Earth Magic

by Alexei Panshin

  “You’re a generous man, Morca,” Oliver said. “If the world only knew. But what will your peers make of this marriage? You said nothing of this before you left. If you had told me what you intended, I would have advised against it.”

  “I know,” said Morca. “That is why I did not tell you. That is why I am a king and you a wizard whose spells of occasion fail. I dare. You do not. I have no peers. I am king here and I will act the king. That is why you sought me out. Do you remember? With what other man among the Gets could you dare to practice your art?”

  “None other. But I wish to practice it longer. I am your man, Morca, but what good is my advice to you if you will not hear what you have no wish to hear?”

  “I will not be told what I cannot do! Study your book and be prepared to help me hold what I have taken. That is your business.”

  Oliver pointed at Haldane who was sitting by the fire, hands clasped, elbows on knees, listening tight to every word. His head did not move, but his eyes flicked from one to the other.

  “You make the boy your pawn,” Oliver said.

  “That is his part. He is a pawn as I am a king and you a wizard. But he is a pawn who will be made into a king.”

  “Tell him of your intent. Let him know what risks he runs.”

  There was a knock then at the door and Morca crossed to open it. It was a serf bearing Morca’s ale. Morca took pitcher and leather jack and bade the man wait outside for further call.

  Oliver moved toward the door as Morca turned.

  Oliver said, “Did you know that the witch Jael was seen in the woods today? Where she appears, trouble trails after. She is a bad omen. Kings and witches—too much power stirs about us. I will study my gramarie as you suggest. It may yet take an Ultimate Spell to keep what you are taking.”

  He closed the door behind him. Morca looked after him and shook his head. It was his bad habit to speak of others when they were not present.

  “He frets too much,” he said. “He lacks guts. He doesn’t do, he dances. Give him a sword and a man to kill, and he would wash his hands.”

  Morca poured ale from pitcher to tankard and took the whole in one draft as he crossed the room. He set jack and pitcher down on the table that stood in one corner, swiped his beard, then turned and belted his son with the same backhand blow he had shown the serf. Haldane was knocked from his stool and stretched at his length upon the floor.

  Morca shook an admonishing finger at him. “That will teach you to listen and mind. You are a pawn. Mine. Learn to do as you are told.”

  Haldane nursed his head. One blow added to another, and now he had a headache, a throbbing pain behind his right eye. The blow had come when he had ceased to expect it and he had been unprepared. He picked himself up from the floor and took his seat again, sitting silently, shaking his head to clear it, ceasing to touch it, doing his best to ignore the pain he’d earned.

  He didn’t grudge Morca the blow, for why should he? It was Morca’s right. It was merely unexpected. The blow was far from the first he had taken, and he thought it fairly purchased. It was the price of hunting alone.

  But then in an outrush, he let his reasons go. “You promised in the fall that I should ride on the first spring reaving! When will you count me man enough? I was called Haldane Left-Behind today. Men begin to laugh at me, and yet I can outdo Hemming Paleface. Why should he go and not me? I begin to envy men their scars. When the carls return I look to see their fresh-won honors.”

  And then Morca began to speak in a tone new to Haldane and Haldane could only stare up at him in wonder. Morca was a man who could no more easily call Haldane “Son” than Haldane could call him “Father.” He was as bluff and rough in private as he was in public. This was the boy’s secret and he told no one. He would pretend otherwise. Even in that moment when Morca had first called Haldane his lieutenant, he had been rough and bluff.

  But now he said in a softer voice than Haldane had ever heard, “I know. I know. You shall have scars enough before I am done making you. But you must have patience. You are man enough to be left in charge. You are my reserve, as Garmund was Garulf’s reserve at Stone Heath, and Garmund became king. Would you have me waste you lightly, boy?”

  He clapped Haldane on the shoulder. “You are my strength. Without you, all my plans come to nothing. I need you. I would not use you too soon and lose you.”

  “But I am strong now,” said Haldane. “Use me.” But his heart was trembling on the edge of the jump to jubilation.

