But after reading some of the more lurid romances and adventures in the palace library, he was reasonably familiar with the notion that girls might sometimes dress up as boys, and that kings preferred sons to daughters.
So had Arbol been a girl all along?
He had asked Queen Artemisia right after the Disaster of the Bath, and she had shushed him without answering. He had asked again later that evening, and she had told him not to worry about such silly things, which wasn’t an answer.
Wulfrith didn’t know everything that was going on, but he had the definite impression that Arbol was in trouble—big trouble—because she was a girl. He felt a twinge of guilt every time he thought of it; if he had bothered to remember everything the silly ritual people had told him, he might have warned her about the bath, and maybe all this wouldn’t have happened.
And now the queen was out bullyragging people, or some such; he hadn’t seen her in hours. She had dropped him off in these same apartments, where he had been kept when they were readying him to be crowned, and had told him to stay put. It all seemed foolish; why bring him here? Arbol, whether male or female, was the heir to the throne.
Maybe the queen just thought this was somewhere he could stay out of trouble. And at least here he didn’t have to wear that stupid mask. He sighed, and picked threads out of the velvet upholstery on the arm of his chair.
Had Arbol been a girl all along, or was it really magic? Maybe the Gorgorian women really did have some strange magic that wasn’t anything like the stuff he knew.
That would be interesting; he wondered if there was any way he could learn about it. That Ubri…but she was probably going to be beheaded, or burned, or fed to the wolverines, or something.
That might be interesting to watch, but it seemed like something of a waste. He had only just started to learn things from Ubri. Reading the books simply couldn’t convey everything the way hands-on experimentation could.
He sighed again, just as the door burst open.
“Wulfie?” she said, charging in.
He sat up and smiled at her.
“Oh, good, you’re still here,” she said. “Is everything all right?”
“It’s fine, Your Majesty,” he said. “I mean, except for Arbol being a girl and everything.”
“Yes, well…”
“Was she always a girl, your Majesty?” Wulfrith asked quickly, before he could lose his nerve.
Queen Artemisia gave a nervous little laugh as she began rummaging through a chest of drawers, not looking at the boy. “Always a girl, Wulfrith? Of course not, how silly you are!”
“So Ubri and those other women really changed her?”
“Well, I think so,” Artemisia said; even with her voice muffled by the contents of the second drawer, Wulfrith didn’t think she sounded completely convincing.
“Does everyone think so?”
Artemisia straightened up and turned to glare at him.
“As a matter of fact,” she said, “no. This multiply damned wizard had to go and turn up at exactly the wrong time, after fifteen years in exile, and show off how he could turn people into assorted beasts, so of course he got himself blamed for it, now, and they’re letting that harridan Ubri go, and they’ve thrown the wizard in the dungeon in her place. But that’s not important right now.”
Wulfrith blinked. “It’s not?” Ubri saved, and a wizard in the dungeon in her place? How could that not be important?
A wizard…
“No, it’s not,” Artemisia told him, turning back to the drawers, “because right now they’re talking about sacrificing your sis…I mean, Prince Arb…I mean, Princess Arbol to a dragon, and I need to find a way to prevent it. Damn!” She kicked the bottom drawer shut. “Don’t they use dragonsbane in any of the ceremonies? I could have sworn they did!”
“I don’t remember any,” Wulfrith said.
“You wouldn’t,” Artemisia replied, looking angrily around the room.
“What’s dragonsbane look like?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Artemisia snapped. “Green, I suppose. Maybe I should check the herb gardens.” She turned, and before Wulfrith could stop her, she stormed out.
He grabbed for the doorknob just as he heard the click of the key turning in the lock; he stopped, stared, and started swearing as the queen’s footsteps faded down the hallway.
He stood for a moment, glowering at the door.
Dragonsbane—dragonsbane was a myth, an old wives’ tale, according to Clootie. That wasn’t going to save Arbol from a dragon.
But then, there weren’t any dragons anywhere near the capital anyway; hadn’t been in centuries. Everyone knew that.
Wulfrith decided that the stress of the last few days—the king’s death, the switching of the heirs, the Disaster of the Bath—had driven the queen mad. Why would anyone go to the trouble to haul Arbol way out to the mountains and feed her to a dragon just because she turned out to be a girl? That was crazy.
What about the rest of it, then? Was there really a wizard in the dungeon?
Well, that was almost as silly; the only real Old Hydrangean wizard left was Clootie, and Clootie…
Wulfrith’s anger faded, and he swallowed hard.
Clootie could change people into various creatures, just as Artemisia had said. Clootie had been in safe exile for fifteen years.
And Clootie just might have come to the city to recover his missing apprentice.
And if that was what had happened, then not only was Wulfrith’s dearly beloved master locked in the palace dungeons, but it was Wulfrith’s own fault!
He had to get down there and check for himself, as fast as possible, before they did something terrible to poor Clootie. He rattled the doorknob, pounded desperately on the panel, to no avail. He had to get out of here, regardless of the Queen’s instructions.
But then, he knew there was no way out, he’d spent weeks cooped up in here…
No, what was he thinking? He had gotten out! He had the unlocking spell he had found in the library.
