A Sorcerer and a Gentleman

by Elizabeth Willey

  Picking up his saddlebags, Otto left the spartan chamber which had fallen to his lot—a quarter the size of Luneté’s, which had, gallingly, been located right next to the stranger’s—and went downstairs. The men had slept above the inn’s stables, and, had Luneté not been along, Otto would have been with them; but she preferred him to take an inn-room rather than a common bunk.

  His men were assembled in the stable-yard. Luneté, flushed with excitement, held her horse Butterfly off to one side.

  “Ocher’s on our ass,” Otto told them. “We have two goals: delay Ocher so Lady Luneté at least gets over Lys’s border, behind Champlor’s city walls, and get there ourselves. We’ll hurry, but I expect him to overtake us and we’ll have to fight. I also expect that we can beat him. Everybody got that?”

  They “Yes, sir’d.” He told them to mount and they swept as a body out of the inn yard and onto the road for Lys at a gallop.

  As ever, the strange sorcerer was nowhere to be seen on the road, and Otto wished he’d lose himself or get his throat slit by the bandits who worked the woods hereabouts, though such an end seemed unlikely for so able a man. Luneté rode now in the center of the line of his armed men and they were quiet and alert.

  Clouds closed overhead as they arrived at a crossroads where a rutted path from the market town of Semaris joined theirs to Lys. The intersection’s chipped-nosed kingstone was neglected, mossed on one side and the ground bare before it. There were no signs of passage of any other large group, which comforted Otto somewhat: he had feared Ocher would have cut through Semaris. What Otto had seen in his scrying-bowl had not been clear as to just where Ocher was, only that he was near. Perhaps the Baron of Sarsemar had turned back, accepting inevitable defeat.

  Would he turn back? Otto asked himself, and answered, No. Not with Luneté and Lys at stake. Not until he had lost everything trying.

  The forest was still, without bird or animal sounds to break the murky silence. A sweet warbling birdsong was a relief. Luneté looked overhead for the brown-backed idler, but did not see it, which was not remarkable; the new-budded leaves were plumper here in the lowlands. Another sounded a few minutes later, followed by a challenging note from across the road—the idlers are territorial birds—and a fraction of a second later Luneté heard other sounds, a clink and a thud, and then Ocher’s men were racing out of the wood to either side, along the cleared area toward them, and Otto was shouting commands to his men. They spurred their horses and managed to fly out from between Ocher’s closing lines. Luneté crouched low against her Butterfly’s neck and rehearsed Otto’s plan in the event of attack: she and four picked men who rode before, behind, and beside her were to flee onward and take refuge at a prearranged location; Otto would deal with Ocher and follow.

  It occurred to her that Otto might be killed. She had never thought of that before, and she was seized with panic on thinking it now. She would not leave him to face Ocher and death alone—she could fight at his side—

  Idiot, Luneté interrupted herself, and he’d be killed trying to protect her. Best to stick to the plan.

  They were still outdistancing Ocher’s men, and Otto yelled something. She tried to see ahead, but the ranks of men and horses blocked her view.

  “Splitting off now, m’lady!” the man next to her shouted, and she nodded; the others were parting now before them and she and her four escorts pounded through the line that, even as they passed, was re-forming and preparing to meet Ocher; she looked for Ottaviano but didn’t see him, which lack twisted around her heart with her fear that she might never see him living again. And then what would she do?

  The sorcerer dismounted to collect a certain herb he had noticed at the roadside, which was valuable for its topical anaesthetic quality when prepared correctly. He heard the horses approaching and sighed to himself. His horse, which he’d bought this morning on seeing the excellent animal in the inn’s stables (left as payment by a valet’s straitened master), pricked his ears and looked back toward the approaching mass of men and horses.

  Five riders shot by at racecourse speed, and the sorcerer recognized them as belonging to the group whose route lately had coincided with his own. Wondering what was toward now, he rolled the leaves in his handkerchief and mounted again. The sorcerer urged his horse among the saplings that edged the forest.

