The Storm - eARC

by David Drake

  I glanced around the edge of the node, then dropped into a momentary trance. I hadn’t seen any activity for nearly a minute, but I was sure that Guntram was still working. This was a risk, but nobody’d appeared up till now. I was going to go numb from boredom if I didn’t do something.

  Guntram was extending his creation inside the wand which connected the jewel with Andreas’s skull, weaving his lattice through the organic structure. I came out of the trance almost at once and saw that the wand was bulging slightly where the silica had entered it.

  As I returned to the present, Guntram stirred where he lay. His eyes opened, and after a moment they focused on me. The birch-bark container was empty.

  “You were with me, Pal?” he said.

  “For a moment at the end,” I said. “I wanted to understand what you were doing.”

  “And do you?” Guntram said with his familiar smile. He seemed tired, though.

  “Not really,” I said. “I see what you’ve done, but I don’t understand.”

  “If you go out to the Road and tell our friend that it’s time to return,” he said, “we’ll all learn whether I’ve been successful.”

  Sam was glad to wander back to the Road. Watching a Maker at work was boring even to somebody like me who knows what’s going on. I wriggled back onto the surface and looked in both directions without seeing anyone. As I opened my mouth to speak, the Beast’s voice in my head said Is the task complete, Lord Pal?

  I spun around and found him behind me, half-hidden by the edges of the narrow track. “I hope so, sir,” I said carefully, because that was all I was sure of. “Master Guntram said you were to return now, at any rate.”

  We walked back onto the node without further discussion.

  Guntram was sitting up but he hadn’t gotten to his feet. I knew how exhausting a long spell in a trance could be, and Guntram hadn’t been in the best shape to begin with.

  “The object is safe now for you to take, friend,” he said to the Beast. “If you would like, Lord Pal or I will sever the connection without touching the case, but that is up to you.”

  The shifting blackness which was our companion said, Lord Pal, please cut the root while I hold the case.

  He moved close to Guntram and blurs of his body encased the globe of crystal. I switched my weapon on, while keeping the blade pointed toward the Waste. Occasionally a weapon may flash out at full distension when first switched on.

  When I was sure it was stable, I judged angles and slipped the hissing blade through the fleshy wand—the root, the Beast had called it—joining the jewel to Andreas’s body.

  Guntram’s casing and the jewel it covered vanished as the Beast’s “hands” withdrew into his body.

  There is no thanks sufficient for what you have done, the voice said. There is no task which I and my whole clan will not perform for either of you.

  The Beast stepped into the Waste.

  I switched off my weapon. “Sir?” I said. “Master Guntram? What do we do now?”

  Guntram stood up before I got my arm out to help him. He said, “According to the courier, your possession Severin is nearby, Pal. I suggest we go there and then return to Dun Add as soon as I think I’ll be able to make it. Does that suit you?”

  “It suits me right down the ground, sir!” I said.

  It was probably a good thing for me to drop in at Severin and see how things were going. At the very least, I hoped to get a good meal out of it. Liquids from the converter generally tasted good and were probably very healthy, but I was looking forward to something solid.

  CHAPTER 29

  Dun Add

  Maggie and I got Guntram up to his workroom and onto the healing couch. I wasn’t sure how much it could do for him since he didn’t seem to have any physical injuries, but it could be that his time in the cyst had injured him inside where I couldn’t see. Anyway, the couch wouldn’t hurt.

  I paused at the door and said to Maggie, “Remember, you’re not here to be his mother. You keep food and drink ready for if he wants them, and you give him any help he asks for. And if he wants to do some fool thing he shouldn’t try until he’s healthier—you help him do it. Right?”

  “Just as you said, sir,” Maggie said. “However you want it. You’re a smart man, and you’ve been a good master to Baga and me.”

  “Thanks, Maggie,” I said. The door clicked shut as I headed down the corridor.

  I’d thought of spending the day and night with Guntram myself, but he wasn’t the only person I was responsible for. Instead we’d stopped off at the boat on landingplace. Maggie and Baga lived there most times when the boat wasn’t in use, and they were both there when I arrived with Guntram.

  All four of us went up to the palace together. There Baga took Sam to the stables, and Maggie and I helped Guntram to his room.

  Maggie wasn’t afraid of Guntram and the artifacts in his room—or maybe she was, but she’d rather die than let on and fail me. Maggie had a higher opinion of me than anybody else I knew. Higher than I had myself, that was for sure.

  Attendants stood at all the stair-heads but until I reached the Consort’s apartments on the east wing nobody more than looked at me as I strode past. The two guards there braced at I came toward them. Then one said, “Bloody hell, Shep! That’s Lord Pal!”

  It was only as the two guards—I didn’t know either of them by name—straightened to attention that I gave any thought about what I was wearing. My clothes had been of good quality—very good quality—when I’d set off from Dun Add two months earlier, but I’d worn them sleeping and waking ever since. Inna had washed them, and Master Hedring’s wife had washed them again while we stayed in Severin, but they were still more suitable for a tramp than they were for a visitor to the palace.