But if anyone saw him roaming the palace without his mask, how could he explain himself? They’d think he was Arbol, and she was supposed to be fed to a dragon. And the only way to prove he wasn’t Arbol would be to show that he was male, and the way things went in this madhouse of a palace they might want to make him king if he did that.
He didn’t want to be seen, he decided—but then, thanks to Arbol, he knew how to avoid it.
Quickly, he headed for the secret passage.
Twenty minutes later, after three wrong turns and two transformation spells that had eliminated two guards and produced a rat and a canary, Wulfrith finally found himself in a narrow and unpleasantly damp stone passageway roughly twenty feet below ground level, lit only by a foul-smelling and smoky torch.
If this wasn’t the palace dungeon, then some interior decorator had entirely the wrong idea.
Wulfrith crept along carefully, moving through corridor after corridor as silently as he could manage, peering through cell doors, and always watching for guards. True, he had his transformation spell ready, and it had served him very well so far, but sooner or later he was going to get something nasty when he used it. Most of the time it produced small, harmless creatures, but that was simply because the vast majority of creatures are small and harmless. Anyone who paid attention could see that the world was simply full of bugs and worms and rodents of every description, while nasty predators, with fangs and claws and the size to be dangerous, were relatively scarce.
The big nasty ones were still out there, though. And the transformations didn’t seem to be completely random, in any case; mammals came up far more often than random chance would account for. Wulfrith had no idea what did determine the exact result, but he was sure that if he kept transforming people, either with the original spell or the intermittent version, sooner or later he’d get something like a lion or a wolverine.
That could be a serious threat to his continued health.
<
br /> It was preferable, therefore, to be as quiet as possible while sneaking around the dungeons.
And he was very much afraid that he was going to have to do quite a bit of sneaking around, as the dungeons seemed to go on and on in all directions, with narrow little side-corridors in unexpected places, and quirky twists and turns, and unnecessary steps up and down. There were any number of cells to be investigated—though so far, every one he had checked was empty.
Something screamed in one of the cells; it didn’t sound like Clootie, but Wulfrith hurried toward the sound. At least it was someone alive, other than a guard. Someone was clearly being tortured, and if it was Clootie…
The scream sounded again, and Wulfrith was able to identify which cell the sound came from; he peered in through the tiny barred window, expecting to see a hellish scene of inhuman cruelty.
A bearded face looked up him, startled, and said, a bit peevishly, “Move aside, would you? You’re blocking my light.”
“Sorry,” Wulfrith said, leaning as far to one side as he could while still seeing into the cell.
It was tiny, but reasonably clean, with fresh straw on the floor and a bucket in the corner. The occupant was seated cross-legged in the center; he wore a ragged white robe, most of it hidden beneath billows of hair and beard.
“Thanks,” the man in the cell said. “You might want to cover your ears; I’m going to scream again.” Before Wulfrith could reply, the man let out a blood-curdling shriek.
When the lad’s ears stopped ringing, he demanded, “Why’d you do that?”
“’S my job,” the prisoner explained.
“It’s what?”
“It’s my job.”
“What kind of a job is that?” Wulfrith demanded angrily.
“What kind of a dungeon is it that hasn’t got some poor wight screaming?” the prisoner countered.
Wulfrith’s mouth opened, then closed. The screamer took pity on him and explained.
“The basic problem, y’see,” he said, “is that the Gorgorians aren’t any good at torturing people.”
“They aren’t?” This did not accord with what Wulfrith had previously heard.
“Not really, no. Oh, they do pretty good with the public spectacles and the short-term stuff, your burnings and wolverines and so forth, but they haven’t got the patience for the really slow stuff, the stuff that keeps a dungeon busy for months on end and keeps up a good, steady supply of screams and whimpers and so on. They aren’t really much on prisons at all, they’d rather just kill someone and get it over with. Anything that lasts over a week, the Gorgorians get bored and go get drunk, or just lop the victim’s head off.”
“I can see that,” admitted Wulfrith.
“Yes, well, you can’t run a self-respecting dungeon that way; a bunch of empty cells, that’s what you’d have. In fact, most of the cells here are empty. I’m doing my best to keep up appearances, but I’ll tell you, lad, it’s not easy.”
“So did you…I mean, how’d you get the job?”
“Oh, well, I was a prisoner here when the Gorgorians took over, fifteen years ago. They let a lot of prisoners go, if they were here for political reasons, and they lopped the heads off a bunch of others, but they couldn’t figure out what to do with me, since nobody could remember why I was here in the first place.”
“Why were you here?”
The prisoner shrugged. “Haven’t the faintest idea,” he said. “I forgot long ago. Been here since I was a boy.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway, so they were arguing about what to do with me, and it looked like they were going to whack my head off just to be on the safe side, and I suggested that they could just leave me here, to give the dungeon some style, as it were. Took some talking, I can tell you, but they agreed in the end.” He smiled proudly.
Wulfrith smiled weakly in return.
“So I’ve been here ever since, as their professional screamer. They give me good fresh straw and empty the bucket regular, or I go on strike and stop screaming. It’s not the best position, I suppose, but I’m satisfied.”
