by Larry Niven
“We have little need for swordsmen here,” one greeted him.
“I want to talk to a magician,” said Orolandes.
“You’re in luck.” The guard looked over his shoulder, quickly, nervously; then turned back fast, as if hoping the swordsman wouldn’t notice. “Two magicians came today. But what if they don’t want to talk to you?”
“I have to talk to a magician,” Orolandes said stubbornly. His hand hung near his sword hilt. He was big, and scarred, and armed. Perhaps he was no longer an obvious madman, but the ghost of some recent horror was plain in his face.
The guard forebore to push the matter. The stranger was no pauper; his gold arm band was a form of money. “If you’re rude to a magician, you’ll get what you deserve. Welcome to Prissthil. Go on in.”
The Blindness Spell
The inn the Warlock loved best was gone, replaced by a leather-worker’s shop. They sought another.
At the Inn of the Mating Phoenixes they saw their mule stabled, then moved baggage to their rooms. Clubfoot flopped on the feather mattress. The Warlock dug in a saddlebag. He pulled out spare clothing, then a copper disk with markings around the rim. He moved to set it aside; then, still holding it, he seemed to drift off into reverie.
Once there had been a proud and powerful magician. When barely past his brilliant apprenticeship; but he had the temerity to forbid the waging of war throughout the Fertile Crescent, and the power to make it stick. He consistently hired himself out to battle whichever nation he considered the aggressor.
Oh, his magic had been big and showy in those days! Floating castles, armies destroyed by lightning, phantom cities built and destroyed in a night. In his pride he nicknamed himself Warlock. Had he known that his nickname would become a generic term for magicians, he would not have shown surprise.
But over the decades his spells stopped working. He moved away, and his power returned, to some extent…then gradually dwindled, until he moved again.
It happened to nations too. Bound together by its own gods and traditions and laws and trade networks, a nation like Acheron might come to seem as old and stable as the mountains themselves…until treaties sealed by oaths and magic lost their power…until barbarians with swords came swarming over the borders. The Warlock was the first to learn why. If he kept his discovery secret, his motive was compassion. His terrible truth spelled the end of civilization, yet it was of no earthly use to anyone. Fifty years ago his secret had finally escaped him…
“Never mind that,” said Clubfoot. “Let’s get dinner.”
The Warlock shook himself. “Shortly,” he said. He set the Wheel aside and reached again into the saddlebag.
Clubfoot snorted. He gathered up spilled clothing and began hanging it.
The Warlock set a wooden box on the table. Inside, within soft fox skins, was a human skull. The Warlock handled it carefully. One hinge of its jaw was broken, and there were tooth marks on the jaw and cheek bones and around both earholes.
Clubfoot said, “I still think we should have contrived to lose that.”
“I disagree. Now let’s get dinner.”
The inn was crowded. The dining hall was filled with long wooden tables, too close together, with wooden benches down both sides. The magicians fitted themselves into space on one of the benches. Citizens to either side gradually realized who and what they were and gave them plenty of room.
“Look at this logically,” Clubfoot said. “You’ve carried Wavyhill’s skull six hundred miles, when we had to throw away baggage we needed more. It’s just a skull. It’s not even in good condition. But if there’s enough local mana to power your spells, and if you work your spells exactly right, you just might be able to bring Wavyhill back to life so he can kill you!”
The Warlock stopped eating long enough to say, “Even if I revive it, it’s still just a skull. You’ll be all right if you don’t stick your fingers in its mouth.”
“He’s got every reason to want your life! And mine too, because I’m the one who led you to Shiskabil and Hathzoril. If I hadn’t found the gutted villages, you’d never have tracked him down.”
“He may not have known that.”
“I’d rather he did. Hellspawn! He’s branded my memory. I’ll never forget Shiskabil. Dead empty, and dried blood everywhere.”
“I’m going to revive him tonight. Want to help?”
Clubfoot gnawed at the rich dark meat on an antelope’s thighbone. Presently he said, “Would I let you try it alone?”
