Space Magic (7 page)

Jason turned away. “And see you every day, and know what you used to be?”

“I’d sleep by your feet while you watch movies. I’d be so happy to see you when you came home. All you have to do is give the word, and I’ll put my voiceprint on the contract right now.”

Jason’s throat was so tight that he couldn’t speak. But he nodded.

-o0o-

The operation took eighteen hours. The recovery period lasted weeks. When the bandages came off, Jason’s father’s face was long and furry and had a wet nose. But his head was still very round, and his eyes were still blue.

Two deep wells of sincere, doggy love.

A cruel wind tugged at Ulrich’s cloak and threw rain in his face as he topped a small rise. The weather had worsened steadily as they neared the village, and the mood of his traveling companions Agnes and Nikolaus had soured along with it. But now, as they emerged from the trees, Ulrich’s spirits rose as he recognized the ragged cluster of buildings that had been his home nearly twenty years ago.

“Welcome to Lannesdorf,” said Agnes, her expression grim.

At first it seemed that little had changed. There was the mill, its wheel turning rapidly in the swollen creek; there the tiny church, there the cottages of Konrad and Georg. But as they approached, Ulrich saw how badly the village had been battered by months of constant rain and wind. Several houses had collapsed completely. From those that remained, thin ribbons of smoke rose only a short distance before being shredded by the relentless downpour. A few dispirited goats stood in the street, their ears drooping and their wool hanging soddenly. No people were visible.

The feeling that lodged in Ulrich’s throat was a strange compound of nostalgia, hope, and despair. He prayed he would be able to find some way to help.

-o0o-

Ulrich had barely recognized Agnes when she had first appeared at his shop in Auerberg. The ample, jolly woman he had called “foster mother” during the three years of his apprenticeship had become thin and stooped, her face lined and most of her teeth gone. Behind her, the young man she had introduced as Nikolaus the pastor clutched his hat to his chest; he was as thin as she, and his shaven cheeks were sunken. Ulrich was keenly aware of their worn and smelly clothes, and hoped they would leave before any of his more prosperous customers saw them.

“Why have you come all this way to ask
my
help? I am no wizard—I never even finished my apprenticeship. I am just a dyer.”

“I know,” said Agnes, “but Johannes always said you showed great promise.”

A twinge went through Ulrich at those words—the pain of lost opportunity. He had been making excellent progress in his apprenticeship when his father and three older brothers had been taken by the bilious fever. Suddenly, unexpectedly, he had found himself in charge of his father’s business. It brought him a tidy income, to be sure, but also a thousand spirit-sapping tasks that left him exhausted at the end of each day.

“Tell Johannes I thank him for his generous words.”

“Alas, we cannot,” said Nikolaus, “for he passed away twelve years ago.”

“May God keep his soul,” Ulrich said. “But what of his partner Heinrich?”

Agnes’ face was bitter. “He and Johannes had a great argument, and he left Lannesdorf not long after you did. In any case, he too has passed on.”

“Have you asked your lord for assistance?”

“Graf Erhart sent soldiers, but they could do nothing against the weather. This is wizards’ business.”

Ulrich began to appreciate their predicament. “And no wizard will help you?”

“We lack the money for a master wizard, and no ordinary wizard will touch another’s spell. But you were Johannes’ own apprentice; surely that gives you some special connection with his work?”

“Perhaps... I don’t know. It’s been twenty years.”

“Please, sir,” said Nikolaus. “Our crops are drowned. Men and beasts alike are sick with hunger. Please. You must help us.”

Ulrich turned away and pretended to busy himself with a length of dyed cloth, so as not to meet Nikolaus’ miserable eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I have my business to tend to.” Three journeyman dyers, constantly in need of instruction and correction. A roof that needed mending. Taxes to be paid. He sighed.

“There is one more thing,” said Agnes. “Bechte daughter of Wolfgang lies grievously ill.”

Ulrich’s head snapped around at that name. “Bechte?” She had been too young to marry when he was forced to leave.

“Bechte. She has the lung fever.” Agnes’ expression was knowing, but sympathetic. “She asked specially for you.”

They left for Lannesdorf that very day.

