Authors: Alexei Panshin,Cory Panshin
Tags: #Fiction, #Fantasy, #Epic, #Science Fiction, #General
“Learn,” Morca said. “Train your arm. Train your eye. Train your wits. A king must be more than other men.”
A king—Haldane a king? It was a new idea, a new possibility. Morca’s father, Garmund, and his uncle, Garulf, who had died leading the Gets at Stone Heath, had each been War King of the Gets in his own time, but this was not the West where crowns were inherited. Among the Gets the strongest baron was king, and if there was any lesson Haldane had learned, any one thing that Black Morca had impressed upon him, it was that he was not the man his father was. Haldane a king? Was it possible?
And so into Oliver’s hands he went and learned to read and cipher, and it was a strange, exhilarating world he found there far outside the ken of any man in Morca’s dun, a world that could be shared with no one but Oliver. Oliver talked of Palsance and the great tourneys held under the eye of King Richard at the stone castle of Fomoria on Clear Lake where the best and strongest were given bid to enter Richard’s service and stand behind him to face the threat of the Gets. Haldane laughed at that. The fighting men of Palsance were butter to Morca’s knife.
Oliver spoke of the trading ships of Vilicea with their sails of blue and red and white, coursing the Bay of Whales to Grelland in the north, faring south along the Brenadine Coast of Palsance where the old mountain trees stand high, narrow, and naked with strange scales for bark, hoving round South Cape to the Isle of Orkay and to Jedburke in Pellardy that paid tribute to the Gets. And he spoke of the dead and wasted ruins of Nestria at the mouth of the Blackstone, the old city of the Kings of the West, the legend of which was so powerful that it had carried even to the far high plains of Shagetai.
“And you saw this yourself?” Haldane asked. “I thought the city of Jehannes was only a story.”
“And the Three Kings too?” Oliver asked gently. “No, little one. I myself have walked the broken streets of Nestria and seen the monkeys at play on the toppled statues of the Three Kings. All that remains of the old glory is bare ruin and empty desolation. There is a mindless village tucked up against the last standing wall of the city and barefoot boys shy stones at the head of Leonidus, the Poet King. His bust has had five hundred years of the abuse he merited in life. Remember that, and leave no statues. Or rule well.”
“I’ll waste no time in making poems,” Haldane said. But in his secret heart he was pleased that Oliver should recognize the stuff of kings in him. It made him feel that it might really be there.
So, in time, as he learned, he and Oliver came as close to being friends as a wizard and a boy can. Not truly friends, but they might talk to each other when there was no one else.
And then Oliver began to teach Haldane magic. Not the magic of simple figures reeling in the dance of multiplication and division. Not the magic of words on paper that could bring the dead voice of Leonidus, more poet than king, to life again after these five hundred years. True magic. The Pall of Darkness.
Haldane had balked. Haldane had questioned. But Oliver said, “Did your father not put you into my hands to learn? The things I have to teach you can serve a king as well as any man. The things I have to teach may serve a king better than other men.”
So Haldane had followed Oliver. He learned the signs of hand and the words, nervous all the while, fearing, uncertain, unsteady. And failed, as magic will fail those who fail magic.
And he tried again, until at last once and then twice he pulled the cold curtain of night over himself while the sun still held the day. His touch was uncertain—the second time the spell succeeded, the veil of invisibility covered Oliver as well as himself. His count was slow and far from smooth. And yet, the spell did work.
Nonetheless, he felt he was doing wrong. Arms, not magic, were the Gettish way. Force of arms was clean and honest, the mark of the superior, the road of those who rule. Spells and sorcery were the dirty tricks of the weaklings of the West, the cowards who had struck from secret at Stone Heath.
Fortunately for his peace of mind, the aftermath of the spell was nausea and weakness. Magic always exacts a price from those who woo her, a bride price: blood, weakness, disease, and even death for power. And the day following his successes, Haldane was too weak to swing his sword or sit his horse under Morca’s eye.
“What’s the matter, boy?” asked Morca. “You fail and faint.”
“Nothing,” said Haldane. “The sun is too hot. It makes me dizzy.”
Morca shook his head, but then he said, “Rest under the tree until your head returns.”
But the sky filled with clouds and Haldane’s weakness did not pass and the story came out. Morca’s anger darked the day more than any spell and his fists blacked both Haldane’s eyes and left him sore as well as weak. Morca’s temper was a well-used tool, but Haldane never saw him angrier than at that moment when he left the boy in a beaten heap and went to search out Oliver. What passed between Morca and the wizard, Haldane had never learned, but he was taken forever from Oliver’s hands and after that, for the first time, Oliver’s sharpness began to be directed at him as much as any other man. After that, they were no longer friends.
There was compensation of a sort. From that day, Morca publicly called Haldane his lieutenant, his second. It was a good name and it filled Haldane with pride, until he found it hollow, a word without power. Hemming Paleface knew how much it meant. Nothing. Morca might say once and again that he left Haldane in command, but when he raided, he raided without him. Even when he promised, swearing before men, swearing lightly, he raided into Chastain without Haldane.