The Warlock smiled. Clubfoot was near fifty; he thought himself experienced in magic. At five times his age the Warlock might have laughed at Clubfoot’s solicitude. But the Warlock knew that most of his dangerously won knowledge was obsolete.
The mana had been richer, magic had been both easier and more dangerous, when the Warlock was raising his floating castles. Clubfoot was probably more in tune with the real world. So the Warlock only smiled and began moving his fingers in an intricate pattern.
Primary colors streamed up from between the Warlock’s fingers, roiled and expanded beneath the beamed roof. Heads turned at the other tables. The clattering of table knives stopped. Then came sounds of delight and appreciative fingersnapping, for a spell the Warlock had last used to blind an enemy army.
Now a lean, scarred swordsman watched the Warlock with haunted eyes. The Warlock did not notice. As he left the dining hall he took with him a bunch of big purple grapes.
The Skull of Wavyhill
The Warlock could remember a time when murder was very dangerous; when the mystical backlash from a careless killing could reverberate for generations. But that was long ago.
Wavyhill had learned his trade in an age when all spells were less powerful. There was still strong mana in murder, but Wavyhill had learned to control it. He had used magic to make himself unkillable. For these past twenty years he must have been regretting that terribly.
Wavyhill’s skull sat grinning on the table. Clubfoot regarded it uneasily. “It may be we’ve had too much wine to try this sort of thing tonight.”
“Would you rather try it tomorrow, before dawn, with hangovers? I want Wavyhill with me when we meet Mirandee and Piranther.”
“All right, go ahead.” Clubfoot bolted the door, then worked spells against magical intrusion. Reviving a murderous dead man was chancy enough without risk of some outsider interfering—and there were amateur magicians everywhere in Prissthil. Magic was an old tradition here, dating from a time when starstone was plentiful.
The Warlock sang as he worked. He was an old man, tall and lean, his head bald as an egg, his voice thin and reedy. But he could hold a tune. The words he sang belonged to a language no longer used except by members of the Sorcerers’ Guild. Wake and see the world…
He knotted a loop of thin leather thong to mend the broken jaw hinge. Other strips of thong went along the cheekbones, the jaw hinges, the ears. Many overlapped. When he finished they formed a crude diagram of the muscles of a human face.
The Warlock stepped back, considering. He cut up a sheet of felt and glued two round pads behind the ear holes. A longer strip went inside the jaws, the back end glued to the table between the jaw hinges.
He looked at Clubfoot, who had been watching intently. Clubfoot said, “Eyes?”
“Maybe later.” The Warlock said in the old language, “Kranthkorpool, speak to me.”
The skull opened its jaws wide and screamed.
Clubfoot and the Warlock covered their ears. It didn’t help. The skull’s voice was not troubling the air, and it did not reach the ears. At least it would not bother the other guests.
“He’s insane! Shut him off!” Clubfoot cried.
“Not yet!”
The skull screamed its agony. Minutes passed before it paused as if drawing breath. Into the pause the Warlock shouted, “Kranthkorpool, stop! It’s over! It’s been over for twenty years!”
The skull gaped. It said, “Twenty years?”
“It took me almost that l
ong to find your true name, Kranthkorpool.”
“Call me Wavyhill. Who are you? I can’t see.”
“Just a minute.” The Warlock plucked two of what was left of the grapes. He picked up the skull and inserted them into the eye sockets from inside. He inked in two black dots where they showed through the sockets.
“Ah,” said the skull. The black dots moved, focused. They studied Clubfoot, then moved on. “Warlock?”
The Warlock nodded.
“I thought I’d killed you. You were two hundred years old when I cancelled your longevity spells.”
“I was able to renew them. Partly. I give you a technical victory, Wavyhill. It was my ally who defeated you.”
“Technical victory!” There was hysteria in the skull’s falsetto laughter. “That werewolf rug merchant kept tearing and tearing at me! It went on forever and ever, and I couldn’t die! I couldn’t die!”
