“Because,” Matt said, “what you learn might enhance the welfare of both your people and yourself.”
King Boncorro stared at him again. All the courtiers held their breath and waited, sensing that their own destinies hung in the balance. Finally, Boncorro said, “There may be some substance in what you say-be quiet, Rebozo! But I require more evidence than your opinion alone.”
Matt’s stomach thought about sinking. “What kind of evidence did your Majesty have in mind?”
“Some sign of your intentions,” Boncorro said, “some sign of the validity of your ideas. I will give you a challenge, Lord Wizard-to answer two specific questions that Rebozo has been unable to answer to my satisfaction.”
“What questions are those?” the chancellor cried. The king held up his index finger. “One: who killed my father, and why?” He raised his middle finger beside it. “And two: who killed my grandfather-and why?”
“But I have answered both!” the chancellor cried. “It was the groom Accerese who slew your father! And it was the bandits who killed your grandfather!”
Boncorro seemed not to hear him, only gazed at Matt. “Of course,” Matt said slowly, “I would have to find you the answers to both questions in such a fashion that you were satisfied that I had found the truth.”
“You would.”
“Don’t bite,” Saul said beside him. “He’s dealing from a stacked deck.”
“Yes, but I’ve got an ace up my sleeve.” Matt took a deep breath and said, “Very well, your Majesty. I accept your challenge.”
“No!” Rebozo cried, and Boncorro snapped, “Be still, Rebozo! If there is no validity to what he says, he will fail. How long will you need to find your answer, Lord Wizard?”
“About half an hour.” Matt pushed back his sleeves. “Starting right now.” He held out his hands, fingers spread to look impressive, and chanted, “When we are frozen up within, and quite The phantom of ourselves, To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost Which blames the living man.”
He took a deep breath, then went from Arnold to original, “What goes around, comes around-all debts get paid, If not in cold cash, then in shame and in pain. A life for a life, and a save for a savior- Spiro, arise! Come pay back your favor!”
“You need not compel,” said a sepulchral voice, “I was more than willing to aid you; you had only to ask.”
There he was, floating in midair, twice as large as life-Spiro the ghost, barely visible in the dim light of the throne room. The courtiers drew back with cries of horror. On the dais, Rebozo stared, trembling; his moan turned to a very soft keening. Matt breathed a sigh of relief. “Sorry, oldster. I didn’t know what kind of morass you were going to have to wade through to get here.”
“Well, there was a net of spells that needed parting,” Spiro admitted. “What would you have me do, Lord Wizard? Oh, yes, I know who you really are, now! Even in Purgatory the dead know far more than they did in life!”
Someone moaned in the crowd, and several others took it up. “Thanks, friend,” Matt said, aware of the effect. “Ghost!” There was urgency in King Boncorro’s voice. “How is it you are in Purgatory, but not in fire?”
The ghost turned slowly to regard the king with hollow eyes. “I owe you no answers.”
“Then do it for charity, I beseech you! I have great need of spiritual answers! Tell me, I pray!”
“Nooo,” Rebozo moaned. “No, no, no…”
“Well, I shall,” Spiro said, relenting. “An act of charity will aid me greatly now. Know, King, that I was not wicked enough to need the worst of tortures to cleanse my soul enough for Heaven. I dwell in a desert, baking under the heat of a blazing sun by day, and freezing at night. I do not complain; I deserved far worse.”
“Thank you,” Boncorro whispered, wide-eyed. “You are welcome.” The ghost turned back to Matt. “What do you require, Wizard?”
“I need to speak to two ghosts,” Matt said. “One of them is probably in Hell, or, just possibly, Purgatory. The other is probably in Heaven; we think he was a martyr.”
“I cannot make my voice reach to Heaven,” said the ghost, “but I shall seek throughout Purgatory, and can call down to Hell. What is the name of the depraved soul?”
Matt took a deep breath. “King Maledicto of Latruria!”
The courtiers gasped. Rebozo’s keening tapered off into shocked silence. But Spiro gave Matt a hard smile. “He is in Purgatory; I have seen him in its most abysmal depths. I shall summon him for you.”
