Stasheff, Christopher - Her Majestys Wizard 1 - A Wizard in R

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2024-12-03 0 0 733KB 324 页 5.9玖币
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Her Majesty's Wizard #1
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Her Majesty's Wizard #1
CHAPTER 1
Matthew Mantrell leaned forward across the little table in the campus coffee
shop and tapped the sheet of rune-covered parchment before him. He tried to put
some of the urgency he felt into his voice.
"I tell you, Paul, this is important!"
Paul just sighed and shook his head, reaching for the last of his coffee. He
didn't even glance at the parchment.
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Somehow, Matt never had been able to make others take him seriously. He was tall
enough, he thought, over medium height, and fencing practice had kept him lean and
wiry. But his eyes were an honest, warm brown-like his hair. His nose was out of
Sherlock Holmes-but from Watson, not Holmes. He looked, unfortunately, good-
natured, friendly, and kind.
Across the table, Paul put his cup down and cleared his throat. "As I remember
it," he said, "you're supposed to be working on your doctorate. How long since you
did any research on your dissertation?"
"Three months," Matt admitted.
Paul shook his head. "Then you'd better get on the stick, man. You don't have
that much more time."
It was true. He had a month of the spring semester left, plus the summer. After
that, it was out into the wilderness of two-year college teaching, with little or
no research time, probably never to emerge into the light of a Ph.D. and eventual
professorship. He shuddered at the thought, but screwed up the remnants of
determination and declared, "But this is important! I feel it in my bones!"
"So what are you going to tell your committee? That you dropped everything
because-so you say-this piece of manuscript fell out of an old copy of the Njaal
saga while you were poking around in the library stacks?"
"It did!"
"So how come nobody else ever found it? They've been sifting that library for
fifty years. How do we know it isn't a hoax?"
"It's in runes..."
"Which you-and who knows how many others-can write." Paul shook his head slowly.
"One scrap of parchment, with runes spelling out words in a language that sounds
like a mess of German, French, maybe Old Norse, and probably some Elvish and
Barsoomian worked in."
"Yeah, but I feel it's a real tongue." Matt managed a tight smile. "The words
just don't make sense-yet."
"So you've been trying to translate it from root words for three months, without
a bit of luck." Paul sighed. "Give it up, man. June's next month. Your fellowship
will be up, and none of your dissertation done. There you'll be, without a degree,
and not much chance of getting one, either."
He looked at the clock and got to his feet, clapping Matt on the shoulder.
"Gotta run. Good luck, man-and pull your head back to reality huh? Or as close as
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we can ever get."
Matt watched him shoulder his way out of the coffee shop. Paul was right, from
the hard-headed, practical point of view. But Matt knew he was, too. He just
couldn't substantiate it. He sighed and pulled out his silver ballpoint pen to have
another try at playing acrostics with the speech sounds in his manuscript.
He looked down at the parchment, and everything else dropped from his mind. He
felt, illogically, that if he just stared at the black brush strokes, just repeated
those alien phonemes again and again, they'd start making sense. Ridiculous, of
course! He had to reason it out, starting with the root words and locating their
place in the family of human languages.
He caught himself repeating the syllables again and stared at the blank notebook
page beside him. Start with root words. Lalinga -- the first word of all. Well,
lingua was Latin for tongue or language, and la was the feminine article in the
Romance languages. But the next words didn't seem to fit the pattern. Lalinga
wogreus marwold reigor ...
He leaned back, taking a very deep breath. He'd slipped into it again, chanting
the meaningless symbols ...
No, not meaningless! They would make sense! He was sure of it. If he could just
find the key ...
Dangerous, some remote, monitoring part of his mind gibed. Very dangerous; that
way lie dragons. And insanity ...
Matt buried his face in his hands, thumbs massaging his temple. Maybe Paul was
right; he had been working this over too long. Maybe he should just drop it ...
But not without one more try. He sat up straight again and took a firmer grip on
the pen. Now, one more time.
