Not Quite Scaramouche

by Joel Rosenberg

  The stairway led down to the trail, and half a dozen branches of the trail led off in different directions. He had taken all of them, but explored the least beyond the one that curled around behind a massive white birch.

  The birch was just too large. A birch should not grow so tall that you could not see the top, nor so wide that half a dozen people could not have joined hands around its base.

  He reached out and pulled off a small piece of bark, idly tucking it in his pouch.

  "Why did you do that?" she asked.

  "An old habit, Lady," he said. "Birch bark burns easily, even when wet. You learn to gather a little here and there, so you'll have it in a time of need."

  "Just a little?"

  "A little is usually enough."

  Once, years ago, during the Old Emperor's Last Ride, he and Pirojil and Durine, along with the Old Emperor and a few who had not, yet, died on that ride, had been caught in the woods during a horrid rainstorm, and spent a horribly wet night, at best half-sheltered by an oiled canvas tarpaulin, in front of a birch-bark fire that even the Old Emperor had been surprised Kethol could light.

  You had to be careful, though. If you peeled the bark all the way around the circumference of a birch tree, it would kill it. Not quickly, but surely.

  You could cut the heart out of it without ever going more than a finger's-width deep. Amazing how much damage you could do through ignorance, without any maliciousness intended.

  She should have known that. She should have known how her smile stripped the bark from around him.

  He smiled at her. "I'm surprised you didn't know that," he said, then raised his hand in apology. "I'm sorry, Lady; it's not my place – "

  "Don't be silly," she said. "After... after all we've been through, together, you and I?" For a moment her smile vanished, as though it had never been there, but then it flickered back to life. "Oh, let's try this way," she said, taking his hand to urge him down the left-hand path.

  He had been down the left-hand path before, but not with Leria pulling on his hand, so, like an obedient little puppy, he followed.

  No; there was no point in being hard on himself. The world could do that for him just fine.

  *Forinel is here,* Ellegon said. *At the fountain.*

  All things come to an end, and –

  *If you can take a momentary break from pining for the lady, we've got a problem.*

  Kethol's hand dropped away from Leria's, and to the hilt of his sword.

  *Well, perhaps you can solve this problem with a sword, but I wouldn't advise trying it. The problem is that he isn't alone.

  *He's with his wife.*

  His what"?

  *Wife. The woman he is married to, and with whom he already has one child: his very pregnant, very elven, wife.*

  "Kethol?" She looked up at him, concerned. "What is it?"

  He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it, and closed it again.

  Chapter 26

  Bargains

  Pirojil wasn't sure why he wanted to separate Forinel's head from his shoulders, but he did. Want to, that is. Badly.

  As if what he wanted to do had any damn thing at all to do with what he was going to do.

  Besides, it wasn't as though it would be easy. Those eleven archers were always just barely out of sight – or, at least, that's what Ti'een had implied – and while Pirojil didn't have any particular moral objection to killing somebody in front of his massively pregnant wife and a young boy-child of three, perhaps four, that wouldn't have been his preference, either.

  Forinel helped the woman to a seat on the stone bench. "It's not necessary, my dear, that you be – "

  "Shh." She was more ungainly than a pregnant human would have been, moving more awkwardly: taller than any human and inhumanly slender, from the elongated head through the slim body and down to the too-small ankles that her white dress didn't quite cover, but her belly was every bit as large and round as a human woman's would have been. Elf babies weren't all that much different in size and shape from human ones. At birth, in fact, you could hardly tell one from the other, or from a half-elven, at least not to look at them.

  The changes only happened in the growing.

  That was apparent in the silent little blond boy who never strayed very far from his mother's skirts, his eyes moving from Erenor to Pirojil and the dragon, and then, always, back to Pirojil.

  The tips of his ears peeked through his flaxen hair, and they had barely started to point. If it weren't for that, Pirojil wouldn't have been able to tell him from a human child, and if it weren't for the definitely human squareness of jaw and wide separation of eyes that mirrored Forinel's, he wouldn't have been sure that the child was half-elven, rather than being a purebred.

