The Well-Favored Man

by Elizabeth Willey

  “I’m afraid it may not be for long, Walt. We met Gemnamnon in the Border.”

  Walter stared at me, his bouncy good cheer becoming shocked concern. “The dragon?”

  “The very same one,” I said. “I shall be back soon. We are at Alex’s house now.”

  “You’re unhurt, though?”

  “Yes. I’ll tell you the full tale when I get there, but keep an eye to the skies and the outlying areas. Let Phoebe know we may have more trouble with the damned beast and ask her to hurry home with due caution when she can.”

  It was possible that the Gryphon had killed the dragon, but I wanted to take no chances. If he didn’t turn up in Argylle, perhaps I ought to go looking for him.

  Or I could just fall on my sword and deprive Gemnamnon of the pleasure of gutting me.

  “Gwydion?”

  “Thinking. Sorry. Um,” I collected myself, “Ulrike will stay here; it’s safer, I think, and on my way back I’ll ask around and see if I can find anything more about him …”

  Walter nodded. “Whatever you want, Gwydion. You’re in command.”

  “Please tell Prospero about this also. He might want to think about getting his ass out of Haimance and down into Argylle City.”

  “He’ll not like that” Walter grinned meaningfully.

  I gestured impatiently. “Then she can visit, I don’t give a fig, but if I come home and find a burned-out city and Citadel—”

  “Surely we shall not come to that, Gwydion. If there is trouble or the rumor of it, I shall Summon you at once.”

  “Good. I had better go.”

  “All right. Safe journey, Gwydion.”

  “Good-bye, Walter. And thanks.”

  “It’s no trouble.” He shrugged, waving, good-natured again.

  I snuffed the candle and sat down on the end of the bed.

  I could not permit Gemnamnon to rampage around the Border or the Road. As Lord of Argylle, I was responsible not only for my immediate surroundings but for everything from the Spring to the Border. It was my job to form some plan to rid us of the dragon permanently and carry it out.

  Where had that Gryphon come from? It was no ordinary one. The gryphons of the Jagged Mountains are scarce nowadays, and have been so since around the time of the Independence War; some plague crashed the population and it never recovered. They had long since retreated to the Western Wastes. I had seen two in my lifetime when travelling around out there with Belphoebe. Gryphons were not so big as that nor so powerful as that—the thing had been a veritable Node in and of itself, out of place in the Border, as out of place as Gemnamnon.

  Maybe Prospero or Belphoebe would have some illumination to shed on that face of the encounter. I made a mental note to myself to ask them. The twins had never spent much time in Argylle and thus were not such good sources of lore and information, trivial and important, about the place.

  Then I sighed. My holiday was shattered. I had been starting to really relish the idea of time off, time to myself, time to be Gwydion and not the Lord of Argylle, to be a nobody and just poke around on my own. If I lived through this, I swore I’d take a year off. If I lived.

  16

  ALEXANDER’S COUNTRY HOUSE WAS ONE OF those perfect places in which it is so comfortable to pass an hour, a day, or a year that the guest can hardly bear to leave. Particularly the guest who knows there is something large and dangerous waiting to pick a fight with him somewhere out in the wide world. I ought to have hit the Road again at once; instead, I delayed.

  I spent most of the afternoon just walking around Alexander’s garden; he left me alone and went and made himself agreeable to Ulrike, who had awakened and risen. When I strolled up to the house for the evening meal I found them laughing and talking together in a summerhouse with apéritifs and hors d’oeuvres. She showed remarkably few ill effects from her horrible introduction to the dragon, perhaps laughing a little brightly and talking a little too fast. Watching her as I approached, I was struck by the realization that we had gotten off lightly; at the very least, there could have been grave injuries. But there Ulrike was, almost as effervescent as Tellin, well and sound.

  Alexander was charming her, I could see; she was happy to be charmed. He was petting and spoiling her, making plans to take her hither and yon and for parties and all that sort of thing, and he had shortened her name to Rikki, which was, I had to admit, rather cuter than the somewhat mournful Ulrike.

