“Mount! Go! I can manage him!”
Prospero mounted, then bent and grabbed Dewar’s arm, hauling him halfway up. Dewar cursed and stepped on Prospero’s invisible foot in the stirrup, swung his leg over the horse’s back behind Prospero, and Hurricane sprang forward.
“What about your sword?”
“I’ll fetch it later!”
“Dewar! Get back here, you son of a bitch! Guards! Stop them!”
“Hark, the cur gives tongue,” Prospero said to nobody in particular, and leaned low on Hurricane’s neck. “Ah, my kingdom for a Gate, a Way, a Road!”
Ottaviano, surprisingly, was still in sight where he ran after them, and his shouts were rousing the camp. Three sentries with halberds ran to intercept Hurricane; he gathered himself as he approached them (Dewar felt the Well flow into the horse) and leapt, a wondrous flight-like jump, over them, past them, landed running, a miracle, and one he repeated a few seconds later.
One of the halberds, swung high by an angry guard, clipped Dewar’s head on the second leap, grazing invisible Prospero too. Prospero grunted; Dewar gasped and clutched Prospero to stay on the horse. Warm blood grew cold with the wind of their travelling on his face. People were shouting alarms; hastily-aimed arrows passed them, though one stuck in Prospero’s unseen thigh, a weird sight; they seemed to pass through Hurricane or perhaps they only missed. Dewar shook his head; blood flew and his vision darkened momentarily, then stayed dark. Or was it shadows? Hard to say. Dewar drew on the Well and felt clearer-headed. He could see Prospero now greyly in the moonlight. They were racing through the camp, pursued by shouts and somehow dodging all the attempted interceptions.
Hurricane leaped again—the dry moat, Dewar realized—and flew through the air. Was Prospero making for his own headquarters, for reunion with his captured forces? Or fleeing? If only they’d had longer to talk—Hurricane galloped now—
Herne was beside them, on his huge dull-red horse, edging closer, closer—
Prospero was shouting something, and Herne shouted back. He had a naked sword in his hand and he was pacing them as Hurricane took a low rise at an impossible speed. Prospero was pulling Hurricane away, gesturing, and a fire left his hand and sizzled in a line through the air to splash off Herne’s whirled sword.
“Ariel!” Prospero bellowed.
“Master!” rang from the air around them.
“Keep our pursuers back!”
A true hurricane joined Hurricane, blowing in his wake, a screaming headwind that slowed Herne’s horse no matter how he fought against it. Prospero bent Hurricane’s head to the west again. Dewar could not quite focus on the Well now. Confused, he thought that might be due to Ariel’s turbulence. He let the Well go from him and slumped forward against Prospero’s back. Hurricane’s muscles gathered and stretched beneath him, and the cold air flowed past his face. He was flying, he thought, and flew on alone into blankness.
22
OTTAVIANO WOKE WHEN THE TINGLE RAN over his body. Something is wrong, it told him, and he lay, keeping his breathing soft and even, listening acutely and reaching with another sense for an explanation.
Nothing had broken the covertly-laid Bounds of his tent. Something else.
Otto tensed and sensed, eyes still closed.
The Bounds he had forged around Prospero were gone!
He shot out of bed, grabbing at his breeches and struggling into them, getting his boots wrong-footed and then getting them right. He stuffed his shirt into his breeches as he ran out into the freezing night, racing past sentries through the moonlit camp toward the guarded tent where Prospero had been confined.
“Has anyone been here?” he demanded of the one who moved to intercept him.
“The sorcerer, sir, with Prince Gaston—”
Otto half-screamed an obscenity and tore the tent flap aside, seeing what he knew he’d see.
The guard gasped.
Otto held up his hand and said “Stay out!” as he ducked inside. Once in, he closed his eyes and swept a hand, extended by a strand of Well-force, through the interior: Prospero was gone indeed, not just invisible.
But not long gone. The disturbance of the spell’s breaking still quivered in the world; they could not be far off. Otto ducked back out. Prince Gaston would have a lot to answer for at Court, he thought, and the Emperor might just lose his temper—
“Prospero’s gone! Which way did they go?” he demanded of the guard, but then he saw the movement of someone mounting a horse a few hundred paces away in the shadows, and he sprinted toward them, away from the shocked guards.
