The Sage (37 page)

“It
was unkind of you to make it chase me,” Culaehra retorted, then remembered that
he was talking so disrespectfully to the legendary hero Ohaern, the one who had
lain so long in enchanted sleep, the one who had led the hosts against Ulahane
himself!

But
Culaehra could not really believe it in his heart of hearts; the old man looked
no different, spoke no differently than he ever had. Illbane he had been,
Illbane he would ever be—to him. He collected his wits and demanded, “Can you
not let me begin my task?”

The
sage sighed. “I have been at great pains to transform you from a brute to a
man, Culaehra. I would not willingly see all my work erased with one stroke of
Bolenkar's war club.”

The
thought rocked Culaehra; he sat unspeaking for a moment and was just managing
to work up another retort when the sage smiled and said, “The hour grows late,
and we must march long tomorrow. Sleep, now.”

The
next thing he knew, the sky was light with dawn, and Illbane was nudging him
with a foot. “Waken, warrior. You have had as much rest as you are going to
have, and it is your own folly if you did not have more.”

Culaehra
pushed himself upright with a halfhearted snarl and began his day—but when
breakfast was done and he strode after the sage beside Kitishane, and Kitishane
asked him, “Did you have a bad night?” all he could truthfully answer was, “Not
bad, no. Odd, perhaps, but not really bad.”

That
did not mean he was about to give up, of course. That night, he rested a little
while they dined, then told stories—but when the others went to bed, Culaehra
tried a new strategy. He claimed the first watch for himself and sat by the
fire, watching the night and feeding the flames until he was sure everyone
slept, even Illbane—though truth to tell, he was beginning to wonder if the
sage could ever truly be said to be asleep. Still, it was worth one more
attempt.

He
would not leave them without a sentry, of course, so he set a few pine cones at
the edge of the fire, knowing they would catch in a little while and explode
with loud noises some while after. Then he rose and strode straight off into
the night—but stepped down onto the ice of the frozen brook that ran nearby.

It
was slippery, so he had to walk with care—but it was level and clear, so he
made better time than he would have if he had been plowing through drifts over
rocky ground again. On he went, following the bends and turns of the stream as
a sliver of moon rose to light him on his way, alert for Illbane to be standing
there waiting around every curve.

So,
of course, he was taken completely by surprise when the voice spoke at his
shoulder. “Will you lose sleep again another night, Culaehra?”

The
warrior jumped a foot off the ground and spun to the side even as he landed—but
there was no one there. “Where are you, Illbane?” he cried.

“Still
back at the camp,” the voice said, still at his shoulder.

Culaehra
spun back, but there was still nothing to be seen. “Can I never be rid of you?”

“Never,”
Illbane's voice said with a tone of absolute finality. “I will always be with
you from this day forth, Culaehra— indeed, I have been with you for months.
There will always be something of me alive inside you now, and I will always be
able to find you through that.”

Culaehra
cursed.

“Come,
will you make me rise from my bed to bring you back?” Illbane chided.

“No,
I suppose not,” Culaehra growled. He turned and set off back the way he had
come. After a while he asked, “Illbane?”

“I
am still with you,” the voice replied.

“How
did you manage to reform me?”

“By
discipline,” Illbane answered. “By teaching you to see the world as the weaker
sees it. By showing you that you could not escape the consequences of your
actions. By stripping away the vain view of yourself as more important than any
other, and letting you see yourself as insignificant.. .”

Old
anger stirred.

“Then
by showing you all the worst aspects of yourself, embodied in the hunter who
persuaded you to slay me, then betrayed you by stealing from you.”

The
anger smothered.

“Then
by telling you that you could be a true man, an excellent man, and leading you
into dangers where you could prove your good qualities. By surrounding you with
good companions who, when you really needed them, could not help themselves
from helping you. By leading you into winning their friendship, and thereby
beginning to believe in your own virtue. But through all this, at every stage
and most especially the last, with magic. Magic, and praise, which has a magic
all its own, if it is genuine—but more than anything else, by magic.”

