My Son, the Wizard

Chapter Twenty

“Hey, now, hold on!” Matt went up to him, reaching out to reassure.

The little man flinched away from his hand, crying, “All right, I am! Just a thief! Nothing but a thief!

Been a thief since I was a boy learning how to cut purses! Is it my fault I was never any good at it? Is it my fault I was caught every time I tried something big?”

“You were caught?” Papa frowned. “But in the Middle Ages, the punishment for theft was cutting off a hand! How is it you still have them both?”

“Well,” said Callio, “I may not be much as a thief, but I’m very good at escapes.” His tears dried on the instant and he smiled, expanding. “Let me tell you of some of them! There was the time I lurked in a guard’s shadow as he went out… I’m small enough so that no one noticed… and the time I went along to comfort a man on his way to be hanged, then in the fuss after he fell, I wiggled away into the crowd.

After that, there was the bar in the window that was a little loose, and the more I wiggled it, the looser it became… how the other prisoners howled when I slipped through the hole and they could not! But by the time the guards came to see what all the shouting was about, I was away and gone into the night!”

“Amazing,” Matt said, and watched the little man preen. “You don’t maybe sing to yourself while you’re doing these things, do you?”

Callio stared, openmouthed. “How did you know? Yes, I sing, but very, very softly, so that only I can hear.”

Yes, only he could hear… and focus the back of his mind on bending forces to help him. Matt suspected the thief was a magician with a very limited, but very strong, power. “Did you ever try singing while you were pulling off a robbery?”

Callio stared. “Sing while I was robbing? And alert my targets to what I was doing? Certainly not!”

But he’d been plenty willing to sing while he was escaping, literally in a guard’s shadow. Matt didn’t bother pointing out the discrepancy… there was no point in telling the man until he was sure. Why raise false hopes? Especially if he was going to use his powers to steal from honest citizens.

How about dishonest citizens? Matt decided to mull that one over… but Callio probably would have been afraid to rob other criminals. He exchanged a glance with Papa and saw that the older man had grasped the same idea about the thief’s powers.

Callio caught the look. He frowned, fear gone, looking from one to the other. “How is this? What have you learned about me that I don’t know? What is happening?”

“War,” Matt said slowly, “and the Moors may come charging over the hill at any moment.”

“Don’t try to scare me!”

“Why not, if it will help you? Make no mistake, Callio… if the Moors catch you, not only will they take away all your loot, they’ll also take you! They’ll sell you for a slave!”

“I’ll escape!” But Callio had turned pale.

“Maybe,” Matt said, “but you’ll be poor again. What good will all these things do you then?”

“Do not tell me to leave them!” the poor thief wailed in agony. “They’re all I have, all I’ve ever had! No woman would want me because I was too poor and couldn’t earn money for her! No woman, no children, no home! No friends, because they all think I’m too small and weak to be worth respect! This is the first time in my life that I’ve ever had anything, anything at all!”

Matt’s heart went out to the man.

So did Papa’s. All sympathy, he said, “If they catch you, though, you’ll have nothing again, and the more you collect, the slower you’ll go.”

“Yes,” Matt agreed. “They’re bound to catch you sooner or later. A cartload of miscellaneous household goods isn’t worth your hands… or your life.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” Callio wailed. “If I had found any gems or gold or other small things of great value, I could tear myself away from these… but I’ve found nothing of that sort, nothing! No jewels, no coins, no plate! The selfish pigs took it all with them! I haven’t found anything really valuable, not anything at all! Don’t deny me this little bit, at least!”

“The more you have, the more you become a target for some bigger thief, or even a band of them,” Matt warned.

“Don’t tell me that!” Callio cried in an agony of apprehension. “They’ll do it, I know they’ll do it! Big burly brutes! Overbearing ogres! Shambling giants! They’ll take everything from me if they see I have anything! They’ve done it before and they’ll do it again! But I can’t just leave it all! You want me to give it up so nobody can steal it from me? What good will that do?”

“Not a whole lot,” Matt admitted, “but you don’t have to give it up forever… just for a little while.”

Callio stared. “What? That’s ridiculous! How can I give it up for a while, but have it when I want it?”

“Well, maybe not the instant you want it.” Somehow, Matt’s main concern for the little thief was to get him out of the bind his greed had gotten him into.

