Earth Magic (4 page)

Chapter 4

M
ORCA LED THE WAY TO THE HALL
followed by Oliver at one heel and Haldane at the other. Within his dun, Black Morca was first. That is what it means to rule. Morca was never late. Other men clocked themselves by him and nothing began until he gave signal. Whatever he commanded was done. Whatever he chose to want was his. He was served first and ate sweetest. When he walked, he was followed. Where he walked, way was made.

A careless serf, too intent on the heavy brass-bound chest he helped to bear to realize his mistake, stepped backward onto the portico and into Morca’s path. Morca informed him of his error with a casual backhand blow that separated him from the chest and sent him tripping over his feet and into the wall. The chest became too much for the other man and he was jerked forward. He dropped the chest and it landed on his toes, sending him into a painful dance.

All laughed at the joke but Morca who was content to grin hugely. Once when he was drunk, Morca had won a bet by breaking a door with a slack serf, a dropper of food and spiller of ale, lifting the Nestorian in his two hands and carrying him forward like a lance as he yelled his slogan,
“Alf Morca Gettha!”
The serf was broken as well as the door. Men still marveled at the thickness of wood that was smashed and the proofs of Morca’s strength.

Morca said to the serf he had struck, “You’ll never rise to serve within the hall if you continue clumsy.”

“Your pardon, master,” said the serf, first in Nestorian and then again in rude Gettish. “Please.”

Odo the Steward rushed past them and began to strike the man. “Is this the way you see your lord home? There will be no meat for you tonight.”

Odo looked to Morca for approval. He was still beating the shrinking serf when Morca, Oliver, and Haldane passed inside the hall.

After the cool evening air, the main room of the hall was warm. There were fires in both fireplaces and the air was moist and heavy with the odors of dinner seeping through from the kitchens behind the dais. Arrases, some of Gettish fashioning, some taken from the West, hung before all the walls and kept the warmth and homey smells well contained within the room.

The great dinner boards were being unstacked and laid across their trestles to make tables for the company. Barons joined with carls to make light of the work. It was honest work for a man to do. With Morca gone, three tables had been sufficient to serve the dun, and with so few to sleep in the hall, the tables had never been struck.

The three tables had already been increased to five and more were being laid. The benches were being carried into place. There was but one chair within the room and it was Morca’s. It stood behind the main table in the center of the dais, solid, great and heavy, as tall as Morca and wide enough to seat two ordinary men. Morca’s father, Garmund, had seen it one year in the West, known it as better than his own, and returned for it the next summer with a wagon and the strength to take it away.

“Hey, by damn, when do we eat?” asked Morca, his voice filling the room.

“Within the hour, Lord Morca.”

“Ale for all. Let’s have the dirt well washed from our throats. A good raid deserves a good end.”

“What about our guests?” called a baron, raising laughter.

“Send them all the water they will drink,” said Morca. “I’ll have my ale upstairs.”

He took the stairs by the wall to his rooms above, followed by Oliver and Haldane. No Get was allowed above except at Morca’s bidding, and no one at all was allowed to walk the upper porch above the portico but Morca. His wife had had permission while yet she lived, but since her fall and death, no one.

At the head of the stairs, sitting on a three-legged stool, was an old man, the oldest man within the dun. His name was Svein. He was one of the few who had been a man at Stone Heath and lived, one of the very few who yet lived these many years later. As his proof of the battle he carried a red lightning scar on his right cheek. For as long as the boy could remember, his hair had been white, but in other days he had been known as Svein Half-White Half-Right. He had served as Lore Master for Garmund, remembering the old ways, the songs, the stories, the sayings, the wisdom the Gets had brought west to Nestor, and applying them to these new times and new ways. Now he sat his stool before Morca’s door, guarding the stair in Morca’s absence and remembering for himself all the things that younger men did not care to know. He rose when he saw Morca.

“Woe,” he said. “Woe to you, Morca. You overreach yourself. You wish to be king in more than war. You would turn Nestor into the fourth Kingdom of the West. Your father was a good king, a right and proper king. He held to the old ways and bowed to the will of his peers.”

It was the sort of thing he was wont to say. As the last of those at Stone Heath, he was allowed by Morca to say what he would, however rude, however contrary. Morca had that much respect for the old ways.

