Of Machines & Magics (16 page)

“Now, I think we can go.” They climbed down, unthreatened. The village seemed deserted. Ponderos stopped long enough to find his sword and to carve himself several thick fish steaks.

“Well?” asked Roli as they left the village—which was surely wishing it had showered the two of them with oysters and sent them on their way.

“Well? Well, what?”

“You’ve not said anything about that animal,” Roli pressed.

“It was a bird. Very rare.”

“But how did it come by those extra wounds? It must have died from the slash on its neck.”

The story had reached its conclusion. Calistrope had been trying to hide a grin for some time with increasing lack of success. Now he spluttered and laughed. Finally, he explained about his own confrontation with the bird.

They walked on. Polymorph learned to match their pace and continued to ask questions, determined to understand everything there was to understand about the world it had suddenly become aware of.

“I wonder if you were made or just evolved,” Calistrope mused at one point.

Polymorph turned his grin on the Mage. “Does it matter a lot?”

“No,” he said. “Not much. Not at all, in fact.”

“What are you doing?” asked Polymorph in turn.

“Nothing,” said Calistrope.

“Is that possible?” asked Polymorph.

“I see what you mean. I’m walking, I have a task to complete. It is something we three have to do.”

Polymorph prompted for more and they tried to explain the purpose of their journey. It was doubtful whether it could comprehend the working of the solar system and its fate at this stage of its development. There were lulls in the barrage of questions, the humans accepted them gratefully, Polymorph with impatience. The pauses seemed necessary for Polymorph, or
Morph
as he came to be called, to digest the great banquets of knowledge it absorbed.

During one such pause, Calistrope stopped abruptly. “I can smell magic,” he said.

“Magic?” Polymorph promptly became speechless as mental osmosis squeezed a whole new concept into the small skull.

Ponderos took a great breath, savoring the false odor that his brain had tricked him into sensing. “Ah, yes. Nearby. I wonder why?”

“Why?”

“Why? It is just
here
. But
what
has brought it here?” Calistrope mused.

They walked on, the sensation came and went as the etheric currents coiled and whirled. They crossed a small tributary stream on stones so conveniently placed as to seem deliberately positioned. On the farther side, Roli stopped and stared up the slope. There had been a significant amount of erosion in this area, a gentler slope backed up towards the higher cliffs. There were patches of green and, here and there, splashes of intense colors which had caught Roli’s attention. “What do you suppose those are?” he asked, pointing.

Calistrope looked up. “Flowers?”

“Flowers? Well, I suppose they could well be.”

Nearer, the stream had cut a broad depression into the sloping valley wall and a cluster of stone-built dwellings could just be seen against the background. “There’s a village up there, too.”

“Hmm,” said Calistrope and marched on.

“A village,” said Morph, sorting through its newly acquired knowledge and filling in the gaps as it went. “A place where people live together. Can we go? Can we see it?”

Calistrope gazed up the hill for several moments, tapping his front tooth with a fingernail.

“Is there any reason why we should not?” asked Ponderos.

“Well, we have lost some time at that village,” Calistrope stopped to consider. “No,” he said at last, “I don’t suppose there’s any reason we should not. None at all.”

Chapter 13

They began to climb the hill alongside the tumbling stream with Polymorph trailing behind as he continued to sort through the mounting abundance of new information and impressions.

The village was built from local stone, small square houses with timber doors and glazed windows set back from the long flight of steps which served as the main street. Between the steps and each house was a terraced plot of red earth. The ground was planted with squash or beans, onions flowered in the corners and one variety or another of a nut tree grew against each wall and blossomed and bore fruit at the same time.

Children crawled between the legs of adults to watch, thumbs-in-mouth, as the strangers passed by. The villagers were silent, blank faced. Some, hoeing a crop or painting a door, ignored the newcomers completely.

Morph pressed his hands to each side of his head. “No,” he said as if in pain. “They know less than me, nothing. They are slowly sucking out everything I know.”

Calistrope looked at their new companion with concern. “You are losing what you know?”

“No. I don’t think so. Copying, I think. Like I did with you.”

“I think it’s your mind, my friend. Soaks things up, lets things leak out.”

Calistrope smiled at one of the villagers who was standing in his way. The villager smiled like a reflection. Ponderos greeted another and the greeting came back like an echo. Both smile and greeting were taken up by others, the expression and words repeated exactly up and down the street until they had run their course and died away like an expanding ripple on a pond.

Roli grinned lasciviously at a pair of young girls. They grinned back, mimicking the precise degree of mischief in the original. One girl passed the grin onto the other; the other gave it to a neighbor and
that
gesture, too, went up and down the village steps.

“They seem mute in a way,” puzzled Calistrope. “They appear to just copy what we say or do but there is no understanding there.”

“No thoughts there,” Polymorph agreed. “Nothing more than a fleeting curiosity. What they took from my mind—which I had taken from yours, of course—has vanished.”

“Water passing through sand,” Ponderos remarked.

“The picture is an apt one,” Polymorph returned.