Papa nodded, catching on. “You can bury it. Haven’t you ever heard of buried treasure?”

“Bury it?” Callio stared. “Well… yes, but… that’s only for real treasure, I mean, gold and jewels and such!”

“But you just told us that if you’d found anything like that, you wouldn’t need to haul all this stuff with you,” Matt said patiently.

“Well… yes, but… that’s because you can carry jewels with you, without hauling a whole cart!”

“Then why do you think people buried their gems?” Papa asked.

Matt nodded. “It was because they were going into country where there were a lot of robbers… or because war was coming.”

Callio looked around wide-eyed. “You mean the townsfolk might have buried their treasures?”

“I doubt that,” Matt said.

Papa nodded. “They wouldn’t have had all that much, any of these commoners… except a few rich merchants, and I don’t doubt they hired small armies to guard their goods as they moved north to join the king.”

“Right.” Matt nodded. “No treasure to be found here… unless you bury it.”

“Me? Bury my things? But how could I do without them?” Nevertheless, Callio’s gaze strayed to the loaded cart.

“You’d know where they were, and you could come back when you’d managed to stea… uh, stake yourself to a horse or two, to do your pulling for you.” Matt didn’t believe for a second that the petty thief would ever manage to steal a whole horse. “But what if I forget where I buried them?” Callio wailed “Draw yourself a map,” Papa suggested “Three maps… this is too big a load to bury in a single hole.”

“But the wood, the feather beds! They’ll rot!”

“You won’t be leaving them that long.” At least, Matt hoped this whole conflict would be tidied up within the month. “Then, too, this is the countryside of La Mancha,” Papa said “It is very dry here, not much water in the ground.”

“It rains, though,” Callio protested weakly. “Not very often, but it rains “

Matt shrugged. “So lay planks on top of the hole, a foot below the surface… and a second layer crosswise, to keep out the damp better.”

“It could work.” Callio’s gaze strayed to the cart.

“Sure it could!” Matt said heartily. “Then every time your cart gets full, you just bury the load again.”

“I could, I could indeed.” Callio gazed at his cart, nodding, lost in thought. Suddenly he turned on Matt.

“Why should you care, though? What do you expect to get out of this?”

“Me? Nothing,” Matt said with contempt. “Just the satisfaction of helping a fellow creature.” He started to climb up to Stegoman’s back. “Come on, Papa. No point in staying where we’re not appreciated.”

“No, wait!” Callio called out, hand upraised. “I have waited long enough, morsel,” Stegoman rumbled.

“Wizards, mount!”

But Papa turned to the thief before he boarded “What is it, then?”

“I thank you,” Callio said lamely. After all, there wasn’t really much more he could say. “Glad to help “

Matt settled in among Stegoman’s plates. “There is great satisfaction in having given even this small advice,” Papa assured Callio. The thief eyed him peculiarly. “You have a strange notion of pleasure.”

“I must, or I would never have become a teacher,” Papa told him. “Try it sometime. You may find that helping others is more rewarding than robbing them.” He gave Callio a parting smile, then climbed aboard the dragon. Stegoman ran away from Callio, huge wings beating, and climbed into the air. He banked around man and cart once, gaining altitude, then arrowed away toward the windmill… but that one circling was enough for them all to see Callio pulling a shovel from his cart and beginning to dig.

The owner of the mill, as it turned out had been ingenious, he had built over a well, and connected the sails to a windlass that pulled a chain of buckets. It took Papa only a few minutes to figure out how to put the contraption into gear, and the sails pumped him a tank full of water. They put the hams in to soak while Stegoman went hunting for stray mavericks, but it was a comfort to know that even if he didn’t find any, he was assured of a full belly in the morning. Meanwhile, Matt scrounged up a couple of sacks of meal that the miller had apparently overlooked on his way out, lit a fire on the hearth, found a cracked skillet that the family hadn’t thought worth taking along, and managed a reasonable facsimile of tortillas to go with their salt beef stew. They were just about to sit down when there was a knock at the door.

They traded glances of puzzled alarm, then Matt stood up and slipped toward the door, drawing his sword, while Papa called out, “Yes?”

