The Sorcerer Read online

  “What did you do?”

  “We just tied the thongs anywhere, and hoped a hare would find one.”

  Snowbird shook her head. “It wouldn’t.”

  “No. Every day my father and his two friends went hunting. Sometimes they caught a rat and that was how we lived.”

  Lefthand looked across the fire into the sorcerer’s face. It was shadowed, haggard, the eyes looking inward to a terrible memory. Every twinkle of good humor was wiped off that face and Sorcerer continued to tremble.

  “That was the first winter the ponies did not come. They never came again. That winter even the reindeer did not come.

  “One day it dawned cold, snow falling so thick you could not see where you went—like now. You know, Lefthand, this is not the time to go hunting. You don’t see the animals if they are there. You don’t see their tracks because the snow swallows them up. Wouldn’t you say this is a time to sit by the fire and chip spearheads?”

  Lefthand nodded. He feared the look in Sorcerer’s face—a dangerous spirit lurked behind the old man’s eyes. But he wanted very much to know how the story ended. Sorcerer was here, after all. He had survived somehow to sit in the rock tent this night and remember. How had he done it? Or rather, how had his father done it?

  “My father and his friends went hunting. They went down by the river looking for pigs. There had been no pigs there since the summer. There were no pigs that day.

  “They came back to the cliff, looking for hare. If there were hares running in the snow, they did not see them. You know how tired you feel when you are very hungry?”

  The three young heads all nodded promptly.

  “They were ready to come back here and rest with us by the fire, when my father smelled …” Sorcerer paused, wrinkling his nose and looking around at his tense audience, “… wood smoke!”

  “‘Ah,’ said my father, ‘There are people nearby! Maybe they have meat.’”

  Sorcerer stopped telling. He looked into the fire and shivered, and Snowbird had to ask him gently but urgently. “And then?”

  And Jay piped eagerly, “And then!”

  “They followed the smoke trail and in a little while they came to the fire. Down there.” He pointed vaguely south. “There was a man sitting alone by the fire. He looked up when he heard their voices and he was a man they did not know.”

  Abruptly, Sorcerer stopped shivering. He raised his head as though seeing approaching strangers and Lefthand knew that he was acting the story for them as his father had acted it for him on this spot.

  “They had never seen him at the dances, you know. They had never seen anyone like him anywhere. He was small”—Sorcerer hunched down into himself to show how small—“and his head hung down like this.” He jabbed his chin into his chest. “His shoulders were bigger than all the rest of him.” Sorcerer bunched his shoulders and shrugged violently.

  “He looked at them like this”—Sorcerer’s face took on a heavy, stupid look—“and he said ‘uggarmgg.’” Jay laughed nervously, but no answering mirth flickered in Sorcerer’s remembering eyes.

  “He was hairy, hairy all over, like a bear. They only knew he was a man because of the fire. Well, my father stepped up and asked him, did he have any meat? They knew he had. They could smell it roasting and the smell drove them mad.

  “And this man-thing stood up.” Sorcerer rose slowly, to a crouch. “He grabbed a spear and threw it at my father.” Sorcerer hurled an imaginary spear at Lefthand.

  “I have that spearhead still, it’s back in the tent. I use it for …

  “Well, he threw it at my father. The spear grazed his leg, just tore the deerskin. Then the man-thing ran away in the storm and they forgot about him. They went to the fire and ate the meat. It was rat, only a little rat, and it made them hungrier. You know how.” The three faces tilted up at Sorcerer and nodded understanding.

  “And then they began to think about us, my mother and me and the other women, back here in the rock tent. What were they going to bring to us? They had eaten the rat. So, they went hunting for the man.”

  Sorcerer stalked around the fire, glancing left and right, brandishing his invisible spear.

  “Father went along the cliff. He kept touching the cliff to guide himself. He stumbled on the man-thing.” Sorcerer dropped to his knees and crawled past Jay, who drew back, startled by his expression of dull ferocity.

  “It was creeping along like this, like some animal.” Sorcerer leaped up. “Father jabbed like this”—he stabbed viciously downward—“and then”—relaxing—“he called the others. And they carried him back here.”

