Earth Magic (20 page)

Chapter 23

A
FTER LIGHT RAIN THAT FELL LATE IN THE NIGHT,
the morning dawned blithesome and cloudless. The sky was blue. The easy countryside of Palsance was green. The sweet breeze darted here and there, carrying the odors of spring about like gossip. It was the best day of the whole new year—as fine a day as you might find in any year.

On this day, two men came walking west from Stone Heath, following the morning roads of Palsance. One was a short old man with a close-cropped white beard. He wore a gray smock, ill fitting, ornamented with rents and with bloodstains. The other was a naked youth bearing a brand on his shoulder. Both were weary. It seemed they had walked far without food and suffered much.

They followed the common roads of ordinary men. Giles’ ability to follow the hidden ways within the land had not survived that great discharge of power on Stone Heath after which Oliver, who had been dead, stirred and spoke and cried, like other mortal men. Giles felt less than he had been, like a man blinded in one eye, like a man unable to think with one side of his mind. But he accepted the fact that one moment is not the same as another, that what is possible at one time and place may not be possible in other circumstances. He knew that last night on Stone Heath was an extraordinary moment. He had been touched by something great and lifted high. After soaring, he had been set back on his own two feet again—but no longer the person he had been. This new person that he was did not fret, but accepted what was.

To Giles, Libera was a river and he had cast himself into it to be carried wherever it pleased Her to carry him. That was free will. It made action possible, when otherwise he would not know what to do or who to be.

At the same time, he did not yet know Her ways. He was like a horse that has been broken to a higher will, but not yet schooled. He was like a pen that has been cut, but not yet set to the alphabet. He was like a young hawk seated on its master’s wrist, waiting for the hood to be removed, waiting for a sign.

So as he walked, Giles concentrated on signs. He devoted himself to thinking on the long riddles the Goddess had set for him: Why had he been born? For what purpose was the land made? And he looked everywhere for answers in hopes of finding answers somewhere.

The first thing that he saw was that even if he lacked insight into the hidden ways today, he had not lost touch with the Goddess. There were reminders of Her presence to be seen around him in Palsance. When Giles and Oliver stopped to rest, it was close by a dolmen, a great flat rock laid across upright stones in ancient days. And here Giles sensed power like a warm hum, like a glow.

While they sat, Oliver, who had been silent all the morning interrupted Giles’ thoughts.

He said, “Haldane . . .”

But that wasn’t his name any longer. He said, “Say, ‘Giles.’ ”

“Giles,” said Oliver. “I have a confession to make to you.”

He looked at his feet. “The night that Morca died, I failed him. I attempted an Ultimate Spell, but my courage gave way and the spell came to nothing. The Pall of Darkness that brought us safe out of the slaughter was not my spell, but yours, spun by you after you had been struck on the head. There, I have said it!”

And Oliver waited for Giles’ reaction. Haldane might have struck at him for these words or denied the truth. Haldane might have hated him for his failure. But Giles’ sense of the necessity of the moment, the flow of the river, ruled his answer.

He said, “I remember. While on Barrow Hill, I remembered. It seems very long ago.”

“My failure weighs heavily on me,” said Oliver. “If things were otherwise, Morca would still be alive. I should be dead for my failure.”

“No,” said Giles. “Don’t think that, Oliver. Accept what is. If Morca is dead and you are alive, it is not your doing or my doing merely. Other will than ours is involved.”

Oliver said, “I cannot accept that. My failure was my own, and I must stand responsible for it.”

“You cannot be so certain,” said Giles. “As a man of magic you should know that there are other magics than your own, some much more powerful. How can you doubt it after all that has happened? Your magic and mine may not have been the only magic in Morca’s dun that night.”

“Do you think so?” asked Oliver. But then he said, “No, my responsibility is not less. I know my failure. Whether the magic was mine or someone else’s, I have been burnt by magic, and I renounce it. I’ve given up my book. I am not a man of magic anymore. I am nothing but an old man in Palsance. An ordinary old man.”

It seemed to Giles that Oliver was less than he had been, as though he had pulled himself forth from the stream of life and declared he would not swim further. Did he seem shrunken and reduced in power as he sat there? Was this responsibility?

