The Sage

by Christopher Stasheff

  It was slippery, so he had to walk with care—but it was level and clear, so he made better time than he would have if he had been plowing through drifts over rocky ground again. On he went, following the bends and turns of the stream as a sliver of moon rose to light him on his way, alert for Illbane to be standing there waiting around every curve.

  So, of course, he was taken completely by surprise when the voice spoke at his shoulder. “Will you lose sleep again another night, Culaehra?”

  The warrior jumped a foot off the ground and spun to the side even as he landed—but there was no one there. “Where are you, Illbane?” he cried.

  “Still back at the camp,” the voice said, still at his shoulder.

  Culaehra spun back, but there was still nothing to be seen. “Can I never be rid of you?”

  “Never,” Illbane's voice said with a tone of absolute finality. “I will always be with you from this day forth, Culaehra— indeed, I have been with you for months. There will always be something of me alive inside you now, and I will always be able to find you through that.”

  Culaehra cursed.

  “Come, will you make me rise from my bed to bring you back?” Illbane chided.

  “No, I suppose not,” Culaehra growled. He turned and set off back the way he had come. After a while he asked, “Illbane?”

  “I am still with you,” the voice replied.

  “How did you manage to reform me?”

  “By discipline,” Illbane answered. “By teaching you to see the world as the weaker sees it. By showing you that you could not escape the consequences of your actions. By stripping away the vain view of yourself as more important than any other, and letting you see yourself as insignificant.. .”

  Old anger stirred.

  “Then by showing you all the worst aspects of yourself, embodied in the hunter who persuaded you to slay me, then betrayed you by stealing from you.”

  The anger smothered.

  “Then by telling you that you could be a true man, an excellent man, and leading you into dangers where you could prove your good qualities. By surrounding you with good companions who, when you really needed them, could not help themselves from helping you. By leading you into winning their friendship, and thereby beginning to believe in your own virtue. But through all this, at every stage and most especially the last, with magic. Magic, and praise, which has a magic all its own, if it is genuine—but more than anything else, by magic.”

  Culaehra trudged along, letting all the words sink in. At last he asked, “No one can really be changed by anything else, then?”

  “Oh, folk can be ground down by oppression,” Illbane said. “People can be transformed by bitterness and hatred, saved by love and sweetness, even bamboozled and confused into thinking they have become someone else—but no man can deliberately change another. If the other wants to change, the teacher can show him the way to grow, can lead him into circumstances that will change him—but without magic, no man can change another. Not truly change, no.”

  “But you led me into wanting to change.”

  “And you had the courage, the strength, and determination to do it,” Illbane confirmed. “You had the staunchness to face what you were and strive to overcome it. You were bora with the stuff of which heroes are made, Culaehra, or I could have done nothing.”

  “But you did,” Culaehra said, “by magic.”

  “Yes, but even magic cannot make a hero of a man who is a coward and a fool. The heroism had to be there within you first.”

  “I thought you told me that we are all fools in some way or another,” Culaehra said.

  “No,” Illbane corrected. “I did not tell you that. Mind you, it is true—but I did not say it.”

  When he came back to the camp, his companions all lay as still as they had when he left. Silently, Culaehra lay down beside Kitishane again, then lay still, studying Kitishane's sleeping form—until she turned, her eyes open and accusing. “Will you leave me so soon, then?”

  Culaehra stared at her, frozen. At last he said, “No. Never.”

  She did not seem entirely reassured, only gazed at him a while longer, frowning, then turned over and lay still once more. Culaehra lay staring at her unmoving back and knew he would not try to escape again.

  They forged northward steadily after that, marching through the day with brief rests, then pitching camp in the lee of a boulder or beneath a pine or, when it offered, in a small cave. They ate stewed jerky and journeybread, with now and then a snow hare or ptarmigan that Kitishane brought down with her bow. Then, exhausted, they dropped into their blankets. That was the pattern of their days for a week and more, and every minute of it was an agony of impatience for Culaehra.

