The Warlock In Spite of Himself

by Christopher Stasheff

  Rod tensed, and clicked his teeth once in acknowledgment. "Big Tom is dressed again, and coming toward your haystack." Rod sat bolt upright, squinting up at the sun; it was almost to the meridian. Time and distance nagged him again.

  "Well, back to the world of the living," he growled, and reached out for his clothes.

  "Milord?"

  She was smiling regretfully, but her eyes were tight with hurt — a hurt which faded into the deep acceptance and resignation even as he watched.

  "The memory of this time will be dear to me, lord," she whispered, clasping the cloak to her breast, her eyes widening.

  It was a forlorn plea for reassurance a reassurance he could not honestly give, for he would never see her again.

  It came to him then that she was expecting refusal of any reassurance, expecting him to lash out at her for her temerity in implying that she had some worth, that she was worthy of thanks.

  She knew her plea would bring hurt, yet she pled; for a woman lives on love, and this was a woman near thirty in a land where girls married at fifteen. She had already accepted that there was to be no lasting love in her life; she must subsist on the few crumbs she could gather.

  His heart went out to her, somewhat impelled by the jab of self-reproach.

  So, of course, he told her one of the lies that men tell women only to comfort them, and later realize to be very true.

  He kissed her and said, "This was not Life, lass, it was what living is for."

  And later, when he mounted his horse and turned back to look at her, with Big Tom beside him waving a cheery farewell to his wench, Rod looked into the girl's eyes again and saw the desperation, the touch of panic at his leaving, the silent, frantic plea for a shred of hope.

  A shred, Tom had said, would be too much, but Rod would probably never see this girl again. Not even a spark of hope — just a glimmer. Could. that do any hurt?

  "Tell me your name, lass."

  Only a spark, but it flared in her eyes to a bonfire. "Gwendylon am I called, lord."

  And when they had rounded a turn in the road and the girls were lost to sight beyond the hill behind them, Tom sighed and said, "Thou hast done too much, master. Thou shalt never be rid of her now."

  Chapter 16

  There was this to be said for a roll in the hay: it had sapped enough of Big Tom's vitality so that he wasn't singing any more. Probably still humming, to be sure; but he was riding far enough ahead so Rod couldn't hear him.

  Rod rode in silence, unable to rid his mind of flaming hair and emerald eyes. So he cursed at the vision, under his breath; but it seemed to his aloof self that the cursing lacked something — vehemence, perhaps. Certainly sincerity. It was his aloof self accused, a very halfhearted attempt at malediction.

  Rod had to admit it was. He was still feeling very much at one with creation. At the moment, he couldn't have been angry with his executioner… And that worried him.

  "Fess."

  "Yes, Rod?" The voice seemed a little more inside his head than usual.

  "Fess, I don't feel right."

  The robot paused; then, "How do you feel, Rod?"

  There was something about the way Fess had said that Rod glanced sharply at the pseudo-horse head. "Fess, are you laughing at me?"

  "Laughing?"

  "Yes, laughing. You heard me. Chuckling in your beard."

  "This body is not equipped with a beard."

  "Cut the comedy and answer the question."

  With something like a sigh, the robot said, "Rod, I must remind you that I am only a machine. I am incapable of emotions. I was merely noting discrepancies, Rod."

  "Oh, were you!" Rod growled. "What discrepancies, may I ask?"

  "In this instance, the discrepancy between what a man really is and what he wishes to believe of himself."

  Rod's upper lip turned under and pressed against his teeth. "Just what do I wish to believe?"

  "That you are not emotionally dependent upon this peasant Woman."

  "Her name is Gwendylon."

  "With Gwendylon. With any woman, for that matter. You wish to believe that you are emotionally independent, that you no longer enjoy what you call 'being in love'."

  "I enjoy love very much, thank you!"

  "That is a very different thing," the robot murmured, "than being in love."

  "Damn it, I wasn't talking about making love!"

  "Neither was I."

  Rod's lips pressed into a thin white line. "You're talking about emotional intoxication And if that's what you mean — no, I am not in love. I have no desire to be in love. And if I have any say in the matter, I will never be in love again!"

