A Sorcerer and a Gentleman

by Elizabeth Willey

  “I’ll meet you there, and we’ll take counsel together o’er the business of going West as speedily as may be done.”

  Ottaviano nodded and looked at Golias, who nodded also.

  “Farewell, then, until the morrow,” Prince Gaston said.

  Lord Dewar turned and went off the bridge to the squire who held their horses, and Ottaviano frowned after him a moment, breaking off his own farewell. Lord Dewar mounted quickly and urged his horse forward toward the bridge.

  “Beg pardon, gentlemen—”

  “What? Where the hell are you going?” demanded Ottaviano.

  “I have affairs to attend to,” Dewar said. He had a long black staff in his hand now. “Farewell, Otto, and a safe journey to you.”

  Gaston’s eyes widened fractionally. He stared. The sorcerer! Of course! Gaston had been blind as a—no, surely the man had been fogging perceptions of himself with illusions, keeping himself from being noticed closely. Gaston stepped forward to get a better, last look at the sorcerer, Lord Dewar.

  “What about your promises, sorcerer?” hissed Golias. “You abandon us when we need you—”

  “That is a lie, Golias,” said Dewar, “in that it implies that I said I would not, and never did I so.” He nudged his horse forward, and the animal began to walk.

  “That’s true,” Ottaviano said, following him. “Look, sometime we—”

  “And farewell, Prince Gaston, a pleasure to meet you.” Dewar smiled a brief, brilliant smile at the Prince Marshal.

  “Farewell,” Gaston said, surprised and amused.

  “I thank you,” said the sorcerer over his shoulder, and kicked the horse so that it began galloping along the drover’s road above the Parphinal. He went around a bend and was out of their sight.

  “Son of a bitch!” Golias said. “Fucking unreliable fickle—”

  “Prince Golias, you surpass yourself in slander and discourtesy,” the standard-bearer said primly.

  Gaston stared at the standard-bearer, startled again. A woman? Was nothing what it seemed to be, today?

  “He sold us out!” Golias said to Ottaviano.

  “Don’t be an ass!” Ottaviano said. “They come and go.”

  “ ’Tis the nature of the breed,” Gaston said. “Whence came he?”

  “Madana,” Ottaviano said. “Or somewhere.”

  Gaston nodded. Had he met the man before? Something about him was familiar, but Gaston could not put a name to it, or him, beyond that given: Dewar. He resolved to think on it later.

  “He’s going for the Nexus at Byrencross, there’s a sunset Gate there, I remember he mentioned it once—” and Ottaviano broke off.

  “At my back,” Prince Gaston said. “I am impressed anew by the quality of the forces thou hast brought to thy cause, Baron.”

  “We could have won!” Golias said, still enraged.

  “Nay,” said the Fireduke, “for had you not agreed, Prince Josquin was prepared to join me with men of Madana, and you would have died.” His holiday humor was gone; again he was the implacable leader of the Emperor’s armies.

  “Oh,” said Ottaviano.

  “Aye.”

  “That’s not a sure thing,” said Golias. “Betrayed!”

  “ ’Tis a certainty,” said Gaston dispassionately, and he gathered up the copies of the treaty.

  15

  OTTAVIANO TURNED SLOWLY ROUND AND ROUND, looking up, looking away in every direction. Above the peaks of the tents, above the poles of the standards, the sky hung high and empty, dawn sweeping up from the distant rim, the wide, long dawn of the frozen plains. Daylight exposed the army as a meagre thing in a way that the near-hanging stars had not. They had arrived at night, following Prince Gaston’s troops into a bonfire-Way the Marshal had opened to Prince Herne; the night was spent pitching camp by torchlight, assigning perimeter patrols, and the like. Otto had crawled into his cold bed shortly before sunrise, and shortly after, his sharp-voiced squire had roused him with the name of Prince Herne, under whom the Marshal had placed Ascolet’s troops and the mercenaries. It had all seemed routine, if a bit off-hours, in the dark. Now that Otto saw the place, the battlefield-plains of Chenay, he was taken aback. The dun and grey earth merged into the heavens; the scraps of color around the army—pennants, cloaks, fluttering laundry—were piteously insignificant.

  “What’s biting you?” Prince Herne demanded, halting and looking back at him.

  “It’s … flat,” Otto explained.

  “These are the Western Plains,” Herne retorted. “Step smartly; the Marshal waits.”

