Dewar nodded. “I see. Freia, I can take you to an Eddy I know, a city where they have skillful physicians, where pregnancies are ended by women in better—kinder—ways than that, without sickness or long bleeding. You will not be hurt or blamed or abused. You will be made comfortable and no one will harry you as I do. You needn’t wander about looking for unreliable fungi. I will take you there if you wish.” He hadn’t been there in thirty Well-years; he trusted it wouldn’t have altered greatly, being a stable, slow-spinning backwater of the Well’s stream—and if it had, he’d find her another. There were women everywhere, in every world, and in every world some of them didn’t want to bear children.
She turned this over in her thoughts slowly, examining all sides of it. “Dewar,” she said, straightening and taking his hands in hers, “please promise me a thing.”
He pressed her hands.
“Promise me you will never talk of this with anyone,” she said. “I mean anyone, Prospero included—”
“I swear,” he said, interrupting her, “by the blood of my body, by my life, that I will not speak to anyone of the rape nor of your abortion, unless you expressly should desire that I do so. Shall I exclude you from the oath?”
That intense, burning look flashed up at him again. “Don’t you ever dare throw it up to me.”
“I will not mention this to you to shame you, to blame you, or to impugn you. And indeed when it is done it will be done, and the ill of it less than a bastard rapist’s bastard brat would bring.” His voice softened, lowered; he stroked her hands. “All shall be well, Freia.”
“I don’t think so. I don’t think anything can ever be right again.”
“Yes, it will. And you will too. You will. You will.”
Dewar calculated a Way to the Eddy-world, a finicky process, and took Freia there through a Way-fire. The place had changed little. He guided her through the busy streets full of lights and sounds and people all moving faster than Freia could comprehend; he led her one place, another, another where they rested, then to a harshly-lit soft-colored building as big as a city in itself; he lied and half-lied and explained for her, for she spoke none of the language, and his tongue and ear were tuned by the Well. Throughout, Freia continued sickly. Dull-eyed, hunched into herself like an ailing animal, flinching at the strange noises and ill from the reeks of sterility and industry, she made no objection when Dewar announced that they would stay a few days longer in the Eddy.
“You need rest,” he told Freia. “They said you’ll feel more like eating. Do you want something to eat?” He’d brought her back to the rooms he had hired, knowing she would be unable to travel at once. One wall was all windows, looking into a courtyard with a fountain as tall as the five-storey building, the water pouring down and down, rushing and tumbling, raising a fine mist. Sometimes the wind frisked and their window became wet, as with sudden rain.
Freia whispered, “I wish I understood what they were saying. Why do I understand you and not them? Why didn’t they understand me?”
“I have passed the Fire of the Well. It is a pity I did not think to send you through it while we were in Landuc; certainly that’s one place they wouldn’t have looked for us, though the tomb was also good.” Dewar smiled, a quick flash of pride. “It’s inconvenient, but in a way it’s also convenient, madame; no one can ask you awkward questions you don’t want to answer.”
She nodded and hugged herself.
Dewar sat down on the curly-armed, high-backed sofa beside her. “How are you feeling?” he asked cheerfully. “Better?”
“I don’t know yet.”
He nodded and examined a book of unreadable text and colorful pictures which had been given to Freia by the brisk, kind woman in blue who had taken charge of her during the oddly swift and painless procedure of removing something which had been added slowly and with painful violence.
“You should eat something,” Dewar announced.
“Do you ever not think about food?” she wondered.
Irritated, he said, “Then don’t eat, starve yourself.”
Freia squeezed her elbows to her sides. She felt unballasted, light-headed and detached from her body. She looked at the incomprehensible book and it reminded her, as all books tended to, of Prospero bent over books, writing in tiny handwriting, and she was suddenly blindingly homesick for the life they had led before he had started his war. If only she could go home and let him feed her golden baked-root soup or (her mouth watered) a fresh-cut piece of liver from a young elk, seared quickly, with pungent tiny thready mushrooms. She licked her lips. And then to curl up in her own bed beside the painted screen with trees and mountains on it, and on the other side the lamplight glowing on Prospero’s creamy leaves of close-written parchment—
“Freia?” Dewar said softly.
