Not Quite Scaramouche

by Joel Rosenberg

  She was surprised that Pirojil and Kethol had agreed to that, but Ahira had likely persuaded them, and if Erenor had had the sense to keep his mouth shut, Kethol and Pirojil would probably have seen the wisdom of going along.

  After all, if Henrad was going to do any harm to her, there wasn't anybody in the Middle Lands who could prevent him from doing so in his own place, surrounded not only by his spell books and whatever magical implements he had created, but by protective spells of all sorts.

  She had expected something dark and dreary, but when she rounded the final turn, the archway to Henrad's aerie was filled with light that, strangely, seemed to stop at the arch.

  He stood in the doorway, hands on hips in a deliberately dramatic pose, bis gray robes belted about a slim waist with a golden cord that appeared to be a gilded snake biting its own tail, Ourobouros-like. His robes fell open to his navel, revealing a well-muscled chest, matted with thick curls of black hair.

  "Hello, my teacher," he said, smiling reaching out a hand. "Come in, please." He waited patiently, making no move to touch her until she stepped forward and took his hand in hers.

  He led her inside, tucking her hand under his arm. "Welcome to my home," he said.

  The tower wasn't more than a couple of dozen feet wide, but the room inside was immense, at least in appearance. Acres of green marble, veined with silver and black, stretched off into the distance, surrounding a circular island of thick carpet perhaps fifty feet away.

  Her boots made hollow sounds in counterpoint to the slapping of his sandals as they walked, and she couldn't hear any returning echo.

  The carpet/island grew as they approached, until it alone was large enough to contain a huge arc of workbench, cupping the living quarters. Retorts burbled merrily over alcohol flames, while wisps of smoke moved vessels from place to place, adjusting the drip of a spigot here, adding a powder from a stone urn there.

  Henrad touched a finger to a portion of the carpet, and two armchairs extruded themselves. He seated himself tailor-fashion in one, and gestured her toward the other. "It's good to see you looking so well," he said.

  "You, too." This wasn't the man Walter Slovotsky had described. Henrad looked and sounded not just well, but vibrantly healthy. His eyes were clear, his teeth white and even, and his beard neatly squared off. It was hard to tell under the golden light over the glowglobes that floated overhead, bobbing like balloons, but he even seemed to have a tan. "Or is this just a seeming?"

  He smiled. "Ah. You've been listening too much to the great Walter Slovotsky, and to others. A reputation for being a sick and crotchety old man gives one a certain, well, isolation that's useful for someone who wants to do more with his magic than kill bugs and relieve insomnia. Don't you think?" He brushed a hand down the front of his robes; in an eyeblink, he was the shriveled sick man that Walter had described: frightened, bloodshot eyes looking out at her from sunken hollows, teeth gapped and green, skin sallow and broken, sores leaking a horrid yellow pus.

  "I could appear to you like this," he squeaked, in between horrid wheezes, "if you'd prefer." He struggled to get out of his chair, leaning on the crooked stick he used as a cane, and just as she started to rise to help him, in another eyeblink he was young and vibrant again, eyes twinkling in amusement.

  "Now, which is it, teacher mine? Which is the seem- , ing?" he asked. "The young and virile man you see before you, or the withered, spent husk?" He plopped down on his seat and folded his hands in front of him. "Can you tell?"

  She shook her head. "I... I don't have the spark, anymore, Henrad. I burned it out, in Ehvenor."

  "Did you, now?" His tone mocked her. "Rather foolish, that, leaving you mundane and powerless, having to come to me, your former apprentice, to beg a favor, to ask me to attune that ring you have hidden in your garments to its former bearer." He shook his head. "Such a trivial favor. Why not ask me something, well, something grand? I could take twenty years off your age, if you'd like. Or make a magical sword for your son, if you'd rather have something more traditional." His smile was warm and entirely false. "But such a little thing," he said. "It hardly seems worth the bother, to you or to me." He brightened. "I know – would you like me to rekindle your fires?"

