One day he said to the treemage, "I want to learn magic."
The treemage smiled with hope. "You"re learning it," he said, "and I"ll gladly teach you more."
"I want to learn things of power."
"Ah," said the treemage, disappointed. "Ah, then, you can have no magic."
"You have power," said Cer. "I want it also."
"Oh, indeed," said the treemage. "I have the power of two legs and two arms, the power to heat tar over a peat fire to stop the sap flow from broken limbs, the power to cut off diseased branches to save the tree, the power to teach the trees how and when to protect themselves. All the rest is the power of the trees, and none of it is mine."
"But they do your bidding," said Cer.
"Because I do theirs!" the treemage said, suddenly angry. "Do you think that there is slavery in this wood? Do you think I am a king? Only men allow men to rule them. Here in this wood there is only love, and on that love and by that love the trees and I have the magic of the wood."
Cer looked down, disappointed. The treemage misunderstood, and thought that Cer was contrite.
"Ah, my boy," said the treemage. "You haven"t learned it, I see. The root of magic is love, the trunk is service. The treemages love the trees and serve them and then they share treemagic with the trees. Lightmages love the sun and make fires at night, and the fire serves them as they serve the fire. Horsemages love and serve horses, and they ride freely whither they will because of the magic in the herd. There is field magic and plain magic, and the magic of rocks and metals, songs and dances, the magic of winds and weathers. All built on love, all growing through service."
"I must have magic," said Cer.
"Must you?" asked the treemage. "Must you have magic? There are kinds of magic, then, that you might have. But I can"t teach them to you."
"What are they?"
"No," said the treemage, and he wouldn"t speak again.
Cer thought and thought. What magic could be demanded against anyone"s will?
And at last, when he had badgered and nagged the treemage for weeks, the treemage angrily gave in. "Will you know then?" the treemage snapped. "I will tell you. There is seamagic, where the wicked sailors serve the monsters of the deep by feeding them living flesh. Would you do that?" But Cer only waited for more.
"So that appeals to you," said the treemage. "Then you will be delighted at desert magic."
And now Cer saw a magic he might use. "How is that performed?"
"I know not," said the treemage icily. "It is the blackest of the magics to men of know not," said the treemage icily. "It is the blackest of the magics to men of my my kind, though your dark heart might leap to it. There"s only one magic darker." kind, though your dark heart might leap to it. There"s only one magic darker."
"And what is that?" asked Cer.
"What a fool I was to take you in," said the treemage. "The wounds in your heart, you don"t want them to heal; you love to pick at them and let them fester."
"What is the darkest magic?" demanded Cer.
"The darkest magic," said the treemage, "is one, thank the moon, that you can never practice. For to do it you have to love men and love the love of men more than your own life. And love is as far from you as the sea is from the mountains, as the earth is from the sky."
"The sky touches the earth," said Cer.
"Touches, but never do they meet," said the treemage.
Then the treemage handed Cer a basket, which he had just filled with bread and berries and a flagon of streamwater. "Now go."
"Go?" asked Cer.
"I hoped to cure you, but you won"t have a cure. You clutch at your suffering too much to be healed."
Cer reached out his foot toward the treemage, the crusty scars still a deep red where his great toe had been.
"As well you might try to restore my foot."
"Restore?" asked the treemage. "I restore nothing. But I staunch, and heal, and I help the trees forget their lost limbs. For if they insist on rushing sap to the limb as if it were still there, they lose all their sap; they dry, they wither, they die."
Cer took the basket.
"Thank you for your kindness," said Cer. "I"m sorry that you don"t understand. But just as the tree can never forgive the ax or the flame, there are those that must die before I can truly live again."
"Get out of my wood," said the treemage. "Such darkness has no place here."
And Cer left, and in three days came to the edge of the Mitherkame, and in two days reached the bottom of the cliffs, and in a few weeks reached the desert. For he would learn desertmagic. He would serve the sand, and the sand would serve him.
On the way the soldiers of Nefyryd stopped him and searched him. When they saw that he had no great toes, they beat him and shaved off his young and scraggly beard and sent him on his way with a kick.
Cer even stopped where his father"s farm had been. Now all the farms were farmed by Nefyrre, men of the south who had never owned land before. They drove him away, afraid that he might steal. So he snuck back in the night and from his father"s storehouse stole meat and from his father"s barn stole a chicken.
He crossed the Greebeck to the drylands and gave the meat and the chicken to the poor people there. He lived with them for a few days. And then he went out into the desert.
