Earth Magic

by Alexei Panshin

  In his dizzy moments, Haldane would look at these pieces on the ground and wonder what they did there and why he cried. And then he would remember what Oliver had told him and become lost again in tears.

  The bird was not disturbed by Haldane, but when Oliver returned from conning the country from secret, it flew away. The wizard too, was nothing like his usual grave and well-arranged self. He, like Haldane, was suffering from shock, confusion and fatigue, and the differently upsetting effect of his own failed spell.

  He was strange, this plump little fringe-bearded man who looked the fool, and could not help sometimes but act it, but whose tongue and wit had carried him through more difficult adventures than Black Morca. He was weak, but he dared. Sometimes he dared.

  He had done more last night than he had known he could. On their first invisible dash, he had led them to his cell rather than into the night. That was presence of mind. He had snatched up night cloaks and the dried beef he was wont to chew over while he worked at his book, and placed them in his old bag that he had brought with him from Palsance, keeping a hand on the boy all the while. Then he had broken the greased paper away and chivvied Haldane through the window. The spell had only taken them out of the dun. Then, suddenly, half down the hill, Oliver had been able to see Haldane again. Frightened every step, he had herded and harried the whorl-witted boy across the hills to the forest.

  Oliver’s magenta satinet bore a record of their desperate passage. It was a thin cold material, made for show and not for hard use. He regretted leaving his daily red robe hanging in his cell, but he had not dared the time to change.

  His best daring was not of the moment, but in long plans. He had been planning what to do. He had told Haldane to set his things out, and not been sure he would.

  He said, “Good. I see you have managed to empty your pockets.”

  Haldane said, “Why did I do it? It is all middle in my mind. I cannot remember. Where is Morca? Did I reach him?”

  Oliver licked his fingers. He had been eating a piece of dried beef while he spied variously from the edge of the copse. He was not sorry that Haldane could not remember everything.

  He said, “Do you remember the fighting?”

  Haldane slowly touched his wounded temple with a hand that held a daffodil with a crushed stem. “I remember fighting. That is the last I remember. Is Morca dead?”

  “Yes.” Oliver had told him that many times.

  “Who killed him?”

  Oliver had told him that too. “Ivor Fish-Eye.”

  “I will kill him. I’ll quarter him and hang him in the sun for crows to strip clean. I remember. I remember Aella and Heregar and Egil Two-Fist. I’ll kill them all. I’ll be like Wisolf the Cunning and live in the houses of my enemies before I kill them.”

  “You have said that. And you killed Heregar last night. Enough, Haldane, enough,” said the wizard in distress. “We must go now. Now.”

  “Is Morca really dead?” asked Haldane.

  “I could only save us two. Morca was dead by then and you were struck senseless. They will be hunting for us in force. It is we who will be quartered and hung in the sun if we don’t hie ourselves beyond their reach.”

  Haldane shook his head determinedly. He muttered the name Ivor Fish-Eye over and over under his breath as though he would prevent himself from forgetting. His headshaking made him sick and he closed his eyes and yawed. But he righted himself again and exchanged flower for sword. He was not called Haldane Hardhead for nothing. He stroked the sword with his hand.

  “I will stay here and kill them all,” he said. Then he began to sing these words, his Carl Song before battle.

  Oliver calmed him with some effort. Haldane was too lost to see the conflicts in his own words and he was beyond the reach of argument, but he could be led.

  So Oliver would lead him. He returned to his plan. He brought a small box and a book from out of his bag. He took his spectacles out of the box and put them on, ran his fingers through the winter forest of his hair, and began to thumb the loose pages of his gramarie.

  The two lost themselves in their own separate worlds. Haldane continued to play with his plans of revenge, remembering each of the stories of the Vengeance of Wisolf in far-off Shagetai that Svein had told him when he was small. He remembered them more clearly than the night just past. Oliver studied the book for some time, not wanting to begin his spell. Then he closed his book and put his spectacles away.

