Wistril Compleat

by Frank Tuttle

  The serpentia dove. Wistril's boat turned about and sped toward the shallows. "Think about it," said Kern. "You'll all be fugitives. The Kingdom never gives up, you know. Never."

  Wistril's boat slid into the shallows, hit bottom, and plowed onward, not stopping until Wistril could step over the side and plant his boots on dry ground.

  The Grizzly bristled. Wistril clambered onto the shore, threw back his cloak, and stamped toward the hunters, his hand on his sword hilt.

  Kern fell in on Wistril's left. Sir Knobby dropped lightly from the sky on the wizard's right.

  The Grizzly spat. "The Law says you can't adopt orphans without swearin' to give them schooling. To raise them up--"

  "In the finest traditions and standards of the House," said Wistril. "And this I shall do. They are, after all, intelligent creatures. But education and care of young Serpentia Giganticus Aquatica Kauph is none of your concern."

  Wistril halted a long stride from the Grizzly. Then the fat wizard drew his sword. "You are a brute and a coward," said Wistril. "The sight of you offends me. The serpentia are now of my House. Threaten them -- threaten anyone here, save your own wretched band of ruffians -- and I shall loose the wrath of Kauph upon you."

  Gargoyles and ghosts dipped low, quiet menace in the flap of their wings and the chill of their passage.

  The Grizzly snorted. "White Chair wizard with a sword. Gargoyles with broom-sticks and tree-limbs. I got a hundred men in the trees, White Chair wizard. And a hundred more behind them." The Grizzly drew his own short, battered blade. "Broken laws don't mean nothing if there's nobody left to tell. I reckon we'll have plenty of hides to sell, come fall."

  Wistril's eyes were full on the Grizzly's sword-hand, but the wizard, from the corner of his eye, saw Kern mouth a three syllable word, squeeze his eyes shut, and jam his fists against his ears.

  Wistril's sword grew hot in his hand, rang like a struck bell, and belched out a blinding, deafening surge of white-hot power.

  Full into the Grizzly's hairy, frightened face.

  The flash was visible all the way to the Laughing Horse, Dervanny's celebrated (and singular) inn and eatery. The blast that followed a heartbeat later rattled the Laughing Horse's only window, knocked old Ferlow the baker's beer mug into his lap, and woke every dog for sixty miles in every direction.

  "Danged wizards," muttered Ferlow as he mopped beer off his britches. "No use at all, they ain't. No use at all."

  Wistril eased into the wide, soft chair behind his desk and let out a long, satisfied sigh. "Nature," he said, his eyes shut, "has her splendors, and is rightly proud. But home and hearth need have no shame."

  Kern rolled his desk-chair around to face the wizard. "Pithily put, Master," he said. "I agree. There's no place like home." He surveyed the study, taking in the burgundy carpet, the polished cherry bookshelves, the bright brass goblin-clock whirling silently away on the corner of Wistril's enormous ironwood desk. "Especially after a week in the wild. I needed a bath more than the Grizzly and any ten of his minions."

  Wistril chuckled. "Indeed. As did I. Still, I shall not dread our next excursion to the Lake; the lads are coming along quite nicely, I believe."

  Kern shook his head. He had an image in his mind, one he knew he would carry with him for the rest of his days. It was the sight of Wistril tottering precariously aboard a tiny two-man rowboat, a bucket of fish at his feet, and a trio of playful sea-monsters arcing and diving and coiling about the boat. Were it not for Wistril's equilibrium spells and two stout gargoyles, Kern knew the boat would have capsized two feet from shore.

  "How smart are the lads, Master?"

  Wistril shrugged. "I suspect the serpentia may, like certain dragons, be as intelligent as they wish to be," he said. "Only time will tell."

  Sir Knobby knocked softly at the half-open study door. "Come," said Wistril. "What is this?"

  Sir Knobby held a long oak box. Kern rose, walked to stand before Sir Knobby, and threw the box open with a flourish.

  "Behold," said Kern. "The Sword of the House of Kauph!"

  Kern withdrew a sword -- Wistril's sword -- from within the case. The blade curved slightly, having softened in the blast, but the hilt shone and the edges gleamed.

  "I had it engraved," said Kern. "Ovis tern va lats, on one side, and Serpentia Giganticus Aquatica on the other."

  Wistril took the sword. "Apprentice," he said, "you never cease to confound me."