“Dewar!” he shouted.
Dewar leaned forward and the horse leapt and started away, accelerating quickly to a gallop.
“Get back here, you son of a bitch! Guards! Stop them!” bellowed Otto, seeing the horse race past three who simply stared at it. In the cloud-patched moonlight, he saw that there was only one man visible on the horse’s back, Dewar from his cloak, but that he was seated far back and thus Otto was sure Prospero sat before him, invisible.
He kept them in sight as they raced through the camp. Dewar looked back once to see him. The sentries at the perimeter, alerted by Ottaviano’s shouts now, tried to intercept them; Otto saw a halberd-swing that must have connected, but Dewar lurched and grabbed unseen Prospero for support. Otto shouted “Arrows! Use your bows!” at the men. At the ditch, he lost them. Prospero’s supernatural horse jumped the damned thing.
Herne thundered past Ottaviano as he jogged to a halt, unable to follow them over the ditch, but Herne’s roan horse, as fast as Prospero’s black, swerved, tore over the bridge, and galloped after the fleeing sorcerers into the night.
“Ottaviano!” shouted someone; was it Josquin?
“Baron!” another said. “The Marshal wants you.” He stood beside Otto and waited, the Fireduke’s right-hand man, Captain Jolly.
“I bet he does. Shit. Oh, shit. He’s going to be sorry for this,” Otto said, looking around, walking slowly, breathing hard from his sprint. Prince Gaston, wearing a chain-mail shirt (maybe he really did sleep in his armor, Otto thought) and leather pants, bareheaded and highbooted and holding Chanteuse du Mort naked in his hand, was coming, giving orders to men who hovered at his side long enough to listen and say, “Yes, sir,” and rushed away into the camp.
Otto and Captain Jolly went to him.
Prince Gaston looked at Otto, lifted his eyebrows.
“Prospero’s escaped,” Otto said.
The Marshal’s face smoothed and then tightened. He slipped the sword into its scabbard. His lips thinned; he turned and stared in the direction in which Prospero’s horse was last seen travelling. “Ah,” he said.
“Why did you let Dewar near him?” Otto yelled. “What in freezing hell were you thinking of?”
Jolly inhaled sharply beside Otto.
Prince Gaston flicked his eyes at his captain, who bowed and began to move away. “Get a horse,” Gaston said. “Follow Prince Herne. Thou understand’st my will.”
“Do my best, sir.” Captain Jolly, like the others, ran off to carry out his Prince’s orders.
“No better can we,” Gaston said, a little bitterly.
“What were you thinking of?” Otto demanded. “You knew, I knew, what—”
“Quiet.” The Fireduke’s hand gripped his shoulder, warm through the thin shirt, and the Fireduke’s eyes finally drilled through Otto’s outrage and held his attention.
“Sir,” Otto said, through clenched teeth, “if I may—”
“Nephew,” said Prince Gaston, “come with me.”
Otto blinked. The Marshal had never referred to him that way.
“Come.” Prince Gaston took his elbow and led him away. “Jolly will run them down,” he said to a man who approached him—Captain Addis.
“The Duke of Winds has escaped!” said the Captain.
“Prince Herne rides after him,” said Prince Gaston. “We shall bide here, rather than panic.” He said panic contemptuously; Captain
Addis reddened, saluted, muttered an acknowledgement, and backed away.
Otto and Gaston walked through the buzzing camp. As they went, the Prince Marshal spoke to a few men, here and there, just a word or two, and the place settled in the wake of his passing. Ottaviano admired his command of the men; they had absolute faith in the Fireduke, and he apparently had equal faith in them.
Prince Gaston’s squires were awake, waiting in the outer part of his tent with an oil lamp and the Fireduke’s plate armor, talking as they cleaned it. It was clean, but Gaston frowned on idle squires. Their labor and chatter halted as he entered with Otto behind him, jumping to their feet and looking expectantly at their master.
“Go back to bed,” Prince Gaston said to them gently. “There’s naught ye may do.”
“Yes, sir,” they said in muted, chiming adolescent voices, and one left the tent as the other returned to his bedroll on the ground.
The Prince took the lit lamp and ushered Otto into the inner tent.
“Sit,” he said.
