“Who could that have been?” she asked.
“We’ll have to ford here.” He sat staring at the stones for three breaths, then turned and called the order to move ahead, adding, “Watch your footing!”
They didn’t see the man on the road after picking their way across the stream, which at once relieved and worried Otto. He had simultaneous urges to kill him for wrecking the bridge and delaying them (though it was some comfort to think that Ocher too would be delayed by the missing bridge) and to grab him and ask how the hell he’d done it. On the third hand, if there could be one, Otto thought he could live the rest of his life happily without running into him because he’d challenge the bastard if he did—
“Otto,” the lady said.
“Thinking.”
“Ocher will believe you destroyed the bridge.”
“Let him. It’ll occupy his six brain cells with something new.”
“But he’ll file a complaint against you. On the Emperor’s road, that’s a crime against the Crown.” She was genuinely worried.
“Well, in that case I have a lot of witnesses to say I didn’t do it. Including you, my lovely abductee.” He grinned reassuringly.
She laughed. Ottaviano laughed with her, but not long nor hard. It was a bad start to the day.
The summer had been dry, after a dry spring and a warm, snowless winter. Prospero had left the weather to itself, for in the preceding seven years he had done much weather-working, and it was tasking to constrain the natural patterns for very long. He had other things to occupy him, drilling and instructing his army of men, taking them step by step through formations and maneuvers. The drought was no great inconvenience; the river still ran, and his folk got from it their drinking water without difficulty. Nonetheless, he used the occasion to have teams of men sink wells, pounding through the soil and rock, in certain auspicious locations where he divined that water would be easily reached. They toiled unwillingly until their first bubbling water-strike, which delighted and heartened them so that Prospero was hard-put to dissuade them from driving holes all through the forest and the cleared fields.
The fields by the riverside (where a few years before trees had reached over the water) were brown early in the season; crops must be irrigated by hand and with quickly-built pumps, and Prospero released men from laboring on the first stone building of the town to aid the women and children in watering the sapling orchards and the fields of grain.
Seven years had his people dwelt by the riverside; seven years of changes had they wreaked under his command, and seven years of change had worked on them. There were long-houses now, communal places where the folk lived together; in the beginning Prospero had tried to segregate the sexes and had given it up, though men and women labored at different tasks in different places. He was amused by his own dismay at the easy manners of his people, for they coupled without inhibition when the notion struck, and that was often. Though some were pair-bonded from the beginning, the idea of matrimony made little headway here. They had not even a word for it in their rippling, lilting, Spring-born tongue. They all appeared to be mostly free of jealousy, which was well, because few were inclined to fidelity and none to chastity.
The first child was born less than a year after Prospero’s night of Spring-fed sorcery, and so many others hard after that Prospero could not recall which of the many it had been, nor who the mother was. The place had teemed with smug, big-bellied women and then with squalling infants. This occasioned delay in Prospero’s plans; he ruefully adjusted them to accommodate the nurturing of a sizable population of children. The men who were not paired to women were largely uninterested in the infants, although many of them were visibly annoyed by rebuffs from the preoccupied mothers.
Prospero had not expected a sudden crop of brats, but indeed that was the natural consequence of the vigorous amorous activity. After the initial explosion, births came in a more even scattering, most frequently in autumn. None of the children wanted for sustenance or attention, and the score or so whose mothers had died in childbed and soon after—for with births came the first deaths—were adopted and nursed by foster-mothers, without need of Prospero urging it.
In the third year, Prospero became aware that many of the women had formed into close, clan-like associations, based around the farms, and that some of these groups mostly spurned the company of men—though not all, for the women bore children still. The men lived in a military structure Prospero had shaped, gradually imposing more and more organization on them as he taught them the use of weapons and supervised them in the heavy clearing work of preparing land for the women to farm. Yet some of the women’s clan-groups included men who worked the fields and gathered wild food with the women, and Prospero gave up trying to comprehend the shifts among the settling population.