She shook herself. “Yes?”
“Are you all right?” He was peering at her closely, his forehead furrowed. “You looked odd for a moment.”
“I was just thinking of—thinking of—of home,” she said, and she thought of the two chairs and the winged table and the trim little boat for going up and down the river, of sun through the trees in the afternoon and mist on the river in the morning.
It had changed since then; Prospero had crowded the place with people, cut down trees, made them into walls, though she had argued with him tearfully. “It must change, Puss,” he had told her again and again. “It is time for change.” She had altered not a stone of his plans.
Would he listen to her now? She wanted to tell him what had happened and to scream at him for not hearing her call to him when he had left first Perendlac and then Chasoulis, for leaving her in Landuc when she wanted to go home and sit with her head on his knee and tell him everything and hear him say—
“Freia, listen to me.”
Freia blinked. Prospero’s face swam and blended in Dewar’s.
“If you want to go home, you must tell me about the place so that I can find it in my Ephemeris. Tell me what it is called.”
“Argylle.” Argylle. Prospero had shouted it, calling everyone to him in the confusion of fire and darkness, and he had waited for everyone, all of them, all but her. Argylle.
“Freia, I can’t find an entry with that name, or anything like it.” Dewar’s voice had an edge now. “Tell me other names.”
“Other names?”
They stared at one another, she blank, he frowning.
“If you will not cooperate,” Dewar said, after a long silence, “then either you will never return home or I will have to find the place myself.”
Freia’s blankness became another kind of emptiness. “You can’t take me there,” she said. “You said—”
Dewar held up a hand, turning away, scowling. “Very well. I said. You have not said anything helpful about finding the place. I have been thinking about this problem since the last time it arose. Have you always lived, or almost always, there?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
He nodded. “I shall find it with sorcery, and I shall require your cooperation to the extent of letting some blood in a phial, which I shall use for the work.”
“Blood?”
“Moreover, I require apparatus which is not here, and I will not take you to the place where I keep my tools. I shall leave you here, prepare the sorcery, and return.” His expression was cold. “If you will not trust me with more information, then you must trust me to leave you while I work.”
“You’re leaving?” Freia grasped at this and closed her eyes. She had known it would happen again. All the whirling skies and alien lands between here and home—
“Freia,” he said, suddenly gentle again, and his arm was on her shoulder. He was pulling on her arm, taking her hand, holding it so tightly it nearly hurt. “I’ll be back. I shall not abandon you. You must sleep. Come now, lie down. You’re tired,” said Dewar, a soft, persuasive voice breaking her reverie again. “You must rest while I’m gone. I’ll not be long. You must rest. Sleep now.”
&nb
sp; Freia let him plump up a pillow, allowed herself to be reclined on the sofa and covered with Dewar’s discarded cloak. He was fumbling with her hand again. She drew it up to her cheek, to pillow her head—odd, there was a little bandage on her thumb, soft white cloth.
“I’ll be back directly,” Dewar said again, patting her shoulder.
Freia nodded and turned on her side, drawing her knees up and closing her eyes as the door closed behind him. She had wished herself home again and again while imprisoned by Ottaviano, Golias, and the Emperor. Now home came to her with practiced ease. She drew the image of the door before her mind’s eye and opened it.
The walls were coming along. Freia stopped on the hilltop and looked down at the curve of stones, built on a line she had ploughed with a flower-wreathed stick, guided by Prospero’s instructions and a long rope made of braided grasses. The breaks for the gates were more evident now, three of them. The wall went down to the river-edge but did not cross; the bridges Prospero planned would be difficult work, requiring large barges, not yet built, to set the piers in the swift current of the narrow, deep river. The great blocks of stone would come from the Jagged Mountains, from the same ugly quarries that now provided stone for the wall-works, and be dragged and floated to the construction site. She knew as much about it as he did; she had sat mouse-quiet listening hopelessly to his plans for the city and its appurtenances for hours.
