Ars Magica (2 page)

“Suppose that I did not. What would you say?”

“Why, my lord, I would say — I would tell you that the West is sadly fallen. What men knew once, they know no longer, nor want to know. It is all iron and edged blades, and lord smiting lord for a fistful of power. They dream of empires, and they kill for a furlong of wasteland.

“But I, my lord, I want to know what the world is. In Aurillac they gave me all they had. Grammar. A little rhetoric. A great vacancy where all the rest should be. Dialectic, the high logic — that's known, a little, in Gaul. But the greater arts, the arts I yearn for, those are lost. Arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music. The
quadrivium
: the fourfold path. No one knows it; no one can teach it. Do you know what I've heard folk say — folk who should know better, monks and priests with a claim to learning? They say that the lesser way, the threefold way, is endurable — just — in that it teaches one to read Scripture. The greater arts serve no purpose other than to lead men astray; they should be banned, as magic is banned, for magic is what they are.”

“No,” said the bishop. “No. Magic is another thing altogether.”

Gerbert realized that he was gaping. He shut his mouth, searching for words. Words without magic in them. Safe words. “I want — I want the greater arts. I want to master them; I want to take them home and teach them, and kindle a light where the darkness is deepest. It's pride, I know, my lord. But my abbot seemed to think
 
that what I wanted was worth reaching for.”

“And that you were capable of reaching for it.”

“Well,” said Gerbert. “It's the wanting. It stretches the fingers. Sometimes it stretches them enough.”

Suddenly, astonishingly, the bishop laughed. “Indeed, Brother! Sometimes it does. We begin in the morning. Simple arts first. Do you know anything of numbers?”

“I did the abbey's accounts for five years, my lord.” It struck Gerbert late, and the harder for that. “We?
You
, my lord?”

“I.” The bishop was stern again, his mirth gone. “I have some slight store of learning.”

“But,” said Gerbert. “I thought — I a farmer's son, and you so great a lord, and all your servants, and some so learned — ”

“Even the Lord of Heaven deigned to dwell for a space as a carpenter's son. Should I be more haughty than He?”

Gerbert stared at his feet, shamed for once into silence.

“Tomorrow,” said the bishop. “Here in my study, after the first mass. We shall see where you need to begin.”

oOo

“Well?” said Bishop Hatto when the young monk was gone.

“Perhaps,” said a shadow by the wall. It did not move, but what had seemed only darkened air had become substance. Human substance: a man in black, black-bearded, with eyes that glittered as he rose. Shadow slipped back like a veil, drawing into itself; neither the stranger nor the bishop took notice.

Bishop Hatto's brows were raised. “As uncertain as that, my friend?”

“Nothing is certain but the will of Allah.” But the man in black was smiling, settling himself opposite the bishop, studying the chessboard laid out on the table. Lightly, almost absently, he shifted an ebony imam to face an ivory bishop.

“Ah,” said Hatto, half in dismay, half in admiration. “There I think you have me.”

“In four moves,” the Moor agreed.

“Five,” said Hatto. “The young Gaulishman, now. If he should be even half of what I think he can be...”

“Between
can
and
should
is a width of worlds. There is a boy — ”

“A man, if a young one. He's past twenty.”

“A boy,” the Moor repeated, gentle but immovable. “Bursting with eager ignorance, and quite as perfectly Christian as ever a monk should be. If I had let him see me, and know what I was, he would have been appalled.”

“My dear friend, you hardly look — ”

The Moor smiled whitely in a face that had rather more in it of Ethiopia than of Arabia, and swept a long hand from turbaned head to slippered foot. “A heathen, your most Christian excellency. A black and literal Saracen. Need that babe see more than that, to know that I am all he must abhor?”

“You wrong him, I think,” Hatto said. “In all my years I doubt I've met a mind to equal his. That passion of his, to know — ”

“But to know what? In his country even simple numbers are a branch of the forbidden arts. As for what I would wish to teach him...”

