Earth Magic

by Alexei Panshin

  He explored the bump on his head with a finger, and he worried the rough edge of his chipped tooth with his tongue. One pain connected the two.

  A bloody end on Stone Heath? Stone Heath was long ago when Morca still hung in a cradleboard on his mother’s back, before the Gets lived within walls. There wasn’t a word that he had heard that he liked, from talk of a Goddess to talk of marriage. He touched the tooth with his fingertip. The finger confirmed what his tongue told him. It was a flake shorter than his other lower front teeth. Hardly a war wound to boast of.

  Yes, and Morca home, so the witch had said. He took a deep breath and started up the road to the dun. Slut followed at his heel.

  He slowed his pace before he reached the dun. The gate of the stockade stood wide. The men at guard were not the men Haldane had left on watch. Morca was home. The carls at the gate, Morca’s men, grinned at Haldane as they saluted him.

  “You’re home late, fuzzface,” old Rolf said. He was still wearing his leather war jerkin, but he vaunted no fresh wounds and he showed more signs of travel than war. Still, as proof of the raid he wore a fork with a bone handle, lashed to his dagger sheath with a piece of light cord so that everyone could see them. “Your command has been lifted, Haldane, and you out walking a pig.”

  Haldane bid Slut stay. “Does Morca know of your fork, Rolf? Fingers are good enough for you. Fingers are enough for him. He’ll make you give it up.”

  Rolf shook his sturdy head. “Oh, nay,” he said. “He has a fork of his own now. You should have seen the place we took. Stone walls as thick as a man.” He held a hand over his head to indicate the width of the walls. “Forks everywhere. A trayful. Morca said I could take two if I wanted, since there were so many, but one is enough. My left hand is not so cunning as my right.”

  The other guard, Hemming Paleface it was, laughed and said, “You’ll stab yourself yet, Rolf.”

  “I’ll stab anyone who gets between me and the spit. My arm is too short. If I had a second fork, someone would have it from me in no time, and then where would be my advantage? And admire the cord. Isn’t that fine? I think of one use for it and then another. For now, I’ll just delight to play with it.”

  Haldane said, “Take my bow and bag, Rolf?”

  “So you can escape Morca’s hand? I’m on duty here. I cannot help you. But you are just on our heels. Slide the pig back to the swinery, nip through the back of the hall, and meet Morca in the yard tying the strings of your trousers as though fresh come from the outhouse.”

  Hemming Paleface said, “Any game in your bag? A freshly dressed rabbit would make Morca sweet.” He had no wounds to boast of either.

  Haldane had few words to spare for Hemming Paleface, who was not so much older, and not as good with sword or bow, but who was allowed on raids. But he would not appear small, so he forced himself to say, “Nothing. The gods of Nestor were not with me.” And groaned inwardly as he remembered how much they had been with him.

  “No matter,” old Rolf said. “We’ve brought you a sweet little partridge from out of Chastain.”

  Both carls laughed. Haldane didn’t laugh, but he did smile and show them the safe side of his hand, and they returned his salute.

  He led Slut by the collar into the courtyard. Truly it seemed he was on the heels of Morca’s party. The mud of their tracks had not settled. How had the witch known? How could she have known?

  The yard was a tangle of movement. Get barons, those Morca had raised, and their carls. Nestorian serfs. And a party of strangely dressed fighting men standing aloof between a wagon piled high with spoils and a heavy traveling carriage at a lurch in the spring mud. Fighting men with all their weapons. What did Morca have in mind? Who were these armed strangers in his home camp?

  Morca himself, the full height of a Western bow and more, dark and hairy, black-bearded, black-visaged, stood by the painted carriage talking to a painted man. A small man, a stranger to Haldane. The mixed colors of his clothes were an offense to Haldane’s eye. Haldane had never seen a Western man before, except for Oliver, Morca’s wizard, and even Oliver did not dress this way. Oliver wore red, or on great occasions magenta.

  The buildings of the dun were set in a hollow square within the larger square of the stockade walls. The stables on one side were large and sturdy. Directly opposite across the yard stood Morca’s hall, even more magnificent. It stood a full two stories high, built of great rough-hewn timbers and fronted with a balcony, with room within to hold all of Morca’s men. It was a luxurious building, visible sign of Morca’s ambition even for those who knew nothing of his plans to enlarge the dun.

