by Larry Niven
“They have talent, though. So. You’re a member of the Peacemongers, aren’t you? All army-age youngsters. I’ll wager you’re backed by half the graduating class at Mercantile Grammaree. They must have been watching me for months now, to have my defenses down so pat.
“And you want to end the war against the Greek Isles. Did you think you’d help matters by taking the Warlock’s Wheel to Atlantis? Why, I’m half minded to let you walk out with the thing. It would serve you right for trying to rob me.”
He looked hard into Aran’s eyes. “Why, you’d do it, wouldn’t you? Why? I said why?”
“We could still use it.”
“You’d sink Atlantis. Are the Peacemongers traitors now?”
“I’m no traitor.” Aran spoke low and furious. “We want to change Atlantis, not destroy it. But if we owned the Warlock’s Wheel, the Palace would listen to us!”
He wriggled in his tight bonds, and thought once again of the word that would free him. Then, convert to werewolf and run! Between the bars, down the hill, into the woods and freedom.
“I think I’ll make a conservative of you,” the Warlock said suddenly.
He stood up. He brushed the willow wand lightly across Aran’s lips. Aran found that he could not open his mouth. He remembered now that he was entirely in the Warlock’s power—and that he was a captured thief.
The Warlock turned, and Aran saw the design on his back. It was an elaborately curlicued five-sided tattoo in red and green and gold inks. Aran remembered what he had been told of the Warlock’s bodyguard.
“Recently I dreamed,” said the Warlock. “I dreamed that I would find a use for a glass dagger. I thought that the dream might be prophetic, and so I carved—”
“That’s silly,” Aran broke in. “What good is a glass dagger?”
He had noticed the dagger on the way in. It had a honed square point and honed edges and a fused-looking hilt with a guard. Two clamps padded with fox leather held it in place on the work table. The uppermost cutting edge was not yet finished.
Now the Warlock removed the dagger from its clamps. While Aran watched, the Warlock scratched designs on the blade with a pointed chunk of diamond that must have cost him dearly. He spoke low and softly to it, words that Aran couldn’t hear. Then he picked it up like—a dagger.
Frightened as he was, Aran could not quite believe what the Warlock was doing. He felt like a sacrificial goat. There was mana in sacrifice…and more mana in human sacrifice…but he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t!
The Warlock raised the knife high, and brought it down hard in Aran’s chest.
Aran screamed. He had felt it! A whisper of sensation, a slight ghostly tug—the knife was an insubstantial shadow. But there was a knife in Aran the Peacemonger’s heart! The hilt stood up out of his chest!
The Warlock muttered low and fast. The glass hilt faded and was gone, apparently.
“It’s easy to make glass invisible. Glass is half invisible already. It’s still in your heart,” said the Warlock. “But don’t worry about it. Don’t give it a thought. Nobody will notice. Only, be sure to spend the rest of your life in mana-rich territory. Because if you ever walk into a place where magic doesn’t work—well, it’ll reappear, that’s all.”
Aran struggled to open his mouth.
“Now, you came for the secret of the Warlock’s Wheel, so you might as well have it. It’s just a simple kinetic sorcery, but open-ended.” He gave it. “The Wheel spins faster and faster until it’s used up all the mana in the area. It tends to tear itself apart, so you need another spell to hold it together—” and he gave that, speaking slowly and distinctly. Then he seemed to notice that Aran was flopping about like a fish. He said, “Kplirapranthry.”
The ropes fell away. Aran stood up shakily. He found he could speak again, and what he said was, “Take it out. Please.”
“Now, there’s one thing about taking that secret back to Atlantis. I assume you still want to? But you’d have to describe it before you could use it as a threat. You can see how easy it is to make. A big nation like Atlantis tends to have enemies, doesn’t it? And you’d be telling them how to sink Atlantis in a single night.”
Aran pawed at his chest, but he could feel nothing. “Take it out.”
