The King leaned his chin on one hand and frowned for a minute. Then he said, «It is our command that this be done as you advise.»
IX
Miach was an apt pupil. At the third try he succeeded in making a man he did not like break out in a series of beautiful yellow splotches, and he was so delighted with the result that he promised Shea for the hunting of the sinech not only the sword of Nuada, but the enchanted shoes of Iubdan, that would enable him to walk on water. He explained that the reason for the overcharge in Shea’s magic was that the spells were in the wrong tongue; but, as the magic wouldn’t work at all without a spell of some kind and Shea didn’t have time to learn another language, this was not much help.
About the sinech itself he was more encouraging. He did a series of divinations with bowls of water and blackthorn twigs. Although Shea himself did not know enough of the magic of this continuum to make out anything but a confused and cloudy movement below the clear surface of the bowl, Miach assured him that in coming to this world of legendary Ireland, he had himself acquired a geas that would not allow his release until he had accomplished something that would alter the pattern of the continuum itself.
«Now tell me, Mac Shea,» he said, «was it not so in the other lands you visted? For I see by my divinations that you have visited many.»
Shea, thinking of how he had helped break up the chapter of magicians in Faerie and rescued his wife from the Saracens of theOrlando Furioso, was forced to agree.
«It is just as I am telling you, for sure,» said Miach. «And I am thinking that this geas has been with you since the day you were born without your ever knowing it. We all of us have them, we do, just as I have one that keeps me from eating pig’s liver, and a good man it is that does not have trouble with his geasa.»
Belphebe looked up from the arrow she was shaping. Her bow was a success, but finding seasoned material from which to build shafts was a problem. «Still, master druid,» she said, «it is no less than a problem to us that we may return to our own place late, and without our friend Pete. For this would place us deeply in trouble.»
«Now I would not be worrying about that at all, at all,» said Miach. «For the nature of a geas is that once it is accomplished, it gives you no more trouble at all. And the time you are spending in the country of the Sidhe will be no more than a minute in the time of your own land, so that you need not be troubling until you are back among the Gaels.»
«That’s a break,» said Shea. «Only I wish I could do something about Pete.»