Warlock’s Last Ride

by Christopher Stasheff

  Magnus was laying the yellow slice on her bread when a voice said, "How now, wizard!"

  "I'll let you know when I find out." Magnus looked up with a smile, then saw Alea's dumbfounded stare. "Alea, may I introduce you to the real spy-master here? His name is Robin Goodfellow, but he goes by Puck."

  Alea looked away, abashed, then back to Puck with a smile. "Pleased to meet you, Puck. Excuse my stares; you reminded me of someone I knew."

  "Several someones, actually." Magnus caught the image of the dwarves of her homeworld that rose in her mind, then sank again.

  "A pleasure to make your acquaintance, lady," Puck said with a smile.

  "Spymaster." Alea frowned. "Don't tell me you have word of a rebellion already?"

  "I do indeed," Puck said, and turned to Magnus. "Men from all over the land are indeed trooping toward Runnymede, their scythes and flails over their shoulders. It is as it was the year before you were born, wizard."

  "Let us hope we can detour them before it comes to battle, then," Magnus said.

  "So many in company will not be deterred long by any of my pranks," Puck said grimly.

  "No, but there are other ways. See if the Wee Folk can learn who the leaders are, will you, Puck?"

  "We shall have you a list ere long," Puck said, "but I think you would be wiser simply to track their movements and prepare for battle "

  "I would never argue with the oldest of the Old Things," Magnus said slowly, "but I must try persuasion first."

  "You will pit yourself against masters."

  "Oh, he's no mean adept himself," Alea said.

  Puck turned to her in surprise. "I hope you speak from your own experience, lady!"

  Alea stared at him a moment, then dropped her gaze, blushing again. "I'm afraid not—but I've certainly witnessed his efforts. The man could charm a pitful of snakes!"

  "Let us hope," Puck said darkly, "that he can charm a field full of angry peasants."

  AFTER SUPPER THAT evening and before the usual entertainments began, Magnus was able to take Cordelia aside for a few minutes' talk. After listening to a glowing report on the baby princess's progress, he said, "Let us hope she will remain so bright and sunny even if she has a little brother."

  "What, one for Alain, and one for me?" Cordelia smiled, amused. "I hope we shall have more children than two!"

  "Yes, I've always thought four was the right number, myself."

  "Because there were four of us? Still, I would have liked to have had a sister—as now I do!"

  "Quicksilver certainly seems to be completely in sympathy with you," Magnus said, amused.

  Cordelia started to speak of Allouette but caught herself in time.

  "You have another brother now, too," Magnus reminded her, "though I suspect you rarely see Diarmid."

  "Rarely indeed, since he was sent to administer the duchy," Cordelia said. "Still, he is pleasant enough when he is here, once you grow accustomed to his quiet ways."

  "Surely you are accustomed already, having grown up with Gregory." Magnus frowned. "Or is Diarmid more quiet than ever these days?"

  "If we saw him, we well might find him so," Cordelia said, "for I understand he has to judge his first capital case and is rather upset about it."

  "Surely it would give him an excuse to delve into some other old books!"

  "Perhaps," Cordelia said, "but the verdict seems clear enough, and I doubt that any moldy old volumes will show him any excuse to pardon the young man. He was caught poaching, after all—more than one of the royal deer—and Diarmid is not looking forward to carrying out the sentence. Still, he knows that, as duke, he must witness the hanging."

  "The poor fellow!"

  "Which," Cordelia asked, "Diarmid or the felon?"

  "Both. I trust Diarmid can postpone the matter for some months."

  "Alas, he cannot," Cordelia said. "The young man must hang in four days." She shuddered and looked away, then brightened. "Look, the jugglers are about to begin! Let us watch and think of happier events!"

  Magnus went with her, thinking furiously how he could manage to travel to Loguire to plead the young poacher's case while he was trying to find a way to forestall a peasant rebellion.

  THE CLEARING WAS wide enough for Rod to see a few stars between the tree-tops. He had pitched his tent in the center, the better to see anyone—or anything—approaching. So far, though, the night had been quiet, only the chirring of insects around him and, in the woods, the odd howl or shriek of the night-hunters or their quarry.

