A Strange and Ancient Name

by Josepha Sherman

  “Mad,” Alliar breathed at last. “Utterly mad.”

  “Just thoroughly childish.” Hauberin paused to catch his breath, reflecting sourly that if the baron was his distant relative, then so was Raimond. Every family had some bad blood. “Li, thank you for the rescue.”

  “What did you expect me to do? Watch him spit you?”

  “I doubt he could have—what is it, Aimery?”

  The boy was hobbling to his side, eyes troubled. “My lord . . .” He glanced warily about. The others were all returning, somewhat obviously, to what they had been doing before the duel, but he still kept his voice low. “You’ve never met Sir Raimond before yesterday, have you?”

  “You know that. Only in passing, as it were, that day in the forest. Why?”

  “Because . . .” Aimery shook his head. “Because it doesn’t make sense. Why should he hate you?”

  “Why, indeed?” Hauberin glanced in the direction Raimond and taken. “I really don’t—eh, but here comes the rain! Come, let’s get inside.”

  XIII

  CHECKMATE

  Courtesy insisted Hauberin and Alliar pay their respects once more to Baron Gilbert, who was still in the Great Hall in his canopied chair. But the last of the castle folk with whom he’d been meeting were trailing out, and the baron himself was getting to his feet, straightening with the delicate care of someone who has been sitting in one position too long.

  “Ah, my lords.” His eyes brightened at the sight of his guests; apparently he had forgiven Hauberin for his . . . indiscreet meeting in the chapel. “A foul day for travelling. You will, of course, stay with us one more night.”

  The prince bowed. “We should be honored.”

  “But,” Baron Gilbert continued in a cautious tone, “there is something I must know of you first, my lord.”

  Maybe he hadn’t quite forgiven, after all. Hauberin said warily, “If I’m able to tell you, I shall.”

  The baron’s severe face was all at once aglow. “Do you,” he said with barely controlled fervor, “play chess?”

  Hauberin laughed in relief. “Play it, my lord baron? My people invented the game!”

  “Ah, splendid! What better pastime for gentlefolk who are, perforce, kept within? Come, follow me, my lords. We shall try our hand at it right now.”

  ###

  Hauberin mused idly that he would have loved to follow Raimond and find out what that spoiled child was about. If the weather wasn’t quite so foul. But much more important than the scratching of any mere itch of curiosity, there were his mother’s chambers to investigate. The steps to the western tower were right beyond that far wall. If only he could puzzle out a way to reach them without—

  “My lord? Your move.”

  The prince started. He studied the chessboard for a time, then moved a beautifully carved little ivory knight forward, settling back to watch the baron from hooded eyes. This human version of what they called chess was far less complex than the intricate Faerie game—which frequently involved magic and the use of more than one dimension—but it was challenging enough even so to be amusing.

  Or it would have been, had Baron Gilbert not been such an extraordinarily cautious player. There he went again, deliberating over a piece, touching it, then withdrawing his hand with a grunt, only to start the whole thing over again with a new piece. Hauberin sighed soundlessly, exchanging a quick, rueful glance with the watching Alliar. The prince gazed about the small room yet again, for all that he had noted everything in it already. Besides the chairs on which they sat and the table at which they played, he could look at the wide fireplace, its comfortable blaze welcome on such a cold, wet day, the one tapestry, new enough for the colors of the hunting scene to be almost garish, or the smooth floor, kept clear of rushes to show off the luxury of patterned tiles.

  Even here in the baron’s solar, there was nothing of true privacy. The Baroness Matilde was present with her ladies, all of them apparently absorbed in their needlework, save for the baroness herself, who was radiating the same quiet boredom Hauberin felt, and shy, pretty little Lisette, the prince’s dinner companion of the night before, who was playing a harp, and making a fair job of it, too, for a human amateur.

  But now she was stumbling over the same chord three times in a row. Hauberin silently went to her side, wordlessly moving her compliant, chilly little hands into the proper fingering till the girl, blushing with confusion, managed it by herself. Hauberin glanced at the baroness, whose eyes flickered with amusement.