  Since it and he had failed each other, Oliver was afraid of his magic. His confidence was shaken. But his plan was to make a spell, one of stronger weave than Haldane’s, that would serve to save them. He closed his eyes before he started because his head was light. He tried to draw his courage together. They were a fine pair, both less than their usual selves. And Oliver knew he would be sick from the spell to come. If it worked. But disguise was their best hope of living.

  For their purpose, he complected a new spell out of old pieces, as a cook on the demand of occasion might invent something new out of old simplicities like cabbage and onions. It was only when the work was begun and the stew asimmer that Haldane forgot Wisolf and took notice of what Oliver did.

  He came to his feet, saying, “No!” and waving his arms. He made as though to seize Oliver’s hand to break the weave, but did not dare finally.

  He said, “I want no part of your magics. Stop!”

  He remembered neither Oliver’s spoiled spell nor his own success.

  “What use is your magic now? You should have plied it in Morca’s behalf when it mattered.”

  Oliver broke off the spell. “I told you. There was no time for great magic. If not for the spell that I did manage, you would not be alive at this moment. Now be quiet, or instead of the weal of my magic, you shall feel its weight. And be grateful!”

  Haldane managed silence, but not gratitude. His face was still too full of various hates, hurts, and confusions for it to show gratitude. But silence was sufficient for Oliver.

  With Haldane chastened, Oliver resumed his spell, speaking the words of power and signing sigils in the air with his hands. Chancing failure. Chancing sickness for success. Haldane watched, unaware of what was about to happen to him. If he had known what he would become, he would not have ceased protest.

  Of a sudden, Oliver and Haldane were different people. Oliver was still short, but no longer stout. He was an old ugly red-haired man, hairy-nostriled, and with a cast to one eye so that he seemed to see in two directions. In place of his robe, he wore a brown smock. He was no wizard now, and no Get, either.

  Haldane was still a boy, but seemed shorter and younger than himself, and less pretty. He too wore a smock. He too was no Get. He was nobody he would have liked to know. He was disguised as a stupid, slope-shouldered peasant boy, a Nestorian calf.

  He held his hands up and looked at them. Short and stubby fingers.

  “What have you done?” he cried. “What have you made me?”

  Oliver said calmly, “Until the spell runs its course, you wear the guise of a simple Nestorian. I will be Noll to those we meet. You will be my grandson—Giles, we will call you. Let us hope it keeps us alive until we are safe.”

  “A peasant!” Haldane shouted. “I will not be a peasant! The shame is too great.”

  He made to tear the smock off, but the illusion was beyond removal. Oliver seized the boy by the shoulder and shook him.

  “Listen, you must do as I say! Your Wisolf played an old woman when he had need, and no one thought shame. Use your wits if you are able!”

  “It was a Gettish woman that he played, and not some smock-wearing peasant. And when Wisolf departed his enemy’s tent, in his basket he carried away a head.”

  “Use your wits if you are able,” said Oliver again. “If you wish your revenge, you must stay alive to take it. There is no safety for us here in this country. We are hunted men. We must flee until Nestor is quiet. When we are safe across the Trenoth in Palsance, and friend and foe show themselves clearly, that
will be time enough to be a Get again. Now give me the things you have set aside and I will put them in my bag.”

  Haldane was confused. Just when he thought he had caught up to himself again, he was suddenly someone new. He did not entirely understand. He turned away from Oliver and sat with his sword and his string and his other treasures. But he did not deliver them to Oliver. He was no peasant named Giles. He picked up his horn and fondled it.

  “I may be sick from my wounds so that I cannot stand, but my brains are not addled,” he said. “What safety is there for me in the West? In Palsance they would kill me as quickly as here. I will stay here until they come along and then I will seek my vengeance.”

  “No, come with me,” said Oliver. “Be Wisolf, Haldane. Use your cunning. Sick and alone as you are, you will be dead if you stay. You can play the peasant in Palsance until the times have sorted themselves. Then you can take your vengeance. But men harry the country for us now. Let us be gone. Or will you leave me to cough and hobble my way to Palsance alone? The man who saved you so that you could have your vengeance?”

  Oliver coughed tentatively to show Haldane the sickness he soon would suffer, as Haldane suffered now and did not realize. There was phlegm enough for him to venture a greater cough, a hack that shook him near to falling.

