Ars Magica (10 page)

He grinned amiably at the huddle of boys, knowing well how daft he could look when he wanted to. It had its effect. They remembered that they had obligations elsewhere. They conveniently forgot their prisoner, who needed Richer's hand to pull him up, and Richer's help to untangle him from his cincture. He was not grateful.

Richer did not ask him his name. His kind were less common in Rheims than anyone had a right to expect; they did no more harm than they must, and less than they might.

That would change, when Gerbert was archbishop. Seventeen years, he had labored at it: coming first to Rheims from service to pope and German emperor, to study logic under its great master in return for instruction in mathematics and music for which the logician had proved to have no talent; strengthening the lesser arts, brightening his name, bringing in the best among masters and students; and slowly, quietly, letting it be known that he had another Art to teach. More — he would welcome others who could both learn and instruct; who would join him in making order out of the age-old chaos that was the art magic. They had a school now within the school, an order, a system, a sequence of masteries. They even had the old archbishop's silent acceptance, leavened with the love he bore the master.

It was going to be hard for Gerbert to lose that best of friends. Richer climbed the familiar narrow stair with little of his accustomed lightness. The door it led to was never barred; it never needed to be. It recognized Richer, and opened to his touch.

The master had a house of his own just outside the cathedral close, and a household large enough for a lord. Which, after all, he was: friend and teacher to kings and princes, liege man of the Emperor of the Romans, certain to be Archbishop of Rheims. But all those were only trappings. His heart was here in this chamber tucked between the school and the cathedral.

It was small. It had a window, shuttered in the bitter winter, though in summer it looked over the canons' cloister. Books tended to find their way there, sacred as often as profane, and Richer had seen a Vulgate resting with all apparent equanimity atop a grimoire. There was a table, a stool, a lamp. The first magic Richer had learned had been to light that lamp without fire.

He did it now, taking in what the light showed him. Gerbert was making a new sphere of the heavens for his friend Constantine in Fleury Abbey; bits of it were scattered on the table. The sphere itself, a half-clothed skeleton, leaned precariously on a stack of codices. None was the one Richer had come for. He turned toward the book-press, and started.

The master's antique bronze was famous in the school. Wherever Gerbert went, the wags said, there went the necessities of life: his chest of books, his army of servants, and his heathen idol. It had a place in his house, in the room where he received guests. For a while it had occupied a niche in his office in the school, where it terrified the youngest pupils and tempted the older ones to steal it and hold it for ransom.

Some of them must have tried it, or come alarmingly close: the image was here, set as if on guard over Gerbert's books of magic. Richer shivered in spite of himself. It was a beautiful thing, and valuable, but he had never been easy in his mind about it. Sometimes it seemed almost alive: watching, listening, brooding in its mantle of power. Which, surely, was only what any work of the founder's art would bear, if it belonged to a magus, and if he used it to aid in focusing his magic. A particularly tenacious rumor had it that the image was an oracle; that, if asked a direct question, it was bound by geas to reply either yes or no. Richer had seen no proof of that. It was simply a beloved possession, a remembrance of the master's years in Spain.

Yet Richer was not immediately willing to move it, even to find the book he needed. He folded his long body in front of it and considered the blank bronze face. It was female, he had almost decided. Some trick of the light, or of the place, or of Richer's sight which was not of the best, had kindled a spark in the graven eyes: a spark that seemed, for a breathless moment, to betoken a living intelligence.

He shook it off. Too much labor, too little sleep, and the constant tension that thrummed about the death of a great lord—he was beginning to start at shadows. He set hands to the cold metal.

“Careful,” it said.

He did not start. He did not fling the thing away. He did not even drop his hands.

“Your fingers will freeze,” said the image: It sounded like his nurse when he was small. She had not been old or dull-witted or a fool. But she had taken her charge to heart, and she had been most firm about it.

“Set me on the table,” the image said, “and master yourself. The book,” it added, “is not here. The master took it this morning.”

Richer set the image where he was bidden, and stood chafing his numbed fingers. He did not know why he should be astonished. He had seen greater wonders than a statue speaking.

“I am rather more than that,” it said. “You may find what you need in the lesser grimoire, there, beneath Hippocrates.”

“Hippocrates?” Richer had forgotten the grimoire. He snatched at the small heavy book, raising it with a peculiar mingling of greed and awe. “Sweet saints, it is! And here was I, only last autumn, riding all the way to Chartres for a glimpse of a half-ruined text; and all the while, he knew that this was here. I could kill him.”

“Don't,” said the image. “It came not long ago. He was caught up in the archbishop's sickness, or he would have told you.”

Richer flushed. It was something, to suffer chastisement from a lump of bronze. Unconsciously he clutched the book to his chest, scowling at the image. “I owe you thanks, I suppose.”

“Your attention will do,” the image said. “He gives me none. I am an oracle; and will he let me serve him as I was ordained to serve? He will not. The present, he says, is enough. And my friendship. Friendship! What is that, if he will not suffer me to help him?”

“Why? What can you do?”

“Warn him. Guide him through these quicksands.”

“Is it as bad as that?”

“Yes,” said the image.

Richer moved a step closer. “Is it because of the magic?”

“No.”

“No? But—” Richer stopped, shifted. “He's not going to get Rheims, is he?”

“Yes,” said the image, “and no.”

Richer's teeth ground together. “Are you playing with me?”

“No.” And before he could erupt: “He was afraid of temptation; and there was a matter of...guilt. He set a binding on me. I may only prophesy if questioned directly.”

“Therefore, unless someone asks the right question, you can foretell nothing clearly.”

