Tales From High Hallack, Volume 1 Read online

  The Lady Juluya was courted and flattered much; yet she was a girl of wit and good humor, wise enough to keep her head. She was both kind and courteous. Time and time again Joachim was tempted to take his true form and tell her his story. But she was seldom alone; when she was, he could not bring himself to do it. Who was he? A loutish clod, so stupid and clumsy he could not even work in the fields nor speak plainly. At his mere appearance he was sure she would summon a guard immediately. And talk! He could not tell anything they would understand.

  After the first night he did not remain a mouse, but went out onto the balcony and became a man, squatting in the deepest pool of shadow. He thought about speech and how hard it was for him to shape words to sound like those of others. He practiced saying in whispers the strange sounds he had heard Saystrap mumble, tongue twisters though they were. He did not use them for the binding of spells, but merely to listen to his own voice. By daybreak of the third day he was certain, to his great joy, that he did speak more clearly than he ever had before.

  In the woods Saystrap had at last fastened upon a plan he thought would get him into the keep. If he could be private with the lady only for a short space, he was certain that he could bind her to his will and that all would be as he wished. He had seen the herald ride forth and knew that it might not be too long before he would return with aid.

  Though the gates were shut, birds flew over the wall. And pigeons made their nests in the towers and along the roofs. On the fourth day Saystrap assumed a feathered form to join them.

  They wheeled and circled, cooed, fluttered, peered in windows, preened on balconies and windowsills. In her garden the Lady Juluya shook out grain for them, and Saystrap was quick to take advantage to such a summons, coming to earth before her.

  There is this about wizardry: if you have dabbled even the nail tip of one finger in it, then you have gained knowledge beyond that of ordinary men. The ring that was Joachim recognized the pigeon that was Saystrap. At first he thought his master had come seeking him. Then he noted the wizard-pigeon ran a little this way, back that, and so was pacing out a spell pattern about the feet of Lady Juluya.

  Joachim did not know what would happen if Saystrap completed that magic, but he feared the worst. So he loosed his grip on the lady’s finger and spun out, to land across one of the lines the pigeon’s feet were marking so exactly.

  Saystrap looked at the ring and knew it. He wanted none of Joachim, though he was shaken at meeting his stupid apprentice in such a guise. One thing, however, at a time. If this spell were now spoiled or hindered, he might not have another chance. He could settle with Joachim later, after accomplishing his purpose. So with a sharp peck of bill, he sent the ring flying.

  Joachim spun behind the rose bush. Then he crept forth again—this time a velvet-footed tom cat. He pounced, and the wildly fluttering pigeon was between his jaws.

  “Drop it—you cruel thing!” Lady Juluya struck at the cat. Still gripping the pigeon, Joachim dodged and ran into the courtyard.

  Then he found he held no pigeon, but a snarling dog twice his size broke from his grip. He leaped away from Saystrap to the top of a barrel and there grew wings, beak, and talons. Once more a falcon, Joachim was able to soar above the leaping, slavering hound so eager to reach him.

  There was no dog, but a thing straight out of a nightmare—half scaled, with leathery wings more powerful than Joachim’s and a lashing tail with a wicked spiked end. The creature spiraled up after the falcon into the sky.

  He could perhaps outfly it if he headed for the open country. But he sensed that Saystrap was not intent upon herding an unwilling apprentice back to servitude. He was after the Lady Juluya; therefore there must be fight not flight.

  From the monster came such a force of gathered power that Joachim weakened. His poor feat of wizardry was feeble opposed to Saystrap’s. With a last despairing beat of wings, he landed on the roof of Lady Juluya’s tower and found himself sliding down it, once more a man. While above him circled the griffin, seemingly well content to let him fall to his death on the pavement below.

  Joachim summoned power for one last thought.

  He fell through the air a gray pebble. So small and so dark a thing escaped Saystrap’s eyes. The pebble struck the pavement and rolled into a crack.

