Ars Magica (3 page)

oOo

Bishop Hatto straightened from the worktable and granted Gerbert one of his rare, brilliant smiles. “Yes,” he said as coolly as ever, but the smile lingered in his eyes. “Yes, that is how you do it.”

Gerbert basked in the warmth of unwonted praise. He laid down the pen and flexed his cramped fingers, too happy even to grimace at the wandering bird-trails that were his calculations. At his best he wrote a passable hand, clear if hardly elegant. This was frankly a scribble; but it was a victory.

He took up the pen again and reached for a fresh bit of parchment, and waited.

The bishop laughed, startling him utterly. “So eager still! Do you never tire?”

“Oh, yes, my lord,” said Gerbert. “But when I've struggled long and hard, and then at last I understand, I forget everything but that.”

“Indeed,” Hatto said. “Our hour was up long ago, and I have duties waiting. And a task for you, once you've eaten and rested a little.”

That was nothing unusual. Hatto always had a use for a quick hand or a quick wit. Lately he had set Gerbert to work doing his accounts, and once or twice writing letters. Gerbert wondered which it would be today.

The bishop was slow to enlighten him. “You've gone pale since you came here,” he observed. “How long has it been since you last saw the sun?”

Gerbert blinked, surprised. “My lord?”

“Too long,” said Hatto. “Obviously. We have to remedy that. Come, now: have you found your way yet round Barcelona?”

“Yes, my lord. You made me learn, when I first came. I studied the map you made.”

“Did you walk the ways on your own feet?”

Gerbert nodded.

“Do you remember them?”

He nodded again.

“Good,” said Hatto. “I have an errand for you.”

oOo

He did indeed. Gerbert was on it before he had time to think, with two servants following, carrying between them an ironbound chest. Gerbert had seen what went into it. A bolt of silk and two of fine linen. A box of medicaments from Toledo. A vial of attar of roses. Sundry oddments, all rare, all precious. A king would not have refused such gifts.

They were not for a king. They would all go to an infidel, a Saracen: the sorcerer of Rodolfo's story. Damn the Spaniard — had he known what the bishop intended? Had Hatto even put him up to it?

“Today,” Hatto had said in Gerbert's dumbfounded silence, “is the remembrance-day of my escape from death. I never forget the one who brought me back. Go to him, Brother, if you will. Bring him my gifts and my unfading gratitude. He will try to refuse them; you must persevere. When he offers recompense, let him give you the copy of Pythagoras which I had asked him to render into Latin. It's time you had a new book.”

Gerbert could not say a word. He could only go where he was bidden.

A Saracen. A sorcerer. Perhaps he could simply leave the box with the porter, and come back untainted. Hatto's punishment could not harm his soul. A magus' presence most surely could.

Harm? Or tempt?

The world was a blur about him. The sun was a featureless dazzle. People passed like flotsam in a flood: a babble without sense, a jostle of bodies. Some of them must have been infidels. Gerbert neither saw nor cared.

Sense flooded in, all unwelcome, and all too soon. Here was the street. The fountain that marked it trickled endlessly into its basin. A woman drew water from it: dark, veiled, Saracen.

Gerbert's throat was dry, but he could not drink where an infidel had drunk.

This, said the cool voice of logic, is ridiculous. Here was he, armored in his habit and his faith, with his bishop's trust for shield. There was the house, a colonnaded wall that spoke of old Rome, a gate wrought in iron with Arab intricacy. No dragons crouched within.

Oh, indeed, no. Worse than dragons.

Folly, said logic.

He gathered his scattered wits and clenched his trembling fists. “God guard me,” he muttered in peasant dialect.

And laughed, sharp and short, because both the words and the tongue were so perfectly fitted to his cowardice.

The servants were carefully oblivious to it all. He led them to the gate and raised his hand to beat on it.

Soundlessly it swung back, leaving him standing like a fool, hand raised to strike the air. In the shadow behind was a darker shadow, a sudden shimmer: the movement of a hand, beckoning. With the valor of the lost, Gerbert passed within.

