Niven, Larry - The Magic Goes Away

VIP免费

2024-12-13 0 0 353.95KB 50 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

THE MAGIC GOES AWAY

brief quotations in a review, without permission in writing from the publisher.

All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

An ACE Book Cover art by Boris

First trade printing: October 1978

First mass market printing: October 1979

Second mass market printing: November 1979

46809753 Manufactured in the United States of America

THE MAGIC GOES AWAY

The waves washed him ashore aboard a section of the wooden roof from an Atlantean winery. He was half dead, and

mad. There was a corpse on the makeshift raft with him, a centaur girl, three days dead of no obvious cause.

The fisherfolk were awed. They knew the workmanship of the winery roof, and they knew that the stranger must

have survived the greatest disaster in human history. Perhaps they considered him a good luck charm.

He was lucky. The fisherfolk did not steal the golden arm bands he wore. They fed him by hand until he could feed

himself. When he grew strong they put him to work. He could not or would not speak, but he could follow orders. He

was a big man. When his weight came back he could lift as much as any two fishermen.

By day he worked like a golem, tirelessly: they had to remember to tell him when to stop. By night he would pull his

broken sword from its scabbard — the blade was broken to within two thumbs of the hilt — and turn it in his hands

as if studying it.

He stayed in the bachelors' longhouse. Women who approached him found him unresponsive. They attributed it to

his sickness.

Four months after his arrival he spoke his first words.

The boy Hatchap was moving down the line of sleeping bachelors, waking them for the day's fishing. He found the

stranger staring at the ceiling in grief and anguish. "Like magic. Like magic," he mumbled — in Greek. Suddenly he

smiled, for the first time Hatchap could remember. "Magician," he said.

That night, after the boats were in, he went to the oldest man in the village and said, "I have to talk to a magician."

8 THE MAGIC GOES AWAY

Prissthil and the village called Warlock's Cave were six hundred miles apart. Once the Warlock would have flown

the distance in a single night. Even today, they might have taken riding dragons, intelligent allies ... and in one or

another region where too much use of magic had leeched mana from the earth, they might have left dragon bones to

merge with the rocks. Dragon metabolism was partly magical.

It annoyed the Warlock to be leaving Warlock's Cave on muleback; but he and Clubfoot considered this prudent.

It was worse than they had thought. The mana-rich places they expected to cross by magic, were not there. Three of

their mules died in the desert when Clubfoot ran out of the ability to make rain.

The situation was just this desperate: Clubfoot and the Warlock, two of the most powerful magicians left in the

world, came to the conference at Prissthil on foot, leading a pack mule.

Clubfoot was an American, with red skin and straight black hair and an arched beak of a nose. His ancestors had fled

an Asian infestation of vampires, had crossed the sea by magic in the company of a tribe of the wolf people. He

limped because of a handicap he might have cured decades ago, except that it would have cost him half his power.

And the Warlock limped because of his age.

Limping, they came to the crest of a hill overlooking Prissthil.

It was late afternoon. Already the tremendous shadow of Mount Valhalla, last home of a quarrelsome pantheon of

gods now gone mythical, sprawled eastward across Prissthil. The village had grown since the Warlock had last seen

it, one hundred and ten years ago. The newer houses were lower, sturdier... held up not by spells spoken over a

cornerstone, but by

THE MAGIC GOES AWAY

their own strength.

"Prissthil was founded on magic," the Warlock said half to himself.

Clubfoot heard. "Was it?"

The Warlock pointed to a dish-shaped depression north of the city wall. "That crater is old, but you can still see the

shape of it, can't you? That's Fistfall. This village started as a trading center for talismans: fragments of the boulder

of starstone that made that crater. The merchants ran out of starstone long ago, but the village keeps growing. Don't

you wonder how?"

Clubfoot shrugged. "They must be trading something else."

"Look, Clubfoot, there are guards under Lion! Lion used to be all the guard Prissthil needed!"

"What are you talking about? The big stone statue?"

The Warlock looked at him oddly. "Yes. Yes, the big stone statue."

Winds off the desert had etched away the fine details, but the stone statue was still a work of art. Half human, half

big gentle guard dog, it squatted on its haunches before the gate, looking endlessly patient. Guards leaned against its

forepaws. They straightened and hailed the magicians as they came within shouting distance.

"Ho, travelers! What would you in Prissthil?"

Clubfoot cried, "We intend Prissthil's salvation, and the world's!"

"Oh, magicians! Well, you're welcome." The head guard grinned. He was a burly, earthy man in armor dented by

war. "Though I don't trust your salvation. What have you come to do for us? Make more starstone?"

Clubfoot turned huffy. "It was for no trivial purpose that we traveled six hundred miles."

