Earth Magic (15 page)
Authors: Alexei Panshin,Cory Panshin
Tags: #Fiction, #Fantasy, #Epic, #Science Fiction, #General
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
T
HEY 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,” said 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.”
“No,” said Haldane.
“You said you would give me aid. You swore to see me safe to Palsance,” said Oliver. He coughed awfully to show Haldane’s responsibility for him. “Does your oath mean nothing? Give me the aid you promised.”
In that late evening mood that had seized him, Haldane was still Haldane enough to be vulnerable to this questioning of his oath.
“All right,” he said. “Enough. I will aid you. We will steal simple clothes in the morning, if we can. Now let us sleep.”
He lay back in the nest of cool grass he had made for himself.
Sometime later, Haldane said, “What was that?”
Oliver stirred. “What?”
“Just as the gloom finally darkened, I thought I heard a horn sound.”
Oliver said, “I did not hear it.”
Chapter 18
W
HEN THEY AWOKE IN THE MORNING,
the day was uncertain, neither one thing nor another. The skies were thin and gray. The trees around them huddled close.
Oliver said, “We must go over this intervening hill. I think we will see the source of smoke then.”
They left the path and struck out overland against the grain of the country. The climbing was not difficult, but it was a constant strain. They must lean, or they must bend, or they must clamber. Oliver was feeling wearied before they reached the top of the hill, and his cough was more fluid and less forced, but not less severe.
At the crest of the hill, they stopped. There was a higher crest, hidden from below, still looming above them. And they could see where they had started down on the path.
“Let us climb on,” said Oliver.
“When you have caught your breath.”
“Let us not wait that long.”
This hill was more steep. To climb it took thought and time. When they reached the top of this hill, there was brush and they must push through it.
When they came into the clear, they could see that though the day had worn on, it was not different. It played at smiling and frowning, Jan, the sun, peeping through distantly. There was no source of smoke, no house or cabin.
“Oh, I think I see,” said Oliver. “From the direction we came last night, the place we seek would be beyond this lower hill before us, not here. We must go on.”
But his cough was much graver. He shook off Haldane’s hand and strode down the hillside. “You see. The slope is easier here.”
In time they came beyond the farther lower hill. As they looked over into a little glen, Jan shone brightly so that all was clear in the narrow valley. And they saw there a small house in the woods, a Nestorian house something like the one where they had eaten clams. It stood alone in the silent morning, caught in the spear of the sun.
They were not in sunlight where they watched.
Oliver suddenly sat down. “You must go,” he said. “I now feel very ill. I will wait here for you.”
“What if I do not find what I seek? What do I say to gain aid? What do I use for payment?”
“Approach the house naked. Approach silently. See what opportunities there are to steal clothes. If you are seen, ask them to clothe you, because you are naked.”
“I will do it,” said Haldane.
Haldane stripped his clothes off his back. He took off his boots so that he was barefoot. All that he wore was his boar’s tooth.
Then he set off to find the hut they had seen. His bare feet were cold and he had to watch carefully where he stepped. He made his way cautiously so as to approach the little house unseen and unheard. With so much care, he spent a long time reaching a place from which he could see all.
He looked up at the hillside, which was now in sun, then not. He could not see Oliver hid there.
There was no sun here in the little valley. The day was drear again.
The house sat silent, the throw of a stone distant. It was a square little house. Its roof was shake instead of thatch. It had windows of glass like eyes, and it seemed to brood and watch Haldane as he crouched.
Behind the house, a frayed rope was stretched between two trees. Thrown over the line, as though forgot, were two gray smocks.
Haldane had not thought to hope for such a thing. His heart was seized at the sight of the two smocks drying in the wind.
He cast a look at the house, but he could see nobody. He crawled on hands and knees over the cold spring ground. He sheltered by the chimney of the little house and then he ran to the line and took the smocks. In a brief fit of nonsense, he matched the smocks and took the longer and put it on. It fit as well as most smocks on most peasants. But it was clean, and in the undecided weather of a late morning he stood and smelled the freshness of the cloth while his hair was teased by the ruffling hand of the wind.
He could not stand not to know, so he ran with the other smock trailing behind him from his hand and looked through the window of the house. He could see no one inside.
