The Time of the Warlock

by Larry Niven

  “He kept enough!” Wilf said wistfully. “I’ve heard the old ones talking. Even today, while the god within a god sleeps…first love always fades. Marriage goes from adoration to companionship. My own lover turned to another woman for mere variety. If the god truly died—”

  “We do not threaten your Roze-Kattee!” Clubfoot shouted. “Tell the big one that we want to bring the god back to life.”

  The Warlock saw sidelong glances between the Nordiks. Curse! But Wilf’s reaction was stranger. The woman was blushing: pink blood beneath the white of cheek and throat. She wouldn’t look at the magicians. It was suddenly obvious that the Frost Giants preferred their god dormant.

  Harric asked, “Who is this tall Frost Giant who threatens us?”

  “Tolerik is my father’s cousin. He ran away when he was eleven; you may remember. He’s lived here ever since. Sometimes we bring him things he can’t get here.” All in a rush she said, “We must have the magicians. If you give them to us, Tolerik will work for you for a year.”

  The local mana had allowed a Frost Giant to reach his full height, but it was too low to let a magician defend himself. They could only wait.

  Poul said, “But by law he is already—”

  Harric’s voice easily drowned him out. “Very well. Take them.”

  Clubfoot dived for the pile of swords. Hathsson’s foot hooked Clubfoot’s twisted ankle. As Clubfoot sprawled headlong he felt a sword’s point pressing the small of his back. Clubfoot froze.

  Poul said, “But the swords! Wilf, will Tolerik let the magicians enchant our swords first?”

  “Don’t be a fool. We can’t trust them now,” Harric said.

  Wilf gestured downslope. Her father and his huge cousin started up. The Warlock was cursing himself for that moment of stunned surprise. Surprise, that warriors would betray a magician!

  What kind of threat would cow an armed man the size of a big tree? The Warlock raised his arms. A fantasm, a great red-and-gold dragon stooping, slashing…if the Giant dodged, if he fell downslope, his height alone might break his neck…

  The Giant’s hand closed around Clubfoot’s ankles and lifted him.

  Colors formed in the air, tinges of red and gold. Harric frowned and rapped the Warlock’s skull with his spear haft. The Warlock sank to his knees with the pain. He saw Clubfoot writhing in the Giant’s hand as the Giant prepared to dash his brains out against a rock.

  Darkness rippled around Clubfoot, swallowed him, swallowed the Giant’s hand to the wrist. The Giant yelled and tried to pull away.

  The Warlock sagged on the grass. It was all right. He saw the darkness closing around him and knew it for what it was: a Great Summoning. Mirandee must have found the god-within-a-god.

  The hillside disappeared, and he was on dusty stone. Strength flowed into him, the strength of youth spells reviving. The Warlock stood up, saying, “W—”

  And every muscle locked in place, locked him standing with his hand extended, his eyes smiling, his lips pursed on a W.

  Clubfoot was on a rock floor with a great severed hand holding his ankles. Beyond him, Orolandes lay awkwardly, like a toppled statue. Mirandee leaned casually against a wall. Piranther—

  Piranther returned the Warlock’s smile. “I must remember to ask Clubfoot about that hand. What kind of allies were you gathering against me?” He dusted his hands together; the dust fell like motes of colored fire. He turned to the decorated skull sitting on a rock behind him. “Or did you trick me? Did I rescue them from a greater danger?”

  “Revive them and ask,” Wavyhill suggested.

  “I like them better the way they are. Well, let us see your dormant god,” said Piranther. He stepped delicately across Orolandes.

  “If—”

  Piranther turned.

  “Nothing,” said the skull. “Just a thought.”

  “Well?”

  “You still can’t move him.”

  “I’ll decide that.” Piranther turned and walked into the cavern.

  Orolandes lay frozen in a frozen world. Behind him Piranther’s footsteps were casually erratic, growing faint and blurred with echoes.

  Wavyhill spoke low. “I hope you’re not dead. If you’re all dead, then I’m in serious trouble.”

  The skull chuckled softly. “He’s deep in the cavern now. Warlock, if you can hear me, I claim a vengeance foregone. I could have suggested that he take you with him, for advice. He could have bound you with a loyalty spell, and you would have walked in with him. Warlock, Clubfoot, do you remember what you did to me, do you see what I am now? Mirandee, do you remember suggesting that I wasn’t worthy to join you?”

