The Complete Compleat Enchanter (55 page)

Shea told him about the Pohjola project. Brodsky looked glum. “So we gotta go up there and crack this box with a lot of them doorshakers on the lay? Me, I don’t like it. Why can’t we just take it on the lam for Ohio? I’ll kill the rap for you.”

Shea shook his head. “Not me. Especially after the fuss I made about Lemminkainen running out on his end of the bargain. Listen, you’re in a place where magic works, and it’s funny stuff. When you get something by promising something else, and then try not to deliver, you’re apt to find yourself without the thing you wanted.”

“You mean if we went lamester, this Bayard and me would land back in that deluxe hop-pen?”

“Something like that.”

Brodsky shook his head. “You’re shot with horseshoes that you got a Joe with you that believes in predestination. Okay, when do we take it?”

“Probably tomorrow. Lemminkainen knocked himself out bringing you from Xanadu and won’t be fit till then.”

“I got it,” said Brodsky. “What we got for today? Just bending the ears?”

Shea turned around and looked out the window. “I guess so,” he said. “It seems to have started raining.”

It was a long day. Kylliki and Lemminkainen’s mother trotted in and out, carrying trays of food to the recumbent hero, and occasionally dropping one off at the table in the hall, where Brodsky and Walter Bayard had started an endless discourse on predestination, original sin, and Cartesianism. After a while, Shea and Belphebe wandered off into a corner and let them talk, since neither Kylliki nor the mother seemed very sociable. It had already grown towards evening and the lowering skies were definitely darker, though none of the rushlights had been kindled, when Bayard and Brodsky approached the couple.

“Say, listen,” said the detective. “Me and this Bayard, we been thinking, and we worked up a hot lineup. You know this magic stuff. How about you putting one of these spells on Lemon Meringue there, and make him drop his score on this Pohjola joint—just skip it? Then he just springs us back where we belong, see?”

Shea was doubtful. “I don’t know. There’s likely to be a kickback. He’s a pretty hot wizard, and playing on his home grounds, where he knows all the rules and I don’t. Besides, I warned you about what happens when you try to get out of a magical bargain.”

“But look here,” said Bayard, “we aren’t proposing anything unethical, even in the terms of magic. All we’re suggesting is a spell that will make him see things our way. He’ll have the credit of having performed a great action in rescuing us, which these heroes of romance prize more highly than anything else, as I gather it. As a more material reward, you can leave him some of your artifacts. That sword of yours, or Belphebe’s bow, for instance.”

Shea turned to his wife. “What do you say, kid?”

“I like it none too well, but I can see no true argument contrarious. Do as you will, Harold.”

“Well, I suppose doing almost anything’s better than doing nothing.” He stood up. “Okay, I’ll try.”

He managed to waylay Lemminkainen’s mother to ask her something about the hero’s background, bearing in mind that one of the requirements of Kalevala magic was a fairly intimate acquaintance with the person or thing you were going to put a spell on. It was like putting soap in a geyser; the old dame prattled away at a furious pace, and Shea soon discovered that his own memory was by no means the equal of Lemminkainen’s, so that he had to reopen the floodgates a couple of times by asking her to repeat.

The process lasted through another of the gigantic Kalevalan meals; when it was over Shea retired to the corner of the fireplace with a big mug of beer and tried to work out a chant in iambic tetrameters along the line Lemminkainen had used. The form wasn’t very familiar to him and he kept forgetting lines, so he got a charred stick and tried scratching some of the key words on the floor. While he was about it, the others drifted off to bed. Bayard was already snoring from his pile of bearskins when Shea, satisfied at last, took one of the rushlights, made his way to the door of the hero’s bedroom, and in a low voice, chanted his composition.

As he finished, something seemed to flash before his eyes and he felt a little dizzy. It might be the beer, but he rather thought the spell had worked, and he staggered weakly across to the lockbed, almost missing the bracket when he put the rushlight in it.

Belphebe sat up, with the skin blankets gathered close around her chin; her expression was far from welcoming.

“ ’Lo, sweetheart,” said Shea. He hiccupped slightly, sat down on the bed and started to take off his boots.

Belphebe said, “Begone, sir. I’m an honest wife.”

“Huh?” said Shea. “Who ever said you were anything else? And why the fire alarm?”

He reached out an arm for her. Belphebe wriggled towards the back of the bed, her voice suddenly going high. “Harold! Walter! Help—I am beset!”

