Space Magic

by Levine, David D.

  “What do you mean?” Ulrich asked, though he already knew the answer.

  “She died this morning, sir.”

  -o0o-

  Bechte lay in state on the table at her cottage, her weeping husband and children by her side. She was as beautiful as he remembered, though her death-pale skin was blotchy from the fever that had killed her. Weakened by hunger, she had not been able to put up much of a fight against it.

  Ulrich felt a pang of envy for Bechte’s husband... but then he realized they shared a common pain. Both of them had loved Bechte, then lost her through no fault of their own. He embraced the man and offered his sympathies.

  Finally he leaned down and delicately kissed Bechte’s brow. It was cold and waxy. “Rest in peace, my wife that never was,” he whispered. “I swear to you I will find some way to help your village.” He straightened and looked around at the thin and haggard faces of Bechte’s family, Agnes, and Nikolaus. They looked back at him with expressions of hope.

  But what could he do to help them? He had never even finished his studies, and had forgotten most of what he had learned.

  “I will visit the wizards’ house in the morning,” he said at last. “Perhaps I will find something there.”

  They all joined hands and Nikolaus led them in a prayer for salvation.

  -o0o-

  Ulrich bedded down on a pestilential straw mattress with Agnes, her sister, her sister’s husband, and seven or eight children. The smell, the constant fidgeting and sniffling, and the moist oppressive heat kept him awake at first. He was used to cool linen sheets, wooden floors, and breezy windows.

  And yet... and yet he found the presence of those others strangely comforting. It reminded him of his apprentice days, when he had slept with the wizards and their families. His duties had been small and well-defined, then, though they had seemed enormous at the time. He had not known how happy he was.

  Ulrich snuggled against the warm breathing bodies and passed into sleep.

  -o0o-

  The wizards’ cottage was well away from the rest of the village, off by itself in a stand of beech. It was abandoned and weather-beaten, but showed no signs of vandalism. “People avoid this place,” Agnes explained. “It’s known to be haunted.”

  “Indeed,” Ulrich replied. “Wizards rarely leave their homes or possessions unprotected. I should go in by myself first.”

  He pushed the crumbling door aside and ducked beneath the collapsed lintel. Inside he found dripping water, weak daylight streaming through holes in the thatched roof, and a swampy smell of mud and decay. The back half of the roof had collapsed; a heavy beam lay across the cracked hearthstone, and rotting straw lay everywhere.

  For a moment he just stood, taking it in, trying to reconcile this ruin with his happy memories. Johannes’ writing-desk had been there, Heinrich’s chest of herbs and compounds there. Now there was nothing but disorder and decay. Johannes’ favorite chair lay overturned in a corner; when he tried to pick it up, it fell to pieces in his hands. He flung the rotten boards away.

  Enough delay. There were problems to be solved here.

  All morning he had strained his mind, trying to piece together bits of memory. He had remembered three of Johannes’ tesserae—words of command over daemons—and hoped that would be enough. He cupped his hands to his mouth and called them out, one after another. There was no reaction to the first or second, but at the third he felt a movement in the mud and rotten straw under his feet.

  Gingerly at first, careful of his fine clothing, then more and more enthusiastically he swept the mud away with hands and feet. Finally he grinned as the iron-bound lid of Johannes’ coffer appeared. It appeared to be intact, and the third tessera had released the ward on its lock. “Nikolaus! Agnes!” he called. “Come in! I think it’s safe, and I need your help!”

  The three of them dragged the heavy coffer out of the sucking mud and onto the hearthstone. Ulrich cleaned the grime away from the hinges and hasps as well as he could, then rinsed his hands in a puddle before raising the lid.

  The large bound volume of spells was inside, as he’d hoped. But it was covered with mold and mildew. Black and green tendrils engulfed the book in a wild profusion of corruption.

  “God in Heaven,” Ulrich breathed. “With the shape this thing is in, we’re lucky the weather is no worse than it is.”

