“My respects, Ancient One, and my thanks for your—boons,” he whispered to the standing stone, and he bowed on his knees. Then he stood, turned away, and without looking back hurried along the road, on which his previous footprints lay fresh and new.
14
“WHERE IN ALL THE HELLS OF man hast been?” Prospero demanded to know, spinning around at the still-open window.
“Went for a walk,” Dewar said. He took off his damp cloak and hung it up. Beneath it, his clothes were wet through. “Needed it,” he added. He’d had time to think as he walked back to the Palace through the swirling snow. There was no way to tell his father what he had done, even if he could have brought himself to speak of it. Dewar suspected Prospero would take a very bad view of such a bargain.
Prospero nodded and closed the window. “My apologies,” he said to it, and twitched the draperies together. “I’d asked thee to await me here.”
“I was distracted, sir.” Dewar sat on the sofa. Prospero carried over a candelabrum with three lit tapers and sat beside him. Dewar stared straight ahead. He took a deep breath and released it; the flames fluttered. “Any word?”
“Naught.”
Had he been duped? Had the Ancient One, with some play on words Dewar had missed, tricked him? He had looked for Freia along the road to the Palace and seen no sign of her. But the Stone could not lie; the meanings lay together, solid blocks—
“I think she’s alive,” Dewar said. “I think—I don’t know. She can’t be dead.”
“She was compounded most mortal,” Prospero said bitterly. “May I kindle thy fire?”
“Surely. Ah. There’s wine.” He was forgetting to play the gentlemanly host.
“An excellent idea.” Prospero took a candle to the hearth, stacked kindling and logs.
Dewar forced himself to rise, to find a corkscrew and heavy glass goblets at the sideboard and to open a bottle a servant had brought him with Luneté’s regards and her farewell note.
“Lys wine,” Prospero remarked, tasting it.
“Gift from the Countess of Lys.” This was better than the last Lys wine he’d had, a shallow but flavorful red. Dewar took a linen towel from the washstand and rubbed at his wet hair.
Prospero turned, watching him, and said, “A lively young woman.”
He smiled. “Very. My cousin-in-law, is she now?”
Prospero drank, rolled the wine in his mouth, swallowed. Dewar watched pale infant flames catch the edges of the logs on the hearth, climbing to glory. They emptied and refilled their glasses in silence.
“I hold no hope that Freia lives,” Prospero said to his goblet.
“We don’t know anything, Father. All we have are hints, clues. She may— Maybe she has wandered onto the Road, or into some situation where she is not easily perceived—”
“Have faith in thyself, son. Dost so timidly endorse thy sorcery?”
“No,” admitted Dewar. “I have hope.”
“Hope is for fools,” said Prospero, “and other things too,” he said, “and belike I’d be as great a fool as any, now. There’s a matter I’ll broach with thee, which I’d liever have left untapped until the morrow.”
“I listen, sir.”
“I’ve spoken with Odile,” Prospero said, “but recently, and ’tis mine intent to bring her to my new dwelling at the Spring.” His mouth twitched slightly.
Dewar touched his lips with his winey tongue and set his glass down carefully. “I am not sure that is—wise—Father.”
“I’m told of the difficulty which has existed betwixt you.”
“I have said nothing of it,” Dewar murmured. Odile. His hands were damp all in an instant; his feet wanted to move.
“We talked of’t, she and I. At first ’twas concern for thy sister that prompted me; the girl hath no mother, no model for a woman’s role and conduct, which lack hath been the root of certain faults in her. I’ve spoken of thee as well. Though the breaking of thy oath was a heinous start in life, thou makest strides toward redeeming thyself. Thy mother hath in her heart to grant thee pardon, an thou’lt sue for it meekly.”
Spoken today? She willing to pardon him? Dewar thought, and his head jerked to stare at Prospero.
Prospero gazed at the fire, not seeing him. “It is for love of me she does so,” he said. “I trust thy bearing will be amicable and suitable.”
For love of him? Odile, love? Prospero deluded himself— “I shall bear myself,” Dewar whispered, bowing his head, “appropriately.” He would ride the Road and hide, he thought; he would find a hole and pull it down behind him; he would return to Oren’s Company of Twelve and be there protected. “I am surprised at the suddenness of this,” he went on in a stronger voice.
