" 'Tis the exchequer," Friar Ignatius murmured.
Oh. So that was where the word "checker" came from. Now that he mentioned it, I could see colored disks on some of the checkerboards, like beads on an abacus, and serving the same purpose. This was a counting room, and these men were clerks. "What are they arguing about?"
I shouldn't really have asked; I knew the answer as soon as I'd thought of the question. They were blaming one another, of course, trying to pass the buck before one of them got caught with it.
The pool seemed to have heard me, though—as if in answer, it magnified the big desk in the center of the room, the one without a checkerboard, where a man with a gold chain around his neck was scribbling furiously on slips of parchment and handing them to the nearest of a group of boys, who twisted their way between furiously arguing clerks to hand the slips to men who were still sitting at their counting tables, moving stones about frantically, trying to look busy. As one boy carried his parchment, it swelled until it filled the pool, and we could all read, "Take two pennies from each peasant." But even as we watched, the words "Take" and "from" were blurring, the pen strokes writhing into new forms that made the message say, "Pay two pennies to each peasant."
"What spell is this?" Frisson stared, amazed.
"The Gremlin again," I said, "though I think he might be getting some advice from the Rat Raiser."
The scene rippled and disappeared, and another one steadied in it, place. This one looked a lot like the first, except that the tables didn't have checkerboards inlaid into them, and the men milling about wore richer and more colorful clothing—mostly doublet and hose; I only saw one or two real robes. Most of them were also wearing mail shirts that gleamed at the necks of their tunics and showed between belt and hose.
" 'Tis the command post of an army!" Gilbert exclaimed, staring.
"And judging from the quality of the clothing, this is the high command," I agreed. "It looks a lot like the other room."
" 'Tis in the queen's castle," Brother Ignatius breathed.
Gilbert frowned. "How is this? Knights and lords, scribbling on parchments?"
"It's called centralized command," I said. "They put their orders in writing, and couriers run them to the generals in the field."
"They fear the field will come to them," Gilbert said, "and shortly, or they would not be wearing mail."
I hoped he was right.
A general finished dictating to a clerk, who was scribbling on a parchment. He poured sand on it, dumped the sand, made sure the sheet was dry, and handed it to a courier who headed for the door, slipping it into a pouch as he went—but not quite quickly enough to keep the pool from magnifying it, and we watched it change from "Conscript five male peasants from each village" to "Discharge five male peasants to each village." Then the parchment slipped into the dispatch case and was gone from sight, but even as it did, the scene rippled and changed to a view from up high, showing a long stretch of dirt road with twenty or thirty soldiers ambling along with their pikes over their shoulders, laughing and slapping one another on the back.
"Men released from arms?" Gilbert cried. "In the midst of a war?"
"Seems Queen Suettay made a mistake by turning her commanders into bureaucrats," I said. "She made them vulnerable to the Gremlin—and the Rat Raiser, of course."
"The Rat Raiser! Can this soft-handed clerk best even knights in the field?"
"Not in the field," I corrected him. "Only before they get there."
The scene rippled again and changed to a paneled room with a richly dressed man sitting behind an elevated table on top of a dais. Before him stood a bruised man in rags and chains, flanked by two well-fed men in green and brown.
"Foresters," Gilbert breathed, "and a county magistrate."
"A courtroom?" I asked.
"A knight's court, mayhap," he said, "though a simple knight can scarcely be termed to hold court."
"Well, it certainly is serving the purpose." I couldn't help but feel sorry for the poor peasant in front of the bench. "What did this guy do, to deserve being arrested?"
"The two men to either side of him are forest keepers," Frisson said. "I warrant the peasant was caught a-poaching." He sounded as if he spoke from experience.
I caught my breath. I'd always thought the medieval forest laws were unfair, even though I had to admit the game laws of my own day and age made no sense. Still, making sure deer and pheasants aren't hunted to extinction was a far cry from making sure they were reserved only for the aristocracy's tables and amusement.
