Magic Three of Solatia (14 page)

So in the morning, after a short nap, Lann started off. Inside his shirt he placed a feather that Bridda had plucked from her breast. It was still warm to the touch. He followed the only path through the wood while the wild goose and gander circled above as if to point the way.

I
T WAS DAY BY
the hut, but it was night in the woods. The way through the forest was long and cold and dark. The trees were hung with rags of fog.

As Lann walked along, his lute slung over his shoulder, the cold seemed like daggers of ice piercing his heart. And only where Bridda’s feather touched him did he feel warm.

“Fear feeds on fear,” thought he. So he unslung his lute, thinking to play a strengthening song. As each string was plucked and stretched, a small bit of light sparked the darkness.

“Aha,” thought Lann, “so that is the way of it.” And then, as if to reassure himself, but also to let any forest ears hear that he was not afraid, he repeated it out loud. “So that is the way of it.”

And he began a cheery-sounding song which he made up as he walked along the midnight path. For minstrels are trained to sing a new song as easily as an old one.

The way is dark, the path is long,

And sometimes right begins as wrong.

But I’ve found as I go along

The world is warmed by just a song.

And as I’m getting warmed a bit,

And gathering up my scattered wit,

I see a pattern, I’ll admit,

By just a song the world is lit.

For song is warmth and song is light,

And song can pierce the darkest night.

My lute’s my weapon in this fight,

And what is wrong can be set right.

The way is dark, the path is long,

And sometimes right begins as wrong.

But I’ve found as I go along

The world is warmed by just a song.

And he ended on a single high clear note.

As the song faded away like fireflies in a dark wood, winking and blinking and sparking and drifting at last into nothing, the forest was again dark. But now the dark seemed heavier and colder than before. Even the feather against his breast was cool.

Lann looked about him. “If this is the way of it,” he thought, “I do not think I like the way.” But he continued on, humming his tune and strumming occasionally on the lute to keep his fingers warm.

As he walked further, Lann thought he heard another rhythm, a steady
one-two, one-two.
“Left foot, right foot,” he said to himself. And soon he found his fingers playing that same steady beat on the strings. His own feet followed after, and he marched toward the sound.

As he marched on, Lann saw a small light ahead. Each step brought him nearer the light, and each step seemed to make the light bigger. Finally Lann could make out a large clearing, and the rhythmic pounding of the
one-two, one-two
was now so loud that it made his ears ring.

Through the ringing in his ears, Lann thought he could hear a difference between the
one
and the
two.
The
one
was loud and crackling, like a fire or the breaking of trees and branches. The
two
was a softer, almost melodic swish, of wind through flowers.

When at last he came to the clearing, which was only a lighter shade of the forest dark, for the sky overhead was heavy and gray with forbidding clouds, Lann saw what was making the noise. It was a giant of a man in leather pants and a leather jerkin, with leather bands around his wrists. He was stomping left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, round and round the forest clearing.

As the gigantic left foot came down, lightning and fire flashed from the toes. Smoke curled up where the giant stepped. The ground beneath his left foot turned sere and brown, and nothing living grew there again. But where his right foot descended, cooling rains fell from the arch. Flowers dropped from his foot onto the path and took root there.

“Ho there,” called Lann as the giant’s right foot came down once again.

The gigantic man stopped stomping and turned toward the sound. His voice, so rough and grating on the ear, made furrows in the air. “Who speaks?”

Lann played a chord on his lute. “It is I, Lann. A wandering minstrel.”

The giant’s rough face broke into a smile. “And I am Jared,” he said. “It has been many years since I have had company.”

“It is a far way to find your clearing, friend,” said Lann pleasantly. “Perhaps that is why you have so few visitors. I only happened here myself. Why don’t you come and meet the world?”

Jared frowned. He pointed despairingly at his feet. “Wherever the one steps, I destroy. Wherever the other, I create. I can go nowhere without this double curse—flame and flowers, flowers and flame.”