  Kern frowned. "Why, Master," he said. "I only wanted to commemorate your heroic defeat of the Grizzly and his army."

  "Pfui," said Wistril. "It was your fool spell that left the Grizzly and half of his men bald, naked, and temporarily blind." Wistril shuddered visibly. "Would that I had been rendered blind as well."

  "I designed the spell so we'd be safe, Master," said Kern. "After all, isn't that what you told me to do? Smelt it yourself, but bring me a sword, you roared. And I did."

  "I had no such intention," said Wistril. "I spoke in anger and with great distraction. My Oath clearly forbids such directives, in spirit if not in letter."

  Sir Knobby snickered softly. Kern winked and grinned. "Of course, Master," he said. "Of course."

  Wistril put down the sword and picked up a book. Kern rolled his chair back to his desk, pulled a stack of paper from a drawer, and inked his pen.

  "This inscription," said Wistril from behind his book. "Ovis tern va lats. What is the tongue, and what is the meaning?"

  "Not sure, Master," said Kern, his pen scratching on the paper. "One of the spooks suggested it. Something like honor forever, or Hand of the Valiant, I think. The old boy claimed all the great swords of the Old Kingdom bore the same phrase."

  "Hmmpph." Wistril went back to his book.

  "Ovis tern va lats," wrote Kern, in the dialect of the Hill Clan his great-grandmother had spoken. "We shall dine in shifts," he added.

  Then he crossed both phrases out, crumpled the paper into a ball, and moved on to a fresh page without even the smallest, most innocent smile.

  Wistril Betrothed

  by Frank Tuttle

  Noon found Kern and half a dozen gargoyles stalking warily about the shrub-lined base of Castle Kauph's squat South Tower. The gargoyles, in pairs, held nets; Kern brandished a stout oak catching-stick with a cloth-wrapped fork at the nether end.

  Kern crept up to a waist-high dandyleaf bush and halted. A loud, rough purring issued from deep within the bush.

  "Here we go, gents," Kern whispered, waving the gargoyles near. "Ready with the nets!"

  Kern gently moved aside a heart-shaped dandyleaf frond.

  Three things happened, nearly at once. First, thunder broke, full over the courtyard of Castle Kauph, with force sufficient to shatter window-glass and rattle Kern's teeth in his head.

  Second, Kern realized that it could not have been thunder that broke the clear midday sky. And, Kern reasoned, if not thunder, it must be Wistril.

  Thirdly, though, the wumpus arcanus felineae resting in the dandyleaf bush awoke, howled, and leaped. Kern glimpsed a furious blur of fangs and claws and mad red cat-eyes and threw himself flat on his back. Nets were cast, but too late; the arcanus felineae spread its feathered wings with a whiplike crack and soared skyward, both tails switching the air in feline triumph.

  Kern rose to his feet, touching his nose and ears just to assure himself they were intact. Sir Knobby, the largest, most gnarled of the gargoyles, stared gape-jawed at the East Tower, where Wistril's study occupied the whole of the fourth floor.

  Glass still tinkled and fell from the shattered study windows. Kern dropped his stick and sprinted for the Tower stair. Sir Knobby took to the air, ignoring the faint dot of the wumpus cat winging away west in favor of the wizard's shattered windows.

  "Master!" shouted Kern. And though his ears still rang from the unnatural thunder, he heard, faint from Wistril's study, Wistril himself shouting. The words were strange, until Kern recognized them as Oomish, Wistril's native but seldom-spoken tongue.
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  "Betrothed," bellowed the wizard, in Oomish. "Oh, doom! Betrothed!"

  Kern doubled his pace, bolted through the Tower doors at a dead run, and charged up the winding tower stairs, three treads at a time.

  Wistril paced, hands clasped behind his back, small round mouth set in a scowl, eyes fixed firmly on the floor. Occasionally the rotund wizard would mutter to himself, or turn abruptly, as if starting for his desk or the door -- but after a pace or three he would turn, ball his fists, and resume his small but determined march.

  Kern leaned against the edge of his writing-desk and watched.

  "Begone," muttered Wistril, after a time.

  "Master--" began Kern.

  "Confound it, Apprentice, get thee hence." Wistril halted, wiped sweat from his bald head with the sleeve of his wrinkled brown robe, and put his hands on his hips. "You allowed a wumpus arcanis felineae to escape the Castle environs -- "

  "The wumpus cat will be back, Master," said Kern, quickly. "It likes the South Tower. All we need do is leave a shutter open." Kern paused. "Anyway, maybe you should conjure up another one. The missus might like a basket of kittens."

