The Crafters Book One

by Christopher Stasheff

  The man was a success. And even though Amer didn’t like him, it was hard to begrudge him his good fortune. Amer didn’t think of it again until the cow-killings began. Until children started to be lost in the deep woods, still haunted by recent memories of savage, pagan Indians. There was a bad fire that consumed half the town, and plague moved in to claim more lives.

  Amer’s relations were not good with the elders of the town. They had never liked him or approved of him. He was not a regular churchgoer, and he was rumored to use magic. The magicians and witches of the town didn’t like him either, because he had spoken out boldly against the powers of darkness. But they had need of his services now. There seemed to be some sort of a spell over the town. Things were going badly for everyone except Edwin Lapthorn, who was prospering.

  “It all has the look of an unholy pact with the Devil.” So Amer was told by Charles Swanson, a well-known local magician who had tried to combat Lapthorn with black magic. Swanson was crippled now. The magic backfired on him. The man Lapthorn obviously had a pact with the Devil. It would take another kind of magic to defeat him.

  “You must do something,” Swanson said.

  “It is not my fight,” Amer told him.

  * * *

  Next to visit was Obadiah Winter, the head of the local Congregationalist Church.

  “We have heard, sir, that you are a considerable magician. We have need of your powers.”

  This conversation took place in Amer’s sitting room, which was well lit by tallow tapers. Winter was a big, grim-faced man, a pious man without humor to him. He lost no time getting to the point.

  “There is a matter my congregation would have me discuss with you, sir.”

  “Discuss away, sir.”

  “Do you know of this new fellow in town? This Lapthorn?”

  “I have heard of him, though we have not met.”

  “Master Amer, let me speak to you openly. There has been nothing but disaster here in Rock Harbor ever since that man arrived.”

  “Coincidence,” Amer said. “You can’t blame a man for that.”

  “Won’t you do anything, sir? We know you have powers.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Amer said.

  * * *

  “Superstitious fool,” he remarked to Samona after Winter departed.

  “In this case, he’s right. You know that Lapthorn is causing all the current problems here.”

  Amer was sitting by the fire studying an old parchment he had bought in Amsterdam, a medieval manuscript which claimed to give the key to the hermetic science of alchemy.

  “Causing what?” Amer said. He turned back to his manuscript. “You know, some of those old alchemists had some pretty good ideas. Let me read you this bit.”

  “Did you hear what I said?” Samona asked.

  “I heard you, my dear, but I do not believe it.”

  “You do not believe the man Lapthorn has brought the bad luck with him?”

  Amer scowled. He had wanted to spend the evening studying his Amsterdam manuscript. Now he saw that he was going to have to consider this matter of Lapthorn.

  “My dear,” he said, “it is coincidence, nothing more.”

  “I know what is coincidence,” Samona said, “and I know what is caused by an evil presence. I took a look at Lapthorn the other day with the Second Sight.”

  “Did you indeed?” Amer was interested. He had spent many years working out the principles of magic, deriving them from those governing alchemy. Armed with that knowledge, he had been able to operate in both worlds, the natural and the supernatural. He always said that it was a difficult situation, because, although supernatural things did happen, it was mere vulgar superstition to attribute a supernatural cause to anything you didn’t understand. Both magic and science existed, but all scientific tests had to be exhausted before it was correct to take recourse in magical explanations.

  As a scientist, Amer was bothered by magic, because it presented him with situations that were not simply quantifiable, and with instances that were not repeatable. If they had been, they would have been scientific. Since they weren’t, they had to be magical. Amer had a distaste for having his life ruled by irrational elements. He would have liked to reduce everything to science and reason. Life and circumstance had dictated otherwise.

  He was also an honest man. He knew that Samona had a natural talent for magic, and a lot of it. She had some powers he did not possess. The Second Sight was one of them. It was typically, though not exclusively, the gift of a female witch. It gave her the power, when conditions were right, to see through the surface of things to the mystery that lay at their core. It presented the conclusion of things, but in a jangled and melted fashion, so that only afterwards did you know, could you interpret, what the Second Sight had shown you.

  Not possessing the power himself, Amer was more than a little interested in Samona’ s accounts of its use.

  “What did you see when you looked at him? And what were the circumstances?”

  Samona’s beautiful face was thoughtful. The firelight put a golden edge to her features. Outside, the wind moved, rustling branches and stirring leaves. There was a sound of crickets. It was a night in late summer.

  “I was on my way to Charity Simpson’s with the shawl I’d promised her. Lapthorn passed on the other side. It was a windy day and his cloak was flapping. I saw a face in his cloak.”

  “An act of the imagination!” Amer cried, disappointed.

  “I think not. There was the feeling of uncanniness that so often accompanies a vision with the Second Sight. The feeling of a strange glamour. And the face in the cloak spoke to me.”

