“Come, ye spirits who generate pandiculation.
And your brothers who revel in wide oscitation—”
The spell corresponded to something like hypnotism, and it was hard to keep his eyes from the tips of Astolph’s fingers, moving in the passes. It was almost not worth the trouble of trying to beat it. After all . . .
“Come Morpheus hither, and Somnus and Coma—”
There was a story where you mustn’t sleep. King of the Golden River? No . . . Kim—and the boy there had used the multiplication table. The memory jerked him to effort. Three times three is nine . . . if he could only keep on . . . this part was too easy . . . six times seven is forty-two, six times eight . . . The spell droned on, apparently without end . . . eleven times thirteen is one hundred forty-three . . .
“I by this authority conjure you, sleep!”
It was over. Shea lay with his eyes closed, but his brain wide open, working on seven times fourteen. Reinald’s voice came drowsily, as though the paladin were talking through fur: “Will he sleep till the morrow?”
“Through several morrows, I should say,” said Astolph. “I gave him a jolly good dose.”
“Almost put me to sleep myself,” said Reinald. He rolled over once, and in less than a minute was back in the low-register snore that had preceded Roland’s kick.
Shea waited, wishing his nose would stop itching, or that Astolph would quiet down next to him, so he could scratch without being caught at it. His eyebrow began to itch, too, then the rest of his face in patches, so agonizingly that he wriggled it, trying to throw off the feeling. Astolph turned over and Shea froze into immobility, wondering whether a snore would be convincing, decided against it and discovered that the itch had shifted to a point inside his left ear. The Duke made another turn, loosed a sigh of comfort and seemed to drift off. But it was a good ten minutes—every one of which Shea counted—before he dared to let his eyelids flicker open.
There was a small red glow at the center of the room and an oblong of gray that was the door. Beyond, he judged it would be near the hour of false dawn; the moon had long since disappeared. The three figures in the draw made darker blacks in the blackness of the hut, but lay perfectly still, and under the beat of Reinald’s snores the rhythmic breathing of the other two was audible. Asleep all right, but he could not afford to take chances, therefore gave it another good ten minutes before stirring an experimental arm. The dark gray patch of the door turned abruptly bright blue, then dark gray again. Far away, thunder purred softly.
Shea thought a few unpleasant things about his luck and the weather. If the storm came this way, it would rain through that hole in the roof, certainly rousing Astolph and probably Roland. If he were to make a getaway, it would have to be right now.
He moved his hands slowly in the straw beside him, gathering up his turban, which had been serving as a pillow, and his sword. At the next rumble, he rolled to his feet, took two cautious steps and lifted his flowing outer garments from the peg where they had hung. The next two steps took him out.
A flash showed a huge pile of thunderheads nearby, and the sound came long-continued, rolling closer. A little puff of wind whirled down the village street. The hippogriff was huddled where Astolph had left it, squatted head down and eyes closed. It trembled unhappily in the lightning flashes, its feathers stirring in the vagrant dashes of wind. When Shea touched it, the beast, bound by the Duke’s magic, did not lift its head. To loose the spell on it would take fooling around, time, and maybe more skill than he had. The first drop struck his hand.
A brilliant flash and an avalanche of thunder. Shea, thinking he had heard a shout from the direction of the headman’s house, whipped the jelab around him and ran just as the rain came pattering down, heading without equivocation along the street and toward Belphebe’s tree. As he reached the edge of the forest shade, she stepped out before him, as wide awake as an owl, unperturbed by the rushing rain.
“Did they—” she said; a crash of thunder drowned the rest.
“I think the storm woke them up,” said Shea, shedding his outer cloak and hanging it around her. “How are we going to get out of here?”
“You an enchanter and know not this?” She laughed gaily, turned and whistled a low, lilting tune in a minor key, less than a third audible under the pattering leaves and whipping branches.