  Haldane turned the horn in his hands. “What is there for Oliver in Palsance but the enemies he left behind?” he asked.

  What would Oliver find in Palsance? The question did give him pause to think.

  A sudden sun of revelation lit Haldane’s face. He put the horn to his lips and made as if to blow. Then he looked at the horn again and said, “My grandfather Arngrim is almost as close as Palsance. He will help me gain my vengeance.”

  Oliver said, still thinking, “Arngrim is farther than Palsance. I could not walk so far.”

  But Haldane was instantly set. “I will go south along the Pellardy Road to Little Nail and there I will blow my horn outside Arngrim’s dun until he opens his gate to me, his own daughter’s son. Then I will gather a new army and return to sweep the earth clean of . . .” He could not remember all the names.

  “Of Ivor and Romund and Egil.”

  “And every traitor baron.”

  Oliver said, “And what welcome would a wizard find with Arngrim?”

  “I owe you my life,” Haldane said. “I will be your warrant with Arngrim. If you are with me, he will accept you. No Get would turn his own away.”

  Oliver took out his clay pipe and filled it with yellow weed, his aid to magic and thought, his mediator. He put punk in his firepump and struck a light. It would be the last smoke he would enjoy while spell and sickness held him. His cough had been more than effect. He could feel his chest filling and tightening now. This last pipe helped serve to calm him.

  “You could play the peasant until the times have sorted themselves, Oliver,” Haldane said. “My grandfather will have a place for a cock-eyed tiller of the soil.”

  Oliver would have need of Haldane’s strength as his own ebbed. He did not like to think of walking to Palsance alone. He thought of the life he would find waiting in Palsance. That was a certainty he had avoided before. He thought of the uncertainty that was Arngrim. At last—as always, at last—he dared.

  He finished his pipe and set it down on his bag. He said, “It seems that my adventure in Nestor is not yet over. Let us make our way to your grandfather Arngrim.”

  Haldane came to his knees and gathered his poor possessions. He was much readier to move now. The boar’s tooth he placed around his neck where it was lost in the illusion. His knife that was Marthe’s, his string that was Rolf’s, and even his horn that was Arngrim’s, he gave to Oliver who put them away in his sack. Then Haldane made to take up his sword. His wits might be mending, but they were not yet mended.

  Oliver told him, “No.”

  “I cannot leave my sword behind,” Haldane said, holding it close. At the moment he was not man enough to wield it. “It is my sword. How can I fight if we are discovered? We need my sword.”

  Oliver said, “If you carry your sword, we surely will be discovered. Whoever heard of a peasant with a sword?”

  Oliver’s objection was unanswerable and his will was stronger on this, and he overrode Haldane. But he did not stop with that. He made Haldane bury the sword so that it might not be found and point their direction.

  Haldane dug a shallow grave with his sword blade there where the bushes were thickest, and laid the sword away with its hilt to the east, returning the good iron to the earth from which it had come, tucking the warrior in for his final rest. As Oliver watched, Haldane covered the sword over with dirt and mold and leaves, and then laid the lone daffodil with its crushed stem on the grave.

  Haldane said, “Rest, Morca. You will be avenged.” And then backed out of the bushes. There were tears again on his cheeks.

  It was now well along in the morning. They were being hunted, the son of Black Morca and Morca’s wizard. They were not safe. Safety would be Arngrim’s fort on high Little Nail, or better Palsance. And Haldane was dizzy-witted.

  Oliver grabbed up his bag and led Haldane away. He paused at the last protection of the copse. When he had spied the land he had seen nothing, but he had an unbearable presentiment of danger. He feared the Gets who lurked, waiting for them to step from cover to cut them down. But though he looked again, he still saw nothing, and because he must Oliver led the way from the thicket.

  They raised a deer with their first steps. It started up, thrashing to its feet, and bounded away.

  In time, Oliver’s heart mended.