He cared not, Prospero decided, what their sexual customs were, so long as they did his bidding in more important things; their nature was still half-bestial, and so he glanced over the grappling in furrow and forest without censure. As long as they avoided violence and none were forced, as long as they accepted his rule and served his plan, they might associate in whatever ways pleased them. Prospero’s only qualm was for what Freia’s reaction might be when she returned and was exposed to the cooing and rutting. Surely such unbridled and flagrant activity would stir her own covert desires. Though he had no ready plans for her marriage, he would not have her make her own. She was his own blood, after all, of noble and particular genesis, not to be squandered on the first lubber who might catch her eye and tumble her. Therefore he spoke of her to them as different and other, an object of reverence as Prospero himself was, aloof and untouchable; no playfellow, but a mistress, a lady.
For himself, his attention was focused on other matters—although he sought without success for the woman who had been his last-made creature. She had gone wandering, as some of the folk had; she returned briefly in the third year, in the arms of another woman, and Prospero shrugged to himself wryly and pushed her from his thoughts. A voluptuous blonde called Dazhur, his first-shaped female creature, made no secret of her interest in bedding Prospero; his courteous refusal piqued her vanity and heated her desire, and she displayed herself invitingly to him whenever possible. But Prospero was cautious of such entanglements, and Dazhur’s lust came to naught though she sought year in and year out to slake it.
Seven years had passed, and Freia had not returned from her hunt. On full-moon nights Prospero Summoned visions of her in a golden basin full of the Spring’s water, to watch her as she cooked her meat, paddled in dark waters, or slept curled beneath sky or bough, all unaware of his spying. Healthy and solitary, she roamed through mountains and in thick, saturated tropical forest: far north of the Spring. She would return. Prospero could wait. She had bolted before when their opinions diverged and, drawn back to him by her own nature, she had always returned, had always reconciled herself to his will.
Freia was seldom in his thoughts, but occasionally, as today, everything brought her to mind and he wished she would return; seven years was as long as her longest journey before this, surely long enough. The weather was oppressive. Her abandoned gardens withered in the drought. He had neglected to have them weeded or watered: the folk did not come to the isle unless he bid them.
Prospero walked through crumpled plants and flaccid leaves in a searing red dawn, uneasily sniffing a hot, dry wind. It was a wild wind, none of his calling, and it smelled of cinders and smoke. There had been great numbers of wood-elk about for the past few days, other beasts too, and bloated corpses had floated by in the river. Prospero suspected fire, struck by one of the hail-throwing thunderstorms in the mountains and borne through the wood on the wind, high Elements allied against the lowest.
The wind sucked the moisture from his lips and eyes. He wiped them. Perhaps he should raise a storm of his own to batter the wild ones down, to counter them before they reached here. Such raisings had frightened Freia, and he recalled with melancholy fondness how she wo
uld rush to his arms for comfort when he returned to the cave from the Spring’s hilltop, having stirred a fine storm to blast and blow. Then he must hold her, but he would stand in the open doorway, mentally critiquing the storm’s thunders and lightnings whilst soothing her terror.
Prospero reached the stones at the upstream end of the island and sat on one. Someday he would have a proper boathouse here, with proper boats, not this clutter of crude canoes and coracles; proper civilized gardens, too, green and groomed, not the wilderness resulting from Freia’s desire to plant some of everything and her inability to keep it all tidy. Cool shade he’d have, and fountains; grapes and roses on arbors, and soft lawns.
Prospero mopped his neck; he wore only a thin shirt on his back, but he was sweltering. The water was busy this morning. As he sat, a quartet of the native spotted otters came out of the water nearby, looked insouciantly at him, and poured their long bodies into some hiding-place among the stones. Logs had piled up at this end of the island and were snagging flotsam in their limbs and roots. Prospero saw a tree-trunk, its roots wrenched from the earth, floating silently past in the hot morning light, and another, and dark shapes he knew to be animal corpses. Yes, there must have been fire, far upriver, and now the river bore the debris to the sea.
“Papa,” he heard, a panting voice at the water’s edge where the otters had been, accompanied by a splash and a slosh.
