Alliance for Antrim

by Thomas Lombard

  Chapter 18

  Corissa

  After Orris left, due to his preference to “sleep in other quarters,” the castlekeeper escorted Anson and Nevin through a series of corridors. Although Orris would return the next day, the soldier’s departure disturbed Anson.

  Nevin tried to ease Anson’s anxiety by explaining that Orris might learn helpful information if he could gad about. If the three of them were confined together, what more could they learn? This reassurance did calm Anson somewhat, but the mage was still unnerved that things were going badly.

  Nevin noted how seriously Anson took this idea of an alliance for Antrim, but chose not to press his friend in the presence of the castlekeeper. It seemed perfectly reasonable for Orris to go about his soldiering business and other interests expected for a man returning home from war. In fact, Nevin would have liked a chance to see more of this place as well, but the castlekeeper, leery of both alleged mages, was not interested in guiding a tour.

  The two were led to a suite of small rooms located at the base of the turret in the northeast corner of the castle. The castlekeeper quickly completed arrangements for bathing and dining before leaving the two men to their privacy, glad to be dismissed from their company.

  Anson remained greatly disheartened and was not very talkative. He failed and took full blame for the fiasco in the King’s reception room. He mumbled that he had no idea what to do next. Despite Nevin’s attempts to reassure him, Anson wrung his hands and paced the room. Nevin finally stopped his friend with hands to his shoulders, and nearly shook him to get his attention.

  “Anson, what is it? What is disturbing you so?”

  The mage looked up at his much taller companion with eyes that exuded a maelstrom of emotion beyond sorrow, anger or fear, but a boiling mixture of each. His shoulders sagged as he admitted his uncertainties. “I do not know what exactly to say, Sir Nevin. I fear that the three of us must stay together. If something should happen to one, we will be lost. We cannot succeed without our alliance.” Anson started to pace the room again and continued, “You are annoyed with me I am sure. Yet time grows short and we must proceed together. There is an ominous threat billowing around us, some kind of menace that lies in wait. I suppose I was gradually aware of it for some time, but the attack on Huxley made it certain. Now, it looms more ominous but without growing clearer. We must proceed with haste before we are harmed.”

  Nevin agreed, thinking the threat seemed pretty obvious. In view of the Chancellor’s actions, the people of Antrim seemed easily misguided. Their so-called alliance came close to imprisonment. Before laying out a plan, Nevin cautioned that they sorely needed rest. Anson reluctantly assented.

  While Anson rested in one of the bedrooms, Nevin examined the surroundings. His sense of excitement started to return at the opportunity to experience such an interesting culture. Their suite included two small bedrooms off a larger sitting room. The sitting room was furnished with two undersized divans and a table with some flimsy looking cane chairs. A fourth room was a bath, also small by Nevin’s standards, but complete with running water (or rather dripping water from a long, narrow clay pipe into a small trough he took to be a urinal or some type of primitive toilet). There was no provision for hot water except to carry it in; there was a tub for bathing, though far too small for Nevin’s use. After completing his tour of the rooms, Nevin was impatient to see more of the castle. A knock on the door startled him.

  Upon opening the door, he saw a lone woman with hands clasped in front of her and a rather grim facial expression. She was taller than any of the Antrim people he had met, perhaps even taller than the King, and she had a somewhat darker complexion. Her hair was a very dark brown, nearly black, and stylishly arranged in mounting curls on top of her head. The arrangement of her hair made the woman seem even taller, which made Nevin feel more comfortable to see someone approaching normal height. Her clothing was definitely patrician, a long white dress that hung with many folds and brocaded with sequins and lavender trim. The dress was designed to be shoulderless, but the woman covered her shoulders and bodice with a shawl of toile cloth. Nevin’s first impression was that this woman was strikingly different from the local inhabitants he had met; perhaps she was an outsider, too. She was certainly attractive, though her somber demeanor diminished that effect. He beckoned, “Please, come in. I was hoping for some company.”

  The woman hesitated, evidently replaying the intent of these words. She cautiously entered the room and looked around before returning her scrutiny of Nevin, trying without success to avoid staring at his black eye. She said softly, “Your companion is here? The mage from Huxley?”

  “He is sleeping. Come in, sit down. Er. . .please, that is. Uh, you have nothing to be afraid of, Miss. . .Who are you?”