This time, however, justice seemed to be adhering to the spirit rather than the letter; the knight was gesturing, and the foresters stared, aghast. The knight pounded on the table, getting red in the face, and the foresters reluctantly turned to strike off the peasant's irons. He stood, dumbstruck, staring at his reddened but naked wrists; then a forester gave him a shove toward the door. He stumbled, but turned the stumble into a run and got out of there before the knight could change his mind.
The knight, for his part, was still red-faced, only now he was glowering at a parchment that lay beside him on his high table.
"The Rat Raiser again!" I grinned. "He told the Gremlin how to louse up the judicial system—from Suettay's standpoint, anyway."
"Aye." Frisson smiled. "Merely dispense actual justice."
The scene rippled again, and we found ourselves looking down from overhead at two long battle lines stretched out across a meadow, facing each other. At the head of each rode a man in armor, with a whole squadron of silver lobsters behind him on heavy-duty Percherons.
" 'Tis the duke of Degmaburg!" Gilbert cried. "I know his arms!"
"Only a duke?" I frowned. "Not a minister of some sort?"
"Nay. He was too strong to depose, though not to corrupt. He is one of the few of the old nobility who has held his station under the sorcerers' reigns."
"And now he sees his chance to reestablish the old line," I breathed, "meaning himself."
Even as I said it, the duke's horse began to canter forward. His squad of heavy armor heaved into a trot right behind him, and the peasantry leveled their pikes and began to move forward.
But Gilbert was frowning. "How is this? The queen's knights are far behind the line of men-at-arms! What can they do there?"
He was about to find out—for just before the duke and his knights struck, the peasant line opened up like a gate, and the horsemen hurtled through. Suettay's armored division snapped their lances down and tried to work up to a quick trot; apparently they hadn't planned on having to fight. But the duke and his men were going too fast to stop; they slammed into the royal knights, unhorsing a few, then dropping their lances and grabbing for maces and broadswords. It turned into a melee after that, with the knights chopping one another to filings.
Meanwhile, back on the front lines, one of the noncoms lowered his pike and held out a wineskin. The advance wavered; then the duke's troopers dropped their pikes, reached for the wineskins, and pulled out some hardtack. In a few minutes, they were laughing and chatting with their opposite numbers, having a regular party while they watched the lobsters open one another's shells.
"How can they think they will not be punished?" Gilbert wondered.
"Nice question." I pointed to the silver melee. "Here come their masters."
The knights were riding back full-tilt, and those broadswords rose and flailed down at their own men. They hit...
And broke.
Snapped clean across, just as if each sword had been a brittle antique. The knights stared at the remnants of blade attached to their hilts, then roared and pulled out their maces.
The heads flew off on the first swing.
The rankers' arms shot up, presumably with a cheer; then their pikes raised and stabbed, some finding chinks in armor, some jabbing between saddle and tin pants, levers to tip knights out of saddles—which they did. Then each knight disappeared in a cluster of soldiers, and pikes rose and fell.
Gilber
t was pale-faced. "Soldiers striking down their own knights!" It was the ultimate threat to him.
"Suettay's harvest," I told him, knowing it would be reassuring. "She's trained her army to get everything they can for themselves and prey upon the weaker, killing off anybody who gets in their way. She forgot that she might not always be the stronger."
But the queen's side hadn't dispensed with all its strong-arms yet; a sorcerer in a midnight robe banded with gray stood up, waving his arms.
"A man of the second rank." Frisson frowned. "This may be their undoing, poor devils."
"Maybe not," I said. "Don't underestimate the Gremlin's capacity for making things go wrong."
Suddenly, a rain fell—a very localized rain; it seemed to envelop only the sorcerer. He clutched his hat and ran, but the storm followed him.
I frowned. "What kind of rain is that? It looks yellow—no, brown, when there's enough of it! And it foams..."
"Ale!" Frisson cried.
The sorcerer fled, pursued by foot soldiers who stopped every few paces to dip up the puddles he left behind him.
