The wizard at Mecq tst-1

by Rick Shelley

  "I conceal nothing of pertinence from you," Silvas said when he saw the bishop staring openly at Koshka. Brother Paul also stared, but he was sitting a little off to the side, where his gaping was less obvious. "Seeing one of Koshka's kin is partial explanation for the look of fear that Sir Eustace's steward wears so firmly."

  "I have never seen your like before," the bishop said, addressing himself directly to Koshka. "Would you mind coming closer?"

  Koshka looked to Silvas, and when the wizard nodded, Koshka bobbed his head and stepped right up to the bishop.

  "Extraordinary," Eustace said after a close perusal of Koshka's head. "Excuse my ignorance, please, but do you speak?"

  "Yes, Your Excellency," Koshka said in neutral tones.

  "I have a couple of dozen of his folk here, and others who would look as strange to you," Silvas said. "They are as human as you or I, no matter how they appear. They come from a place that is so far away that the distance is unfathomable… yet they come from a place that is, in some ways, no farther than the great hall is from us here."

  The bishop looked from Koshka to Silvas and back.

  "You may go now, Koshka," Silvas said. "Thank you."

  Koshka bobbed his head and left the room quickly.

  "He is a most excellent servant," Silvas said. "His people, and the others, are all good at their jobs and loyal beyond measure."

  "Then you are indeed fortunate," Egbert said. His voice displayed no tremors at the encounter.

  "I believe so," Silvas agreed. "Now, perhaps I had best tell you all I know of the situation here." He proceeded to do just that, speaking first of the vow he had made to the Unseen Lord so long before, of the purpose behind his lifelong peregrination. When he finally reached the immediate matters, Silvas didn't even hold back the tales of his meetings after the previous Council and after the battles, the murky stranger who appeared to be their Unseen Lord, and the things he had told Silvas. Carillia listened as intently as the two churchmen when Silvas got to those parts, since he had never mentioned them to her.

  "If the Blue Rose gives us time tonight," Silvas finally said, "I will summon a Council of my advisers in the spirit. I would be honored to have you and the vicar join us. I would welcome your advice."

  Bishop Egbert leaned back. Being an adept of the Greater Mysteries of the White Brotherhood, he had a vague idea of what the wizard was proposing. It will be something beyond the scope of conclave but similar, he told himself. He closed his eyes to pray and to meditate on the wisdom and propriety of accepting. I need to do whatever I may to save this village and thwart the Blue Rose, he decided. And I would not willingly miss this opportunity.

  "I accept your offer most eagerly," he said when he opened his eyes. He turned to Brother Paul. "I do not say this in command, brother. I urge you to accept, though I must also caution you that what you will experience goes far beyond the Lesser Mysteries. It may test your faith sorely."

  Brother Paul bowed his head. "In that case, Excellency, how could I possibly refuse?"

  "I will come for you in sleep," Silvas said. "There are certain precautions that I must take before any Council, and more so under the present circumstances. We can find a bed for you here as well, Vicar."

  Brother Paul hesitated. "If it does not interfere with your magic, Lord Wizard, I belong where my parishioners can find me instantly at need, in the manse of St. Katrinka's."

  "It will not hinder the Council, as long as I know where to find you."

  "It is your place," Egbert told Brother Paul. "Go in peace, my son."

  – |"A good man," Silvas said after the friar left. "Much better than I would have expected in a place such as Mecq."

  "I believe you are right," Egbert said, looking at the door through which the vicar had departed. "When this is over, he will bear examination. He may be fit for more than the Lesser Mysteries."

  "That is, of course, your domain," Silvas said. "But I do know that he hasn't flinched at anything he has seen or experienced since I came here."

  Egbert sipped at his wine and looked at Carillia. "You have an aura of power around you as well," the bishop told her. "Yet you have been mostly silent this evening."

  "It is not my place, Excellency," Carillia said.

  The bishop tilted his head to the side. "That is, of course, between the two of you," he said in conscious imitation of Silvas's earlier words. He transferred his attention to the wizard.