  She stood perfectly erect, a posture that conveyed at a strong sense of self-confidence, or maybe patrician arrogance, but this image fell apart as she became flustered trying to explain her presence. “My name is Corissa. King Lucan has asked me to see if your needs are being met. I mean, in terms of your comforts, that is. . .Like your bath—though I am not here to bathe you. . .I don’t think I am explaining this well. . .”

  “It’s OK. Don’t worry about it. You can be of help to me.”

  “In what way?” she asked, still on her guard.

  Though he was fatigued from the earlier spellcasting efforts, Nevin caught a second wind. “Just be my guide,” he said hopefully. “Show me around the castle. I have never seen a place like this before and I have a lot of questions. May we go? Please?”

  Corissa seemed relieved at the opportunity to leave the room and quickly consented to give Nevin his guided tour. For the next few hours, she tirelessly led him to all corners of the castle and tried to answer what seemed like hundreds of questions. She proved equal to the task and seemed willing to go on as long as he asked. Throughout their walk, they drew stares but no one dared speak to either of them.

  As the sun set they took a respite at the Central Garden, an atrium in the middle of the castle grounds that reminded Nevin of a Japanese garden. Corissa did not understand that reference, and asked if that was a compliment or a criticism. Nevin laughed, but abruptly refrained when she indicated her ignorance should not be cause for amusement. He tried to explain what he meant, but was more successful at diverting her attention to the flowers and shrubs among the stone paths circling through the garden. Nevin loved flowering plants and had extensively studied annual and perennial species that grew in temperate climates. He saw many familiar varieties but their richness of color and fragrance was extraordinary. There were anomalies, too, at least to him, like red pansies and white marigolds, and many colors of violets, including the black variety that John Stryker had tried to propagate.

  In the center of the garden, a circular stone bench surrounded a small pool. They sat there and talked for another hour, mostly with Corissa responding to Nevin’s endless questions about the local names of the flowers, weather extremes accompanying the seasons, the heating system used in the castle, and more. The conversation remained one-sided, as she did not ask him about himself or his land. They both avoided any discussion of the day’s events in the reception room. Corissa eventually asked Nevin if he wished to have supper brought to his room.

  “I forgot all about eating,” he replied. “I suppose I should eat something before they close the kitchen. Would you care to join me?”

  Corissa did not understand his comment about closing the kitchen. Since he was the King’s guest, he would be served food and drink whenever he bid. However, she had no intention of dining with him and made that clear. “I will find the castlekeeper and ask her to have a meal brought to your room. I shall not be joining you.” She rose from the bench and waited for him rise as well. “I hope you found the tour pleasant, Sir Nevin. I will show you back to your room and call on you tomorrow, if the King asks it of me.”

  “Please, do come back. I’d like very much to see more, perhaps outside the
castle?”

  “Perhaps. Now I must leave.”

  She had been an excellent guide and responded patiently and intelligently to his barrage of questions. But her dismissal seemed rather brusque, making him think he had somehow offended her. A tactical mistake on his part, he thought. She was interesting, intelligent and potentially charming, if she were not so icy. He wanted to meet with her again and try to rectify any misconduct on his part. In this unfamiliar land of small-size people where magic was plausible, he was more comfortable talking to her than anyone he had met so far. If she was an outsider, as he suspected, they had something in common.

  Corissa led the way back to his room. Nevin dutifully followed, but there was no conversation between them. When they finally reached his door, she turned on her heels and left him with a terse “Good evening, Sir.”Nevin weakly waved good-bye, but the young woman never noticed as she hurried off.

  Nevin entered the room and found Anson still asleep. He prepared for bed when a servant knocked, bearing a large tray of steamed vegetables and a near burnt slab of beef. Nevin usually ordered meat so rare “it would moo when stuck with a fork,” but not knowing whether they had refrigeration, he appreciated having this meat over-cooked as a precaution against bacterial contamination. After enjoying Corissa’s guided tour, and now savoring this pleasing meal, the day had turned out quite well. Putting the day’s earlier turmoil out of mind, he dined eagerly, looking forward to the next day’s surprises. He did muse briefly on the extraordinary results of his reversed luminescence spell, concluding he must have modified the experiment by adding A with B′ to produce 1/C.