“I don’t think so. Now we face the same death, wolf boy. Goodby, and give my best to the School for Mercantile Grammaree. And, oh yes, don’t go back by way of Hvirin Gap.”
“Grandson of an ape!” Aran screamed. He would not beg again. He was wolf by the time he reached the bars, and he did not touch them going through. With his mind he felt the knife in his chest, and he heard the Warlock’s laughter following him down the hill and into the trees.
When next he saw the Warlock, it was thirty years later and a thousand miles away.
Magician’s Fee
Aran traveled as a wolf, when he could. It was an age of greater magic; a werewolf could change shape whenever the moon was in the sky. In the wolf shape Aran could forage, reserving his remaining coins to buy his way home.
His thoughts were a running curse against the Warlock.
Once he turned about on a small hill, and stood facing north toward Shayl Village. He bristled, remembering the Warlock’s laugh; but he remembered the glass dagger. He visualized the Warlock’s throat, and imagined the taste of arterial blood; but the glowing, twisting design on the Warlock’s back flashed at the back of Aran’s eyes, and Aran tasted defeat. He could not fight a shadow demon. Aran howled, once, and turned south.
Nildiss Range, the backbone of a continent, rose before him as he traveled. Beyond the Range was the sea, and a choice of boats to take him home with what he had learned of the Warlock. Perhaps the next thief would have better luck.
And so he came to Hvirin Gap.
Once the range had been a formidable barrier to trade. Then, almost a thousand years ago, a sorcerer of Rynildissen had worked an impressive magic. The Range had been split as if by a cleaver. Where the mountains to either side sloped precipitously upward, Hvirin Gap sloped smoothly down to the coast, between rock walls flat enough to have a polished look.
Periodically the bandits had to be cleaned out of Hvirin Gap. This was more difficult every year; for the spells against banditry didn’t work well there, and swords had to be used instead. The only compensation was that the dangerous mountain dragons had disappeared too.
Aran stopped at the opening. He sat on his haunches, considering.
For the Warlock might have been lying. He might have thought it funny to send Aran the long way over Nildiss Range.
But the dragon bones. Where magic didn’t work, dragons died. The bones were there, huge and reptilian. They had fused with the rock of the pass somehow, so that they looked tens of millions of years old.
Aran had traveled the Gap in wolf form. If Hvirin Gap was dead to magic, he should have been forced into the man form. Or would he find it impossible to change at all?
“But I can go through as a wolf,” Aran thought. “That way I can’t be killed by anything but silver and platinum. The glass dagger should hurt, but—
“Damn! I’m invulnerable, but is it magic? If it doesn’t work in Hvirin Gap—” and he shuddered.
The dagger had never been more than a whisper of sensation that had faded in half an hour and never returned. But Aran knew it was there. Invisible, waiting. With a knife in his heart, he could still survive—as a wolf. But it would hurt! And he could never be human again.
Aran turned and padded away from Hvirin Gap. He had passed a village yesterday. Perhaps the resident magician could help him.
“A glass dagger!” the magician chortled. He was a portly, jolly, balding man, used to good living. “Now I’ve heard everything. Well, what were you worried about? It’s got a handle, doesn’t it? Was it a complex spell?”
“I don’t think so. He wrote runes on the blade, then stabbed me with it.”
“Fine. You pay in advance. And you’d better convert to wolf, just to play safe.” He na
med a sum that would have left Aran without money for passage home. Aran managed to argue him down to something not far above reason, and they went to work.
The magician gave up some six hours later. His voice was hoarse, his eyes red from oddly colored, oddly scented smokes, and his hands were discolored with dyes. “I can’t touch the hilt, I can’t make it visible, I can’t get any sign that it’s there at all. If I use any stronger spell, it’s likely to kill you. I quit, wolf boy. Whoever put this spell on you, he knows more than a simple village magician.”
Aran rubbed at his chest where the skin was stained by mildly corrosive dyes. “They call him the Warlock.”
The portly magician stiffened. “The Warlock? The Warlock? And you didn’t think to tell me. Get out.”
