The Warlock’s back was turned, and Aran could do nothing. He spotted Wavyhill gesticulating from across the courtyard, in the instant before Wavyhill completed his spell.
Aran turned to shout a warning; and so he saw what the spell did to the Warlock. The Warlock was old in an instant. The flesh seemed to fade into his bones. He looked bewildered, spat a mouthful of blackened pebbles—no, teeth—closed his eyes and started to fall.
Aran caught him.
It was like catching an armload of bones. He eased the Warlock onto his back on the great snail shell. The Warlock’s breathing was stertorous; he could not have long to live.
“Aran the Merchant!”
Aran looked down. “What did you do to him?”
The magician Wavyhill was dressed as usual, in dark robe and sandals and pointed hat. A belt with a shoulder loop held his big-hilted sword just clear of the ground. He called, “That is precisely what I wish to discuss. I have found an incantation that behaves as the Warlock’s Wheel behaves, but directionally. Is this over your head?”
“I understand you.”
“In layman’s terms, I’ve sucked the magic from him. That leaves him two hundred and twenty-six years old. I believe that gives me the win.
“My problem is whether to let you live. Aran, do you understand what my spell will do to you?”
Aran did, but—“Tell me anyway. Then tell me how you found out.”
“From some of my colleagues, of course, after I determined that you were my enemy. You must have consulted an incredible number of magicians regarding the ghostly knife in your heart.”
“More than a dozen. Well?”
“Leave in peace. Don’t come back.”
“I have to take the Warlock.”
“He is my enemy.”
“He’s my ally. I won’t leave him,” said Aran.
“Take him then.”
Aran stooped. He was forty-eight years old, and the bitterness of defeat had replaced the manic energy of battle. But the Warlock was little more than a snoring mummy, dry and light. The problem would be to get the fragile old man down from the snail shell.
Wavyhill was chanting!
Aran stood—in time to see the final gesture. Then the spell hit him.
For an instant he thought that the knife had truly reappeared in his heart. But the pain was all through him!—like a million taut strings snapping inside him! The shape of his neck changed grindingly; all of his legs snapped forward; his skull flattened, his eyes lost color vision, his nose stretched, his lips pulled back from bared teeth.
The change had never come so fast, had never been more complete. A blackness fell on Aran’s mind. It was a wolf that rolled helplessly off the giant snail shell and into the courtyard. A wolf bounced heavily and rolled to its feet, snarled deep in its throat and began walking stiff-legged toward Wavyhill.
Wavyhill was amazed! He started the incantation over, speaking very fast, as Aran approached. He finished as Aran came within leaping distance.
This time there was no change at all. Except that Aran leapt, and Wavyhill jumped back just short of far enough, and Aran tore his throat out.
For Aran the nightmare began then. What had gone before was as sweet dreams.
Wavyhill should have been dead. His severed carotid arteries pumped frantically, his windpipe made horrid bubbling sounds, and—Wavyhill drew his sword and attacked.
Aran the wolf circled and moved in and slashed—and backed away howling, for Wavyhill’s sword had run him through the heart. The wound healed instantly. Aran the wolf was not surprised. He leapt away, and circled, and slashed and was stabbed again, and circled…
It went on and on.
Wavyhill’s blood had stopped flowing. He’d run out. Yet he was still alive. So was his sword, or so it seemed. Aran never attacked unless it seemed safe, but the sword bit him every time. And every time he attacked, he came away with a mouthful of Wavyhill.
He was going to win. He could not help but win. His wounds healed as fast as they were made. Wavyhill’s did not. Aran was stripping the flesh from the magician’s bones.
There was a darkness on his brain. He moved by animal cunning. Again and again he herded Wavyhill back onto the slippery flagstones where Wavyhill had spilled five quarts of his blood. Four feet were surer than two. It was that cunning that led him to bar Wavyhill from leaving the courtyard. He tried. He must have stored healing magic somewhere in the castle. But Aran would not let him reach it.
