The Complete Compleat Enchanter

by L. Sprague deCamp

  The last words set up a train of thought in Shea’s mind that caused him to look more sharply at Chalmers. “Been rejuvenating yourself, haven’t you?” he asked.

  Chalmers flushed. “It seemed expedient, in view of the demands of my—uh—more active recent life. I was, as you perceive, conservative in my application of the formula, not wishing to become an adolescent by inadvertent overdosage.”

  Shea grinned nastily as he bore a hand with the athanor. “The more fool you, Doc. Don’t you know what the statistics show about adolescents?”

  Four

  Harold Shea dreamed he was drowning in an ocean of olive oil, too thick for swimming. Every time he reached the edge of an overhanging cliff and tried to pull himself out, a gigantic Roger with a cruel smile on his petulant face pushed him down with the butt of a lance.

  He woke to see Vaclav Polacek on the edge of the other bed, holding a handkerchief to his nose. The whole place reeked with the stench of rancid oil. Shea reeled to the window, which was closed with some alabaster material. As he fumbled it open, a blast of chill but fresh air struck his face. He gulped. Beyond the castle battlements he could see the snowy crags of a range of mountains, pink in the early sun.

  “What the hell?” said Shea, thoughts of some weird attempt at poisoning floating through his mind. Staying as near as he could to the open shutter, he struggled into the loose garments provided for him, and, without waiting to jockey the turban into position, made his way into the hall. There the odor was overpowering. As he turned the corner he bumped head-on into the Amir Thrasy, who was toddling along with a cut-open orange held under his nose.

  “What the hell makes this stink, my noble friend?” asked Shea.

  “Truly, sir, you are right and it comes from nowhere but the ultimate pits of the damned. But as the reason, it has been whispered to me that Atlantès (may flies nest in his ears!) has forgotten to renew his spell.”

  “What spell?”

  “Verily, none other than that by which the smell of this oil is restrained within bonds, as the Jann are bound by the seal of Solomon. It is certain that there is no spell against rusting, and, unless this castle be kept well oiled, there would be no help for it that it must be overthrown. Yet is the spell for the sweetness of oil more fugitive than a leaf in tempest, and must have renewal from time to time, as . . .”

  He stopped as Atlantès himself came bustling around a corner of the corridor. “In the name of Allah, on whom be praise!” he greeted them. “Most noble lords, forbear your anger from your unworthy servant.” He was bowing up and down like a metronome. “Give me but the kerchief of your pardon that my dread may be appeased and my heart eased!” More bows. “I pray you, enlighten me with your graciousness so far as to break fast with me. See, even now the air grows purer than a spring of fresh water! And your squire as well, glorious sir. Is the youth well?”

  Shea’s appetite, whatever it might normally have been, had vanished under this shock of the olive oil stench. Nevertheless he called to Polacek, and the Amir Thrasy fortunately saved him the necessity of a reply.

  “In sooth,” said he, “our pains are borne lightly for the sake of the pleasures to come, as we bore with joy the smell of the corpses the day Lord Roger slew the two thousand serfs at the gate of Pampeluna, forgetting in his warlike fury to leave any alive for the withdrawal of the bodies.”

  Their host conducted them to a breakfast consisting mainly of stewed lamb with a sour, whitish liquid which Shea took to be milk, rather noticeably unpasteurized. Roger, reclining on cushions across the floor from the young psychologist, gobbled horribly. There was no sign of Dr. Chalmers. When the mirror of chivalry had finished his meal by sucking leftovers from between his teeth, he stood up and said meaningfully to Shea: “Will it please your honor to slash at the pells, since under my uncle’s ordnance we may not slash at each other?”

  “What’s pells?” demanded Polacek.

  Ignoring this question in a marked manner, Shea said: “Delighted. But somebody will have to lend me a sword. I came away so quickly I left mine home.”

  The pells of Castle Carena were a row of battered-looking wooden posts in the courtyard. Beyond them, a couple of men in castle guards’ livery were shooting at targets with short, double-curved bows. Oddly enough, they had the heads of baboons.