  She frowned. "If you're saying what I think you're saying, that's not possible. I burned those abilities out, in Ehvenor, and – "

  He held up a palm. "Oh, yes, and so bravely you did, sealing the rift between Faerie and reality, I'm sure it was wonderful. But I am quite serious – I haven't been working for nothing, you know. I can't restart your abilities at what they were, but I could, if you'd like, oh, relight the fires, bring you back your ability to work magic." His smile broadened. "Then I could do for you what you did for me," he said. "You could be my apprentice." He reached out his hand, and there was a mug in it, steam licking up. He took a tentative sip. "Have we an understanding?"

  Yes, she wanted to say, yes, do it, do it now. Give me back my fire.

  To be able to work magic again, to feel power flow through her veins and nerves, to have harsh words of power sweet on the tongue again, her mind and body and spirit all afire ...

  His smile broadened. "Yes, I know. You miss it, don't you?"

  "But... but what would happen in Ehvenor? Would the rift open again?"

  "I couldn't tell you." He spread his hands. "If it did, it could be sealed once more. Even Vair the Uncertain could tell you that." He rose and walked across the carpet toward her. It should have taken him half a dozen steps, but it took only two. He took her hand, wrapping both of his hands around hers, and drew her to her feet. "The preparation has taken much time, but the doing of it would be but the work of a moment."

  "One syllable left?"

  He shook his head, his eyes never leaving hers. She didn't remember him as having gold flecks in the brown.

  And it was strange: as she looked into his eyes, the irises seemed to spin.

  No.

  She had pushed her magical abilities too far, bringing them past the point of wanting, well into addiction. "Henrad... I can't."

  "Of course you can," he said, raising her hand to his lips. "It's a question of will, not of can."

  It was tempting, the way a drink of ice water would have been tempting to someone just in out of the desert; like food would have tempted a starvation victim.

  No.

  She had made her bargain with the world: closing the rift between reality and Faerie had been worth the price she had paid, and she was an Andropoulos by birth and a Cullinane by marriage, and the Cullinanes kept faith.

  That was how she had raised her son, and it was how she would live.

  And never mind the hunger inside her. She could live with that. Moment by moment; day by day; year by year.

  'No," she said. "I want you to make the ring locate its owner, Forinel." She pulled away from him. "But that is all, Henrad. I won't be your apprentice, or whatever else it is that you want."

  His expression went dead and lifeless. Not angry; not sad. His eyes seemed vacant, and his mouth hung slightly open. "Very well," he said. "Just this once. But the offer stays open, and the next time you come to ask me for a service, you must accept it."

  "Then there won't be a next time."

  The smile returned. "So you say ... now." He stretched out a hand for the ring, and as she laid it on his palm he closed his eyes for a moment, then uttered a single word, three syllables in a harsh language that could not be remembered, three sounds that could only vanish on the ear like three sugar crystals on the tongue.

  "Tis done, Andrea," he said, tying a leather thong around the ring.

  He dangled the thong between thumb and forefinger, and the ring slowly rose to one side, the thong still taut, as though the golden ring had been drawn by a magnet. "I think you'll find the lovely Lady Leria that way," he said. "As to Lord Forinel, well, of such matters I shall not claim to know either much or little."

  "Henrad, I – "

  He silenced her with a finger to her
lips. "Shhh. Not now. Until next time, my old teacher." He snapped his fingers and murmured a quiet word, and in an eyeblink she found herself out on the windy top of the tower, facing an inky black doorway, the ring's thong clutched tightly in her hand.

  Pirojil waited silently as the ragged steps descended down the stone staircase. There was, of course, the temptation to run up to the dowager empress's side, but if she had wanted his help, all she had to do was whisper.

  Even in the dim light of the overhead stars above and the flickering torches on the walls below, she looked ghastly: she leaned against the wall more for support than for guidance, and her fingers and knees trembled visibly. Her hair, stringy with sweat, had come loose from the band that had held it back, and it clung wetly to her neck and face, like tiny tendrils.

  He was wary of touching her without permission, but he grabbed hold of her hand and helped her down the last couple of steps.

