“I watched, and as I watched I felt the tower shake more beneath me, though the water had not come near to it, and Scudamor came running to me to say that below—from below water was coming up, a fountain. But it was strange water, not—not wet. It was not drowning anyone, Lord. I cannot describe it—”
“The Spring,” Prospero said.
“We thought so, Lord. It had risen up like the river, though why I do not know, for it is autumn and there were no great rains. The Spring went up and up, like a fountain, Lord, as it did the night you—before you left here, and then it fell back and we all fell down with its going, dizzy and weak and ill, every one of us. And it was long before I could stand again, and when I could I helped Scudamor to stand and we went again to the window and looked out, and the river’s wall of water had left the city much as you see it, and water lay on the fields.
“We have been trying to clean up,” he added apologetically.
Prospero nodded. The damage was greater than his first glance had shown. The missing storehouses had been where the harvest had been kept, food for the winter, and the river appeared to have swept away all of them from the far bank.
“It is curious about the islands,” Utrachet went on after a brief silence. “One would have thought they too would be washed away, but instead the tower’s isle is even extended, and the others have come back a little larger.”
“They are stone, not soil,” Prospero said, “and ’twould be more than water that washed them away.”
The water had left a thick coating of earth behind it. The riverbanks were smooth as if planed, a wall-fragment jutting from the ground here or there, fallen from the flood or having withstood it.
“How many ships survived? Did the wave flow to the shipyards?” Prospero asked, his eyes on the vacant space where the storehouses had been.
Utrachet replied softly, “Three, Lord, and all are damaged.”
Three ships, of more than a hundred.
“Ollol’s and the other shipyards are … There is not much more left of them than that,” Utrachet said, gesturing at the far bank. “Lord, I am sorry.”
Prospero snorted. “Were you to stand against the water and hold it back? Pah. Thy apology’s folly as great as resistance were.”
Someone shouted “My Lord!” and Prospero turned.
“Scudamor,” he said, pushing his mouth to smile.
“My Lord! Lady Freia, welcome—ah, madame—” Scudamor skidded to a stop, halted in mid-greeting as Odile turned and looked icily at him.
“Freia is dead,” Prospero said emotionlessly.
He watched the news reach them. Utrachet swayed and closed his eyes for an instant. Scudamor’s mouth hung soundlessly open.
“Hath Dewar come here?” Prospero asked, to force motion on them again.
“Nay, Lord,” whispered Scudamor.
“An he be seen, let me be informed in the very instant,” Prospero said, “he hath spurned me and broken his word, taken what he could and may return to plunder more.”
“Aye, Lord,” Scudamor said after a few seconds.
“This lady is the Countess Odile of Aië, who shall bide here with me. Her will is mine. Let all be told.”
Scudamor and Utrachet glanced at one another and nodded. “Aye, Lord,” Scudamor said.
“Lord,” Utrachet said, “if you would care to see the woman who saw the waters coming down the river, she is easily found. Her account of it is better than mine.”
Prospero considered it, nodded. “ ’Tis plain it was no natural flood,” he said, “and I would question her nearly on it. Let her come to the tower.”
“Within the hour, Lord,” Utrachet said. “I will bring her myself.”
“Go then.”
Utrachet bowed and went up across the mud toward the remaining houses.
“My Lord, m— Countess, I will row you to the isle, if you would cross,” Scudamor said. “It is a rough boat—the good ones are gone.”
“I’m not surprised,” Prospero said. “We’ll cross.”
The river was wider than it had been, and the water was churning brown; snags stuck out of the water close to the shore. Prospero made a quick excuse to Odile when he had handed her out of the flat-bottomed rowboat, and he told Scudamor to conduct her to an apartment beside Prospero’s own, that would have housed his daughter. The straight-sided tower had taken no damage at all; it stood tall and clean and proud as it had on the morning of its first day, watching over the city, the river, the isle, and the Spring.
Prospero took a lantern and a few candles and hurried down.