  As Shea and Roger came out, Lord Mosco, a Saracen so pudgy that he waddled, was facing the nearest pell with a scimitar in one hand and a round shield on his other arm. He gave a blood-curdling whoop, leaped at the post light as a cat for all his bulk, and swung. Chips flew. Mosco went into a dance around the unoffending wood, slashing forehead with a drawing cut, and yelling at the top of his voice: “Allah-il-Allah! Mahound! Mahound!” He stopped suddenly and walked back to where the others stood in a little group. “My Lord Margéan, will you give me the balm of your word upon my performance?”

  Margéan, in a kind of shapeless cap instead of a turban, and whose nose had once been well broken, said judicially: “I rate it but indifferent good. Twice you exposed your left side during the recovery, and the war cry did not ring. The foe is always the worse for a lusty shout in his ears.”

  Mosco sighed. “Blessed by the name of God,” he said resignedly. “I fear I am a lost man unless protected by His angels or the arm of our champion. My lords, shall we not grace our eyes with the sight of these Frankish warriors?” There was a murmur of assent. “Now there is nothing for it but you must smite at these pells, squire.”

  “Better say you have a sprained wrist,” muttered Shea.

  But Polacek had his own ideas. “I’ll get along. I’ve been watching him, haven’t I? Where do I get one of these toad-choppers?”

  The Amir Thrasy handed over his own somewhat battered and nicked scimitar. Polacek marched up to the pell, yelled: “Rah, rah, rah, Harvard!” and swung up in an underhand slash. However, he had misjudged the height of the pell; missed it completely, swung himself clear round the circle, tripped over his own feet, and had to clutch the post to keep from falling.

  “That’s my special attack,” he explained with a shame-faced grin. “I make believe I’m gonna chop him, but instead I jump into a clinch and wrassle him down where I can really get at him.”

  Nobody seemed to feel the episode at all funny. Margéan’s face expressed disdain, while the others looked away, all but Roger, who glanced at Shea to indicate that he was next.

  Shea hefted Thrasy’s weapon; aside from the nicks in the blade, it was altogether wrongly balanced for his type of work. “Has anybody got a straight sword I could borrow?” he asked.

  Lord Margéan, who seemed to be some kind of coach, clapped his hands and called; a castle servant with the blubbering muzzle of a camel appeared with the desired weapon. Shea hefted it. The blade was straight enough, but the sword was as purely designed for cutting as the scimitars; no point whatever, the end rounded off, and the hilt made for a small-handed man. The balance was better, though, and if the weapon was too heavy for a proper parry, it might do for a little lunging practice. Shea addressed himself to the post without shouting, did a simple disengage lunge, a disengage lunge with an advance, a lunge-and-remise. In five minutes he had worked up a healthy sweat, and was pleased to hear a murmur from the spectators, partly puzzlement and partly appreciation.

  Margéan said: “Marry, sir knight, here’s strange bladeplay; yet methinks that with a Frankish sword you would even skewer one or two of your foes.” And they began to argue about the merits of Shea’s system: “Look you, lords, with a proper point like a spear you could even drive through the fine mail of Damascus. . . .” “Nay, I like not these newfangled tricks. . . .” “But see the reach it gives you. . . .” “Howsobeit, men will slash when excited. . . .” “Oho!” (to Sir Audibrad, who was awkwardly trying to imitate Shea’s lunge). “It is plainly to be seen that the noble Sir Harold’s tricks are not to be picked up in an evening over the coffee cups. . . .”

  Only Roger looked contemptuous. Without preliminary word
s he strode up to the nearest pell, filled the castle-yard with a yell, and swung an enormous scimitar. Chunk! went the blade into the wood, and then quickly chunk-chunk-chunk-chunk! With the last blow, the upper half of the pell flew off, turning end over end. He swung round and grinned rather nastily at Shea.

  Shea gulped. “Nice work, O Pearl of the Age.”

  Roger thrust his scimitar back into its scabbard and handed it to one of the servitors. “O Frank, this is but the tenth or the hundredth part of what would be seen if I stood in battle before a worthy antagonist. Not that you, son of an unfortunate, would be such; for you do but dance and foin like one of my uncle’s entertainers.”