  "Thank you, Pirojil," she said, her voice ragged. "The others – ?"

  "We decided that the others should take the wizard's advice, and make their way down to the bailey, and mix with the crowd. Ahira wanted to wait for you, but we decided that I could probably sneak in alone better than he could." Erenor had been the obvious candidate, but Pirojil didn't like the idea of leaving him alone with the dowager empress. His eye tended to wander, and while Pirojil didn't think his fingers would – and was sure that Andrea Cullinane would put him in his place if they did – he didn't want to risk it, unless necessary.

  Kethol, of course, could have done that better than Pirojil. Would it have been more cruel or more kind to have let him have the job of waiting for Andrea Cullinane instead of joining the others, including Leria? Pirojil didn't know, and didn't like to think about it.

  Are you unwell? he didn't ask. Any damn fool could see she was unwell, after all. "Is there anything I can do?"

  She leaned back against the base of the tower and shook her head. "Just give me a few moments. If you can."

  "Of course." He turned away from her. It wasn't proper that he should see her so disheveled. She was the dowager empress – let others call her the Dowager Baroness Cullinane, but to Pirojil she would always be the dowager empress – and he was just an ordinary soldier, after all.

  "I don't understand it," she said, so quietly that he wasn't sure whether she was talking to herself or to him.

  "Your pardon?" He didn't turn back. She hadn't told him to face her.

  "It's hard, sometimes, Pirojil, trying to figure out when things are and aren't as they seem," she said. "Even when magic isn't involved."

  That seemed to call for a response. "I've often found that true, if you don't mind me saying so."

  "Yes," she went on. "Take yourself. You're not what I would call a handsome man..."

  He made himself laugh. "That, my Empress, is beyond doubt." Too gently put, that. He was ugly enough that women turned away.

  "... but, as I was saying," she said, her voice louder, but somehow more gentle, "you're brave, and you're faithful, and you manage to be loyal to my house and to your companions, even when some would find conflicts – even, I suspect, when you find conflicts between the two. That's the reality of you, soldier. The looks are deceiving."

  He nodded, accepting that as his due, every bit as much as the silver quartermarks he received in pay.

  If by being brave she meant that he did what was necessary, despite any fear, well then that was as much a part of a soldier's equipment as his knife, or his knowledge of how to use it.

  But loyalty? Why praise him for loyalty? That was like praising him for eating. At the end of the day, when he lay down to sleep and closed his eyes, what else was there to comfort him in the dark?

  The softness of a woman? Hardly.

  Children? Let's not be silly.

  The memories of the screams of the dying? They were cold comfort, indeed, no matter what a younger man had thought.

  "I can't figure it out, Pirojil, and I'm not sure I ever will. Which is the real Henrad? The young, strong, well one who tempted me with that which I'd given up? Or the sick, twisted one, so far gone in his own addiction that he needs to bring others into it, as though sharing it makes it better?" She shook her head.

  "Or both," he said. "The opposite of a lie isn't always the truth, my Empress. Sometimes – not always, mind you, but sometimes – it's just another lie."

  "Yes, Pirojil, there is that." She was silent for a long time. "But sometimes both can't be lies. He held a finger to my lips, and it looked to be a young man's finger, smooth and straight, but it felt all wrinkled and bent. Tell me, Pirojil: how can both be untrue?"

  He thought that maybe she wanted an answer, although he hadn't any, but when he turned to look at her, she was looking away.

  So he didn't say anything at all.

  Part Four:

  Forinel

  Chapter 18

  The Search Begins

  It's easier to get forgiven than to get permission.

  – Walter Slovotsky

  It was all Kethol could do to keep his voice calm and level. "No," he said. "It's a bad idea." It was important to persuade them, or else she was going to be endangered, and –

  No. He sighed. You can't persuade somebody who has already made up his mind, and Walter Slovotsky and the rest of the nobles had already made up their minds.

  Pirojil didn't meet his eyes as he checked the straps on one of the rucksacks, then tossed it to Erenor, who stacked it with the others – there was much to be said for a bag that you could carry on your back as well as on a dragon's.

