by Larry Niven
As we moved, he asked me, “Were you aware that at each Starfall ceremony for the past ten or twelve years the mana content of the Starwind has been a bit higher?”
“It was ten or twelve years ago that I stopped attending them,” I answered. “I recall that it was very high that year. Since then, when I’ve thought to check at the proper time, it has seemed high, yes.”
“The general feeling is that the increase will continue. We seem to be entering a new area of space, richer in the stuff.”
“That’s great,” I said, coming into the corridor again. “But what’s that got to do with your wanting me out of the way, with your kidnapping Lamia and turning her to coal, with your sicking Werewolf on me?”
“Everything,” he said, conducting me down a slanting shaft where the mana diminished with every step. “Even before that, those of us who had been doing careful studies had found indications that the background level of mana is rising.”
“So you decided to kill me?”
He led me to a jagged opening in the wall and indicated that I should enter there. I had no choice. My body obeyed him. The light remained outside with him.
“Yes,” he said then, motioning me to the rear of the place. “Years ago it would not have mattered—everyone entitled to any sort of opinion they felt like holding. But now it does. The magic is beginning to return, you fool. I am going to be around long enough to see it happen, to take advantage of it. I could have put up with your democratic sentiments when such a thing seemed only a daydream—”
And then I remembered our argument, on the same matter Elaine had brought up during our ride down the coast.
“—but knowing what I knew and seeing how strongly you felt, I saw you as one who would oppose our inevitable leadership in that new world. Werewolf was another. That is why I set it up for him to destroy you, to be destroyed in return by myself.”
“Do all of the others feel as you do?” I asked.
“No, only a few—just as there were only a few like you. Cowboy and the Wolf. The rest will follow whoever takes the lead, as people always do.”
“Who are the others?”
He snorted.
“None of your business now,” he said.
He began a familiar gesture and muttered something. I felt free of whatever compulsion he had laid upon me, and I lunged forward. The entrance had not changed its appearance, but I slammed up against something—as if the way were blocked by an invisible door.
“I’ll see you at the party,” he said, inches away, beyond my reach. “In the meantime, try to get some rest.”
I felt my consciousness ebbing. I managed to lean and cover my face with my arms before I lost all control. I do not remember hitting the floor.
How long I lay entranced I do not know. Long enough for some of the others to respond to an invitation, it would seem. Whatever reason he gave them for a party, it was sufficient to bring Knight, Druid, Amazon, Priest, Siren and Snowman to a large hall somewhere beneath the Cornish hills. I became aware of this by suddenly returning to full consciousness at the end of a long, black corridor without pictures. I pushed myself into a seated position, rubbed my eyes and squinted, trying to penetrate my cell’s gloom. Moments later, this was taken care of for me. So I knew that my awakening and the happening that followed were of one piece.
The lighting problem was taken care of for me by the wall’s beginning to glow, turning glassy, then becoming a full-color 3-D screen, complete with stereo. That’s where I saw Knight, Druid, Amazon, etc. That’s how I knew it was a party: There were food and a sound track, arrivals and departures. Gnome passed through it all, putting his clammy hands on everybody, twisting his face into a smile and being a perfect host.
Mana, mana, mana. Weapon, weapon, weapon. Nothing. Shit.
I watched for a long while, waiting. There had to be a reason for his bringing me around and showing me what was going on. I searched all of those familiar faces, overheard snatches of conversation, watched their movements. Nothing special. Why then was I awake and witnessing this. It had to be Gnome’s doing, yet…
When I saw Gnome glance toward the high archway of the hall’s major entrance for the third time in as many minutes, I realized that he, too, was waiting.
I searched my cell. Predictably, I found nothing of any benefit to me. While I was looking, though, I heard the noise level rise and I turned back to the images on the wall.
Magics were in progress. The hall must have been mana-rich. My colleagues were indulging themselves in some beautiful spellwork—flowers and faces and colors and vast, exotic, shifting vistas filled the screen now—just as such things must have run in ancient times. Ah! One drop! One drop of mana and I’d be out of here! To run and return? Or to seek immediate retaliation? I could not tell. If there were only some way I could draw it from the vision itself…
But Gnome had wrought too well. I could find no weak spot in the working before me. I stopped looking after a few moments, for another reason as well. Gnome was announcing the arrival of another guest.