Otto took a camp chair. His host poured wine for them both and sat down on the other side of the table. “Thou think’st I was lax,” Prince Gaston said.
“I’m not too clear on what happened,” Otto admitted, looking down. “I, uh, shot my mouth off perhaps prematurely—”
“Dewar came to me,” Prince Gaston looked at a small traveller’s hourglass in a polished brass case, “three-quarters of an hour past. He desired to speak briefly with Prince Prospero. I consented and escorted him there. Prince Prospero received him; I gave them a quarter of an hour and returned here.” He paused, studying Otto, and continued in a lower voice. “I take it thy Bounds were not impervious to attack.”
“If I’d thought they were going to be tested from the outside, as well as from within, I’d have made them differently,” Otto said, biting his lip. He realized that he did not look very good now, himself. “I didn’t expect Dewar to turn coat. After all his claims of loyalty—”
“Meseems a man who hath daily stated that he is here on whim, cannot be considered to have turned coat,” the Marshal said.
“But you trusted him alone with Prince Prospero—”
“I’d no cause to deny him privy speech with the Prince. But a few hours past Prince Herne visited; they quarrelled, as ever.”
“You’re blind, Your Highness,” Ottaviano said, thumping his hand lightly on the table. “You saw the way Dewar hung back today! Prospero might have bought him off against just such an event.” He said this, but he didn’t believe it. Dewar’s notions of honor and ethics were too nice, too otherworldly-idealistic, to allow him to play the double agent. Otto’s own notional ethics held him back from speaking of Dewar’s geas: it was the sort of confidence a gentleman would not betray, and telling Gaston of it now—too late to use the knowledge—would be useless.
“ ’Tis possible,” Prince Gaston said slowly. “In that case I would expect Dewar to have confined him, however, thereby to leave a flaw in the binding.”
Otto nodded and tasted his wine, then put it aside. His good work, undone; his sorcery, exposed—the stuff might have been water. He said wearily, “Prince Gaston, why did you let him in there?”
Gaston scrutinized his nephew’s sharp, stubbled face for a full minute and then said, “To spare Prospero’s life, nephew.”
“To what?” whispered Otto.
Prince Gaston continued studying him.
“Save his life? After what he’s done—”
“What hath he done?”
“Made war on the Emperor—”
“His war hath been judged just by many,” Gaston said.
“Your Emperor!”
“My Landuc,” Prince Gaston corrected him. “Baron, th’art an intelligent man, and I think thee not without perception. Suppose Prospero, in a few days’ time, be delivered up to th’ Emperor, and th’ Emperor then execute him; hath said ’a would. What followeth?”
Ottaviano frowned a little. “Peace.”
“Think beyond this war.”
Ottaviano thought further. “Anyone the Emperor doesn’t like, dies,” he whispered. “You, Prince Herne, me, any of us. Princes or not, Well-born or Well-user or not, anyone who cramps the Emperor’s style goes without negotiation or mercy. By this precedent.” And he thought further: King Panurgus had not executed people. Exiled, yes, but not executed; why, he had exiled Prospero. The King had taken subtler vengeances than murder.
“Dost think peace would prevail under those circumstances?”
“People would get worried,” Otto decided slowly, thinking hard. “Maybe—a split, a coup … no, I guess it wouldn’t be too peaceful. But, Marshal—Prospero has caused a lot of war already. It has not been peaceful. Is his life worth so much death?”
“I know not,” Prince Gaston said, “but I know how many Princes there are, and what we are, and who we are, and I think ’twere ill to lose one to fraternal malice.”
“You are a traitor.”
“Nay. The realm is safe. His forces are bested.”
“He’ll be back. The Emperor won’t let you off the hook for this. What are you going to say, Prince Gaston? Are you going to blame me for not Binding him strongly enough?”
“The Emperor and I will discuss this privily,” said the Marshal.
“You’re not indispensable, Your Highness.”
“I have never pretended to be so.”
Otto swallowed, drank some wine. It mellowed in his mouth. “I don’t think he’s worth it,” he said softly. “One Prince, even if he is the Prince of Air, the Duke of Winds, is not worth so many lives, so much bloodshed, so much war.”
“Art certain?” the Prince asked him, without inflection.
“No,” he admitted even more softly. “I guess I’m not. You’ve thought about this a long time, haven’t you.”
