Tales From High Hallack, Volume 1 Read online

  Not too far from his cave lived a landsman with two sons. The eldest was a credit to his thrifty upbringing, a noble young man who was upright enough to infuriate all his contemporaries in the neighborhood to who he was constantly cited as an example. He worked from sunrise to early dusk and never spent silver when copper would do—in all ways an irritating youth.

  But his brother was as useless a lad as any father wanted to curse out of house and field. With the mowing hardly begun he could be found lying on his back watching clouds—clouds, mind you! Put to any task, he either broke the tools by some stupid misuse or ruined what he was supposed to be working on. And he could not even talk plain, but gobbled away in so thick a voice that no decent man could understand him—not that any wanted to.

  It was the latter misfortune that attracted Saystrap’s attention. A wizard’s power lies in spells, and most of these must be chanted aloud in order to get the proper effect—even a short-time effect. An assistant who was as good as dumb—who would not learn a few tag ends of magic and then have the audacity to set up in business for himself—was the best to employ.

  So one morning Saystrap arrived via a satisfactory puff of smoke in the middle of the cornfield where the landsman was berating his son for breaking a hoe. The smoke curled very impressively into the sky as Saystrap stepped out of its curtain. And the landsman jumped back a step or two, looking just as amazed as he should.

  “Greetings,” said Saystrap briskly. He had long ago learned that any long build-up was not for a short-spelled wizard. It was best to forego the supposedly awed mumbles and get right to the point.

  But he did not overlook the staging, of course. A pass or two in the air produced two apple trees about shoulder height. And, as an additional nice touch, a small dragon winked into existence and out again before the landsman found his voice. “It is a fair morning for field work,” Saystrap continued.

  “It was,” the landsman returned a bit uncertainly. Magic in the woods or a cave now—that was one thing. But magic right out in the middle of your best cornfield was a different matter. The dragon was gone, and he could not really swear it had been here. But those trees were still standing where they would be a pesky nuisance around which to get the plow. “How—how can I serve you, Master—Master—?”

  “Saystrap,” supplied the wizard graciously. “I am your near neighbor, Master Ladizwell. Though busy as you have been on your very fruitful land you may not be aware of that.”

  Master Ladizwell looked from the trees to the wizard. There was a hint of a frown on his face. Wizards, like the lord’s taxmen, were too apt to take more than they gave in return. He did not relish the thought of living cheek by jowl, as it were, with one. And he certainly had not invited this meeting.

  “No, you have not,” said Saystrap answering his thought. This was the time to begin to bear down a little and let the fellow know just whom and what he was dealing with. “I have come now to ask your assistance in a small matter. I need a pair of younger feet, stronger arms, and a stout back to aid me. Now this lad” —for the first time he glanced at the younger son— “has he ever thought of going into service?”

  “Him?” The landsman snorted. “Why, what fool would—” Then he stopped in mid-word. If this wizard did not know of his stupid son’s uselessness, why tell the family shame abroad? “For what length of service?” he demanded quickly. If a long bond could be agreed upon, he might get the lout out from underfoot and make a profit into the bargain.

  “Oh, the usual—a year and a day.”

  “And his wages, Master Saystrap?”

  “Well, now, at this season another pair of knowledgeable hands—” Ladizwell hurriedly kicked at the broken hoe, hoping the wizard had not seen that nor heard his hot words to his son.

  “Will this suffice?” Saystrap waved a hand in a grand, wide gesture, and in the field stood a fine horse.

  Ladizwell blinked. “Yes, right enough!” he agreed hurriedly and held out his hand. Saystrap slapped his into it, thus binding the bargain.

  Then the wizard gestured again and smoke arose to wreathe both him and his newly engaged servant. When that cleared, they had vanished; and Ladizwell went to put a halter on the horse.

  At dawn the next day Ladizwell was far from pleased when he went to the stable to inspect his new prize and found a rabbit instead of a horse nibbling the straw in the stall. At least he did not have to feed and clothe that slip-fingered lout for a year and a day, so perhaps he was still better off than he had been yesterday.

