by Larry Niven
“I’ve heard of such things.”
“I did it all the time, for myself, for friends, for whoever happened to be king, or whomever I happened to be in love with. And I found that after I’d been settled for a while, the power would leave me. I’d have to move elsewhere to get it back.”
The copper disc glowed bright orange with the heat of its spin. It should have fragmented, or melted, long ago.
“Then there are the dead places, the places where a warlock dares not go. Places where magic doesn’t work. They tend to be rural areas, farmlands and sheep ranges, but you can find the old cities, the castles built to float which now lie tilted on their sides, the unnaturally aged bones of dragons, like huge lizards from another age.
“So I started wondering.”
Hap stepped back a bit from the heat of the disc. It glowed pure white now, and it was like a sun brought to earth. Through the glare Hap had lost sight of the Warlock.
“So I built a disc like this one and set it spinning. Just a simple kinetic sorcery, but with a constant acceleration and no limit point. You know what mana is?”
“What’s happening to your voice?”
“Mana is the name we give to the power behind magic.” The Warlock’s voice had gone weak and high.
A horrible suspicion came to Hap. The Warlock had slipped down the hill, leaving his voice behind! Hap trotted around the disc, shading his eyes from its heat.
An old man sat on the other side of the disc. His arthritic fingers, half-crippled with swollen joints, played with a rune-inscribed knife. “What I found out—oh, there you are. Well, it’s too late now.”
Hap raised his sword, and his sword changed.
It was a massive red demon, horned and hooved, and its teeth were in Hap’s right hand. It paused, deliberately, for the few seconds it took Hap to realize what had happened and to try to jerk away. Then it bit down, and the swordsman’s hand was off at the wrist.
The demon reached out, slowly enough, but Hap in his surprise was unable to move. He felt the taloned fingers close his windpipe.
He felt the strength leak out of the taloned hand, and he saw surprise and dismay spread across the demon’s face.
The disc exploded. All at once and nothing first, it disintegrated into a flat cloud of metallic particles and was gone, flashing away as so much meteorite dust. The light was as lightning striking at one’s feet. The sound was its thunder. The smell was vaporized copper.
The demon faded, as a chameleon fades against its background. Fading, the demon slumped to the ground in slow motion, and faded further, and was gone. When Hap reached out with his foot, he touched only dirt.
Behind Hap was a trench of burnt earth.
The spring had stopped. The rocky bottom of the stream was drying in the sun.
The Warlock’s cavern had collapsed. The furnishings of the Warlock’s mansion had gone crashing down into that vast pit, but the mansion itself was gone without a trace.
Hap clutched his messily severed wrist, and he said, “But what happened?”
“Mana,” the Warlock mumbled. He spat out a complete set of blackened teeth. “Mana. What I discovered was that the power behind magic is a natural resource, like the fertility of the soil. When you use it up, it’s gone.”
“But—”
“Can you see why I kept it a secret? One day all the wide world’s mana will be used up. No more mana, no more magic. Do you know that Atlantis is tectonically unstable? Succeeding sorcerer-kings renew the spells each generation to keep the whole continent from sliding into the sea. What happens when the spells don’t work any more? They couldn’t possibly evacuate the whole continent in time. Kinder not to let them know.”
“But…that disc.”
The Warlock grinned with his empty mouth and ran his hands through snowy hair. All the hair came off in his fingers, leaving his scalp bare and mottled. “Senility is like being drunk. The disc? I told you. A kinetic sorcery with no upper limit. The disc keeps accelerating until all the mana in the locality has been used up.”
Hap moved a step forward. Shock had drained half his strength. His foot came down jarringly, as if all the spring were out of his muscles.
“You tried to kill me.”
The Warlock nodded. “I figured if the disc didn’t explode and kill you while you were trying to go around it, Glirendree would strangle you when the constraint wore off. What are you complaining about? It cost you a hand, but you’re free of Glirendree.”
Hap took another step, and another. His hand was beginning to hurt, and the pain gave him strength. “Old man,” he said thickly. “Two hundred years old. I can break your neck with the hand you left me. And I will.”
The Warlock raised the inscribed knife.
“That won’t work. No more magic.” Hap slapped the Warlock’s hand away and took the Warlock by his bony throat.
The Warlock’s hand brushed easily aside, and came back, and up. Hap wrapped his arms around his belly and backed away with his eyes and mouth wide open. He sat down hard.
“A knife always works,” said the Warlock.
“Oh,” said Hap.
“I worked the metal myself, with ordinary blacksmith’s tools, so the knife wouldn’t crumble when the magic was gone. The runes aren’t magic. They only say—”
“Oh,” said Hap. “Oh.” He toppled sideways.
The Warlock lowered himself onto his back. He held the knife up and read the markings, in a language only the Brotherhood remembered.
AND THIS, TOO, SHALL PASS AWAY. It was a very old platitude, even then.
He dropped his arm back and lay looking at the sky.
Presently the blue was blotted by a shadow.
“I told you to get out of here,” he whispered.
“You should have known better. What’s happened to you?”
