Kingdom Of Argylle - A Sorcerer And A Gentleman Part 46

The girl tensed and thrashed in his arms. Otto set her down.

"I've got to get a sword. Wait here," he hissed at her. "Stay out of sight."

She staggered against the wall, looking worse in daylight than by flame. Her eyes were wide and wildly blank.

Otto hurried to the corpse. A Lys man and not yet dead.

"Erkel, friend, I need your blade."

"Sir," mouthed Erkel, eyes glazed, and Ottaviano took the blade from his blood-slick hand, his rage at perfidious Goiias boiling up again.

"Goiias!" came the shout again, and the girl cried out in Sorcerer and a Qentkman 381.

answer and ran, truly ran, down the corridor past Otto as he stood.

"Hey! Stop!"

"GOLIAS!" reverberated through the very stones of the building.

Prince Prospero had arrived, realized Otto, starting after the girl.

Prince Gaston glanced at the body on the mosaic-tiled floor, which lay in a smear of fresh blood on the worn stones. Still moving, knees curling to chest to meet the end as the beginning. He took a step away, then stopped again and looked a second time. A couple of blood-marked footprints led away in the direction in which he'd been going himself.

The light from the tall, narrow windows was wan and grey, the fading sun too weak to pierce the cloud cover which was rolling over the sky. He bent, a dagger ready in his right hand in case it was a ruse, and turned the near-corpse over slowly.

More blood, welling from fresh sc.r.a.pes on the face, crimson on white-indigo-black-violeted skin, and red blood on the broken mouth. She looked at him with purpled, puffed eyes.

"Finish it . . ." she whispered, slurred but distinct.

Too dark for Neyphile, too ragged, too grimed, the Fire-duke thought. This must be the hostage. Someone had sought to silence her: Goiias? But she was his bargaining-piece. Ottaviano had run past Gaston, bloodspattered and pale, an instant before Gaston had rounded the corner, and Gaston frowned to himself at the coincidence. But he would get the truth of it from her later, if she lived.

"Nay," he said, and used his dagger to tear a piece of cloth from his scarlet cloak, ripping a wider gash in her grimy s.h.i.+rt and pressing it hard against a freely-bleeding wound in her chest. A blooded knife lay under her.

Her eyes closed. Her breath slipped out slowly: she fainted, close to death. Prince Gaston pushed aside her hair, matted with blood, and saw no obvious head injuries.

382.

'Etizabeth "Sir?" called one of his men, Gallitan, and then ran forward up the hall, leading a squad of a dozen others.

"Captain Gallitan. Bring Gernan the surgeon. This woman's to be kept alive. Guard and tend her till Gernan's here. Keep a guard of two on her lest they try again."

"Yes, sir."

He left Gallitan there and went on with six of the men. Scuffling sounds came from both sides when he pa.s.sed the doors between this corridor and the main hali; there was fighting in the main hall around which the corridor ran, and Gaston disregarded it, confident that Captain Jolly would have it under control. The Fireduke had better prey than mercenaries in mind: Golias would be hereabouts.

A light exploded with a dull boom into the hall from a dark s.p.a.ce to the left, and it raced up the stairs which were thereby illuminated, a tall midnight-blue-cloaked figure running behind it. Gaston hissed with recognition and sprinted, following. The other was ahead, ahead by a length of stone, by a few turns. The soldiers fell behind, taken by surprise and unable to keep up. The Marshal raced up the stairs, afraid he had seen clearly what he saw by the fireball's light.

With a banging, smas.h.i.+ng sound, a draft of cold air flooded the stairway, fresh air from outside tainted with smoke. Prince Gaston took half a flight at a step in his rush to the last landing.

A door was no longer there. Burning splinters of wood were sprinkled around the guardroom which occupied the top of this ponderous square tower of the antique castle-There was another door open on the other side of the room, which led outside to the walk around the top. The wind wailed and mourned wordlessly through the opening.

He went out slowly, sword in hand. The wind had its shoulder to the tower and was pus.h.i.+ng him too, but Prince Gaston paid it no heed; he put his head beside the wall and frowned, listening. Straightening, he stalked to the corner, listened again, and then sprang around it, sword ready. Nothing there, not even the wind; this side was screened by the stone tower. He repeated the stalk and spring. Noth- Sorcerer and a (jentteman 383.

ing-no, a cry, from around the next corner, and blood on the stone here. The Fireduke took one breath and this time went slowly around the corner.

