Ars Magica

by Judith Tarr

  Gerbert shook his head.

  The magus’ face twisted. A moment only: grief, rage, unbearable pain. Then it had stilled again. “Now,” he said, low and rough. “Now you know the truth. What the magic is. What price it exacts.”

  “Blood,” said Gerbert.

  “No.” Ibrahim bit it off. “Nothing so simple as blood. Did you love her?”

  The hot blood rose to Gerbert’s cheeks. “Not that way.”

  “Of course not,” said Ibrahim. His contempt cut more cruelly than any lash of anger. “What was she to you, that your power must have her?”

  “She was — ” Gerbert’s voice broke. “She was my dark rose. She was the light of my eyes. She was my friend.”

  Ibrahim had not moved, but a force like a strong hand closed Gerbert’s throat. “She is dead. You slew her. What penance will you do for that, O slave of the Crucified?”

  Gerbert shook to his foundations. But he had a voice, after a fashion. It served him. “Anything,” he answered. “Anything you name.”

  “Even servitude in hell?”

  “Anything.”

  Ibrahim looked long at him. He was brave enough, but he was no saint or paladin. He sank down under that black gaze, until he lay as he had lain before the altar.

  The magus spoke above him, immensely weary. “I cannot even hate you.” Gerbert looked up. He could see only a black robe, a slippered foot. “You did what all young mages do, if they are strong, if their strength exceeds their wisdom. She...even she...” Almost, he broke. He mastered himself. “You will do anything, you say. Can you do nothing?”

  Gerbert could not understand.

  “Nothing,” Ibrahim said again. “Go as you had intended. Live. Fly where your ambition takes you.”

  “But,” said Gerbert, “that’s not — ”

  The black eyes glittered. “No? Maryam is dead. I refuse you the comfort of expiation. I demand that you live in your guilt, and hone your power, and become what your destiny wills. I bid you live as she would have lived, had your magic not destroyed her.”

  Now at last Gerbert comprehended. So wise, he had been, in consoling Maryam for the death of her mother. Now he must live by his own, baseless wisdom. It was subtle, that punishment. And just. And in it, no mercy at all.

  His head bowed. “As my master wills.”

  Ibrahim took no joy in that submission. He seemed to forget that Gerbert was there at all: turned, and as if he resumed a speech interrupted, said, “Will you go?”

  “You know I must,” Hatto said.

  “You will not come back.”

  “That is with God.”

  “Inshallah.” Ibrahim said it bitterly, but not as if he would deny it. “Then it is farewell, my friend. I grieve that it must be thus.”

  “I grieve with you,” said Hatto. “Your daughter — if — ”

  “She is tended.” Ibrahim softened the merest degree. “I am grateful. But she needs nothing now. Nor I. Rest in God,” said Ibrahim.

  He had almost gone before Gerbert found voice to speak. “Master! You forgot — that — ”

  Ibrahim did not glance at the image on the table. “It is yours.”

  Gerbert started, trembled. “It’s not — I can’t — ”

  “It is yours,” Ibrahim repeated. “It has chosen you. It will serve no other while you serve its purposes.”

  Gerbert had staggered to his feet. “I can’t take it.”

  “It is not a matter of can or will. It is only must.”

  “I can’t!”

  Ibrahim turned back a little into the room. “Nevertheless, you will.”

  “Do you lay it on me?”

  “It is laid on you.” Ibrahim paused; he seemed to take thought. Or perhaps he had intended all of this, and only played it out because he chose. “What I command, beyond your life and your leaving... Kneel.”

  Gerbert had obeyed before he thought. His knees ached with bruises.

  The long dark hands rose over him. He bowed his head beneath their power. “This I lay upon you,” the magus said. His voice was soft, but that softness was terrible. “Mage you are, mage you shall be, master of the high and deadly Art. You have seen what price that Art exacts. For the honor of your soul, I command you: Never again betray any who has loved you, or aided you, or given you comfort; nor ever work harm with that power which God has granted you. Wield it wisely and wield it well, and never wield it to gain aught that is of this world. While that binding holds, may you prosper. If you break it, may you know such grief that death itself shall seem a mercy.”

