The Lion of Farside

" ^ "

Curtis Macurdy hiked up the slope through deepening dusk. He'd lost the conjure woman's footpath, but it wasn't that which worried him. On a hill like Injun Knob, you couldn't miss the top. If you kept going uphill, you got there.

He wore a sheepskin jacket tied round his waist by the sleeves; he'd want it later to keep warm with, sitting or lying on the ground waiting for midnight. Just now, though, sweat slicked his forehead and he breathed deeply, not entirely from climbing. For there was fear, not of the gate, but that there would be no gate. That Varia was gone beyond finding, beyond recovery. It had been a month already. What might have happened to her in that month? Given how Idri hated her.

The fear had been kindled the night before, when he'd hiked that same slope, and spent the night on top in mists and drizzles, sitting, standing, dozing on the wet ground. And shivering despite the heavy jacket he'd paid two dollars for secondhand. When dawn had come with no gate, he'd hiked back down and asked the old conjure woman what had gone wrong. She'd cackled her brittle laugh and said he'd come the wrong night; come again the next.

The calendar in the sawmill had been for 1929, useless for 1930, so he'd judged by how the moon looked the night before: nearly full. When she'd told him it was the next night, he'd asked to see her calendar. She'd laughed at that, too. "Ain't got no calendar," she'd said. "Know in my bones when the moon is full."

In Washington County, every kitchen had a calendar, and every calendar the phases of the moon. Lots of people planted, castrated pigs, and dehorned calves by the phases of the moon.

When he reached the top of Injun Knob this second try, it was dusk, the sky clear and the moon already up, its round fullness reassuring. After a night as wakeful as the one before, he expected to fall asleep nearly as soon as he sat down. But he sat anyway, almost exactly on the top, leaning against the largest tree available, a scrubby shortleaf pine. After a few minutes, he got up and put on his jacket, then sat back down. He felt ready for whatever happened-anything except nothing at all. A Smith amp; Wesson.44 hung on his belt, and a Winchester.45-70 buffalo gun lay across his lap, its thick octagonal barrel feeling heavy as a Model-T axle. Spare shells for both guns were buttoned in his jacket pockets.

The moonlight played tricks with his vision. Things moved in the shadows, images formed and shifted. And when his eyelids slid shut, Varia met him in a garden, a garden surrounded by a palisade like the pioneer forts in his history book. They walked into a house with a windmill by the back porch-it was Will's-and inside were three other Varias. "We're your wives," one of them said, and they pushed him down on a bed and undressed him. He was compliant, but when they pulled his underwear off, there was another set beneath them, and a set beneath them… Then he was on his feet. "Varia," he said, "this isn't going to work. It's got to be just you and me. I like your sisters all right, but…"

"I'm not Varia, I'm Liiset."

He looked around at the others, then back to the first. "No," he said, "you're Varia. Why are you trying to fool me like that?"

She started to cry, and they sat down on a fallen tree by the Sycamore Bend, he with his arms around her. "Honey," he said, "it's not going to work with all four of you. It's not. You're the only one I want." Still weeping, she started to fade out of his arms, less substantial than the transparent Varia back on the farm. "Don't go away!" he cried. "I came all this way to get you back!"

He awoke shouting, lunging to his feet, the heavy buffalo gun clopping against bare bedrock. He didn't notice, his mind still caught up in the dream. Oh God! he thought, don't let it be like that! Then blinking, looked around, breathing hard. It was quiet and peaceful, the full moon shining down between sparse trees. This was still Missouri in the U.S. of A., he was sure of it. Had midnight come and gone? The only directions he knew for certain were up and down. The moon could still be east of south, or… He found the dipper and the pointers, then the Pole Star faint in the moonlight. Not midnight yet; not for a while. He bent, picked up his rifle and sighted on the moon. The sights were undamaged, hadn't struck the rock. With a sigh he turned up his collar, sat back down against the pine, and letting his eyes close again, slept.

