Earth Magic

by Alexei Panshin

  That was when Ivor burst upon them.

  Throughout the meal, Ivor had played them with his eye, enjoying his power. He had talked of the art of tracking with pigs, of which he was evident master. Arngrim had not interrupted him, but let him speak. Haldane and Oliver had made no comment.

  Ivor talked of great hunting boars that killed redly.

  Ivor talked of pigs set to hunt their masters.

  Ivor talked of hunting.

  Ivor talked of the minds and tricks of those who trailed and those who were trailed.

  Ivor talked of his great ability to kill.

  Then Haldane looked from the door closing behind the woman who had served them, and said to Ivor, “But I do not recall that you killed the wurox for which you hunted so long. Perhaps the quarry must be large enough for you to see.”

  “The wurox does not exist,” said Ivor. “That I may tell you. It is but a peasant jest. If it had existed, your father would have eaten it for his last meal.”

  “You have overstepped yourself,” said Arngrim.

  “Your pardon, Lord Arngrim. I was in error. I will talk of hunting.”

  “Some other subject yet, Baron.”

  “I am confused,” said Ivor, and hid behind his eye. When he came out, he said, “Let us talk of the meal. This is very good. Do you smoke your own meat, my lord?”

  “Yes.”

  “When my friend Romund arrives, I’ll have a small pig for your butcher. I’ll return in the fall for a taste of the bacon.”

  And he smiled as though he had, at great risk and daring, won through to a prize. Ivor was a triumphant man.

  As Ivor entered that brown room where they were with its well-carved furniture stolen before Arngrim was born, Haldane was swearing to lend his strength to Oliver. Ivor had his sword drawn.

  Ivor paused but a brief moment to let them know who he was and why he had come. Then he proposed to kill them swiftly. He crossed the small dais.

  Haldane did what he had never done before. He struck a new blow, made of nothing he had ever learned, filled with power, while Ivor was stumbling over Oliver’s bag. The bag was suddenly there as Ivor stepped on a stair. And Haldane as suddenly struck Ivor a blow much crueler than that which Haldane had had from Arngrim. The sword clattered on stone. Ivor went wandering in night realms.

  Oliver could only look on in surprise at this swift passage. Violence had always held the potential of surprise for him.

  Haldane turned with the sword recovered in his hand and saw Ivor helpless.

  “He would not have killed you,” said Arngrim from the doorway, “for you are my daughter’s son, and I would not have let him. But neither will I let you kill him, for you are the son of Black Morca and good men have seen him rightly dead, as I have report. I will not let you be killed here, but I will not let you stay here. Therefore, you must be gone. And with you, this foul wizard of Morca’s. If Morca had not bargained for advantage with witches in the forest and given refuge to this man, then he might still be alive at this moment. I would have let my voice be heard. But I do not like magic. And you, my daughter’s son, smell of magic. You are like your father. You are not Gettish.”

  Arngrim stood waiting, sword in hand. Haldane did not look up at him, but rather at Ivor.

  He said, “I must kill this man.”

  Arngrim said, “Bind him. He will not be found immediately. I’ve seen that your bellies are full. I will see you out the gate of the dun and three hours on your road. You must run for your lives.”

  So Haldane bound Ivor. He used the cord that he had from Rolf on the night of his betrothal. It occurred to Haldane to wonder how Princess Marthe fared in this universe where everything was new. He used the rawhide thong from his horn to bind Ivor’s knees together. He gagged Ivor’s mouth with a dried fish from the breakfast table that he had brought away to chew on.

  “Leave the sword,” said Arngrim. “You must rely on your magic, since you stand to die for it.”

  “I will leave the sword and I will rely on my magic,” said Haldane. He stood before Arngrim who was still two steps above him on the dais. “I am not a Get, as you say. But you are my grandfather and I would lay eyes on you again. Take this from my hands.”

  He held out the horn which Arngrim had given him so long ago when his mother was alive and they had come here to Little Nail. At the sight, Arngrim looked downward at his feet.

