The Magician of Karakosk, and Other Stories

by Peter S. Beagle

Well, then. Once, a very long time ago, in the land I come from, there was a magician who was too good at magic. Ah, you stare, you look at each other, you snicker, but it’s so—it is quite possible to be too good at anything, and especially magic. Believe me, I know what I am saying.

  Now the magician of whom I speak was a humble man in every way. He was of low birth, the son of a rishu-herder, and although he gave evidence of his abilities quite young, as most wizards do, there was never any possibility of his receiving the proper training in its use. Even if he could have had access to the teaching scrolls of Am-Nemil or Kirisinja, such as are preserved in the great thaumaturgic library at Cheth na’Bata, I much doubt that he could even have read them. He was a peasant with a gift, nothing more. His name was Lanak.

  What did he look like? Well, if your notion of a magician is someone tall, lean, and commanding, swirling a black cape around his shoulders, you would have been greatly disappointed in Lanak. He was short and thickset, like all the men of his family, with their tendency to early baldness, I am afraid. But he had nice eyes, or so I have heard, and quite good manners, and large, friendly brown hands.

  I repeat, because it is important: this Lanak was a humble man with no high dreams at all—most unusual in a wizard of any origin. He lived in Karakosk, a town notable only for its workhorses and its black beer, which suited our Lanak down to the ground, as you might say, for he understood both of those good creatures in his bones. In fact, the first spell he ever attempted successfully was one to strengthen his father’s rather watery home brew, and the second was to calm a stallion maddened by the pain of a sand-spider bite. Left to himself, he’d likely never have asked to do anything grander than that with his magical gift. Spending his life as a town conjuror, no different from the town baker or cobbler—aye, that would have suited him right down to the ground.

  But magic has a way of not leaving you to yourself, by its own nature. Magic has an ambition to be used, even if you don’t. Our Lanak went along happily for many years, liked and respected by all who knew him—he even married a Karakosk woman, and I can count on the fingers of one hand those wizards who have ever wed. They simply do not; wizards live immensely alone, and there it is. But Lanak never really thought of himself as a wizard, you see. Lanak thought of himself as a Karakosk man, nothing more.

  And if his talent had been as modest as he, likely enough he would have spent his life in perfect tranquility, casting his backyard spells over fields, gardens, ovens, finding strayed children and livestock impartially, blessing marriage beds and melon beds alike, perhaps bringing a bit of rain now and then. But it was not to be.

  He was simply too good, and he could not restrain himself. The colicky old horses he put his hands on and whispered to did not merely recover—they became twice the workers they had been in their prime, as the orchards he enchanted bore so much fruit that the small farmers of Karakosk found themselves exporting to cities like Bitava, Leishai, even Fors na’Shachim, for the first time in the town’s history. There was a hard winter, I remember, when Lanak cast a spell meant only to ease the snowfall, just for the children, so their shoes would last longer—and what was the result? Spring came to Karakosk a good two months before a single green shoot stuck up its head anywhere else in the entire land. This is the sort of thing that gets itself noticed.

  And noticed it was, first by the local warlord—I forget his name, it will come to me in a moment—who swept down on Karakosk one day with his scabby troop at his heels. You know the sort, you doubtless have a Night Visitor or a Protector of your own, am I right in that? Aye, well, then you’ve an idea what it was like for Karakosk when their particular bravo and his gang came swaggering into the market square months before their yearly tribute was due. There were close on forty of them: all loud, stupid, and brutal, except for their commander, who was not stupid, but made up for it by being twice as brutal as the rest. His name was Bourjic, I remember now.

  Well, this Bourjic demanded to see the great wizard folk had been telling him about; and when the townspeople appeared reluctant to fetch their Lanak on a bandit’s whim, he promptly snatched the headman’s little son up to his saddle and threatened to cut his throat on the spot if someone didn’t produce a wizard in the next five minutes. There was nothing for it—Bourjic had made similar threats in the past, and carried them all through—so the headman himself ran to the very edge of town to find Lanak in his barn, where he was once more redesigning his firework display for the Thieves’ Day festival. Lanak’s fireworks were the pride of the region for twenty miles around, but he was forever certain that he could improve them with just a little effort.

