“What will you, then, Odile? I have much afoot; I cannot go forth to this challenge without knowing I shall not lay myself open to a greater. I Bind the boy; I deliver him to you, his mother, for sorely-needed correction in certain grievous errors which appear to be ingrained in his thinking; and you promise me there will be no further consequences?”
“Not to you. To the boy, yes. He must learn the protocol of interaction and challenge.”
“I agree. He is about to learn something of it. But you do not concern yourself over his father’s reaction, so long as his father is ignorant. I think you shield the boy.”
Odile said nothing.
“You are too fond, Odile,” Prospero said. “I fear you will scold him roundly and box his ears and send him abashed on his way.”
“That is nothing of your concern.”
“Very well,” Prospero said, “I shall not concern myself about it further. Thank you, madame, for this interview. I shall see you next with this Dewar in hand.”
“I am looking forward to it,” Odile said.
He bowed, turned to go.
“You leave at once?”
“It doth not do to let things hang too long,” Prospero said, pausing.
“Allow me to offer thee some refreshment ere thou goest.”
He hesitated, then nodded and turned back to face her fully. “Thy courtesy is not amiss, Countess,” he said, “to offer, but I fear delay.”
“The delay will be but a few hours in thy journey,” said she, “but if it be so urgent—”
“Not so urgent as to offend thee by refusing, then,” Prospero said, and he smiled.
Odile rose to her feet. The birds, disturbed, fled in three different directions among the pillars to the sides and behind Prospero. Her veil-like robes swirled and settled around her foggily with the movement of her standing; Odile stood as still as she had sat for the time of one heartbeat and then, slowly, descended the dais. Prospero bowed deeply and offered her his arm; she took it and they stood another beat of Prospero’s heart eye-to-eye (for she was tall). Then, at a stately pace as if they were leading a procession, they walked together around the dais, to the rear of the black-pillared temple.
The three white birds waited at the edge of the pillared darkness, heads bowed. Odile touched their heads negligently with a drifting finger as she passed, not looking downward from Prospero’s silvery gaze, and when she had passed, three fair white-clad serving-maids, slender and soundless, hurried away to fetch refreshments for their mistress and her guest.
Dewar opened the bottle of wine and poured four glasses. He handed the first to Prince Gaston, the second to Baron Ottaviano, the third to Prince Golias, and the fourth he raised himself.
“To Prince Josquin,” he said. “A generous man.” The wine was Madanese, from the new supplies.
Golias laughed and drank. Ottaviano snorted, grinned, and drank also. Gaston tasted the wine, then sipped. Dewar’s smile was secret, mocking.
“So he’s almost here? Or what?” Golias said, wiping his mouth.
“He is where he should be, and on the morrow shall we confer all together to plan our next attack,” Gaston said. “Lord Dewar hath provided such knowledge as he may safely gather about the enemy’s disposition; to wait longer would be needless delay, for what we know now is adequate.”
“It’s about time,” Golias said. “All the time we’ve been waiting for his dandified highness, that bastard’s been building up forces and spying on us.”
“With Josquin,” Ottaviano said, “the numbers are ours.”
The sorceress Odile rose noiseless, naked, from her silk-draped couch and stood at its foot. Behind her, through an arched doorway, the moon hung between two pillars of the temple of Aië, and its light was but little, for it was a pared old moon. Yet the little light cast a shadow, Odile’s shadow, before her, cold and black-edged, a shadow cut from the moon-stream; and another, deeper, more perilous and potent stream came in with the moon, that cast a shadow also: unfathomably deep, and darker still. Odile looked into her shadow, where her visitor lay, his eyes closed, asleep for an instant: long enough.
“Nay, Prospero, I’ll not delay thee,” whispered Odile, as thin as the moon’s edge. “Haste from here: haste to thy wars and workings, and haste thereby to thy end.” Odile’s hands moved, cupping the darkness, and it grew more dark, all light seeping from it. “Seek thy own blood, and find defeat and destruction.”
The darkness seeped from her hands, a silent trickle onto Prospero, who slept in her shadow.
