The Incompleat Enchanter

by L. Sprague De Camp

  “Aye,” nodded Heimdall, “Yet not Lord Surt’s arm is long enough to reach into the troll country — after one who has gone there to stay with his own troll-wife.”

  Snögg cocked his head on one side, so that he looked like some large-beaked bird. “Hard part is,” he countered, “to get beyond Lord Surt’s arm. Too much danger.”

  “But,” said Shea, falling into the spirit of the discussion, “if one’s face were altogether changed by the removal of a feature, it might be much easier and simpler. One would not be recognized.”

  Snögg caressed his enormous nose. “Too big — You make fun of me!” he snapped with sudden suspicion.

  “Not at all,” said Shea. “Back in my own country a girl once turned me down because my eyes were too close together. Women always have peculiar taste.”

  “That’s true,” Snögg lowered his voice till it was barely audible. You fix nose, I be your man: I do all for you.”

  “I don’t want to guarantee too much in advance,” said Shea. “But I think I can do something for you. I landed here without all my magic apparatus, though.”

  “All you need I get,” said Snögg, eager to go the whole way now that he had committed himself.

  “I’ll have to think about what I need,” said Shea.

  The next day when Stegg had collected the breakfast bowls, Shea and Heimdall lifted their voices and asked the other prisoners whether they would cooperate in the proposed method of escape. They answered readily enough. “Sure, if “twon’t get us into no trouble.” “Aye, but will ye try to do something for me, too?” “Mought, if ye can manage it quiet.” “Yngvi is a louse!”

  Shea turned his thoughts to the concoction of a spell that would sound sufficiently convincing, doing his best to recall Chalmers’ description of the laws of magic to which he had given so little attention when the psychologist stated them. There was the law of contagion — no, there seemed no application for that. But the law of similarity? That would be it. The troll, himself familiar with spells and wizardry, would recognize an effort to apply that principle as in accordance with the general laws of magic. It remained, then, to surround some application of the law of similarity with sufficient hocus-pocus to make Snögg believe something extra-special in the way of spells was going on. By their exclamation over the diminishing size of Snögg’s nose the other prisoners would do the rest.

  “Whom should one invoke in working a spell of this kind?” Shea asked Heimdall.

  “Small is my knowledge of this petty mortal magic,” replied Heimdall. “The Evil Companion would be able to give you all manner of spells and gewgaws. But I would say that the names of the ancestors of wizardry would be not without power in such cases.”

  “And who are they?”

  “There is the ancestor of all witches, by name Witolf; the ancestor of all warlocks, who was called Willharm. Svarthead was the first of the spell singers and of the giant kindred Ymir. For good luck and the beguiling of Snögg you might add two who yet live — Andvari, king of the dwarfs, and the ruler of all trolls, who is the Old Woman of Ironwood. She is a fearsome creature, but I think not unpleasant to one of her subjects.”

  When Snögg showed up again Shea had worked out his method for the phony spell. “I shall need a piece of beeswax,” he said, “and a charcoal brazier already lit and burning; a piece of driftwood sawn into pieces no bigger than your thumb; a pound of green grass, and a stand on which you can balance a board just over the brazier.”

  Snögg said: “Time comes very near. Giants muster — when you want things?”

  Shea heard in the background Heimdall’s gasp of dismay at the first sentence. But he said: “As soon as you can possibly get them.”

  “Maybe tomorrow night. We race?”

  “No — yes,” said Heimdall. His lean, sharp face looked strained in the dim light. Shea could guess the impatience that was gnawing him, with his exalted sense of personal duty and responsibility. And perhaps with reason, Shea assured himself. The late of the world, of gods and men, in Heimdall’s own words, hung on that trumpet blast. Shea’s own fate, too, hung on it — an idea he could never contemplate without a sense of shock and unreality, no matter how frequently he repeated the process of reasoning it all out.