The wind which had ignored him on the one side and shoved him on the two others slammed into him here on the fourth, pressing him against the wall with its force. Gaston found breathing difficult in its powerful sucking drag and turned his head slightly, keeping an eye on the other two men on the tower.

They were fighting, not speaking, and Golias's face was to Gaston.

"Look behind you!" he cried to his opponent mockingly. "Death himself has come for you, Your Royal Highness!"

The man in the blue-black cloak gestured with his free hand, the one which did not hold the long slender pretty dark-red blade, and moved it as if to throw, and the wind gathered and punched Golias. He staggered.

Prospero, thought Gaston, and did but watch, crouching slightly.

Prospero growled something, forcing Golias into the corner with the aid of that blow from the wind, and Golias sneered.

"Where is she?" shouted Prospero.

"Dead," Golias said, and laughed, and he kicked out at Prospero, feinted, and threw a dagger with his left hand at Prospero's right eye. Prospero parried with the grace and economy Gaston had always loved to watch.

The dagger clattered into the wall and fell.

Golias used Prospero's evasion to evade Prospero and twisted and stepped-as quickly as the knife flew-to one side, along the crenelated wall, and he was no longer trapped.

But now Prospero's wind buffeted him to and fro as Prospero fought with him, making him slip and sending his blows awry, and Gaston watched, holding his breath, as Prospero started what Gaston could feel was a leadup to a killing strike.

Golias could feel it too, and he jumped back suddenly and threw his blade like a spear at Prospero, who beat it 384.

'Etizað aside as he lunged forward. It spun out, over the wall, seized by the wind to tumble end-over-end away and down, brightly flas.h.i.+ng in the thin sunlight.

Again Golias's quick heels saved him.

Gaston leapt forward to follow them around the corner in time to see the door dragged shut behind Golias and to see Prospero lose his grip on its edge and slam his fist into the door. Incipient death can give a man great strength against all the Elements, else Golias could never have closed it in Prospero's very face.

"Prospero!" cried Gaston, starting forward.

Prospero swung and glared once, a brilliant wild look, at Gaston and then stepped back. He swept his hand down, then up, clenching it, and a great blast of wind flattened the Fireduke against the wall as the door blew inward. Prospero ran in. Gaston was nearly suffocated in the screaming, howling wind that pinned him, and he tore himself free of it step by step, dragging himself along the stone, sc.r.a.ping his cheek b.l.o.o.d.y.

The room he entered, minutes after Prospero, was empty and quiet. As Gaston came to the door, the wind ceased as unnaturally as it had started. The splintered bar for the door lay in two pieces on the floor.

He looked slowly around, turning on his heel, and saw it: the remains of a table, blasted, fires flickering around it now and going out. Someone had left through a Way.

"Prospero," said Gaston, and sheathed his sword.

He went down the stairs then, briskly, back to the business of subduing the more mundane forces left behind and of securing the object of the battle, now a piece of its jetsam.

33.THE DUKE OF WINDS SAT FEEDING sticks to a feeble fire in a sheltered desert canyon. Wind tossed the stunted, contorted trees on the canyon's rim, but never reached him; the resinous little smoke-trail of the fire rose without smarting his Sorcerer and a (jentieman 385.

eyes. On the other side of the flames, Hurricane filled out his supper of oats with mouthfuls of gra.s.s, methodically reaped and chewed.

"All's not lost," the sorcerer-Prince said to the fire, or to Hurricane. " Tis no defeat: I live."

The horse looked, chewing still, at his master.

"I live. I have the Spring. I have still men, some five and a half thousand," the sorcerer said softly. "Aye, and time spins quickly from the Spring. That handful of thousands may be tripled or better in a score of years; I'll shape more- they'll make more themselves-'tis but a work for time, that, a natural work."

Hurricane took more gra.s.s, almost apologetically, and his gut rumbled loudly.

The sorcerer dropped a handful of twigs in the flames.

