"Indeed." The high druid nodded slowly. "Count it said for us, too." He shrugged. "We are usually content to let the world go to ruin in its own way—only what it deserves, for having deserted our religion—but even we must draw the line at such wholesale misery-making. We cannot allow it to persist, for it offends our gods, and our very souls."
"There comes a point when you cease to be yourself if you don't take a stand against what you perceive to be evil." Matt nodded.
"Indeed," the high druid agreed. "Then, too, there is the reputation of ourselves, and our gods, to consider—that is almost as important as the sufferings of the people. These synthodruids will make the descendants of the folk of Bretanglia think of us as monsters, for they will confuse us true druids with Niobhyte's travesties."
"Good reasons for trying to stop him," Matt said with approval. "But how are you fighting him?"
"Why, we have brought you here, have we not?" The high druid smiled.
Matt felt a surge of anger at having been manipulated, but managed to contain it. "I was already trying to bring them down for my own reasons."
"Aye, but you had little strength with which to fight them. Here we can give you Brion, who is worth whole armies, for he is the rightful king."
"Worth whole armies maybe, but he'll need even more armies to win back his throne," Matt said. "False king or not, John has the power now, and will fight to the death to keep it."
"His death in battle is not wholly distasteful," the high druid mused. "As to armies, I suspect that Brion shall gather them wherever he goes, as a lodestone gathers nails. Everyone who suffers from the greed of John's tax-gatherers, or the looting and raping of Niobhyte's worshipers, will flock to his banner."
"A good point," Matt admitted, "once he's well enough to travel."
"As to that, we have been weaving spells into his body, healing him as he slept; it needed only the kiss of his future queen to make our enchantments web their virtues together to make him whole. He will be able to ride tomorrow, and will be stronger than he ever was ere you reach the shores of Bretanglia."
"Nice work," Matt said with admiration. "I wouldn't have thought of that. But it's going to take more than armies to win against Niobhyte. From all I hear, he is one very powerful sorcerer."
"He is," the high druid said with a smile, "but so are we. You shall not sleep this night, Lord Wizard, for you shall keep vigil by learning every spell we can teach you. We shall even give you one to use if all else fails, one that shall drown all the synthodruids and their worshipers."
Matt shuddered at the magnitude of the disaster the words described. His head filled with the thunder of earthquakes, the roar of tidal waves. "Isn't that a little drastic?"
"These false druids are a disaster in themselves, and only something of their own magnitude can defeat them. Have no fear—by the time you come to them, there shall be no one left in the South Saxon Shore but themselves and their most ardent believers."
"Meaning the ones who have committed themselves so thoroughly that they won't even think of resigning." Matt nodded. "Okay. I'll use it if there's no other way."
"There will not be," the druid replied, "but you are welcome to try to reason with them. A caution, though—do not reason too long, for while you talk, they shall be preparing a doom to fall upon you."
Matt heard them as soon as he reached the archway into the grove.
"Will you not lie still!" Rosamund scolded. "Must you forever be reaching for me as though I were nothing but your own private cup?"
"No cup could hold wine as sweet as your kisses," Brion protested. "Have I become as ugly as a bear in only a few minutes?"
Matt stepped in quickly. He saw Brion struggling to rise, reaching out toward Rosamund, who was backing away. "You need rest, my lord, not excitement! Nay, forfend! No one owns me save myself!"
"I do not say that I own you," Brion protested, "only that you have kissed me, and, I thought, with some pleasure!"
Rosamund blushed. "It was a lapse of moments only. Be sure it will not happen again!"
Brion stared at her, realizing that she meant it, at least as a resolution. "Ay di mi!" He sank back into his coffin. "If it shall not, then I have no wish to live!"
"Oh, do not carry on so!" Rosamund fumed. "All the world knows you are a troubadour as well as a knight, but there is no need for you to sing your laments to me!"
Brion's face darkened and he struggled to rise again.
