The Lion of Farside

" ^ "

After breakfast I said goodbye to folks. A little bit dishonestly, letting them think I'd be going from the farm to Ferny Cove, in case Sarkia got ideas. Then I drove Socks and the buggy back to the farm, where I packed stuff to take with me-not very much-and went over things with the foreman and steward. I spent the night in our old bedroom; had a little spate of grief, but it passed. Then, early the next morning, rode north on Hog to the Valley Highway and headed west, taking neither remount nor pack horse. Just some silver so I could sleep at inns, and some gold coins about the size of double eagles to use on Farside, and to pay Arbel for the training I wanted. Being alone, and not caring to sit around a potroom in the evening, I generally rode late. If I didn't come to an inn, I slept in a barn. I didn't trouble to count the days.

The house looked like it had when I'd left Wolf Springs. Lamplight shone through the cracks between the shutters, and thin smoke rose from three of the chimneys, flattening out above the roof in a layer that by moonlight looked like cotton gauze. Getting down off Hog, I knocked at the door.

It was Hauser that opened it. He stood there for a minute with his mouth open, then grinned, stepped outside, and shook my hand. For a minute I thought he was going to hug me! "Macurdy!" he said. "What brings you here? I've been picturing you in a manor somewhere, or a palace! Come in!"

"I'll stable my horse first," I said. He said he'd do it, but I said I'd better, Hog being touchy with strangers. In the horse shed, I lit the lamp with my finger, hung up Hog's tack, and curried him three-four minutes, which was plenty, given the winter weather. Then I went back to the house.

I'd hardly knocked again before Hauser opened the door. Arbel was standing with him, and gave me one of his long looks. Then he grinned bigger than I'd ever seen him before; grins aren't Arbel's specialty. "So," he said, "the hero of Wolf Springs returns. It's good to see you, Macurdy." He led us to his parlor and we all three sat down. "What brings you back?"

He'd called me the hero of Wolf Springs! And his aura said he was being sarcastic! "I'm going back to Farside," I told him, "and Oz wasn't a whole lot farther than Ferny Cove. Besides, I was in Oztown twice, getting ready for the war, and never got to Wolf Springs to apologize or thank you. You did a lot for me, and I've always felt bad about leaving Oz the way I did. It must have hurt your reputation. Wolf Springs' too."

Arbel laughed. "Hurt my reputation? You became famous in Oz as the man who climbed a tree to drive a jaguar out. The man who beat up half the House of Heroes, or at least a number of them, including a sergeant famous as a brawler, and rode off with the best looking, most daring and admired spear maiden in Oz. And then became really famous for the war."

My jaw must have been down on my chest when he finished, but it didn't stay there long, because the next thing he said was, "Where is your spear maiden?"

I didn't tell him flat out; I led into it. "She and I were leaders in the rebellion that got Pavo crowned king," I said, "and she was with me all the way through the war. She was a colonel, wounded at the Battle of Ternass. Then we got married. She died about three weeks ago. Drowned." I told him how it happened, how Blue Wing had fetched me-the whole thing except how terrible I'd felt. "We burned her body outside the palace," I finished. "The king and queen were there, and a couple thousand veterans of the war. Not to mention most of Teklapori. She was well-known and much admired."

Arbel shook his head, looking sober. "A grievous loss, Macurdy," he said. "I can see the scar. I can also see you've healed." None of us said anything more right away. Then he smiled a little. "You've gotten a reputation as a wizard, too. You killed the evil Quaie with a ball of fire…"

My eyes must have bugged out. "How did you hear about that?" I asked.

"The story spread through the empire and Marches; merchants carried it from there. It reached Oz this winter. And our troops brought home other stories. Perhaps exaggerated."

"Probably." It was an invitation to tell him stories, and I would before I left, but not just then. "You asked what brought me here. I told you part of it, but there's more." I stopped then. I'd been taking it for granted he'd say yes. "If you'll change your mind," I went on, "and teach me more of the shaman's profession, mainly the healing skills, I'd like to try them on Farside. I'll be glad to pay you for your trouble."

He laughed out loud. "But you're not sure I will, because I sent you to the militia. Well. I'll be happy to. But first, tell me what magicks you've demonstrated since I saw you last."

I did, not leaving out about my new teeth, though I could hardly take credit for them. It'd been Varia's spells, and from there, my jaws had taken over. I told him the luck I'd had with the healing he'd taught me, him and Omara, and about learning to keep myself warm. And about looking into the eye holes in that skull on the headwaters of the Tuliptree; to me that was bigger magic than the way I'd killed Quaie. "I guess when I was here before," I said, "I wasn't really ready to learn much."

