The Complete Compleat Enchanter (56 page)

“You have the gratitude of a hero,” he said to Brodsky. “Never have I seen a wrestle hold like that.”

“Jujitsu,” said Pete. “Any shamus is hep to it.”

“On our trip to far Pohjola you shall go with us and show it.” His eyes swept the group. “Which of you is so skilled in magic as to have penetrated the false shaping that deceived even me, the master of spells?”

“Why, I guess that was me,” said Bayard. “Only I’m not skilled in magic at all. Not the way Harold is.”

Shea said, “Walter, that must be just the reason. That’s why Doc Chalmers couldn’t get you out of Xanadu, too. And remember how you saw Lemminkainen’s mother untying him when none of the rest us of could? You must be too rational or something, so that spells working a change of appearance make no impression on you.” He turned to Lemminkainen. “This guy would be more help on the trip than all the rest of us put together.”

The hero appeared to be making a convulsive and prodigious effort to think. Finally, he said, “For your eyes, O Valtarpayart, so be it, since it is not to be concealed that many and strange are the enchantments that beset the road to this land of fog and darkness.”

Six

Under Lemminkainen’s direction, the serfs dragged out the largest of four sleds that stood in a shed stacked high with harness and similar gear.

“What do you know!” said Pete Brodsky. “Is the big shot going to take a sleigh ride?”

“We all are,” said Shea. “It’s the only way they have of traveling here.”

The detective shook his head. “If I tell them that back at the precinct, they’ll think I’m on the snow myself. Why don’t they get wised up and use a heap? Say, Shea, maybe we could dope one out for them! It wouldn’t have to be no gold-plated boiler, just something that would buzz. These jakes always go for the big-sounding show.”

“It wouldn’t work here, even if we could build it,” said Shea. “Anymore than your gun. You want to remember that nothing that hasn’t been invented yet will.”

He turned to watch the serfs carrying out armfuls of deerskin blankets and vast sacks of food, which they lashed in position with rawhide ropes. Two of them trundled out a keg of beer and added it to the heap. It looked as though the Elk of Hiisi would have his work cut out for him; but, gazing at the gigantic beast, Shea decided that it looked capable of meeting the demand. Lemminkainen bawled orders about the stowing of the gear and warmer clothes for Bayard and Brodsky, whose twentieth-century garments he regarded with unconcealed contempt.

Presently the tasks were done. All the serfs came out of the building and formed in a line, with Lemminkainen’s two women in the middle. He kissed them smackingly, shouted the others into the sled, and jumped in himself. It immediately became crowded. As he cracked his whip and the giant reindeer strained forward, the whole line of serfs and women lifted their heads back and burst into a high-pitched doleful chanting. Most of them seemed to have forgotten the words of what they were supposed to be singing, and those who remembered were off-key.

“Marry!” said Belphebe. “Glad am I, Harold, that these farewells do not come often.”

“So am I,” said Shea behind his hand, “but it gets Lemminkainen. The mug’s eyes actually have tears in them!”

“I wish my schnozz was okay again,” said Brodsky. “I used to could make them fill a bucket with eye-juice when I gave them ‘Mother Machree.’ ”

“Then I’m rather glad you got the polyp or whatever it is that prevents you doing it now,” said Bayard, and grabbed the side of the sled, as the Elk of Hiisi went into a swinging trot and the sled bounced and skidded along the muddy track northward.

“Now, listen . . .” began Brodsky, but just at this moment a flying clod of mud from the animal’s hooves took him squarely in the face. “Jesus!” he shouted, then with a glance at Belphebe: “Write it on the ice, will you, lady? That was such a nut-buster I forgot for a minute that we gotta take what’s laid out for us in the Lord’s book, even if he throws the whole package at us.”

Lemminkainen turned his head. “Strange the language of Ouhaio,” he said, “but if I hit rightly your saying, O Piit, it is that none may escape the course laid down for him.”

“You got it,” said Brodsky.

“Then,” said the hero, “if one but knew the incantations, one might call forth the spirits of the future to tell what will come of any doing.”

“No, wait . . .” began Brodsky, but Shea said, “They can in some continua.”