  The rock softened under Orolandes’ rigid elbow. The light grew pink; or was the rock itself changing color?

  The roof of the entrance descended.

  Behind Orolandes came Piranther’s echoing scream. Wavyhill laughed shrilly, madly. A warm wet wind blew against Orolandes’ back. It stank like the breath of a thousand wolves. Piranther’s scream ended as if muffled.

  The roof above him had dropped low enough to touch the Warlock’s head.

  Wavyhill ended his cackling. “Well? Am I right? Did I have your lives in my grasp? Isn’t it a marvelous hiding place for the last god? Greek, you probably still don’t understand. Have you heard of the World-Worm, the snake that circles the world and swallows its own tail? The Nildiss Range and the Andes and the Rocky Mountains all form a part of its body. And you lie within its mouth.”

  Orolandes said, “Uhn!”

  “Oh, ho! You’re alive, are you? That paralysis won’t last. I could free you now, if I could make the gestures. I don’t think Piranther did anything fancy; he just bulled through our ward-spells with the power in his black opals.

  “Marvelous, isn’t it? The World-Worm is a strange beast. Of course it couldn’t possibly live by eating its own flesh. The tail used to have flanges of bone behind those huge pores. It sweeps up all kinds of things: turf, birds’ nests, the dens of animals that lair in the pores, even full grown trees growing in the dirt the flanges sweep up. It grows very slowly this tail. And of course anything that wanders into the mouth gets eaten. I should be talking in the past tense, really,” said the skull. “The fins are all weathered away. The World-Worm is like all magical forms of life; it turns to stone when the mana runs low. Like dragon bones. Like that statue in front of the Prissthil gates. What fooled Piranther was the tail. Running back into the mouth like that, it changes the shape so the cavern isn’t mouth-shaped any more.”

  Teeth, thought Orolandes. I was jogging through a forest of spike teeth. He said, “Uhn!” The calf of his leg kicked suddenly, painfully.

  The roof of the cavern was rising…and changing in color, greying to the look of stone.

  “Can talk,” Clubfoot said. “Can’t move yet. Anyone?”

  The Warlock grunted. “Spell should wear off soon.”

  “Got us with those black opals,” said Clubfoot. “We couldn’t know. Wavyhill. Why here?”

  “Why, it’s obvious! Look: nobody who knows what this place is would come here. The World-Worm must have been nearly dead for centuries, but who’d risk it? If a mundane wandered in here all unknowing, nothing would happen. But if a magician came here looking for the dormant god—” Wavyhill chuckled. “There’s mana in magic. The power of their spells hovers around magicians. Put a mana source in the World-Worm’s mouth and what happens?”

  “Poor Piranther,” said Mirandee.

  “It wakes up for a snack,” Clubfoot said callously.

  “I think it would have done that even without the opals. Any time a magician comes calling…or a swordsman carrying a sword stolen from a place where gods once lived. In the meantime, whatever mana is still with the World-Worm is there to keep the dormant god alive. If our luck holds.”

  Clubfoot had called up a pair of hares: an old and simple magic, still potent almost everywhere. He had started a fire and cleaned the hares and was now roasting them. In his stiff back there
was a rejection of the quarrel now going on in the cavern entrance.

  “I won’t let him go,” Mirandee said. She sat with her back to them, her legs dangling over the stone buttress…over what must be the World-Worm’s lower lip.

  Orolandes came up behind Mirandee. He moved stiffly. They were all sore from the cramps that had followed their paralysis. He put his hands on her shoulders, ignored their angry shrug. “It is what we came for.”

  “Idiot! It’s eaten a powerful magician and his black opals. It may not sleep again for years! Wavyhill, tell him! It eats things that wander into its mouth!”

  “It may have gone dormant again,” the skull said comfortably. “It was mana-starved for generations. It’s a big beast; it needs nourishment.”

  “Father of trolls!” she spat.

  “Retired.”

  “Mountain goat,” the Warlock said without turning. He stood at the corner of the cavern’s mouth, a little apart.

