Shadow of Wings
by Bob Shaw
There was once a magician named Dardash, who—at the relatively young age of 103—decided he had done with the world.
Accordingly, he selected an islet a short distance off the coast of Koldana and built upon it a small but comfortable house which resembled a wind-carved spire of rock. He equipped the dwelling with life’s few necessities and moved into it with all his possessions—the most prized of which were twelve massive scrolls in air-tight cylinders of oiled leather bound with silver wire. He surrounded his new home with certain magical defences and, as a final touch which was intended to complete his isolation, he rendered the entire island invisible.
As has already been stated, Dardash had decided he was finished with the world.
But the world was far from being finished with him…
It was a flawless morning in early summer, one on which the universe seemed to have been created anew. The land to the east shimmered like freshly smelted gold, deckled with white fire where the sun’s rays grazed slopes of sand; and on all other sides the flat blue immensity of the sea challenged Dardash’s knowledge of history with its sheer ringing emptiness. It was as though Minoa and Egypt and Sumer had never existed, or had vanished as completely as the ancient magic-based civilisations which had preceded them. The very air sang a song of new beginnings.
Dardash walked slowly on the perimeter of his island, remembering a time when such mornings had filled him with a near-painful joy. It was a time that was lost to him.
Being a magician, he retained a long-muscled and sinewy physique which—except for its lack of scars—resembled that of a superbly conditioned warrior, but his mind was growing old, corrupted by doubt. When the twelve scrolls had first come into his possession, and he had realised they contained spells written in the mana-rich, dawn-time of magic, he had known with a fierce certainty that he was destined to become the greatest warlock that had ever lived. But that had been almost two-score years ago, and he was no longer so confident. In truth, although he rarely admitted it to himself, he had begun to despair—and all because of a single, maddening, insuperable problem.
He reached the north-eastern tip of the islet, moody and abstracted in spite of the vitality all around him, and was turning southwards when his attention was caught by a flickering whiteness at the far side of the strip of water separating him from the mainland. The coast of Koldana was rocky in that area, a good feeding ground for gulls, but the object he had noticed was too large to be a bird. It was possibly a man in white garments, although travellers were rare in that region. Dardash stared at the brilliant speck for a moment, trying to bring it into sharp focus, but even his keen eyesight was defeated by the slight blurring effect caused by the islet’s invisibility screen.
He shrugged and continued his morning walk, returning his thoughts to more weighty considerations. As a man who had travelled the length and breadth of the known world, he could speak every major language and was familiar with the written forms where they existed. The fact that the spells of the twelve scrolls were couched in the Old Language had at first seemed a minor inconvenience, especially for one who was accustomed to deciphering all manner of strange inscriptions. A few months, possibly even a few years, of study would surely reveal the secrets of the old manuscripts—thus enabling him to fulfil his every dream, to become immortal, to assume all the fantastic powers of the dream-time sorcerers.
But he had not allowed for the effect of the 10,000-year hiatus.
The old magic-based civilisations—so powerful in the days when mana was plentiful everywhere—had in fact been edifices of great fragility; and when the raw stuff of magic had disappeared from the earth they too had crumbled and faded into nothingness. Few relics remained, and those that Dardash had seen or thought he had seen were totally without relevance to his quest. He lacked the necessary key to the Old Language, and as long as it remained impenetrable to him he would fail to develop anything like his full potential. The doors of destiny would remain shut against him, even though there were places where mana had again begun to accumulate, and that had been the principal reason for his retreat from outside distraction. He had elected to devote all his time, all his mental energies, all his scholarship to one supremely important task—solving the riddle of the scrolls.
Thus preoccupied, and secure behind his magical defences, Dardash should have been oblivious to the world beyond, but he had been oddly restless and lacking in concentration for some time. His mind had developed an annoying tendency to pursue the irrelevant and the trivial, and as he neared the southern corner of the island—where his house was located—he again found himself speculating about who or what had appeared on the opposite shore. Yielding to impulse, he glanced to the east and saw that the enigmatic white mote was still visible at the water’s edge. He frowned at it for a short period, hesitating, then acknowledged to himself that he would have no mental peace until the inconsequential little mystery was solved.
Shaking his head at his own foolishness, he went into his house and climbed the stone stair to the upper balcony. He had used the spy-mask only the previous day to observe a ship which had appeared briefly on the western horizon, and it was still lying on the low bench, resembling the severed head of a giant eagle. Dardash fastened the mask over his face and turned towards the mainland. Because the spy-mask operated on magical and not optical principles, there was no focusing or scanning to be done—Dardash immediately saw the mysterious object on the coast as though from a distance of a few paces. And he was unable to withhold an exclamation.
The young woman was possibly the most beautiful he had ever seen. She appeared to be of Amorite stock, with the lush black hair and immaculate tawny skin of her race. Her face was that of the perfect lover that all men recognise from dreams, but which few aspire to touch in reality—dark-eyed and full-lipped, sensuous and wilful, generous yet demanding. She was standing ankle-deep in the waters of a narrow cove—a place where she could presume to remain unobserved—and, as Dardash watched, she unbuttoned her white linen chiton, cast the garment behind her on to the sand, and began to bathe.
Her movements were graceful and languorous, like those of a dance that was being performed for his sole benefit, and his mouth went dry as he took in every detail of her body, followed the course of every runnel of water from splendid breast to belly and slim-coned thigh.
Dardash had no clear idea of how long her toilet lasted. He remained in a timeless, trance-like state until she had left the water, clothed herself and was gliding away into the rocky outcrop that formed a natural palisade between sea and land. Only when she was lost to his view did he move again. He removed the eagle-mask from his head, and when he surveyed his little domain with normal vision it seemed strangely bleak and cheerless.
As he descended the stair to the principal chamber in which he did most of his work, there came to Dardash a belated understanding of his recent lack-lustre moods, of his irritability and lapses of concentration. The decision to devote his entire life to the riddle of the scrolls had been an intellectual one, but he was a composite being—a synthesis of mind and body—and the physical part of him was in rebellion. He should have brought one or more girls from an inland village when he had set up his offshore retreat a year earlier. Many would have been glad to accompany and serve him in exchange for a little basic tutelage in magic, but he had an uneasy feeling it was too late to come to such an arrangement. The women, even the youngest, of the region tended to be a sun-withered, work-hardened lot—and he had just seen the sort of companion he truly craved.