  -o0o-

  “Demons?” Konrad the reeve cried, touching the saint’s medal pinned to his doublet. They had hauled the coffer with its precious, damaged contents to Agnes’ cottage for a more careful inspection, and Konrad, Graf Erhart’s representative in Lannesdorf, had joined them there. His long face was very lined and hard for a man so young, and he carried himself with an authoritative swagger.

  “Not demons, daemons,” Ulrich explained, remembering his own panicked reaction when Johannes had used the word for the first time. “The word is Latin; it is closer in meaning to Geist, spirit, than Dämon, demon. Philosophers disagree over where daemons come from, even whether or not they exist before they are bound to a task, but they are not devils or angels. Only God may command those, but daemons are subject to human will.”

  “Demons or spirits, they are still evil,” said Konrad.

  “Not evil. Just mindless and powerful.” Johannes had been fond of comparing them to an imbecile child with the strength of a bull. “When properly controlled, they are beneficial. The daemons bound by these spells gave you twenty years of exceptionally good weather.”

  “It’s true, Konrad,” Agnes said. “Up until this year we hadn’t had a crop failure since before Ulrich was an apprentice. You’re too young to remember, but we used to have a bad harvest at least one year in four.”

  “But now they have turned against us,” said Konrad.

  “Not really,” said Ulrich. “Look.” He gestured at the book open on the table before them.

  Spell-books were never beautiful like illuminated Scriptures; they consisted of nothing but line upon line of the convoluted legalistic Latin called Zauberschrift. But this spell-book was truly ugly. The center of each page was still legible, but the edges were discolored and many of the letters were unreadable.

  “You see how badly damaged the words are,” said Ulrich. “The daemons are still doing their best to obey these commands, but they are so garbled the results are disastrous.”

  Agnes looked puzzled. “But if the book was damaged by the rain, and the rain came from the damage to the book... which came first?”

  Ulrich had to think about that. “The mold must have come first,” he said after a time. “It probably started years ago, while the weather was still good. The damage to the book caused the rain, not the other way around.” But something nagged at the back of his mind.

  Konrad’s angry voice interrupted Ulrich’s thoughts. “Surely to control the weather is a violation of God’s will!”

  “God sends the rain,” Nikolaus said, “but it is no violation of his will to wear a hat. Perhaps these daemons have been something like a hat for the whole village.”

  “But now they are destroying it!” Konrad replied. “And we must destroy them. Burn the book!”

  “It’s not so simple,” said Ulrich. “The daemons will try to follow their commands even as the book burns.” Ulrich recalled a demonstration Heinrich had given him. He had bound a very simple protective daemon to a yew tree, then had set fire to the spell. The tree had become a twisted heap of splinters in an instant. “These weather daemons are very powerful. I would not want to be here if you did anything to damage this volume any further!”

  “There must be some way to dispel the daemons,” Nikolaus asked.

  “Yes, but breaking a spell is an exceedingly complex spell in itself. Only a master wizard would even attempt it.”

  “So what do you propose to do?” said Agnes.

  “Clean away the mold, repair the vellum and binding, re-ink the damaged places. That should put things back the way they were. And then you can store the book somepl
ace dry.”

  “I thought you said you were not a wizard,” said Konrad.

  “Only a wizard can write a new spell, but even an apprentice should be able to repair one. All I have to do is make up some ink, cut some quills, and read and write a few words of Latin. I did those things every day.” And I pray I can still remember how after twenty years, he added silently.

  There was one other thing he did not mention. The sealing of the spell with blood, and the risk of death that went with it. But he had an idea to avoid that.

  “Very well,” said Konrad. “But if the weather does not improve soon, I will take matters into my own hands.”

  -o0o-

  Ulrich sat at Agnes’ trestle table, grinding charcoal into a fine powder with a mortar and pestle he had found in the ruins of the wizards’ cottage. Nearby, Agnes dipped goose feathers into a cauldron of boiling water to soften them for cutting. Ulrich’s goose-bitten finger throbbed, a reminder of the eternal enmity between geese and the scribes who steal their eggs for ink and their feathers for quills.

