LEGEND

'One day, long ago, in a small village not so very far from here there was born to a Miller's wife a boy child who never cried. As he grew up so did his reputation for cleverness, for by the age of five he was helping his father grind and weigh the corn, by seven he had re-designed the mill so that it was powered by the running of a nearby stream, and by twelve he had learned Greek and Latin and long division and he had in his control all the accounts for trade and taxes. The Miller and his wife grew rich and fat, and their son, whose name was Norbert, while he had no friends, was content enough perfecting the mechanical and financial systems of the mill.

'Every year, after the harvest, Tax-collectors arrived, and they were so impressed by the efficiency of the mill and the exactitude of the book-keeping that word of the young prodigy was carried back to Court, and in due course Norbert himself followed the word. His education was entrusted to seven Magicians, who told him of the interconnectedness of all things, and of the secret words that hold power over things living and dead.

'But, where the Magicians saw connections, Norbert saw only separateness, and where the Magicians saw Spirit, Norbert saw only blind, mechanical force like the water that drove his father's mill; and where the Magicians worked to keep all things in balance, Norbert believed only in what could be weighed and measured and counted and bought and sold, like the grain and the flour he had grown up among.

'Time passed, and Norbert became a man of power in the Court, and his contempt for magic grew and grew. When he had served his Master twice seven years he went to him and said

"Great is the foolishness and waste and inefficiency of

superstition. Give me leave, oh Master, to uproot it from

the land, and I shall make Poictesme as bright and neat

and clean and efficient as a clock."

'And the Count his master gave him leave and he raised an army and marched about the domain, everywhere there were dragons and trolls and dark woods and wild places. Wherever he went he laid roads and dug drains and drilled wells and installed machinery.

*

'Now, the seven Wizards, his former tutors, were much displeased. They left the Court and established their rumourous sway in castles in the in-between places which nobody wanted, and there they wove their magics and prepared for battle. The rest of the realm became as orderly, prosperous and neat as a market garden, and if some found that under the new arrangements they had no land to graze their livestock or grow their food, then they joined the army of Norbert Sedge and built fences, and cleared woods, and drained swamps and made roads and bridges and dug wells and ditches and drains and irrigation channels.

'Then Norbert Sedge turned his face to the West, and marched upon the strongholds of the Wizards, where magic had been driven into hiding.

*

'The first of these strongholds was in a great swamp and in a great forest and in a great rock. Sedge drained the swamp and burned the forest and cracked the rock, and when all was done there was nothing but a great pile of ashes on which nothing would grow, and no creature prosper, and which was unmoved by any wind.

*

'The last of these strongholds stood on a high pass in the Western Mountains, grim and bleak and scoured by an icy wind. Sedge came there at the head of a great army, the sun glinting from the points of their spears, and their pennants standing stiff, and this army laid seige to the Castle, until one day at dawn the drawbridge lay open, and the gate was flung wide.

*

'Norbert Sedge went in alone, for though his army had followed him to the edge of the World, they would not follow him into the Castle of the Seven Magicians.

'Norbert entered the great hall and adressed the six Magicians he saw there and who had been his tutors :

"I have come for your surrender.

Yield me your staves, your books of secret knowledge,

your stones of power, and you may depart into the West,

and the reign of Magic shall pass from this place."

'And the Magicians saw that there was no power they had over him, for magic had no hold over a mind so concentrated, and affection no sway in a heart so determined. So the six Magicians laid at his feet their staves and their books and their jewels, but the seventh Magician, Gremthell, stayed hidden in the shadows.

'Then Norbert Sedge called upon the seventh Magician to come forward, saying that if he did not he would put to death his friends and colleagues who had already surrendered; and hearing this Gremthell stepped from the shadows holding in his hand a silver wand, to which was tied a golden thread.

"Lay down your wand, Gremthell."

said Norbert Sedge.

"Is that truly what you want ?"

asked Gremthell, last and greatest of the Wizards, Master of Thaumaturgy, Lord of Psychosis, initiate of the innermost spiritual knowledge.

"It is."

said Norbert Sedge.

'So Gremthell released his silver wand, which, instead of falling, in the manner of objects, rose swiftly into the air, up, up to the high ceiling of the Great Hall. Norbert Sedge looked up, surprised, and then he saw the boulder, which, in the manner of objects, fell down from the great height at which the golden thread had held it, and squashed him like a bug.

*

'The army dispersed quietly into separate people, who walked the long way home to their villages, and many of them lived in reasonable contentment for a fairly long time, and had children, and quarrelled and drank ale and paid taxes and died before they had time to ask themselves what it was all for.