Lalinga wogreus marwold reigor
Athelstrigen marx alupta
Harleng krimorg barlow steigor ...
Pull back, the remote part of his mind warned. You're in too deep; you'll never
get out...
But Matt couldn't let go-underneath it all, somehow, the weird words were
beginning to make sense. He head filled with roaring-and beneath it, like a,
harmonic, the noise seemed to modulate into words:
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You, betrayed by time and space,
Born without your proper grace ...
The whole room seemed to be darkening, with only the scrap of parchment lighted;
and even there, the runes were writhing, blurring, starting to run together...
To a world befouled and base.
Feel your proper form and case,
Recognize your homeland's face.
The page darkened, left him enveloped in a formless, lightless limbo. He lurched
to his feet, then sagged against the wall, squeezing the hard, cool cylinder of the
silver pen like a talisman; but the words thundered on in his head:
Cross the void of time and space!
Seek and find your proper place!
Worlds whirled, suns swerved across limbo, wheeling him about like a dervish.
Nausea struck as the floor swung out from under his feet. His knees tried to give;
Matt clutched at a beam in the wall, holding himself up, trying to force his eyes
open.
It passed; the spinning suns slowed, his feet touched hardness, then pressed up.
Bit by bit, the churning universe ground down toward a halt...
Matt leaned against the wall, taking deep breaths, letting the dizziness pass
and the nausea ebb. Paul was right; he had been working too hard ...
A hand clasped his shoulder. "Here, countryman! Stand away!"
Matt looked up, irritated-at a florid, beefy face with a full beard, a puffy
beret, and a fur-trimmed woolen robe over a linen tunic.
The hand shook his shoulder, almost knocking him down. "D'ye hear me? Stand away
from my shop!"
Matt stared, unbelieving. The meaning was clear and familiar, but the words
weren't English.
They were the language of the manuscript fragment...
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He looked around, dazed. How had he. gotten outside? Especially this outside-a
narrow street, half-timbered houses with second stories sticking out over the
cobblestones ...
Where was he?
"Alms, goodman! Alms for the poor!"
Matt looked down into a grimy, grease-stained wooden bowl about a foot below his
nose. There was a hand holding it-a filthy, scabby, dirtcrusted hand. The arm
attached to it went with the hand perfectly, scab for scab and crud for crud. He
followed it down to a motley collection of rags and a hideous, emaciated, grizzled
old face, with a filthy woolen strip tied across the eyes.
The beggar gave the bowl an angry, impatient shake. "Alms, countryman! Give me
alms! For charity's sweet sake, goodman -- alms!"
The man went with the scene. The gutter was filled with garbage and sewage, a
magnet for mangy dogs and scrofulous pigs.
While Matt watched, a rat shot out of a pile of garbage, and a mutt leaped on,
it with a happy yelp. Matt shuddered and looked away; a sudden wave of dizziness
swept him, and he clutched at the wall again, leaning against it.
"He's ill!" The beggar sounded as if he were on the verge of panic; definitely
overreacting, Matt thought dizzily.
"And he leans against my shop!" The beefy type didn't sound too solid, either.
"Stand away, I say!"
Matt remembered something about medieval plagues and people accused of carrying
them. He staggered upright, fishing in a pocket. "No, no, I'm all right." He pulled
out a quarter and dropped it into the bowl. "Just a little dizziness; it was a hard
trip, you understand.. ."
Why had he thought of medieval plagues?
The beggar's other hand closed on the quarter, scooping it out of the bowl with
a satisfied hiss; but the tradesman spat an oath and snatched it out of the
beggar's hand. He held it about two inches from his eyes, staring at it, his eyes
bulging. Then he looked up at Matt, his eyes wide with a sort of horror, and maybe
loathing. Matt suddenly realized he wasn't exactly dressed for the occasion. The
others he saw all seemed to be wearing the same sort of basic outfit, with
variations-a short tunic over hose, with some sort of cloak over it. It was the
variations that gave Matt heartburn; they ran the gamut from about the seventh
century to the fourteenth.