  Wistril's wet blue eyes narrowed. "Have a care, Apprentice."

  Kern pulled himself upright and met Wistril's glare. "I do, Master," he said, quietly. "And I'd be less prone to make insensitive jests if I knew what led you to hurl lightning-bolts at the furniture earlier today."

  Wistril's scowl deepened. After a moment he reached into his robe, pulled out a folded paper, and thrust it at Kern.

  "Read," growled Wistril. He turned his eyes from the paper, as though it were a thing of horror. "Read it carefully. And apprentice -- when you speak of it, as you surely will, let your words be tempered with the depth of my distress."

  Kern took the paper, unfolded it, and read. Wistril stood unmoving before him.

  Done, Kern folded the letter, handed it back to Wistril, and walked to stand behind his writing desk. "Master," he said, "I need to sit down. Won't you do the same?"

  "No," growled Wistril, his wide face reddening. "I cannot be still. I can not rest, until I have plotted a safe course through this confounded . . ." Wistril flailed with his hands, groping for a word.

  "Matrimonial maelstrom?" offered Kern. "Flurry of fiancées? Siege of suitors?"

  Wistril threw up his hands, stamped to his own massive, ancient desk, and sank into his wide, worn rolling-chair. Kern shook his head.

  "Master," said Kern. "As painful as this may be, I need to make sure I understand your situation. Oomish isn't my first tongue, or even my second. May I?"

  Defeated, Wistril shrugged.

  "The letter appears to be from a Lady Emmerbee Hohnserrat," said Kern, carefully. "Furthermore, this Lady Emmerbee claims to be -- and I must be misreading this part -- your fiancée."

  "Correct," said Wistril, his bald head flushing.

  Kern blinked. "Fiancée," he said, pronouncing the word carefully. "That would imply that you, Master, asked this woman -- pardon me, the Lady Hohnserrat -- to marry you."

  "Of course I did," snapped Wistril. "Else why in blazes would she title herself my fiancée?"

  Kern counted silently to ten.

  "Then I must ask, Master, why are you surprised?" asked Kern. "You asked. She said yes. A wedding is the inevitable -- some might say inescapable, but I'm far too sensitive to use such a harsh term -- conclusion to the state of being affianced."

  Wistril took in a bushel of air. "All Oomish ladies are affianced," he said, with a pained expression. "Some twenty-three are, in fact, affianced to me."

  Kern ogled. "Twenty-three?" he mouthed, silently.

  Wistril closed his eyes and shook his head, his expression grim.

  "Twenty-three," repeated the wizard. "Which is by no means considered an unusually large pool of suitors," he added. "Kauph is a lesser House of the lesser Houses -- were I Strampish, or a Hool, I should require two scribes and a mathematician merely to keep my records in order."

  Kern shook his head. "How long have you been, um, betrothed?" he said.

  "I was twelve, at the time," said Wistril. "The Lady Hohnserrat was, I believe, nine. We have neither seen each other nor communicated since that day." Wistril shuddered. "Oomish betrothals are merely a bloodless means of conquest among the Houses," he said. "And since conquest of Kauph would, by any reasonable standards, constitute an enormous waste of time, I thought myself safe from any matrimonial . . . predations."

  Kern let the silence linger on for a few moments. Crows cawed frantically in the pines just beyond the castle walls, and Kern wondered idly if the wumpus cat was the source of the disturbance.

  "So," he said, at last, "Your fiancée -- pardon, the Lady Hohnserrat -- is bound for Kauph, in search, as she says, of the wedding flag." Kern frowned. "I didn't know we had any flags, Master," he said. "Especially not a wedding flag. What does that look like, anyway? A frightened groom rampant, set against a field of scowling in-laws?"

  Wistril glared. "The wedding flag is also a custom among Oomish families of high rank," he said. "When a lady of noble birth comes seeking matrimony, she looks first to the ramparts of the prospective groom's keep. By flying a white flag, the groom signals acceptance of the suit."

  "How appropriate," said Kern. He raised his forefinger. "What if we hoist a green flag, then? Will the Lady ride on in search of new suitors?"

  Wistril sighed. "Such is the custom," said the wizard. "But we shall fly no flag of any color until first I speak to the Lady Hohnserrat." Wistril stared up toward the heavens. "Since mindless ardor cannot be her motive in pressing this absurd suit, hope remains that I can dissuade her without resorting to rebuff and insult."