Arbel laughed, then we sat around and talked about different things. He'd found an apprentice he liked-a twelve-year-old girl with a lot of talent, who went home before supper. That was the disadvantage of having a young girl as an apprentice, he said; you couldn't very well keep them around in the evening. Folks might get the wrong idea.

Ozians are pretty free and easy, but they don't put up with a man humping children. The punishment is, they tie you up, set you astraddle of a log, nail your cod to it, stack wood around you, and put a dull knife in your free hand. Then they light the wood. If you saw off your cod, you're a castrate, and a slave into the bargain. If you don't, you won't suffer very long, but it might seem like it.

Hauser wasn't talking, just listening, and anyway, his face, and the way he sat, and his aura all told me he was looking in, not out. It came to me that what I'd said about going back to Farside must have hit him hard. I could go because I had ylvin blood, and talent, and some training, while he didn't and couldn't.

While I was at it, I told them about other magicks I'd seen, like Kittul Kendersson "blessing" my sword, and weaving a spell so the dead dwarves wouldn't swell and stink. And about the Sisters that went with the army to heal wounds, and Quaie's shock fingers he'd used on me.

I also told him what Omara said about keeping warm by drawing heat from what she called the "Web of the World," and the dangers in learning it. That really got Arbel's interest. He said he was going to try working it out for himself.

He also told me that magic misused, even accidentally, kicked back on the magician sooner or later, and that big magic was at least as dangerous to the user as to anyone else. There'd been folks who'd set out to develop really big powers, but they died in the process.

After a while it got late, and Arbel put me up in a small guest room with a clean straw sack on the bed. I stripped, put on my nightshirt and lay down, wishing Omara would come through the door like she had at the palace. How I felt about her wasn't anything like I'd felt about Varia or Melody, but I liked her a lot. She was a good person, and just then I was lonesome, in spite of being in the same house with two old friends, and another probably perched on the roof beside a chimney.

I thought about Hauser, too. I could stay in Yuulith and be a bigshot if I wanted, in Tekalos or at the Cloister, and probably in Oz or other places. Or be Wollerda's ambassador at Duinarog. But instead I was going back to Farside, to the farm. While Hauser could probably be a professor on Farside, but in Oz he was a slave. Couldn't go back, even if they'd let him.

Then I got thinking about the dangers Arbel had mentioned in big powerful magicks, and told myself I better be careful with fireballs. Sarkia was supposed to have practiced magic for two hundred years and stayed young and healthy. And was only now declining; something I wouldn't mention to Arbel. But from what I'd heard about Ferny Cove, from some Kormehri and from Sarkia herself, she hadn't used magicks for weapons, only for protection-confusion spells, invisibility spells, spells to raise fogs and mists. And tracking magic. Things like that. Maybe magicks like those didn't kick back on a person.

What with all the thoughts running through my head, I must have laid there an hour before I got to sleep.

The next day my lessons started. Like before, Arbel said I should do other stuff too, to keep grounded, and offered to get a slave girl sent in for me once a week, like he did for himself. I was tempted, but instead, for a few mornings, I saddled up Hog and rode around the countryside a couple hours. Then I took a notion to train with Isherhohm's militia veterans on Six-Day afternoons, for the exercise and to keep my hand in. They'd nearly all of them been in the war, and I'd been the commander, but Isherhohm treated me like just another veteran.

The morning after the first workout, I was sore all over, really sore! I'd gone soft! Never thought that could happen to me. So I started taking an ax and trotting out to the woods in the morning, where I'd cut logs and firewood for a couple hours.

I'd figured Blue Wing had come along mainly to see someone go through a gate, but he told me it was because Melody and I had gotten to be his best friends, and now she was gone, and pretty soon I'd be. Whatever. In Oz he didn't hang around close all that much, any more than he had on the farm. He even flew west once to visit Maikel. Anyway I set it up with the local butcher to keep him supplied with cutting scraps that otherwise would have gone to the hogs or the dogs. Most of our talking got done in the woods, where he'd drop in on me pretty often. But he'd be gone days at a time.

Cutting wood, I'd take a few minutes every day to practice throwing the ax at a tree. And the knife Arbel gave me when I went off to the Heroes. Stuck them better than ever, which made me wonder if magic played any part in it.