Shea looked at her in bewilderment. Why was she dodging him? He hadn’t done anything. And why was she calling for Harold when he was right there?

Before he could think up anything intelligent to say, Bayard’s voice said from behind him, “He’s in it again—grab him and tie him up till Harold can do something about it.”

“Is everybody crazy?” demanded Shea, and felt Brodsky grab his arm. He pulled loose and threw a punch at the detective, which the latter dodged with a slight movement of his head. Then the light went out.

###

Shea awakened with a splitting headache and a dark brown taste in his mouth. There had been too much beer; and on top of that he was hogtied even more efficiently than he had bound Lemminkainen the previous night. It was just about dawn; somewhere outside he could hear a clink of metal as a serf went about the early business of the house. The two piles of bearskins near him on the floor would be Bayard and Brodsky.

“Hey, you guys!” he called. “What happened?”

One set of snores bit off, a head lifted and Brodsky’s voice said, “Listen, glom. We dropped you dead bang. Now dummy up before I let you have it again.”

Shea fumed inwardly. From the feeling at the side of his cranium Brodsky had let him have it all right, and with a peculiarly solid blackjack. The prospect of another treatment had no appeal. But he could not understand why everybody was behaving that way—unless perhaps Lemminkainen had put some kind of spell on him while he was trying to work on the hero. That must be it, Shea decided, and lay uncomfortably, trying to work out a counterspell in Kalevalan terms. While he was doing that he must have drifted off into a doze again. He wakened to a roar of laughter.

It was fully light. The entire household was standing around him, including Belphebe with a worried expression, and the laughter came from Lemminkainen, who was doubled up, choking with mirth. Bayard merely looked surprised.

The master of the house finally got his breath long enough to say: “Fetch me a pail of water, Kylliki—ho, ho, ho!—and we’ll give his proper semblance to this son of Ouhaiola.”

Kylliki brought the pail. Lemminkainen crooned a spell over it, then dashed it into Shea’s face.

“Harold!” cried Belphebe. She threw herself down on Shea and covered his wet and sputtering face with kisses. “You left me burning anxious when you came not to me last night. I had thought you taken in some trap.”

“Help me off with this rope,” said Shea. “What do you mean I didn’t come to you? How do you think I got in this jam?”

“Nay, I see it now,” said the girl. “You put on the appearance of Lemminkainen. Was it to test me?”

“Yeah,” said Brodsky. “Sorry I sapped you, Shea, but how the hell was we to know?”

Shea stretched cramped arms and scratched a stubbly chin. He had put a line about. “As if we were twins identic” into his spell the previous night, and it appeared now that this had been a mistake. “I was trying a little spell,” he said, “and I guess it must have backfired.”

“You were twin to Lemminkainen,” said the hero. “Learn, strange man from Ouhaiola, that the laws of magic tell us when a spell is falsely woven, all things wear another semblance. Nevermore seek to equal the master of magic until you know more of the art.” He turned. “Mother! Kyllikil We must fall to eating, for we have a journey before us.”

Belphebe said to Shea. “Harold, it is well to be warned. This saying that if a spell isn’t accurate it will give another look to things is well to remember.”

“Yeah, the laws of magic are different here. But I wish we’d known that last night.”

They took their places at the table. Lemminkainen was in the best of humors, crowing over Shea’s discomfiture and boasting of what he would do to the Pohjolans when he got to them. He seemed to have forgotten about Dunyazad or any other squab.

His mother looked more and more melancholy. At last she said, “If you will not hear me for your own sake, at least listen for mine. Will you leave your mother alone and unprotected?”

“Little protection is needed,” said the hero. “But such as you need, I give you. This Payart, this Piit shall stay with you. Not that the two together would be of one-third as much use as such a hero as myself.”

“Harold . . .” began Bayard, and Brodsky said, “Hey, ain’t we going with?”

Lemminkainen shook his head firmly. “Never shall I consent. This is hero’s work. Harolsjei has shown he can be a fighting man of sorts, and this shield-maiden is not the worst archer in the world, though far from so good as I am—but you, frogs of Ouhaio, what can you do?”

“Listen, lug,” said Brodsky, getting to his feet, “come on outside, and I’ll show you. I don’t care if you’re as big as Finn McCool.”

