Kingdom Of Argylle - A Sorcerer And A Gentleman Part 53

"Cannot uphold your side," Gaston insisted. "The bargain's void ere it's made. An 'a come, tell him she's fled."

"This is not a matter on which we have requested a second opinion, Marshal."

" 'Twill bring ill to the Empire if you press on, Avril. Prospero'd not yield without some plan to repay evil for evil, to you and the Empire. Tis well, 'tis needful that he be defeated, but not thus, not with a lie and a false vow." Gaston, not waiting for permission to leave the Emperor's presence, turned away in disgust and strode toward the door. It opened as he approached. Herne stood there, horsy and smelling of his cold dry forest.

"Prospero comes," Herne said, and he showed his teeth in a smile.

37.THEY SAT ON OPPOSITE SIDES OF the white-scoured table, and Freia ate nothing as Dewar wolfed down his long-delayed luncheon-little sh.e.l.lfish steamed quickly in a hot pan in the coals and b.u.t.tered, a salad of sharp greens, toasted bread. The day's stresses and sorcery had left him hungry, though he forbore to point this out to his sister, who sat with her head in her hands.

He finished with hard-skinned fruits from the low bushes around the house, slicing them neatly and eating them by 436.

'ZCizaBetfi itfittey scooping the seeds and pulp into his mouth. Red juices flowed.

"Freia, you must eat something."

"I don't want to."

"Why not?" he probed.

"I'm tired of vomiting."

She had a knack for answers which were unanswerable, thought Dewar, and looked at his fruit with less relish.

"I thank you for your patience with my appet.i.te," he said, rising and going to the kitchen pump. He washed his hands and dried them, watching her sidelong.

Freia said nothing.

Dewar sat down opposite her again and put his hands on hers. "Lady," he said, "tell me your desire."

Her hysteria had faded. "I want to go home," Freia said listlessly. "But truly I should not. He will be so angry at me. I wasn't supposed to leave at all. Now- He was angry before, but he-he won't-like me." She shook her head.

"Why should he be angry with you?" Dewar wondered. She had followed Prospero everywhere, trying to help him. How could the sorcerer Prince take such devotion amiss?

Freia shook her head again, not looking at him, staring at the wooden table. "He won't want me the way I am now. I should just take a knife and gut myself." Her hands became fists.

He pulled her hands away from her head and made her look up at him, sad-eyed. His heart seemed to move in his breast, and she, tired and grief-bitten, in an instant became unbearably precious and dear. Dewar knew dishonored women sometimes chose death. He would not let her do that. "You're not going to die."

"I want to. How could you have any idea-how could anybody-I didn't want-I don't-" She moved away from him jerkily. Her voice rose; she was nearly shouting again, the edge of wiidness returning.

"Freia," Dewar said, and he went around the table and sat beside her on the bench, conscious of the cutlery lying casually on the table and dresser and of how fast she could Sorcerer and a Qentteman 437.

move. He took her hands again, but lightly. "It is your will to return home."

"He won't want me there."

"Your will, Freia. Not his. And don't try to guess his will-"

"He's always saying that, too," she muttered, and pulled her hands a little away from his, but not far; their fingers still touched. "You're much like him."

"What's he like?"

"Much like you," Freia said wearily. "Self-centered, unreliable, kind on a whim, and ill to cross. I suppose all sorcerers are like that."

Dewar frowned. "You're quick to d.a.m.n, aren't you."

"I guess all Landuc people are like that," Freia mused on in an undertone, half to herself.

"Freia," Dewar said, "if you have nothing good to say about me or anyone else to my face, when I have been expending considerable effort to help you-"

"I don't need to get home to Prospero," she said. "I can take care of myself anywhere. I know the plants, the animals."

"You're not yourself, Freia," he pointed out. "And you'll not be well-"

"I'll be fine; there is an herb there I need to-to be myself, and I know where to find it," she said.

Under standing substantially redirected Dewar's thoughts. He drew a breath and savored it. "Herbs," he said. He was moving onto unfamiliar ground; he had never studied more than rudimentary medicine or surgery, but he had travelled widely and he thought he knew her better than he had. "Perhaps I can help you find the herb you want-to be yourself," he said, using her phrasing delicately.

Freia stiffened. They regarded one another, combatants or allies.

"What's this herb called?" he asked.

"Mayaroot," she said.

"Mayaroot?"

"It's not a root truly, it's a fungus that grows on the roots 438.

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Sorcerer and a (jentCeman 439.

of old veil-trees in the seaside marshes," Freia said.

"Why do you want it?"

"If you must know," she said, drawing away from him, "to bring a miscarriage."

Dewar nodded slowly. "Are you certain of it? Certain that it will work?"

