The Star Magicians

EPILOGUE

THEY STOOD together on the crest of a rounded hill, along toward sunset. His arm was about her shoulders, and they stood without speaking, looking down into the valley.

Behind them, hovering just above the hill’s crest, the lean, rakish shape of the Wolfhound caught the ruddy westering light, in long sanguine reflections that glimmered in its mirror-smooth metal hull.

Before them, the long, shallow slope of the hill stretched away in a thick green carpet of sweet grass that flowed silkenly in the early evening breeze. The heady perfume of meadow flowers came to them, borne on the fresh, sharp breeze that also carried to them the distant, raucous cry of gulls winging along the beach and the lazy slap and wash of waves from the sea that lay just beyond the green, darkling hills to the west.

Against the dim green bosom of the valley, like a bright brooch, the city lay—young, lusty, still growing, with walls of whitewashed stone. Smoke from evening cook-fires rose from many chimneys, and they could see the clear pastel colors of the plastered walls of low houses and small buildings: salmon and blue and a sunny yellow, topped with peaked roofs of dark red tile.

A small blue stream, crimson now as it reflected the sunset sky in all its glory, meandered lazily in zig-zags across the distant fields where ripe yellow corn grew and rustled in the breeze.

Home.

To Calastor, whose only home had been a spaceship’s grimly utilitarian cabin, or the bleak rocky vales of barren Parlion, it looked very peaceful. Quiet. Restful.

Before the Goddess had transported them in the sphere of force to the Wolfhound’s cabin, She had warned him not to be so deceived.

“Think not, young wizard, that your adventuring is done, and that naught lies ahead for you and your lady but domestic tranquility, fat babies, and a sleepy old age, tucked in a warm chimney-corner out of the wind.

“Much lies yet ahead of you. You must realize and master the world that is yours. Choose men of worth and mettle, call them to your standard, fire them with ringing words—and ringing deeds. Yours is no sweetly rustic, quaintly charming little planetary kingdom. No—but a brawling, lusty and barbaric young world. There will be tribes and kings, clans and nations for you to break—and then remold together into a stronger unity. Oh, you will have your fill of fighting, Calastor, before you have done! You will be weary enough, by the end, of adventures and wars, battles and heroic deeds of derring-do, never fear.

“And, by some miracle, you must forge the strong foundations of an industrial technology out of simple farmers, fishers, and bandit-chiefs. Parlion waits to divulge her long-hoarded treasury of scientific secrets. She must find a booming, vigorous young technological civilization ready to use them, when the day dawns at last.

“You, or your sons, or their sons, shall lead the first legions into space, first settling and colonizing the worlds within the home system—then out across immensity to the planets of thrice ten thousand stars. By strategy or force, cunning or conquest, you shall bring the standards of the old Imperial planets beneath your bright new banner—and hold them.

“You have a Galaxy to civilize once again. And you had best get started!”

Remembering Her words, he smiled. Quiet little valley, eh? Charming little old-fashioned walled city? Ah, this little world little dreamed, there in the mystic twilight, of the exciting things that would soon be happening to it!

But She was right—as always! It was time to get started,

He wondered how he would ever find time to do everything that had to be accomplished.

Well … that was what sons were for!

Hand in hand, they went down the hillside through the long, sighing grass, and into the city.