“What are you looking for?” Rihwin still sounded suspicious.
Gerin grinned triumphantly. “Earwigs.”
“Well, father Dyaus, that’s ingenious,” Rihwin said. “Perhaps I shall be here when you return.”
With that Gerin had to be content. He went out and started turning over stones in the courtyard. Under one not very far from the stables, he found several of the shiny, dark brown insects. They tried to crawl away, but he grabbed them and carried them back to the shack. “Even the little pincers on their posteriors will serve symbolically to represent the ring you wore in your ear.”
“Why, so they will.” All at once, Rihwin went from dubious to enthusiastic. “Don’t fribble away the time. Get on with it.”
Gerin got on with it, but first spent more time studying the spell in the grimoire. He knew his own inadequacy as a sorcerer, and also knew he would never get the chance to make two serious blunders. Fitting a general spell to a specific application required certain adaptations of both verse and passes. He muttered to himself, planning in advance the rhymes he’d use and the passes he’d have to change. The spell was intended to be simple, which meant most of the passes used the right hand. That hindered him more than it helped. He’d overcome the problem before, though, and expected to be able to do it again.
He felt confident as he launched into the chant. His right hand was clumsy, but seemed to be doing what he required of it. He poured rose water over the earwigs he’d imprisoned in a bronze bowl. They didn’t drown quite as fast as he’d thought they would, but surely that degree of exactitude wouldn’t matter.
“My ear feels strange,” Rihwin remarked. He brought his hand up to the ruined flap of flesh. “You’ve not changed it yet, but the potential for change is manifestly there.”
“Shut up,” Gerin said fiercely, though Rihwin had given him good news. The donkey had to know he didn’t need to be distracted, not when he was coming to the climactic moment of the spell. His right hand twisted through the last pass; he grunted in satisfaction at having done it correctly. He cut a red wool thread with a bronze knife he never used for any other purpose and cried, “Transform!”
“You’ve done it!” Rihwin said exultantly. “I can feel the change.”
Gerin turned to see what his magic had wrought. He suffered a sudden coughing fit, and hoped his face would not betray him. He had changed Rihwin’s ear, but not quite in the way he’d intended. It was indeed whole, but not pink and round: it was long and pointed and hairy.
He knew what had gone wrong. He’d called Rihwin a donkey, and then thought of him as a donkey when he’d spoken up at the wrong time. Somehow, the resentful thought had leaked into the conjuration and left his fellow Fox with a donkey’s ear.
A fly buzzing around the inside of the shack chose that moment to light on the new-formed appendage. As a donkey’s ear will, it twitched. The fly flew away. Rihwin started violently and clapped a hand to his head. The evidence, alas, was all too palpable. “What have you done to me, you muddler?”
“Muddled.” Gerin kicked at the dirt floor of the shack, feeling smaller and more useless than the earwigs he’d drowned.
“Well, what are you going to do about it? You were going to give me an ear, you—you moldy pigeon dropping, not this—this excrescence.” Gerin had never heard an unwounded man scream through three consecutive sentences before; in the abstract, the feat was to be admired.
“I’ll try my best to set it right,” Gerin said. “I should be able to manage a simple reversal of the spell.” He reached for the grimoire.
“You said the spell itself would be simple, too,” Rihwin reminded him. He wasn’t screaming any more, but sarcasm sharp and sour as vinegar dripped from his tongue.
“So I did” Gerin admitted. “Look, if all else fails, I’ll buy you a hat.” That sent Rihwin’s voice back into the upper registers.
Gerin tried to ignore him, though it wasn’t easy. In theory, reversal spells were simple. Both the law of similarity and that of contagion applied and, since he’d just essayed the spell he wished to overturn, the links were temporally strong. On the other hand, given the sorcerous ineptitude he’d just demonstrated—He made himself not think about that. A magician needed to believe he’d succeed.
A magician also needs talent, part of him jeered. The rest of him made that part shut up. He plunged headlong into the first reversal spell he found. The more time he spent thinking about it, the more he’d hesitate later. If you fell out of a jouncing chariot, you needed to get back in and ride again.