“Have you been downstairs again?” Morca asked.

“No, I have not,” the old man said and plunked back onto his stool. “I have no need. I’ve been sitting my stool and minding my business as I should, but I can hear of your alliance to Chastain well enough from here. What your father would have thought!”

Svein pointed an accusing finger at Oliver. “It is his fault. You were a good boy until he came and now he has filled your head with gross ambitions. Garulf overrode the word of his barons and bought the Gets Stone Heath. What will your appetites buy?”

Morca said, “Be at peace, old man. You excite yourself. Sit your stool and watch my door well. When my ale comes, pass it through. There is ale for you, too, if your watch is good and your tongue ceases its flap.”

“There is?” Svein rose and went trotting halfway down the stair. “Ale,” he called. “Ale for me. Morca said I might have ale.”

A fire had been laid and started on Morca’s arrival. Nestorian serfs might pass within the room under Svein’s watchful eye to do their work and leave again. The rules did not apply to them since they were not people. The stair was the distance between Morca and lesser Gets, but the distance between any Get and the Nestorians who served them was so great and obvious that it needed no emphasis.

Haldane sat him down by the fire on a three-legged stool the match of Svein’s. Oliver closed the heavy door on the din from belowstairs.

Morca said, “Woe, woe, woe. It is all he can say. He eats and shits and sits his stool now in Nestor, but his mind dwells in Shagetai that we left fifty years before he was born. If it weren’t for the respect I bear my father, I would cut his throat. That is a sense of tradition for you. I’m an old-fashioned man and he gives me no credit for it.”

“You’re a generous man, Morca,” Oliver said. “If the world only knew. But what will your peers make of this marriage? You said nothing of this before you left. If you had told me what you intended, I would have advised against it.”

“I know,” said Morca. “That is why I did not tell you. That is why I am a king and you a wizard whose spells of occasion fail. I dare. You do not. I have no peers. I am king here and I will act the king. That is why you sought me out. Do you remember? With what other man among the Gets could you dare to practice your art?”

“None other. But I wish to practice it longer. I am your man, Morca, but what good is my advice to you if you will not hear what you have no wish to hear?”

“I will not be told what I cannot do! Study your book and be prepared to help me hold what I have taken. That is your business.”

Oliver pointed at Haldane who was sitting by the fire, hands clasped, elbows on knees, listening tight to every word. His head did not move, but his eyes flicked from one to the other.

“You make the boy your pawn,” Oliver said.

“That is his part. He is a pawn as I am a king and you a wizard. But he is a pawn who will be made into a king.”

“Tell him of your intent. Let him know what risks he runs.”

There was a knock then at the door and Morca crossed to open it. It was a serf bearing Morca’s ale. Morca took pitcher and leather jack and bade the man wait outside for further call.

Oliver moved toward the door as Morca turned.

Oliver said, “Did you know that the witch Jael was seen in the woods today? Where she appears, trouble trails after. She is a bad omen. Kings and witches—too much power stirs about us. I will study my gramarie as you suggest. It may yet take an Ultimate Spell to keep what you are taking.”

He closed the door behind him. Morca looked after him and shook his head. It was his bad habit to speak of others when they were not present.

“He frets too much,” he said. “He lacks guts. He doesn’t do, he dances. Give him a sword and a man to kill, and he would wash his hands.”

Morca poured ale from pitcher to tankard and took the whole in one draft as he crossed the room. He set jack and pitcher down on the table that stood in one corner, swiped his beard, then turned and belted his son with the same backhand blow he had shown the serf. Haldane was knocked from his stool and stretched at his length upon the floor.

Morca shook an admonishing finger at him. “That will teach you to listen and mind. You are a pawn. Mine. Learn to do as you are told.”

Haldane nursed his head. One blow added to another, and now he had a headache, a throbbing pain behind his right eye. The blow had come when he had ceased to expect it and he had been unprepared. He picked himself up from the floor and took his seat again, sitting silently, shaking his head to clear it, ceasing to touch it, doing his best to ignore the pain he’d earned.

He didn’t grudge Morca the blow, for why should he? It was Morca’s right. It was merely unexpected. The blow was far from the first he had taken, and he thought it fairly purchased. It was the price of hunting alone.

