My Son, the Wizard Read online

  MY SON, THE WIZARD

  Book Five of A Wizard in Rhyme

  by

  Christopher Stasheff

  Copyright © 1997 by Christopher Stasheff

  Cover art © 2014 by Ashley Cser

  eBook ISBN-10: 0991358228

  eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-9913582-2-9

  Published by Stasheff Literary Enterprises, Champaign, IL

  Visit us at http://christopher.stasheff.com

  With thanks to Isobel-Marie

  for suggesting an appearance by the old knight

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  About the Author

  Ebooks by Christopher Stasheff

  Introduction

  Unlike the other books in this series, this one takes place in two worlds: contemporary urban America, and a magical medieval world. It’s not surprising, then, that it grew out of two influences.

  The Mantrell’s home in New Jersey was a collage of the places I’ve lived. I was a child once—I know that’s hard to believe, given the grim and grisly nature of my stories, but there you are. All things considered, I’d rather be a child again. I spent my earliest years in a postwar suburb just outside of the Bronx, and my later childhood just outside of Detroit. I seem to have specialized in living just outside of cities, and that milieu is part of this story: corner stores, busses, good hardworking people who took care of their houses and their families—and, for better or worse, neighborhood bullies (somewhat counteracted by the big boys teaching the little boys to fight fair). The neighbors might be from anywhere—Ireland, Italy, Germany, France, Puerto Rico—and they were determined to see their children have better lives than they’d had (every parent knows how proud they’ll be someday when they can casually mention “my son the doctor”). Perhaps that’s why I imagined Matt’s parents as coming from two different countries, though they both speak Spanish. Matt’s family name, Mantrell, is part of his Hispanic heritage—and I’m sure his parents weren’t the only immigrants on their block!

  Anyway, it was a warm neighborhood with a sense of community. I rode a trolley car to the movie theater and to church; I cut across the vacant lot to run errands to the A&P supermarket, and played baseball in the playground behind the synagogue with my friends. In retrospect, I can see that society was changing all around me—the neighbors who owned the first car on the block, the rooftops sprouting TV antennas, the childhood friend whose mother was a single parent (looking back, I think his father was one of the World War II soldiers who never came home). I’ve tried to capture that feeling in this book—the closeness, the cultural shifts happening all around me, and the ethnic diversity of a world in which what went on outside our neighborhood didn’t really matter; what was important was what happened on our block.

  My family moved out to the Midwest in the early 1950s, but six years later we went back to visit the old neighborhood. The corner deli was still there, but everybody seemed to have a car, every house had a TV antenna... and the area had gone downhill enough that I wouldn’t have let my kids go out without me (okay, so I’m overprotective, but I’m certainly not the only one!) Twenty years later, after finishing college in the Midwest, I moved back to the East Coast to start a family of my own, into a blue collar New Jersey neighborhood that was just beginning to go downhill—and, unfortunately, continued to slide during the years we lived there. This time, the cultural shifts happening around me were not as pleasant—rustbelt factories closing, growing unemployment, creeping poverty, the proliferation of crack cocaine, and the rise of street gangs. I’ve tried to capture that feeling in this book as well—encroaching urban blight, a neighborhood in decline, a community falling apart, the feeling that... things just aren’t what they used to be.

  In contrast to all that, however, was the world of fantasy and magic that I both read and write. The inspiration for the Moorish invasion of Merovence came not only from history, but also from the poetry of The Rubaiyat of Omar Kayyam, the adventures of Sinbad and Ali Baba in The Arabian Nights, and the rich myths and legends of Arabic folklore so full of genies and flying carpets and magic lamps. The theme of this novel and its religious war, though, came from a different source altogether.

  Back in 1970, a friend of mine, Royal Eckert, wrote the musical A Touch of Magic built around Caliph Harun al-Rashid sending an embassy to the other great emperor of the (then) known world, Charlemagne (not too many Europeans knew about China yet). The biggest of his ambassadorial gifts was an elephant. The expedition’s leader was Issac, a Jewish merchant and veteran traveler. Going along for the ride were a Frankish knight and an Arab trader. The highlight of the show, for me, was a rousing trio, “Moslem, Christian, and Jew,” emphasizing the need for unity in fighting the evil sorcerer who waylaid the caravan.

  From that, gentle reader, you may get the idea that A Touch of Magic may have had a lot to do with this novel, and I certainly hope it did. I can’t be sure where influences came from, mind you—it’s more in the theme than the plot or the characters—but in retrospect, the similarities between the two stories seem fairly obvious. I’m pretty sure it’s there, and heartfelt, too. The moral of the story, both his and mine, is a plea for mutual tolerance, understanding, and respect between all the major religions of the world. After all, the evil sorcerers haven’t gone away, and our world could use a good wizard.

  I can’t run a production of A Touch of Magic, of course, since I’ve lost touch with Royal and can’t ask for permission—so Royal, if you ever read this, please get in touch with me by e-mail or through the forum on my website, http://christopher.stasheff.com. I certainly hope you do, because the message of your play is needed even more now than it was in 1972—and is was needed badly enough then!