“Freia?” Prospero jumped to his feet, some part of him unsurprised.
“Papa,” she said again. Freia it was, dripping wet and sagging onto the ground. She wore only her scant hunting tunic, no leggings, not even an arm-brace, and she was barefoot; and as Prospero made his way to her he saw that she was bone-tired and somewhat singed. There were blisters on her left arm and a long angry burn on her left thigh, and her legs were laced with scratches. Her hair was burnt unevenly on the left and back.
“How now, Puss,” was all he said, and he bent over her, half-lifted her to her feet. She nodded, wobble-kneed, and let him lead her from the water. He patted her shoulder. “Wert caught in the fire?”
“I couldn’t get away. I ran and ran. It’s horrible. Papa, Papa, it’s all flames, all the wood, and the animals run, and the poor little Satyrs, and the birds cannot fly fast enough—” She coughed, shaking her head. “The river is full of death,” she said. “I thought I could float with the logs, but the flames falling, and the animals—” Freia sat down again, on a long rock this time, shivering in spite of the heat.
Prospero sat beside her. “ ’Tis a dry season,” he said, “and some lightning-strike in the mountains hath sparked the blaze. It will devour until it meeteth its own flank, and there die, self-poisoned.” An infelicitous metaphor: he thought of Panurgus, of the flash of fire and blood as he was wounded, dismissed the thought.
“Please, Papa, please, make it stop?”
“ ’Twere best I not tamper overmuch with it,” Prospero said. “There’s a natural rhythm to these things best left unchallenged. Such fires are not unknown; they’ve come beforetimes, though thou hast never seen them, and they serve to scour the forest of deadwood and choking brush, making place for new growth. I’ll not hinder it, Freia. I know it pains thee, but I’ll not stop the fire ’less it threatens us here.”
She stared at him. “Why won’t you stop it? How can you let it burn all the forest away?” and she coughed again.
He stood. “Come now. Let’s feed thee and salve thy scorchings.”
“How can you?” Freia’s reddened eyes accused him. She wiped at her face and stayed seated.
Prospero sighed and sat again. He took her right hand in his left, pressing it. “It likes me little, Freia, but I cannot mend all that’s amiss in the world. Yet what’s amiss with thee, can be mended.” After a pause, “Hast been long from home,” he said.
“Are they still here?” Freia asked, looking significantly at the clearings on the banks, the boats drawn up, the long-houses.
Prospero nodded. “Aye, they are here. I would no more send them from the place than I’d send thee. Less, indeed.” He watched her face change, open heart-ache. “Freia,” Prospero said, leaning toward her, “thou hast that which none other hath, my blood. Thou’rt mine own and there’s none like thee. Dost compass the difference ’twixt thyself and these others I have made?”
Freia looked down at their clasped hands. He took her left hand also, holding them both between his now.
“Puss,” Prospero said, pressing her hands, “I do love thee; art dear to me as only mine own child could be. Yet thou canst not have me all thine own, no more than the wind may blow only on one tree or the rain fall on one stone. Must share.”
“There’s too many of them,” she whispered. “They’re a, a herd.”
“Thou hast not seen a group of men before,” Prospero said, scenting victory. “They startled thee, I know; thou art likewise strange to them. Aye, they’re many, but withal my concern for them is balanced by my love for thee, and thou’lt receive full measure of thy entitlement.”
“Why did you make them? Wasn’t I good enough?” Freia asked, looking up at him.
Prospero smiled at her. “Good? A flower fresh-budded hath more of evil or hatefulness than thou. Leave jealousy, lest it canker and corrupt thee. Good enough? I am pleased with thee; thou art made to please me. I made them to serve my purpose in ways beyond thee, in matters where I would not hazard thee. Sooner would I build a wall of blossoms than spend thee on such wholesale work as I undertake with them.”
Freia gazed at him, perplexity in her face. “Then what do you want me to do, Papa? Why am I here? I’m no use to you. What should I do?”
“Do thou obey my bidding, and be of good cheer, and keep thy duty uppermost in thy thought,” he told her. “Do as thou hast ever done, as a daughter ought, and thou wilt be ever near my heart.”
