Лайон Спрэг Де Камп Array: The Green Magician

«Miach!» called the King. «Is it the truth he is telling?»

The druid stepped forward, said, «Fetch me a bowl of water,» and when it was brought, instructed Shea to dip a finger in it. Then he made a few finger-passes, murmuring to himself, and looked up. «It’s of the opinion I am,» he said, «that this Mac Shea has obligations elsewhere, and if he fails to fulfill them, a most unfavorable geas would come upon him.»

«We may as well be comfortable over a mug of beer in deciding these questions,» said the King. «We command you to follow us.»

Belphebe had been dabbing at Shea’s shoulder. Now she caught his hand and they went in together. The big sword was awkward, and they had taken his scabbard as well, but he clung to it anyway. When they were inside, and King Briun had seated himself again, he said, «This is a hard case, and requires thinking, but before we give judgment, we must know what there is to know. Now, what is this of a new magic?»

«It’s called sympathetic magic,» said Shea. «I can show Miach how to do it, but I don’t know the old tongue, so he’ll have to help me. You see — I’ve been trying to get back to my own place, and I can’t do it because of that.» He went on to explain about the court of Maev and Ailill, and the necessity of rescuing Pete and getting back with him.

«Now,» he said, «ifsomeone will give me a little clay or wax, I’ll show you how sympathetic magic is done.»

Miach came forward and leaned over with interest, as someone brought a handfull of damp clay to Shea, who placed it on a piece of wood and formed it into a rather crude and shapeless likeness of the seated King. «I’m going to do a spell to make him rise,» said Shea, «and I’m afraid the effect will be too heavy if you don’t chant. So when I start moving with my hands, you sing.»

«It shall be done,» said Miach.

A verse or two of Shelley ought to make a good rising spell. Shea went over it in his head, then bent down and took hold of the piece of wood with one hand, while he murmured the words and with the other began to make the passes. He lifted the piece of wood. Miach’s chant rose.

So did a shriek from the audience. Simultaneously an intolerable weight developed on Shea’s arm, a crack zigzagged across the floor, and he half-turned his head in time to see that the royal palace and all its contents were going up like an elevator, already past the lower branches of the trees, with one of the spectators clinging desperately to the doorsill by his finger-tips.

Shea stopped his passes and hastily began repeating the last line backward, lowering his piece of wood. The palace came down with a jar that sent things tumbling from the walls and piled the audience in a yelling heap. Miach looked dazed.

«I’m sorry,» began Shea. «I.»

Patting his crown back into position, King Briun said, «Is it ruining us entirely you would be?»

Miach said, «O King, it is my opinion that this Mac Shea has done no more than was asked, and that this is a very beautiful and powerful magic.»

«And you could remove the geas on this woman and return the pair to their own place?»

«On the wings of the wild swan.»

«Then hear our judgment.»King Briun stretched forth a hand. «It is the command of the gods on all of us to help others fulfill their obligations, and this we will do. Yet it is equally true that a doing should be met with a doing in return, and this we cannot escape. Now, Mac Shea has killed our champion, and does not wish to take his place. There must be a balance against this, and we set it that it shall be this wonder-working bow of his wife’s, which if it is as good as his magic, will surely shoot holes through the walls of the mountains.»

He paused and Shea nodded. The man could be quite reasonable after all.

«Secondly,» Briun went on, «there is the matter of removing his wife’s geas. Against this we will place the teaching of this new magic to our druid. Now respecting the transfer of these two to their own country, there is no counterweight, and it is our judgement that it should be paid for by having Mac Shea undertake to rid us of the sinech, since it is so troublesome a monster and he is so great a champion and magician.»

«Just a minute,» said Shea. «That doesn’t help us find Pete or get him back, and we’ll be in trouble if we don’t. And we really ought to do something for Cuchulainn. Maev is going through with her plan against him.»

«We would most willingly help you in this matter, but you have no other prices to pay.»

Miach said, «Yet there is a way to accomplish all they ask, save the matter of the man Pete, in the finding of whom I have no power.»

Briun said, «You will be telling us about it, then.»

«Touching the geas,» said Miach. «Since it is one that was imposed, and not a thing natural, it can be lifted at the place and in the presence of the druid who laid it, and it will be needful for me to accompany these two to the place where it was put on.

Touching the sinech, it is so dreadful a monster that even Mac Shea will be hard put against it by his own strength. Therefore let us lend him the great invincible sword of Nuada, which is forbidden to us by its geas, but which he will be able to handle without trouble, at all. Then he can lend it to this hero Cuchulainn, who will make a mighty slaughter of the Connachta we detest, and as I will be with the sword and Mac Shea, I can see that it is returned.»

The King leaned his chin on one hand and frowned for a minute. Then he said, «It is our command that this be done as you advise.»

Miach was an apt pupil. At the third try he succeeded in making a man he did not like break out in a series of beautiful yellow splotches, and he was so delighted with the result that he promised Shea for the hunting of the sinech not only the sword of Nuada, but the enchanted shoes of Iubdan, that would enable him to walk on water. He explained that the reason for the overcharge in Shea’s magic was that the spells were in the wrong tongue; but, as the magic wouldn’t work at all without a spell of some kind and Shea didn’t have time to learn another language, this was not much help.

About the sinech itself he was more encouraging. He did a series of divinations with bowls of water and blackthorn twigs. Although Shea himself did not know enough of the magic of this continuum to make out anything but a confused and cloudy movement below the clear surface of the bowl, Miach assured him that in coming to this world of legendary Ireland, he had himself acquired a geas that would not allow his release until he had accomplished something that would alter the pattern of the continuum itself.

«Now tell me, Mac Shea,» he said, «was it not so in the other lands you visted? For I see by my divinations that you have visited many.»

Shea, thinking of how he had helped break up the chapter of magicians in Faerie and rescued his wife from the Saracens of theOrlando Furioso, was forced to agree.

«It is just as I am telling you, for sure,» said Miach. «And I am thinking that this geas has been with you since the day you were born without your ever knowing it. We all of us have them, we do, just as I have one that keeps me from eating pig’s liver, and a good man it is that does not have trouble with his geasa.»

Belphebe looked up from the arrow she was shaping. Her bow was a success, but finding seasoned material from which to build shafts was a problem. «Still, master druid,» she said, «it is no less than a problem to us that we may return to our own place late, and without our friend Pete. For this would place us deeply in trouble.»

«Now I would not be worrying about that at all, at all,» said Miach. «For the nature of a geas is that once it is accomplished, it gives you no more trouble at all. And the time you are spending in the country of the Sidhe will be no more than a minute in the time of your own land, so that you need not be troubling until you are back among the Gaels.»