"Your pardon, but my grandfather used to fly half

THE MAGIC GOES AWAY

around the world to attend a banquet," said the head guard. "Poor old man. None of his spells worked, there at the

end. He kept going over and over the same rejuvenation spell until he died. Wanted to train me for magic too. I had

more sense."

A grating voice said, "Waaarrl... lock."

The blood drained from the head guard's face. Slowly he turned. The other guard was backing toward the gate.

The statue's rough-carved stone face, a dog's face with a scholar's thoughtful look, stared down at the magicians. "I

know you," said the rusty, almost subsonic voice. "Waarrllock. You made me."

"Lion!" the Warlock cried joyfully. "I thought you must be dead!"

"Almost. I sleep for years, for tens of years. Sometimes I wake for a few hours. The life goes out of me," said the

statue. "I wish it were not so. How can I do my duty? One day an enemy will slip past me, into the city."

"We'll see if we can do something about that."

"I wish you luck."

Clubfoot spoke confidently. "The best brains in the world are gathering here. How can we fail?"

"You're young," said Lion.

They passed on. Behind them the statue froze in place.

It was luck for Orolandes that Prissthil was no farther. Else he would have died on the way. He made for a place he

knew only by name, stopping sometimes to ask directions, or to ask for work and food. He was gaunt again by the

time he reached Prissthil.

He circled a wide, barren dish-shaped depression. It was too circular, too regular; it smacked uneasily of sorcery.

There was a great stone statue before the city gate, and guards who straightened as he came up.

"We have little need for swordsmen here," one greeted him.

"I want to talk to a magician," said Orolandes.

"You're in luck." The guard looked over his shoulder, quickly, nervously; then turned back fast, as if hoping the

swordsman wouldn't notice. "Two magicians came today. But what if they don't want to talk to you?"

"I have to talk to a magician," Orolandes said stubbornly. His hand hung near his sword hilt. He was big, and scarred,

and armed. Perhaps he was no longer an obvious madman, but the ghost of some recent horror was plain in his face.

The guard forebore to push the matter. The stranger was no pauper; his gold arm band was a form of money. "If

you're rude to a magician, you'll get what you deserve. Welcome to Prissthil. Go on in."

THE WARLOCK II

The inn the Warlock loved best was gone, replaced by a leather worker's shop. They sought another.

At the Inn of the Mating Phoenixes they saw their mule stabled, then moved baggage to their rooms. Clubfoot

flopped on the feather mattress. The Warlock dug in a saddlebag. He pulled out spare clothing, then a copper disk

with markings around the rim. He moved to set it aside; then, still holding it, he seemed to drift off into reverie.

Hundreds of years ago, and far east of Prissthil, there had been a proud and powerful magician. He was barely past

his brilliant apprenticeship; but he had the temerity to forbid the waging of war throughout the Fertile Crescent, and

the power to make it stick. He consistently hired himself out to battle whichever nation he considered the aggressor.

Oh, his magic had been big and showy in those days! Floating castles, armies destroyed by lightning, phantom cities

built and destroyed in a night. In his pride he nicknamed himself Warlock. Had he known that his nickname would

become a generic term for magicians, he would not have shown surprise.

But over the decades his spells stopped working. It happened to all magicians. He moved away, and his power

returned, to some extent... then gradually dwindled, until he moved again.

It happened to nations too. Bound together by its own gods and traditions and laws and trade networks, a nation like

Acheron might come to seem as old and stable as the mountains themselves ... until treaties sealed by oaths and

magic lost their power... until barbarians with swords come swarming over the borders. All knew that it was so. But

the Warlock was the first to learn why, via an experiment he performed with an enchanted copper disk.

THE MAGIC GOES AWAY

If he kept his discovery secret through succeeding decades, his motive was compassion. His terrible truth spelled the

end of civilization, yet it was of no earthly use to anyone. Fifty years ago his secret had finally escaped him, for good

or evil; it was hard to know which.

"Never mind that," said Clubfoot. "Let's get dinner."

The Warlock shook himself. "Shortly," he said. He set the Wheel aside and reached again into the saddlebag.

Clubfoot snorted. He gathered up spilled clothing and began hanging it.

The Warlock set a wooden box on the table. Inside, within soft fox skins, was a human skull. The Warlock handled it

carefully. One hinge of its jaw was broken, and there were tooth marks on the jaw and cheekbones and around both

earholes.

Clubfoot said, "I still think we should have contrived to lose that."

"I disagree. Now let's get dinner."

The inn was crowded. The dining hall was filled with long wooden tables, too close together, with wooden benches

down both sides. The magicians fitted themselves into space on one of the benches. Citizens to either side gradually

realised who and what they were and gave them plenty of room.

"Look at this logically," Clubfoot said. "You've carried Wavyhill's skull six hundred miles, when we had to throw

away baggage we needed more. It's just a skull. It's not even in good condition. But if there's enough local mana to

power your spells, and if you work your spells exactly right, you just might be able to bring Wavyhill back to life so

he can kill you!"

