The Accidental Magician Read online

  The Fanist calmly walked to the center of the camp and with mild courtesy watched the exertions of the colonists and crew. The creature seemed neither hostile nor concerned.

  One thing above all must be said about our Captain Marvin--he was not a timid man. In fact, he was often referred to by the human crew members as possessing that-emotion which they termed courage.

  He approached the Fanist with a weapon prominently displayed at his belt, but with empty hands. In the background all work stopped. The human crew soon armed themselves and formed a perimeter guard about the camp and ship. They found no other natives, nor could they discover how this one had entered our midst unseen.

  Captain Marvin went through the standard procedure for communicating with a strange being. He recited a list of nouns, emphasized by gestures with his right arm.

  "Marvin--rock--tree--ship--" The Fanist stared at the captain but made no attempt to reply in kind.

  Next, Captain Marvin attempted to demonstrate the personal pronoun "I," then to introduce a series of simple verbs.

  "I run," he said as he pranced a few feet forward and back. "I sit," he announced and flopped down onto the ground. An instant later he arose while declaring: "I stand."

  The Fanist remained impassive, watching everything but speaking not at all. Finally, to our amazement, he uttered two Terran words, "Talk more," followed by a sweep of one of his hands in the direction of the captain, colonists, and crew. Immediately all conversation ceased. The humans stared at the Fanist with open amazement. Angrily the captain shouted: "He said to talk. Everyone start talking."

  For ten minutes the Fanist stood quietly in the midst of the babbling colonists and crew, then, at last, he held up his upper right hand.

  "Enough. I understand now. You are accepted."

  "This is your world?" the captain asked.

  "We are here."

  Captain Marvin pondered that statement for a moment and then replied: "We wish to be here, too."

  "You are here," the Fanist answered.

  "You have no objections, then?"

  "The world is as it is. Destiny shapes itself. Everything will set itself in proper order. You are here. You are part of the order. What will you do?"

  Amis Hartford, the leader of the colonists, now strode forward. "We will build our city here," he declared. "We will grow and multiply and found our world."

  "The world is vast and there are limits. You are mistaken."

  "With our things," Hartford continued, pointing to the bales and bundles of equipment which had already been unloaded from the ship, "we will build a great city. If you will let us, we will work with you and help you and we will be friends."

  "You will not build a great city."

  "You intend to stop us, then?"

  "Things are as they are. If you tell me that you will drop a rock and that it will fall upward without the words, then I tell you it will not happen. I do not stop it, but it does not happen."

  "What will stop us? What words?"

  "The words are necessary. Everything must be done with the words. My words will not work for you. Each life has its own way. You will learn."

  "Do you mean spells, incantations, witchcraft, mysticism? We are civilized men. We do not believe in such things. We know better. The machines will serve us well."

  The Fanist looked around the clearing. He stared intently at the crated equipment, then looked back to Marvin and Hartford. With an almost human expression he shook his head.

  "You will see. You will find your own way. It is all one. Destiny will take you where it will. I say back to you your own words: 'Good luck.'"

  The Fanist turned to his left, weaved through the piles of supplies, and apparently without exiting from the other side, disappeared.

  * * *

  Grantin jerked his head as he heard his uncle's slapping steps. He slammed shut the oversized volume and shoved it under his arm. Greyhorn was close now, almost to the right-hand angle of the corridor. Grantin whirled and ran for the shelves on the far side of the room. There he replaced the Ajaj history, then grabbed Hedgkin's The Magician's Constant Companion and Source Book Compendium. Opening it at random, he settled in a chair with the volume on the table in front of him.

  Grantin tried to suppress his harsh breathing and will his heart to slow its pace. His eyes barely had time to focus on the page before his uncle entered the room.

  "I hope you're doing something useful for a change, nephew," Greyhorn announced in an accusatory tone.

