Morindicum and to seek out that which has always been hidden. This is
my quest.” It was pure gibberish, of course, but I think the word
“infernity”–which I made up on the spur of the moment–got his
attention.
I’ve always had this way with words.
“Should you survive this quest of yours, I will accept you as my
apprentice–and my slave.”
I’ve had better offers, but I decided not to negotiate. I was here to
learn, not to correct bad manners.
“You seem reluctant,” he observed.
“I’m not the wisest of men, Master,” I confessed, “and I have little
skill with magic. I would be more happy if this burden had been placed
on another.”
“It is yours to bear, however,” he roared at me.
“Behold the gift that is mine to give.” He quickly sizzled out a
design on the top of the water with a burning forefinger, evidently not
observing that the swift current of the stream carried it off before
he’d even finished his drawing.
He raised a Demon Lord, one of the Disciples of the king of Hell.
Now that I think back on it, I believe it was Mordja. I met Mordja
many years later, and he did look a bit familiar to me.
“What is this thou hast done?” Mordja demanded in that awful voice of
his.
“I have summoned thee to obey me,” my prospective tutor declared,
ignoring the fact that his protective design was a half-mile downstream
by now.
Mordja–if it was Mordja–laughed.
“Behold the face of the water, fool,” he said.
“There is no longer protection for thee. And therefore–” He reached
out one huge, scaly hand, picked up my prospective
“Master,”
and bit off his head.
“A bit thin,” he observed, crushing the skull and brains with those
awful teeth. He negligently tossed away the still-quivering carcass
and turned those baleful eyes on me.
I left rather hurriedly at that point.
I eventually found a less demonstrative magician who was willing to
take me on. He was very old, which was an advantage, since the
apprentice to a magician is required to become his
“Master’s” slave for life. He lived alone in a dome-shaped tent made
of musk-ox hides on a gravel bar beside one of those streams. His tent
was surrounded by a kitchen mid-den, since he had the habit of throwing
his garbage out of the front door of his tent rather than burying it.
The bar was backed by a thicket of stunted bushes that were enveloped
by clouds of mosquitoes in the summertime.
He mumbled a lot and didn’t make much sense, but I gathered that his
clan had been exterminated in one of those wars that are always
breaking out among the Morindim.
My contempt for “magic” as opposed to what we do dates from that period
in my life. Magic involves a lot of meaningless mumbo-jumbo, cheap
carnival tricks, and symbols drawn on the ground. None of that is
really necessary, of course, but the Morindim believe that it is, and
their belief makes it so.
My smelly old
“Master” started me out on imps–nasty little things about knee high.
When I’d gotten that down pat, I moved up to fiends and then up again
to afreets. After a half-dozen years or so, he finally decided that I
was ready to try my hand on a full-grown demon. In a rather chillingly
offhand manner, he advised me that I probably wouldn’t survive my first
attempt. After what had happened to my first
“Master,” I had a pretty good idea of what he was talking about.
I went through all that nonsensical ritual and raised a demon. He
wasn’t a very big demon, but he was as much as I wanted to try to cope
with. The whole secret to raising demons is to confine them in a shape
of your imagining rather than their natural form. As long as you keep
them locked into your conception of them, they have to obey you. If
they manage to break loose and return to their real form, you’re in
trouble.
I rather strongly advise you not to try it.
Anyway, I managed to keep my medium-size demon under control so that he
couldn’t turn on me. I made him perform a few simple tricks–turning
water into blood, setting fire to a rock, withering an acre or so of
grass-you know the sort of tricks I’m talking about–and then, because
I was getting very tired of hunting food, I sent him out with
instructions to bring back a couple of musk-oxen. He scampered off,
howling and growling, and came back a half-hour or so later with enough
meat to feed my “Master” and me for a month. Then I sent him back to
Hell.
I did thank him, though, which I think confused him more than just a
little.
The old magician was very impressed, but he fell ill not long
afterward.
I nursed him through his last illness as best I could and gave him a
decent burial after he died. I decided at that point that I’d found
out as much as we needed to know about the Morindim, and so I discarded
my disguise and went back home again.
On my way back to the Vale I came across a fair-sized, neatly thatched
cottage in a grove of giant trees near a small river. It was just on
the northern edge of the Vale, and I’d passed that way many times over
the years. I’ll take an oath that the house had never been there
before.
Moreover, to my own certain knowledge, there was not another human
habitation within five hundred leagues, except for our towers in the
Vale itself. I wondered who might have built a cottage in such a
lonely place, so I went to the door to investigate these hardy
pioneers.
There was only one occupant, though, a woman who seemed young, and yet
perhaps not quite so young. Her hair was tawny and her eyes a curious
golden color. Oddly, she didn’t wear any shoes, and I noticed that she
had pretty feet.
She stood in the doorway as I approached–almost as if she’d been
expecting me. I introduced myself, advising her that we were
neighbors-which didn’t seem to impress her very much. I shrugged,
thinking that she was probably one of those people who preferred to be
alone. I was on the verge of bidding her good-bye when she invited me
in for supper. It’s the oddest thing. I hadn’t been particularly
hungry when I’d approached the cottage, but no sooner did she mention
food than I found myself suddenly ravenous.
The inside of her cottage was neat and cheery, with all those little
touches that immediately identify a house in which a woman lives as
opposed to the cluttered shacks where men reside. It was quite a bit
larger than the word “cottage” implies, and even though it was none of
my business, I wondered why she needed so much room.
She had curtains at her windows–naturally–and earthenware jars filled
with wildflowers on her windowsills and on the center of her glowing
oak table. A fire burned merrily on her hearth, and a large kettle
bubbled and hiccuped over it. Wondrous smells came from that kettle
and from the loaves of freshly baked bread on the hearth.
“One wonders if you would care to wash before you eat,” she suggested
with a certain delicacy.
To be honest, I hadn’t even thought about that.
She seemed to take my hesitation for agreement. She fetched me a pail
of water, warm from the hearth, a cloth, a towel of sorts, and a cake
of brown country soap.
“Out there,” she told me, pointing at the door.
I went back outside, set the pail on a stand beside the door, and
washed my hands and face. Almost as an afterthought, I pulled off my
tunic and soaped down my upper torso, as well. I dried off with the
towel, pulled my tunic back on, and went inside again.
She sniffed.
“Much better,” she said approvingly. Then she pointed at the table.
“Sit,” she told me.
“I will bring you food.” She fetched an earthenware plate from a
cupboard, padding silently barefooted over her well-scrubbed floor.
Then she knelt on her hearth, ladled the plate full, and brought me a
meal such as I had not seen in years.
Her easy familiarity seemed just a bit odd, but it somehow stepped over
that awkwardness that I think we all feel when we first meet
strangers.
After I’d eaten–more than I should have, probably–we talked, and I
found this strange, tawny-haired woman to have the most uncommon good
sense. This is to say that she agreed with most of my opinions.
Have you ever noticed that? We base our assessment of the intelligence
of others almost entirely on how closely their thinking matches our
own. I’m sure that there are people out there who violently disagree