The Magic Goes Away - Larry Niven, ebook, CALIBRE SFF 1970s, Temp 2
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The Magic Goes Awayby Larry Niven Copyright © 1978============================The waves washed him ashore aboard a section of the wooden roof from an Atlantean winery. He was half dead, and mad. There was a corpse on the makeshift raft with him, a centaur girl, three days dead of no obvious cause.The fisherfolk were awed. They knew the workmanship of the winery roof, and they knew that the stranger must have survived the greatest disaster in human history. Perhaps they considered him a good luck charm. He was lucky. The fisherfolk did not steal the golden arm bands he wore. They fed him by hand until he could feed himself. When he grew strong they put him to work. He could not or would not speak, but he could follow orders. He was a big man. When his weight came back he could lift as much as any two fishermen.By day he worked like a golem, tirelessly: they had to remember to tell him when to stop. By night he would pull his broken sword from its scabbard Ñ the blade was broken to within two thumbs of the hilt Ñ and turn it in his hands as if studying it.He stayed in the bachelors' longhouse. Women who approached him found him unresponsive. They attributed it to his sickness.Four months after his arrival he spoke his first words. The boy Hatchap was moving down the line of sleeping bachelors, waking them for the day's fishing. He found the stranger staring at the ceiling in grief and anguish. "Like magic. Like magic," he mumbled Ñ in Greek. Suddenly he smiled, for the first time Hatchap could remember. "Magician," he said. That night, after the boats were in, he went to the oldest man in the village and said, "I have to talk to a magician."* * * Prissthil and the village called Warlock's Cave were six hundred miles apart. Once the Warlock would have flown the distance in a single night. Even today, they might have taken riding dragons, intelligent allies, and in one or another region where too much use of magic had leeched mana from the earth, they might have left dragon bones to merge with the rocks. Dragon metabolism was partly magical. It annoyed the Warlock to be leaving Warlock's Cave on muleback; but he and Clubfoot considered this prudent.It was worse than they had thought. The mana-rich places they expected to cross by magic, were not there. Three of their mules died in the desert when Clubfoot ran out of the ability to make rain. The situation was just this desperate: Clubfoot and the Warlock, two of the most powerful magicians left in the world, came to the conference at Prissthil on foot, leading a pack mule.Clubfoot was an American, with red skin and straight black hair and an arched beak of a nose. His ancestors had fled an Asian infestation of vampires, had crossed the sea by magic in the company of a tribe of the wolf people. He limped because of a handicap he might have cured decades ago, except that it would have cost him half his power.And the Warlock limped because of his age.Limping, they came to the crest of a hill overlooking Prissthil.It was late afternoon. Already the tremendous shadow of Mount Valhalla, last home of a quarrelsome pantheon of gods now gone mythical, sprawled eastward across Prissthil. The village had grown since the Warlock had last seen it, one hundred and ten years ago. The newer houses were lower, sturdier... held up not by spells spoken over a cornerstone, but by their own strength."Prissthil was founded on magic," the Warlock said half to himself.Clubfoot heard. "Was it?"The Warlock pointed to a dish-shaped depression north of the city wall. "That crater is old, but you can still see the shape of it, can't you? That's Fistfall. This village started as a trading center for talismans: fragments of the boulder of starstone that made that crater. The merchants ran out of starstone long ago, but the village keeps growing. Don't you wonder how?"Clubfoot shrugged. "They must be trading something else.""Look, Clubfoot, there are guards under Lion! Lion used to be all the guard Prissthil needed!""What are you talking about? The big stone statue?"The Warlock looked at him oddly. "Yes. Yes, the big stone statue."Winds off the desert had etched away the fine details, but the stone statue was still a work of art. Half human, half big gentle guard dog, it squatted on its haunches before the gate, looking endlessly patient. Guards leaned against its forepaws. They straightened and hailed the magicians as they came within shouting distance."Ho, travelers! What would you in Prissthil?" Clubfoot cried, "We intend Prissthil's salvation, and the world's!""Oh, magicians! Well, you're welcome." The head guard grinned. He was a burly, earthy man in armor dented by war. "Though I don't trust your salvation. What have you come to do for us? Make more starstone?"Clubfoot turned huffy. "It was for no trivial purpose that we traveled