  The rest of the red-cloaked, belligerent captain’s force came along more slowly, passed, then wheeled about with drilled precision and took on the look of a formation.

  They were about to do battle, the sorcerer realized, but with whom—brigands? And it puzzled him that he had not been attacked, for a lone rider is easy pickings. He worked a small spell to make himself less noticeable, a veil blended of air, light, and darkness, and he watched down this straight stretch of road as the red-cloaked captain’s troops and the pursuing force, which bore a device of red tower, approached one another.

  They were outnumbered three to one at best, thought the sorcerer, and he acted without thinking further.

  Ottaviano yelped and hauled his horse up as the earth in front of him erupted. One of his men banged into him, wrangling his horse for footing and balance—on the left, luckily, his sword sliding off Otto’s shield—and shouted curses came from every side. Horses whinnied shrilly, panicking. There was dirt flying up in the air, rocks, dust—

  Coughing, choking, Otto shouted a retreat order to his men, and they complied, disorderly but prompt.

  The dust was settling, although the ground in front of them still boiled in an unnatural way. It seethed, as the surface of a stew or overheating custard does; it rumbled in many keys, the sounds of stones grinding together; it hissed and threw friction heat. The air above it shimmered as on a hot, dry summer day.

  Ocher faced Ottaviano. Otto could just see his moustaches beneath his helm’s nosepiece across the thirty-foot-wide breadth of this no-man’s-land. They glared at one another.

  “You bastard puppy!” screamed Ocher. “You birth-damned unclean dog …”

  The sorcerer listened, smiling, and saw the five riders returning at a cautious pace. He nudged his nervous horse out of cover without lifting the spell that veiled them and walked the horse until he was at the verge just opposite them where they had drawn up to the rear of the others. As one of the men went up to ask his fellows what had happened, the sorcerer rode toward the small party, undoing his concealment as he went. Someone was bellowing at the unsettled edge of his earthen barrier. Occasionally, an unseen tree crashed in the forest as the disturbance lengthened.

  The men with the lady drew their weapons and surrounded her as he approached, but she spoke and they reluctantly put up their blades and moved aside.

  The sorcerer and the lady in riding clothes regarded one another. There was some shouted conversation going on now over the seething earth.

  “What did you do?” she asked. “It was you, wasn’t it?”

  “I? Do?” The sorcerer blinked innocently and smiled, tipping his head to one side. His hat hung at his back, suspended on a cord.

  Luneté’s heart did three backflips and landed somewhere near her liver. “Uh,” she said, and smiled also. He is a magician, a wizard, thought Luneté distractedly, but her smile was still there and so was his. He was so young! And so handsome. She’d thought wizards were centuries old—

  The sorcerer lifted an eyebrow. “Your party appears to be in disarray,” he observed. “Perhaps it would be best to regroup and continue on your way, madame.”

  Luneté couldn’t stop smiling. “Is that what you advise, sir?” His eyes were an uncommon shade of blue. And he was quite tall, taller than Ottaviano—

  “My advice is always worth its price, madame.”

  “What price will you ask for this advice?” she asked him, collecting herself.

  He shrugged, smiling still. “I do not engage in trade, and you have already returned more than its value, madame,” he said, bowing from his saddle, and he flicked his left eyebrow again and turned away, nudging
his horse toward the re-forming line of men.

  Ocher was trying to circumvent the disturbed, moving section of ground. Otto turned his horse to prepare for the assault and saw the sorcerer.

  “Son of a bitch!” he exclaimed. “You!”

  The other man smiled. “Is he trying to flank?”

  “Looks that way,” Otto replied tersely.

  “Mm, he’ll fail,” decided the stranger, studying his handiwork. “It would be wisest for you to go on your way, Captain.”

  Otto stared at him and then saw Luneté, who was gesturing urgently in apparent agreement with the stranger.

  “What did you do?”

  The magician shrugged.