“He did not cross himself when I spoke of that Art.”

The Moor paused. Then he shook his head. “That is no proof.”

“Well, then,” said Hatto with the air of one who saves the greatest persuasion for the greatest necessity. “I say that he has the power in him. I say that as one who sees it. You know what eyes I have, Master Ibrahim. You know how I came by them.”

The dark eyes lowered, but never in humility. “My fault, my Christian friend. I healed your eyes' affliction. I fear I healed it all too well.”

“I was hardly glad of it when first I woke to it. But now, I see God's will in it. It showed me a great light in a darkened chapel. It led me to an abbot's hope and pride.”

“Such hope as this?” asked Ibrahim.

Hatto sighed. “The Art is all forgotten there, if it was ever known. The power resides in the black tribe, the old pagans with their demons and their Sabbat. Good Christians shun it with all their hearts and souls. But,” he said, “this boy has it. I think he has the strength to accept it.”

“But should he?”

The bishop threw up his hands. Suddenly he laughed. “Listen to us! I should be protesting; you should be doing battle for so promising an apprentice. He could be quite perfectly content in what he thinks he has come here to learn: numbers, music, the study of the stars. All those, I can teach him. And yet he has so much more in him; and there is the debt I owe you and your Art. I would offer him, if you would take him.”

“Would he permit it?”

Hatto quelled the spark of triumph. It was not yet — not quite — won. “Would you ask?”

Ibrahim stroked his long silken beard. “You tempt me, clever infidel. Oh, you tempt me. True power is as rare as rubies. If he can bear to face its presence...if he can master all our bitter disciplines...what a mage he would be!”

At last the bishop allowed himself to smile. “Will you ask?”

The Moor's brows met, but his eyes bore no anger. “I will ask,” he said. “I will never compel.”

Hatto nodded. “That is enough,” he said.

2.

“Moors?” Brother Rodolfo stopped even pretending to copy the bishop's letter. “Of course I've seen the Moors. We have them in our city.”

Gerbert swallowed impatience. “I know that. I've seen them, too. They're everywhere. But why? How can your lords allow it? They're the enemy.”

“They live here.” Brother Rodolfo was patently enjoying himself. No doubt it was a favored sport, to shock young newcomers from darkest Frankland. “Our lord bishop is their faithful patron.”

“That's not so!” said Gerbert, outraged. “His Christian excellency would never sink so low.”

“Don't let him hear you say that, Brother. He has dear friends among them. Haven't you heard the story yet?”

Gerbert scowled and said nothing. Rodolfo took that as permission. He settled to it with great contentment, and with a tale-teller's flourish. “When my lord was still a young priest, before he had his bishopric, he took sick. He was a perfect Christian then; he detested the infidel as any good believer should. His illness was dire, and the doctors all agreed that it was mortal. They had all despaired of him.

“The worst of it for him was not that he would die. It was that he would die blind. He could face death, but death in the dark was more than he could bear.

“At first he had refused the ministrations of Moorish physicians, though there were and are none better in the world. As his case grew more desperate, his friends prevailed upon him to suffer the touch of unbaptized hands; but none could give him more than a few moments' surcease. He was dying still, and he was still blind.

“Then at last, as he began to sink into the utmost dark, one came with hope. If he would take it. For that hope resided in one man in Barcelona, a Moor and, worse by far, a magus. When my lord heard that, he closed his ears and his mind. Not for his very life's sake would he submit to sorcery — not if it would cost him his soul. He turned his head away from all pleading and composed himself for death.

“As he stood at the gates with the oil of anointing on him, a voice spoke out of the night. It was a man's voice and no angel's, but none had seen him come. He was simply there, a turbaned Moor clad all in black. It came as no little shock that he was young. Little older than you, Brother, but strong for all of that, and possessed of a remarkable presence. No one moved or spoke as he approached the bed and stood looking down.