six hundred miles.""Your pardon, but my grandfather used to fly half around the world to attend a banquet," said the head guard. "Poor old man. None of his spells worked, there at the end. He kept going over and over the same rejuvenation spell until he died. Wanted to train me for magic too. I had more sense."A grating voice said, "Waaarrl... lock."The blood drained from the head guard's face. Slowly he turned. The other guard was backing toward the gate.The statue's rough-carved stone face, a dog's face with a scholar's thoughtful look, stared down at the magicians. "I know you," said the rusty, almost subsonic voice. "Waarrllock. You made me." "Lion!" the Warlock cried joyfully. "I thought you must be dead!""Almost. I sleep for years, for tens of years. Sometimes I wake for a few hours. The life goes out of me," said the statue. "I wish it were not so. How can I do my duty? One day an enemy will slip past me, into the city.""We'll see if we can do something about that.""I wish you luck."Clubfoot spoke confidently. "The best brains in the world are gathering here. How can we fail?""You're young," said Lion.They passed on. Behind them the statue froze in place.It was luck for Orolandes that Prissthil was no farther. Else he would have died on the way. He made for a place he knew only by name, stopping sometimes to ask directions, or to ask for work and food. He was gaunt again by the time he reached Prissthil.He circled a wide, barren dish-shaped depression. It was too circular, too regular; it smacked uneasily of sorcery. There was a great stone statue before the city gate, and guards who straightened as he came up."We have little need for swordsmen here," one greeted him."I want to talk to a magician," said Orolandes."You're in luck." The guard looked over his shoulder, quickly, nervously; then turned back fast, as if hoping the swordsman wouldn't notice. "Two magicians came today. But what if they don't want to talk to you?""I have to talk to a magician," Orolandes said stubbornly. His hand hung near his sword hilt. He was big, and scarred, and armed. Perhaps he was no longer an obvious madman, but the ghost of some recent horror was plain in his face.The guard forebore to push the matter. The stranger was no pauper; his gold arm band was a form of money. "If you're rude to a magician, you'll get what you deserve. Welcome to Prissthil. Go on in."The inn the Warlock loved best was gone, replaced by a leather worker's shop. They sought another. At the Inn of the Mating Phoenixes they saw their mule stabled, then moved baggage to their rooms. Clubfoot flopped on the feather mattress. The Warlock dug in a saddlebag. He pulled out spare clothing, then a copper disk with markings around the rim. He moved to set it aside; then, still holding it, he seemed to drift off into reverie.Hundreds of years ago, and far east of Prissthil, there had been a proud and powerful magician. He was barely past his brilliant apprenticeship; but he had the temerity to forbid the waging of war throughout the Fertile Crescent, and the power to make it stick. He consistently hired himself out to battle whichever nation he considered the aggressor.Oh, his magic had been big and showy in those days! Floating castles, armies destroyed by lightning, phantom cities built and destroyed in a night. In his pride he nicknamed himself Warlock. Had he known that his nickname would become a generic term for magicians, he would not have shown surprise.But over the decades his spells stopped working. It happened to all magicians. He moved away, and his power returned, to some extent... then gradually dwindled, until he moved again.It happened to nations too. Bound together by its own gods and traditions and laws and trade networks, a nation like Acheron might come to seem as old and stable as the mountains themselves ... until treaties sealed by oaths and magic lost their power... until barbarians with swords come swarming over the borders. All knew that it was so. But the Warlock was the first to learn why, via an experiment he performed with an enchanted copper disk.If he kept his discovery secret through succeeding decades, his motive was compassion. His terrible truth spelled the end of civilization, yet it was of no earthly use to anyone. Fifty years ago his secret had finally escaped him, for good or evil; it was hard to know which."Never mind that," said Clubfoot. "Let's get dinner."The Warlock shook himself. "Shortly," he said. He set the Wheel aside and reached again into the saddlebag.Clubfoot snorted. He gathered up spilled clothing and began hanging it.The Warlock set a wooden box on the table. Inside, within soft fox skins, was a human skull. The Warlock handled it carefully. One hinge of its jaw was broken, and there were tooth marks on the jaw and cheekbones and around both earholes.Clubfoot said, "I still think we should have contriv...
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