  Haldane looked one way and then another, the pig he held straining in his grip. Before greeting Morca, he needed to rid himself of all the visibles of his disobedience. He caught the arm of a serf plodding past.

  “Here, old man,” he said. “Take the pig to the swinery.”

  “Yes, Lord Haldane.”

  The serf seized the pig, but Slut was in no mood to be penned. She squealed and tried to wriggle free, but the serf held her by collar and ear.

  That was easy enough, but bow, quiver, and empty game bag could not be passed like the pig to a Nestorian. To enter the hall unseen, Haldane must do it from the rear. He looked after the old man, dragging the pig away by force of arm.

  “Hey, hold,” he said. “I have a question.”

  “Yes, lord?” The old man tried to make his respectful gesture and keep his grip on the pig, and did badly at both.

  “I’ll walk with you a distance,” Haldane said, pointing to the swinery tucked in one corner of the dun out of sight of the courtyard. “You’ll do better to loose her ear. She doesn’t like that.”

  “Yes, lord.”

  “What . . . What portents have been seen of late by the plain folk?” He used the Nestorian phrase, Jael’s phrase, rather than the Gettish word that came most easily: cattle.

  “Portents, lord?”

  “Signs. Strange occurrences. Omens.”

  “Omens. It’s strange that you should ask of omens, lord. Lon, the son of Witold the Woodcutter, saw a wurox in the forest only two days past. So he says to anyone who will listen.”

  “Simple Lon? The boy who wets his smock?”

  “Ah, well, yes, lord. He does, but he is a good boy. He saw a cow, he says, and he is very positive.”

  “What is this wurox? Of what is it a portent?” Haldane knew the wurox only as the name of a sky sign. It was no more real to him than that other sky beast, the pard, sacred of Jan.

  “Why, lord, it is the wild bull of the woods in all the old stories. Libera’s kine. Travelers say they inhabit the great forest beyond Lake Lamorne, but none has been seen here in Nestor since my grandsire’s grandsire’s time. They drop stones rather than normal turds. I have seen them myself, great stone whorls. But the wuroxen are gone. Until now.”

  Haldane’s tongue went back to his flaked tooth. The edge was rough. That one little tooth edge dominated his mouth.

  His heart in arrest, he said, “Does this mean that Libera is here in Nestor?”

  The old man sucked his breath and nearly lost his grip on Slut. “I hope not,” he said. “Veton preserve us.”

  He meant Veton preserve himself, for Veton was his god, and not Haldane’s. Haldane had seen the old serf often enough standing in his gardens, sharing his wine with Veton, a great swallow for himself, a dollop on the earth for the god.

  They reached the swinery and the swineherd came hurrying out to take the pig.

  Haldane said, “If these wuroxen have not been seen in living time, how comes Simple Lon to know one?”

  “Why, Lord Haldane, I’ve never seen a wurox and I would know one. They shit stones, as I told you. I’ve never seen the great bird of the sea with a wingspan twice your father’s height, but I would know it if I saw it. Wouldn’t you?”

  “I suppose I would,” said Haldane.

  Haldane’s attention was taken by the approach of a bearded barefoot man of middle ye
ars, short, stout, and wrapped in a red robe. His name was Oliver. He was the only wizard in all of Nestor, one of Morca’s luxuries, evidence of Morca’s ambition. Great kings keep wizards. Morca kept a wizard. He slicked and slid his way over the rain-muddied ground from the weathered board steps at the rear of Morca’s hall. It was usually muddy there. No shoes and his woolen red robe billowing about bare shanks. That mud would be cold between his toes and he made no practice of cultivating discomfort. His spells and experiments made sufficient demand on his health without him courting indisposition, he would say, often said, and he did his best to keep his feet dry and his belly full. He didn’t fight, either.

  Oliver hailed Haldane and danced to spare his feet contact with the mud. His unbelted robe had the appearance of a flapping half-pitched tent. In the usual way of things, his feet were shod, his robes were in place, his pockets were full of secrets, and his head full of answers beyond Haldane’s patience to bear. At the moment, however, nothing was in place.