  Rod plucked his harp, gazing into the campfire and letting his thoughts wander as he tried to pin down the cause of his vague unease. It could just be a quirk in his brain chemistry, of course, but he doubted that. Better to rale out events in the kingdom—but he couldn't think what they would be. He reviewed recent happenings, then let them sort themselves at the back of his mind while he tried an old folk song; maybe the odd correlation would make itself if he didn't try to work it out by logic.

  "As I was a-walking one morning in May, To hear the birds whistle, see …"

  He broke off, alerted by some change in the night's sounds. Whoever was coming was very good—Rod couldn't hear his steps at all, only track him by insects falling silent around him, then starting their concert again when he was past. Rod opened his mind to scan and was doubly alerted by emptiness, the lack of mental activity of a shielded mind.

  Strumming, he turned to his left just a little and made out the silhouette blocking the stars, a silhouette in the shape of a head. Whoever it was, he or she was very tall. He smiled, letting the strings fall silent. Sure enough, the voice came out of the darkness: "A new song, Dad."

  "New to you, yes, son. I don't suppose I've played it since you were a toddler."

  Gwen sitting on a blanket spread over meadow grass with a picnic basket beside her, arms outstretched to the tow-headed toddler who was having great fun being obstinate about coming to her…

  Rod winced at the pain of the memory of happiness and put it aside, sure he could recall it when he wanted. He concentrated on the living son who was here, allaying the ache of longing for the wife who wasn't. "Your stalking has improved; you're excellent now."

  "I can't be, if you knew I was there." Magnus stepped into the firelight.

  "Ah, well, you forget that I'm an excellent sentry." Rod moved over on the log. "Sit down and have a bite." He nodded toward the kettle of stew that hung near the fire.

  "Thank you." Magnus took a bowl from Rod's pack and ladled it full, then brought it back to sit beside his father, toying with the spoon, then sampling the food and nodding approval.

  Rod smiled, amused; he knew his own culinary limitations. "Someone taught you good manners."

  Gwen, thirty-two and smiling as she showed her little boy how to hold his spoon, while his baby sister napped in her cradle ...

  The deep voice of the grown Magnus pulled him from the memory. "I just happened to be in the neighborhood."

  Rod gazed at the huge dark man who had somehow grown out of that blond two-foot toddler and blinked his eyes clear. "Yes, I understand you have friends living down this way."

  "Kin, actually." Magnus turned his gaze to the fire, frowning. "I suppose they are, now that Cordelia's married."

  "Kin?" Rod frowned, then remembered Alain's uncle and smiled. "Well, the king may be your sister's father-in-law, but I'm not sure that makes his brother Anselm your uncle-in-law."

  "A relative of an old family friend, then?"

  "Yes, but I'm sure his feelings toward me aren't friendly."

  "Because you were the key to defeating his rebellion? Or because you counselled mercy for him?"

  "Both." Rod looked more closely at his son. "Not that you were coming to visit him—or is there trouble in the south?"

  "There's trouble in all quarters of the land, Dad," Magnus sighed, "but only vague mutters of discontent—nothing I can really pin down."

  So he needed to talk about threats to the Crown. Rod felt oddly flatter
ed, even though it was a little disappointing that his son hadn't sought him out simply for company.

  On the other hand, it was nice to know Magnus hadn't come to check up on his delusional parent.

  Had he?

  "Nothing specific, then. Has Alea heard any gossip you haven't?"

  "No." Magnus turned to him with a frown. "Why should she?"

  "Men aren't always privy to women's conversations— or interested enough to pay attention." Rod took a stick and reached out to stir the coals; flame licked up. "Then too, being new to Gramarye, she might notice some things that you and I would look right past."

  "So used to them that we dismiss them." Magnus nodded thoughtfully, his gaze following Rod's stick back to the flames. "We talk constantly, and I'm sure she would have mentioned anything that seemed odd."

  "She must be mentioning oddities every night."

