A Sorcerer and a Gentleman

by Elizabeth Willey

  Awaiting your reply with great concern, I am …

  Gaston looked up from the letter, which had been written in haste and featured blots and crosses. “More trouble,” he said, passing it to Herne.

  The Emperor sneered. “Very astute, Marshal. More trouble.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Luneté of Lys to herself, but aloud.

  “Bad news, madame?” asked her maid, Laudine.

  “I’m not sure,” said Luneté, folding the parchment and tapping it against her chin. “Is the blue gown ready?”

  “Yes; shall I bring it?”

  “I’ll want it tomorrow,” Luneté said, and she opened the letter again. Rising, she walked to the window and reread her letter.

  Laudine watched her, seeing her anxiety, and asked again, “Is it trouble?”

  Luneté sighed. “We had foreseen something of this sort,” she said, “and I—I simply quail somewhat at what my answer must be. That is all: the nervousness before the leap.”

  “This year has been full of leaps and bounds,” Laudine said comfortingly, coming to her side.

  “Yes, and we have landed on our feet every time so far.”

  “Because each time you have considered the jump ere you made it, and planned your way,” the maid pointed out, “with circumspection and due caution each time. As for the leap of marriage, it’s always blind; there’s no way to know what comes with that.”

  “Indeed,” and Luneté wryed her mouth, “that’s small comfort. I do not like the chasm now before me.”

  Laudine looked at her inquiringly, and the habit of a lifetime made Luneté speak on.

  “I must deceive my Emperor, who is my liege lord,” said Luneté, “and I cannot help but think it a bad start and a rebellious one to a lifetime I had rather fill with harmony and goodwill.”

  “He calls for troops?”

  “Yes, in such a way that I believe the intent would be to use them in Ascolet, under Prince Gaston. That is news also: the Fireduke is sent against Ottaviano.”

  “He did not expect it?”

  “It did not seem likely. He thought the Fireduke would rather be sent into the West, to quell the disturbance lately arisen there.—My answer to this is ready-crafted, but still it mislikes me to turn coat against Landuc.”

  “It is not really against Landuc,” Laudine said.

  “It is. They will see it so. If Otto fails—”

  “He cannot fail,” said Laudine confidently.

  “One would think you his wife.” Luneté smiled, pleased by Laudine’s loyalty.

  “My lady, I have seen enough of men to know that that one is not lightly to be put down. If they have sent the Fireduke to do it, they are fools, for even he will not prevail against the men of Ascolet and Lys if they go, in their fatherland which they know well, fighting for a King in whom they have all faith and against one who robbed them.”

  Luneté nodded. “That’s true,” she admitted.

  “He has planned it well, madame, you yourself have told me so: the winter will be his strongest ally, and if it be severe then the Fireduke will find himself doused and shivering.”

  Luneté laughed. “As the unwelcome troubadour below the balcony, eh? But with snow and ice. I am a silly girl to think about this now, Laudine. The decision was made, the plans laid, long ago, and we cannot now deviate from them. Send for Bar-riseo and I shall dictate my reply.”

  In the Pariphal Mountains south of Ascolet, autumn had come and fled. It never lasted long, not like the lazy, slow-ripening, heavy-fruited autumns of the plains where time poured by at the indolent pace of thick honey. The Pariphal autumn flickered through the high, sharp sides of the snow-topped heights hastily, preferring to linger on the hospitable lowlands, and only gave the mountains perfunctory attention in all phases. Snow flew in the air while the small yellow pemmefel fruit, sweet though seedy, hung still on the trees, those freezing which had not already dropped to become winy mulch for future sprouts or been eaten by the birds and beasts.

  Dewar was standing by just such a tree at the edge of a mountain meadow, his heavy blue-green cloak thrown back over one shoulder despite the sandy white snow which scoured his cheeks and hissed in the twigs. It had dewed his dark beard with tiny droplets and whitened and then dampened his hair. His companion, in a red cloak, had a cocked bow in his hands and was watching a thicket upwind of them. The sorcerer was eating his way through a handful of chilly, honey-sweet pemmefel.