  “I know it,” whispered Gerbert.

  “You know only guilt and shame and fear.” Ibrahim drew back. His presence had lightened, but his power burdened Gerbert still, bowing him to the floor. “I cannot wish you well. That much of sainthood, I do not have. I wish you long life; I wish you wisdom, and strength. I wish you far from Spain.”

  “Soon,” Gerbert said.

  Ibrahim did not reply. He had turned his back. It was very straight, and pitilessly proud.

  Far away in the city, the muezzin cried the hour of the Muslims’ prayer. Maryam had taught Gerbert the meaning of it.

  God is great! God is great!...Come to prayer, o ye Muslims, come to prayer! Come to prosperity, come to prosperity...

  Prosperity, thought Gerbert. Ambition. Destiny.

  Ibrahim was gone. Hatto was silent. The image was silent, inscrutable.

  He looked at it and knew what Ibrahim had meant. He could not even hate it. It had done no more than it was wrought to do. It was no human creature, to care that its doing had been bought with death. It would serve him well, if he would let it. If he could bear it.

  He shuddered. Not now, before God. But later...

  He would use it. He had a destiny. He even had a geas to keep him honest. He could not laugh, even in bitterness. Perhaps he would never laugh again.

  “Tomorrow,” said Hatto, like a bell tolling, “we go to Rome.”

  Gerbert bowed his head. “Tomorrow,” he said. For all that he could do, for all its weight of sorrow, his heart had leaped up and begun, however painfully, to sing.

  Part Two

  Magister Artium

  Rheims, A.D. 989

  8.

  The archbishop was dying. In the city they barely knew it. In the cathedral they had begun the preparations for his burial. The cantor was composing the hymn of mourning; in the vestry they had taken out the vestments reserved for the funeral mass of a great prelate, and begun to repair the depredations of time and the moth.

  The school tried to go on as usual. But the mood was strange, and everyone knew it. Half grief, for his excellency had been well beloved; half anticipation, for no one doubted who would take his place. Or what would happen then.

  “Jews,” came a snarl among the older students. “Saracens. Witches and sorcerers. We’ll be overrun.”

  Even as Richer paused, the dissenter was fallen upon and pummeled until he yelled for mercy. But having gained it, he proved a wretchedly slow learner. “You know it’s true! You know what that man is. He has Saracens in his very household. He mutters spells before the altar of his chapel. He’ll turn this city into a nest of witches.”

  This time they gagged him with his own cincture, and kicked him for good measure. “No one,” said the strongest of his chastisers, “no one talks like that about Master Gerbert.”

  They saw Richer then, and fell abruptly silent. One stooped over the offender, hissing in his ear. Richer, whose ears were as quick as a cat’s, caught what he was not meant to catch. “Now you’re for it. That’s the master’s pet: his tame wizardling.”

  It was amazing, Richer thought, how open a secret it all was. Outside of these walls, the school of the cathedral of Rheims was only that: a school of the liberal arts, the best in Gaul and maybe in the world. But here everyone knew what else it was; what other Art some few of its chosen pursued. Not publicly, not where the ignorant could watch, but all the young imps had spied on classes tha
t did not officially exist — and been royally disappointed, most of them. But enough had seen a wonder or two, to keep the rest coming back; and occasionally one would do more than that. Would find in himself some spark of what made a master. Richer knew. He had been one of them.

  He grinned amiably at the huddle of boys, knowing well how daft he could look when he wanted to. It had its effect. They remembered that they had obligations elsewhere. They conveniently forgot their prisoner, who needed Richer’s hand to pull him up, and Richer’s help to untangle him from his cincture. He was not grateful.

  Richer did not ask him his name. His kind were less common in Rheims than anyone had a right to expect; they did no more harm than they must, and less than they might.

