A Study in Sorcery: A Lord Darcy Novel

by Michael Kurland

  “If you stop the guns, I will be able to do that,” the chief said. “If you cannot stop the guns, I will not be able to do that. If you cannot stop the guns, then I may no longer be chief.”

  “Then I had better stop the guns,” Lord Darcy said. He pushed himself away from the table and stood up. “The Azteque treaty party is arriving today, probably just about now. I want to take a look at it. Perhaps you two should get some sleep, and we will speak further this evening.”

  “Good idea,” Major DePemmery said. “One can run indefinitely on three hours sleep a night, but thinking is another matter. And I believe some hard thinking might be in order about now. We’ll be off. Speak to you later, my lord.”

  Lord Darcy saw his two guests out and then grabbed his cape and followed. The serjeant of the guard had a horse saddled and ready for him, and Lord Darcy swung up into the saddle and headed south along the Great Way.

  It was a damp, foggy morning, and the horse showed the need of a little warming exercise, so Lord Darcy broke it into a trot, and then a gentle canter, until both horse and rider had worked off the chill of the early morning air. When they came into sight of the Langert Street Ferry, Lord Darcy slowed the horse back down to a walk, and watched the activities at the ferry with interest as he approached.

  A company of the Duke’s Household Guard foot soldiers, in spotless uniforms with gleaming metalwork, was drawn up in double rows on both sides of the street leading to the ferry. Between them a couple of platoons (or whatever the Azteques called them) of Azteque warriors had already arrived on the ferry and were standing motionless in a four-abreast column.

  A large, ornate wooden platform was on the ferry now, as it pulled into its slip. In the center of the platform was a square structure that looked like a miniature temple, which Lord Darcy deduced was the traveling home of the Eternal Flame. It took a couple of minutes to tie the ferry securely to its moorings, after which twelve men, six on a side, hefted the platform to their shoulders and walked off with it.

  Lord Darcy sat watching for the next hour, as the ferry made three more trips across the Arthur, and the Azteque Retinue d’Ambassade gathered itself on Saytchem Island. Several Legion officers also made the trip across; presumably from the company which had escorted the Azteques up from Mechicoe. When the Azteques were all assembled, they formed into a six-man-wide marching unit and, to the beat of a single, rather hollow-sounding drum, began to march into town. As the Azteques started up, Lord Darcy turned and rode back to the Residence.

  “Ah, my lord,” Master Sean said, catching up to him as he strode down the wide entrance hall. “I’ve been waiting here for you.”

  “What is it?” Lord Darcy asked, pausing in midstride. “Has something happened?”

  “Not exactly, my lord. That is, not yet. His Grace the Duke wishes to see us right away.”

  “Ah!” Lord Darcy said. “You didn’t want to face the—that is, His Grace—alone. Am I right?”

  “I think that His Grace probably feels certain pressures right now, and he is going to pass the feeling on to us, his loyal servants,” Master Sean said. “He did so badly want the murder of Prince Ixequatle solved before the Azteque treaty party arrived.”

  “Hmm,” Lord Darcy said. “We’d best go speak with His Grace.”

  With the tubby Irish sorcerer trotting at his side, Lord Darcy strode down the corridors to the duke’s private chambers. “Tell His Grace that Lord Darcy and Master Sean are here, if you please,” he told the duke’s secretary, who guarded the outer room.

  Duke Charles did not look pleased to see them. From the expression on his face, it would have taken a lot to please him right then. Count de Maisvin stood by his side looking distinctly unhappy.

  “Come in, my lord, Master Sean,” the duke said, waving them into the large room with the hand-painted wallpaper of hunting scenes that was his private study. “Well, the wheel has turned, time has marched along, and the Azteque Ambassade is arrived. In a little over three hours I am going to have an official meeting with a chap called Lord Chiklquetl, who is their Minister Plenipotentiary, as well as being their High Priest, and I think I know the first question he’s going to ask.”

  “I’m sure, Your Grace—” de Maisvin began.