By luck, most of the passes were for his left hand. He went through them with care, but not with confidence—he wondered when, if ever, he’d have confidence in his magic once more. Rihwin sat in the chair, arms folded, glaring stonily at him. Normally, having Rihwin keep quiet while he cast a spell would have been a blessing. As things were, it just disconcerted Gerin more.
He raced through the cantrip at a pace a practiced wizard would have hesitated to match. One way or another, he’d know soon. His fingers twisted through the last and hardest pass of the spell. “Let all be as it was!” he yelled.
“Something happened,” Rihwin said. “I felt it.” But he didn’t raise his hand to discover exactly what it was. Maybe he was afraid. He asked Gerin, “Did you deck me out with an octopus tentacle?”
“I haven’t even seen octopus tentacles since that Sithonian eatery I used to frequent in the City of Elabon,” Gerin replied. He stared at the place where the donkey’s ear had sprouted from Rihwin’s head.
“That’s not a responsive answer.” Rihwin sighed theatrically. “Very well, since you won’t tell me, I shall just have to find out for myself.” Slowly, he brought his left hand up to his head. His eyes grew as wide as Gerin’s. “It’s my ear,” he whispered. Then, even more amazed, he added, “And it’s whole—isn’t it?”
“It certainly looks that way,” Gerin said. “Does it feel so, too?”
“By Dyaus, it does. How ever did you manage that?”
“If I knew, I would tell you.” Gerin cudgeled his wits for an explanation. At last, he said, “The reversal spell must have undone your wound as well as my magic—that’s all I can think of.”
Rihwin felt of his ear. “There’s the hole through which the hoop passed. You must be right, lord Gerin; like you, I can think of no other explanation that fits.” Now that his ear was restored, he started to laugh. “My fellow Fox, you are the best bad magician I have ever known.”
“I’ll take that for a compliment.” Suddenly Gerin started to laugh, too. Rihwin’s elastic features showed curiosity. Gerin explained: “If I could do on purpose what I did by accident, think of the demand I’d be in from wenches who wanted to frolic and yet be wed as maidens.”
Rihwin leered. “Aye, and think of the fee you could charge, too.”
“I’m surprised women don’t already have a magic like that,” Gerin said. “Or maybe they do, and just don’t let on to us men.”
“It could be so,” Rihwin agreed. He felt his ear again, as if not believing Gerin had, no matter how erratically, accomplished exactly what he’d said he’d do. “Now I have to wait until Otes or another jeweler passes through, so I can have a new hoop made to replace the one I lost.”
“If you get your ear torn again on account of that foolish southron conceit, don’t expect me to fix it for you,” Gerin said.
“If I come to you again to have my ear fixed, I deserve to wear a donkey’s in its place,” Rihwin retorted. Gerin mimed taking an arrow in the ribs; Rihwin had won that exchange.
One of Gerin’s warriors who held the Elabon Way open through Bevon’s holding brought disquieting news back to Fox Keep. “Lord prince, it’s said Bevon and two of his sons have made common cause with Adiatunnus—and with the monsters from Ikos,” he said between swigs from a jack of ale.
“Said by whom?” Gerin demanded, not wanting to believe Elabonians could fall so low as to align themselves with the creatures.
&nb
sp; “By Bevander, another of Bevon’s sons,” the soldier answered. “He came to us calling down curses on past enmity and saying he’d sooner cast his lot with you than with a bunch of things.”
“I wonder what he meant by that,” Gerin said, “the monsters, or his father and brothers?” The warrior who’d brought word started, then snorted as he was swallowing, which made him choke and spray ale over the table-top.
Gerin plucked distractedly at his beard. He’d reckoned Adiatunnus’ embrace of the monsters a hideous aberration. If more and more lords proved willing to use the creatures to further their own ends, they would gain a permanent place in the northlands. He wondered which lord who favored them they’d first end up devouring.
“What will you do, lord Gerin?” the soldier answered.
