All he told Arbol, though, was, "I cheated, so I won. It was no honorable victory.”
“Who cares?” the prince said. “It's the winning that counts. Dad says that all the time. Isn’t this a fun game Mom invented for us, Wulfie?”
Wulfrith thought about it. “No.”
"Oh, all right, you don't have to pretend you're me for fighting practice any more; just for those stupid court ceremonies and sometimes with my math teacher. Besides, I like fighting practice myself too much to give it away. Good thing, too. If you did like to fight, and since we’re getting so slick at swapping places, one day you just might get it into your head that you could take my place for keeps.” Arbol sighed. “Then I’d have to kill you.”
“Don’t bother.” Wulfrith stretched his feet to the fire. “You can keep your crown. I'm happy being who I am, doing what I do, and liking what I like. ’ ’ He reached into his belt pouch and pulled out the hooded mask. Settling it over his face as he rose, he said, “And one thing I do like is going to the library. May I, Your Highness?”
“ ‘May I, Your Highness?' ” Arbol taunted. The prince leaped up and gave his friend a Hydrangean hotknuckle on the upper arm. “I thought we were pals, Wulfie! What’s all this 'Your Highness’ dung?”
“Well, you were getting so all-fired protective about being the prince, I just thought—” Wulfrith rubbed his sore arm. “All right, if that’s how you want it, I’m going to the library whether you want me to or not . . . Stinky!”
“That’s my pal!” The prince laughed and sent Wulfrith on his way.
Accelerating rapidly as he left Arbol's rooms, Wulfrith almost raced to the royal library. As much as he had come to enjoy Prince Arbol's friendship, his first love would always be books.
Especially those books. The ones in the alcove. The books whose text and helpful illustrations were a source of never-ending fascination to Wulfrith's young eyes.
“I am a wizard; nothing human disgusts me,” Wulfrith remarked self-righteously as he closed the library doors behind him, removed and stowed his mask, and made a beeline for the alcove. He did not have the plain honesty to admit to himself that disgust was hardly the sentiment those books stirred in him. And they stirred plenty.
He was deep into Chapter Twenty of The Pomegranate Chamber: An Instructive Inquiry into the Flexibility of the Nubile Youth or Maiden, and had just reached the part about winning the confidence of the Untried Partner, when he became aware of a heavy, musky presence in his immediate vicinity. Discretely he gave his underarms a cursory sniff, then realized that he was not alone.
“Ooooh, Your Majesty, how happy I am to find you.”
She stepped from between two bookcases, her eyes smoldering. With an undulating walk that would leave most snakes perishing of envy, she smoothly approached him and draped herself over one arm of his chair. Leaning forward so that poor Wulfrith was left breathing bosom, she said, 'Tve heard how much of a scholar you’ve become, my lord. I, too, am most interested in ancient knowledge.”
“Ungh,” said Wulfrith as the full impact of her scent got him where he lived.
Snuggling partway into his lap, the lady went on: “Now isn’t this a marvelous coincidence! You’re reading the very same book I’ve been studying in my spare time. Alas, I am only a simple woman. I’m afraid I lack Your Highness’s wisdom. There is so much of what I’ve read that I don’t understand.” Ubri slowly licked her forefinger and turned a few pages in the book until she found an illustration that she thought would do. She could not read to save her life, but one look at the open book in the prince’s lap told her all she needed to know. If she tossed away this gods-given opportu-nity, she deserved to let Queen Artemisia rule in peace forever.
“Ah! There it is.” Ubri slipped fully into her prey’s lap when she pointed to the illustration of her choice. A sly smile curved her lips as she sensed the young man’s growing interest. “I really don’t know anything about such matters.' ' She brought her lips so close to his ear that her tongue gently brushed it. “Would you explain?’’