  Then, one night, as they were about to lie down, a glimmering light appeared in the sky, appeared and spread until it took the form of twisting, furling curtains winding and unwinding across the sky. Green they were, shading into blue, with here and there a red one that was soon swallowed up by the twistings of the green.

  “I have never seen anything so grand,” Kitishane murmured in awe. “What are they, Illbane?”

  “The aurora borealis,” he replied, “the Northern Lights. They are a sign that we near the Star Stone.”

  “Do they spring from it, then?”

  “No, they come from the unseen parts of the sun's rays striking near the northern center of the world—but the green and the red are drawn to the Star Stone and hover near it.”

  Culaehra frowned at his teacher, wondering at the tension in his voice.

  The next day they found a cliff of ice blocking their path. “It is a glacier,” Illbane told them, “a sheet of ice that flows out of the valleys in distant mountains and covers all the plain to this, its southern edge. Help me now in gathering as much deadwood as we can carry, for there shall be no more firewood on yonder floe.”

  They did as he asked, picking up sticks and logs until their backs bent under their loads. Then they followed Illbane onto the glacier.

  He led them up a tortuous path, climbing on ice as gray and hard as rock, though nonetheless slippery for that. Once up on top, the going was easier, for fresh snow had fallen deeply upon the glacier, and if it had not been for Illbane's assurances, there might have been grass rather than ice beneath it, for all Culaehra could tell.

  He still carried Illbane's pack of tools, though its weight seemed far less than it had at first. He bore it in the sage's wake, watching him with brooding eyes.

  “What worries you?” Kitishane asked as she plodded through the snow beside him.

  “Illbane,” Culaehra replied. “He grows tense and curt. If I did not know he were the hero Ohaern, I would think that fear grew upon him.”

  Kitishane looked up at their leader and her voice was low. “Even heroes know fear, Culaehra.”

  “I am not a hero, Kitishane!”

  “No,” she said, very low, “not yet.”

  That night, the aurora danced above them again, and the horizon was lighted with a green glow.

  In the morning, when the fire was smothered, Illbane bade them bring the partially burned logs with them.

  “Why, Illbane?” Yocote asked. “Is it not enough that we carry dry wood, for there is none to gather on the glacier? Will it be so scarce that we must carry the burned ones, too?”

  “Yes,” Illbane answered. “I shall have need of the charcoal. Put them in a bag and bring them, Yocote, even though this is magic of a sort you will never need to know.”

  “If it is magic of any kind, I need to learn it!” The gnome collected the sticks and solid coals into a bag and slung it on his back.

  Illbane spoke rarely that day, growing more and more somber as they. went. He insisted they burn new wood that night, not using the coals they carried. The aurora was brighter, and the glow from the horizon reached higher into the sky.

  It was higher the next night and the next, and Yocote's bag grew so heavy that Kitishane took it from him. The day after that, Culaehra t
ook it from her, and that night the aurora seemed to dance directly overhead, while the green glow lit half the sky. Illbane sat in his trance till dawn, not sleeping at all, and the next day he did not say a word.

  As the sun lowered, they crested a ridge, and the glow struck them so that they recoiled.

  It lay below them, far below, cupped between outthrusts of the glacier that seemed to have melted away in its presence to mere fingers, ones that seemed to cup it in an embrace—a huge, irregular, pitted form that glowed like sunshine through leaves, like a vast emerald caught in a sun ray, but the glow came from within its own substance. Around it for five yards the snow was melted away and lichens covered the ground in a patchwork of bright colors.

  “Look your fill, then retreat and look upon it no more,” Illbane said grimly, “for that is the Star Stone.”

  “The Star Stone?” Culaehra stared wide-eyed. “If that is a shard, how thick was the spear!”

  “They were giants then,” Illbane told him, “and their ghosts were more gigantic still. They gathered stars from the sky and formed them into weapons to smite one another. They were vast beyond our imagining.” He lapsed into silence, leaning on his staff and gazing down at the Star Stone, and his companions looked upon his face and wondered.

