AllFreeNovel
Share Us
As he grew older, though, and studied the records of the ancient magics - all so tantalizingly consistent, from culture to culture! - he came to the bitter realization that the really splendid, godlike sorceries had, gradually over the millennia, become impossible. It was as if magic had once been a spring at which a sorceror could fill the vessel of himself to the vessel's capacity, but was now just damp dirt from which only a few drops could be wrung, and even that with difficulty ... or as if there were invisible stepping-stones in the sky, but the sky had expanded and pulled them far apart, so that, though ancient magicians had been able to step up them with just a little stretching, it now took almost a lifetime's strength just to leap from one stone to the next.
But he worked with what remained, and by the time he was fifteen he was able to take anything he wanted, and he could make people do virtually anything, against their wills ... and then he tried to give his mother, who alone had always had faith in him, access to this secret world he'd found. He could never remember exactly what had happened then ... but he knew that his father had hit him, and that he had fled his parents' house and had not ever returned.
His sorcerous skills enabled him to live comfortably for the next five years as a student. The best of food, clothing and lodging were his for the reaching - though a profound mistrust of sex had kept him from doing anything more about that subject than to have disturbing, unremembered, sheet-fouling dreams - and so one day he was alarmed, as a man might be alarmed to realize that his usual daily dose of laudanum is no longer enough to sustain him, to realize that he wanted - needed - more than this.
For after all, it was not what he was able to take that made magic wonderful, but the taking, the violation of another person's will, the holding of the better hand, the perception of his own will staining the landscape in all directions; and so it was disquieting to realize that his violation of other people was not complete, that there were spots in the picture that resisted his will the way waxed areas on a lithographer's stone resist ink - he couldn't reach their minds. He could force people to do his bidding, but he couldn't force them to want to. And as long as there was the slightest tremor of protest or outrage in the minds of the people he used, then his domination of them, his absorption of them, was not absolute. He needed it to be absolute ... but until he met Benjamin Hurwood he'd thought it couldn't be done.
Chapter Five
"Why do you call him that?" Beth Hurwood asked irritably.
"What, hunsi kanzo?" said Shandy. "It's his title. I don't know, it seems too familiar to call him Thatch, and too theatrical to call him Blackbeard."
"His title? What does it mean?"
"It means he's a ... an initiate. That he's been through the ordeal by fire."
"Initiated into what?" She seemed upset that Shandy should know all this.
Shandy started to speak, then shrugged. "All this magic stuff. Even living up there in the old fort, you must have noticed that magic is as much in use here as ... as fire is back in England."
"I've observed that these people are superstitious, of course. I suppose all uneducated communities - " She froze, then stared at him. "Good Lord, John - you don't believe any of it, do you?"
Shandy frowned, and looked past the flickering fire to the jungle. "I won't insult you by being less than frank. This is a new world, and these pirates live much more intimately with it than the Europeans in Kingston and Cartagena and Port-au-Prince, who try to transplant as much of the Old World as they can. If you believe what's in the Old Testament you believe some weird things ... and you shouldn't be too quick to dictate what is and isn't possible."
Mr. Bird flung his food away and leaped to his feet, glaring around at no one in particular. "I am not a dog!" he shouted angrily, his gold earrings flashing in the firelight. "You son of a bitch!"
Beth looked over at him in alarm, but Shandy smiled and muttered to her, "Nothing to worry about - it's a rare night that he doesn't do this at least once. Whatever it is he's angry about has nothing to do with New Providence Island or 1718."
"God damn you!" shouted Mr. Bird. "I am not a dog! I am not a dog! I am not a dog!"
"I guess someone called him a dog once," Shandy said quietly, "and when he has a few drinks he remembers it."
"Evidently," agreed Beth bleakly. "But John, do you mean to tell me you ... I don't know ... carry charms so you'll be protected by this Mate Care-For?"
"No," said Shandy, "but I remember firing a pistol at your physician's stomach when he was carrying such a charm, that day Davies took the Carmichael.
"And listen, during the first week we were here, I caught a chicken and cooked it and ate it, and next day I came down with a bad fever. Old Governor Sawney was wandering by, jabbering and swatting invisible flies the way he does, and he saw me sweating and moaning in my tent, and right away he asked me if I'd eaten a chicken with words written on its beak. Well, I had noticed markings on its beak, and I admitted it. 'I thought so,' says the governor. 'That's the chicken I magicked Rouncivel's fever into. Never eat 'em if there's writing on their beaks - you'll get whatever it was someone wanted to get rid of.' And then he got another chicken, and did his tricks, and I was recovered next morning."
"Oh, John," Beth said, "don't tell me you think his tricks cured you!"
Shandy shrugged, a little irritably. "I wouldn't eat that chicken." He decided not even to try to tell her about the man he'd seen down the beach one night. The man's pockets had all been torn open, and he didn't speak because his jaw was bound up in a cloth that was knotted over his head. As he had walked past Shandy, Shandy had noticed that his coat was sewn shut rather than buttoned. There was no point in telling her about it, or what he'd later learned about people who were dressed that way.
She dismissed the subject with an impatient wave. "John," she said urgently, "Friend won't let me stay long - can you tell me where it is we're sailing for, tomorrow morning?"
Shandy blinked at her. "You're not going, are you?"
"Yes. My father - "
"But are you certain? I'd have thought that, with Woodes Rogers due here any day, the obvious thing for your father to do would be - "
"Yes, John, I'm certain. I saw my father today, the first time I've seen him in a week or so, and of course he was carrying that little wooden box that smells so bad, and he told me I'm going along. He went on and on about how thoroughly I'd be protected from any injuries or ailments - but he wouldn't say a word about where we're going, or why."
"Jesus." Shandy took a deep breath and then let it out. "Well, Davies hasn't said either, but the rumor is that we're headed for a place on the Florida west coast, a place where the huns - uh, where Blackbeard accidentally let a number of ghosts attach themselves to him." He smiled nervously at her. "Something like lamprey eels, I gather; or leeches. And," he added, hoping he was concealing the apprehension he felt, "we'll rendezvous there with Blackbeard himself."
"God help us," she said softly.
And Mate Care-For too, thought Shandy.