  "Well, yes." Magnus smiled, amused. "She's not used to elves, or to so many people with psionic talents. I do have to reassure her as to what's considered commonplace here."

  "She certainly isn't."

  "What? You mean being so tall that she seems a freak?" Magnus turned to him with a frown; it was a topic with which he was all too familiar.

  "No, her perceptiveness and sensitivity." Rod put down the stick and looked up at his boy. "A very intelligent woman, son."

  "Yes. She is that." Magnus allowed himself a small smile.

  "Just a stray who followed you home?"

  Magnus laughed.

  Rod blinked in surprise at the rare sound, then smiled, thinking that Alea might be better for Magnus than he knew.

  "A stray, perhaps," Magnus acknowledged. "Certainly a fugitive—but she scarcely followed me. In fact, she took quite a bit of reassuring and coaxing."

  "Oh?" It was a side of Alea Rod hadn't seen. "What had made her skittish?"

  "Her parents died," Magnus said, "and the neighbors she had thought were her friends turned away from her. On her home world of Midgard, the 'normal' people were reacting to the abnormalities of inbreeding by enslaving those they could and fighting those they couldn't—and she was too tall to count as normal."

  "So they enslaved her?"

  Magnus nodded. "Her parents' lands were given to their worst enemies, who proceeded to beat her or whip her for the slightest disobedience."

  'Trying to break her spirit. They didn't succeed."

  "No, but they might have, if she had stayed. The first night, though, the son made advances—if you can call assault an advance …"

  "So she didn't stay around for a second night."

  "She felt that a quick death was better than a lifetime of abuse," Magnus said, "so she took the chance to run and hoped she could escape the slave-catchers. She took her risks with the wild dog packs and the giants."

  Rod shuddered. "Harrowing enough."

  "Yes, but there's something more." Magnus frowned. "She has never spoken of it, but I'm sure there was a heartbreak there—and whoever broke her heart did it in the cruelest way possible."

  Rod looked up at him. "Only a guess, though?"

  "A guess, but the symptoms don't leave me much room to imagine anything else—unless it's something worse."

  "So she took her chances with the forest's monsters instead of the human ones." Rod turned to gaze into the campfire. "Think she would have survived by herself?"

  Magnus was still for a minute, thinking it over. Rod was surprised that his son didn't seem to have considered the issue before. "Not a relevant question?"

  Magnus shrugged. "She met me before she met the wild-dog pack. I had to pretend to ignore her except to leave food where she could take it but still have a head start if I tried to attack."

  Rod nodded. "She couldn't know you were safe, after all."

  "She must have had some suspicion of the sort," Magnus said. "She travelled near me for the next few days until she plucked up the courage to talk with me—and I had to be very careful not to say or do the slightest thing that could even seem to be threatening."

  "But you were a stranger, far too tall to be one of her own kind," Rod said, "and, I take it, too short to be a giant?"

  "For once in my life, yes." Magnus smiled.

  "So it must have taken a great deal of courage to trust you at all."

  "Great courage indeed." Magnus nodded. "That was what I first admired in her—her bravery in facing the wilds by herself: the savage animals, the unknown, the unexpected …"

  "Including you," Rod said. "How well could she survive by herself now?"

  "Oh, very well," Magnus assured him. "She knows how to fight, bare-handed or with a staff, and knows how to find food in the woods. Then too, she turned out to have some psi talent—how much, I'm still not sure …"

  "Which means it must be considerable."

  "Exactly. She has learned how to use her powers enough to be formidable in her own right—and she's sharp-tongued enough to scare off any animal that can understand speech."

  Rod glanced up quickly, looking for signs that Magnus had suffered the sharp edge of that tongue, but the young man's face was tranquil as he gazed into the fire, giving away nothing. "No chance she's an emotional basket-case?"

  "Not once she recovered from the shock of betrayal and the two days' abuse that followed," Magnus said. "She grew up in a loving and supportive home—or so I'd judge from the odd comment she has made about her parents. Apparently she was devoted to them because they were devoted to her."

  "Not because she was starved for approval?"

  Magnus shook his head. "If anything, her parents made her feel so special that she had no idea how cruel the world could be."