  “Are you saying that he spoke aloud?”

  “I know not. Perhaps what he said was not audible to others. But he said to me, “Help! I need help!”

  “Whose face was it?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Was it the face of Douglas, the idiot?”

  “It was not.”

  “Had you ever seen the face before?”

  “Never.”

  “Is there anything you can tell me about it?”

  “Only that it was not human.”

  * * *

  Amer cleared his throat explosively, breaking the quiet that had fallen upon them. He got up from his chair and began pacing up and down the plank floor. His hands were clasped behind his back. His long dark hair, caught at the end in a black ribbon, had half escaped its confines and hung to one side of his face. His look was intent, annoyed.

  “Samona, have you forgotten why we came here to Rock Harbor?”

  “No, I have not forgotten.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “It was to live for a time away from magic and from those who knew of our powers.”

  “And why did we decide to do that?”

  “Amer, please!”

  “No, tell me, why.”

  Her voice dropped to a whisper. “We became tired of the loneliness and hiding from the fears of others.”

  “That is my understanding, too, my dear. We moved away and decided to live simply and sanely, and without witchcraft. Is that not correct?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Why, then, are you using the Second Sight?”

  “Amer! It did no harm to use it! No one could tell! I did it but to find out what manner of man he was.”

  “What do you mean, no one could tell?”

  “You know as well as I do, only one with the power can detect another using the Second Sight. There are none in this town save us.”

  “And Lapthorn,” Amer said. “Lapthorn, a warlock? Are you sure?”

  “Think about what you’ve told me about him.”

  Samona thought, then nodded. “Yes, he must be a warlock. His actions point to no other conclusion.”

&n
bsp; “And now,” Amer said, “he knows that you are a witch, and probably believes that I am a warlock.”

  “I didn’t think of that, Amer!”

  “You’re out of practice,” Amer said. “That’s probably why you were detected.”

  “But Lapthorn didn’t see me! Only the face in the cloak!”

  “And who will the face in the cloak tell it to? After all, it’s Lapthorn’s cloak.”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right,” Samona said. “But it’s no sin to use the Second Sight. Perhaps all this will come to nothing.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Amer said. “We didn’t move to Rock Harbor to be drawn into a profitless battle of wizards.”

  * * *

  During the next weeks, uncanny occurrences came to the little town of Rock Harbor. Weird noises were heard at night, such as the ominous twitterings of bats that had gathered in the woods near town in great numbers. They were joined by the eerie hooting of barnyard owls, and the cough and snarl of wolverine and wolf. Lapthorn’s prosperity continued to increase, but the fortunes of the town began to run downhill. Flocks of small black flying insects began to proliferate. It was difficult to know if they were natural or not. But worst of all, little Amy fell sick of a fever. This was the matter that finally precipitated Amer to action.

  * * *

  Amer called up his own elemental. Through his alchemical researches he had long known that on the ethereal plane, many strange beings exist. These were responsive to natural law, as expressed through alchemical manipulations, These beings were not really human, and their motivations were strange and sometimes shocking. But they could be of assistance to an alchemist who treated them with respect.

  He burned the chemicals and repeated the incantations.

  After a while, Robin Goodfellow, as Amer had come to call him, appeared in the big glass retort. He was no more than five inches high, and he had a heart-shaped pixie face and long pointed ears.

  “You always call me at the most inconvenient times,” Robin said. He was almost incorporeal—a dancing flame within the glass retort, a flame that changed color as he expressed different emotions.

  “I beg pardon,” Amer said. “Perhaps another time?” He already knew the trouble you could get into if you tried to force an elemental to do what it didn’t wish to do.

  “No, it’s all right,” Robin said. “As it happens, I do have some time on my hands. I had intended to attend Oberon’s fancy dress ball, which was to be held in Poictesme this evening. But it has been cancelled due to sidereal effects of a baleful nature, and so I am at your service.”

  Amer wanted to ask about Oberon and the fancy dress ball. And where was this place called Poictesme? But he decided he’d better stick to business. He explained about Lapthorn and the mysterious happenings that had attended his coming to Rock Harbor, and Samona’s experience in the house.

  “What do you want me to do?” Robin asked.

  “It would please me very much if you went in there, Robin, and tell me what you saw.”

  “Why not do it yourself?”

  “That is more than a little difficult. Since Samona went there unannounced, Lapthorn has set up his defenses.”

  “I will take a look,” Robin said, “and we will see what we will see.”

  That evening as Amer was going over papers in his study, he noticed a green flame dancing in the big glass retort.

  “Robin, is it you?”

  “None other.”

  “And have you been to Lapthorn’s house?”

  “I have tried. But some sort of dire magic lingers around the place. I sought to pass through a keyhole invisibly, but something seized me by the hair and tried to pull me through. I got out fast, I can assure you.”