In early afternoon of this beautiful day, they came to a village huddling against the knees of a ruined stone castle that stood on a height and shadow-guarded the eastern marches of Palsance. First they heard great tumult. Then, when they came in view, they saw many people gathered to watch boys in white and boys in green wrestling and surging in a body on the common.

“What is that?” asked Giles.

“It is the War of Winter and Summer,” said Oliver. “See there, Winter is being beaten back. Soon Winter will be slain and buried, and ashes scattered on the grave.”

Giles smiled at that, for it seemed to him that he had lived through a winter that was long and cold. He was ready to greet summer and make it welcome.

“But what does it mean?” he asked. This ceremony was not observed in Nestor, not even by Nestorian peasants.

“It means that we have arrived on a holiday,” said Oliver. “Today is the Festival Of Joy. See the pole?”

In the center of the common, a great Joy-tree had been erected, a bare pole stripped of branches and bark, all save the crown. In this top, there were cloths and pennons of many colors tied, and prizes of hard eggs, sausages, and sweetcakes for the young to climb after.

This was the first day of Joy Month, that month when all the best flowers grow and spring is at its sweetest. On this day, throughout Palsance, men and women set their work aside and gladly played, celebrating the fertility of the Goddess. Little girls dressed their Libera-dolls in ribbons and flowers, and carried them about to show. Their older sisters likewise dressed themselves in ribbons and flowers, and on this day might dare to do that which otherwise was not done. And young boys waylaid travelers and asked them hard questions.

Giles and Oliver were seen as they approached. A little stream bordered the common. They were met first on the footbridge that crossed it by a holiday guardian, a boy with a bullock horn on a stick and a sprig of green in his shirt.

“Where is your Libera-leaf?” he challenged them. “Where is your sprig of Joy?”

“What is that?” Giles asked of Oliver.

“I don’t know this custom,” said Oliver. “Or perhaps I have forgotten it.”

“You must be strangers,” said the boy. “All who pass here on the Festival of Joy must wear a leaf like mine, grandfather, or pay the penalty. That is the custom.”

“What is the penalty?” asked Giles.

“The penalty is a drenching in the name of the Goddess,” said the boy as he scooped up water in his dipper horn.

Oliver stepped back. “Isn’t there something to be said otherwise?”

“Nothing, grandfather,” the boy said, and whistled loudly.

Oliver dodged back off the bridge in hopes of saving himself a soaking. The boy flung water after him, but it fell short. Oliver did not escape, however. A number of other boys of the same size all armed with dipper horns came pounding up in answer to the whistle. Some ran over the bridge. Some jumped the stream. They surrounded Oliver and knocked him down, and then shoved and jostled to empty their dippers over him as fast as they could scoop them full.

Haldane, had he been here, might have run like Oliver, wary, disgusted, and panicked. He would surely have fought, and fought more effectively than Oliver.

But Giles stood his ground and took his baptism with better grace. Could one who swam in the river of the Goddess refuse a drenching in Her name? Wet is wet.

And by his quiet acceptance, Giles stayed relatively dry. In attempting to escape his penalty, Oliver had attracted to himself all but the first boy, the guardian of the footbridge, and he contented himself to pour three slow cold dipper horns of water over Giles. Then something in Giles’ calm and steady manner made the boy cease.

Oliver’s cries and the shouts of the boys abusing him brought spectators from the common. Giles heard a sudden commotion amongst the boys, and a girl’s voice saying, “Enough. Enough. You will drown the old man.” And he brushed the water and wet hair from his face to see a blonde maiden driving the boys away from Oliver.

“But, Mai, we catch so few. It’s our fun,” the boy beside Giles protested.

The girl looked at them. She was dressed in the gay holiday costume of eastern Palsance, and she wore her own Libera-leaf in her dirndl. She looked at Giles with a frank gaze, and he did not flinch because he was naked. He was one with the moment, and stood steady.

“Who are you, strangers?” a voice of authority asked.

Oliver sat on the ground like a soaked gray rat. His rent and bloody smock was now wet and muddy, too.

“We are serfs escaped from Nestor,” he said. “I am Oliver. This is my poor branded grandson, Giles.”