  Kern nodded sagely. "Just don't charm her unintentionally, Master," he said. "Be a pity if you found happiness. Think of the disruption to your reading schedule!"

  A knock sounded the study door.

  "Enter," said Kern, after seeing the set of Wistril's jaw.

  Sir Knobby gently opened the study door and padded through. Behind him crept three much smaller gargoyles. Two wore lace-trimmed pink aprons; the third was wearing a red lady-in-waiting dress, complete with silver-wrought sash and frilly white trim. The gargoyle's folded wings protruded through a pair of lace-trimmed slits in the dress-back, and though Kern couldn't see the gargoyle's face he imagined the sheer silk veil that hung from the gargoyle's horns would probably fall just short of covering the gargoyle's fangs.

  Kern snapped his mouth shut.

  "Splendid," said Wistril, no trace of dismay in his voice. "Thank you. The Lady Hohnserrat will be most pleased."

  Sir Knobby beamed.

  "These shall tend to the Lady Hohnserrat when she arrives," said Wistril.

  Sir Knobby hooted softly, and the three gargoyles executed stiff-kneed curtsies.

  "Go now and prepare the guest rooms," Wistril said, his face ashen. "Apprentice, assist. I understand a few of the younger haunts have taken up residence in the Red Room. I want them removed before the Lady's arrival. Gently, but removed. Is that clear?"

  Kern stood. "I'll see to it, Master," he said. He waved the gargoyles out into the hall, took hold of the door, and pulled it halfway closed. "Master," he said. "What of the flag? Shall I find a white one, just in case it's love at first sight?"

  "Go!" roared Wistril. Tiny lashes of lightning whipped the air about his hands. "Confound you, go!"

  Kern bit his lip and shut the door.

  "No, no, no," said Wistril, with a sigh of exasperation. "Salad fork. Victual fork. Dessert fork. Here, here, here." The wizard held up each implement as he pronounced its name, and set them down beside Kern's empty Delve-worked dinner plate. "Do try again, Apprentice," said Wistril. "We are gentlemen, here at Kauph, and we must dine in the fashion of gentlemen while in the presence of Lady Emmerbee."

  Kern rubbed his eyes. "Salad, victual, dessert," he said, pointing. "Three tines for the salad. Five for the victual. Seven for dessert, unless we're having creme Orlot, in which cas
e we break our shasta pastries in two and use the halves as implements."

  Wistril nodded, and Kern sagged. "No wonder you fled Oom," said Kern.

  "I did not flee," said Wistril.

  "Not far enough, at any rate," said Kern. He picked up his glittering silverware -- Wistril's family utensils, freshly unpacked from their solid silver case -- and placed them carefully in the plate. "I'd better see if the patrol is in, Master," he said. "With your permission?"

  Wistril sighed and waved Kern on. "Yes, yes," he said. "Three days," he added, glumly. "What the devil is keeping that infernal woman?"

  Kern shrugged. "She's probably hoping she'll drive you mad with passion," he said, rising. "Is it working?"

  Wistril merely glared.

  Kern shrugged. "Perhaps she changed her mind and turned back for Oom," he said. "There's a lot of rough country, between Kauph and everywhere else."

  "The letter was written from Ollabat," said Wistril. "Scant miles from Kauph." Wistril rose. "No, Apprentice, we must prepare for the inevitable, not court the implausible."

  Kern made for the door, but a knock and a hoot sounded first.

  Wistril went pale. His heirloom dining-set rattled in his hands, and he set it quickly down upon the desk.

  "Enter," he boomed.

  The door swung open, and Sir Knobby darted into the study. "Hoot," he said, hooking a black-taloned claw in the direction of the castle gates. "Hoot."

  Kern frowned. "What did he say?" he said.

  Wistril's frown deepened. "Men are coming," he said. "Armed men, on horseback. With wagons and pack-mules and tents."

  "The Lady and her entourage?"

  "Hoot," said Sir Knobby, and Kern needed no translation to hear the gargoyle's firm "no."

  "They fly a standard before them," said Wistril. "A unicorn amid a field of swords. The sigil of house Hohnserrat is that of a rose entwined about a lance."

  Kern matched Wistril's frown. "So it's not the Lady," he said. "Who, then? Do you recognize the standard?"