But then in an outrush, he let his reasons go. “You promised in the fall that I should ride on the first spring reaving! When will you count me man enough? I was called Haldane Left-Behind today. Men begin to laugh at me, and yet I can outdo Hemming Paleface. Why should he go and not me? I begin to envy men their scars. When the carls return I look to see their fresh-won honors.”

And then Morca began to speak in a tone new to Haldane and Haldane could only stare up at him in wonder. Morca was a man who could no more easily call Haldane “Son” than Haldane could call him “Father.” He was as bluff and rough in private as he was in public. This was the boy’s secret and he told no one. He would pretend otherwise. Even in that moment when Morca had first called Haldane his lieutenant, he had been rough and bluff.

But now he said in a softer voice than Haldane had ever heard, “I know. I know. You shall have scars enough before I am done making you. But you must have patience. You are man enough to be left in charge. You are my reserve, as Garmund was Garulf’s reserve at Stone Heath, and Garmund became king. Would you have me waste you lightly, boy?”

He clapped Haldane on the shoulder. “You are my strength. Without you, all my plans come to nothing. I need you. I would not use you too soon and lose you.”

“But I am strong now,” said Haldane. “Use me.” But his heart was trembling on the edge of the jump to jubilation.

Morca said, “I do owe you a reaving. And you shall have it. It is time for you to prove yourself.” He put his hand almost tenderly on Haldane’s biceps and tested the muscle. “My son. Be all that I need you to be.” His voice was intense.

Haldane could only look at him, Morca, the distant, dominating sun he followed, who ordered and denied, and numbly say, “I will.” He was too filled to say more. His head was spinning. Morca was admitting of a need for him.

Then abruptly, as though the intimacy were too much for him, Morca rose and turned to the table, where stood his pitcher and jack. He did not break away completely, but he poured and finished his second tankard and then stood about patting himself on the stomach until he delivered a satisfactory belch, and only then did he speak again and it was in his customary hearty voice or something like it.

“It was a beautiful raid,” he said. “Oh, it was fine. If Richard of Palsance were as simple as Lothor of Chastain, the West would lie open to any man’s hand. There would be no need to draw the barons together behind me as one. Anyone could rape the West.”

“And you would raise the barons? All the barons as in the old days?”

Haldane might well ask. Since the Gets had recoiled into Nestor to rule there after Stone Heath, the barons had been united in nothing. They had been arrogant, grasping, quarrelsome, careless of law, unmindful of clan, jealous of privilege, and unruled.

“What do you think a King of the Gets should be?” Morca asked.

“Leader of the Gets in war.”

That was the simple, well-known answer. Svein’s answer. Morca said as much. “These are new and modern times. We are no longer in Shagetai. What was does not rule what might be. I will rule the barons in peace as in war. I shall lead those that can be led. I shall inspire those who would be inspired. I shall beat those who must be beaten. And when I am ready, I mean to take the West. All the West, from South Cape to the Hook, Chastain and Palsance and Vilicea. From Orkay to Grelland. From Lake Lamorne to the sea.”

If Haldane was one of those who must be inspired, truly this was inspiring talk. It filled him with visions of Morca leading a great army into the West with Haldane at his right hand. He watched Morca in awe as he spelled out his full flashing vision.

“King of the Gets?” asked Morca. “Why not King of the Get Empire, master of greater territory than the Empire of Nestria ever knew? Why not all the world if a man can seize it?”

The Morca that Haldane knew did not like questions he could not answer. Haldane risked a blow to ask. “What of the wizards of the West?”

Morca waved the question aside as of no importance. “What of them?” he asked, roaring on. “They are dead. They died at Stone Heath and those that are left are small men, more theoretic than our Oliver, whom I can provoke to perform. Why else should I tolerate a man of magic? We were too weak to take the West after Stone Heath and the West lay helpless, too weak to defend itself. In our weakness, we did nothing. In their weakness, they survived. Our weakness is now strength—we have a new generation of Get fighting men. What does the West have? Still nothing. Lothor thought himself safe behind his mountains and his guarded passes. We spent a week crossing through snow and high rock on our mission of state, and Lothor still wonders from where we came. Give me an army and the West is mine. And yours after me.”