Culaehra
trudged along, letting all the words sink in. At last he asked, “No one can
really be changed by anything else, then?”

“Oh,
folk can be ground down by oppression,” Illbane said. “People can be
transformed by bitterness and hatred, saved by love and sweetness, even
bamboozled and confused into thinking they have become someone else—but no man
can deliberately change another. If the other wants to change, the teacher can
show him the way to grow, can lead him into circumstances that will change
him—but without magic, no man can change another. Not truly change, no.”

“But
you led me into wanting to change.”

“And
you had the courage, the strength, and determination to do it,” Illbane
confirmed. “You had the staunchness to face what you were and strive to
overcome it. You were bora with the stuff of which heroes are made, Culaehra,
or I could have done nothing.”

“But
you did,” Culaehra said, “by magic.”

“Yes,
but even magic cannot make a hero of a man who is a coward and a fool. The
heroism had to be there within you first.”

“I
thought you told me that we are all fools in some way or another,” Culaehra
said.

“No,”
Illbane corrected. “I did not tell you that. Mind you, it is true—but I did not
say it.”

When
he came back to the camp, his companions all lay as still as they had when he
left. Silently, Culaehra lay down beside Kitishane again, then lay still,
studying Kitishane's sleeping form—until she turned, her eyes open and
accusing. “Will you leave me so soon, then?”

Culaehra
stared at her, frozen. At last he said, “No. Never.”

She
did not seem entirely reassured, only gazed at him a while longer, frowning,
then turned over and lay still once more. Culaehra lay staring at her unmoving
back and knew he would not try to escape again.

They
forged northward steadily after that, marching through the day with brief
rests, then pitching camp in the lee of a boulder or beneath a pine or, when it
offered, in a small cave. They ate stewed jerky and journeybread, with now and
then a snow hare or ptarmigan that Kitishane brought down with her bow. Then,
exhausted, they dropped into their blankets. That was the pattern of their days
for a week and more, and every minute of it was an agony of impatience for
Culaehra.

Then,
one night, as they were about to lie down, a glimmering light appeared in the
sky, appeared and spread until it took the form of twisting, furling curtains
winding and unwinding across the sky. Green they were, shading into blue, with
here and there a red one that was soon swallowed up by the twistings of the
green.

“I
have never seen anything so grand,” Kitishane murmured in awe. “What are they,
Illbane?”

“The
aurora borealis,” he replied, “the Northern Lights. They are a sign that we
near the Star Stone.”

“Do
they spring from it, then?”

“No,
they come from the unseen parts of the sun's rays striking near the northern
center of the world—but the green and the red are drawn to the Star Stone and
hover near it.”

Culaehra
frowned at his teacher, wondering at the tension in his voice.

The
next day they found a cliff of ice blocking their path. “It is a glacier,”
Illbane told them, “a sheet of ice that flows out of the valleys in distant
mountains and covers all the plain to this, its southern edge. Help me now in
gathering as much deadwood as we can carry, for there shall be no more firewood
on yonder floe.”

They
did as he asked, picking up sticks and logs until their backs bent under their
loads. Then they followed Illbane onto the glacier.

He
led them up a tortuous path, climbing on ice as gray and hard as rock, though
nonetheless slippery for that. Once up on top, the going was easier, for fresh
snow had fallen deeply upon the glacier, and if it had not been for Illbane's
assurances, there might have been grass rather than ice beneath it, for all
Culaehra could tell.

He
still carried Illbane's pack of tools, though its weight seemed far less than
it had at first. He bore it in the sage's wake, watching him with brooding
eyes.

“What
worries you?” Kitishane asked as she plodded through the snow beside him.

“Illbane,”
Culaehra replied. “He grows tense and curt. If I did not know he were the hero
Ohaern, I would think that fear grew upon him.”

Kitishane
looked up at their leader and her voice was low. “Even heroes know fear,
Culaehra.”

“I
am not a hero, Kitishane!”

“No,”
she said, very low, “not yet.”