  While Shea and Polacek were giving themselves sketchy baths by standing in their washbowls and emptying the ewers over each other’s heads, the latter asked: “What’s the program for the rest of the day?”

  “For most of them it’ll be loafing all afternoon, I expect, and then Atlantès’ floor show in the evening.”

  “I should think those guys would get too bored to live!”

  “Roger does. He wants to bash somebody, and I don’t quite figure why Atlantès won’t let him loose to do it. There’s something funny going on besides just the business of the old guy making passes at Florimel. Wish I’d read the Furioso; I’d know better what we were up against. We have a date with Doc now, you know; some of that new theoretical stuff he’s been working up. Ready?”

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  When they reached Chalmers’ apartment there was more than a suspicion of the olive oil smell that had awakened them. Chalmers was frowning.

  “I am inclined to believe that the failure to renew the spell on the oil was not altogether an accident,” he replied to Shea’s question. “You will note that the odor persists here to a certain extent. Atlantès is extremely astute, and I have no doubt that he has become fully aware of Florimel’s—uh—sensitivity. It really made the young lady quite ill.”

  Shea said: “Wonder why? Maybe the guy’s a sadist. According to all the correlations, abnormal sex patterns should be common in this Moslem society where they keep all respectable women locked up. Besides his personality reminds me of that sadist we used as a case study—you know the one I mean—that real-estate fellow the SPCA got after.”

  “You mean Van Gilder?” Chalmers shook his head. “In the first place those correlations you speak of are mostly guesswork. Besides, it would be unprecedented for any genuine sadist to seek his satisfactions by such indirect methods.”

  “You mean,” said Polacek, “that a real sadist has gotta turn the thumbscrews himself?”

  Chalmers nodded. “Or at least be present directing the operating. No, there are various explanations for elaborate bits of malevolent plotting of this type, but—uh—sadism is the last one to look for. An ulterior motive is inherently more probable.”

  “Such as?” said Shea.

  “Such as—ah—if Atlantès hoped to force me to use a counterspell, which he would then watch and adapt to lifting the death-doom which he says overhangs this castle. Harold, please for that reason do not commit yourself to indulging Roger’s penchant for mortal combat. One never knows when this conflict will materialize.”

  “I’m not afraid of him,” said Shea, but without lightness.

  “Looks to me like an awful lot of guys around here are anxious to get somebody bumped off,” said Polacek. “Why don’t you do something about it?”

  “It is merely a matter of conducting oneself with ordinary prudence,” said Chalmers firmly. “In an unexpressed contention of the type wherein we are engaged with the—uh—gentlemen, the winner will undoubtedly be the party who longest restrains himself from ill-judged or impulsive action. Now, gentlemen, shall we begin?”

  Half an hour later: “. . . the elementary principles of similarity and contagion,” he was saying, “we shall proceed to the more practical applications of magic. First, the composition of spells. The normal spell consists of two components, which may be termed the verbal and the somatic. In the verbal section the consideration is whether the spell is to be based upon command of the materials at hand, or upon the invocation of a higher authority.”

  “That’s a little different from the way you had it worked out before,” said Shea.

  “This is a somewhat different space-time continuum. I am trying to relate matters to our current problems, so pray do not interrupt. Now—uh—prosody is of the utmost importance if the first is the case. The verse should conform to the poetic conventions of the environment, to which the materials in question have become responsive. For instance in—uh—Asgard the verse, for maximum effectiveness, should be alliterative, whereas in Faerie it should be metrical and rhyming. In the world of Japanese mythology, on the other hand, the verse should comprise a fixed number of syllables in a certain—”

  “But wouldn’t any verse we made for the purpose naturally have the proper form?” asked Shea.

  “It is possible. What I was about to say was that a certain—uh—minimum skill in versification is inseparable from the optimum results. That is why you, Harold, who have what might be called the literary or inspirational type of mind, often attain quite extraordinary effects—”

  “Listen,” said Polacek, “one of the troubles with this joint is that they’re prohibitionists. You mean to say that if I made some passes and sang out:

  “Beer, beer, beautiful beer,

  Fill me right up with it,

  Clear up to here!

