by Larry Niven
He watched as the troll hurried through a gate in a high white wall. They had passed out of the merchants’ quarter.
“I think Wavyhill’s a necromancer,” he said abruptly.
“Necromancer. What is it? It sounds ugly.”
“A technical term for a new branch of magic. And it is ugly. Turn sharp left here.”
They ducked into a narrow alley. Two- and three-story houses leaned over them from both sides. The floor of the alley was filthy, until the Warlock snarled and gestured. Then the dirt and garbage flowed to both sides.
The Warlock hurried them deep into the alley. “We can stop here, I think. Sit down if you like. We’ll be here for some time—or I will.”
“Warlock, are you playing games with me? What does this new dance have to do with a duel of sorcery?”
“A fair question. Do you know what lies that way?”
Aran’s sense of direction was good, and he knew the city. “The Judging Place?”
“Right. And that way, the vacant lot just this side of Adrienne’s House of Pleasures—you know it? The deadest spot in Rynildissen City. The palace of Shilbree the Dreamer once stood there.”
“Might I ask—”
“The courthouse is void of mana too, naturally. Ten thousand defendants and thirty thousand lawyers all praying for conviction or acquittal doesn’t leave much magic in any courthouse. If I can keep either of those spots between me and Wavyhill, I can keep him from using farsight on me.”
Aran thought about it. “But you have to know where he is.”
“No. I only have to know where I ought to be. Most of the time, I don’t. Wavyhill and I have managed to fog each other’s prescient senses pretty well. But I’m supposed to be meeting an unknown ally along about now, and I’ve taken great care that Wavyhill can’t spy on me.
“You see, Wavyhill has taken the Wheel concept and improved it in at least two ways that I know of. Naturally he uses up mana at a ferocious rate. He may also be a mass murderer. And he’s my fault. That’s why I’ve got to kill him.”
Aran remembered then that his wives were waiting dinner. He remembered that he had decided to end this conversation hours ago. And he remembered a story he had been told, of a mundane caught in a sorcerer’s duel and what had befallen him.
“Well, I’ve got to be going,” he said, standing up. “I wish you the best of luck in your duel, Warlock. And if there’s anything I can do to help…”
“Fight with me,” the Warlock said instantly.
Aran gaped. Then he burst out laughing.
The Warlock waited with his own abnormal patience. When he had some chance of being heard, he said, “I dreamed that an ally would meet me during this time. That ally would accompany me to the gate of Wavyhill’s castle. I don’t have many of those dreams to help me, Aran. Wavyhill’s good. If I go alone, my forecast is that I’ll be killed.”
“Another ally,” Aran suggested.
“No. Too late. The time has passed.”
“Look.” Aran slapped his belly with the flat of his hand. The flesh rippled. “It’s not that much extra weight,” he said, “for a man. I’m not unsightly. But as a wolf I’d look ten years pregnant! I haven’t turned wolf in years.
“What am I doing? I don’t have to convince you of anything,” Aran said abruptly. And he walked away fast.
The Warlock caught him up at the mouth of the alley. “I swear you won’t regret staying. There’s something you don’t know yet.”
“Don’t follow me too far, Warlock. You’ll lose your path.” Aran laughed in the magician’s face. “Why should I fight by your side? If you really need me to win, I couldn’t be more delighted! I’ve seen your face in a thousand nightmares, you and your glass dagger! So die, Warlock. It’s my dinner time.”
“Shh,” said the Warlock. And Aran saw that the Warlock was not looking at him, but over his shoulder.
Aran felt the urge to murder. But his eyes flicked to follow the Warlock’s gaze, and the imprecations died in his throat.
It was a troll. Only a troll, a male, with a tremendous pack on its back. Coming toward them.
And the Warlock was gesturing to it. Or were those magical passes?
