by Mage Quest
"My sword!" cried Hugo in dismay, reaching for it. "What's happened to it?"
There came a sound of a low chuckle from behind us, rough-edged as though it had not been used very often. When we spun around, Dominic tossed his cloak back to show that he held Hugo's sword concealed beneath it.
Hugo, incredulous, slowly drew the sausage from his sheath. Dominic was really laughing now. The sausage, three feet long, was wrapped its entire length in pink ribbons.
V
We came over a hilltop, buffeted by a damp wind. Dominic, riding in front, pulled up hard.
Done in the valley before us was a small merchant caravan, half a dozen mule-drawn carts accompanied by two mounted men. But the mounted men had their hands up and were trying to control their skittish mounts with their knees. For on the hillside just above them, their backs turned to us, were four helmeted horsemen holding drawn bows.
Hugo reacted at once. Not even taking time to pull on his helmet, he gave a yell and kicked his horse forward. Dominic and Ascelin were only a second behind him. I hadn't seen Dominic move that fast in years.
The startled bandits spun around, trying unsuccessfully to maintain their seats and keep their bows steady. Before they could aim again, our party was on them.
Hugo swung his sword in a great arc toward the bandit who seemed to be the leader. It slashed through his crimson cloak, but the steel bounced with a dull clang off the armor hidden underneath. The bandit's bow flew from his hands as Ascelin grabbed the momentarily-stunned leader and wrenched him from his horse. Dominic whirled his mace, and two well-aimed blows on two more bandits' arms made them drop their bows in anguish.
I had recovered from surprise enough at this point to come forward and start putting paralysis spells on everyone. The two bandits Dominic had clubbed toppled from their horses, and the leader went still in Ascelin's hands. But that left one more.
I looked up and saw him galloping desperately, away down the valley. The other bandits' horses ran, riderless, behind him.
"Shall I fly after him?" I yelled to Dominic.
"Let him go," the prince answered with satisfaction. "They're bound to have friends, and the friends ought to hear what happens to bandits."
The king and Joachim, who had been left behind, came up with our pack horses at the same time as the mounted men from the caravan seemed to decide we weren't a second group of bandits about to turn on them, having once dispatched the first group.
We all came together by the wagons at the bottom of the hill, a group of varied emotions. Dominic, Ascelin, and Hugo were highly pleased with themselves, I thought all out of proportion. Although there were only three of them to the four bandits, they had had the advantage of surprise as well as Ascelin's size, plus the assistance of a supposedly competent wizard, me. I myself was angry that it had taken me so long to react; Hugo would have killed the leader if it hadn't been for his armor, whereas I should have been able to disarm him easily with magic. The king looked excited and a little apprehensive, Joachim concerned, and the knights who were supposed to be protecting the caravan embarrassed.
A man in a rich purple cloak jumped off the first of the wagons. "Thank you!" he said heartily. "I don't know what we would have done if you hadn't come along," with a sharp glance at his knights. "We hadn't expected to meet bandits in this region—although I myself am only taking this road for the first time, since the lord in the next river valley over started charging tolls on his bridges. We have a lot of valuable silks here on the way to market. Can I reward you with a few bolts? The color of your choice, for yourselves or your ladies?"
The king smiled. "We appreciate your offer, but we don't need a reward. I'm the king of Yurt." So much, I thought, for traveling anonymously. "Even when not at home, I feel it part of royal responsibility to keep the roads safe for honest men—and you can tell that my knights feel the same way!"
"What shall we do with them?" asked Ascelin, stirring the three paralyzed bandits with one toe. They were breathing, but they were stiff and immobile, and I doubted they would remember much of this.
"We should kill them," said Hugo enthusiastically.
"No," said the king thoughtfully. "We may have caught them, but I have no rights of justice outside my kingdom."
"And you can't kill a defenseless man," said Ascelin to Hugo reprovingly.