Matt realized that King Maledicto had been older than he had thought-a lot older. “You do not summon a king!” Boncorro cried. “Worldly rank means nothing here,” the ghost retorted, “only the goodness of the soul. Maledicto, come!”
And the king’s ghost was there, smaller than Spiro’s, no longer malevolent, face contorted in agony. “What would you have of me, squire?” he gasped. “A debt to the living, and to Heaven, King-that-was!” Spiro turned to Matt. “Ask!”
“Who killed you?” Matt demanded, the hairs standing up on the back of his neck. “Who killed you, and why?”
“Why? Because I repented and sought to confess!” Maledicto’s tortured eyes lit with triumph. “And through the brave defense of two knights who held off my slayer, I succeeded! They are not here; I think they have gone to Heaven, with the monk who shrived me!”
“But how is this?” King Boncorro cried. “You, who slew and tortured so many! You, who caused so much agony through your devotion to Evil! How could you have come to repent?”
“Who speaks?” The king’s ghost turned. “Ah! My grandson, alive after all! I rejoice to see you living and well! Take care of your soul! Do not follow me!”
“I will not!” Boncorro assured him, seeming to regain strength by that renunciation. “Why did you repent?”
“My son’s death cut the heart out of me,” the ghost answered, “and your disappearance took what little spirit remained, for I saw there would be nothing left to show I had ever lived. Indeed, if I had known you lived, I might have rallied and reformed, for you were hope for the future-but without you, tomorrow was already in ashes. There was, of a sudden, no purpose in my life, for even pleasure had palled. After ten years of meditating on that matter, and nerving myself for the death I knew would follow, I repented and went to a confessor secretly. As soon as I began to confess, the Devil knew, as I had been sure he would, and sent a masked sorcerer on a fiery monster to kill me-but thanks to the intervention of my two stalwart knights, the only two of my court who I was sure were secretly religious, I managed to be shriven first-so the sorcerer slew not only me, but also the priest who had given me absolution.”
“But who was the sorcerer?” Boncorro demanded. “I know not,” King Maledicto sighed. “He was masked, and my soul is not yet risen enough to know more than it did in life.”
Suddenly, the flames billowed up higher around him. He cried out in pain, then called, “I must go, I cannot stay longer! Bless you, my grandson! Turn to God, and to Good!”
Rebozo cried out in pain at the name of the Lord, and so did many of the courtiers. The flames billowed up about the ghost, and when they died down and faded, he was gone. “That is all that I can do myself,” Spiro’s ghost told them. “As I have said, my words cannot reach to Heaven-but there is one among you whose voice can.”
Boncorro stared in shock. “Who?” Matt asked, eyeing Rebozo nervously. “Him!” Spiro’s finger lanced out at Arouetto. “His life has not been blameless, but nearly so-his only real vice has been in failing to see enough of the wickedness that is in humankind, and in not seeking out his fellow people, to do good for them! He has helped those who have come to him, but has not sought them out. Withal, his soul is still solidly good, and bound for Heaven!”
“So that is why you wished him gone.” King Boncorro fixed Rebozo with a glare that held not only conviction, but also sentence. Matt glanced at the chancellor. The man was wild-eyed and trembling. Matt braced himself for trouble-a man in that state
might do anything, and this was a sorcerer. “Pray, scholar!” Spiro enjoined. “Pray that the soul of Prince Casudo may appear! The time is right, the moment crucial! If Heaven hears your prayer, the martyr may come!”
Trembling, Arouetto bowed his head over his folded hands and murmured something in Latin. Light burst through the throne room, banishing Spiro’s ghost. It faded, pulling in on itself-and a shining specter floated there before them, three times their height. It was the form of a man in his thirties, bearded and lithe, with a look of exultation in his eyes. “Father!” King Boncorro cried, and Rebozo sank keening to his knees. The ghost turned and looked down; then its face softened into lines of doting. “My son! How my heart swells with joy to see you grown, and not fully corrupted! Oh, forgive me for having left you lorn!”
“I did, I did long ago!” Boncorro cried. “It was not your doing, after all! But I cannot forgive your murderer, or forgive God for taking you from me!”