Now, as he and Oliver walked past the great hall into the tangle of the courtyard to face Morca returned from Chastain, as the witch had said, Haldane tried questions in his mind.
He craved answers, but he would not say too much, not to Oliver. He would not tell Oliver of the witch’s words—nothing of portents or Stone Heath, or a foreign bride, or his soul, his, Haldane’s, torn from his body by this Goddess, this Libera. But in this moment when he could ask, he must have at least one answer.
They passed the high loaded wagon with heavy carved doors lashed one to a side like elaborate shields. Morca had been looking for a proper set of doors for two years.
Haldane shot a look at the huddle of foreign men out of Chastain and then he asked, “Does magic cost a witch pain?”
Chapter 3
T
HE MEN OF CHASTAIN THEY PAUSED NEAR WERE A LEAN LOT,
leaner than Haldane, although Haldane was lean for a Get. Their hair was of an unmanly length, and though they wore their weapons well displayed, it was all in show because they gave Haldane and Oliver ground. They burdened themselves in hauberks of chain mail, shoulder to knee, and they held their helmets by the noseguards like clumsy bludgeons or tucked under their arms like men waiting their turn to bowl at the jackstone. Haldane wondered if they would flee in a herd if he stamped his foot.
Oliver looked at Haldane. These days he must even look up. No apparent matter to him that with the parting of the men of Chastain, they were in sight of Black Morca.
“Magic always takes its price without exception,” Oliver said. “It is the one thing I know about magic. What commerce would you have with witches? Do you seek a new tutor?”
“No!” said Haldane. “I saw the old witch Jael in the woods as I hunted today. She made a pheasant for my arrow with magic and then laughed. And she disappeared before me with the aid of a spell like your Pall of Darkness, but other. I wished to know if her tricks cost her pain.”
“Ah, no doubt,” said Oliver. His beard was white and cropped to the outline of his face. His lip and cheeks were bare and ruddy. His hair was gray and wild. He ran his hand through his hair and left it wilder. “But I wonder their meaning. Did she speak?”
“She laughed,” Haldane said.
“It must have been to hide her pain,” said Oliver. It was his way of closing the question. He indicated Morca with a lift of his chin and a wag of his beard. “Your father waits.”
Serfs began to light the courtyard torches against the darkness. Odo the Steward directed hands to the unloading of the high-piled wagon. Odo sent a serving woman across the muddy yard to show the knights of Chastain to their quarters. The gates of the dun were swung shut, a solid door for the wild night to rap at for entry.
As Oliver and Haldane approached, Morca caught sight of them. He pushed past the painted man, raising an arm. Morca was a dark, overpowering giant. He had charm and a rude wit, but lacked grace. His subtleties were crude, and even his whispers were loud. His hand was heavy.
His son was little like him, except perhaps in owning wit and lacking subtlety, but he would never be as obvious a presence, never as tall, never as strong, never as whelming. Haldane’s hair was a neutral brown. Morca’s was a black and curly bush. Morca’s hand could cover and hold Haldane’s two fists.
Haldane readied to take his blow, but Morca swung his arm around his son’s shoulders and pulled him close, saying, “Hey, Lothor. Here is Haldane, my son and second. My little brown bull to match your little brown heifer. Bring your daughter out and we’ll introduce them. Introductions before weddings, hey?”
Haldane was staggered by the blow that did not fall. His heart was felled by the words that followed. Morca was in his gay and unpredictable mood. He was manic in his half-played game. What now? The witch’s sight had been true—Morca’s return had brought change indeed. Was he then to be Libera’s brown bull, her wurox? Was he to be dumb-eyed sacrifice to a goddess he had asked nothing of? He felt himself a helpless hand-tossed die, spun for others’ pleasure. At that moment, for that moment, he wished to be simple. He wished to be nothing, almost nothing—a housecarl. Still a Get, but not a king.
Lothor tugged his cloak into place as though Morca had set it awry with his violence. He held a brown-and-white dog, as neat and small as a puppy. His hair was white to his shoulders and he wore a fur cap ajaunt. He wore tight hose and he stood on heels strapped to pattens to keep him above the mud. He on his heels and Oliver in his bare feet in the mud were much of a height.
He said, “In Chastain, only one of equal rank would presume to ask to be presented. Marriage is hardly sufficient excuse. But since you were willing to forego your long-tried Gettish customs in favor of ours in the matter of a dowry, I suppose we must be equally civil.”
He was no older than Morca, but he seemed older. His days as a leader of fighting men, if ever they existed, must have been early and brief. His voice was boyish thin, his face was paled with powder and brightened with rouge, and he carried a dog—and who would follow a man like that?
His traveling carriage was decorated in strong shades of yellow and red, and the drawn leather curtains that masked the interior were painted with gilt flowers. Lothor tapped at the door of the carriage with the head of his scepter, his thin stick of power.
“Marthe,” he said, “You must come out now.”
He spoke of matters beyond Haldane’s knowledge. His tongue was a twisted Nestorian that had more in common with the difficult language of Leonidus, the Poet King, five hundred years dead, than with the country speech, plain and simple, of the boy’s nurses or with the Western speech Oliver had brought with him out of Palsance. Still, Haldane understood him. His tone was clear if his words were not.
