Earth Magic

by Alexei Panshin

  “You shan’t go,” said Cob’s young wife.

  “Wake your mother, Jed, and ask her,” said the woodcutter. “She is old and strange, but she has seen much and I trust her advice.”

  Jed crossed the room and went to his knee in front of his mother’s chair. Before he could shake her, she came erect, spilling the cat from her lap, and fended him off.

  “I’m awake,” she said. “I’m awake. Hear my word, Jed.” She spoke prophetically. “If you join Duke Girard, you will starve and die in the forest, fight and die in the forest, die in the forest. The time will come when the Goddess sends help to Nestor and all the West and a new and peaceful Golden Age will dawn. But this is not yet that day. That will be another spring. For now, go on home and keep the door barred until the Gets have chosen their new king.”

  “See,” said Cob’s young wife.

  Jed rose, shaking his head. He pointed his finger at his mother. “That is why I sent you away. That is why I sent you away. You are always saying me no. Well, I won’t listen to you. I will join Duke Girard whatever you say.”

  “Shh,” said his sister, the peasant woman. She held out the well-filled bowl. “Here, now. You must be hungry. Have some of the good clams that you brought to us.”

  Clams?

  Clams? Was that what the dream-food was?

  It was all too much for Haldane. His stomach turned a somerset inside him.

  He looked wildly round the room. He must do something. He must break his way out.

  As Jed turned toward his sister, Haldane lunged between him and the steaming bowl of food. With a sweep of his hand, he knocked the bowl away, the food spilling, bowl flying. Then he swung around and with his fist he struck Jed square in the nose.

  There!

  There indeed! But the nightmare continued. The peasants unbarred the door and hustled Sailor Noll and his idiot grandson out into the darkness. And they threw their bag after them. The door slammed.

  Chapter 12

  OLIVER WAS SICK FROM HIS SPELL that night and could not sleep. As proof that wizards are as silly as any mortal man and twice as silly as some, he blamed Haldane for that, as though Haldane would not have preferred that he had left his spell uncast. The hard forest ground was an insult to Oliver’s aching body, striking him small coward blows every time he coughed. His face burned. His soft palate was raw and clotted. His chest was filled with sick syrup that no cough could clear. He lay, wrapped in his night cloak and his resentment, listening to Haldane’s even breathing.

  At last he picked himself up and set his back against a tree. He arranged his cloak around him as a cover against the clear probing coolness of the night so that he was as comfortable as he could manage. Sitting, his chest bothered him less, and the tree bole was more of a friend to his back than the ground had been.

  In the normal way of things, he thought much and he made many plans, but he did not think or plan now. He let his mind drift with the night. He heard the forest move around them. He let his fevered face be washed by the breeze as though it were a damp cloth in the gentle hands of good Mother Night. He turned his face up to welcome it, dreaming that he was a boy again at home in Palsance with all his life’s adventure yet before him.

  He watched as a bright star slowly rose above the tree shudder and sway. He was no country man, nor a sea man neither in spite of his stories, to be keeping track of the course of wandering stars. He was only a wizard whose spells of occasion failed—though never when it was truly of moment that they succeed—and he spent his nights in bed in the comfort of his cell, not gazing at the skies.

  But though he had not followed the progress of this planet in many long years, he knew it at first sight for the seat of Gradis. He knew many more things than he could remember learning and his eyes, which needed aid when he pored over his book, were otherwise keener than other men’s when he chose to employ them. Other men might not always see the pale white corby, Con, Gradis’s faint companion who brought messages winging from Jan and Libera and the other gods. When Oliver was a boy, he spied it often when others might not be sure they did, and he could see it now even with his old eyes.

  If Oliver had a god, which he did not, it might have been Gradis as well as any. Many noblemen in Palsance held by Gradis. But when Oliver was a grown man, the craft master Vidal of Grelland had made for him his reading spectacles, and while he waited for them to be done, Vidal had offered him a look at Gradis and Con through a long glass that brought them nearer the eye. There were those, Vidal said, who were afraid to look. Not Oliver. He had lost faith in all gods when he was young. The gods had left him to his own devices and he had prospered best when he did the same for them. So he looked. And he saw that Con was no corby, no winged messenger. Con was a moon, like Jana, and only one moon among three. Vidal said there were four, but that one was hid behind Gradis. Oliver was neither afraid nor surprised by this new knowledge. He was rather delighted to know one more thing that other men did not.