  “Your rebuke is sharp,” he said. “I do what I must, not always what I would like.”

  “It is no rebuke,” Haldane said, and laughed strangely. “Or take it as a rebuke if you want, Grandfather.”

  He was not the same person anymore. He was not like Arngrim. He could do what he liked. He did not know what that was exactly. He did what he did and said what he said, and surprised himself.

  Haldane said, “But no, I say, take this horn from my hands and keep it close until I return here. Someday, perhaps, when you have forgotten me, I will pay you a visit.”

  Arngrim could only think Haldane’s words to be boyish bravado, spoken by one who did not fully appreciate his situation. The old man shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, as though his life was drowned in the bitter tide of iron fate, and he was resigned. He took back the horn he had once given to his only grandson, the last of his line, whom he had condemned to die.

  “Do you know the sound of this horn?” he asked. “Do you know its voice?”

  “Yes,” Haldane said. “I do know the sound of that horn.”

  Arngrim said, “When your chief hunter is unbound, he will blow his hunting calls on this horn. I will place it in his hands. And when you are dead, I will see that this horn is buried with you.”

  Arngrim’s world and Haldane’s world might once have been the same, but they were the same no longer. Haldane heard Arngrim speak and did not lose his strange new certainty. He answered the old man in plain words, straightly spoken.

  “That would be honor if I were still a Get,” said Haldane. “But I am not a Get now. When I am gone away and your huntsman returns your horn to you, keep it close until I come again. I will see you by and by.”

  How strange and foolish of Haldane not to know that he was dead! Arngrim would not feed this folly further.

  “I will escort you to the gate,” said Arngrim.

  “There is no need,” said Haldane. “We will find our own exits with our magic power.”

  “No magic here!” Arngrim said. “I will not allow it.”

  But Haldane made signal to Oliver to draw the Pall of Darkness over them. That was not a necessary act, since Arngrim would have seen them out, but Haldane wanted to demonstrate his otherness to his grandfather.

  And Oliver obeyed him. It may have been because Haldane had sworn to lead him to Palsance. Perhaps it was because he had been unsettled by the sudden violence and wanted to match its surprise and power with surprise and power of his own. But Oliver did obey.

  He cast his spell. Haldane and Oliver became invisible before Arngrim and stole out of the dun on Little Nail unseen.

  The trail down from Little Nail to the Pellardy Road was tortuous and difficult. Before they reached the bottom of the hill, they encountered a man on horseback riding up.

  Mortal eyes might not see them, so Haldane and Oliver did not hide. They but stood to the side to let the rider pass.

  He was one they recognized. His name was Coughing Romund and he was a baron who had not liked Morca, for he was chief among the Farthing and could not like he who was chief among the Deldring. His face was narrow and he had cheekbones sharp as axes. A gaunt man, but his lean limbs were powerful. He wore shellacked leather armor.

  His horse climbed at a steady pace. As it climbed, Romund coughed insistently.

  Before Romund on the saddle was a black pig. Haldane knew it. It was Slut, that he used to hunt with. As the rider passed, the little black pig raised its nose and sniffed the air urgently. Then it squealed and wriggled to be free.

  Romund held it in place, but to do
that he must pull his horse to a halt. Haldane and Oliver ran down the trail, for they knew that the pig smelled their presence.

  At first bend, Haldane turned to cast a last look behind.

  He slipped then, and landed on his behind. But he looked back to see Romund setting the pig down. It squealed and looked about uncertainly, and then Haldane was down the trail in a new surprise of rock. And Slut was left somewhere behind them.

  Chapter 17

  THEY DID NOT HEAR THE HORN THAT DAY.

  They ran along the Pellardy Road until the Pall of Darkness failed. Then they were themselves.

  Oliver was an old wizard, sadly out of breath. He carried his sack. Things from it had been left behind and the sack was lighter than it had been at other times. Oliver wore magenta satinet and could be seen at a distance. He felt himself conspicuous.

