Split Heirs

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “Shut up!” Pelwyn shouted. “Forget the proverbs! What we have to do is get the wizard to come out where we can see him!”

  “Oh, like the wolverine on Wolverine’s Day? And if he sees his shadow, he’ll eat your foot off?”

  “No, if he sees your shadow, he’ll eat your foot off.”

  “Isn’t it his own foot?”

  “No, that one’s got traps in it somewhere…”

  “Shut up!” Pelwyn’s scream carried a warning hint of hysteria. The pair shut up, and watched their leader in wary silence.

  After a moment of quiet, in which the loudest sounds were rustling leaves and the call of a distant bird, the Green Mole had sufficiently collected himself to say, “Now, we need to get this wizard out of his cave. Has either of you got any idea how we can do that?”

  The Ferret and the Sparrow looked at one another, then shrugged in unison.

  “Nope,” the Ferret said.

  “Um,” the Sparrow said.

  Pelwyn eyed the Vermilion Sparrow. “Um?” he said.

  “Well, I was sort of thinking…” the Sparrow said.

  “‘Sort of’ is probably as close as you’ll ever get,” Pelwyn muttered to himself.

  “…I was thinking, wizards do stuff with magic, sort of, don’t they? I mean, sometimes?”

  “I would have to agree with that,” the Green Mole said. “Invisible caves might be considered a form of magic, I’d say. What of it?”

  “Well, then, shouldn’t we do some magic to make this wizard appear? I mean, demons do magic, and to get a demon to appear, our granddad always said, you had to do just all kinds of magic, and even then he said there was a good chance the demon would eat your head, which is why he always advised us against raising demons.”

  “I don’t think it’s quite the same,” Pelwyn said, “but you might have a point.” He stroked his beard, considering, then asked, “Does either of you know any magic? Anything you picked up from your grandfather, maybe?”

  Both his companions shook their heads vigorously.

  “We could fake it, I suppose,” Pelwyn said, more to himself than anyone else.

  “Once when I was a boy,” the Ferret said, “I had a ferret—that was how I got my name, see, when I joined up—anyway, my ferret had gone down a rathole and wouldn’t come out, and we got ’er out by putting a dead mouse nearby and waiting until she got hungry.”

  “Bait, to lure it out,” Pelwyn said, nodding. “That’s a good idea, too.”

  The Ferret smiled proudly.

  “But what sort of bait do you use for a wizard?” Pelwyn asked.

  The Ferret’s smile vanished.

  “Magic?” the Sparrow suggested timidly.

  “We don’t have any,” Pelwyn pointed out. He frowned. “But when my Uncle Binch used to go fishing, he used bugs made out of feathers and sticks and wire for bait, and they worked just as well as real bugs. So maybe we could fake it.”

  The other two nodded enthusiastically.

  “So how do we fake magic?” the Sparrow asked.

  “Talk funny, and wave your hands around,” the Ferret said. “I saw an actor do that once in a show, pretending to be a magician.”

  “And they use wands, and stuff, don’t they?” the Sparrow asked.

  The Ferret nodded. “And they brew stuff in kettles.”

  “We can make wands out of some of those sticks,” Pelwyn said, pointing.

  “Come on!” the Ferret shrieked, suddenly overcome with enthusiasm.

  Five minutes later the three of them were dancing about the hillside, waving sticks around and chanting nonsense at the tops of their lungs, all of them smiling and laughing, Pelwyn’s damaged toes forgotten.

  Forty-five minutes after that, they had switched to taking turns resting, and the chants had gotten less enthusiastic and more repetitive—Pelwyn’s had settled down to, “Ka mon ya sa na va bitch, ka mon ya sa na va bitch!”

  An hour later, the Sparrow stood alone on the slope, drearily waving a stick and reciting, “Wizard appear, wizard come forth, wizard show yourself, wizard get your arse out here, wizard appear, wizard come forth, wizard show yourself, wizard get your arse out here…”

  And shortly thereafter, he flung down the stick and said, “To hell with it! Pelwyn, there isn’t any wizard here!”

  Pelwyn awoke, startled. “Whu…?” he said.

  “There isn’t any wizard here,” the Sparrow repeated.