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Most of them went barefoot. Some had cross-gartered sandals. Some wore shoes,
but they were pointy at the toes. And the hats ran from a simple hood to the beefy
individual's puffy beret.
"What manner of man is this?" a new voice growled. It belonged to a muscle-bound
type in cross-gartered hose and a leather apron, with an interesting assortment of
soot smudges and singed hairs in place of a shirt, and an even more interesting
hammer-a squarish block of iron with an oaken handle. Now that Matt noticed it,
there were two more members to the group, one with a quarterstaff and the other
with an adz. And they all looked hostile.
"He's an outlander, isn't he?" Quarterstaff grunted.
"Mayhap," Puffyhat answered, "but he appeared in front of my shop when I had
scarce glanced down at my counting-board. And look at his coin-have you ever seen
such?"
The quarter passed from hand to hand, to the accompaniment of rumbles of
amazement and suspicion.
"'Tis too polished," the blacksmith opined. "'Tis as if a king's statue could be
shrunken down to the size of a coin."
"And such exactness, such precision!" Matt recognized a professional tone in
Puffyhat's voice; he must be a silversmith. "'Tis in all ways wondrous. He who cast
it must have been a wizard!"
"Wizard!" The knot of men fell totally silent, staring at Matt.
The ridiculousness of it hit Matt suddenly. He felt the tender glow of his own
twisted humor and straightened slowly, fighting temptation. As usual, he lost.
He flung his arms straight up and started chanting in his most orotund tones,
"Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers set forth upon this continent a new
nation..."
They backed off like kids in a dentist's office, arms up to protect their faces.
Matt shut up, hands on his hips, grinning around at them, waiting to see what
happened-which was nothing, of course.
Slowly, the townsmen lowered their arms and looked up, unbelieving. Then their
faces reddened with anger, and their arms came down the rest of the way with fists
on the ends. They moved in.
Matt stepped back and back again, till the stucco wall pricked his back. The mob
started shouting, "Vile, impotent wizard!"... "We'll teach you to curse your
betters!" ... "Foul sorcerer!"
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Sorcerer? Somehow, that had an ugly sound.
But "wizard" was another matter-and so was being used for a punching bag. Matt
stabbed his forefingers at them, one after the other, right, left, right, chanting:
"To the top of the porch! To the top of the wall! Now dash away, dash away, dash
away all!"
There was a loud pop! Matt found himself facing an empty street, with a handful
of gawkers on the far side.
He blinked and shook his head. It couldn't be. But where had Puffyhat and his
friends gone? Matt looked around for a porch.
There wasn't any in the vicinity, but there was a low wall about fifty feet down
to the right across the alley, with four huddled, moaning shapes on top of it.
One of them looked up-the blacksmith. He stared at Matt. Matt stared back.
Then anger wrenched the smith's face, and he jumped off the wall with a howl,
running straight for Matt, his hammer swinging up.
Puffyhat and the boys jumped down to follow him, bellowing gleefully.
So did everyone else on the street-letting the smith lead, of course.
There was no time to think. Matt stepped back, curling his left arm as if he
were holding a book and thrusting up an imaginary torch with his right.
"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free!"
They kept coming-a howling mob, charging the stranger who chanted in an arcane
language.
"The wretched refuse of your teeming shore!
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me!"
They were twenty feet away and still coming, but he had to catch a breath,
because he was suddenly working uphill, pouring sweat, feeling as if he were,
trying to twist some huge, invisible field of forces that had suddenly enveloped
him. He blurted out the last line:
"I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
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Thunder split the alley, and men screamed. Matt squeezed his eyes shut.
When he opened them, the street was filled with bodies-the living kind, crawling
with lice and festooned with rags. Every beggar in town must have been there all of
a sudden-though Matt did wonder why there were so many Orientals in a medieval
European burg. And weren't those Hindus, down on the right there?
The beggars straightened up slowly, mouths gaping open, staring around, gawking
at each other. Then the screaming started again. But it was all under a tidal wave
of excited babbling.