“It is not sudden. I’ve long desired to refresh the acquaintance. I am pleased to find that the rare affection she felt for me remains, as mine for her, untarnished by time or circumstance.” Prospero drank again. “She is here, now,” he finished.
Dewar’s chest tightened. “Here? She is?” He looked around swiftly.
“Aye. In the Palace. Hath been here all the day, arrived this morn early and sought me,” and Prospero closed his eyes for a moment, “and I prithee do her the honor of joining us in my rooms tomorrow for a late breakfast. I’d intended—other things. We’ll wait to see if thy sister’s body be found,” and Prospero breathed deeply and took a quick swallow of wine, “and then begone after such obsequy as be required. She’s dead, and cannot be bound, cannot be used to further bind me.” He did not look at Dewar; he seemed rather to address the now-empty goblet.
“Oh,” said Dewar, although he had known this. “What are your further plans, then?”
Prospero refilled his goblet. “Ere my vow was fulfilled, I sensed deep changes in the balance—”
Dewar started, hearing the term again.
Prospero spoke still to his wine. “—which hath maintained ’twixt the Stone of Blood and the Well. Alas, I had no fore-knowledge that I’d be forever kept from sounding deeper in these currents, but this much could I see from the surface, this much do I know: the Spring hath altered the balance, hath begun to disorder the flow of the Well, at the wastelands fringing Pheyarcet.”
“Oh,” again said Dewar, who had not only noticed the effect but deduced the cause and calculated its approximate location and strength, alone in his Tower of Thorns: which discovery had prompted him to travel in Pheyarcet and Landuc. “That’s interesting.” It was interesting. Prospero knew what he held in the Spring, Dewar had supposed he must, but now—banned from sorcery, what good could it be to him? And Dewar’s belly tightened as he thought of Odile, and what use she might make of such power.
“I believe ’tis a natural process—the upwelling, so to speak, of Wells. Avril,” Prospero said, and smiled scornfully, “who fears sorcery, Gaston who ignores it—they know naught of’t. They know I drew my forces, my men, from some mighty but unfamiliar place: they’ve not the knowledge to guess what the truth is.”
“The Spring?” Dewar half-asked, prompting.
“Avril hath an ill dawn lurking,” said Prospero. “What dost know of it?”
“What you have told me,” Dewar replied, which was but half the truth: with Odile in the background of his thoughts, caution governed him, and he wished to veil himself and his work and hear what Prospero would volunteer. “I only followed Freia there, and you,” he added, another half-truth. “The Well seemed weak and distant.”
“ ’Twas a source of power,” Prospero said. “I opened it, drew ’pon and primed it with the last of my sorcery. If all’s worked as I wished, ’tis now a mate to Landuc’s Well and the Stone of Morven: antithesis and complement.”
Dewar drew his breath in and held it. “A wonder,” he said softly. Exactly what he’d thought himself, waking there in Argylle after his marathon of copying. Did Prospero think him utterly blind, not to have observed the change? Or had Prospero simply not thought of it, so consumed he’d been by his other difficulties?
&n
bsp; “More than a wonder. I do not want Pheyarcet. I’ve something better that’s mine own, and there shall I dwell.”
“This cannot have passed unnoticed by the other adepts, Father.” Dewar pictured the disruption a new Power would cause in political circles, not just sorcerous—although those of the sorcerers in Phesaotois capable of finding the place could and would do much toward making it considerably less idyllic. Prospero must know this; he had driven the Argyllines to complete their city’s walls before he left, and the walls had potent Bounds on them.
But what use would Bounds be when Prospero meant to invite Odile within?
“I am sure not, thus I desired to seal with Avril some stronger edifice of defense than the simple shield of words he granted on my surrender. I’d have had the better side of’t; he’d no idea of what I represent.” Prospero chuckled darkly. “Pity. ’Twere a pleasure to see his discomfiture, when the true state of affairs became evident: not knowing what he did, he granted Freia might hold Argylle ’mongst her dower-lands, hers alone.” Prospero’s laugh deepened. “Why, His Mean-Spirited Majesty stooped to quibble o’er houses I’ve not beheld in full four centuries, o’er estates whose very district-names are half-eroded with their lands, e’en let me dispute with him for a few of Diote’s jewels, all that he niggardly begrudged the maid: but never marked a virgin woodland and a village with no manor-house appertaining, all called Argylle, lying in a vague quadrant far-flung from Landuc. He thought them without worth, though he burdened all she was to have with tithes. Incompetent.”