  “Or if there is, he’s not coming out,” the Ferret said.

  “If we stay here much longer, we’ll miss the coronation!” the Sparrow pointed out. “What good will that do anyone? If the Black Weasel wants to overthrow the Gorgorians at the coronation, he’s going to need every man he’s got—even us!”

  “That’s why he wants the wizard,” Pelwyn said.

  “But we can’t find the wizard,” the Sparrow insisted. “And even if we could, he probably wouldn’t do any good. Maybe all he knows how to do is turn sheep into dragons—what good would that be against the Gorgorians? They don’t keep sheep in the capital, from what I’ve heard—just oxen and horses. So even if we could find this wizard, it wouldn’t help!”

  “Besides,” said the Ferret, “if the others found Bernice, she might not like having the wizard around. She’d probably just eat him.”

  Pelwyn didn’t think that was very likely, but on the other hand, he was just as bored as his companions.

  “All right,” he said, “forget about the wizard. On to the capital!”

  The Ferret and the Sparrow cheered loudly.

  “And we’ll start with a good meal at the inn in Stinkberry, to prepare for the journey!”

  The cheers grew even louder. Together, the three trooped off down the slope.

  Behind them, the rock outcropping shifted slightly, and Clootie peered out at the departing men.

  A coronation?

  The Black Weasel?

  Bernice?

  This all sounded very interesting. When that fool had first kicked at Clootie’s door handle, the wizard had thought it was just another young idiot eager to buy aphrodisiacs or other love potions, and he had ignored the trio. The dancing and chanting had been funny enough to deserve a look, but that had grown boring after awhile.

  It certainly wasn’t any temptation to come out and talk; Clootie liked his privacy.

  It was just luck that he had happened to take another look, to see if they were still there, just as the youngest one got fed up; he might easily have missed that final conversation.

  But he hadn’t, and a very interesting conversation it was.

  Coronation?

  The Black Weasel?

  Bernice? Dunwin’s Bernice, the sheep-turned-dragon?

  This was too good to miss, the sorcerer decided. He turned and scurried deeper into the cave, to pack a bag.

  He had a coronation to attend—and who knew, perhaps a Gorgorian dynasty to overthrow. The Black Weasel might well find a use for the transformation spell!

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “There you are, dear,” the queen whispered as a hooded figure sidled up to take the seat beside her in the Hallowed Hall of Sacred and Ever-Flowing Royal Enthronement. “I’ve been so worried. Where have you been?”

  Wulfrith’s head was still terribly muzzy. He recalled leaving the rightful heir to Gudge’s crown in possession of the tower suite. He recalled turning the two guards into hamsters. He recalled feeling very pleased with himself as he skipped down the winding tower steps two at a time.

  Most especially, he recalled how all that skipping made his hooded mask get turned around with no warning whatsoever. He was in midskip when half his vision became obscured abruptly, ruining his depth perception and causing him to land not on the next step down but face first up against the tower wall.

  This, in turn, had made his rate of descent go from brisk to faster-than-a-rolling-beer-keg as he barrelled all the way to the bottom of the tower. He had only just awoken a few hours ago and had spent t
he intervening time trying to find out where the coronation rite was being held in—he had never bothered to learn the ornate Hydrangean names for the various chambers and halls—and whether he had missed it.

  He hurt.

  “Precious child, what is the matter with you?” the queen pressed, laying a hand on Wulfrith’s sleeve. “And what in the name of the thirty-four hundred styles of sonnet are you wearing?”

  Wulfrith looked down. He was still clad in the richly-embroidered tunic proper to a king-in-the-making, neither he nor Arbol having thought to switch clothes as well as identities. “Uh…I thought I should change into something appropriate for the coronation,” he explained. The excuse sounded feeble, but so did he.

  The queen’s brow furrowed. “You’re not planning on making a scene, are you?”

  “Who, me?”

  “You must swear to me that you will do nothing to disturb the rituals until the coronation itself is finished.”

  “Oh, I swear.” Wulfrith made the arcane sign of the Wizard’s Seal of Truth by using the first two fingers of his right hand to trace a large X over his heart.

