Crunching and grinding sounds brought him half-awake. He was being pulled upward through gritty sand, in jerks. Then the stopper jerked free, sudden sunlight flamed into his refuge, and the highly compressed substance that was Kreezerast the Frightener exploded into the open air.
Kreezerast attempted to gather his senses and his thoughts. He had slept for a long time…
A long time. A human male, an older man not in the best of shape, was standing above the bottle. There was desert all about. Kreezerast, tall as the tallest of trees and still expanding, had a good view of scores of miles of yellow sand blazing with heat and light. Far south he saw a lone pond ringed by stunted trees, the only sign of life. And this had been forest when he entered his refuge!
What of the man? He was looking up at Kreezerast, probably perceiving him as a cloud of thinning smoke. His aura was that of a magic user, though much faded from disuse. At his feet, beside Kreezerast's bottle, was a block of gold wrapped in ropes.
Gold? Gold was wild magic. It would take no spells. It drove some species mad; it made humans mad enough to value the soft, useless metal. Was that why the man had carried this heavy thing into a desert? Or had its magic somehow pointed the way to Kreezerast's refuge?
Men often wished for gold. Once upon a time Kreezerast had given three men too much gold to carry or to hide, and watched them try to move it all, until bandits put the cap to his jest.
Loose white cloth covered most of the man's body. Knobby hands showed, and part of a sun-darkened face. Deep wrinkles surrounded the eyes. The nose was prominent, curved and sharp-edged like an eagle's beak, and sunburnt. The mouth was calm as he watched the cloud grow.
Kreezerast pulled himself together: the cloud congealed into a tremendous man. He shaped a face that was a cartoon of the other's features, wide mouth, nose like a great ax, red-brown skin, disproportionately large eyes and ears. He bellowed genially, "Make yourself known to me, my rescuer!"
"I am Clubfoot," the man said. "And you are an afright, I think."
"Indeed! I am Kreezerast the Frightener, but you need not fear me, my rescuer. How may I reward you?"
"What I—"
"Three wishes!" Kreezerast boomed. He had always enjoyed the wishing game. "You shall have three wishes if I have the power to grant them."
"I want to be healthy," Clubfoot said.
The answer had come quickly. This was no wandering yokel. Good: brighter minds made for better entertainment. "What disease do you suffer from?"
"Nothing too serious. Nothing you cannot see, Kreezerast, with your senses more powerful than human. I suffer from sunburn, from too little water, and from various symptoms of age. And there's this." The man sat; he took the slipper off his left foot. The foot was twisted inward. Callus was thick along the outer edge and side. "I was born this way."
"You could have healed yourself. There is magic, and you are a magician.
Clubfoot smiled. "There was magic."
Kreezerast nodded. His own kind were creatures of magic. Over tens of thousands of years the world's manna, the power that worked spells, had dwindled almost to nothing. The most powerful of magical creatures had gone mythical first. The afrights had outlived the gods. They had watched the dragons sickening, the merpeople becoming handless creatures of the sea; and they had survived that. They had watched men spread across the land, and change.
"There was magic," Kreezerast affirmed. "Why didn't you heal your foot?"
"It would have cost me half my power. That mattered, when I had power. Now I can't heal myself."
But now you have me. So! What is your wish?"
"I wish to be healthy."
Did this Clubfoot intend to be entirely healed from all the ills of mankind on the strength of one wish? The question answered itself: he did. Kreezerast said, "There are things I can't do for you—"
"Don't do them."
Was there no way to force Clubfoot to make his wish more specific, more detailed? "Total health is impossible for your kind."
"Fortunate it is, that I have not wished for total health."
The wish was well chosen. It was comprehensive. It was unambiguous. The Frightener could not claim that he could not fulfill the conditions; they were too general.
Magic was still relatively strong in this place. Kreezerast knew that he had the power to search Clubfoot's structure and heal every ill he found.
To lose the first wish was no disaster. One did like to play the game to the end. Still, Kreezerast preferred that the first wish come out a bit wrong, to give the victim warning.
Pause a bit. Think. They stood in a barren waste. What was a man doing here? His magic must had led him to Kreezerast's refuge, but—
Footprints led north: parallel lines of sandal-marks and shapeless splotches. They led to the corpse of a starved beast, not long dead, half a mile away. Here was more life: scavengers had set to work.
Saddlebags lay near the dead beast. They held (Kreezerast adjusted his eyes) only water skins. Three were quite dry; the fourth held five or six mouthfuls.