Prince Gaston had been thinking about it since before Ottaviano’s father was born. The corner of his mouth twitched, and he said, “Aye.”
“You’re conservative. You prefer the status quo.”
“I’d liever another status quo, one in which Prospero keepeth peace, one in which he’s reconciled. ’Tis ill for us to be at one another’s throats.”
Ottaviano shook his head. “He’s not going to give up,” he said. “Not unless—” He stopped, an idea stirring through his words.
Prince Gaston watched the lamp’s flame and then looked at Otto expectantly. He was a bright fellow, quick and deep-striking, and his wits were nimble; the boy was a better thinker than Sebastiano had ever been.
“Unless,” Otto said slowly, “you can get some kind of oath or vow from him … Hm. And for that … Does the Emperor really want him dead?”
“There hast thou the very kernel-question,” said Prince Gaston. “It is one only the Emperor can answer.”
Ottaviano’s horse, Lightfoot, was as groggy as he, but the exercise of trotting along in Prospero’s wake woke them both up. He had left a note for Prince Gaston, saying that he was attempting to follow Prospero, and had departed the camp with Lightfoot and a lantern.
He stopped at Prospero’s tent and prowled the place, looking for some trace which might be used in finding him. The sorcerer had been careful, though, and after searching everywhere Otto had to make do with a pillow on which he had lain a little while. It was not going to get him far, but he hoped it might put him in the right direction.
The sky had clouded over and the air had taken on the sharpness of snow. Ottaviano wondered, as he rode, if Prospero had somehow—being the Prince of Winds—kept the weather favorable for war, and now, without his influence, the postponed winter would descend with added weight. The conjecture seemed plausible. The man commanded his element the way Prince Gaston commanded his men. The storms which had raged over them had left Prospero’s lines unscathed.
Otto thought that if he were Prospero, he’d slip into Landuc and nail the Emperor with a lightning bolt. It would save time and blood.
Once outside the camp,
Otto stopped and wove around the pillow a low-powered spell of affinity. Riding onward, the spell guided him over some of the roughest and worst ground in the region; the action of water on and in the limestone here meant the terrain was irregular, cut with gullies and chasms. Many times he had to detour around places which were impassable in the dark, over which Prospero’s horse had to all appearances flown.
By morning, he was miles from the camp, and the chasms and gullies had given way to the long, level highlands. Heavy snow was falling. Ottaviano began to draw on the Well’s currents for his sustenance, but they were thin here, comparatively, the area never having been much favored though it lay so near the well, and he derived less good from them than he hoped. He stopped to rest Lightfoot often, but dared not stop too long.
As he rode, he took out his Landuc Well-Map and studied it, and at once his path became clearer. Prospero had headed for a Ley. At a Nexus at the end of the Ley, there was sometimes a Gate.
Even as Otto realized this and smiled, the affinity-spell jerked the pillow from his hand. Otto snatched at it, surprised, and missed. The pillow plumped onto the snowy ground.
“Hm,” Otto said, and reined in Lightfoot to stop for a look.
The snow was thin and dry. He brushed the pillow; the spell had snapped apart under the excessive stress of proximity and it was only a pillow now. Then, under a dusting of snow, he saw what it was that had brought the spell to an end.
An arrow.
Rather, a broken arrow. Ottaviano lifted it, beginning to smile broadly, and then he laughed. The head was stained with dried and frozen blood: Prospero’s own.
“Thank you, thank you!” he shouted up at the snow clouds, and remounted with fresh vigor, chortling. He ripped up the pillow and wrapped the arrow in the fabric. “Lightfoot, we’ll find some water, take a rest, and burn ourselves a trail,” he told the horse, and gave him a nudge to start him walking again.
Down the Ley, through the Gate at dawn, and along the Road went Otto, led by the bloodstained arrow in his pocket. It was as bright and clear a beacon as the full moon; it felt like a string reeling him in toward the Prince, and the feeling grew stronger as he travelled. The arrow led him away from Landuc, a roundabout route. He checked the Ephemeris and found that indeed, Prospero had been able to take a more direct path. At a Gate where Otto had had to leave the Road and travel for more than a day on a Ley, Prospero had been able to go straight through.
A Sorcerer and a Gentleman Page 27
