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Authors: Alexei Panshin,Cory Panshin

Tags: #Fiction, #Fantasy, #Epic, #Science Fiction, #General

Earth Magic (8 page)

BOOK: Earth Magic
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Old Svein Half-White Half-Right on his staircase stood and threw down his dinner. He yelled, “Up! Up! Morca, we are undone! Your ambitions have brought fire down on us!”

As Morca looked to the doorway and the attackers, Lothor seized Morca’s black beard in tight laced fingers and brought the power of Chastain down on Morca’s head. But bull Morca’s chief strength was sturdier than Lothor’s stick. The scepter broke with the second blow and Morca’s head did not.

Morca reared, his great heavy chair toppling backward slowly. No one else in the world could have disturbed it so lightly. He dragged Lothor to his feet by his beard-tangled fingers. Then Morca swung his great arm and stumbling Lothor of Chastain was knocked to the floor senseless. Morca was a strong man.

Black Morca spread his arms wide and in his bull bellow he cried, “For your lives and for Morca!
Alf Morca Gettha!

Men thrilled to the sound of his voice. With his slogan still ringing, Morca drew his sword. He placed a foot on Lothor to steady him and split him like a log on the chopping block. The Princess Marthe screamed to see her father so sudden dead. With one great hand Morca the War King upset the tableboard before him, dishes flying, kicked the golden dowry of Chastain out of his way, and strode down to the cutting floor red sword in hand to wade in blood.

In the first moment, men stood throughout the room shaking the fog from their heads and the meat from their poniards. They drew their swords and turned to meet the killing tide. They frantically tried to sort friend from foe. They were far outnumbered and shock, dismay, and gorged bellies made them slow.

Soren Seed-Sower and Furd Heavyhand, their quarrel forgot, stood together side by side to face the weight of onslaught. They met it and held, fighting like true Gets, like true loyal men. Then they were overwhelmed and they died. They were only the first.

There was no quarter here. Egil, Heregar the Headstrong, and the rest who came through the doors, Lothor’s knights who followed, and Aella and Ivor, the traitors within, meant to kill every man.

Old Svein on his stair, no fighting man for twenty years, turned and scrambled upstairs for his stool. But not to sit, not to cower. He gripped his stool with his left arm as a shield and with his eating knife as his weapon he strove to hold the stair. It was all he knew to do. And hold the stair he did against all attackers, turning them back in ones, twos, and threes. They could not bring him down. Then Aella of Long Barrow, that man, leapt up from beside the stair and seized the old man’s ankles and toppled him. Aella set his knee on Svein’s thin old chest and showed him no mercy. He slit his throat in a stroke.

The room was bloody chaos, filled with shouts and slogans, cries of pain, and the groans of the felled as they were trampled and kicked by the standing. The torches leapt with the cool touch of night and the hot breath of battle, swaying to the surge of the dance of death, uncaring and unconcerned high above the fray. Some few of Morca’s men sought to escape the maelstrom by following the screaming serving women within the kitchens or plunging through the doors into the night, but most stood their ground, falling back toward Morca when he bellowed his call, dying hard, earning their deaths by dealing death.

Morca was a giant. His sword was a circle of death for any who dared to close with him. He lifted fallen men to their feet. He inspired dead men to fight on. He was the center of the room. He was captain and king.

“Alf Morca Gettha!”

Haldane followed Morca down to the floor. He stood on his chair and stepped to the tabletop, for he did not have Morca’s strength to push tables aside with a hand, and then he jumped down to the floor, banging one knee and rising with sword in hand.

“To me, Hemming. To me,” he called, and Hemming Paleface came to him.

He and Hemming stood together and guarded each other’s backs. Haldane was both thrilled and afraid. So this was battle!
At last.
At last. His heart resounded.

He knew their cause was dire, but how dire he did not realize. He did not know he was a dead man in his first battle with only the moment of his death undetermined. He had no time to think. He set aside his fear and fought.