  So please enjoy this story of a family escaping from the depressing realities of urban struggle into a world of magic and wonder, adventure and danger. And, if it helps you to forget your own worries of the real world for a little while, all the better.

  — Christopher Stasheff, September 2014

  CHAPTER ONE

  The air over the broad table shimmered and thickened, coalescing into a pint-sized gryphon who took one look at the man who had conjured it up, screamed, and shot toward him with talons reaching out.

  “ ‘But the haunch and the hump and the hide of the law is: Obey!’ ” Saul intoned. “Land on my shoulder—and don’t pinch!”

  The gryphon changed course on the instant, wheeling about Saul’s head to land on his shoulder—gently. It furled its wings and glowered at Saul resentfully, but it obeyed.

  “Amazing,” Matt said, staring. “And it’ll work on any kind of monster you conjure up?”

  “Any kind I conjure up, yes,” Saul said. “How it will work on something an enemy calls up, I don’t know.” He snapped out a quick verse, and the gryphon disappeared.

  “Very impressive,” Matt said.

&nb
sp; Saul shrugged irritably. “I don’t do magic just to show off.”

  “No, you do it to share your research with an ally who might need it—and I very easily might. Thanks a lot.” Matt smiled. “I thought you didn’t do magic at all—or do you still think this is all one massive hallucination?”

  “No, I’ve admitted to myself that it’s real, at least in this fantasy universe,” Saul sighed, “and that I can actually make strange things happen by reciting poetry. I still don’t buy that idea about the magical power coming from either God or the Devil, though, with no gray source in between.”

  “How do you explain the difference between white and black, then?”

  “How do you explain the difference between white and black on an old-fashioned TV screen?” Saul countered.

  Matt shrugged. “White is where there’re a lot of electrons hitting the back of the screen, black is where there are none—if you absolutely have to call it ‘black’; it’s all really shades of blue.”

  Saul nodded. “Same thing. Whether it’s good magic or bad magic depends on what it’s used for—which is to say, it depends on the person who does the using.”

  “You think it’s a talent, then? Not something everybody can learn to do, like physics and chemistry?”

  “I’m not all that sure that everybody can learn physics and chemistry,” Saul countered. “I think there’s definitely a matter of talent involved in being a good engineer. And I know it takes talent to be a good magician—we’ve both seen people try, reciting enough poetry to burn down a forest but only lighting a campfire.”

  “So everybody can do it, but not everybody can do it well.” Matt nodded. “Yeah, I’d have to agree. But how come a poet like Frisson just happens to have such vast power?”

  “Because the same talent that makes a poet, also makes a magician—at least, in this universe,” Saul said. “I’m not sure yet, but I think there really isn’t any distinction between them.”

  “So I’m a powerful wizard because I have enough of the poet’s talent to love literature, and get a body-rush from it—but not enough to make up any real poetry.”

  Saul nodded. “But Frisson, who makes up good verses the way he breathes—sheer instinct, can’t help himself...”

  “And emits great poetry at least once a week, without realizing it.” Matt felt the bite of envy.

  “Right. He also happens to be such a powerful magician that he was a walking hazard, until I taught him how to write down the poetry instead of chanting it aloud whenever the Muse hit him.”

  “Like lightning to a lightning rod.” Matt nodded with a wry smile. “Yeah, I’d have to say it’s a matter of talent.”

  “Sure.” Saul shrugged. “Otherwise, every peasant would be memorizing spells from birth, and everybody would be shooting magic around so often that a whole village would burn down every time somebody got a little irritated with somebody else.”

  Matt stared. “You mean magical talent could be a counter-survival trait?”

  “Unless it happens to be linked to genes for unusually good judgment and amazingly good self-restraint, yes.” Saul gave Matt a bitter smile. “Now do you see why I don’t like to work magic if I don’t have to?”

  “Yeah.” Privately, Matt didn’t—he thought Saul was one of the most levelheaded people he knew, and his massive self-restraint was only partially disguised by the hippie ways that he tried so hard to live out.

  Matt turned and looked out the window. “There’s the other reason why you don’t like to work magic.”

  Saul came to stand at the tall clerestory window, looking down into Queen Alisande’s private garden, where the queen and Lady Angelique were comparing babies. “Oh, how right you are,” Saul said softly. “You never know when a spell might backfire and hurt them. That’s why, when I do have to do some chanting, I go off by myself, at least a hundred yards from the house—and I’m very careful.”

  He always had been, actually, where other people were concerned, though he tried to seem indifferent. “Glad you could come visit,” Matt said. “There aren’t too many women that Alisande can relax and gossip with.”

  “Well, our ladies aren’t god-sibs, but I get the point,” Saul replied. “Sir Guy and Lady Yverne don’t stop by too often, then?”

  “Christmas and Easter. Other than that, Sir Guy only shows up when there’s trouble. We’d like to invite them to dinner, but we don’t know where they live.”

  “You mean he doesn’t even tell you?”