“Do about what, Captain?” Van called from the stairway. He and Fand were coming down into the great hall hand in hand. By the foolish grins on their faces, Gerin had no trouble imagining what they’d been doing up on the second floor. Fand smirked at him, just in case he had had trouble. She wanted to make him jealous—her door stayed closed to him these days.
He knew a certain amount of annoyance at the way she flaunted what she was up to, but jealousy stayed dormant. He wondered what that was telling him. To keep from having to think about it, he turned to the trooper and said, “Tell him what you just told me.”
The trooper obeyed. Van scowled and rubbed at the scar that creased his nose. Fand poked him in the ribs, indignant at being forgotten. He let go of her hand and slipped his arm around her waist. She molded herself against him, but most of his attention was still on what he’d just heard. “Good question,” he said. “What will you do, Fox?”
“I don’t know yet,” Gerin answered. “I begin to think I need allies myself. I wonder if the monsters have got to Schild’s lands yet. If they have, he may be more likely to remember he’s my vassal. And Ricolf will fight on my side, even if he isn’t fond of me anymore.”
“The Trokmoi south of the Niffet will range themselves with. Adiatunnus, sure and they will,” Fand said.
Gerin couldn’t tell whether she was trying to be helpful or to goad him further. He gave her the benefit of the doubt. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re right. All the more reason for me to look for those who will help me struggle against them.” He puckered his lips, as if at a sour taste. He hated having to rely on any power but his own. It left him too vulnerable by half. But he was already vulnerable, in a different way.
“Hagop son of Hovan—” Van began.
“—Is hardly worth having on my side, for he brings little force with him,” Gerin interrupted. “I want to win this fight, not have it drag on forever.” As he spoke, one way to do that came to mind. “If Grand Duke Aragis would make common cause with me, now—”
Van, Fand, and the trooper all stared at him. He didn’t suppose he could blame them. Ever since Elabon abandoned the northlands and the Trokmoi entered them, he and Aragis had been most successful at building from the ruins of empire. He’d taken for granted that they would clash one day, and assumed Aragis had done the same—a notion their meeting at Ikos had only reinforced. But the monsters and the lords who would use them to augment their own power were a danger to Aragis no less than to Gerin.
At last Van said, “You don’t think small, Captain. That much I give you.”
The more Gerin looked at the idea, the more he liked it himself. “I see two problems,” he said. “One is making sure we stay allies with Aragis and don’t end up his vassals. He’ll have the same concern about us, no doubt. It could make working together ticklish.”
“Aye, I can see that one,” Van said with a sage nod. “This setup of vassalage you Elabonians have makes you so sticky about rank and honor that it’s a wonder you ever get anything done. What’s the second?”
Gerin made a wry face. “Simply getting a messenger from Fox Keep to the Castle of the Archer. With all the monsters loose on the land between what I hold and what belongs to Aragis, I really should send a good-sized fighting force just to see to it that he hears my offer and I hear his answer. But I can’t afford to do that, not now, not with the monsters and the Trokmoi and now Bevon and his sons ganging together against me.”
“Send Rihwin,” Van suggested. “Ever since you got him that one ear back, he’s been talking both of mine off about—what does he call it?—your natural talent as a mage, that’s right.”
Remembering the near fiasco in the shack, the Fox said, “That only proves he’s not as smart as he thinks he is.” He plucked at his beard again. “I need to ponder this a bit more before I go and do it. It’s not something I can just set in motion before I try to look at the places it may lead.”
“Rihwin would,” Van said. “But then, you already said what needs saying about him. Not that he’s stupid, mind, but that he thinks he has your Dyaus’ view of things, and he doesn’t.”
“I don’t what?” Rihwin asked, coming into the great hall from the courtyard.
“Know your backside from a longtooth turd,” Fand said. Gerin and Van hadn’t put it so pungently, but it did a fair job of summing up their opinion.
Rihwin looked down over his shoulder at the part of him cited. “That’s what I thought I had there,” he said, as if in relief. “Trying to sit down on a longtooth turd strikes me as unaesthetic.”