He wandered in the desert for a week before he ran out of food and water. He tried everything to find the desertmagic. He spoke to the hot sand and the burning rocks as the treemage had spoken to the trees. But the sand was never injured and did not need a healing touch, and the rocks could not be harmed and so they needed no protection. There was no answer when Cer talked, except the wind which cast sand in his eyes. And at last Cer lay dying on the sand, his skin caked and chafed and burnt, his clothing long since tattered away into nothing, his flagon burning hot and filled with sand, his eyes blind from the whiteness of the desert.
He could neither love nor serve the desert, for the desert needed nothing from him and there was neither beauty nor kindness to love.
But he refused to die without having vengeance. Refused to die so long that he was still alive when the Abadapnu tribesmen found him. They gave him water and nursed him back to health. It took weeks, and they had to carry him on a sledge from waterhole to waterhole.
And as they traveled with their herds and their horses, the Abadapnur carried Cer farther and farther away from the Nefyrre and the land of Greet.
Cer regained his senses slowly, and learned the Abadapnu language even more slowly. But at last, as the clouds began to gather for the winter rains, Cer was one of the tribe, considered a man because he had a beard, considered wise because of the dark look on his face that remained even on those rare times when he laughed.
He never spoke of his past, though the Abadapnur knew well enough what the tin ring on his finger meant and why he had only eight toes. And they, with the perfect courtesy of the incurious, asked him nothing.
He learned their ways. He learned that starving on the desert was foolish, that dying of thirst was unnecessary. He learned how to trick the desert into yielding up life. "For," said the tribemaster, "the desert is never willing that anything should live."
Cer remembered that. The desert wanted nothing to live. And he wondered if that was a key to desertmagic. Or was it merely a locked door that he could never open? How can you serve and be served by the sand that wants only your death? How could he get vengeance if he was dead? "Though I would gladly die if my dying could kill my father"s killers," he said to his horse one day. The horse hung her head, and would only walk for the rest of the day, though Cer kicked her to try to make her run.
Finally one day, impatient that he was doing nothing to achieve his revenge, Cer went to the tribemaster and asked him how one learned the magic of the sand.
"Sandmagic? You"re mad," said the tribemaster. For days the tribemaster refused to look at him, let alone answer his questions, and Cer realized that here on the desert the sandmagic was hated as badly as the treemage hated it. Why? Wouldn"t such power make the Abadapnur great?
Or did the tribemaster refuse to speak because the Abadapnur did not know the sandmagic?
But they knew it.
And one day the tribemaster came to Cer and told him to mount and follow.
They rode in the early morning before the sun was high, then slept in a cave in a rocky hill during the heat of the day. In the dusk they rode again, and at night they came to the city.
"Ettuie," whispered the tribemaster, and then they rode their horses to the edge of the ruins.
The sand had buried the buildings up to half their height, inside and out, and even now the breezes of evening stirred the sand and built little dunes against the walls. The buildings were made of stone, rising not to domes like the great cities of the Greetmen but to spires, tall towers that seemed to pierce the sky.
"Ikikietar," whispered the tribemaster, "Ikikiaiai re dapii. O ikikiai etetur o abadapnur, ikikiai re dapii."
"What are the "knives"?" asked Cer. "And how could the sand kill them?"
"The knives are these towers, but they are also the stars of power."
"What power?" asked Cer eagerly.
"No power for you. Only power for the Etetur, for they were wise. They had the manmagic."
Manmagic. Was that the darkest magic spoken of by the treemage?
"Is there a magic more powerful than manmagic?" Cer asked.
"In the mountains, no," said the tribemaster. "On the well-watered plain, in the forest, on the sea, no."
"But in the desert?"
"A huu par eiti ununura," muttered the tribemaster, making the sign against death. "Only the desert power. Only the magic of the sand."
"I want to know," said Cer.
"Once," the tribemaster said, "once there was a mighty empire here. Once a great river flowed here, and rain fell, and the soil was rich and red like the soil of Greet, and a million people lived under the rule of the King of Ettue Dappa. But not all, for far to the west there lived a few who hated Ettue and the manmagic of the kings, and they forged the tool that undid this city.
"They made the wind blow from the desert. They made the rains run off the earth. By their power the river sank into the desert sand, and the fields bore no fruit, and at last the King of Ettue surrendered, and half his kingdom was given to the sandmages. To the dapinur. That western kingdom became Dapnu Dap."
"A kingdom?" said Cer, surprised. "But now the great desert bears that name."
"And once the great desert was no desert, but a land of gra.s.ses and grains like your homeland to the north. The sandmages weren"t content with half a kingdom, and they used their sandmagic to make a desert of Ettue, and they covered the lands of rebels with sand, until at last the victory of the desert was complete, and Ettue fell to the armies of Greet and Nefyryd-they were allies then-and we of Dapnu Dap became nomads, living off that tiny bit of life that even the harshest desert cannot help but yield."
