Ursus of Ultima Thule (21 page)

This wizard had the form of a man in full vigor, with ruddy cheeks and sparkling eyes. And the second wizard bore the form of a stripling youth and smiled and cast down his face as it seemed he were shy in such a company, and spoke so softly that the others strained to hear. “Wethinks that we’ve slumbered longer than somewhile, as usual,” he murmured. “Weseems it be arrived to the near time of Fireborn, the first-born son of Fire, who hath so often died and ever returned in one form or another. Ah we, but have ever born a love for Fireborn, and would gladly go forth even from our choicest place of wizardry for to see and for to be with Fireborn again …” His words passed from words into a sound like the laughter of a stripling young man who deems it delicate not to behave too vigorously in the presence of elders.

The third wizard had the form of a stout witchery-woman and sage femme, a granny of good wealth and position and hale, yet in all her health and humors, with a dignified sprinkling of beard upon her face, and she pursed her lips and said in the tone of one giving portents,
“One queen is every queen, beware,”
and it seemed to Arnten that he had heard this once, and that certainly to hear it twice and elsewhere and moreover from such a source enhanced it as a caution: but for the moment he could not pause to consider it, but he placed it into his memory as a squirrel does a nut in its cheek or an ox a cud in her rumen. And she said,
“When the stars throw down their spears and pelt the earth with thunderstones, go seek the new iron to cure the old.”
And she said these things with a heavy and a slow tone, rolling her eyes and bobbing her head heavily.

The first wizard had spoken so profusely and so swiftly, as though still making up for more than a century of not speaking at all, that he had almost lost them. And the second wizard had spoken so softly that almost they had not heard him at all. But now the manner of the third wizard was so familiar to them, and her voice neither too swift nor too soft: and so they listened full well.

And she told them, “There is come an end to certain things, and thus a beginning to certain others,” and they nodded. And she said, “The wood which has burned without burning shall be fittest to burn for Fireborn,” and they leaned forward and missed no syllable. And she spoke of many another thing, but the two things she had said first stirred most in the mind of Arnten.

And he bethought him, even as he listened, what it might mean:
One queen is every queen
, and he thought that somehow he did know. And he wondered how
The stars
could indeed
throw down their spears and pelt the earth with thunderstones
, and he knew that this he did not know at all.

But must wait until the knowing of it would be revealed.

The name of the first wizard, they learned, was Gathonobles. And the name of the second was Wendolin. And the name of the third was Immaunya. And it was the second who accompanied them.

Arnten was not sure by any means that they had learned all that he would know, but they could not stay; there was no food in Wizardland save that which they had brought with them; nor any water or other drink, either. So the five were now increased to six, and the two other wizards they saw, as they went their way from the grey canyon walled with grey time-eaten stones and floored with grey time-washed sand, still sitting and pondering; no longer engaged in talk, no longer paying their visitors any mind at all: but sitting as they might sit another hundred years, absorbing the thoughts of all the outside worlds.

As surely as they knew that each night the sun descended, stained and tired, to be refreshed and refurbished in the fires of Lower Hell, so they knew that their new companion was older by far than any living man was old, perhaps older than calculation. But they knew it as men know a thing which belongs to the realm of wisdom, as, for one, men know that to lie with a strange woman and spend one’s seed in her is bad, because with this seed she may make strong and malign witcheries: but as for the spontaneous sense of the moment, one knows that to lie with a woman and to spend one’s seed in her is good. So, by wisdom, they knew that Wendolin was a wizard, and very old; but only Arntenas-Arnten had seen him as a barely viable bundle in the cave, and even he would need strain to acknowledge that the Wendolin who moved and walked and shyly smiled among them was that same being. Nor did he strain. Nor did the wisdom fact remain forever and always in their minds: they had seen him as a stripling lad, thus they saw him now, he did not change before their eyes, and so he did not change in their minds.

And on this subject once old Bab said to his great-nephew, “There must be some deep reason why his shape and semblance is thus: and I incline to think that tis because this is his real nature.”