“Shelter, gentles, I pray you!” called a voice they knew even though it was muffled by oak. Matt relaxed, sheathing his sword, and opened the door to find a dirty thief, sagging with weariness. “I think there will be rain,” he said, “and I’d liefer have a better roof over me than the bottom of my cart.”

“Good thought.” Matt waved him in, touching his wallet as the thief passed. He had a notion he was going to have to guard it closely. He barred the door and turned to find Papa on his feet, beckoning

Callio to a seat by the fire. “Welcome, welcome indeed!”

“I… I thank you.” Callio sat down on a rough wooden chair, but his eyes and his nose turned automatically to the fire and the cooking pot. “Surely you must share our dinner!” Papa told him. “It is rough fare, but travelers cannot be epicures. Matthew, a bowl for our friend?”

Matt pulled the spare bowl from his pack and filled it with stew. Callio accepted it with a sigh. “You are friends indeed, for the sky does indeed look like rain, and my things would have been soaked if I hadn’t buried them as you said!”

“No trouble finding planks, then?” Matt asked. “None at all… I’d found some near a sawmill, solid oak, beautifully grained, and even some sailcloth for mending another mill. The boards were part of my treasure, and I covered them with the canvas.”

“Well, that oughta do it.” Matt settled on the center chair and picked up his bowl again. “Hey, don’t burn your throat!”

“I shall try not to.” Callio picked a strip of meat out on the point of his knife and blew on it to cool it.

“But I am so very hungry!”

“Yes… the refugees seem to have been bound and determined not to leave any food for the invading army,” Matt said, frowning. Of course, Callio couldn’t bring himself to eat any of his loot. Callio nodded. “I’ve never seen a countryside so stripped of anything that could be eaten.” He tucked the meat into his mouth and chewed. Matt agreed “Good thing it’s so early in spring, and the crops scarcely sprouting, or the farmers would probably have burned their fields as they retreated.”

“What a waste,” Callio mumbled around his meat. “War always has a bad effect on crop yield,” Papa said. Callio swallowed heavily and asked nervously, “What of the dragon?”

“Oh, he’ll be okay,” Matt said. “He’ll find something to eat, even if it’s only a mountain goat… but if it really does rain, he’ll find a cave for the night.”

“He will not come back to sleep in the mill?” Callio asked, relieved. Matt shook his head. “Can’t get him through the doorway. He might try the stables back there in town, especially if they left a horse or two… but he won’t come back here until morning.”

“A lonely night for him,” Callio sighed. “He’s used to it,” Matt said. “Dragons are basically solitary creatures. Oh, they like company, but they don’t feel they have to have a whole herd around them.”

“Unlike people?” Papa asked, smiling. “We do seem to be social creatures,” Matt said. “Maybe that’s why empty towns are so depressing.”

“Places where the flock used to be, but is no longer?” Papa nodded. “There is sense to that.”

Thinking of the emptiness of the land loosed a tide of melancholy. Matt laid down his empty bowl and glowered into the fire. “Haven’t done much, have we? Most of Ibile is still a conquered Moorish province, its people fled to rally to their king.”

“True, but the Mahdi isn’t marching against that king yet,” Papa protested. “He has only mounted a diversion, then turned to camp by the Pyrenees.”

“Only because he’s waiting to fall on my wife as she comes out of the mountains with every soldier she’s got!”

Callio stared, wide-eyed and chewing, wondering what he’d wandered into.

“Meanwhile, Bordestang is besieged, and I’ve left my poor little mother to try to defend it!”

“Your ‘poor little mother’ is a holy terror, if she is angered,” Papa reminded, “and this war is scarcely begun. Be of good cheer, my son… it is not that you have lost, but that you have only begun to fight.”

Papa clapped him on the shoulder. “You must not blame yourself when you have done nothing to deserve it.”

“I know,” Matt mumbled, but he stared into the fire anyway, feeling the melancholy descend further.

“There is no cause for such darkness of the heart,” Papa said softly, “and this mood has come very suddenly, suspiciously so. Might it not be a spell cast by an enemy?”

“Yes, it could!” Matt sat bolt upright, staring as though he’d never seen flames before. “Try to bury me under depression, will he? We’ll see how far he gets with that!”

They talked for half an hour longer, Matt trying very hard to be cheerful… but when he lay down, sorrow still tugged at his heart, and with it, fear. As his eyes closed, he couldn’t stave off the feeling of failure.