  “So I am no wiser than before,” Amer said sadly.

  “Not true. I can tell you that your suspicion of another elemental is confirmed. Even at that distance I could tell its presence.”

  “Is this spirit’ stronger than you? Is that what kept you out?”

  “I wouldn’t call it stronger,” Robin said. “But there was much evil around that house, evil of the blackest kind.”

  “Is there no way to get inside?”

  “There is for you,” Robin said. “You have but to use the proper spell.”

  “And which spell might that be?”

  Robin Goodfellow sat down on emptiness within the big glass globe of the retort. He was dressed in a tunic of russet brown, and wore a green shirt with wide sleeves and a green tunic. His heart-shaped face was nut-brown, and filled with many creases.

  “Faith,” he said crossly, “what does a spirit have to do to get some refreshment around here?”

  “My apologies,” Amer said. “I have victuals for you right here.”

  Amer put into the open-topped glass globe a little pitcher of milk and a plate of honey cakes that Samona had baked the previous night. Robin tested them and found them good. His appetite was soon satisfied, however, since elementals eat for the spirit of the thing, having no use for earthly provender. Finished, he wiped his mouth delicately on a tiny muslin handkerchief.

  “My dear Amer,” he said, “you have in your study the fourth book of the great Albertus Magnus?”

  “Yes, I do,” Amer said. “I’ve been studying it.”

  “Remember the formula that appears in Section Fourteen, which is entitled ‘Getting Around Evil Influences’?”

  “I remember it well. But it doesn’t work. I have tried that incantation many a time, without result.”

  “Master Albert got it ever so slightly wrong,” Robin said. “His third word begins with a bet in the language of the Hebrews. Change that to a shin and see what happens.”

  “As easy as that?”

  “Magic is very easy,” Robin said, “when you know how.”

  After Robin had gone, Amer hastened to his copy of the Great Albert’s book. He found the erroneous word and made the proper correction. He was ready now to enter Lapthorn’s house. But there was still a problem. Lapthorn, perhaps sensing a contradictory magic that could work against him, scarcely moved from his home, except for rapid trips to buy provisions. His absences were unscheduled. Amer waited, two days, four days, a week. His opportunity still did not occur. He began to despair at getting into the house.

  * * *

  Samona and he were discussing it one evening. Amer was in a very bad mood, since this was cutting into his study time. And in the meantime, evils of various sorts continued to proliferate in the town. Strange sights were reported. There was panic among the citizens. Visitations of an uncanny and noxious nature were increasing—showers of toads, sudden eruptions of stinging worms, odd little red-furred bats that had never been seen before in the neighborhood. And there was no relief in sight.

  “It’s really annoying,” Amer said. “The man doesn’t even attend to his jewellery business any longer. It’s as if he knows I’m planning a move against him, and is waiting to be ready for me. If only he’d leave the house for a decent length of time! Even an hour could be enough!”

  “If an hour is all that you need,” Samona said, “I think I could provide that for you.”

  “And how do you propose to do that?”

  “Master Lapthorn has a considerable interest in me.”

  Amer raised both eyebrows. “I thought he was enraged at you for entering his house.”

  “He was. But that anger hides his deeper rage at my not returning his signs of interest in me.”

  “How do you know he is interested in you? Is that more witch’s business?”

  “It is woman’s business,” Samona said serenely. “Magic has nothing to do with it.”

  “I don’t like it,” Amer said. “Whatever you are proposing would put you at risk.”

  “I can take care of myself,” Samona said. “As you well know.”


  “Samona! We had agreed that you were not to use any magic again!”

  “I don’t intend to,” Samona replied demurely. “There are other ways of distracting men. Is Master Lapthorn at home now?”

  “He has gone to the tavern, probably to bring home his customary tankards of ale.”

  “Then I could go out now and meet him on the street. Be you ready, Amer, for I will shortly give you the hour you need.”

  “What will you do?” Amer asked.

  “Don’t ask matters that will give you unnecessary pain. We must do this, Amer! Not just for the town; for our own lives, and Amy’s!”

  “Yes, so be it,” Amer said sullenly.

  * * *

  Samona said, “Master Lapthorn! How providential that I run into you.”

  Lapthorn paused, two foaming pewter tankards of beer in his hands, a length of sausage under his arm. “Mistress Crafter! I would not have thought you glad to see me.”

  “Because you warned me to stay out of your house?”

  “Why, yes,” Lapthorn said. “Ladies do not take kindly to being given orders, even if they are for their own good.”

  “Some do and some do not, Master Lapthorn,” Samona said, simpering, and so dense was Master Lapthorn, as she had suspected, that he did not take her conduct for fakery, but thought that some special essence of manhood in himself had called it forth.

  “Master Lapthorn, I have heard you sailed from Plymouth in England.”