  I grinned, though a bit sadly. My dress and courtly manners didn’t have anything to do with Jon making me a Champion of the Commonwealth.

  “I’m Pal of Beune, come to visit with Lady Jolene and her company!” I said as I approached.

  One guard whispered through the trap in the door as his comrade bowed to me. The door pulled fully open and the Consort’s short, big-chested, greeter bellowed, “Welcome, Lord Pal!”

  A moment earlier a woman’s lovely voice had been singing, “Her form was like the dove, so slender and so neat.” The song and the light string accompaniment broke off. As I stepped through the doorway, May threw herself into my arms. She was holding her long-necked guitar out to the side to keep it from getting smashed as we hugged each other.

  “Is that our friend Lord Pal?” Lady Jolene called. “Bring him in, for goodness’ sake, May.”

  May walked me deeper into the reception room of the suite, tugging me closer to her with every step. There were about a dozen people present. The Consort and her Ladies were the most noticeable in outfits like pastel sea foam, but there were several men as well. Lord Gismonde, one of the Champions, was near me at the front.

  “My lady,” I said, dipping my head toward the Consort. “I’ve just returned from the Marches with Master Guntram, who’s recuperating in his room now. I was hoping to find Lady May here, and I apologize for not taking time to dress appropriately.”

  “You found Guntram?” boomed a man, rising to his feet at the back of the room where I hadn’t gotten a good look at him. “He’s all right?”

  I fell to one knee. I was facing the Leader himself.

  “Sir!” I said, my eyes on the carpeted floor. “Master Guntram’s fine but he’s very tired, that’s all. I’m sure he’d appreciate a visit tomorrow, but I’m hoping he’ll be able to sleep for the rest of the day. If he can, I mean.”

  “Whatever happened to Master Guntram?” Gismonde said. He was a very tall, fair-haired man; taller than he was broad, but he wasn’t a toothpick like me either. “I’d heard he was missing, but I’d never heard what he was on to.”

  “Ah…” I said. “As I understand it, Master Guntram was searching for a sort of animal that was a religious totem to a friend o
f his. The trouble is that the animal was dangerous in one stage of its growth. It caught Guntram and held him until me and a couple friends were able to get him loose.”

  What I’d just said made sense and was all anybody in this room needed to know. Except for the Leader, that is. I stood and said to him, “Sir, I’ll come in tomorrow and give you a full report—or today, if you like. But I don’t think there’s anything that you really need to deal with.”

  “I don’t think there is either, Pal,” Jon said. “For me, that is. I think Lady May has something on her mind, though.”

  “Pal, you’ll have to come in tomorrow and tell me and my girls about all your adventures,” Jolene said. “But for now, why don’t you and May run off about your own business?”

  “Thank you, milady,” I said, bobbing my head to her again. When I remembered that the Leader was here—I was very tired, mentally and physically—I turned toward him. “Sir?” I said.

  “Be off with you, Pal,” Jon said, smiling. “But I’d appreciate it if you could sit in on the Council meeting tomorrow. It’s the second hour of the afternoon. Duke Giusto has sent a proposal, and I’d like your thoughts on it.”

  Another Lady in Waiting—Lady Hippolyte, as a matter of fact—took the guitar. May and I walked out of the suite, moving apart for convenience but still hand in hand.

  We walked down the main staircase without talking, but when we reached the courtyard, May said, “You told Gismonde the animal you freed Master Guntram from was dangerous. Were you in danger?”

  I thought about the question. “You know the way cicadas live underground and then come up and shed their skins on tree branches?”

  “Yes,” May said, looking puzzled. She was a gardener so she knew about cicadas, but she didn’t see what they had to do with the subject.

  “The creature Guntram’s friend was looking for lived sort of like a cicada,” I said. “The first stage completely destroys a host. The second stage creates a home for itself but doesn’t actually kill the host. That’s how Guntram described it, anyway.”

  I took a deep breath, thinking back to the grip of the fungus on me. Then I said, “The creature I freed Guntram from was in the second stage. It was dangerous, sure, but it’s not like what the first stage does to a guy. That was a lot worse, and I never risked that.”

  We walked through the passage out the south side of the palace, nodding to the guard there. When we were out in the sunshine again, May gave a little laugh.

  “Pal, the Leader seems to value your counsel, doesn’t he?” she said.

  “Yeah, he does,” I said. We turned onto South Street and were heading down toward the house. “And I’m happy to give it to him if I’m in Dun Add. But love, if I’m at court for more than a week or so, I start to go nuts. Dun Add’s okay for a couple days of relaxing, but after that it’s…well, it starts to feel like when I was in that cyst before Lord Osbourn got me out. The second stage I was talking about.”

  “Speaking of my nephew, he’s been worried about you,” May said as we came to the steps of the townhouse. “More than he is about the Aspirants’ Tournament in two days. I hope you’ll be able to see him before then, because he really values your advice.”

  Dom threw the door open for us and bowed. Elise hovered deeper in the room.

  May ignored the servants and hugged me again as we stepped into the house. “Come, darling,” she said. “You’re back in Dun Add for relaxation, so let’s get on with relaxing you.”