Free Ars Magica by Judith Tarr Page B

soft yet stern.
    He rolled onto his back. Tears dried cold on his cheeks, stinging where his nails had rent them. “I killed Maryam,” he said, simply, like a child.
    Hatto’s breath hissed as he caught it, but his face did not change. He glanced at the altar and its burden. “For that?”
    â€œFor my soul’s damnation.”
    â€œYet you came here. You do penance. Have you hope of atonement?”
    â€œI want to die.”
    â€œHad that been true, you would have stayed to face her father.”
    Gerbert drew in upon himself, trembling in spasms. “He will hunt me down. He will not let me die. Oh, no. He will want me to atone, and atone, and atone, and — ”
    Hatto slapped him, hard. “Enough! You are not the first man ever to do murder. Even murder of magic. Get up.”
    There was power in that voice, if no magic. It drove Gerbert to his feet. It brought men in armor, whom he welcomed with open arms. “Seize me, bind me, chain me. Make me pay.”
    They did none of his bidding. They only guided him. Back through the bishop’s palace. Back to his own small cell, with his books in it, and his pens, and his spare habit. They bade him stay there; they mounted guard.
    It was enough. It would have to be. The damned could not pray. The mad could not read. The murderer could only lie on the hard cold floor and let his soul gnaw itself into nothingness.
    Or try to. Great passions were alien to peasants’ sons, even peasants’ sons whose lust for learning had destroyed them. Reason kept wanting to intrude. Grief, yes, that was fitting. And guilt. But hysteria shamed her memory.
    â€œI’m sorry,” he said to it. “I’m — so — sorry.”
    It was not even pitiful. It was too feeble.
    His weeping was saner now. He could think around it. They were no thoughts he would ever have wanted to think, but they were necessary. To face what he had done. To set it deep, where he could never forget it, or excuse it, or argue it away. Deep enough even, God willing, to touch his magic.
    He shuddered on the stone. Magic. Oh, God, he hated it. If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out.
    Pluck. Out.
    His body knotted. Simple, yes. Easy. Simpler and easier than facing it. Naming its name. Mastering it.
    Master it?
    She had. She had killed no one so distant as a sister of the heart. Her magic had destroyed her mother.
    Was this how, in the end, she paid? How then would he pay? Who would love him, and fell him unthinking, because he was in the way?
    He had an oracle now, to tell him. For all the good it had done Maryam, who had had it before him.
    â€œMaryam,” he said, grieving. “Maryam.”
    oOo

    They brought him food and drink. He touched neither. He welcomed the pain of hunger and thirst, the ache of a body left too still, too long, on unyielding stone. Pain was a punishment.
    How long he lay there, he neither knew nor cared. When they came for him, he went without either will or resistance. He felt light, hollow, emptied of aught but bare being.
    Bishop Hatto waited for him. Hatto in his private chamber, with the image of bronze on the table before him, and across the table, still as the image, Ibrahim.
    Gerbert’s knees gave way. No one moved to help him. He knelt and stared at the magus’ face. In this little while, it had grown old.
    There was nothing Gerbert could say. They were cold, both of them, and stern. They had tried him, judged him, sentenced him. He knew better than to hope for mercy.
    After an endless while, Ibrahim spoke. “Have you anything to say?”
    Gerbert shook his head.
    The magus’ face twisted. A moment only: grief, rage, unbearable pain. Then it had stilled again. “Now,” he said, low and rough. “Now you know the truth. What the magic is. What price it exacts.”
    â€œBlood,” said Gerbert.
    â€œNo.” Ibrahim bit it off. “Nothing so simple as blood. Did you love