  Grantin looked over his shoulder in a pathetic attempt to appear surprised. Greyhorn's expression remained unchanged, the winter-gray eyes open, unblinking, the tip of his short, narrow nose pointing at a spot in the middle of Grantin's forehead, hard lines running from each nostril to the comers of his mouth. A hint of angry furrows marred the sorcerer's brow.

  Grantin swallowed and replied in a breathy, nervous tone. "You'll have to excuse me, uncle, you startled me. Yes, I was just now reading the, uh-- Magician's Compendium, trying to sharpen up my skills."

  "Skills!" Greyhorn exclaimed. "I've seen cross-eyed, one-legged virgins with more skills than you possess. You couldn't conjure up a tip of your hat if your life depended on it. Why I've been cursed with a nephew like you . . . ." Greyhorn halted in mid-sentence, his cunning eyes looking past Grantin, across the table, and down to the lower shelf where the Ajaj scribbler's history now lay slightly askew.

  Greyhorn strode around the table, his wide cuffs and cape flapping behind him in the wind of his passage. In an instant, he bent and examined the volume for signs of recent use. Greyhorn's suspicions aroused, he stood and turned to face his nephew. Leaning forward across the table, he placed his hands on the planks and angled his great triangular head down and forward until his nose halted only a foot in front of Grantin's nervously darting eyes.

  Greyhorn stared at Grantin for a long minute, as if he could divine his nephew's thoughts by shear mental concentration. Even though Grantin knew that his uncle's skills were those of a high manipulator, master sorcerer, and workmanlike prestidigitator, he still felt a rippling chill course through his spine as though Greyhorn now possessed the talents of a telepather as well.

  One great, long-fingered hand shot out to cover the page that Grantin supposedly had been reading. Greyhorn's bone-white member protruding from his midnight-black sleeve seemed like a skeleton's hand thrust out from a freshly dug grave.

  "What were you reading on this page?"

  "Why, I--I-- The Magician's Compendium--"

  "What were you reading on this page?" For an instant Grantin's eyes flicked downward to scan the right-hand sheet.

  "'--and so with the tri-finger and arm upraised one pronounces, in the fourth voice and at the intermediately high volume, the incantation--'

  "It's the spell . . . the spell for warding off noxious mendicants and--and--other such people," Grantin suggested in a querulous tone.

  "A Traditional Spell to Clear One's House of Demonized Politicians and Other Odious Creatures," Greyhorn announced as he read from the book.

  "Well, uncle," Grantin suggested with a weak smile, "that's more or less correct. I can't be expected to memorize the titles of all of these things. As long as I get the spell right, that's what really counts, isn't that so?"

  "Bah! One more time, Grantin, one more time that I find you wasting your days instead of working to make yourself worthy of being my nephew and I will evict you from my home. Only my solemn promise to your father has allowed you to stay here this long. As you know, in one month you will be twenty-two and so, in law, my debt will be discharged. Take care that I do not on that day send you out to make your own fortune. No doubt you would end up as little better than a barkscraper or toothbuilder. Heed me, nephew: put this nonsense behind you or else there will be dark days ahead."

  With a slap of his hands Greyhorn stomped out of the room like a great black bird of prey. Grantin again looked down at The Magician's Compendium and, remembering some long over
due debts, attempted to read one of the pages. The words seemed to shift beneath his gaze, and by the time he gained the bottom of the page he had forgotten what he had read at the top.

  Well, perhaps the fair at Gist two weeks hence would provide a solution to his financial problems. With a thump Grantin closed the Compendium and began to plan how he might return to the library after dinner and finish reading the ancient Ajaj history.

  Chapter Three

  Wearing soft moccasins, Grantin crept noiselessly into the library. An oily black night coated the manor house's windows. As was customary for this time of the month, Greyhorn was away from the house, off on some wizard's business which he refused to discuss or reveal.