The Warlock stopped eating long enough to say, "Even if I revive it, it's still just a skull. You'll be all right if you

don't stick your fingers in its mouth."

THE MAGIC GOES AWAY

"He's got every reason to want your life! And mine too, because I'm the one who led you to Shiskabil and Hathzoril.

If I hadn't found the gutted villages, you'd never have tracked him down."

"He may not have known that."

"I'd rather he did. Hellspawn! He's branded my memory. I'll never forget Shiskabil. Dead empty, and dried blood

everywhere, as if it had rained blood. We may never know how many villages he gutted that way."

"I'm going to revive him tonight. Want to help?"

Clubfoot gnawed at the rich dark meat on an antelope's thighbone. Presently he said, "Would I let you try it alone?"

The Warlock smiled. Clubfoot was near fifty; he thought himself experienced in magic. At five times his age the

Warlock might have laughed at Clubfoot's solicitude. But the Warlock wasn't stupid. He knew that most of his

dangerously won knowledge was obsolete.

The mana had been richer, magic had been both easier and more dangerous, when the Warlock was raising his

floating castles. Clubfoot was probably more in tune with the real world. So the Warlock only smiled and began

moving his fingers in an intricate pattern. -

Primary colors streamed up from between the Warlock's fingers, roiled and expanded beneath the beamed roof.

Heads turned at the other tables. The clattering of table knives stopped. Then came sounds of delight and

appreciative fingersnapping, for a spell the Warlock had last used to blind an enemy army.

Now a lean, scarred swordsman watched the Warlock with haunted eyes. The Warlock did not notice. As he left the

dining hall he took with him a bunch of big purple grapes.

THE SKULL OF WAVYHILL

The Warlock could remember a time when murder was very dangerous; when the mystical backlash from a careless

killing could reverberate for generations. But that was long ago.

The magician nicknamed Wayyhill — as all magicians carried nicknames, being wary of having their true names

used against them — had learned his trade in an age when all spells were less powerful. There was still strong mana

in murder, but Wavyhill had learned to control it. He had based a slave industry on the zombies of murder victims,

and sold the zombies as servants, then set them to killing their masters to make more zombies ...

He had also used magic to make himself unkillable. For these past twenty years he must have been regretting that

terribly.

WavyhlH's skull sat grinning on the table. Clubfoot regarded it uneasily. "It may be we've had too much wine to try

this sort of thing tonight."

"Would you rather try it tomorrow, before dawn, with hangovers? Because I want Wavyhill with me when we meet

Mirandee and Piranther."

"All right, go ahead." Clubfoot bolted the door, then worked spells against magical intrusion. Reviving a murderous

dead man was chancy enough without risk of some outsider interfering — and there were amateur magicians

everywhere in Prissthil. Magic was an old tradition here, dating from a time when starstone was plentiful.

The Warlock sang as he worked. He was an old man, tall and lean, his head bald as an egg, his voice thin and reedy.

But he could hold a tune. The words he sang belonged to a language no longer used except by members of the

Sorcerers' Guild.

He knotted a loop of thin leather thong to mend the broken jaw hinge. Other strips of thong went along the

THE SKULL OF WAVYHILL

cheekbones, the jaw hinges, the ears. Many overlapped. When he finished they formed a crude diagram of the

muscles of a human face.

The Warlock stepped back, considering. He cut up a sheet of felt and glued two round pads behind the ear holes. A

longer strip went inside the jaws, the back end glued to the table between the jaw hinges.

He looked at Clubfoot, who had been watching intently. Clubfoot said, "Eyes?"

"Maybe later." The Warlock said in the old language, "Kranthkorpool, speak to me."

The skull opened its jaws wide and screamed.

Clubfoot and the Warlock covered their ears. It didn't help. The skull's voice was not troubling the air, and it did not

reach the ears. At least it would not bother the other guests.

"He's insane! Shut him off!'" Clubfoot cried.

"Not yet!"

The skull screamed its agony. Minutes passed before it paused as if drawing breath. Into the pause the Warlock

shouted, "Kranthkorpool, stop! It's over! It's been over for twenty years!"

The skull gaped. It said, "Twenty years?"

"It took me almost that long to find your true name, Kranthkorpool."

"Call me Wavyhill. Who are you? I can't see."

"Just a minute." The Warlock plucked two of what was left of the grapes. He picked up the skull and inserted them

into the eye sockets from inside. He inked in two black dots where they showed through the sockets.

"Ah," said the skull. The black dots moved, fo-cussed. They studied Clubfoot, then moved on. "Warlock?"

The Warlock nodded.

