by E. D. Walker
Tense, Garwaf crept up to the bowl and peered into the water’s black depths. Shapes swirled until a face formed on the surface. Garwaf yipped in shock and fell backward off the bench. His ears flattened to his skull, and he gazed in wonder at the magician.
***
Llewellyn muttered a few words and passed his hand over the bowl. He filled his lungs and closed his eyes as he let the air out in a slow sigh. When he opened his eyes again, he stared at the face in the bowl.
The face belonged to a young man in his late twenties with smooth terra cotta brown skin. His thick hair had the dark, luxurious finish of a raven’s wing. A long beard shadowed his well-chiseled cheekbones and strong, square jaw. His features were generally reminiscent of the king’s leonine countenance, except broader and stronger. His aquiline nose had a crooked bridge from at least one bad break. A puckered white scar cut through his eyebrow and scooted just to the side of his right eye before going all the way down to the top of his cheekbone.
The man’s eyes were truly beautiful: deep set and almond shaped, with dark lashes and irises of cobalt blue. The top of the young man’s broad, well-muscled shoulders showed, and Llewellyn could just make out signs of small, half-healed bite marks there. The man also wore a gold rose pendant around his neck on a delicate chain.
Llewellyn had not seen this face in a very long time but, nevertheless, he recognized the man on the instant. He touched the wolf’s shoulder. “I’m sorry to have startled you, my lord.” He bowed his head and grinned at the wolf. “But that’s one mystery solved for certain, at least. You are Lord Gabriel.”
The wolf huffed and rolled his eyes.
Llewellyn chuckled. “Well, yes, but I had to be sure.” He slapped his thigh in satisfaction and stood. “Now on to the next mystery.”
Llewellyn shuffled back to the tripod and picked the bowl up. With great care, he set the container in front of the wolf’s paws. The magician hurried to his worktable and selected a small, wickedly sharp knife. He bowed his head again in respect before the wolf. “My lord, this next form of scrying requires a bit more. I could use spittle, but that doesn’t work as well. I am as likely to see what you had for dinner in the bowl as I am anything of significance. Have I your leave?” He brandished the knife.
Garwaf lifted his paw readily enough, and his muscles tensed as he braced himself. Llewellyn held the wolf’s limb over his scrying bowl. “Think of all you wish for me to know.” With precision, Llewellyn made a small slash on the wolf’s forearm and let three drops of blood plop lazily into the bowl of water.
Llewellyn released the paw and swirled the contents of the bowl with his knife’s blade. He quickly set the bowl back on the wooden tripod and let the surface of the water still. After a moment, he leaned forward to watch the play of events flit in crystal-clear images across the surface of the water.
He saw the duke at once, and the Lady Alisoun swam into focus a moment later. The lady appeared very upset, hanging on to her lord’s arm, her face pinched and white.
The bowl could do many things. Producing sound was, unfortunately, not one of them. Llewellyn, being intuitive and quick witted, had a gift for interpreting the images he saw when he scryed.
At first, the duke seemed reluctant, apprehensive even. He kept shaking his head and turning away from her. She grabbed his arm and pulled him back, tears streaming from her eyes. At last he gave in and pulled her into his arms. In a whispered conference, he conveyed to her whatever secret she had been trying to pull from him.
Llewellyn watched the Lady Alisoun closely and saw the look of horror and revulsion cross her countenance. He also saw, barely a moment later, the look of cunning as it fell like an executioner’s axe across her face. She schooled her beautiful features into a look of love and concern as her lord looked at her once more.
***
Garwaf had by this time climbed up to watch the play of events in the bowl. How well he remembered this conversation.
Alisoun addressed a question to him. Her tone had been so mild, full of such simple curiosity. “My lord, do—do you undress for your transformation into a wolf, or…”
He had laughed. Laughed. The idiot. “Wife, I go stark naked.” He had wiggled his eyebrows and leaned in for a kiss.
She turned away. “My love, where are your clothes, then, while you’re changed?”
