Kingdom Of Argylle - A Sorcerer And A Gentleman Part 50

"I c-c-can't," she sobbed, s.h.i.+vering. "Where's P-P-Papa? W-why isn't he h-here?"

He gave it up. "Come along then," he told her, not unkindly, and began talking to the fire. She huddled in a ball Sorcerer and a QentCeman 411.

of misery out of the rain; her body stiffened, so that when he told her to stand she couldn't. Dewar picked her up and jumped into the fire.

Gaston's bellow of rage was still ringing from the wet walls of the Palace as he ran in his s.h.i.+rt and a half-laced pair of breeches out the terrace door after the fleeing sorcerer and hostage. Guards followed him. He barked orders at them in the wet dark, took a torch from one, and raced on after the two. His fury at the girl's escape-she must have been shamming, shamming weakness and illness-overpowered thinking until his boot came down on a fresh pile of horse manure and he skidded and fell, vainly trying to keep his balance on the wet gra.s.s.

Cursing, picking up his failing torch and puffing on it once so that it flared, Gaston started off again, seeing now hoofprints in the thin slush. If he listened, he could hear the horse pounding ahead of him into the groomed and dormant garden. The marks on the lawn were easy to follow. He ran, pursuing the horse through the wild wet night by the streaming torchlight, farther into the garden. Dewar, he thought, must be making for the Emperor's Ride, the forest area beyond the gardens; there were two Gates along the Ride, both guarded, but Dewar's sorcery could foil the guards' opposition.

But the horse wove and wandered, and Gaston chased it back through the gardens and, strangely, toward the Palace again. A feint?

No. He came upon the horse suddenly. He had cantered to a halt and was drinking at a fountain's rain-filled basin; the light made the animal shy, but Gaston clucked and spoke gently and the horse let him take the bridle; ruefully, Gaston stroked his neck.

"Oldest b.l.o.o.d.y trick in the book," Gaston said to him.

The horse snuffed at Gaston's chest. He was a handsome black-dappled grey; fine, but small compensation for the futile course Gaston had just run. The Fireduke led him to the Palace and met three guards, who were diligently searching, but not sure what for.

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'E&za&etfi "Prince Prospero, sir," one answered promptly.

"Nay! 'Twas the sorcerer Dewar. And the girl. Look for footprints. She's not strong; they cannot be far." Gaston began directing the men. He sent the horse to the stables with one.

An hour later he called off the search. Dogs had led them to the Royal Tombs, to Prospero's own tomb where a fire smoldered outside the pillared portico. A sopping blanket from Freia's bed lay in a corner of the porch; the dogs pawed it eagerly.

"d.a.m.n," Gaston said, not loudly.

He returned to the Palace and went to his apartment to repair his clothing, but his valet told him that the Emperor wanted to see him at once, and Gaston went accordingly at once to the private royal quarters. Wet, smeared with gra.s.s, dirt, and dung, he was an unwelcome bearer of an unwelcome report.

"Where's the girl?" the Emperor demanded.

"Gone," Gaston said. "It was Dewar. I saw him fleeing. Tis clear how 'twas done; he scaled a rope to the window and prised the grating, broke the panes, and went down again with the girl. The grating fell. I heard it and looked out to see them running."

"You heard nothing of his prying and breaking?"

"I slept," Prince Gaston pointed out, "in another room, and the storm was loud, the window shuttered. I heard naught." He looked coldly, levelly at Avril, daring him to fault Gaston's vigilance.

The Emperor considered: should he blame Gaston for this breach, convict him and put him down for good? There were so few weaknesses in Gaston's character and conduct, it might be folly not to use this. The Fireduke served without deference, which bothered his brother. The Emperor did not trust the prevailing wisdom that Panurgus's eldest son cherished no ambitions for the throne. Gaston had made no move toward it when Panurgus died, although he had had wide support and was the obvious first choice; despite his b.a.s.t.a.r.dy, Panurgus had always favored him. The Emperor had never gotten more than "It does not suit me" from Sorcerer and a Qentkman 413.