  "And that horse of yours. There is more to him than his great size."

  "You are very discerning," Silvas said. A smile couldn't be helped. But did you discern just how much more there is to him? he wondered. There was real curiosity behind that. Silvas had never come across anyone who could guess at Bay's true intelligence or his other gifts, like speech.

  "We are a community," Silvas said. "I may be a wizard, but I could not function fully without the support of my advisers."

  Egbert raised an eyebrow at the word advisers, but before he could ask about it, there was a knock at the door.

  "Come in, Bosc," Silvas called. Turning back to the bishop, he explained, "I recognized the sound of his knock."

  Bosc entered but stopped just inside the door. "The-" He stopped, then started again immediately. "Will there be anything special for us tonight, lord?"

  "It's all right, Bosc," Silvas said. "Yes, there will be a Council, if no attack comes first. You will tell Bay?"

  Bosc bobbed his head.

  "You're not the one who was here before," Egbert said. It was no question. "You have the aura of power as well."

  "I but serve my lords." Bosc looked uncomfortable at the bishop's scrutiny.

  "I'm sure you do," the bishop said. Bosc bobbed his head again and hurried out of the room.

  "What other wonders await me tonight?" Egbert asked.

  "I think that any additional wonders will be a surprise to me as well as to you, Excellency. It's about time to begin to think of the night and the Council. If there is anything you need for your own preparations?"

  "Nothing special, thank you," Egbert said. "I have my faith. I have my crucifix and my rosary. I need nothing else."

  Silvas inclined his head. "I will come for you when the time is right."

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  A Council was not a casual gathering, no matter how casually Silvas's advisers accepted the notice of a Summoning. Sometimes years elapsed between situations where Silvas felt the need of a formal Council to help with his work in some village or other. The membership of his Council had been fixed since the days when Louis the Stammerer ruled the Holy Roman Empire. Carillia had come to Silvas then. And the last time outsiders had joined in a Council, King Edmund had been looking for a way to break the alliance between the Scots and the Norsemen, to set them fighting each other.

  When the talk in the room off of the great hall ended, Silvas and Carillia escorted the bishop to his room before they went on to their own quarters. Carillia started to prepare for bed at once. Silvas picked up his quarterstaff and went to warn Braf Goleg of the coming Council and the possibility of attack while it was in progress.

  "We be ready, lord," Braf assured him.

  "I trust there was no problem about dinner tonight," Silvas said. "You know why the unusual arrangements were needed."

  "Aye, lord. It went well." The teeth that showed when Braf grinned were pointed, the tearing and ripping teeth of a carnivore.

  The two made a hurried inspection of the walls and gates. The Seven Towers were sealed off against attack. Sentries and warriors were in place and alert. Finally Silvas left Braf to his duties and returned to the keep.

  The central tower of the Glade was quiet. In the great hall, only the fires in the twin hearths were still burning, along with a single torch near the main entrance. Satin and Velvet came to walk this part of the tour with Silvas. The cats came as hunters now. Their earlier nervousness had been channeled into the exaggerated patience of the stalk. They flanked Silvas as he prowled the halls and larger rooms
of the keep, their ears forward, heads moving constantly, looking and listening for any threat. Silvas felt himself slipping more firmly into the same mode. He had to switch his grip on the quarterstaff from time to time, consciously relaxing his hold on it.

  The room where the monks were quartered was silent. The last of their chanted prayers had ended, but there was no great noise of snoring yet. On the first level of the keep, the only room that still held talking was the watch room, where sentries could come to spend a moment before or after their turns on the walls.

  On the broad staircase leading up to the higher levels of the keep, the cats bounded ahead, going to the next landing and looking along the corridors there.

  "You feel it too," Silvas whispered when he caught up. "The feeling that the climax nears." The cats only glanced at him briefly before turning their attention outward again. They would not be distracted from the hunt.

  "All right, let's go to work," Silvas told them. The cats led the way back to the other stairs, the ones that led up through Silvas's library to the conjuring chamber.