The sound died and the picture faded at that point. The corridor beyond my cell seemed to grow slightly brighter. I moved toward it. This time my way was not barred, and I continued out into the lighter area. What had happened? Had some obscure force somehow broken Gnome’s finely wrought spells?
At any rate, I felt normal now and I would be a fool to remain where he had left me. It occurred to me that this could be part of some higher trap or torture, but still—I had several choices now, which is always an improvement.
I decided to start back in the direction from which we had come earlier, rather than risk blundering into that gathering. Even if there was a lot of mana about there. Better to work my way back, I decided, tie up any mana I could find along the way in the form of protective spells and get the hell out.
I had proceeded perhaps twenty paces while formulating this resolution. Then the tunnel went through an odd twisting that I couldn’t recall. I was still positive we had come this way, though, so I followed it. It grew a bit brighter as I moved along, too, but that seemed all for the better. It allowed me to hurry.
Suddenly, there was a sharp turning that I did not remember at all. I took it and I ran into a screen of pulsing white light, and then I couldn’t stop. I was propelled forward, as if squeezed from behind. There was no way that I could halt. I was temporarily blinded by the light. There came a roaring in my ears.
And then it was past, and I was standing in the great hall where the party was being held, having emerged from some side entrance, in time to hear Gnome say, “…And the surprise guest is our long-lost brother Phoenix!”
I stepped backward, to retreat into the tunnel from which I had emerged, and I encountered something hard. Turning, I beheld only a blank wall of rock.
“Don’t be shy. Phoenix. Come and say hello to your friends,” Gnome was saying.
There was a curious babble, but above it from across the way came an animallike snarl and I beheld my old buddy Werewolf, lean and swarthy, eyes blazing, doubtless the guest who was just arriving when the picture had faded.
I felt panic. I also felt mana. But what could I work in only a few seconds’ time?
My eyes were pulled by the strange movement in a birdcage on the table beside which Werewolf stood. The others’ attitudes showed that many of them had just turned from regarding it.
It registered in an instant.
Within the cage, a nude female figure no more than a hand high was dancing. I recognized it as a spell of torment: The dancer could not stop. The dancing would continue until death, after which the body would still jerk about for some time.
And even from that distance I could recognize the small creature as Elaine.
The dancing part of the spell was simple. So was its undoing. Three words and a gesture. I managed them. By then Werewolf was moving toward me. He was not bothering with a shapeshift to his more fearsome form. I sidestepped as fast as I could and sought for a hold
involving his arm and shoulder. He shook it off. He always was stronger and faster than me.
He turned and threw a punch, and I managed to duck and counterpunch to his midsection. He grunted and hit me on the jaw with a weak left. I was already backing away by then. I stopped and tried a kick and he batted it aside, sending me spinning to the floor. I could feel the mana all about me, but there was no time to use it.
“I just learned the story,” I said, “and I had nothing to do with Lamia—”
He threw himself upon me. I managed to catch him in the stomach with my knee as he came down.
“Gnome took her…” I got out, getting in two kidney punches before his hands found my throat and began to tighten. “She’s coal—”
I caught him once, high on the cheek, before he got his head down.
“Gnome—damn it!” I gurgled.
“It’s a lie!” I heard Gnome respond from somewhere nearby, not missing a thing.
The room began to swim about me. The voices became a roaring, as of the ocean. Then a peculiar thing happened to my vision as well: Werewolf’s head appeared to be haloed by a coarse mesh. Then it dropped forward, and I realized that his grip had relaxed.
I tore his hands from my throat and struck him once, on the jaw. He rolled away. I tried to also, in the other direction, but settled for struggling into a seated, then a kneeling, then a crouched, position.
I beheld Gnome, raising his hands in my direction, beginning an all-too-familiar and lethal spell. I beheld Werewolf, slowly removing a smashed birdcage from his head and beginning to rise again. I beheld the nude, full-size form of Elaine rushing toward us, her face twisted…
The problem of what to do next was settled by Werewolf’s lunge.
It was a glancing blow to the midsection because I was turning when it connected. A dark form came out of my shirt, hovered a moment and dropped floorward: It was the small bottle of djinn Dervish had given me.
Then, just before Werewolf’s fist exploded in my face, I saw something slim and white floating toward the back of his neck. I had forgotten that Elaine was second kyu in Kyokushinkai—
Werewolf and I both hit the floor at about the same time, I’d guess.
…Black to gray to full-color; bumblebee hum to shrieks. I could not have been out for too long. During that time, however, considerable change had occurred.