  Finally Illbane roused himself and turned away. “Come, then! Pitch camp below this ridge, where its radiance shall not strike you directly. Tonight I shall rest; tomorrow I shall begin work.”

  As they went back down the hill, Culaehra said, “In any way I can help, Illbane, only call upon me!”

  “I thank you for that, my pupil,” Illbane said with a gracious nod. “I will ask you to bring a boulder three feet high, with Yocote's magic aiding your strength, and I will ask you all to bring half the firewood that is left. Then, though, you must wait at the camp and not come near me while I work.”

  “Do you know smithing, then?” Yocote asked, and bit his tongue in chagrin—but the question brought the ghost of a smile to Illbane's face.

  “Yes, my pupil, I know something of smithing.”

  To be sure he did, Culaehra reflected. Before he had taken arms against Ulahane and the cities of the south, Ohaern had been a smith, and one of the first of the northern smiths to learn to forge iron—taught by the god Lomallin himself, if the tale was to be trusted.

  So that night they piled firewood into a huge mound by the Star Stone, then came back to kindle a fire from some of the rest. Thus they sat around a campfire dwarfed by the glow that filled the sky, that obscured even the aurora, and they banished the eldritch chill upon their backs by telling tales as they ate, trying to coax another smile from Illbane. They almost succeeded in this: he gazed upon them proudly from time to time. But he did not smile again.

  The next morning, Culaehra and Yocote cast about and found a boulder waist-high. Culaehra could never have moved it by himself, but Yocote cast a spell to set it rolling, and all Culaehra had to do was push now and again to keep it on the right course. When it crested the ridge and began to roll down toward the Star Stone, Yocote had to try to slow it, and Culaehra cried, “'Ware, Illbane! It comes!”

  “Let it come.” The smith already stood near the Star Stone, laying billets of firewood in a grid. “It cannot damage the Star Stone.”

  Yocote cast him a doubtful glance, but Illbane beckoned, and the gnome threw up his hands, letting the boulder go. It rolled by itself, faster and faster down the slope, and Illbane stood calmly watching it come. Finally Yocote cried a warning, but even as he did, the boulder began to slow, its turns slackening more and more until at last it came to a stop, well within the lichen patch that surrounded the Star Stone.

  “Bring my anvil plate,” Illbane called. “Set it upon the boulder.”

  Culaehra caught up the bag of tools and lugged it down to Illbane, then took out the anvil—a rectangle of iron a few inches thick and a few more wide, a little more than a foot long, pointed at one end—and set it on the flattest place he could find on the boulder. He did it almost by feel, his eyes drawn to the Star Stone, and bright though it was, its radiance did not seem to hurt his eyes. It seemed far smaller than it had from the hilltop, not even as large as the boulder they had brought, and this close he could see threads of scarlet twining through its green glow.

  “Bring me the burned wood,” Illbane directed. “Then get you gone, and wait till I come.”

  His face was grim, so Culaehra stifled the urge to argue and set off back up the slope, Yocote beside him, casting many anxious glances back at the sage.

  When they brought the sack of charcoal, they saw that Illbane had dug three long trenches in the earth before the Star Stone, the ends square, the bottoms beveled. He thanked them and stacked the wood around the base of the Star Stone, then brought a live coal from the pottery box at his belt and set fire to the charcoal. As the flames sprang up he turned and lit the cairn of firewood he had built, too, then turned again and said, “Go now. My work is begun.”

  There was a look of peace in his eyes. Mute, his students turned away. As they reached the top of the ridge they heard him beginning to chant. Turning back, they saw the flames leaping up all about the Star Stone, growing red, then orange, then yellow, then even brighter than yellow. A roaring sprang up that reminded them of Agrapax's Forge, and the flames whipped in the gusts of air—but they could not see the source of those blasts. Shuddering, they crossed the top of the ridge and went back to the camp.