The stairs were fine-grained black stone, the risers high, the treads wide. They spiralled dizzyingly; there was no counting the turnings. The ceiling, an arm’s-length over Prospero’s head, seemed oppressively close. His light was nearly superfluous, for once his feet had learned the rhythm of the steps he need not look.
He had only ascended here, never descended; and then he’d been half-carried by Freia, who had stumbled and paused every dozen steps until he understood that she was holding him up, half-lying across her back and shoulders. He’d insisted on supporting himself, hindering both of them. It had taken them a quarter of the day to come out of the darkness, from the sunken Spring to the bright door where faithful Scudamor and Utrachet had peered and waited.
It seemed more oppressively close than he recalled, and he could not feel the Spring’s power seeping upward. Prospero loped three steps at a time, perilously fast in the turning spiralling darkness, and at the bottom there was the arched opening as it had been, letting onto black nothing.
He stood, listening.
Not a sound met his ears. Not a draft stirred the darkness, Caliban’s great labor now to be of no use to Prospero. The place was dead air, not living as Prospero had intended it to be; a hollow corpse, untenanted.
The light of the lantern’s flame was lost in the dark. All it showed him was that beneath his feet lay stone. Prospero tried to find the Spring with his senses and failed: either it eluded him or it was gone. How different it was from the hours after his great sacrifice, when the place had teemed with life’s essence!
He walked with small, careful steps in what he thought was the right direction. Another pillar. No. He turned and went back, tried again.
His foot nearly went into the hole before he caught himself. Prospero leapt back, the light almost extinguishing itself as he brandished it, and stared at the place where the Spring had been.
A vacant cavity was sunk in the floor, lifeless. He held his hand over it and concentrated. Was he deluding himself, or did it stir, but faintly? He could not be sure.
Something had happened, but what? Had Dewar come and done some mischief? But they had said he’d not been about the place. Yet the drowning, or near-drowning, of the city—
Drowning. Prospero nodded. “Not Dewar, but Freia,” he whispered to the hole. “For I had assigned the place to her; ’twas she who was the ruler, but for a few days. She drowned: Argylle drowns. Water leaving death behind it. Aye.”
The silence answered nothing.
The harvest swept away by the waters was—
Prospero ground his teeth. Had he guessed this might be the result, he’d have undone his gift to Freia, passed the place to his son, who was suited to rule it far better than Freia; to match her nature to the Spring’s had been a risk. Yet it was just as well not, perhaps; Dewar had shown his true self in fleeing Landuc. He was a sorcerer first.
He turned on his heel and left the dry Spring. As long as some little flow continued, the place would survive. Indeed Argylle was now in a similar position to Landuc, whose Well had been dark since Panurgus had made a pyre of it for himself, whose ruler was as incapable of sorcery from ignorance as Argylle’s was from his vow. And Landuc persisted. Argylle would endure.
The Prince of Montgard had intended to be there only briefly, but he had been away nearly three years and had much to review. He spent sixteen days on the most urgent business, reading letters a
nd reviewing accounts from his stewards and retainers, by and large approving what they had done. He did not appoint cheats, liars, or fools; Gaston’s sense of justice required that all, great and small, be treated equally, and if he did punish harshly, the punishment would be the same be the offender a serf of one of his estates or the Lord Mayor of Montgard.
The delay gave him time to assure himself that he had done right by Freia—for he had felt a qualm that he ought to have taken her back to her father—and to observe improvement in her health. She slept two days, waking a few times to eat ravenously and then relapsing into exhausted slumber. A maid stayed by her, sewing and watching, and brought her food when she wanted it. Another few days saw Freia being measured, passively doll-like, for clothing and shoes and other necessities, fussed over by Mistress Witham the housekeeper. Her feet and hands, though blistered, were not severely frostbitten, her face patched and peeled; but she mended rapidly, without complications or complaint. Gaston observed to himself that the Well must have shielded her from the worst, though she had not yet passed its fire. He had seen men lose limbs after such exposure.
