Magic in Ithkar

by Andre Norton

  Told which fork of the road to take, where to pay tax or toll for crossing some border no one could see, what magics were prohibited at the fair. All of this was on the signposts, but someone had to tell me.

  “Do no magic, I,” I protested. “My tribe would not live at the farthest reaches of misery if they could do magic.”

  Was not even sure what magic was, but knew I had never done it. Had no intention of doing it at the fair.

  Before I had half completed my journey a band of nomads set upon me and cuffed me about, laughing, until they tired of the game and took the best contents from my pack and most of my food. Good daggers they took, and axe heads, too. They left me with nothing I could sell but a pouch of small arrowheads fit only for bird shooting, and no payment but the memory of their hard fists and kicking feet. “Troll from the mountains,” they called me, not knowing who I really was.

  Could have gone back to the mountain people and told of the robbery, they would not have been surprised. But then I would never had gotten close to the Three Lordly Ones. So slogged on and on, dragging my beast with her depleted pack, searching for something to eat and something I could sell to earn admittance to the fair.

  We eventually came to a marshland of still water and waving grasses, and there I let the ass graze while I daubed mud on my wounds. Hungry I was, and growing desperate, when a flock of birds flew in over the marsh. Great gray creatures with long necks and voices of haunting sweetness. In the mountains, a fletcher takes his feathers from hawks. Never had I seen birds such as these, with such plumage. It seemed to me that killing one would be a monstrous thing, though mountain folk would not have thought so. Kill or be killed was their simple law. But I saw beauty in these strange gray birds and mourned in my heart, even as I tore one from the air with a stone in an improvised sling.

  The bird lay at my feet, stunned and dying. It stretched out its long neck and rolled one glazing eye upward, looking for its killer. My heart leaped with pity. Dropped to my knees in the mud, then, and tried to find its wound, tried to undo what I had done. But the bird was already departing on another journey and I could not hold it back. My tears fell upon it as my hands explored it with more gentleness than I had known I possessed, but it uttered one soft cry and went limp. In dying, it had extended its wings to their utmost, so I could see the fine quills, the gloss and perfection of each feather. And I swear the bird was still watching me when the light went out of its eyes.

  That night, beside my campfire, I skinned the bird and cooked its flesh, though I had little appetite for it. But I carefully cleaned the feathers and set them aside, and the next morning found me hard at work, making arrows from the wood of the young trees that grew at the fringe of the marsh. Fletching the arrows with the feathers of the great gray bird. Sniffling a little, like a weakling, because so much beauty was dead.

  The mountain tribe would have scorned me, had they seen.

  When I had a sizable bundle of arrows I looked at them with pride. No shafts had ever been so true; no feathers had ever been set more evenly. Took the only bow my assailants had left me, a poor thing with little power to it, and tried one of the arrows. It went straight for a target so distant I could hardly see it, and I found it dead center there, though everyone knows Weenarin is an indifferent archer.

  But the astounding thing was the flight of that arrow. It sang all the way, a melody of great beauty such as the birds had sung in their flight.

  When at last we entered the region of the fair my ass became nervous, which was a new thing for her. She stamped her feet and rolled her eyes, and when a gilded wagon with curtained sides passed us enswirled in dust my beast bolted, dragging me a goodly way.

  Someone laughed behind the wagon’s curtain. Laughed at me, not knowing who I was. Rippling, mocking merriment, unmistakably feminine—and though I had never heard such a sound in the arid mountains, I recognized the voice of wealth and privilege.

  At the gateway I was halted by a condescending guard who eyed my person with contempt. “You’re a fletcher, an arrowsmith?” he asked coldly. “Did no one tell you weapons are outlawed at the fair?”

  “Brought only arrows for hunting birds,” I answered truthfully, momentarily forgetting the bow out of sight at the bottom of my pack. “The arrowheads are too light to penetrate anything much bigger.”