  Saystrap, back in his cave, was already making use of his new servant. To him, Joachim was a tool with neither wit nor will of his own. But the sooner he began to give what aid he could, the better. There were brews boiled and drunk—by Joachim. And he had to be led, or pushed and pulled, through patterns drawn in red and black on the rough floor. But in the end Saystrap was satisfied with the preliminaries and went wearily to his hammock, leaving Joachim to huddle on a bed of bracken.

  At dawn the wizard was up and busy again. He allowed Joachim a hasty—and to the lad very untasty—meal of dried roots and berries, hurrying him until Joachim was almost choking on the last bite. Then they took to the traveling cloud again and emerged from it not too far from the Market Cross of Hill Dallow. That is—there strode out of the cloud a man in a gray wool tunic leading a fine frisky two-year-old colt, as promising an animal as anyone would want to lay eye on. And this was sold at the first calling in the horse fair for a bag of silver pieces heavy enough to weight a man’s belt in a satisfying manner.

  The colt was led home by the buyer and shown off as being an enviable bargain. But when the moon rose, Joachim stole out of the barn, dropping stall and door latch into place behind him. He shambled off to the far side of the pasture where Saystrap waited impatiently.

  This was a game they played several times over, always with a good gain thereby. Saystrap treated Joachim well enough, though more as if he were really a horse than any man. And this was a mistake on Saystrap’s part. Joachim might seem stupid and be too thick of speech to talk with his fellows, but he was not slow-witted. He learned from all he heard and saw his master do. Deep in him a small spark of ambition flared. There had not been anything about his father’s land that had ever brought that spark into being. There, no matter how hard he tried, his brother could outdo him without seeming to put forth any great effort. But this was another world.

  Then, by chance, he learned something that even Saystrap did not know: spells were not always wedded to the spoken word.

  His master had sent him to gather herbs in a wild country where men seldom traveled. But furred and four-footed hunters had their own well-trodden trails.

  For all the barrenness of the wild land, Joachim was glad enough to be alone in the open. He missed the fields more than he would have believed possible. It seemed a very long time since he had had a chance to lie and watch the slow passing of clouds overhead and to dream of what he might do if he had a magician’s treasure now or had been born into a lord’s family.

  But this day he found himself mulling over Saystrap’s doings rather than paying attention to clouds and his one-time dreams. In his mind he repeated the words he had heard the wizard use in spells. By now the change spell, at least, was as familiar to him as his own name. Then he heard a sound and looked around—into the yellow-green eyes of a snow cat. It hissed a challenge, and Joachim knew that here stalked death on four paws. So, he concentrated—without being sure of how or on what.

  The snow cat vanished! On the rock crouched a barn rat.

  Joachim shivered. He put out his hand to test the reality of what he saw, and the rat scuttled away squealing. Was this by any chance some ploy of Saystrap’s, meant to frighten him into his work? But—there was another way of testing. Joachim looked down at his own body. Did he dare? He thought again.

  Soft fur, paws with claws—he was a snow cat! Not quite believing, he leaped up to bound along the ridge. Then he stopped beneath a rock spur and tho
ught himself a man again, more than a little frightened at his own act.

  Then that fear became pride, the first time in his life he had cause to feel that. He was a wizard! But only in part. One spell alone could not make him a real one. He must learn more and more and at the same time try to keep his secret from Saystrap if he could. Doubts about that gnawed at him all the way back to the cave.

  The only trouble was that Saystrap no longer tried other spells. And the few scraps Joachim assembled from his master’s absent-minded mutterings were no help at all. Saystrap was concentrating on what he intended to be his greatest coup in shape-changing.

  “The harvest fair at Garth Haigis is the chance to make a good profit,” he told Joachim, mainly because he had to tell someone of his cleverness. “We must have something eye-catching to offer. A pity I cannot change you into a coffer of jewels; I could sell you to more than one buyer. Only then, when the spell faded” —he laughed a little, evilly, and poked Joachim in the ribs with his staff-of-office— “you would be too widely scattered between one keep and the next ever to be put together again.” He was deep in thought now, running his long forenail back and forth across his teeth.