"I thought I'd killed you. You were two hundred

THE MAGIC GOES AWAY

years old when I cancelled your longevity spells."

"I was able to renew them. Partly. I give you a technical victory, Wavyhill. It was my ally who defeated you."

"Technical victory!" There was hysteria in the skull's falsetto laughter. "That werewolf rug merchant kept tearing and

tearing at me! It went on forever and ever, and I couldn't die! I couldn't die!"

"It's over."

"I thought it wouldn't ever be over. It went on and on, a piece of me gone every time he got close enough — "

The skull stopped, seemed to consider. Its expression was unreadable, of course. "I don't hurt. In fact, I can't feel

much of anything. There was a long time when I couldn't feel or see or hear or smell or ... Did you say twenty years?

Warlock, what do I look like?"

The Warlock detached a mirror from the wall, brought it and held it. Wavyhill's skull studied itself for a time. It said,

"You just had to do that, didn't you?"

"I owed you one. Now you have a decision to make. Do you want to die? I can cancel the spell of immortality you

put on yourself."

"I don't know. Let me think about it. What do you want of me, Warlock?"

"Some technical help."

The skull laughed. "From me?"

"You were the world's first necromancer. You were powerful enough to defeat me," said the Warlock. "I'd be dead if

I hadn't brought help. You used your power for evil, but nobody doubts your skill. Tomorrow I meet two powerful

magicians. We'll want your advice."

"Do I know of them?"

"Piranther. Mirandee."

"Piranther!" The skull chuckled. "I'd like to see that meeting. Piranther walked out on your conference,

THE SKULL OF WAVYHILL

didn't he? After you called him a shortsighted fool. I heard that he took a whole colony of his people to the South

Land Mass and swore never to come back."

"You heard right. And he never did come back, but he's coming now."

The skull was silent for a time. Then it said, "You've roused my interest. I don't care to die just now. Under the

circumstances that may be silly, but I can't help it. Can you make me a whole man again?"

THE MAGIC GOES AWAY

THE SKULL OF WAVYHILL

"Look at me."

The Warlock's back was festive with colored inks: a five-sided tattoo, hypnotic in its complexity. The famous demon

trap, once a housing for the Warlock's guardian demon, was empty now; but he still preferred to wear nothing above

the waist. Its purpose had been lost, but the habit remained.

It showed him to disadvantage. The Warlock's ribs protruded. His small pot belly protruded. Pouchy, wrinkled,

unflexible skin masked the strong lines of his face and showed the shrinkage of his musculature. Vertebrae marched

like a tiny mountain range across the fading inks of the empty demon trap.

The skull sighed mournfully.

"Look at me! I'd wish my youth back, if wishing were all it took," the Warlock said. "I was young for two hundred

years. Now the spells are failing. All spells are failing."

"So you need a necromancer." The dots on the grapes turned to the red man. "Are you involved in this madness too?"

"Of course."

The Warlock said, "This is Clubfoot, our ally."

"A pleasure. I'd take hands, but you see how it is," said Wavyhill.

Clubfoot was not amused. "One day you may have hands again, but you will never take my hand. I've seen the

villages you gutted. I helped kill you, Wavyhill."

The dots on the grapes turned back to the Warlock. "And this tactless boor is to be our ally? Well, what is your

project?"

"We're going to discuss means of restoring the world's mana."

The skull's laugh was high and shrill. The Warlock waited it out. Presently he said, "Are you finished?"

"Possibly. Will it take all five of us?"

"I tried to call a full meeting of the Guild. Only ten answered the call. Of the ten, three felt able to travel."

"Has it occurred to you that magic can only use up mana? Never restore it?"

"We're not fools. What about an outside source?"

"Such as?"

"The Moon."

The Warlock expected more laughter. It did not come. "Mana from the Moon? I never would have thought of that in

a thousand years. Still.. .why not? Starstones are rich in mana. Why not the Moon?"

"With enough mana, and the right spells, you could be human again."

The skull laughed. "And so could you, Warlock. But where would we find magic powerful enough to reach the

Moon?"

The door rocked to thunderous knocking.

The magicians froze. Then Clubfoot stripped a bracelet from his upper arm. He looked through it at the door. "No

magic involved," he said. "A mundane."

"What would a mundane want with us?"

"Maybe the building's on fire." Clubfoot raised his voice. "You, there — "

Neither the old spells, nor the old bar across the door, were strong enough. The door exploded inward behind a

tremendous kick. An armed man stepped into the room and looked about him.

"I have to talk to a magician," he told them.

"You are interrupting magicians engaged in private business," said the Warlock. No sane man would have needed

more warning.

The intruder was raggedly shaved, his long black hair raggedly chopped at shoulder length. His dark eyes studied

two men and a skull decorated with macabre humor. "You are magicians," he said won-

THE MAGIC GOES AWAY

THE SKULL OF WAVYHILL

deringly. In the next instant he almost died; for he drew his sword, and Clubfoot raised his arms.