  Otto stared at him again, narrowed his eyes, and then shouted an order to fall back to his men. Shouts of dismay were coming from Ocher’s troops, mixed with the sounds of more crashing trees and the screaming of an injured horse. Ottaviano cleared his throat. “Thanks,” he said.

  The magician shrugged again.

  They studied one another.

  “Our paths seem to coincide,” Ottaviano said after another moment. “Want to ride with us?”

  The sorcerer thought about it. “I thank you for your offer,” he said, inclining his head. “I will join you after completing some business which that rude fellow’s arrival interrupted.”

  Otto wondered what in the names of the stars it could be, but he nodded and turned his horse, shouting “Fall in!” When he glanced back half a minute later, he saw that the man had dismounted and was picking plants by the road, ignoring the simmering ground twenty steps away.

  Half an hour later, the men muttered as the magician’s horse overtook them and then matched their pace at the head of the troop. They were on a pleasantly wide stretch of road, its sides guarded by tall, slender straight trees just coming out in bud. Beyond the trees lay fields of turned earth, black beneath the grey sky.

  “Why, hello,” said Luneté, smiling.

  “Good afternoon, madame,” replied their newly-acquired companion, inclining his head.

  “Hello,” Otto said, “you finished your—business?”

  The corner of the other’s mouth lifted in a half-smile. “For today.”

  “I am Luneté of Lys,” said Luneté, “and this is Ottaviano, King of Ascolet.”

  “Countess Luneté of Lys,” Ottaviano corrected her, nettled by her openness.

  She shrugged. “Oh, well, yes.”

  The magician managed a graceful bow to her, from horseback—no mean feat. “I am honored to make your acquaintance, Your Grace, Your Majesty.”

  Ottaviano heard mockery in his tone, but again Luneté spoke before he could.

  “Please call me Luneté.”

  Their new companion smiled at her, bowed again, and said, “Dewar,” indicating himself.

  An outlandish name. “Pleased to meet you,” Ottaviano said.

  “For a change,” Dewar said, catching his eye.

  “For a change,” agreed Ottaviano. “May I ask why you did that?”

  “Did?”

  “Blew up the road.”

  Dewar shrugged. “Certainly, you may ask,” he invited Ottaviano, without a trace of sarcasm.

  Duckshit, thought Otto, and said, excruciatingly nicely, “Why did you blow up the road?”

  “To get to the other side?” Luneté suggested in a light, lilting voice.

  “Because it was there?” wondered Dewar, and chuckled. “I don’t know, Your Majesty. It amused me to do it.”

  Otto inhaled, giving him a hot look that was just a degree removed from a glare. “I don’t like being on the receiving end of favors from strange magicians—”

  Dewar interrupted quickly, hardly thinking, “Then you are in luck. I am a sorcerer.”

  “—sorcerers because it can be notoriously expensive.”

  “Wise of you. However, I did you no favor,” Dewar said.

  Luneté looked at the road and felt her cheeks grow warm. Ottaviano shrugged, not noticing.

  “I am not familiar with the kingdom of Ascolet,” Dewar said after a short silence, “although I believe that one of the sons of Panurgus held a barony of that name, at one time …” and his voice trailed off invitingly. It had, at least, not been mentioned in his guidebook, but the book was years old.

  Ottaviano looked at the road now. “Long story,” he said curtly.

  “Prince Sebastiano was Ottaviano’s father,” Luneté said softly.

  “He is dead.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “You seek to claim your patrimony, then?” Dewar asked, and something in his tone made Otto glance at him again. He wasn’t condescending now; he looked interested, his brows drawn together, his voice serious, not mocking. This was, thought Otto, the stuff that spies were supposed to find out.

  “Something like that,” Otto said. “As I said, it’s a long story.”

  “But it can be shortened,” Luneté prompted him in an undertone.

  “In short, yes,” said Otto.

  “Following Prince Sebastiano’s death, the Emperor declared the barony extinct and took Ascolet as Crown territory,” Luneté explained.

  “Ah,” said Dewar. “Avril the Usurper.”