"I must-" he began, and halted himself. "d.a.m.ned smoke," he murmured then, and rubbed his eyes. "I must recover her body. Aye. Now what Gaston did there I care not; Golias in mutiny, no doubt. He'll know naught of her; she'll be another corpse-boy-clad amongst the men, poor fool. Will he fire them all? F this season ... fuel's not lacking thereabouts . . . 'tis hard to know. I'd best go quickly, seek her blood with mine: and my curse upon her murderer, his life shall pay for hers." He growled the words to the flames, and they danced up, a greater Fire manifest, and fell back again. "I'll send Ariel again," he concluded. "Then homeward wend: entomb her in mine earth-womb cave; 'tis time I better housed my books, and there was she made, so there tet her sleep."

Hurricane walked into the darkness. The gurgles of his drinking at the stream came to his master's ears.

The Prince poured wine from a skin into a battered wooden cup and drank it quickly. He had finished the whisky already. There hadn't been enough.

"And then the boy," he said to the fire thoughtfully. "The boy, and Odile."

He rested his head against the stone behind him and refilled the wine-cup.

" 'Tis a sorry setback," he decided then, "but the boy, 386.

*Elizabeth 'Wittey Sorcerer and a Qentteman 387.

aye, and Odile: with them to my aid, or even one, there'd be no question. I was o'ertasked, sorcerer and commander-general. They're both inclined to aid me, and she can be warmed to him again; she's a woman and a mother, her heart cannot be so hard against her own." He drank, sipping, his eyes thoughtful now and cool. " 'Tis mine by right," he said. "I've lost the field, but naught else do they hold but a brief victory. Avri), thou thief of thrones, why, thou knowest not even whence I came. Hast no clew to guide thee, no line to bind me. Tis more than marriage to Madana nor Palace politicking maketh a ruler o' the Well." He chuckled softly. "This Dewar's the nearest thing thou hadst, and wouldst not covenant with him-mine own blood against me, most potent indeed. Time have I, time's mine ally: in time the King's Bounds weaken; in time I'll bring young Dewar to my side; in time, Avril, thy dumb-show monarchy shall lose all support, insupportable. Lan-duc is mine by right, and shall be mine by deed, in time."

34.PRINCE PROSPERO LAY NUMB-HEADED AND SOUr-Stomached beside the ashes of the night's fire, his eyes closed. All night he had dreamt of his daughter, pursuing her through Lan-duc's streets, through the Tombs, from room to room of the Palace. He was ill and ill-rested, and the prospect of that day's work made him feel still more ill. He must hurry, though, back to Chasoulis, before her corpse was fired. He must haste to the funeral.

Suppose Gaston were still there, as was most likely. Pros-pero sat up slowly, swilled his mouth with water and spat into the ashes. Well enough. He could negotiate with Gas-ton, who was an honorable man above all. Gaston would not make difficulties about the girl's body going home, poor foolish maid, to have ended so after such a little life.

Prospero hefted the wineskin and found it empty. He took another mouthful of water, swallowed, and stood (leaning against the rock), then further wetted the ashes. Hurricane was at the stream, eating the local cress.

"Leave that lest it colic thee! I'll not physick thee for't, I'll leave thee in the knacker's yard, thou cur's-meat. Come!" and Prospero split his own ears with a whistle.

Horse fed, brushed hastily, and saddled, Prospero turned back to Landuc, Ley to Road to Ley, until the Rendlac hurried along beside the road to Chasoulis, reaching it at midday.

The fortress was still occupied, and a pall of pyre-smelling smoke lay along the river. Prospero and Hurricane halted in a grove of trees and Prospero concealed them, air and light curved round to guide eyes away. Riding on, down a slope to the road, the smoke and its unmistakable stink grew thicker. Patrols in Imperial uniform rode past Prospero; he kept to the shoulder and they saw nothing of him.

Following the rising road, leaving the trees, Prospero saw that the open area around and below Chasoulis was still covered with the Imperial Army's encampment. The Landuc standard flew over the fortress, and Gaston's, and three piles of logs laden with the dead blazed below the castle walls, beside the river.

"Too late, too late," Prospero whispered to Hurricane, and guided him away from the camp, to an empty, trampled area. There he sat and watched the flames and smoke and .;.. cursed himself, his haste and his slowness. He should not _ s bave fled the keep. He should have held his ground the ?' previous day, faced Gaston, demanded her body. Gaston ; might have tried to take him prisoner again, but might not, too. He knew Gaston well enough, he thought, to escape a free man with his daughter's corpse.

