid closed, slowly. There was something he could not put off any longer, but he was uncertain what that something might be.

  "Eyru, reygu olduvia. Eyru, sprath kevry." The words of the incantation came to his lips without bidding, a spell of defense for himself and for the Seven Towers. Silvas discerned no particular threat, but still the words
of the spell forced themselves into being. Silvas's head started to spin. He felt an almost familiar sensation of being pinned in his chair, unable to move if he had wanted to.

  He could do nothing but flow with the demand.

  – |Silvas stood alone, in a dark place with nothing to mark its dimensions or location. He could hear a hollowness around him that emphasized the slow rasping of his breath.

  I can't even tell if I've been here before, he thought. Since he could normally see in almost total darkness, it occurred to him that there might be nothing here to see. He took one step forward, then took it back. Similarly, he took one pace in each of the other primary directions, always returning to his original spot. That was the only anchor he had.

  At last, he spotted a single point of light, tiny and distant, less than a pinprick against the utter blackness that surrounded him. He did not see the point of light appear, but he thought that it had not been there just an instant before. He stared long enough to convince himself that the light was no mere mirage brought on by his sudden isolation, then he extended his vision to use his telesight, but even that did not bring definition to the light. He walked slowly toward it, sliding his feet along the unseen, undefined surface of this nightmare, counting each measured step so he would know how far he might have to walk to return to his starting point.

  Silvas counted out one hundred paces, then stopped. The point of light appeared no closer than before. Silvas took another measured hundred paces, then stopped again. There was still no apparent difference to the light.

  "This isn't the way," he whispered, or thought. He was uncertain which. He did not resume the walk. "More light, that's what I need, figuratively as well as literally." He blinked repeatedly, delving into himself.

  I must have the answer somewhere within me, he reasoned. I am not as I was before. I have more resources than I ever imagined.