“Good,” he said. “Now, I could tell you that it’s futile to fight fate, and you might even believe me, because I’m an expert. But I’d be lying. Or I could offer you a chance to get rid of the dagger—”
“Go to Hell. I learned to live with that dagger—”
“Wolf man, if you never learn anything else from me, learn never to blaspheme in the presence of a magician! Excuse me.” The troll had walked straight to the mouth of the alley. Now the Warlock took it by the arm and led it inside. “Will you help me? I want to get the pack off its back.”
They lifted it down, while Aran wondered at himself. Had he been bewitched into obedience? The pack was very heavy. It took all of Aran’s strength, even though the Warlock bore the brunt of the load. The troll watched them with blank brown eyes.
“Good. If I tried this anywhere else in the city, Wavyhill would know it. But this time I know where he is. He’s in Adrienne’s House of Pleasures, searching for me, the fool! He’s already searched the courthouse. Do you know of a village named Gath?”
“No.”
“Or Shiskabil?”
“No. Wait.” A Shiska had bought six matching green rugs from him once. “Yes. A small village north of here. Something…happened to it…”
“The population walked out one night, leaving most of their valuables and a good deal of unexplained blood.”
“That’s right.” Aran felt sudden horrible doubt. “It was never explained.”
“Gath was first. Then Shiskabil, then Hathzoril. Bigger cities each time. At Hathzoril he was clever. He found a way to hide where his palace had been, and he didn’t leave any blood.”
“But what does he do? Where do the people go?”
“What do you know about mana, Aran? You know that it’s the power behind magic, and you know it can be used up. What else?”
“I’m not a magician. I sell rugs.”
“Mana can be used for good or evil; it can be drained, or transferred from one object to another, or from one man to another. Some men seem to carry mana with them. You can find concentrations in oddly shaped stones, or in objects of reverence, or in meteoroids.
“There is much mana associated with murder,” said the Warlock. “Too much for safety, in my day. My teacher used to warn us against working near the site of a murder, or the corpse of a murdered man, or murder weapons—as opposed to weapons of war, I might add. War and murder are different in intent.
“Necromancy uses murder as a source of magic. It’s the most powerful form of magic—so powerful that it could never have developed until now, when the mana level everywhere in the world is so low.
“I think Wavyhill is a necromancer,” said the Warlock. And he turned to the troll. “We’ll know in a moment.”
The troll stood passive, its long arms relaxed at its sides, watching the Warlock with strangely human brown eyes and with a human dignity that contrasted oddly with its low animal brow and hairy body. It did not flinch as the Warlock dropped a kind of necklace over its head.
The change came instantly. Aran backed away, sucking air. The Warlock’s necklace hung around a man’s neck—a man in his middle thirties, blond-haired and bearded, wearing a porter’s kilt—and that man’s belly had been cut wide open by one clean swing of a sword or scimitar. Aran caught the smell of him: he had been dead for three or four days, plus whatever time the preserving effects of magic had been at work on him. Yet he stood, passively waiting, and his expression had not changed.
“Wavyhill has invented a kind of perpetual motion,” the Warlock said dryly; but he backed away hastily from the smell of the dead man. “There’s enough power in a murdered man to make him an obedient slave, and plenty left over to cast on him the seeming of a troll. He takes more mana from the environment, but what of that? When the m
ana runs out in Gath, Wavyhill’s trolls kill their masters. Then twice as many trolls move on to Shiskabil. In Hathzoril they probably used strangling cords; they wouldn’t spill any blood that way, and they wouldn’t bleed themselves. I wonder where he’ll go after Rynildissen?”
“Nowhere! We’ll tell the Council!”
“And Wavyhill a Councilman? No. And you can’t spread the word to individual members, because eventually one of them would tip Wavyhill that you’re slandering him.”
“They’d believe you.”
“All it takes is one who doesn’t. Then he tells Wavyhill, and Wavyhill turns loose the trolls. No. You’ll do three things,” said the Warlock in tones not of command but of prophecy. “You’ll go home. You’ll spend the next week getting your wives and children out of Rynildissen City.”
“My gods, yes!”
