The Green Magician

by L. Sprague De Camp

  He paused and Shea nodded. The man could be quite reasonable after all.

  “Secondly,” Briun went on, “there is the matter of removing his wife’s geas. Against this we will place the teaching of this new magic to our druid. Now respecting the transfer of these two to their own country, there is no counterweight, and it is our judgement that it should be paid for by having Mac Shea undertake to rid us of the sinech, since it is so troublesome a monster and he is so great a champion and magician.”

  “Just a minute,” said Shea. “That doesn’t help us find Pete or get him back, and we’ll be in trouble if we don’t. And we really ought to do something for Cuchulainn. Maev is going through with her plan against him.”

  “We would most willingly help you in this matter, but you have no other prices to pay.”

  Miach said, “Yet there is a way to accomplish all they ask, save the matter of the man Pete, in the finding of whom I have no power.”

  Briun said, “You will be telling us about it, then.”

  “Touching the geas,” said Miach. “Since it is one that was imposed, and not a thing natural, it can be lifted at the place and in the presence of the druid who laid it, and it will be needful for me to accompany these two to the place where it was put on.

  Touching the sinech, it is so dreadful a monster that even Mac Shea will be hard put against it by his own strength. Therefore let us lend him the great invincible sword of Nuada, which is forbidden to us by its geas, but which he will be able to handle without trouble, at all. Then he can lend it to this hero Cuchulainn, who will make a mighty slaughter of the Connachta we detest, and as I will be with the sword and Mac Shea, I can see that it is returned.”

  The King leaned his chin on one hand and frowned for a minute. Then he said, “It is our command that this be done as you advise.”

  IX

  MIACH WAS an apt pupil. At the third try he succeeded in making a man he did not like break out in a series of beautiful yellow splotches, and he was so delighted with the result that he promised Shea for the hunting of the sinech not only the sword of Nuada, but the enchanted shoes of Iubdan, that would enable him to walk on water. He explained that the reason for the overcharge in Shea’s magic was that the spells were in the wrong tongue; but, as the magic wouldn’t work at all without a spell of some kind and Shea didn’t have time to learn another language, this was not much help.

  About the sinech itself he was more encouraging. He did a series of divinations with bowls of water and blackthorn twigs. Although Shea himself did not know enough of the magic of this continuum to make out anything but a confused and cloudy movement below the clear surface of the bowl, Miach assured him that in coming to this world of legendary Ireland, he had himself acquired a geas that would not allow his release until he had accomplished something that would alter the pattern of the continuum itself.

  “Now tell me, Mac Shea,” he said, “was it not so in the other lands you visted? For I see by my divinations that you have visited many.”

  Shea, thinking of how he had helped break up the chapter of magicians in Faerie and rescued his wife from the Saracens of the Orlando Furioso, was forced to agree.

  “It is just as I am telling you, for sure,” said Miach. “And I am thinking that this geas has been with you since the day you were born without your ever knowing it. We all of us have them, we do, just as I have one that keeps me from eating pig’s liver, and a good man it is that does not have trouble with his geasa.”

  Belphebe looked up from the arrow she was shaping. Her bow was a success, but finding seasoned material from which to build shafts was a problem. “Still, master druid,” she said, “it is no less than a problem to us that we may return to our own place late, and without our friend Pete. For this would place us deeply in trouble.”

  “Now I would not be worrying about that at all, at all,” said Miach. “For the nature of a geas is that once it is accomplished, it gives you no more trouble at all. And the time you are spending in the country of the Sidhe will be no more than a minute in the time of your own land, so that you need not be troubling until you are back among the Gaels.”

  “That’s a break,” said Shea. “Only I wish I could do something about Pete.”

  “Unless I can see him, my divination will not work on him at all,” said Miach. “And now I am thinking it is time for you to try the shoes. King Fergus of Rury was eat up by this same sinech because he did not know how to use them, or another pair like them.”