  He picked one up and turned it over in his hands. Too late I remembered the bow. Meager thing that it was, would he still call it a weapon? Would he search my pack? But just then he began humming a pretty tune, deep in his throat. Took a step backward, I, thinking he might be going mad. We saw much madness in the cold mountains. He looked and met my eyes.

  “What, you still here? Why haven’t you taken your place?” He caught me by the shoulder and held me like a child while he pinned a badge on me, then directed me to a distant clutter of merchants’ stalls on the borderline between the area reserved for food and clothing and that of the metal-workers.

  A shabby fletcher could not hope for a stall of his own, but I was allowed to tuck my things into one corner of a painted canvas lean-to shared by a mercer and a pair of identical twins, two wizened crones who sold salt in leather bags. Tall, bony women who said I might tether my ass behind the tent.

  The mercer was a spindle-shanked, potbellied man with a wall eye, but there was no meanness in his voice. “This is a good location,” he assured me, “though our pavilion isn’t as fancy as some. But you should do well here. What’s your name, lad?”

  No stranger had ever asked for it before. Mountain folk do not speak of themselves, nor hand out their names like gifts.

  Then I remembered: the laws of the mountain tribe need not apply to me.

  “Weenarin,” I told the tent-holders in a bold voice, not bowing my head.

  “What kind of name is that?” asked the mercer, mopping his domed forehead with a square of fine fabric.

  One of the old women pressed forward. She had wispy gray hair and more gaps in her mouth than teeth; her eyes were as bright as a ferret’s. “A mountain name,” she told him. “This fellow is dressed like the trolls from the mining district; a strange people, surly and—”

  “They’re not my . . .”I began, but then I swallowed my words and my secret. The old crone seized my words like a terrier seizing a rat. “What’s that?” she said. “You’re not from the mines?”

  Lowered my eyes then, as I had been taught all my life, though pretending inferiority burned me like fire. “From the northern mountains, I come,” I muttered.

  The mercer shrugged. “That’s an end to it, then.”

  “No, wait,” said the second crone. “There is something about this fellow. I cannot imagine him standing over a forge, or wielding a pickaxe.”

  “Fletching is my trade,” I said, willing to give them that much. “My stock is bird arrows for dove or pheasant.” And was glad my assortment of real weaponry had been stolen, for with it I would never have gained entry to this place.

  “Can you demonstrate your arrows for me?” asked the mercer. “If I like your wares, I might buy some myself; we do a bit of birding where I come from.”

  Reluctantly took out my bow, glancing over my shoulder all the time for the authorities. The two old women hung up a salt sack in the weedy lot behind the tent to serve as a target, and by the time I set arrow to bowstring a small crowd had gathered. People at a fair will crowd up for anything.

  Felt the weight of judgment in their eyes. They saw how slender my arm was, how small the bow. But when I held the arrow and saw the gray feathers sleeking back from the shaft, I deliberately moved back from the target so many paces that someone snickered. “That lad has delusions of grandeur. He’ll take no pheasant on the wind, he’d be lucky to shoot a hen on the ground at his feet.”

  Spread my legs and braced my body; drew my elbow straight back in line with my ear. And arrow left bow with an exultant hum that became winged song as it flew.

  The onlookers gasped. Shaded my eyes against the sun and
tried to see the target, but too many people were crowding around it. As I trotted up they were saying, “Dead center!” “An incredible shot for such a bow and a arrow!”

  “Incredible indeed,” said a different voice belonging to a hulking, flat-faced man wearing the uniform of a fair-ward. He carried a weighted quarterstaff and his eyes were constantly shifting, alert for trouble. He jerked the arrow from the salt sack and handed it back to me. “You broke our law by bringing that bow in here,” he said angrily. “And there are only three explanations for the shot you just made— accident, skill, or magic. From the looks of you I doubt that it’s skill. And I discount accident. That leaves only the possibility that you are using magic to enhance your wares, which is an even graver offense than carrying weapons. Since you broke one law you may well have broken another and we’d best know it now, so shoot again, boy! Just as you did before. And if your archery is a magician’s trick, it will cost you your goods and you will be declared outlaw, driven from the gate, and thrown to the mercy of the people.”

