This Scepter'd Isle

by Mercedes Lackey

  By the time Pasgen reached the door of his manor, the horse was saddled and waiting. He rode to the Gate that would take him to the Bazaar of the Bizarre, and then, as if he had come to shop, through the market to a second Gate that debouched in the mortal world just outside of London.

  It was black night to mortals, but barely twilight to Pasgen. The horse jibbed at first, misliking the need to ride out into darkened streets, but Pasgen simply gripped its feeble mind and rode it through the night. He did not force the animal beyond its limits, however, so it was late afternoon when he passed the gates of Windsor and disappeared into a small wood just off the road. From there he watched, and when he saw the guards demand that every person who came to the gate be identified, and then be searched for weapons, he knew that things had changed at Windsor. Drastically. This was not the time to force a confrontation, particularly when he saw that if the person insisted on going to the palace, he found himself accompanied by a guard.

  Pasgen did not attempt to enter.

  Instead he rode on to the little town that had grown up to service the needs of Windsor Palace. At the inn he complained bitterly that he had come all the way from London at the request of the steward and that he had been turned away. What was going on? Pasgen demanded. Half a dozen patrons rushed up to the serving counter to tell him.

  It took some time to sort out all the different tales, but when he was sure enough of what was fact and what was assumption, Pasgen grumbled that the steward could go hang, that he would return to London. He paid for the meal he had ordered and several rounds of drink for himself and a group of those he considered best informed about the events in the palace the previous day. Then he went out and demanded his horse.

  It had not been a satisfactory journey—except that he had learned that what Vidal had claimed was true, that there had been an attempt on FitzRoy's life.

  As he rode back toward London, he considered whether he should create a Gate near Windsor. He was surprised that he had not sensed one nearby because it seemed likely to him that the so-called foreign Lord Denno who had saved FitzRoy was really Denoriel. He snorted lightly with contempt when he realized there was no Gate nearby. Just like his stupid, overcautious half-brother. Denoriel was so fixated on keeping the secret of Underhill that he probably rode the whole way from the London Gate each time he paid a visit to the boy.

  However, if Lord Denno was Denoriel, Pasgen thought, that added another layer to his problems. The moment Denoriel saw the changeling they intended to substitute for FitzRoy, he would know what the creature was. A local Gate would make his escape with the real FitzRoy quicker and safer, but Gates left traces that Denoriel might well be able to read and follow.

  Well, Pasgen thought, he had time to consider whether to build a Gate. It would take Rhoslyn some days, perhaps even a week, to create the changeling. Perhaps she could make it real enough to fool Denoriel for a while. She would have a good image of the boy because she would wrench that image hair by hair out of the minds of the men who had been sent to kill him.

  Although he had not pressed the horse and had even lent it a little strength, the animal was very tired when he passed through the Gate to the Bazaar. But of course, his journey was not even close to being done. Instead of returning to his domain, he simply turned around, and passed through the same Gate again, this time arriving in London midmorning of the day after the attack on FitzRoy. Pasgen knew exactly where he was going, although he had never actually been in London before. He had a mental grip on that treacherous mage's aura and the man could not escape him no matter where he hid himself.

  Reminded by this of precisely why he had spent a day riding to Windsor and almost another riding back, Pasgen was suddenly furious.

  When he noted that passers-by were looking at him in startlement, then quickly shying out of his path, he damped down his rage, lest he attract too much attention. Then he took the moment to be sure that the aura wasn't moving—just in case the wretch might be, say, on a ship on his way back to Spain. . . .

  But no. There was nothing to indicate that Martin Perez knew his deception had been discovered. He was unlikely to be hiding, and unlikely to suddenly decide to take himself elsewhere, unless he felt Pasgen's anger. And although Pasgen didn't think Perez was a good enough mage for that, it wouldn't do to alert him at this point. Another reason to throttle his own anger—for now.

