Ars Magica (9 page)

The black exultation of power sank and died. He was empty; emptied. The magic, having wielded him, had abandoned him to cold and stillness and swelling horror. As he saw what he had done. As he saw what he had felled.

Maryam.

The veil had slipped, baring her face. It was waxen grey. Its eyes were wide, astonished. She had had no time to be afraid.

Dead
. It rang like a gong.
Dead
.

The magic killed her. Magic — his magic — he —

He howled like a beast.

“Take me,” said the demon in his arms. “Take. Take.
Take
.”

He wept. He cursed her lying soul to deepest hell. He obeyed her. What else was left to him, save to go mad?

7.

Gerbert lay before the altar of the bishop's chapel. The thing that had betrayed him lay on the altar itself, silent now, but not for any awe of sanctity. It would not speak where any but Gerbert could hear. Perhaps it could not.

The bishop's servants reckoned him mad. Rightly. They had not tried to drag him away, nor to do more than watch him, and keep their distance when he tore at himself, and eye the graven image with deep distrust.

He clawed at unyielding stone, welcoming the pain of flesh worn to bleeding rags. “I killed her,” he said, his voice raw with weeping. “I killed her.”

Robes whispered. He felt in his bones the one who knelt beside him, not touching him. “What have you done?” Hatto asked him, soft yet stern.

He rolled onto his back. Tears dried cold on his cheeks, stinging where his nails had rent them. “I killed Maryam,” he said, simply, like a child.

Hatto's breath hissed as he caught it, but his face did not change. He glanced at the altar and its burden. “For that?”

“For my soul's damnation.”

“Yet you came here. You do penance. Have you hope of atonement?”

“I want to die.”

“Had that been true, you would have stayed to face her father.”

Gerbert drew in upon himself, trembling in spasms. “He will hunt me down. He will not let me die. Oh, no. He will want me to atone, and atone, and atone, and — ”

Hatto slapped him, hard. “Enough! You are not the first man ever to do murder. Even murder of magic. Get up.”

There was power in that voice, if no magic. It drove Gerbert to his feet. It brought men in armor, whom he welcomed with open arms. “Seize me, bind me, chain me. Make me pay.”

They did none of his bidding. They only guided him. Back through the bishop's palace. Back to his own small cell, with his books in it, and his pens, and his spare habit. They bade him stay there; they mounted guard.

It was enough. It would have to be. The damned could not pray. The mad could not read. The murderer could only lie on the hard cold floor and let his soul gnaw itself into nothingness.

Or try to. Great passions were alien to peasants' sons, even peasants' sons whose lust for learning had destroyed them. Reason kept wanting to intrude. Grief, yes, that was fitting. And guilt. But hysteria shamed her memory.

“I'm sorry,” he said to it. “I'm — so — sorry.”

It was not even pitiful. It was too feeble.

His weeping was saner now. He could think around it. They were no thoughts he would ever have wanted to think, but they were necessary. To face what he had done. To set it deep, where he could never forget it, or excuse it, or argue it away. Deep enough even, God willing, to touch his magic.

He shuddered on the stone. Magic. Oh, God, he hated it.
If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out.

Pluck. Out.

His body knotted. Simple, yes. Easy. Simpler and easier than facing it. Naming its name. Mastering it.

Master it?

She had. She had killed no one so distant as a sister of the heart. Her magic had destroyed her mother.

Was this how, in the end, she paid? How then would he pay? Who would love him, and fell him unthinking, because he was in the way?

He had an oracle now, to tell him. For all the good it had done Maryam, who had had it before him.

“Maryam,” he said, grieving. “Maryam.”

oOo

They brought him food and drink. He touched neither. He welcomed the pain of hunger and thirst, the ache of a body left too still, too long, on unyielding stone. Pain was a punishment.

How long he lay there, he neither knew nor cared. When they came for him, he went without either will or resistance. He felt light, hollow, emptied of aught but bare being.