  When he understood the danger to the headman’s son, he flushed red as a taiya-bush with outrage. Rather pinkfaced as he was by nature, no one had ever seen him turn just that shade of redness before. He put his arm around the headman’s shoulders, spoke three words—and there they were in the market square, face-to-face with a startled Bourjic trying to control his even more startled horse. Bourjic said, “Hey!” while his horse whinnied in fear, and Lanak said the little boy’s name and one other word. The boy vanished from Bourjic’s saddle and reappeared in his father’s arms, none the worse for the experience, and the spoiled envy of all his schoolmates for the next six months. Lanak set his hands on his hips and waited for Bourjic’s horse to calm down.

  I’ve told you that Bourjic’s men were all as stupid as gateposts? Yes, well, one of them cranked up his crossbow and let a quarrel fly straight for Lanak’s left eye, as he was bending over the boy to make certain that he was unharmed. Lanak snatched the bolt out of the air without looking up, kissed it—of all things to do—and hurled it back at Bourjic’s man, where it whipped around his neck like a noose and clung very tight indeed. Not tight enough to strangle, but enough so that he fell off his horse and lay there on the ground kicking and croaking. Bourjic looked down at him once, and not again.

  “The very fellow I wanted to see,” said he with a wide, white smile. Bourjic was a gentleman born, after all, and had a bit of manners when it suited him. He said now, “I’ve grand news for you, young Lanak. You’re to come straightway to the castle and work for me.”

  Lanak answered him, “I’m not young, and your castle is a tumbledown hogpen, and I work for the folk of Karakosk and no one beside. Leave us now.”

  Bourjic reached for his sword hilt, but checked himself, keeping that smile strapped onto his face. “Let us talk,” he said. “It seems to me that if I were offered a choice between life as a nobleman’s personal wizard and seeing my town, my fields, my friends all burned to blowing ashes—well, I must say I might be a bit more inclined toward seeing reason. Of course, that’s just me.”

  Lanak nodded toward the man writhing in the dirt. Bourjic laughed down at him. “Ah, but that has just made me want you more, you see. And I simply must have what I want, that’s why I am what I am. So float up here behind me, or magic yourself up a horse, whichever you choose, and let’s be on our way.”

  Lanak shook his head and turned away. Bourjic said nothing more, but there came a sound behind him that made Lanak wheel round instantly. It was the sound of forty men striking flint against steel at once and setting light to tallow-stiff torches they’d had ready at their saddles. The townsfolk looking on gasped and wailed; a few bravely, hopelessly, picked up clods to throw. But Lanak fixed his mild, washed-out-looking blue eyes on Bourjic and said only, “I told you to leave us.”

  “And so indeed I shall,” the warlord answered him cheerfully. “With you or without you. The decision is yours for another ten seconds.”

  Lanak stood fast. Bourjic sighed ostentatiously and said, “So be it, then.” He turned in the saddle to signal his men.

  “Get back,” Lanak said to the folk of Karakosk. They scrambled to obey him, as Bourjic’s grinning soldiers raised their torches. Lanak folded his arms, bowed deeply—to the earth itself, as it seemed—and began to sing what sounded like no more than a nonsensical nursery rhyme. Bourjic, s
uddenly alarmed, shouted to his men, “Burn! Now!”

  But even as he uttered those two words, the ground before him began to heave and stretch itself and grumble, like an old man finally deciding to throw off his quilt and get out of bed. Where it stretched, it split, and some bits fell in and down and deep out of sight, and other bits swelled right up to the height of storm waves heading for shore. Bourjic’s horse reared and danced back from the chasm that had just opened between him and Lanak, while all his men fought to control their own terrified beasts, and the folk of Karakosk clung to their children, to each other, to anything that seemed at all solid. The earth went on splitting, left and right, as though it were shedding its skin: raw red canyons were opening everywhere, and you could see fire crawling away and away in their depths. Shops and houses all around the square were toppling, bursting apart, and the angry, juddering, groaning sound kept getting louder, louder. Lanak himself covered his ears.