  The road was perfectly straight and would bring him past Whitehall Palace and onto The Strand. Down a lane south from The Strand was a small house not far from the manor rented by the Spanish to be their embassy. That was his goal, and Pasgen knew by the strengthening sense of Perez's aura that his path would lead him there. He gave his mind to just what he would do to Perez, and after losing himself in the pleasurable contemplation of taking full measure of his vengeance, wakened with a start to shrill imprecations.

  Pasgen looked around with considerable shock. The road was now overfull of people on foot, ahorse, driving carts and wagons, pushing bushels by hand, and his tired and nasty-tempered brute of a horse had shouldered aside a handcart, tipping it over so that what it carried had been spilled into the mud of the road. Instinctively Pasgen lifted a hand to blast the mortal fool who had got in his way, but hearing curses rise all around him, thought better of the impulse. Instead he fished a gold coin out of his purse.

  His lips curved up in a travesty of a smile. He could blast them all, but that would betray the kind of power he wielded and even Vidal Dhu would not condone that. Better to let them tear each other apart. It was far more satisfying when the mortal scum did his work for him. He called an apology, and flipped the gold piece into the air toward the woman who had been pulling the handcart but made sure it fell just short of her reach. She flung herself forward, but others had seen the glint of gold in the air. Pasgen wrenched his horse left, away from the converging crowd, and then drove it forward. Behind him he heard screams and shouts, then louder howls of rage and pain. No matter who won in that tussle behind him, there would be many more losers than winners. He did not look back.

  That had been amusing, but he realized that he could not afford to cause riots all along his path, and he gave his attention to managing the horse, cursing it under his breath because it did not have the wits of a not-horse. Torgan, instructed by a mental command, would have picked its own way through the crowd and with a minimum of fuss. The damned horse seemed bent on causing as much havoc as possible.

  The attention he was giving to where he was going also opened him to a variety of other unpleasant experiences. The sun was too bright; it hurt his eyes. The road was growing more and more crowded, and the people did not draw aside respectfully. They shook their fists at him when he tried to force a passage, and shouted curses at his back. Worse, everything stank! The odor grew worse and worse as he approached the city, and all kinds of filth appeared in the ditches alongside the road.

  There were Unseleighe domains that were as disgusting, he supposed, but ordinarily the denizens of those places were summoned somewhere less noxious if one of the Sidhe wished to give it orders. If messages had to be delivered to such a domain, mortal slaves were sent, or constructs, or even lesser Unseleighe. Here he could not avoid the miasma; he could not even eviscerate the mangy dogs that barked at his horse, ran at its legs, and made the stupid beast shy so erratically that Pasgen, who was a superb horseman, was twice nearly unseated.

  Rage grew in him, and the need to keep it inside made it worse. And when he realized that the aura he sought had peaked and was diminishing, he sat for a moment on his horse perfectly still, fighting the urge to destroy, destroy anything. Then, slowly, carefully, to keep himself from lashing out all around him with balefire and thus clearing the area, he turned the horse—no easy thing in the crowded street—and retraced his path. When he felt the aura peak again opposite the lane between Somerset House and the Savoy Palace, he rode south. At least this small street was less crowded, mostly servants afoot and a few liveried riders.

&nb
sp; About a third of the way down the street he felt the aura begin to diminish again and turned back. A grand manor occupied the whole corner. The next house was a more modest structure of dull-red brick with black door and window frames. There was a rail to the right of the front door; that was where he rode up, and stopped, sure that he had, at last, tracked his quarry to its lair. Pasgen waited a moment, but no servant darted out to take his horse and finally he dismounted and tied it to the rail himself. It was just as well, he told himself. He would not be inside long.

  He applied the knocker to the door thunderously, and when it was flung open by a startled and angry servant, threw a compulsion spell at him and demanded to be taken to his master. Pain contorted the man's face, and a mewling cry escaped him as the spell pierced his mind and froze his faculties. Then he turned about and began to walk woodenly across the small entrance foyer toward the stair that rose to the second floor. Unable to do anything except lead the way to his master, he left the door open. Pasgen growled but took the time to shut the door, being disinclined to cope with unexpected intruders.