When Odile’s white hands were empty, she lay again, a soft and silent movement, beside Prospero, and touched him lightly, and his eyes opened.
“Madame,” Prospero said to her, “dear though dalliance be, I may not tarry; I may not linger another minute here.”
“That I wit well,” said she, “for hast thou not said it afore the sunset? and in the dusk? and now as the moon doth rise and open thy Road to thee, will I believe thee. Lo, I did not hinder thee; ’twas the Stone and the moon.”
“True enough, madame. If I rest another instant, sleep would claim me, nor would it be thy doing that it keep me from motion.”
“Hast never been a restful man,” she said, and drew dark draperies around her, veiling her body. He rose then, and clothed himself alone, for she left through the moon-limned archway, and when Prospero had dressed he followed her and took leave of her at the dais, bending over her hand in the light of the four tall torchères, turning and leaving her motionless there.
Prince Josquin was hardly recognizable in leather armor and a helm. His fine blond hair was cut short to lie fur-smooth against his skull; he was thinner and harder-looking than he had been when Dewar first met him in Landuc some years previous. But his speech had the same arrogance over the Madanese drawl and his movements the same sensual deliberation, and his pale-blue eyes had the same good-natured expression.
Dewar slipped into his chair at the table as Prince Gaston presented Golias to Prince Josquin with elaborate courtesy. Ottaviano was already there, engaged in drawing in his notebook. It didn’t look like his usual subjects: arbalests and onagers, bridges and water-wheels.
“What’s that?” Dewar asked in a low voice, keeping half his attention on Josquin’s leather leggings.
“Just this thing I saw,” Otto said evasively.
“A cannon.” Dewar was familiar with them through his travels on the Road.
“Yeah. The Marshal said the Prince Heir has a few.”
“Good. I’m tired of being all the ordnance. Primitive design, that.”
“I’m a primitive artist.” Otto’s pencil broke; he took out his strange red folding pocket-knife and began whittling the pencil-point sharp.
Gaston, Josquin, and Golias had completed their introductions and were sitting down. The other two looked up. Dewar kept his face bland and emotionless.
“Lord Dewar, I did not see thee join us,” Gaston said. “Prince Josquin, here is our sorcerer.”
Josquin looked from Ottaviano to the man beside him in sea-blue silk and black leather. The Prince Heir’s breath paused, quickened as his face was touched with more than wind and cold’s reddening. “I am pleased to meet you, Sir Sorcerer.”
The sorcerer rose to his feet, holding Josquin’s eyes with his own, and bowed fluidly without looking down.
“The pleasure is mine, Your Highness,” he murmured.
After passing the girdling Limen which the warring brothers Panurgus and Proteus had forged to separate Fire from Stone, Prospero built a large fire and through it opened a Way to a certain place near his headquarters. Hurricane, an old hand at this, allowed himself to be led without balking into the fire and through to the other side of the Way, a flat, open place of stones among the scrub. The midday air was cold and colorless. Beneath his and Hurricane’s feet, the ground thumped with the hollowness that freezing brings; a high, thin glazing of cloud hinted at snow.
Swinging himself into the saddle, Prospero nudg
ed Hurricane, and he, who knew well the way home from here, walked between the trees, choosing his way to the narrow, rutted road. As they travelled, occasional things seen and unseen fluttered around them and then departed, sentinels of the occupied territories. Prospero was their master, and so they made no interference with his passage.
The house which he had made his occupational headquarters became visible as he left the winding low road. Prospero’s eyes saw things that others could not: shimmering, insubstantial lines of warning spells and Bounds; Elementals flitting, flowing, or creeping; in the distance behind the bare black sticks of the weather-twisted winter-nude trees, a skyward veiling glow between his lines and Gaston’s, coruscating up and down the spectrum as the opposing spells Dewar had set against him touched it.
Hurricane pricked his ears forward, pleased at the sights and smells of their temporary home. He trotted to the house, ignoring the doings of the Elementals and other creatures with august indifference—he, after all, was the Master’s preferred steed, his intimate in many enterprises—and to the stable-yard.