He had done something to himself that would not let him die. He must be regretting it terribly. Aran the wolf had crippled him now, slashing at his ankles until there was not a shred of muscle left to work the bones. Wavyhill was fighting on his knees. Now Aran came closer, suffering the bite of the sword to reach the magician…
Nightmare.
Aran the Peacemonger had been wrong. If Aran the rug merchant could work on and on, stripping the living flesh from a man in agony, taking a stab wound for every bite—if Aran could suffer such agonies to do this to anyone, for any cause—
Then neither the end of magic, nor anything else, would ever persuade men to give up war. They would fight on, with swords and stones and whatever they could find, for as long as there were men.
The blackness had lifted from Aran’s brain. It must have been the sword: the mana in an enchanted sword had replaced the mana sucked from him by Wavyhill’s variant of the Warlock’s Wheel.
And, finally, he realized that the sword was fighting alone.
Wavyhill was little more than bloody bones. He might not be dead, but he certainly couldn’t move. The sword waved itself at the end of the stripped bones of his arm, still trying to keep Aran away.
Aran slid past the blade. He gripped the hilt in his teeth and pulled it from the magician’s still-fleshy hand. The hand fought back with a senseless determined grip, but it wasn’t enough.
He had to convert to human to climb the dragon shell.
The Warlock was still alive, but his breathing was a thing of desperation. Aran laid the blade across the Warlock’s body and waited.
The Warlock grew young. Not as young as he had been, but he no longer looked…dead. He was in the neighborhood of seventy years old when he opened his eyes, blinked, and asked, “What happened?”
“You missed all the excitement,” said Aran.
“I take it you beat him. My apologies. It’s been thirty years since I fought Glirendree. With every magician in the civilized world trying to duplicate the Warlock’s Wheel, one or another was bound to improve on the design.”
“He used it on me, too.”
“Oh?” The Warlock chuckled. “I suppose you’re wondering about the knife.”
“It did come to mind. Where is it?”
“In my belt. Did you think I’d leave it in your chest? I’d had a dream that I would need it. So I kept it. And sure enough—”
“But it was in my heart!”
“I made an image of it. I put the image in your heart, then faded it out.”
Aran’s fingernails raked his chest. “You miserable son of an ape! You let me think that knife was in me for thirty years!”
“You came to my house as a thief,” the Warlock reminded him. “Not an invited guest.”
Aran the merchant had acquired somewhat the same attitude toward thieves. With diminished bitterness he said, “Just a little magician’s joke, was it? No wonder nobody could get it out. All right. Now tell me why Wavyhill’s spell turned me into a wolf.”
The Warlock sat up carefully. He said, “What?”
“He waved his arms at me and sucked all the mana out of me, and I turned into a wolf. I even lost my human intelligence. Probably my invulnerability too. If he hadn’t been using an enchanted sword he’d have cut me to ribbons.”
“I don’t understand that. You should have been frozen into human form. Unless…”
Then, visibly, the answer hit him. His pale cheeks paled further. Presently he said, “You’re not going to
like this, Aran.”
Aran could see it in the Warlock’s face, seventy years old and very tired and full of pity. “Go on,” he said.
“The Wheel is a new thing. Even the dead spots aren’t that old. The situation has never come up before, that’s all. People automatically assume that werewolves are people who can turn themselves into wolves.
“It seems obvious enough. You can’t even make the change without moonlight. You keep your human intelligence. But there’s never been proof, one way or another, until now.”
“You’re saying I’m a wolf.”
“Without magic, you’re a wolf,” the Warlock agreed.
“Does it matter? I’ve spent most of my life as a man,” Aran whispered. “What difference does it make—oh! Oh, yes.”
“It wouldn’t matter if you didn’t have children.”
“Eight. And they’ll have children. And One day the mana will be gone everywhere on Earth. Then what, Warlock?”
“You know already.”
“They’ll be wild dogs for the rest of eternity!”
“And nothing anyone can do about it.”