  Oliver was a man of hard sense. He believed only in things certain and exact—like his book of spells and himself. Like new knowledge.

  He never failed when success mattered. That was why his failure in the Chaining of Wild Lightning, his great failure, had shaken him to his marrow. He thought he believed in nothing uncertain. To learn of belief’s uncertainty only in that moment when belief fails is overtoppling. He had lost his faith for the second time, and this time the jolt was greater, for his unknowing faith had been in himself.

  And here he was, lost in the forest, cast out into the night with a boy as bewildered as himself. And needing the boy to live. These were hard days.

  The gentle curve of root and trunk made him a cradle to lie in. He lay back and watched the progress of Gradis as it climbed in the night sky. He coughed sometimes. In time, he dozed a little.

  He was wakened suddenly by Haldane. The boy sat bolt upright and screamed wordlessly so loud that his voice cracked and went soundless. Haldane leapt to his feet and struck out at invisible enemies with wild scything arms. He was crazed with fear.

  Haldane cried out: “Ayeee! Libera let me alone! I will not go with you!”

  What was most strange to Oliver was that Haldane’s cry was not in Gettish, but in country Nestorian. Oliver could not explain that. He did not know that it was Haldane’s breast language.

  Oliver was frightened too. He cast his cloak aside and struggled to his feet. He was desperate.

  “Be quiet,” he said. “They will hear us.” And he made to interfere with Haldane’s striking arms.

  He was muddled himself. His first waking fear was of a forest filled with enemies listening to hear them and ready to sweep down with naked swords. He wanted most for Haldane to cease to bellow his cries.

  Haldane was not properly awake. He was in a blind fighting trance and he kept Oliver at a distance with the wildness of his undirected blows.

  “Nay! Nay! Stay away from me!”

  Then Haldane tangled his feet in his night cloak and fell heavily. Oliver was on him instantly, pinning him to the ground.

  “Quiet, boy! Quiet, Haldane! For our lives, quiet!”

  But Haldane writhed and struggled under Oliver’s hands. He made lost and frightened sounds like a strange whining tune.

  It was all the wizard could do to keep his seat and contain the boy, and he felt his sickness overwhelming him. He used his greater weight to hold Haldane down and used his hands to wind the boy’s cloak around him and inhibit his wildness. One desperation was pitted against another.

  Haldane cried. “The wurox! I am being taken! Gets assist me!” He cried now in Gettish.

  “There is no wurox here!” Oliver cried in return. “There is no wurox here!”

  To silence Haldane’s cries, he took the last corner of the cloak and stuffed the wad into Haldane’s mouth until the boy gagged.

  Oliver fell away, struggling to cough, coughing in order to breathe, unable to breathe for his coughing. He was old. His head rang in circles. He co
ughed, spat, and choked. He coughed until his lungs were raw and he was near to vomiting and he took no note of Haldane who was coughing and choking himself as he fought against the cloak.

  When Oliver looked up, he could make out Haldane panting as he was panting, struggling to rise as he was struggling to rise.

  Haldane said, “Where. . . . What is this place? Who are you?” He was speaking Gettish still, and what was better, he seemed aware of his words.

  “It is me, Oliver,” the wizard said, fighting a battle for every word. “This is the forest. You had a nightmare.”

  “Oh, no! Nay. You are not Oliver. That is not Oliver’s voice.”

  “I am Oliver. Come to yourself! I cast a spell to guise our appearance until we win through to Little Nail. Remember! Remember!”

  “But that was the dream!” Haldane said, and his voice was wilder again. He pointed a finger at Oliver in the cool night dimness and pushed away like a broken crab on one hand. “You brought me back into the dream! I was home safe in my bed and you dragged me back to this again.”