  "Precisely what I said you wished to believe," mused the robot.

  Rod ground his teeth and waited for the surge of anger to pass. "Now what's the truth about me?"

  "That you are in love."

  "Damn it, a man's either in love, or he's not, and he damn well knows which."

  "Agreed; but he may not be willing to admit it."

  "Look," Rod snapped, "I've been in love before, and I know what it's like. It's … well …"

  "Go on," the "robot prodded."

  "Well, it's like" — Rod lifted his head and looked out at the countryside — "you know the world's there, and you know it's real; but you don't give a damn, "cause you know for a certainty that you're the center of the world, the most important thing in it."

  "Have you felt that way recently?" Fess murmured.

  "Well… yes, damn it." Rod's mouth twisted.

  "With Catharine?"

  Rod stared, and glared at the back of the horse's head. "How the hell would you know?" His eyes narrowed.

  "Logic, Rod." The robot's voice had a touch of smugness. "Only logic. And how did you feel while you were with Gwendylon?"

  "Oh …" Rod threw his shoulders back, stretching. "Great, Fess. Better than I ever have. The world's clearer, and the day's younger. I feel so healthy and clearheaded I can't believe it. It's just the opposite to how I feel when I'm in love, but I like it."

  Rod frowned at the back of Fess's head. "Well?" The robot plodded on, not answering.

  "Cat got your tongue?"

  "I am not equipped with a tongue, Rod."

  "Don't change the subject."

  The horse was silent a moment longer; then, "I was mistaken, Rod. You love, and are loved — but you are not in love."

  Rod frowned down at the roadway. "Why not, Fess?"

  The robot made a sound like a sigh. "How do the two Women differ, Rod?"

  "Well…" Rod chewed at the inside of his cheek. "Gwendylon's human. I mean, she's just an ordinary, everyday woman, like I'm an ordinary man."

  "But Catharine is more?"

  "Oh, she's the kind of woman I tend to put on a pedestal… something to be worshiped, not courted..

  "And not loved?" the robot mused. "Rod, of the two women, which is the better human being?"

  "Uh… Gwendylon."

  "The prosecution," said the robot-horse, "rests."

  The demesne of the Loguires was a great, broad plain between the mountains and the sea. The low, rolling mountains stood at the north and east; beach curved in a wide semi-circle in the south; a sheer, hundred foot high cliff face towered in the northwest. The ocean battered at its seaward side; a waterfall poured over the other face into the valley. A long, old river twisted over the plain to the sea.

  The plain itself was a patchwork of fields, with here and there a cluster of peasant huts — Loguire's people.

  Tom and Rod stood at the verge of one of the mountain forests, where the road from the North fell away to the plain.

  Rod turned his head slowly, surveying the demesne. "And where," he said, "is the castle?"

  "Why, back of the waterfall, master."

  Rod's head jerked around, staring at Tom; then he followed the road with his eyes.

  It wound across the plain to the foot of the waterfall; there, where the cliff met the plain, a great gate was carved in the roc
k, complete with portcullis and a drawbridge over the natural moat formed by an oxbow of the river. The lords of Loguire had honeycombed the cliff for their home.

  An exclamation point formed between Rod's eyebrows as they drew together. "Is that a dike to either side of the drawbridge, Big Tom?"

  "Aye, master; and there are said to be charges of gunpowder within it."

  Rod nodded, slowly. "And the land before the portcullis gate sinks down. So if unwelcome callers come knocking, you blow up the dike, and your front door gets covered with thirty feet of water. Very neat. Then you just sit and wait out the siege. The waterfall gives you plenty of fresh water, so your only worry is food."

  "There are said to be gardens within the keep," Big Tom supplied helpfully.

  Rod shook his head in silent respect. "So you're completely defended, and stocked for a ten years" siege. This place ever been taken, Tom?"

  The big man shook his head. "Never, master." He grinned.

  "Wonder if the old boy who built this place was maybe a little bit paranoid… Don't suppose they'd have room in that place for a couple of weary travelers, do you?"

  Big Tom pursed his lips. "Aye, master, if they were noblemen. The hospitality of the Loguires is famed. But for the likes of me, and even yourself, who are no more than a squire, master, that hospitality lies in the cottages."

