After the Downfall

“About time you find out, then, isn’t it?” Bottero said. “If you can do it, you’ll give us a big hand.”

“But – But – ” Hasso spluttered.

“His Majesty’s right,” Orosei said. “Magic isn’t a common gift. If you’ve got it, you shouldn’t let it lie idle. The goddess wouldn’t like that.”

Did he mean Velona or the deity who sometimes inhabited her? Hasso didn’t know, and wondered whether the Lenello did. “But – But – ” he said again. He hated sounding like a broken record, but he didn’t know what else to say.

The king slapped him on the back, which almost knocked him out of the saddle. If he’d fallen off the horse and landed on his head, it would have been a relief. “Talk to Velona,” Bottero said. “She’ll give you some pointers, and you can go from there. It doesn’t sound like the kind of magic that can kill you if you don’t do it right. Give it your best shot.”

Hasso hadn’t even thought about the consequences of a spell gone wrong. He wished his new sovereign hadn’t reminded him of such things, too. But what were his choices here? He saw only two: say no and get a name for cowardice – the last thing he needed – or give it his best shot.

He’d long since decided that a big part of courage was nothing more than a reluctance to look like a coward in front of people who mattered to him. And so, reluctantly, he said, “Yes, your Majesty.”

Velona came up and kissed him, which was a hell of a distraction for somebody contemplating his very first conjuration. “You can do it,” she said. Her voice was full of confidence – and perhaps some warm promise, too. “I’m sure you can do it. The goddess wouldn’t have brought you here to let you fail.”

He didn’t know why the goddess had brought him here. He didn’t even know that the goddess had brought him here. King Bottero had a point, though. Velona knew a lot more about magic than he did. Christ! My horse knows more about magic than I do, he thought. Between her suggestions and his own few feeble ideas, he’d come up with what might be a spell.

It turned dowsing upside down and inside out. He wasn’t trying to find water flowing underground – he was looking for unmoving objects concealed beneath running water. If everything went exactly right, the forked stick in his hands would rise when he pointed it at a submerged bridge.

The not-quite-dowsing stick was carved from one of the timbers the Lenelli had torn from the first underwater bridge. Velona said that would give it a mystic affinity with the other bridges … if there were others. The idea seemed reasonable, in an unreasonable kind of way.

Even so, he let his worry show: “If I find no bridges, does that mean there are no bridges? Or does it mean I can’t find them? If I am no wizard, casting a spell does not help. Will not help.” He remembered how to make the future tense. He didn’t need to worry about the future, though. He was tense right now.

“Cast the spell. Then see what happens,” Velona said. That also seemed reasonable – if your view of reason included spells in the first place. Hasso’s didn’t. Or rather, it hadn’t.

Fighting not to show his fear, he started to chant. Velona had come up with a lot of the spell. Hasso would never make a poet in Lenello – come to that, he’d made a lousy poet auf Deutsch. What he had to remember here was to get the words right. He understood what the magic ought to do, even if he didn’t perfectly follow all the phrases in the charm. Poetry was supposed to be challenging … wasn’t it?

Velona gestured. That reminded him to move the not-dowsing rod. He swung it slowly from southwest to northeast, paralleling the course of the Aryesh. All of a sudden, it jerked upwards in his hands. He almost dropped it, he was so surprised. He’d no more thought he could truly work magic than that he could fly.

“There!” Velona said. “Go back, Hasso Pemsel. Go back and get the exact direction, so the artisans can find the hidden bridge.”

He did, and damned if the rod didn’t rise again. His own rod rose, too. He remembered how she’d called him by his full name when they met, there on the causeway through the swamp. He remembered what they’d done right afterwards, too, and he wanted to do it again.

His thoughts must have shown on his face, for Velona laughed, softly and throatily. “Soon,” she promised. But then she tempered that, adding, “But not yet. First we see where the savages can sneak across the river.”

“Oh, all right.” Hasso knew he sounded like a petulant little boy who couldn’t have what he wanted just when he wanted it. (Quite a bit like the Fuhrer, in fact, he thought.) Velona, who knew nothing about Hitler except that he was the man who ruled the country Hasso came from, laughed again, this time with rich amusement in her voice.