Christopher Stasheff: The Warlock Enraged

“So.” Simon frowned. “I have convinced thee that thou art thyself again?”

Rod nodded. “More importantly, you’ve shown me that I can restore myself to my real personality, instead of the make-believe one, welding my thoughts and my actions back into a whole again. It’s a matter of remembering who I am. Fess was the key; Fess was the final thing that did it. Because, you see…” He quirked a smile. “…Fess couldn’t exist in Lord Kern’s universe.”

Simon frowned. “I do not understand why not; yet will I accept thine assurance.” Then his eyes sparked, and widened. “Yet mayhap I do comprehend. Thine horse doth stand for thee, doth he not? For if he could not be, in this Lord Kern’s land, then neither couldst thou!”

“Not without being imported, no.” Then Rod stiffened, turning aside from Simon, feeling as though an electric current were passing through him. “Yes… he does stand for me in a lot of ways, doesn’t he?” The computer mind in the horsehair body was rather symbolic of technological Rod in Gramarye’s medieval culture…

But of himself…?

“I think ‘tis so,” Simon was saying. “And even as thine horse is the key to returning thee to control of thine actions, so thine anger is the key to summoning this ‘Lord Kern’ which, thou dost say, thou hast created, to take responsibility for thine own fell deeds, that thou mayest give thyself the lie that ‘tis no fault of thine own.”

Rod stood still for a moment, then nodded slowly. “Yes. And it is a lie.” He dropped down, to sit on his heels. Simon sat by him. “Ever since I came back from Lord Kern’s universe, I’ve been flying into rages—and it’s scary, very scary.”

“So.” Simon’s eyes glinted. “Thou hast been afraid to draw on thine own powers, for fear of summoning him.”

Rod stared at him for a while. Then, slowly, he nodded. “Yes, that would make sense, wouldn’t it? Association. Using magic for the first time, resulted in Lord Kern’s being a house guest within my skull; so using them again, should bring him back. A certain illogical sort of reason to it, isn’t there?”

“It doth sound so, when thou dost say it.”

“Yes—but stating it also makes me able to see that it doesn’t make sense.” Rod grinned. “I have to draw on my powers, though. There have been times when they came in almighty handy. Just now, for example—Alfar had his dagger at my throat, so I had nothing to lose.” He shuddered. “And ‘Lord Kern’ almost took over completely, this time.”

“Aye.” Simon smiled. “Thou didst fear, didst thou not? To use thy powers, for fear of summoning ‘Lord Kern.’ ”

Rod nodded, chagrined. “Even if he’s just an illusion I made up. Yeah. I’d still be afraid of it.”

“Yet thou dost wish to use these powers.” Simon raised a forefinger. “Whether they be Lord Kern’s, or but thine own magics, that thine anger doth conjure up, thou dost fear to use them, lest thou shouldst yield to temptation, and let thine hands do what thou dost abhor.”

Rod nodded slowly. “Nicely said. Separating the thought from the action. Yes. I have always been a bit schizoid.”

“Then contain the power thou dost conjure up,” Simon urged. “Thus thou mayst reunite thy thoughts with thine action, by containing thine active part within the pen thy thoughts do make. Contain ‘Lord Kern,’ even as thou dost contain thine anger. Assuredly thou hast not forgot our conversation, touching on that point? ‘Twas directly after thou…”

“After I beat up on that poor, unsuspecting, defenseless rock. Yes.” Rod nodded, lips tight with chagrin. “Yeah, I remember it. But I still don’t understand how you keep the lid on your anger.”

“Nay, I do not!” Simon frowned, shaking a finger at Rod. “If the anger rises, do not attempt to bury it, nor to pretend that it’s not there. Let it be in thine awareness, and do not seek to throttle it—but contain it.”

Rod frowned. “And how do you manage that?”

“By distancing thyself from the person who doth anger thee,” Simon answered. “Tis not easily done, I know—for when the folk of the village had come to like me, and their priest had become my friend, I did come from out mine hermitage, to live among them. I built myself mine inn—with their aid. And, in good time, I found myself a wife.” His head lifted, gazing off into the past again. “She bore me bonny bairns, and together we labored to rear them.”

“That’s right—you do have a daughter.”

“Two—and a son. Who, by Heaven’s grace, went for a soldier in the last war, and remained in the South, to serve Lord Borgia. Beshrew me, but I love him! Yet whilst he grew, he tried me sorely!”

“I wouldn’t say I know all about that,” Rod growled, “but I’m sure learning. How did you deal with it?”

“By holding in my mind, and never letting go, the notion that ‘twas not me his anger aimed at, but at that which I stood for.”

“Authority,” Rod guessed. “Limits on his actions.”

“Aye—and the tree from which he needed to separate himself, the shoot, or he’d not be a being in his own right. Yet ‘twas more than that—’twas that he was not angry at me, but at what I’d done or said.”

“That doesn’t make much sense.” Rod frowned. “What you’re trying to say is, it was anger, not hatred.”

Simon gazed off into space. “Mayhap that is the sense of it. Yet whether it be anger or hatred, anger at thee or at what thou hast done, be mindful that, if worst comes to worst, thou hast but to recall that this person, this event, is but a part of thy life, not the whole of it—a part with which thou mayest have to deal but, when the dealing’s done, canst lock out from thy life.”

“What if you can’t ?” Rod exploded. “What if you’re tied to them? What if you have to deal with them continually, every day? What if you love them?”

Simon sat, grave and attentive. He nodded. “Aye. ‘Tis far more easy to hold thy temper with one whom thou dost see for but an hour or two each day, for thou canst go to thine home, shut the door behind thee, and forget them.” His face eased into a gentle smile. “Be mindful that these you love are people too, and deserving of as much respect and care as those with whom thou dost deal for but an hour or two each day. If thou dost not treat thy family well, pretend they’re friends.”

The thought gave Rod an icy chill. “But they’re not! They’re inextricable parts of my life—parts of myself!”

“Nay!” Simon’s eyes blazed, and his face was the countenance of a stern patriarch. “Never must thou believe them so! For look you, no one else can be a part of thee; they are themselves withal, and are apart from thee!”

Rod just stared, astounded by the intensity of Simon’s emotion.

Simon shook his head slowly. “Never think that, simply because thou dost love a person, or she doth love thee, that she is no longer her self, a separate thing, apart.”

“But… but… but that’s the goal of marriage!” Rod sputtered. “For two to become one!”

“Tis a foul lie!” Simon retorted. “Tis but an excuse for one to enslave another, then make her cease to be! Thy wife is, withal, one person, contained within her own skin, and is, and ought to be, one whole, of which all the parts are fused together, a being, separate, independent—one who loves thee, yet who is apart.” Suddenly, he smiled, and his warmth was back. “For look you, an she were not a separate person, thou wouldst have none to love thee.”

“But… but, the word marriage! Isn’t that what it means—two people, being welded together into a single unit?”

Simon shook his head impatiently. “That may be what the word doth mean. Yet be not deceived; two cannot become one. ‘Tis not possible. I confess it hath a pretty sound—but doth its beauty suffice to make it right?”