  Sorcerer faced the night. His eyes were wide and empty, as they must have been that day when he watched the extraordinary procession stumble in out of the storm. Gradually he came back to himself. His look brightened, humor lines creased his kindly face, and he sat down again.

  Snowbird drew a long breath and asked, “What did you do?”

  “What did we do? We ate him.”

  “You ate him?”

  “Certainly.” Sorcerer turned defiant eyes upon her. “Why not?”

  Lefthand was much relieved to see the sorcerer’s face return to its own good nature. He was wondering about this long-ago act of eating a little, hairy man—might this be the source of his magic? Perhaps the hairy one had possessed a magical power which Sorcerer had consumed.

  Finally, wrestling inwardly with himself, Lefthand asked it.

  “Is that why … why … why you are a sorcerer?”

  “Is that why what? Oh yes, I see. It’s not a thing everybody does, is it? Though I think more have done it than talk about it. No. The magic is another story. That was later, much later. It was summertime then, hot and bright. There were meat and fish on the racks and many families camped beside the river.”

  Lefthand forgot the cold and the dark around. He listened intently and his mind followed the words and the gestures away from winter, away from the rock tent, back to a distant summer.

  He saw the summer river, wide and slow, reflecting a blue sky with puffy, friendly clouds. He saw the busy tent-town spread along the bank, bustling with smoke fires and talk and easy laughter. Children scampered about the camp. One of them was the little Sorcerer.

  “One morning, a girl, one of my friends, was sick.” Sorcerer told how she lay in the back of her mother’s tent, her small face turned away from the light. She moaned and vomited while her friends squatted about, curious and puzzled. Then the mother came in, swatting left and right, and the boy who became the sorcerer ran away with the others into the bright, buzzing morning.

  The children waded in shallow backwaters of the river. They caught minnows in their hands. They built stick tents on the bank and fashioned little clay men to live in them. Sheltered under the willows they slept through the noon glare. In the evening they straggled home to find the supper fires cold.

  The mothers were gathered together in a tense, talking knot. In the middle of the knot was the tent where the sick girl lay. The children were hungry and puzzled. They remembered the sickness but the morning seemed long ago. Something had happened that they did not understand. Then came the fathers, masked for magic, with Sorcerer’s father tapping his pigskin drum.

  Half the night the men danced. The women talked, strangely quiet, and the children stood about watching, snacking on scraps of smoked fish and last night’s dinner.

  Firelight stretched the horn and antler shadows on the tent wall. Slowly the men forgot themselves, emptied their souls, until a child could not tell his father from his friend’s father. It was good, strong magic, but it failed. As the moon rose the drum hesitated, then stopped, as the women folded the tent about the little dead girl and her father carried the bundle away.

  “Then,” Sorcerer went on, “it was a boy, my special friend. We had been spearing frogs together in the afternoon. The next morning he could not stand up.”

  As the summer days passed, one child after another could not stand up. The sick ones
crawled into their mothers’ tents, away from the light. There they trembled and vomited and often died. At night the children fell asleep to the drum music, their cheeks still warmed by their mothers’ caressing fingers. Anxious mothers hovered and fluttered, astonishingly gentle.

  One night Sorcerer’s father put on a final, heart-stopping show. He had a very special mask, a boar’s head equipped with antlers. With this on his head he leaped and bounded about a sick child whose mother had brought him out to the fire. He yelled, he growled and snarled, he neighed and shrieked, and the men followed behind him, adding their noise to his. Surely now the Evil would hesitate. Surely it would draw back in fear and leave them alone.

  In the morning the exhausted men held council beside the dead child. The Evil was not frightened. It was too strong for them. Sorceror’s father advised that they should scatter. Then the Evil would have to choose one victim to follow. The rest would escape.

  The men staggered to their tents and gave directions. The women folded the tents, bundled their goods on their backs, and they set out, each family alone.

  With his parents Sorcerer passed the stagnant pools where he and his friends had played. Already the little stick tents were falling down, the clay men were damp, shapeless lumps scattered among gnawed bones and broken little spears.