Lothor must surely be a king. Morca did not bother to understand him, as he would have understood any lesser man. The dog watched all, silent but eager.
The door of the carriage opened and a girl, a woman, a princess, Lothor’s little brown heifer, stepped down into the mud of the yard with some difficulty. It was impossible to tell if her clumsiness was the result of shoes raised and protected like her father’s. Her great dress of white and gold hid her feet. The heavy sleeves of the dress were a series of puffs and every puff wore a modest skirt of its own. Her face, underneath her broad-brimmed hat, was unappealing, sour and painted.
“Odo!” Morca bawled, calling like a herdsman, as she stepped to the ground.
She flinched at the roar of it and seemed to teeter, and was steadied by her father’s hand.
Odo the Steward, the Nestorian of highest rank in Morca’s service, who might even order housecarls to come, go, or stay, ceased his directions and overseeing as he heard his master call. His exhortations and movements of hand were no more needed than sideline signals to a squad of well-drilled horses on parade. The work continued smoothly without him as he came off the porch of Morca’s hall and out into the yard
“Yes, Lord Morca?”
“Unload the carriage,” Morca called. “It is empty now.” He turned back to Lothor. “Ha. I said if breakfast was early and cold, we should make our dinner here in the comfort of home.”
Odo began to draft serfs from the earnest ant line waiting to carry away what it was handed from the wagon of spoils to Morca’s storehouse within. Or was the wagon the dowry Lothor had spoken of? Trust Morca. For years, until men had drifted back to calling him Black Morca, he had been known as Morca Bride-Stealer, the man who paid no bride price. In these days, unlike the better ones of old, the name was no sully. Men had laughed and leapt to follow him.
The serfs hurried to the carriage. One bounded up atop and began to unstrap royal baggage.
Haldane studied the girl. His bride? Her hair under the hat was some shade of brown and pinned in draping curls. In this light, that was all that could be said. Her nose was long and straight and her face was round. He thought she must be older than he, all of twenty or more. And stunted, shorter than her father. Shorter than the Nestorian women he knew best, the nurses, serving maids, and cooks of the dun, or those he saw in the villages. Shorter than Get women, though he knew none of these, never having traveled, except once to his grandfather’s when he was a child, and it being Morca’s rule that men might marry but that married men might not serve within his walls. But the Get women of his mind and the Get women of his memory were taller than this.
The boy thought though he might marry this princess of Chastain, he wouldn’t like her. He would close her away in a tight room and turn his back on the door. She deserved no better, and she would get from him only what she deserved. Men might see him with her and laugh.
Morca said, “This is Lothor of Chastain. The king. And this is his daugh—”
“No, no,” said Lothor, changing the lapdog to his other arm. “Let me make the introductions. This gaping lurdane, my dear, is your husband-to-be. Haldane, the son of Black Morca. My youngest daughter, the Princess Marthe, the spring of my old age. You are not fit to lay eyes upon her, but I grace you with her hand. I do not know this barefoot man.”
“Embrace her, boy,” said Morca. “This is Oliver, my maker of magic. Oliver from the Hook of Palsance. Did you know I had a wizard? Would you care to try his skill?”
Lothor said, “It is a large place to be from. And the name is unknown to me. Call him wizard if you like. We have no barefoot wizards in the Western Kingdoms.”
“Embrace her, boy,” said Morca in Nestorian.
“But she’s painted,” Haldane said. He spoke in Gettish.
“Embrace her. You can wipe it off after.”
Oliver stood silent. He did not speak to Lothor, but stood toes a-squelch in the mud and looked steadily at him, as though his sheer presence spoke against all doubts. Men here knew him if Lothor did not.
At his father’s continued urging, Haldane finally stepped forward and put his arms around the stranger princess. The material of her dress was thick rich brocade, stiff and heavy under his hands. She must have been a-teeter on pattens because he threw her off balance and only saved her from falling by seizing her shoulders. She pressed at him to be free and, balancing, struck at him, knocking his bow off his shoulder so that it hung at his elbow by the string.
“Don’t touch me,” she said. “You have grimed and soiled my dress. Do you understand Nestorian?”
“My little bull,” said Morca.
“I’ll teach her to speak Gettish,” said Haldane, speaking Gettish.
“Let us go in,” said Morca. “At dinner, I’ll have Oliver prove his magic for you. An Ultimate Spell, if you are willing to try your courage. Stone Heath in reverse.”
“If you have so many wizards to spare,” said Lothor.
“Wizards are of nature economical,” said Oliver. “We suit the size of our spells to the occasion. We do not waste ourselves idly. But tonight I will show you magic.”
“Odo!” Morca called. “Show King Lothor and Princess Marthe to their apartments. We meet at dinner, Lothor. Bring your fork.”
“And you bring yours,” said Lothor.
“I will. I will.” And Morca held his new fork high, finer than Rolf the carl’s, and he waved it. As he saw Lothor and Marthe led away, he said, “Come, you two. Follow me to my rooms. We will talk before dinner.”