  Bourjic and his lot crumbled like dry cheese. They yanked their horses’ heads round and were gone, a good bit faster than they’d come, and it was hard to say who was doing the more screaming, the men or their mounts. The ground began to quiet, by little and little, as soon as they were out of sight, and the townsfolk were amazed to see the fearful wounds in the earth silently closing before their eyes, the scars healing without a trace, the buildings somehow floating back together, and the Karakosk market square demurely returning to the dusty, homely patch of ground it had always been. And there stood Lanak in the middle of it, stamping out a few smoldering torches, wiping his forehead, blowing his nose.

  “There,” he said. “There. Nothing but an illusion, as you see, but one that should keep friend Bourjic well clear of us for some while. Glad to be of help, I’ll be off home now.” He started away; then glanced around at his dumbstruck neighbors and repeated, “An illusion, that’s all. No more. The fireworks, now, those are real.”

  But the citizens of Karakosk had all seen one of Bourjic’s soldiers—the one with the crossbow quarrel wrapped so snugly around his neck—plummet straight down into a bottomless crevasse that opened where he lay, and that closed over him a moment later. And if that was an illusion, you could never have proved it by that man.

  As I’m sure you can well imagine, the whole business made things even more difficult for poor Lanak. Bourjic was probably as interested as he in keeping the story from getting around; but get around it did, and it was heard in towns and cities a long way from black-beer Karakosk. Sirit Byar made a song out of it, I think. Lissi Jair did, I know that much—a good song, too. There were others.

  And the Queen, in her black castle in Fors na’Shachim, heard them all.

  None of you know much about the Queens in Fors, do you? No, I thought not, and no reason why you should. Well, there is always a Queen, which really means little more than the hereditary ruler of Fors na’Shachim itself and a scatter of surrounding provinces and towns—including Karakosk—and even particular manors. Most of the Queens have proved harmless enough over the years; one or two have been surprisingly benign and visionary, and a very few have turned out plain wicked. The one I speak of, unfortunately, was one of those last.

  Which does not mean that she was a stupid woman. On the contrary, she was easily the cleverest Queen Fors na’Shachim has ever had, and it is quite an old city. She listened to new songs as intently as she did to the words of her ministers and her spies; and it is told that she walked often among her subjects in various guises, and so learned things that many would have kept from her. And when she had heard enough ballads about the wizard Lanak of little Karakosk, she said to her greatest captain, the Lord Durgh, “That one. Get him for me.”

  Well now, this Durgh was no fool himself, and he had heard the songs, too. He’d no mind at all to have as many people laughing and singing about his humiliation by some bumpkin trickster as were still laughing at Bourjic. So when he went down to Karakosk, he went unarmed, with only two of his most closemouthed lieutenants for company. He asked politely to be directed to the home of a gentleman named Lanak, and rode there slowly enough to let the rumors of his arrival and destination reach the house before he did. He’d been born in the country himself, Lord Durgh had.

  And when he was at last facing Lanak in the wizard’s front garden, he got off his horse and bowed formally to him, and made his men do so, too. He said, “Sir, I am come to you from the Queen on a mission of grave urgency for the realm. Will it please you attend on her?”

  Yes, of course, it was a trick, and all of us here would doubtless have seen through it instantly. But no high personage had ever spoken to Lanak in such a humble manner before. He asked only, “May I be told Her Majesty’s need?” to which Lord Durgh replied, “I am not privileged to know such things,” which was certainly true. Then Lanak bowed in his turn, and went into his house to tell Dwyla, his wife, that he had been summoned to the Queen’s aid and would return in plenty of time for the Priests’ Moon, which is when the folk around Karakosk do their spring sowing. Dwyla packed the few garments he requested and kissed him farewell, making him promise to bring their little daughter something pretty from Fors.

  There’s been a new road cut long since, but it is still three hard-riding days from the market square at Karakosk to the black castle. Durgh made a diffident half-suggestion that the wizard might like to call up a wind to whisk them there instantly, but Lanak said it would frighten the horses. He rode pillion behind Lord Durgh, and enjoyed the journey immensely, however the others felt about it. You must remember, Lanak had never been five miles from Karakosk in his life.