He caught blows on his sword that numbed his arm and he dealt strokes that brought blood. He was wounded and did not feel the pain. His throat was raw from battle cries he never heard. There was the flavor of iron in his mouth. His sword was tight locked one moment and he tasted the ugly breath of the Get he fought, brown beard, yellow teeth, one dogtooth missing: Heregar the Headstrong. No, a smooth-shaven knight of Chastain. No, another Get. In other moments his sword’s world was empty as far as it could reach. He braced his back against Hemming, his one support, and he braced Hemming in turn. When Morca called his slogan, he strove to reach the sound of his father’s voice, Hemming following. And then, of a sudden, his back was empty.

Haldane was lying against something unyielding that pressed into his back and hurt him. He was kicked as he lay. His mind was a sickening whirlpool. Then he found himself on his knees. There was wetness running into his right eye and he cleared it with the back of his hand.

He wasn’t sure where he was. What was happening? He was confused and sick. Before him on the rushes was a dead man. Blood ran from the dead man’s nose and mouth and was clotted in his beard and mustache. Haldane knew him. Knew him? It was his dear old Rolf who had taught him to ride and shoot, now beyond any use of forks or strings. As dead as . . .

Everywhere around Haldane there was death. The room was full of dead men, Gets and foreigners. Everywhere around Haldane there was noise and tumult. War. The battle continued in knots, but everywhere many against few. And there lay Hemming Paleface dead, his head split, brains adribble.

Then Haldane recovered some of his mind. He knew where he was. He did not know what had happened to him, but he knew what was happening.

Black Morca still stood, but he stood alone. He had been wounded many times, the great bull beset by wolves. He bellowed in pain and he bellowed in fury, but he was dying bravely and his dangerous horns kept the yapping giant killers at a distance. His sword sang a song of death and his poniard played harmony. But he was encircled and his end was close.

Haldane tried to come to his rescue, but he could not gain his feet. He crawled forward desperately over rushes and bodies and the scattered trash of the dowry, his dowry, dragging his sword with him. Then he saw Oliver a double armslength distant on the dais, crouched beneath a table. He was mumbling and moving his hands through the slow middle figures of a spell. And then Oliver stood, an eye-catching figure in his magenta robes, calling down the Chaining of Wild Lightning on their heads, the Ultimate Spell to kill the many, as the Gets had been slain at Stone Heath, that would kill himself, too, as the wizards of the West had perished with their triumph.

Haldane found himself mumbling too, the only spell he knew, the Pall of Darkness, as though by chanting his little spell he could be of aid to Oliver. He remembered the words, he remembered the motions of hand, and did not know how he remembered. And he hoped for magical deliverance. Anything that would save them.

Oliver made his gestures and said his words. He was magnificent, rising, growing, spreading, becoming great. The last figure was traced. The last word was spoken. He stood with arms spread, waiting for the white tongues of flame that would lash down and destroy the destroyers. Fire that would know whom to strike.

But no flame came.

Nothing happened. Nothing!

The fighting continued as though Oliver had not spoken a word.

And Black Morca was a dead man. The wolves closing, tightening their little circle, dragged down the great bull. They overbore him by weight of number. And the finishing strokes were made by Ivor Fish-Eye, the traitor. He waited his chance and when Morca was engaged he slipped in behind him and killed him with a knife thrice plunged into his back. Then he held the bloody knife high in exultation.

There were tears in Haldane’s eyes and his mind was a morass. His whole world lay slain. Murdered. Dead.

He came at last to his feet, his lips moving through the last automatic mumble of the Pall of Darkness. He nearly fell. He stumbled against the dais. He finished the spell, leaning against a table. The old wave of cold he had known before rolled over him again. He was invisible to men’s eyes, though the gods could see him still.

The carrion wolves set up a gay savage howl: “Black Morca is dead! Morca is slain! We have killed him!”

They pranced around the body of the fallen king and made much of themselves. They leaped in to hack at his bones. Men smeared themselves in his blood, painting their faces red with his death. They vied to cut off his parts and hold them up to show. Others turned to the scattered gold of the dowry, picking up prizes to keep.

But their work was not done. Egil Two-Fist, who led then, yelled, “Make sure of Morca’s cub! He must be killed too. Find him.”

That was Haldane. Haldane the Invisible. Haldane the Disappeared.

A sudden shattering hand fell on Haldane’s shoulder.