“I swore you wouldn’t regret hearing me out. The third thing, if you so decide, is to join me at dawn, at the north gate, a week from today. Come by way of Adrienne’s House of Pleasures,” the Warlock ordered, “and stay awhile. The dead area will break your trail.
“Do that today, too. I don’t want Wavyhill to follow you by prescience. Go now,” said the Warlock.
“I can’t decide!”
“Take a week.”
“I may not be here. How can I contact you?”
“You can’t. It doesn’t matter. I’ll go with you or without you.” Abruptly the Warlock stripped the necklace from the neck of the standing corpse, turned and strode off down the alley. Following the path.
The dead man was a troll again. It followed Aran with large, disturbingly human brown eyes.
The Hill Magician
That predawn morning, Adrienne’s House of Pleasures was wrapped in thick black fog. Aran the rug merchant hesitated at the door; then, shivering, squared his shoulders and walked out into it.
He walked with his sword ready for tapping or killing. The fog grew lighter as he went, but no less dense. Several times he thought he saw monstrous vague shapes pacing him. But there was no attack. At dawn he was at the north gate.
The Warlock’s mounts were either lizards enlarged by magic or dragons mutated by no magic. They were freaks, big as twin bungalows. One carried baggage; the other, two saddles in tandem.
“Mount up,” the Warlock urged. “We want to get there before nightfall.” Despite the chill of morning he was bare to the waist. He turned in his saddle as Aran settled behind him. “Have you lost weight?”
“I fasted for six days, and exercised too. And my wives and children are four days on their way to Atlantis by sea. You can guess what pleasures I chose at Adrienne’s.”
“I wouldn’t have believed it. Your belly’s as flat as a board.”
“A wolf can fast for a long time. I ate an unbelievable meal last night. Today I won’t eat at all.”
The fog cleared as they left Rynildissen, and the morning turned clear and bright and hot. When Aran mentioned it, the Warlock said, “That fog was mine. I wanted to blur things for Wavyhill.”
“I thought I saw shapes in the fog. Were those yours too?”
“No.”
“Thanks.”
“Wavyhill means to frighten you, Aran. He wouldn’t attack you. He knows you won’t be killed before we reach the gate.”
“That explains the pack lizards. I wondered how you could possibly expect to sneak up on him.”
“I don’t. He knows we’re coming. He’s waiting.”
The land was rich in magic near Wavyhill’s castle. You could tell by the vegetation: giant mushrooms, vying for variety of shape and color; lichens growing in the shapes of men or beasts; trees with contorted trunks and branches, trees that moved menacingly as the pack-lizards came near.
“I could make them talk,” said the Warlock. “But I couldn’t trust them. They’ll be Wavyhill’s allies.”
In the red light of sunset, Wavyhill’s castle seemed all rose marble, perched at the top of a fairy mountain. The slender tower seemed made for kidnapped damsels. The mountain itself, as Aran saw it now for the first time, was less a breaking wave than a fist raised to the sky in defiance.
“We couldn’t use the Wheel here,” said the Warlock. “The whole mountain would fall on us.”
“I wouldn’t have let you use the Wheel.”
“I didn’t bring one.”
“Which way?”
“Up the path. He knows we’re coming.”
“Is your shadow demon ready?”
“Shadow demon?” The Warlock seemed to think. “Oh. For a moment I didn’t know what you were talking about. That shadow demon was killed in the battle with Glirendree, thirty years ago.”
Words caught in Aran’s throat, then broke loose in a snarl. “Then why don’t you put on a shirt?”
“Habit. I’ve got lots of strange habits. Why so vehement?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been staring at your back since morning. I guess I was counting on the shadow demon.” Aran swallowed. “It’s just us, then?”
“Just us.”
“Aren’t you even going to take a sword? Or a dagger?”
“No. Shall we go?”
The other side of the hill was a sixty degree slope. The narrow, meandering path could not support the lizard beasts. Aran and the Warlock dismounted and began to climb.