"Two women-" Freia began, and she stopped herself.

"Trust me," he said, frustrated by this slow eking, word-by-word, of pieces of stories. He seized her shoulders. "I will not abandon you, I swear it. I will help you. I have not brought you so near me to leave you. I will not see you suffer a day longer if I can help you. I'm no herbalist, but I know plants vary in potency. The mayaroot might fail you. There are better remedies. Trust me."

Stiff and withdrawn at first, Freia relaxed as he spoke. "Trust you," she repeated softly.

"Please."

"I trust you."

Dewar moved toward her and embraced her, grateful. "Thank you," he whispered, and whispered it again when he felt her arms go around him, her weight fall against him. With her trust, he could undo what had been done, erase the vile evidence of his own failure and restore her to happiness. He could set all right for her, with her trust.

"Two women," she whispered to the wall, her voice creaking, "they were with child, and they were gathering crabs, and they ate the crabs with mayaroot. It made them sick. It was terrible. They were very sick, and then they bled some days, and they-their pregnancies ended. Another woman-Cledie-had had the crabs unseasoned by the mayaroot, and a few men, and none were ill save those women and a man who ate the mayaroot, and Prospero said it was poison."

Dewar nodded. "I see. Freia, I can take you to an Eddy I know, a city where they have skillful physicians, where pregnancies are ended by women in better-kinder-ways than that, without sickness or long bleeding. You will not be hurt or blamed or abused. You will be made comfortable and no one will harry you as I do. You needn't wander about looking for unreliable fungi. 1 will take you there if you wish." He hadn't been there in thirty Well-years; he trusted it wouldn't have altered greatly, being a stable, slow-spinning backwater of the Well's stream-and if it had, he'd find her another. There were women everywhere, in every world, and in every world some of them didn't want to bear children.

She turned this over in her thoughts slowly, examining all sides of it. "Dewar," she said, straightening and taking his hands in hers, "please promise me a thing."

He pressed her hands.

"Promise me you will never talk of this with anyone," she said. "I mean anyone, Prospero included-"

"I swear," he said, interrupting her, "by the blood of my body, by my life, that I will not speak to anyone of the rape nor of your abortion, unless you expressly should desire that I do so. Shall I exclude you from the oath?"

That intense, burning look flashed up at him again. "Don't you ever dare throw it up to me."

"I will not mention this to you to shame you, to blame you, or to impugn you. And indeed when it is done it will be done, and the ill of it less than a b.a.s.t.a.r.d rapist's b.a.s.t.a.r.d brat would bring." His voice softened, lowered; he stroked her hands. "AH shall be well, Freia."

"I don't think so. I don't think anything can ever be right again."

"Yes, it will. And you will too. You will. You will."

Dewar calculated a Way to the Eddy-world, a finicky process, and took Freia there through a Way-fire. The place had changed little. He guided her through the busy streets full of lights and sounds and people all moving faster than Freia could comprehend; he led her one place, another, another where they rested, then to a harshly-lit soft-colored building as big as a city in itself; he lied and half-lied and explained for her, for she spoke none of the language, and his tongue and ear were tuned by the Well. Throughout, Freia continued sickly. Dull-eyed, hunched into herself like an ailing animal, flinching at the strange noises and ill from 440.

'E&zabetfi Itfittey Sorcerer and a (jent(eman 441.

the reeks of sterility and industry, she made no objection when Dewar announced that they would stay a few days longer in the Eddy.

"You need rest," he told Freia. "They said you'll feel more like eating. Do you want something to eat?" He'd brought her back to the rooms he had hired, knowing she would be unable to travel at once. One wall was all windows, looking into a courtyard with a fountain as tall as the five-storey building, the water pouring down and down, rus.h.i.+ng and tumbling, raising a fine mist. Sometimes the wind frisked and their window became wet, as with sudden rain.

Freia whispered, "I wish I understood what they were saying. Why do I understand you and not them? Why didn't they understand me?"

"I have pa.s.sed the Fire of the Well. It is a pity I did not think to send you through it while we were in Landuc; certainly that's one place they wouldn't have looked for us, though the tomb was also good." Dewar smiled, a quick flash of pride. "It's inconvenient, but in a way it's also convenient, madame; no one can ask you awkward questions you don't want to answer."

She nodded and hugged herself.

Dewar sat down on the curly-armed, high-backed sofa beside her. "How are you feeUng?" he asked cheerfully. "Better?"

"I don't know yet."

He nodded and examined a book of unreadable text and colorful pictures which had been given to Freia by the brisk, kind woman in blue who had taken charge of her during the oddly swift and painless procedure of removing something which had been added slowly and with painful violence.

"You should eat something," Dewar announced.