  So I poured myself an apéritif, helped myself to little vegetables with dabs of this and that on them, and sat off to one side, listening to them with one ear and looking at the light and water playing together in a fountain not far off.

  “Gwydion, be happy,” Alexander said. “You are alive; you are not presently filling a dragon’s crop; moreover you have a most worthy opponent to challenge your swordplay and sorcery. Furthermore we are honored by the company of our delightful youngest sister.”

  Ulrike giggled. “Oh, Alex.”

  “Thus,” Alexander went on, “Fortuna has given you everything a man of our blood could want. Stop moping, for heaven’s sake. There is nothing you can do this minute, is there?”

  I glared at him. “Alexander, I have to think of a way to either permanently discourage or destroy Gemnamnon. I prefer to do it sooner rather than later. I assume he is not sitting around composing quatrains on the elegance and surpassing excellence of some horse.”

  Alexander reddened. He had once done exactly that. He was drunk at the time, but Walter had heard about it and set the abominable poetry to music and sung it at a dinner party where Alexander was also a guest.

  “Then get going on it,” he said indifferently then. “Rid us of this scaly plague.”

  “You could offer assistance,” I snapped.

  “I am not the Lord of Argylle, and this is an Argylline difficulty,” Alexander retorted. “I would suggest, if you were of a mind to listen, that you must either master him in his element or take him utterly out of it and vanquish him there. That is merely a philosophical chestnut, though, one which I am sure you, as notoriously clever as you are, have already applied to your possible solutions.”

  My reply to that was on my tongue when Ulrike interrupted me.

  “Gwydion,” she said, “Alexander was asking me just where Grandfa—where Prospero is visiting and I could not remember it; can you remind me of it please?”

  “He is in Haimance,” I said after a few seconds, “at Zhuéra Pellean’s.” I spoke through a tight jaw, though I saw perfectly well what she was trying to do. It was the right thing, to forestall a quarrel.

  “That was it,” she said. “Are the Voulouy family not related?”

  “In some way or other,” I said. “In Haimance, probably in several. It is a little turned in on itself, that district.”

  Alexander said something civil about the Pelleans, and the conversation went on in a more courteous and appropriate way.

  “You’ve become quite domestic,” I said to Alex the second day I was there. “The conservatory, the renovations … You are not thinking of marrying or anything like that, are you?” I said it lightly, banteringly, not offensively; it could be a touchy subject, but I was curious.

  He laughed and then grinned. “Not in the slightest,” he said, “never less than now, indeed. Why bother? I can get any benefit I would from having a wife from my staff or the local ladies, who count some uncommonly attractive creatures among their number. In fact, one of them is coming to lunch tomorrow with a couple of sisters and a cousin or two and some miscellaneous other friends and relations so that Rikki may begin making some acquaintances in the neighborhood.”

  “Which is the attractive one?” One of his mistresses, probably.

  “You must judge for yourself. They are none of them bad-looking, I can tell you that. Any of them would be an ornament to the Palace in Landuc in any capacity.”

  “There’s an idea,” I said, “establish a harem …”

  “As much work as having a wife,” snorted Alexande
r, laughing. “And they’d ever be bickering and what-not too. Nay, the status quo contents me, and the status shall be quo for a long, long, long time to come.”

  “Good,” I said. “Walter has been circling that weaver more and more closely.”

  “Walter has always been the domestic sort. Father and Mother shouldn’t have allowed him to run off and get married so young. It has skewed his thinking.”

  “He seems happy to me,” I said.

  “He’s happy, but he’s always looking for something he will never find,” Alexander said. “Emily is gone. He shouldn’t have married her. She was an ephemeron. He wanted, and he wants still, to find someone who will be there all his life, and it should be obvious that in our family this is the glaring exception, not the rule.”

  “Particularly considering the temperaments of our aunts and our lack of female cousins,” I agreed, steering away from the subject of our parents with a gut instinct for avoidance. Talking with Alexander is like walking the wire for me.

  “Speaking of female relations, Neyphile was setting little sticky lines for Uncle Fulgens lately,” Alexander said.

