by David Drake
“How in the world did you arrange to meet Guntram?” I asked. “He doesn’t leave Dun Add but once in a blue moon.”
It wasn’t the most important question, but it was sure the one that popped into my mind first. The only time Guntram had left since I met him was when he trekked all the way to Beune to convince me to come back to the capital. I’d given up the notion of becoming a Champion after I’d left Dun Add the first time. When I’d got to know Guntram better during the year since, I realized just how big a thing it was that he’d done for me.
And thank the Almighty that he had.
Guntram buys artifacts from prospectors who find them in the Waste. the Beast said. I placed a device where a human who sells to Guntram regularly searches. The device guided him to where I waited.
“Was this a Not-Here device?” I said, trying to get my head around what the Beast had just told me.
I built the guide myself, he said. I am of what you call Not-Here. If Guntram was the person I needed, then he would be able to use it…as he did.
I swallowed. “Where is Guntram trapped?” I asked. “I’d appreciate any help you can give me, but I’ll get him out myself if I have to.”
I do not know, the Beast said. This human—
A portion of the shiny blackness suddenly extended toward the Envoy. She didn’t flinch as I might have done.
“—came to me and said that Guntram had sent her, but she could not inform me how to return to the place she had come from.
I looked at the woman. Before I snarled an angry demand, I remembered what I had seen through the Envoy’s eyes: an infinite twisting of paths. I couldn’t have described a course I’d taken through that tangle; that made me think about another question.
“You,” I said to the woman. “Do you have a name?”
“I do not know my name,” she said. She shrugged. “I think I had a name once, but I do not remember it now.”
“Envoy, then,” I said, because that’s how I’d been thinking of her. “How were you able to find—” I gestured “—the Beast?”
“Master Guntram directed me when he put me out of my village,” she said. She was of ordinary height, probably five feet six inches, and looked plain without being ugly. I could think of thirty women in Beune that I would’ve described in the same words I’d use of her. “He had removed my connection, but the village had taken Master Guntram in my place.”
“The village had?” I said.
Our priests— the Beast said, and I felt a smile in his thought —tell us that there are cysts which are separate from all other places. Neither Here nor Not-Here. They are holy— the smile again —and my folk cannot enter them. I believe Guntram found a cyst and entered it in search for a treasure which to me is worth the afterlives of all my kin to the beginning of time. But he could not escape once he had entered.
I thought, “I see,” but I didn’t see, so the words didn’t reach my mouth. I suppose the Beast heard them anyway. If he did, he knew they were just a politeness to spread over my ignorance and worry.
I said, “What do I do now? To find Guntram and get him free?”
I do not know, the Beast said. The Envoy remained a silent figure. Her eyes didn’t even move between us as we spoke, unless we were speaking to her. I cannot even guess where Guntram is. I came to you, Lord Pal, because you are his friend, not because I thought you could find him.
I took a deep breath. The Beast was being honest. That was good, but it wasn’t comforting to hear.
I am capable of lying, the Beast said. But I do not lie.
I smiled, or anyway I felt the corner of my lip lift a trifle. “It’s pretty much the same with me,” I said. “I guess that’s why we get on. Get on better than people and Beasts generally do, anyhow.”
I turned to the Envoy and said, “Why was your village a cyst? Or how did it get to be a cyst, if that’s what it did?”
“I don’t know,” the Envoy said. Her voice, no matter what she was saying, was emotionless. She frowned and added, “I have a brother. He is a bandit but he hides with us. He came back with what he had stolen before the fur devoured the village.”
“Is your brother still in your village?” I asked.
“My brother is dead,” said the Envoy. Then, “His name is Arno.”
I thought I heard a tone of satisfaction in her voice at having remembered the name. Maybe she’d recover her memory enough to lead us to the place that Guntram was being held…but not soon, I guess.
How many humans live in your village? the Beast asked.
The Envoy looked at him. I wondered if she saw more than I did. “No one lives in the village,” she said. “The fur killed all of us. All of us but me.”
