A Sorcerer and a Gentleman

by Elizabeth Willey

  “No, no, no. I was leaving Golias after going there to find out what he planned for tomorrow. A—a kind of a wind, a Sylph, grabbed me and hustled me—I don’t even know just where or how far, it blew me around so—to Prospero.”

  “Prospero!”

  “Yes. He wanted to have dinner and a chat.” Dewar brushed twigs out of his hair, looking weary all at once. Gaston removed a few leaves from his cloak. “He’d sent the Sylph to bring me in. It’s his. I mean he owns it. Never mind; you don’t understand the implications—so we dined and talked of this and that—”

  “Talked,” Gaston said, his voice very low.

  “Just talked. You see— It’s a complicated tale. Can I beg a lift of your horse to camp? This is that perishing bridge, isn’t it?”

  “It is. Here, I’ll give thee a leg up.”

  “Thanks. Ah! Ow. Hell’s bells, I owe him for this.”

  In Gaston’s tent, the Marshal saw that Dewar was considerably more battered by his fall than had been evident. His clothing was wet and his face bright with cold. A large bruise was coming up on his head and his hands were embedded with thorns and splinters; he settled stiffly into a chair and let Gaston call a bonesetter to look at the foot.

  Gaston opened a small cabinet and took out a wicker-wrapped bottle of something colorless. He poured a tumbler half-full for Dewar, splashed in a few drops from a smaller brown jug, and topped the tumbler off with a thick golden Madanese wine.

  “Thanks. Painkiller?”

  Gaston chuckled and poured for himself in another tumbler.

  Dewar tasted it, coughed, and wiped his eyes. “What is this?”

  “ ’Tis wholesome fruit, the essence—cherry, apricot, berries.…” Gaston emptied his glass.

  “Whew.” He sipped, coughed again, and swallowed manfully. The Madanese wine was soft, a sweet wash over the stronger brew. His stomach began to glow. “Where was I?”

  “In a ditch.” Gaston smiled slightly, refilling Dewar’s tumbler: less wine, and more of the wicker jug’s contents.

  “Oh. He summoned up an ignis fatuus to guide me back, and the blasted thing waltzed me all over the countryside and guided me into the ditch. All of me but my head missed the bridge by six inches. They’re rotten little fuckers, fickle and never fixed—” Dewar sampled the stuff in his glass again. It wasn’t so bad, once one got used to having a numb tongue. There might even be a flavor to it. He drank a mouthful. The warmth was pleasant, and it distracted him from his pounding head.

  “What did Prospero want?”

  “To challenge me, he said.” Dewar was suddenly hungry. The meal with Prospero had been hours ago. He drank more of Gaston’s wine.

  Gaston set his glass down, frowning. “Art resolved that this be wise?”

  “He didn’t challenge me, though. Said he’d changed his mind.” Perhaps Gaston would send for breakfast … meanwhile, the liquor warmed him.

  “Why?”

  “Personal reasons,” Dewar muttered, and had another swallow of his wholesome fruit-essence. He coughed, but this time he did detect a hint of apricot and cherry in the fire. An acquired taste, no doubt.

  The squire came in and said that the bonesetter was not to be found. Gaston sent him for his surgeon. Dewar stared at the mica-paned lantern and sipped mechanically at the wine, fighting the coldness of his wet clothes.

  “Of what did Prospero speak?” Gaston asked softly, when the squire had gone.

  “Oh, all kinds of things. You. War. Her. Suchlike gossip.” Dewar drank again, suddenly nervous. Thinking about Aië made him perspire at the best of times. He emptied his glass and rubbed his hands over his face. The bruise just tingled now.

  “Her?”

  “He knew her. Knows her. Seems like her kind of fellow. My dear, dear mother.”

  “Why, who’s she?” Gaston tried.

  “Thought I told you. Odile of Aië. Most dangerous woman in the universe, Oren used to say. Did you never hear of Aië?” Curious: this time when he said her name, there came no stabbing fear. Had he lost that with the geas?

  Gaston prompted quickly, “So th’art from Aië?”

  “Left as soon as I could,” Dewar said, yawning, leaving his eyes closed, dozing an instant and snapping upright as he began to slump, glaring at the Fireduke. “What’s in this? Is this one of your exotic soporifics?”

  “Nay, nay. Pure fruit-essence, nothing more. ’Tis nigh to dawn; th’art weary. So Prospero knows Odile.”