  He was just crunching down on his last pemmefel when the other released the bow. The arrow hissed in the air and thudded into a russet-furred mountain buck’s side, just behind its left foreleg; the animal leapt up, crashed out of the thicket, and staggered twenty or thirty paces across the meadow before it collapsed.

  “It’s not dead,” observed the sorcerer. “I hate that about hunting.”

  “The last blow?”

  “It ought to be clean.”

  “You’re too squeamish, Dewar.”

  “I’m not looking forward to this war, either,” said Dewar, picking another pemmefel, and he followed Otto to the deer. He bent and offered the fruit to the animal, pushing it into its mouth. Its jaw closed convulsively on the pemmefel, its eyes glazing. “Drink the untongued beast’s blood, O Earth,” he said, watching the hunter slash the buck’s heaving throat. “You’ll have better soon—”

  “Knock it off,” Ottaviano grumbled.

  “It’s a famous poem,” said Dewar, smiling.

  “Are you going to help me with this?”

  “I’ll help you carry it. I’ll even help you carry it by finding a pole we can sling it on. Unless you had planned to put it over your shoulders like a proper vision of the Mountain King.”

  “I’ll pass. My back is killing me after that workout yesterday. Where did you learn to throw like that?”

  “Postgraduate research. I’ll fetch a pole.”

  Otto watched his companion go and hack a sapling from the edge of the thicket whence the mortally wounded deer had run. Dewar trimmed the trunk roughly with a few cuts and then walked back, whistling, whittling off branches and brown leaves. The snow had stopped, but the thin wind still pushed the dry yellow grass back and forth.

  “Somehow when I suggested we go hunting I had something else in mind,” Ottaviano said drily.

  “You suggested that I accompany you, and I have; it is more rewarding than hunting idle words and overheard rumors. This has been very pleasant. We have also had an excellent view of the Viden Pass all day, which we hope to be occupying tomorrow.”

  “The next day, probably, with this storm coming. The valleys may have deeper snow; it’ll be slower travelling.”

  “We’re well ahead of the Fireduke. It doesn’t much matter.” Dewar pared his sapling.

  “You said he isn’t in Landuc. Is he on the Road?”

  “I told you: I cannot know. Prince Herne travels west, gathering levies as he goes. I’d give something precious to know what’s up out there.”

  “Something big.”

  They looked at one another for a few seconds.

  “If it’s big enough,” said Dewar reflectively, leaning on his trimmed tree, “they may summon troops from Lys.”

  “I expect to hear any day that the Emperor has done just that, to use either here or there. Since the Marshal is away, I’d bet he wants them when he gets back. The Fireduke keeps an army or two of his own in reserve, in that stronghold of his.”

  “If I were an Emperor, that would make me nervous.” Dewar cleaned his knife on his pants leg.

  Otto took the tree from him and began lashing the buck to it. “He’s tame. No ambition along those lines. I’ve never understood why; he could’ve had it any time—”

  “Since Panurgus’s death—or before it. And he has not. So we must consider Prince Gaston to be a man who is either too smart to desire to rule or too self-effacing. Princes are seldom self-effacing.” He sheathed the knife.

  “He’s not stupid, certainly. If Prince Herne is going west
that means Prince Gaston is coming here, and frankly I’d rather face Prince Herne.”

  “Then go west.”

  “Funny man.”

  “You could,” said the sorcerer, smiling a little. “There is plenty here to keep Prince Gaston busy without you.”

  “The rebellion will die without me.”

  “Ah, but I did not say rebellion, did I.”

  “What I hate about you sorcerers is that you all talk in riddles. You know something new?”

  “Something I had previously not seen as what it really is.” The sorcerer bent and hefted the sapling, which bent with the buck’s weight. “One—two—three!” On the third count they both lifted it up onto their shoulders and settled the burden comfortably.

  “Tell on. If you’re going to.”

  “Have you ever heard of a man called Golias of Charbeck?”