“Oh, yes, there is! I’m going to see to it that no magician ever enters Rynildissen again!” Aran stood up on the dragon’s shell. “Do you hear me, Warlock? Your kind will be barred. Magic will be barred. We’ll save the mana for the sea people and the dragons!”
It may be that he succeeded. Fourteen thousand years later, there are still tales of werewolves where Rynildissen City once stood. Certainly there are no magicians.
I do love peace. But…I’m fifty-one. You may have noticed: older people seem reluctant to believe that the United States and the Soviets can solve their problems with a mutual disarmament pact.
Why older people? Are our brains softening, or have we noticed something that the youths have not?
I have tried to diet for a lover, and my lover didn’t lose weight. I have tried to give up alcohol for a friend, but my friend continued to pickle his brain. I think Jerry Pournelle tried to give up smoking for me; but ultimately I had to do it myself.
From time to time we have tried to give up weapons for the Soviets…but it doesn’t work. They have the habit. They must break it themselves.
• • •
• • •
Consider the days when it was first suspected that the cetaceans were Earth’s second sentient order of life. It was known, then, that dolphins had many times helped swimmers out of difficulty and that no dolphin had ever been known to attack a human being. Well, what difference did it make whether they had not attacked humans or whether they had done so only when there was no risk of being caught at it? Either statement was proof of intelligence.
“The Handicapped,” 1968
From THE MAGIC GOES AWAY
Scores of times in my life, I have looked out of an airplane window at cloudscapes. It always looks like you could walk on the clouds. In places you’d have to circle the feathered canyons, or jump from puffball to puffball, or toil up the slope of a thunderhead. By the time I found a chance to write about such things, I knew just how it would feel. (It can’t hurt that I learned how to use a trampoline in college.)
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
The cloud bank stretched away like a clean white landscape, under a brilliant sun and dark blue sky. The Warlock rubbed his hands in satisfaction. “We’re here! Orolandes, let me get into that pack.”
The others watched as he chose his tools. If the Warlock had told them what he was about, Orolandes hadn’t heard it. He did not speculate. He waited to know what was expected of him.
The attitude came easily to him. He had risen through the ranks of the Greek army; he could follow orders. He had given orders, too, before Atlantis sank beneath him. Since then Orolandes had given over control of his own fate.
“Good,” muttered the Warlock. He opened a wax-stoppered phial and poured dust into his hand and scattered it like seeds into the cloudscape. He sang words unfamiliar to Orolandes.
Mirandee and Clubfoot joined in, clear soprano and awkward bass, at chorus points that were not obvious. The song trailed off in harmony, and the Warlock scattered another handful of dust.
“All right. Better let me go first,” he said. He stepped off the stairs into feathery emptiness.
He bounced gently. The cloud held him.
Clubfoot followed, in a ludicrous bouncing stride that sank him calves-deep into the fog. Mirandee walked out after him. They turned to look back at Orolandes.
Clubfoot started to choke. He sat down in the shifting white mist and bellowed with a laughter that threatened to strangle him. Mirandee fought it, then joined in in a silvery giggle. There was the not-quite-sound of Wavyhill’s chortling.
The laughter seemed to fade, and the world went dim and blurry. Orolandes felt his knees turn to water. His jaw was sagging. He had climbed up through this cloud. It was cold and wet and without substance. It would not hold a feather from falling, let alone a man.
The witch’s silver laughter burned him like acid. For the lack of the Warlock’s laughter, for the Warlock’s exasperated frown, Orolandes was grateful. When the Warlock swept his arm in an impatient beckoning half-circle, Orolandes stepped out into space in a soldier’s march.
His foot sank deep into what felt like feather bedding, and bounced. He was off balance at the second step, and the recoil threw him further off. He kicked out frantically. His leg sank deep and recoiled and threw him high. He landed on his side and bounced.
Mirandee watched with her hands covering her mouth. Clubfoot’s laugh was a choking whimper now.
Orolandes got up slowly, damp all over. He waded rather than walked toward the magicians.