The Warlock shook Clubfoot's shoulder. "Stop! It's broken!"

"Yes. I broke it," said the intruder. He looked at the bladeless hilt, then suddenly threw it into a corner of the room.

He took two steps forward and closed hands like bronze clamps on the Warlock's thin shoulders. He looked

searchingly into the Warlock's face. He said, "Why did it happen?"

Clubfoot's arms were raised again.

Human beings are fragile, watery things. Death spells are the easiest magic there is.

"Back up and start over," said the Warlock. "I don't know what you're talking about. Who are you?"

"Orolandes. Greek soldier."

"Why did you break your sword?"

"I hated it. I thought maybe it happened because of the people I killed. Not the other soldiers. The priests."

Clubfoot exclaimed, "You were in the Atlantis invasion!"

"Yes. We finally invaded Atlantis. First time Greeks ever got that far." Orolandes released the Warlock. He looked

like a sleepwalker; he wasn't seeing anything here in the room. "We came for slaves and treasure. That's all."

"And trade advantage," said the Warlock.

"Uh? Maybe. Nobody told me anything like that. Anyway, we won. The armies of Atlantis must have gotten soft.

We went through them like they were nothing. But the priests were something else. They stood in a long line on the

steps of the big temple and waved their arms. We got sick. Some of us died. But we kept coming, crawling — I was

crawling, anyway — and we got to them and killed them. And then Atlantis was ours."

THE MAGIC GOES AWAY

He looked with haunted eyes at the magicians. "Ours. At last. Hundreds of years we'd dreamed of conquering

Atlantis. We'd take their treasure. We'd take away their weapons. We'd make them pay tribute. But we never, we

never wanted to kill them all. Old men, women, children, everyone. Nobody ever thought of that."

"You son of a troll. I had friends in Atlantis," said Clubfoot. "How did you live through it? Why didn't you die with

the rest?"

"Uh? There was a big gold Tau symbol at the top of the steps. We were laughing and bragging and binding up our

wounds when the land started to shake. Everybody fell over. The Tau thing cracked at the base and fell on the steps.

Then someone pointed west, and the horizon was going up .It didn't look like water. It was too misty, too big. It

looked like the horizon was getting higher and higher.

"I crawled under the Tau thing with my back against the step. Captain lason was shouting that it wasn't real, it was

just an illusion, we must have missed some of the priests. The water came down like the end of the world. I guess the

Tau thing saved my life — even the water couldn't move it, it was so heavy — but it almost killed me too. I had to

get out from under it and try to swim up.

"I grabbed something that was floating up with me. It turned out to be part of a wooden roof. I got on it. A centaur

girl came swimming by and I hauled her up on the roof. I thought, well, at least I saved one of them. And then she

just fell over."

Clubfoot said, "There's magic in centaur metabolism. Without mana she died."

"But what happened? Did we do it?"

"You did it," said Clubfoot.

"I thought... maybe ... you'd say ..."

THE MAGIC GOES AWAY

"You did it. You killed them all."

The Warlock said, "Atlantis should have been under the ocean hundreds of years ago. Only the spells of the priest-

kings kept that land above the waves."

Orolandes nodded dumbly. He turned to the door.

"Stop him," said Wavyhill. As Orolandes turned to the new voice, the skull snapped, "You. Swordsman. How would

you like a chance to make amends?"

Orolandes gaped at the talking skull.

"Well? You wiped out a whole continent, people and centaurs and merpeople and all. You broke your sword, you

were so disgusted at yourself. How would you like to do something good for a change? Keep it from happening to

others."

"Yes."

Clubfoot asked, "What is this?"

"We may need him. I may know of a source of very powerful mana."

'Where?"

"I'll reserve that. Do the words 'god within a god' mean anything to you?"

"No."

"Good." The skull chuckled. "Well see what develops tomorrow. See to it that this ... Orolandes is with us when we

meet your friends. You, Orolandes, have you got a room here?"

"I can get one."

"Meet us at dawn, for breakfast."

Orolandes nodded and walked out. There was no spring in his walk. His sword hilt he left lying in a corner.

FISTFALL

From PrissthiTs gate one could make out an elliptical depression, oddly regular, in the background of low green hills.

Time had eroded Fistfall's borders; they disappeared as one came near. Greenery had covered the pits and dirt piles

where earlier men had dug for starstone. From what must be the rim, Oro-landes could see only that the land sloped

gradually down, then gradually up again.

It was just past sunrise; there was still shadow in the hollow. Orolandes shivered in the morning chill.

The old man did not shiver, though he walked naked to the waist. A talking skull sat on his shoulder, fastened by

straps over the lower jaw. He and the skull and the younger man chatted as they walked: trivia mixed with

incomprehensible shop talk mixed with reminiscence from many lifetimes.