  Dewar shuddered. “Yes, it seems so. He behaved very bizarrely. Said he wanted to know when I was born. Guess he wanted to cast my horoscope.”

  “What didst tell him?”

  “I gave him a broad answer so he couldn’t. I’m not stupid. Then he wanted to know where I studied and all kinds of things, and when I didn’t answer he dismissed me. With his cindered little ignis.” Dewar slumped in the chair, clumsily turning the tumbler in his dull fingers. “Said we’d meet again, and he’ll tell me of my ancestry … Has he always been so eccentric?”

  “Aye,” Gaston said, and poured a little more into Dewar’s glass. “Didst know he knew thy mother?”

  “No. I dough nidea. I’d no idea. I must have walked a score of miles tonight. In the dark. Damn’ bug. Prospero. Wine at dinner was good, though. Humph.” He sipped, emptied the glass again in two swallows, and slouched further, eyes closing without interruption. He was so tired. Gaston wouldn’t mind if he just rested for a moment.

  Gaston watched Dewar’s face relax, the courtier and sorcerer leaving it, weary youth remaining. Why had Prospero released him?

  His hands, his hands were gone, become hooves—his tongue was thick and unlimber—a frightened bleat began in his chest, and his body jerked. Awake, Dewar stared down at his body. His body. Not the other. Bandages around his hands, mittening them. The bandages had set off the nightmare. He looked around him, unsure where he was. He couldn’t recall returning to his tent. No, this wasn’t his tent. Armor hung on a stand beside the tent-flap— It was— Sun above, it was Gaston’s. He was in the squires’ anteroom.

  What had he done? he wondered, and he moved and felt his foot twinge. It brought the night’s events back to him.

  There was a note pinned to his jacket, which was on a stool beside the bed, his boots underneath. See me. G.

  Prince Gaston had helped him out of the ditch and brought him back here. Yes. Dewar had fallen asleep before the surgeon had tied up his foot, though. Gaston’s damned inflammable intoxicant had knocked him out and left him with a tooth-aching headache.

  He should have known better than to drink anything the Fireduke swallowed without cutting it with nine parts water; Gaston’s gullet seemed to volatilize the strongest distillations. Dewar made a disgusted sound and threw aside the blankets with which he’d been tucked up. His own cloak was on top of the pile, brushed, and he reached for it. The surgeon had cleaned and lightly bandaged his hands. He lifted them, staring: thumbs, fingers, wrists—all there, covered with smooth human skin and linen, not the hooves and hide of his nightmare. Dewar pushed the dream from him: it was over, gone. Another bandage was around his head. He didn’t recall being that badly hurt, but when he put his feet on the floor and felt the bruises along his body wake up, he thought that he might have been very lucky not to break his neck.

  Respectful of his aches, he pulled on his boots and gloves. The bandage made the left boot fit tightly, but the tightness supported him better, and Dewar was able to walk, limping slightly.

  One of Prince Gaston’s pages ran up to him as he lifted the tent flap and stepped outside, a boy with glossy, evenly-cut hair and an unbroken, piping voice.

  “Lord Dewar, Prince Gaston’s respects, and he’d like to see you.”

  “Yes, he left a note,” Dewar said. “Is he free?”

  “I’ll take you to him, sir,” the page offered—Dewar shrugged and nodded.

  Gaston stood at one side of the practice ground, arms folded, watching one of his sergeants put a tough-looking group o
f Golias’s men through a formation drill. The page ran ahead to the Prince Marshal and tugged at his sleeve, speaking to him; Gaston looked down, nodded, and left the sidelines to join Dewar, who was leaning against an oak-tree up on a low rise. The page ran off on some other errand.

  “How boots thy foot?”

  “I think it will be all right. I don’t even remember the surgeon.”

  “ ’Twas Gernan. Hast cracked a small bone belike, but ’tis not significant an thou favor it.”

  “Thank you for picking me up.” Dewar smiled. “What did you want to see me about?”

  Gaston’s eyes flicked over his face. He stood on the lower side of the slope, so that the difference in their heights was eliminated, and he was eye-to-eye with Dewar. “Last night didst thou tell a curious tale, and I’d be sure I heard aright.”

  Dewar lifted his eyebrows expectantly, hiding a sinking feeling.

