Kingdom Of Argylle - A Sorcerer And A Gentleman Part 5

He stood. "Come now. Let's feed thee and salve thy scorchings."

"How can you?" Freia's reddened eyes accused him. She wiped at her face and stayed seated.

Prospero sighed and sat again. He took her right hand in his left, pressing it. "It likes me little, Freia, but I cannot mend all that's amiss in the world. Yet what's amiss with A Sorcerer and a enteman 53.thee, can be mended." After a pause, "Hast been long from home," he said.

"Are they still here?" Freia asked, looking significantly at the clearings on the banks, the boats drawn up, the long-houses.

Prospero nodded. "Aye, they are here. I would no more send them from the place than I'd send thee. Less, indeed." He watched her face change, open heart-ache. "Freia," Prospero said, leaning toward her, "thou hast that which none other hath, my blood. Thou'rt mine own and there's none like thee. Dost compa.s.s the difference 'twixt thyself and these others I have made?"

Freia looked down at their clasped hands. He took her left hand also, holding them both between his now.

"Puss," Prospero said, pressing her hands, "I do love thee; art dear to me as only mine own child could be. Yet thou canst not have me all thine own, no more than the wind may blow only on one tree or the rain fall on one stone. Must share."

"There's too many of them," she whispered. "They're a, a herd."

"Thou hast not seen a group of men before," Prospero said, scenting victory. "They startled thee, I know; thou art likewise strange to them. Aye, they're many, but withal my concern for them is balanced by my love for thee, and thou'lt receive full measure of thy ent.i.tlement."

"Why did you make them? Wasn't I good enough?" Freia asked, looking up at him.

Prospero smiled at her. "Good? A flower fresh-budded hath more of evil or hatefulness than thou. Leave jealousy, lest it canker and corrupt thee. Good enough? I am pleased with thee; thou art made to please me. I made them to serve my purpose in ways beyond thee, in matters where I would not hazard thee. Sooner would I build a wall of blossoms than spend thee on such wholesale work as I undertake with them."

Freia gazed at him, perplexity in her face. "Then what do 54.Elizabeth "Wittey you want me to do. Papa? Why am I here? I'm no use to you. What should I do?"

"Do thou obey my bidding, and be of good cheer, and keep thy duty uppermost in thy thought," he told her. "Do as thou hast ever done, as a daughter ought, and thou wilt be ever near my heart."

Ottaviano, his lady, and his men arrived in the large chartered town of Peridot as the town gates closed, having pushed five miles further than kind usage of the horses and the spring-muddied roads would have permitted, and, Otto reckoned, leaving Ocher at least ten miles behind them, stranded in one of the far less hospitable villages through which their road had taken them that day.

Their feeling of safety died when Ottaviano selected one of Peridot's three inns and found that a large chamber had been reserved for Lunete. Otto asked how this came to be, and the landlord explained that a gentleman had bespoke it for her.

"What gentleman?"

"Put him down, Otto!'Was he a tall man with a blue-green cloak and a black staff?" Lunete interrupted.

"Yes," whispered the landlord. "He's out-sir-my lady-back soon now I daresay, sir-"

"I'll-be-blowed," Otto said, and apologized to the landlord in cash. Then he, his lieutenant, and his betrothed put their heads together.

"Third time's the charm," Lunete suggested, smiling despite Otto's glowering face.

"Charm, my left-" Otto interrupted himself. "This is the third time he's been right where we're going. Last night and yesterday afternoon, not to mention yesterday morning at the bridge. He's following us."

"Sir, we've got to get rid of him. He may be reporting to Ocher," Otto's lieutenant Clay urged.

Lunete said, "Ocher wouldn't have such a man working for him. Indeed, I don't think such a man would work for Ocher." Clearly she thought him too elegant to be a.s.sociated with the gross Baron of Sa.r.s.emar.

J? Sorcerer and a QentCeman 55."What do you think he is, then?" Otto snapped at her impatiently. "An eccentric n.o.bleman fond of walking alone? A wandering student? A bard with expensive habits and a long purse? Coincidentally bound for Lys, just as we are?"

"Would a spy reserve a room for me?" To Lunete, the answer was obvious. The spy would betray himself by snowing too much interest in her if he did that, and so no spy would.

Otto began to frame his own answer to this question and said instead, "I'm checking it over before you set foot in it."

"Do it now, please. I believe my head begins to ache."

They proceeded upstairs without further conversation, Otto carrying the small bundle that was her sole baggage. His humor was not improved by his discovery, on opening the door, of an unseasonal yellow rose in a slender gla.s.s vase on the table. Behind a screen waited a basin of steaming water strewn with rose petals, and the fire had pleasantly overcome the spring chill.