  He was ignored. The skull on the rock said, “Listen, girl. I gave up my vengeance against these, my murderers. I am willing to risk a swordsman to the same high purpose.”

  The Warlock began singing to himself.

  “Well, ’Landes? You heard him. You can’t throw away your life after that. What about me?” Mirandee demanded.

  Floating bodies, myriads of bodies, shoals of bloated human bodies turned in the waves, bumping gently against each other and against the wooden raft on which Orolandes lay dying of thirst beside the decaying body of a centaur girl. Did they thirst for vengeance? They had the right…and if Orolandes walked out of the cavern alive, there were lives still to be saved. There were centaur and satyr tribes in Greece. He said, “I have to.”

  “If you die I’ll die!”

  He was startled. “You’ll die? Because you read my mind?”

  “Yes!”

  Wavyhill said, “She’s lying. Think it through. Piranther read your mind too. Would he have taken that risk?”

  Orolandes looked at her. Her eyes did not drop. “I mean it. I won’t live without you.”

  A clattering of hooves startled them. They turned as a mountain goat bounded up on the World-Worm’s lip and stood gazing up at the Warlock.

  “Any of you idiots could have thought of this,” the Warlock told them. He turned back to give the goat its orders.

  Stiff-legged and blank of eye, the goat walked into the cavern. They watched it blunder into stalagmites and stumble on until it had reached the entrance to the inner cave…the World-Worm’s gullet.

  Clubfoot spoke grudgingly, it seemed. “You can wait till morning. Have some dinner.”

  “No.”

  Mirandee sat stony-eyed. She did not look up as Orolandes stroked her hair, turned and walked after the goat.

  The smell of broiling meat followed him and made it hard to go on. He circled teeth taller than himself. He climbed the soil-gathering potholes in the side of the long, long tail. He walked along the top of the tail with his torch casting yellow light into the gap.

  He heard only his own footsteps. The bats…the bats must have been eaten along with Piranther. The flickering flame made motion everywhere. How would he know when the roof began to descend?

  Far at the back, the tip of a stalagmite tooth showed above a whitish mass that enclosed it.

  The last god was no bigger than Piranther, made of nearly translucent marble. It sat with its arms and legs wrapped tight around the base of a tooth. Its slanted eyes glowed yellow-white by torchlight. Its face and ears were covered with fur. In the triangular shape of its face there was something cat-feminine.

  It took some nerve to wrap his arms around the stalagmite and, throwing all of his weight into it, try to move the tooth. It was solidly fixed.

  “There’s no way to get it loose from there,” he told the magicians. “Your Roze-Kattee was a coward, Wavyhill. It’s got a death-grip on that tooth.” And he sat down to eat hot disjointed hare, one-handed, with his other arm around a weeping Mirandee. He had been ready to die in there; he had come out alive, and he was famished.

  When there was nothing left but bones, Wavyhill said, “It sounds bad.”

  Orolandes grunted! “Would you consider chopping through one of the god’s arms?”

  “No.”

  “Then we’d have to chop through the tooth at the base, then have a team of men pull out tooth and statue together. Work for an army. Can we hire some of the Nordiks? They live close enough to—”

  The Warlock chopped at the air. “The Nordiks won’t help us. Even the Frost Giants seem to prefer their god dormant. Curse them and their coward god.”

  “And my lost vengeance,” said Wavyhill.

  Clubfoot sat hugging his knees. “I don’t believe it. We came all this way, and now…No. There’s an answer. We’ve got meat to be called and snow for water. We’ll stay here until we find an answer.”

  The God of Love and Madness

  Fourteen thousand years have garbled all the details.

  The last god is remembered in diverse legends. Roze become Eros, Kattee become Kali and Hecate, their qualities radically changed. Now only children hear of the Warlock’s great project. They learn of a foolish frightened hen who ran screaming to tell the world that the world was ending. Some she convinced. In a desperate effort to salvage something, she led them into a cave.

  The solution was in the cave. So close…

  “We can get close!” A bellowing voice cut deep into the Warlock’s dreams.

  He rolled over, blinking. He heard rustlings and grunts of annoyance around him, and saw Clubfoot looming over him in gray pre-dawn light. Half asleep, he struggled to sit up.