  Haldane had only his bridegroom clothes, which had once been new and fine Gettish clothes, but were not new anymore. He had no weapons. His pockets were empty. All that he had which was especially his was a boar’s tooth with Deldring markings that Morca had encouraged him to wear to remember the boar, and Deldring, and other things.

  “We cannot stay here on the road,” said Oliver. “We will be seen. But if we hide, they will find us. They will put that little pig on our trail. You heard what Ivor said of trails and hunts. What are we to do?”

  Haldane said, “We will go inside the country. We will not follow the roads, but we will go by other ways.”

  “What other ways?” asked Oliver.

  “The ways in the country.”

  “I do not know what you mean.”

  “There,” said Haldane, and pointed to nothing in the land. “Don’t you see the path?”

  “No,” said Oliver. “But we cannot stay here on the road. If you see a path, lead us on it.”

  Haldane led the way. They left the road, brushed through brown grass and then were on a way that Haldane could see and Oliver could not. Oliver followed where Haldane walked, and he did not suffer as much as he had anticipated from his spell compounded, his Pall of Darkness.

  There were some signs by which Oliver could see that a way did exist. At times they walked in forest galleries, places that only now seemed made. Sometimes they walked in lanes between fields. Three times they passed by standing stones like that in the camp of Duke Girard. Once they came to a ring of stones.

  But Oliver did not know how the way was found. He could not see how Haldane knew when to walk here and when to walk there, nor how he found the confidence that the way would be here when he walked here and there when he walked there.

  They stopped to rest at the ring of stones.

  “I wonder if three hours have passed?” said Oliver. “No matter. There are Gets all over this countryside, everywhere between here and the Trenoth. So Mainard, the friend of Duke Girard, said. We are in grave straits.”

  Oliver coughed, a dry cough. He forced it again.

  “Did you see that I forbore to cough when Romund coughed? Not even a clearing of my throat. I think that was well done. If we had not been invisible, we might have met Coughing Romund and been killed.”

  But after a minute, Haldane said, “If we had not been invisible, we might not have met Coughing Romund.”

  A bird sang intensely nearby. The sun was pleasantly warm on them.

  “Everything is always so new!” Haldane said, marveling. “Do you sense what it is like . . . now.” He pounced on the moment and missed, and smiled at the fun in his folly.

  Then Haldane said, “What was that that I said?”

  “I don’t know,” said Oliver. “What did you say?”

  “It seems to me now that it was important,” said Haldane.

  Oliver felt obliged to say something important then. “I will tell you this,” he said. “We may be better off going this way than by the roads, but unless we change these clothes we wear, we will not be safe. If anyone sees us, we will have no chance to lie about ourselves.”

  “No. That was not the important thing I thought I said.”

  Soon Haldane led the way again. The country spoke to him and he listened to it. The way was open to him.

  It was as though it was this way:

  Once upon a time, men had taken a large landscape and remade it into a mirror.

  Or, once men had made the western world into an engine, aligning the land so that power was gathered and loosed.

  Or, once men had taken mountains and moved them, had put land in place and taken it away, so that a country that in a later day would make an empire was but a map of a greater world, copied in miniature. Alterations so immense that the play of children might destroy villages and let bridges tumble but never disturb the great meaningful permanence.

  The land of Nestor—and who knew how much more?—was a pattern, a written book. It was a fabrication beyond the mind of a Get to admit possible, even to notice.

  Haldane did not know the meaning of the writing. But he knew that it existed and he could follow it with his feet. Inside the land. Not the roads and the places where men now gathered.

  He laughed. He said, “Children. It’s all so large. I hadn’t thought it would be so large.”

  But he could not explain what he sensed to Oliver. It was as sealed as the spell he had once known and could not now utter. He didn’t know the words. He could only lead the way across the countryside by routes that were not the routes of Gets or peasants or outlaws.

  For instance, he said, “Was Little Nail made? Were all the hills made?” And Oliver could only shrug, gesture, and cough. There were no answers in Oliver.