When she was able to rise, and when she was not required by seamstresses and cobblers, Freia kept close to Gaston, saying little, nearly invisible in her stillness. If he worked in his office, she would sit wrapped in a shawl in a chair near the fire or a sunny window, her hand cupped protectively over the sallow bruise on her cheek, looking at books from his collection; if he walked on his walls, Gaston took her with him and showed her the town, or they might walk in the castle garden and look at espaliered fruit trees and the pleached arbor, now bare, and the fountain whose water was shut off for the winter. The castle garden was functional, herbs and vegetables pragmatically arranged with little art, but the weather was mild, and the Fire-duke was pleased to divert his sad, dull-eyed guest by strolling the gravelled and planked paths with her and teaching her the names and descriptions of the plants and furnishings.
Though Freia lunched and dined alone, since Gaston had much to do in the way of social and business eating, after his guests had gone he would sit with her in the solar where she would be looking into another incomprehensible book or staring at the coals and seeing other things in their place. Silent but companionable, Gaston would read missives from his deputies and reports from various eyes and ears he kept open, and he would talk if she wanted to talk, though he did not force conversation on her.
“Uncle?” Freia’s voice chimed diffidently into an account of a sordid cheating of one landowner by another.
“Lass,” Gaston said, after realizing she meant him: he was the only other person there. Josquin seldom called him uncle.
“Papa never told me— Why are the seasons different in different places?”
“Because,” he said, “they are different places.”
Freia, who sat across the fire from him, wrinkled her forehead. “I thought—” she began, and stopped, and tried again. “It seemed to me that—Papa showed me once—that it was all a—a sort of a—well, a globe— We did not go very far.…”
Gaston pursed his lips and pondered. “I’m no sorcerer nor a scholar of such matters. Maybe ’tis. But Montgard lieth on its globe, as Landuc hath its too, and so the other places. Together all are Pheyarcet. In travelling, ’tis not distance, but direction, that brings thee here or there.”
Freia gazed at him, clearly trying to picture something Gaston had never thought of visualizing: all the worlds, all at once, together. It wasn’t possible, he thought.
“Dewar had a Map,” she said finally.
“Ah,” Gaston said. “The Map shows places in relation to each other and the Well, by the Well. ’Tis no picture of the shape of the lands; ’tis a geomantic tool, not geographic.”
“Then—it’s not that—that someone from Landuc could—sail here.”
“Nay, but ’a could, had ’a drunk of the Well and knew where the Leys and Gates and Road lay. There are Gates and Leys just as on land, and my father warded them as well. Fulgens hath made such journeys; so hath thy father, so have I. He knows the colors of the water and the ways it moves and changes, and he can read it as thou seest the lie of the earth around thee.”
Freia nodded.
“But he must travel the Road to come here.”
“Leys …?”
“Leys do not pass ’tween spheres as doth the Road. There is a Ley from this city up to a village, in the mountains and beyond, which I use to go from here to Montjoie in short time and distance. But to ride to Landuc I must use the Road, and to find the Road I must use the Gate, and that Gate lets on many Roads, yet all are one.” Prospero had kept the girl damnably ignorant; it was no wonder she had fallen foul of Ottaviano and Golias in Landuc. She’d no means to elude them.
Freia had been linking her fingers together as if playing some child’s game. “I think I see. It’s like nesting eggshells.”
“Aye, so. Yet all the eggshells the same size. Or maybe not. I cannot swear to’t,” Gaston said, wondering if he had explained anything, “some larger, some smaller, some more distant than others.”
Freia nodded slowly. “And sometimes they touch.”
“And ’tis the Road, those places where they touch. ’Tis not always in truth a clear path.”
“And the places we don’t stop we see—”
“Veiled one o’er the other, dimly seen spheres, yes. A good likening, lass.”
“I’m getting it all wrong.” She shook her head.
Freia’s uncle smiled, shaking his head too. No knowing what kind of image she had in her mind now. “Why, it sounds right enough to me.”
“How many spheres are there?”
“None knows, none whom I know of,” Gaston said. “Perhaps my father did.”