"Look at this, Hugo," said Dominic pointedly. "The bandit leader has an earring just like yours."
"We passed a castle about an hour ago," said the merchant, pointing along the road in the direction that we were going. "You can just see the turrets beyond that hill. If the castellan there doesn't have rights of justice, he'll certainly have a dungeon where these malefactors can be kept until they're turned over to the proper authorities." He looked at their motionless forms quizzically, then at me. "What did you do with them?" he asked with what I hoped was awe.
"Just a little trick we wizards know," I said airily, fairly satisfied myself with my ultimate role in this.
As we continued south, the bandits tied onto the pack horses, I positioned my horse next to Hugo's so I could talk to him. Joachim seemed to have the same idea, for I discovered him on Hugo's other side.
I spoke up quickly, feeling that the young lord needed to hear good sense before he heard Christian morality. "Hugo," I said conversationally, "you could have gotten yourself killed back there."
"But I didn't," he said with a grin.
"You might have had an arrow in the eye if the bandits had been on foot rather than on horseback."
"That's why I yelled, to startle the horses." I was quite sure he had not thought this through, but I couldn't very well contradict him. I had a sudden and very unpleasant vision, of Sir Hugo's party starting happily home from the Holy Land and of bandits leaping out of ambush and putting an arrow through Evrard. But I couldn't mention this to Hugo, because the next arrow would have been for his father.
I switched tactics. It was no use trying to make him realize the unnecessary danger he had put himself in if he was happy to have been in danger. "Why do you think the king brought his Royal Wizard along?"
Hugo shot me a quick look. "To deal with dragons or whatever magical creatures we run across."
"And also," I said, giving him a wizardly stare, "to deal with bandits. You saw me paralyze the three of them. If you'd given me fifteen seconds before you attacked, I could have had them all tied up neatly with magical spells."
"You wizards take all the fun out of everything," said Hugo grumpily. "I know perfectly well why there haven't been any decent wars in the western kingdoms for close to two centuries, not since the Black Wars. You don't want to let the aristocracy do what we're trained to do."
"We certainly don't want you killing each other," I said.
"Our own wizard would never scold me for saving us all from bandits."
I realized he meant Evrard. But if he had seen much more of Evrard in the last few years than I had, I thought I still knew the red-headed wizard better. "Didn't your wizard ever tell you that he'd decided to study wizardry in the first place because he was fascinated by the history of how wizards had stopped the Black Wars?"
Hugo didn't answer, which I took as an affirmative.
"I don't doubt your courage, Hugo," I continued. I thought, but decided it would be tactful not to say, that he was still young enough that his own death would not seem a real possibility to him. "And there will be ample opportunity on this trip for you to show it. But if you don't mind putting yourself in danger, you might at least think about the bandit leader. You would have killed him if he weren't wearing armor."
"It's nice armor, too," said Hugo thoughtfully, "much higher quality than you'd expect to see on a highwayman. It's even better than mine. I wonder if it would fit me."
I was not about to be distracted. "Doesn't death seem like a rather stiff penalty for trying to rob a silk caravan?"
"Don't go all moralistic!" Hugo cried. "The castellan to whom we're taking these bandits may
well hang them all if they're multiple offenders. I know King Haimeric never hangs anybody, but justice is sharper a lot of places outside of Yurt."
"You still can't act as judge and executioner yourself," I said sternly. I was rapidly starting to feel out of my depth. Since I, unlike Evrard, had not become a wizard out of fascination with the end of the Black Wars, and because Yurt really was very peaceful, I tended not to think about the morality of judicial execution, or for that matter much about deep moral issues at all.
"Even the Church recognizes killing in self-defense and the possibility of a just war," said Hugo.
"This was not self-defense," said Joachim.
I had been wondering when the chaplain was going to join this conversation. Priests were supposed to worry about morality. Wizards just try to keep as many people as possible alive and well.