“Ah.” Prince Casudo’s face saddened. “But you must not blame God, my son. You must blame it on me, for I wanted to die.”
“You… wanted to leave me?” King Boncorro’s voice was a hiss; his eyes stared wide. “Oh, no, not that, never!” The ghost’s hands came up as if to embrace, to hold. “But I did wish to die, for I was racked with a temptation that I knew must be my downfall!”
“Temptation?” Boncorro stared. “You?”
“Oh, yes! Do not think, my son, that simply because I had resisted so many temptations already, that I did not suffer them!”
“But what kind of temptation could have swayed so saintly a man?”
“The temptations of a beautiful serving maid,” Prince Casudo sighed, “brought to this court by Chancellor Rebozo, and somehow preserved from my father’s clutches. Sweet she was, though no virgin, and with a face and form that would have distracted a stone! And I was no stone, my son, oh, no-but she was of too low a station for a prince to marry…”
“You loved a woman other than my mother?” Boncorro’s face was almost white. “Love? Ah, no, to my shame, little enough of love was there, but a great deal of lust, an ocean of lust, crashing in on the beach of my celibacy all at once, in a tidal wave! Do not think too harshly of me, I pray-remember that I had been eight years without a wife, that the chambermaid was very attractive and flirtatious, that I found myself tempted to the point of succumbing-and that I knew myself well enough to know that if I fell, I would try to justify the deed, to find some excuse for it, to persuade myself that the sin was right and good, so that I could maintain the liaison even though I could not marry her! Those excuses would have Jed me little by little to embrace the Devil’s blasphemies, until, believing I was damned, I would have declared myself a servant of Satan, who would then have given the throne into my hand-and rather than saving Latruria, I would have taken the kingdom with me to damnation. Nay, I resisted the beckoning ofher gazes and swayings, I refused the unspoken invitation in her eyes, I resisted the spoken invitations that came after, but my blood pounded so furiously in my veins that I knew I could not hold out forever! I besieged the gates of Heaven with my prayers, that the Lord would remove this temptation from me! I reminded myself time and again that God would not send me a trial too great for me to bear! But at last I pled with the Lord that, if he would not remove the temptress from me nor purge the lust from my heart, that he would take me home to the safety of Heaven! This was my sin, to ask to be removed from the strife of life! It is my fault, and none of the Lord’s, if He heard me and granted my prayer by relaxing His protection so that the assassin’s knife delivered me from my own weakness!”
“Weakness indeed!” Boncorro cried. “It was given to you to care for a kingdom, and to care for a son who would one day also care for that kingdom! How dare you desert me so! How dare you desert your kingdom!”
“But I never did, never truly!” the ghost pleaded. “Oh, aye, I quit this life, and could not be with you in the flesh, nor hold you when you were racked with grief nor counsel you in your confusion-but I was always with you as closely as I could be, ever hovering near to strengthen your mind and soothe your heart! Oh, I have not preserved you completely from Satan’s wiles-but if your heart was in turmoil and you felt a sudden calmness, that was me, channeling God’s grace to you! If you dreamed a nightmare, racked with confusion and fear, and I appeared to banish the monsters and show you magical wonders-that was more than a dream, it was I in the spirit! If you were tempted to hate, tempted to revenge, and a cool impulse stayed your hand and calmed you, that impulse was mine! I have never truly deserted you, my son, but have always been with you, in your heart and in your mind and, as much as I could, in your soul, strengthening you against temptation and counseling you against the sins of lust. It was I, it was always I, and I shall always be there to guide you and to give you solace, if you do not truly forsake the Lord God!”
Boncorro sat, staring at the ghost, as the color slowly came back into his face. Then, finally, his form relaxed and a single tear flowed from his eye. “God bless you, my father! I forgive you again, for in your place, I could have done no less, to save my kingdom-and my son, for I can only imagine the nightmare my life would have become if you had declared for Evil!”