“I’m sorry to plague you with foolish questions—”
“Nay, they are sound questions. ’Tis shame to me I’m not the man to answer them best, no scholar but a soldier, I. Thy father or brother could tell thee more, and tell’t well. I’ll fetch my Map anon, and thou mayst try me again.”
Freia drew up her feet in the chair and looked again into a book Gaston had given her, an illuminated history in Tallamont, the language of Montgard and its provinces. He watched her for a moment.
“When I fare again to Landuc,” Gaston said, “I thought ’twere of benefit to thee an I brought thee other books, that thou mightst better learn that tongue.”
Freia shrugged. “I can read. Papa taught me. He said I would understand perfectly once I stood the test of fire,” she said to the book.
“ ’Tis true. Spoken language. Not written.”
“Why?”
“ ’Tis the nature of the Well,” Gaston said, and smiled wryly. “Alas, thou needest a more sorcerously-grounded tutor.”
“Don’t—” Freia glanced up with alarm.
Gaston held up a hand. “I’ll not reveal th’art here.” She expected betrayal, he realized. She did not trust his promise of secrecy. She did not really believe anything anyone said, including Gaston. This pained him. He could not take it as a personal slight, but he desired to cleanse the stain of his brothers’ and nephews’ cruelty and faithlessness from her image of him.
A meal had been set for Prospero in his new rooms in the tower, and a bath readied and fresh clothing laid out. Prospero sighed and sat down on the bed for a moment. Food. There would be scant food this winter, in all likelihood. He must address that first, and fast.
A light rap came at the door. Odile, he hoped, and he called “Enter.”
Not Odile, but Scudamor. “Lord Prospero—”
“Scudamor; good. I would have sent for thee. Here’s a task, most urgent, that must be completed within this day: let a door be shaped, of two thicknesses of wood, and set in the opening of the top of the black stairs that lead downward; let it be fitted with a lock, and I shall have the key in my hand by sundown. And ever, as ever, two men to guard the door.”
“It shall be done, Lord. If you will see the woman who
saw the river rise, Lord, she is here, or she will bide till later.”
Prospero stood, nodded. “I’ll see her now, perhaps again later. Let her come in.”
The Seneschal smiled and bowed again, turned away and beckoned; a woman came in past him. “Are there further commands, Lord?” Scudamor asked.
Prospero was staring at his guest, who was regarding him with serene brown eyes. “Nay,” he said. “Go.”
Scudamor closed the door.
“You called me, Lord Prospero,” the woman said.
“How art thou called?” he asked, nearly whispering.
“Cledie Mulhoun, Lord Prospero. I do remember you.” And she smiled as she had in the first light of the sun that morning beside the Spring, when he had shaped her last and best of all his folk. He had but glimpsed her since. Her shimmering hair was long, drawn back and braided, and she wore the simple tunic most Argyllines preferred, dyed bright yellow, draped to leave a breast bare and pinned at her waist with a bone brooch.
“And I remember thee, and well. Long years have passed.” He had never known her name before. Cledie. It echoed in his ear with an uncertain familiarity. Cledie.
She nodded. Her smile was gone, but she was still beautiful, perfect and still.
“Where hast thou kept thyself? I have scarcely seen thee since that day, and I inquired for thee. Wherefore hast thou now returned?”
“I thought I might be needed, Lord Prospero,” Cledie said.
Prospero could not take his eyes from hers. “I—”
A light tap at the door preceded its opening: Odile entered. Cledie turned, and the two looked at one another, Odile cool, the Argylle woman cooler and seeming faintly amused. Cledie looked back to Prospero, and amusement danced still on her features. “Indeed,” she said, “if the Lady did not mention that we had become friends, it was to surprise you with what she thought would be welcome news. I am grieved to learn she is lost to us. I longed to see her again.”
“She said naught of it,” Prospero said, damning Freia in his thoughts, tight-lipped wench. “Tell me of the flood, Cledie.”
The Price of Blood and Honor Page 28