  “You said these weather daemons are very powerful,” said Agnes. “Why work such great magic in such a tiny village?”

  “Many villages have a weather daemon or two. But Johannes and Heinrich together were able to bind stronger daemons than either of them could alone.” He paused in his grinding, lost in memory for a moment. “It’s a pity they didn’t stay together. Do you know why Heinrich left?”

  “It was his ambition. Johannes was content to stay where he was born, and work more and better spells for the benefit of the village. Heinrich was always pushing, always reaching for more and more power. He ached to be a king’s wizard. Finally it came to a huge screaming fight, and he left the village in a foul temper. But without Johannes he was nothing. He eventually became wizard of Mehlen, and died there.”

  “I do not know Mehlen.”

  “I’m not surprised—it is an even smaller town than Lannesdorf.”

  “I remember how Heinrich treated his horse—whipped the poor beast so hard I feared for her life. I wondered sometimes why Johannes put up with him.”

  “He told me once that he had tolerated Heinrich for the sake of the magic they could do together. But in the end it was Heinrich who left, and good riddance.”

  -o0o-

  Ulrich set down his quill and rubbed his eyes. After two weeks of scrubbing, stitching, and inking, the letters seemed to swim upon the page like a thousand tiny black fish. But this was the last of it.

  The sound of Agnes’ family snoring in the outer room mingled with the drum of rain on the thatched roof, the hiss of wind through the cracks in the walls, the rhythmic splats from the mud puddle under the leak in the corner. The smoky flame of the tallow candle wavered in the draft. He wondered what hour of the night it might be.

  He turned back over the pages, looking for any remaining spots of mold or illegible words. Here and there he touched up a letter, but he knew he was only delaying the inevitable. Finally he brought from his belt-bag the fragments of the wax seal that had closed the spell-book—wax mingled with wizards’ blood. He melted the fragments together in the candle’s flame, let the melted wax fall onto the cord that held shut the book. Then, fingers trembling, he pressed his father’s signet ring into the wax.

  Nothing happened. The spell was sealed, and he still lived.

  He let out a breath he had not even known he was holding, and knelt to thank God for his success. Then he dragged his weary body off to bed. He did not even bother to undress.

  -o0o-

  A short time later he was jerked from sleep by an enormous clap of thunder.

  He sat up, trying to shake the sleep out of his head. A long flash of lightning showed the wide eyes of Agnes and her family, huddled together in fear—the thunder followed just a moment later, seeming to smash a lid of darkness down over the scene. Between peals of thunder Ulrich heard a tremendous rattling roar—hail pelting the roof and walls.

  The youngest child wailed. Another bolt of lightning showed Ulrich her terrified face, and one tiny hand reaching out to grasp at Agnes’ sleeve. Thunder rolled across the roof.

  Ulrich struggled out of the bed, groped for a candle. Then the roar of hail doubled in volume as the front door was flung open. A flash of lightning revealed Konrad and a dozen other villagers, their dripping faces contorted with rage and fear.

  “Enough of wizardry!” Konrad yelled. “Agnes, stoke the fire. We will burn the cursed book this very night!”

  “There is no telling what might happen then!” Ulrich shouted.

  “Silence!” Konrad replied. “It could scarcely be worse than this. Nikolaus, bring the book.”

  “No!” Ulrich yelled, and dashed into the inner room. He snatched up the spell-book.

  Lightning flared again, a long stroke that cast a net of blue-white fire across the scene. Nikolaus and Agnes blocked the door, their eyes hard; Konrad stood behind them. Water trickled down the windowless walls. No escape.

  Ulrich clutched the book to his chest. Then, with a growl, he lowered his head and charged—straight at the wall.

  The rain-sodden clay gave way and he crashed through, feeling the sticks within the wall claw at his face and arms. He tried desperately to protect his eyes and the book at the same time. He got his head and upper body through, but then his legs met resistance and he tumbled face-first into the cold mud outside.