Four hours later, while Wulfrith was explaining Chapter Forty-Nine to Ubri all over the alcove carpet, the doors opened and King Gudge walked into the library. The Gor- gorian monarch was still mumbling to himself—something about “Right shoulder, rain; left shoulder, luck. I still say it’s a load of ox apples! ” He scanned the imposing rows of books and spat. “Look it up myself, the wench says. The facts are documented, she says. Documented my hairy bum. Documented where, I want to know? Damn. Should’ve brought one of those Old Hydries with me. I bet you’ve got to know how to read to find out where this right-shoulder-left-shoulder swill’s written up!’’
A dim spark of thought, solitary and forlorn inside Gudge’s skull, flickered with a memory: Libraries are where you look for documented facts—“I know that!’’ Gudge snapped. “Why else would I be wasting my time here?’’—and librarians are who you get to do all the scut- work for you.
“Oh.’’ That was an idea Gudge could use. He looked around the dusty shelves but didn’t see any librarians there. He gazed upward, but none were hanging from the rafters. Then he heard some interesting sounds coming from an alcove. “Sounds like a librarian,’’ he decided, and went to fetch it. .
It wasn’t a librarian, but it was a sight to bring joy to a simple barbarian king's fatherly heart.
“That’s my boy, Arbol!’’ shouted Gudge, frightening poor Wulfrith, who had been too busy to hear the king's approach, all the way into Chapter Fifty-Two.
Chapter Twenty-One
“But,” Wulfrith said, as he tried to tie the drawstring of his breeches. Being pounded on the back by the king added considerably to the difficulty of the task; so did his confusion and fright at having been discovered under such circumstances.
“But nothing, Arbol," Gudge told him. “If you think there’s any 'but' then you’ve been listening to that damned mother of yours too much.’’
“But . . .’’
“It’s about bloody time you became a man,’’ Gudge continued. “Why, you’re what, almost fifteen? I was . . . well ... I was ...” Gudge had never been good with numbers, but the memory did eventually surface. “I was scarcely fourteen! That’s two years I’ve been waiting for you, boy!"
“But ..." Wulfrith was too concerned with questions of mistaken identity to pay any attention to the royal grasp of mathematics.
“Your mother probably hasn’t told you what comes next," Gudge said, heading for the door and herding Wulfrith ahead of him. “Ox’s blood, she probably doesn’t even know, being a Hydrie, and a woman."
“Next?" Wulfrith had been desperately trying to find some way to tell the king that he was not Arbol that would not result in decapitation, or evisceration, or other impediments to further vitality, but King Gudge’s latest words had entirely distracted him.
Next?
None of the books mentioned anything after Chapter Fifty-Two, not unless you wanted to count washing up, or getting married, or disemboweling unfaithful wives, or any of that sort of thing.
Well . . . some did mention a few things, but Wulfrith hadn't really taken those seriously. And they didn’t agree with each other, anyway.
Gudge clapped Wulfrith on the shoulder, staggering him, and announced, “Now, my boy . . . now we get drunk”
“Oh, Your Majesty,’’ Ubri said from behind them. She had finally managed to get her skirt back to the general vicinity of her waist, and to get herself upright. “Your Majesty, I’m so pleased ...”
“Good! Just a beginner, and he’s already pleasing his women!’’ Gudge exclaimed, not looking back.
“No, I mean I’m happy that your son ...”
“Me, too,’’ Gudge said, interrupting her, “but I won’t be if you don’t shut up. This is man talk.’’ His hand fell convincingly to Obliterator’s hilt, and Ubri stopped dead in her tracks and watched the two males depart.
She sighed. It was progress, at any rate, very good progress indeed, whe
re the prince was concerned. And Gudge had certainly been feeling mellow; he'd given a warning first. She supposed she should feel lucky.
Wulfrith was unsure, as he left the library and Lady Ubri behind, whether he should consider himself lucky or cursed. Being mistaken for the prince even by Arbol’s own father, when he wasn’t even trying, was quite an accomplishment for an impostor—but he wished he could get away from the king long enough to find the real Prince Arbol. The idea of getting drunk with King Gudge was rather terrifying; everyone knew the attrition rate among the king’s drinking companions ran very high, and besides, if this “getting drunk’’ Gudge talked about was a special occasion, what were all those rowdy, bellowing, bloodstained evenings that used up so many drinking companions?
