A Strange and Ancient Name

by Josepha Sherman

  ###

  To Hauberin’s mild surprise, they weren’t ushered into the Great Hall, but led directly to Baron Thibault’s private solar, a room as slovenly as everything else they’d seen so far, crammed full of glittering gold plate and hunting trophies with little regard for taste. Heavy, smoke-darkened tapestries lined the walls, and chipped, elegantly patterned tiles covered the unswept floor.

  Baron Thibault sat overflowing a cushioned chair beside the fireplace, gilded cup in hand.

  The baron, Hauberin thought wryly, matched his surroundings: overfed, overripe, just a shade too soft for handsomeness, just a shade too richly dressed for elegance. Gold dripped from neck and fingers, and the smile he offered his visitors was equally as rich: charming and, the prince didn’t doubt, totally insincere. The slightest glaze to his eyes implied that the cup he held had been refilled more than once, but despite the wine, the faintest trace of fear still encircled him, thin as mist.

  “My Lady Baroness. And gentles. Please, be seated.”

  There wasn’t the slightest trace of drunkenness in Thibault’s steady voice. At his gesture, servants scuttled forward with three chairs. Matilde sat, the heart of dignity despite her by now sadly soiled riding clothes. Hauberin and Alliar perched, not at all at ease, the being watching the baron closely, the prince questing warily with his mind for traces of his cousin, finding none.

  “Will you not drink with me, lady, gentles?”

  Hauberin shot back to the here and now. Powers, no, he wasn’t going to share drink with this nilethen-nichal, this shelterer-of-an-enemy; that would be as dark as a lie—and probably more perilous. But he could hardly refuse. The prince took the proffered cup, but did not drink. Nor, he noticed, did Matilde.

  “Enough courtesies, my lord,” she said. “You know why I am here.”

  Baron Thibault raised a bushy brow. “No, my lady, I do not.”

  “Oh, come! You have my husband.”

  “I . . . what?” It was a cry of pure astonishment. And, Hauberin thought in uneasy surprise, it was far too realistic to have been feigned. “No, lady,” the baron exclaimed, still amazed, “I most certainly do not!”

  “Please. Don’t lie.”

  “I’m not lying! On my honor as a noble, lady, I am not lying. I do not have your husband, and I’ll swear to that on whatever holy relics you wish.”

  “But—”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Perhaps you don’t actually have the man,” Hauberin interjected, knowing how smoothly truth could be sidestepped, “but surely you know where he can be found.”

  “No, I—” Thibault froze in mid-speech, staring at the prince as though only now really seeing him. “God’s blood. The wizard.”

  There was a startled hiss from Alliar. “And how would you know what I am?” Hauberin asked warily, and received a nervous flash of a smile from the baron in return. The feel of the human’s fear hung heavily in the air between them.

  “I will be honest, Sir Wizard,” Thibault said in a rush. “I had my spies at those heathen stones. They hurried back here to tell me what had happened. And I . . .” The man’s tongue swiped quickly, uneasily, across his lips, and his voice sank to a harsh whisper. “I must speak with you, my lord. Alone.”

  “I think not.”

  “Oh, please, you don’t understand.” The baron lurched to his feet. “My lady, if you will excuse us for just a moment?”

  Curious despite himself, Hauberin allowed himself to be herded to the far side of the solar, fighting not to show his distaste at the man’s wine-scented breath. After an apprehensive glance back at the staring Alliar, Thibault whispered urgently, “It’s about that . . . about him. Rogier.”

  “Go on.”

  “About Rogier, and the—the demon possessing him.” The baron mopped his brow with a precious square of silk, apparently not noticing Hauberin’s involuntary start. “My lord,” Thibault continued, “you would know more about such matters than I. But he—the demon—tried to control me, too. Believe me, I never would have done what I did, allied myself with that—with the sorcerer and—look you, Gilbert and I have never been friends, but I would never sink so low as to use sorcery . . .”

  “Please, my lord baron. Get to your point.”

  “Ah. Yes. I—couldn’t help myself, I found myself agreeing to things . . .”