“What about my money?”
“I wouldn’t have tried it for ten times the fee! Me, a mere hedge-magician, and you turned me loose against the Warlock! We might both have been killed. If you think you’re entitled to your money, let’s go to the headman and state our case. Otherwise, get out.”
Aran left, shouting insults.
“Try other magicians if you like,” the other shouted after him. “Try Rynildissen City! But tell them what they’re doing first!”
Challenge
It had been a difficult decision for the Warlock. But his secret was out and spreading. The best he could do was see to it that world sorcery understood the implications.
The Warlock addressed the Sorcerers’ Guild on the subject of mana depletion and the Warlock’s Wheel.
“Think of it every time you work magic,” he thundered in what amounted to baby talk after his severely technical description of the Wheel. “Only finite mana in the world, and less of it every year, as a thousand magicians drain it away. There were beings who ruled the world as gods, long ago, until the raging power of their own being used up the mana that kept them alive.
“One day it’ll all be gone. Then all the demons and dragons and unicorns, trolls and rocs and centaurs will vanish quite away, because their metabolism is partly based on magic. Then all the dream-castles will evaporate, and nobody will ever know they were there. Then all the magicians will become tinkers and smiths, and the world will be a dull place to live. You have the power to bring that day nearer!”
That night he dreamed.
A duel between magicians makes a fascinating tale. Such tales are common—and rarely true. The winner of such a duel is not likely to give up trade secrets. The loser is dead, at the very least.
Novices in sorcery are constantly amazed at how much preparation goes into a duel, and how little action. The duel with the Hill Magician started with a dream, the night after the Warlock’s speech made that duel inevitable. It ended thirty years later.
In that dream the enemy did not appear. But the Warlock saw a cheerful, harmless-looking fairy castle perched on an impossible hill. From a fertile, hummocky landscape, the hill rose like a breaking wave, leaning so far that the castle at its crest had empty space below it.
In his sleep the Warlock frowned. Such a hill would topple without magic. The fool who built it was wasting mana.
And in his sleep he concentrated, memorizing details. A narrow path curled up the hillside. Facts twisted, dreamlike. There was a companion with him; or there wasn’t. The Warlock lived until he passed through the gate; or he died at the gate, in agony, with great ivory teeth grinding together through his rib cage.
He woke himself up trying to sort it out.
The shadowy companion was necessary, at least as far as the gate. Beyond the enemy’s gate he could see nothing. A Warlock’s Wheel must have been used there, to block his magic so thoroughly.
Poetic justice?
He spent three full days working spells to block the Hill Magician’s prescient sense. During that time his own sleep was dreamless. The other’s magic was as effective as his own.
Rynildissen
Great ships floated at anchor in the harbor.
There were cargo ships whose strange demonic figureheads had limited power of movement, just enough to reach the rats that tried to swarm up the mooring lines. A large Atlantean passenger liner was equipped with twin outriggers made from whole tree trunks. By the nearest dock a magician’s slender yacht floated eerily above the water. Aran watched them all rather wistfully.
He had spent too much money traveling over the mountains. A week after his arrival in Rynildissen City he had taken a post as bodyguard/watchdog to a rug merchant. He had been down to his last coin, and hungry.
Now Lloraginezee the rug merchant and Ra-Harroo his secretary talked trade secrets with the captain of a Nile cargo ship. Aran waited on the dock, watching ships with indifferent patience.
His ears came to point. The bearded man walking past him wore a captain’s kilt. Aran hailed him: “Ho, Captain! Are you sailing to Atlantis?”
The bearded man frowned. “And what’s that to you?”
“I would send a message there.”
“Deal with a magician.”
“I’d rather not,” said Aran. He could hardly tell a magician that he wanted to send instructions on how to rob a magician. Otherwise the message would have gone months ago.
“I’ll charge you more, and it will take longer,” the bearded man said with some satisfaction. “Who in Atlantis, and where?”
Aran gave him an address in the city. He passed over the sealed message pouch he had been carrying for three months now.