“He said again what he had said as he came, quietly as before, neither gentle nor harsh, as one who states a simple truth. ‘You are a fool, sir priest. Ignorance may excuse you. It will certainly kill you.'

“My lord was dying, but he was not yet dead. He turned toward the sound of that voice; he raised himself. With all the breath that was left him, he said, ‘My body may die, but my soul will live.'

“‘Ah,' said the stranger. ‘Does your faith permit suicide, then?'

“That brought my lord almost to his feet, and all but slew him, casting him into the stranger's arms. The man was slender, but he was strong; he bore easily that weight of anger and of death. He laid my lord down again, for all that he could do, and said, ‘I have been sent to heal you, and so I will, resist me though you may.'

“‘No,' my lord said, the merest thread of sound. ‘Before God, you will not.'

“‘Before God, I must.' And the stranger laid hands on our lord, and not one of his friends could stir to his aid. The man prayed over him — infidel prayers, but prayers they were, and no curses or invocations of devils. He prayed long and long. Years, it seemed to those who watched, held helpless by his power.

“Slowly, so slowly that at first they were scarcely aware of it, they realized that something had changed — was changing. My lord was healing. The pallor of death lad left his face. And as he grew stronger, the mage grew weaker, until the balance held level between them. Then the mage fell silent. Their hands had locked. And their eyes. My lord could see. The fire that had burned in the mage now burned in him.

“With a crack like the breaking of a world, they fell apart. My lord's people would have fallen on the sorcerer, but my lord himself rose to stop them. He shielded the infidel with his own body. He said, ‘Who touches this man, dies.'”

Brother Rodolfo stopped. He was silent for so long that Gerbert presumed that he was done. “And they were friends forever after.”

The Spaniard shook himself. “What? Friends? Not precisely then. My lord was grateful — he knew his duty. But he was hardly delighted to owe his life to a Moor and a sorcerer, however white the sorcery had been. It was still sorcery.”

“Then how — ”

“Time,” Rodolfo answered, “and teaching. And the mage himself. Quite simply, they took to one another.”

“But,” said Gerbert. “An infidel. A magician.”

“A white magician,” Rodolfo pointed out, “and, by his lights, a pious man. Moors have no bishops, and no priests to speak of, or Master Ibrahim would be one.”

Gerbert shook his head. He could not absorb it. Bishop Hatto and a black infidel. Bishop Hatto and a sorcerer. Bishop Hatto who was both an excellent bishop and, by all accounts, an excellent Christian; and, in Gerbert's own experience, a great scholar and a great teacher. It was too much to take in.

Homesickness stabbed him deep. No one at home had ever torn him with so many contradictions. One was a Christian or a pagan, a good man or a bad. And one did not imperil one's soul with the sleights of magic.

Against his will he saw again the stars from Saint Gerald's tower, heard the laughter of witches, drowned in soft wild eyes. The power stirred in him and began, softly, to sing.

Fiercely he beat it down. He was a man of God. If Abbot Gerald had known what in truth he was sending his brightest star to face, he would never have allowed it. But it was done. Gerbert was here. He was studying what he had come to study. With God's help he would emerge unscathed, in body and in soul.

But ah, mourned a hidden part of him, how sweet it would have been, to see, to know, what the power was.

oOo

The day after Rodolfo told his tale, Gerbert faced his lessons with thudding heart. For a long while he was certain that he could not go at all. How could he face this man, now that he knew what he knew?

It took all the courage he had, but he did it. Part of it was cowardice: fear of his master's reprimand. But some of it was the old craving for what the bishop had to teach. He found that he could bury himself in the cool serenity of numbers, and forget who it was who taught them. And such numbers — new ones, wonderful ones, one symbol for each that was less than ten, utterly unlike the awkward, heaping letter-numbers of the Romans: 3 for III, graceful curving 8 for VIII. One could work wonders with them. That they were Arabic — that did not matter. Some magics, even a good Christian could accept with a joyous heart.