Matt came to his senses with a start. When you fill an inside straight, cash in.
He leaped into the crowd, forcing his way through with elbows and boots. Hands
groped at his belt every inch of the way, trying to find his purse. He thanked
Heaven they didn't know about pockets and clapped a hand on his wallet as he
twisted through the last rank into the clear. Then he took one deep breath and
started off walking, fast.
There was a sudden, ominous silence behind him.
Matt kept on walking.
Then someone yelled, "There goes the sorcerer! Don't let him get away!"
The mob gave one huge, delighted howl, with the thunder of hundreds of running
feet underneath it.
Matt wasn't about to try the wizard act again until he'd learned who wrote the
script. He ran. The beggars gave a lusty bellow and charged, delighted to be on the
chasing end for a change. Matt reminded himself he'd been a track star in high
school and leaned into it. But high school had been a long time ago.
Matt didn't try to figure out where the beggars had come from; he was too busy
panting. He dimly realized that he'd called for them-but just now they were calling
for him, and he wasn't exactly eager to oblige them.
Fortunately, the beggars weren't in any great shape, either. Matt had specified
something of the sort. He had about a two block lead when he turned the corner-and
ran smack into the gendarmes, mounted on war horses and wearing ring-on-leather
iron mail.
The grizzled man in front leaned down to snag an arm as Matt went by. He had a
very snug grip; it swung Matt around to land smack against the flank of the horse.
"Here now," the man growled, "where d'ye think you're running?"
"That way!" Matt pointed the way he'd been going. "I'm trying to leave my past
behind me!"
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The front wave of beggars came pouring around the corner, howling. They saw the
soldiers and stopped on a shilling. Then they went sprawling as the second wave
hit. Those saw the soldiers and stopped dead in their turn. Just then the third
wave hit, with the fourth coming up.
The sergeant, or whatever he was, just sat back in his saddle, watching and
waiting, with the hint of a smile under his scowl. He kept a viselike hold on
Matt's arm.
When the whole mob had gotten the message and more or less stopped, the sergeant
cut across the muttering with a bull roar.
"Now, then! What happened here?" And to Matt he added, "Quite a past you have,
fellow."
The mob got quiet then. A throat toward the back cleared itself, and Puffyhat
came elbowing his way importantly toward the front. "This man is a sorcerer!"
"Is he, now?" the sergeant purred. "Well, that would explain his outlandish
costume. What sorceries did he work?"
Puffyhat launched into a tale that would have done credit to Walpole, in which
Matt figured largely and luridly. It seemed Matt had brought down a thunderstorm
just outside Puffyhat's shop, changed base metal into silver, made the earth slip
beneath the feet of four good citizens and true, tarnished the honor of the nation
by conjuring up a horde of unskilled workers-who would doubtless compete with the
locals for jobs-and changed an honest and worthy baker into a toad.
"That," Matt howled, "is slander! I never changed anyone into a toad!"
"But you did the rest?" He was a quick one, that sergeant.
What could Matt say? "Uh ... Well..."
"So I thought." The sergeant nodded, satisfied. "Well, then,. Master Sorcerer
"Wizard." Matt figured he'd better set the record as straight as possible. "Not
sorcerer. No traffic with the devil. None. Wizard."
The sergeant shrugged. "Wizard, then. Will ye now whisk yourself away from us in
the blink of an eye? Or come with us to the guardhouse, that our captain may judge
ye?"
"Uh..." Matt glanced at the crowd. Ever since Puffyhat's crack about imported
labor, they'd been looking uglier and uglier; there was a vicious muttering passing
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HerMajesty'sWizard#1file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Ch...e%20-%201%20-%20Her%20Maj\estys%20Wizard.html(1of324)[10/18/20043:42:15PM]HerMajesty'sWizard#1CHAPTER1MatthewMantrellleanedforwardacrossthelittletableinthecampus\coffeeshopandtappedthesheetofrune-coveredparchmentbeforehim.Hetried\top...

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