"Poor fool, my poor pretty fool." Prospero lowered his .;. head and closed his eyes. All his plans for her, her fetching f silly ways, her sweetness, her quiet happiness-annihilated j by false Golias. He should kill Golias; he would, but he **.= must return to Argylle now. There was no present leisure for a vendetta. Later he would have time, and he would take ^ time; a slow death for Golias. Yes.

388.

'Wittey Prospero turned Hurricane from Chasoulis and set off homeward.

The Tower of Thorns was caked with wet white snow along one side. The snow had changed to rain, and the rain was was.h.i.+ng the snow down the wall in sheets and sodden lumps. From time to time, within his cozy study, the sorcerer would see a heavy mess of snow pelt past a window while the rain rattled the panes on the other side of the round room. He sprawled in, or across, an armchair today, a proto-Map unrolled on his knees while he paged through sheets of equations and checked the Map against them.

There seemed to be an error in his measurements again. A once-strong streak of the Third Force arced in toward Landuc, beginning from far out in the Eddies. But the streak had grown steadily weaker with each subsequent regular measurement, and now it seemed to have moved and grown somewhat stronger again. There must be a mistake, but he was loth to think he had been so ridiculously inaccurate either in all the previous measurements or in the three he had made today and yesterday.

The rain and snow were punctuated by the low sound of Dewar grinding his teeth from time to time.

The afternoon wore on. The conclusion was inescapable: he'd erred. Either he had missed that second arc in the earlier measurements, or he hadn't put the earlier ones in the right place and there was only one.

"d.a.m.n!"

Dewar shoved his papers onto the floor and stomped off to have a gla.s.s of wine.

The incapability of the Emperor to maintain the Roads and Gates of Landuc meant that Prospero could not leave the place from the Gate he'd intended to use. Instead he must ride a day out of his way, find a Gate that would lead him onto the Road in entirely the wrong direction, travel another two days along three Leys, and then cut cross-country through a burned-out Eddy to another Gate to put him on his proper Road home. It was a prodigious, malicious waste Sorcerer and a (JentCeman 389.

of time. He cursed Avril with each fresh detour and cursed him afresh when he arrived at his Gate an hour past sunset, doomed thereby to loiter in the blasted Eddy for a day.

Foul-tempered, Prospero led Hurricane away from the Gate to a sheltered area of tipped rocks and piled boulders. The place was arid; he had seen no water at all here, and Prospero had rationed what he carried for himself and Hurricane. The Well being spa.r.s.e here also, Hurricane was growing weary and dispirited. Prospero called up a greenish ignis and by its light consulted his Ephemeris and Map.

"Water tomorrow," he told the horse.

Hurricane nodded and looked mournfully at his master over his feed-bag.

" Twill be good to be home," Prospero said. "A futile journey, this." He put the Map and Ephemeris away slowly. At home, there would be explanations, mourning. Then they must get on with life. Perhaps he would give that wench Dazhur an hour or three to cheer himself up. Freia hadn't liked Dazhur, he recalled. She'd said her friend Cledie was prettier. Had Freia not been a woman grown, Prospero might have suspected his daughter of inventing Cledie, whom Freia accounted perfect in all things. He'd never seen her; she kept to the forests, running wild with the people and half-people there.

A breeze whirled down and around Prospero.

"Ariel. I bade thee go-"

"Master, Master, I've found her!" Ariel became a shower of sand. "I found the Lady!"

"So have I; she lieth in Chasoulis's charnel-yard, mingled with her native Element. Dost mind my command ever so poorly?"

"Master, nay, she lives! She lives, Master! They have her yet, Master, I saw her sleeping."

Prospero, disbelieving, sat statuesque and frozen, then shook his head. "They keep her carcase unfired?"

"Nay, Master, no corpse she! I did see them take her up gently, and bear her from there, and I felt her breathing lightly."

390.

'Etiza&etfi "Wittey "And was this my command to thee?" Prospero demanded, suddenly enraged. Again he had been deceived, and he would open Golias's guts and see what rotted offal the man carried there.

"Nay, Master," admitted Ariel. The sand fell to the ground; the breeze became but a zephyr. " Twas on my way to do your bidding, Master, that I did see the Lady-you said she was dead-I thought you must wish to know otherwise-I sought you there, and found you not. Master. I go as you bade me."

The zephyr blew off westward. Hurricane turned his head and watched the wind go.

Prospero sat, staring at a point some great distance before him.

"Ariel!" he bellowed, Summoning with the word.