  Saystrap meanwhile turned to bring victory out of defeat. He alighted in the courtyard and seized upon the Lady Juluya to bear her away. The pebble rolled from hiding, and Joachim stood there. Bare-handed, he threw himself at the monster. This time he shouted words clear and loud, the counterspell which returned Saystrap to his own proper form. Grappling with the wizard, he bore him to the ground, trying to gag him with one hand over his mouth so that he might not utter any more spells.

  At that moment the herald rode in upon them as they struggled, ringed around (at a safe distance) by such of the keep folk who were not afraid to be caught in the backlash of any spells from the tangle.

  Lord Tanheff shouted an order from the door of the hall to where he had swept his daughter. The herald tossed at the fighters the contents of a box he had brought back with him (one ruby, two medium-sized topazes). These caused a burst of light and a clap of thunder. Joachim stumbled out of a puff of smoke, groping his way blindly. A fat black spider sped in the opposite direction, only to be gobbled up by a rooster.

  Well pleased now that they had someone reasonably normal in appearance to blame for all the commotion, the men-at-arms seized Joachim. When he tried to use his spell, he found it did not work. Then the Lady Juluya called imperiously:

  “Let him alone!” she ordered. “It was he who attacked the monster on my behalf. Let him tell us who and what he is—”

  Let him tell, thought Joachim in despair, but I cannot do that. He looked at the Lady Juluya and knew that he must at least try. As he ran his tongue over his lips, she prompted him encouragingly, “Tell us first who you are.”

  “Joachim,” he croaked miserably.

  “You are a wizard?”

  He shook his head. “Never more than a very small part of one, my lady.” So eager was he to let her know the truth of it all that he forgot his stumbling tongue and all else but the tale he had to tell. He told it in a flow of words all could understand.

  When he was done, she clapped her hands together and cried, “A fine, brave tale. I claim you equal to such acts. Wizard, half-wizard, third or fourth part of a wizard that you may be reckoned, Joachim, I would like to know you better.”

  He smiled a little timidly. Though he might be finished with wizardry, anyone the Lady Juluya claimed to be a man had a right to pride. Fortune had served him well this time. If he meddled in magic concerns again, it might not continue to do so.

  In that he was a wise man—as he later had chance to prove on numerous occasions. Joachim, his foot firmly planted on the road to success in that hour, never turned back nor faltered.

  But the rooster had a severe pain in its middle and was forced to let the spider go. How damaged it was by that abrupt meeting with the irony of fate no man knew thereafter, for Saystrap disappeared.

  London Bridge

  Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October (1973)

  “JUST another deader—” Sim squatted to do a search.

  Me, I don’t dig deaders much. No need to. There’re plenty of den-ins and stores to rummage if you need a pricker or some cover-ups. Of course, I took that stunner I found by what was left of the dead Fuzz’s hand. But that was different, he wasn’t wearing it. Good shooter too; I got more’n a dozen con-rats before it burned out on me. Now I didn’t want to waste any time over a deader, and I said so, loud and clear.

  Sim told me to cool the air. He came back with a little tube in his hand. I took one look at that and gave him a sidesweep, took his wrist at just the right angle. The tube flew as straight as a beam across the stalled wiggle-walk and into a blow duct.

  “Now what in blue boxes did you want to do that for?” Sim demanded. Not that he squared up to me over i
t. By now he knows he can’t take me and it’s no use to try. “I could have traded that to an Up—real red crowns and about ten of them!”

  “What trade? Those hazeheads haven’t got anything we want and can’t get for ourselves.”

  “Sure, sure. But it’s kinda fun showing them a haul like that and seeing ‘em get all hot.”

  “Try it once too often and you’ll take a pricker where it won’t do you any good. Anyway, we’re not here to scrounge.”