  “Nay, nay. Stop,” said Oliver. “I am Oliver and you are Haldane. If you were home safe in your bed, that was the dream. If this forest be a dream, it is the dream that can be ended only by death. It is the dream in which you will gain your vengeance.”

  Haldane halted his progress, fetched against a sapling that would not break. “Where. . . . Where is Morca?”

  “Morca is dead. Don’t you remember? The peasant Jed said that his head now sits on a pole before the dun.”

  Haldane stroked his cheeks with his fingers as though to test them. He said slowly, wonderingly, “But Morca was alive. I was asleep in my bed. I was sleeping there and I dreamed. I dreamed—oh, many strange and awful things. I dreamed of a battle. Morca brought a Western princess and I was to marry her only there was a battle instead. Then . . . then I don’t remember, but there were peasants. They were not real. I knew they were a dream. I struck one because he was a dream and I wanted him to know it, too. But the dream did not end. They cast us into the forest. And then the wurox came to me and spoke.”

  “Nay,” said Oliver. He waved his hand to silence Haldane. He hawked to clear his chest. “All that you thought was a dream was true. All but this wurox that you dreamed.”

  Haldane must not have seen the waving hand in the darkness for he answered in an angry voice as though he cared not to be disbelieved: “There was a wurox! It came and it tried to carry me away with it. I would not go. I struggled. I fought free and ran. I ran and ran and I hid, but it found me. I ran again. I hid in the small deep darkness and it found me. It was about to take me then but I struck it down. But it rose up again and took me and I cried for help. And then I woke. But I was not in my bed. I was here in the dream again!”

  And he cried in fear and desperation. He rocked back and forth as he cried.

  Oliver sighed deep. How like a Get this all was, to dream of gods and to strike them with his hands. Things like this did not happen to him. Simple reality was enough of a trial.

  He said, “You have seen your own bed for the last time until you and your grandfather Arngrim raise an army and retake Morca’s Hill. And move Morca’s head off the pole where it sits. This is no dream. You were asleep here all the time you thought yourself in your bed. And you will be here when you wake in the morning.”

  “But the wurox . . .”

  Oliver picked up Haldane’s night cloak and threw it at him. “Listen to me!” he said in exasperation. “This is no dream and there is no wurox here. There never was. You have been wounded and you are confused. You slept little last night, Haldane, and you walked far today. If we are to reach your grandfather, you have far to walk tomorrow. So, please, go to sleep again, and let me do the same!”

  “But how can I trust you?” Haldane asked. “Oh, my senses are deceived! What can I believe?”

  Oliver said in a wearied voice, “Believe this. You must trust me. You have no one else to trust. If we are to live, we must trust each other. Go to sleep now. When you wake in the morning, you will wake here. I will keep you from all wuroxen.”

  Fine brave words. Falsely spoken. For all his years among the Gets, Oliver still saw them with the cool eye of a stranger. He did not truly trust Haldane and would not. Even unfuddled, the boy was a raw and reckless Get who required careful watch. Oliver bore Haldane because he needed him.

  Oliver turned away. Pretending to ignore the boy, he found his own cloak by the base of the tree where he had left it. He wrapped it close about him once more, cleared his chest of phlegm, and with great show lay down, his back to Haldane, and left him behind.

  That was the last he remembered until morning came to them in the woods. It was a cool and misty morning, and Oliver woke damp, aching, and grouchy. Still he had slept. Haldane was frisky as a colt. He made no reference to his behavior with the peasants or to his nightmare. He was quick to fold away the night cloaks and to bring out the very last of Oliver’s dried beef. Oliver suffered him in surly silence except for occasional reproachful coughs.

  As he ate, he thought. If his map and his calculation were correct and he could force himself to continue, they were no more than two days from Little Nail and Arngrim and a safe place in this chaos of Nestor. He thought he could go so far with Haldane’s help and Haldane’s vouch to open the gate for him. Oliver’s strength was not great, but his endurance was to be reckoned with.