-o0o-

Agnes the widow of Friedrich lived with her family in a typical two-room peasant cottage, with wattle and daub walls, a dirt floor, and a roof of thatched straw. By comparison with Ulrich’s three-story house in Auerberg, it was little more than a box made of sticks held together with mud. It lacked windows, chairs, and chimney; smoke from the hearth-fire exited through a simple hole in the roof. “Mind the wall, there,” she said as they entered. “You could put your elbow right through it if you’re not careful. We keep trying to patch it up, but in this weather nothing ever dries.”

Ulrich dropped his traveling bag on the table. “Take me to Bechte,” he said. “I must see her at once.”

Agnes’ son Michel looked up at that, his eyes wide. “Oh, sir... you may see her, but I fear she cannot see you.”

“What do you mean?” Ulrich asked, though he already knew the answer.

“She died this morning, sir.”

-o0o-

Bechte lay in state on the table at her cottage, her weeping husband and children by her side. She was as beautiful as he remembered, though her death-pale skin was blotchy from the fever that had killed her. Weakened by hunger, she had not been able to put up much of a fight against it.

Ulrich felt a pang of envy for Bechte’s husband... but then he realized they shared a common pain. Both of them had loved Bechte, then lost her through no fault of their own. He embraced the man and offered his sympathies.

Finally he leaned down and delicately kissed Bechte’s brow. It was cold and waxy. “Rest in peace, my wife that never was,” he whispered. “I swear to you I will find some way to help your village.” He straightened and looked around at the thin and haggard faces of Bechte’s family, Agnes, and Nikolaus. They looked back at him with expressions of hope.

But what could he do to help them? He had never even finished his studies, and had forgotten most of what he had learned.

“I will visit the wizards’ house in the morning,” he said at last. “Perhaps I will find something there.”

They all joined hands and Nikolaus led them in a prayer for salvation.

-o0o-

Ulrich bedded down on a pestilential straw mattress with Agnes, her sister, her sister’s husband, and seven or eight children. The smell, the constant fidgeting and sniffling, and the moist oppressive heat kept him awake at first. He was used to cool linen sheets, wooden floors, and breezy windows.

And yet... and yet he found the presence of those others strangely comforting. It reminded him of his apprentice days, when he had slept with the wizards and their families. His duties had been small and well-defined, then, though they had seemed enormous at the time. He had not known how happy he was.

Ulrich snuggled against the warm breathing bodies and passed into sleep.

-o0o-

The wizards’ cottage was well away from the rest of the village, off by itself in a stand of beech. It was abandoned and weather-beaten, but showed no signs of vandalism. “People avoid this place,” Agnes explained. “It’s known to be haunted.”

“Indeed,” Ulrich replied. “Wizards rarely leave their homes or possessions unprotected. I should go in by myself first.”

He pushed the crumbling door aside and ducked beneath the collapsed lintel. Inside he found dripping water, weak daylight streaming through holes in the thatched roof, and a swampy smell of mud and decay. The back half of the roof had collapsed; a heavy beam lay across the cracked hearthstone, and rotting straw lay everywhere.

For a moment he just stood, taking it in, trying to reconcile this ruin with his happy memories. Johannes’ writing-desk had been there, Heinrich’s chest of herbs and compounds there. Now there was nothing but disorder and decay. Johannes’ favorite chair lay overturned in a corner; when he tried to pick it up, it fell to pieces in his hands. He flung the rotten boards away.

Enough delay. There were problems to be solved here.

All morning he had strained his mind, trying to piece together bits of memory. He had remembered three of Johannes’
tesserae
—words of command over daemons—and hoped that would be enough. He cupped his hands to his mouth and called them out, one after another. There was no reaction to the first or second, but at the third he felt a movement in the mud and rotten straw under his feet.

Gingerly at first, careful of his fine clothing, then more and more enthusiastically he swept the mud away with hands and feet. Finally he grinned as the iron-bound lid of Johannes’ coffer appeared. It appeared to be intact, and the third
tessera
had released the ward on its lock. “Nikolaus! Agnes!” he called. “Come in! I think it’s safe, and I need your help!”