Matt decided it was time to interfere. He stepped up to the coffin and laid a hand on Brion's good shoulder. "Gently, gently, my lord. You won't get better if you don't try to rest."
Brion sank back with a groan. "Why should I heal if love is denied me?"
Rosamund rolled her eyes in exasperation and turned away.
"Perhaps for the good of your people," Matt said quietly. "Nobility imposes obligations, you know."
Brion lay completely still for several seconds, then looked up at Matt, and the lover had submerged completely under the leader. "You are right. How selfish it was of me to think otherwise!"
Rosamund turned back, staring, uncertain whether or not to feel hurt.
"And it was very wrong of me to pursue my brother's fiancée," Brion went on, "even though he is dead—perhaps even more because he is dead." He forced himself up on one elbow. Matt and Rosamund both sprang to hold him, but he inclined his head in something resembling a bow. "My lady, I beg your pardon. It was dishonorable of me to importune you so."
"My pardon you may freely have," she said, "though nothing else of me." Still, her face could not hide her hurt.
Brion must have seen it, too, for he sank back with a groan. "I had hoped to woo you for my own, now that I am heir apparent—but it is certainly improper to come courting so soon, and my father has doubtless disinherited me. No, I have no right to seek your hand, no matter how much I may desire it."
Rosamund's face was a study in consternation, both hurt and flattered. Finally, she resolved it by snapping, "Oh, fie upon your chivalry and your honor!"
"I was near to thinking that myself," Brion said, subdued. "Even if I were able to win your love, though, we could not become betrothed without the consent of the king." He was silent for a minute, lost in thought.
Rosamund stared at him, and one hand began to reach out toward him, then pulled back.
Privately, Matt thought that Brion had come pretty close to the hub of the problem: both of them were feeling guilty about being in love. Their hearts may have been clamoring at them, screaming, "Right!" but all the conventions of their society were howling, "Wrong!" He had to find a way to resolve that dilemma for them.
Brion turned to Matt again, still frowning. "Lord Wizard..." Then he hesitated, which was unusual for him.
"What's the matter?" Matt asked.
"When first you reached out to heal me, you called me 'Your Majesty,' " Brion said. "That was a mistake, was it not?"
"No mistake." Matt saw what was coming, and braced himself.
So did Brion. "A prince is addressed as 'Your Highness,' my lord."
"I know."
The foreboding shadowed Brion's face. "I cannot be 'Your Majesty' unless my father dies."
Matt gave him a long and level look, then slowly sank to one knee, even though Brion wasn't his liege lord. "The king is dead. Long live the king!"
Brion buried his face in his hands and burst into tears.
Matt stared at him in amazement.
Rosamund was at his side in an instant, trying to fit an arm around his broad shoulders, gazing down at his face in anxiety. "Weep, my lord, as becomes a noble knight! Weep, for grief must out! Weep, for surely the strong may dare to show their hearts!"
Matt resolved to quote that to her later. For the moment, he waited for the first burst to slacken, then said, "But he was your enemy, Your Majesty! He was a tyrant to his sons and the shame of his wife! You fought against him in your mother's war! How can you grieve for him?"
"Because he was my fath
er," Brion gasped. "Because I have boyhood memories of games and riding and early lessons with wooden swords, memories of a kindly though boisterous man! Him I mourn! And most of all, I mourn because he was my father!"
Inside Matt's head, a voice said heavily, How could I have been so blind as not to see such loyalty as this? How could I have failed to perceive his love, and John's treachery? A curse upon the pride and anger that ever lost me his affections!
Matt resolved to be the gentlest father he could be, and to discipline with caring.
But Rosamund was cradling Brion's head to her breast now, murmuring in soothing tones. Time and again she started to kiss his forehead, then caught herself, though the longing was naked in her face.
The next day, when Matt went into the grove, he heard Rosamund crying, "Stop it at once! You cannot be healed so quickly! You shall open the wound and bleed to death!"