Ottaviano, his lady, and his men arrived in the large chartered town of Peridot as the town gates closed, having pushed five miles further than kind usage of the horses and the spring-muddied roads would have permitted, and, Otto reckoned, leaving Ocher at least ten miles behind them, stranded in one of the far less hospitable villages through which their road had taken them that day.
Their feeling of safety died when Ottaviano selected one of Peridot’s three inns and found that a large chamber had been reserved for Luneté. Otto asked how this came to be, and the landlord explained that a gentleman had bespoke it for her.
“What gentleman?”
“Put him down, Otto! Was he a tall man with a blue-green cloak and a black staff?” Luneté interrupted.
“Yes,” whispered the landlord. “He’s out—sir—my lady—back soon now I daresay, sir—”
“I’ll—be—blowed,” Otto said, and apologized to the landlord in cash. Then he, his lieutenant, and his betrothed put their heads together.
“Third time’s the charm,” Luneté suggested, smiling despite Otto’s glowering face.
“Charm, my left—” Otto interrupted himself. “This is the third time he’s been right where we’re going. Last night and yesterday afternoon, not to mention yesterday morning at the bridge. He’s following us.”
“Sir, we’ve got to get rid of him. He may be reporting to Ocher,” Otto’s lieutenant Clay urged.
Luneté said, “Ocher wouldn’t have such a man working for him. Indeed, I don’t think such a man would work for Ocher.” Clearly she thought him too elegant to be associated with the gross Baron of Sarsemar.
“What do you think he is, then?” Otto snapped at her impatiently. “An eccentric nobleman fond of walking alone? A wandering student? A bard with expensive habits and a long purse? Coincidentally bound for Lys, just as we are?”
“Would a spy reserve a room for me?” To Luneté, the answer was obvious. The spy would betray himself by showing too much interest in her if he did that, and so no spy would.
Otto began to frame his own answer to this question and said instead, “I’m checking it over before you set foot in it.”
“Do it now, please. I believe my head begins to ache.”
They proceeded upstairs without further conversation, Otto carrying the small bundle that was her sole baggage. His humor was not improved by his discovery, on opening the door, of an unseasonal yellow rose in a slender glass vase on the table. Behind a screen waited a basin of steaming water strewn with rose petals, and the fire had pleasantly overcome the spring chill.
“Oh, lovely!” exclaimed Luneté, and brushed past him.
“Lu! There could be—”
She shook his hand off. “Otto, you’re being very silly. I think you’re jealous.”
His jaw slackened; he gaped at her, taken off-guard by the accusation. “Sky above me! We’re running from half an army, toward a war, and you think I’m jealous because this, this crazy rich vagrant is following us?”
“Yes,” she said firmly, taking her baggage from him. “If you knock on the door in an hour and a half perhaps we’ll have dinner together. Au revoir.”
The door closed behind him.
Otto stood with his back to it, fuming, building up a good head of steam, and then growled deep in his throat on his way down to the public room.
There he was, talking with a well-dressed merchant in the common room. Ottaviano ignored him and had a mug of good dark beer until the merchant had left, with many courtesies, to join his fellows at table in a smaller room on the other side of the inn. There were few locals in the inn yet, and they were loitering at the counter. Otto ignored the stranger a few minutes more and then suggested to Lieutenant Clay that the men should go into the inn-yard and run through an hour of drill, to limber them up after the riding and keep them at peak readiness.
When his men, grumbling, had left the inn, Ottaviano walked up to the stranger, who was now reading by the fire in the early spring twilight, at his elbow a table which held a candle, a pewter plate of tidbits, a glass of red wine, and a bottle. Otto observed that he wore high black riding boots and clothing of good but not ostentatious cut and quality, displayed by a full, bluish-green cloak thrown back over one shoulder; the light showed gold on his dagger’s pommel and his sword-hilt, and a very nice emerald pendant dangled from his left ear.
A Sorcerer and a Gentleman Page 6