The image could not nod, but he felt its assent, and its frustration. He had never thought of oracular spirits as prey to any such sentiments. “You would think,” said this one, “that he would consider what he was doing in stopping my tongue. But when has he ever taken thought for anything that has to do with himself? He is one of nature's fools.”

“He is the greatest mind in Europe,” Richer said stiffly.

“Did I deny it?” The image sighed like wind in a bell tower. “He seems to think that you have a little sense. I would question that, but never your loyalty.”

“You—” Richer choked on it, coughing till the tears sprang. “What are you?”

“His servant, of my own choosing. His friend, once he got over certain unhappy consequences of our meeting. His counselor, when he will allow it.”

“His gadfly,” said Richer. His eyes narrowed. “Or are you trying to press me into that service?”

“You,” said the image, “have legs.” And when he did not speak: “He needs his friends, and he needs them both loyal and clearheaded. Me, he never listens to. He says I fret.”

“You're female,” said Richer with sudden certainty.

“I resent that,” said the image, sharp as two blades clashing. “I am a prophet forbidden to prophesy.”

“Are you asking me to pity you?”

“I am asking you to help me. Our mutual master would stride naked into the desert, trusting in God and in his own brilliance to shield him from the sun. But the desert knows only that it is. Neither gods nor cleverness mean anything to it.”

“What can I do? I'm no oracle.”

“You are a man; you are loyal; you know what I am. Stand by him. Be braced, and do what you may to brace him, for whatever comes. He thinks that he knows the worst of it. He is a babe at the breast.”

“If he knew what you thought of him, he'd melt you down for a chamberpot.”

“He tried that,” said the image. “Once.”

Richer bit his lip. He did not know if he dared laugh. He remembered the book in his hands, ran his thumb along the smooth leather of its spine. “You should have no illusions about me. He seems fond of me, but I'm nothing close to what he is. If he won't listen to his oracle, he's not likely to care what one of his many students is thinking.”

The image was impervious to doubt. “He will listen. Only give him time, and use your wits. And,” she added, “take the small grimoire when you go.”

He opened his mouth, but no words came. What he had taken for an echo of her voice, was the tolling of bells. The death knell, stroke and stroke and somber stroke.

“Go,” sang the image like an echo itself. “Go!”

He snatched the grimoire, bundled it inside his habit with Hippocrates. Hastily he crossed himself, muttering a prayer for the departed. Only when he was done did it strike him. Books first, then the prayer. He was his master's pupil.

oOo

His master stood by the great bed, gazing dry-eyed at the man who lay there. A frail body for the spirit that had been in it, flesh shrunk to bone now, as if death could not wait even this little while before it seized all that belonged to it. The spirit was gone. Gerbert had shriven it; he had watched it go. It was a saintly soul, when all was considered. It had gone singing, eager as a child on its way to something promised, something wonderful.

Gerbert closed the wide wondering eyes, and straightened. Behind him, someone gasped and began to sob. He darted a glance, quelled a sigh. Yes, it would be that one. Arnulf, the old king's bastard, pretty as a girl with his wide blue eyes and his yellow curls, and just enough wits about him to tell a penance from a paternoster.

If Gerbert put his mind to it, he could be fair. The boy was no great light of intellect, but it was difficult to dislike him. He did not parade his pedigree; he granted respect to the peasant's son who, everyone knew, would be his archbishop. His trouble was simple mediocrity, and a lightness of mind that inclined him all too often to forget such niceties as truth and fidelity. In time, no doubt, he would be given high office in the Church — it would be expected of him, for his father's sake. Gerbert hoped that, when that time came, his superiors would have the sense to supply him with a competent secretary. Then he could look magnificent in his vestments, and the secretary could run the see for him.

Gerbert's teeth clenched. Grief struck like that, without warning, without mercy. It could not fell him. He set a kiss on Adalberon's cold brow. Part of it was apology. This royal offspring too had had a secretary, and looked magnificent, and been thought a puppet; but the Archbishop of Rheims had never been that. Whatever Gerbert had advised, Adalberon had chosen or not chosen, as his heart moved him. Before they were friends, they were lord and servant, and neither ever forgot it.

Now the lord was gone. The servant, turning, saw in the crowding faces what princes must see when they became kings. The shifting, the choosing: to accept, or to refuse. The dawning of awareness that the king was dead, long live the king.

They would do nothing until he spoke. It was not joy, that awareness of power. It was terror. His voice when it came was quiet, but they listened; they obeyed.

When the bells began to toll, it was all in hand. Gerbert's hand, as always. He was going to have to train a clerk or two to assist him. Richer, perhaps. A good one, that: good with words, good with numbers, passable with magic. The good ones found their way here; the power knew where to find its like.

Yes. Work would drive out both grief and fear. Grief for what was gone. Fear of what would follow. The Greeks had had a word:
hubris
. Getting above oneself. Attracting the attention of the gods.

“You let him die.”

Gerbert stopped in the eye of the storm, and saw his conscience. Small, ancient, swathed in a vast expanse of black habit. “You let him die,” said the apparition. “You who have magic, who can master death, you let him die.”

“No man may conquer death,” Gerbert said.

The ancient — was it man or woman, or was it anything at all? — cackled with laughter. “Any man may, if he be mage, and strong, and armored with love. But you loved ambition more.”

“I gave him all I had to give.”

“Maybe,” said the creature.

Someone called to Gerbert. When he looked back, the apparition was gone. He felt cold and strange, as sometimes he did when the magic ventured on paths that were more grey than light.