Shea strained his eyes toward the village and in the repeated lightning glare, was sure he saw figures moving. “Hurry,” he said, then he heard a trampling behind and a voice shouted, “Whee-he-he-he! Who calls?” Almost instantly it was answered by another and higher one: “Who calls?”
“Bel—Belphegor of the woods—a daughter of—” her voice seemed to check oddly.
“In whose name call you us?” bellowed the first voice.
“In the name of Sylvanus, Ceres and the Fountain of Grace.”
“What desire you?”
“To be carried faster and farther than man can run or beast gallop.”
The trampling sounds closed in. Shea smelled damp horse, and the next flash showed that the voices belonged to centaurs, led by one with a grizzled beard. He said: “Belphegor of the mountains, we know you by all names, but who is this? Is it our mission to carry him as well?”
“Aye.”
“Is he an initiate in the mysteries of wood, wold and fountain?”
“Nay, not that I wot on. But that am I, and he a friend in need.”
“Whee-he-he-he! We are forbid by an oath more dreadful than death to take none but those who have reached the degree of the three great mysteries.”
“Hey!” shouted Shea. Another flash had shown him the three paladins, leading their mounts more accurately in his direction than one would have believed possible. “What’s this? Those lug’ll be here in a couple of minutes.”
“There be rituals and vows through which all must pass who seek to live by the forest ways, Sir Harold,” said Belphegor. “A thing of many days.”
“Okay, skip it. I’ll shin up a tree and hide.”
“Nay, not from Duke Astolph’s magic. One blast of that great horn, and you’d come tumbling like a ripened nut. Will you stand, then? My bow is useless in this wet, but we have made compact, you and I, and will guard your bare side with my hunting knife.”
“It won’t work, kid,” said Shea, “even though it is damn white of you.” The pursuers were a bare two hundred yards away. Astolph had the big sword out, and the lightning flash was reflected from it. Then inspiration reached him. “Wait a minute, I used to be a boy scout, and I had to pass an examination and take vows for that. Would that get me by?”
“What says he?” asked the bearded centaur. “I know not the chapter, yet—” Shea snapped out a brief account of the organization and the merit badge he had won in woodcraft, looking over his shoulder. Two or three centaur heads came together, and the bearded one returned. “It is believed that we can lawfully take you, man, though this is the first we hear of such wonders, and your craft be that of the small things. Mount!”
Before he had finished the sentence, Belphegor had vaulted lightly onto his back. Shea scrambled somewhat less gracefully onto the back of the other centaur, finding it wet and slippery.
“Ayoi! Ready, brother?” asked Shea’s mount, pawing with its front feet.
“Ready. Whee-hee-hee!”
“Whee-he-he-he!” The centaur began to bounce, and as Shea, unused to this kind of ride, wiggled on its back, turned around: “Put your arms around me and hold on,” it said.
Shea nearly released his grip in surprise as the first long bound was taken and a shout came from behind. It was a female centaur.
He looked over his shoulder. The last flash showed the pursuing paladins before they were hidden among the trees. The hippogriff, its feathers bedraggled, looked more melancholy than ever, and its expression would remain with him all his days.
Ten
The centaurs halted upon a smooth knoll. Behind them rose the slopes of the western Pyrenees
, and before them the country rolled and flattened away into the high plateau of Spain. The sun was just pinking the crests.
“Here we rest,” said Belphegor’s centaur. “We cannot take you further, for lo! the Amir’s camp is in sight, and our forests lie behind.”
Shea slid off—legs stiff, eyes red, behind feeling as though it had been paddled, and teeth as furry as chows. Belphegor came down lightly on the balls of her feet, increasing Shea’s already vast admiration for his wife. They thanked the centaurs, who waved farewell and galloped off as though their all-night run had been merely a warm-up, sending their “Whee-he-he-he!” after the travelers.
Shea turned in the other direction and shaded his eyes. Through the early-morning haze he could just see a village with white walls and flat roofs three or four miles off. And away beyond it, a patch of little tan humps would be the tents of Agramant, Commander of the Faithful.