  When they finished the last crumbs of beef, Haldane made to shoulder Oliver’s bag again, but Oliver pulled the bag away.

  “No!” he said.

  He swung it up onto his own back and they left their broken bedding place in the small greens of the forest floor. They set off again to find the road, the Pellardy Road for these two Pellardy sailors, the road that ran under the eye of Little Nail, where they would leave it.

  But as they departed the glade, Oliver saw something strange. Coughing, weaving a bit as he found his stride under the weight of the bag, he found himself looking at the track of an animal in the soft floor of the forest. It arced around their bedding place as though the animal had circled round them while it thought its own thoughts. But most unsettling was that the tracks were the great split hoof marks of kine. And great, indeed! If the track were a true index of the animal, this boss was twice the size of any mortal cow that Oliver had ever seen.

  As long as he had been in Morca’s dun, as long as he had been a wizard, Oliver had made it his business to hear and weigh all mention of strange happenings. He was as well aware of the talk of wuroxen in the woods these past weeks as he was of Haldane’s dream this past night. And he knew whose beast the wurox was.

  Oliver may have lost his faith in the gods, but he had not cast off belief. The tracks there in the forest round about their camp bothered him more than he could like. He was ready to argue that they meant nothing, but he was readier to pretend that he had never seen them, and readiest of all to leave them behind and forget them entire. He wanted no part of Libera.

  He said sharply, “Stop dragging. Either you set a pace, boy, or I will.”

  He made no light talk of dreams or the tracks of wuroxen. If Haldane saw the circle there in the forest, he said nothing either, and Oliver was content to have it that way.

  Chapter 13

  LIKE A GOSLING TRAILED BY A GOOSE in reverse of all the common order of the world, Haldane led the pack-burdened old man along the turns of the Pellardy Road. He pretended to be blithe, but his lightness was a lie. He felt eyes on his back.

  Haldane knew Noll for a liar and his enemy, this cock-eyed shade who claimed to be Oliver and was not. He aimed to fool him and be free. Around his neck, and lost in the illusion of a Nestorian sproutling that he still smothered under, was his good string. Hanging from the string was his horn and his knife. When Haldane had brought out their crumbs of breakfast from Noll’s deep blue bag, he had slipped out all his possessions and secreted them on his person. Now that he had his own things about him once more, he was unbound,
free to run in the first moment when Noll’s back was turned. He was free to be free.

  But he was also afraid. He had meant to carry the pack and Noll had seized it from him. Did he know what Haldane had taken? Would he notice?

  As Haldane walked, he paused long enough to pluck a heavy blade of bog grass from a seep by the wayside. To still his heart, he stretched it tight between the tips and the balls of his thumbs. Then with deliberation he blew into the gap where his thumbs met, just as he was used to do when he was small. The reed fluttered, shrieked, and honked like an abused woman until the hills were filled to overflowing with the secrets of his heart. Haldane laughed.

  “Why are you doing that?” Noll cried from behind, looking up in pretended distress from under the weight of his sack. Oh, the liar!

  Haldane mistrusted him in everything. It was Sailor Noll who had kept him so spun about with new fancies that he was too dizzy to be sure of any truth. It was Noll who had lied to him about the wurox. Haldane had seen the tracks this morning round about their camp. But he knew Noll now.

  “Hey, now, it’s a beautiful day and my spirit is singing,” said Haldane. He blew another frightful blast to prove his words, and smiled cunningly.

  It was a beautiful day only for those who love dampness. The high-shouldered hills were covered with muted spring shades of green, red, purple, white and yellow, a textured surface of dull running color. It set Haldane in mind of a tapestry that Morca had carried home through the Great Slough of Vilicea and hung in his hall in spite of its ruination because he liked the strange unsettling thing it had become. And because others did not. The skies that capped the narrow valley where the road sought its lean way south were as cool and wild and gray as old ice.

  “That noise will only succeed in bringing enemies upon us. Or rain,” said Noll. “We can do without both.”

  What need of new enemies? The one at hand was enough for Haldane. He blew another screeching trumpet call on his grass horn.