Kingdom Of Argylle - A Sorcerer And A Gentleman Part 20

They sat. Prince Prospero poured the wine. Dewar, the Prince noted, was indeed hungry; he, the host, urged him to eat well and did not demand conversation.

His guest seemed completely at ease. "This is very pleasant," said he, smiling suddenly at Prospero, pus.h.i.+ng his pudding-plate away from him at last. "I have not had a meal like this in long and long."

184.

tlizabetk "I'm grieved to hear rations are so short," Prospero twitted him.

"I mean-oh, I don't know what I mean. Never mind. I don't mean the food, the wine-not just those anyway. I should not have spoken."

Prospero smiled and topped their gla.s.ses off with the last of the third bottle of heavy red wine that had accompanied their supper of onion-tart, venison, baked mushrooms, small game-birds in a sauce of currants and cherries, ham pie, and other rustically wintry fare. The cheeses lay before them still: a thick golden hemisphere with a criss-crossed rind and a richly turquoise-veined beauty, gently reeking.

The geas whirled around Dewar as the wine ran into his gla.s.s, surprising him in mid-sigh before he could resist. "Odile the Black Countess of Aie," said Dewar suddenly, almost explosively.

Prospero's goblet was b.u.mped from the table by his elbow as he jerked away, straightening.

The wine spread over the carpet unregarded. The crystal goblet did not break.

"What of her?"

Numb with shock at what he had said, Dewar replied, "My mother." d.a.m.n the geas, and d.a.m.n Prospero for laying it! What had Dewar's ancestry to do with anything? Odile was all the ancestry he had, and he had renounced her.

How strangely her name lay upon his tongue. He had not said it in years, not since he had fled her house, not in the years with his master, nor after, not even on this side of the Limen between the Stone and the Well. People in Phesaotois knew better than to speak such a curse-freighted name lest they draw the attention of its owner to themselves. Dewar's skin p.r.i.c.kled into cold b.u.mps, all in the instant as he realized what he had done.

"Thy-" Prospero's throat tightened suddenly, and he had to set the bottle down very carefully to be sure it stayed upright. A cold inevitability gripped him: here was his fate, here his nemesis, here his end. "Thy mother."

"Yes." The geas lightened. Dewar could feel its ebb, as he had felt its presence for so many years. It left a curiously Sorcerer and a Qentkman 185.

irksome vacancy in the underpinnings of his thought, and he wondered, afraid and then detached, how much it had influenced him.

Prospero leaned on the table, over it, supporting himself on both his hands. "Thy father?"

Dewar blinked, coming out of contemplation.

"Who was thy father, then?" demanded Prospero more sharply.

Dewar shrugged, puzzled. "I don't know. She receives few callers. Some poor fool she ensorcelled, I suppose."

"Suppose."

"I don't know which particular pig he might have been," Dewar snapped. "How is it you know her? There seems to be little commerce between Pheyarcet and Phesaotois."

"Once I knew her full well," Prospero said softly.

Dewar looked at him more warily now. "She has no love for me," he said. "Nor I for her."

Prospero stared at him still, quivering. "When wert thou born?" he asked.

"It doesn't matter."

"It does!" The Prince's blood pounded in his ears.

Dewar stared at him. The geas pulsed; his tongue held the answer; he temporized. "I suppose you're right," he said, "it's part of the geas-"

"Dost know when?"

Dewar withdrew from his intensity. "I might be able to figure it out," he said. "A moment." He closed his eyes, clearly calculating. "In the fifteen hundred and twenty-third Great Circuit, fourth dodecade, twelfth year," he decided. "Give or take one or one and a half or so."

Prospero lowered his head, displeased, and growled, " Tis hardly nice."

"Nothing in Aie is-almost nothing." Dewar glanced at the door involuntarily, the door through which the hooded servant had departed. The niceties of Aie were unpleasant in their elegant rigor.

Prospero resumed his seat. His foot struck the goblet, which rang faintly; he bent down and picked it up, frowning at the winestain, deeper red on crimson.

186.

*Elizabeth 'Wiliey Sorcerer and a (jentteman 187.

Fifteen hundred and twenty-third, twelfth of the fourth. Or thereabouts. No end, but a beginning.