  He accompanied Shea to one of the smaller lakes, not haunted by sinechs, and the latter stepped out cautiously from the shore. The shoes sank a little, forming a meniscus around them, but they seemed to give the lake-water beneath a jellylike consistency just strong enough to support him. A regular walking motion failed to yield good results. He found he had to skate along, and he knew that, if he tripped over a wave, the result would be unfortunate. The shoes would not keep the rest of him from breaking through the surface and, once submerged, would keep his head down. But he found he could work up quite good speed and practiced making hairpin turns until night put an end to the operation.

  Next morning they went out in a procession to Loch Gara, the haunt of the monster, with King Briun, Belphebe, and the assorted warriors of the Tuatha De Danaan. The latter had spears, but they did not look as though they would be much help. Two or three of them fell out and sat under trees to compose poems, and the rest were a dreamy-eyed lot.

  Miach murmured a druid spell, unwrapped the sword of Nuada, and handed it to Shea. It was better balanced than his own broadsword, coming down to a beautiful laurel-leaf point. As Shea swung it appreciatively, the blade began to ripple with light, as though there were some source of it within the steel itself.

  He looked around. “Look, King,” he said, “I’m going to try to do this smart. If you’ll cut down that small tree there, then hitch a rope to the top of that other tree beside it. We’ll bend down the second tree . . .”

  Under his direction the Tuatha did away with one tree and bent the other down by a rope running to the stump of the first. This rope continued on, Shea holding the rest of it in a coil. “Ready?” he called.

  “We are that,” said King Briun. Belphebe took up her shooting stance, with a row of arrows in the ground beside her.

  Shea skated well out in the lake, paying out the rope, which dragged in the water behind him. The monster seemed in no hurry to put in an appearance.

  “Hey!” called Shea. “Where are you, sinech? Come on out, Loch Ness!”

  As if in answer, the still surface of the lake broke like a shattered mirror some fifty yards away. Through the surface there appeared something black and rubbery, which vanished and appeared again, much closer. The sinech was moving toward him at a speed which did credit to its muscles.

  Shea gripped the rope with both hands and shouted, “Let her go!”

  The little figures on shore moved around, and there was a tremendous tug on the rope. The men had untied the tackle, so that the bent tree sprang upright. The pull on the rope sent Shea skidding shoreward as though he were water-skiing behind a motorboat. An arrow went past him and then another. Shea began to slow down, then picked up again as a squad of King Briun’s soldiers took hold of the rope and ran inland with it as fast as they could. His theory was that the sinech would ground, and in that condition could be dispatched by a combination of himself, the soldiers with spears, and Belphebe’s arrows.

  But the soldiers on the rope did not yank hard enough to take up all the slack before Shea slowed down almost to a stop. Still twenty yards from shore, he could see the sandy bottom below him, looking a mere yard down.

  Behind him he heard the water boiling and swishing under the urge of the sinech’s progress. Shea risked a glance over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of a creature somewhat like a mosasaur, with flippers along its sides. Just behind the pointed, lizard-like head that reared from the water, a pair of arrows projected. Another had driven into its cheekbone, evi
dently aimed for the eye.

  The instant of looking back brought Shea’s foot into contact with a boulder that lay with perhaps an inch projecting from the surface. Over it and down he went, head first into the water of the marge. The sinech’s jaws snapped like a closing bank-vault door on empty air, while Shea’s head drove down until his face plowed into the sand of the bottom. His eyes open under the water, he could see nothing but clouds of sand stirred up by the animal’s passage. The water swished around him as the sinech came in contact with solid ground and threshed frantically in its efforts to make progress.

  The shoes of Iubdan kept pulling Shea’s feet up, but at last he bumped into the boulder he had stumbled over. His arms clawed its sides and his head came out of water with his legs scrambling after.

  The sinech was still grounded, but not hopelessly so. It was making distinct progress toward Belphebe, who valiantly stood her ground, shooting arrow after arrow into the creature. The same glance told him that the spearmen of the Tuatha De Danaan had taken to their heels.