Bishop Hatto waited for him. Hatto in his private chamber, with the image of bronze on the table before him, and across the table, still as the image, Ibrahim.

Gerbert's knees gave way. No one moved to help him. He knelt and stared at the magus' face. In this little while, it had grown old.

There was nothing Gerbert could say. They were cold, both of them, and stern. They had tried him, judged him, sentenced him. He knew better than to hope for mercy.

After an endless while, Ibrahim spoke. “Have you anything to say?”

Gerbert shook his head.

The magus' face twisted. A moment only: grief, rage, unbearable pain. Then it had stilled again. “Now,” he said, low and rough. “Now you know the truth. What the magic is. What price it exacts.”

“Blood,” said Gerbert.

“No.” Ibrahim bit it off. “Nothing so simple as blood. Did you love her?”

The hot blood rose to Gerbert's cheeks. “Not that way.”

“Of course not,” said Ibrahim. His contempt cut more cruelly than any lash of anger. “What was she to you, that your power must have her?”

“She was — ” Gerbert's voice broke. “She was my dark rose. She was the light of my eyes. She was my friend.”

Ibrahim had not moved, but a force like a strong hand closed Gerbert's throat. “She is dead. You slew her. What penance will you do for that, O slave of the Crucified?”

Gerbert shook to his foundations. But he had a voice, after a fashion. It served him. “Anything,” he answered. “Anything you name.”

“Even servitude in hell?”

“Anything.”

Ibrahim looked long at him. He was brave enough, but he was no saint or paladin. He sank down under that black gaze, until he lay as he had lain before the altar.

The magus spoke above him, immensely weary. “I cannot even hate you.” Gerbert looked up. He could see only a black robe, a slippered foot. “You did what all young mages do, if they are strong, if their strength exceeds their wisdom. She...even she...” Almost, he broke. He mastered himself. “You will do anything, you say. Can you do nothing?”

Gerbert could not understand.

“Nothing,” Ibrahim said again. “Go as you had intended. Live. Fly where your ambition takes you.”

“But,” said Gerbert, “that's not — ”

The black eyes glittered. “No? Maryam is dead. I refuse you the comfort of expiation. I demand that you live in your guilt, and hone your power, and become what your destiny wills. I bid you live as she would have lived, had your magic not destroyed her.”

Now at last Gerbert comprehended. So wise, he had been, in consoling Maryam for the death of her mother. Now he must live by his own, baseless wisdom. It was subtle, that punishment. And just. And in it, no mercy at all.

His head bowed. “As my master wills.”

Ibrahim took no joy in that submission. He seemed to forget that Gerbert was there at all: turned, and as if he resumed a speech interrupted, said, “Will you go?”

“You know I must,” Hatto said.

“You will not come back.”

“That is with God.”

“
Inshallah
.” Ibrahim said it bitterly, but not as if he would deny it. “Then it is farewell, my friend. I grieve that it must be thus.”

“I grieve with you,” said Hatto. “Your daughter — if — ”

“She is tended.” Ibrahim softened the merest degree. “I am grateful. But she needs nothing now. Nor I. Rest in God,” said Ibrahim.

He had almost gone before Gerbert found voice to speak. “Master! You forgot — that — ”

Ibrahim did not glance at the image on the table. “It is yours.”

Gerbert started, trembled. “It's not — I can't — ”

“It is yours,” Ibrahim repeated. “It has chosen you. It will serve no other while you serve its purposes.”

Gerbert had staggered to his feet. “I can't take it.”

“It is not a matter of
can
or
will
. It is only
must
.”

“I
can't
!”

Ibrahim turned back a little into the room. “Nevertheless, you will.”

“Do you lay it on me?”

“It is laid on you.” Ibrahim paused; he seemed to take thought. Or perhaps he had intended all of this, and only played it out because he chose. “What I command, beyond your life and your leaving... Kneel.”