  The Marshal emerged now from his tent, frowning a little; the frown disappeared when he saw Prince Herne, Prince Golias, and the Baron of Ascolet. They were late.

  Otto glanced around himself again with a shudder. It was too flat. It was like being on a plate. Prospero had chosen his venue well; the Emperor’s army was exposed in every way. Otto had been on prairies before, in deserts, on oceans, and he hated their naked sweeps of space and sky.

  Prince Gaston was waiting, though. Ottaviano saluted and greeted him, then was stopped as he started into the tent by Gaston’s hand on his shoulder.

  “Sir?”

  “Hadst thou difficulties in the journey?”

  “None. No. The men, a few of them didn’t like it, but they came through. We had some panicky horses. And they’re all finding it strange here.”

  “Strange?” the Fireduke prompted him.

  Otto gestured, embarrassed. “Well, it’s—flat. It’s like—like being on top of a mountain,” he said, “all the time. Seeing so far. The air’s thin, even.”

  “ ’Tis an unwonted bitter cold strike, from Prospero’s hand no doubt,” Prince Gaston said. “Aye, the land’s not like Ascolet.”

  “I don’t like it, sir. We can’t do anything.”

  “We can. We can advance.”

  Ottaviano nodded. “Yes, sir,” he agreed, and the Prince let him go. But as Ottaviano went into the tent, he glanced back again. On the monotonous horizon, a blue-violet line of storm swept toward them from Prospero’s forces, and Otto wondered how far anyone would advance against that.

  He had the answer sooner than he liked. The Emperor’s men could not advance. They could barely hold their own. Prospero had momentum, and Prospero had sorcery the like of which had not been since Panurgus and Proteus had divided Hendiadys into Pheyarcet and Phesaotois, and Prospero had weather. Hail hammered down, and fierce small cones of black cloud whipped over the land and through their lines, sucking men up and crushing them when they fell. The weather mocked them; a few hours of sun or stars would precede a stinging near-horizontal rain that soaked through their tents and gullied and rutted the encampment. They froze, but snow never fell, only icy, glazing rains.

  Ottaviano admired the weather-working; it took fine Elemental control to do it, the sort Prospero had been rumored to have, but seeing it in action was deeply disturbing. When the very air a man breathes can turn into a hostile wind, morale suffers. Gaston’s troops seemed to take it better; perhaps their proximity to the Fireduke heartened them. Golias’s portion of the army had it the worst, or claimed to, and Herne’s men were bogged in mud.

  Yet they did progress, feet by days. Prince Gaston attacked Prospero anyway, and Prospero fell back sometimes and held sometimes. Prospero’s object, Gaston said, must be to reach the River Ire, which he could use to move very swiftly past a number of obstacles to land relatively close to the capital. Landuc’s Bounds barred him from using sorcery to go so near and prevented him from some of the direst workings, and he must fight his way as any invader would.

  “If Panurgus were alive,” Otto muttered to Golias, as they walked to Golias’s tent to dine and play a game of cards with Herne and Clay, “he could strengthen the Bounds and push Prospero back. That’s how the damn things are supposed to work.”

  “Were the old bastard alive, Prospero wouldn’t be, simple as that,” Golias said. “Who’s there?” he added, half-drawing, turning to face
a torch-bearing figure racing toward them.

  “Baron! Sir! Prince,” said the messenger, one of Gaston’s squires. “His Highness the Prince Marshal, sir, wishes you to come to his tent now, Baron, sir.”

  Ottaviano could think of reasons for Gaston to send for him at this time of the night, but none seemed plausible. “Now? Well—Golias, go on without me, I guess.”

  Golias nodded and turned away, slogging on alone in the icy drizzle Prospero had sent them today, and Otto plodded through the encampment to Gaston’s tent.

  There were an unusual number of guards around the place. Ottaviano followed the squire in past four grim-faced helmed men waiting outside the door.

  “Ah, there you are,” said Dewar cheerfully.

  The first thing Ottaviano noticed about the sorcerer was that he was bone-dry, unlike everyone else within sixty-four miles of the sodden battlefield. Dewar was clean, clean-shaven, and clothed rather better than war might dictate, the emerald pendant in his ear; he looked like a foppish landowner visiting his gamekeeper as he sat across from the Prince Marshal.

  “What are you doing here?” Otto asked, before Prince Gaston could say anything. Was Dewar acting as an emissary again—this time for Prospero?