And no more was said or thought on it. Wendolin had no beard upon his face, but then, till recently, neither had Corm; this did not distinguish him in any ill sense, and neither did his grey-green eyes, his somewhat dark countenance, his clothes of russet leather. From what beast his clothes had come, or who had gathered the bark to tan them, or when, none of them to be sure knew. But then, no one cared. “I know a quicker way out,” he said, easily, in his clear, free voice. And they were glad that he did, and they followed him without concern. His words proved true; he led them through a cleft in the gaunt grey cliffs, out into the nameless land of woods and grass and streams which lay aside to Wizardland. And they breathed a relieved breath, and smiled on him, and touched his arm. His own smile was a trace less shy. He was now one of them, it seemed. And all had an unspoken feeling that their number was now complete.

And they killed game, and ate of it, and they ate of fruit and berries and of greens.

It was as they stood by a stand of berry-canes, with no great thought upon them more than to avoid the thorns, that one clear and distant sound came to their ears, and then Roke grew a bit white, and he lay his hands upon his scars. And for a moment the blood of the berries seemed as though it were his own blood.

He said, “That is surely the voice of Spear-Teeth. Am I to go and kill him now? Or to be killed by him again, this time for true and ever? Does no one know?”

Carefully they snuffed up the breeze, as though the faint sound they made in doing so would be heard, and to their danger. And over the green scent of growing things there lay the heavy and dangerous must-smell of the great mammont. And they were all still, the berries still between the cusps of their teeth.

“Oh, perhaps neither of those,” said Wendolin. “I think it is none of those,” he said, his manner seeming easy, though somewhat grave. His trifle smile slightly spread his red lips. “But before this Bear and I go to see what Big One has to say to us, I think,” he said, softly but not fearfully, “I think we will eat some more good berries. It is long since I have eaten such,” he said. And his manner as he stripped the withes was as simple and hearty as that of any boy who feasts himself with berries after a long dearth of them. And Arnten did the same.

Slowly the whiteness in Roke’s face diminished. He looked at his new friend all clad in russet with some slight surprise and admiration. “Then I am not to see him now,” he said, low-voiced, and slightly indistinct. He moved his tongue and seemed bemused to find berry mashed upon it, and he swallowed. “Mmmm … It be a different thing for thee, Wendo,” he said — for he had spoken of his incomplete dying, and all of that, earlier. “Eh, thee may stand beside him and eat berries and wail thy weirds and stand safe indeed … but as for me and as for he … I feel that when the pair of us come sight to sight, and close, again, that one of us must soonly be dead for true and ever.” He stood a moment. Then he moved. Said, “But as tis not to now, then now I’ll do as Wendo says — I’ll eat berries.” And he gave a sudden snort of laughter and his head a good shake. And he ate more berries.

By and by, Arnten felt his body give a great impatient twitch and he grunted and laid his heavy hand as lightly on Wendolin’s slight shoulder as he could, and gave him a little push. Wendolin with a rueful, laughing look, but with no word, reached for one last, large berry, did not reach to it, and so the two of them departed from the rest.

The great roan mammont trumpeted when he saw them emerge out of the bosque, and swung round, shambled off. The open ground was broken and irregular, and often he was out of sight. Once they over-walked a tuft of his fleece upon a thorn-bush, and once they by-passed a huge pile of his steaming dung. Once the wind shifted and they paused, and he sounded again, as though impatiently, and they followed in the direction of his call.

Arnten asked, “Have you also received the thoughts of Spear-Teeth?”

“Oh yes.”

“What are they like?”

“Mostly they are heavy and hairy. And sometimes they are steamy and dungy.”

Arnten rumbled a laugh in his big, shaggy chest. It did seem a somewhat strange to be following after the great mammont, instead of trying to avoid it; and they did not even intend to try to kill it. But the strange was now the usual, the usual had become so strange by former standards that … that what? He sought a short thought to sum it all up, found none. He was like a man who settles into a steady run and no longer pauses to consider what a thing looks like when one slowly skulks around it. For years he had skulked around the events in life, well, that had not been his own choice; but now he was in effect running — though, in fact, he now at this moment walked — running with head thrown back and chest thrown out and feeling the wind and taking the wind in and feeling the growth and play of his muscles and the expansion of his thoughts.