Gerbert had obeyed before he thought. His knees ached with bruises.

The long dark hands rose over him. He bowed his head beneath their power. “This I lay upon you,” the magus said. His voice was soft, but that softness was terrible. “Mage you are, mage you shall be, master of the high and deadly Art. You have seen what price that Art exacts. For the honor of your soul, I command you: Never again betray any who has loved you, or aided you, or given you comfort; nor ever work harm with that power which God has granted you. Wield it wisely and wield it well, and never wield it to gain aught that is of this world. While that binding holds, may you prosper. If you break it, may you know such grief that death itself shall seem a mercy.”

“I know it,” whispered Gerbert.

“You know only guilt and shame and fear.” Ibrahim drew back. His presence had lightened, but his power burdened Gerbert still, bowing him to the floor. “I cannot wish you well. That much of sainthood, I do not have. I wish you long life; I wish you wisdom, and strength. I wish you far from Spain.”

“Soon,” Gerbert said.

Ibrahim did not reply. He had turned his back. It was very straight, and pitilessly proud.

Far away in the city, the muezzin cried the hour of the Muslims' prayer. Maryam had taught Gerbert the meaning of it.

God is great! God is great!...Come to prayer, o ye Muslims, come to prayer! Come to prosperity, come to prosperity...

Prosperity, thought Gerbert. Ambition. Destiny.

Ibrahim was gone. Hatto was silent. The image was silent, inscrutable.

He looked at it and knew what Ibrahim had meant. He could not even hate it. It had done no more than it was wrought to do. It was no human creature, to care that its doing had been bought with death. It would serve him well, if he would let it. If he could bear it.

He shuddered. Not now, before God. But later...

He would use it. He had a destiny. He even had a geas to keep him honest. He could not laugh, even in bitterness. Perhaps he would never laugh again.

“Tomorrow,” said Hatto, like a bell tolling, “we go to Rome.”

Gerbert bowed his head. “Tomorrow,” he said. For all that he could do, for all its weight of sorrow, his heart had leaped up and begun, however painfully, to sing.

Part Two

Magister Artium

Rheims, A.D. 989

8.

The archbishop was dying. In the city they barely knew it. In the cathedral they had begun the preparations for his burial. The cantor was composing the hymn of mourning; in the vestry they had taken out the vestments reserved for the funeral mass of a great prelate, and begun to repair the depredations of time and the moth.

The school tried to go on as usual. But the mood was strange, and everyone knew it. Half grief, for his excellency had been well beloved; half anticipation, for no one doubted who would take his place. Or what would happen then.

“Jews,” came a snarl among the older students. “Saracens. Witches and sorcerers. We'll be overrun.”

Even as Richer paused, the dissenter was fallen upon and pummeled until he yelled for mercy. But having gained it, he proved a
 
wretchedly slow learner. “You know it's true! You know what that man is. He has Saracens in his very household. He mutters spells before the altar of his chapel. He'll turn this city into a nest of witches.”

This time they gagged him with his own cincture, and kicked him for good measure. “No one,” said the strongest of his chastisers, “no one talks like that about Master Gerbert.”

They saw Richer then, and fell abruptly silent. One stooped over the offender, hissing in his ear. Richer, whose ears were as quick as a cat's, caught what he was not meant to catch. “Now you're for it. That's the master's pet: his tame wizardling.”

It was amazing, Richer thought, how open a secret it all was. Outside of these walls, the school of the cathedral of Rheims was only that: a school of the liberal arts, the best in Gaul and maybe in the world. But here everyone knew what else it was; what other Art some few of its chosen pursued. Not publicly, not where the ignorant could watch, but all the young imps had spied on classes that did not officially exist — and been royally disappointed, most of them. But enough had seen a wonder or two, to keep the rest coming back; and occasionally one would do more than that. Would find in himself some spark of what made a master. Richer knew. He had been one of them.