That
night, the aurora danced above them again, and the horizon was lighted with a
green glow.

In
the morning, when the fire was smothered, Illbane bade them bring the partially
burned logs with them.

“Why,
Illbane?” Yocote asked. “Is it not enough that we carry dry wood, for there is
none to gather on the glacier? Will it be so scarce that we must carry the
burned ones, too?”

“Yes,”
Illbane answered. “I shall have need of the charcoal. Put them in a bag and
bring them, Yocote, even though this is magic of a sort you will never need to
know.”

“If
it is magic of any kind, I need to learn it!” The gnome collected the sticks
and solid coals into a bag and slung it on his back.

Illbane
spoke rarely that day, growing more and more somber as they. went. He insisted
they burn new wood that night, not using the coals they carried. The aurora was
brighter, and the glow from the horizon reached higher into the sky.

It
was higher the next night and the next, and Yocote's bag grew so heavy that
Kitishane took it from him. The day after that, Culaehra took it from her, and
that night the aurora seemed to dance directly overhead, while the green glow
lit half the sky. Illbane sat in his trance till dawn, not sleeping at all, and
the next day he did not say a word.

As
the sun lowered, they crested a ridge, and the glow struck them so that they
recoiled.

It
lay below them, far below, cupped between outthrusts of the glacier that seemed
to have melted away in its presence to mere fingers, ones that seemed to cup it
in an embrace—a huge, irregular, pitted form that glowed like sunshine through
leaves, like a vast emerald caught in a sun ray, but the glow came from within
its own substance. Around it for five yards the snow was melted away and
lichens covered the ground in a patchwork of bright colors.

“Look
your fill, then retreat and look upon it no more,” Illbane said grimly, “for
that is the Star Stone.”

“The
Star Stone?” Culaehra stared wide-eyed. “If that is a shard, how thick was the
spear!”

“They
were giants then,” Illbane told him, “and their ghosts were more gigantic
still. They gathered stars from the sky and formed them into weapons to smite
one another. They were vast beyond our imagining.” He lapsed into silence,
leaning on his staff and gazing down at the Star Stone, and his companions
looked upon his face and wondered.

Finally
Illbane roused himself and turned away. “Come, then! Pitch camp below this
ridge, where its radiance shall not strike you directly. Tonight I shall rest;
tomorrow I shall begin work.”

As
they went back down the hill, Culaehra said, “In any way I can help, Illbane,
only call upon me!”

“I
thank you for that, my pupil,” Illbane said with a gracious nod. “I will ask
you to bring a boulder three feet high, with Yocote's magic aiding your
strength, and I will ask you all to bring half the firewood that is left. Then,
though, you must wait at the camp and not come near me while I work.”

“Do
you know smithing, then?” Yocote asked, and bit his tongue in chagrin—but the
question brought the ghost of a smile to Illbane's face.

“Yes,
my pupil, I know something of smithing.”

To
be sure he did, Culaehra reflected. Before he had taken arms against Ulahane
and the cities of the south, Ohaern had been a smith, and one of the first of
the northern smiths to learn to forge iron—taught by the god Lomallin himself,
if the tale was to be trusted.

So
that night they piled firewood into a huge mound by the Star Stone, then came
back to kindle a fire from some of the rest. Thus they sat around a campfire
dwarfed by the glow that filled the sky, that obscured even the aurora, and
they banished the eldritch chill upon their backs by telling tales as they ate,
trying to coax another smile from Illbane. They almost succeeded in this: he
gazed upon them proudly from time to time. But he did not smile again.

The
next morning, Culaehra and Yocote cast about and found a boulder waist-high.
Culaehra could never have moved it by himself, but Yocote cast a spell to set
it rolling, and all Culaehra had to do was push now and again to keep it on the
right course. When it crested the ridge and began to roll down toward the Star
Stone, Yocote had to try to slow it, and Culaehra cried, “'Ware, Illbane! It
comes!”

“Let
it come.” The smith already stood near the Star Stone, laying billets of
firewood in a grid. “It cannot damage the Star Stone.”