Okay, so he was up against insurmountable odds… but even so, he had to be doing awfully poorly if the only ally he could find was a thief too inept to make a peacetime living, and too insecure to bury his loot when the countryside was deserted. So it wasn’t surprising that, when his eyes did close, he should dream of an empty land, bone-dry and breathless, under a lowering sky that darkened and deepened with a feeling of doom about to fall, the sun searing mercilessly in front of that purpling background.

Maybe it wasn’t even surprising that bare bones should begin to rise from that dead land, rise and pull themselves together, until a nightmarish horde of skeletons came plodding toward Matt, skeletons of extinct rhinoceroses, chalicotheres, giant lizards, and even a few Neanderthals.

We are the dead they seemed to chant. We are what you shall become very soon. Welcome among us, for you shall never leave. Matt screamed denial inside his head, but he couldn’t let the sound out, couldn’t utter, because he didn’t seem to have a body, was only a point of consciousness that the skeletons approached with a steady and inexorable tread. Then a shout sounded behind him, hooves beat a tattoo, and an armored figure on a spavined horse sped past him. A broken, poorly mended lance dropped down. The army of skeletons all turned their plodding gait toward the horseman, their very postures threatening to grind him beneath their hooves, their feet… but the broken lance touched the first bony mastodon, and it exploded into a shower of ivory.

The horseman swerved, riding a great circle through the horde, and wherever his lance touched, bones shot into the air to fall as they had been before. Matt saw them. Then out he came at a wobbling gallop, turned his nag for another charge… and the half of the horde that was left turned and fled, bones clanking and clacking in their hurry. One skeleton, though, somehow flew with no skin… its structure showed it to be a pterodactyl. It banked, turning back, and struck at the knight with a cawing shriek that extended into the sound of nails on glass as it flew apart, its bones raining down… but the knight swayed in the saddle.

Quicker hooves sounded, and a short, chubby man on a donkey galloped past Matt’s viewpoint to pull up beside the swaybacked nag. The knight leaned and fell, his brazen wide-brimmed helmet flying away, but the chubby man caught him and somehow bore up under the weight of his armor. With the helmet gone, Matt could see that the knight’s hair was snowy white. He muttered his thanks to his squire and clambered back into the saddle. The squire turned the donkey and trotted after the helmet, and the knight turned to Matt. “You need not thank me, senor… it is I who must thank you, for an opportunity to strike a blow for Right and Goodness.”

Now Matt could see his face clearly. He was old and wrinkled, his beard sparse and patchy, his armor dented and rusty… but his eyes were young, and alight with zeal. “No, it is I who must thank you, milord.” He tried to bow. “You have saved me when fear and self-doubt had paralyzed me.”

“Never doubt yourself,” the old knight said sternly, jamming his lance into its stirrup. “It you fight for Right and Good, your arm will always be strong, your sword keen! You may be struck down, but you shall rise again! You may lose the battles, but you shall win the war!”

And in Ibile rather than Spain, Matt reflected, the old cavalier was probably right. But how had a fictitious character from his own universe come to be in this one? He was in Matt’s dream, of course. No doubt Matt had brought him along, unknowing, waiting to be needed… as he surely had been now. The idea seemed somehow wrong, but it would do for the time being.

“Never fear,” the old knight counseled, “or rather, pay no attention to your fears. No man can help being afraid now and again, but he can take that fear as a blow struck against him, and parry it, block it, let it serve only to inspire him to strike back with greater strength, to bend his mind more sharply to outwitting the enemy…

“Yes, my lord.” Matt felt humbled and exalted at the same time. “You must never cease to strive,” the old knight told him. “The good fight is worth fighting for itself, even if one loses.” A sudden grin broke the old leathery countenance into wrinkles of delight. “Besides, one always might win.”

“As I am sure you will.” Inspiration struck. “Could I ask you to help me, my lord? The paynim strike against the heart of Ibile, even to the mountains, even to the rivers of the north! The rightful king gathers his people there to make one last stand. With your arm to aid us, we might yet prevail!”

“A quest!” the old knight cried joyfully, and turned to his squire, who came riding up with the brass helmet. “Old friend, once again we ride on a quest!”