“Good enough. We don’t have a lot of time,” said the Warlock. “Take a little practice—we all need that—then go back for the pack.”
The layer of cloud stirred uneasily around them. It was not flat. There were knolls of billowing white that they had to circle round. It was like walking through a storehouse full of damp goose down. The cloud-stuff gave underfoot, and pulled as the foot came forward.
Orolandes found a stride that let him walk with the top-heavy pack, but it was hard on the legs. Half-exhausted and growing careless, he nearly walked into a hidden rift. He stared straight down through a feathery canyon at small drifting patches of farm. A tiny plume of dust led his eye to a moving speck, a barely visible horse and rider.
He turned left along the rift, while his heart thundered irregularly in his ears.
Clubfoot looked back. Mount Valhalla rose behind them, a mile or so higher than they’d climbed, blazing snow-white in the sunlight. “Far enough, I guess. Now, the crucial thing is to keep moving,” he said, “because if the magic fails where we’re standing it’s all over. Luckily we don’t have to do our own moving.”
He helped Orolandes doff the pack. He rummaged through it and removed a pair of water-tumbled pebbles, a handful of clean snow, and a small pouch of grey powder. “Now, Kranthkorpool, would you be so kind as to tell us where we’re going?”
“No need to coerce me,” said Wavyhill. “We go east and north. To the northernmost point of the Alps.”
“And we’ve got food for four days. Well, I guess we’re in a hurry.” Clubfoot began to make magic.
The Warlock did not take part. He knew that Clubfoot was a past master at weather magic. Instead he watched Mirandee’s hair.
Yes, her youth had held well. She had the clear skin and unwrinkled brow of a serene thirty-year-old noblewoman. Her wealth of hair was now raven black, with a streak of pure white that ran from her brow all the way back. As she helped Clubfoot sing the choruses, the white band thickened and thinned and thickened.
The Warlock spoke low to Orolandes. “If you see her hair turn sheer white, run like hell. You’re overloaded with that pack. Just get to safety and let me get the others out.” The Greek nodded.
Now the clouds stirred about t
hem. The fitful breeze increased slightly, but not enough to account for the way the mountain was receding. Now the clouds to either side churned, fading or thickening at the edges. Through a sudden rift they watched the farmlands drift away.
“Down there they’ll call this a hurricane. What they’ll call us doesn’t bear mentioning,” Clubfoot chuckled. He walked back to where Orolandes was standing and settled himself in the luxurious softness of a cloud billow. In a lowered voice he said, “I’ve been wrestling with my conscience. May I tell you a story?”
Orolandes said, “All right.” He saw that the others were beyond earshot.
“I’m a plainsman,” said Clubfoot. “My master was a lean old man a lot like the Warlock, but darker, of course. He taught half a dozen kids at a time, and of course he was the tribe’s medicine man. One day when I was about twelve, old White Eagle took us on a hike up the only mountain anywhere around.
“He took us up the easy side. There were clouds streaming away from the top. White Eagle did some singing and dancing, and then he had us walk out on the cloud. I ran out ahead of the rest. It looked like so much fun.”
“Fun,” Orolandes said without expression.
“Well, yes. I’d never been on a cloud. How was a plains kid to know clouds aren’t solid?”
“You mean you never…realized…” Orolandes started laughing.
Clubfoot was laughing too. “I’d seen clouds, but way up in the sky. They looked solid enough. I didn’t know why White Eagle was doing all that howling and stamping.”
“And the next time you went for a stroll on a cloud—”
“Oh, no. White Eagle explained that. But it must have been a fine way to get rid of slow learners.”
When Jim Baen at Ace and Jim Frenkel at Dell began publishing illustrated novellas, I thought it was a wonderful idea. Novellas are always the stepchildren when the awards are given out. There’s no market for them. Ideas come in lengths, but a writer may force a good novella idea into novel length, or mush two together to form a novel. If we’re going to give awards for 25,000 to 40,000 words, shouldn’t we make the length less awkward by giving it a market?