The Warlock said, “There’s no point in subtlety. We know we’ll get as far as the gate. So does Wavyhill…excuse me.” He threw a handful of silver dust ahead of them. “The road was about to throw us off. Apparently Wavyhill doesn’t take anything for granted.”
But Aran had only the Warlock’s word for it; and that was the only danger that threatened their climb.
A rectangular pond blocked the solid copper gates. An arched bridge led across the pond. They were approaching the bridge when their first challenger pushed between the gates.
“What is it?” Aran whispered. “I’ve never heard of anything like it.”
“There isn’t. It’s a changed one. Call it a snail dragon.”
…A snail dragon. Its spiral shell was just wide enough to block the gate completely. Its slender, supple body was fully exposed, reared high to study the intruders. Shiny leaflike scales covered the head and neck, but the rest of the body was naked, a soft greyish-brown. Its eyes were like black marbles. Its teeth were white and pointed, and the longest pair had been polished to a liquid glow.
From the other side of the small arched bridge, the Warlock called, “Ho, guardian! Were you told of our coming?”
“No,” said the dragon. “Were you welcome, I would have been told.”
“Welcome!” The Warlock guffawed. “We came to kill your master. Now, the interesting thing is that he knows of our coming. Why did he not warn you?”
The snail dragon tilted its mailed head.
The Warlock answered himself. “He knows that we will pass this gate. He suspects that we must pass over your dead body. He chose not to tell you so.”
“That was kind of him.” The dragon’s voice was low and very gravelly, a sound like rocks being crushed.
“Kind, yes. But since we are foredoomed to pass, why not step aside? Or make for the hills, and we will keep your secret.”
“It cannot be.”
“You’re a changed one, snail dragon. Beasts whose energy of life is partly magical, breed oddly where the mana is low. Most changed ones are not viable. So it is with you,” said the Warlock. “The shell would not protect you from a determined and patient enemy. Or were you counting on speed to save you?”
“You raise a salient point,” said the guardian. “If I were to leave now, what then? My master will probably kill you when you reach his sanctum. Then, by and by, this week or the next, he will wonder how you came to pass his guardian. Then, next week or the week following, he will come to see, or to remove the discarded shell. By then, with luck and a good tail wind, I could be halfway to the woods. Perchance he will miss me in the tall grass,” said the bungalow-sized beast.
“No. Better to take my chances here in the gate. At least I know the direction of attack.”
“Damn, you’re right,” said the Warlock. “My sympathies, snail dragon.”
And he set about fixing the bridge into solidity. Half of it, the half on the side away from the gate, really was solid. The other half was a reflected illusion, until the Warlock—did things.
“The dead border runs under the water,” he told Aran. “Don’t fall into it.”
The snail dragon withdrew most of itself into its shell. Only his scaly head showed now, as Aran and the Warlock crossed.
Aran came running.
He was still a man. It was not certain that Wavyhill knew that Aran was a werewolf. It was certain that they would pass the gate. So he reserved his last defense, and came at the dragon with a naked sword.
The dragon blew fire.
Aran went through it. He carried a charm against dragon fire.
But he couldn’t see through it. It shocked hell out of him when teeth closed on his shoulder. The dragon had stretched incredibly. Aran screamed and bounced his blade off the metallic scales and—the teeth loosed him, snapped ineffectually at the Warlock, who danced back laughing, waving—
But the Warlock had been unarmed!
The dragon collapsed. His thick neck was cut half in two, behind the scales. The Warlock wiped his weapon on his pantaloons and held it up.
Aran felt suddenly queasy.
The Warlock laughed again. “‘What good is a glass dagger?’ The fun thing about being a magician is that everyone always expects you to use magic.”
“But, but—”
“It’s just a glass dagger. No spells on it, nothing Wavyhill could detect. I had a friend drop it in the pond two days ago. Glass in water is near enough to invisible to fool the likes of Wavyhill.”
“Excuse my open mouth. I just don’t like glass daggers. Now what?”
The corpse and shell of the snail dragon still blocked the gate.
“If we try to squeeze around, we could be trapped. I suppose we’ll have to go over.”