  “Thank you,” she mouthed, and the prince gave her a little bow and returned to the chessboard.

  The baron glanced up at him. “You are restless, my lord. Surely you’re not planning to leave us after all. That torrent is hardly weather for travel.”

  “Sir Raimond is out in it,” Hauberin murmured, testing.

  “I am not,” the baron returned, “my brother’s keeper, to quote the Holy Word.” Something hinted in the cool eyes: anger? pain? “I heard how he virtually forced you into a duel, my lord.”

  And nearly killed me. “A . . . childish prank.”

  “Raimond is no longer a child.” For one startling instant, very real pain blazed out from the man. Then, as suddenly as though a veil had dropped, it was gone, and the baron was adding stiffly, “But I will not trouble you with such matters.” Not a trace of emotion creased the elegant, somber face. “You will be staying with us, then?”

  Human self-control. Almost inhuman self-control. Hauberin forced a smile, suddenly pitying the young baroness very much. “I fear we must indeed impose on your hospitality.”

  “No imposition at all.”

  “Ah . . . your king’s in danger, you know.”

  “What—” The man’s glance dropped to the chessboard. “Mm.” That lost him in thought for a good span of time, and Hauberin suddenly grinned to himself.

  “Alliar.”

  “My prince?”

  “How’s your game?”

  “Good enough, you know that.”

  “Good enough to keep our kind host occupied for a bit?”

  A flame of understanding. “Oh, indeed. We should be able to play out one of the most complex and slowest games in human history! Certainly long enough for someone to go . . . exploring.”

  The baron at last made his move. Hauberin shook his head, and pounced. “Check, my lord baron. And mate.”

  “Indeed, indeed.” It was a mutter. “You will, I trust, give me a return game?”

  “Oh, but my lords!” Alliar cut in, smiling. “Am I not to have this game?”

  The baron, out of courtesy, could hardly refuse. Hauberin switched places with his friend and waited, watching till he saw the human totally engrossed. Then he quietly got to his feet and moved across the small chamber, so slowly and smoothly that no one glanced up at him. Subtle as a stalking cat, he slipped out and onto the landing that led onto the spiral stairway down to the Great Hall and up to the western tower.

  He found himself facing two guards. Coolly, Hauberin nodded to them, stepped onto the spiral, and began his climb, radiating the confidence of a man who knew exactly where he was going and had every right to be going there.

  It worked. He wasn’t so much as challenged.

  Though the lower stair had been brightly lit, the light grew vague as the prince climbed. No one, after all, was going to waste good torches on a stairway that would rarely be used by the baron. Darkness, of course, was hardly a problem for someone of Faerie. But the stairs grew increasingly slick as he climbed, rain slithering own the slick stone from the tower’s open top like so many reed-thin snakes. Hauberin moved warily, picturing himself slipping and falling all the ignominious and painful way down to the bottom. The prince suspected there should have been another guard up there on the tower top, but presumably that extra touch of security was being neglected on such a foul day. That was fine with Hauberin; he would be running that much less of a risk of being surprised.

  A brief, straight flight of stairs branche
d off from the main spiral, up into darkness. The prince paused for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to even less light, then smiled grimly as he saw that the stair ended at a bolted door. Beyond it were the rooms he sought. Hauberin climbed his careful way up to stand pondering. He could have removed the bolt without risking the touch of iron by snaring it in a loop of clothing and pulling. Unfortunately, the door was also secured by a massive iron monster of a lock.

  Can’t have things too easy, now, can we?

  It was just possible that the baroness kept the key on her chatelaine’s ring, along with all the other keys to the castle. Then again, from everything he’d seen so far, these human folk were just melodramatic enough to have hurled the key into the moat.

  Still, the prince told himself firmly, this was only a lock, no matter what the material. There were unlocking spells, conveniently fueled only by mind and will; they should, at least in theory, work.