"And what of the sandmages?" asked Cer.
"We killed them."
"All?"
"All," said the tribemaster. "And if any man will practice sandmagic, today, we will kill him. For what happened to us we will let happen to no other people."
Cer saw the knife in the tribemaster"s hand.
"I will have your vow," said the tribemaster. "Swear before these stars and this sand and the ghosts of all who lived in this city that you will seek no sandmagic."
"I swear," said Cer, and the tribemaster put his knife away.
The next day Cer took his horse and a bow and arrows and all the food he could steal and in the heat of the day when everyone slept he went out into the desert. They followed him, but he slew two with arrows and the survivors lost his trail.
Word spread through the tribes of the Abadapnur that a would-be sandmage was loose in the desert, and all were ready to kill him if he came. But he did not come.
For he knew now how to serve the desert, and how to make the desert serve him. For the desert loved death, and hated gra.s.ses and trees and water and the things of life.
So in service of the sand Cer went to the edge of the land of the Nefyrre, east of the desert. There he fouled wells with the bodies of diseased animals. He burned fields when the wind was blowing off the desert, a dry wind that pushed the flames into the cities. He cut down trees. He killed sheep and cattle. And when the Nefyrre patrols chased him he fled onto the desert where they could not follow.
His destruction was annoying, and impoverished many a farmer, but alone it would have done little to hurt the Nefyrre. Except that Cer felt his power over the desert growing. For he was feeding the desert the only thing it hungered for: death and dryness.
He began to speak to the sand again, not kindly, but of land to the east that the sand could cover. And the wind followed his words, whipping the sand, moving the dunes. Where he stood the wind did not touch him, but all around him the dunes moved like waves of the sea.
Moving eastward.
Moving onto the lands of the Nefyrre.
And now the hungry desert could do in a night a hundred times more than Cer could do alone with a torch or a knife. It ate olive groves in an hour. The sand borne on the wind filled houses in a night, buried cities in a week, and in only three months had driven the Nefyrre across the Greebeck and the Nefyr River, where they thought the terrible sandstorms could not follow.
But the storms followed. Cer taught the desert almost to fill the river, so that the water spread out a foot deep and miles wide, flooding some lands that had been dry, but also leaving more water surface for the sun to drink from; and before the river reached the sea it was dry, and the desert swept across into the heart of Nefyryd.
The Nefyrre had always fought with the force of arms, and cruelty was their companion in war. But against the desert they were helpless. They could not fight the sand. If Cer could have known it, he would have gloried in the fact that, untaught, he was the most powerful sandmage who had ever lived. For hate was a greater teacher than any of the books of dark lore, and Cer lived on hate.
And on hate alone, for now he ate and drank nothing, sustaining his body through the power of the wind and the heat of the sun. He was utterly dry, and the blood no longer coursed through his veins. He lived on the energy of the storms he unleashed. And the desert eagerly fed him, because he was feeding the desert.
He followed his storms, and walked through the deserted towns of the Nefyrre. He saw the refugees rushing north and east to the high ground. He saw the corpses of those caught in the storm. And he sang at night the old songs of Greet, the war songs. He wrote his father"s name with chalk on the wall of every city he destroyed. He wrote his mother"s name in the sand, and where he had written her name the wind did not blow and the sand did not shift, but preserved the writing as if it had been incised on rock.
Then one day, in a lull between his storms, Cer saw a man coming toward him from the east. Abadapnu, he wondered, or Nefyrre? Either way he drew his knife, and fit the nock of an arrow on his bowstring.
But the man came with his hands extended, and he called out, "Cer Cemreet."
It had never occurred to Cer that anyone knew his name.
"Sandmage Cer Cemreet," said the man when he was close. "We have found who you are."
Cer said nothing, but only watched the man"s eyes.
"I have come to tell you that your vengeance is full. Nefyryd is at its knees. We have signed a treaty with Greet and we no longer raid into Hetterwee. Driplin has seized our westernmost lands."
Cer smiled. "I care nothing for your empire."
"Then for our people. The deaths of your father and mother have been avenged a hundred thousand times, for over two hundred thousand people have died at your hands."
Cer chuckled. "I care nothing for your people."
"Then for the soldiers who did the deed. Though they acted under orders, they have been arrested and killed, as have the men who gave them those orders, even our first general, all at the command of the King so that your vengeance will be complete. I have brought you their ears as proof of it," said the man, and he took a pouch from his waist.
"I care nothing for soldiers, nor for proof of vengeance," said Cer.