  Chapter 9

  ALONG THE FOREST TRAILS THEY WALKED to find the Pellardy Road, first grandson Giles trudging, then old gnarled Noll with his bag. Their pace was slow. There was no spring in Giles’ stride, the poor wounded, spell-confused peasant boy Haldane. He still was not sure of himself. And his head ached.

  For all that the day was green and gold, Noll was content with the pace. He was stiff. He had spent too much of the night awake and then slept as badly as a sailor his first night on land. At his age he needed a good night’s rest. The bag he carried with all their lives within was a burden. He would cough frequently but could not clear his lungs.

  Haldane was still fuddled. Sometimes he would ask questions like, “I can’t remember who killed Hemming. Tell me again?” Other times he would turn and look at Oliver as though he didn’t believe in him and expected the stranger behind him to have disappeared. But it was Haldane who led the way, now they had found a trail to follow.

  In the blind dash through the morning night to the forest and panting concealment, Oliver had taken them farther than he could recognize the land. It was as strange to him as any place three leas from his native hearth in Palsance. Since he was a boy he had always been best occupied indoors. He knew this country from what other men had let drop of it, and from an old map he had that showed all the duchies of Nestor before the Gets took the land. He knew the map well. It had brought him at the first from Palsance to Morca’s dun in the old duchy of Bary.

  So, when they set out, Oliver took the map from his bag and studied it. It told him only that they were in the forest. Haldane was a silent mind-spun boy and asked no questions, but Oliver was embarrassed for the map. It showed the road, but not how to reach it. By his map, but more by guess, Oliver led them until they reached a trail.

  Then Oliver found he could let Haldane lead the way. Haldane had hunted all over this land since he was small and he did not need his head to be a guide. His feet knew all the trails.

  It was a quiet morning with many rests. Oliver called a halt whenever he thought Haldane needed one. Haldane continued distracted. He looked often at his hands and smock and shook his head. He asked questions for his vengeance too, but Oliver did not encourage the boy with the answers he gave him. Oliver was usually a ready talker, but today he thought much on the Chaining of Wild Lightning and was a silent gnarly red-man.

  They reached the Pe
llardy Road near midday. They ate more dried beef as they walked. It was all they had.

  There were many rests in the afternoon too. Oliver called a halt now whenever he thought Oliver needed one. His chest tightened and the bag weighed heavily, a fat stone on his back as great as the stone on his mind. His price for being a red peasant.

  In the afternoon, Haldane began to throw off the effects of his spell, the Pall of Darkness, or so it seemed. He was still fey, but more coherent. He continued to peer at Oliver as though to spy him out beneath his strange skin, but he needed to ask less often who killed Hemming or Ludbert or Rolf, and remembered the answers better. He remembered Ivor Fish-Eye without further reminder. He spoke sometimes with great glee about reaching Arngrim and raising an army. He was often silly.

  He began to inquire at his smock with his hands. At last he asked Oliver, “Do I still wear my clothes? When I forget myself in walking, I can feel my belt. But when I reach for it, it isn’t there. And sometimes I feel the wind touch me through the tears in my clothes.”

  Haldane was still following his feet. Oliver, for his part, followed his map and looked about him for what the map told him he could expect to see. Wizards are fools for illusion. That is why they become wizards. Oliver followed maps and believed in them, and he could almost forget that Giles was not a Nestorian peasant boy.

  Oliver said, “You still wear your belt and your old clothes. But men’s eyes are led to see what they expect to see. When they look at us, they will expect Nestorians and see them. The reality is unchanged and the wind is not fooled.”

  “Then why can’t I touch my belt? I know I can really expect it. Can’t I?” Haldane added unwittingly to the illusion he wore by acting the young boy.

  To silence Haldane and occupy him, Oliver said, “You can do it, but only if you clear your mind of all thoughts of yourself. When you cease to think of your belt, your hands will be able to touch it.”

  It was a game that Haldane could not but lose. He played it visibly as they walked along the Pellardy Road through the forest. His hands could not fool his mind. They would try to touch before he could think, and they never could. It made him angry and he gave up in disgust. But natural habit won him what concentration could not and sometime later he found himself for the briefest moment with his thumbs hooked in his belt.