"Oh, lovely!" exclaimed Lunete, and brushed past him.

"Lu! There could be-"

She shook his hand off. "Otto, you're being very silly. I think you're jealous."

His jaw slackened; he gaped at her, taken off-guard by the accusation. "Sky above me! We're running from half an army, toward a war, and you think I'm jealous because this, this crazy rich vagrant is following us?"

"Yes," she said firmly, taking her baggage from him. "If you knock on the door in an hour and a half perhaps we'll have dinner together. Au revoir."

The door closed behind him.

Otto stood with his back to it, fuming, building up a good head of steam, and then growled deep in his throat on his way down to the public room.

There he was, talking with a well-dressed merchant in the common room. Ottaviano ignored him and had a mug of good dark beer until the merchant had left, with many courtesies, to join his fellows at table in a smaller room on the other side of the inn. There were few locals in the inn yet, 56 -=>.

and they were loitering at the counter. Otto ignored the stranger a few minutes more and then suggested to Lieutenant Clay that the men should go into the inn-yard and run through an hour of drill, to limber them up after the riding and keep them at peak readiness.

When his men, grumbling, had left the inn, Ottaviano walked up to the stranger, who was now reading by the fire in the early spring twilight, at his elbow a table which held a candle, a pewter plate of tidbits, a gla.s.s of red wine, and a bottle. Otto observed that he wore high black riding boots and clothing of good but not ostentatious cut and quality, displayed by a full, bluish-green cloak thrown back over one shoulder; the light showed gold on his dagger's pommel and his sword-hilt, and a very nice emerald pendant dangled from his left ear.

Ottaviano glared down at the stranger. "Who the h.e.l.l are you?" he demanded in a low voice.

"I beg your pardon," said the man, lowering his small black book. "Are you addressing me?"

Otto belatedly alerted his senses for nascent sorceries and locked his gaze on the other's. The guy might try another spell. If he did, Otto must disrupt it or avoid it.

"Yes, I am," Otto said softly. "Don't get cute."

"I have been called many things, but never 'cute,' " said the other coldly.

"1 believe you. You're tailing us, or me, and I find it very, very annoying, buster."

The sorcerer looked at the man leaning over him. The fellow plainly wanted to pick a fight. He thought he'd deny him the satisfaction of it. "You have an overrated opinion of yourself if you believe that, sirrah. I have no interest in you at all."

"I find that hard to believe, considering the number of times I've seen your face lately."

"Believe anything you like, by any means," said the other, indifferently.

"I'd also like your attentions to my fiancee to stop," Otto said.

Sorcerer and a (jentkman 57."You have confused me with someone else," the sorcerer decided, and raised his book again.

"I don't think so."

"You think?" the sorcerer muttered, and it took a few seconds for the insult to register.

Ottaviano reached for the sorcerer's wrist, but a slow, sticky resistance engulfed his hand. He tugged back at it. He couldn't free himself, and he realized he had been snared and immobilized by a protective spell-one he hadn't sensed in the slightest degree.

"I can leave you like that all night, you know," said the sorcerer, not lifting his eyes from his book.

"Where are you from? Noroison?" Otto whispered, cold seeping into his extended arm through his fingers. There was no one to see his odd position; the room was still empty.

"Yes."

Otto had intended the question sarcastically; he had expected any answer but that. "No s.h.i.+t."

This statement had no possible reply that the sorcerer could conceive. He reread the sonnet. He couldn't decide whether he liked it or not. The conceit was not novel, but the interesting way the poet had broken the meter in the concluding couplet- Meanwhile, Otto tried to free his hand again. No success, and he was numb to the shoulder. "Uh, look, if you don't mind, we should either finish this conversation-"

"We aren't having a conversation. You're swaggering and making an a.s.s of yourself. If I release you, you shall cease this buffoonery."

"You just happen to be going everywhere we're going."

"It appears so. Unfortunately. The journey becomes rather dull when one sees the same faces again and again."

"Where are you going?"

Silence.

"All right, your business. It's rather unusual to see anyone from Noroison around these parts."

The sorcerer glanced up, and Otto noticed that the man's eyes were a remarkably intense blue, even in the dim light.

58 -^.

"I suppose so. You'll speak of this to no one."

"Yes," said Otto, automatically it seemed, his mouth agreeing without consulting his thoughts.

"Excellent."

Ottaviano's hand flew back; he staggered off-balance for a moment, then walked away from the sorcerer without another word, ma.s.saging his arm.