He shook his head, retaining that much common sense, at least. “I cannot tell you, nor anyone. If I am ever discovered, if my clothes are taken, I will be trapped as a wolf until they are returned to me.” He’d tucked a strand of her flaxen hair behind her ear. “That’s why I don’t want to reveal their hiding place. Can you understand?”
Tears trembled on the edges of her eyelashes, and her lips turned down into an adorable pout. “I have given you all of myself. I love you more than all the world. I am your wife. You must not keep secrets from me. Do you fear your wife?”
Yes. Dammit. And rightly so.
“Quiet, please, so I may think,” Llewellyn murmured.
Garwaf realized he had growled as the water mirror turned to that bit of the scene. Duly chastened, he looked back at the shining surface that was water and yet more besides.
Ah yes, another bout of pleading and begging and raging and storming. Alisoun had certainly known how to throw her tantrums. Quite impressive ones, really.
“You don’t trust me.” She threw a jar of perfume, and he jumped back as it shattered against the wall. “You hide your deepest self from me, and then when you finally do tell me, I find there are still more lies to unravel, more secrets you keep. You claim to love me, but this doesn’t seem like love.” Her lower lip trembled, and a small catch formed in her voice. “What dire sin have I committed to make you doubt me?”
His guilt got the better of his common sense. In those days he had believed himself to love her. Before he’d learned the truth of things, of course. Before Kathryn.
“Dear heart.” He perched on the edge of the bed while Alisoun sat next to him and watched him with eager, hungry eyes, drinking in his every word. “Near the woods where I abide as a wolf, there is an old shrine that has often done me good service. Beneath one of the bushes of this same holy place is a hollow rock. I hide my clothes there until I am ready to return home.” He told the truth to his wife and opened his soul to her, exposing the deepest shadow that hung over his heart. Fool that he was, he had told her everything.
Garwaf could take the memories no longer and looked away again.
***
But Llewellyn kept watching. That was the point of this whole exercise, after all.
The interview apparently over, Gabriel reached for Alisoun, but she waved him off and, having soothed him with a tender kiss, crossed to a small table filled with correspondence. She sat at once and scribbled a hasty note on a small sheaf of parchment. Gabriel, meanwhile, sighed heavily and went to fetch a servant to clean up the mess she had created in her pique.
On his way out, he glanced down at the letter to which she was just applying a wax wafer and the seal of her husband’s house. As the scene dimmed, Llewellyn squinted fiercely and just managed to make out the name written on the letter: Lord Reynard, Earl of Troumper.
“Ah,” was all Llewellyn said as the water flowed in the bowl into a different scene. Gabriel stood in the forefront of the scene, in the middle of his castle’s inner bailey, checking the cinches on his great black palfrey’s saddle.
Llewellyn looked at the wolf. “What was that horse’s name again? Bible name, wasn’t it?”
Garwaf returned him rather a dry, droll look. The magician quirked an eyebrow and grinned. “Goliath.” He shook his head and turned to the bowl. “Good horse.”
Gabriel checked the gear strapped to the grand brute Goliath. The duke paused before mounting and cast about for something, his dark eyes probing every corner of his keep. He glanced upward, and the Lady Alisoun rushed headlong down the castle steps to her lord. She threw herself into his arms and kissed him with abandon
. While poor Gabriel had his eyes firmly closed—all the better to enjoy the sweet attentions of his beloved wife—Lady Alisoun had her brown eyes open—all the better to watch the werewolf whose kisses she suffered through one last time to allay suspicion. She pulled away, and Gabriel mounted and rode off. He turned at the castle gate to wave, but Alisoun had already hurried inside.
Gabriel seemed disheartened, his broad shoulders slumping and his brows drawing together. He looked worried. He shook his head, and a strained smile crossed his face as he rode off into the gathering gloom of the night.
Llewellyn sighed. “Idiot.”
Garwaf growled and rolled his gaze toward the ceiling, sighing, as if to say, I know.