Dewar smiled too. The Emperor deserved what he got, to let himself be so led about, pursuing the obvious and ignoring the veiled, the unseen. “And now?”
“Since the bride’s gone—” Prospero shrugged. “I swore non-aggression; I’ll keep mine oath. I’ve no interest now in Pheyarcet. The surrender treaty chafes me, but thou hast gotten me my liberty again—and thy poor sister’s, for all the good she made of it.”
Freia, thought Dewar. Where was she? Perhaps best out of sight, if Odile was about the place. She’d as soon poison Freia as look at her, surely. Would Odile test her mettle in the Fire? The Emperor might not allow it—
Prospero was speaking still; he paused and said, “Dewar?”
“I’m—preoccupied. It’s been a day of many shocks, Father.” Dewar put his elbows on his knees and his head on his hands.
Prospero squeezed his shoulder. “I ask thee to join us for breakfast o’ the morrow, in my apartments,” he repeated quietly.
“I—usually I fence with Josquin in the morning, or try to if he is up,” Dewar said, looking up. Prospero’s face was kind, care-lined. Dewar pitied him, ensnared by Odile. He would come to a bad end, through delusion to humiliation and degradation. Prospero was a fool, as he had said himself, and Odile would help him make himself an ass, as she had so many others.
“Come afterward. There is more for us to discuss. I thought to tell thee this now, ’twould distract thee.”
“I cannot believe she is dead,” Dewar said, truthfully.
Prospero pressed his shoulder again. “I must go,” he said, “and see what word Herne’s turned up, or Fulgens. Gaston could not wait; despite the storm he must ride to his Montgard on some business of his army.” He paused. Dewar looked at him, at the concern in his face, and nodded. “Wilt be well …?” Prospero half-asked.
Dewar said, “Yes.”
“She was too mortal made,” Prospero whispered, shaking his head, “to survive here ’mongst the smokes and stirs o’ the Well.”
Dewar nodded.
“Good night, son.”
“Good night, Prospero.”
Prospero went out of the room. Dewar lifted his head and gazed at the fire. He listened to the door close and a frown drew the corners of his mouth down; his eyes narrowed.
“Odile,” he said to the fire, and ground his teeth. “Damn,” he whispered.
Dewar left from the sofa, took up the candles, and opened his workroom. In the bottom of a wardrobe in his bedroom, after strenuous searching, he found a pair of large leather saddle-bags and brought them to the workroom.
First he stripped off his wet clothes, dried himself, and dressed again; then, the real work began. Methodically, sometimes going to fetch a vest or socks or other clothes to pack something fragile (the Mirror he wrapped in three new shirts of fine South Madanese silk), he emptied his workroom of everything sorcerous, everything scholarly. It required that he fill an additional pair of saddle-bags and a haversack, for he had borrowed, from the Palace library, books which he had no intention of returning. If the Emperor did not value sorcery, Dewar did, and he knew what was worth studying. Two old histories of the early days of Panurgus’s reign went along also.
When he was done, he heaped all he had packed on the bed. He cleaned the bedroom meticulously next, removing all traces of his occupancy, and then, regretful, decided it wasn’t enough: he must scour the place the best way he knew, annihilating every atom of himself Odile might use against him. Sword and cloak he donned, and his best high boots. He judged the pile of luggage and added a rolled blanket containing two new sea-green silk waistcoats embroidered with silver stuffed into a new pair of riding boots. Such amenities were unobtainable near his Tower of Thorns.
Last of all, he took his staff.
How to depart? He might make a Way; it would be quickest and easiest, and there’d be no chance of pursuit, and he began to rummage for the little cube of stone that would lead him to his tower wrapped in thorns. And as he did he thought of Freia, and he slowed his searching and halted. Freia had not been found. She lived, though, and he fully expected her to appear soon. A feeling that she could not be far away at all nagged at him. He owed it to her not to leave her here, in Odile’s reach.