Orolandes shivered. He had fallen among magicians, willingly and by design, and he was not sure of his sanity.

Before that terrible day in Atlantis he would never have considered a magician to be anything but an enemy.

In the village of the fisherfolk Orolandes had waited for the images to go away. Don't speak of it, don't think of it;

the vivid memories would fade.

But in the dark of sleep the sea would rise up and up and over to swallow the world, with his spoils and his men and

the people he'd conquered. He would snap awake then, to stare into the dark until it turned light.

Or on a bright afternoon he would heave at the awkward weight of a net filled with fish ... and he would remember

pulling at the limp, awkwardly right-angled centaur girl, trying to get her up on the broken roof. She'd had to lie on

her side; he'd felt unspeakably clumsy trying to give her artificial respiration. But he'd seen her breath at last! He'd

seen her eyelids flicker

THE MAGIC GOES AWAY

open, seen her head lift and look at him ... seen the life go out of her then, draining away to somewhere else.

What had happened that day? If he knew why, then the horror would leave him, and the guilt... He had clung to that

notion until last night. Now he knew. What the magicians had told him was worse than he had imagined.

The notion he clung to now might be the silliest of all. Orolandes could read nothing in the white bone face of the

dead magician. Even to its friends it was a tolerated evil. But nobody else had offered Orolandes any breath of

comfort. __

On the strength of a skull's vague promise, he was here. He would wait and see.

The Warlock felt uncommonly alive. As they moved into Fistfall his vision and his hearing sharpened, his normal

dyspepsia eased. Over the centuries the townspeople had removed every tiniest fragment of the boulder that had

come flaming down from the skies; but vaporised rock had condensed and sifted down all over this region, and there

was no removing it. Old spells took new strength.

Down there in the shadow, two walked uphill toward them.

"I recognise Mirandee," said Clubfoot. "Would that be Piranther?"

"I think so. I only met him once."

Clubfoot laughed. "Once was enough?"

"I'm surprised he came. We didn't part as friends. I was so sure I was right, I got a little carried away. Well, but that

was fifty years ago." The Warlock turned to the swordsman. "Orolandes, I should have said it before. You can still

turn back."

The big man's hand kept brushing his empty scabbard. He looked at the Warlock with too-wide eyes and

FISTFALL

said, "No."

"You are about to learn the secrets of magicians. It isn't likely you'll learn too much, but if you do, we may have to

tamper with your memory."

It was the first time the Warlock had seen him smile. The swordsman said, "There are parts you can cut out while

you're about it."

"Do you mean that?"

"I'm not sure. What kind of man is that? Or is it the woman's familiar?"

The man approaching them was small and dark-skinned and naked in the autumn chill. His hair was white and puffy

as a ripe dandelion. A skin bag hung on a thong around his neck.

"His people come from the South Land Mass," said Clubfoot. "They're powerful and touchy. Be polite."

Piranther's companion was a head taller than he was, a slender woman in a vivid blue robe. Snow-white hair fell to

her waist and bobbed with her walk. Mirandee and the Warlock had dwelt together in a year long past, sharing

knowledge and other things, experimenting with sex magic in a way that was only partly professional.

But now her eyes only brushed the Warlock and moved on. "Clubfoot, a pleasure to see you again! And your

friends." Visibly she wondered what the scarred, brawny, bewildered man was doing here. Then she turned back to

the Warlock, and the blood drained from her face.

What was this? Was she reacting to the bizarre decorated skull on his shoulder? No. She took a half-step forward and

said, "Oh my gods! Warlock!"

So that was it. "The magic goes away," he told her gently. "I wish I'd thought to send you some warning. I see that

your own youth spells have held better."

"Well, but I'm younger. But you are all right?"

FISTFALL

"I live. I walk. My mind is intact. I'm two hundred and forty years old, Mirandee."

Wavyhill spoke from the Warlock's shoulder. "He's in better shape than I am."

The woman's eyes shifted, her brow lifted in enquiry.

"I am Wavyhill. Mirandee, I know you by reputation."

"And I you." Her voice turned winter-cold. "Warlock, is it proper that we deal with this ... murderer?"

"For his skill and his knowledge, I think so."

The skull cackled. "I know too much to be absent, my dear. Trust me, Mirandee, and forgive me the lives of a few

dozens of mundanes. We're here to restore the magic that once infused the world. I want that more than you do.

Obviously."

But Mirandee was looking at the Warlock when she answered Wavyhill. "No. You don't."

The age-withered black man spoke for the first time. "Skull, I sense the ambition in you. Otherwise you conceal your

thoughts. What is it you hide?"

"I would bow if I could. Piranther, I am honored to meet you," said Wavyhill. "Do you know of the god within a

god?"