“Why not you?” I said, thinking about Guntram.
She shrugged. “Maybe it did kill me,” she said, her tone as calm as water in a bucket.
I rubbed my forehead hard, wishing that I could squeeze a useful thought into it. Perhaps in the morning.
“Sir…” I said to the Beast. “Unless you know something I ought to do, I guess I’ll go back to Dun Add. In the morning I might be able to find a note Guntram had left about where he was going. I hadn’t looked hard before because I just figured he’d be back.”
Take this, Lord Pal, the Beast said. A streak of blackness extended toward me with something round at the end. I was expecting it, so I didn’t flinch. It will summon me if you strike the center.
I took what looked like a disk of red jade. It was cold to my touch, but even without entering it in a Maker’s trance I knew that it was an Ancient artifact.
“What about her?” I said. Realizing how discourteous that was, I made a little bow toward the Envoy. “Ma’am?” I said. “What would you like to do?”
She met my gaze for the first time. I understood now why Lady Hippolyte had fled. There was nothing in the Envoy’s eyes; nothing at all.
“I do not wish,” she said.
I will take care of her, the Beast said. If I have more information, I will send her to bring us together again.
“All right,” I said. If he’d been human, we would have shaken hands. “I hope to see you soon.”
The Envoy guided me to Dun Add; then she turned back.
In the banquet enclosure the heavy drinking had begun. I met the attendant I recognized at the service entrance; he said Lady Hippolyte had gone off with Lord Boilleau, but that he could find me an even prettier girl if I wanted.
I went to bed alone, which was what I wanted. I slept in Master Guntram’s suite, as I’d been doing since May left.
CHAPTER 3
Business as Usual
Guntram’s suite—well, a room but a large one—is on the third floor of the palace, at the back where nobody has to go unless they want to. It isn’t on the way to anywhere else; off and on, Guntram puts a greeter at his door. The greeters are always harmless, but they’re likely to scare the daylights out of anybody who isn’t comfortable with Ancient artifacts.
Currently a bird sticks its head through the door panel when anybody pauses outside. It startled me the first time I visited Guntram after he set it up.
I had a cot in a corner of the room. I used it pretty often when Guntram was in Dun Add. We’d get working late on an artifact—partly me helping him, mostly me watching a master and learning; or maybe we’d just be chatting and I wouldn’t feel like going out of the palace and down the street to the house I rented.
With May gone and Guntram gone both, I’d moved into his room full-time. I did that for a couple reasons, but they all boiled down to the same thing: it meant less trouble for me.
I took my meals in the general refectory on the ground floor; the food was pretty good, and anyway it was a lot better than what Mom had cooked for me on Beune. We have a fancy cook in the townhouse, but May wasn’t here to go over the meals with him and I just didn’t care that much. I know when I’m eating good food; but if I’m not, it doesn’t matter.
I
didn’t sleep well the night after the banquet. I’d been up nearly an hour looking for any sign of where Guntram had gone when the bird at the door squawked to get my attention. The bird faced around and said, “Master, a woman named Maggie, the wife of your servant Baga, wants to come in.”
The bird was about the size of a night heron, but it was colored a glossy gray like moleskin and its beak had teeth. It stood in midair, its long-clawed feet resting two feet above the stone floor.
“She’s welcome,” I said, wondering what Maggie was on about. With Baga and the boat both gone, I’d left her living in the townhouse along with the cook and the pair of servants—a man and a woman, neither one with a lot to do even when I was in residence. May said we needed to have them, though, and it was all right with me.
The bird stuck its head back through the panel, then vanished as the door opened by itself and Baga’s wife came in with her arms full of clothes. She was about thirty, younger than Baga, and good looking in a homey sort of way. I didn’t pay much attention to Maggie, but what contact we’d had was good—and she was good for Baga.
“I brought you a change of clothes from the house,” she said, laying down, over a free-standing bookcase, a blue suit I didn’t remember seeing. “Do you want some tea or anything to eat?”