With a deep thrumming resonance, the gate spit him out of nightmare, rolling across the ground in bright sunlight. He woke like a frightened tomcat, hair on end, and scrambled staggering to his feet, grabbing for a rifle that wasn't there. So he snatched at his holster, drew the.44, and looked around wild-eyed. Four men stood a little way off, watching him and laughing, talking some foreign lingo he might have heard once before, when Varia and Idri had lashed each other that day in Evansville.

The men started toward him, and bracing his legs against residual dizziness, Macurdy drew his revolver. His wits began to adjust, and he was aware that they carried short spears pointed his way. He pointed the revolver back at them, and when they kept coming, jabbed it in their direction. They stopped eight or ten feet away, spears at the ready. A stride forward and thrust, by any of them, and he'd be meat. One, the leader, said something to him, he had no idea what.

"Stay back," he answered. "I don't want to hurt no one."

The man spoke more sharply, and jabbed the spear at him, its point almost reaching him. Macurdy jumped backward and pulled the trigger-and nothing happened. He felt the hammer release and strike, heard it click, but no shot fired. He pulled again, and again nothing. He knew he'd loaded all six chambers. Staring around, he spied the rifle lying in the grass too far away.

The man had been saying something more. Now the others moved behind Macurdy, who looked at the revolver and swung the cylinder out. From each chamber, a center-fire cartridge peered back at him, two of them indented by the firing pin. The spearmen watched curiously. Reseating the cylinder, he tried again, and once more it clicked, so he slid the weapon back into its holster. Then a spear jabbed his left buttock, and with a yell, Macurdy jumped forward. Once more the leader spoke, beckoning, and Macurdy followed him.

On this side, the gate was in a grassy grove of large old basswood trees. The place looked nothing like Injun Knob; there wasn't even a knoll, a hump. Within a couple of minutes they were out of the woods, crossing open pasture. Several times more the spear jabbed one buttock or the other. Limping now, Macurdy felt blood trickling down the back of both legs. At each jab he jumped, and someone laughed. Glancing over his shoulder, he identified his tormentor, then the leader snapped another order and the jabbing ceased.

The pasture ended at a wide potato field. Macurdy could see a crew of men hoeing some distance away. He trudged between the potato hills, three spearmen spread behind him while their leader walked ahead. Across the field was a considerable village of log buildings.

His captors took him to a small hut, one of numerous surrounded by a twelve-foot palisade. The leader opened the door, and-Macurdy turned abruptly, grabbed the shaft of the spear that had jabbed him, wrenched it free, and doing a horizontal haft stroke, struck his tormentor on the side of the head with the hard hickory shaft. The man staggered sideways and Macurdy was on him, grabbed him by his waistband and his wadmal shirt and slammed him head first against the log wall. Then let him fall, and stood with his hands raised above his own head in submission.

The leader barked rapid words, then strode over to the fallen man, and bending, spoke to him. When the man didn't move, he kicked him, and made some rough comment. Briefly he looked Macurdy in the eye, then grunted an order to the remaining two spearsmen. One jabbed their captive hard in the belly with a spear butt, and Macurdy doubled over. The other struck him above an ear, and he fell to his knees. Moccasin-like boots began kicking him, and he dropped the rest of the way, curling up in a ball. Someone rolled him onto his back astraddle of him, fists striking at his face. Except to shield himself with his forearms, Macurdy made no resistance, and after half a minute, the leader barked another order. Reluctantly, Macurdy's pummeler got to his feet.

Macurdy got slowly to his own. Hands grasped him, frog-marched him to the door of the hut and propelled him inside, where he fell sprawling on the floor. A moment later his sheepskin jacket was thrown in after him.

The floor he lay on was dirt. The only light came through the door, and through foot-square windows, one each in three of the walls. Beneath one of them was a trestle table with a bench on one side and a water bucket. The place smelled of wood smoke and damp ground.

An old man stood in a corner, and after a moment spoke to him-in American! "You're wearing Farside clothes!"