  The cats prowled that room carefully, staying outside the pentagram but otherwise crossing and recrossing almost every inch of the room. Velvet went to the narrow stairway that led to the turret that looked out over Mecq. After a second Satin joined her mate and went farther up the stairs. When the cats remained poised on the stairs, Silvas went past them, all of the way to the turret.

  Mecq seemed as quiet as the Glade. There were no lights visible in the village. Smoke came from the Boar and Bear. There were a couple of small lights visible up at the castle. Silvas narrowed his eyes to focus on the walls of Mecq's fortress. He could see two guards walking their posts, and he saw Henry Fitz-Matthew standing above the gate, looking nervously toward the village or-more likely-at the pillar of smoke.

  "Such fear is the fuel that feeds the Blue Rose," Silvas mumbled. Fitz-Matthew was clear of the taint of the heretics. The wizard would have felt that presence in the steward, but Fitz-Matthew might not remain free of it if temptation were laid upon him. "No man should have to bear such fear," Silvas said, regretting that he should be the cause of so much of Fitz-Matthew's fear. "It were better turned outward, at the Blue Rose, and tempered into fire." He spoke a quick spell while his eyes remained on the steward, then sighed. "It is the best I can do at the moment." Silvas took one more quick look down at the village, then returned to his workroom.

  "I think the time is about on us," he said softly. The cats went to their protected circles.

  When Silvas entered his pentagram and started to work the magics that had to precede his Council, he spoke each spell carefully, slowly, taking more pains with precision than he ever had before-and he was always careful and precise in this work. The web of protective spells he wove was intricate and strong. After he finished his normal preparatory work, he added a spell of seeing so he could look at his handiwork to make sure that it was perfect, that there was nothing he could add to make it more complete. Only when he was satisfied with every line and intersection did he lower himself to the floor to begin the spell of Summoning. He took as much extra care with that as he had with the preparatory work, the more so because there were outsiders to bring to this Council.

  Silvas went for Carillia first, as he always did. She rose from her sleeping body and passed out of the bedroom to wait for him to summon the others.

  Bishop Egbert was next. Entering the room he had given to the bishop, Silvas noted the ritual defenses Egbert had deployed. The pattern was familiar, even if Silvas had never seen it executed so meticulously before. He would have recognized the signs of the White Brotherhood in the pattern even if he had known nothing of the individual who had drawn it.

  "It is time," Silvas said in the spirit. The bishop responded with a slight show of surprise. Although the eyes of Egbert's body didn't open with his spirit eyes, the eyelids fluttered enough that Silvas felt it necessary to speak an extra spell of safe separation.

  "Simply sit up and get out of bed," Silvas instructed when the bishop seemed uncertain how to proceed. Egbert stood, then looked down at his body. He leaned over it, as if to insure that it was still alive, then he straightened up and turned to Silvas. "Walk through there," the wizard said, pointing to the nearest wall. Egbert hesitated for only an instant.

  It was time to go for the vicar of Mecq. Silvas didn't consciously plan a course that would take him to St. Katrinka's. That was unnecessary. He simply passed through the walls of the keep and the curtain wall of the Glade straight into the church as if they were adjacent. Another passage brought him to the small room where the vicar slept. Brother Paul also looked back down at his still sleeping body, for longer than the bishop had. But finally Paul turned to Silvas, brought his hands together, and bowed his head briefly to signify that he was ready to leave.

  "Walk that way," Silvas pointed. When the friar left the room, Silvas went through another wall and returned to the Seven Towers to finish his summoning. Bosc and Bay remained to be gathered.

  – |There was again the sense of a room around them, but there was no room. The Council gathered on the ridge of Mount Balq, across the Eyler from the castle of Sir Eustace, at a point where they could look across at the castle and down at the river and into the valleys of Mecq and Blethye without moving more than a few steps. There were stones at a comfortable height for sitting. Once more Bay did not appear so large; Bosc did not appear so small.