Haldane rubbed at the window and looked to see better. The house was empty. But Haldane could tell by the angle of the light that came through the farther windows and made a sharp splash on the floor that it was summer within the house. The light he saw said that it was very hot and that the house was a pleasant refuge from the sun. Haldane saw dust motes swimming in the bright sun. On a table within the house, there was an earthenware pitcher and beside it there were two jacks. The pitcher was somehow so cold that it sweated.
Haldane felt thirsty from the brilliance of the sun, the heat that had dried his throat. He looked from the window to find a door so that he might drink from the pitcher. But when he looked, it was Bud Month again. It was cool and windy, and Jan played rare tricks with the great clouds. There was no sun now.
He ran from the house, feeling its windows like eyes on his back. He did not want to linger here. He feared the return of the unknown owner of this place. His throat was still dry, but he no longer craved to drink from the pitcher.
He scrambled up the slope, the second gray smock over his shoulder. His bare feet slipped and scrabbled in the leaves and loose brown mold. He hurt the outside edge of his left foot stepping on a weathering branch stub hidden among the leaves so that there was small blood and he was limping when he came to Oliver.
He threw the gray smock down. “There is your smock,” he said. “You may be a peasant now.”
Oliver was sick. When he did not cough, he was aswim in nausea and weakness. It seemed that the climb they had made had brought on sevenfold the effects of the spell that Oliver had ignored as they walked yesterday.
“You have done well,” Oliver said at last. He slowly took off his magenta satinet, sweating and shivering in the coolness of the day. “How did you deal with those at the house?”
Haldane sat to put his boots on once again. “No,” said Oliver. “If we are to be peasants, we must be peasants. We must go barefoot.”
And lay wracked with the sick swirl of his innards.
Haldane said, “The house was empty.”
He looked at the cut on his foot, small, bloody, and dirty.
“You must bear the pain as though you were a Get,” said Oliver. For Gets do have virtues—they bear pain bravely.
The gray smock did not fit Oliver well, but it did fit him as it might fit a Nestorian.
“Do I make a peasant?” Oliver asked.
They were slow in ascending the slope that had seemed easy when they had come down it. Haldane had to aid Oliver when his sickness was upon him.
“It was as well that we stole these clothes,” said Oliver. “The longer we are in Nestor, the more need we have of disguise. As I am feeling now, we will be a long time in Nestor.”
They had to push through the brush again, and only at last came to the farther side of the great hill.
“The path is just below,” said Haldane. “It is but two courses down the hillside.”
But Oliver was not encouraged by these words. He stopped to rest and be sick. He vomited there in the leaves. It was conspicuous, but less conspicuous than magenta satinet.
“I will go spy our way,” said Haldane.
He made his way down the slope. Before him was the last smaller hill hiding the path. As he came to its crest and a view of the way they had come yesterday, there was sudden wringle-jingle in the forest. He fell to the ground and peeped to see the riders.
First he saw a small black pig. It scented briskly and then trotted eagerly the last distance to where they had made their camp.
Behind the pig came three riders riding. The first of these was Ivor Fish-Eye, casting close behind the pig, alert for the dodges of those who would flee him. Behind Ivor was Coughing Romund. He leaned on his saddle and cleared his throat. And third was another rider like a spear. When the pig found the camp, this one lifted a horn to his lips and blew.
He blew,
They were here, they were here.
It was the call of a hunter of man, not of game.
The call was none that Haldane had ever blown. And it was not Haldane who blew this horn. But he knew the tone of this horn as his fingers knew the texture of his graven boar’s tooth. It was the horn that had been his, now in the hands of his hunters.
Slut whuffled and peered dimly.
Haldane slipped back out of sight of the camp and the path. He tumbled over his feet as the horn sounded again, out of sight behind his shoulder.
Then he climbed the hill faster than before. He did not mind what happened to his feet, hurt them, and ignored the hurt.
He came upon Oliver standing and gazing urgently down the hill. Oliver’s disguise was successful. He was the very image of a sick and unhappy peasant.
Oliver said, “Did you see who blew the horn?”
“I did see. I saw that and more. There was the pig, Slut. And behind the pig there were three riders. There was Ivor Fish-Eye, and there was Coughing Romund, and sounding the horn as they came was Iron Arngrim.”
“Where did you see them? How close do they press us?”