  But Haldane did not doubt that he could now see madeness everywhere in the land. He could see his way markers and the path was not hard.

  Haldane led the way by paths along water, through marks in distant vantages, in forest cathedrals. The day was timeless and golden. They met no one. They saw wildlife, and groups of birds flew overhead. Twice they heard voices calling or crying, but they saw no one and hurried on. They were in a country unknown to any but them. To Haldane it was constant surprise, the constant revelation of existence.

  Oliver said, “They will have put your small pig on our trail. They must now be after us.”

  “Can you keep the pace?” asked Haldane.

  “ . . . Yes,” Oliver said in wonder. “I know not the source of my strength, but I can keep this pace. I do not yet feel the full weight of the Pall of Darkness.”

  And in the course of the day, these two walked farther together than they ever had any other day. It was a fine day for walking. Everything was large and old and part of itself here where they walked and neither Haldane, nor Oliver for all his travels, had been inside the country before. They had lived on high made places, and ridden in long made places, and swum in soft made places, and eaten their picnics in the shade of hard made places—but they had not been inside the country before.

  Oliver followed Haldane blindly. His feet stepped where Haldane’s feet stepped, and found a safe and easy way. But Oliver felt conspicuous. He was sure that he could be seen. His magenta satinet was an unnatural display in this wilderness they walked, and would surely be perceived.

  He fretted. He had worn red wool in Morca’s dun, and on great occasions magenta, but when he had fled from Palsance to find Morca, he had worn gray so that he might not call attention to himself.

  Haldane was calmer, striding along as though he were still invisible, stepping with the unconscious sure foot of a sleepwalker. Almost as though bound in a trance. As though he led them safely and surely by constant concentration that withheld the outside world.

  They stopped at dusk. In late evenglow they shared a dried fish like the one that Haldane had left for Ivor to chew on.

  Haldane’s state of mind changed then. He began to think and even to remember a little that he had forgotten. As he did, without his quite noticing, some of his inner sense of certainty slipped away from him.

  “There is something that we need to do,” sa
id Oliver.

  “What is that?”

  “We must disguise ourselves. I cannot chance another spell. We must buy, take, or make simple clothes for ourselves. We must be Nestorians without the aid of spells. We must lie and pass for peasants.”

  Haldane shook his head. “I don’t like it. I don’t think we should turn aside but make straight away for Palsance.”

  Oliver said, “Do you remember the manner of our arrival at Arngrim’s dun?”

  “Yes,” said Haldane. It was not something that he would forget lightly. Though he did not quite remember how Oliver had arrived.

  “As we labored the slope in the last of night, we were passed on the trail by a greasy Nestorian abroad on some bad business or other. He saw in us two like himself and gave us the go by.”

  “Yes,” said Haldane, though he did not remember things quite this way.

  “If we had been dressed then as we are now, he would not have. Nay, he would have killed us, or sold us. Dressed as we are, we must be victims to anyone we meet. Dressed as we are, how can we win through to Palsance? And when we do arrive in Palsance, how can we appear thus? We must surely pass for peasants then.”

  “All right,” said Haldane. “If we see a place along our way where we may disguise ourselves, we will stop.”

  “Good,” said Oliver. “Before we halted for the night, I saw smoke rising against the late green of the southern sky like ink in water. Let us pass that way when we rise.”

  “I don’t think the way we follow leads south,” Haldane said.

  “It is not far. It is but over the next hill or so. It will not take us long. We will go to that place in the morning and steal clothes to disguise ourselves. Then we can pass on to Palsance.”

  “I would rather press on directly,” said Haldane. “I don’t want to stop. I don’t want to turn.”

  Oliver said, “If there is one thing I know, it is that haste ends many men’s lives. I have seen it to happen. We will rest easier and travel faster when we have assurance that we will not be recognized from afar by anyone who spies us. We have no weapons. We have no power. We must make the best of our chances.”