  Hauberin glanced about, making absolutely certain he was alone, then took a deep breath and stared at the lock. Bit by bit he shut out the world around him, the rain, the dank, heavy walls, shut out everything save the lock. He saw and felt and smelled nothing but the lock, the inner shape of it, the design of it. The coldness of iron ached in his mind (No, reject that), the red rawness of rust burned like a smoldering fire (No, reject that, too). The pattern of locking was there, heavy from age and disuse, rejecting him by simply being what it was: a creation meant to resist. Delicately, he began unravelling its essence, picking at it with his will here, pressing at it there and there even though his head was beginning to ache (No! There was no pain, there was only the spell, building, building) . . . A little more pressure and he would . . . a little more—

  With a sudden anguished shriek, the lock burst apart. Hauberin threw himself aside as a hail of deadly iron shards smashed against the wall, missing his face by a handsbreadth.

  “Powers . . .”

  For a long while, Hauberin couldn’t do anything but lean against the clammy wall and listen to his racing heart. That would have been an ugly, ugly way to die.

  Ae, but had anyone heard the lock explode?

  No. He was surrounded by silence broken only by the muted sound of rain on stone. After a time, the prince recovered his breath, and began struggling with the rusted bolt, looping it as he’d planned in a fold of his full sleeve. It was a clumsy way to work, made all the clumsier by the bolt being heavy and rusted shut for so many years.

  Would it never move . . . ? Would it . . . never . . . move—the bolt slid free with a horrible metallic squeal, but a roll of thunder drowned out the noise. Hauberin silently thanked whatever Powers might be in this human Realm, and warily pushed at the heavy oaken door. The dampness, fortunately, must have gotten into the hinges, because the door moved almost noiselessly, creeping nearly halfway open before jamming. Hauberin bit his lip in sudden sharp tension, and slipped through the narrow opening, wondering what he would find.

  Nothing. The castle folk might have been too superstitious to use rooms associated in their minds with sorcery, but that hadn’t stopped them from stripping those rooms of furnishings. They might even have burned everything.

  But he didn’t need much physical residue, no more than a scrap of fabric, a splinter of wood. He didn’t have to give up hope just yet.

  The prince prowled silently through the two small, barren, musty chambers, leaving light footprints in the dust of three generations, uncomfortably aware of the burning cold of the iron bars at the one narrow window. Nothing, nothing . . .

  Hauberin stopped short. Closing his eyes, he began searching again, senses this time going beyond the physical. Almost at once he felt something pulling at him, and opened his eyes to find himself fallen to his knees in a corner of the room, amid a small mound of rubble where mortar had cracked and fallen away from stone.

  Wondering, the prince closed his eyes again, following the impulse that made him sweep his hands out over the rubble.

  Something burned him!

  But even as the prince’s eyes shot open, he realized the shock had been psychic, not physical. Warily Hauberin reached into the cracked mortar again, withdrawing: what was it? A scrap of parchment? Ha, yes, and with a fragment of writing on it as well!

  Hauberin shot to his feet, heart pounding so wildly it nearly staggered him, knowing with every psychic sense this scrap of parchment far too small to be read was what he sought, one fragile little link with the past.

  If—if I don’t calm myself, I’ll never learn anything.

  Even the simplest mind-quieting disciplines he’d learned as a child seemed far beyond his abilities right now, but Hauberin kept at them and kept at them, and at last his excitement, his fear and hope, faded to calm. He let out his breath in a soft, relaxed sigh, holding the scrap of parchment with both hands, eyes focused not on the realities of the empty room, but on the past . . . Hauberin’s breathing slowed. His senses seemed to expand, spinning out and out, far beyond the limits of the room, beyond the limits of time.

  And there was a room, this room, no longer barren and gray with dust. A chair stood within it, a chest, a lovely canopied bed, and warm-hued tapestries covered the starkness of the walls. A cradle stood by the bed, with a small, sleeping form within.

