Christopher Stasheff - The Warlock Unlocked

“Small magics,” Rod agreed, “daily ones. It seems the village priest is the mundane magician, here. How does that fit into your theories, Father?”

“Perfectly. As I mentioned, I posit three sources of Power, and one of them is Divine—though I have a notion that some of his spells work more by ‘secular,’ impersonal magic than by God’s Power. Some trace of magical ability could well be a requirement for admission to the seminary.”

“Probably,” Rod agreed. “But the old man’s abilities notwithstanding, I think it might be in order to keep our hands off his food, if we can.” He turned to his son. “Magnus, Geoff’s about tuckered. How much grub do you think you could scare up by yourself?”

Magnus pulled a hare out from behind his back. “I was hungry, Papa.”

“So was I.” Cordelia held out an apronful of birds’ eggs and berries.

“Nice thing about kids—they never lose track of the important things,” Rod noted, to Father Al. “What do you say I take the skillet, Gwen? You’re looking pretty tired, yourself.”

“Aye, but I wish to eat before noon.” Gwen caught up the hare and brushed past him into the “rectory.”

“Come, Cordelia.”

“Well, I guess we get to decide the fate of the world.” Rod sat down on the step as the door closed behind the ladies. “Magnus, keep your brother busy until breakfast, so he doesn’t fall asleep.”

“Doing what, Papa?”

“Oh, I dunno… go play tag with a wolf, or something. Uh, cancel that,” he added quickly, as he saw Magnus’s eyes light up. “No sense in cruelty to animals. Go cut a couple of willow wands and drill him on fencing—he’s a little slow on the riposte.”

“As thou dost wish, Papa.” Magnus turned away, crestfallen. “Come, Geoffrey.”

“And stay where I can see you!”

Magnus gave a martyr’s sigh. “We will.”

“Would you really have worried more about the wolf than about them?” Father Al asked, sitting beside Rod.

“Not completely,” Rod admitted, “but I’ve seen Magnus drive a wolf to distraction. He disappears just before the wolf gets him, and reappears behind it. Then the wolf turns around to charge him again, and he disappears in the nick of time, bobbing up behind it again. When I caught him, he had it chasing its own tail.”

Father Al shook his head in wonder. “I think I begin to understand why you adjusted to a world of magic so easily.”

“Kids do keep your mind limber,” Rod admitted.

“Limber enough to understand why technology never went beyond the hammer and anvil here?”

“Oh, there’s not much question there. Why do you need to develop fertilizers when the average parish priest can do the same thing with a blessing?”

Father Al nodded. “I’ll have to worm the wording of the prayers out of him, to see whether it’s the prayer that does it, or the charm.”

“So you can know which Power is working?”

Father Al nodded. “Increasing crop yields isn’t exactly what we mean by ‘small miracles happening everywhere.’ ”

“Like medical technology? It sounds as though he can cure arthritis, though he doesn’t know it by that name. Our own doctors can’t do much better. I’d imagine the same kind of thing’s happening in all areas of technology.”

Father Al nodded again. “Smiths producing case-hardened alloys by singing to the metal as they pound it; carriages riding smoothly, cushioned by spells instead of steel leaves, perhaps even spell-propelled; ships communicating with shore by crystal balls… Yes, why bother inventing anything?”

“But,” said Rod, “magicians being rare, the average man couldn’t afford battle-spells; so martial power remained an aristocratic monopoly. Which meant…”

“That the political system remained essentially feudal.” Father Al’s smile grew hard. “Though, with wizards providing kings with efficient communications, and even intelligence abilities, there’s a chance centralized governments may have evolved.”

“But never terribly absolute,” Rod noted. “The barons could get wizards, too. So they’d think of themselves as ‘Christendom’ as much as separate countries.”

“Not much nationalism,” Father Al agreed. “But how would the New World have been colonized?”

Rod shrugged. “No problem; Columbus came over shortly after the Wars of the Roses, and the Vikings set up a colony before him. With wizardry to help them, they shouldn’t’ve had as much trouble with the ‘skralings.’ ”

“The Amerinds, yes. I notice that most of these people are nowhere nearly as pale as Northern Europeans of the period.”

“Probably hybrids. And with their shamans’ magic added in, you’d have quite an assemblage of magic. But that indicates a big emphasis on trade, which means mercantilism. How come there’s no rise of the middle class?”

“There probably was, to a point. But the kings and barons would’ve entrusted fund-raising to their wizard-advisers, who, being probably of common birth, could participate in trade for them. No, I’d guess the ‘merchant princes’ were princes. And trade not being their means to rise, they wouldn’t push its development as hard.”

Rod spread his hands. “But—fifteen hundred years! Could a society really last that long, without changing?”

“Well, there was ancient Egypt—and the Chinese Empire. Dynasties changed, and styles; technology even improved a little, from time to time—but the society remained the same. And, come to think of it, India, before the Mongols… You know, Europe may have been the exception, not the rule, with its changing society.”

Rod shook his head in wonder. “All because they started being able to make magic work! What do you think was the dividing point—the alchemists?”

“ ‘Dividing point?’ Oh, you mean when this universe split off from ours. It didn’t have to, you know—both universes could have started at the same time, and evolved independently.”

“Could have,” Rod admitted, “but there’re just too many resemblances between this universe and ours. The language is even close enough to Gramarye’s so that I didn’t have any problem understanding.”

“Hmf. A good point.” Father Al frowned. “Who knows? Perhaps both theories are true. It may be that the model for multiple universes isn’t just one branching tree, with universes splitting off from one another at major historical events, but a forest—several root universes, each one branching at decision-points.”

“Maybe—but this one looks to have branched off from ours.”

“Or ours from it—we’re not necessarily the center of Creation, you know.” Father Al grinned wickedly.

“A point,” Rod admitted. “So what was it—the alchemists?”

“Perhaps. There was much talk of wizardry before that, of course—but the alchemists were the first ones to approach the topic rationally. And the astrologers, of course.”

Rod nodded. “So some alchemist-astrologer, probably totally forgotten in our own universe, happened to have the Power, and figured out some rules for its use. He probably wouldn’t have let anyone else in on the secret—but once he proved it could be done, others would figure out how. When would this have happened—Fourteenth Century?”

Father Al nodded. “Sounds about right—I haven’t seen any gunpowder here. That would be the latest point it could’ve happened, at least.”

“And styles have continued to change, and they’ve kept pieces of all of them—but the social set-up hasn’t.” Rod nodded. “Makes sense. A little on the sick side, but sense. Where did the elves come from?”

Father Al shrugged. “ ‘Summoned’ from another universe, or extremely thorough illusions made by a wizard, and kept ‘alive’ by the popular imagination. But they may have been there all along, and were only chased out of our universe by the combination of Cold Iron and Christianity, which gradually eroded the people’s belief in them. There’s some evidence for that last one—the Grand Duchess told us that the faery folk are tied to their own particular piece of countryside. That would seem to indicate that they grew out of the land itself, or rather, out of its life-forms. We aren’t the only beings that set up minute electromagnetic fields around themselves.”