  Driven from the gate. Denied access to the Shrine of the Three Lordly Ones before I even had a chance to see it. That was a far worse threat to me than mere outlawry, for mountain folk were treated little better than outlaws anyway and were used to it.

  “His arrow sings a strange song in flight,” someone in the crowd murmured. “I heard it, and I say it must have been magic.”

  “Shoot!” roared the fair-ward, doubling his fist at me.

  “Do no magic, I!” I protested. But how could I keep the arrow from singing or flying true an impossible distance? The magic was in it and not myself, though by now I was certain of its existence. Certain of it and doomed by it.

  They made me stand where I had stood before, too far away for any normal shot to succeed. My heart hammered at the base of my throat as I notched arrow to string. Could have pulled the shot, of course, and let it fall short, for my skill was enough for that at least. But when I held the gray-feathered arrow a sort of integrity moved from it into my hand, and I fired the best I could.

  The arrow arced up, up into the air, climbing as if it spurned the earth forever. Then suddenly it bent in its flight and coursed off to one side, toward the gathered crowd. In helpless horror I watched as it sank straight into the shoulder of the fair-ward, in the joint his breastplate did not cover.

  He yelled and clutched at the shaft. “Now you’ve done it,” the mercer said to me in a low voice. “I thought your arrow sang too strong to be meant for sparrow hunting. It’s capable of piercing a man; you will be sorely punished for this. If you run quick, though, you might make the river before they seize you. ... I know of caves where you could hide. . . .”

  Running I was, but not to the river. Running toward the crowd and the fair-ward, as if my feet had a will of their own. For beyond that shouting throng of people was the shrine, and if I was to be exiled or killed, I would at least see it first, somehow.

  But when I drew near the fair-ward I found an astonishing thing. He had pulled the arrow from his shoulder, and in spite of the good bronze head I had affixed to it my weapon had made hardly any wound. A little blood oozed, then stopped as if the skin closed up. And the man was smiling!

  Stopped still and gaped at him, I.

  “That was a clumsy shot, young man,” the fair-ward said, handing me back my arrow. The head was still warm where it had been heated in his flesh. For some reason I thrust it through my belt instead of putting it back in my quiver. “You’re too thin to be a bowman,” the man went on. “You need fattening up if you’re going to be able to demonstrate your wares impressively. Here . . .” He dug into a pocket and took out a fistful of coins, which he pressed into my astonished hand. “Go to the food stalls and buy yourself a decent meal, will you? And then get some clothes that look like something; we can’t have beggars in rags at the fair, it isn’t good for business.”

  He grinned at me as if I were his dearest friend, then turned his back on me and began breaking up the crowd, calling names, punching noses, threatening to break heads if they did not move along. A fair-ward, surly and short-tempered. My arrows could be used as weapons against men and he had felt the proof of it, yet seemed to have forgiven and forgotten at once, almost as soon as the shaft had entered him.

  What to do? Took the money and ran, as fast as my legs could carry me. When I had gone far enough to be out of his sight I opened my fist and found more coins than I had ever seen at one time before.

  It appeared I could do some sort of magic—or magic could do me, since I had no control over it. That was yet another proof of kinship with the Three Lordly Ones, was it not? And now I was very near the place where they had entered this world. Soon I could be standing just where they had stood. . . . Stuffing the coins into the little leather purse that had hung from my belt like an empty bladder until now, I headed toward the sacred precincts.

  Felt the hackles rise on the back of my neck. No one needed to tell me where the sky-descended dwelling had rested; even without the fenced-off enclosure and the reek of incense and the muttering of priests I would have known the place. Needed no stone cenotaph to guide me. Would have found it by the lines of force surging up from the ground, catching my feet and drawing me forward.