The prints blurred as he followed them farther. Dunes, more dunes… the prints faded, but Kreezerast's gaze followed the pathless path… a fleck of scarlet at the peak of a crescent dune, twelve miles north… and beyond that his eyes still saw, but his other senses did not. The manna level dropped to nothing, as if cut by a sword. The desert continued for scores of miles.
It tickled Kreezerast's fancy. Clubfoot would be obscenely healthy when he died of thirst. He would suffer no ill save for fatigue and water loss and sunstroke. Of course he still had two wishes… but such was the nature of the game.
"You shall be healthy," Kreezerast roared jovially. "This will hurt."
He looked deep within Clubfoot. Spells had eased some of the stresses that were the human lot, and other stresses due to a twisted walk, but those spells were long gone.
First: brain and nerves had lost some sensitivity. Inert matter had accumulated in the cells. Kreezerast removed that, carefully. The wrinkles deepened around Clubfoot's eyes. The nerves of youth now sensed the aches and pains of an aged half-cripple.
Next: bones. Here was arthritis, swollen joints. Kreezerast reshaped them. He softened the cartilage. The bones of the left foot he straightened. The man howled and flailed aimlessly.
The callus on that foot was now wrong. Kreezerast burned it away.
Age had dimmed the man's eyes. Kreezerast took the opacity from the humor, tightened the irises. He was enjoying himself, for this task challenged his skills. Arteries and veins were half-clogged with goo, particularly around and through the heart. Kreezerast removed it. Digestive organs were losing their function; Kreezerast repaired them, grinning in anticipation.
In a few hours Clubfoot would be as hungry as an adolescent boy. He'd want a banquet and he'd want it now. It would be salty. There would be wine, no water.
Reproductive organs had lost function; the prostate gland was ready to clamp shut on the urethra. Kreezerast made repairs. Perhaps the man would ask for an hour too, when glandular juices commenced bubbling within his veins.
A few hours of pain, a few hours of pleasure. For Kreezerast to win the game, his three wishes must leave a man (or an afright, for they played the game among themselves) with nothing he hadn't started with. To leave him injured or dead was acceptable but inferior.
The man writhed with pain. His face was in the sand and he was choking. His lungs, for that matter, had collected sixty years of dust. Kreezerast swept them clean. He burned four skin tumors away in tiny flashes.
The sunburn would heal itself. Wrinkled skin was not ill health, nor were dead hair follicles.
Anything else?
Nothing that could be done by an afright working with insufficient manna.
Clubfoot sat up gasping. His breathing eased. A slow smile spread across his face. "No pain. Wait—" The smile died.
"You have lost your sense of magic," the afright said. "Of course."
"I expected that. Ugh. It's like going deaf." The man got up.
"Were you powerful?"
"I was in the Guild. I was part of the group that tried to restore magic to the world by bringing down the Moon."
"The Moon!" Kreezerast guffawed; the sand danced to the sound. He had never heard the like. "It was well you didn't succeed!"
"In the end some of us had to die to stop it. Yes, I was powerful. All things end and so will I, but you've given me a little more time, and I thank you." The man picked up his golden cube by two leather straps and settled it on his back. "My next wish is that you take me to Xyloshan Village without leaving the ground."
Kreezerast laughed a booming laugh. "Do you fear that I will drop you on Xyloshan Village from a height?" It would make a neat finale.
"Not anymore," Clubfoot said.
Here the magic was relatively strong, perhaps because the desert would not support men. Men were not powerful in magic, but there were so many! Where men were, magic disappeared rapidly. That would explain the sharp drop-off to the north. Wars did that. Opposing spells burned the manna out locally in a few hours, and then it was down to blades and murder.
To east and west and south, the level of power dwindled gradually. "Where is this Xyloshan Village?"
"Almost straight north," Clubfoot pointed. "Rise a mile and you'll see it easily. There are low hills around it, a big bell tower and two good roads—"
The man's level of confidence was an irritant. Struck suddenly young again, free of the ever-present pains that came with age in men, he must be feeling like the king of the world. How pleasant it would be, to puncture the man's balloon of conceit!
"Take me to Xyloshan Village without leaving the ground." Very well. Kreezerast would not leave the ground.