He bore something of her face in his. Hard to tell with that beard, though. Her straight nose. Her brows were smoothly-curved neat lines, and his were nothing like that, angled and arched. Eyes . . . How could Odile's son have missed inheriting Odile's beautiful eyes, the dark windows on Otherness? Because he was a man, and there was no Otherness to him?

"Prince Prospero, you are far from here."

"Aye," Prospero replied curtly, and leaned back in his chair to study the man further. "I've seen thee in the battle, too," he remarked after a moment. He had held his sorcery back one day to see what Dewar would do. Dewar had spurned the opportunity; he had not attacked. Instead he had held his defenses and had ridden down to fight in a melee beside a fellow in the old Ascolet colors, using earthly weapons as effectively as his sorcery.

Dewar pushed his chair back slightly, slouched a little, put his right ankle on his left knee and steepled his fingers.

"Who taught thee swordsmans.h.i.+p?"

Dewar let his head tip a little to one side. "Sir, I think that is a piece of my history that does not concern you."

"It concerns me nearly, boy. Was it Gaston?"

"No."

"No. Canst handle the blade like a gentleman born to it, yet ... thou'rt a sorcerer."

"I am a sorcerer."

"d.a.m.n it, I'm not challenging thee. I brought thee here with the intent of arranging such a match, but I think now 'twere unwise."

"You flatter me."

"Hardly. I dislike killing people; 'tis difficult to undo.

Wasteful."

"How odd that both you and Prince Gaston have expressed similar sentiments about killing, yet both of you-"

"Don't be fatuous," Prospero snapped.

Dewar didn't finish the statement.

"With whom didst thou apprentice in the Art?" asked his host more softly after a brief, uncomfortable silence.

The younger man said nothing, but his gaze was disdainful.

Prospero sighed and his left eyebrow quirked up. He regarded Dewar, memorizing him, noting the tautness of his jacket over his shoulders and arms and the steadiness of his hands, the length of leg and angle of rest, the brightness of his eyes, his att.i.tude of readiness. He was a thing of deadly beauty, and like most such, wisely to be destroyed. It lay within Prospero's power to do that. He had the fellow here in his palm, and though between them they would destroy the province down to the primal fire below, Prospero would be victorious in a duel. That would be great shame, a vandal's way to deal with such a fine creature as this courtly young sorcerer. Herne killed things out-of-hand. Prospero knew better.

"Lord Dewar," he said at last, in a heavy tone, "I shall send thee away now, unchallenged."

"I am sorry to hear it."

"Why?"

"It would save a great deal of trouble if we settled it between us, but, on the other hand, if I lost, I'd die, and I cannot imagine a cause worth so much of my talent as that. Not Landuc, to be sure. Perhaps the Emperor would strike a deal: if I lost, Esclados dies-"

"The Emperor's incapable of bargaining with sorcerers." Prospero reached over the untouched cheeses to the nearest candle and closed his hand around its flame. He concentrated a moment and then opened his fingers; a brilliant spark of gold light darted out of them like a fish, zigzagging through the air.

"Follow," Prospero commanded Dewar, putting the Well into the word, catching him off-guard.

Dewar stood, his eyes fixing on the spark-an ignis fatuus.

"Farewell," said Prospero to him, standing also. "We'll ' meet again, and then I'll tell thee of thy ancestry." >- Dewar did not seem to hear; he slung his cloak absently * around him and followed the ignis fatuus out of the room.

188.

'L&zabetfi Prospero sat and listened to his light footsteps descend the stair.

Gaston heard cras.h.i.+ng and thras.h.i.+ng as he crossed the coa.r.s.e wooden bridge they'd thrown up to replace the stone one destroyed in a battle. He recognized the voice cursing after half a minute's surprise and reined in. The pre-dawn sentry inspection could wait.

"Lord Dewar!"

"By Flame and Ice!" Less-intelligible expostulation followed, and suddenly a fireball erupted out of the brush-filled gully. A few twigs in its vicinity glowed briefly and fell, instant cinders, and by its bobbing light and his own lantern's glow Gaston saw Dewar, scratched and torn and wet, clambering up the steep side of the gully. The sandy, gravelly slope must be nearly impossible for him to scale, and Gaston considered offering to fetch a rope, but then reconsidered as Dewar, grim-faced and determined to rise without a.s.sistance, began going sideways.