  “I wonder.” He eyed Joachim appraisingly. “A cow is bait only for a landsman. And we have dealt too often in horses; there might be someone with a long memory there.” He tapped the end of his staff on the rock. “Ah! A trained hunting falcon—one such as brings a gleam of avarice to any lord’s eye!”

  Joachim was uneasy. True enough, all Saystrap’s tricks had always worked smoothly. He had had no trouble freeing himself from barns and stables when the spell lifted. But keeps were better guarded, and it might not be easy to flee out of those. Then he thought of his own secret. He might in the allotted time cease to be Saystrap’s falcon, but that did not mean he had to become an easily recognized man.

  The fair at Garth Haigis was an important one. Joachim, wearing falcon shape, gazed about eagerly from his perch on Saystrap’s saddle horn. Men in booths remarked on the fine bird and asked its price. But the wizard set such a high one that all shook their heads, though one or two went so far as to count the silver in their belt purses.

  Before noon a man wearing the Cross-Key badge of Lord Tanheff rode up to Saystrap.

  “A fine bird that—fit for a lord’s mews. My lord would like to look at it, Master Falconer.”

  So Saystrap rode behind the servant to an upper field where tents were set up for the comfort of the nobly born. They summoned to them merchants with such wares as they found interesting.

  Lord Tanheff was a man of middle years, and he had no son to lift shield after him. But his daughter, the Lady Juluya, sat at his right hand. Since she was a great heiress, she was the center of a goodly gathering of young lords, each striving to win her attention. It was her way to be fair and show no one favor over his fellows.

  She was small and thin. Had she not been an heiress, none perhaps would have found her a beauty. But she had a smile that could warm a man’s heart (even if he forgot the gold and lands behind it) and eyes that were interested in all they saw. Once Joachim looked upon her, he could not see anything else.

  Neither could Saystrap. It suddenly flashed into his mind as a great illuminating truth that there were other ways of gaining a keep than through difficult spells. One such way was marriage. He did not doubt that, could he gain access to the lady, he would win her. Was he not a wizard and so master of such subtleties that these clods sighing around her now could not imagine?

  His planned trickery might also be turned to account. For if he sold Joachim to her father, and the bird apparently escaped and returned to him, then he could enter the lady’s own hall to bring it back. He could use the pretense of the strayed bird to open all doors.

  “Father—that falcon! It is a lordly bird,” the Lady Juluya cried as she saw Joachim.

  He felt the warmth of pride. Though she saw him as a bird, he was admired. Then he lost that pride. If she could see him as he really was, she would speedily turn away.

  Lord Tanheff was as pleased as his daughter and quickly struck a bargain with Saystrap. But the wizard whispered into the bird’s ear before he placed it on the gloved hand of the lord’s falconer, “Return swiftly tonight!”

  Joachim, still watching the Lady Juluya, did not really heed that order. For he was wondering why, at the moment of change, he could not wish himself into some new guise that would bring him close to the lady. He did not have long to watch her, however, for the falconer took him to the keep. Joachim stood on a perch in the mews, hooded now and seeing nothing, left in the dark to get the feel of his new home as was the way with a bird in a strange place. He could hear other hawks moving restlessly and, beyond, the noises of the keep. He wondered how Saystrap thought he could get out of this place in man’s shape. Had the wizard some magic plan ready to cover that?

  Joachim guessed right. The wizard knew that his falcon-turned-man could not leave the mews as easily as a landsman’s barn. He did not trust his assistant to have wits enough to work out any reasonable escape. He himself would move cautiously to gain Joachim’s release and not allow magic to be suspected, not when he planned to enchant the Lady Juluya. So Saystrap sat down in a copse near the keep to wait moonrise.

  At sunset, however, the clouds gathered, and it was plain that no moon would show. Saystrap could not summon moon magic now, but perhaps he could put the coming storm to account. If he could only be sure when Joachim’s change would occur, a matter with which he had never concerned himself before. Had it not been for his new plan to win Lady Juluya, the wizard would not have cared what happened to Joachim. Stupid lads could always be found, but a wizard was entitled to keep his own skin safe. Lord Tanheff, if he did suspect spells, would be just the sort to appeal to some major sorcerer for protection. Saystrap, for all his self-esteem, was not blinded to his own peril from an encounter of that kind.