  The city’s big. I don’t know anybody who’s ever gotten all over it. You could walk your feet raw trying since all the wiggle-walks cut out. And some of it is deathtraps—what with Ups who have lost any thinking stuff which ever was between their dirty ears, or con-rats. Those get bigger and bolder every time we have a roundup to kill them off. The arcs have shut off in a lot of places, and we use flashes. But those don’t show much and they die awfully quick. So we don’t go off the regular paths much. Except because of this matter of the Rhyming Man, which was why Sim and I were trailing now. I didn’t much like the look ahead. A lot of arcs were gone, and the shadows were thick between those which were left. Anything could hide in a doorway or window to jump us.

  We’re immune, of course, or we wouldn’t be kicking around at all. When the last plague hit, it carried off most of the cits. All the oldies went. I must have been nine—ten—I don’t know. You forget about time where the ticks can tell you the hour but not the day or year. I had a good tick on my wrist right now, but it couldn’t tell me what day it was, or how many years had gone by. I grew a lot, and sometimes when I got a fit to do something different, I went to the lib and cut into one of the teachers. Most of the T-casts there didn’t make much sense. But I’d found a couple in the histro-division on primitives (whatever those were) which had some use. There was Fanna—she got excited about some casts which taught you about how to take care of someone who got hurt. Because of that Sim was walking beside me today. But, as I say, most of the stuff on the tapes was useless to us now.

  There are twenty of us, or were ‘til the Rhyming Man came around. Some don’t remember how it was before the plague. They were too young then. And none of us remember back to before the pollut-die-off. Some of us have paired off for den-in—Lacy and Norse, Bet and Tim. But me, I’m not taking to den-in with some fem yet. There’s too much to see and do, and a guy wants to be free to take off when he feels like it. Course I have to keep an eye on Marsie. She’s my sister—she was just a baby in the plague days—and she’s still young enough to be a nuisance—like believing in the Rhyming Man. Like he’s something out of a tape, I mean—that he’s going to take good children Outside.

  Maybe there was an Outside once. There’s so much about it in the tapes, and why would anyone want to spend good time making up a lot of lies and taping them? But to go Outside—no one has for longer than I’ve been around.

  Marsie, she’s like me, she digs the tapes. I can take her with me, and she’ll sit quiet, not getting up and running out like most littles just when I get interested. No, she’ll sit quiet with a teacher. I found some tapes of made-up stories—they showed the Outside and animals moving on their own and making noises before you squeezed them. Marsie, she had a fur cat I found and she lugged it everywhere. She wanted it to come alive and kept thinking she could find a way to make it. Kept asking Fanna how you could do that. Littles get awfully set on things sometimes and near burn your ears out asking why—why—why—

  That was before the Rhyming Man. We heard about him later. Our territory runs to the double wiggle-walk on Balor, and there we touch on Bart’s crowd’s hangout. They’re like us—not Ups. Once in a while we have a rap-sing with them. We get together for con-rat roundups and things like that. But we don’t live cheek by cheek. Well, some time back Bart came over on a mission—a real important search. He had this weirdo story about a couple of their littles going off with the Rhyming Man.

  Seems like one of his fems saw part of it. She must have been solid clear through between the ears not to guess it was trouble. She heard his singing first, and she thought someone was running a tape, only it didn’t sound right. Said the littles were poking around down in the streets—she could see them through a window. All of a sudden they stood up and stopped what they were doing, and then went running off. She didn’t think of it again—because Bart’s crowd’s like us, they don’t have any Ups in their territory. He keeps scouts out to make sure of that.

  But when it came feed time, those two didn’t show. Then the fem shoots out what she saw and heard. So they send out a mission, armed. Though Bart couldn’t see how Ups could have got through.

  Those littles, they never did find them. And the next day two more were gone. Bart rounded them up, kept them under cover. But three more went, and with them the fem he had set with a stunner on guard. So now he wanted to know what gives, and if we had anything to tell him. He was really sky climbing and shadow watching by the time he got to us. Said now a couple more fems were missing. But he had two guys who had seen the Rhyming Man.