Part II

Evasion

Chapter 8

T
HE DAY HELD FAIR PROMISE,
should the two fugitives in the forest live long enough to enjoy it. It was as sweet a day as the spring had seen. The morning air was blithe, even in the cool tuckaway of a thicket. The sky beyond the trees was a light blue sea with a few small boats gently riding before the wind. A bird that Haldane neither saw nor heard landed on a branch above his head, tossed him a cheery good morning that he did not answer, and began to whet its bill.

Haldane was in sorry condition. His fine new betrothal clothes were bloodied and dirty, rent and torn. He had bruises everywhere, the worst of which were to knee and back. He wore his first true war wounds, the best of which was a head wound that Oliver had cleaned. It would make a scar to carry. His right eye was blackened, besides. In addition to his wounds and his broken head, he suffered from shock, confusion, fatigue, and the sad effects of his small spell of invisibility, itself long passed. He remembered fighting back-to-back with Hemming Paleface and striving to reach Morca, but he remembered nothing but in flashes thereafter. He found things hard even now to fix in his mind. Worst, for a Get, he cried in weakness and could not help himself.

Before him on the ground were the small remains of his life. They were set out in a half-circle. His long sword. A narrow knife with a black haft. A horn. A boar’s tooth graven with Deldring mysteries, strung on a rawhide cord. A length of string. And a daffodil that Haldane had added, weeping hotly and laying it beside the sword.

There was dried blood on the sword blade, though Haldane had been taught to clean his sword after use lest it rust. He was too confused to remember to do it now that it mattered. There was dirt on the point of the sword, sign of its employment as a staff through the night. That was not right use, either.

In his dizzy moments, Haldane would look at these pieces on the ground and wonder what they did there and why he cried. And then he would remember what Oliver had told him and become lost again in tears.

The bird was not disturbed by Haldane, but when Oliver returned from conning the country from secret, it flew away. The wizard too, was nothing like his usual grave and well-arranged self. He, like Haldane, was suffering from shock, confusion and fatigue, and the differently upsetting effect of his own failed spell.

He was strange, this plump little fringe-bearded man who looked the fool, and could not help sometimes but act it, but whose tongue and wit had carried him through more difficult adventures than Black Morca. He was weak, but he dared. Sometimes he dared.

He had done more last night than he had known he could. On their first invisible dash, he had led them to his cell rather than into the night. That was presence of mind. He had snatched up night cloaks and the dried beef he was wont to chew over while he worked at his book, and placed them in his old bag that he had brought with him from Palsance, keeping a hand on the boy all the while. Then he had broken the greased paper away and chivvied Haldane through the window. The spell had only taken them out of the dun. Then, suddenly, half down the hill, Oliver had been able to see Haldane again. Frightened every step, he had herded and harried the whorl-witted boy across the hills to the forest.

Oliver’s magenta satinet bore a record of their desperate passage. It was a thin cold material, made for show and not for hard use. He regretted leaving his daily red robe hanging in his cell, but he had not dared the time to change.

His best daring was not of the moment, but in long plans. He had been planning what to do. He had told Haldane to set his things out, and not been sure he would.

He said, “Good. I see you have managed to empty your pockets.”

Haldane said, “Why did I do it? It is all middle in my mind. I cannot remember. Where is Morca? Did I reach him?”

Oliver licked his fingers. He had been eating a piece of dried beef while he spied variously from the edge of the copse. He was not sorry that Haldane could not remember everything.

He said, “Do you remember the fighting?”

Haldane slowly touched his wounded temple with a hand that held a daffodil with a crushed stem. “I remember fighting. That is the last I remember. Is Morca dead?”

“Yes.” Oliver had told him that many times.

“Who killed him?”

Oliver had told him that too. “Ivor Fish-Eye.”

“I will kill him. I’ll quarter him and hang him in the sun for crows to strip clean. I remember. I remember Aella and Heregar and Egil Two-Fist. I’ll kill them all. I’ll be like Wisolf the Cunning and live in the houses of my enemies before I kill them.”

“You have said that. And you killed Heregar last night. Enough, Haldane, enough,” said the wizard in distress. “We must go now. Now.”