  He said, “Your father wishes your immediate presence. He is holding me accountable for your coming. They arrived in a sudden hour,” he said, to explain the self-evident.

  The boy wasn’t sure how much he liked Oliver, who wouldn’t fight. He thought of leaving him floundering there while he passed through the hall, dropping bow, arrows, and bag, and found his father by himself. At last, however, he hooked his bow over his shoulder the way Morca had taught him to carry it, and said, “Let us go to my father.”

  He had an automatic clout to take, Morca’s price for disobedience, but he was ready for it. He had bargained for as much, slipping away to hunt alone, but his head had already been broken once today and still ached. He touched his chipped tooth with his tongue and his boar’s tush with thumb and forefinger, and he shivered.

  “Is all well with you?” Oliver asked.

  “Just the evening breeze,” Haldane said. “I wonder that you don’t feel it, Oliver.”

  “I do,” said Oliver. “Let us get out of the wind.” And he pulled his robe into an imitation of order and tied the belt.

  As they passed between buildings into the courtyard, Haldane said, “Who are these strangers?”

  “Have you no eye for panoply? A Get raider should be able to gauge wealth and value like a clerk lest he fetch trash. You have much to learn. Your father has for company Lothor of Chastain.”

  “A King of the West here? In the land of the Gets? Why not be satisfied with his head?”

  “Ah, as to that, I cannot say. I was in my cell collecting my thoughts for an hour or two when your father arrived so suddenly. He sent no messengers to warn of his coming, and in these minutes he hasn’t seen fit to take me aside for consultation. Perhaps he intends to roast Lothor for the company and wished to keep the meat fresh. Proper spits are not easily found in Chastain, so there was nothing to do but bring him home.”

  If Haldane disliked Oliver, it was in large part for his tongue which could deal blows no man in Morca’s dun could ward, save only Morca—who was only rarely put to the test. Men were wary of the wizard.

  Oliver had appeared suddenly out of the West with an eye to his backtrail when Haldane was only a boy and entered Morca’s service, valued as much for his tongue as for his magic—as long as Morca was not put to the test too often. And he was not, for if Morca had use for a sharp-tongued wizard, Oliver had need of protection. He had been a younger son, and then a younger brother, his family of some power in Palsance, and he had filled his days with magic and other study. His pride being great, he had allowed himself enemies to match, until at last he had aimed a successful spell at too great and powerful an enemy and found his overmatch, not in magic, but in politics, and been forced to flee.

  He told the story well, leaving the best parts to the imagination, and he told it rarely enough that it kept its flavor. Haldane had heard it only twice from Oliver, though other men might tell it more often. Oliver never named his enemy, but men around their campfires who claimed to know spoke of the childlessness of Richard, King of Palsance, and nodded.

  In other days, Haldane had been in closer company with Oliver than he was wont to be now and liked him better. Not at first, of course. Oliver was far from Haldane’s idea of what a Get should be—he was not Black Morca. He was a left-behind, a member of the train with the women and children, no fighting man, but only a counselor, and content to be; a strange, plump, remote figure, a man who wore glass in front of his eyes to help him to read his book. And then, when Haldane was twelve, Morca informed him that he was to be placed in Oliver’s hands to learn letters and numbers, magical figures on paper that no self-respecting Get would know. Haldane naturally resisted the idea. Black Morca was Black Morca without knowledge of these cabalisms.

  Haldane said as much. A solid thumping—how else are impressions to be made?—altered his thinking.

  “Learn,” Morca said. “Train your arm. Train your eye. Train your wits. A king must be more than other men.”

  A king—Haldane a king? It was a new idea, a new possibility. Morca’s father, Garmund, and his uncle, Garulf, who had died leading the Gets at Stone Heath, had each been War King of the Gets in his own time, but this was not the West where crowns were inherited. Among the Gets the strongest baron was king, and if there was any lesson Haldane had learned, any one thing that Black Morca had impressed upon him, it was that he was not the man his father was. Haldane a king? Was it possible?

  And so into Oliver’s hands he went and learned to read and cipher, and it was a strange, exhilarating world he found there far outside the ken of any man in Morca’s dun, a world that could be shared with no one but Oliver. Oliver talked of Palsance and the great tourneys held under the eye of King Richard at the stone castle of Fomoria on Clear Lake where the best and strongest were given bid to enter Richard’s service and stand behind him to face the threat of the Gets. Haldane laughed at that. The fighting men of Palsance were butter to Morca’s knife.