Whatever. Trotting and chopping every day made me feel good; toughened me and gave me more energy. And the lessons went really well, a lot better and faster than when Arbel had tried teaching me before. My very first day back, he'd said I was already better than lots of shamans-a late starter but fast learner. Kerin, his real apprentice, was bright and sharp, and already getting tall, but kid-skinny. And dark, with big, bright, dark eyes, a sharp curved nose like an Aye-rab, and a little narrow mouth. Lots of times he'd just give her something to do and leave her to do it, while he worked with me. I felt a little awkward about that, but he said he had years to work with her, while I wanted to be on my way. No later than Four-Month, I'd told him. Part of what he had Kerin doing was preparing dried herbs for him; and practicing to read and write, which lots of Ozians could barely do; and practicing ceremonial magic that could be used to bring rain or cancel curses-things like that. I didn't figure to learn either one; I didn't much believe in curses or rain spells. Arbel didn't seem to make much of them either, but if Ozians did, I suppose he had to go through the motions.

He took a different approach with me than before. I'd told him how Varia had taught me meditation, which she'd set me up for early on by spelling me. So he tried teaching me stuff when I was in a meditation trance, and liked how it worked. Better than just spelling me, he said, because under a spell you're less doing than being done to, while in a meditation trance you did it yourself. A matter of self-responsibility, he said.

Right from the start I did a fair job of healing injuries. Arbel was famous for his healing, and folks came or got brought to him from miles around. One guy he worked with me on had split his foot with an ax, and another'd got slashed in a knife fight, and a little girl had fallen in her ma's cookfire. Mostly what he did was refine, and strengthen quite a bit, what I could already do for wounds like those. Taught me to focus better.

Except for the little girl that fell in the fire: I didn't know anything about healing burns; all I could have done was use a sort of general spell that would give relief from the pain, and speed the healing some. He showed me things just for burns.

Where I was weakest was in healing the sick. He had different spells for different sicknesses. Some sickness, he told me, comes from the mind. Asthma was sort of like that. Some folks could get asthma from their mind alone. Others were allergic to something-hay more often than not-but get them away from the hay, they'd keep the asthma for hours or days, or even longer, because of something in their mind that held it there. It could even kill them. When someone got asthma from hay, they could come to him and he'd treat the mind, and the asthma would quit right away, instead of hanging on. After that they could still get asthma from hay, but usually, take them away from the hay, and the asthma was gone in minutes. Commonly rashes disappeared in minutes too, at least the itching eased, and the rash would almost always be gone within the day. Rheumatism might go just as quick, or take a few days, or it could hang on.

He even showed me how to make tumors shrink up and disappear. That didn't always work either, but sometimes it did, and sometimes the tumor didn't come back. And when someone got brought in that had what I'd call pneumonia, he couldn't make it go away right off, but usually they'd feel better right away, and well, after a night's sleep. They'd be back working in two or three days, instead of a couple weeks.

Like anything else, what he did had its limits. Sometimes someone wasn't helped at all-everyone dies sooner or later-and he said the shaman who couldn't live with that had better quit and go to farming, for peace of mind. For me, not being perfect wouldn't be any problem; I'd been doing it all my life.

It was a mild sunny morning in Three-Month when I met Vulkan. Or when Vulkan found me. I'd felled a tree and was chopping logs out of it when I heard Blue Wing yelling from way up high, I couldn't tell what. Then I felt someone looking at me-someone of power-and turned around. And almost shit myself! There was a BIG boar hog standing between two trees watching me. Not that he looked like any hog I'd ever seen, not even a razorback. I could tell he was a hog, but for size he reminded me more of a shorthorn bull, a good four feet high at his humped shoulders. He had a thick coat of bristly hair, dark gray on the sides and nearly black along the back. His tusks looked like ivory sickle blades, and I'd judge his weight at better than half a ton. There was no doubt at all that were he to meet a bear in the woods, that bear would go up a tree quick as a wink, crying for its mama.

I should have been scared to death, but after the first shock I wasn't; somehow I knew he wasn't there to rip me up. So I stepped onto the log I'd just cut, squatted there and looked at him. hSo you are the one.h

His "voice" was deep and hollow, like someone talking with an empty milk pail over his head, but somehow I knew there wasn't really any sound to it-that the words had come into my head without him ever speaking. "Could be," I said. "It depends on who the one's supposed to be." That amused him; I could feel it. "Sounds as if you're looking for someone in particular," I went on. "What brings you?" hAn urge. The purpose will no doubt unfold itself for us in good time.h His hooves, the only dainty thing about him, brought him a few steps closer. hYour aura marks you as someone of power,h he said. hA ruler and magician.h

He had an aura too, all animals do, but with all that hog to look at, I'd paid it no attention. Now I did. It wasn't what I think of as an animal aura. More like yours or mine or Blue Wing's, but different. His spirit aura showed at least as much power as that giant body. I wondered if all great boars were like him, and he answered my question without my putting it into words. hWe are alike, they and I, in being magicians, and in essence, rulers. And in various other respects. But still we vary one from the other, though less than humans do.h

Then he just stood there. It seemed like if he'd come looking for me, it was up to him to lead the conversation. But if he didn't know why he'd come, maybe I ought to keep things going till he remembered or figured it out, or decided to leave. "My name's Macurdy," I told him. "What's yours?"