Already three mud-trodden ways led in from the gates through bare-trampled ground, meeting at a collection of log-and-daub buildings in the middle; a stone-enclosed, roofed fountain rose there, the main public water supply—as if the river weren’t sufficient. Already many of the older wooden buildings, Prospero’s first projects for his people, had been replaced by stone; two stood half-constructed. These were Prospero’s command-post now, where he dwelt himself and planned his works and war and housed the favored of his folk.
“A young city,” Dewar said beside her. A glass ball on a golden chain swung from his hand, its inside stained with a few drops of blood.
“Yes,” she said.
There were still trees on the Isle, but now the riverbanks were naked. Bare ground and sloping meadows sprawled where once she had threaded her way through mighty trees and stalked wood-elk and other prey. She would have left it so. Prospero’s ideas were not hers.
Dewar was quivering with tension. “Hope he’s here,” he muttered.
“I don’t know where he’d be, but I never did,” Freia said. “He never trusted me to tell me,” she said, almost to herself, but Dewar heard.
Freia began walking very rapidly, blinking back tears. Please be home, Papa, she pleaded with Prospero in her thoughts. Please, please, please.
A man from a group working on the walls ran toward them, sprinting.
“Utrachet!” Freia recognized him, but hadn’t the strength to run toward him.
Dewar fell back a few steps behind her, storing away his glass ball.
“Lady!” Utrachet cried, putting on a last burst and covering a hundred paces at race-speed. “Lady! Lord! Welcome! Is it—” and he broke off.
“Utrachet, I’m so happy to see you,” Freia said. His face was scarred, she had seen it so in Dewar’s bowl of vision-water, but he was heavier and healthier-looking than he had been. “Utrachet—How, how are things here?”
“Lady, they go on,” he said, and looked at Dewar behind her and at her.
“This is—this man is Dewar,” Freia said. Recognition came to Utrachet’s face, and she added, “You know who he is?”
“Yes; Lord Prospero has spoken of him,” Utrachet said. “Welcome, Lord,” he added in Lannach, bowing.
“Thank you, Utrachet.” Dewar bowed also.
Lord Prospero never mentioned him to me, Freia thought. “Is he here?”
“Lord Prospero?”
“Yes.”
Utrachet stared at her. “Is he not with you?”
“Oh, Utrachet. Please don’t let’s have one of these conversations about him,” Freia said, tears starting to her eyes. “Of course he’s not here. He never is when I need him. Where is Cledie?”
“She has gone, Lady,” said Utrachet. “She left the dawn after you did, and did not say whither she went to anyone.”
Freia stared, frozen for a moment, and then walked past the Castellan and continued on toward Prospero’s walled city.
Utrachet and Dewar looked at one another.
“She has had difficulties,” Dewar said.
“We know she was captive,” Utrachet said in accented Lannach. “But why is Lord Prospero not with you?”
Dewar frowned. “Has he been looking for, ah, Lady Freia?”
“He went to free her,” Utrachet said.
Dewar blinked. “When?”
“Five days past.”
“Uh-oh,” Dewar muttered. “Free her how? By attack? Covertly? Do you know?”
“You do not?”
“No—”
“Best to wait, then,” Utrachet decided, and, looking very worried, turned to begin trotting after Freia. “Come, if you will,” he called back over his shoulder.
Prince Gaston must be present, loathe the proceedings though he did; the Emperor swore him to silence. Prince Herne was solidly of the Emperor’s opinion in the matter. Prince Fulgens had never liked Prospero well, for Prospero’s winds sported with his ships and had driven many of the navy onto rocks and shoals over the years of war. The prospect of seeing Prospero shorn of sorcery had the Admiral in an expansive mood, despite the severe winter storms that were setting in.