"Do you ever not think about food?" she wondered.

Irritated, he said, "Then don't eat, starve yourself."

Freia squeezed her elbows to her sides. She felt unballasted, light-headed and detached from her body. She looked at the incomprehensible book and it reminded her, as all books tended to, of Prospero bent over books, writing in tiny handwriting, and she was suddenly blindingly home-sick for the life they had led before he had started his war. If only she could go home and let him feed her golden baked-root soup or (her mouth watered) a fresh-cut piece of liver from a young elk, seared quickly, with pungent tiny thready mushrooms. She licked her lips. And then to curl up in her own bed beside the painted screen with trees and mountains on it, and on the other side the lamplight glowing on Prospero's creamy leaves of close-written parchment- "Freia?" Dewar said softly.

She shook herself. "Yes?"

"Are you all right?" He was peering at her closely, his forehead furrowed. "You looked odd for a moment."

"I was just thinking of-thinking of-of home," she said, and she thought of the two chairs and the winged table and the trim little boat for going up and down the river, of sun through the trees in the afternoon and mist on the river in the morning.

It had changed since then; Prospero had crowded the place with people, cut down trees, made them into walls, though she had argued with him tearfully. "It must change, Puss," he had told her again and again. "It is time for . change." She had altered not a stone of his plans.

Would he listen to her now? She wanted to tell him what had happened and to scream at him for not hearing her call to him when he had left first Perendlac and then Chasoulis, for leaving her in Landuc when she wanted to go home and sit with her head on his knee and tell him everything and hear him say- "Freia, listen to me."

Freia blinked. Prospero's face swam and blended in Dewar's.

"If you want to go home, you must tell me about the place so that I can find it in my Ephemeris. Tell me what it is called."

"Argylle." Argylle. Prospero had shouted it, calling everyone to him in the confusion of fire and darkness, and he had waited for everyone, all of them, all but her. Argylle.

442.

'EfizaBetd "Freia, I can't find an entry with that name, or anything like it." Dewar's voice had an edge now. "Tell me other names."

"Other names?"

They stared at one another, she blank, he frowning.

"If you will not cooperate," Dewar said, after a long silence, "then either you will never return home or I will have to find the place myself."

Freia's blankness became another kind of emptiness. "You can't take me there," she said. "You said-"

Dewar held up a hand, turning away, scowling. "Very well. / said. You have not said anything helpful about finding the place. I have been thinking about this problem since the last time it arose. Have you always lived, or almost always, there?"

"Yes," she whispered.

He nodded. "I shall find it with sorcery, and I shall require your cooperation to the extent of letting some blood in a phial, which I shall use for the work."

"Blood?"

"Moreover, I require apparatus which is not here, and I will not take you to the place where I keep my tools. I shall leave you here, prepare the sorcery, and return." His expression was cold. "If you will not trust me with more information, then you must trust me to leave you while I work."

"You're leaving?" Freia grasped at this and closed her eyes. She had known it would happen again. All the whirling skies and alien lands between here and home- "Freia," he said, suddenly gentle again, and his arm was on her shoulder. He was pulling on her arm, taking her hand, holding it so tightly it nearly hurt. "I'll be back. I shall not abandon you. You must sleep. Come now, he down. You're tired," said Dewar, a soft, persuasive voice breaking her reverie again. "You must rest while I'm gone. I'll not be long. You must rest. Sleep now."

Freia let him plump up a pillow, allowed herself to be reclined on the sofa and covered with Dewar's discarded cloak. He was fumbling with her hand again. She drew it up to her cheek, to pillow her head-odd, there was a little Sorcerer and a gentleman 443.

bandage on her thumb, soft white cloth.

"I'll be back directly," Dewar said again, patting her shoulder.

Freia nodded and turned on her side, drawing her knees up and closing her eyes as the door closed behind him. She had wished herself home again and again while imprisoned by Ottaviano, Golias, and the Emperor. Now home came to her with practiced ease. She drew the image of the door before her mind's eye and opened it.

The walls were coming along. Freia stopped on the hilltop and looked down at the curve of stones, built on a line she had ploughed with a flower-wreathed stick, guided by Pros-pero's instructions and a long rope made of braided gra.s.ses. The breaks for the gates were more evident now, three of them. The wall went down to the river-edge but did not cross; the bridges Prospero planned would be difficult work, requiring large barges, not yet built, to set the piers in the swift current of the narrow, deep river. The great blocks of stone would come from the Jagged Mountains, from the same ugly quarries that now provided stone for the wall-works, and be dragged and floated to the construction site. She knew as much about it as he did; she had sat mouse-quiet listening hopelessly to his plans for the city and its appurtenances for hours.