And just what would be involved in this "getting drunk" that was not part of those evenings?
He wished he could find some excuse to get away, but he couldn't think of anything. His brain seemed to have shut down in panic, and his body was mostly interested in lying down somewhere and relaxing a little, not in slipping away.
Not that the king was offering any obvious opportunities for escape.
The first stop in "getting drunk," Wulfrith discovered, was the kitchen, where the king happily swatted various serving wenches on their respective bottoms and sent a steward down to the cellars for wine—"A little something to hold us until we get there,'' Gudge explained, as the steward handed him an immense earthenware jug. Wulfrith nodded unhappily.
Gudge pulled the cork with his teeth and gulped down approximately half a gallon, then handed the jug to Wulfrith. "Take a swig, boy," the king commanded.
Obediently, Wulfrith took a sip. He gagged, but kept the stuff down.
It tasted . . . well, once, when one of the real prince's Companions had taken a good whacking in fighting practice, he had soiled his pants, bled all over them, and fallen sitting into a mud puddle. Wulfrith happened to have seen the lad's breeches on their way to the palace laundry; more to the point, he had smelled them as they were carried past.
That smell was what the stuff in the jug tasted like. Only worse.
Wulfrith was not stupid enough to say anything about the taste; besides, he was unable to say anything at all for several seconds.
The second stop in "getting drunk" was the palace stable, where the grooms hurried to obey the king's bellowed orders, fetching and saddling Gudge's and Arbol's favored mounts.
Wulfrith had never played Arbol outside the palace before; this whole ordeal was growing steadily more terrifying.
At the third stop, however, some of the fear subsided; Wulfrith finally discovered what sort of a celebration “getting drunk” was, in this context.
“Getting drunk” consisted of marching into a tavern, loudly announcing one's presence, and then proclaiming, “My boy's a man today! Drinks for everyone!” Any arguments from tavern proprietors were cut short with Obliterator.
Then the king would down a gallon or so of whatever the place served, while everyone else (including Wulfrith) drank a pint apiece. After that, Gudge held forth in lurid and increasingly fictional detail about his son's amorous feats, gulping liquor between sentences.
When the need to piss exceeded his thirst, Gudge would march out, splatter the tavern's front wall, then jump on his horse and ride off to the next tavern, while Wulfrith, who was by no means an experienced rider, struggled to keep up.
When the taverns directly adjoined each other, as a few did, the riding hardly seemed necessary, but Gudge apparently considered it part of the ritual.
With each tavern, the descriptions of the supposed Arbol's amatory prowess grew more obscene and less coherent, but the king's temper grew ever better. By the fourteenth stop, objections to the royal progress were no longer necessarily fatal; Gudge was too drunk to handle Obliterator with any skill, and instead simply punched anyone who did not immediately oblige his whims, usually aiming at the annoyance’s face, but not always hitting it.
Wulfrith, harried and embarrassed, watched all this with growing amazement. He was convinced that he had seen the king imbibe several times his own volume in alcoholic beverage, and he did not quite understand how that was possible, even allowing for the amount that had then been distributed against various tavern walls. Gudge's face had turned a truly amazing shade of purplish red.
It had never occurred to Wulfrith how many taverns a city the size of the Hydrangean capital could hold; the number was well over a score, apparently.
It was at the conclusion of their visit to number twenty-two or twenty-three, a peculiar and nameless little place far up on the hill in the Old Hydrangean section that appeared to serve only peppermint liqueur, that Wulfrith, fairly intoxicated himself at this point, got up the nerve to ask, “Are we going to visit every tavern in the city?"
Gudge, cheerfully pissing in the general direction of the tavern wall, turned a bleary grin on his son. “Tha's gen’rul idea, yeah. ‘Less we fall down firs'."
“Oh. After we've visited them all, what do we do then?"
Gudge blinked. “An' we haven't fallen over yet? We start over again!" His grin grew impossibly wide, and he belched loudly.
“How . . . how many ..."
Wulfrith had intended to ask how many taverns there were, in all, and maybe how the king came to know every single one of them, but Gudge was no longer listening; he was, instead, climbing onto his horse.