  Yet not even the shock of this repeated thought could stir him from the fatalism into which he had fallen. The world he had come from, uninteresting though it was, had at least been something one could grasp, think over as a whole. Here he felt himself a chip on a tossing ocean of strange and terrible events. His early failures on the trip to Jötunheim had left him with a sense of helplessness which had not entirely disappeared even with his success in detecting the illusions in the giants’ games and the discovery of Thor’s hammer. Loki then, and Heimdall later had praised his fearlessness — ha, he said to himself, if they only knew! It was not true courage that animated him, but a feeling that he was involved in a kind of strange and desperate game, in which the only thing that mattered was to play it as skillfully as possible. He supposed soldiers had something of that feeling in battle. Otherwise, they would all run away and there wouldn’t be any battle —

  His thoughts strayed again to the episode in the hall of Utgard. Was it Loki’s spell or the teardrop in his eye that accounted for his success there? Or merely the trained observation of a modern mind? Some of the last, certainly; the others had been too excited to note such discordant details as the fact that Hugi cast no shadow. At the same time, his modern mind balked over the idea that the spell had been effective. Yet there was something, a residue of phenomenon, not accounted for by physical fact.

  That meant that, given the proper spell to work, he could perform as good a bit of magic as the next man. Heimdall, Snögg, and Surt all had special powers built in during construction as it were — but their methods would do him, Shea, no good at all. He was neither god, troll — thank Heaven! — nor giant.

  Well, if he couldn’t be a genuine warlock, he could at least put on a good show. He thought of the little poses and affectations he had put on during his former life. Now life itself depended on how well he could assume a pose. How would a wizard act? His normal behaviour should seem odd enough to Snögg for all practical purposes.

  The inevitable night dragged out, and Stegg arrived to take over his ditties. Snögg hurried out. Shea managed to choke down what was sardonically described as his breakfast and tried to sleep. The first yell of “Yngvi is a louse!” brought him up all standing. And his fleabites seemed to itch more than usual. He had just gotten himself composed when it was time for dinner again and Snögg.

  The troll listened, twitching with impatience, till Stegg’s footfall died away. Then he scurried out like a magnified rat and returned with his arms full of the articles Shea had ordered. He dumped them in the middle of the passage and with a few words opened the door of Shea’s and Heindall’s cell.

  “Put our all but one of the torches,” said Shea. While Snögg was doing this the amateur magician went to work. Holding the beeswax over the brazier, he softened it enough to work and pressed it into conical shape, making two deep indentations on one side till it was a crude imitation of Snögg’s proboscis.

  “Now,” he whispered to the popeyed troll, “get the water bucket. When I tell you, pour it into the brazier.”

  Shea knelt before the brazier and blew into it. The coals brightened. He picked up a fistful of the driftwood chips and began feeding them onto the glowing charcoal, They caught, little varicoloured flames dancing across them. Shea, on his haunches and swaying to and fro, began his spell:

  “Witolf and Willharm,

  Stand, my friends!

  Andvari, Ymir,

  Help me to my ends!

  The Hag of the Ironwood

  Shall be my aid;

  By the spirit of Svarthead,

  Let this spell be made!”

  The beeswax, on the board above the brazier, was softening. Slowly the cone lost its shape and slumped. Transparent drops trickled over t
he edge of the board, hung redly in the grow, and dropped with a hiss and spurt of yellow flame into the brazier.

  Shea chanted:

  “Let wizards and warlocks

  Combine and conspire

  To make Snögg’s nose melt

  Like the wax on this fire!”

  The beeswax had become a mere fist-shaped lump. The trickle into the brazier was continuous: little flames rose yellowly and were reflected from the eyes of the breathlessly watching prisoners.

  Shea stuffed handfuls of grass into the brazier. Thick rolls of smoke filled the dungeon. He moved his arms through the murk, wriggling the fingers and shouting:

  “Hag of the Ironwood, I invoke you in the name of your subject!”

  The waxen lump was tiny now. Shea leaned forward into the smoky half-light, his eyes smarting, and rapidly moulded it into something resembling the shape of an ordinary nose. “Pour, now!” he cried. Swoosh! went the water into the brazier, and everything was blotted from vision by a cloud of vapour.