  “You seem to have free will now.” As free as the wine would allow, at any rate.

  “Y-Yes. The demon lost his hold on me when I, all accidentally, was splashed with holy water by my priest.”

  “Convenient.”

  “Please, my lord, I’m not lying! It wasn’t an easy thing, but—my lord, I tricked the demon in Rogier’s body. I trapped him behind cold iron bars.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, it’s true, but I d-don’t know how much longer I can hold him there!” Thibault seemed virtually at the edge of tears, desperation quivering in his voice. “Oh please, you must help me, you can’t let him get loose again!”

  Powers. It was just barely possible. Oh, not the nonsense about the holy water, of course. Serein was no demon. But he also was no skilled plotter, either; he never had been. If he really had made some mistake, if the human really had imprisoned him . . .

  “What proof can you offer me?” Hauberin asked.

  “Proof, proof? God’s blood, man, what do you want from me? The demon’s head?”

  That would be nice, the prince thought drily. But Thibault was continuing: “I know his name; he—he let it slip when he thought I was still under his control. And it’s a devilish name, all right, not a good Christian name at all: Serein. That’s right, and when he realized I had trapped him, he started railing to me about my not being able to hold him, because he was such a powerful demon even a prince of Faerie on a Faerie hill couldn’t kill him.” Thibault stopped, blinking owlishly. “Is that good enough?”

  “Hauberin.” Alliar’s wind-keen ears had overheard. “You can’t believe him.”

  “Serein would never have given his name to a human. Not unless he was under great strain. And who else but Serein would boast about my not having killed him? Li, I don’t dare not believe.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “No. Right now Matilde is in greater need. Stay with her, my friend.” After a moment, he felt Alliar’s reluctant agreement, and nodded. “Come, my lord baron,” Hauberin said. “Show me your captive demon.”

  ###

  The baron led him down the winding stair to the Great Hall, steps just slightly befuddled by wine. “There. The demon’s down there, down that other stairway.” The words seemed to delight him, because he added in a singsong voice, “The dungeon’s down there, and the demon’s down there, and—”

  “And you’re going down there, too,” Hauberin told him.

  “No, I don’t want to—”

  “Yes, you do.” The prince gave him a not-quite-gentle shove in the right direction. “That’s right, my lord. You first.”

  Hauberin, thinking of what little he knew of human dungeons, had been expecting a row of dank, cramped, ugly little cells. But at the bottom of the stair, a vast vaulted area lay below the Hall: the castle cellars, somewhat dank, but smelling more of dust than cruelty. They were piled high with mysterious crates and casks, dimly lit by flickering torchlight.

  The prince stopped short. “Now, who lit those torches, my lord?” he asked softly.

  Thibault blinked at him, face guileless. “Why, my servants, of course. They’re always coming and going down here, getting supplies, replacing tools, and so the torches are almost always lit.”

  At the far end of the open vault, a section of the cellar had been screened off by a huge iron gate. Thibault saw Hauberin stare at it, and the color faded from the human’s face. “Yes,” he whispered. “The demon’s locked behind there. You sense him, don’t you?”

  No, Hauberin didn’t, not with a virtual wall of iron blocking him. But as he stalked forward at the baron’s side, every arcane s
ense sprang alert. And in one wild rush of awareness he knew, “Everything you’ve told me was a lie!” Furious at himself for having been so gullible, for being so of Faerie he hadn’t recognized falsehood, he spat out, “There’s no lock on that gate, he’s not your prisoner. And you—damn you!”

  He backhanded the man across the face with all his strength. Baron Thibault stumbled away from him, crumpling to the floor, whimpering, “I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t think. He—he was in my mind, he made me do it.”

  But Hauberin wasn’t listening. Thibault’s men were rushing at him, no innocent servants but fully armed men-at-arms, ringing him around with their swords.

  I can’t use Power here, not with all this iron!

  But the guards couldn’t know true magic from simple illusion, and when a bolt of fire flashed out from him to them, they believed what their eyes told them. Yelling in alarm, they staggered back, and Hauberin darted through the opened circle for the stairway—Damn! They had him cut off.