  Morca said, “I do owe you a reaving. And you shall have it. It is time for you to prove yourself.” He put his hand almost tenderly on Haldane’s biceps and tested the muscle. “My son. Be all that I need you to be.” His voice was intense.

  Haldane could only look at him, Morca, the distant, dominating sun he followed, who ordered and denied, and numbly say, “I will.” He was too filled to say more. His head was spinning. Morca was admitting of a need for him.

  Then abruptly, as though the intimacy were too much for him, Morca rose and turned to the table, where stood his pitcher and jack. He did not break away completely, but he poured and finished his second tankard and then stood about patting himself on the stomach until he delivered a satisfactory belch, and only then did he speak again and it was in his customary hearty voice or something like it.

  “It was a beautiful raid,” he said. “Oh, it was fine. If Richard of Palsance were as simple as Lothor of Chastain, the West would lie open to any man’s hand. There would be no need to draw the barons together behind me as one. Anyone could rape the West.”

  “And you would raise the barons? All the barons as in the old days?”

  Haldane might well ask. Since the Gets had recoiled into Nestor to rule there after Stone Heath, the barons had been united in nothing. They had been arrogant, grasping, quarrelsome, careless of law, unmindful of clan, jealous of privilege, and unruled.

  “What do you think a King of the Gets should be?” Morca asked.

  “Leader of the Gets in war.”

  That was the simple, well-known answer. Svein’s answer. Morca said as much. “These are new and modern times. We are no longer in Shagetai. What was does not rule what might be. I will rule the barons in peace as in war. I shall lead those that can be led. I shall inspire those who would be inspired. I shall beat those who must be beaten. And when I am ready, I mean to take the West. All the West, from South Cape to the Hook, Chastain and Palsance and Vilicea. From Orkay to Grelland. From Lake Lamorne to the sea.”

  If Haldane was one of those who must be inspired, truly this was inspiring talk. It filled him with visions of Morca leading a great army into the West with Haldane at his right hand. He watched Morca in awe as he spelled out his full flashing vision.

  “King of the Gets?” asked Morca. “Why not King of the Get Empire, master of greater territory than the Empire of Nestria ever knew? Why not all the world if a man can seize it?”

  The Morca that Haldane knew did not like questions he could not answer. Haldane risked a blow to ask. “What of the wizards of the West?”

  Morca waved the question aside as of no importance. “What of them?” he asked, roaring on. “They are dead. They died at Stone Heath and those that are left are small men, more theoretic than our Oliver, whom I can provoke to perform. Why else should I tolerate a man of magic? We were too weak to take the West after Stone Heath and the West lay helpless, too weak to defend itself. In our weakness, we did nothing. In their weakness, they survived. Our weakness is now strength—we have a new generation of Get fighting men. What does the West have? Still nothing. Lothor thought himself safe behind his mountains and his guarded passes. We spent a week crossing through snow and high rock on our mission of state, and Lothor still wonders from where we came. Give me an army and the West is mine. And yours after me.”

  Morca paused, for the moment talked to an end. He poured the last of the pitcher of ale into his leather cup, sipped, and looked upon Haldane to gauge the effect of his words
.

  Haldane jumped up and seized Morca by the sleeve. “Call the Storthing together,” he said in excitement. “Please, father, tonight. Let us raise the barons and go take the West!”

  There had been no Storthing in Haldane’s lifetime, none since Morca’s election as King of the Gets. That gathering had been marked by quarrels and blood and Morca had prevailed only with the aid of his good friend Arngrim, who had been lieutenant to Garmund, though barely older than Morca. That was before Morca had taken Arngrim’s daughter Freda and paid no bride price for her, opening a breach that had taken years to heal. In the meantime, though parties to this quarrel and that had changed and changed again, the quarrels had hardly grown fewer.

  Morca pushed the boy away with his great hand, forcing Haldane to loose his fierce grip. Morca’s cup was never in danger.

  “Not yet,” said Morca. “Not yet, but soon. I will call the Storthing when I command the barons. If I am to hold the West, the Gets must be united behind me. I will have my homage. I am not nice about the reasons. I will have some through love and some through fealty, some by command of their land or life. But I will have my grip.”