“This would have been his mate,” said Wendolin. There was nothing to show them what had caused this other mammont’s death — or, if there was, Arnten did not observe nor Wendolin point out. But beasts had gnawed clean its bones, and it must have been a long and ample feast for them. And there were even teeth marks on the stump of tusk which protruded from the socketed skull on the upper side. “Not this,” said Wendolin. His hands brushed aside grasses, found something barely sticking above the surface of the ground, said, pointing, “This. Take it up, brother.”

Arnten reached, seized, tugged, grunted, drew forth the lower end of the dead mammont’s tusk.

“ ‘
This
’ …?”

Wendolin had already turned and started back. He said, without turning, “That is for Fireborn. His haft.”

The others marvelled and murmured much on seeing the ivory. But he all clad in russet merely smiled shyly and crammed his mouth with berries.

• • •

One other new thing stayed much in Arnten’s mind. On another day, and days later, when they had begun to see from time to time the rising smokes of men’s places, and turned wide aside to avoid them — he and Wendolin had gone off again together, and then Arn had begun to think deep, bearish thoughts. After a while he saw that he was alone, and so sank back into his thoughts. Then slowly rose from them again. Heard faint voices. Odd sounds. There seemed a new strangeness in the air, scents familiar and yet not so. Walking softly, softly, he saw Wendolin in the soft grasses, bare of skin, arms and legs spread out upon the ground. Yet stranger: Wendolin seemed to have doubled, for, beneath him, and very next to the grassy ground, was a second Wendolin: one, face down; one, face up: face to face, arms to arms, body to body, legs to legs.

As Arn stood in full astonishment, the lower face twisted and one of the lower eyes turned and saw him. And at that the awesome stillness of the scene was shattered and the lower body struggled its way out from the upper, there was a scramble of limbs, a body leaped to its feet and Arnten saw it was that of a woman, with visible breasts.
Is Wendolin, then
—
?
His mind groped for understanding. Then, as one body fled, still silent, the other turned over and it met his eyes and it laughed a little.
It
was Wendolin;
this
was Wendolin. Smiling his still slightly shy smile and without haste or shame or alarm, he reached slowly for his clothes. “When I am among men,” he said, “I do as men do.” And, indeed, he was made full as other men be made.

Many thoughts rocketed like startled birds in Arnten’s mind. He felt a host of urges, changes starting in his flesh, and almost he turned to pursue after the fled girl. Then he asked, “Do you not fear, then, that when your seed flows from her she will take some upon a leaf or two and save it away in her witchery-things for working a later malevolence upon you?”

“No,” said Wendolin, shortly and easily, sliding his legs into his breeches. His smile he stowed away and faced Arnten face to face. “And neither need you,” he said.

“This I will remember,” said Arnten slowly. Later on he would reflect and endeavor to find out if this meant that no men need really fear such a thing (when all men he knew did indeed fear it), or if he, Arnten, by virtue of his bearhood or his wizard-friend’s remark, need not. But now he said, “Then what of this as has been heard by me more than once, that
One queen is every queen —
”

“Ah, that is quite a different thing. Beware, indeed, of queens, for indeed, one queen
is
every queen. And yet, though every queen be a she, not every she be a queen …”

He was clothed now and as before, except for a flush in his cheek and a sparkle in his eye, and — yes — his lips were fuller, redder; Wendolin said, “But only, friend,
Beware
. Not to tremble, nor forget your strength nor wisdom, but merely to beware. Be wary.”

And Arnten, still strongly confused by new thoughts and things, not understanding by half or half of half, slowly repeated, “This I will remember.”

Arnten knew that all were cautious on his behalf, knew it and knew it to be well that they were. For him and for his cause they had all, in part at least, left the known for the unknown and the secure for the perilous. And to the extent that they had not, to that extent they counted on him to bring better in the stead of worse. Did they not represent all the Land of Thule which was not represented by himself? “Our thing is the Thing of Thule: our matter is the Matter of Thule.” In a way it behooved him to be in the lead and for them to follow; in another way it behooved the others to precede him and be a-watch on his behalf for danger.