“Is Morca really dead?” asked Haldane.

“I could only save us two. Morca was dead by then and you were struck senseless. They will be hunting for us in force. It is we who will be quartered and hung in the sun if we don’t hie ourselves beyond their reach.”

Haldane shook his head determinedly. He muttered the name Ivor Fish-Eye over and over under his breath as though he would prevent himself from forgetting. His headshaking made him sick and he closed his eyes and yawed. But he righted himself again and exchanged flower for sword. He was not called Haldane Hardhead for nothing. He stroked the sword with his hand.

“I will stay here and kill them all,” he said. Then he began to sing these words, his Carl Song before battle.

Oliver calmed him with some effort. Haldane was too lost to see the conflicts in his own words and he was beyond the reach of argument, but he could be led.

So Oliver would lead him. He returned to his plan. He brought a small box and a book from out of his bag. He took his spectacles out of the box and put them on, ran his fingers through the winter forest of his hair, and began to thumb the loose pages of his gramarie.

The two lost themselves in their own separate worlds. Haldane continued to play with his plans of revenge, remembering each of the stories of the Vengeance of Wisolf in far-off Shagetai that Svein had told him when he was small. He remembered them more clearly than the night just past. Oliver studied the book for some time, not wanting to begin his spell. Then he closed his book and put his spectacles away.

Since it and he had failed each other, Oliver was afraid of his magic. His confidence was shaken. But his plan was to make a spell, one of stronger weave than Haldane’s, that would serve to save them. He closed his eyes before he started because his head was light. He tried to draw his courage together. They were a fine pair, both less than their usual selves. And Oliver knew he would be sick from the spell to come. If it worked. But disguise was their best hope of living.

For their purpose, he complected a new spell out of old pieces, as a cook on the demand of occasion might invent something new out of old simplicities like cabbage and onions. It was only when the work was begun and the stew asimmer that Haldane forgot Wisolf and took notice of what Oliver did.

He came to his feet, saying, “No!” and waving his arms. He made as though to seize Oliver’s hand to break the weave, but did not dare finally.

He said, “I want no part of your magics. Stop!”

He remembered neither Oliver’s spoiled spell nor his own success.

“What use is your magic now? You should have plied it in Morca’s behalf when it mattered.”

Oliver broke off the spell. “I told you. There was no time for great magic. If not for the spell that I did manage, you would not be alive at this moment. Now be quiet, or instead of the weal of my magic, you shall feel its weight. And be grateful!”

Haldane managed silence, but not gratitude. His face was still too full of various hates, hurts, and confusions for it to show gratitude. But silence was sufficient for Oliver.

With Haldane chastened, Oliver resumed his spell, speaking the words of power and signing sigils in the air with his hands. Chancing failure. Chancing sickness for success. Haldane watched, unaware of what was about to happen to him. If he had known what he would become, he would not have ceased protest.

Of a sudden, Oliver and Haldane were different people. Oliver was still short, but no longer stout. He was an old ugly red-haired man, hairy-nostriled, and with a cast to one eye so that he seemed to see in two directions. In place of his robe, he wore a brown smock. He was no wizard now, and no Get, either.

Haldane was still a boy, but seemed shorter and younger than himself, and less pretty. He too wore a smock. He too was no Get. He was nobody he would have liked to know. He was disguised as a stupid, slope-shouldered peasant boy, a Nestorian calf.

He held his hands up and looked at them. Short and stubby fingers.

“What have you done?” he cried. “What have you made me?”

Oliver said calmly, “Until the spell runs its course, you wear the guise of a simple Nestorian. I will be Noll to those we meet. You will be my grandson—Giles, we will call you. Let us hope it keeps us alive until we are safe.”

“A peasant!” Haldane shouted. “I will not be a peasant! The shame is too great.”

He made to tear the smock off, but the illusion was beyond removal. Oliver seized the boy by the shoulder and shook him.

“Listen, you must do as I say! Your Wisolf played an old woman when he had need, and no one thought shame. Use your wits if you are able!”

“It was a Gettish woman that he played, and not some smock-wearing peasant. And when Wisolf departed his enemy’s tent, in his basket he carried away a head.”