The Frightener didn't rise into the air; he grew. At a mile tall he could scan everything to the north. Xyloshan was a village of fifteen or sixteen hundred with a tall, crude bell tower, two hundred miles distant. If he hurled Clubfoot through the air in a parabola…
He couldn't. It was too far and he didn't have sufficient magic. Just as well. It would have ended the game early.
He still had two choices.
Clubfoot had made the wrong wish. It could not be fulfilled. The afright could simply say so. Or…
He laughed. He shrank to twenty feet or so. He picked up Clubfoot, tucked him under his arm and ran. He covered twelve miles in ten minutes (weak!) and stopped with a jar. He set Clubfoot down in the sand. The man lay gasping. His hands had a death-grip on the ropes that bound the gold cube.
"Here I must stop," Kreezerast said. "I must not venture where there is no manna."
The man's breathing gradually eased. He rolled to his knees. In a moment he'd realize that his minuscule water supply lay twelve miles behind him.
Kreezerast needled him. "And your third wish, my rescuer?"
"Whoof! That was quite a ride. Are you sure rescuer is the word you want?" Clubfoot stood and looked around him. He spoke as if to himself. "All right, where's the smoke? Mirandee!"
"Why should I not say rescuer?"
"Your kind can't tolerate boredom. You built those little bottles as refuges. When you're highly compressed and there's no light or sound, you go to sleep. You sleep until something wakes you up."
"You know us very well, do you?"
"I've read a great deal."
"What are you looking for?"
"Smoke. It isn't here. Something must have happened to Mirandee. Mirandee!"
"You have a companion? I can find her, if such is your wish." He had already found her. There was a patch of scarlet cloth at the top of a dune, and a small canopy pitched on the north side, two hundred paces west.
Clubfoot played the game well. He had a companion waiting just this side of the border between magic and no magic, on a line between Xyloshan Village and Kreezerast's refuge. The afright had taken him almost straight to her. And to their camp, where waited two more loadbeasts and their water supply.
A puff of wind could cover that scarlet blanket with sand…
An afright would have gloated over his two victories. The man merely picked up his gold and walked. In a moment he was jogging, then running flat out, testing his symmetrical feet and newly youthful legs. He bellowed, "Mirandee!" half in the joy of new youth, half in desperation. He ran straight up the side of a tall dune, spraying sand. At the top he looked about him, and favored Kreezerast with a poisonous glare. Then he was running again.
Kreezerast's little whirlwind had buried the scarlet marker. But of course: the man had failed to find it, but he'd seen a dying whirlwind.
Kreezerast followed, taking his time.
The man was in the shade of the canopy, bending over a woman. Kreezerast stopped as his highly sensitive ears picked up Clubfoot's near-whisper. "I came as quick as I could. Oh, Mirandee! Hang on, Mirandee, stay with me, we're almost there."
The Frightener could study her more thoroughly now: a very old woman, tall and still straight. An aura of magic, nearly gone. She was unconscious and days from death. The golden cube lay beside her, pushed up against her ribs. Wild magic… it might reinforce some old spell.
Once upon a time, a man had wished for a woman who didn't want him. Kreezerast found her and brought her to him, but he made no effort to hide where she had gone. He'd watched her relatives take their vengeance. Humans took their lusts seriously… but this woman did not seem a proper object for lust. She'd be thirty or forty years older then he.
The man must have thought the Frightener was out of earshot. He rubbed her knobby hand. "We got this far. The bottle was there. The afright was there. The magic was there. The first spell worked. Look at me, can you see? It worked!"
Her eyes opened. She stirred.
"Don't mind the wrinkles. I don't hurt anywhere. Here, feel!" He wrapped the woman's fingers around his left foot. "The second spell, he did just as we thought. I don't think we'll even need—" The man looked up. He raised his voice. "Frightener, this is Mirandee."
Kreezerast approached. "Your mate?"
"Close enough. My companion. My final wish is that Mirandee be healthy."
This was too much. "You know we hate boredom. It is discourteous of you to make two wishes that are the same."
Clubfoot picked up the gold, turned his back and walked away. "I'll remain as courteous as possible," he snarled over his shoulder. "I remind you that you carried me facing backward. Was that discourteous, or did you consider it a joke?"
"A joke. Here's another. Your… companion must be nearly one hundred years old. A healthy woman of that age would be dead."
"Hah hah. Nobody dead is healthy. I already know that you can fulfill my wish."