Noroison. That put the wind up Otto, left him cold long after his arm was flexible and sensate. Was it possible? One of the legendary bogeymen, here: not far from Landuc and the Well itself. How had he crossed the Limen, King Panur-gus's sorcerous screen between cold, ancient Phesaotois and burning, younger Pheyarcet? Had that outermost Bound begun to weaken, after the King's death, as the Well had faded and drawn inward? Otto pushed that question aside for more immediate worrying.

The stranger was probably a spy, and certainly a sorcerer, as all the people of Noroison were reputed to be. He was not spying on Otto personally, but on things in general. Otto's doings, however, would form part of the spy's stock in trade, and Otto thought he objected as much to that as to the attentions to Lunete.

Yet there was pitifully little that he could do about the man. Killing him outright, considering the command of sorcery he'd demonstrated so offhandedly, would be difficult. He was protected and wary. Otto wasn't so foolish as to get himself into a sorcerers' duel.

Stepping out the stableside door into the damp spring twilight, Otto folded his arms and leaned against the wall, scanning his surroundings automatically, longing in vain for tobacco or anything smokable. His hand, in his pocket, found his special red-handled folding pocket-knife. He took it out and began whittling a twig of wood he picked up from under his feet, making it into a spiralling screw-shape. The thuds, grunts, shouts, and clas.h.i.+ng of his men's practice session came from a paddock behind the inn, homey sounds.

A sorcerer, travelling alone and inconspicuously. It occurred to Otto that this could even be long-silent Prince Sorcerer and a Qentfeman 59.Prospero, t.i.tled the Duke of Winds; in which case Otto thought he would like to know where Prospero was going and why.

The door rattled. "There you are," Lunete said, smiling at him.

"Here I am." His irritation over the sorcerer was balmed by Lunete's conceding to seek him. Ottaviano folded his knife away.

"Are you awaiting an a.s.signation of honor, sir?"

"I was awaiting a brilliant idea, but I think the odds of one visiting me just now are low. I'll accept your briHiant smile instead," and he smiled back at her.

"I was afraid you and that fellow would have brought the building down by now," she said, dropping the courtly tone to match him.

Otto considered asking her to make herself agreeable to the stranger, thereby to try for more information. He reconsidered. The man had already taken too much notice of Lunete.

"Did you find anything out about him?" Lunete asked, interrupting the thought and slipping her hand through his arm.

"How did you know- No. Yes. In fact I did."

"Being . . . ?"

"He-" and Otto's tongue froze.

Lunete waited politely.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h!" he exclaimed, regaining command of his vocal cords and realizing what had happened.

"If you keep calling him names like that, he'll get really annoyed, Otto," Lunete said, sighing.

"He's-" and Otto found he couldn't tell her what had been done to him either. He gurgled incoherently. "I'm going to break his ribs bone by bone," he gasped.

Lunete stared at him in alarm, took his shoulders, and shook him slightly. "What's wrong? What's wrong?"

Otto, breathing slowly and hard now, commanded himself to calm down. There was no point in raging like this. He'd been bagged as neatly as any coney could be, a geas slapped on him to tie his tongue and lock his throat when 60.'LtizaBetd Itfittey he tried to speak of the traveller being a sorcerer from Noroison. Humiliating, it was, and infuriating. He knew just when it had been done, too: when the other had said, "You'll speak of it lo no one." And done so well Otto hadn't even suspected it.

The subtlety and force of the sorcerer's workings were impressive. Otto had felt nothing of them, though they had seized him and settled on him while he was wary of just such measures. There were few, or no, sorcerers so able in Phe-yarcet, and none in Landuc, a lack due to the late King's and now the Emperor's vigorous discouragement of the Art. Who could he be? The Well, nearly inaccessible after King Panurgus's death, was supposed to be banned to new initiates-a ban that could be evaded, Otto knew, but still- "Otto?"

"I'm all right, Lu."

"You didn't look it." She still stared into his face, but took her hands from his shoulders. "You looked ready to choke."

"I'm all right now. Just a-spell." Otto smiled to cover his dismay. "I think I'll stay out of that guy's business. No point messing with a strange magician when we've got a war to worry about." Could the Emperor have bargained with a new sorcerer? But this wasn't the time to consider that problem. Lunete came first.

"I'm glad you've changed your mind," she said, and squeezed his hand, pleased that he'd dropped the quarrel. "Come up for dinner."

After their meal, Lunete allowed Otto a single chaste kiss on her hand before closing and barring her door for the night. He bowed, smiling, over the hand, and they played their customary quest ion-game: "How long, my lady?"

"Four weeks, five days, and six hours," she replied, smiling also.

"It gets longer every day," he muttered, straightening. At times there were disadvantages to being a gentleman.

"It does not."

"It will take infinitely long, madame, for first we must live Sorcerer and a Qentkman 61.halfway until then, then half the remaining time, then half what is left again-"