  Glancing feverishly about, the prince laughed suddenly, scrambling up and up a rickety pile of crates. One guard tried climbing up after him, and Hauberin whirled, bracing himself, and kicked out, catching the man squarely in the chest and sending him crashing back to the floor. The crates swayed wildly, and Hauberin nearly fell, caught his balance, and hurriedly reached up to where a pair of torches burned smokily in their holders. Tearing them free, he hurled them down into the pile of crates, which caught with a gratifying rush of flame. He heard the baron’s frantic yelps to his men:

  “The fire! Put out the fire, curse you, before the whole cellar takes!”

  Hauberin leaped down into a cloud of smoke and a swirl of confusion, kicking at feet that tried to trip him, punching at hands that grabbed at him. He sprang for the stairway and started to climb, only too well aware of how painfully exposed he was just now, hearing behind him an all-too-familiar voice, Serein’s voice, shouting: “Never mind the fire, idiots! Stop him!”

  Panting, the prince glanced back over his shoulder and saw an archer taking aim. He twisted frantically aside even as Serein screamed out, “No! Not iron!” knowing even as he did that there wasn’t enough time, enough room—

  Hauberin felt the arrow slamming into his arm as a white-hot flash so overwhelming his mind couldn’t even interpret it as pain—

  And then he was tumbling helplessly down into darkness.

  ###

  Alliar sprang up with a cry of anguish: “Hauberin!”

  Matilde scrambled to her feet, heart pounding. “What is it? What—”

  “Treachery!” The being’s eyes were wild and unfocused. “I felt his mind cry out, then there was nothing—and now I can’t sense him at all!” Golden fingers clamped painfully about her wrist. “We have to find him!”

  Matilde struggled futilely against the being’s strength as she was dragged along. “Alliar, wait, you’re hurting me. Alliar . . .”

  But then she was crashing into the being as Alliar stopped dead at the head of the stair, faced by a solid wall of guards. “That’s right,” gasped Thibault’s voice from below. “Hold them there.” And then, to Matilde’s horror, “They know. They must die. He told me: there—there must be no witnesses.”

  He’d gone mad, Matilde thought. And, being mad, he meant to kill them.

  “The devil he will!” Matilde slapped the leading guard across the face (thankful he wasn’t helmeted), and as he staggered back in sheer surprise, she and Alliar turned as smoothly as though they’d rehearsed it and raced back into the solar.

  “No other way out!” the being gasped, eyes wild and blank. “No other door, no window—”

  “Alliar, stop it.” She could understand a wind spirit’s claustrophobic terror of closed spaces, but now, with guards rushing in to seize them was hardly the time—

  Closed spaces! Of course! Matilde snatched at Alliar’s arm, barely noting its inhuman chill. “Come on!”

  “The fireplace?”

  “Don’t argue.” Matilde was glancing up its smoky chimney, praising Heaven it was too warm for a fire to have been lit. Ah, yes! Dimly seen against the square of sky far overhead were the recesses for smoking meat, the iron rungs set into the chimney wall to facilitate cleaning. Hastily she shed her encumbering riding cloak. “Just climb.”

  Of course it didn’t take the guards long to follow them. But a grunt from Alliar, a stifled cry of pain and a most gratifying crash told Matilde that the being had kicked the lead guard back down on top of the others.

  Grinning fiercely, the woman continued to climb, half-choked on the reek of old smoke, hands and feet slipping on the greasy rungs (Saints above, doesn’t Thibault ever clean up here?). After one glance up at that tantalizing blue square that never seemed to get any larger, Matilde clenched her teeth and refused to look again. The weight of her riding skirt pulled at her, growing heavier with every passing moment, and one shin was aching savagely where she kept banging it against the rungs again and again. By now every muscle was complaining, burning as though there really was a fire surrounding her, and her lungs ached with strain. God, for one clear, clean breath of air! Now trickles of perspiration were working their tickling way down her face, but she couldn’t spare the time or a hand to wipe them away, and this ordeal would never be over, but she simply refused to just give up and die . . .