“Thank you, Hurricane. Good fellow. Odo!”
Odo was a boy who had remained behind when the rest of the manor-house’s residents had fled before Prospero’s advance. He had been in the stables, and in the stables he had stayed, apparently completely uninterested in whose horses he curried and fed. He came running a few minutes after Prospero had dismounted, from a far corner of the paddock where he had been clearing the stream.
“Sir,” Odo said, and took Hurricane from his master. “Good ’orse, good ’orse, good ’orse,” Odo chanted under his breath, leading him away.
Prospero patted Hurricane’s neck and went into the house carrying his saddlebag. In the room where he had received Dewar, he summoned his captains to a meeting and reviewed with his second-in-command Utrachet the immediate business that had arisen in his absence. Strangely, there was none.
“They have not made any but small sallies,” Utrachet said.
“He is waiting for something.”
“He may have gotten it, my lord. Today Stachan saw activity in the turncoat Golias’s camp which might signify some large movement.”
“Interesting. It could be a feint. They know we watch.”
“They have attempted to conceal their doings this time, but I am suspicious.”
“I shall call in my watchers and see if they can add to’t. In the meantime, pass the word: prepare for an attack two days hence.”
“Yes, sir. We have been in readiness for days now.”
“I know. I dislike this stalemating, but we have no choice. The time was not yet right.”
When Utrachet had gone, Prospero unrolled maps and weighted them down flat on his table, and he stood a long time gazing down at them moving himself and Gaston through possible encounters in his mind.
Prince Gaston’s page came to him where he sat writing orders in his tent and announced Prince Josquin, who was on his heels. The Marshal sent the boy out and offered Josquin a seat. He poured two tumblers of wine and offered Josquin one; Josquin accepted and drank, then set the tumbler down with a thump as if deciding something.
“I left and came back,” Josquin said, “because I didn’t want to be seen. No guarantee I wasn’t, of course, but at least I’ve tried. Your sorcerer, Uncle Gaston.”
“He is not mine, nor anyone’s but his own. Had thy father deemed fit to contract with him we might call him ours.”
“Exactly. Uncle Gaston, that is the man who stole my Map and Ephemeris.”
“ ’Twas years ago, well-nigh a score. Art certain?” the Fireduke asked.
“I’d know him among thousands,” Josquin said, and his face was high-colored as his uncle studied him. “He’s the one,” said Josquin.
Gaston nodded once slowly. Dewar was a man to leave a strong impression behind him, having many fine traits to catch the eye—particularly an eye like the Prince Heir’s. “Aye. I’d thought ’a must be.”
“You what!”
“Thy description then was particular and he fits it surpassing well, and he hath every mark of having passed through the Well’s Fire.”
Josquin sat back and nodded slowly. “But he is of use to you.”
“Josquin, ’tis not judged that ’a hath committed any greater misdeed than cozening thee. ’Tis not, per ensample, a crime to approach the Well, though the Crown seeketh to keep the Well for itself. Once ’tis done so, there’s naught to mend it. I cannot think of a previous case of’t.”
“Does my lord father know he is here?”
“I have not mentioned it to the Emperor because I am not certain.”
“What doubt could there be? How else could he use the Map and Ephemeris? Why steal them if he had not been to the Well?” Josquin found his uncle’s cautious reasoning, as always, opaque.
“ ’Tis evidence by circumstance,” Gaston said. “Thou saidst at the time that he employed a spell to render these senseless.”
“To put me to sleep. Yes.”
“Thus he had some measure of power already competently at his command. I’m no sorcerer; I know not whether ’tis essential to command the Well in order to use the Roads and Leys and all, though I’ve believed so. It may not be the case. He may simply be a very clever man.”
“Too clever. Gaston, how can we be sure of him?”
“I trust him,” Gaston said. “Do not accuse or antagonize him, Josquin. If no other reason will still thee, then because we need his cooperation to defeat Prospero. Without him I had long since lost.”
“Marshal!”