“It’s a very peculiar community,” Calistrope looked up and down the street. “If there’s a headman or a mayor or some such, I don’t see him.”

“There’s his house, anyway,” nodded Ponderos. “It’s bigger and grander than the rest.”

It was but only a little bigger and a little grander. The house stood a little apart and was surrounded by a garden composed of stones and rounded cushions of moss. A small copse of ash trees grew in terra-cotta pots and a stream ran in through an archway in the wall along the farther boundary and out again through an arch in the nearer wall. The place reeked of magic, not strong magic but a lot of it: many small applications.

There was a closed garden gate in the wall. The travelers entered here and Roli turned back to close it. Beyond the wall, a few villagers stood and watched them. Roli dropped the latch and the villagers and the village vanished.

They were in a different place.

Two griffins stood either side of the gate which was now an impressive affair of black iron and curlicues. The house, still modest but rather larger than the version which obtruded into the village outside, had six windows in the front wall with a central door which itself, had a central door knob. Flower beds lined the pathway to the door, the pot-grown trees were now the nearer fringe of a great forest with the stream become a placid river reflecting a sky which had never shone over the Earth.

Calistrope looked at the griffins. “What do you see here, Roli?”

Roli looked from one to the other. Two carved stone animals, they seem a little indistinct, er…”

“Yes?”

“They’re like your gargoyle, aren’t they? Set here to guard this manse.”

“Well, yes and no,” Calistrope smiled. “Well done Roli, your extra senses are quickening. The haze you noticed is the result of mismatching the personalities to the carving, it’s only slight, not noticeable by the ordinary man. However, the gargoyle at my manse is a complete personality, it is real. These are not real. Concoctions.”

Calistrope held up a warning finger. “Don’t touch them Roli, you are not able to deal with these things yet. Nor you Morph, they may be dangerous to you. Now…”

Calistrope left the others and went to bang on the door with the brass knocker, also in the form of a griffin. The sound boomed hollowly and a score of unseen things looked out through the windows at Calistrope. He pushed lightly at the door, it opened a hand’s breadth, welcoming almost.

The Mage stood back and the door swung shut again. He returned and patted one of the griffins on the head. “Tell him that Calistrope came to see him,” he said. “Tell him I knocked and no one answered.”

“Maybe he—or she—won’t be long,” said Roli. “We could wait if you want.”

“Oh, we’ll wait,” Calistrope decided. “And it is a
he
.”

Calistrope indicated the several flagged pathways which led off across the garden. One led to another gate in a wall which faded out of existence an ell from either gate post. Others led over bridges into the woodland or to iron bound doors which stood by themselves where the garden merged with meadowland. One ended only a pace or two from them, at a solid timber trapdoor weighted down by a huge millstone.

“There are many places he may have gone to but my curiosity has been engaged, I’d like to wait and meet with him.”

They left the garden. The enigmatic paths, the forest and far-away meadows all vanished. The four of them were back again outside the somewhat larger house of the headman and now, a small crowd of curious villagers watched them close the gate.

“Suppose we eat,” proposed Ponderos, always ready with a sensible suggestion about his favorite subject. “We will cook ourselves a meal, make some tea. A surplus of magic lies here, so perhaps a jug of wine, too.”

They walked off to one side where there was an open area where they could build a fire. Roli began to select stones for a hearth.

“You remember Phariste, Ponderos?” sighed Calistrope.

Ponderos screwed up his features in thought. “A tall man, broad shoulders.”

“A small man, slight of build. He considered meditation to be a useful tool.”

“And so it is. It lends idleness respectability. But no, I don’t remember Phariste.”

“This is all his work, Ponderos. I’m certain of it. He left the College many old years ago, before I last culled my memories else I’d recall him better.”

“The manse you mean? Or the village?”

“The villagers.”

“The villagers?”

“The whole place smells of Phariste, Ponderos. You know I’m never wrong in these matters,” Calistrope laid a long finger against his sharp nose.

Ponderos went to look for firewood without answering.

A little later, Roli came back with six fish from the stream. Morph followed him with a bundle of firewood and Ponderos brought back a canvas bottle of water over which he performed a certain ritual.

Ponderos tested the contents of his bottle. “Adequate,” he said. “Not a great wine but then, made in this manner, it is rarely great.”

Throughout the meal, they handed tidbits to those villagers who had grown curious enough to come and watch. Ponderos let some sip from his wine bottle which, unsurprisingly, never seemed to run out. When several of the villagers brought small cups of blue pottery to him, Ponderos poured with a will.

“Where has Roli gone?” asked Calistrope, suddenly aware that his apprentice had vanished.

“Satisfying mutual curiosities with one or two of the village girls, I imagine,” Ponderos poured a little more wine down his throat and got to his feet. “I’d thought of satisfying my own curiosity,” he continued, “though in a less abandoned manner.”

“Quite,” Calistrope replied. “Slake your curiosity by all means but beware the effect of too much slaking. I shall wait here for Phariste.”

“As you will. Till later, then,” Ponderos took his bottle and ambled away.

Calistrope was perfectly content to wait and to watch the villagers watching him and mimicking the odd action he made.