“It’s over.”
“I thought it wouldn’t ever be over. It went on and on, a piece of me gone every time he got close enough—”
The skull stopped, seemed to consider. Its expression was unreadable, of course. “I don’t hurt. In fact, I can’t feel much of anything. There was a long time when I couldn’t feel or see or hear or smell or…Did you say twenty years? Warlock, what do I look like?”
The Warlock detached a mirror from the wall, brought it and held it. Wavyhill’s skull studied itself for a time. It said, “You just had to do that, didn’t you?”
“I owed you one. Now you have a decision to make. Do you want to die? I can cancel the spell of immortality you put on yourself.”
“I don’t know. Let me think about it. What do you want of me, Warlock?”
“Some technical help.”
The skull laughed. “From me?”
“You were the world’s first necromancer. You were powerful enough to defeat me,” said the Warlock. “I’d be dead if I hadn’t brought help. You used your power for evil, but nobody doubts your skill. Tomorrow I meet two powerful magicians. We’ll want your advice.”
“Do I know of them?”
“Piranther. Mirandee.”
“Piranther!” The skull chuckled. “I’d like to see that meeting. Piranther walked out on your conference, didn’t he? After you called him a shortsighted fool. I heard that he took a whole colony of his people to the South Land Mass and swore never to come back.”
“You heard right. And he never did come back, but he’s coming now.”
The skull was silent for a time. Then it said, “You’ve roused my interest. I don’t care to die just now. Under the circumstances that may be silly, but I can’t help it. Can you make me a whole man again?”
“Look at me.”
The Warlock’s back was festive with colored inks: a five-sided tattoo, hypnotic in its complexity. The famous demon trap, was empty now; but he still preferred to wear nothing above the waist. Its purpose had been lost, but the habit remained.
It showed him to disadvantage. The Warlock’s ribs protruded. His small pot belly protruded. Pouchy, wrinkled, unflexible skin masked the strong lines of his face and showed the shrinkage of his musculature. Vertebrae marched like a tiny mountain range across the fading inks of the empty demon trap.
The skull sighed mournfully.
“Look at me! I’d wish my youth back, if wishing were all it took,” the Warlock said. “I was young for two hundred years. Now the spells are failing. All spells are failing.”
“So you need a necromancer.” The dots on the grapes turned to the red man. “Are you involved in this madness too?”
“Of course.”
The Warlock said, “This is Clubfoot, our ally.”
“A pleasure. I’d shake hands, but you see how it is,” said Wavyhill.
Clubfoot was not amused. “One day you may have hands again, but you will never take my hand. I’ve seen the villages you gutted. I helped kill you, Wavyhill.”
The dots on the grapes turned back to the Warlock. “And this tactless boor is to be our ally? Well, what is your project?”
“We’re going to discuss means of restoring the world’s mana.”
The skull’s laugh was high and shrill. The Warlock waited it out. Presently he said, “Are you finished?”
“Possibly. Will it take all five of us?”
“I tried to call a full meeting of the Guild. Only ten answered the call. Of the ten, three felt able to travel.”
“Has it occurred to you that magic can only use up mana? Never restore it?”
“We’re not fools. What about an outside source?”
“Such as?”
“The Moon.”
The Warlock expected more laughter. It did not come. “Mana from the Moon? I never would have thought of that in a thousand years. Still…why not? Starstones are rich in mana. Why not the Moon?”
“With enough mana, and the right spells, you could be human again.”
The skull laughed. “And so could you, Warlock. But where would we find magic powerful enough to reach the Moon?”
The door rocked to thunderous knocking.
The magicians froze. Then Clubfoot stripped a bracelet from his upper arm. He looked through it at the door. “No magic involved,” he said.
“What would a mundane want with us?”
“Maybe the building’s on fire.” Clubfoot raised his voice. “You, there—”
Neither the old spells, nor the old bar across the door, were strong enough. The door exploded inward behind a tremendous kick. An armed man stepped into the room and looked about him.