But they were already growing smaller in the gazing pool; the field dwindled, forests leaning in from the sides to hide it. Then the treetops began to look like waves in a pool as they shrank away, and kept shrinking. A patchwork quilt of farmland moved in around the edges, still shrinking until it became a plain flat area of yellowish green with dark-green masses of forest and clots of dots that were towns made of houses. The blue shimmer of the Baltic appeared at the top of the pool, with the white beard of the Alps below. Ribbons of blue marked the boundaries, and I found myself looking down at Germany as I knew it. But the picture kept on expanding, including Austria, Hungary...
"The Holy Roman Empire," I whispered.
"Holy no longer," Friar Ignatius said grimly, "and 'tis odd that you should couple the empire with Rome, for Hardishane refused to accept the crown the pope would have given him. He did revere the pope and his bishops, for he was a man of faith—but he held that the churchmen should no more partake of governance, than he should of ministry, and that 'twould be as great a catastrophe for the one as for the other."
I whistled. "Brave words, for the time! How did he avoid being excommunicated?"
Brother Ignatius shrugged, and Gilbert said softly, "Who would have dared excommunicate Hardishane?"
I took it that Hardishane was this universe's answer to Charlemagne, and had been just a little more deft than the Frankish king... or a little more paranoid. I decided I wanted to learn more about him, but now wasn't quite the time.
An area of the map was growing in the screen—the southeast, where the Alps gave some security to the smaller kingdoms and principalities that would someday be Switzerland, in my universe. We seemed to be going in for a close look at the sector that would have been the Dauphin, the bridge between France and Germany. I wondered why, but as the view swelled, we saw a long dark line snaking out of the mountains into Allustria. The line was moving, and as it swelled, I could make out the gleams of armor and spear heads, then individual knights and soldiers. It was an army on the move.
"The army of Merovence!" Gilbert cried. "Praise Heaven!"
But the view went past them, a pair of mountains swelling, then their tops flanking the screen. There the view steadied, and I saw soldiers in the same colors as the marchers below standing on crags, bows in hand. Among them stood men in homespun tunics, looking as hard as the rocks they stood on, bearded and booted against the cold.
"The montagnards have thrown in with Merovence!" Gilbert cried. "And the Free Folk with them!"
"The Free Folk?" I frowned.
"Behind the soldiers," Friar Ignatius prompted.
I looked, and realized that the gray-green wall I had taken for rock had a head and a tail—and wings! So help me, it was a dragon!
But it was growing smaller in the pool, and the scene blurred as we swept along the line of the army. It steadied again, and a dragon floated by, filling the pool for a moment, its wingspan vast but still nowhere near enough to support such a huge body. Was magic in the air, here?
Yes, of course. If Friar Ignatius was right, raw magical power filled all of space, like the hypothetical ether of early electronics. I mentally kicked myself—I had known that! And if there were a magic field that surrounded the whole Earth, why wouldn't life-forms have evolved to take advantage of it?
I resolved to keep a closer eye on the local fauna.
But the view was narrowing again, the individual soldiers growing larger as the view swept on to the head of the file—and I saw a sight that stung like a slap in the face. At the head of the column rode a knight whose long blonde hair streamed out from under a steel cap with a crown around it.
" 'Tis Queen Alisande!" Gilbert yelped. "The queen of Merovence herself!"
My heart leapt into my throat. "Isn't that a little dangerous?"
"Nay." Gilbert pointed. "See who rides beside her."
On the lady's right hand rode a man in midnight blue, emblazoned with stars and crescent moons and comets, though he wore a steel cap instead of a pointed one. "A sorcerer?"
"Nay, the Lord Wizard!"
"I notice he's riding a dragon," I said. "Thought you said they were the Free Folk."
"They are, and the fabled Stegoman is the Lord Wizard's friend, not his slave. And, see!" Gilbert pointed; on the other side of the Queen rode a knight all in black, on a midnight charger.