  Clubfoot was shivering with excitement. “Wavyhill, do you remember that gesture-spell, the variant on the Warlock’s Wheel? The one that cancels mana.”

  “Remember it? Sure. I designed it. Nearly killed the Warlock with it, too. Shall I teach you the gestures?”

  The Warlock said, “Wait a minute. I’m still trying to wake up. Clubfoot, have you really got something?”

  “Yes! We can’t get into the cavern, right? But we can get close! Roze-Kattee is just inside the World-Worm’s cheek!”

  Orolandes woke late, to the smell of roasting rabbit and the pleasant sound of Mirandee’s humming. “Eat,” she said gaily, “We’ve got work to do.”

  “Work? That’s good. Yesterday it was all a dead end. Where are the others?”

  “Already at work. Today it’s different. I had a dream.”

  “So? Or do you dream the future? You’re so much a man’s ideal woman, I keep forgetting what else you are.”

  She kissed him. “Sometimes I dream the future. It’s not dependable.” Her brow wrinkled. “This one was funny. I guess it means success. I dreamed the sky was falling.”

  Orolandes laughed. “That sounds scary.”

  “No, I wasn’t frightened at all. And it is what we’re after, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe, but it sounds scary as Hell when you put it like that. What did you feel, watching the sky fall?”

  “Nothing.”

  After breakfast they walked on bare earth, swinging their linked hands. On their left a sloping wall of stone rose out of the earth, higher and higher above them as they walked on. The stone was smooth, worn by the wind, until only a suggestion of scales was left to show that this was the side of the World-Worm’s head.

  They came to where a patch of the smooth rock turned to crumbly sandstone. Here was a hole in the rock, head-high, and sand spilled beneath it. Orolandes paused to look, but Mirandee pulled him on.

  The second hole was higher and larger, big enough for a man to crawl through. Clubfoot and the Warlock waited as they came up. The magicians had piled rocks as stepping-stones to reach the hole. Orolandes climbed the pile and looked through.

  It was black as a stomach in there. Clubfoot coaxed the end of a branch into flame and handed it up to him. By firelight Orolandes saw that he was ten feet away from the marble statue of Roze-Kattee.
<
br />   “How did you break through? We don’t have so much as an ax.”

  “We cursed it,” said the Warlock. “Wavyhill evolved a gesture spell that uses up the mana in whatever he aims it at. He used it on me once. We don’t use it much these days. It’s wasteful.”

  Wavyhill spoke from his accustomed perch on the Warlock’s shoulder. “This isn’t just rock, after all. It’s a great brute of a dying god.”

  Orolandes nodded. “What’s the next step? Can you revive Roze-Kattee through that hole?”

  “We think so. The next step is tricky, and it involves climbing,” said the Warlock. “That leaves it up to you and Clubfoot.”

  Clubfoot nodded, but he didn’t look happy.

  And Mirandee was frowning. “Why, no. I climb better than you, don’t I, Clubfoot?”

  “Well, there’s more to this than—”

  “And I’m as skilled at magic. Unless this is weather magic? Just what have you in mind?”

  Clubfoot answered in the Guild tongue.

  They talked for some time. Whatever they were discussing, it was complicated, judging from Mirandee’s frequent questions and the way Clubfoot waved his arms. Orolandes could see that Mirandee didn’t like it. He edged closer to those inseparable colleagues, Wavyhill and the Warlock, and asked, “What’s going on?”

  “Necromancy,” said the skull. “Very technical. Can you climb that rock with a pack?”

  “Yes. But why is Mirandee—”

  “We didn’t discuss it with her before. She didn’t know what was involved.”

  “Then—”

  “No!” Mirandee snapped. “If it has to be done, I’ll do it. Otherwise I wouldn’t let you do it either. Orolandes!” She turned her back on Clubfoot, whose face was a study in mixed emotions: sorrow and relief. Mirandee was biting her lower lip.

  Orolandes went up alone, barefoot, using as fingerholds and toeholds those crevices and irregularities whose pattern just hinted at serpent-scales worn smooth. There were potholes in the great smooth expanse of the World-Worm’s head: real potholes this time, worn by rain pooling to dissolve rock. Orolandes chopped with the sword point—the blade was uncannily hard—until he had joined adjacent potholes into a knob that would hold the line.