  Grantin carried a blanket in his arms. He closed the library door behind him and then carefully hung the cloth over the window. When he was certain it was secure he ignited a crude oil lantern and then removed the scribbler's great masterpiece. Settling himself into the softest chair, he opened the book and began again to read:

  * * *

  Amis Hartford stared for a moment at the spot where the Fanist had slipped between the crates. By some unknown method the native had disappeared. After a moment Hartford slowly shook his head and turned back to the captain. Clearly the colonists must be allocated guns. Captain Marvin disliked passing out arms to passengers, but these were strange circumstances. He hesitantly agreed to honor Hartford's demand.

  The colonists went back to their duties. Those without specific tasks relaxed in the warm afternoon sun. Several of the criminals borrowed decks of cards from the crewmen. Only Gogol and his assistant, Windom, remained aloof. Standing at the edge of the clearing, Gogol seemed to fidget. He turned this way and that and scented the air like a predatory beast.

  A few minutes later crewmen bearing boxes of weapons left the ship. One of the crates was opened and pistols were brought forth. They consisted of hundreds of long, slender rods bundled together side by side, polished and shiny on each end. The cylinder of glass rested upon a thick baseplate, underneath which extended a metal handle.

  One by one the colonists marched up to receive their weapons. The sixth man in line was a laborer named Blotho who, having gotten into trouble on the docks of his native world, had joined the Lillith as an apprentice colonist.

  Blotho was large, even for a human, and towered more than twice my height. His skin was the color of copper. Curly black hair sprouted from between the openings of his garments, the wire-like tendrils protruding at his throat, hands, ears, eyebrows, and toes. Blotho grasped the pistol firmly in one great fist, then walked toward the edge of the clearing where he waved the weapon back and forth like a scythe. Amis Hartford noticed his reckless behavior and shouted to Blotho to stop playing with the gun as if it were a toy.

  At the sound of the order Blotho suddenly turned. Catching his foot in a root, he fell, landing in an ungainly sprawl. The pistol flew from his hand and smashed against one of the rocks which marred the face of the meadow. Showers of pulverized crystal erupted from the barrel and Blotho uttered a roaring oath:

  "Damn the idiots who gave us guns of glass! Blast them and all their broken toys!"

  The words had hardly left his throat when his body seemed to change. The colonist's skin began to harden. It glistened even as he struggled to his feet. Barely had Blotho arisen before his joints froze and his voice strangled into silence. His flesh became like polished mail. Light danced in shimmers through his arms. In a few minutes every inch of him, even his hair, teeth, and eyes, had become a glowing crystalline material. His ship-issued clothes were the only aspect which remained untainted, his few pieces of clothing rustled free in the breeze. Blotho's head was as hard as diamond, his fingers as unbreakable as steel. All of us sensed, in that instant, that what the native had said was true: Fane was a very special world and we did not know the words or the way.

  When the sun set two moons appeared, one shortly after the other. The first cast a pale pink light across the meadow and Amis Hartford named it Dolos. About an hour later the second, promptly named Minos, rose into the sky and shed a pale yellow glow, filling the fields with twin, jagged shadows as if a Fane were bathed in the radiance of some strange crooked moon.

  Grantin sat up and thrust back first his left shoulder, then his right. Arching his neck he lolled his head around in a counterclockwise motion. The book was too awkward to hold in his lap and he huddled over it, like a miser counting his gold. Awkwardly he twisted his torso in an attempt to quiet a host of complaining aches.

  Grantin leaned forward again. One by one he lifted the lower right-hand corners of the remaining pages, counting as he went. Only a few more and he would finish volume one. He adjusted the chair until his stomach was only a foot and a half from the edge of the table, then slid the book toward him until it lay tilted, one edge resting on his belt buckle, with the spine against the table's edge. In this condition he pressed on, anxious to finish before Greyhorn's return.

  All of us crowded around Blotho's statue. A few of the more adventurous persons walked close. Hesitantly they slid their palms along the surface of his cheek. There the flesh was cool, hard, and slick like finely polished marble. Dr. Milton, the geologist, closed his hand into a tiny fist and rapped lightly three times against Blotho's temple. The knocks produced a sonorous thump, thump, thump, as though Milton had been rapping on a solid piece of soft, light wood. Experimentally one of the crewmen brushed a questing palm across the top of Blotho's head. He yipped in surprise and yanked back a bleeding hand. So hard and sharp were the individual strands of hair that he might as well as have petted a cactus. Small drops of blood oozed from the tips of two of his fingers. At the sight of this injury the crowd retreated a pace or two, then halted in a frightened, nervous circle.