"And killing someone," Joachim continued soberly, "even in self-defense or to save another innocent life, still leaves a stain on the soul."
Hugo, who had turned toward the chaplain, seemed abashed. I myself sometimes still found Joachim's burning dark eyes intimidating. "Well, I didn't kill him, and I didn't mean to kill him."
I expected he was telling the perfect truth—at all the tournaments in which he had taken part, everyone would have been wearing armor, and he would not have even thought about the effects of a razor-sharp sword on a man who did not have mail under his cloak.
But I was tired of worrying about morality myself. So when Hugo suddenly looked up and said, "What a castle!" in an entirely different voice, I was happy to change the subject.
And it was quite a castle. Among the tumbled hills before us rose a high ridge of red sandstone, at least a hundred feet tall. Cut into the sandstone were narrow windows, and perched on top, staring sternly down at the fields surrounding it, was the castle itself. Pennants whipping in the wind from the tops of the towers looked tiny, making us realize how high the castle really was.
We all pulled up for a better look. The castle was so well situated for war that we were momentarily stunned. "It would be impregnable," said Ascelin. "There's no way to scale the sandstone cliffs, especially with men inside shooting out. And I expect the stairs inside, going up to the castle, are very narrow and could easily be blocked against an enemy."
"I'm sure the castellan there does indeed have rights of high justice," commented the king with a chuckle.
The castle rose higher and higher above us as we approached. Encircling the base of the sandstone ridge was a tall curtain wall, also built of red stone, but the gate stood open. Two soldiers stepped forward menacingly as we approached.
"Greetings," said the king. "We would like to see the lord of this castle. We have captured some bandits."
The soldiers took a good look at us and our pack horses and then abruptly fled with startled cries. Giving each other surprised glances, we dismounted and came through the gate on foot.
"It's a good thing we caught these bandits," said the king, "if even the sight of them bound terrifies the people here."
"It's a good thing the castellan has such a fine castle if his soldiers are all cowards," replied Dominic.
Inside the walls were all the working parts of a castle that someone would not want to transport up narrow stairs cut inside a cliff: the stables, the kennels, the armor shop, the mews, the kitchens, and the big grain storage bins. Down at the far end stood a set of gibbets; this castellan did indeed practice high justice.
We waited politely for someone to come meet us, but for a few minutes there was only panicked shouting and scurrying. I even wondered momentarily if some bizarre spell had made everyone here think that we were dragons. But a quick probe found no spells other than my own.
After a while, one of the soldiers came back. "Are— Are they dead?"
"Of course not," I said. "I paralyzed them with magic."
He hesitated. Something very odd indeed, I thought, was happening here. Did they think we were another band of ruffians ourselves? But if so, why did they make no effort to resist us?
"You'd better go up to the castle," the soldier said at last, "and talk to the constable."
There was a brief pause while we tried to decide if it was possible to carry the bandits up the stairs. Finally I broke the spells that held them. They looked disoriented and confused as we untied them from the pack horses, then pulled them to their feet and tied their hands behind them. As we started up toward the castle, Ascelin, Dominic, and Hugo each had a bandit in front of him, a dagger point resting against the back of his neck.
The first flight of stairs was wide enough to give us few problems, even though the steps were uneven and extremely dark. There were no windows, and we had to feel our way. The sandstone walls were gritty on either hand, and I heard Dominic cursing quietly as he bumped his head.
We came out into what appeared to be a guard room cut into the stone. A single window gave a little light. On the far side, the stairs started up again, much narrower and even darker.
The soldier leading us glanced at Dominic and Ascelin. "We'd better take the outside stairs," he said.
The bandits, who had said nothing, all turned toward a door set in the room's outer wall, next to the window. The soldier opened the door, which led to wooden stairs built on scaffolding on the outside of the cliff. These were much wider than the inner stairs though the gaps between steps made them potentially treacherous.