  Trotting over his first real cobblestones in the streets of Fors na’Shachim, he almost disjointed his neck turning it in every direction, this gawking peasant who could chase away winter and make the earth rend itself under bandits’ feet. He was so busy memorizing everything he saw for Dwyla’s benefit—the marketplace as big as his entire town; the legendary Glass Orchard; divisions of the Queen’s household guard in their silver livery wheeling right about and saluting as the Lord Durgh cantered by—that the black castle was looming over him before he realized that they had arrived. He did, however, notice Lord Durgh’s poorly concealed sigh of relief as they dismounted and gave their horses over to the grooms.

  Does anyone here know Fors at all, by any chance? Ah, your father did, Mistress Kydra? Well, I’m sure it hadn’t changed much from Lanak’s time when your father saw it, nor would it be greatly different today. Fors na’Shachim never really changes. For all its color, for all the bustle, the musicians and tumblers and dancers on every corner, the sharpers and the alley girls, the street barrows where you can buy anything from namph still wet from the fields to steaming lamprey pies—those are good—for all that, as I say, one never truly escapes the taste of iron underneath, of forced abandon working overtime to mask the cold face of power. And even if that power casts no shadow beyond the city gates, I can assure you that it is real enough in Fors na’Shachim. I have been there often enough to know.

  But Lanak had never been to Fors, and he was thrilled enough for any dozen bumpkins to be marching up those obsidian stairs with Lord Durgh’s hand closed gently enough just above his left elbow, and all those silver-clad men-at-arms falling in behind them. He was not taken directly to see the Queen—no one ever is. Indeed, that’s rather the whole point of being Queen, as you might say. There have been those who forced their way into the presence, mind you; but these were a different sort of people from our modest Lanak. Most of them ended quite differently, too.

  Lanak was perfectly content to be shown to his quarters in what used to be called the Hill Tower, because you can just make out the haze over the Ghost Range from the upper windows. They call it the Wizard’s Tower now. There was food and drink and hot water waiting, and he used the time to wash, change from his grimy traveling clothes into something more suitable for meeting the Queen, and then to begin a long letter to Dwyla at home. He was still hard at it that evening when Lord Durgh came to fetch him.r />
  What is the black castle really like? Well, it is as grand as you imagine, Hramath, but perhaps not exactly in the way you imagine it. It began as a fortress, you know, in the old times when Fors was nothing more than a military outpost; which is why it is black, being mostly built of dressed almuri stone from the quarries near Chun. Every queen for the last five hundred years has tried in turn to make the castle a bit more luxurious for herself, if no less forbidding to her subjects: so there are a great many windows and rich carpets, and countless chandeliers, even in places where you would never expect more than a rushlight. There is always music, and always sounding just at your shoulder, even if the players are a dozen galleries distant—that’s a trick of almuri, no other stone does that. And of course the walls of every room and every corridor are hung with real paintings, not merely the usual rusty shields and pieces of armor—and the paintings are done on real cloth and canvas, not bark or raw wood, as we do here. The food and wine served to the Queen’s guests is the best to be had south of the Durli Hills; the ladies of her court have Stimezst silk for their everyday wear, and the beds are almost too comfortable for comfort, if you understand me. Oh, Hramath, you would want for nothing you know how to dream of in the black castle at Fors.

  Even so, just like the city itself, it is always the stone fortress it always was, with the Silver Guard never more than a room away, and Lanak was not bumpkin enough to miss that for long. Not that he was especially on his guard when Lord Durgh bowed him into the Queen’s presence—perhaps what I mean is that he was attempting from the first to see his marvelous adventure through his wife’s eyes, and Dwyla was a shrewd countrywoman who missed very little. Wizard or no, he did well to marry her, Lanak did.

  Yes, yes, yes, the Queen. She received Lanak in her most private chambers, with no one in attendance but Lord Durgh himself, and she packed him off on some errand or other before Lanak had finished bowing. I am told that she was quite a small woman, daintily made, with a great deal of dark hair, a sweetly curved mouth, skin as smooth as water, and eyes as shiny and cold as the gleaming black walls of her castle. She seemed no older than Lanak himself, but of course you never know with queens.