“No more youth spells. I knew I’d have to do it when the prognostics spell showed blank.” He drew a ragged breath. “It was worth it. I killed Glirendree.”
“Playing hero, at your age! What can I do? How can I help?”
“Get me down the hill before my heart stops. I never told you my true age—”
“I knew. The whole village knows.” She pulled him to sitting position, pulled one of his arms around her neck. It felt dead. She shuddered, but she wrapped her own arm around his waist and gathered herself for the effort. “You’re so thin! Come on, love. We’re going to stand up.” She took most of his weight onto her, and they stood up.
“Go slow! I can hear my heart trying to take off.”
“How far do we have to go?”
“Just to the foot of the hill, I think. Then the spells will work again, and we can rest.” He stumbled. “I’m going blind,” he said.
“It’s a smooth path, and all downhill.”
“That’s why I picked this place. I knew I’d have to use the disc someday. You can’t throw away knowledge. Always the time comes when you use it, because you have to, because it’s there.”
“You’ve changed so. So—so ugly. And you smell.”
The pulse fluttered in his neck, like a hummingbird’s wings, “Maybe you won’t want me, after seeing me like this.”
“You can change back, can’t you?”
“Sure. I can change to anything you like. What color eyes do you want?”
“I’ll be like this myself someday,” she said. Her voice held cool horror. And it was fading; he was going deaf.
“I’ll teach you the proper spells, when you’re ready. They’re dangerous. Blackly dangerous.”
She was silent for a time. Then: “What color were his eyes? You know, Belhap Sattlestone whatever.”
“Forget it,” said the Warlock, with a touch of pique.
And suddenly his sight was back.
But not forever, thought the Warlock as they stumbled through the sudden daylight. When the mana runs out, I’ll go like a blown candle flame, and civilization will follow. No more magic, no more magic-based industries. Then th
e whole world will be barbarian until men learn a new way to coerce nature, and the swordsmen, the damned stupid swordsmen, will win after all.
Earthshade
Fred Saberhagen
When Zalazar saw the lenticular cloud decapitate the mountain, he knew that the old magic in the world was not yet dead. The conviction struck him all in an instant, and with overwhelming force, even as the cloud itself had struck the rock. Dazed by the psychic impact, he turned round shakily on the steep hillside to gaze at the countenance of the youth who was standing beside him. For a long moment then, even as the shockwave of the crash came through the earth beneath their feet and then blasted the air about their ears, Zalazar seemed truly stunned. His old eyes and mind were vacant alike, as if he might never before have seen this young man’s face.
“Grandfather.” The voice of the youth was hushed, and filled with awe. His gaze went past Zalazar’s shoulder, and on up the mountain. “What was that?”
“You saw,” said Zalazar shortly. With a hobbling motion on the incline, he turned his attention back to the miracle. “How it came down from the sky. You heard and felt it when it hit. You know as much about it as I do.”
Zalazar himself had not particularly noticed one small round cloud, among other clouds of various shape disposed around what was in general an ordinary summer sky. Not until a comparatively rapid relative movement, of something small, unnaturally round, and very white against the high deep blue had happened to catch the corner of his eye. He had looked up directly at the cloud then, and the moment he did that he felt the magic. That distant disk-shape, trailing small patches of ivory fur, had come down in an angled, silent glide that somehow gave the impression of heaviness, of being on the verge of a complete loss of buoyancy and control. The cloud slid, or fell, with a deceptive speed, a speed that became fully apparent to Zalazar only when the long path of its descent at last intersected age-old rock.
“Grandfather, I can feel the magic.”
“I’m sure you can. Not that you’ve ever had the chance to feel anything like it before. But it’s something everyone is able to recognize at once.” The old man took a step higher on the slope, staring at the mountain fiercely. “You were born to live with magic. We all were, the whole human race. We’re never more than half alive unless we have it.” He paused for a moment, savoring his own sensations. “Well, I’ve felt many a great spell in my time. There’s no harm in this one, not for us, at least. In fact I think it may possibly bring us some great good.”
With that Zalazar paused again, experiencing something new, or maybe something long-forgotten. Was it only that the perceived aura of great spells near at hand brought back memories of his youth? It was more than that, probably. Old wellsprings of divination, caked over by the years, were proving to be still capable of stir and bubble. “All right. Whatever that cloud is, it took the whole top of the mountain with it over into the next valley. I think we should climb up there and take a look.” All above was silent now, and apparently tranquil. Except that a large, vague plume of gray dust had become visible above the truncated mountain, where it drifted fitfully in an uncertain wind.
The youth was eager, and they began at once. With his hand upon a strong young arm for support when needed, Zalazar felt confident that his old limbs and heart would serve him through the climb.