  One of the crewmen ran to fetch the captain. In a few moments Captain Marvin shouldered his way through the spectators. He looked first at Blotho, then turned an inquiring gaze to Dr. Milton.

  "What in the bloody blue blazes happened to him?"

  "As best I can tell he's turned to stone, or, more accurately, a crystalline substance similar to diamond."

  "He smashed one of the pistols," Able Starman Norberg volunteered.

  "Just before it happened he cursed the glass," Mary Allen chimed in.

  "It's witchcraft, just like the native said," another voice whispered from the edge of the crowd. "Sorcery."

  "Nonsense!" Amis Hartford pushed his way to the captain's side. "Don't let your imagination run away with you. There's no such thing as spells and witchcraft."

  Captain Marvin stared quizzically at Blotho, then strode forward and gave the head a backhanded rap on the point of the nose. Blotho remained as insensate as a tree while the captain pulled back his hand and thrust a skinned knuckle between his lips.

  Marvin looked truculently around the clearing. He saw only golden afternoon sunlight slanting through the trees and dappling the heavy grasses with yellow specks.

  "Everyone back in the ship," he called. 'Tomorrow I'll decide what to do."

  Reluctantly, the colonists climbed the gangplank. Inside the Lillith they split into pairs and returned to their bare metal cubicles. In the meadow, crewmen armed with rifles mounted a watch where the grass met the trees.

  The next morning the colonists arose early. Without consultation with the captain, Amis Hartford ordered them to finish unloading. So determined was Hartford to complete the job that even the criminals were pressed into service. The work was done quietly. Few words were spoken. After the incident with Blotho, each person took care with what he said. No shouts or arguments marred the early-morning silence. All worked diligently, even Gogol and Windom, although these two were often seen muttering softly to each other.

  Shortly after breakfast Captain Marvin left the Lillith. Descending the gangplank, he was amazed to see such furious activity. He wandered through the camp and found Amis Hartford chairing a meeting with his subordinates.

  "Hartford, I want to talk to you," Marvin sai
d brusquely.

  Hartford spoke to his associates, then turned to join the captain. The two men walked to the edge of the meadow to a point where they could converse more or less in private.

  "Hartford, I don't think this planet is going to do for you. All taken with all, I suspect that the best thing is to load your people and proceed to New Ossening. After we've gotten rid of the criminals I'll let you off at Clarion or Marissa on the way back."

  "Captain, we're all quite satisfied with Fane," Hartford replied. "The climate is harmonious, the water sweet, the air pure, the land fruitful, the produce nourishing, and the natives friendly."

  "Listen, Hartford, I've been talking with my chief engineer. Between you and me, the equipment is beginning to deteriorate. The magnetic field seems to shift in some kind of harmony with Pyra's sunspots. Certain of the frequencies are able to penetrate our shielding. It's getting worse. Already systems are breaking down. If we don't get out of here in the next ten hours we may never lift the ship at all. Mussman thinks that sooner or later every engine and electronic circuit you've got will decay into a worthless pile of junk. Your colony doesn't have a chance here. In a week you'll be back to the Stone Age."

  As he talked the captain's eyes darted back and forth, checking to see if anyone were near enough to have overheard the conversation. Amis Hartford, though, seemed calm, serene, after the fashion of an admiral in command of a battleship which is about to attack a rowboat.

  "Captain, it is to be expected that no planet will be perfect. We assume that there will be a few minor problems here and there."

  "This isn't a minor problem. In three months standard you'll be plowing the ground with a sharp stick and living in a mud hut. Brute force is the only thing that will stand between you and starvation. This isn't a suitable planet."