Gaston by way of explanation. Yet he served, and served ably, quietly leading the Empire's armies, his support unwavering through the first uncertain decades of the Emperor's rule. Without him Landuc would have splintered in factions, for his support kept Herne and Fulgens far from the throne.

"We suppose it's possible," the Emperor said, gracelessly yielding the point with a glare. "How the h.e.l.l did he get in without being seen or heard? Where were the guards? And that d.a.m.ned lying Oriana-she said her Bounds couldn't be broken."

"Dewar is a sorcerer," Gaston said.

"There's a guard on that terrace. Are they blind? Dead?"

"True," Gaston said, and frowned. "I did not see the guards there. I'll inquire, or rather ask Herne; the Palace guards, as you know, are his men, and I would not intrude in his domain."

"You chased them, you said-where did they go?"

"I pursued as soon as I saw them, but they were fresh and e'en horsed; they rode some small distance, but dismounted. I saw't not, following the horse's prints at a distance, and followed the horse still. They pa.s.sed a Way-fire. The dogs trailed them to Prospero's tomb and we found the coals there."

The Emperor hissed an obscenity. "It shall be razed," he snarled.

Gaston shrugged. It would be wise, he thought, to distract the Emperor before he made some dangerous vow of destruction. "She is gone from our hands," he said, "and now 'twere best consider what we'll do next."

"True," the Emperor said. He sat in a high-backed red brocaded chair, but did not offer a seat to Gaston, who leaned on the flame-carved gold-leafed mantelpiece, drying the backs of his s.h.i.+ns at the fire. "He'll be back," the Emperor said, "ready to concede for her."

"Do you think so?"

"Do you think not?" the Emperor said. "You saw them."

"Prospero does set his plans with care," the Fireduke said. "He may refuse, plan to rescue her later. We discussed 414.

'EtizaBeth this ere now, and you said 'twas what you expected; I agree still, for 'tis very like his craftiness. We did not meet o'er what the best counter would be." The Emperor had favored executing the hostage. Prince Gaston had opposed it.

"She's his. As long as we have her we have him. He'll be back to get her, in order to get the noose off his neck. Even if it means crippling himself, he'll free her, because she's his heir, she knows a lot about him, and sooner or later she'll be broken and talk." The Emperor smiled, thin-lipped and hard-eyed. "He can't afford to leave her." He stared at the flames a moment. "Of course it's possible that that Fire-blasted loose cannon of Ascolet's was doing it for Prospero. That Prospero hired him."

Gaston frowned. "Why might Prospero hire another to do something within his ability?"

"Maybe he's not as good as we think he is," the Emperor said. "He said he couldn't break the Bounds. Certainly he would have if he could."

The Fireduke was still unconvinced. "How was it done? I have not seen the room."

"Some sorcery; there's blood all over the place. We'll speak with Oriana about this-she swore it was unbreakable. Why would that little rat want the girl? To use her against him? Sorcerers feuding? It's more believable than sorcerers leaguing. Maybe he'll finish Prospero off for us."

" Tis dark, whether they be allied or no," Gaston said after considering the reasons. "Prospero and Dewar. They were opponents in our war, and Dewar made sorties against him-"

"And broke faith at the final battle. He was in with him, and still is. Yes. And for some reason Prospero couldn't come himself, sent the other- s.h.i.+t and sorcerers. We must quadruple the price on his head."

"I knew not he was made outlaw."

"Of course. As soon as he turned coat. We'll make the award such that one of his own will turn him in: Oriana, or that witch Neyphile, or maybe Ascolet, who seems to have an axe to grind with him himself. Yes." The Emperor smiled Sorcerer and a Cjentkman 415.

again. "And for now, Prospero is still defeated. Be thinking, Marshal, of ways to keep him thus."

Prince Gaston, taking this as dismissal, bowed slightly and squelched, flaking dried manure, toward his apartment. The Emperor's fearful hatred of Prospero marred his insight. Gaston thought Dewar might not be in league with Prospero; he might have abducted the girl for a hostage himself. Or for other reasons. Ottaviano had described their arrival and the way she had fought at Perendlac, his tune a mix of admiration and fury at the slaughter she'd accomplished aided by a huge bird. The young sorcerer and the old sorcerer's daughter might know one another well; they might even be allies, friends, lovers. Prospero might strengthen himself by wedding her to another in the Art, binding their fates together. Or maybe they were bound already, by blood-there were only Gaston's guesses for that. Yet he knew Dewar's heart was not yet crystallized in sorcery, as sorcerers' did, as Panurgus's had.