  Surely this was the heart of the universe, the place of perfect centeredness. As I drew close to it I felt myself on the verge of a breakthrough into unimaginable abundance. At this point, the Three Lordly Ones had achieved immortality by becoming gods to us. And wherever they had gone, in their infinite and godlike wisdom they must be aware of me. Would surely reach out and gather me in, now that I was here. Would lift me up—

  “Stop that, you beggar, what are you doing here?!” Harsh hands grabbed me, pinioning my arms behind my back. Angry faces surrounded me. Eyes were flashing, mouths were stretched wide with yelling, but I hardly heard. Kept concentrating on the Three, calling desperately to them to come back to me, feeling almost confident, almost safe, for the first time in my life. Had got so far against such odds, I.

  Then someone hit me a mighty blow on the side of the head and I tumbled off the world.

  When I woke up, I was lying in a stone cell bedded with filthy straw and slimy refuse. No head ever hurt worse than mine. The room was dark and stinking, worse than any mountain hut. Shut my eyes tight and willed myself to be somewhere in the silvery vault of the sky with my true people. When I opened my eyes again, however, I saw only a scruffy rodent no more than a handspan from my face, watching me with dispassionate assessment.

  Sat up abruptly and the creature scurried back, but not very far. A quick inventory of myself showed they had taken my purse, my bow, and my quiver—but somehow overlooked that last arrow, the one I had thrust through my belt. My ragged tunic must have concealed it.

  If I possessed magic, this was the time to prove it—and legally, too, for was this not self-protection? Flung my arrow straight at the rat, like a killing-dart. Saw it hit the mangy hide and bounce off harmlessly, falling into the straw.

  Where was the magic?

  On hands and knees I crept forward and reclaimed my only weapon, while the animal watched me. In dark corners, his littermates chittered and rustled the straw.

  Footsteps on stone in the corridor, and the heavy door grated open. Someone thrust a lamp into my cell and an old woman hurried forward to bend over me. The door was shut behind. Even in the dim light I recognized her as one of the twins, the salt peddlers from the fair.

  “You’re accused of invading the shrine, Weenarin,” she said in her cracked voice. “It’s a serious charge, the priests want you executed. Is there anyone you can send for who will pay for your freedom?”

  Pay for my freedom. The mountain folk? No, I had no resources with fat bribes in their pockets. I had nothing at all. It seemed even the Three Lordly Ones were not interested in me. That had been a childish fantasy, I saw now; this prison cell and the hungry rats were the reality.

  She saw my shoulders slump. “I thought not, lad.
You must do for yourself, as we all do. You are alone among strangers.” An odd look flitted among the wrinkles of her folded face, and she dropped her voice to a whisper. “Alone as the Three Lordly Ones were when they arrived here, no doubt, and had to depend upon their wits and skills to survive.”

  My face must have mirrored surprise, for she cackled a laugh. “Did you think they just sank to earth and were immediately hailed as gods? How little you know of life, Weenarin! Don’t you suppose it more likely they met a hostile reception at first? Judge by your own experiences. They were strangers and very different from the natives; they were probably attacked and captured, imprisoned maybe, and had to disguise themselves very cleverly in order to escape. And then the authorities, to cover their embarrassment at being outwitted, may have surrounded the advent of the Three with all sorts of supernatural tales, which became myth and miracle in time. ...” She clamped her jaws on her words like a trap snapping shut. Instinctively, I understood the danger there must be in telling tales so at variance with the dogma of the priesthood.

  The old crone leaned closer to me, thrusting her face into mine until I shrank back, which made her laugh again. “You think I am ugly, Weenarin? This wrinkled old visage displeases you?”

  Kindness curved my tongue. “Your face is the map of your years,” I told her. “The landscape of a life is an honor to its wearer.”

  She straightened up. “Come,” she said briskly. “It is time to leave this place.”

  “But how? I am imprisoned for a crime—will they just let me walk out of here?”

  “Of course not, no one ever lets anyone do anything. Just bring that arrow and follow me.”