For one, Elaine was slapping my face.
“Dave! Wake up!” she was saying. “You’ve got to stop it!”
“What?” I managed.
“That thing from the bottle!”
I propped myself on an elbow—jaw aching, side splitting—and I stared.
There were smears of blood on the nearest wall and table. The party had broken into knots of people, all of whom appeared to be in retreat in various stages of fear or anger. Some were working spells; some were simply fleeing. Amazon had drawn a blade and was holding it before her while gnawing her lower lip. Priest stood at her side, muttering a death spell, which I knew was not going to prove effective. Gnome’s head was on the floor near the large archway, eyes open and unblinking. Peals of thunderlike laughter rang through the hall.
Standing before Amazon and Priest was a naked male figure almost ten feet in height, wisps of smoke rising from its dark skin, blood upon its upraised right fist.
“Do something!” Elaine said.
I levered myself a little higher and spoke the words Dervish had taught me, to put the djinn under my control. The fist halted, slowly came unclenched. The great bald head turned toward me, the dark eyes met my own.
“Master…?” it said softly.
I spoke the next words, of acknowledgment. Then I climbed to my feet and stood, wavering.
“Back into the bottle now—my command.”
Those eyes left my own, their gaze shifting to the floor.
“The bottle is shattered, master,” it said.
“So it is. Very well…”
I moved to the bar. I found a bottle of Cutty Sark with just a little left in the bottom. I drank it.
“Use this one, then,” I said, and I added the words of compulsion.
“As you command,” it replied, beginning to dissolve.
I watched the djinn flow into the Scotch bottle and then I corked it.
I turned to face my old colleagues.
“Sorry for the interruption,” I said. “Go ahead with your party.”
I turned again.
“Elaine,” I said. “You okay?”
She smiled.
“Call me Dancer,” she said. “I’m your new apprentice.”
“A sorcerer needs a feeling for mana and a natural sensitivity to the way spells function,” I said.
“How the hell do you think I got my size back?” she asked. “I felt the power in this place, and once you turned off the dancing spell I was able to figure how to—”
“I’ll be damned,” I said. “I should have guessed your aptitude back at the cottage, when you grabbed that bone flute.”
“See, you need an apprentice to keep you on your toes.”
Werewolf moaned, began to stir. Priest and Amazon and Druid approached us. The party did not seem to be resuming. I touched my finger to my lips in Elaine’s direction.
“Give me a hand with Werewolf,” I said to Amazon. “He’s going to need some restraining until I can tell him a few things.”
The next time we splashed through the Perseids we sat on a hilltop in northern New Mexico, my apprentice and I, regarding the crisp, postmidnight sky and the occasional bright cloud-chamber effect within it. Most of the others were below us in a cleared area, the ceremonies concluded now. Werewolf was still beneath the Cornish hills, working with Druid, who recalled something of the ancient flesh-to-coal spell. Another month or so, he’d said, in the message he’d sent.
“‘Flash of uncertainty in sky of precision,’” she said.
“What?”
“I’m composing a poem.”
“Oh.” Then, after a time, I added, “What about?”
“On the occasion of my first Starfall,” she replied, “with the mana gain apparently headed for another record.”
“There’s good and there’s bad in that.”
“…And the magic is returning and I’m learning the Art.”
“Learn faster,” I said.
“…And you and Werewolf are friends again.”
“There’s that.”
“…You and the whole group, actually.”
“No.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, think about it. There are others. We just don’t know which of them were in Gnome’s corner. They won’t want the rest of us around when the magic comes back. Newer, nastier spells—ones it would be hard to imagine now—will become possible when the power rises. We must be ready. This blessing is a very mixed thing. Look at them down there—the ones we were singing with—and see whether you can guess which of them will one day try to kill you. There will be a struggle, and the winners can make the outcome stick for a long time.”
She was silent for a while.
“That’s about the size of it,” I added.
Then she raised her arm and pointed to where a line of fire was traced across the sky. “There’s one!” she said. “And another! And another!”
Later, “We can count on Werewolf now,” she suggested, “and maybe Lamia, if they can bring her back. Druid, too, I’d guess.”
“And Cowboy.”
“Dervish?”
“Yeah, I’d say. Dervish.”
“…And I’ll be ready.”
“Good. We might manage a happy ending at that.”
We put our arms about each other and watched the fire fall from the sky.
m.Net