Macurdy got to hands and knees, then stood up, fingers exploring his face gingerly. "My name's Curtis Macurdy," he said. "From Washington County, Indiana originally, but I've been working at Neeley's Corners, in Missouri." He examined the old man, perhaps six feet tall once, now gaunt and somewhat bent, with one shoulder carried lower than the other. And bearded. Macurdy wasn't used to beards, hadn't seen half a dozen beards in his life.

The old man sat down as if weighted by Macurdy's gaze. "Did you just now"-he waved vaguely-"arrive through the, ah, aperture between universes?"

"I came through the gate on Injun Knob."

"How do you feel?"

Macurdy reached back, feeling his behind. "Not too good. That sonofabitch I slammed against the wall had been jabbing my rear end with his spear all the way from the woods." He stepped to the door and peered out. The unconscious man had been taken away, but one of the others had been left on guard. The man scowled at Macurdy, and gestured threateningly with his spear.

"Okay," Macurdy said placatingly in his direction. "Okay. I'm not looking for trouble. I don't doubt you're good to your wife and mother, and all I want to do is get along."

He backed away from the door, bent painfully and picked up his jacket, then straightened and looked the cabin over. It was about twelve by twelve feet, and low roofed. On one wall hung two sleeping pads, long sacks of straw. A pair of split-plank shelves had been built on another. At the windowless end was a mud and stick fireplace; a copper kettle and ladle hanging beside it. Embers glowed beneath a blanket of wood ash.

"And you just arrived?" the man asked. "Just now?"

"Yep."

"You don't feel ill?"

"Nope."

"Remarkable. When my companion and I came through, eight years ago, we arrived desperately ill. I had a fever, cramps, and severe diarrhea for two days. My companion was so ill, I feared for his life. I've been told that two young men died after coming through, some years before we did."

"How about two women and one man, a month ago?"

"What did they look like?"

"The women looked young, like maybe twenty years, one of them pretty, the other one twice as pretty. The prettiest one had red hair, the other reddish brown."

"And green eyes?"

"Green and tilty. What happened to them?"

"I understand they were provided with horses and an escort, and left. I didn't actually see them. They're said to belong to a powerful, um-it translates to Sisterhood, but actually it seems to be some sort of politically influential power group." He paused, curious. "What do you know of them?"

"I'm married to the red-headed one. Her name is Varia. She's a sort of witch, but nothing bad. No deals with the devil or anything."

"I've heard," the man said, "that one arrived manacled."

"That's her. That's my wife. They came and took her away while I was in town. I followed them to get her back, but didn't catch up with them, so I got me a rifle and pistol, and waited till the gate opened again." He drew the.44. "Lost the rifle when I came through, and this didn't work when I tried to use it."

"Ah. Ours didn't either. We'd thought perhaps it was the ammunition, but if yours didn't…"

"Maybe guns don't work in this world."

The old man shook his head. "Our human biochemistry functions properly here. I can't imagine why nitrocellulose wouldn't explode." He sighed, got up carefully and held out a hand. "Excuse my lack of manners. I am, or was, Doctor Edward Talbott, a professor of psychology at the University of Missouri. Just now my profession is slave, and normally at this time of day, I'd be working at some sort of hard labor. Yesterday, however, I was quite ill, with a fever, so I've been given a day to recover. My health has been surprisingly good here, so far as infections are concerned. My problems have been structural: arthritis, actually."

"Mine is that sonofabitch's spear. I don't suppose you'd look at my rear end and see how bad he stabbed me?"

"I can look, but I'm afraid I have nothing for bandages. Just a moment." A fat stub of candle squatted on the table. He took it to the fireplace and lit it at an ember, then came back. Macurdy pulled down his overalls and trousers and bent over a bit. "They don't seem severe," Talbott said. "The bleeding has stopped, though obviously there was quite a bit of it earlier."

Macurdy pulled his trousers up and sat down on the bench, hissing with pain as he did. Then they talked. Macurdy didn't have to pump Talbott; the professor was starved to talk with someone newly from the other side. Mostly he talked about this side; things the newcomer needed to know. He also speculated that the sergeant who'd brought Macurdy in might suspect him of connections with the Sisterhood. "That would account for your arriving functional," he added, "and for his treating you with restraint, despite what you did to one of his men."