  That would change, when Gerbert was archbishop. Seventeen years, he had labored at it: coming first to Rheims from service to pope and German emperor, to study logic under its great master in return for instruction in mathematics and music for which the logician had proved to have no talent; strengthening the lesser arts, brightening his name, bringing in the best among masters and students; and slowly, quietly, letting it be known that he had another Art to teach. More — he would welcome others who could both learn and instruct; who would join him in making order out of the age-old chaos that was the art magic. They had a school now within the school, an order, a system, a sequence of masteries. They even had the old archbishop’s silent acceptance, leavened with the love he bore the master.

  It was going to be hard for Gerbert to lose that best of friends. Richer climbed the familiar narrow stair with little of his accustomed lightness. The door it led to was never barred; it never needed to be. It recognized Richer, and opened to his touch.

  The master had a house of his own just outside the cathedral close, and a household large enough for a lord. Which, after all, he was: friend and teacher to kings and princes, liege man of the Emperor of the Romans, certain to be Archbishop of Rheims. But all those were only trappings. His heart was here in this chamber tucked between the school and the cathedral.

  It was small. It had a window, shuttered in the bitter winter, though in summer it looked over the canons’ cloister. Books tended to find their way there, sacred as often as profane, and Richer had seen a Vulgate resting with all apparent equanimity atop a grimoire. There was a table, a stool, a lamp. The first magic Richer had learned had been to light that lamp without fire.

  He did it now, taking in what the light showed him. Gerbert was making a new sphere of the heavens for his friend Constantine in Fleury Abbey; bits of it were scattered on the table. The sphere itself, a half-clothed skeleton, leaned precariously on a stack of codices. None was the one Richer had come for. He turned toward the book-press, and started.

  The master’s antique bronze was famous in the school. Wherever Gerbert went, the wags said, there went the necessities of life: his chest of books, his army of servants, and his heathen idol. It had a place in his house, in the room where he received guests. For a while it had occupied a niche in his office in the school, where it terrified the youngest pupils and tempted the older ones to steal it and hold it for ransom.

  Some of them must have tried it, or come alarmingly close: the image was here, set as if on guard over Gerbert’s books of magic. Richer shivered in spite of himself. It was a beautiful thing, and valuable, but he had never been easy in his mind about it. Sometimes it seemed almost alive: watching, listening, brooding in its mantle of power. Which, surely, was only what any work of the founder’s art would bear, if it belonged to a magus, and if he used it to aid in focusing his magic. A particularly tenacious rumor had it that the image was an oracle; that, if asked a direct question, it was bound by geas to reply either yes or no. Richer had seen no proof of that. It was simply a beloved possession, a remembrance of the master’s years in Spain.

  Yet Richer was not immediately willing to move it, even to find the book he needed. He folded his long body in front of it and considered the blank bronze face. It was female, he had almost decided. Some trick of the light, or of the place, or of Richer’s sight which was not of the best, had kindled a spark in the graven eyes: a spark that seemed, for a breathless moment, to betoken a living intelligence.

  He shook it off. Too much labor, too little sleep, and the constant tension that thrummed about the death of a great lord—he was beginning to start at shadows. He set hands to the cold metal.

  “Careful,” it said.

  He did not start. He did not fling the thing away. He did not even drop his hands.

  “Your fingers will freeze,” said the image: It sounded like his nurse when he was small. She had not been old or dull-witted or a fool. But she had taken her charge to heart, and she had been most firm about it.

  “Set me on the table,” the image said, “and master yourself. The book,” it added, “is not here. The master took it this morning.”

  Richer set the image where he was bidden, and stood chafing his numbed fingers. He did not know why he should be astonished. He had seen greater wonders than a statue speaking.

  “I am rather more than that,” it said. “You may find what you need in the lesser grimoire, there, beneath Hippocrates.”

  “Hippocrates?” Richer had forgotten the grimoire. He snatched at the small heavy book, raising it with a peculiar mingling of greed and awe. “Sweet saints, it is! And here was I, only last autumn, riding all the way to Chartres for a glimpse of a half-ruined text; and all the while, he knew that this was here. I could kill him.”