  Night had been effectively banished. There was the pale, ghostly glow of a false daylight, a light without sun or moon, without any apparent source. There were no shadows or clouds either.

  This vantage does not exist, Silvas noted quickly. There was no small flat area at the near end of Mount Balq. That did not stop him from taking immediate advantage of the location. He surveyed all of the terrain, concentrating on the valley downstream, the demesne of the Duke of Blethye, but he didn't ignore the castle of Mecq or the village and its valley.

  "Do you feel it?" Silvas asked, stretching out his arm to indicate Blethye. He glanced at Bishop Egbert, who was also surveying his surroundings. Brother Paul stood as close to his bishop as he could get. There remained a trace of apprehension on the friar's face.

  "I feel it," Egbert said. "The Devil's armies are at work. The mark of the Blue Rose is close. It was not so strong when we rode to crusade against them in Burgundy."

  "You do not wear the cross of a crusader," Silvas observed.

  "I wear another cross," Egbert replied. He turned away from Blethye to look at Bay and Bosc. He studied them closely, then turned his attention to Silvas.

  "This is a remarkable magic," the bishop said.

  "It but provides a setting for our Council," Silvas said. "And this is not the usual setting. Our location was not of my choosing."

  Bishop Egbert allowed just the slightest trace of concern to show on his face. "There has been interference already?"

  Silvas shook his head once. "I think not. Interference of that sort would have given signs. I think rather that this is the doing of our Unseen Lord, putting us here to overlook the field of our trial."

  Egbert moved to the side overlooking Mecq. He pointed and let his hand drift across the cottages and other buildings. "I can almost see the lights of each soul down there. Our charges, the flock we must defend against the wolves of evil."

  "But now our Council," Silvas said. Everyone but Bay sat. There were just enough stones. The wizard started out with a quick review, including much of what he had told the bishop earlier. Bay and Bosc hadn't heard some of that, and in any case, knowledge shared in Council ran deeper than the same knowledge shared in the flesh. But time didn't run as rapidly in Council as it did in the world outside. Silvas had no particular worries about wasting too much of the night.

  When he finished, Carillia took over. "I do not see the lights of souls seeking our protection," she said, glancing at the bishop, "but I hear their supplications. The fear that runs through Mecq this night is awesome in its pathos.
The final assault of the Blue Rose cannot be long delayed. This fear ripples away from it across this pond, and the point where the stone falls is close." She made a sweeping gesture with her right arm. "The souls of your flock need comforting this night, Brother Paul." She closed her eyes and seemed to withdraw from the gathering in some unfathomable manner.

  There was hardly a pause between Carillia's last word and Bay's first. "Armies are gathering, but I can make out nothing of their nature. They are veiled in a mist I cannot penetrate."

  Egbert and Paul both stared at the horse. The friar was visibly shaken by the specter of a horse speaking. Bishop Egbert remained composed, but he too felt disturbed.

  "Do you speak only in Council, or is this part of your normal power?" the bishop asked.

  Bay didn't look to Silvas before he said, "It is part of my normal being. I usually do not speak in front of outsiders, for reasons good and plentiful. But Silvas said that we need hide nothing from you, Bishop Egbert of St. Ives. He said that you have the strength to know whatever may be pertinent."

  "And me?" escaped from Brother Paul's lips without his volition. Egbert turned and laid his hands on the friar's shoulders.

  "You have more strength than you dream of, brother," Egbert said. "That, and your faith, will sustain you. Our Unseen Lord stands with us."

  "That is true, Brother Paul," Carillia said, opening her eyes. She had not moved, but still she seemed to somehow reappear when her eyes opened. "His presence is very real to all of us."

  The others watched Brother Paul for several minutes. His inner struggle was reflected clearly on his face. Not until resolution was visible there did Bosc make his contribution to the Council.

  "I feel the Earth," he said by way of prolog for the outsiders. "I feel her bones and blood the way you might feel the pulsing of life by holding your hand against a man's chest." He held his hand against his own chest.