  Walter Slovotsky shook his head. "I don't see a better choice." He sighed. "Wish I was going with you."

  Erenor snorted. That was the first time Kethol had heard Erenor snort. He wasn't sure he liked it. "So, you think this is going to be easy?"

  "Not at all. No, hey, I didn't mean it that way." Walter Slovotsky held up a hand. "I was thinking that I'd rather have somebody else explain this" he said, looking pointedly at Lena, then back to Erenor, "to Thomen."

  The emperor would likely have the same objection to sending Leria that Kethol did. As far as Kethol was concerned, it was better to let Miron have the barony than risk her, again – and perhaps even end up having to let Miron have the barony in any case.

  He was the heir, after all, if Forinel was dead.

  Why did the idea of Forinel being dead seem so pleasing? It wasn't as though Kethol had any chance with Leria in any case. She was a lady, after all.

  Truth to tell, in the privacy of his own mind, he was looking forward to this. Some more time with her, away from Castle Biemestren, away from it all, where she would need him, again.

  For a while.

  He felt obligated to try to talk the nobles out of it, but since he couldn't, he would just do the best he could. Some time alone with her was something he had idly daydreamed about, and if he had to share her company with Pirojil, Erenor, and the dragon, well, so be it.

  Storm clouds smeared the western sky, and lightning flickered on the horizon, too far away for the thunder to reach their ears.

  Yet. The storm was moving in along with the dawn, and the wind on top of the ramparts had a decided bite to it. Leria shivered in her mannish traveling clothes, and Erenor opened up one of the rucksacks, producing a Katharhdstyle jacket without looking.

  It was made of a sheep's skin, a hole cut in the center for the head, and fastened at the corners with ties, and at the waist with a belt, leaving room enough for her to tuck her arms inside.

  Jason Cullinane looked from Kethol to Erenor and Pirojil, and then back to Kethol, as though deciding something, although Kethol didn't have the slightest idea as to what.

  The baron stepped over to him and beckoned him to one side. "I'm sorry I can't come with you. I know my father would have, and. . . and there are no excuses, but Walter, my mother, and Ahira say that I'm needed here." His tone was almost pleading, as though it was important for some reason that Kethol understand him.
<
br />   Which it wasn't. What Kethol understood was that he, for one, was glad that the baron wasn't coming along. No matter how good Jason Cullinane was with a pistol, flintlock rifle, or sword, he would be a problem: Kethol, Pirojil, and Erenor might have to, at a moment's notice, choose between protecting him and protecting Lena, and Kethol feared that any one of them might choose wrongly.

  How many backs did this baron think he could watch at one time?

  "I understand, Baron," Kethol said.

  "I wouldn't want you to think me a coward."

  "No. I'd not think that."

  There was a twinkle in Pirojil's eyes as he watched the conversation. No, they might think the Cullinanes to be foolhardy, but not cowards.

  "Take this, please." Leria gave a folded piece of paper to Walter Slovotsky. "I don't know that this will do much, but I've done the best I can: this explains that I'm going along at my insistence, not yours."

  "Yeah." Walter Slovotsky tucked it in his tunic. "I'm sure that will persuade Beralyn not at all and Thomen only a little. You did push the Forinel angle?"

  Her smile was genuine, and warmed Kethol. "There's nothing to push, Walter Slovotsky," she said. "I simply said Forinel was the first boy I loved, and that I had to know why he hasn't come back to me."

  " 'Boy.' I like that. Nice choice of word."

  "Why, thank you, Walter Slovotsky," she said, too sweetly. "I'm so glad you approve."

  *Let's get going, people,* sounded in Kethol's mind. *I don't think that hanging around here is going to lead to any productive discussion, do you?*

  Ellegon swooped up from behind the treeline, vast leathery wings beating the air as he set himself down on the ramparts.

  A cry went up from the northwestern tower, and the alert bell started ringing. The dragon's arrival was always cause for an alert, if only for the Home Guard to be sure to keep people away. Accidents could happen, and dragonbane was being cultivated in far too many places for far too many reasons to be controlled.