Changing his mind, Gaston turned from his own apartment and went instead to the rooms beside Freia's which he had used while he warded her. The connecting door was closed. He opened it and looked again at the dishevelled chamber. Hastily dressed, bundled in a blanket from the bed, out a broken window (a board over it now to keep the rain out) and down the wall on an insecure rope. Shamming, the Fireduke thought again, and a spark of rage flared.

The spark faded as quickly as it came. No. She could not have been feigning. He had touched the wounds himself, had fed her for the first few days, had seen the weakness and sickness that gripped her body and soul. She hadn't been dissembling illness, no more than she had dissembled when she saw Prospero.

Gaston closed the door quietly. Perhaps it was just as well she was gone, he thought. Her situation could not be worse than it was here. With a tremor of surprise, Gaston recognized that he was more than a little pleased at her escape. He had not liked having the girl prisoner. She ought to have 416.

'ECizaBetfi been received into the family, comforted, consoled; she was one of them by blood. Even if she were a prisoner elsewhere, if Dewar had captured her for some purpose of his own, it was in some way better for her to be prisoned by strangers than her own kin.

And, somehow, he was certain that she was no prisoner of Dewar's.

There was thunder outside. Freia, waking to it, pulled the pillow from under her head to over it. She hated thunder.

It rolled on and on, never stopping. She floated into an uneasy dream of storms, of Prospero raging at her for a misbegotten creature of coa.r.s.e and amoral appet.i.te, and then Prospero's wrath invoked monsters from the heaving earth at her feet and when she fell, they leapt upon her, bouncing on her face and head, thick scaled limbs choking her, mouths gaping foul-breathed in her face, and a tearing of claws in her belly- "Freia?" woke her.

The pillow was lifted tentatively from her face. The thunder rolled up and down. Strangely, the room was brilliant with light, dazzling her. She was panting, damp with sweat.

"Good morning," Dewar said.

The dream of storm and terror clung to her senses. "Isn't it raining?"

"No, that was in Landuc," he said, amused.

"What's that noise?"

"What noise?" He listened, then laughed. "The sea, Freia. The sea. Come see," he said, and he went to the window and opened the outer cas.e.m.e.nt. The white curtains filled with wind and swelled into the room, bellying around him. The room was white: white walls, white furniture, white bedding. Even the long loose nights.h.i.+rt she wore was white. "See?" he said, though she didn't get up.

Now the crash of the waves was audible, the hiss of sand, the roll of stone. Salt and moisture seasoned the air. "Oh." The sweat chilled her as it dried in the breeze.

He closed the window, smiling still, and returned to the bed.

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"Where's this?" she asked, pulling the coverlet to her chin.

"A place I have for stopping," Dewar said. "Nowhere very travelled. I like the sea."

"I don't," Freia said.

"Why not?"

"It's too big."

Dewar shrugged mis...o...b..fully. "How are you?"

How was she? Sick-she was sick. Her body was churned and disoriented, unwillingly changing around her. She was afraid. She was alone. The only cure for all must be found in Prospero. "I need to get home," she said.

"I can help you with that. Gladly." Dewar sat on the very edge of the bed, looking intently at her. He wore snug bottle-green trousers and a voluminous blue-green s.h.i.+rt that flowed and fell from his arms and shoulders in liquid ripples. In the white room, he glowed with vitality.

Uneasy, Freia edged away. The claws of her dream became sickness curdling in her stomach.

"Where's your home?"

"Why do you want to help me now?" Freia asked him.

He shrugged.

"You just left me there," she said in a low, haunted voice.

Her eyes held no mirth, no trust, no opening for him to build a conversation, and her words were blunt, forestalling badinage. "I didn't know you were in trouble," he said honestly.

Freia swallowed hard.