  It took her a long moment to realize there was light all about her. With a gasp and a wriggle, Matilde was out of the chimney, clinging to its rim, Alliar, disheveled and dirty, beside her. They exchanged fierce, conspiratorial grins. But then the sound of panting from within the chimney made them both start and look back down.

  “The guards!” Matilde glanced about and found no escape from this chimney because the one clear spot of root they could have safely jumped down to was swarming with more of Thibault’s men. She groaned. It had all been useless. They were trapped.

  But Alliar, a clear, cold, alien light in the golden eyes, was pulling off the filthy tunic, standing on the chimney’s narrow rim in linen hose alone. Matilde caught a brief glimpse of a smooth, hairless, sleekly muscled chest, disconcertingly nippleless, then Alliar was pulling her to her feet. She swayed, dizzied by the vast expanse around her.

  “I can’t—”

  “Don’t argue! Just hold fast!”

  She didn’t have a choice. A guard was snatching at her skirts, so Matilde seized Alliar in a deathgrip. She felt powerful muscles tense. And then they were plunging out into space.

  XX

  FLIGHTS

  But they weren’t falling, they were flying, soaring out into empty air, and Matilde gasped to see that the golden shape to which she clung, lying atop the sleek, chilly back, had all at once become even more alien, flattened, just barely recognizable, wide sheets of golden skin stretched between outstretched arms and body catching the wind.

  It wasn’t flight at that. It was a long, straining glide, and after the first moment of sheer terrified exhilaration, Matilde realized that Alliar, tiring rapidly, was struggling just to bring them down safely inside the forest, so tantalizingly near.

  A little further, she pleaded silently, only a little further . . .

  But they were losing height so rapidly . . .

  “I can’t!” It was a cry of pure despair.

  And then they hit a tree. Torn from Alliar, Matilde was bruised, scratched, terrified, a whirlwind of leaves spinning before her eyes as she grabbed frantically at branches, catching, falling, catching again. Her hands closed on a slippery branch. For an instant it held and she dared think she was safe . . .

  Then, with a horrifying crack, something gave. The branch whipped out then down, hurling her off. Falling once more, Matilde shrieked, sure she was going to break her leg, or her arm, or her neck—

  Instead she landed, winded but unbroken, in the middle of a thick, springy bush.

  For a time, Matilde was too shaken to move, lying in her prickly bed while the world continued to whirl dizzily about her. But at last it stille
d and, aching, more and more aware of every bruise, every scrape, she managed to roll her weary way down onto the nice, solid, unmoving ground.

  But what had happened to Alliar? Matilde struggled to her feet, half-afraid of what she might find. A glint of golden skin . . . The being lay prone, incredible wings vanished back into the malleable form, so fiat against the earth that for a heart-stopping moment she was sure Alliar was dead. But then she saw the sleek chest rising and falling, and at last the being rolled over to stare blankly up at the leaves overhead.

  “Alliar . . . ? Are you . . . all right?”

  The being hesitated as though considering the question very carefully, then nodded. “Aching.” Alliar’s voice was a whisper, but a hint of humor quivered in it. “More weary than ever I recall. But otherwise all right.” The being sat up with immense care. “I wasn’t sure we were going to make it. The wind was fading out from under me; didn’t recognize a distant cousin, I suppose,” wryly. “And if some of those guards had thought to loose arrows at us while we were still in range—”

  “They were all too stunned. So,” Matilde added, “was I. I . . . didn’t know you could do that.”

  “Neither did I. Desperation does amazing things.” Alliar staggered upright. “What of you? You aren’t hurt, are you?”

  “Nothing worse than scrapes and bruises.” Matilde scrambled up, trying not to wince. “They didn’t even try to come after us. Probably thought you were a demon.”

  But Alliar had stopped listening, looking out over the brush to where Baron Thibault’s castle squatted grimly in the fading light.

  “He’s still in there. Hauberin is still in there. Alive. I’d feel it were he . . . dead. But something terrible has happened to him.”

  “Oh, surely not,” Matilde said feebly. “I don’t think Thibault would dare hurt him,” and the being whirled on her savagely. “You think not? After the man tried to kill us?”