  What Bart told us sounded like an Up was loose. But for an Up to do the same thing all the time, that wasn’t in curve at all. Seems he wore this bright suit—all sparkling—and danced along singing and waving. Bart’s boys took straight shots at him (with burners). And they swore that the rays just bounced off him, didn’t even shake him.

  We organized for a roundup quick and combed as much as you can comb with all the den-ins up and down. There was nothing at all. Only, when we came back—two more littles were gone. So Bart’s crowd packed up and moved over to our side of the double wiggle-path and settled in a block front, downside from our place. But he was tearing mad, and now he spent most of his time over in his old territory hunting. He was like an Up with a new tube of pills, thinking only of one thing, getting the Rhyming Man.

  Though right now I could understand it, how he felt, I mean, because Marsie was gone. We’d warned all our littles and fems good after Bart told us the score. They weren’t to go on any search—not without a guy with them. But Marsie had gone to the tape lib this morning with Kath and Don. Don came back by him-self saying they had heard some funny singing and that the girls had run away so he could not find them.

  We rounded up all the littles and fems and posted a guard like an Up raid was on. Jak and Tim took out one way, Sim and I the other. The lib was empty. We searched there first. And whoever had been there couldn’t have doubled back toward us. Too many had the path in good sight. So we went the other way and that took us into deep territory. Only I knew we were going right by what I found just a little while ago and had tucked in my belt now—Marsie’s cat.

  And if she’d dropped that—! I kept my hand on my pricker. Maybe you couldn’t finish this Rhyming Man with a burner, but let me get close enough, and I’d use a pricker and my own two hands!

  The deep territories are places to make a guy keep watching over his shoulder. They’re always so quiet, and you keep coming across deaders from the old days, mostly just bones and such—but still they’re deaders. And all those windows—you get an itchy feeling between your shoulders that someone just looked at you and ducked away when you turned around. With a hundred million places for a loony Up to hide out we had no chance at all of finding him. Only I wasn’t going to give up as long as I could keep walking—knowing he had Marsie.

  Sim had been marking our way. It’s been done—getting lost—even keeping to paths we know. But we were coming into a place I’d never seen, big buildings with straight walls, no windows in them. There were a couple of wide doors—and one was open.

  “Listen!” Sim pawed my arm. But he needn’t have, I heard it too.

  London Bridge is broken down.

  Broken down, broken down,

  My fair lady.

  How shall we built it up again?

  Up again, up again?

  My fair lady.

  Built it up with silver and gold.

  Silver and gold, silver and gold.

  M
y fair lady.

  I had it now, pointed with my pricker— “In there.” Sim nodded and we went through the open door.

  Silver and gold will be stole away,

  Stole away, stole away,

  My fair lady.

  Odd, the sound didn’t seem to get any louder, but it wasn’t fading away either, just about the same. We were in a big wide hall with a lot of openings off on either side. There were lights here, but so dim you had to take a chance on your path.

  Build it up with iron and steel,

  Iron and steel, iron and steel.

  My fair lady.

  Still ahead as far as I could tell.

  Iron and steel will rust away,

  Rust away, rust away,

  My fair lady.

  Build it up with wood and clay,

  Wood and clay, wood and clay.

  My fair lady.

  All at once the singing was loud and clear. We came out on a balcony above a place so big that most of the den-ins I knew could be packed into it with room to spare. There was light below, but it shone up from the floor in a way I had never seen before.

  “There he is!” Again I didn’t need Sim to point him out. I saw the blazing figure. Blaze he did, blue and gold, like he was a fire, but the wrong color. And he was dancing back and forth as he sang:

  Wood and clay will wash away,

  Wash away, wash away,

  My fair lady.

  Build it up with stone so strong,

  Stone so strong, stone so strong.

  My fair lady.

  Hurrah, it will hold for ages long,

  Ages long, ages long.

  My fair lady.

  At the end of each verse he would bend forward in a jerky little bow, and those listening would clap their hands and laugh.