  And he finished his cup and the last of the ale. As though his habits were well known and taken into account, which they were, the door opened and the serf outside announced that Morca’s dinner was served. While he stood with his hand to the door, the serf was brushed aside by Svein come pell-melling up the stairs.

  “I heard them talking,” Svein said. “That Princess Marthe is in the hall with her father. She expects to eat at the High Table. No one knows what to say.”

  Morca’s table and dun were celibate, it being Morca’s rule that no man should keep what Morca did not. Those of Morca’s men who cared to marry were encouraged to establish steads of their own under Morca’s protection.

  Morca said, “Go down and tell them that the girl is to be served privately in her rooms. The custom of my hall is not to be disturbed. Call me for dinner when all is settled.”

  Svein turned and went out with a glancing look at the serf at the door. In the old days before there were serfs, a Get carl did his own labor and was proud. Svein was proud.

  Haldane said, “When you speak from the balcony before a raid, you always say that women are to be taken where they are found and not dragged back to the dun. Do you intend to send this woman and me out to start our own homestead, our own dun?”

  “What is a custom in the face of an opportunity?” said Morca. “By damn, you have no sense! This marriage is part of my brightest planning. Men will follow you. They like the thought of long tradition. You there, Rab,” he said to the serf holding the door open yet. “If you were a Get would you follow Lord Haldane and Princess Marthe?”

  The serf nodded, “Oh yes, master, I would. Yes.”

  “See, and thus with many. If I had not made a vow to your mother never to keep another woman, I would marry the girl myself. A daughter of the line of Chastain and Nestria mated to the ruler of the Gets. It is an epic.”

  “The woman is painted.”

  “Her age washes off. She is but fourteen. She has more spirit than you might think. She threatened to kill me at first. And listen to the roar she is causing. Your mother tried to kill me four times before we came to terms. See the girl tomorrow. You may find you like her better. And if you don’t, we have rooms enough to keep her in. The story needn’t suffer. Come along, boy. Let us go down for dinner.”

  Before they were out the door, Morca said, “If I had only known before the softness of Chastain, I would not have spent these many years in wading the Great Slough and other adventures. When Lothor is well returned to Dunbar, you and I will rape an estate or two in Chastain. Mind you, we won’t tell the girl. We’ll spare her feelings.”

  Morca started forward down the stair calling, “Remove the girl. It is my order, Lothor.”

  Haldane followed, at a slower pace. His tongue touched his chipped tooth and he shivered and wasn’t quite sure why.

  Chapter 5

  HALDANE WAS EXUBERANT IN THE MORNING. Far out of sight of Morca’s dun and Morca’s tower, far beyond the huddled Nestorian village and the edge of the wood, Haldane galloped the cool forest avenue alone. He was loosed from all the limits and responsibility he had suffered in Morca’s absence, and he recked for nothing. He felt like a true Get again.

  The mist that had held the dun when he left that morning had been blown away. As he rode the natural lane, the wind nipped the boy’s back and harried him onward. His horse drummed the mold and his heart raced to the drumbeat. He could not be slowed. He could not be stayed. He ducked the reaching branches that lined the forest gallery as though they were enemy broadswords slicing over his saddlebow and laughed though he lost his head fully five times to the cold wet kiss of steel.

  Hemming Paleface, his guard and companion, sent by Morca to heel after Haldane, lay lost somewhere on the turning Pellardy Road behind him, unable to stand the pace. He had called to halt, to slack a little, but Haldane had not heeded. Why should he? Let Hemming explain to Morca why he could not keep up to a proper Gettish pace. If Morca would listen. Haldane could keep up.

  Once again, Haldane saw himself riding beside Morca, leading the Gets into the West. Being Gets as Gets should be, bleeding and being bled, trading blow for blow, squeezing the throat of the world in a hand. No, not at Morca’s elbow. Morca at the head of one army, he at the head of another—Morca’s reserve. Vaulting the Trenoth River into Palsance, overspreading the West.