  “I’d get a couple of seidels?”

  “Vaclav!” said Chalmers sharply. “Pray give your attention to the matter in hand. If you were to perform so rash an act, you would almost certainly find yourself filled with the beverage in question, but I doubt whether your organs would retain it. The utmost precision of expression is necessary. Kindly observe that the doggerel you quoted demanded that you be filled with the liquid instead of having it to drink. Now, where was I? Ah—magic will thus, I fear, always remain to large extent an art, just as in my opinion psychiatry will as well. However, there is also the somatic element of the spell, subject to more precise regulation. There is some point in connection with this element that eludes me, and on which I shall be glad to have any light that observation of Atlantès by either of you, gentlemen, can throw. I refer to the very adroit manner in which he is able to employ spells as an instrumentality for teleportation of human beings or even those only quasi-human—”

  Shea’s mind wandered as Chalmers droned along. They had worked out most of this stuff in Faerie, with Belphebe—Belphebe! She must be the same as the Belphegor the doctor had mentioned. With the springy step and the freckles under her tan. The question of getting her back concerned the somatic element, of finding out how Atlantès . . .

  An eruption from Polacek jerked Shea out of his daydream. The Rubber Czech was on his feet, exclaiming: “Sure, I get it, Doc. Let’s take time out to do some lab work. Watch that cushion while I turn it into—”

  “No!” shouted Shea and Chalmers together.

  “Aw listen; can’t you ever believe a guy can learn anything?”

  “I remember,” said Shea, “when you blew up the lab and almost killed yourself in sophomore chem, trying to make cacodyl. You stick around for some more lectures before you try enchanting even a mouse.”

  “Yeah, I know, but you can check me on each step, and I’m—”

  The argument was squelched by the arrival of Florimel with: “I am somewhat more myself, my lord.” But so, it turned out, was the lecture on magic. Shea wandered off to orient himself, while Chalmers undertook the difficult task of restraining Polacek.

  Five

  It was clear and bright upon the battlements, and the air had the fine tang of a mountain climate. Around a corner where a turret gave both shelter from the breeze and exposure to the sun, Shea came upon Atlantès, busy with a scroll among long cushions. The little enchanter scrambled to his feet.

  “O knight of the age, you are welcome. Will the friend o
f my friend have sherbets?”

  “No thanks, noble host. I was just looking around, trying to find where things were in this place. You certainly have a fine layout.”

  “Alas, my lord, that it is no better. All things shall be done for him who eases the heart and broadens the bosom of Lord Roger.”

  “I wasn’t aware that I’d done anything remarkable in that line. Will you have something special for him tonight?”

  Atlantès snapped his fingers and shrugged. “Truly, I have nothing to set before you but seven virgins of Sericane, with faces like moons. All can play at the lute and sing, or hold converse in the law of the Prophet equal to Kasis, and the dealer who sold them to me declares they are sisters of a single birth, which is a very strange thing. Yet you, O auspicious one, will have seen wonders that are to this as the sun to the crescent moon.”

  He had tipped his head to one side and was watching out of the corner of one eye. What was he fishing for this time? Shea said: “I, O doubly auspicious one, have never seen anything like it. But tell me—” he let his voice fall “—your nephew, Lord Roger, will he like it as well as I? He seems restless.”

  The little man lifted his face toward the clear blue sky. “I testify that there is no god but God and I testify that Mohammed is the Messenger of God! Of a truth Roger is no less than restless, and longs for battle as a strong horse for the race-course.”

  “Why not let him go fight one, then?”

  Atlantès tapped himself once or twice on the sternum in a manner which Shea supposed was to entitle him to credit for having beaten his breast. “To you I will tell no less than the truth. Know, then, that there is a prophecy of which I have learned by my arts, that unless the wonder of the age and the son of my brother goes forth directly to battle and by the light of the full moon, he will be lost to Islam if he depart ten miles from Carena. Yet at present there is no war, nor is the moon full, and I must answer before Allah the just, the omnipotent, if he be condemned to Jehannum.”