“Oh.” It occurred to Wulfrith that he was wasting time. “Well,” he said, “it’s been nice talking to you, but I need to see if they have a wizard I know locked up somewhere down here.”
“A wizard?” The prisoner cocked his head. “You’re looking for the wizard they just brought in? Oh, he’s in Number Forty-Three—down that way, turn left down the steps, then it’s the sixth door on the right.”
Wulfrith blinked in surprise.
“Oh,” he said.
“Thought I’d save you some time,” the prisoner remarked.
“Thank you,” Wulfrith replied.
“Now, get out of my light, please.”
“Yes, sir.”
Wulfrith retreated down the corridor as screams echoed from the stones behind him, and followed the directions.
The turn was half-hidden by a cluster of old chains, and he might well have missed it on his own, and never found Cell Number Forty-Three; as it was, in five minutes he was prying at the rusted lock, assuring the bound and gagged Clootie that he would be free in just a moment.
Chapter Thirty-One
Three dusty figures slipped in through the city gate and paused, looking about in confusion.
The streets were deserted. This was not in accord with their expectations, nor with any of the plans they had discussed along the way.
This wasn’t the first surprise; finding that a suburb or two had apparently been torched as part of the coronation celebrations had been a bit startling.
“I hadn’t thought the Gorgorians did that any more,” the Purple Possum had remarked. “I’d been hearing that they were really quite restrained nowadays, more sensitive to the quieter tastes of the Hydrangeans.”
“Oh, shut up,” the Black Weasel had said. This had been a common reaction for him ever since awakening in the Widow Giligip’s house; when the Possum commented that it might almost be considered rude, were the Black Weasel not deposed royalty, the Weasel had blamed it on a headache that simply wouldn’t quit.
And now, as they stared at the city, his head hurt more than ever.
“Oh, look, there’s the Street of Delights Not Spoken of in Polite Company,” the Purple Possum said, pointing. “I feared I’d never see it again.”
The Black Weasel mumbled something, but didn’t tell the Possum to shut up. He, too, was enjoying the sight of the city he had fled so long before.
“What’s that banner up there for?” Dunwin asked, pointing back at the gate. “Is that always there?”
“What banner?” the Black Weasel asked.
“The one that says WELCOME DRAGON,” Dunwin replied.
The Weasel and the Possum looked at one another.
“Did you see a banner?” the Weasel asked.
“No, my lord,” the Possum admitted. “I was studying the suburban architecture. Did you notice how they’ve built houses that imitate the shape of the Gorgorian campaign tents?”
“I didn’t bloody well notice anything,” the Weasel snarled, “because my head was pounding like a smith with a royal deadline to meet, and I kept my eyes toward the ground, where the sun’s glare wouldn’t make it pound any worse.”
“We could go back out and take a look,” the Possum suggested.
“There are more banners,” Dunwin mentioned.
“So there are,” the Possum agreed, startled. He looked over the hastily-painted signs that were draped here and there along the main street up toward the palace. The Black Weasel, forgetting his headache for the moment, did the same.
“A feast,” he said. “Maybe we didn’t miss the coronation after all.”
“Or maybe they left the banners up afterward,” the Possum suggested. “The Gorgorians aren’t much on housecleaning, after all.”
“If they’re for the coronation,” Dunwin said, “why does the big one out there say WELCOME DRAGON?”
The Possum shrugged. “Maybe that’
s a symbolical reference to the new king?”
“Maybe it’s Bernice,” Dunwin said.
“The Gorgorians use an ox,” the Weasel said thoughtfully, “and the royal house has always been represented by the sallet, not a dragon. I think the boy’s right—they mean it literally, and Bernice is here before us.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Dunwin shouted. He turned, and began to charge up the street in the direction indicated by the arrows helpfully provided on several of the banners.
As he started to pass, the Purple Possum thrust out a foot; Dunwin tripped and fell headlong, to lie dazed upon the cobbles.
The Weasel looked at the Possum; the Possum looked at the Weasel, and shrugged. “I didn’t think we should be hasty,” he said.
“Oh, I agree completely,” the Weasel said. “But I suppose we will have to go see what all these banners are about.”
“Yes, my Prince,” the Possum replied. “I suppose we had better.”
“You know, though,” the Weasel said, glancing about at the empty streets, “it doesn’t look as if this is going to work.”
“Oh?”
“I don’t see any sign of my men, and those banners would seem to imply that the city’s people have the dragon under control. And the coronation must be over by now, after we spent all that time spewing into buckets after that idiot Spurge poisoned us. I think the moment’s passed.”
The Possum considered that, stroking his narrow beard thoughtfully.
“Should we, perhaps, retreat to the forest once more, and await another opportunity?” he asked.
The Weasel shuddered. “Do you want to spend another fifteen years out in the bushes?”
“I think,” the Possum said warily, keeping a careful eye on his master’s expression, “that I’d rather trust to your nephew’s beneficence…”
“So would I, damn it. And there are always the secret passages, you know—I think I might do better at palace intrigue than this hiding in the hills nonsense.”
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