  “I don’t care how he got his throne,” Otto said. “He’s a son of Panurgus, he was there when the old man died, he’s been able to keep it, and he can have it. I don’t give a damn who reigns in Landuc, but Ascolet is mine.”

  “Yet if your father was a Prince of Landuc—” Dewar said.

  “His mother was Queen of Ascolet,” said Otto. “By blood, not marriage.”

  “I do seem to recall some old tale of that species,” murmured Dewar, exhuming gossip and scandal from the back of his memory. Assassinations, land-grabs, marriages of convenience—

  “You seem to know a fair bit of ancient history,” Otto remarked.

  “It is not terribly ancient,” Dewar replied. “So Lys allies herself with Ascolet to seek independence from the Well-wielders?” It was an innocent-toned, though leading, question, accompanied by an amiable smile and nod to Luneté.

  “Not exactly,” said Luneté, a delicate pink again.

  Ottaviano recalled referring to her as his fiancée to the sorcerer—a stupid slip. “In a manner of speaking, yes,” he admitted. “We, ah, the other is an incidental thing.”

  “But the armies of Lys are well-spoken-of,” murmured Dewar.

  “Justly so,” Otto agreed.

  “On the other hand,” Dewar said, as if thinking aloud, “plainly someone objects.”

  Luneté blushed deeply. “It’s not what you think,” she said.

  “I’m not sure what I think it is,” Dewar said, amused, glancing at Otto to check his reaction. “On the one hand, someone objects; on the other, unless I have been gravely deceived, we are travelling to Lys, not from it.”

  “It’s a long story,” Otto said.

  “Best kind,” replied Dewar, overmatching his terseness.

  “What are you doing up around these parts?” Otto asked.

  “Travelling.”

  “I always thought sorcerers had hooves, tails, horns, and yellow eyes,” said Otto.

  “In all truth, some have,” said Dewar, and he turned his attention from Otto to Luneté. “Champlys is reputed a fair city.”

  “It is indeed lovely,” said Luneté.

  “I have heard high praise spoken of the Shrine of Stars,” said Dewar courteously.

  “It is the most ancient Shrine of Stars anywhere in the Empire,” Luneté said, “for King Panurgus founded it first of them all and placed it in the care of my ancestor Urs, the first Count of Lys.”

  Ottaviano held his tongue and listened as the two discoursed politely, across him, about the attractions of Lys and Champlys for the better part of an hour.

  “You’re familiar with Champlys and Lys,” he remarked to Dewar finally at a convenient break in the conversation.

  “The place is of some renown,” Dewar said. His Madanese guideb
ook had assured him of it.

  Not so much as all that, thought Otto. “Have you visited there before?” he asked.

  “No,” said Dewar.

  “What brings you there now?”

  Dewar shrugged. “I travel for my own reasons, sir, and sometimes I am hard-put to find one for travelling where I do. I might say, that Lys lies between my last location and my next, and certainly that is sufficient reason for going there.”

  “So you’re passing through?” Otto suggested.

  Dewar met his eyes and slowly raised his left eyebrow. “My time is at my disposal,” he said blandly. “I tarry when there’s something worth tarrying over.”

  “Lys may not be a salutary spot for tourism just now,” Otto said.

  Dewar’s expression did not change.

  “I hope things do not go so far as that,” Luneté said, trying to break the tension.

  “So do I,” said Otto.

  The sorcerer shifted his gaze to Luneté. “A lady’s wishes should be granted whenever possible,” he said, and inclined his head to her.

  Ottaviano clenched his teeth and looked ahead. They approached a crossroads with a milestone for Champlor. Beside the milestone was a watering-trough for horses and oxen and a fount for human travellers which overflowed to fill the trough. At the other side of the crossroads, hard at the edge of the road, was a man-sized pillar of rough-dressed hard white stone, a kingstone topped with a good likeness of the late Panurgus. It was in better condition than the Semaris crossroads’ stone. This image looked toward Lys, not smiling but with a benign expression.