Shea gave Belphegor a long, searching look, noting how fresh she seemed after an all-night ride.
“Is it the chivalry of your land to stare?” she asked coolly.
“Sorry. I was just wondering what made you sort of—hold up and change your mind about your name. Last night, when the centaurs asked you.”
A tiny frown appeared between her brows. “In sooth, I know not. ’Twas as though a veil were drawn, and I swam between worlds with my tongue framing words spoken by another.”
“I can clear that up so it won’t happen again.”
“Nay, no more of your spells, Sir Magician. I lay it upon you as a condition of this adventure we undertake, that you attempt no enchantments on me for whatever purpose.” She looked at him earnestly, but her regard faded into a small yawn.
“Oh—all right,” said Shea ruefully. “Wouldn’t take much of an enchantment to put you to sleep though, now would it?”
“Marry, that shaft is not far from the clout. Could I but find a grove!” She looked around. “But this country is bare as a priest’s poll.”
“Shucks, why don’t you try sleeping in a bed again?”
“Again? I have never—”
Shea suppressed a grin. “Sure, sure, I know. But lots of people do without dying of it, you know, and it even gets to be fun after a while.” He looked towards the village.
“There ought to be an inn in that town, and we’ll have to go there anyway if we’re going to stand any chance of finding Roger.”
Amiably doubtful, she fell in beside him as he led the way down the slope to where a track took them toward the village. The matter still hung in abeyance when they reached the place, which did have an inn. This was a small house that differed from the private dwellings only by having a dry bush affixed over the door.
Shea banged with the hilt of his sword. Above, the shutters of a window swung outward. A villainous-looking head peered out to look in astonishment at the unshaven man in Saracen costume and the red-golden-haired girl with a longbow. Presently the proprietor appeared at the door, scratching himself under a leather jerkin whose laces were not yet tied. The request for breakfast and lodging seemed to depress him.
“O lord of the age,” he said, “know that neither in this village nor for miles around is there so much food as would satisfy a sparrow, save in the camp of the Amir Agramant, on whose sword be blessings.”
“Heigh-ho,” said Belphegor, “then sleep we supless and dine our souls on dreams.” She yawned again.
The innkeeper looked more lugubrious. “On my head and eyes, Allah preserve me from your displeasure, lady; but there is lacking in my poor house a place where such a moon of delight as yourself may companion with her lord. For behold, I have neither secluded alcoves nor a bath for the performance of the Wuzu ablution.”
The girl’s foot began to tap dangerously. However, Shea averted the storm by saying; “Don’t let it worry you. We really want to sleep; and besides, we’re Christians, so the bath doesn’t matter.”
The landlord looked at him with an expression of cunning. “O man, if ye indeed be Christians, then there is nothing for it but you must pay ten dirhams before entering, for such is the regulation of the prince of this place, who is none other than that light of Islam, the Lord Dardinell.”
Shea, hearing the girl catch her breath slightly, remembered that Dardinell was the name of the man who had brought the poetic Medoro to her attention. It also occurred to him that the innkeeper was probably lying, or cheating him, or both. To these peasant-village characters, a member of an outgroup was fair game . . . Shea, becoming annoyed, reached into the twist of the cloth belt where he had put the remainder of the coins Chalmers had given him. He pulled out a handful—a small handful.
“Listen, pickle-puss,” he said menacingly, “I haven’t got time to argue with you, and the lady is tired. You take these and give us a place to sleep, or you can take a piece of this.” He indicated the sword.
“Hearing and obedience,” mumbled the innkeeper, dropping back a couple of steps. “Enter, then, in the name of Allah the Omnipotent.”
The entry was dark and somewhat smelly, with a set of stone steps going up to the right. The innkeeper clapped his hands twice. A door opened at the rear, and a very black Negro, so small as to be a dwarf, and naked to the waist, scuttled in. He grinned from ear to ear, and the speed with which he came suggested that he had overheard some of the conversation. The innkeeper did not seem to like his cheerfulness, for he fetched the dwarf a crack on the ear that sent him spinning against the wall, and said: “O miserable buffoon, cease from mockery! You shall conduct these guests to the upper room and provide them with coffee of the night, as is the custom, for they have been long abroad and desire to sleep the day.”