The Fireduke wished that Prospero might be suspicious of his daughter’s absence from the room where the Emperor received him, flanked by officials of his court and the two other Great Dukes and the sorceress Oriana, who was also a party in the deception. Would it not seem unnatural to him? More likely it would appear as more of the Emperor’s caution.
The doors were opened by two heavily-armed guards, who stood one on each side. Prospero entered. His cloak covered him shoulder to heel and he carried a metal-shod black staff in one hand. Under his cloak was a leather messenger’s cylinder.
Prince Gaston tried to catch Prospero’s steel-grey eye, but Prospero watched Oriana and the Emperor, whom he rightly saw as the two most dangerous in the room.
“I’ll renounce nothing before another adept,” he told the Emperor without preamble, “and thou’rt a fool to think I would, a fool doubly, for anything she learn of me could be to wield ’gainst thee, and anything she wield ’gainst me shall rebound on thee.”
“She shall remain,” the Emperor said.
“Then needs must accept my word that I shall fulfill my vow, for I’ll perform naught before any man, layman or sorcerer. ’Tis as binding as the deed; though thy words are gossamer, mine hold.”
“This seems a forthright precaution,” Gaston said, “and I support it. It is no matter where the vow is kept, nor exactly when, so long as it be done and done timeously.”
“Aye,” Fulgens said, “Prospero keeps his vows, all know’t, though they work to his own ill.” He smiled.
“No need to spawn a second scourge in putting down the first,” Herne agreed.
Oriana remained loftily silent.
The Emperor considered it. “So be it,” he said. “You shall complete the terms of the agreement at earliest possible time—within, let us say, five days of its making, and shall be bound by them in that interval.”
“ ’Twill not be done instanter,” Prospero said in a level tone which was also, somehow, sarcastic, “for thou commandest nor Time nor Elements. Seven days shall pass ere I may complete the vow, and that’s if all go well in journeying—which it may not, for thy Empire’s full of wildnesses where all was tamed before thy reign. You that travel little,” and he glanced at them contemptuously, “know it not so well as one who does.”
“He speaks truth,” Oriana said distantly, coldly—perhaps repaying Herne’s slight. “A twelve-day’s frist be not overgenerous, considering the ter
ms of the contract.”
The Emperor, burning with Prospero’s insults, began to naysay this, but was interrupted by Prince Gaston.
“Indeed it’s true, travelling’s not so easy as it was,” the Marshal said, “and the old ways are not always reliable. I think twelve days, for journeying to thy bolt-hole and returning, be not unreasonable; and indeed, if it lieth in six days’ Road-journey of the capital, ’tis near indeed. As the condemned man may choose his hour, so may you, Prospero; how long will you reasonably require? Considering that you’re bound by the vow ’pon agreeing to it, there’s no harm in allowing adequate time for its completion.”
Fulgens and Herne glanced at one another; Gaston could be fiendishly diplomatic at times.
Prospero said, through clenched teeth, “Your kindness, brother, is warm, and warmly received. Twelve days be not unreasonable, eighteen be somewhat realistic.”
“Eighteen,” Prince Gaston repeated, firmly. Prospero’s stronghold lay far afield, but not too far. Where could it be, that it was hidden from Landuc?
“Eighteen,” the Emperor muttered, displeased.
“At which time shall my daughter be delivered me,” Prospero said, leaning forward.
“The Crown cannot impede your daughter’s liberty,” the Emperor said.
Gaston hoped Prospero would demand to see the girl, but Prospero said, “An ill wind thou art, Avril, pure pestilence. Any hurt she hath taken I shall charge to thy account, for that thou’rt so eager to claim benefits, must also claim evils done in thy demesnes—and with them a father’s curse on thee.” His voice was soft and menacing.
The Emperor said nothing, but stared back at him hatefully, ignoring the coldness on his neck.
Evil comes of evil, thought Gaston. He rubbed a pounding vein in his temple.
“Now let us review these terms,” Prince Prospero said, opening his cylindrical leather case.
A Sorcerer and a Gentleman Page 47