  Matt shook his head. “Security nut. Mind you, I probably would be, too, if I had a wife and babies and was heir to a broken-up empire—especially if I didn’t want to be emperor, and thought the individual kingdoms were doing just fine the way they were.”

  “Well, when you put it that way, it does sound like justified paranoia,” Saul admitted. “It would kind of make him liable to be a political pawn.”

  “Yes, and with people he loves as hostages, he could be very vulnerable indeed,” Matt agreed. “Easier to stay hidden—and safer for everybody concerned.”

  “Suppose so,” Saul allowed. “Does kind of make me feel sorry for Yverne, though.”

  “She knew it going in,” Matt sighed, “and knew she could have been queen of Ibile, too. She doesn’t seem to have any regrets, but I notice she does a lot of talking whenever she’s here.”

  “High energy level, no doubt,” Saul agreed. “One more who thinks of this castle as a home away from home.”

  “Yeah... home.” Uneasiness prickled Matt’s conscience. “Be nice to be able to visit the folks again.”

  “No it wouldn’t.” Saul’s voice had an edge to it. “Me, I had a pompous autocrat for a father and a phony pill-popper for a mother. I like your world just fine, Matt.”

  “My world, yes.” Matt felt a glow as he looked out over the wall of the private garden to the courtyard, and the castle towers beyond. “My world, my home...” He glanced down at his wife and son again and felt the glow spread. “Be nice if the kid could meet his grandparents, though.”

  “Yeah,” Saul answered with a mirthless smile. “How do you think they’ll feel about having a prince for a grandson?”

  “Fine, considering who the queen is.” But conscience pricked harder. “Kind of too bad we had to get married without their blessing, though...”

  “What were you going to do? Send a limo to bring them to the church?”

  Matt looked up with a sudden glint in his eye. “Maybe. Just maybe I could have!”

  Saul stared at his face and shuddered. “I know that look. The last time you had it, you got hung up on translating an indecipherable parchment, and look where that got you!”

  “Yeah, with the perfect wife, a prince for a baby, and the highest position in the land next to hers! If all my ideas work out that well—”

  “If,” Saul said, interrupting. “You have a knack of developing dangerous projects, lad.”

  “Dangerous? Me, A.B.D. in comparative literature? How dangerous can poetry be?”

  “Plenty, in a universe in which magic works by rhyme, and literary criticism is equivalent to theoretical physics. What bomb are you planning to explode this time?”

  “Hey, if I could travel here, I should be able to travel back, shouldn’t I?”

  “Forgive him, St. Moncaire,” Saul called toward the heavens.

  “Wouldn’t the saint want me to pay attention to my mother and father? I mean, Saul, five years! Five years since they heard anything from me! They’ll be frantic!” This time conscience stabbed, and deeply.

  “Not so long as that,” Saul reminded him. “Remember, you’d only been gone a few days when I started hunting you, but it was two years here.”

  “Time moves faster in this universe, huh? But that means it’s been a week there!”

  “Yeah, a week, and you a hundred miles away in college! Tell me they’re worried sick.”

  “Yeah, there is that.” Matt turned to watch Alisande again, calming a little. “Probably not worri
ed at all.”

  “Didn’t sound like it, when I talked to them. Your mother just told me to look for you on campus. Hey, you never told me she was an immigrant.”

  “Yeah, came from Cuba when Castro—” Matt’s head snapped up. “You talked to her!”

  “I wouldn’t say that. My Spanish is only a little worse than her English, and—”

  “You phoned them!”

  “Sure.” Saul frowned. “You’d disappeared without leaving any word. Of course I thought of trying you at home!”

  “But you got them worried! Now they know I’m missing!”

  “Hey, I just asked for you,” Saul protested. “I didn’t say where I was calling from—and I sure didn’t tell them you’d gone missing!”

  “You don’t know my mother! If some people have worry warts, she’s got an anxiety aneurysm! She’ll start wondering, she’ll call the college and check!”

  “Hey, man, don’t freak out on me! How’s she gonna check up if she can’t speak English?”

  “She’ll pester them until they find somebody who speaks Spanish! That woman is smart!”

  Saul lifted his head. “Dr. Korbinsky!”

  “Right! She speaks Spanish—and she’s on my doctoral committee! All I need is to have two overprotective mothers putting their heads together and working up a panic! Saul, I’ve got to get home!”

  “Right, sure, I gotcha, man.” Saul was actually trying to sound soothing. “But where’s the bus?”

  “I’ll ask the Spider King! He’ll know!”

  “Sure.” Saul’s lip twisted. “All you have to do is find him.”

  “Oh, I have a notion he’s keeping an eye on me—on all of us, now that you mention it.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Doesn’t matter. He’s thorough—attention to detail and all that.”

  “Oh, and I’m a detail, am I?”

  “Saul.” Matt put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “In the cosmic scheme of things...”

  “...we’re all details, yeah, sure! What do you think, all you have to do is tell the nearest spider, ‘Connect me to the Big Boy’?”