Kreezerast wondered if the man would use the gold to bribe him. That would be amusing. "I point out also that you are not truly my rescuer—"
"Am I not? Haven't I rescued you from boredom? Aren't you enjoying the wishing game?" Clubfoot was shouting over his shoulder across a gap of twenty paces. In fact he had walked beyond the region where magic lived, while Kreezerast was still looking for ways to twist his third wish.
That easily, he was beyond Kreezerast's vengeance. "You have bested me. I admit it, but I can limit your satisfaction. One more word from you and I kill the woman."
Clubfoot nodded. He spread a robe from the saddlebags against the side of a dune and made himself comfortable on it.
No curses, no pleading, no bribe? Kreezerast said, "Speak your one word."
"Wait."
What? "I won't hurt her. Speak."
The man's voice now showed no anger. "Our biggest danger was that we would find you to be stupid."
"Well?"
"I think we've been lucky. A stupid afright would have been very dangerous."
The man spoke riddles. Kreezerast turned to black smoke and drifted south, beaten and humiliated.
Once upon a time a man had wished to be taller. Kreezerast had lengthened his bones and left the muscles and tendons alone. Over time he'd healed. A woman had wished for beauty; Kreezerast had given her an afright's beauty. Afterward men admired her eerie, abstract loveliness, but never wished her favors… and she was the one who had shied from men.
But no man had ever bested him like this!
What did the magician expect? Kreezerast had watched men evolve over the thousands of years. He had watched magicians strip the land of magic, until better species died or changed. He had no reason to love men, nor to keep his promises to a lesser breed.
The bottle beckoned… but Kreezerast rose into the air. High, higher; three miles, ten. Was there any sign of his own kind? None at all. Patches where manna still glowed strong? None. Here and here were encampments, muffled men and women attended by strange misshapen beasts. Men had taken the world.
The world had changed. It would change again. Kreezerast the Frightener would wait in his refuge until something or someone dug him up. A companion would come… and would hear the tale. Afrights didn't lie to each other.
So be it. At least he need not confess to killing the woman out of mere spite. Let her man watch her die over the next few days. Let him tend her while his water dwindled.
The key to survival was to live only through interesting times.
Here was the bottle. Now, where…
Where was the stopper?
The stopper bore afright's magic. Sand would not hide it.
Gold would. Wild magic would hide the magic in the stopper. It was a box, a box!
The camp was untouched. The woman had not moved. Her breathing was labored.
Clubfoot lay against the next dune. He had gone for the beasts and the supplies in their saddlebags. He said nothing. The golden cube glowed at his feet.
Kreezerast said, "Very well. You can reach Xyloshan Village and I cannot stop you, if you are willing to abandon the woman. So. You win."
Clubfoot said, "Why do I want to talk to a liar?"
The answer was obvious enough. "For the woman."
"And why will you stoop to bargaining with a mere man?"
"For the stopper. But I can make another."
"Can you? I could never make another Mirandee." The man sat up. "We feared you would twist the third wish somehow. We never dreamed you'd refuse to grant it at all."
He would have to remake the stopper and bottle, for they were linked. And he could do that, but not here, nor anywhere on this manna-poor desert. Perhaps nowhere.
He said, "Give me the stopper and I will grant your third wish, or any other you care to make."
"But I don't trust you."
"Trust this, then. I can repair this Mirandee's nerves. In fact… yes." He looked deep into her body, deep into her fine structure. This one had never been crippled. She'd never born children either. Odd. It was humankind's only form of immortality.
Clear out the capillaries, clean the jugulars and carotids, repair the heart. Now she cannot die inconveniently. More blood flows to the brain. Myelin sheaths are becoming inert. Fix it.
She stirred, flung out an arm. Her breathing was faster now.
Kreezerast called, "So sensation has returned—"
She whispered, "Clubfoot?" She rolled over, and squeaked with pain. She saw the tremendous man-shape above her; studied it without blinking, then rolled to her knees and faced north. "Club-foot. Stay there," she croaked. "Well done!" He couldn't have heard her.
"So her sensation has returned and her mind is active, too," the Frightener called. "Now she can feel and understand pain. I will give her pain. Do you trust my word?"
"Let us see if you trust mine," the man called. "I will never give the stopper to you. Never. Mirandee must do that for me. You must persuade her to do that."
Persuade? Torture! Until she begged to do him any service he asked. But then she must go and get the stopper, where magic failed… fool. Fool!