He didn't answer for a minute. Then, hYou may call me Vulkan,h he said. hWe do not have names, but I like that one.h

After another half minute with neither of us saying anything, I tried something else. "From what I've heard, you folks eat animals, and I've seen where one of you rooted up skunk-cabbage and ate it. But big as you are, it must take a lot to keep you fed. Seems like you'd leave more sign around than you do." hWe are quite rare, and at any rate do not eat a great deal; we draw our energy from the Web of the World, as you think of it. But as yours do, our bodies require certain substances, minerals for example, though not in large quantities. Thus we must eat, but not nearly in proportion to our size. hAnd now I begin to see-begin to-why I was drawn to speak with you. You are from Farside, and… Ah yes, Macurdy! Of course. And you plan to leave Yuulith, to return whence you came.h

How could he have known that? Unless he read it in my mind. Or was I imagining things? No, he was there all right. I'd seen enough else strange in Yuulith that I wasn't going to doubt my eyes. And Blue Wing must have seen him; that must have been what got him all excited. It seemed like if any of this was imaginary, it was his "talking" to me. So far he hadn't moved, except early when he'd come a few steps closer, and to flick his little fly-whisk tail a few times. Hadn't even moved his mouth. But his aura and eyes told of power way beyond anything the Sisters had shown me.

I decided to ask him questions-see what he'd say. "I've heard that all of you are boars," I said, "that there aren't any sows of your kind. Is that true?" hBoars? Let us simply say you heard correctly: there are no sows.h

"Well then, uh, who births you?" hWe are not born in the usual sense. We come from the inbetween, one might say. Inaccurately, of course.h

I didn't know what to make of that. "How could you come to be, without a sow to birth you?"

He chuckled again inside my head. hThe All-Spirit provides us with bodies. There is no sexuality among us.h

"But then-" He seemed to be saying they got born without any breeding taking place, or any sow giving birth. I let that be. Instead I asked him: "How did you get to Yuulith from the inbetween?" Whatever that was. hWe do not use gates. We once were humans, and enter Yuulith in the spirit, from the place of rest and recovery. We receive our bodies here. We are old souls, who have lived out the normal prerequisites for permanent retirement from the choices and lessons of life. And should have graduated, you might say. But instead have been sent here as volunteers, to prepare ourselves for some purpose we will remember, or discover, when it is time.h

I had no idea at all what to ask next. I just looked at him, maybe eleven, twelve hundred pounds of bone, muscle, and tusks, roaming around the back country rooting up skunk-cabbage and eating wild game, and maybe from time to time somebody's calf. All to prepare himself for he didn't know what. hAnd you are returning to Farside,h he said. hWell. In time, if you live, you will return here. I will find you then, for I sense we have things to do together.h

I just stared. hAnd now I will grant you a favor. As a sign.h

"A favor?" hTomorrow you will know the favor you want. It will be foremost in your mind when you waken. When you know, I will know, even at a distance. And whatever it is, it will be yours.h

Then, without another word, he turned and trotted off.

I never did go home for my day's lesson from Arbel. Instead I sheathed my ax and hiked around in the woods, a thousand thoughts running through my head, not to mention the questions Blue Wing asked. He'd lit in a tree to watch and listen, but hadn't heard any of what Vulkan thought to me, though he'd heard me talking to Vulkan, of course.

Part of what I thought about was what favor I'd get. Could Vulkan give me Melody back? Or Varia, with her and Cyncaidh's blessing? What would be on my mind when I woke up in the morning? Could he really do it?

Along toward evening my mind settled out, and I headed back for Arbel's. I told him about meeting Vulkan, and he was impressed, but I didn't mention the promised favor. Didn't feel ready to. Besides, having spent most of the day hiking in the woods, talking in a warm room made me drowsy. I excused myself, went to bed, and fell straight to sleep, like a stone.

44: Farewell to Yuulith