CORONACH OF THE BELL
Christopher Stasheff
THERE is a spruce, a skeleton, that stands above a forest in a mountain valley, and from its tip, a bell hangs high and lone, moaning in the wind.
There is a pass into that valley, but the sides are sharp and jagged—torn and twisted, blackened granite. One slip means death.
Once a clan lived there, when the spruce was quick with resin and fields of maize filled half the valley. There was no pass between the mountains then, for a granite bridge once joined them. But that bridge was hollow, gutted out by adze and pick, honeycombed into a home for Manninglore.
Manninglore, bald and bearded, hunchbacked, stunted, muscle-bound, stooping from his years of toil.
Manninglore, born old.
The wrinkles of birth never left his face; hair never grew upon his scalp. "Changeling!" the children called him. He did not dare protest, for his bandy legs could scarcely run and his bulging arms were much too slow for fighting.
So, of course, his bald pate became the target for their mocking slaps—blows which, as Manninglore learned quickly, he could but endure. The lesson of his childhood was patience; the companion of his youth was solitude.
So, when he was old enough for numbering among the grown men of the clan, and his beard (already white) begun, he set the village at his back and climbed up to the granite bridge between the mountains. Behind a grove of trees he hewed him out a cave, hiding his door from village eyes. There, in the leaf-broken sunlight of the cave mouth, Manninglore sat cross-legged and opened his soul to the totem of his clan, the Wind.
They grew old, the men and women who had been young with Manninglore. Old and wrinkled, stooped and gnarled, they looked up to the mountainside with envy—envy, now, and longing; for those who rose before the dawn saw Manninglore up high upon the granite bridge, leaning on his staff in sunlight, though the village of the clan still lay in shadow. His beard was long, his shoulders stooped—but in all else, he had not changed.
"He is a sorcerer," said some. "He has dark knowledge."
"No," said most. "How could he age, who was ancient at his birth?"
Yet Manninglore had aged, though not in body. The whole of the bridge was hollow now, filled with crucibles and books, with heaps of ore and precious earths. At the back, away from the valley, stood the bellows, anvil, and hearth of a smithy. At the front, two windows, too small to be seen by the clan, looked out toward the village.
When Manninglore's generation were long in their graves, their children's children, old in their turn, looked to the mountain with a curse, for Manninglore stood hale as ever, on the bridge of sunrise.
"Our grandfathers are dust," they muttered, "yet Manninglore lives."
"All that mountain is his home. We will die in huts of mud."
"What have we done with our lives?" they wondered. "We, and our grandfathers before us? Yet how much more has Manninglore gleaned!"
"He has knowledge, dark knowledge to lengthen his life. But will he give of it?"
Then, in their envy and their shame, they would have gone to the mountain and put Manninglore to death, had they dared— but the span of his powers was hidden, their limits unknown. So they kept to their village in fear and cursed the mountain.
Then their anger fermented into bitterness and hatred. They cried to their totem for a sorcerer that they might safely burn. Thus, from their guilt and self-pity, Demouach was born.
The clan gathered round the central fire, muttering, quiet in the night.
Then Demouach was hopping round the flame-pit, grinning and chirping—Demouach, the height of a knee, brittle leather, hairless, with the form and the face of a man, but with parchment between his arms and sides and legs, and claws where a man should have feet. Wordless, with only chirpings or wailings— Demouach, imbecile.
One long moment the clan crouched staring, silent. Then howling broke out, with drumming of feet and brands from the fire whirling at the monster.
Demouach flew, screaming in terror and pain. Still coals struck him; the clan, gleeful, followed.
But they turned away, cursing in fear, when Demouach fell onto the mountainside.
Manninglore, bent over alembics and crucibles, heard the wail at his threshold, stumped bandy-legged to the entryway, hauled back the door.
Burning leather, cries of torture, smoldering parchment writhed in the light from the doorway.
The next generation knew Manninglore chiefly from Demouach, ever about his master's business, sailing over the valley with a leathern sack in his claws, fetching the raw stuffs of magic. Legend had hidden Manninglore's birth from them. He was their sage, who always had dwelled on the mountain; only this could they know of him. "Our forefathers sinned against him," they said, "but in his mercy, Manninglore spared them." So they lived in awe of the hermit, awe and reverence. "Be diligent," they told their children. "Be steadfast," they told their youth. "Care well for your children," they told those new-come to parentage. 'Be industrious, tenacious, generous, loving, and the child of your children's children may be like to Manninglore."
But the sage in his mountain knew nothing of their reverence.
High in his granite hall, he thought of wood and stone and metal only, and hearkened to none but the totem of his clan, the Wind.
"Go," he said, putting a leathern pouch in Demouach's claws, and fetch me clay from the bank of the river, and wax from old hives, for I would hear my totem speak in words."
He took the clay when Demouach returned and squared it into a block, a cubit on each side.
Looking up at Demouach, he frowned. "Be still!"
For Demouach danced, hopping from foot to foot on the window ledge, keening like the birds of dusk.
"Be still!" said Manninglore again, but Demouach sprang from the ledge, catching Manninglore's sleeve in his horny lips, pulling the sage to the window.
Manninglore looked down, down to the village of the clan of Mannin under the noonday sun.
The people wandered thin and haggard, stumbling as they went.
"They starve," said Manninglore. "What is that to me?"
Demouach wailed, dancing on the ledge.
"Their cornfields lie in darkness," said the wizard. "The stalks are pale and flaccid, for they lie in the shadow of the forest pines even at noon. But that is not my care."
Demouach cried in short, lamenting calls, hopping from one foot to the other as though the window ledge burned beneath his claws.
"They revere the forest excessively," said Manninglore. "They will not fell a tree, not even to let the sunlight in upon their crops. They are fools. But their folly is not mine."
Then Demouach chittered, scolding.
The wizard's visage hardened; the ends of his mustache drew down. "Only pain they gave me, Demouach. In the days of my youth they mocked me, striking me when my face was turned away, then running, for I could not follow. I have built my home and gathered knowledge, never asking aid of them. I owe them nothing."
Still Demouach lamented.
"You also, Demouach, have suffered at their hands. They have burned you, Demouach, and hunted you, and cursed you. And would you aid them, now?"
Then Demouach howled, flapping from the ledge to beat his wings about the wizard's head till he raised his arms as a shield and stumbled from the window. "Peace!" he bellowed over Demouach's cries. "Peace, Demouach! I shall heal them, I shall pull down the pines and give them light! Only give me peace, good Demouach, that I may work!"
Then he filled a pouch with seeds and gave it to Demouach. "Scatter these over the forest," he said, "and oak and ash shall spring up 'mongst the giant pines, to bring them down."
Caroling, Demouach gripped the pouch in his claws and tumbled through the window.
"Demouach, hold!" cried Manninglore, and the messenger hovered.