  He struggled away and to an erect position. Sweat was making little furrows in the dirt along his skin, with the sensation of insects crawling. “All right,” he said. “You can put the light back on now.” The next few seconds would tell whether his deception was going to work. if the other prisoners did not fail him — Snögg was going along the passage, lighting the extinguished torches from the one that remained. As the light increased and he turned to place one in its bracket on the opposite side of the wall, Shea joined involuntarily in the cry of astonishment that rose from every prisoner in the cells.

  Snögg’s nose was no bigger than that of a normal human being.

  Harold Shea was a warlock.

  “Head feel funny,” remarked Snögg in a matter-of-fact tone.

  Chapter Nine

  THE TROLL PUT the last torch in place and turned to Shea, caressing the new nose with a scaly hand. “Very good magic, Harald Warlock!” he said, chuckling and dancing a couple of steps. “Hail Elvagevu, you like me now!”

  Shea stood rooted, trying to absorb events that seemed to have rushed past him. The only sound he could utter was “Guk!”

  He felt Heimdall’s hand on his shoulder. “Well and truly was that spell cast,” said the Sleepless One. “Much profit may we have from it. Yet I should warn you, warlock, that it is ill to lie to the gods. Why did you tell me, at the Crossroads of the World, that you had no skill in magic?”

  “Oh,” said Shea, unable to think of anything else, “I guess I’m just naturally modest. I didn’t wish to presume before you, sir.”

  Snögg had gone off into a ludicrous hopping dance around the hall. “Beautiful me!” he squealed. “Beautiful me!”

  Shea thought that Snögg, with or without nose, was about the ugliest thing he had ever seen. But there seemed little point in mentioning the fact. Instead, he asked, “How about getting us out of here now, friend Snögg?”

  Snögg moderated his delight enough to say: “Will be do. Go your cage now. I come with clothes and weapon.”

  Shea and Heimdall exchanged glances. It seemed hard to go back into that tiny cell, but they had to trust the troll now, so they went.

  “Now it remains to be seen,” said Heimdall, “whether that scaly fish-eater has betrayed us. If he has —” He let his voice trail off.

  “We might consider what we could do to him if he has,” grinned Shea. His astonishing achievement had boosted his morale to the skies.

  “Little enough could I accomplish in this place of fire magic,” said Heimdail, gloomily, “but such a warlock as yourself could make his legs sprout into serpents.”

  “Maybe,” said Shea. He couldn’t get used to the idea that he, of all people, could work magic. It was contrary to the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology. But then, where he was the laws of physics, chemistry and, biology had been repealed. He was under the laws of magic. His spell had conformed exactly to those laws, as explained by Dr. Chalmers. This was a world in which those laws were basic. The trick was that he happened to know one of those laws, while the general run of mortals — and trolls and gods, too — didn’t know them. Naturally, the spells would seem mysterious to them, just as the changing colour of two combined chemicals was mysterious to anyone who didn’t know chemistry. If he had only provided himself with a more elaborate knowledge of those laws instead of the useless flashlights, matches, and guns —

  A tuneless whistle cut across his thoughts, It was Snögg, still beaming, carrying a great bundle of clothes and something long.

  “Here clothes, Lords,” he grinned, the tendrils on his head writhing in a manner that no doubt indicated well-being, but which made Shea’s skin crawl, “Here swords, too. I carry till we outside, yes?” He held up a length of light chain. “You put round wrists, I lead you. Anybody stop, I say going to Lord Surt.”

  “Hurry, Harald,” said Heimdall as Shea struggled into the unfamiliar garments. “There is yet hope, though it grows dim, that we may reach the other Æsir before they give my sword away.”

  Shea was dressed. He and Heimdall took the middle and end of the chain, while Snögg tucked the other end in his belt and strode importantly before them, a huge sword in either hand. They were as big as Hundingsbana, but with plain hilts and rust-spotted blades. The troll carried them without visible effort.

  Snögg opened the door at the end of the dungeon. “Now you keep quiet,” he said. “I say I take you to Surt. Look down, you much abused.”

  One of the prisoners called softly. “Good luck go with you, friends, and do not forget us.” Then they were outside, shambling along the gloom of the tunnel. Shea hunched his shoulders forward and assumed as discouraged an expression as he could manage.