  Chapter 21

  They could not resist looking now and then, of course. In fact, they could not resist keeping an anxious watch on their friend and teacher, though they did it in turns, and none watched for more than a few minutes at a time. Even then the watcher raised his head only enough to see above the ridge and make sure Illbane was well, then ducked down again and hurried back to bear word to the companions.

  They really had little need to look to know he was well—his chanting sounded day and night, carrying to them steadily, even over the top of the ridge. After the first few hours, though, Yocote could not bear to stay away; he found a sheltered cranny under a huge old pine and sat, wrapped in his furs and with a small fire before him, watching through his goggles as the sage-smith chanted and hammered and wrought magic in metal.

  Yocote was of no use to his friends, though, for he never came down to tell them what occurred. Culaehra, Lua, and Kitishane took turns climbing up to the ridge top for a quick look, then coming back to report, and similarly each took his or her watch in the night. Lua took it upon herself to keep bringing Yocote wood and food. Culaehra protested. “Yocote is my friend, too, Lua! Let me tend him now and again!” And he took up an armload of sticks.

  But Lua stopped him with a hand on his arm and a gentle if cryptic smile. “No, Culaehra. This is my privilege, and I will take it unkindly if you seek to steal it from me.” Then she took the wood from his arm and set off up the slope, leaving him to stare after her speechless, wondering how this woman whom he had beaten and degraded had come to be able to stop him with a gesture.

  Then he wondered all over again how she could have forgiven him enough to become his friend.

  “Let her go, Culaehra.” Kitishane slipped her arm through his with a smile that mirrored Lua's. “It is her portion.”

  “Her portion?” Culaehra frowned down at her. “How so?”

  “Do you not see it?” Kitishane chided. “She has fallen in love with Yocote at last.”

  “In love?” Culaehra stared, and tried to ignore the surge of indignation that followed the thought. “Why? What has changed? It cannot be proof of his constancy—she had that before!”

  “Oh, but he has changed in so many ways, Culaehra!” Kitishane beamed up at him. “Even as you have.” She leaned a little closer, tilting her chin up, her eyes shining, and Culaehra would have been a fool indeed to miss seeing the chance of a kiss.

  Deeply worried about Illbane, Culaehra told himself he was being foolish—if anyone could keep himself well, it was a shaman who had surpass
ed all others of his profession so thoroughly that he was now a sage. How could Fate strike down the consort of a goddess? Still he watched, and his brief glimpses became longer and longer, though Illbane showed no sign of weakening. His voice was still rich and strong as he chanted to the iron; stripped to the waist, his muscles rolled beneath his skin like those of a man far younger as he lofted the hammer and brought it down, then bounced it on the metal and raised it again.

  The first day, he only tended the fires around the Star Stone and the fire in the cairn, singing to the flames throughout the day and all that night through.

  “What does he do?” Kitishane asked when Culaehra came back from his twilight trip.

  “Still sings, and brings blasts of wind to fan the flames,” Culaehra reported. “Only the fire under the rock, though—the cairn he lets burn slowly of its own accord.” He shook his head. “I cannot understand how his voice endures!”

  The next morning Lua came back to report, “The cairn burns no longer; in fact, it no longer stands! He has taken the charcoal from it and added it to the fire all around the rock. A green glow has sprung up about it, a green glow threaded by strands of scarlet!”

  They ran to see—and sure enough, the Star Stone glowed green, though here and there threads of red undulated in its haze.

  Halfway through the afternoon Yocote came back in great excitement. “The Star Stone is melting! Drop by drop it trickles into the trenches he has cut beneath it!” Then he was gone, back up the hill to watch, and the others came scrambling after. It was true—the whole form of the Star Stone seemed to have softened, and droplets came from it into the trenches as Illbane sang, his voice deep and heavy.

  When Kitishane went to look the next morning, she saw no Star Stone at all—only a heap of slag at the center of six trenches. Illbane had dug them all around, and each now glinted with white metal. She came back and told what she had seen, adding, “He is digging the cooled metal out of the earth now. It is formed into bars!”