"You saw for yourself that it was healed so thoroughly it might have been new flesh!" Brion grunted, whirling his longsword and leaping in a practice slash. The sword spun in his hands, sending flashes of sunlight caroming off the leaves, as his feet wove an intricate pattern of advance, feint, and retreat. Suddenly, though, he swung his sword high and jabbed it into the ground, leaning on it and panting, "A pox upon it! I have barely begun, but already am wearied!"
"The amazing thing is that you managed it at all," Matt said.
Both young people looked up at him, staring.
He came forward and took Brion's wrist, feeling the pulse slam through it. "Healthy enough, if you don't overdo it—which you will, if I know you." He looked up at Rosamund. "Don't worry, Your Highness—the druids told me that they wove all sorts of healing spells into him. His body has been mending while he slept—the best way to keep him from trying to get up too soon."
"Truly said." Rosamund gave Brion a dark look.
"Perhaps not fit enough to fight," Brion gasped, "but surely fit enough to travel."
Matt glanced from the new king, fairly glowing with virility, to Rosamund, who seemed to exude an equal or greater feminine glow whenever she looked at him, which might explain why her face so quickly erased the burgeoning euphoria that started every time she looked at him, hiding it under a mask of defiance and anger. Guilt, he decided, could do amazing things—but so could leaving these two alone together. Brion was certainly now strong enough for them to do more than kiss, and Rosamund too filled with desire every time she looked at him, no matter how angry it made her. Whatever their mutual destiny might be, the rules of their society made it entirely forbidden for them—yet. "Yes," Matt agreed, "we'd better get on with our quest—tomorrow morning. Until then, Your Majesty, back to bed. You can get up for a ten minute walk every hour, but when we set out tomorrow, you're riding in a litter."
He braced himself against the storm of Brion's outrage and waded through the outburst with grim and unyielding determination. After all, Brion might have been the rightful king, but Matt was Brion's physician, as well as consort to the Queen of Merovence. When the sun rose the next morning, Brion's war-horse went in front of him, and a local horse—drafted by the druids—behind, with the king lying on a stretcher between them, grumbling every foot of the way.
Matt accepted his grumbling with good grace, but Rosamund, who rode beside him, spoke sharply to him every ten minutes or so, upbraiding him for his lack of chivalry in making those about him suffer. She must have known which buttons to push, because she always managed to make Brion subside into dark muttering for five minutes or so.
For his own part, Matt kept glancing at the Irish horse at the other end of the stretcher, wondering whether it was going to turn into a person or not. However, by the end of the day it was still a horse, and the most human thing it did was to turn greedy when he put on its feed bag.
The next day, though, even Matt couldn't deny that Brion was well enough to ride. The Irish horse was quite happy to bear Rosamund, and three other horses had showed up during the night to carry Brock, Orizhan, and Matt, who rode gingerly, each wondering what he would find himself riding the next minute.
At noon they turned off the road to rest and eat—and broke through a thicket into a lovely little grotto, decked with flowers, with a brook making a small waterfall into a crystal-clear pond where brightly colored fish darted.
Brion's gaze turned distant, and he reached out to rest one mailed hand lightly on Rosamund's. "Now could I stay in this grove all my days and let the world go hang, if you were by my side!"
Her gaze snapped up to him in surprise and, since he wasn't watching her, the naked longing filled her face and stayed there.
"Could you not, also?" Brion's voice was low, seductive, and thrilling.
Rosamund shivered and admitted, her voice very low, "Aye, my lord, and be mightily content in your presence and the beauty of this place."
Matt had to do something fast. "You can't seriously mean to stay in this grotto the rest of your lives!"
"Why should we not?" Brion reached out toward Rosamund, smile glowing, eyes devouring her. "What more would we need than each other?"
Slowly, shyly, she reached out to him, but her eyes were locked on his, and her face was beginning to glow, too.
"Well, there's the matter of midwives, for one." Matt spoke a little more loudly than he needed to, just to break the spell. "Or were you somehow going to live together all your lives without having babies?"