The Frightener shrank until he stood some seven feet tall. He said, "Woman, your paramour has wished you to be healthy. If I make you healthy, will you give me that which he holds in ransom?"
She blinked. "Yes."
"Will you also keep me company for a day?" Postpone. Delay. Wait. "Tell me stories. The world is not familiar to me anymore."
Her thoughts were slow… and careful. "I will do that, if you will give me food and water. As for keeping you company—"
"I speak of social intercourse," he said quickly. To show Club-foot's woman that an afright was a better mate would have been entertaining. If they were lovers. She was far older than he was… but there were spells to keep a woman young. Had been spells. She had been a powerful magician, he saw that. In fact (that unwinking gaze, as if he were being judged by an equal!), this whole plan might have been hers.
He had lost. He was even losing his anger. They had known the danger. What a gamble they had taken! And Kreezerast must even be polite to this woman, and persuade her not to break her promise after she had walked beyond his reach.
He said, "Then tell me how you almost brought the Moon to Earth. But first I will heal you. This will hurt." He set to work. She screamed a good deal; and so he kept that promise too.
Bones, joints, tendons: he healed them all. Ovaries were shrunken, but not all eggs were gone; they could be brought to life. Glands. Stomach. Gut. Kreezerast continued until she was a young woman writhing and gasping, new inside and withered outside.
Clubfoot did not run to his lady to help her in her pain.
They might still make a mistake. If nothing else thwarted them, perhaps he had one last joke to play.
She'd feel the wrinkles when she touched her face! But wrinkles do not constitute ill health. But she must give him the stopper. Kreezerast pulled her skin smooth, face and hands and forearms (but not where cloth covers her. Hah! She'll never notice until it's too late!), legs, belly, breasts, pectoral muscles too. (She might.)
The sun had gone. He set sand afire for warmth and summoned up a king's banquet. Clubfoot stayed in his place of safety and chewed dried meat. She didn't touch the wine. Mirandee and the Frightener ate together, and talked long, while Clubfoot listened at a distance.
He told her of the tinker and his family who had wished for jewels, once upon a time. He'd given them eighty pounds of jewels. They had one horse and a travois. A hundred curious villagers were swarming to where they had seen the looming, smoky form of an afright.
But the tinker and his wife had thrown handfuls of jewels about the road and into the low bushes, and fled for a day before they stopped to hide what they kept. Forty years later their grandchildren were wealthy merchants.
Mirandee had seen the last god die, and it was a harrowing tale. She spoke of a changed world, where powerless sorcerers were becoming artists and artisans and musicians, where men learned to fish for themselves because the merpeople were gone, where war was fought with bloody blades and no magic at all.
Almost he was tempted to see more of it. But what would he see? If he ventured where the manna was gone, he would go mythical.
Presently he watched her sleep. Boring.
They talked the morning and afternoon away. At evening Mirandee folded the canopy and gathered the blankets and bedding and walked away with it all on her shoulders. She had been strong; she was strong again. She crossed the barrier between magic and no magic. Kreezerast could do nothing. She came back to collect food and wine left over from the banquet, and crossed again.
She and her man set up their camp. Kreezerast heard them talking and laughing. He saw Clubfoot's hands wander beneath the woman's robes, and was relieved: he had not fooled himself, at least. What of the stopper?
Neither had mentioned it at all.
He waited. He would not beg.
Mirandee took Clubfoot's golden cube. She carried it to the margin of magic. Her magical sense was gone; would she cross? No, they'd marked it. She swung the cube by the straps and hurled it several feet.
Kreezerast picked it up. The wild magic hurt his hands. There was no lid. He pulled the soft metal apart and had the stopper.
Time to sleep.
He let himself become smoke, and let the smoke thin. The humans ignored him. Perhaps they thought he had gone away; perhaps they didn't care. He hovered.
The canopy and the darkness hid their lovemaking, but it couldn't hide their surging, flashing auras. Magic was being made in that dead region. They were lovers indeed, if they had not been before. And Kreezerast grinned and turned toward his bottle.
In her youth she had chosen not to bear children.
Kreezerast had given them their health in meticulous detail. The ex-sorceress's natural lust to mate had already set their auras blazing again. She'd have a dozen children before time caught up with her, unless she chose abstinence, and abstinence would be a hardship on her.
Some human cultures considered many children a blessing. Some did not. Certainly their traveling days were over; they'd never get past that little village. And Kreezerast the Frightener crawled into his bottle and pulled the stopper after him.