  “He is going to ask me how it happens that a royal prince of the Azteques can get murdered here,” His Grace continued firmly, “in Nova Eboracum, the site of government of New England, and we do nothing about it.”

  “We can’t just catch a murderer to order, Your Grace,” Lord Darcy said reasonably, “much as we might like to. We use logic, deduction, careful detective work, and the finest forensic magic anywhere; but we cannot perform miracles. Even Lord, um, Chiklquetl should see that.”

  “That is just what he will not see, my lord,” the duke said. “That is just what we do not want him to see. It is bad enough that the Prince got murdered on our territory, but I can get Lord Chiklquetl to accept that. One can’t be guarded if one is going to refuse guards and go off into dark corners, no matter how efficient the guards are.

  “But the Azteques do believe that we, the Angevins, perform miracles. It is that belief that enables us, with less than ten thousand people on this whole continent, to keep from being pushed back into the sea. If the million or so Azteques to the south of us did not think that we can perform miracles, we would be in severe trouble. For one thing, the Good Lord knows they’d never sign this treaty if they didn’t think they had to.”

  “I see,” Lord Darcy said. “If Your Grace would like to dismiss me from the case—”

  ”By God, Darcy, I didn’t say that! Who would replace you? You’re not going to run out on me that easily!”

  “I didn’t mean that, Your Grace,” Lord Darcy said.

  “No, no, of course you didn’t.” His Grace dropped into a chair. “Sit down, sit down, all of you,” he said, waving his hand at them. “We’ve had enough of pacing about, and it doesn’t seem to get us anywhere. Now let us have a bit of intelligent discussion about what we have done, and what we’re going to do about all this.”

  Lord Darcy sat on one of the brocade-covered chairs that surrounded the central table. “We have actually made a lot of useful progress, Your Grace,” he said. “I could not take my oath that it has gotten us any closer to the killer, but I believe it has. We have a mass of information, we seem to have inadvertently broken up a smuggling operation, and we’re working on uncovering a nest of Serka agents here.”

  “Here?” His Grace said, looking surprised. “In Nova Eboracum? Or in the Residence itself?”

  “Somewhere in the government of New England, at any rate,” Lord Darcy said.

  “I should pay closer attention to some of those reports I sign,” the duke said. “Count de Maisvin, what do you know about this? And why didn’t you know it months ago?”

  “We had some indication that something was going on,” de Maisvin said, “but until the murder—until we discovered that the pyramid was being used to store weapons—we had nothing solid to go on. Just rumors of the sort that caused Major DePemmery to go on his trip inland. It took Lord Darcy’s brilliant discovery of the secret room in the pyramid for us to get some understanding of what had been going on.”

  “Master Sean’s discovery, not mine.” Lord Darcy said.

  Duke Charles stared from one to the other. “The report I am going to have to write to His Majesty about this is going to make him wonder about his choice of administrators,” he said. “That something like this has been going on under my very nose, and I remained unaware of it. Rumors of unrest in the interior. Rumors of modern weapons in the hands of natives. And I treated them like—rumors. A prince of the Azteques comes here, and I permit him to be murdered.”

  “Come now, Your Grace; there are ways of making the situation sound bad, and ways of making it sound good,” de Maisvin said. “You are elucidating the negative. Looked at from the other side, there has not been a native uprising in the twelve years you’ve been here. Indeed,
we are on good terms with most of the native tribes. Commerce has increased. The farmers are healthy, happy, and reasonably safe.”

  “One thing,” Lord Darcy said, “the natives have not yet gotten the weapons, for some reason.”

  “They’re probably hidden somewhere right here in New Borkum,” Count de Maisvin said. “We’ll have to put out double patrols, keep a close watch on all wagons out of town.”

  “Can we use magic?” the duke asked, turning to Master Sean. “Some sort of divination to see where the guns are concealed?”

  “Probably not, Your Grace,” Master Sean replied. “Most homeowners have privacy spells put on their homes just for, ah, privacy, if you see what I mean. Of course most of them will be simple, inexpensive spells, put on by journeyman sorcerers, and I or another master could defeat such a spell with ease. But that would be unethical unless we had specific cause to suspect a given household. I would have to get an exemption from the Bishop to proceed. And, in any case, it would involve doing each of them one at a time.”