The dwarf got up, rubbing ear and cheek with one hand, and wordlessly motioned Belphegor and Shea up the stairs. The room at the top ran the whole width of the inn. It held ten beds like very low couches, only a few inches off the floor and covered with thin and moth-eaten Oriental rugs.
Belphebe looked at them with distaste. “Sir Harold, I know not how men can bear such shabby habitation, when they may live among clean trees.”
She began to pace the floor, looking out of one window after another.
“It could be better,” Shea admitted. “But anyway, we won’t get rained on. Come on, kid, try it for once.”
He yawned. The dwarf came trotting upstairs with a brass tray holding two little cups from which floated the appetizing smell of coffee. He set it on one of the beds, then bowed low. More out of the habit of tipping than anything else, Shea fumbled one of the odd-shaped coins and held it out. The little black man half-reached toward it, looking at Shea’s face as though he suspected him of playing a joke in questionable taste.
“Go on, take it,” said Shea. “It’s for you. Honest.”
With a snatch it was in the dwarf’s hands, and he rolled over and over, holding the precious thing before his eyes and gurgling with delight. Shea picked up the coffee and took a long pull, then almost gagged. It was so cloyingly sweet as to be almost syrup. He asked Belphegor: “Is all the coffee like that around here?”
“ ’Tis coffee. What else would you have?” she said, sipping her own.
“Why, you know how I like . . .” He checked himself; no use starting the same old argument with a real amnesiac, and it would only antagonize her. He amended: “I’d have a lot else. Hey, George!”
The dwarf, having ceased his antics, came trotting over to duck his head three times. Shea asked: “Have you got any of this stuff without sugar in it?”
The servitor seemed to be overtaken by some inner ill, for he put both hands to his belly and rocked from side to side, pointed to the cups and put both hands beneath one ear, then closed his eyes, jumped up, ran to the window and went through the motion of leaping out, then pointed to Shea.
“What’s the matter?” asked Shea. “Can’t you say anything?”
For answer the little man only opened his mouth and pointed again. He had no tongue.
“That’s too bad, Georg
e.” Shea turned to the girl. “What’s he trying to put over?”
She gave a tired little laugh. “Meseems he would convey that this be a brew so potent another cup would make one leap from a height. Marry, the one will not affect me so.” She set down her cup, raised a small hand over another yawn, picked out one of the less dirty beds, and stretched out on it.
“Me, either,” said Shea. It was too much trouble to argue. He stretched out on another; it might be straw under the disintegrating rugs, but his weary muscles found it softer than down. “Sweet dreams, kid.” At least the fact that there was a multitude of beds precluded any silly arguments about lying his sword down the middle, as in the medieval romances. Though if a man were too feeble to climb over . . .
Just as he was whirling down into the pool of sleep it occurred to him that maybe the dwarf was trying to let them know that the coffee was doped, but he forgot before he could do anything about it. . . .
###
Somebody was shaking him, and the side of his face stung with the memory of a slap. That goddam innkeeper! “Lay off!” he growled, his head fuzzy, and wriggled from the grasp. Slap!
This was too much. Shea rolled to his feet and started to swing, or tried to, for his arms were instantly pinioned from behind. Clearing eyes showed that he was in the center of a circle of armed Saracens. In another and larger group, some of whom turned as he came erect, he caught the sheen of Belphegor’s bright hair, now mussed. Two of them were holding her. One had a black eye; the other had lost his turban, and his face bore an interesting crisscross pattern of scratches.
“O my lord,” said the innkeeper’s voice from well in the rear, “did I not warn you that these were indeed Franks, and violent?”
The Complete Compleat Enchanter Page 35