  He could not sit still, but paced back and forth, trying to measure time. To be too early would be as fatal as being too late. The cloud-traveling spell could not be held long. If Joachim could not take to its cover at once, Saystrap could not summon it again that night. He bit his thumbnail, cursing the rain now beginning to fall.

  At the keep that same rain drove men to take cover indoors. Joachim heard footsteps in the mews and the voices of the falconer and his assistant. His time for change was close. He shifted on the perch, and the bells fastened to his jesses rang. The footsteps were closing in, and the change was now!

  Suddenly he was standing on his own two feet, blinking into the light of a lantern the falconer held. The man’s mouth opened for a shout of alarm. Joachim thought his mind spell.

  A snow cat crouched snarling. The falconer, with some presence of mind, threw his lantern at that fearsome beast before he took to his heels, Joachim in great bounds behind. But as the shouting falconer broke one way out of the door, Joachim streaked in the other, trying to reach the outer wall.

  That wall was far too high to leap over, but he sped up the stairs leading to the narrow defense walk along its top. Men shouted, and a torch was thrown, nearly striking him. Joachim leaped at a guard aiming a spear, knocked the man down, and was over him and on. Just ahead more men were gathering, bending bows. He thought—

  There was no cat on the wall—nothing! The men-at-arms hurried forward, thudding spear heads into every patch of shadow. They were unable to believe that the animal had vanished.

  “Wizardry! Tell my lord quickly. There is wizardry here!”

  Some stayed to patrol by twos and threes, no man wanting to walk alone in the dark with wizardry loose. The storm struck harder; water rushed over the wall. It washed with such force that it swept away a small gold ring no man had seen in that dusk, carrying it along a gutter, tumbling it out and down, to fall to the muddy earth of the inner garden where the Lady Juluya and her maids grew sweet herbs and flowers. There it lay under the drooping branches of a rain-heavy rose bush.

  When the Lord Tanhef
f heard the report of the falconer and the wall guards, he agreed that it was plain the falcon had been enchanted and was some stroke of wizardry aimed at the keep. He then dispatched one of his heralds to ride night and day to demand help from the nearest reputable sorcerer, one to whom he already paid a retaining fee as insurance against just such happenings. In the meantime he cautioned all to keep within the walls; the gates were not to be opened for any cause until the herald returned.

  Saystrap heard the morning rumors at the fair where men now looked suspiciously at their neighbors, bundling their goods away to be on the road again even though the fair was not officially over. With magic loose, who knew where it would strike next? Better be safe, if flatter of purse. The lord had sent for a sorcerer—and with magic opposed to magic anything might happen to innocent bystanders. Magic was no respecter of persons.

  The wizard did not give up his plan, however, for the Lady Juluya; it was such a good one. Common sense did not even now baffle his hopes. So he lurked in hiding and made this new plan and that, only to be forced to discard each after some study.

  The Lady Juluya, walking in her garden, stooped to raise a rain-soaked rose and saw a glint in the mud. Curious, she dug and uncovered a ring that seemed to slip on her finger almost of its own accord.

  “Wherever did you come from?” She held her hand into the watery sunshine of the morning, admiring the ring. She was more than a little pleased at her luck in finding it. Since all her maids denied its loss, she finally decided that it must have lain buried for years until the heavy rain washed it free. She would claim it for her own.

  Two days passed; and then three. Still the herald did not return. The Lord Tanheff did not permit the keep gates to be opened. The fairground was deserted now. Saystrap, driven to a rough hiding place in the woods, gnawed his nails down to the quick. Only a fanatical stubbornness kept him lurking there.

  None in the lady’s tower knew that the ring grew loose and slipped from her finger when she took to her bed at night. It became a mouse feasting on crumbs from her table. Joachim realized that this was a highly dangerous game he played. It would be much wiser to assume wings and feathers once more and be out of the castle with three or four good flaps of his wings. Yet he could not bring himself to leave.