“But can you forgive God?” the ghost whispered. Silence answered him, a silence that held the whole throne room and stretched on and on as young King Boncorro stared up at him, a boy no longer, but a man in the fullness of his strength-of body, of mind, and of will. Then at last he spoke, and his voice was low. “Yes, I can-but only because it has just dawned on me, through your talk, and… was that you, moving in my heart just now, to open it to grace?”
The ghost did not answer, but his eyes shone. “It comes dimly to me,” Boncorro went on, “that God may have worked for the best of us all-that my own orphaning has certainly made me the man that I am today, and that God may have wanted that, for His own reasons-but perhaps also for the welfare of the people of Latruria.”
Behind him, Rebozo winced. “I can begin to forgive Him, at least,” Boncorro went on, “though I may need to understand a great deal more of His plan before I can seek to make amends. Tell me more, that it may make greater sense to me! Why were you murdered?”
“You have guessed it, and guessed aright,” the ghost told him. “As soon as my murderer realized that I intended to turn to God, to turn my whole country to God if I gained the throne, he bent all efforts to assuring that I would not do so. Assassins began to appear about me-”
“The groom Accerese?”
“No, not he! Never he! The poor man only found my body-he did not wield the knife! Nay, he dwells here in glory among the Saints-for the small sins of his life were redeemed by the pain of his death, and his cleaving unto God until the last!”
“So much for your tortures, Rebozo,” Boncorro said, not even looking over his shoulder at the crumpled man who winced and whimpered at every mention of the Deity’s name. “But God protected you, my father?”
“He did,” the ghost said, “but I also exercised unceasing vigilance, ever wary, and foiled many an attacker myself, by an adroit move and the blocking of a blow. One learns such things, growing up in a court filled with intrigue.”
“Yes,” Boncorro said softly, “one does.”
“It is even so for you, my son. When your chancellor realized you, too, intended to be a reformer, he set the assassins on your trail-but you proved too wary for him, aye, and your magic too powerful.”
Now Boncorro did swivel about to glare at Rebozo, who snapped upright, hands raised to fend him off. “Your Majesty, no! I will admit that I did set the hounds at first, but when I saw you would not turn religious, I was reassured and called them off! I bent my efforts thenceforth to corrupting you, only showing you the ways of ecstasy, the pleasures of power and debauchery and revelry!”
“And you made good progress, did you not?” Boncorro’s gaze was steely. “Yes, until this Merovencian spell caster came!” Rebozo cried. “It would not have been necessary
to seek your death!”
“No, not at all,” Boncorro said grimly. “I listened to you; yes, I yielded to temptation and gathered a harem of wenches! I condoned prostitution and its coercing of women into degradation! Oh, you did well for your master, Rebozo, but I begin to see that he was not me!” He turned back to the ghost. “Who killed you, my father?”
“No, my son!” The ghost held up his hands in supplication. “I would not have you seek revenge! That path leads to Hell!”
Boncorro stared up at him for a minute, eyes narrowed. Then he said, “Your rebuke is wise-I shall not revenge!” But he squared his shoulders, raising his chin with an air of authority his father had never shown. “But I am the king, as you never were, and I must render justice, as you never did! Tell me, for the sake of that justice-who murdered my grandfather? Who murdered you?”
“How could he know who slew your grandfather?” Rebozo cried, trembling. “He was dead!”
“Dead, but in Heaven-and though the Saints may not know everything, they know a great deal more than the living. Is it not true, my father? Do you not know, and that without a shadow of doubt, who killed Grandfather?”
“I do,” Casudo’s ghost admitted. “It was the same man who murdered me. He slew me when I proved to be incorruptible, not knowing that a week longer would have seen my fall from grace; he killed King Maledicto when he found him confessing his sins, then instantly became the loudest mourner of all.”
“Who was it, then?” Boncorro’s voice was steel, and it was no longer a son speaking to a father, but one young man speaking to another. “Alas!” the ghost cried. “It was the single man most trusted by your grandfather and yourself-”
“You lie, foul phantom!” Rebozo screamed, leveling his staff. “It was the Lord Chancellor Rebozo!” the ghost cried.
Chapter 26
Rebozo screamed a cursing verse in the archaic language, and the staff spat green fire. “Die, foul phantom! Get thee hence!”
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