  The pole crashed to the ground. Otto had dropped his end, spinning to face the sorcerer, who perforce put his down quickly too. The deer lolled on the frozen snowy grass.

  “Golias? What about him?”

  “So you have.”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah. Recently?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m asking whether you’ve recently had any business with him,” Dewar said.

  “No. I’d thought he must be dead.”

  “No, he’s not dead.”

  Otto demanded, “Then what about him?”

  “We’d better keep moving. The snow grows heavier.”

  “Dewar, in three seconds I’m going to get pissed off—”

  “I thought your back was bothering you. What do you know about him?” Dewar crouched down and took the pole in his hands again, his eyes crinkling with suppressed amusement.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Curious.”

  “Curiosity has killed more than cats.”

  “As a sorcerer, I am well able to take care of myself. Tell me of Golias. Lift.”

  They heaved the carcass up again, Ottaviano smoldering. Then he laughed. “You’re like a little boy, you know? You have to have your surprises—”

  “It’s an endearing trait; I cultivate it. Golias, Otto.”

  “Well, how’s your history of the turmoil around Panurgus’s death?”

  “I do know that Golias shifted from side to side in there. Seemed like he had it in for everyone and they had it in for him at the end.”

  Otto led the way down the meadow, picking his footing and his words. “My father died fighting him.”

  “Ah.”

  “My father Sebastiano was good friends with him. Golias knew Count Bors of Lys first, somehow; I’m not sure just how. Bors was friendly with my father, too. Golias’s mother was one of the Palace women—he said a lady-in-waiting to Queen Anemone. Panurgus futtered around with her for a while, the usual thing, and then when she got pregnant blew her off. Had her sent off to one of those little retreats and informed her he’d no intention of making her Queen, which apparently disappointed her so much she ran away, off to the West, and hid and nursed her baby and her grudge until she died when he was in his early teens. They lived in a cottage; she had sold a lot of jewelry to get money, when she first ran off, and they used that to pay rent and they had a cow and poultry and pigs. She did some spinning and whoring and Golias did everything else. When she died, Golias took what money was left, which wasn’t a little, and bought himself some good armor, a sword, a shield, and some lessons. He wasn’t going to herd cattle and swine around for the rest of his life; he knew who he was, that he was the King’s son, and he meant to make his mark in the world.”

  “A romance,” Dewar commented. “I’m rapt. Go on.”

  Otto snorted, chuckling. “Yeah. I think maybe he romanticized it a little and sanitized it a lot. So Young Prince Golias—of course he didn’t call himself that—went out into the world, sword in hand, and joined the Army. He liked the life, the travelling, and he found he had the charisma and talent to lead men. Much more to his taste than following livestock. He went independent and became a mercenary, recruited a company pretty quickly and got experience fighting in smaller wars, not in Landuc. That lasted about fifteen, twenty years, I guess. Then he distinguished himself in the Flange War by a lot of heroic deeds. All according to schedule. Unfortunately he didn’t get the degree of distinction he wanted from that, though he did get the Well’s favor by being knighted. In the last naval battle, he’d taken fifteen of the Flange ships, and he was naive enough to expect King Panurgus to be more grateful.

  “Some people say it was Queen Anemone’s doing that he wasn’t. Golias slogged up to Court to be knighted and afterward announced his lineage to the King. The King denied it and laughed him out of the place. Anemone had borne many sons to him—he liked Queens who had boys, as Diote found out the hard way—and was high in favor and had a lot of powerful relations, friends, and supporters, and I’m sure the last thing she wanted to see was a bastard getting on equal footing with or precedence over her brood, like Princes Gaston and Herne. So Golias wasn’t believed, wasn’t permitted to bathe in the Well’s fire, and was publicly humiliated.”

  “Not merely a romance, a cheap romance. Thrilling. Of course, Panurgus knew he was telling the truth; he was a sorcerer, and truth lives in the Well. Curious that he should endanger himself with the denial.”

  “Of course he knew. Stupidly, Golias’s mother, I forget her name, hadn’t bothered to get anything in writing about it, and the King could deny it up, down, left, and right, because there wasn’t any way to prove it.”