  “Thou saidst Prospero was acquainted with thy mother.”

  Had he said that? To Gaston? Dewar supposed he must have. “That’s what he told me.”

  “Lord Dewar, canst thou repeat his words exact?” The Prince kept his voice casual and friendly.

  “I can, but I don’t know if I care to do so,” Dewar said.

  Gaston bit his lip. “I ask not to idly pry, Lord Dewar.”

  Dewar gave him a closed look of veiled hostility. Gaston did nothing accidental; Dewar was certain he’d been given the strongest liquor the Marshal had, to loosen his tongue. “I’m sure you don’t. I consider the conversation a professional encounter not pertinent to anyone else. Is that all? I’ve work to do.”

  “Dewar!” The Marshal caught his arm—he did not want Dewar to be angered by his questions, yet he felt he must have the answers, or partial answers if the whole truth could not be told. “Where lieth Aië?”

  Dewar began to answer and stopped; Gaston’s urgency was familiar to him from other places, other times. What had he said of Aië? Nothing, he hoped; nothing, he was certain, for he loathed the place sincerely. “I’ll do you the favor of never telling you, Prince Gaston,” he said softly, and shook his head.

  “ ’Tis in Phesaotois?” guessed Gaston.

  Dewar blinked.

  “I’m correct.”

  “Yes. Prince Gaston—”

  “I’ve no plan of faring thither.”

  “Gaston—”

  “Dewar.”

  “Look, I—”

  They stared at one another for a long, long minute. Dewar was hot and cold at once; he felt a turmoil of emotions, of which fear seemed to be strongest, a lonely lost fear. Could he never escape Aië?

  “I’m not here to make trouble,” Dewar whispered finally. “I—What do you think I am?”

  “A sorcerer,” Gaston said low-voiced, watching him. “A foreign sorcerer working without contract, for reasons wholly opaque to his allies.”

  Dewar folded his arms and watched the sergeant bawling at the men, the wind carrying the sound away. “And so you don’t trust me. Golias never does either.”

  “I trust thee, Dewar.”

  “Then please—let this lie. Please. Ask nothing of Aië, think nothing of Aië; it is not a place for you.” Dewar glanced at the Marshal and wished he had not; he could not look away.

  “Hast let things lie, thyself,” Gaston said, his eyes fixed on Dewar’s.

  Dewar, not understanding what he might mean, lifted his eyebrows.

  “I have never asked thee,” Gaston said, “why thou didst join us here after leaving Baron Ottaviano in Ascolet. I will ask thee now, and I desire an answer, a truthful answer.”

  Dewar looked down, rubbed his nose which itched suddenly, and shifted his weight. He leaned against the tree again. “It was something to do,” he said finally. “I’d hate to see Otto get killed.” He glanced up at Gaston.

  “He is thy friend.”

  Dewar shrugged and looked down again.

  “Why didst make cause with him?”

  “I liked his fight,” Dewar said at once. “I met them on the road, and I thought they were—his cause was a good one and I wanted him to succeed. It will always gall me that we lost. Why did you support your brother Avril when he seized the throne?” he asked.

  It was a question of comparable intrusiveness, Gaston supposed, and so he answered. “I did not wish the kingdom fragmented, as might have happened. Th’art outside that; thou seest not the inner tensions. For a time, it seemed possible that Landuc would be shattered into internecine, fratricidal rivalry. ’Twere a great evil. When Avril moved to take the throne, I supported him; meseemed he’d make a fit monarch. Prince Prospero was exiled by King Panurgus, and though the throne must be said to be his by right, by politics hath it been alienated utterly. We were at war with Golias and needed a king, and—perhaps th’art not fully aware—a sorcerer monarch, Prospero, even were a favored, might not have been accepted so quickly as Avril was. For Panurgus disapproved sorcery, beyond his own, and the general opinion followed him in that.”

  “It seemed the right thing to do.” Had Gaston done otherwise, had Landuc’s leadership been broken, Pheyarcet might become like Phesaotois: a disorganized collection of feuding petty sorcerer-lords.

  “Summed in few words, aye. And thy reasons are similar, then.”

  “They could be. I haven’t viewed them so idealistically. —Do you think I will betray you, Herne, Golias, Otto? Is that what you fear?” Dewar said, angry.

  “I think that unless thou hast understanding of why th’art here, thou’lt stumble to explain thy position to another and to justify it to thyself.”