“Use your wits if you are able,” said Oliver again. “If you wish your revenge, you must stay alive to take it. There is no safety for us here in this country. We are hunted men. We must flee until Nestor is quiet. When we are safe across the Trenoth in Palsance, and friend and foe show themselves clearly, that will be time enough to be a Get again. Now give me the things you have set aside and I will put them in my bag.”

Haldane was confused. Just when he thought he had caught up to himself again, he was suddenly someone new. He did not entirely understand. He turned away from Oliver and sat with his sword and his string and his other treasures. But he did not deliver them to Oliver. He was no peasant named Giles. He picked up his horn and fondled it.

“I may be sick from my wounds so that I cannot stand, but my brains are not addled,” he said. “What safety is there for me in the West? In Palsance they would kill me as quickly as here. I will stay here until they come along and then I will seek my vengeance.”

“No, come with me,” said Oliver. “Be Wisolf, Haldane. Use your cunning. Sick and alone as you are, you will be dead if you stay. You can play the peasant in Palsance until the times have sorted themselves. Then you can take your vengeance. But men harry the country for us now. Let us be gone. Or will you leave me to cough and hobble my way to Palsance alone? The man who saved you so that you could have your vengeance?”

Oliver coughed tentatively to show Haldane the sickness he soon would suffer, as Haldane suffered now and did not realize. There was phlegm enough for him to venture a greater cough, a hack that shook him near to falling.

Haldane turned the horn in his hands. “What is there for Oliver in Palsance but the enemies he left behind?” he asked.

What would Oliver find in Palsance? The question did give him pause to think.

A sudden sun of revelation lit Haldane’s face. He put the horn to his lips and made as if to blow. Then he looked at the horn again and said, “My grandfather Arngrim is almost as close as Palsance. He will help me gain my vengeance.”

Oliver said, still thinking, “Arngrim is farther than Palsance. I could not walk so far.”

But Haldane was instantly set. “I will go south along the Pellardy Road to Little Nail and there I will blow my horn outside Arngrim’s dun until he opens his gate to me, his own daughter’s son. Then I will gather a new army and return to sweep the earth clean of . . .” He could not remember all the names.

“Of Ivor and Romund and Egil.”

“And every traitor baron.”

Oliver said, “And what welcome would a wizard find with Arngrim?”

“I owe you my life,” Haldane said. “I will be your warrant with Arngrim. If you are with me, he will accept you. No Get would turn his own away.”

Oliver took out his clay pipe and filled it with yellow weed, his aid to magic and thought, his mediator. He put punk in his firepump and struck a light. It would be the last smoke he would enjoy while spell and sickness held him. His cough had been more than effect. He could feel his chest filling and tightening now. This last pipe helped serve to calm him.

“You could play the peasant until the times have sorted themselves, Oliver,” Haldane said. “My grandfather will have a place for a cock-eyed tiller of the soil.”

Oliver would have need of Haldane’s strength as his own ebbed. He did not like to think of walking to Palsance alone. He thought of the life he would find waiting in Palsance. That was a certainty he had avoided before. He thought of the uncertainty that was Arngrim. At last—as always, at last—he dared.

He finished his pipe and set it down on his bag. He said, “It seems that my adventure in Nestor is not yet over. Let us make our way to your grandfather Arngrim.”

Haldane came to his knees and gathered his poor possessions. He was much readier to move now. The boar’s tooth he placed around his neck where it was lost in the illusion. His knife that was Marthe’s, his string that was Rolf’s, and even his horn that was Arngrim’s, he gave to Oliver who put them away in his sack. Then Haldane made to take up his sword. His wits might be mending, but they were not yet mended.

Oliver told him, “No.”

“I cannot leave my sword behind,” Haldane said, holding it close. At the moment he was not man enough to wield it. “It is my sword. How can I fight if we are discovered? We need my sword.”

Oliver said, “If you carry your sword, we surely will be discovered. Whoever heard of a peasant with a sword?”

Oliver’s objection was unanswerable and his will was stronger on this, and he overrode Haldane. But he did not stop with that. He made Haldane bury the sword so that it might not be found and point their direction.

BOOK: Earth Magic
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