Piranther's brow wrinkled. "These words mean nothing to me."

"Then I have knowledge you need. A point for bargaining. Please notice that I am more helpless than any infant. On

that basis, will you let me stay? I won't ask you to trust me."

Piranther's eyes shifted. His face was as blank as his mind, and his mind was as dark and hidden as the floor of the

ocean. "Warlock, I should be gratified that you still live. And you must be Clubfoot; I know you by reputation. But

who are you, sir?"

"Orolandes. I, I was asked to come."

THE MAGIC GOES AWAY

FISTFALL

Wavyhill said, "I asked him. His motives are good. Let him stay."

Piranther half-smiled. "On trust?"

Wavyhill snorted. "You're a magician, they say. Read his mind. He hasn't the defenses of a turtle."

That, and Piranther's slow impassive nod .. ."No!" cried Orolandes, and his hand spasmed above the empty scabbard.

He backed away.

The skull said, "Stop it, Greek. What have you to hide?"

Orolandes moaned. His guilt was agony; he wanted to burrow in the ground. One flash of hate he felt for these who

would judge him: for .the Warlock's sympathy, the woman's cool curiosity, the black demon's indifference, the red

magician's irritation at time-wasting preliminaries. But Orolandes had already judged himself. He stood fast.

Corpses floated in shoals around his raft. They covered the sea as far as the horizon. Sharks and killer whales leapt

among them...

Piranther made a grimace of distaste. "You might have warned me. Oh, very well, Wavyhill, he's certainly harmless.

But he trusts you no more than I do."

"And why should he?"

Piranther shrugged. He settled gracefully onto a small grassy hillock. "I had hoped to be addressing thirty or forty

trained magicians. It bodes ill for us that no more than five could come. But here we are. Who speaks?"

There was an awkward pause. Clubfoot said, "If nobody else wants to ..."

"Proceed."

Mirandee and the Warlock settled cross-legged on the ground.

Clubfoot looked toward Mount Valhalla, collecting

THE MAGIC GOES AWAY

his thoughts. He may have been regretting his temerity. After all, he was the youngest of the magicians present. Well

——

"First there were the gods," he said. "Earth sparkled with magic in those days, and nothing was impossible. The first

god almost certainly created himself. Later gods may not have been that powerful, but there are tales of mountains

piled one on another to reach sky-dwelling gods and overthrow them, of a god torn to pieces and the fragments

forming whole pantheons, of the sun being stopped in its track for trivial purposes. The gods' lives were fueled by

magic, not fire. Eventually the mana level dropped too low, and the gods went mythical... as I suppose we'd die if

fires stopped burning.

"We still have the habit of thanking the gods, mun-danes and sorcerers alike. With reason. Before they died, some of

the gods played at making other forms of life. Their creations were their survivors. Some live by what seems to be

slow-burning fire ... men, foxes, rabbits ... and most plants use fire from the sun. Other plants and beasts use fire and

mana both. We find unicorns surviving in mana-poor regions, though the colts are born with stunted horns, or none.

But many mana-dependent peoples are going mythical: mer-people, dragons, centaurs, elves. Hey—"

Clubfoot did a strange thing for a man making a speech. He darted over to a boulder, heaved at it and turned it over.

Underneath was a blob of grayish jelly two feet across.

In his youth the Warlock had killed carnivorous goo the 'size of houses. To a mere warrior they were more dangerous

than dragons: a sword was generally too short to reach the beast's nucleus. By contrast this goo was tiny. It was

formless and translucent, with darker organs and vacuoles of food showing within its body. It arched itself in the

morning sunlight and tried to

THE MAGIC GOES AWAY

FISTFALL

flow into Clubfoot's shadow.

"There! That's what I'm talking about!" Clubfoot cried. "The goo are surviving, but look at it. Goo are named for the

first word spoken by a baby. They're said to be children of the first god: formless, adaptable, created in the image of

the Crawling Chaos. We saw them smaller than a man's fist in the desert, where the mana is poor. Do you see how

small it's gotten? Goo live by fire and magic, but they can use fire alone. When the world is barren of magic the goo

will remain, but they'll probably be too small to see.

"And we'll survive, because we live by fire alone. But we'll be fanners or merchants or entertainers, and the

swordsmen will rule the world. That's why we're here. Not to save the centaurs or the dragons or the goo. To

save ourselves."

"Thank you. You're very eloquent," said Piranther. He seemed to have taken charge, with little challenge from

anyone. He looked about at the rest. "Suggestions?"

Mirandee said, "What about your project, Piranther? Fifty years ago you were going to map the mana-rich regions of

the world."

"And I said that was self-limiting," said the Warlock.