“I have to talk to a magician,” he told them.
“You are interrupting magicians engaged in private business,” said the Warlock. No sane man would have needed more warning.
The intruder was raggedly shaved, his long black hair raggedly chopped at shoulder length. His dark eyes studied two men and a skull decorated with macabre humor. “You are magicians,” he said wonderingly. In the next instant he almost died; for he drew his sword, and Clubfoot raised his arms.
The Warlock shook Clubfoot’s shoulder. “Stop! It’s broken!”
“Yes. I broke it,” said the intruder. He looked at the bladeless hilt, then suddenly threw it into a corner of the room. He took two steps forward and closed hands like bronze clamps on the Warlock’s thin shoulders. He looked searchingly into the Warlock’s face. He said, “Why did it happen?”
Clubfoot’s arms were raised again.
Human beings are fragile, watery things. Death spells are the easiest magic there is.
“Back up and start over,” said the Warlock. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who are you?”
“Orolandes. Greek soldier.”
“Why did you break your sword?”
“I hated it. I thought maybe it happened because of the people I killed. Not the other soldiers. The priests.”
Clubfoot exclaimed, “You were in the Atlantis invasion!”
“Yes. We finally invaded Atlantis. First time Greeks ever got that far.” Orolandes released the Warlock. He looked like a sleepwalker; he wasn’t seeing anything here in the room. “We came for slaves and treasure. That’s all.”
“And trade advantage,” said the Warlock.
“Uh? Maybe. Nobody told me anything like that. Anyway, we won. The armies of Atlantis must have gotten soft. We went through them like they were nothing. But the priests were something else. They stood in a long line on the steps of the big temple and waved their arms. We got sick. Some of us died. But we kept coming, crawling—I was crawling, anyway—and we got to them and killed them. And then Atlantis was ours.”
He looked with haunted eyes at the magicians. “Ours. At last. Hundreds of years we’d dreamed of conquering Atlantis. We’d take their treasure. We’d take away their weapons. We’d make them pay tribute. But we never, we never wanted to kill them all. Old men, women, children, everyone. Nobody ever thought of that.”
“You son of a troll. I had friends in Atlantis
,” said Clubfoot. “How did you live through it? Why didn’t you die with the rest?”
“Uh? There was a big gold Tau symbol at the top of the steps. We were laughing and bragging and binding up our wounds when the land started to shake. Everybody fell over. The Tau thing cracked at the base and fell on the steps. Then someone pointed west, and the horizon was going up. It didn’t look like water. It was too misty, too big. It looked like the horizon was getting higher and higher.
“I crawled under the Tau thing with my back against the step. Captain Iason was shouting that it wasn’t real, it was just an illusion, we must have missed some of the priests. The water came down like the end of the world. I guess the Tau thing saved my life—even the water couldn’t move it, it was so heavy—but it almost killed me too. I had to get out from under it and try to swim up.
“I grabbed something that was floating up with me. It turned out to be part of a wooden roof. I got on it. A centaur girl came swimming by and I hauled her up on the roof. I thought, well, at least I saved one of them. And then she just fell over.”
Clubfoot said, “There’s magic in centaur metabolism. Without mana she died.”
“But what happened? Did we do it?”
“You did it,” said Clubfoot.
“I thought…maybe…you’d say…”
“You did it. You killed them all.”
The Warlock said, “Atlantis should have been under the ocean hundreds of years ago. Only the spells of the priest-kings kept that land above the waves.”
Orolandes nodded dumbly. He turned to the door.
“Stop him,” said Wavyhill. As Orolandes turned to the new voice, the skull snapped, “You. Swordsman. How would you like a chance to make amends?”
Orolandes gaped at the talking skull.
“Well? You wiped out a whole continent, people and centaurs and merpeople and all. You broke your sword, you were so disgusted at yourself. How would you like to do something good for a change? Keep it from happening to others.”
“Yes.”
Clubfoot asked, “What is this?”