I glanced down as we came out into chilly daylight and saw that we were already forty feet up. This was indeed an admirable castle for war. Even if an enemy made it as far as the guard room, he would still have to climb either the narrow, inner stairs, which could easily be blocked, or the outer, wooden stairs, which could be set on fire.
But how had the bandits known that the doorway led to the stairs?
All of us except the bandits were breathing hard when we reached the top of the cliff and entered the castle itself through another door. We came into a great hall, well lit by tall windows looking out in all directions across the countryside.
"They can afford windows, being up so high," I heard Dominic say appreciatively to Ascelin. "In Yurt, all our windows open onto the courtyard."
But I was thinking about the bandits rather than castle architecture. Was it because they been captured and brought here for justice so many times that they had known where the stairs were and had been able to climb them so readily, even with daggers pressed against their necks? If so, why had they not yet been hung?
The constable of the castle came forward, looking at us with wide eyes. "What— What is it that you want?"
King Haimeric greeted him formally and told him what had happened. I was pleased to note that he did not say that he was king of Yurt; maybe he, like me, was starting to wonder if the castellan here had made some nefarious pact with the bandits.
"And so," finished the king, "we are bringing these bandits to your lord for judgment." The three bandits, listening, all looked unaccountably amused.
"You caught these men," said the constable, "but you aren't trying to ransom them? You brought them here— You brought them so that the lord of this castle might exercise justice?"
"That's what I said," said the king patiently.
"But—"
The leader of the bandits answered for the constable. "But I am lord of this castle."
There was a short silence while we all struggled to keep our faces straight. "In that case," began King Haimeric sternly, "I must warn you, as an aristocrat and a giver of justice, to stop your wicked attacks on the defenseless."
It was no use. Dominic took the king firmly by the arm, and we all got out the door and staggered down the stairs somehow. Even Joachim was laughing as we tumbled out into the courtyard.
But as we galloped away from the castle, I couldn't help glancing back. The castellan's initial reaction had been the same amusement that convulsed us all, but he must also have been horribly shamed to appear before his men a bound captive. For the first time this trip
, we may have come across a difficulty we could not simply leave behind.
PART TWO - KING SOLOMON'S PEARL
I
I awoke all at once and lay perfectly still, waiting for whatever sound had wakened me to come again.
Inside the tent it was pitch black and completely silent. I couldn't even hear Joachim's breathing. But then I heard the faintest creak from his side of the tent; he must have heard the sound as well and be leaning on his elbows, listening.
It came again, the sharp crack of a broken twig followed by muffled hushing sounds. Our tents were pitched in a little grove, and someone, or something, was creeping up on us.
I was out of the tent with a quick scramble and was hit by air so cold I immediately wished I had brought a blanket with me.
But there wasn't time to go back. Where was Dominic? It should be his watch. Shivering in my pajamas, I crept toward the edge of the grove, straining to see.
The moon, three days past the full, hung red and deformed-looking above me. In its pale light I could at last see Dominic, a dim and bulky form. He moved his head as though he too had heard something.
Before I could speak or move closer, there was a dull thunk as of leather hitting bone, a grunt, and Dominic pitched forward. Behind him stood a smaller figure, arm upraised.
I yelled, a magically-amplified yell that shook the trees, and I filled the grove with a great flash of light. The light was gone in two seconds—even the best magic light needs to be attached to something solid. But before it faded I had seen four startled and frozen figures, and Dominic's body face down on the ground.
If they remained still for five seconds, I had them. I threw out coils of magic, shaped with the Hidden Language to make thin air into bindings as strong as cord. My binding spell wrapped around the four, imprisoning them. It was not as thorough as a paralysis spell, but I didn't have enough time for a paralysis spell.
I tried another flash of light and saw that I had all four. It must be, I realized, no more than a minute since I had scrambled out of the tent. In spite of the cold, I had to wipe my forehead with a pajama sleeve. Magic, especially rapid magic, is hard work.