  Rod wondered if he and Gwen had been guilty of that, then remembered his own rages with greater guilt. Maybe it would have been better for them all if he had left—but no, he'd considered that at the time, even tried it for a while when the delusions hit. "Your opinion of her seems to have grown with time."

  "Oh, it has." Surely it was the reflection of the fire that glowed in Magnus's eyes. "Herkimer dug up enough material on the healing process to give me some idea what to expect, so I was able to endure the months of anger and insult. Then on planet after planet, her courage showed clearly, then her loyalty and her willingness to try to understand the people we met, to learn what was best for them and work for it, and finally her aptitude for caring re-emerged, for trying to help other people. Sometimes I don't think she's even aware she's doing it."

  Rod studied his son's impassive face, hoping for some sign of his feelings. "Added to which, she's a handsome woman."

  "Once she recovered from abuse and exposure, yes. Once she was able to wash off the dirt and eat decently again." Magnus's voice sank low. "Very handsome indeed." Then quickly, as though he had revealed too much, "More importantly, she's a valiant shield-mate and fiercely loyal."

  "Maybe that is more important." Rod's shield-mate had been beautiful as well as ferocious and fearsome. Then he realized that Magnus's was, too. "You can't really be thinking that she's only a travelling companion."

  Magnus was quiet a moment, then turned to him with a frown. "I wouldn't say that a shield-mate was that small a thing to be."

  "Agreed," Rod said. "But you must realize that you care about her much more deeply."

  "I care about her immensely, of course," Magnus said, frowning, "but still only as the closest of my friends."

  Rod studied his face and decided that he'd hit the point of diminishing returns. "Then you're planning to take her home."

  "She doesn't want to go back to Midgard. She says that since her parents died, she has no home there."

  "So you're planning to find her one here?"

  Magnus turned away, shaken, and Rod saw that his son hadn't considered Alea's falling in love with someone else—but Magnus said gamely, "Of course."

  "Well, then, you'd better pay attention to what she means as well as to what she says." Rod ignored his son's puzzled look. "Just don't forget that you can't accuse a friend o
f not being willing to give if you aren't willing to take."

  "No, of course not," Magnus said, even more puzzled.

  "Good." Rod filled himself a bowl of stew. "Care for seconds?"

  Magnus stared, then laughed and shook his head. "No thank you, Dad. One bowl was enough to tide me over. I do have to get back to the castle." He looked up with a quizzical frown. "I thought I had come to ask your opinion about my siblings' insistence that I not give them orders."

  "They're grown up now." Rod smiled. "Are you?"

  Magnus laughed again, and loudly. He stood, nodding. "You're right—I'll treat them as I've treated all the other adults I've met on my travels."

  "Meaning that you'll manipulate them with respect." Rod smiled and set his bowl down. "Instead, we talked about something that must matter more to you. I take it you're planning dinner with Alea."

  "Of course." Magnus must have realized that he sounded domestic, because he said quickly, "Oh, and Dad—Alea picked up word of a little problem in Loguire."

  "Yes?" Rod looked up with interest. "What kind of problem?"

  "A poacher who's about to be hanged," Magnus said, "and it's Diarmid who has to pass judgement on him.

  Twenty-One

  "OF COURSE," ROD SAID SLOWLY. "HE'S THE duke now, so any capital case would be referred to him."

  "I understand he's not terribly happy about it."

  "Sure," Rod said with a bleak smile. "Who would be? But it's part of being duke—he has to carry out his responsibilities."

  "The poacher's wife is on her way to plead with the judge—Diarmid—for her husband's life," Magnus said. "He's a squire, you see, and had a bad harvest, so he was bringing the peasants venison to smoke and store for the winter."

  "Deer?" Rod looked up. "Plural?"

  "Sixteen," Magnus said.

  Rod whistled. "Not much chance of claiming it was an accident or a drunken prank, is there? Or of promising he won't do it again."

  "Very little," Magnus agreed, "but it gets worse."

  "Worse?" Rod stared. "He's a squire who has purposefully poached sixteen deer, and it gets worse?"