  “After all,” Artemisia went on, “I know how much you want to be king, and…”

  “No, I don’t,” Wulfie replied. “Not really. You see, I’ve thought it over, and I don’t think I’m really cut out for the job.”

  The queen’s frown deepened. A look of downright skepticism etched its bitter way across her face. “Are you all right, dear?” she asked suspiciously. “You didn’t fall on your head or anything, did you?”

  Before Wulfrith could lie, there was a flourish of trumpets, a roll of drums, and a rumble of many bronze wheels coming down the central aisle of the Hallowed Hall as five snow-white milk goats accompanied by seven fair-haired virgins clad all in blue entered, hauling the biggest, shiniest, most ornate marble bathtub in the kingdom. Virgins and goats alike wore garlands of pink and white flowers, but only the virgins were singing the Old Hydrangean hymn to the new king.

  The goats would have done it better.

  The bathtub reached its destination, the foot of a canopied, damask-draped platform at the head of the Hallowed Hall. Here the virgins and goats were relieved of duty by eleven strapping guardsmen, Gorgorians all, who saw to hoisting the tub onto the platform. There was much sloshing, but only a little of the foaming water slopped over the lip. The scent of orange blossoms and rosewater filled the hall, overpowering the aroma of goats, virgins, and Gorgorians.

  Seated beside the queen in a place of honor reserved for the Old Hydrangean nobility, Wulfrith had an excellent view of the proceedings. As soon as the tub was in place, the curtains behind it parts and three men emerged. Wulfrith immediately recognized young Lord Alsike carrying a scepter, the overenthusiastic former apprentice Clerestory carrying a sword, and a mighty glum-looking Bulmuk the Gorgorians bearing the great royal crown of Old Hydrangea on a cushion.

  “Would you look at that!” the queen said, with a sniff of disgust. “Those beastly Gorgorians have attached a band of oxskin to the crown, and—oh, my gods, tell me that’s not an oxtail hanging off the scepter!”

  Wulfrith couldn’t tell her anything of the sort. It was most definitely an oxtail. “It’s only a little one,” he temporized.

  Artemisia’s teeth made a harsh sound as they ground together. “If they have taken any more liberties with the regalia, I shall…”

  She didn’t complete the threat, for just then the curtains parted once more and the prince emerged, looking as splendid and purely Old Hydrangean as the queen might desire. Arbol wore a long, unbelted robe of cloth-of-gold, exquisitely brocaded in a pattern of pomegranates and peacocks. Silver slippers were on the prince’s feet, and a slender diamond diadem bound the royal brow, small potatoes indeed when seen beside the ornate tangle of gems, wire, and velvet that was the Volnirian crown—and that was equally true with or without oxskin hatband attached.

  The curtains parted one last time as an old man hobbled forward to the edge of the platform and almost toppled off. Only the prince’s quick reflexes saved him. “Yes, yes, that’s all right, I’m fine,” he said, nodding vaguely to all quarters of the assembly. “Just the thing for this time of year, a nice hot…oh!” He blinked as if just waking up, then looked over at Lord Alsike. “This is it, is it?” he asked him.

  “Yes, it is, so get on with it,” the young Hydrangean lord replied.

  “Just so, just so.” The graybeard bobbed his head, then found he couldn’t stop until Arbol gave him a sharp whap on the back. “Beloved people!” the sage cried out, and for a wonder his quavery voice carried the length and breadth of the Hallowed Hall. “Behold your king-that-shall-be! Behold that he comes to you having acquitted himself nobly of all the tasks, labors, challenges, and proofs of royalty laid before him! Behold that he is a worthy ruler! Behold that he shall here enter into the ritual bath, in sight of you all, and wash himself clean of any lingering taint or folly of his younger days! Behold that his trust in you, his people, is without flaw or imperfection, even as his royal body is without flaw or imperfection…”

  There were several more beholds in the old man’s speech, but Wulfrith missed them because suddenly Artemisia gave him an elbow in the side and snarled in his ear, “I thought I told you to kill her!” The queen’s finger jabbed across the aisle to where Lady Ubri sat, watching the coronation’s progress and smiling.