  The monster, engrossed in Belphebe as its remaining opponent, threw back its head for a locomotive hiss. Shea, skating toward it, saw her bend suddenly and seize up one of the abandoned spears to distract it from him. Tugging out the sword of Nuada, he aimed for the sinech’s neck, just behind the head, where it lay half in and half out of water, the stiff mane standing up above Shea’s head. As he drove toward the creature, the near eye picked him up and the head started to swivel back.

  In his rush, he drove the sword in up to the hilt, hoping for the big artery.

  The sinech writhed, throwing Shea back and ejecting the sword. There was a gush of blood so dark it looked black, the animal threw back its head and emitted a kind of mournful whistling roar of agony. Shea skated forward on his magical shoes for another shot, almost stumbling over the neck, but reaching down to grasp a bunch of mane in his left hand, and climbing aboard, cutting and stabbing.

  The sinech threw back its head violently, it seemed to a height of thirty feet. Shea’s grip on the mane was broken, and he was thrown through the air. All he could think of was that he must hang on to the sword. He had hardly formulated this thought before his behind struck the water with a terrific splash.

  When he got his head out against the resistance of the shoes at the other end of his anatomy, the sinech was creaming the water with aimless writhings, its long head low on the bank, and its eyes already glassed. The sword of Nuada had lived up to its reputation for giving mortal wounds, all right. Shea had to develop a kind of side-winding dog paddle to carry him into shallow water past the throes of the subsiding monster.

  Belphebe waded out to help Shea to his feet, regardless of the wet. She put both arms around him and gave him a quick, ardent kiss, which instantly doubled him over with cramps. Behind her the Sidhe were trickling out of the wood, headed by King Briun, looking dignified, and Miach, looking both amazed and pleased.

  Shea said, “There’s your job. Do you think that lets me out from under that geas you say I’ve got?”

  Miach shook his head. “I am thinking it will not. A rare fine change you have made in the land of the Sidhe, but it is to the land of men you belong, and there you must do what is to be done. So we will just be going along to see if you can avert the fate that hangs over this Cuchulainn.”

  X

  SHEA AND Belphebe were bouncing along in a chariot on the route from the section of Tir na n-Og corresponding to Connacht to the other-world equivalent of Muirthemne in Ulster. They had agreed with Miach, who was coming in another chariot, that this would be better than to re-enter as they had come and possibly have to fight their way through hostile Connacht, even though he was wearing the invincible sword of Nuada.

  The country around seemed very similar to that from which they had come, though the buildings were generally poorer, and there were fewer of them. Indeed, none at all were in sight when they stopped at a furze-covered hill with a rocky outcrop near its base. Miach signalled his charioteer to draw up and said, “Here stands another of the portals. You are to draw off a little while I cast my spell, as this is not one of the holy days and a magic of great power is required.”

  From the chariot, Shea could see him tossing his arms aloft and catch an occasional word of the chant, which was in the old language. A blackness, which seemed to suck up all the light of the day, appeared around the outcrop, considerably larger than the tunnel Shea himself had opened. The charioteers got down to lead the horses, and they found themselves on the reverse slope, with Cuchulainn’s stronghold of Muirthemne in the middle distance, smoke coming from its chimneys.

  Shea said, “That’s queer. I thought Cuchulainn was at Emain Macha with the King, but it looks as though he came back.”

  “By my thinking,” said Belphebe, “he is most strangely set on having his own will and no other, so that not even the prophecy of death can drive him back.”

  “I wouldn’t . . .” began Shea, but was interrupted as a horseman suddenly burst from a clump of trees to the right, and went galloping across the rolling ground toward Cuchulainn’s stronghold.

  Miach called from the other chariot, “That will be a warden, now. I am thinking the fine man there is expecting company and is more than a little ready to receive it.”