  “I thought I’d see how you were getting on with this war,” Dewar said. “The last one wasn’t nearly as interesting.” He smiled, lifting an eyebrow.

  Ottaviano stared at him, shook his head, and turned to the Marshal. “Sir, I do swear by the Well’s Fire that I did not know he was here, or coming here, nor did I ask him to do so.”

  Gaston nodded. “I do believe thee,” he said, “for meseems ’tis harder to take a sorcerer unawares than this one was.”

  “It is not impossible to catch a sorcerer napping,” Dewar put in from where he sat. “It is difficult, but not impossible. Some are careless—just as any man might be.”

  “What are you doing here?” Ottaviano asked again.

  “He said he wished to see thee,” Gaston said, sitting down and nodding to another empty camp-chair. Otto sat slowly. “No more than that.”

  Otto shook his head. “More fairy-tales?”

  Dewar shrugged. “I was curious,” he said.

  “That’s going to get you into a lot of trouble, one of these days,” Otto said. “Curious?”

  “Yes. And now I am interested.”

  “Interested,” Gaston repeated.

  “And hungry,” Dewar said. He paused hopefully and then went on, “But yes, interested. I have not seen ever so one-sided a conflict as this. Prince Prospero has considerable force in his hands.”

  “The Emperor,” Otto said, “won’t hire a sorcerer.”

  “I do not sell my services,” Dewar replied haughtily, lifting his chin and raising an eyebrow.

  “So you came to watch us get ground into compost,” Ottaviano said. “That’s real neighborly of you.” He thought suddenly of Luneté, of the note in her voice when she spoke to the sorcerer, of the way he didn’t like her smiling at Dewar, of the way the sorcerer smiled back sometimes—

  Gaston interrupted the beginnings of Otto’s seizure of jealousy. “Lord Dewar,” he said in his usual even way, “under the circumstances, the presence of a strange sorcerer is not welcome here.” He shifted in his seat. Light flashed from the long hilt of his sword at his back as the Fireduke moved a shoulder.

  “But I’m not strange. Otto knows me,” Dewar said, with a hint of dandified drawl, “and I have come to visit him as any gentleman might visit a friend. I assure you that I am not a partisan in this conflict. I have no interest in seeing Prospero conquer Landuc, nor in seeing Landuc defeat Prospero. I am simply here.”

  “Simply here, simply visiting. Civilians seldom find welcome in the midst of the battlefield,” Gaston said.

  “Rotten weather you’re having,” Dewar said.

  “We’ve noticed,” Otto replied. Gaston’s straightforward hints wouldn’t make a dent on Dewar, he knew; the sorcerer liked games.

  “It’s much better a few miles west,” Dewar continued. “Snappy—cold—but none of this vile rain.”

  “Doesn’t seem to be bothering you,” Otto said.

  “Ah, well, I came prepared,” Dewar said. “Didn’t you?”

  “Prepared? With umbrellas issued to all ranks. No, not if that’s what you mean,” Otto said.

  “There’s probably not so much as a wind-rope in the whole camp, is there,” Dewar said. “I’m disappointed; I had heard such glowing reports of Prince Gaston’s military acumen.”

  Ottaviano kicked Gaston beneath the table as the Fireduke tensed and drew his breath. “Well, Dewar,” Otto said, “do you have any suggestions? The Emperor hasn’t allowed the Marshal to hire a sorcerer. Refuses to deal. I heard a rumor that Oriana offered, too.”

  “The deals Oriana offers,” Dewar said, “nobody wants,” and now he grinned, “not even those who rather fancy her. She’s quite charming on short acquaintance, but I understand she becomes,” he paused as if seeking a word, “wearing with longer exposure.”

  “I’ve heard that too,” Otto said. “And the Emperor’s a married man anyway.”

  Dewar made a dismissing gesture, his eyes on Otto’s. “You shall all be dead in about twelve days,” he said.

  “How might you know that,” Gaston wondered.

  “Because in eleven days there will be a Day of Flame,” Dewar said.

  “Days of Flame come every year; they are not uncommon to the calendar,” Gaston said.