  “Don’t,” said the image. “It came not long ago. He was caught up in the archbishop’s sickness, or he would have told you.”

  Richer flushed. It was something, to suffer chastisement from a lump of bronze. Unconsciously he clutched the book to his chest, scowling at the image. “I owe you thanks, I suppose.”

  “Your attention will do,” the image said. “He gives me none. I am an oracle; and will he let me serve him as I was ordained to serve? He will not. The present, he says, is enough. And my friendship. Friendship! What is that, if he will not suffer me to help him?”

  “Why? What can you do?”

  “Warn him. Guide him through these quicksands.”

  “Is it as bad as that?”

  “Yes,” said the image.

  Richer moved a step closer. “Is it because of the magic?”

  “No.”

  “No? But—” Richer stopped, shifted. “He’s not going to get Rheims, is he?”

  “Yes,” said the image, “and no.”

  Richer’s teeth ground together. “Are you playing with me?”

  “No.” And before he could erupt: “He was afraid of temptation; and there was a matter of...guilt. He set a binding on me. I may only prophesy if questioned directly.”

  “Therefore, unless someone asks the right question, you can foretell nothing clearly.”

  The image could not nod, but he felt its assent, and its frustration. He had never thought of oracular spirits as prey to any such sentiments. “You would think,” said this one, “that he would consider what he was doing in stopping my tongue. But when has he ever taken thought for anything that has to do with himself? He is one of nature’s fools.”

  “He is the greatest mind in Europe,” Richer said stiffly.

  “Did I deny it?” The image sighed like wind in a bell tower. “He seems to think that you have a little sense. I would question that, but never your loyalty.”

  “You—” Richer choked on it, coughing till the tears sprang. “What are you?”

  “His servant, of my own choosing. His friend, once he got over certain unhappy consequences of our meeting. His counselor, when he will allow it.”

  “His gadfly,” said Richer. His eyes narrowed. “Or are you trying to press me into that service?”

  “You,” said the image, “have legs.” And when he did not speak: “He needs his friends, and he needs them both loyal and clearheaded. Me, he never listens to. He says I fret.”

  “You’re femal
e,” said Richer with sudden certainty.

  “I resent that,” said the image, sharp as two blades clashing. “I am a prophet forbidden to prophesy.”

  “Are you asking me to pity you?”

  “I am asking you to help me. Our mutual master would stride naked into the desert, trusting in God and in his own brilliance to shield him from the sun. But the desert knows only that it is. Neither gods nor cleverness mean anything to it.”

  “What can I do? I’m no oracle.”

  “You are a man; you are loyal; you know what I am. Stand by him. Be braced, and do what you may to brace him, for whatever comes. He thinks that he knows the worst of it. He is a babe at the breast.”

  “If he knew what you thought of him, he’d melt you down for a chamberpot.”

  “He tried that,” said the image. “Once.”

  Richer bit his lip. He did not know if he dared laugh. He remembered the book in his hands, ran his thumb along the smooth leather of its spine. “You should have no illusions about me. He seems fond of me, but I’m nothing close to what he is. If he won’t listen to his oracle, he’s not likely to care what one of his many students is thinking.”

  The image was impervious to doubt. “He will listen. Only give him time, and use your wits. And,” she added, “take the small grimoire when you go.”

  He opened his mouth, but no words came. What he had taken for an echo of her voice, was the tolling of bells. The death knell, stroke and stroke and somber stroke.

  “Go,” sang the image like an echo itself. “Go!”

  He snatched the grimoire, bundled it inside his habit with Hippocrates. Hastily he crossed himself, muttering a prayer for the departed. Only when he was done did it strike him. Books first, then the prayer. He was his master’s pupil.

  oOo

  His master stood by the great bed, gazing dry-eyed at the man who lay there. A frail body for the spirit that had been in it, flesh shrunk to bone now, as if death could not wait even this little while before it seized all that belonged to it. The spirit was gone. Gerbert had shriven it; he had watched it go. It was a saintly soul, when all was considered. It had gone singing, eager as a child on its way to something promised, something wonderful.