  "You were delayed by illness," Pirojil said.

  Forinel nodded. "Yes, we were. It's almost Erianne's time, and it's been a difficult pregnancy, even more so than the one that – " he glanced down, meaningfully, “– than others we've heard of. I am ... ever so slightly concerned about the birthing," he said, although it wasn't clear to Pirojil how much the expression of concern was for the benefit of his wife, and how much the minimizing of the concern was for the benefit of the boy.

  He would be a difficult man to figure out, all in all. It probably ran in the family.

  He was half a head taller than his half-brother, Miron, and looked easily ten years older, although Pirojil knew that wasn't the case. Forinel's hairline, save for a prominent widow's peak, was far receded, although his black hair remained thick, and tightly curled, from the rest of his head down to his beard, and further, where it gradually turned into a black mat of chest hair, revealed by a white tunic slit open almost to the navel.

  The tunic fit him too tightly across the shoulders, chest, and waist, as though the seamstresses who had sewn it for him had not been able to accustom themselves to the squat, overly broad measurements of a human. Either that, or he had recently put on weight in the shoulders, chest, and belly, and his lean form made it clear that he hadn't.

  A short sword – a familiar length; elves tended to go in for longer ones – hung from the left side of his waist, undecorated save for the single emerald embedded in the hilt.

  Erianne reached a slim hand into one of her oversized sleeves, and produced a small vial, which she uncapped and sniffed at. The effect was immediate, if not overly dramatic: her too pale skin gained just a touch of color, and her shoulders relaxed, as though she didn't feel she had to hold herself stock still, for fear of falling apart if she moved.

  "Erianne," Forinel said, "should you – "

  "Shhh." She took his outstretched hand in one of hers. "A few moments of vanished discomfort will do neither me nor the baby any harm."

  Erenor looked over at Pirojil and nodded. Whatever that nod was supposed to mean was a mystery to Pirojil, but, then again, a lot of what Erenor did and said and thought was a mystery to Pirojil, and what had ever happened to that gold coin he had borrowed from Kethol for a demonstration back in Cullinane, anyway?

  Erenor apparently could read Pirojil better than vice versa. "She should know about that sort of thing, Pirojil," Erenor said. "She's quite a powerful wizard in her own right, and unless I'm very much mistaken, both of her children will grow to be even more so."

  The blood grows thin, Pirojil thought.

  Her face showed no trace of weakness, or of friendliness, as she turned to the wizard.

  "That's true, Master Erenor," she said. Her voice was higher-pitched than it should have been, but there was no hint of weakness in it, no threat that it would break if it, or she, were too far pushed. "At least in potential. A child is like a seed, in some ways. You can see the possibilities, but until it flowers, those are only possibilities." She smiled, but the smile was not for him, but for the child and the man, as she took their hands in hers.

  "Forinel."

  Leria stood at the very edge of the plaza, Kethol to the side and behind her.

  "Leria," he said, with a nod,
his voice tight.

  Erianne grabbed hold of his hand and tried to stand, although whether it was to comfort him or because she didn't like the idea of Leria looming over her was anybody's guess.

  "Please," he said. "Sit. The trip has been too difficult for you as it is – "

  "Forinel, she said, cutting him off. "Be still." She turned back to Leria. "My name is Erianne," she said. "This is my son – our son – Erinel." She ran her impossibly long fingers through the boy's hair.

  Kethol listened with limited patience while Forinel talked. Forinel didn't want to go into details that nobody particularly wanted to hear, anyway.

  He had ridden away toward the Katharhd, but a series of events – he called them "adventures," which visibly lowered Pirojil's opinion of him by another full step – had brought him to Therranj, and to Erianne. Word of his father's death had reached him via some Home traders, and –

  – he hadn't had the courage or the integrity to face Leria, and he certainly didn't want to bring his wife and his child – children, now – into the Middle Lands in general, where they'd be despised outsiders instead of what they were here.