“As what, now?” Fand said. Her Elabonian was fluent, but that was not a word used every day in a frontier castle of a former frontier province of the decaying Empire of Elabon.
“Messy and smelly,” Gerin translated for her. “He’s making a joke.”
“Is he? Then why doesn’t he up and do it?” Fand said.
“I take a certain amount of pleasure at being insulted by so fair a lady,” Rihwin said, bowing, “but only a certain amount.” He turned on his heel and strode out.
“A pity you gave him back his missing ear,” Fand said to Gerin. “Better you should have torn off the other one.” She bared her teeth and looked every bit as savage as she sounded. The Fox was sure she meant to be taken literally.
He said, “What good would that do? Rihwin didn’t listen with two ears and didn’t with one, so why do you think he would with none?”
Fand stared at him, then gurgled laughter. “It’s not just that y’are lefthanded, Fox, but sure and you think that way as well. How am I to stay angry at you, now, when you go sneaking round my temper with such silliness as that?”
Gerin didn’t answer. As far as he was concerned, he hadn’t done anything to deserve Fand’s anger. His thoughts were another matter, but if men—and women, too—were scourged for their thoughts, every back in the northlands—no, every back in the world—would bear stripes.
Van said, “Will you send to Aragis, then, Captain?”
“I think so,” Gerin answered. “But as I said, I’ll weigh it a bit more before I make up my mind. I grudge the strength I’d have to send to make sure my embassy got through.”
“Fair enough, I suppose,” the outlander said, “but don’t go weighing overlong. My gut warns me we haven’t much time to squander.”
If Van was worried, the situation could not be good; Van generally saw fighting as sport. Gerin had already thought matters bleak. Seeing his friend’s concern, he wondered if he hadn’t been too optimistic.
Rap, rap. Knocking on Fand’s door, Gerin realized he hadn’t been so nervous approaching a woman since he’d gone off into the woods with a serf girl at about the age of fourteen. If she told him no again, he vowed he’d have nothing more to do with her.
The door opened. Fand eyed Gerin with the same irresolution he felt. At last, with the hint of a smile, she said, “You’re not one to give up easy, are you, now?”
“If I were, I’d either be dead or living in the southlands,” Gerin answered. “May I come in?”
“Sure and you’d do better with more sweet talk, not just throwing it out so, like a sausage, splash! into the soup pot.” Fand sounded a trifle irked. Sh
e didn’t close the door in his face, though, as she had so many times lately. After a moment, she stepped aside and motioned for him to join her. She closed the door behind him, barred it.
A tunic lay on the bed, bone needle and thread halfway through a rip on one sleeve. Gerin turned the sleeve right side out so he could see how the repair would look. “That’s fine work,” he said.
“For which I thank you, though sewing by lamplight is more trouble nor it’s worth, I’m thinking.” Fand rubbed her eyes to show him what she meant. After an awkward pause, she went on, “But you didna come here to be talking of shirts.” She sat down on the bed.
“No, I didn’t.” Gerin sat down beside her. “I came because I hoped we could end the quarrel between us.”
“Because you wanted to futter me,” Fand said. She didn’t sound angry, though, as she had so often when she sent him away. She might have been talking about how the wheat was doing this year. After a moment, Gerin nodded; saying he didn’t want her would have been a lie. Fand’s mouth quirked in a wry smile. “Och, you’re no seducer, are you now? But have your way this once, Fox. We’ll see what we bring to it.” She pulled the tunic she was wearing up over her head, then stood to slide off her brightly checked wool skirt.
Seeing her naked made the breath catch in his throat, as it always did. She was a splendid woman, and she knew it, which only made the impression stronger. Gerin undressed in a hurry. They got back down on the bed together.
They did their best to please each other. The Fox tried hard; he could tell Fand was doing the same thing. He rolled off her quickly afterwards, not wanting her to have to bear his weight any longer than she needed to. “I thank you,” she said, and sat up.
Gerin lay on one side. He looked over to her and said, “It’s no good any more, is it?”
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