“Ah…” I said. I was wearing the singlet I’d taken to sleeping in since I’d gotten a house with servants. “I’ll get a mug of tea in the refectory in a little bit. And a bowl of oatmeal. You needn’t have bothered, Maggie.”
“Somebody had to,” she said, picking up the green and yellow tunic I’d been wearing last night. She looked around for the trousers, then spotted them on the floor at the end of my cot.
“I was just going to wear those back to the house and change to a set of work clothes,” I said. “They’re fine. The green and yellow ones, are.”
“Lady May would be scandalized if she learned I’d let you wear these in public,” Maggie said, glaring at the trousers. “And she’d be right to be!”
A thorn had ripped a little triangle out of the right calf, now that I looked carefully. That didn’t seem to me like much to worry about. The fabric was slick and glossy, but I guess it wasn’t very strong.
“It’d do for plowing back where you come from, I suppose, where there’s nothing but sheep to look at you,” Maggie said tartly. “Here in Dun Add there’s fine ladies, and if you go out looking like a beggar, it reflects on Lady May.”
“We don’t raise sheep on Beune,” I muttered, but I turned my face away. “Look, I’ll put the suit on and go to the house, but I’m going to be on the jousting field all afternoon, so I’ll be wearing work clothes. Loose clothes.”
“I’ll leave then,” Maggie said, turning her glare toward the door. “I must say, Lord Pal, I don’t think much of your door-knocker. That bird has teeth.”
“I’m sorry, Maggie,” I said. I didn’t bother telling her that it was Guntram’s idea or that I wasn’t by any means sure it was supposed to be a bird.
She looked at me again, her expression softer. “Lord Pal,” she said, “you’re the kindest man I ever met and you’ve brought Baga back from pretty close to the edge with his drinking, where another wouldn’t have bothered.”
“He’s a good boatman,” I said. “He’s stood by me when things got tough.”
“There’s some say…” Maggie continued, her eyes on me. “That it was magic that you beat Lord Baran with, that you’d never have won else. They’re afraid of you, aye, and afraid of Master Guntram too.”
“It wasn’t magic,” I said. “I would’ve used magic if I could’ve though, because Baran was thrashing me like wheat until he made one mistake.”
I’d heard the rumors about me, sure. I had friends in Dun Add, but there were plenty who turned or went down a side street if they saw me coming toward them.
“I watched that fight!” Maggie said fiercely. “There wasn’t any magic, nothing but that big brute hammering on you and you taking it like a man! The whole bloody morning and near to dark. You were the next thing to dead when they carried you off, even though you won! And I tell them that!”
“Thank you, Maggie,” I said, “but it doesn’t matter that people talk nonsense.”
In my heart that wasn’t true, though. I’d generally gotten along with my neighbors on Beune. My being a Maker was just something we didn’t talk about and I guess they managed to forget most of the time. I was a good man with a scythe, and I always showed up to work when I said I would.
Nobody’d much noticed me in Dun Add, even after I’d come through the selection tournament and become a Champion. Then I’d fought Baran. It was a battle that everybody in Dun Add watched, because it was for the Consort’s life.
Baran was half again my size and known to be a very powerful warrior—and I’d beaten him. It was no wonder that people who believe in magic would think that was how I’d done it.
I don’t believe in magic. I believe in hard work, careful study, and luck. I wouldn’t mind folks saying I’d been lucky to beat Baran, because I surely had; only they ought to give me credit for the hours I’d spent on the practice machines, and the way I’d tuned my equipment to meet the way Baran had fought in the past.
“It matters to me,” Maggie said with a sniff. She walked out the door, carrying the suit from last night to clean and repair.
I sighed and changed into the fresh clothes. I’d have to bring a set of work garb up here to use in the future.
Wearing the new blue suit, I walked down to the stables, also in the back wing of the palace, and picked up Denison Lad. He was glad to see me but a bit skittish. I’d worked him a little along the Road near Dun Add, but I’d planned to have taken him out on a real mission for the Leader by now.