Sudden coolness, echoing night; sudden blinding light. His mind, independent of his will, made sense of it: a brief vaulted passage, a turn, a courtyard smitten with sunlight. There was nothing sorcerous in it, unless there were magic in the trees that bloomed in basins all about, filling the air with sweetness.

His guide came clear before him. It was, he saw with a shock, a woman, and veiled. Her eyes were large and very dark; her brow and her hand amid the veils were the color of a marten's pelt. A demon? A Nubian?

He crossed himself. The great eyes glinted with mockery. The woman turned with flowing grace and led him through the court.

It was all most ordinary, for Spain. The woman walked like a woman, if a young and remarkably graceful one; her scent was fleeting but earthly, and it was one he knew: attar of roses. The servants walked as they had through the streets, stolid, unafraid. No wonders unfolded about them, save what one expected in the house of a wealthy man in Barcelona: a man who seemed less inclined to opulence than to a studied simplicity. One of Hatto's secretaries fancied himself a judge of elegance; he had seen fit to teach Gerbert a few of its many degrees. Therefore Gerbert recognized quality in the plainness of the woman's robe, and in the carving of a lintel, and in the hanging of a rug on a whitewashed wall. The only magic in it was the alchemy of taste.

Gerbert's stride broke. He should have been glad. He was not. He was disappointed.

So much dread, and all for naught. He would have laughed if he had been alone.

He was almost calm when he came to the end of it: a chamber like any of the others, plain, with a rug and a table and a low divan. The woman's gestures bade him sit. She brought him cakes, fruit, a cup of something cold and sour-sweet. Shame of his fears had made him bold. He nibbled a cake, sipped from the cup. No bolt of lightning struck him; no poison knotted his vitals. The cakes were pleasant. The sherbet was excessively odd. He tasted nothing in either that could have been sorcery.

When he had thus accepted the hospitality of the house, the woman bowed with glinting eyes and went away. She left the cakes and the cup. Gerbert took up another of the former, wondering what it was made of. He knew almonds, but the rest was strange. One could learn to like it. He tried the sherbet again, and grimaced. Too sour, and yet too sweet. Its undertaste was bitter.

“Yes,” someone said in excellent Latin, but with an odd accent, “that is rather an acquired taste.”

The man had come while Gerbert was preoccupied, soft on slippered feet. He was a little surprising, even when one knew that he was younger than the bishop. One always expected a mage to be immensely old. This one was barely into middle years; his beard was black without trace of grey, his face unlined. The woman could have been his sister: they had the same eyes, and the same dusky skin. What her features were, Gerbert had not had time or wits to see. This man looked not at all like a Nubian. His lips were full in the rich beard, but his nose was thin, arched, the nostrils fine and flaring.

He bowed with exquisite courtesy and sat on the carpet, his grace like the woman's, but fiercer, a man's grace. His long hand indicated the cup which Gerbert had forsaken. “The sweetness is not native to the fruit; alone, it often seems excessively bitter. It grows as lemons do, but its color is paler; it grows large, clustered like grapes on its tree. I find it fascinating.”

“Do you like the taste?” Gerbert could not help it; he had to ask. It was that madness of his, to know. Even here, before a heathen sorcerer.

The sorcerer smiled. “It grows on one. Would you prefer orange or citron? We have both.”

“Thank you,” said Gerbert, “no. Sir.” Belatedly he rose and bowed. “Brother Gerbert of Aurillac,” he named himself, “in Bishop Hatto's service.”

“Ibrahim ibn Suleiman,” responded the sorcerer, “in the service of God.”

Gerbert was taken aback. Somehow he scrambled himself together. “I bear gifts, sir, from my master. He says that you must accept them, in token of his gratitude that never fades.”

“I need no token but his friendship.”

“But, sir,” said Gerbert, “it makes him happy.”