  Silent, although his eyes showed horror, the servant opened the door to Martin Perez's bedchamber. He had not knocked; Pasgen had not told him to knock. Pasgen did not knock either, simply walked in. Perez was just allowing a second manservant to button his breeches. He gaped at Pasgen, who had walked past the ensorcelled servant.

  "How dare you!" he cried. "Out! Out of my bedchamber!"

  He recognized Pasgen, of course. The fool. He clearly was under the misapprehension that he, and not Pasgen, was the master here.

  "Be still, little man," Pasgen snarled. "Be grateful that I did not decide to lesson you in public."

  "Lesson me? For what? Do you think you can?" There was assurance and contempt in Perez's voice.

  Pasgen saw the mage's fingers move, heard the subvocalization of some spell. He wondered whether he should let the fool cast it and break it so that it would backlash, but in the end, he was too angry and impatient. He gestured. Perez froze. For one moment Pasgen simply stared at him, allowing him to struggle to free himself, and grow more and more frightened as he realized that he could not.

  "You betrayed me. You lied to me."

  A tiny finger gesture freed Perez's mouth. He cried, "No." Pasgen cut him off.

  "You never told me about the king's son FitzRoy. You concealed the fact that the king is considering naming the boy his heir instead of Princess Mary."

  Perez's eyes, the only things that could move beside his lips, slid desperately from side to side. "No! I did not tell you because I did not wish to waste your time. FitzRoy is nothing and nobody. King Henry will never name him heir. He will never place a bastard on the throne."

  Pasgen twisted his hand and Perez screamed. The servant who had been attending his master and had been shocked into paralysis by what had happened, now drew a knife and leapt at Pasgen. Without even turning his head, Pasgen drew his sword, and with a single gesture, pulled the man onto the blade without ever releasing his magical hold on the master. Perez screamed again in horror, as did the dying servant.

  Pasgen allowed the man to drop to his knees, hands clasped impotently around the blade, then pulled the sword free as he toppled over sideways, eyes glazing with pain and encroaching death.

  "FitzRoy is no longer the boy's name," Pasgen said, ignoring the servant and the spreading pool of blood around him as a thing of no moment. He did wonder, though, at Perez's look of horror. This was hardly a gentle age; the mayfly mortals died brutally as a matter of course every day. But perhaps Perez was horrified, not by the servant's death, but by the realization that Pasgen was far more powerful than the Spaniard had guessed. "He is now earl of Nottingham, duke of Somerset, duke of Richmond, the premier duke of the kingdom as well as Lieutenant of the Northern Marches. He has more honors than the princess, has been given an equivalent household and his household holds equivalent power—"

  "Nothing. It all means nothing," Perez gasped, his eyes on the bloody sword in Pasgen's hand.

  The weapon came up; the tip just touched Perez's throat. He could not flinch away. He began to weep.

  "It means so little that yesterday you gave two men a sleep spell to be used on the child's guards so that they could—" Pasgen hesitated; even the Unseleighe Sidhe would not kill a child "—drown him."

  "That was not my doing!" Perez's voice was so high with fear that he sounded like a gelded man. "I thought it was nonsense, only King Henry's ploy to win some more points in his negotiations over Mary. I said to draw attention to FitzRoy was a mistake. But the Imperial ambassador demanded the spell—"

  He stopped abruptly as Pasgen's sword inched forward and pricked him. The spell held him so rigid that he could not tremble, but tears ran down his face.

  "The attempt failed," Pasgen said, contemptuously. "Both men. . . ." He sneered. "Oh, brave! Oh, how noble! How truly in the tradition of the El Cid! So clever, to imagine sending two men to drown a child! Your noble hidalgos . . . were wounded, and fled."

  Perez was white under his natural skin-tone, which had the effect of making him look pasty and sallow.

  Pasgen drew little figure-eights in front of Perez's nose with the tip of his blade. "There was considerable confusion concerning who was guilty of the attack. Sometime later, Inigo de Mendoza and his retinue left Windsor. Then the attempt on FitzRoy was reported to Norfolk and the palace and grounds were carefully searched. The gate guards swore that no two wounded men had gone out, but the men could not be found. They went out with Mendoza's retinue. I want those two men."