A cozy little hermitage and shrine off the main road appeared in the bowl. Gabriel tied his horse there and went in to leave an oblation at the church. He prayed on his knees before the tiny altar to the ancestors and, when he rose, walked straight out of the building and down the road.
He stepped behind a bush to strip off all of his fine clothes and every piece of jewelry he wore, right down to the golden signet ring of his house. He made a small bundle and wrapped it around with sacking, then turned over a hollow rock and snugly tucked the package inside the stone before tipping it back down. This accomplished, he looked skyward. Night had fallen, and clouds screened the sky. The moon rose.
Llewellyn had never seen a werewolf transformation. He had been trying to do some research on the subject, but whenever people tried to observe a werewolf secretly, they inevitably ended up observing from the werewolf’s innards. Scholarship on the subject remained somewhat limited.
Llewellyn wouldn’t say he was disappointed on witnessing the event—just surprised at the subtlety of the transformation. Moonbeams fell across the land. Gabriel watched them with apparent equanimity and waited silently behind his bush. As the moonbeams fell across his body, the parts they touched just…turned wolfish. Where the light strayed across his leg, dark fur was suddenly revealed to the light, or was made by the light or…something. Llewellyn couldn’t tell which.
Gradually the moonbeams had lovingly caressed every inch of Gabriel’s body with the sensuous silver light. Where the fine and noble figure of Gabriel had been, there now stood the same black wolf that even now sat placidly at Llewellyn’s feet.
The wolf, his transformation completed, threw his head back with delight and howled his freedom. He bounded happily into the night to create whatever mischief wolves do when left to their own devices. The bowl didn’t show Llewellyn these nightly revels. He was sure they would be fascinating, but they were hardly the meat of the matter.
“Customarily three nights, yes?” Llewellyn turned to the wolf, who nodded solemnly. “But sometimes you didn’t turn back during the day. Such a bother, after all.”
The wolf looked a trifle abashed, and he shifted his paws in seeming unease.
Llewellyn clucked and smiled. “Ah, my boy, I understand. Being a wolf has certain enjoyments when it’s only three days out of every month. But two years of nothing but being an animal? The experience wears thin, I’m sure. You didn’t this last time, correct? Turn back human and change into your clothes, I mean. That’s why you didn’t notice they had gone missing until the time to change back for good?”
Garwaf nodded. Excitement bubbled in Llewellyn, making his hands twitchy for something to do. Garwaf blinked, and the pictures in the water spun again.
The wolf returned in the predawn light of what Llewellyn guessed was the final day of his transformation. The wolf sniffed at the rock, turning it over with a paw. Empty. Just a hollow rock.
The wolf sniffed the area. Again and again. Round and round in circles. Down the road, up, back into the woods. All over. Dawn came and went, and still the wolf continued his fruitless search.
Llewellyn cast him a look of sympathy. “Even then?”
***
Yes, even then. The wolf sighed. I didn’t believe it.
In the next scene, he would go home to look, ashamed to let Alisoun see what he had become, yet he needed her help if he was ever to be a man again. He went home, and he had found Reynard there before him.
Next came the scene in the garden where Alisoun had said—where she and Reynard had first—
Well, Garwaf had seen the moment enough in his mind’s eye. He didn’t need to watch Alisoun’s betrayal again outside his own head. He went away from the table and waited for the last scene of his silent testimony to play out.
When the magic had finished, Llewellyn leaned back, rubbing his eyes wearily. “Very illuminating.” He patted the wolf’s shoulder as he had when Gabriel had been a lad. Llewellyn gave him a lopsided grin and set about making a small bed for him on the floor, since the castle was far too cramped with visiting nobles to accommodate either of them that night. “And now, some much-needed rest.”
Garwaf was suddenly reminded of hunting with his uncle and the magician in his youth, before his marriage. Grinning inwardly, Garwaf stretched out next to his friend.