  “There are ways,” murmured Dewar.

  “Say, this is a good way to distract me from the fact that I have the heavy end of this damn buck. Golias was incensed. He went back to his company, who believed him, and they were peeved too because they’d all figured on riding his coattails to the top. Since the Flange War was over, there were a lot of loose blades around, and Golias recruited them and headed toward Landuc.

  “He had gotten friendly with Bors of Lys and Prince Sebastiano during the Flange War, I guess. They had supported him in his petition, and they were angry when Panurgus threw him out. Esclados was the last bastard the King recognized, and maybe he’d had enough of his old sins coming back to haunt him. He’d exiled and disinherited Prospero over his sorcery, and Prospero had already returned to attack the King on that account, and he’d come damn close to killing him. Maybe that famous wound was getting to the King and he was starting to think about an heir, and the second-in-line of the eligible Princes, Fulgens, is by nature unsuited to command the Well of Fire— Anyway, that’s all old gossip, and the upshot is that Sebastiano persuaded the King that it would be worthwhile to recognize Golias. Panurgus agreed to acknowledge him, but refused to give him any titles or privileges. When he sent Sebastiano to Golias to say this, Golias got even angrier.”

  Dewar nodded, unseen. Otto seemed to have remarkably detailed knowledge of the business; perhaps Sebastiano his father had told him of it. How old was Otto? As a son of the Well, even unfired, he would change but slowly. “I can see how things could get complicated quickly.”

  “Yeah. One of those five-hundred-thousand-line epics full of blood, treachery, royalty, and stinking politics. In the end, of course, Panurgus unleashed Prince Gaston, who had been off somewhere flexing his muscles for a rematch against Prospero, Prospero raided Landuc again, and Golias lost everything.”

  “Except his life and his wits.”

  “Right. He took those off somewhere along with a king-sized hatred of Landuc, and if you’re hinting that he’s back again—”

  “Sebastiano died in one of those battles, didn’t he.”

  “Yeah.”

  “On whose side was he? He was Golias’s friend—”

  “He tried to stay out of it,” Otto said. “In the end he fought under Prince Gaston. Had to. He was sworn to uphold the King and all that crap. He and Bors of Lys both.”

  Dewar, at the other end of the pole behind Otto, no
dded again. The account he had heard had pointed out that Sebastiano hung back, nearly losing the battle with that hesitation, and had claimed that the two bastard Princes had been planning to join forces and turn on favored Gaston. Dewar had also heard that Golias had taken refuge in Ascolet after the final battle over and within the Landuc city walls. However, it was understandable if Otto preferred not to discuss that side of the tale, and Dewar did not wish to overburden their still-fledgling friendship.

  “So,” Otto went on, “what about him? That’s what I know.”

  “I had the impression you were personally acquainted.”

  Otto shook his head quickly. “No.”

  “Oh. Sorry. Well, he is somewhere to the north of here, burning and pillaging in southern Preszhëanea.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Ottaviano hissed.

  “He has confined himself to Preszhëanea thus far, and not intruded into Ascolet proper.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I know things.”

  Otto snorted. “Yeah. Well, that’s very interesting.”

  “I’d wager, though,” Dewar said, “that the Emperor and his Marshal do not know it. They know, that is, that they have trouble there, but not that it is Golias.”

  “Hm.”

  “Indeed.”

  “That’s very interesting,” Ottaviano said again. “I’ll have to think about that.”

  “I thought you would. The tale was well-told, by the bye.”

  “I rushed it a bit because we were getting close to camp, and here we are. Ah—don’t mention this elsewhere, naturally.”

  “Naturally.”

  They carried the deer carcass through the camp, past piles of packs and small tents where off-duty soldiers mended their gear or huddled knitting beside small, smokeless fires.

  “Dewar, what’s your cut in this?” Otto asked when they had set the kill down at the feet of a cook and started back to Otto’s quarters.

  “I prefer the haunch, roasted but not burnt, basted with wine and gravied with mushrooms,” Dewar replied.