  His mother as a babe! Hauberin knew it all at once with psychic certainty, just as he knew he was seeing her through another’s eyes, and the shock of it was almost enough to hurl himself away—

  No! He hadn’t learned anything yet, he dared not lose control. Hauberin forced emotion aside, relaxing his hold on real time, letting it slip away . . .

  Once more he saw that room as it had been, and the babe, and suddenly realized he was watching through a woman’s eyes (glimpse of long, graceful hands, glimpse of thick golden braids being thrown impatiently back over velvet-clad shoulders).

  Lady Alianor. It could only be she: his human grandmother.

  Now those graceful hands were putting pen to parchment. She could read, the Lady Alianor, she could write, rare skill among nobility, and as Hauberin watched, she blotted the ink with sand and sealed the parchment with her signet ring, saying to someone, “She’s already safely baptized, my dear little witch-child, and now I’ll protect her against mortal harm as well.” Straightening, the woman handed the small parchment roll to a young, plain human servant, his eyes liquid with devotion, telling him, “I will keep one copy. Take this other. Leave it safely in the treasury of St. Denis, this record of my dear little one’s birth, there and in no place else.” And in her mind as the young man bowed and left was the image of a noble building of spires and light, colored light, a great glowing circle of red, blue, gold.

  Hauberin wondered, A temple? But the thought was vague, sliding away like smoke. A flood of memories rushed in to drown his mind, memories that weren’t his own: the thoughts and hopes and fears of a warm and vital human woman. With that part of consciousness still his own, Hauberin ached with the terrible knowledge of the tragedy to come. And even though there was no nope for it, he struggled to scream out to her, “Run, run from your brother!” But he was helpless, and the last awareness of his separate self was fading . . .

  No, ae, no! One small corner of Hauberin’s mind knew he had linked too closely with the past, with the Lady Alianor herself who, human though she was, was still flesh of his flesh. He must remember who he was, what he was, when he was! He was being torn, not here, not then—Powers help him, no!

  Despairing, Hauberin fought with all his ebbing strength, striking out frantically to find something, anything of his own time. There, ah, there, he had brushed another mind! Whose it was—no matter! It was someone of the present, it was a focus.

  With a last savage rush of will, Hauberin tore himself from the past and hurled himself at reality. He lost contact with that other mind, but now he knew which way to turn and—

  As spirit shot back into flesh, Hauberin dimly heard himself scream aloud. And then the psychic impact hurled him into darkness.


  ###

  Damn his brother, and damn Duke Alain, and damn, damn, damn this weather!

  Bent nearly double over his horse’s wet mane, Raimond continued to mutter oath after futile oath. He hadn’t ridden more than a few bow-lengths down from the baronial castle before the rain had started. Now it was pouring fiercely enough to warrant Sir Noah out of the Scriptures building a second ark.

  Raimond broke off his cursing to grab frantically at the hood of his riding cloak. Though he had pulled the hood as far forward as it would go, the wind kept pushing it back, slapping him in the face with watery flails. At this point it hardly mattered whether he covered his head or not. He was already nearly as wet in this downpour as though he had gone swimming fully clad, and the thick wool of his cloak was so rain-sodden it flapped heavily at his back with each stride of his unhappy horse.

  I should go back, Raimond thought yet again. I should abandon this whole miserable business and go home.

  For a moment he was tormented by an image of himself sprawled before a roaring fire, warm and dry, a flagon of mulled wine in hand.

  With dear brother Gilbert lecturing him on noble propriety and the sin of sloth—no, thank you.

  Raimond’s teeth flashed in a silent snarl. Ever since they’d both been children, Gilbert the older by a good many years and Raimond so sickly a boy he’d seemed fit for nothing but the Church, Gilbert had taken it on himself to protect his younger sibling. Oversee his brother’s moral education, whether Raimond willed it or not. For a time, the young man really had considered taking holy orders just to escape. After all, a clever man of noble birth could rise through the churchly ranks to a position of true temporal power; there were churchmen in Christendom who were the real power behind many a throne. But acquiring power took time. And the thought of a life filled with even more restrictions than his brother could place upon him—Raimond spat.