Llewellyn crossed his arms under his head and stared at his ceiling. “Now that I have seen what you had to tell me, I have an idea what is best to be done. You and I need to speak to the king tomorrow. See if he fancies a bit of…hunting.” Llewellyn’s breath slowed with sleep.
Garwaf yawned and placed his chin on his paws to sleep as best he might with all the worries and woes pressing on him. He studied the sleeping wise man, hope stirring in his wolfish heart that, despite his fears, something could be done to save him.
There had to be a way to unravel the tangle that he and the lady he loved now found themselves caught up in.
Chapter Thirteen
The next morning brought the convocation of the king’s lords and the ceremony in which the king’s liegemen would renew their oaths of fealty.
By general accord between the king and the wolf, with a solemn promise on Garwaf’s part, they agreed he would attend the meeting, closely chaperoned by Llewellyn at all times.
The king had observed firsthand some of his liegemen in their carousing of the night before. In deference to the fact that, after all that merrymaking, some of them would have heads fit for cracking, the meeting was never called before noon. The event took place in the great hall. Only men were allowed inside.
The king spent the morning settling land disputes, hearing the grievances of one lord against another, and taking tallies of what taxes and how many fighting men could be called up should the need arise.
The slog through the morning’s work finished rather more quickly than usual with Garwaf sitting by the king’s side. The hearings and adjudications being over, the time had come for the oath to King Thomas. As one, every man in the hall knelt to speak the oath, which renewed his fealty to the king for another year of honorable and righteous service.
Garwaf swallowed as he looked about him at all the bowed heads. He looked to the king. His king. His lord. The man who, for as long as he could remember, had acted as a father to him. Garwaf’s heart stirred, swelled sweetly inside him, a fierce desire kindling to swear again all the oaths of knighthood.
He bowed over his forepaws. His chin touched the cobbles of the court, and he closed his eyes.
The men of the king’s retinue all knew the customary words of the oath well, and as one man, they spoke. For Garwaf, the promises of fealty and righteousness etched themselves into his heart, the words acting as an incantation, drawing their shining light from his worthless hide to lift him higher than his stifling, corporeal form. In his heart, the words of the oath sang out in all sincerity and love for his king.
“I will to my lord, the high king, be ever true and loyal. I swear by my oath I shall love all which my king loves. I shall shun all which he shuns, according to the will of Fate, the order of this world, and the laws of our land. I swear by no word or deed of mine shall I ever do anything to displease or anger my lord. I will be without fear, upright, and good as he dictates, and always I shall defend his realm and his pers
on with my very life. This I swear on my honor as a knight and servant of this land.”
To which King Thomas replied, per tradition, “In return for this service you render unto me, I swear to hold stalwart to you all as you deserve. I will perform every act I have promised and so I am bound to you as you are bound to my will and my service.” King Thomas raised a hand in acknowledgment of his vassals, then slowly lowered it, officially ending the convocation until next year.
Garwaf trembled from the fervor with which he had expressed his vows. He had not yet moved nor risen from his bowed position on the floor.
Two years. Two years and now I’m back again. He wasn’t sure how he kept breathing after such joy. Almost nothing would be able to tarnish this moment. Almost nothing.
Lord Stephen muscled his way through the crowd to the king’s high seat. The baron fell respectfully and with some difficulty to one knee and bowed his gray head. The king motioned, and the Baron of Réméré stood once more with a little huffing and puffing.
Kathryn’s father. Garwaf rose and padded softly to the king’s chair. He settled his limbs on the floor, gave a jaw-popping yawn, and pillowed his long snout on his paws. He attempted then, very overtly, to give every evidence that, despite his display of moving fealty a bare moment before, he really was little more than a dumb lapdog.
Lord Stephen eyed Garwaf with misgiving, but the king waved encouragement that the baron should speak. The Baron of Réméré, looking rather put upon, drew himself up and began an obviously prepared speech. “My lord.” He bowed again, sighing all the while. “My daughter, Lady Kathryn, came to me last night. She’s unhappy—”
“Lady Kathryn? Unhappy?”