  The sun winked. Rod scowled and peered into the sky. "There's that damn bird again. Doesn't it know we're too big for lunch?" He unlimbered his crossbow and cranked it back to cocked.

  "Nay, master." Big Tom put out a hand "You've lost four bolts on it already."

  "I just don't like anything airborne following me, Tom. They're not always what they seem." Tom's brow furrowed at the cryptic statement. Rod tucked the stock into his shoulder. "Besides, I've taken one shot a day at it for the last four days; it's getting to be a habit."

  The bow hummed, and the quarrel leaped upward; but the bird sailed up faster. The bolt passed through the place where the bird had been, rose another fifty feet, hit the top of its arc, and began to fall. The bird, fifty feet higher, watched it sink.

  Big Tom raised an eyebrow, his mouth quirked up on one side. "You'll never strike it, master. The fowl knows the meaning of a crossbow."

  "You'd almost think it does." Rod slung the bow over his shoulder. "What kind of country is this, with elves under every tree and hawks in the sky shadowing you?"

  " 'Tis not a hawk, master," Big Tom reproved. " 'Tis an osprey."

  Rod shook his head. "It started following us the second day out. What would a fish hawk be doing that far inland?"

  "Myself, I cannot say. Thou might ask it, though, master."

  "And I wouldn't really be all that surprised if it answered," Rod mused. "Well, it isn't doing us any harm, I suppose, and we've got bigger problems at the moment. We came here to get into that castle. Do you sing, Big Tom?"

  Tom did a double take. "Sing, master?"

  "Yeah, sing. Or play the bagpipes, or something."

  Tom tugged at his lip, frowning. "I can make some manner of noise on a shepherd's flute, and the half dead might put the word music to it. But what folly is this, master?"

  "Fool's folly." Rod unstrapped a saddlebag and took out a small harp. "As of now, we're minstrels. Let's hope the cliff-dwellers are a little short on music at the moment." He pulled an alto recorder out of the saddlebag and gave it to Tom. "I hope that's enough like your shepherd's flute to do some good."

  "Aye, master, very like it. But—"

  "Oh, don't worry, they'll let us in. Folks this far away from the capital tend to be- out of touch; they're hungry for news and new songs, and minstrels carry both. Do you know 'Eddystone Light'?"

  "Nay master."

  "Too bad; that's one that always goes over well in a seaport town. Well, no matter, I can teach it to you as we go."

  They set off down the road, singing in accidentals unknown to any human mode or scale. The fish hawk screamed and sheered off.

  Chapter 17

  "Bring ye news from the North?" the sentry had asked eagerly; and Rod, recollecting that minstrels were the closest medieval equivalent to journalists, had replied in the affirmative.

  Now he and Tom stood before a gathering of twenty-eight noblemen, their wives and attendants, ranging in age from pretty teenage serving maids to the ninety-year-old Earl of Vallenderie, all with the same eager, hungry glint in their eyes, and Rod without a scrap of news to tell them.

  Well, no matter; he'd make it up as he went along. He wouldn't be the first journalist who'd done it.

  The crusty old Duke of Loguire sat in a great oaken chair in the midst of the company; he didn't seem to recognize Rod. But Durer did; he stood hunched over Loguire's left shoulder, eyes twisting hate at Rod. But it would have done him no good to expose Rod, and he knew it; Loguire still loved his niece, though he was at odds with her. He would have honored Rod for saving Catharine's life.

  It was Loguire who voiced the question for all his people; and Rod, reflecting that the Duke had very personal reasons for wanting news of the House of Clovis, had replied that as yet, all was quiet in the North. "Oh, one heard talk and saw signs of the House; but that was talk, and talk only — so far.

  Then he and Tom swung into a foot-stamping rendition of "Eddystone Light". The gathering stood in astounded silence a moment; then grins broke out, and hands started clapping the rhythm.

  Encouraged, Big Tom picked up both the tempo and the volume; Rod struggled to match him while he scanned the faces of the audience.

