Лайон Спрэг Де Камп Array - The Incomplete Enchanter

Chalmers gained breath enough to sit up. «Just. puff winded. I am. uh. merely middle-aged. To whom do we owe our rescue?»

The girls eyebrows went up, Shea noticing they were a delightful colour. «You know me not? I hight Belphebe.»

«Well,» said Shea, «I. ah. hight Harod Shea, esquire, and my friend hight Reed Chalmers, the palmer, if that’s how you say it.»

«That would be your blade sticking in the other Losel?»

«Yes. What happened to it.»

«I will even show you. The creature died when erst I saw it.»

Losels . Shea recalled the table at Castle Caultrock, with Britomart telling Sir Erivan he would not find it easy to come to grips with Busyrane the enchanter, because Busyrane’s castle was in «the wood where the Losels breed».

«We’re on the right track, Doc,» he said to Chalmers as he helped the latter up and followed Belphebe.

Chalmers merely gave him a sidelong glance and sang softly:

«But when away his regiment ran,

His place was at the fore, oh,

That celebrated, cultivated, underrated nobleman,

The Duke of Plaza-Toro!»

Shea grinned. «Meaning me, I suppose? I was just setting a good pace for you. Here’s our other Losel.» He pulled the épée from the repellent corpse.

Belphebe gazed at the instrument with interest. «Marry, a strange weapon. May I try its balance?»

Shea showed her how to hold the épée and made a few lunges, enjoying to the full his first recent chance to show off before an attractive girl.

Belphebe tried. « Ouch! These poses of yours are as awkward as a Mussulman at Mass, Squire Harold.» She laughed and tossed the épée back to him. «Will you show me more another day?»

«Glad to,» replied Shea. He turned to Chalmers. «Say, Doc, it seems to me we were eating lunch when the fracas started. Maybe the young lady would like to help us finish it.»

Chalmers gulped. «I had — this harrowing experience had quite driven the thought of food out of my mind, Harold. But if Miss Belphebe would like to — by all means —»

«If I may give that I may get,» she said. «Hola, attend!» She pulled out an arrow and tiptoed slowly away from them, peering intently into the greenery. Shea tried to follow her gaze, but could see nothing but foliage.

Then Belphebe brought up the bow; aimed, drew, and released all in one movement. To Shea it looked as though she had loosed at random. He heard the arrow strike. Down from the trees fell a large green macaw-like bird. It struck the leaf mould with a thump, and a couple of green feathers gyrated down after.

Gustavus and Adolphus still trembled and tugged at their reins when the three approached them. Shea soothed them and took them down to the stream to drink while Chalmers started a fire and Belphebe stripped the feathers from the parrot. Presently she was toasting the bird on the end of a stick. She was so deft in rustling a meal in the open that Shea felt no desire to compete with her in scoutcraft.

Chalmers, he was surprised to observe, was holding his right forefinger against his left wrist. He asked: «What are you doing, Doc? Taking your pulse?»

«Yes,» said Chalmers gloomily. «My heart seems to be — uh — holding up all right. But I’m afraid I wasn’t cut out for this type of life, Harold. If it were not for pure scientific interest in the problems —»

«Aw, cheer up. Say, how’s your magic coming along? A few good spells would help more than all the hardware put together.»

Chalmers brightened. «Well, now — ahem — I think I may claim some progress. There was that business of the cat that flew away. I find I can levitate small objects without difficulty, and have had much success in conjuring up mice. In fact, I fear I left quite a plague of them at Satyrane’s castle. But I took care to conjure up a similar number of cats, so perhaps conditions will not be too bad.»

«Yeah, but what about the general principles?»

«Well, the laws of similarity and contagion hold. They appear to be the fundamantal Newtonian principles, in the field of magic. Obviously the next step is to discover a system of mathematics arising from these fundamentals. I was afraid I should have to invent my own, as Einstein was forced to adapt tensor analysis to handle his relativity equations. But I think I have discovered such a system ready made, in the calculus of classes, which is a branch of symbolic logic. Here, I’ll show you.»

Chalmers fished through his garments for writing materials. «As you know, one of the fundamental equations of class calculus which a naive academic acquaintance of mine once thought had something to do with Marxism — is this;»

«That is, the class alpha plus the class non-alpha equals the universe. But in magic the analogous equation appears to be:»

The class alpha plus the class non-alpha includes the universe. But it may or may not be limited thereto. The reason seems to be that in magic one deals with a plurality of universes. Magic thus does not violate the law of conservation of energy. It operates along the interuniversal vectors perpendicular, in a sense, to the spatial and temporal dimension. It can draw on the energy of another universe for its effects.

«Evidently, one may readily have the case of two magicians, each summoning energy from some universe external to the given one, for diametrically opposite purposes. Thus it must have been obvious to you that the charming Lady Duessa — somewhat of a vixen, I fear — was attempting to operate an enchantment of her own to overcome that of the girdle. That she was unable to do so —»

«The fowl is ready, gentlemen,» said Belphebe.

«Want me to carve?» asked Shea.

«Certes, if you will, Master Harold.»

Shea pulled some big leaves off a catalpa-like tree, spread them out, laid the parrot on them, and attacked the bird with his knife. As he hacked at the carcass he became more and more dubious of the wisdom of psittacophagy. He gave Belephe most of the breast. Chalmers and he each took a leg.

Belphebe said: «What’s this I hear anent the subject of magic? Are you practitioners of the art?»

Chalmers replied: «Well — uh — I would not go so far as to say —»

«We know a couple of little tricks,» put in Shea.

«White or black?» said Belphebe sharply.

«White as the driven snow,» said Shea.

Belphebe looked hard at them. She took a bite of parrot, and seemed to have no difficulty with it. Shea had found his piece of the consistency of a mouthful of bedsprings.

Belphebe said: «Few are the white magicians of Faerie, and all are entered. Had there been additions to the roster, my lord Artegall had so acquainted me when last I saw him.»

«Good lord,» said Shea with sinking heart, «are you a policewoman too?»

«A — what?»

«One of the Companions.»

«Nay, not a jot I. I rove where I will. But virtue is a good master. I am — but stay, you meet not my query by half.»

«Which query?» asked Chalmers.

«How it is that you be unknown to me, though you claim to be sorcerers white?»

«Oh,» said Shea modestly, «I guess we aren’t good enough yet to he worth noticing.»

«That may be,» said Belphebe. «I, too, have what you call ‘a couple of tricks’, yet ’twere immodesty in me to place myself beside Cambina.»

Chalmers said: «Anyhow, my dear young lady, I — uh — am convinced, from my own studies of the subject, that the distinction between ‘black’ and ‘white’ magic is purely verbal; a spurious distinction that does not reflect any actual division in the fundamental laws that govern magic.»