Gaston dismounted to help the sorcerer past the overhanging, crumbling lip.

"Thanks," gasped Dewar, scrambling over, sitting on the ground.

The Fireduke bent over him. "Art injured?" "I've pulled a muscle. Be fine. d.a.m.ned ignis. b.a.s.t.a.r.d! I'd swear he did it a-purpose - Ouch."

Grabbing Gaston's arm, Dewar tried to rise and wob- bled.

"Here," Gaston said, and helped him up. "Where's thy staff?"

"Not with me. Else there'd have been no problem. Ouch.

Maybe I broke it. Ouch."

"Lord Dewar, what's pa.s.sed here?"

Dewar, leaning now on the horse, looked away and shook his head a little, then looked up at Gaston. "I'm not sure."

"Yestereve came a windstorm hath blown half the camp away - "

"I'm not surprised." Dewar snorted. Ariel the Sylph had been sent away on other business, having dragged Dewar J3 Sorcerer and a QtntUman 189.

into Prospero's hands to be entertained: the Prince was a thoughtful host and a wily enemy.

Gaston grabbed his shoulder. "Thy doing?"

"No, no, no. I was leaving Golias after going there to find out what he planned for tomorrow. A-a kind of a wind, a Sylph, grabbed me and hustled me-I don't even know just where or how far, it blew me around so-to Prospero."

"Prospero!"

"Yes. He wanted to have dinner and a chat." Dewar brushed twigs out of his hair, looking weary all at once. Gaston removed a few leaves from his cloak. "He'd sent the Sylph to bring me in. It's his. I mean he owns it. Never mind; you don't understand the implications-so we dined and talked of this and that-"

"Talked," Gaston said, his voice very low.

"Just talked. You see- It's a complicated tale. Can I beg a lift of your horse to camp? This is that peris.h.i.+ng bridge, isn't it?"

"It is. Here, I'll give thee a leg up."

"Thanks. Ah! Ow. h.e.l.l's bells, I owe him for this."

In Gaston's tent, the Marshal saw that Dewar was considerably more battered by his fall than had been evident. His clothing was wet and his face bright with cold. A large bruise was coming up on his head and his hands were embedded with thorns and splinters; he settled stiffly into a chair and let Gaston call a bonesetter to look at the foot.

Gaston opened a small cabinet and took out a wicker-wrapped bottle of something colorless. He poured a tumbler half-full for Dewar, splashed in a few drops from a smaller brown jug, and topped the tumbler off with a thick golden Madanese wine.

"Thanks. Painkiller?"

Gaston chuckled and poured for himself in another tumbler.

Dewar tasted it, coughed, and wiped his eyes. "What is this?"

" Tis wholesome fruit, the essence-cherry, apricot, berries. . . ." Gaston emptied his gla.s.s.

190 -:>.

"Whew." He sipped, coughed again, and swallowed manfully. The Madanese wine was soft, a sweet wash over the stronger brew. His stomach began to glow. "Where was I?" "In a ditch." Gaston smiled slightly, refilling Dewar's tumbler: less wine, and more of the wicker jug's contents. "Oh. He summoned up an ignis fatuus to guide me back, and the blasted thing waltzed me all over the countryside and guided me into the ditch. All of me but my head missed the bridge by six inches. They're rotten little f.u.c.kers, fickle and never fixed-" Dewar sampled the stuff in his gla.s.s again. It wasn't so bad, once one got used to having a numb tongue. There might even be a flavor to it. He drank a mouthful. The warmth was pleasant, and it distracted him from his pounding head. "What did Prospero want?"

"To challenge me, he said." Dewar was suddenly hungry. The meal with Prospero had been hours ago. He drank more of Gaston's wine.

Gaston set his gla.s.s down, frowning. "Art resolved that this be wise?"

"He didn't challenge me, though. Said he'd changed his mind." Perhaps Gaston would send for breakfast... meanwhile, the liquor warmed him. "Why?"

"Personal reasons," Dewar muttered, and had another swallow of his wholesome fruit-essence. He coughed, but this time he did detect a hint of apricot and cherry in the fire. An acquired taste, no doubt.