It’s as though there has never been anything novel in their lives
, he thought. Their lack of speech was puzzling, too. Calistrope could not remember meeting anyone who could not speak unless actually dumb and even they had the capacity to understand.
Here is yet another subspecies of homo ultimo
.

There were many such. The race had modified and reinvented itself so many times that there were hundreds, if not thousands, of variations on a theme. Some were still close enough to the main genotype to interbreed, others had altered to such an extent that procreation between them and other branches of the species was impossible.

“Morph,” he said after watching the behavior of the villagers for some time. “These people have changed since we first came. Do you detect a difference?”

Polymorph was silent for a few seconds. “There is a change. Their minds seem less empty. They wonder who we are, how did we make the new food. I can sense excitement as well somewhere, and pleasure.”

“They are learning from us, would you say?”

“It seems likely. However, I believe this is your expected visitor.”

Calistrope turned to see where Polymorph was looking, Polymorph had its eyes closed, it had sensed the newcomer by their mental signature. Alerted, Calistrope could sense a current of etheric power coming from behind him.

“Come and sit with us, Phariste.”

A figure came into view to his left. “Calistrope? I am afraid I am not this Phariste you expect.”

Until she spoke, Calistrope had not realized the newcomer was a woman.

“Certainly you are not.” Despite his surprise, Calistrope retained his composure. He got to his feet. “If you are the mage who occupies the manse over yonder, my assumptions have been wrong.”

“I am Lelaine,” she said. “The manse, the village, these people, they are mine,” she gathered a voluminous black cloak of fine silk about her and took a seat across the fire from Calistrope, a faint perfume reached him—a scent of woodland flowers. “And you?” Lelaine drew her knees up and rested her folded arms on them.

Calistrope sat down again. “Calistrope, as you have divined. A traveler, as you must have guessed. On my way to Schune, which perhaps you did
not
know.”

“And the Halfling?”

“Is Polymorph. A companion, a friend.”

Polymorph’s figure became a little more upright, swelled a little with gratification.

“Not human.”

“
Absolutely
not.”

“This Phariste you mentioned. Why might I be she?”

“He, Madam. Phariste was someone I knew once, a mage as it chances. The nature of the villagers, they reminded me of certain theories Phariste had formulated.”

Lelaine had a narrow oval face; she had dark hair, an ivory-pale complexion and eyes like lilac-colored almonds. Expression was conveyed by her eyebrows; all other parts of her visage seemed a mask, her lips moving only enough to form words, her jaw only sufficient to enunciate.

“Tell me Phariste’s theories,” she demanded.

Calistrope eased himself. “Phariste believed in the power of meditation to cure many ills—both of the mind and of the body. Meditation purged the mind of conflicts, he told me. Thought, he believed—at least, if taken to extremes—overtaxed the body’s resources.”

Lelaine’s eyebrows rose questioningly.

“I don’t recall his attempting to put this into practice but he was wont to say that if thought were entirely banished, then the body might continue to function forever.”

The eyebrows descended, drew together, formed a straight line. Lelaine considered Calistrope’s recollections. “Your friend merely skirted the fundamental truths, Calistrope. Skulked around the heart of the matter like a burglar unexpectedly finding the householder at home.”

“I see.”

“Indeed. You should not be surprised. Did you say your friend was male?”

Calistrope nodded.

“A woman would have been more exacting in her analysis; men are given to prejudgment.”

Calistrope had to admit the fact, if only to himself, that there had been occasions—rare ones—when even
he
had been less than rigorous. Still…

“Well now,” he said. In Calistrope’s experience, there was rarely anything to choose between the two sexes. Both were equally likely to be affected by prejudice, both prone to prevarication, both would attempt to fit observation to the theory. “There may be something in what you say,” Calistrope opted for diplomacy.

“You may depend upon it,” Lelaine was firm. “Your friend failed to take his arguments to their logical conclusion. You see, it is the thought which affects the person, not the act of thinking. Thoughts are demons, debilitating, degrading and extremely contagious.”

“This seems highly unorthodox.”

“Ah! If you were a mage.”

“Perhaps I am. What is there to say that I am not?”

Lelaine smiled. The first time her lips had been used to express an emotion—sadly it was disdain. “Would a mage have left his name with my griffins?”

“Your griffins? How can this be?”

“The stone griffins at my gate are guardian spirits. If you were a mage, they would not have let you pass—and they heard what you said and related it to me.”

“Well now. Perhaps if I were a mage…”

“
If
you were a mage, trained to assess—better yet, a woman with her faculties unclouded by the hormones which rage through men’s bodies—in that case, I could explain all of it to you.”

Calistrope shook his head, sighed. “If I were
only
a mage.”

“And female.”

“Alas.”

“You see, ideas are the curse of the human race.”

“But surely, thought is what makes us what we are. Thought elevates us.”

“Every thought you believe to be good, or useful, or uplifting has its counterpart, driving mankind lower than the beasts. The thoughts themselves pass from one to another of us, shaping our brains to their own ends.”