  They went down a slope into a depression where the fold of the ground and a screen of young trees on the opposite side hid the view of Muirthemne. As they climbed the slope, the charioteers reined in. Glancing ahead, Shea saw that the saplings and bushes on the crest had all been pulled down and woven into a tangle. At the same time a line of men jumped out of cover, with spears and shields ready.

  One of them advanced on the travelers. “Who might you be?” he demanded truculently, “and for why are you here?”

  Miach said, “I am a druid of the Sidhe, and I am travelling with my friends to Muirthemne to remove a geas that lies on one of them.”

  “You will not be doing that the day,” said the man. “It is an order that no druids are to come nearer to Muirthemne than this line until himself has settled his differences with the Connachta.”

  “Woe’s me!” said Miach, then turned toward Shea. “You will be seeing how your geas still rules. I am prevented from helping you at the one place where my help would be of avail.”

  “Be off with you, now!” the man said and waved his spear.

  Behind her hand, Belphebe said to Shea, “Is this not very unlike them?”

  Shea said, “By George, you’re right, kid! That isn’t Cuchulainn’s psychology at all.” He leaned toward the guard. “Hey, you, who gave the order and why? Cuchulainn?”

  The man said, “I do not know by what right you are questioning me, but I will be telling you it was the Shamus.”

  An inspiration struck Shea. “You mean Pete, the American?”

  “Who else?”

  “We’re the other Americans that were here before. Get him for us, will you? We can straighten this out. Tell him that Shea is here.”

  The man looked at him suspiciously, then at Miach even more suspiciously. He pulled a little aside and consulted with one of his companions, who stuck his spear in the ground, laid the shield beside it, and trotted off toward Muirthemne.

  Shea asked, “How comes Pete to be giving orders around here?”

  “Because it’s the Shamus he is.”

  Shea said, “I recognize the title all right, but what I can’t figure out is how Pete got away from Cruachain and got here to acquire it.”

  He was saved from further speculation by the creaking of a rapidly driven chariot, which drew up on the other side of the hedge. From it descended a Pete Brodsky metamorphosed into something like the Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s court. His disreputable trousers projected from beneath a brilliantly red tunic embroidered in gold; he had a kind of leather fillet around his head and a considerable growth of beard; and at his belt swung not one, but two obviously home-made blackjacks.

  “Jeepers!” he said, “am I glad
to see you! It’s all right, gang — let these guys through. They’re part of my mob.”

  Shea made room for him to climb in their chariot, and the spearmen fell back respectfully as Pete directed the driver through the winding gaps in the entanglement. When they had cleared it Shea asked, “How did you get here, anyway?”

  Pete said, “It was a pushover. They had me singing until I almost busted a gut. I tried to get this Ollgaeth to send me back to Ohio, but he nixed it and said I’d have to throw in with their mob when they came over here to rub out Cuchulainn. Well, hell, I know what’s going to happen to the guys in that racket. They’re going to end up with their heads looking for the rest of them, and anyway I figure that if you go any here after you do your fadeout, it will be here. So one day when this Ollgaeth has me in the King’s ice house showing me some of the flash, I figure it’s a good chance to take along some presents. I let him have one on the conk, snatched everything I could and make a getaway.”

  “You mean you stole Ailill’s crown jewels?” asked Shea.

  “Sure. I don’t owe him nothing, do I? Well, when I get here, they roll out the carpet and send for, Cuchulainn. Well, I give him a line about how this Maev mob is coming to hit him on the head, like I told him before, but I add that they’re gonna put a geas on all his gang so they’ll go to sleep and can’t do any fighting. That was different, see? They all want to get into the act, but they can’t figure what to do about it. I been watching this Ollgaeth, see, and the line I got is that if he can’t get close enough, he can’t make this geas business stick.”

  “That’s good magicology,” said Shea. “Couldn’t Cathbadh send you home?”

  “Home? What do you mean, home? They told me to go to it, so I stashed the combination around the place like we done in the army. Then they made me head shamus of the force. Do you think I want to go back to Ohio and pound a beat?”