  “Prospero made me no such proposal!”

  “I am glad to know’t, but to hear it is not why I question thee.”

  Dewar drew a shuddering breath. “Prince Gaston, I swear to you—to you personally, not to Landuc about which I care not a pin—by the Well and by my life, I will not betray your fight here.”

  Gaston shook his head regretfully. “I require no such oath of thee, Lord Dewar. Nor do I expect it, nor do I consider thy participation here as anything more than a personal favor to Baron Ottaviano.”

  “Good.” Dewar began to turn away again, and Gaston caught his arm as he had done before.

  “Dewar.”

  “Now what?” Dewar half-yelled, wheeling on him.

  “I trust thee.”

  Dewar regarded him a long time, and his ire ebbed as he did, and finally he said, “Thank you.”

  “Let this remain in our ears only.”

  “Personal.”

  “Aye.”

  A blurred confusion of emotions flowed over Dewar’s face, and all of them combined and cancelled one another to leave a smile, a very small, almost shy smile.

  Gaston smiled also, relieved.

  “I’m going to my tent to clean up,” Dewar said.

  “An thou hast no objection, I’ll walk with thee, because there’s a matter of which hast yet heard naught.”

  “Hm. Attack?”

  “Nay, but soon.”

  “You keep saying that.”

  “Prince Josquin shall join us with reinforcements from Madana, and then we shall attack.” Gaston watched the sorcerer, sidelong.

  “Prince Josquin!”

  “Aye.”

  “Herne, Otto, Golias, and I aren’t enough for you? You need him too?”

  “Not so much him as the men he will bring. I have fought Prospero before, Lord Dewar. Dost know of’t? ’Tis the latest engagement in a battle that taketh years to move through its feints and parries. Last time we fought we parted, neither the victor, and before that ’twas the King’s lingering death resulted from Prospero’s defeat. My desire is a swift end.”

  “Victory at a stroke.”

  “With the least number of blows, the least of losses. Prospero’s a tenacious, creative, wily fighter, and no less than crushing loss can even discourage him. Hath the weather in his hand, even. Were it not for Panurgus’s Bounds—” Gaston interrupted himself. “Hast seen how he a
dapts himself to all thou dost, to every military move.”

  “He almost seems to read my mind.”

  “Aye. He’s brilliant in more ways than one; he— He’s like our father so, leading his enemies to defeat themselves, weakening them with their own weapons. With Prince Josquin’s reinforcements I shall have the force I desire.”

  “What will happen when he is defeated?”

  “I know not.”

  “Execution?”

  “ ’Twould sate the Emperor,” Gaston said after a moment.

  “But not you.”

  “Prince Prospero’s my brother, Lord Dewar. Hast belike no siblings, but I’m loth to murder mine, no matter how objectionable they may be, no more my other kin.”

  “Thus Ottaviano lives, and is at least administratively rehabilitated.…”

  Gaston said nothing.

  “I consider that no weakness, Prince,” Dewar said after a moment.

  “Nor I.”

  “When will Prince Josquin arrive?”

  “ ’Twill take him at least sixteen days to come here, now he hath assembled the force, though he travel with all haste on the Road and then, the last move, through a Way. The greater numbers slow the pace.”

  Prince Gaston left Dewar at his tent and walked slowly to his own quarters. En route, he answered questions, gave orders, inspected automatically each soldier he saw with an unforgiving eye; yet all the while his body carried on, a part of his mind sat apart. He thought of Dewar, of his quickness and his sorcery, his hands and his thoughtful squint, his youth and his easy, unconscious superiority. And he thought of his own brother Prospero, whose least gestures spoke of command and power, cold-eyed and dark, a connoisseur of fine things who had devoted the days and nights of his long life to his search for knowledge, and he wondered what manner of woman Odile of Aië might be. A sorceress herself, Gaston suspected, if Dewar described her as dangerous; potent and deadly, known to Prospero.

  How might she be known to a Prince of Landuc? Well, Gaston thought, Prospero was a sorcerer also; sorcerers all seemed to know one another, an uneasy fraternity, by name at least and often by doing business with one another. They traded amongst themselves, Prospero had once said, Traded what? someone had asked, and wintry Prospero had smiled and said, Why, intelligence that thou hast not, lugwit. Prospero might have traded with this woman of Aië. Dewar’s mother.