  The old Duke was trying to look sternly disapproving, and not succeeding too well. A tall young man of about Rod's age stood behind the old man's right shoulder, a grin coming to his lips and a gleam to his eye as he listened to the song, displacing a grimace of discontent, self-pity, and bitterness. The elder son, Rod guessed, with a host of weaknesses Durer could prey upon.

  It was easy to pick out Loguire's vassal lords; all were richly dressed, and accompanied by an even more richly dressed wire scarecrow of a man: the councillors, Durer's boys.

  Rod felt strangely certain that anything Durer proposed would have the unanimous approval of all the Southern lords, with only Loguire dissenting.

  And Loguire, of course, had one more vote than all the vassal lords put together. Rod remembered Loguire's unsolicited promise to Catharine: "No harm shall come to the Queen while I live…"

  "While I live…"

  Chapter 18

  The performance was literally a howling success; Rod had managed to keep it on a ribald rather than a political level, walking the thin line between the risqué and the pornographic. The audience had loved it; Rod decided that the tin ear must be a genetic dominant in Gramarye. He'd noticed, too, that the eyes of all the serving girls had been riveted to himself and Big Tom; he was still trying to understand why. It didn't seem to have done Big Tom's ego any harm, though.

  But now and again, one of the councillors had asked a question that could not be put off; and when Rod had answered with rumors that the House of Clovis would rise against the Crown, a frantic, acid joy had burned in their eyes.

  That, at least, he understood. The important thing about a revolution is that it begin; you can always take control of it later.

  That he understood; but now, with the singing done, as he was going to the loft which had been temporarily assigned to Tom and himself, he was still pondering the look on the faces of the serving maids. When they had looked at Tom, he'd been quite sure what it was; he expected to find the loft fully occupied by the time he arrived, since Big Tom had gone on ahead.

  But that look couldn't mean the same thing when applied to himself — unless the occupation of minstrel carried a great deal more prestige than he'd thought.

  So, all in all, he was even more confused but not too surprised when one of the servant girls intercepted him with a cup of wine.

  "Salve for a parched throat, Master Minstrel," she murmured, her eyes shining as she held the cup out to h
im.

  He looked at her out of the corner of his eye and reluctantly accepted the cup; no call for bad manners, was there?

  "And," she murmured as she drank, "warmth for your bed, if you will."

  Rod choked and spluttered, lowered the cup, glaring at her; then he looked her up and down quickly. She was full-bodied and high-breasted, with a wide, full-lipped mouth — very like Gwendylon, in some ways.

  Suddenly suspicious, Rod looked more sharply; but no, this girl's eyes were tilted upward at the outer corners, and her nose was long and straight, not snub. Besides, her hair and eyes were black.

  He smiled wryly and drank off the rest of the cup and returned it to her. "Thank you, lass, right deeply."

  It was indicative, he thought, that she had come to him instead of Big Tom. Tom was certainly the more appealing chunk of man; but Rod was obviously the one who had the status. A bitch like any of them, he thought: she doesn't give a damn for who the man is, just as long as what he is is a station higher than hers.

  "I thank you," he said again, "but I have been long on the road, and am like to swoon from my weariness." A very pretty speech, he thought; and go ahead, let her think less of my manhood for it. At least she'll leave me alone.

  The serving maid lowered her eyes, biting her lip. "As you will, good master." And she turned away, leaving Rod staring after her.

  Well, that hadn't taken much refusing. Come to think of it, he was a little indignant … but had there been just a hint of triumph in her eyes, a shard of rejoicing?

  Rod went on his way, wondering if perhaps he hadn't inadvertently stepped into the pages of a Machiavellian textbook.

  The door to the loft was closed, as Rod had guessed; a muffled feminine squeal, followed by Tom's bass laugh, further confirmed his guess.

  So he shrugged philosophically, settled his harp over his shoulder, and turned back down the long, winding staircase. He could put the time to good use, anyway. The castle had so obviously been built by a paranoid that he was certain there had to be secret passages.

  He sauntered down the main corridor, whistling. The granite walls were painted ocher, ornamented with standing suits of armor and here and there a tapestry. Some of the tapestries were huge, reaching from floor to ceiling; Rod noted their locations carefully in his mind. They could very easily conceal the mouths of passageways.