"Sir Guy de Toutarien!" Gilbert crowed. "I know his blank shield."
"Black armor and a blank shield are pretty anonymous," I demurred.
"Aye, but what other Black Knight would ride beside Queen Alisande of Merovence? Nay, all do know of that blank-shield knight, Wizard Saul! 'Tis he who aided the Lord Wizard to overthrow the vile usurper Astaulf and his sorcerer Malingo, to set Queen Alisande again upon her ancestral throne!"
I could see there was a lot of old news I was going to have to catch up on.
"Thereafter," Frisson said, his eyes glowing, "they two worked among the folk of Ibile and shook the throne so sorely that Queen Alisande could ride in, depose the false sorcerer who had taken the crown, and restore the rightful heir."
I was beginning to see a pattern here. "Who is the rightful heir to the throne of Allustria?"
"None," Frisson mourned. "Suettay's ancestor slew them all, root and branch, when she usurped the throne."
"All?" I stated. That didn't equate with the medieval tradition. "You sure there wasn't maybe a baby hidden someplace? Raised as a peasant, possibly?"
"Three, but the sorcerer-queen found them all out and slew them in cold blood. Then her daughter slew her mother before the whole court, took the throne, and sent knights straightaway after the last babe of the cadet branch, and his mother."
"So. No heirs." I frowned. "That gives us a problem, doesn't it?"
"We shall find a fit monarch," Friar Ignatius said with certainty.
I wished I'd shared his confidence.
The scene dwindled, and the Alps sank out of the picture. A long river swam to the center of the pool, then grew larger until we saw a battle going on at the eastern end of a bridge. The space around the bridge grew larger and larger as the invaders pushed back the defenders, and a steady stream of reinforcements poured across the span. In the thick of the fighting rode a silver knight with a golden circlet about his helm.
"King Rinaldo of Ibile!" Gilbert cried.
But the battle was already shrinking; soon we were watching a blur of greenery speed by. It steadied and swelled; we found ourselves watching a thread of brown emerge from the mass of leaves, growing until we saw a road through a forest, blocked by a tollgate. There were five carts drawn up, waiting to get through, but four of the drivers were gone, and the fifth walked the line, soothing the mules. Then the other four men came out of the tollhouse, shaking their heads. Together, all five men put their shoulders to the tollgate, heaved, and forced it up. Then they mounted their carts and drove on through.
/> "How is this?" Gilbert frowned. "Have they overpowered the witch-clerk and gone their way? How so? And know they not what will hap to them when they are caught?"
"Nothing," Frisson said slowly, "if the witch-clerk was gone."
I stared, then remembered the sick toll-witch I'd cured.
"Shall not bandits fall upon them?" Gilbert asked.
The trees blurred, but the road remained clear; we were looking at something happening farther down—a cloud of dust, with struggling men and swords and staves dimly visible though it, slamming and hacking in rage at one another.
"Two mobs of bandits!" Gilbert cried. "They fight to see who shall have the right to despoil the merchants!"
"And they're making enough noise so travelers will have sense enough to stay away." I nodded. "The winner will probably be so weakened that he won't try to ambush any five who have sense enough to band together."
"But do they not fear the magistrate?" Frisson asked.
The scene shifted to show a magistrate's house with a dozen men standing about impatiently, waiting for the door to open. Finally, they knocked, then knocked again, then pounded incessantly.
"Magistrate's not home," I said.
"Is he out hunting bandits?" Frisson wondered.
"Nay," Gilbert answered, "for his stables are full, and his men stand idle."
I looked at the area behind the courthouse. Sure enough, there were a dozen men in leather armor, shooting at big round targets and taking halfhearted swipes at one another with oaken staves.
"How shall the merchants resolve their disputes now?" Friar Ignatius murmured.
Apparently, the merchants were wondering that, too, because they were talking among themselves with a lot of gesturing. Finally, they gave up and walked away, discussing matters among themselves. They sat down in the village square, ten of them watching while two stood up and began to argue.
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