  Oliver spoke of the trading ships of Vilicea with their sails of blue and red and white, coursing the Bay of Whales to Grelland in the north, faring south along the Brenadine Coast of Palsance where the old mountain trees stand high, narrow, and naked with strange scales for bark, hoving round South Cape to the Isle of Orkay and to Jedburke in Pellardy that paid tribute to the Gets. And he spoke of the dead and wasted ruins of Nestria at the mouth of the Blackstone, the old city of the Kings of the West, the legend of which was so powerful that it had carried even to the far high plains of Shagetai.

  “And you saw this yourself?” Haldane asked. “I thought the city of Jehannes was only a story.”

  “And the Three Kings too?” Oliver asked gently. “No, little one. I myself have walked the broken streets of Nestria and seen the monkeys at play on the toppled statues of the Three Kings. All that remains of the old glory is bare ruin and empty desolation. There is a mindless village tucked up against the last standing wall of the city and barefoot boys shy stones at the head of Leonidus, the Poet King. His bust has had five hundred years of the abuse he merited in life. Remember that, and leave no statues. Or rule well.”

  “I’ll waste no time in making poems,” Haldane said. But in his secret heart he was pleased that Oliver should recognize the stuff of kings in him. It made him feel that it might really be there.

  So, in time, as he learned, he and Oliver came as close to being friends as a wizard and a boy can. Not truly friends, but they might talk to each other when there was no one else.

  And then Oliver began to teach Haldane magic. Not the magic of simple figures reeling in the dance of multiplication and division. Not the magic of words on paper that could bring the dead voice of Leonidus, more poet than king, to life again after these five hundred years. True magic. The Pall of Darkness.

  Haldane had balked. Haldane had questioned. But Oliver said, “Did your father not put you into my hands to learn? The things I have to teach you can serve a king as well as any man. The things I have to teach may serve a king better th
an other men.”

  So Haldane had followed Oliver. He learned the signs of hand and the words, nervous all the while, fearing, uncertain, unsteady. And failed, as magic will fail those who fail magic.

  And he tried again, until at last once and then twice he pulled the cold curtain of night over himself while the sun still held the day. His touch was uncertain—the second time the spell succeeded, the veil of invisibility covered Oliver as well as himself. His count was slow and far from smooth. And yet, the spell did work.

  Nonetheless, he felt he was doing wrong. Arms, not magic, were the Gettish way. Force of arms was clean and honest, the mark of the superior, the road of those who rule. Spells and sorcery were the dirty tricks of the weaklings of the West, the cowards who had struck from secret at Stone Heath.

  Fortunately for his peace of mind, the aftermath of the spell was nausea and weakness. Magic always exacts a price from those who woo her, a bride price: blood, weakness, disease, and even death for power. And the day following his successes, Haldane was too weak to swing his sword or sit his horse under Morca’s eye.

  “What’s the matter, boy?” asked Morca. “You fail and faint.”

  “Nothing,” said Haldane. “The sun is too hot. It makes me dizzy.”

  Morca shook his head, but then he said, “Rest under the tree until your head returns.”

  But the sky filled with clouds and Haldane’s weakness did not pass and the story came out. Morca’s anger darked the day more than any spell and his fists blacked both Haldane’s eyes and left him sore as well as weak. Morca’s temper was a well-used tool, but Haldane never saw him angrier than at that moment when he left the boy in a beaten heap and went to search out Oliver. What passed between Morca and the wizard, Haldane had never learned, but he was taken forever from Oliver’s hands and after that, for the first time, Oliver’s sharpness began to be directed at him as much as any other man. After that, they were no longer friends.

  There was compensation of a sort. From that day, Morca publicly called Haldane his lieutenant, his second. It was a good name and it filled Haldane with pride, until he found it hollow, a word without power. Hemming Paleface knew how much it meant. Nothing. Morca might say once and again that he left Haldane in command, but when he raided, he raided without him. Even when he promised, swearing before men, swearing lightly, he raided into Chastain without Haldane.