Wulfrith provided a steadying hand before clambering onto his own mount.
“Thanks, Arbol," Gudge managed, as he wavered in the saddle. He shook the reins, dug in his heels, and his tired horse set out at a fast trot.
Wulfrith hurried after, his head swimming with every step his horse took. He had drunk far more liquor than ever before in his life, even if it was only a tiny fraction of the king’s consumption, and the effects were definitely making themselves felt. He was beginning to lose touch with the world around him, and with details of who and where he was and what he was doing.
“Y’ a goo’ boy, Arbol," Gudge called, grinning.
“My name’s not Arbol, is it?" Wulfrith said, more to himself than anyone else. “ 'Snot Dunwin, either. It's Wulfrith. I'm sure it is."
" ’Swhat?" King Gudge, somehow forgetting that he was on horseback, turned to face his son. He was now sitting sidesaddle on a large horse trotting down a steep hill, over cobblestones.
Wulfrith giggled. The king looked so silly, swaying like that. He vaguely recalled that he hadn’t meant to tell Gudge who he really was right away because the king might be angry, but so what if he got angry? How could Wulfrith be scared of anyone who rode that way?
"I’m not Prince Arbol," he said between giggles, "I’m his food taster!"
"No!" Gudge bellowed, and, still sidesaddle, tried to draw his sword.
That was too much; the god who looks after fools and drunkards threw up His intangible hands in disgust, and Gudge toppled backward from the saddle. He landed headfirst on the cobbles, heavily as a sack of grain; he rolled several yards down the steep slope, then stopped and lay very still indeed.
Wulfrith's drunken amusement turned abruptly to horror; the pleasant alcoholic haze dissipated rapidly, as he struggled to rein in his own mount. When he managed it, he dismounted quickly and hurried to the fallen Gorgorian. He felt for a heartbeat, for a pulse, for breath, for any sign that the king still lived.
There was none.
He looked around for help, and spotted three of the King’s Own Guards, as his old Gorgorian raiders were now called, walking by at the foot of the hill.
"Hey," Wulfrith called from where he sat beside the late King Gudge. "Help!"
Despite his lingering drunkenness, he then realized this was probably not the cleverest thing he had ever done. Wouldn't it have been better to get back to the palace and put his mask back on, and leave the king to be found by someone else? What if they thought he, Wulfrith, had murdered King Gudge? What did Gorgorians do to regicides?
"Who's there?" one o
f the guards called, and Wulfrith knew he’d wasted his chance.
He wasn't sure who he should claim to be just now, so rather than identifying himself, as the soldier probably expected him to do, Wulfrith called, "It's the king! He's fallen from his horse!"
He saw the soldiers glance at one another; then all three of them came charging up the hill. A moment later they stood around, looking down at the dead king and the live boy.
"That’s old Gudge, all right."
"Dead as a rock, ain't he?"
"Looks it. I s'pose we should take him back and let one of them Hydrie doctors make it official."
"And yer the prince, ain't you?" One of the guards squinted at Wulfrith's face. "Hard to see in this light."
"Urn . . ." Wulfrith wasn't quite ready to claim to be Arbol; admitting he wasn't, however, seemed like a very bad idea just now.
" 'Course it's Prince Arbol," one of the others said. "Ain't you got eyes? Moon's up, innit?"
"Yeah, but . . . stand up, boy, let’s get a look at you."
Wulfrith got unsteadily to his feet.
"Tha's the prince, all right." The three soldiers nodded. "Assuming the old king’s dead," the tallest one remarked, "there’s no use in wasting time. I wanna be first to say it."
"Say what?" The other two looked at the speaker doubtfully.
"Oh, come on, you know."
"So say it, then."
Wulfrith looked at their faces with no idea what the three were talking about. Then the tall one grabbed the boy’s hand, raised it over his head, and shouted, "The king is dead! Long live King Arbol!"
Chapter Twenty-Two
"Just to the library?" Wulfrith pleaded with the guard. “I'll come right back, I promise."
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