Bayard said: “It might be worth trying in this one, Harold. If the thought pattern is right, as you put it, the ability to see consequences might keep us out of a lot of trouble. Don’t you think that with your magic . . .”

They hit a stone just then, and Shea collapsed into the lap of Belphebe, the only member of the party who had been able to find a place to sit in the jouncing sled. It was not that the road was worse than before, but the strain of hanging on and being bumped made it too difficult to talk. The trunks of birch and fir fled past them, close by on both sides, like the palings of a fence, the branches closing off all but fugitive glimpses of the sky overhead. The road zigzagged slightly—not, so far as Shea could determine, for topographic reasons, since the country was flat as an ironing board—but because it had never been surveyed. Now and then the forest would clear a little on one side and a farmhouse or a small lake would appear among the trees. Once they met another sled, horse-drawn, and everybody had to dismount and manhandle the vehicles past each other.

At last, as they reached one of the lakes, Lemminkainen reined in his singular draught animal, said, “Pause we here a while for eating,” jumped out and began to rummage among the foodbags.

When he had consumed one of the usual Gargantuan snacks, belched, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, he announced: “Valtarpayart and Piit, I have allowed you to accompany me on this journey, but learn that for all your arts, you will be worse than useless unless you learn how to fight. I have brought swords for you, and as we take our ease, you shall learn to use them under the greatest master in all Kalevala.”

He dragged a pair of clumsy, two-edged blades out of the baggage and handed one to each, then sat down on a root, evidently prepared to enjoy himself. “Cut at him, O Valtarpayart!” he said. “Try to take his head off.”

“Hey!” said Shea, with a glance at the woebegone faces of his companions. “This won’t do. They don’t know anything about this business and they’re likely to cut each other up. Honest.”

Lemminkainen leaned back. “Or they learn the swordsman’s business, or they go with me no further.”

“But you said they could come. That isn’t fair.”

“It is not in our agreement,” said the hero firmly. “They came only by my permission, and that has run out. Either they practice with the swords or turn homewards.”

He looked as though he meant it, too, and Shea was forced to admit that legally he was right. But Belphebe said, “In Faerie, when we would teach young springalds the use of blades without danger to themselves, we use swords of wooden branch.”

After some persuasion, Lemminkainen agreed to accept this as a substitute. The pair were presently whaling away at each other under his scornful correction with singlesticks made from saplings, and lengths of cloth wound round their hands for protection. Bayard was taller and had the better reach; but Brodsky’s jujitsu training had made him so quick that several times he rapped his opponent smartly, and at last brought home a backhand blow on the arm that made Bayard drop his stick.

“An arm was lost that time,” said Lemminkainen. “Ah, well—I suppose not everyone can be such a swordsman and hero as Kaukomieli.”

He turned away to harness up the reindeer again. Belphebe laid a hand on Shea’s arm to keep him from reminding the hero of their own little bout.

The afternoon was a repetition of the morning’s journey through country that did not change, and whose appearance was becoming as monotonous as the bumping that accompanied their progress. Shea was not surprised when even Lemminkainen wanted to camp early. With Bayard and Brodsky he set about building a triangular lean-to of branches, while Belphebe and the hero wandered off into the woods in search of fresh game for their evening meal.

While they were picking the bones of some birds that resembled a chicken in size and a grouse in flavor, Lemminkainen explained that he had to make this journey to Pohjola because he had learned by magic that they were holding a great wedding feast there and he had not been invited.

“Crashing the party, eh?” said Brodsky. “I don’t get it. Why don’t you just give those muzzlers the air?”

“It would decrease my reputation,” said Lemminkainen. “And besides, there will be a great making of magic. I should undoubtedly lose some of my magical powers if I allowed them to do this unquestioned.”

Belphebe said, “We have bargained to accompany you, Sir Lemminkainen, and I do not seek to withdraw. But if there are so many present as will be at a great feast, I do not see how even with us four, you are much better than you would be alone.”

Lemminkainen gave a roar of laughter. “O you maiden, Pelviipi, you are surely not quick-witted. For all magics there must be a beginning. From you and your bowstring I could raise a hundred archers; from the active Harolainen set in line a thousand swordsmen—but not until you yourselves were present.”