They stopped at the foot of an old rock slide to rest, and to drink from a high spring there that the old man knew about. The midsummer grass grew lush around the water source, and with a sudden concern for the mundane Zalazar pointed this out to the boy as a good place to bring the flocks. Then, after they had rested in the shade of a rock for a little longer, the real climb began. It went more easily for Zalazar than he had expected, because he had help at the harder places. They spoke rarely. He was saving his breath, and anyway he did not want to talk or even think much about what they were going to discover. This reluctance was born not of fear, but of an almost childish and still growing anticipation. Whatever else, there was going to be magic in his life again, a vast new store of magic, ebullient and overflowing. And feeding the magic, of course, a small ocean at least of mana. Maybe with a supply like that, there would be enough left over to let an old man use some for himself…unless it were all used up, maintaining that altered cloud, before they got to it…
Zalazar walked and climbed a little faster. Mana from somewhere was around him already in the air. Tantalizingly faint, like the first warm wind from the south before the snow has melted, but there indubitably, like spring.
It was obvious to the old man that his companion, even encumbered as he was by bow and quiver on his back and the small lyre at his belt, could have clambered on ahead to get a quick look at the wonders. But the youth stayed patiently at the old man’s side. The bright young eyes, though, were for the most part fixed on ahead. Maybe, Zalazar thought, looking at the other speculatively, maybe he’s a little more frightened than he wants to admit.
Maybe I am too, he added to himself. But I am certainly going on up there, nevertheless.
At about midday they reached what was now the mountaintop. It was a bright new tableland, about half a kilometer across, and as flat now as a certain parade ground that the old man could remember. The sight also made Zalazar think imaginatively of the stump of some giant’s neck or limb; it was rimmed with soil and growth resembling scurfy skin, it was boned and veined with white rocks and red toward the middle, and it bubbled here and there with pure new springs, the blood of Earth.
From a little distance the raw new surface looked preternaturally smooth. But when you were really near, close enough to bend down and touch the faint new warmth of it, you could see that the surface left by the mighty plane was not that smooth; no more level, perhaps, than it might have been made by a small army of men with hand tools, provided they had been well supervised and induced to try.
The foot trail had brought them up the west side of what was left of the mountain. The strange cloud in its long, killing glide had come down also from the west, and had carried the whole mass of the mountaintop off with it to the east. Not far, though. For now, from his newly gained advantage upon the western rim of the new tabletop, Zalazar could see the cloud again.
It was no more than a kilometer or so away. Looking like some giant, snow white, not-quite-rigid dish. It was tilted almost on edge, and it was half sunken into the valley on the mountain’s far side, so that the place where Zalazar stood was just about on a horizontal level with the enormous dish’s center.
“Come,” he said to his young companion, and immediately led the way forward across the smoothed-off rock. The cloud ahead of them was stirring continually, like a sail in a faint breeze, and Zalazar realized that the bulk of it must be still partially airborne. Probably the lower curve of its circular rim was resting or dragging on the floor of the valley below, like the basket of a balloon ready to take off. In his youth, Zalazar had seen balloons, as well as magic and parade grounds. In his youth he had seen much.
As he walked, the raw mana rose all around him from the newly opened earth. It was a maddeningly subtle emanation, like ancient perfume, like warm air from an oven used yesterday to bake the finest bread. Zalazar inhaled it like a starving man, with mind and memory as well as lungs. It wasn’t enough, he told himself, to really do anything with. But it was quite enough to make him remember what the world had once been like, and what his own role in the world had been.
At another time, under different conditions, such a fragrance of mana might have been enough to make the old man weep. But not now, with the wonder of the cloud visible just ahead. It seemed to be waiting for him. Zalazar felt no inclination to dawdle, sniffing the air nostalgically.
There was movement on the planed ground just before his feet. Looking down without breaking stride, Zalazar beheld small creatures that had once been living, then petrified into the mountain’s fabric by the slow failure of the world’s mana, now stirring with gropings back toward life. Under his sandaled foot he
felt the purl of a new spring, almost alive. The sensation was gone in an instant, but it jarred him into noticing how quick his own strides had suddenly become, as if he too were already on the way to rejuvenation.
When they reached the eastern edge of the tabletop, Zalazar found he could look almost straight down to where a newly created slope of talus began far below. From the fringes of this great mass of rubble that had been a mountaintop, giant trees, freshly slain or crippled by the landslide, jutted out here and there at deathly angles. The dust of the enormous crash was still persisting faintly in the breeze, and Zalazar thought he could still hear the last withdrawing echoes of its roar…
“Grandfather, look!”
Zalazar raised his head quickly, to see the tilted lens-shape of the gigantic cloud bestirring itself with new apparent purpose. Half rolling on its circular rim, which dragged new scars into the valley’s grassy skin below, and half lurching sideways, it was slowly, ponderously making its way back toward the mountain and the two who watched it.
The cloud also appeared to be shrinking slightly. Mass in the form of vapor was fuming and boiling away from the vast gentle convexities of its sides. There were also sidewise gouts of rain or spray, that woke in Zalazar the memory of ocean waterspouts. Thunder grumbled. Or was it only the cloud’s weight, scraping at the ground? The extremity of the round, mountain-chopping rim looked hard and deadly as a scimitar. Then from the rim inwards the appearance of the enchanted cloudstuff altered gradually, until at the hub of the great wheel a dullard might have thought it only natural.
Another wheelturn of a few degrees. Another thunderous lurch. And suddenly the cloud was a hundred meters closer than before. Someone or something was maneuvering it.