“Prospero hath a peculiar array of forces at his disposal. He is using more sorcery and more magical beings than ever hath done before. We should have been roundly defeated more than once but for Lord Dewar’s help.”
“Which you accept unquestioningly—”
“I have conversed with him enough to understand him. If we accept him and his assistance now without censure or remark, he will be an enduring ally.”
“Hm. He is testing us.”
“An thou wilt. He is no more certain whether he should trust Landuc than Landuc can be that it should trust him.”
“It’s to no one’s advantage to make an enemy of a sorcerer. Very well, I’ll say nothing if he says nothing.” Josquin rose.
“An if he speak of’t? Hast vengeance in mind ’gainst him?”
Josquin shrugged and twisted his mouth. “What could I say? Give it back? Challenge him? He beat me in the one fencing-match we ever had—he’s good, you know, very good! He befooled me and did me no harm at all.” He chuckled. “And I helped him. Good night, Uncle Gaston.”
Gaston held up his hand, halting the Prince Heir’s departure. “A word, Prince,” he said.
“Yes?” Josquin, startled by the title, waited.
Gaston looked at the younger man ready to dart out of the tent, bright-eyed and smiling. The Marshal’s expression was impassive and his voice without emotion as he said, “I shall remind you that in my command, I allow no fraternization ’mongst mine officers.”
Josquin’s smile vanished. His face flickered with anger; a wash of color flooded and left his cheeks. But he said, “I remember, sir.”
“Good night, nephew.” Gaston rose and escorted Josquin out.
At the edge of the forest, Freia sat on a long log destined to become a bridge piling and watched the people of Argylle laughing and talking, cooking and eating, around their bonfires in a fenced, stubbled field. Her hands were clasped and pressed between her knees, and her shoulders were hunched and tight; she stared at the festivities without seeing them. She had brought them a wood-elk to cook, out of her awkward, abiding sense that she must give them something, but further involvement in their feast was outside her training. She had no children nor lovers in the crowd; she had no gossip about others’ children or lovers; she did not think they needed her help to prepare the food; and she supposed, in her dissociation from them, that they felt no association with her.
So
meone took up the wood-elk’s rack and began prancing around the fires, holding it over his own head. A line of laughing, clapping, whooping others followed him in a moment. Freia looked up at the thin-scattered stars. Beneath the woodsmoke and roast-reek, the night air was sweet and warm; but this was the celebration of taking the last summer grains, and some of the children were waving the first yellowed boughs of autumn in the train of the horned dance leader. The season and the sky had turned; the harvest made it certain. Until the ripe grain had been cut, she could tell herself that summer still reigned.
Sparks rose in a tower from one of the fires, welcomed with delighted shrieks. Freia stared at the stars still and tried to picture the Landuc star-patterns Prospero had taught her. Winter was coming. How far away was Landuc, among the strange lands Prospero had described?
“Brr, it is cold,” said a woman softly.
Freia looked down from the sky. “Cledie.”
“Come to the fire and be warm, Lady. The food is ready, or most of it.” Cledie wore a loosely pinned mauve tunic that left a breast bare until she, shivering, pulled the cloth tighter around her. She went to one knee beside Freia, to see her face by the fire-glow.
“I’m not hungry, thank you.”
“It is not possible,” Cledie said firmly. “I can smell the meat cooking even here. A stone would salivate.”
Freia smiled but shook her head. “It’s your feast,” she said.
“And yours, as the grain is yours, and the meat and the fruit and vegetables,” Cledie said. “Someday you will admit it.”
“None of it’s mine. You did it all, yourselves.”
“Here comes Scudamor to argue it with you, apple by peach by bean if you will, Lady.”
“Freia.”
“Freia,” Cledie said, smiling, touching Freia’s arm once, light and quick. “If you will be our Freia, then you must eat with us.”
“Lady,” said Scudamor, crunching over the stubble, a dark earthy-smelling bulk. He crouched on his heels in front of her, beside Cledie. “If you are hungry, Lady, there is food to eat now. Come and eat.”
“Scudamor,” Freia said, “summer is over today.”
A Sorcerer and a Gentleman Page 23