  “After that,” Sorcerer concluded, “when we were alone, the Evil came hunting me.”

  “You were sick like the others?” Snowbird had not heard this story.

  The old man nodded.

  “But you didn’t die!”

  “No, my father chased the Evil away. He put on his boar mask and he danced by himself and the Evil let go and went away.”

  The audience sighed.

  “But it left a mark where it bit me.” Sorcerer suddenly raised his arms above his head. The cloak fell back, and the two arms stretched up bare in the firelight; one round, one like a gnarled branch. He pushed off one boot with the heel of the other, and thrust the withered, shrunken foot toward the fire.

  Sorcerer looked around at them all to be sure they understood. Then he lowered his arms and pulled the boot back on. Summer faded from the rock tent. They were huddled once more about a tiny fire while snow piled up in bitter darkness a step away.

  “So then,” Lefthand pursued, wanting certainty, “you saw the power of magic, and you wanted to do it?”

  “That, yes, but there was more than that. What kind of a hunter would I have made? Think of me chasing after reindeer on these legs or spearing bison with these arms.” And the haggard old face broke into laughter. The sparse yellow teeth gleamed, the eyes creased to slits. The young people glanced at each other and laughed uncertainly.

  “Put the meat in the fire,” Sorcerer directed Snowbird. “We want more than stories of the past to warm us tonight!”

  Snowbird reached behind her, grasped two frozen carcasses, and slipped them into the embers. She cast a long look at her father, who sat silent, remembering.

  Lefthand sat sniffing the roasting meat, enjoying the warmth close to his feet. He was thinking of the stories, turning them over in all the mental light he had. “We ate him,” said Sorcerer’s voice in his mind, “why not?”

  Lefthand shivered as the old man had shivered and the tale turned slowly in the light of his understanding. Like a spearhead examined first in firelight, then in daylight, this story gave off a strange, dead glint. There was some reason why not. Lefthand felt there was and he suspected the sorcerer felt it, too. Why had he trembled, why had his eyes dilated at the memory?

  A reason why not slept in the heart of humanity. It was there, but it slept so deeply that none of the four sheltered in the rock tent could awaken it.

  SIX

  THE MOUNTAIN

  1

  “Come in,” said the old man, “come on down!” And he tittered. Sorcerer crouched in a hole in the cliff, utter blackness behind him. His wrinkled face peered up at Lefthand.

  Bright winter sunshine bounced off the gray-white rock and a fresh cold breeze slapped Lefthand’s face. He heard it hissing through the flames of the two pine torches Snowbird held behind him on the rock path. He heard her slight panting and felt her shoulder brush his.

  “Go,” she whispered.

  To find the magic, he must crawl into that dark hole away from the sun. Another moment of hesitation and the sorcerer would give him up—the chance would be lost. It was like throwing a spear. The time was Now. Lefthand took a deep breath, rested his weight on his hands, and swung his feet down into the dark.

  Chuckling, Sorcerer held out a wizened hand. Snowbird leaned over the hole and handed down a torch. Desperately Lefthand looked at the sky, blue around her head, and at the brown stream of her hair, lifted by the wind and brightened like water by the sun. She smiled at him, handed down his torch, and whispered, “Go!”

  The torch in his hand spat and dribbled. He clutched it as a starving man clutches meat, and turned into the darkness. Already the sorcerer was scrambling deep into the cliff. Lefthand saw him as a ragged shape against a spurting fountain of red light. Hastily Lefthand brought his own torch down to his knees to light the clay floor, and started after Sorcerer.

  The cave instantly narrowed to a man’s width. Lefthand bowed his head and bent his knees, squeezed between boulders, and climbed over rockfalls. He kept his eyes on the scurrying shape, the red light that waxed and waned ahead. Breathlessly he hurried after it and Fear hurried after him.

  Once he glanced behind, and saw nothing but thick Dark. When he turned again the light ahead had vanished.

  For an instant he saw its reflection on the damp clay wall facing him, then darkness. Only his own torch fought the Dark. As he hesitated, it flared and hot resin ran down his hand.