  Kethol didn't know much about the Therranji, and the way that they'd been kept around Visitors' Tree made it clear that he wasn't going to learn much more.

  Save that the bastard was breaking Leria's heart, of course.

  "... and I thought that, finally," he said, "that I should come here – "

  "That we should come here," Erianne said, firmly.

  “– that we should come here to meet you, and to apologize for having ..." His hands seemed to grasp for some phrase that would make it all acceptable.

  Leria's face was stony. No hint of tears, or of anger, or of anything. It was a mask.

  "There's only one thing," Forinel said. "It sounds petty, I know. But the ring; I need it back."

  "The ring?"

  Erianne laid a hand on his shoulder. "The ring. I long ago realized what Elanee had done to him, and why, and that she would scour the barony for any thing that Forinel could be traced with. But the ring ..."

  "But the ring could be used."

  She nodded. "Not just to locate Forinel, either. It's an heirloom, and there's a connection between it and his family." She let one graceful hand rest on her belly, the other on her son's head.

  The little boy grinned up at her, but didn't speak.

  "It could, perhaps, be used in various ways against his blood, as well."

  Kethol took a step forward, desisting only when Pirojil held up a hand. "Stand easy, Kethol. You're not going to attack a pregnant woman, in any case."

  "I believe you miss the point, Mistress Erianne," Erenor said, ignoring the byplay. "Lady Leria doesn't have the ring. I do."

  "But you'd give her – him – the ring if I asked you to," Leria said.

  Kethol nodded. "Of course you would."

  "No, there is no 'of course' to it." Erenor shook his head, and his smile broadened. "No, I don't think so," he said. "I'm new to this soldiering thing, new to this notion of being sent off on missions, but as I understand it, returning empty-handed is not the objective of the exercise." He sneered at Forinel. "He may be a poor excuse for a baron, but I'd rather see him than Miron there. The people who sent us here – Walter Slovotsky and the Cullinanes – are better off without Miron becoming baron, much better off without Tyrnael having won one off the Cullinanes, much..." Erenor let his voice trail off as he shook his head. "No. Perhaps we may return with nothing more than we left, but we'll not return with anything less." He tucked the ring back in his tunic. "Let the Parliament know that Forinel is still alive here, but doesn't wish to come home and assume his duties. Perhaps they'll send others out to find him, for whatever reason."

  No, they would just give Miron the barony. Kethol opened his mouth to say that, stopped only when Erenor turned to face him.

  Not one word, he mouthed. Don't say anything.

  Erianne smiled genially. "Do you really think that you could leave Therranj with this ring, without our – my – leave?"

  Erenor nodded. "Yes, I do. I think I could do just that." He murmured a quick phrase that could only be heard and forgotten.

  And in an eyeblink, he was gone.

  "Oh, I know," the air to Kethol's left said, in Erenor's voice, "it might be difficult for me to simply walk out, but impossible? No. I'm quite good at what I do, even if what I do is seeming not to be here." He muttered another quick phrase, and he blinked into existence – not where the voice had come from, but from next to Forinel, his knife near Forinel's throat.

  Smilingly, Erenor took a step back as he sheathed his knife, then raised his palms. "No harm done, eh?"

  "Master Erenor," Erianne said, "I've been involved with humans, in various ways, from time to time over the years, and I can tell when one is simply blustering, and when one is blustering to make a point. You have a point, and I assume it's the obvious: you want to trade for the ring."

  Erenor spread his hands, palms up. "Lady Erianne, you are wise beyond your years, and I suspect that's rather many years to be wise beyond." He gestured toward Pirojil. "I tried a seeming on Master Pirojil some time ago, and found that it simply wouldn't stick." He shook his head. "That sounds to me like there's something there that's more than a spell. Pirojil said it to me, something about how his appearance isn't just what he was made to be, but what he is." He pointed to Forinel. "Make him look and sound like that – make it so that nobody, not even a wizard, can tell – and you can have this ring."