"I'm sorry," Dewar said. He looked at the cold white floor. "I'm sorry you-you got hurt. I didn't know you were in trouble. The gryphon was there." He wasn't to blame for her injuries, he told himself; yet he knew they two had gone into that fight companions, and he had saved himself and left her behind. A sorcerer should feel no qualms, but the sorcerer was losing the argument-had lost it when Ot-taviano had told Dewar of Prospero's daughter.

"How can I-" Freia began, and stopped. How could she trust him? What reason was there? He did nothing without self-interest. He wanted something now. s.e.x? Her body hurt 418.

all over and she felt as if she might vomit at any moment. Freia shuddered. No. "What do you want?1' she asked. "Why do you want to help me?"

"I want to take you home," he said. "That's all I want."

"But why?"

Dewar met her eyes again. Fear, distrust, pain: written in lines and taut shadows on her face. "I'd like to tell you that when we get there," he said, "because it's an odd and personal thing. I don't want to tell you now because-well, honestly, I don't think you'd believe me. But you will when I tell you there."

"1 don't have anything," she said. "I can't give you anything."

"I don't want anything from you but for you to let me escort you home."

The sea boomed and crashed. It sounded as though it were battering down wails. Freia's head ached. Her stomach was knotted, nauseated. Her body burned around her.

"You wanted me to take you to Prospero,'1 she said.

"Yes-"

"You left me there," Freia said. "You went away in the fire and left me."

Dewar couldn't look at the deep, dark smudges of her eyes, the chalky pallor of her face. Something unpleasant quivered in the air around her.

"You won't help me," Freia whispered, drawing her knees up and hugging them, watching him, on her guard. "You'll leave me somewhere again."

The burn of her gaze on him was too much, the emotion under her hoa.r.s.e voice too naked. Dewar stood. "I'll get you something to eat," he said, and he fled out of the room.

There were two people whose intelligence and discretion Prospero trusted so highly as to take counsel with them. He considered it particularly necessary now, given the terms which had been presented to him by Avril. The net was that for his daughter's liberty he would pay with his own.

He was aware that his thinking on this could not be unbiased, and he was also aware that the agreement be- Sorcerer and a gentleman 419.

tween himself and Landuc must affect his fledgling world forever, coercing its tender new growth into some forced and artificial old form. The Emperor had acted greatly amazed when Prospero said he must take counsel on the proposal. Prospero had insisted, though, and had left the Palace and Landuc without seeing Freia again-sparing them both, he thought.

On tireless Hurricane, untiring himself for most of the journey, he made his way through the Gates and Road of Pheyarcet, leaving the settled, fertile areas for the barren zones. Panurgus had controlled and directed his fiery Well; the center flourished at the expense of these, devouring them in a sense. The barriers the King had set up, the Gates and others, kept most of the flow of life-feeding energy from the Well from the outer worlds, and thus the inner regions burgeoned with the vitality of an area four times their size. Life of a sort persisted outside the favored area, but the places it had to dwell in were harsh and hostile.

Prospero, since becoming aware of this, had ever been of two minds as to its wisdom. Certainly there were areas naturally spa.r.s.e in life. To create such intentionally, though, required a ruthlessness Prospero knew he could muster yet misliked to exercise. Such a decision, in a way, faced him now.

As Hurricane cantered fluidly into a grey desert unbroken by movement other than his own, Prospero on his back sounded his future. He must preserve what he had found; it must be his, must remain his. Freia had been a folly of weakness. He regretted her now. She endangered something unique and irreplaceable. Of course she was unique herself; but he had a son, he could sire more children, and where there had been one there might be another. The great good fortune of finding and claiming, without compet.i.tion or objection, the Spring, a Source different in nature from either other power in the world, would never come again. In Pheyarcet, the fiery Well was in the control of the ruler of Landuc-presently the Emperor was not competent to do much with it, yet even without consciously exercising himself he manipulated it. In Phesaotois, the power of the Stone 420.

'Elizabeth Sorcerer and a Qentteman 421.

was divided by sorcerous adepts among themselves into territories and domains, and woe be to he who trespa.s.sed.

The Spring was Prospero's, only Prospero's.