Perhaps he had surprised this master of mages. The dark eyes had widened a fraction; the lips seemed almost ready to smile. “Does it indeed? Surely then he will please me by accepting a gift in return.”

“He said you'd say that, sir. He said to ask for the Pythagoras you've been translating for him,” Gerbert paused. “From the Greek, sir?”

“From the Greek,” said Ibrahim.

“You read Greek? Is it difficult? It's like Latin, I've heard, but the letters are different.”

“Arabic is harder,” said Ibrahim. “And yes, it is remarkably like Latin.”

Gerbert drew a breath of wonder. “Greek! Then you know Aristotle, you must. And Plato. And Hippocrates: do you know Hippocrates?”

“Certainly. He is one of the masters of my art.”

“Magic?”

As soon as he had blurted it out, Gerbert bit his tongue. But the mage was calm, unruffled. “Magic, indeed, a very little. And medicine. My first training was in healing.”

Gerbert's cheeks burned. “Then you — you aren't — ”

“I am a student of the high magic, of the Art as we call it. God has ordained that my incapacity should be least evident in the healing of the body and the spirit.”

“As you did with my lord bishop,” said Gerbert.

“Just so.” The deep eyes were level. “Are you afraid of me?”

“Yes.” Gerbert was. He was also calm: calm as a rabbit under the hawk's shadow. The servants were no help. They had set down their burden when he was not looking, and gone away, abandoning him. He was all alone. “They say your arts are of the realms below.”

“Yet you came to me?”

“I obeyed my lord's command.”

The mage leaned back on his elbow, all at ease. “Perfect obedience! Would it comfort you to know a truth? I am no servant of Iblis, whom your people call Satan. My art is the white art; my allegiance is to the light.”

“That can't be,” Gerbert said. “Sorcery is evil. God forbids it.”

“Sorcery,” said Ibrahim, “yes. I am not a sorcerer.”

“But isn't it all the same?”

“Hardly.” Ibrahim straightened and tucked up his feet. He had a look which Gerbert knew well: eager, intent. A teacher's look. “Magic has its orders and its divisions, as does any other branch of learning. Most simply, there are three: the white and the black, and the broad realm between. In the learned magic, the distinction lies somewhat in method, but chiefly in purpose. To heal is of the light; to destroy is of the dark.”

“Like prayers and curses.”

Ibrahim nodded, pleased. “Very like. But a prayer beseeches the aid of a saint or of God Himself; it cannot compel. The will of the one who prays is subject to the will of divinity. A white spell differs. It does not presume to command God, Who is above all compulsion. Yet it seeks to work the mage's will on the powers of heaven and earth. The magus masters them; he shapes them to his ends.”

“How can that be anything but evil? It goes against the law of God.”

“God's law ordains that a spell worked in His name be fulfilled by His will.”

Gerbert frowned. “I don't see... It's arrogant. To assume that one knows what He intends.”

“Any of His priests assumes exactly that, in everything he does.”

Gerbert's frown deepened. The man was right, damn him. And Gerbert should have seen it. And yet... “Why then do they bid us shun all works of magic?”

“Fear,” answered Ibrahim. “Ignorance. Confusion of the high learned Art with its black shadow. The power in itself is neither good nor evil; it simply is. The mind of the magus shapes its purpose.” He paused, a breath only. “I have heard that in your country the same fear and ignoranee have banned the arts of the Quadrivium.”

“Not banned them,” Gerbert said. “Let them slide into neglect. But numbers can't call up devils.”

“Can they not? The art magic grounds itself in the seven liberal arts. The three arts of language and its use; the four sciences. It is all one in the face of God.”

Gerbert's head shook of itself. “No. No, it can't be that simple. Or — or that beautiful.”

“Why should it not be? It is part of God's creation. He has not given it to every man, that is true; it is too strong for that, and too perilous. So likewise is any knowledge. In the wrong hands, even the words we speak can destroy a reputation or a life.”