The squire grinned from ear to ear. “More misadventures!” He handed the helmet up to his knight. The old knight clapped it on his head and turned back to Matt. “Be assured that we shall aid, senor… if we can only think how!”

“I am sure that you shall, my lord,” Matt said, grinning. “You never fail to be inspired with new blows to strike against the enemies of Right!”

“I shall ride through men’s dreams, I shall inspire women to esteem themselves!” The broken lance suddenly dipped, and Matt tried to flinch away, but its tip touched him somehow. Fear and melancholy vanished as the old knight intoned, “You, too, must believe in your own worth! The world falters, the world totters, and it is you who must brace it up! No, do not flinch away in false modesty, for I know you are equal to this task!” Then the old knight’s eyes seemed to expand, everything outside them became indistinct, and the rusty voice echoed in Matt’s head. “Awake now, freed from self-doubt and feelings of doom impending! Shoulder the world, and be glad of your purpose!” The slight pressure vanished, and Matt knew the lance had lifted, but the light old eyes still commanded every iota of his attention as the old knight intoned, “Awaken! Awaken in every fiber of your being, awaken in hope and in zeal!”

Then the light eyes expanded still further till they were all that Matt could see, they turned blue, the pale blue of earliest dawn, a paleness that became tinged with rose at one side, tinged then swept with rays of gold, and Matt blinked, realizing that he was staring at the morning sky through the window of the mill, and that somehow the night had ended. He levered himself up on one elbow and saw the campfire, bright and smokeless, with Papa watching a steaming bucket and toasting wheat cakes in the cracked skillet. He looked up, anxious, concerned “Good morning, my son.”

Matt blinked, then smiled “Good morning, my father.”

The concern lightened a little, and Papa asked, “Have you found a cure for your melancholy?”

Matt looked about him, and was amazed that the inside of the mill looked so bright, so golden. He was filled with elation, with a bubbling enthusiasm. He remembered the Mahdi, the towering djinn, the acres and acres of Moorish troops… but somehow he was sure that all these things would pass, that he and his family, and all the good folk of Ibile and Merovence, would still be standing and triumphant when they did. He turned back to Papa, grinning “No. The cure found me.”

Unfortunately, the world wasn’t the only thing that was still with them… so was Callio. Papa generously slid pancakes onto the thief’s plate… he had saved one of his own, as well as a cup and spoon, out of his loot, the three were only wooden, so their owners hadn’t bothered taking them along. But when they had finished breakfast, washed their tableware, drowned the fire, and started hauling the hams out of the water trough and into the sunlight, Callio bent to help with a will. “Why do we set them outside? Ought we not to put them in my cart, so we can take them with us?”

“We’re not going far,” Matt told him, and they went back for a second load. When they finished hauling, Callio was still tagging merrily along.

“I think we have gained a mascot,” Papa muttered, not entirely happily.

“Don’t worry,” Matt muttered back out of the corner of his mouth. “He’s bound to take off when he sees Stegoman again “

“I think the dragon has seen us.” Papa nodded at the sky. There, gilded by the morning rays, soared a creature that might have been an eagle, if it hadn’t been so long-necked. Callio came up with them, following their gazes, interested. “Is it a swan?”

“A little larger than that,” Matt explained “He just looks smaller because he’s so far away.”

Callio’s eyes widened, and dread began to show. He backed away as the flyer banked, sliding lower and lower in a spiral, swelling into the form of a dragon, and Stegoman landed in a shower of dust. “Good morning, High Rider,” Matt said with a grin… a grin because he’d noticed that Callio was no longer beside him. “How was the hunting?”

“I found a mountain goat just before the light left the hilltops,” Stegoman grumbled. “He was small and tough. I am hungry, Matthew.”

“Help yourself.” Matt gestured at the hams then stepped back. Stegoman stepped forward, lowering his head, and started gulping. Five minutes later, he sighed and nodded. “Well done. I shall be content for the day now. Will you fetch your packs and mount?”

“We’ll be glad to,” Matt said. “Thanks for the invitation.”

They went back inside the mill, and Matt found himself suddenly wondering if their belongings would be where they’d left them… but he did Callio an injustice, everything was there. They left the mill with their packs on their backs, then realized that their footsteps had developed an odd echo.