  I laughed at the idea.

  “I know. The image that comes to my mind is of a Fapha-tan cat courting a bull. Fulgens found some urgent and engrossing business out of town and took to his heels.”

  “Wise of him.”

  “The woman is transparent. I wonder if she realizes that. Are you staying, then?”

  I blinked at the change in topic. “No, I’ll be off … perhaps tonight … have to check my Ephemeris. This isn’t an easy spot to leave, and I want to ride along the Border on my way home and scout it out.”

  Alexander said only, “I believe the only way open to you is the dawn Gate outside Montgard.”

  When I consulted my Map and Ephemeris, I found he was right. I could shortcut down to the town on a Ley and go through a dawn Gate at a mound and a standing stone to get on the Road. At this season, this was the only opening within several days’ travel, so I planned to do that. Alexander nodded when I told him this, gave me the name of a good inn in the town and a letter telling the Montgard town gatekeepers that I was to be permitted to come and go freely at any time, and showed me the Ley. Since, even with the Ley shortcut, it was a day’s ride to the town, I was persuaded without difficulty to stay another night and leave in the morning. Regretfully I forwent the opportunity to see some of the prettiest girls in Montgard.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Alexander shrugged, “the prettiest is already in the house. What a delightful doll she is, Gwydion.”

  “Isn’t she,” I agreed, shaking my head and smiling, “the quintessential sister, except our other sisters are nothing like her. She’s so damn shy though.”

  “I can see that. That is why I thought I would introduce her to Lady Ammerle. She is a grandmotherly woman. I expect she will take Rikki right under her wing, and I’ll have no further worries about introducing her anywhere.”

  “Try to get her to … you know … be a little more,” I gestured, “or rather, a little less mousy.” My impulse to shake her at times nearly overmastered me. I wanted to shout, “Wake up! Look alive!” at her.

  “Maybe she’s just a mouse,” Alexander said. “Some girls are.”

  “I cannot believe that Gaston would rear any species of mouse.”

  My brother shrugged again.

  I left as planned in the morning on a fast, businesslike young blonde-maned mare of Alexander’s who had plenty of Road trips to her credit. He asked that I return her as soon as I could, and I promised to do so. Her name was Hussy. Her saddlebags held a week’s food and water, some extra clothing, and a letter Ulrike had written to her bosom friend in Haimance and which I had sworn to post when I got home. The letter probably recounted in hair-raising detail the trip hither. I was armed and armored as before, despite Alexander’s suggestions that I get some heavier equipment.

  “Alex, you’ve seen Gemnamnon. You saw what he did to Marfisa. I know what he did to me. Armor is a formality against him. If I run into him alone without having some kind of plan or trap, I am simply going to die.”

  We stood in the grey-gravelled drive before Alexander’s country house. I was taking my leave of them, and Alexander had brought up armor.

  Ulrike looked frightened. “Gwydion, maybe you shouldn’t go alone!”

  “I must go alone. Alexander cannot leave just now and I can move faster alone anyway,” I said, “and what I said about meeting the dragon alone probably also applies to meeting him with a friend or an army. There is nothing to be done. I am as well-prepared as I can be.”

  “He might not even meet the dragon,” Alexander told Ulrike. “Don’t worry about things you can’t change, Rikki. This is Gwydion’s choice. We all have the right to choose our risks and run them.”

  “Mother always used that as her last-ditch argument with Gaston,” I remembered.

  Alexander laughed. “It’s a principle she didn’t exactly invent, although she invoked it when it suited her. Safe journey, Gwydion.”

  “Safe journey,” echoed Ulrike.

  I mounted as they spoke. “Thank you. Au revoir,” I said, and turned the mare’s head as I nudged her sides with my heels. She trotted down the drive. Relief and dread jockeyed for position in my heart—relief at getting out of Alexander’s house without our having one of our usual nasty arguments and at fobbing off responsibility for Ulrike for a little while, and dread at what I might encounter on the next Ley or Road segment I trod. I hoped Gemnamnon was not preying up and down the Border. He would be a nightmare of blood and terror to them.