But Giles denied this. “He is not my grandfather. He is addled. He but says that because I help him. Black Morca is dead and the Gets are at war amongst themselves. In the confusion the old man and I have made our way to safety here in the West with Libera’s aid.”

One in the crowd said, “Can it be true that Morca is dead? Did he choke while swallowing an elk?” Great Bad Black Morca, who stood the height of the Joy-tree and ate babies for breakfast, was a legend even here in Palsance—nay, even more of a legend than in Nestor.

“Why you poor folk,” said an old woman. “You young boys should be ashamed to treat them so!”

But the man who spoke for the village said, “In Libera’s name, welcome to the Festival of Joy. Join our celebration, we bid you.” And to those around him, he said, “Make them welcome and give them comfort. Hurry. Hurry. Can you not see how tired and hungry these travelers are?”

In an instant, people were gathered around the fugitives. Giles’ brand was fingered by curious children until their mothers bade them stop. Giles did not protest, but endured their attentions without comment. He knew the meaning of the letter that he wore on his shoulder, and it was his still center, his constant reminder that he was the dog of the Goddess—like Lothor’s little lap-dog—ready always to be bent to Her will.

Towels were brought to them and they were dried. They were given new shirts to wear. And they were brought bread and cheese to eat and beer to drink. They were sat down on the common near the Joy-tree. It was a perfect day for a favorite festival, and they were made part of the celebration.

They watched the games. All day, Giles saw youths try and succeed or try and fail to lift prizes from the top of the Joy-tree. In the evening, a great fire was laid and lit, and there was singing and dancing around the Joy-tree. And young couples passed back and forth from the shadows, while their elders lounged about smoking pipes and savoring the end of the day.

But Oliver had something on his mind unspoken all this day. He said, “Why did you deny that I was your grandfather?”

Giles said, “I swore to see you safely to Palsance, and you are safely here.”

“Yes.”

“Then let us take leave of each other. I am not sure we have any farther to travel together.”

“No,” said Oliver. “I am not home yet.”

“I never promised to see you home,” Giles said, and looked away. He felt responsible for the old man’s life, but he also felt impatience to be free of him.

“You feel me as a burden. But listen. Since I have no magic, I need your help more than ever,” Oliver said. “Bear me company home. You can do so much as that. And I will repay you. I will let you stay with me there.”

“No,” said Giles. He remembered the stories he had heard. Oliver’s family was great. It was one thing for Oliver to call him his grandson here amongst peasants in the eastern marches of Palsance where any raid child might bear a Gettish look. But how could Oliver pass him off as a by-blow to his noble family? Not easily.

“Listen, Haldane.”

“I am not Haldane. I am Giles.”

“No,” said Oliver. “Let me speak to Haldane. I don’t know Giles. Listen to me, Haldane. I know I am not the man I was, but do not despise me. I can be of help to you. This world is not safe for you to walk abroad alone in. There are too many who may recognize Haldane, the son of Black Morca. You need time. You need a place to be small in.”

“I am not sure that is my way,” said Giles. “I go where I am directed to go. As Libera wills—that is my way.”

Mai, the pretty blonde maiden who had driven away the boys with their dipper horns, sought them out then. She gave Giles a look that Oliver might remember from Festivals of Joy when he was young. But it was to Oliver she spoke, and not to Giles.

She said, “How are you now, grandsire? Are you well fed? Are you rested? Are you dry?”

Oliver said, “I am content. As you see, I have even been given a pipe to smoke. May I thank you for coming to my rescue, sweet young lady? Without your aid, I might have been drowned, and I never thought to die by water.”

She said, “It is the Festival of Joy,” as though that were a reason for her rescue, and blushed.

Then she said, “Since I will likely not see you in the morning, grandsire, let me wish you a safe journey in Libera’s name.”

Giles took that as a sign. He could not do other. Everything was a sign to him. Anything was a sign to him. And he felt ashamed of his impatience.

“Thank you,” said Oliver.

Then Mai said, “May I have leave to speak to your grandson?”

Oliver pulled on his pipe and blew out smoke again. “Yes,” he said.

Half-shy, half-bold, she said to Giles, “Will you come with me and sit and comb my hair?” And she drew her comb from her pocket a little way, and showed it to him.