David Grace - The Accidental Magician

"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 overdue 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.

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.