  "No," Pirojil said. "It's not – "

  "It's not possible," Erianne said. "I have some idea what – what was done to this friend of yours, and it's not like one of your little illusions, to be put on or taken off like a suit of clothes. You, now – "

  Erenor shook his head. "You haven't thought that through, Lady. I'm little enough of a wizard, but I'd not extinguish my inner flame in exchange for a not nearly so handsome body," he said, with a sniff, "a few pieces of gold, and even a lady as lovely as Lady Leria. Even if you could somehow transform me, to make me really look like Forinel without putting that flame out, why, any wizard could see with one glance that the Forinel who returned had an inner flame that nobody had noticed before he left his father's home."

  "Your point is well-taken, but – "

  "My point is," Erenor said, his eyes no longer on Erianne, nor on Pirojil, "that if you want this ring, you'll have to send us back with a Forinel we can pass off." Kethol was slow of mind far too often. For a moment, he didn't realize why everybody – not just Erianne and Forinel, not just Pirojil and Erenor, but Leria, as well, was looking at him.

  Me?

  Pirojil nodded. "We'll help, but it has to be you."

  Me?

  "No," he said. He spun on the ball of his foot and walked away.

  Chapter 27

  Leria

  Kethol stood alone on the veranda, an unrimmed lip of wood. It had been carved into the tree, not merely tacked onto it: the growth rings in the bare wood spoke of its age.

  He had stopped counting somewhere around one hundred, as that hadn't even taken him off the veranda, and the rooms didn't go to the heart of the tree; he wouldn't be able to tell its age, anyway.

  It had just been something to do.

  He shook his head. It was something he could do. There were some things he could do, and some he was quite good at. A game of bones, say; a fight with a sword, or a bow, or bare hands, or a knife, or even a rifle. He could sit a horse better than most, and follow a trail as well as any. He could even fool the odd foreign soldier, every now and then, into thinking that he was an officer and not just an ordinary soldier.

  He could, he hoped, die well, if he had to. He had seen enough do that.

  But pass himself off as a noble? For the rest of his life?

  No. It wasn't just that it was wrong – it wasn't him. He couldn't do it.

  Yes, Pirojil and Erenor had come up with an explanation: Forinel had been badly injured in
the head, and his health recovered, but some of his memories not. It had taken the appearance of Lady Leria to reawaken some of those, and he was helpless without her. He needed to be reminded of things, from time to time, and while he was no slackwit – and his heirs would show no sign of his injuries

  – he would need help in governing Keranahan, indefinitely. It was a good enough story. That would make Treseen happy, and if after all was said and done, the emperor could be prevailed upon to find a new governor, that would be just as well.

  Or, perhaps Treseen could be kept on, at least for a time, using him as a beater to drive Miron out into some public admission, if it was Miron who was behind the attempt on Jason Cullinane's life.

  The worst part of it was how easily at least part of it would work: Kethol would be gone, and there would be nobody to miss him.

  Kethol would be dead – and who would think it strange that an ordinary soldier was killed? What was strange, perhaps, was that he had survived so long. Who would miss him? Nobody, not really. Oh, the baron would find himself short a soldier who was rather better than average; Walter Slovotsky would miss being able to order Kethol to stick his hand into a hole to see if there was a badger hiding inside; the dowager empress would, for just a moment, grieve just a little.

  But he would be gone, like a rock thrown into a pond, leaving few ripples to mark its passing, and those for only moments.

  The golden ring that they would return with would now, with a proper location spell, point to him. That was easy to do, Erenor said. Just make a duplicate, heat it, and temper it in his blood.

  Nothing more than that. Kethol shook his head. He didn't mind shedding blood, but this way ...

  It would be just like it would if he really died. That was the worst of it.

  No, that wasn't the worst of it. The worst of it was her.

  He couldn't have had her as himself; it would have to be as another man.

  No.

  Their footsteps sounded behind him, quiet enough on the thick carpets before they reached the bare wood of the veranda that nobody else would likely have heard them, much less been able to distinguish Pirojil's drumbeat walk from Erenor's irregular stride.