Though the Stone hadn’t promised anything of the sort, Dewar’s sorcerer’s instinct told him that he must put himself in a position to meet Freia by chance. That precluded a Way. He would have to take the Road, risk Odile and Prospero tracing him or just happening by bad luck to meet him, and trust Fortune to put Freia in his path. Fortuna had served him well before, in similar circumstances.
Dewar draped the awkward saddle-bags about his person and lifted the black staff, Summoning the Well of Landuc. He spun the staff and chanted a spell of Bounding, walking through the rooms and moving the staff along the walls, making a confinement for the Elemental he would invoke.
Having completed his circuit, Dewar stood in the center of his rooms, at the door of the bedroom and sitting-room, and Summoned again with words of power.
It exploded into the room along a line he cut in the air with his staff, hovered, limited in its scope by that staff’s circling.
“Perceive the Bounds,” said Dewar.
“I persssceive the Bounds,” said the Salamander, a hiss and crackle.
“Within the Bounds is thine.”
“I ssshall take what is withhhin.”
“When all within is burned, be dismissed, and return to thy proper sphere.”
“I sssshall burn within the Bounds, and return to my ssssphere,” agreed the Salamander. “The Bounds are small, massster.”
“Tough. That’s what you’re getting.”
“There is greater food without.…”
“It’s not for you.” Salamanders, thought Dewar, were a greedy lot. Sprites were content to work within Bounds and rarely overflowed; the desire of a Salamander was only to devour.
“As you wisssh, massster.”
“Indeed.” Dewar blew out the candles; the room was lit only by the dull red glow of the Salamander hanging, contorting, at the end of his staff. The sorcerer, staff in hand, walked to the window, reached through the curtains, and unlatched it. The Salamander could not leave the Bounds he had made; Dewar stepped backward through the opened window onto the balcony and the Elemental dropped from the tip of his staff at the Bounds, exploding into light and fire. Dewar closed the window on the roar, being neat at heart, and jumped, for the second time that
night, from the balcony into the snow, encumbered now by his souvenirs of the Palace.
The hue and cry was raised as he reached the stables; undisturbed, he chose and saddled a horse, Majuba, burdened him with the saddlebags, and led him out. Prospero’s glossy black Hurricane stood at one end of the stalls; Dewar paused there.
“Tell him—nothing,” Dewar said to the horse. “Farewell, and we’ll meet again in better times, Hurricane. I’d like a foal of yours one day.”
Hurricane snorted and tossed his head, as diminished from mightier things as his master and as chafed thereby. Dewar smiled a little and left the stables.
He cared not where he went, at first; the Gate of Winds would do as well as any, and he could get to the shore-road from there, to follow the ocean a ways.
At the Palace to the west, there were shouts and shrieks, bells and to-do. He chuckled. The Salamander would consume everything within the Bounds and no mortal hand could restrain it. A Sprite might destroy it and itself too, but only if a sorcerer could put one inside Dewar’s apartment.
“That’s me,” he said, mounting. “Out in a blaze of glory. Let’s go!”
15
PRINCE GASTON TOOK A LANTERN ON a pole from a rack and lit it while the groom saddled Solario and brought him from his stall. The horse snorted when he scented his master, and Gaston stroked his sleek neck and nose. He led Solario out of the stables, into the snow-whitened yard, and mounted. His road was north, into Herne’s Riding. At an ancient standing stone, he would pass onto the Road and make his way toward Montgard.
The wet snowflakes swirled like comets under the lights of the Palace ways. Gaston passed through three gates, was saluted briskly by the guards at all, and settled with Solario into a frame of mind for the long, dark, damp ride through the forest before he could pass onto the Road. The cold and wind were nothing to him; the horse ignored them as well, being Gaston’s animal and having absorbed something of his nature in the service. At the end of its short chain, the lantern bobbed and swung, covering the white road before them with a cycle of shadows and wan light. Solario was a horse accustomed to getting from here to there rapidly; he cantered smoothly, comfortable with Gaston’s weight and light hand on the reins.
The Price of Blood and Honor Page 24