  The Ley track was a clear, easy-to-follow one; it led me straight down to the town and I left it when I recognized that I was about a mile from the town’s gates. I rode in then like any other traveller and showed my pass-letter to the gatekeeper, who gave me directions to the inn Alexander recommended.

  I half-feared it would be a fleabag brothel or some such prank of his, but it was a real inn: The Mermaid’s Cups. The green-tressed Mermaid was combing her hair with a sultry pout on her lips and a mirror in her hand. The name was puzzling since Montgard is landlocked. I asked the host, as he showed me to a room, whence came the name, and he snickered and asked if I’d looked at both sides of the sign. I had not. Well, he said, that was where the name came from and it had been called that since the Old Lord’s days and that was all he knew.

  I went down and had a look at the sign and laughed out loud, for the reverse showed her with her hair up and dressed and her hands holding a seashell brassière which did not look adequate to cover her very generous breasts—one shell in each hand. Since the shells were of the pointed, spiralling sort and she held them at the narrow ends, they did look like wine-cups she was offering to the passerby.

  “Very nice,” I said to the landlord, and he chuckled and said there was a certain amiable lady who was said to be the spitting image of the Mermaid if I was interested, and I said thanks but no and had a beer and a meat pie and sat around listening to the local gossip, which was mostly uninteresting to me except when it touched on Alexander.

  I spent a quiet night there, got up in time to make it out of town and onto the Road at the moment of access at the dawn Gate, and made good speed toward the Border. As I rode, I admitted to myself that I was afraid and braced myself for the things I might find there, and I tried to lay contingency plans for my escape or preservation if Gemnamnon should appear as he had before. There were not many courses open to me. Sorcery is unreliable in the Border. That closed most of the life-preserving avenues. And though Hussy was fast, I didn’t think she’d outrun Gemnamnon, even with an adrenaline boost.

  Hussy made excellent time; she had amazing stamina and pounded along at a steady gallop. I praised her often and gave her rests to keep her sharp (and an apple at one stop) and wondered if Alexander could be induced to part with her or maybe one of her foals. Ulrike should have such a horse as this: already trained to Leys and the Road, fast, smart, and calm. It w
ould be a fitting gift to give her come spring, when outings in Threshwood are as common as those on the Wye.

  This turned my thoughts homeward. A half-panicked worrying over what might be happening there seized me with a series of horrible images. What if Gemnamnon had gone there? What if I returned to find him on my Citadel, over my brother Walter’s body? What if he had laid waste the town or fired the forest? What could I do? How could I protect the whole City from such a monster?

  There were guarding spells around the City already, of course, and there were simple wards on most farms and stronger ones on every village or town, but they wouldn’t stop Gemnamnon. Could the warding spells be strengthened to a point where they would stop him? At least on the City proper? I would have to check. I suspected not, or not without substantially diverting the flow from the Spring to the rest of the world. What would such diversion of the sustaining power do to the Leys and the Road? Would they … fade? Or degrade? Or disappear altogether? Become intermittent, broken? There was no way to guess.

  I gnawed at this problem for a long time while Hussy carried me along briskly. After fretting on the dilemma of whether to attack or to wait to be attacked again long enough for frustration to set in, I called a halt.

  Hussy and I left the Ley and found ourselves a campsite in a desiccated country of yellow rocks turned incarnadine by the glowering sun. I picketed her. While she ate her oats and tried nibbling various of the local shrubs and grasses, I built a fire for myself and had dinner—a meat pie I’d brought from Montgard, a few tart early apples, a chunk of cheese. Then I drew a protective circle around us, horse and man, and cast three spells of warding for different kinds of threats into it.

  That done, I wrapped myself in my cloak and lay beside my dying fire to watch the afternoon sky grow dark. It would be cold here tonight. I pillowed my head on a saddlebag and played the old first-star game. When I found it, a steady topaz spark near the zenith, I made a wish for peace and quiet and good health for everyone. That seemed like it might be general enough to do some good.