  “That would take far too long,” His Grace said, “even if the Bishop would approve.” He sighed. “Draw up a plan, de Maisvin. Put guardsmen at the ferry to check wagons crossing, and at the Great Way bridge to the north. Notify the Coast Guard to keep Saytchem Island under watch around the clock. They may have to call up reserves to do it. Warrant the Legion to stop and search any suspicious cargos along the outer roads. Don’t use Company B for that; they deserve some time off.”

  “Very good, Your Grace,” de Maisvin said. He took out a small notebook, and made some notes. “Lord Darcy, there’s a detail of men on Pyramid Island under your direct command. Do you still need them there? They would be useful elsewhere.”

  “A few more days,” Lord Darcy said, “and then I’ll release them. I want to go back to the island once again, before the Azteque dedication ceremony. That won’t be for a couple of weeks, will it, Your Grace?”

  “It might not be at all, if we can’t come up with that young prince’s killer,” His Grace said.

  “I shall do my best, Your Grace,” Lord Darcy said.

  “That has always been good enough before,” Duke Charles said. “Let us hope it still is.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” Lord Darcy said.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  That afternoon Lord Darcy and Master Sean took mounts from the guardhouse stables and rode down to the Langert Street Ferry. “One last look inside that temple,” Lord Darcy told Master Sean as they waited by the gate for the ferry to pull in. “I have a feeling that we have overlooked something; and I have learned to never ignore such a feeling.”

  “Aye, my lord,” Master Sean agreed. “We should all learn to pay close attention to such feelings. Many’s the person who has just a touch of one of the rare Talents: clairvoyance, or clairaudience, or precognition, or such; and it appears just often enough to give you little hints about what’s going to happen, or what did happen, and that mostly in moments of stress. Or so it seems.”

  “What you’re saying, Master Sean, is that when a little voice inside of you tells you to duck, you should duck first, and then worry about where the voice is coming from,” Lord Darcy said.

  “Aye, my lord,” Master Sean agreed.

  The motive power for the cable that drove and guided the ferry came from four patient oxen, huge beasts that spent their days walking around a massive capstan in the ferry building. LordDarcy watched the animals walking around and around as the ferry pulled into its slip. They seemed healthy, well-fed, and content with their life. Perhaps going around in a large circle all day, pulling a wooden pole, was not boring for an ox. Lord Darcy asked the ox-driver.

  “They only work half a day, you see,” the ox-driver, an old, gnarled, totally bald man told Lord Darcy. “Then they go out to pasture and the other team moves in. It being real hard work, even for four oxen, turning this great machine, we can’t work them more than half a day.” The man spit into the straw that was spread out beneath the animals’ feet. “I, contrariwise, work the whole blasted day myself, with only two half-hours off when the boy takes over for me.”

  “I see,” Lord Darcy said.

  “You can’t drive an ox too far,” the man said, “It don’t pay. Some of them will just stop when they’ve had enough, and you can’t cajole, or beat them into going any further. Some of them will suddenly stop in their tracks, and when you try to move them, they sort of slowly fall over. They’ve died, you see, with no warning. They just decided that they’ve had enough of this world, and want to see if the next is any better.”

  The man spit again. “Now, you can’t tell one kind of ox from the other,” he said, “and it really doesn’t matter anyhow. In either case, it isn’t smart to drive an ox past where it should be driven. So they only work half a day.”

  “Fascinating,” Lord Darcy said.

  “Now, a man,” the man said, “he isn’t smart enough to stop nor stubborn enough to die when he’s had enough. So I work a full day. From six in the morning to eight at night. Sometimes ten.”

  “Thank you, goodman,” Lord Darcy said.

  “I think they eat better than I do, too,” the man finished, and then turned back to his animals.

  Lord Darcy looked over at Master Sean and saw that the tubby sorcerer was holding on to his saddle horn and trying not to laugh. “If I thought that my life was no better than that of the ox I was driving,” Master Sean said, “I believe I might stop driving the ox.”