  “Um, I meant to,” Wulfrith began, “but I had to change my clothes, and…”

  “Is that what you were trying to tell me with all that gibble-gabble about not wanting to be king any more?” Artemisia’s eyes shot sparks. “Because if that’s so, let me tell you that it’s not just kings who have an obligation to keep their word to their mothers. Just wait until this is over and I get you alone! Then you’ll hear…”

  But Wulfrith was not destined to hear another word on the subject of filial duty to commit murder. The old man on the platform had reached the end of his oration. Servants scurried up to remove the prince’s silver slippers, other servants materialized behind, poised to remove the golden robe just as the gaffer proclaimed, “Behold your king!”

  The robe came off. The people beheld. There was a very loud hush, and then…

  “The king’s a girl!” someone bellowed. It was Bulmuk. Arbol punched him in the stomach, kicked him where it counted, slammed both fists down hard on the back of his neck when he doubled over, and snatched the sword from his hands as he collapsed.

  “Call me that again and I’ll make you sorry!” she shouted.

  “But—but he is a girl!” the old man stammered. “I mean she is. You are, your Majesty. Don’t hit me. Oh, dear. There’s nothing in the rituals about this.”

  A wild hubbub seized the assembly. The Old Hydrangean aristocracy froze where they sat, their breath coming in strained gasps. The Gorgorians were equally divided between those who were making rude remarks while shamelessly ogling their king and those who were muttering, making strange handsigns, and mistrustfully eyeing all the Gorgorian women present.

  “Oh dear,” the old man said. “Oh dear, oh dear.”

  The queen stood up and screamed.

  “Witchcraft!” Artemisia cried, wringing her hands. “Vile witchcraft! See how it has unmanned my beloved son, your rightful prince, your king! Oh, evil, loathsome, wicked machinations! Oh, desperate strategem of most atrociously infernal premeditation which has rendered my darling son effeminate, willy-nilly!”

  Galvanized by the royal mother’s anguish, for the first time at any public occasion Old Hydrangeans and invading Gorgorians were heard to join voices and with one accord respond, “HUH?”

  “She did it,” Artemisia explained, pointing at Lady Ubri.

  The guards closed in on the shocked Gorgorian woman, the prince was disarmed and bundled off to points unknown, and the whole beautifully-orchestrated coronation dissolved into amateur night at the hog-slaughtering festival. In the midst of chaos, a stunned Wulfrith slewed his eyes toward the queen to
see how she was taking all this.

  He could understand hysterical tears at such a time. He could understand hysterical laughter.

  He had never heard of hysterical cartwheels.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Tired and a little dizzy, Clootie dismounted in front of the Tavern of Wonderfully Digestible Foods. After a moment’s thought, and seeing no hitching post or rail, he slipped his homemade harness off his horse, and released the poor, terrified animal.

  He felt a twinge of guilt that he couldn’t turn the miserable creature back into the rabbit it had once been, but he still hadn’t found a way to make his transformations reversible. He hadn’t found any way to decide what a given specimen would turn into, either; it had taken him twenty-six tries before he had gotten something he could ride, and he had left an astonishing variety of wildlife roaming the vicinity of Stinkberry before he had produced the horse.

  Of course, having once been a rabbit, the horse had a tendency to charge headlong in one direction for awhile, then abruptly make a right-angle turn and dash off in another direction entirely. The makeshift bridle hadn’t done much to combat this tendency, which accounted for the wizard’s dizziness. His route to the capital had been only a very vague approximation of a straight line.

  The beast had, however, gotten him there very quickly indeed. And a rabbit never tried to attack anyone, not even someone who climbed on his back and kicked him, which was certainly an advantage.

  There had been distractions along the way, of course—every time the animal had scented a female rabbit, for example. If someone could redirect that enthusiasm from the old species to the new, Clootie thought, that horse could be worth a fortune in stud fees.

  But having now reached the capital, Clootie had no more need for rapid transportation, so he released the creature, and marched into the tavern in pursuit of food, drink, and news.

  Was he in time for the coronation?

  He could just ask, he supposed, but he hated to draw any attention to himself, even the minimum amount such a query would bring. Surely, if he just listened, someone would mention it—a coronation was a major event, after all, and bound to be the subject of gossip.