“He’s right, kid,” said Shea. “That’s good sympathetic magic. I remember Doc Chalmers giving me a lecture on it once. What have you got there?”

Lemminkainen had picked up several of the long wing and tail feathers from the outsize grouse and was carefully smoothing them out. His face took on the expression of exaggerated foxiness it had worn once or twice before.

“In Pohjola they now surely know that the greatest of heroes and magicians approaches,” he said. “It is well to be prepared for all encounters with something that can be used.” He tucked the feathers in one of his capacious pockets, glanced at the fire, which was beginning to show brightly in the gathering dusk, and lumbered off to bed.

Bayard said, “It strikes me, Harold, that the magic in this continuum is quantitatively greater and qualitatively more potent than any you have reported before. And if Lemminkainen can turn you into a thousand swordsmen, can’t the other people do something like that? I should say it’s rather dangerous.”

“I was just thinking of that,” said Shea, and went to bed himself.

###

The next day was a repetition of the first, except that Brodsky and Bayard were so stiff they could barely drag themselves from their deerskin blankets to go through the sword exercises on which Lemminkainen insisted before breakfast. There was not much conversation in the sled, but when they assembled around the fire in the evening, Lemminkainen entertained them with a narrative of his exploits until Shea and Belphebe wandered off out of earshot.

It was followed by more of the same. On the fifth day, the single-stick practice at noon had progressed so far that Lemminkainen himself took a hand and promptly knocked Brodsky out. It appeared to improve relations all around; the detective took it in good part, and the hero was in the best of humor that evening.

But soon after the start the next morning, he began weaving his head from side to side with a peering expression and sniffing. “What’s the trouble?” asked Shea.

“I smell magic—the strong magic of Pohjola. Look sharp, Valtarpayart.”

They did not have to look very sharp. A glow soon became visible through the trees, which presently opened out to reveal a singular spectacle. Stretching down from the right and losing itself round a turn in the distance, came a depression like a dry riverbed. But instead of water this depression was filled with a fiery red shimmer, and the stones and sand of the bottom were glowing like red-hot metal. On the far side of this phenomenon rose a sharp peak of rock, where sat an eagle as big as a beach cottage.

As Shea shielded his face against the scorch, the eagle rotated its head and gazed speculatively at the party.

There was no necessity to rein in the Elk of Hiisi. Lemminkainen turned to Bayard. “What do you see, eyes of Ouhaiola?”

“A red-hot pavement that looks like the floor of Hell, and an eagle several times the size of a natural one. There’s a kind of shimmer—no, they’re both there, all right.”

The giant bird slowly stretched one wing. “Oh-oh,” said Shea. “You were right, Walter. This is . . .”

Belphebe leaped from the sled, tested the wind with an uplifted finger and began to string her bow; Brodsky looked round and round, pugnacious but helpless.

Lemminkainen said: “Save your arrows, dainty Pelviipi, I myself, the mighty wizard, know a trick worth two of this one.”

The monster eagle leaped into the air. Shea said, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Kauko,” and whipped out his épée, feeling how inadequate it was. It was no longer than one of the bird’s talons and nowhere near so thick.

The eagle soared, spiraled upward, and then began to come down on them in a prodigious power dive as Bayard gasped. But Lemminkainen left his own weapon hanging where it was, contenting himself with tossing into the air the feathers of the big grouse, chanting a little staccato ditty whose words Shea could not catch.

The feathers turned themselves into a flock of grouse, which shot off slantwise with a motorcycle whirr. The eagle, almost directly over them—Shea could see the little movements of its wingtips and tail feathers as it balanced itself on the air—gave a piercing shriek, flapped its wings, and shot off after the grouse. Soon it was out of sight beyond the treetops westward.

“Now it is to be seen that I am not less than the greatest of magicians,” said Lemminkainen, sticking out his chest. “But this spelling is wearisome work, and there lies before us this river of fire. Harol, you are a wizard. Do you make a spell against it while I restore myself with food.”

Shea stood gazing at the redness and pondered. The glowing flicker had a hypnotic effect, like a dying woodfire. A good downpour ought to do the trick; he began recalling a rain spell he and Chalmers had been working up, in the hope of putting down the flaming barrier around Castle Carena during their adventures in the world of the
Orlando Furioso.