  “Don’t suggest it to the driver,” Lord Darcy said, smiling. “At least not until we return this evening. The oxen will have been changed, but he’ll still be here.”

  “Aye, my lord,” Master Sean agreed.

  The gate came up, and the ferry unloaded the passengers it had brought across.

  “You’ll have to dismount, gentlemen, and lead your animals on board,” the ferryman told them, swinging over to the little stand from which he collected the fares. “That’ll be a quarter-bit from each of you—a sixth-bit for yourselves, and a twelfth-bit for your mount.”

  Lord Darcy took a silver half-sovereign from his purse and tossed it to the man. Then he swung down from his palfrey and led the beast on board.

  The three-quarter-mile trip across the Arthur took slightly over a quarter-hour. On the other side they remounted and started south along the wagon road that paralleled the river. After ten minutes or so the road turned inland, and they had to continue along what was no more than a well-worn trail into the marshy land along the river bank. It was twenty minutes later before they reached the clearing that was directly opposite Pyramid Island.

  There was a ring of tents around the clearing, and a stone fireplace had been built at the inland end. Some few strands of early grass grew around most of the area, but the center, which domed up slightly, was bald and bare. A circle of young, first-growth trees surrounded the area, showing that there had been a fairly severe fire within living memory.

  A corporal of the guard and three guardsmen were in the temporary camp when Lord Darcy and Master Sean arrived. They were doing housekeeping chores, awaiting the arrival of the cutter that would bring their evening meals. Alerted by the sound of approaching hoofbeats, they greeted the riders, with rifles at the ready. As soon as they recognized the investigator and his tubby assistant, they lowered their weapons.

  “My lord, Master,” the corporal said, grounding his rifle and saluting. “Sorry for that greeting, but we didn’t expect you.”

  “Just paying an informal visit to the pyramid, Corporal,” Lord Darcy said, “and I thought I’d come the back way. Didn’t mean to surprise you. Has anything happened to make you so, ah, cautious?”

  “Nothing you can rightly put your finger on, my lord,” the Corporal said. “Some of the men thought they heard noises at night—but it could have been bear, or raccoon, or overly active imaginations. But Chief Karlus said there was no point in taking chances, whatever it is, so he has issued us these rifles and twenty rounds each for the rest of
our stay.”

  “Quite right, Corporal,” Lord Darcy agreed. “Would you have one of your men row us out to the island? Master Sean and I wish to go pyramid-climbing again.”

  “Very good, my lord,” the Corporal said.

  The back side of the pyramid, Lord Darcy noted as they were rowed across, looked, if anything, more foreboding than the front. There was nothing of human scale from this view; the temples on top were meaningless boxes, the stairs were on the other side, and the steps of the pyramid itself, each over three feet high and under six inches deep, were not meant to be negotiated by any earthly creature.

  After landing at the makeshift dock, Lord Darcy and Master Sean walked around the massive pyramid to the front. They began slowly climbing the stone stairway, pausing every few feet for Lord Darcy to look around and prod at the quiescent stones. Occasionally he would bend over and closely examine one bit of rock, or put his ear to the stone and listen for a few seconds.

  “You think it’s going to talk to you, my lord?” Master Sean asked, watching Lord Darcy’s curious behavior.

  “Not at all, Master Sean,” Lord Darcy replied. “I think this pyramid has done all its talking for quite a while; your ingenious magical techniques have drawn it out far more than it intended to be drawn. I am merely, to speak metaphorically, listening for such incidental noises as I might hear.”

  “And have you heard any?” Master Sean asked. In a world where magic works, metaphor is taken quite seriously. Sometimes the analogue represents the object in a very physical way.

  “Not a sound,” Lord Darcy admitted. They continued up to the top of the pyramid.

  Lord Darcy stood in front of the temple of Huitsilopochtli and stared out at the great bay before him. “Look,” he said, pointing at a two-masted barque anchored in midbay. “There’s the Sibyl. Still waiting for the command to discharge her illicit cargo.”