He changed the subject. "You referred to your wife as a witch. What does she do that seems 'witchy'? I'm very interested in the paranormal; it's what drew me to Injun Knob."

"What she does ain't any kind of normal," Macurdy answered. "For one thing, when I was five years old, she could pass for twenty. And when I was twenty-five, she could still pass for twenty, just as easy. And she can lay a spell on you, at least if you're willing.

"She says I've got the blood line for magic, too-that my great-great-grampa ran away from the Sisterhood. For a couple of weeks she spelled me about every evening and had me doing drills. To 'open up my powers,' she said. Which might be why I didn't get sick, crossing over. But I never showed much sign of magic powers."

Macurdy got off the bench, wincing again. Going to the candle, he took a cartridge from his pistol and pried the bullet out with his jackknife, planning to toss the powder onto the embers, to see if it flared up. But when he shook the cartridge case over his palm, nothing came out. He peered inside it. Empty! They'd worked when he'd taken target practice. He tried another, then went to his jacket, and from a pocket took one of the large cartridges for the.45-70; it was empty too.

Grunting, he turned to Professor Talbott. "No powder. They were fine, three, four days ago."

Talbott said nothing, just sat staring at his hands, which lay folded on his knees. For a moment Macurdy stood thoughtful, then tossed the brass case into the ashes and sat down again. "You know what you never told me?" he said. "What they call this place. Not Missouri, I don't suppose."

"Oz." Talbott pronounced it Ohz. "Imagine it being spelled as in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, but pronounced with a broad O."

"I remember that book. We had it in school." Macurdy grinned. "I didn't know you could get to Oz from Missouri. Thought you had to start from Kansas.

"Hmm. O-Z, but pronounced like in Ozark. I expected there'd be Ozarks on this side, too; expected to come out on something like Injun Knob."

"There are mountains not very far west of here," Talbott answered, "considerably higher than the Ozarks. You can see them in the daytime. They may be why the forests are so thick. We seem to have an orographically-enhanced summer monsoon here, off what they call the Southern Sea, which I suspect is less landlocked than the Gulf of Mexico. And the winters are wet, with frontal storms out of the west. Though the moisture for them might be from the Southern Sea, too, brought in by cyclonic circulation around the storm front."

Macurdy only half-listened, not comprehending at all. And at any rate seeing something more interesting to him. Talbott was a gaunt, bent, oldish man, his hair and beard mostly white but with black streaks. The lines in his leathery face reflected weather and hardship. His rough wadmal breeches were ingrained with dirt; his homespun shirt had been snagged and darned. His callused hands hadn't known soap for years, and their nails were black and broken.

But as Macurdy looked, the scarecrow figure became a tallish, lanky man in brown tweed and a green bow tie, clean-shaven and with his hair parted neatly in the middle. Dirt and calluses had no part of the image. He saw it plain as day, and it occurred to him that this kind of seeing was a magic power. Maybe, he told himself, going through the gate had jarred it loose for him.

They continued talking until Macurdy, who'd gone abruptly from midnight to noon, got sleepy. Talbott took down one of the straw-filled sleeping pads. Macurdy lay down on it and went to sleep.

To waken wide-eyed from some bad dream. Talbott had snuffed the candle, and the fire had burned down to embers again. Macurdy got up painfully and felt his way to the door, to stand outside gazing up at the sky. There was the Big Dipper, there the pointer stars. And there the North Star; in school, Mr. Anderson had called it the Pole Star, Polaris. Same stars, it seemed like, but a different world beneath them.

It struck him then that there was no longer a guard at the door. But there remained the palisade, and according to Talbott, a spearman who patrolled the night with a large dog on a leash. Escaping now made no sense anyway, Macurdy told himself. He needed to learn the language here, and something of the people, or he'd have no chance in hell of finding Varia.

10: The Shaman's Apprentice