  He glanced at the torch. It was half spent. Now Fear caught up with him, grabbed his throat. He could do one thing—turn back and run along the passage he had traveled. The torch might last as far as the hole, back to the wind and the sun.

  He started to turn around.

  Through the deep, chill stillness echoed a sudden sound, the old man’s chuckle. Somewhere close by, the shriveled old creature was hunched up, shaking with mirth.

  Lefthand’s mind formed a picture. On the cave floor sat the sorcerer, cross-legged, like a hunter in a blind. He laughed to himself, gurgling between his few teeth. He was waiting for Lefthand to fall into a trap he had set. Perhaps in some deeper cavern his cooking fire already burned high and hot. “I can still scuttle around some, Provider! … I could surprise you with some of the things I eat! Hare, piglet, rat, or … anything that comes along.”

  Fury throttled Fear. Lefthand had no weapon but the dying torch. No matter, he could finish off the chuckling cannibal with his hands, then feel his way back to the light.

  He dropped to his knees and one hand. He crawled silently forward. To one side he found the low hole through which his enemy had vanished. It was narrow. Lefthand thrust through the torch, then his head. Black water shone below. Would this be the trap? If he let himself down into that water, would he sink to the bottom of the mountain?

  He waved the torch, trying to see into the water. Its reflection flared among ripples. Two torches burned in the water!

  “Come on,” said Sorcerer, “it’s no deeper than your ankles.” And he tittered again.

  The sorcerer had crossed the water. There must be a way. Lefthand glanced again at the torch. It would last until he had killed the enemy and found his way back into the passage—if he acted quickly.

  As he squirmed through the hole he saw Sorcerer. Indeed, he was sitting cross-legged on the floor, grinning through his brown teeth.

  “Come on,” he urged, “the torches won’t last forever.”

  In a spasm of anger Lefthand slithered through the hole, one hand holding the torch above his head. It was no deeper than his ankles. His feet splashed, hit bottom, and he stretched for the clay bank.

  The old man bounced up. “Quick,” he admonished, and scampered away
down another passage.

  Lefthand slipped and fell in the water. Both hands plunged. Darkness fell like a vast skin blanket as Lefthand dropped the dead torch in the water and leaped blindly for the bank. He scrambled up in time to see the bent figure, silhouetted by the torch, turn a corner.

  Rushing, stumbling, banging into rock walls, Lefthand followed. The hoarse noise echoing around him was his breath. He could see nothing but the faint, last reflection of the torch. It seemed to stand still for him.

  Gasping, he ran to seize the pale light on the rock. Suddenly strong light struck him forcibly from the side. He turned to look through a jagged hole in the wall, into a golden glow.

  Blinking, he looked again. Before him the sorcerer stood erect, arms outstretched. On each palm he balanced a little sun, and by their quiet light he was illumined.

  Over Sorcerer’s shoulder a bison bull shook his mighty head and bellowed. Lefthand felt his roar but the sound was within himself, a rushing of exhaustion, anger, and fear down through his body to be lost in astonishment. The bull stretched sweeping horns across the rock wall toward a reindeer buck, who staggered and limped under a weight of well-aimed spears. Across his rump ran a pig, thrusting defiant little tusks. His black hind feet pointed to a pony who paused, head up and suspicious, hoofs lifting for flight.

  All around the small circular cave animals plunged, trotted, and galloped. The earth should have shaken, the rock walls should have echoed their thundering strides. But it was only Lefthand who shook, only his thudding heart that echoed. The animals lived their startling, vibrant life on another plane; the actual cavern was still, so profoundly silent that even the whisper of the little suns roared in Lefthand’s ears.

  “Come in,” said the sorcerer, and he held out one of the suns to Lefthand. It was a small, stone bowl, like those in his tent. In a pool of fat floated a twisted wick, and from this flickered the soft, sunny flame that warmed the cavern.

  “Come on in,” the old man repeated, his voice sober and solemn with no hint of titter or giggle. “You can do this, Lefthand. Provider told me.”