“Cursed,” said Lann. It was a statement, but the giant heard a question and so replied.

“By Bleakard, the wizard. Once I was a king. And a rather foolish, cowardly king, I am afraid. But I loved to sing and dance and be entertained. My people rather enjoyed it, too. And they called me Jared the Good and said that flowers followed where I trod. But I trod once on a wizard’s toes, I think. I thought him but a visiting magician and boasted of my own worth. That blackguard Bleakard laughed and said, ‘So you create flower gardens in your path, do you?’ and brought his magic flute down upon my feet. I suppose I fainted. For when I came to, I was here in the forest as you see me now. And here I have stayed, for I do not think I could face either my people or that wizard again.”

“And what will end the spell?” asked Lann.

“I do not know,” replied Jared. “I have told you all I know—of the spell and of my past. The rest seems to be lost to me, I know not why.”

“If you cannot break the spell,” said Lann, remembering when he said the same before, “you must break the spell maker.”

“But I dare not,” said Jared. “The shame of visiting my people. The fear of visiting Bleakard…”

Lann put his hand out and touched the giant’s hand. “I am off to visit Bleakard myself. Why not come along with me? A friend is always a welcome companion in the dark. And your people would not think less of you as you are now.”

“I dare not,” whispered the giant. Yet his whisper was loud enough to bend the trees with its noise. “For I have just now recalled a part of the curse. Bleakard will kill me if I come to the castle.”

“Is that any worse than living the way you are now?” asked Lann softly. “Going round in circles of fire and flowers?”

“I daren’t,” said the giant. “Here at least I am still a king. And I do not want to die.” He looked as if he might weep.

“But I dare,” said Lann. “And I am not afraid to die.” He added “I think” under his breath, remembering Bridda.

The minstrel slung his lute over his back and crossed the clearing, over alternate stubbles of burned grass and patches of red and gold flowers. He started down the only path that led away from the clearing. Bridda’s feather was again warm against his skin.

Lann had gone but four steps into the darkened forest when he heard a cry from behind. It sounded like a sigh, like a gulp, like a plea, like a song. It was the giant.

“Wait, oh wait, and I’ll come too.”

L
ANN TURNED AND WAITED.
In a minute, trailing fire and flowers, Jared had run to his side.

Carefully Lann stepped around the giant to his right side. Then side by side, Lann taking two steps to the giant’s one, they made their way deeper into the forest. But whereas before the forest had been dark and lit only by the notes that sang from Lann’s lute, now it was blazing-bright from the flames from the giant’s foot.

“You see,” said Lann, “there is good in every bad. Sometimes right begins as wrong.”

Jared shook his head as if trying to clear it. “I do not find your meaning,” he said.

“I mean that if you were not
cursed,
we could not see. At least not so clearly. Your foot shall light our way to Bleakard’s castle.”

“Why didn’t I think of that?” exclaimed Jared.

“That is what a friend is for,” replied Lann. “To turn a liability into an ability.”

“It sounds quite fine when you say it,” said Jared. “But it is one of those matters to which I will have to give a lot of thought.”

And so he did.

For a while neither of the new friends spoke, but walked on in silent companionship, accented only by the hissing of the flames and the twanging of the lute strings being tuned.

When at last the lute was tuned again—for lute strings need much attention, just as people do—Lann began a song especially for his new friend.

A friend is the other side of a coin,

A friend is an old song resung.

A friend is the other side of your moon,

A friend is an old lute restrung.

And if I never knew it before,

I guess I know it today.

And if I haven’t said it before,

Then this is the right time to say:

A friend is just you turned inside out,

A friend is yourself turned round.

And nothing’s as good in a darkling wood

As a friend who’s newly found.

Jared laughed then for the first time, and clapped Lann so hard on the back in his enthusiasm that Lann pitched forward into the dark and nearly smashed his lute upon a tree.

“Hold, friend Jared,” the minstrel called out. “I appreciate your gesture but not your gusto. Take care. The lute and I can be equally unstrung.”