  “On Days of Flame,” Dewar said, examining his fingernails and pushing the skin back from them, “the Summoning and Binding of Salamanders is easier than at any other time. There is a Firebound about six miles east of you. There is a Firebound about ten miles north and another eighteen miles south. Prospero has one at the lines. You cannot see them, but I can. He can Summon a Salamander, have it harried by his winds, and let it do his work for him, contained by the Firebounds. No guarantee that that’s what he’ll do,” Dewar added, “but I can’t think why a sorcerer would install those elaborate protections if he weren’t planning exactly that. Such things take time.” He licked his lips and looked pointedly at a bottle of wine breathing on a small table at the other side of the tent, Gaston’s dinner wine.

  Gaston didn’t move, either missing the cue or unwilling to offer hospitality to an unknown sorcerer. Otto stood, got the bottle, put it in front of Dewar, and sat down again.

  “Why, thank you, sir,” Dewar drawled.

  Gaston said nothing, but after a moment he rose also and opened a chest, from which he took a round glass. He set the glass by Dewar and poured.

  “And thank you,” Dewar said. He sniffed and tasted the wine, then drank, saluting Gaston with the glass first.

  “Thanks for the tip,” Otto said. “We’ll have to arrange to be elsewhere.”

  “How?” Dewar asked, lifting an eyebrow.

  “Through a Way, I suppose,” Otto said. “Or the Road. I reckon the Marshal here isn’t keen on all of us getting immolated by a Salamander.”

  “You might find making a Way rather difficult,” Dewar said.

  “It is impossible to prevent,” Gaston said.

  Dewar raised both eyebrows in such a way as to convey that he was too well-mannered to disagree openly, but that the Fireduke was not properly informed.

  “How can Prospero prevent the Marshal from opening a Way?” Otto asked with a sinking feeling.

  “I don’t know, but I tried to open one to leave here. It doesn’t work. Prospero has not been idle; he has advanced certain aspects of the Art intriguingly.”

  “We can march,” Otto said.

  “Not fast enough. He can throw Bounds around you faster than this many men can move. Your Marshal knows that.”

  “Well, thank you for letting us know, then,” Ottaviano said. “I’d better go write a will and put it in a fireproof chest.”

  Dewar poured himself another glass of wine, smiling slightly. “You really have no idea what to do,” he sa
id. “Really?”

  The Fireduke frowned, catching Otto’s eye. Otto shrugged.

  “You have a suggestion?” Gaston said.

  “Actually I have a question, or a criticism.”

  Gaston inclined his head, waited.

  “Why don’t you have Bounds on your encampment?” Dewar asked, setting the glass down, genuine wonder in his voice. “You’re facing a sorcerer, and you don’t have the most rudimentary of Bounds.”

  “I know not the Art of placing them,” Gaston said, “nor does anyone who is not a sorcerer, and we have no sorcerer among us.”

  “Hm,” Dewar said. “Panurgus’s doing. I see. Pity.”

  “I cannot make contract with a sorcerer,” Gaston said bluntly.

  “I don’t sell my services,” Dewar said. “I just came to see Ottaviano, how he was getting on. I shall convey, sir, your respects to your widow,” he added, rising to his feet.

  Ottaviano kicked Gaston again, hard, and stood himself. “Don’t bother,” he said, and dragged his temper under control. Gaston had risen too now and appeared to be holding some hot words in his clenched teeth. It reminded Otto of the coy conversation he had had with Dewar before, when Dewar had been obliquely letting Otto know that he would help Otto with his war. “Perhaps you’d like some supper,” Ottaviano said. “Let’s go to my tent. It’s not far.”

  “Very kind of you,” Dewar said, that annoying smile returning. “I shall accept with all the gratitude of the famished, if the Marshal will allow me to leave his presence without sending those husky fellows after me everywhere.”

  Gaston looked at Ottaviano, clearly considering whether this were some treacherous game or weird plot. He nodded once. “Baron, thou shalt wait on me at midnight,” he said.

  And report on what this is about, Otto filled in. “Yes, sir.”

  “And whilst Lord Dewar is in the camp, bear him company at all times.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Uninvited, Dewar sat down in the one real chair Otto had in his tent, a rather nice one Luneté had embroidered with a picture of the famous Ascolet castle, Malperdy, on its back and a fine big ram, representing the acknowledged fundament of the Ascolet livelihood, on the seat. She had had some trouble with the ram’s right legs, so that he appeared to be fixed to his hillside at an angle, and his gaze was a touch cross-eyed. Still, it was an excellent chair, having upholstered arms and built to be tilted onto two legs, and the Baron of Ascolet nearly suggested that Dewar might be more comfortable on one of the three-legged sling stools.