  But this beautiful vision was spoiled by a thought. Suddenly looming in front of the progress of his armies was a plain. The boy had never seen the plain, but he knew it instantly. It was Stone Heath. Stone Heath lay in Palsance on the other side of the Trenoth River. Out of the stories of his childhood, he had conjured a picture of the place in his mind. It was an open landscape, a series of plains and cliffs, carelessly bestrewn with great rocks shaped like eggs and lit by wild and dangerous lightnings under black clouds. It was a deserted place of death and danger. And in Haldane’s mind the two armies, Morca’s and his, galloped headlong down onto the plain and disappeared into a sudden crevasse.

  Haldane’s gelding swerved at a bridle tug, but it served no purpose to dodge destiny. The army in his mind was gone and the plain stood empty under deathly skies. Haldane was abruptly sobered and drew rein. He looked to see if he were watched. If he had seen outlaws he would have killed them then. He would have cut them down for seeing him.

  He felt it was unmanly of his mind to return to the witch’s words and to dwell on them. Either he was a silly old man like Svein and Oliver, haunted by thoughts of woe and doom, or he was a Get, Morca’s son, Morca’s own man. To harry the West was not to meet a bloody end on Stone Heath. It need not be. Stone Heath could be ridden by. Cast the thought out, Haldane, and revel in your fortune.

  But in the moment before he dismissed his fear, Haldane had a premonition, a vision that he knew not whether to heed. He saw himself returning home to find Morca ready to lead the Gets again to Stone Heath. Haldane closed the thought determined that should the vision prove true—which he would doubt—he would warn Morca no, whatever Morca said.

  He halted his horse on the hill above the New Bridge, back on the Pellardy Road once more. At the ford just upstream from the pilings of the fallen bridge there were two Nestorians in gray smocks kneedeep in the chilly water. They bent and searched slowly in the water with their hands, but he thought they watched him, as he would have watched himself if he had been they. He sat taller in the saddle and looked back down the road for Hemming Paleface. Ear served better than eye on the tree-closed road, but there was no more sound than sight of the carl. So much for him.

  Haldane set his horse down the road slope and trotted past the bridge pilings standing bare-kneed. He remembered New Bridge on Rock Run when the bridge still existed. He and his mother had passed over it as they traveled the Pellardy Road on their visit to his grandfather in his dun on Little Nail. Of that journ
ey he remembered two things—the bridge and his steel grandfather, Arngrim. When they had left Little Nail, Arngrim gave him the horn that he still carried, though it was years before he could blow it.

  He had wondered that a bridge so old could be called new and had been told not to fret about things Nestorian. But that was all very long ago. It was before Oliver had appeared from the West, before his mother’s fall, and even before Morca’s hall was built with its second story and its balcony. It was long ago when Haldane was a child and nothing had yet happened.

  He reined his horse at the bank of the stream close by the wading men. He waited for respect. Haldane was armed and the Nestorians were not. He sat tall and dry on a handsome gelding while they paddled with the river bottom. He was a Get and they were cattle. For all these reasons he expected to be given attention.

  The peasants straightened and touched their foreheads with dripping muddy fingers. It was funny to Haldane. Their fingers left smears. One peasant was old. The other was younger and larger and stood in need of a shave come market day. Like many Nestorians, he had a dull and stupid face.

  Haldane was curious to know for what purpose they waded. “What are you doing?” he asked in Nestorian.

  “Gathering clams for our dinner, lord,” the old man said. He pointed to shells looking like damp shale on the riverbank.

  Would they really eat shells? These peasants ate many things like roots and mushrooms that a Get would know enough to kick aside as he walked.

  “Mussels, too,” the younger one said, grinning foolishly.

  Haldane shook his head. “How do you eat such stuff?”

  “In a broth with fish and vegetables,” the old man said. “It is a very good meal.”

  Haldane waved the answer away because it was not to the question he had asked. The plain folk misunderstood much that was said to them. Odo the Steward was a rare man. Most of his fellow natives understood only the plainest of Nestorian country speech, spoken slowly and clearly, often repeated, often rephrased.