At that Jared laughed again and promised to be gentler. And the two walked on singing Lann’s new-made song together. For the giant, as he had claimed, enjoyed a song and his voice was pleasing, if a bit too loud.

They had gone but a mile or maybe three when they heard the sound of fierce quarreling ahead. It was as if two men were screaming at one another at the top of their voices. Yet both voices were so similarly pitched that it was hard to distinguish one from the other.

“Hold, friend,” said Lann. “I will sneak on ahead. For with your hissing and sparking, we will never creep up upon these battlers unawares.”

“Nay, you hold, friend,” replied Jared. “You are but a stripling and I am a giant of a man. What we lose in surprise we will gain in awe. For when these two fighters see me and my fiery foot, they will set to such a shaking and quaking that their bones will play a knocking to accompany your strings.”

But much to the giant’s relief, Lann would not hear of it. And so, after a few words more, the two decided to go on together, which is the way of friends.

Around a final bend in the road they could distinguish another clearing, smaller than the last. And when they had come to the road’s ending and the grass’s beginning, they saw the strangest sight either had ever seen.

Instead of two men quarreling in the meadow, there was but a single man, so small he could be nothing but a dwarf. Stranger yet, the dwarf had not one but two heads. And it was these two heads that were quarreling, the one with the other. They shouted, “I am,” and “You are not, I am,” back and forth at one another, snarling and gnashing teeth, sticking out tongues and spitting. It was a thoroughly disgusting exhibition.

“Ho there,” called Lann and Jared together into one of the few silences.

The two heads turned toward the new voices at the same time. “Who speaks?” they said in unison.

“It is I, Lann, a wandering minstrel,” said the lad, strumming a chord on his lute, which was sadly out of tune again.

“And I, Jared, who once was a mighty king,” said the giant, stomping his left foot down with such violence that the flames shot high into the air. Lann looked over at him, and Jared added, “Well, maybe not
so
mighty.”

“And I am Coredderoc,” said the head on the right.

“He is not, I am Coredderoc,” said the head on the left.

“He is lying,” said the first head. “I always tell the truth.”

The second head spat at the first and missed. “He is the one who always lies, I am telling the truth.”

Lann put his head to one side and thought a minute. “It puts me in mind of an old paradox,” he said. “My mother taught it to me.”

“No,” said the first head. “You have it wrong. It is only a paradox if I say ‘I always he.’”

“And you do,” added the second.

“I do not,” said the first.

“Well, it matters not,” said Lann pleasantly. “You both look equally like Coredderoc to me.”

“It matters indeed,” said the two heads together. “I am cursed. By the wicked wizard Bleakard, blast his black soul.” Both heads turned aside and spat on the ground at the wizard’s name. It seemed the only thing they could agree upon.

“Cursed?” said Jared loudly.

“Yes. Once I was a royal minister to a truly great king who had recently lost his wife in childbirth. Bleakard was but a visiting magician, or so I thought at first. But when first the queen died, bless her beautiful soul, and then the royal children disappeared, I feared something evil in the air. I first curried Bleakard’s favor.” All this the first head said. And when it took a breath to continue, the second head broke in.

“And when I had discovered who he really was, I denounced him to the king. But the king was so besotted with the mage, he dismissed me as two-faced. And Bleakard came to my chamber that very night,” the second head said.

“And,” the first inserted, finishing the story in a rush, “he said, ‘Two-faced you are, then two-faced be.’ He brought his magic flute down upon my head. I must have fainted, for when I awoke I was as you see me now. And that is all I remember.”

Both heads turned and glared at one another for a moment, and then began to weep.

Jared, who had been shaking his head slowly from side to side during the dwarf’s recital, suddenly spoke. “There is something familiar about your tale. And something familiar about your faces. But upon my very life, my head is a cloud and has been so since Bleakard enchanted me. I can think of nothing but my own sad fate. For look, friend, I too am cursed by that mage. So I have joined my young friend here to break the wizard as he has broken me.”