  * * *

  They passed a recess in the tunnel wall, where sat four trolls. Their tridents leaned beside them, and they were playing the game of odds-and-evens with their fingers. One of the four got up and called out something in troll language. Snögg responded in the same tongue, adding: “Lord Surt want.”

  The troll looked dubious. “One guard not enough. Maybe they get away.”

  Snögg rattled the chain. “Not this. Spell on this chain. Goinn almsorg thjalma.”

  The troll seemed satisfied with the explanation and returned to his sport. The three stumbled on through the dimness past a big room hewn out of the rock, full of murky light and motion. Shea jumped as someone — a man from the voice — screamed, a long, high scream that ended with gasps of “Don’t . . . don’t . . . don’t.” There was only a glimpse of what was going on, but enough to turn the stomach.

  The passage ended in a ledge below which boiled a lake of molten lava. Beside the ledge sat a giant with one of the flaming swords. As he looked up, his eyes were pits beneath the eyebrow ridges.

  Snögg said; “Prisoners go to Lord Surt. Orders.”

  The giant peered at them. “Say,” he said, “ain’t you the troll Snögg? What happened to your nose?”

  “I pray Old Woman of Ironwood. She shrink him!” Snögg grinned.

  “Okay, I guess it’s all right.” As they passed, the giant thrust a foot in front of Shea, who promptly stumbled over it, in sickening fear of going down into the lava. The giant thundered, “Haw, haw, haw!”

  “You be careful,” snapped Snögg. “You push prisoners in. Surt push you in, by Ymir.”

  “Haw, haw, haw! Gawan Scalyface, before I push you in.”

  Shea picked himself up, giving the giant a look that should have melted lead at twenty paces. If he could remember that face and sometime — but, no, he was romancing. Careful, Shea, don’t let things go to your head.

  They turned from the ledge into another tunnel. This sloped up then levelled again where side tunnels branched in from several directions. Snögg picked his way unerringly through the maze. A tremendous banging grew on them, and they were passing the entrance of some kind of armoury. The limits of the place were invisible in the flickering red glare, through which scuttled naked black things, like liquorice d
olls. Heimdall whispered: “These would be dark dwarfs from Svartalfheim, where no man nor As has ever been.”

  They went on, up, right, left, A sultry glow came down the tunnel ahead, as though a locomotive were approaching around the curve. There was a tramp of giant feet. Around the corner came a file of the monsters, each with a flaming sword, marching and looking straight ahead, like somnambulists. The three flattened themselves against the wall as the file tramped past, their stench filling the passage. The rear-most giant fell out and turned back.

  “Prisoners to Lord Surt,” said Snögg. The giant nodded, cleared his throat, and spat. Shea got it in the neck. He retched slightly and swabbed with the tail of his cloak as the giant grinned and hurried after the rest.

  They were in the upper part of the stronghold now, moving through forests of pillars. Snögg abandoned his bold stride, put a finger to his lips and began to slide softly from pillar to pillar. The tread of a giant resounded somewhere near. All three squeezed themselves into a triangle of shadow behind a pillar. The footsteps waxed, stopping just on the opposite side, and all three held breath. They heard the giant hawk, then spit, and the little splat! on the floor. The footsteps moved off.

  “Give me chain,” whispered Snögg. He rolled it into a tight ball, and led the way, tiptoeing into another maze of passages. “This is way,” he whispered, after a few minutes. “We wait till passage clear. Then I go make giant chase. Then you go, run fast. Then — ssst! Lie down on floor, quick!”

  They fell flat at the word, next to the wall. Shea felt the floor vibrate beneath him to the tread of invisible giants. They were coming nearer, towards them, right over them, and the sound of their feet was almost drowned for Shea in the beating of his own heart. He shut his eyes. One of the giants rumbled heavily: “So I says to him, ‘Whassa matter, ain’tcha got no guts?’ And he says —” The rest of the remark was carried away.

  The three rose and tiptoed. Snögg motioned them to stop, peering around a corner. Shea recognized the passage by which they had entered the place — how long before? Snögg took one more peek, turned and handed Shea one sword, giving the other to Heimdall. “When giant chase me,” he whispered, “run; run fast. Dark outside. You hide.”