"And you called me a short-sighted fool," Piranther said without heat. "But we carried through in spite of you. As

you know, there are places human magicians never reached or settled, where the mana remains strong. I need hardly

point out that they are the least desirable living places in the world. The land beneath the ice of the South Pole. In the

north, the ice itself. The clouds. Any fool who watches clouds can tell you they're magic. I know spells to render

cloud-stuff solid and to shape it into castles and the like."

"So do I," said the Warlock.

"So did Sheefyre," Mirandee said dryly. "The witch Sheefyre will not be joining us. She took a fall. Where are you

on a cloudscape when the mana runs out?"

"Precisely. It was our major problem," Piranther said. "There are places one can practice magic, but when the spells

stop working, where are you? A desert, or an inaccessible mountaintop, or the terrible cold of the South Pole. But our

search turned up one place of refuge, an unknown body of land in the southern hemisphere.

"Australia was probably infested with demons until recently. They're gone now. All we have of them is the myth of a

Hell under the world. But why else should the fifth largest land mass in the world have been uninhabited until we

came? You know that when we finished our mapping project," said Piranther, "I took

THE MAGIC GOES AWAY

my people there, all who would go. The mana is rich. There are new fruits and roots and meat animals. On a nearby

island we found a giant bird, the moa, the finest meat animal in the world —"

The Warlock grinned. "Do I hear an invitation to emigrate?"

For a moment Piranther looked like a trapped thing. Then the bland, expressionless mask was back. He said, "I'm

afraid we have no room for you."

"What, in the world's fifth largest land mass?"

"At the conference fifty years ago you said .. .what was it you said? You said that mapping mana-rich places only

brings magicians to use up the mana. So—" Piranther shrugged delicately. "I take you at your word."

They looked at him. He was hiding something ... and he knew they knew ... "I must," he said. "The castles we raised

by magic along the coast are falling down. The ambrosia is dying. We must migrate inland. I fear the results if my

students can't learn to use less powerful spells."

"They'll go further and further inland," Mirandee said in a dreamy voice, "using the mana as they go." i Her face was

blank, her eyes blind. Sometimes the gift 1 of prophecy came on her thus, without warning.; "Thousands of years

from now the swordsmen will come, to find small black people in the barren center of the continent, starving and

powerless, making magic with pointing-bones that no longer work."

"There is no need to be so vivid," Piranther said coldly.

Mirandee started. Her eyes focussed. "Was I talking? What did I say?"

But nobody thought it tactful to tell her. Clubfoot cleared his throat and said, "Undersea?"

The Warlock shook his head. "No good. There's

FISTFALL

nothing to breath in the water, and the mana is in the sea floor. When the spells fail, where are you?" He looked

around him. "Shall we face facts? There's no place to hide. If we can't bring the magic back to the world, we might as

well give it to the swordsmen."

Piranther asked, "Do you have something in mind?"

"An outside source. The Moon."

Nobody laughed. Even the Greek swordsman only gaped at him. Piranther's wrinkled face remained immobile as he

said, "You must have been thinking this through for hundreds of years. Is this really your best suggestion?"

"Yes. Silly as it sounds. May I expound?"

"Of course."

"I don't have to say anything that isn't obvious. Stones and iron fall from the sky every night. They burn out before

they touch earth. Their power for magic is low; it has to be used fast, while they still burn.

"Some starstones do reach earth. The bigger they are, the more power they carry. Correct?" The Warlock did not wait

for an answer. "The Moon is huge. Watch it at moonrise and you'll know. It should carry enormous power — far

more than the Fist carried, for instance. In fact, it must. What else but magic could hold \t up? I suggest that the

Moon carries more mana than the world has seen since the gods died.

"But you don't need me to tell you that, do you? — Orolandes, is there magic in the Moon?"

The ex-soldier started. "Why ask me? I know no magic." He shrugged uncomfortably. "All right, yes, there's magic

in the Moon. Anyone can feel it."

"We all know that," said Piranther. "How do you propose to use it?"

"I don't know. If our spells could reach the Moon at all, its own mana would let us land it."

THE MAGIC GOES AWAY

FISTFALL

"This all seems very ... hypothetical," Mirandee said delicately. "I don't know what holds the Moon up. Do you?

Does anyone?"

There were blank looks. Wavyhill's skull cackled. "We could pull the Moon down and find we'd used up all the mana

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

THEMAGICGOESAWAYCopyright©1978byLarryNivenIllustrationscopyright©1978byEstebanMarotoAllrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereproducedinanyformorbyanymeans,exceptfortheinclusionofbriefquotationsinareview,withoutpermissioninwritingfromthepublisher.Allcharactersinthisbookarefictitious.Anyresemblancetoa...

展开>> 收起<<

Niven, Larry - The Magic Goes Away.pdf

共50页,预览10页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Niven, Larry - The Magic Goes Away

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: