The Haunted Wizard

by Christopher Stasheff

  "So," Matt said softly, "you are a druid—a real druid."

  "I am, and can tell you the name of my teacher, and of her teacher, and her teacher's teacher, back to the days when we held the island of Mona as our right. There are true druids in Erin, too, more than in Bretanglia, though not so many as there should be," Meg told him.

  Matt wondered about that "should," but only said, "Why are you helping me, then?"

  "Because I hate and despise these mock druids who defame and debase our noble religion!" Meg spat. "They seek to imprison the people, not to free their hearts and minds! They seek to use the gods as tools for their own ends, not to devote themselves wholly to the deities! And in their blasphemy, they shall make the reputation of we who truly hold to the Old Gods even worse than the milksop monks and nuns have done!"

  "We have a common enemy, then?"

  "Aye, and a common champion, too! I have told you I seek to aid the true king, and you know my opinion of Drustan!"

  "But you think his son Brion is true," Matt interpreted.

  Rosamund gasped.

  "True in heart, true in mind, but more importantly, true to the land and the people who dwell in it, far more true than either his father or his brothers have been! Nay, this much I can tell you—that Brion's body is indeed in Erin, and that holy men have borne it there by magic!"

  "But you can't tell us whether or not he's still alive," Matt inferred.

  "If he is, he looks most amazingly dead—though his body is not corrupted, unless the rumors that pass from druid to druid are false." She fixed Matt with a burning eye. "But alive or dead, he shall bring you men to help you in your quest—this I know! Go to Erin, go to the Isle of Doctors and Saints, and bring back an army of truth to help you disperse the purveyors of lies who defame my Order!"

  "I'll try," Matt said slowly, never taking his eyes from her, "but it's apt to be dangerous. Maybe we should leave the princess with you—she should be safe enough."

  "Oh, no!" Rosamund cried. "I must go with you to find Brion!"

  "It is even as she says," Old Meg agreed. "Her destiny does not lie in a small fishing village on the shore of Bretanglia. Take her to Erin, wizard, and let her read her weird."

  The room seemed gloomy, but there was no candle at his bedside, and King Drustan raised a hand to gesture as he called for light—but the hand would not rise at the command of his will, and he could hear only the harsh caw of his tongueless voice. Prince John stepped into his range of vision, and there was enough light to see him, at least. The boy bent low, his voice soothing. "The drapes are opened wide to the sunlight, Father; the room is as light as we can make it. Let the doctor examine you, and perhaps he can make the day seem brighter—though it is indeed gray and gloomy."

  Drustan grumbled something affirmative and relaxed. His stomach was roiling, making him faint with nausea. It had been getting worse for days.

  John stepped back, and the doctor stepped forward. He held the king's wrist for a little while, frowning in concentration, then leaned over to peer closely into his eyes. Brows bent, he straightened up and probed the king's stomach.

  Drustan bellowed in agony, eyes bulging.

  "It has been too long since your bowels moved," the doctor said with false heartiness, "only that, my liege, and nothing more. Rest, drink only small beer, and wait."

  But as he stepped back, Drustan's nausea spread upward to heartsickness. He gargled a curse at the man, recognizing the falseness of the tone—and his heartsickness turned to panic as an archbishop stepped up to his bedside. Drustan tried to push himself upright, mouthing denials.

  "Gently, gently, Your Majesty," the archbishop soothed. "I have heard your confession every month, and given you the Eucharist every week, for six years. Surely there is no need to alter that now."

  A little relieved, Drustan sank back on his bed and muttered a querulous phrase.

  "It has been a month, yes, a month and more." The archbishop raised his head and addressed John. "Your Highness, I beg you withdraw for some minutes. What His Majesty confesses is only for the ears of himself, myself, and God."

  "But how shall you understand his words? I must explain them to you!"

  "God shall understand them," the archbishop said, "and after sixty confessions, I fancy I shall recognize every word he says. Leave us, Your Highness—leave him to me and God."

  John stood outside the door and fretted. When the archbishop finally came out and said, "You may go in again," John bolted through the door and smelled the aroma of the priest's scented candles. He hurried to his father's bedside and saw the gleam of anointing on his forehead. His smile had a vindictive quality as he bent over Drustan. "Gave you the Last Rites, did he? Well, that was wise of him, old man, for you're dying now, and there's no doubt of it."

  Drustan's eyes widened; he gargled in anger.

  "How dare I tell you that?" John grinned. "Because it's true enough, you old goat, and in less than an hour you won't be able to hurt anyone anymore! Aye, at last I'll be safe from your whims and your rages! At last I'll be able to build a life for myself! At last I'll be rid of you!"

  Drustan struggled to rise, face livid, mouthing outrage.

  "Behold the king!" John mocked. "Behold the mighty Drustan, before whom all men tremble! Here, O Man of Power, hold this cup!"

  He pressed a silver goblet into his father's hand, then took his own hands away. The vessel clattered to the floor.

  "If you cannot grasp a cup, how shall you hold a sword? No, the days when all men feared Drustan are done, for Drustan himself is done—and no man need fear you now!"

  He thrust his face close, so close the reek of his breath nearly stifled Drustan as John spat, "How can I be so sure? Why, because it's I who have done it, you poor benighted old fool! It's I who brought you your cup and bowl, I who spooned the gruel into you, I who mixed poison with wine and porridge! It is I who have poisoned you, and I wish you had not confessed or taken Extreme Unction, so that you could have gone to Judgment with your sins on your soul!"

  Drustan roared with rage, anger so intense that he actually managed to start up from his bed, to lift an anvil-heavy arm and grope for John's throat. With a cry of terror, John sprang back, hands up to defend, shrinking into a corner—but the huge red swollen face before him abruptly turned white, and the king fell back, senseless, with eyes wide open.

  John waited, heart hammering. He waited for what seemed an impossibly long time, then waited longer. Finally he dared creep up to the bed, dared even further to reach out and touch his father's hand, ready to leap away and flee—but the hand stayed unmoving. Daring even more greatly, John took Drustan's wrist and felt for the pulse. It was a task he had done every day for weeks, so he knew exactly where to probe—but felt nothing. At last he plucked up the courage to touch the great vein in the king's neck, felt and waited, dreading, hoping—and felt not the slightest tremor of blood moving beneath the skin. Finally, he dared to reach up and close Drustan's eyelids. Triumph began to boil up inside him; his face split in an idiotic grin; but he held it in while he fished in his purse for two pennies, then laid them on his father's eyelids. "Money for the ferryman! Copper to hold your soul away! Rest in agony, Father, as I have when I've dreaded your anger! Rest uneasily, rest angrily, rest painfully, but rest, rest, and never come back!"

  There was more, all uttered in a hushed, intense tone, so that none might hear it except the corpse. At last John ran down and stood panting as he glared at the body of the man who had humiliated him so often, and only given approval when John had learned how to fawn upon him.

  Then John stepped away from the bed and threw his head back with silent laughter, forcing himself to keep his shout of victory to a whisper, fists clenched in triumph.

  A tapestry stirred in the shadows. John heard the slightest rasp of wood sliding against wood and dropped his hands, squaring his shoulders, doing the best he could to look regal—but he could not quite wipe the grin from his face.

  Niobhyte stepp
ed out of the gloom into the light of the deathwatch candle. "Is it done, then?"

  "It is," John told him, glee still in his voice. "He is dead, and shall trouble me no more. I thank you for the poison, Niobhyte. It did all that you said it would."

  The chief synthodruid made a deprecating gesture. "It was my pleasure, as it shall always be my pleasure to serve you—if you will."

  "Oh, yes," John told him. "Oh, I shall always be glad of your service, Niobhyte—and you may be sure of my patronage. I shall see your religion rise, and these stumbling-block priests torn down! The Church shall fall, the Old Gods rise again, and I shall be the first to worship them openly!"

  "I shall ever be Your Majesty's faithful servant." Niobhyte knelt to kiss John's hand. "The king is dead—long live the king!"

  "I thank you, my first and most loyal subject," John told him. "Now, though, you had better step back into that secret passageway, for I must bring in the doctor and the archbishop to make Drustan's passing the law of the land. Then I can begin to unmake their Church!"

  "I am ever obedient to Your Majesty," Niobhyte said, and backed away with bowed head to disappear behind the tapestry again.

  John listened for the sliding of wood on wood, then turned to open the door and call in both physician and prelate. They came, they stared in apprehension—then they both turned and knelt, declaring as Niobhyte had, "The king is dead—long live the king!"

  "Read my weird?" Rosamund asked. "What is my weird, and how shall I read it?"

  They stood on land, watching the little boat skip away over the waves, its sail filled with the morning breeze. Behind them the sun struggled to rise over Erin. Admittedly, the distance between Erin and Bretanglia wasn't great, but Matt was still surprised Meg had sailed it so fast.

  "Your weird is a sort of a trap," Sergeant Brock told her.

  Matt looked up in surprise.

  "It is what you were born into this world to do," the sergeant went on, "the outcome of the sum and total of all the virtues and talents within you, the work in life for which you, and only you, are most singularly fitted. But you do not have to do it. You can turn away from it, if you lack the courage—or you can be too blind to see it. But if you have eyes clear enough to read it, and the courage to enter into it, your weird shall close about you, shall catch you up, and bear you onward to fulfillment in this world and joy in the next. Therefore must you read your weird."

  "That has the sound of fate," Sir Orizhan said, frowning.

  "Is that your southern word for it?" the sergeant asked.

  "Not quite," Matt said. "Fate happens to you whether you choose it or not—and whether you like it or not."

  "A weird is not always pleasant," Sergeant Brock admitted. "Your... the Church sings the praises of martyrs to the faith, who have endured the tortures of burning in this world in order to rise to the glory of sainthood in the next."

  "True," Matt said thoughtfully, "but there are other saints like St. Francis of Assisi, who sang his way through life with joy."

  "Well, he had his hard times, too," Sir Orizhan pointed out, "but what life does not? The importance of it, Your Highness, is that if you can read your weird and be brave enough to step into it, it may bear you on to joy or bear you on to grief, but it will never leave you feeling that your life was not worth having lived."

  "Then I shall find it," Rosamund said with iron determination, "clasp it to my breast, let it fold about me, and go wheresoever it carries me!"

  "Then let's begin by finding Brion's body." Matt turned his back on the sea and the fading dot that was Meg's boat. "She said holy men had carried him away. Let's find a bishop."

  That by itself turned out not to be easy. They'd had to leave the horses in Bretanglia, of course—Meg's boat just barely managed the four of them—so they had to walk along the beach until they came to a fishing village. It took about an hour, and the old men were sitting on the dock watching the last of the fishing boats sail off for their day's work. Matt hailed them, waving, and the four gaffers looked up in surprise before their faces turned into masks.

  "Hi, there!" Matt climbed up onto the dock with his companions right behind him and approached the nearest grandfather, a man who looked to be in his eighties but, given the harshness of medieval life, was probably only in his thirties. "Can you tell me how to get to the castle?" He didn't ask which one—any castle would do.

  The oldster frowned, looking very suspicious, and demanded something incomprehensible—it sounded vaguely like "Bail out this Arab, go lair in her hair."

  Matt didn't bother looking around for a Near Eastern woman. "Great," he sighed. "I've been living and traveling in countries that were pieces of Hardishane's empire for so long that I forgot what happened in lands that weren't connected to the continent!"

  Sir Orizhan came up, frowning. "What is the trouble, Lord Wizard?"

  "Trouble? Oh, nothing—except that these people speak a foreign language, probably Gaelic, and I haven't the faintest idea what this old duffer's saying!"

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Sergeant Brock eyed the old man narrowly. "I suspect he speaks less and less of our language the more he distrusts us."

  The gaffer may not have known the words, but he understood Brock's tone. He glared back at him and spat another unintelligible phrase.

  "So is your mother," Brock said. He watched the oldster carefully, but the expression of suspicious hostility didn't change, and Brock turned to Matt with a sigh. "I fear he really doesn't understand Bretanglian, Lord Wizard. He didn't even seem to know I'd insulted his mother."

  "Maybe you didn't. After all, he might have been paying you a compliment."

  Sergeant Brock showed his teeth in something resembling a grin. "There is that virtue in merely turning his own words back on him."

  "Okay, he's only a day's sail from Bretanglia, but how often do you think he meets people who speak our language?" Matt asked.

  "Not often," Sir Orizhan admitted, "since he is only a fisherman—but there is a fair amount of trade between the lands. Surely we can find a merchant who can speak with us!"

  "Good idea." Matt scanned the village. "Come to think of it, even the local priest should at least be able to speak church Latin... There! I suppose you could call that a steeple." He pointed to a larger-than-average one-story building with a sort of pointed bump at one end.

  "A church indeed," Sir Orizhan agreed. "Do you truly speak the language of ancient Reme?"

  Matt kept forgetting that it had been Remus who had won the fight for the first Latin wall in this universe, not Romulus. "Let's say it's not too different from something I learned in school." He turned back to give the old men a cheery wave. "Thanks, guys. I think we can make it from here."

  The gaffers stared, taken aback, and watched with apprehension as the companions started for the church.

  The chapel was the only stone structure in town, as was so often the case, and the rectory-cottage beside it was only wattle and daub with a thatched roof. But the yard before it was neat and clean, with flowers around the border and a whitewashed fence, and the priest was sitting on a bench beside the door, reading his breviary.

  Matt felt a little strange walking right up to him, so he knocked at the gate. The priest looked up with a pleasant smile that vanished when he saw strangers, and ones in foreign clothing at that.

  "Good morning, Father," Matt said agreeably.

  The priest frowned, cocking his head on one side, and asked a question in Gaelic.

  Matt sighed and tried again. "Ave, pater!"

  "Ah!" The priest's expression cleared. "Ave, filius meam."

  It was a strange experience, hearing Latin with an Irish accent—but Matt had only had a year in high school and fifteen years of Mass prayers in childhood.

  "Quem quaeiritus?" the priest asked. It meant, Who are you looking for?

  "We wish to go to the bishop's town," Matt explained. "Can you tell us the way?"

  "Do you come from Bretanglia?" the priest a
sked.

  "We just have," Matt told him, "but our journey began in Merovence." After all, that was true for Rosamund, too—it was just that, in her case, the first leg of the trip had been done a long time before.

  "What do you seek in the bishop's town?"

  Matt began to feel that the priest meant to protect the bishop from these vile Bretanglians. "We seek a merchant, any merchant, who can tell us how to find a certain monastery where a—" Matt groped for a word that could describe the (hopefully) sleeping Brion. "—a certain relic lies."

  "Ah! A pilgrimage!" The priest nodded, not only satisfied but delighted. He pointed along the main street of the town. "Go three miles to the crossroads, and the signpost will point the way to Innisfree. It is the road to the right, and five miles later, the left branch of a fork."

  "Thank you, Father." Matt tipped his hat and started to turn away.

  But the priest held up a cautioning hand. "Be careful on the road, my son. A pouka haunts that way, and not by night alone."

  "A pouka?" Matt's blood chilled, especially since the word wasn't Latin. "I thank you even more deeply, Father. May I donate to your church?"

  The priest's face broke into a smile. "That would be pleasant."

  But he was staring at the small gold coin in stunned disbelief as the companions walked away.

  "What advice was it that made you so generous?" Sir Orizhan asked.

  "He told me there's a pouka haunting the road," Matt explained.

  "A pouka!" Rosamund and Sergeant Brock stopped dead, staring.

  "I take it you have them in Bretanglia, too," Matt said.

  "We have pooks, and the most mischievous of them is an elf by that name," Brock said.

  Matt supposed the distinction between "pook" and "Puck" was pretty minor—only a matter of a vowel shift. Nonetheless, the thought made him glad he was in Ireland; he'd had experience with Puck. "Here, a pouka means a shapeshifter. It usually appears as a horse, but it can be just about anything, including a human being."