Aran too had made some difficult decisions. In final draft his message warned of the tectonic instability of the continent, and suggested steps the Peacemongers could take to learn if the Warlock had lied. Aran had not included instructions for making a Warlock’s Wheel.
Far out in the harbor, dolphins and mermen played rough and complicated games. The Atlantean craft hoisted sail. A wind rose from nowhere to fill the sails. It died slowly, following the passenger craft out to sea.
Soon enough, Aran would have the fare. He would almost have it now, except that he had twice paid out sorcerer’s fees, with the result that the money was gone and the glass dagger was not. Meanwhile, Lloraginezee did not give trade secrets to his bodyguard. He knew that Aran would be on his way as soon as he had the money.
Here they came down the gangplank: Lloraginezee with less waddle than might be expected of a man of his girth; the girl walking with quiet grace, balancing the rug samples on her head. Ra-Harroo was saying something as Aran joined them, something Aran may have been intended to hear.
“Beginning tomorrow, I’ll be off work for five days. You know,” she told Lloraginezee—and blushed.
“Fine, fine,” said Lloraginezee, nodding absently.
Aran knew too. He smiled but did not look at her. He might embarrass her…and he knew well enough what Ra-Harroo looked like. Her hair was black and short and coarse. Her nose was large but flat, almost merging into her face. Her eyes were brown and soft, her brows dark and thick. Her ears were delicately formed and convoluted, and came to a point. She was a lovely girl, especially to another of the wolf people.
They held hands as they walked. Her nails were narrow and strong, and the fine hair on her palms tickled.
In Atlantis he would have considered marrying her, had he the money to support her. Here, it was out of the question. For most of the month they were friends and co-workers. The night life of Rynildissen City was more convenient for a couple, and there were times when Lloraginezee could spare them both.
Perhaps Lloraginezee made such occasions. He was not of the wolf people. He probably enjoyed thinking that sex had reared its lovely, disturbing head. But sex could not be involved—except at a certain time of the month. Aran didn’t see her then. She was locked up in her father’s house. He didn’t even know where she lived.
He found out five nights later.
He had guarded Lloraginezee’s way to Adrienne’s House of Pleasures. Lloraginezee would spend the night…on an air mattress floating on mercury, a bed Aran had only heard d
escribed. A pleasant sleep was not the least of pleasures.
The night was warm and balmy. Aran took a long way home, walking wide of the vacant lot behind Adrienne’s. That broad, flat plot of ground had housed the palace of Shilbree the Dreamer, three hundred years ago. The palace had been all magic, and quite an achievement even in its day. Eventually it had…worn out, Shilbree would have said.
One day it was gone. And not even the simplest of spells would work in that vacant lot.
Someone had told Aran that households of wolf people occupied several blocks of the residential district. It seemed to be true, for he caught identifying smells as he crossed certain paths. He followed one, curious to see what kind of house a wealthy werewolf would build in Rynildissen.
The elusive scent led him past a high, angular house with a brass door…and then it was too late, for another scent was in his nostrils and in his blood and brain. He spent that whole night howling at the door. Nobody tried to stop him. The neighbors must have been used to it; or they may have known that he would kill rather than be driven away.
More than once he heard a yearning voice answering from high up in the house. It was Ra-Harroo’s voice. With what remained of his mind, Aran knew that he would be finding apologies in a few days. She would think he had come deliberately.
Aran howled a song of sadness and deprivation and shame.
The Empty Villages
There was a small village called Gath, and a Guild ’prentice who came seeking black opals. He found them, and free for the taking too, for Gath was dead empty. The ’prentice sorcerer wondered about that, and he looked about him, and presently he found a dead spot with a crumbled castle in it. It might have been centuries fallen. Or it might have been raised by magic, and collapsed when the mana went out of it, yesterday or last week.
It was a queer tale, and it got around. The ’prentice grew rich on the opals, for black opals are very useful for cursing. But the empty village bothered him.