If Lady May didn’t show up shortly, Lad and I were going to be hiking to Madringor by Road. That might mean I missed May’s return—it would be ten days by the Road and only about two days for the boat—but that would still be better than hanging around Dun Add much longer. And besides, something might have gone wrong on Madringor.
Lad was perfectly polite at my right heel down South Street to the house I’d taken for me and May. Occasionally we met somebody who said hello or at least nodded. I nodded back, but I was feeling even less like chatting with chance acquaintances than usual.
The same was true at the townhouse where I changed into loose linen trousers and tunic. I’d had to search a ways for linen in Dun Add: like I’d told Maggie, we don’t raise sheep on Beune—but there’s a lot of flax on Herries, which is only about a day away.
Dom, Elise, and the cook—Master Fritz—all wanted to talk to me, mostly wondering when Lady May was coming back. I didn’t know—but more important, I didn’t have to talk with them. I knew Baga and Maggie well enough that they weren’t really servants anymore, but I’d had nothing to do with the house staff except wish they’d keep out of my way. I stayed courteous, but if Dom had gone on after he started, “Milord, we must know—” he was out on the street—and Elise with him if she wanted her husband more than she wanted a job.
Wearing work clothes—peasant clothes, as May called them; she thought they were quaint—I took Lad down to the jousting ground. There were ten or a dozen pairs sparring already, and maybe forty or fifty spectators. Some of those watching were servants or girlfriends of those on the field, but at least half were townies who’d come for entertainment.
Four or five warriors were on the sidelines on this side, either having finished sparring or looking for a match. I walked toward the nearest and called loud enough to be heard, “Anybody up for a bout?”
They all looked in my direction. Dressed as I was, I wasn’t very impressive—but Lad was obviously an expensive dog. He’d been sired by the Leader’s own collie, and Lord Clain’s dog came from an earlier litter.
“Yeah, I’ll give you a match,” said a big fellow whose mongrel had enough chow in him to show a black tongue. “My name’s Bard and I ju
st got here yesterday.”
“I’m Pal,” I said, shaking hands with him. We walked onto the grassed field till we reached a spot where we wouldn’t be fouling anybody else.
I said, “Ready?” and switched on. Bard nodded and followed my lead. He paused for a moment, then rushed.
With my shield on, I was on a gray plane under which the ankle-high grass was a shadow. Bard was a shimmer in green behind the shimmer of his shield.
I met Bard’s stroke with my weapon and let him drive my arm down. He was a strong man with a pretty decent weapon; I wondered where he came from.
Sparring’s done with equipment at twenty percent, as low as you could go with most hardware and still hold a setting. What I carried was of exceptional quality, though: the best Guntram and Louis between them could contrive. I kept it at ten percent in pick-up matches like this.
I was here to hone my skills on real opponents, not to knock folks around. Somebody with an ordinary weapon—and Bard’s was better than that—could give me quite a whack if he was good enough. And me—well, if he knocked me down, I’d have learned something for the next time.
A dog’s brain calculates movement—trajectories—many times faster than any human being could. Lad caught every hint of motion and predicted its course while it was barely a twitch to my own eyes. My weapon always caught Bard’s at the beginning of a stroke or thrust and diverted it away, either into empty air or to the ground at Bard’s feet.
I kept backing while Bard attacked. Only when he slowed down did I begin pressing. I circled to the left, so he was always off balance when he struck.
Bard had a sturdy shield, but it wasn’t especially efficient so it had a lot of inertia to move around. He was a strong man, but I could tell from the start that he wasn’t used to being worked the way I worked him when I moved in.
My equipment was much handier than Bard’s. I kept cutting at his lead foot—his right—but getting my weapon up in time to guide away the chops he responded with.
My weapon was a thread of light compared to Bard’s fuzzy wrist-thick beam, but I made sure that all their contacts were at a slant. He might have been able to smash through in a right-angled impact, but he didn’t get a chance to learn.