“They are not far. They dismount now in our camp of last night. We cannot return to our path. We must go otherwise.”
Oliver said, “Let us go along the hill here. You shall confuse our trail as we go to slow pursuit. Then, when we can, we may find your easier path.”
This was bravery for Oliver to offer. Here he was, sick and continuing sick. The country that lay before them to the west was cross-grained and difficult. Yet one of Oliver’s virtues was perseverance, his dogged ability to continue. So they worked west and south, and west and north, and west and east and west, running when they could, sometimes crawling or climbing. They turned on their trail. They walked in water. They went where a horse might not go. They went where a pig might go only with great difficulty and left the trail there where a pig could not.
They did not hear the horn blow. They labored in fear of its sound. And though Haldane saw many signs that the country here was made, he saw no way inside the country.
Oliver lay in a hollow of grass. His legs were pulled tight and he rocked and nursed his side. Haldane came dashing in to earth beside him like a field rabbit to its hole.
Haldane said, “I emptied your yellow smoking mixture on the false trail. I pity the pig that finds it.”
He tumbled over to take heaving breaths. He watched the clouds blow by in wisps and clots. The world he saw as he looked to the sky was silent. The air was so very quiet. One could stay still and nothing would be new but the changing clouds and the brooding and flighting of his heart.
“How do you fare?” he asked Oliver.
“I can . . . continue.”
“Let us continue then,” Haldane said. “For if I am right, then I see a way before us into the country.”
Oliver ran, holding his side. Haldane ran, carrying Oliver’s bag.
“Here is the path. Follow me.”
They ran down the path. The earth was cool and soothing to their burning, broken, bleeding feet.
But it was dark on the path. The clouds gathered close overhead, and the sun ceased to show itself.
“What was that?” said Haldane, as they two suddenly stopped.
“I think it was a man by that standing stone.”
“Nay, I meant that which I heard behind us.”
“I did not hear anything.”
“Then listen.” With peeps from hiding at the man before them by the standing stone in their way, they looked away again at nothing and listened, hardly daring to pant.
“I do hear,” said Oliver. “It is the horn. But that was not where we were.”
“No,” said Haldane. “It is on the path behind us.”
“I cannot go farther,” Oliver said. “You must leave me here to die from this one who waits or from Arngrim and Ivor.”
“Nay, I swore I would help you and I must be honest. Who is this one ahead whom we must pass?”
“I make it to be a Get.”
Haldane studied for what he could see through the trees that intervened. It was a Get standing like a bear with a bow and an arrow set to his string.
“It is a Get, but I do not know him.”
“What are we to do?”
Haldane said, “I will go forward and let him see me, and I will see what he will say. It may be that I can open our way.”
Oliver rested his head against a tree there where he sat. He could not seem to catch his breath. It was unpleasant to see him labor.
He said, “What if we are separated? I do not know the way.”
Haldane said, “If we are separated, follow the path straight to the great hill.”
“What hill is this?”
“We saw its rough presence to the west where we rested last.”
“I cannot follow your path,” Oliver said.
“But it is the straightest way.”
“I cannot see it to follow. Let me have my map.”
The horn sounded:
On the trail, on the trail.
Oliver said, “It is here. Barrow Hill. It stands alone. I will follow my map and meet you there if we are parted.”
So Haldane walked forward along the path to the standing stone. As he came close, the Get stepped forward to meet him.
“Where are you from, young boy? Where are you going?”
“I am returning from a visit to my mother who is ill.”
Haldane was dressed after the manner of a simple peasant. There was nothing about him that was not simple, for all he wore was a gray smock. His feet were bare. He had nothing in his pockets. He had no pockets. He spoke with humility, as no Get might speak. He had nothing to fear.
The Get, who looked like a bear, said, “Come with me. I need your strength.”
So Haldane followed behind him to the large standing stone. There the Get set his bow down and motioned Haldane to go before him.
“Add your weight to mine,” he said. “I wish to overset this rock.”
So Haldane joined him and together they put their shoulders to the rock and pushed against its hardness. They heaved and strained and only at last they paused for breath.
The Get said, “This land is mine and I will clear it as I like. This boulder must go. Push again.”
Again, they pushed as though they were oxen, dumbly as oxen. But the rock resisted them without effort and remained as it was.