  "They were not my men," Perez protested. "How can I—"

  "I do not know. I do not care," Pasgen told him in a tone that brooked no argument. "I want those men. I will return here tomorrow evening. I will find them here . . ." he smiled " . . . or I will take you."

  Pasgen then turned and left, ignoring Perez's cries to be released. The spell would wear off after a while, and Pasgen did not want the mage to try to follow him. He retrieved his horse and returned to The Strand, but instead of turning back to find the Gate he had used, he turned right at the corner and rode further east.

  Somewhere ahead, Pasgen sensed a Gate, and he was curious. He could not tell whether it was a very small Gate or simply far away, but he intended to find it if he could. If it were Denoriel's Gate, it would be well worth the time spent to know it. Pasgen smiled thinly again. A neat ambush could be set at a Gate if they needed to neutralize Denoriel for a while. He would not kill his half-brother . . . no, not kill, but he would be delighted to disable that righteous prig.

  As he rode along Watling Street, he passed St. Thomas's church. His head lifted and turned when he felt a tiny quiver of power, but he did not rein in the horse. He had often felt a similar touch of power in mortal churches. Another thin smile bent his lips as he rode past; that power had not been nearly enough to save the wretches who thought they could shelter there from the Wild Hunt. Besides, there was a surer, stronger source of power somewhere ahead and to his right.

  He rode down Watling Street and then into the East Chepe, one of London's larger markets. He shuddered. Entirely too many things here were made of iron and steel. He kicked his tired horse, feeling it trembling with weariness beneath him. At least now the brute was so worn out that it wasn't fighting him. Probably he should not have come this way; if he did not soon find a Gate the animal might collapse on him. He pushed a little power into it, and to his right felt an answering silent bell.

  Down Fish Street . . . faugh, what a smell came up from pools of filth holding decaying scales and skin and fish guts, from heaps of heads and tails and fins! And the stink of the river was not much more salubrious, but at last he was out on the bridge. In its way it was worse. His horse could barely make a way through the buyers and sellers, who came right to his side and thrust trays of goods, often pins and needles of steel, into his face.

  There was nowhere to go but ahead. Both sides of the bridge were filled with stalls. Several
were armorers who sold steel swords and knives; there were even blacksmith's shops (although at least the forges were off the bridge) that exhibited nails and hinges and handles and Dannae knew what else—all made of iron. Although he touched nothing—he had pushed away the peddler of needles and pins by shoving his shoulder with a boot-clad foot—the evil cold beat at him. Pasgen's gorge rose and he regretted the little strength he had given the horse as his own faltered. Still, ahead, the bell-tone held steady and it seemed that a drift of cleaner, purer air flowed out toward him.

  He found the Gate only a little way down High Street, right—he had to laugh—in a tiny grove of trees in the graveyard of St. Saviour's church. The tone he "heard" and the "scent" in the air told him that the Gate would lead into Seleighe territory, but his horse was too tired to go back to his own Gate and unless this was one of the guarded portals, he could pass for Seleighe. The graveyard was empty. Pasgen dismounted and led his horse into the shadowed grove.

  He did not recognize any of the six destinations patterned into the Gate and chose one which felt the least "sweet" at random. The choice was fortunate; Pasgen arrived in a neutral area now mostly inhabited by spirits of the air. This lot were cheerful, babbling things which happily directed him to an adjoining Unformed area.

  He had remembered to change his somber black to some frivolous combination of rose and blue and the silly creatures were delighted with him. Several wished to accompany him, and he had to turn quite nasty and hurt a few of them to discourage them, but he really could not have them tagging along into Unseleighe territory or marking his path to his own domain. For one thing, they'd quickly become meals there for whatever happened to catch them. . . .

  He left the exhausted horse and collected Torgan at his home. From there it was only moments until he completed the tortuous path and went through a last Gate into Rhoslyn's domain. He wrinkled his nose as he looked around. Untidy, that's what Rhoslyn was—a patch of woodland here, a meadow there, a babbling brook following a wavering course over stones of every size and shape, flowers here and there.