Bayard put out a restraining hand. “Just a minute, Pete,” he said. “I rather think he’s right, at that. The kind of activity in which we are skilled is of little value in this continuum, and we might be more useful preserving the base, as it were.” He glanced at Kylliki. “Besides, it occurs to me that perhaps you could improve the hour. I doubt if any of these people have heard of predestination and original sin.”

“Say, you’re a good head,” said Brodsky, sitting down again. “Maybe if we make that gift good, I could get a couple of converts.”

Lemminkainen was already on his feet, leading his way to the door. He took down a long rawhide lariat from a peg and headed out towards the meadow, where the same quartet of animals were grazing. They started walking away; the hero swung the rope and cast it over the nearest antler of an enormous reindeer. Then, chanting something about “Elk of Hiisi,” he climbed down the rope and made a loop around the animal’s neck with the other end. The reindeer bucked; Lemminkainen gave one jerk and it went down on its knees.

Pete Brodsky’s eyes opened wide. “Lord!” he said softly. “Maybe I copped the right dope not trying to go on the muscle with that ghee.”

Lemminkainen started back across the meadow, leading the reindeer as though it were a puppy. Suddenly he stopped and stiffened. Shea followed his glance and saw that a man, too well dressed for a serf, was standing at the door of the main house, talking to Kylliki. As they came closer, it was apparent that the man was about Lemminkainen’s own height, but stouter, with a great gray Santa Claus beard. He turned a beaming smile on the hero; they fell into each other’s arms and administered powerful slaps on their respective backs, then held each other at arm’s length. The stranger declaimed:

“Hail the lively Lemminkainen!

Is it true thou plan’st to visit

In the fogbound land of Turja,

And with help of foreign swordsmen

Teach old Ilpotar a lesson?”

They fell into each other’s arms and slapped again. “Will you go with me to Pohjola?” bawled Lemminkainen. “Nay, I still seek a new wife!” shouted the gray-bread, and both of them laughed as though this were a peculiarly brilliant jest.

Brodsky and Bayard pressed close to Shea and muttered questions. Shea said, “The old guy must be Vainamoinen, the great minstrel and magician. Damn, if I’d known where to find him, I wouldn’t have made that deal . . .”

“What old guy?” asked Bayard.

“The one talking to Lemminkainen and whacking him on the back. The one with the beard.”

“I don’t see any such person,” said Bayard. “He’s hardly more than an adolescent, with only the beginnings of whiskers.”

“What!”

“Not over twenty.”

Shea exclaimed, “Then this must be another magical illusion, and he must be after something. Watch him!”

The pseudo-Vainamoinen seemed to be trying to question Lemminkainen, but every now and then one of them would get off five or six lines of poetry, they would fall into each other’s arms and begin back-slapping again. Suddenly, at the beginning of one of these declamations, Brodsky leaped, catching the stranger’s wrist just as it came sweeping down. The detective twisted deftly, pulled the wrist across his own shoulders and stooped forward. The man’s feet flew up, he came down on his head in the long grass with the wicked-looking knife in his hand. Brodsky deliberately kicked him in the ribs. The knife dropped.

The man sat up, a hand pressed to his side and the Santa Claus face twisted with pain. Lemminkainen looked bewildered. Shea said: “Walter says this man is not what he seems. Maybe you better make him use his right face.”

Lemminkainen crooned a spell and spat on the man’s head. A sallow young face glowered up sullenly. The hero said: “So, my cousins of Pohjola send me greeting for my journey! Bow your head, spy of Pohjola.” He drew his broadsword and felt the edge.

“Hey!” said Brodsky. “You can’t just bump the ghee off like that.”

“Wherefore not?” said Lemminkainen.

“He ain’t gone up or got his bit or nothing. Where’s the law?”

Lemminkainen shook his head in honest puzzlement. “Piit, you are surely the strangest of men, whose words are without meaning. Spy, will you bow your head, or shall I have the serfs deal with you in their manner?”

Shea said to Pete: “They don’t have judges or trials around here. I told you this guy was the big boss and made his own law.”

Pete shook his head. “Some connection man,” he said as Lemminkainen’s sword whistled through the air. The man’s head thumped on the grass in a little fountain of blood.

“Serfs, bury this carrion!” Lemminkainen shouted, then turned towards the visitors from Ohio. Shea noticed that the expression of shrewdness had come back into his eyes.