  Hail battered his head, a sharp broken stick jabbed into his thigh, and his mouth and eyes were clogged with foul, clinging mud. He struggled blindly, writhing in the ruins of the broken wall. Hard clods of clay fell onto his back and head.

  Then he felt hands grabbing at his feet. Panicked, he surged forward, finally winning free—all save one shoe, pulled off by someone inside the house. Freezing mud squelched between the toes of the bare foot.

  Ulrich struggled to his feet, rubbing mud from his eyes with one hand, awkwardly juggling the heavy book with the other. He heard a confusion of voices behind him as a large section of the wall collapsed, delaying pursuit. Konrad shouted something, but his words were lost in the sounds of hail and thunder.

  This was clearly no natural storm. The hailstones that seemed to pound in on him from all directions were black, not white, and had the size and twisted shape of knucklebones. Lightning flared again and again, blue-white flashes mingling with greenish afterimages in his eyes. The thunder was nearly constant. And there was a weird, lightheaded sensation, as though he were falling, which he had experienced before in the presence of great magics.

  “There he is!” A tremendous bolt of lightning accompanied the shouted words, revealing Konrad standing in the door of Agnes’ collapsing house. His finger pointed directly at Ulrich, and two villagers began to move in his direction before the light faded.

  Ulrich ran.

  His head and shoulders were battered by the black hail as he ran, hunched protectively over the book, unbalanced by its weight. His bare foot slid painfully across the hailstone-littered mud and he nearly fell, but he caught himself with one hand and kept going. Shouts and the splashes of feet in puddles sounded not far behind.

  Another flash of lightning revealed a fork in the path. The left fork led into the woods—the natural destination for any outlaw. He could lose himself there with ease. But unless he found shelter soon, the hail would destroy the spell-book as surely as any fire.

  He took the right fork. Konrad and the others were right behind him.

  Ulrich left the path and charged through the trees. Branches whipped his face; sticks and sharp rocks assailed his bare foot with every step. But it delayed his pursuers, and with his desperate haste he gained a little way on them.

  Then the ground fell away from him.

  Ulrich cried out in surprise as he slid down a muddy embankment and splashed into the freezing waters of the creek. He felt the book slipping from his arms as he regained his feet, and it was only with a frantic grab that he prevented it from falling into the rushing water. He heard
shouts behind him. With an effort he hoisted the book over his head, then waded into the creek.

  The chill water ripped at his legs, threatening to topple him over, but he pressed forward. Deeper and deeper he slogged, feeling the current tug at his leggings, then at his jacket. He had no idea how deep the water might be after months of rain, but he forced himself to keep going. Water splashed to his waist, his chest, his armpits, sucking all warmth from his body. He could feel nothing from his feet. His arms burned from the effort of holding the heavy book above his head. He kept going.

  Finally the creek bed began to slope upward. He struggled on, feeling his body grow heavier and heavier as he rose step by step from the roaring water. At last he reached the bank and collapsed onto a log, letting the book fall into his lap. His muscles twitched from exhaustion and he trembled all over from fatigue and fear.

  Another bolt of lightning illuminated the scene. Three villagers stood, pointing, on the opposite bank. Konrad was half-way across, his face set in an expression of determination and hatred.

  Ulrich hauled himself to his feet and stumbled up the bank, seeking higher ground. Hoping to lose himself in the trees.

  He staggered through a black world, freezing cold and lit only by irregular flashes of lightning. Again and again he ran headlong into a tree or fell into the mud. Thunder roared like God’s mocking laughter. Blood pounded in his ears, even louder than the thunder; breath rasped in his throat.

  Then, just as he entered a clearing at the top of a small hill, his bare foot snagged on a protruding root and he sprawled full length, the book flying from his hands. Desperately he scrambled forward on hands and knees, found the book caught in the branches of a thorny bush. The cover was still closed; he prayed none of the pages had been damaged. He levered himself to a standing position, clutching the book to his chest.