"Our love shall be as pure as any troubadour ever sang!" Brion declared.
Rosamund drew her hand back a little, the glow starting to fade.
"There's also the minor matter of food," Matt pointed out. "I see wild grapes growing here, but that's hardly a balanced diet, and it won't last past the first frost. I suppose Brion could hunt enough meat to keep you through the winter, if you had any way of staying warm, but that's hardly a balanced diet, either."
"Must you be so confoundedly practical!" Rosamund cried.
Matt shrugged. "Somebody has to, and neither of you seem to be in the mood—at least, not that mood. But the biggest problem is that Brion is a knight, and one of the most chivalrous in Europe. How long do you think it would be before he grew restless and began to sicken for battle again?"
"Never!" Brion declared.
But Rosamund withdrew her hand completely as the glow died. "Then I must know you better than yourself, Majesty, for I see that the Lord Wizard is right in every particular. You are a knight born and bred, and would chafe and grow ill-tempered if you could not take to the saddle and ride to defend the weak and the poor."
Brion opened his mouth to protest.
Rosamund's voice sank low. "Indeed, if you were not such a man, I would not... esteem you so highly."
Brion closed his mouth.
Rosamund turned away. "Let us find some other place to rest, Lord Wizard. I could not abide here now, and think of what might have been."
She rode out of the clearing, back straight as an exclamation point, and Brion followed, casting a black look at Matt as he passed. Matt let Sir Orizhan and Sergeant Brock ride by before he rode after, cursing under his breath. It wasn't always fun to know you were right.
Nonetheless, later in the afternoon Matt found himself riding beside the new and uncrowned king. Brion rode with his eyes straight ahead, not deigning to give the Lord Wizard so much as a glance.
Matt couldn't let that last, either. "I still have to learn who murdered your brother, Your Majesty. Your mother burns to make war on Merovence as long as she believes it was our fault he died."
"And you know that if I overthrow my upstart puppy of a brother, I shall loose her from her prison?" Brion nodded. "You would rightly dread her then! Yes, she might make war upon Merovence of her own accord, and I would surely march to support her."
"But not if Gaheris were murdered by a man of Bretanglia, who was trying to shift the blame onto Merovence," Matt countered.
Finally Brion turned to frown at him. "Who had you in mind?"
"Practically everybody who
was there, or anybody who knew Gaheris." Matt didn't mention that the list included Brion himself. "I was hoping you might have seen or heard something that would help me learn who the murderer was, even though I know you weren't at the inn."
"In that you are wrong," Brion said. "I knew my brother of old, and followed him to that inn disguised as a common soldier."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Matt stared. "You followed your brother because you know him? I'm sorry, but that doesn't make sense. You're leaving something out. Why did knowing him make you want to follow him?"
"I knew he would begin a brawl of some sort," Brion answered, "and so he did. I followed both to protect him from those with whom he picked his fight, and to protect those others from him. If the whore's pimp had not stepped up to protect her, I would have done so myself."
Matt's head reeled in amazement. "A belted knight, fight to save a prostitute?"
"I am sworn to protect the weak, my lord, no matter their virtue, or lack of it," Brion said severely. Then he seemed to thaw a little and added, "Besides, I have never been certain that prostitutes were not more victims than sinners."
He spoke softly, but Rosamund heard nevertheless, and looked up at him in surprise. Then her gaze turned thoughtful.
"So you saw the fight," Matt interpreted.
"I saw it begin," Brion corrected. "Once the melee began, though, and I saw the harlot was safe, I leaped to defend my brother's back."
Matt stared. "You defended Gaheris? I thought you hated each other!"
"He was my brother," Brion said simply.
Once again Matt was amazed by the medieval concepts of honor and duty.
"I turned three blows that would have felled him," Brion reported, "and stretched their assailants cold on the floor. They were common men, only enjoying a good fight. I doubt they knew Gaheris for a prince."
"So how come you didn't see who struck the killing blow?"
"Because some foul knave came upon me from behind, and laid me low."
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