The three of them dragged the heavy coffer out of the sucking mud and onto the hearthstone. Ulrich cleaned the grime away from the hinges and hasps as well as he could, then rinsed his hands in a puddle before raising the lid.

The large bound volume of spells was inside, as he’d hoped. But it was covered with mold and mildew. Black and green tendrils engulfed the book in a wild profusion of corruption.

“God in Heaven,” Ulrich breathed. “With the shape this thing is in, we’re lucky the weather is no worse than it is.”

-o0o-

“Demons?” Konrad the reeve cried, touching the saint’s medal pinned to his doublet. They had hauled the coffer with its precious, damaged contents to Agnes’ cottage for a more careful inspection, and Konrad, Graf Erhart’s representative in Lannesdorf, had joined them there. His long face was very lined and hard for a man so young, and he carried himself with an authoritative swagger.

“Not demons,
daemons
,” Ulrich explained, remembering his own panicked reaction when Johannes had used the word for the first time. “The word is Latin; it is closer in meaning to
Geist
, spirit, than
Dämon
, demon. Philosophers disagree over where daemons come from, even whether or not they exist before they are bound to a task, but they are
not
devils or angels. Only God may command those, but daemons are subject to human will.”

“Demons or spirits, they are still evil,” said Konrad.

“Not evil. Just mindless and powerful.” Johannes had been fond of comparing them to an imbecile child with the strength of a bull. “When properly controlled, they are beneficial. The daemons bound by these spells gave you twenty years of exceptionally good weather.”

“It’s true, Konrad,” Agnes said. “Up until this year we hadn’t had a crop failure since before Ulrich was an apprentice. You’re too young to remember, but we used to have a bad harvest at least one year in four.”

“But now they have turned against us,” said Konrad.

“Not really,” said Ulrich. “Look.” He gestured at the book open on the table before them.

Spell-books were never beautiful like illuminated Scriptures; they consisted of nothing but line upon line of the convoluted legalistic Latin called
Zauberschrift
. But this spell-book was truly ugly. The center of each page was still legible, but the edges were discolored and many of the letters were unreadable.

“You see how badly damaged the words are,” said Ulrich. “The daemons are still doing their best to obey these commands, but they are so garbled the results are disastrous.”

Agnes looked puzzled. “But if the book was damaged by the rain, and the rain came from the damage to the book... which came first?”

Ulrich had to think about that. “The mold must have come first,” he said after a time. “It probably started years ago, while the weather was still good. The damage to the book caused the rain, not the other way around.” But something nagged at the back of his mind.

Konrad’s angry voice interrupted Ulrich’s thoughts. “Surely to control the weather is a violation of God’s will!”

“God sends the rain,” Nikolaus said, “but it is no violation of his will to wear a hat. Perhaps these daemons have been something like a hat for the whole village.”

“But now they are destroying it!” Konrad replied. “And we must destroy them. Burn the book!”

“It’s not so simple,” said Ulrich. “The daemons will try to follow their commands even as the book burns.” Ulrich recalled a demonstration Heinrich had given him. He had bound a very simple protective daemon to a yew tree, then had set fire to the spell. The tree had become a twisted heap of splinters in an instant. “These weather daemons are very powerful. I would not want to be here if you did anything to damage this volume any further!”

“There must be some way to dispel the daemons,” Nikolaus asked.

“Yes, but breaking a spell is an exceedingly complex spell in itself. Only a master wizard would even attempt it.”

“So what do you propose to do?” said Agnes.

“Clean away the mold, repair the vellum and binding, re-ink the damaged places. That should put things back the way they were. And then you can store the book someplace dry.”

“I thought you said you were not a wizard,” said Konrad.

“Only a wizard can write a new spell, but even an apprentice should be able to repair one. All I have to do is make up some ink, cut some quills, and read and write a few words of Latin. I did those things every day.” And I pray I can still remember how after twenty years, he added silently.

There was one other thing he did not mention. The sealing of the spell with blood, and the risk of death that went with it. But he had an idea to avoid that.

“Very well,” said Konrad. “But if the weather does not improve soon, I will take matters into my own hands.”