With A Single Spell

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “Well, I’ve got forever, and they say a witch’s love can keep a man young. You’ve got a recipe for an eternal youth spell in that book of Derry’s; you can work your way up to that, and then we’ll both have forever.” She leaned over and kissed him.

  Someone knocked at the door.

  Startled that anyone would be about so late, Tobas called, “What is it?”

  “Your companion has returned, my lord wizard,” announced the voice of one of the few servants who spoke Ethsharitic.

  “Well, it’s about time!” Karanissa said, rolling quickly out of the bed onto her feet. Tobas followed suit, and both grabbed for the nearest decent clothing.

  A moment later the witch and the wizard descended the staircase together and marched out to the torchlit courtyard, where a curious crowd, much of it still in nightclothes, was staring at the various fragments of the dragon that now occupied a long line of wagons.

  “My lord Tobas,” someone said behind him; Tobas turned and found the Lord Chamberlain, his ceremonial robes wrinkled, obviously himself just roused from sleep. “My apologies, sir, for doubting you. You are indeed entitled to the reward, and despite the hour his Majesty the King is waiting in the audience chamber at this moment, eager to have the matter settled. We do not wish there to be any further delay and hope you will come now and make your choice. If you would be so kind as to follow me?”

  Grinning broadly, with Karanissa on his arm, Tobas followed.

  Peren was waiting at the door of in the audience chamber. “I’m sorry I took so long,” he said, speaking quickly, “but it was hard keeping that bunch together, and it took a long time to chop the thing up. They insisted on bringing it all back. They wanted practically every scale and drop of blood. And then on the way back they kept stopping to rest, too! Half of them wanted to stop and make camp at sundown this evening, but we were so close I insisted we should press on, and here we are. I’m sorry it’s so late.”

  “That’s all right,” Tobas said. “We thought that the delays were probably something like that. We weren’t really worried — after all, we knew we’d killed the dragon. Besides, we could always go through the tapestry if we had to escape quickly.”

  Peren nodded, not really listening. “Did you know that the crown is claiming the dragon’s remains?” he said, clearly agitated. “They say that since we were working for them, they own the dragon; we don’t get to keep any for ourselves.”

  “Well, with all that gold, we shouldn’t need...” Tobas began.

  “Hush!” the chamberlain said, as the door of the audience chamber swung open.

  The three adventurers obeyed, and were appropriately quiet and obeisant as they were brought before His Majesty Derneth the Second, King of Dwomor and Rightful Lord of the Holy Kingdom of Old Ethshar. Tobas wondered idly whether this last title was a new acquisition or merely one they hadn’t come across previously.

  They noticed immediately that, in addition to a small assortment of rather befuddled advisors, the king was surrounded by his unmarried daughters. All five princesses stood to the left of the throne, arrayed in fine white gowns — though Tobas noted a few untied bows and unfastened buttons, clear proof of the hurry with which they had dressed. Zerréa was grinning behind her hand, and Alorria was visibly excited, but the older three merely seemed sleepy.

  Servants were still lighting candles along the sides of the hall; about two-thirds of the racks were aglow when the king motioned for the three foreigners to rise from their formal bows.

  “Hello,” he said politely when everyone was upright once more. “We understand you three actually managed to kill that dragon.”

  “Yes, your Majesty,” Tobas replied. “We did.”

  “Congratulations, my boy!” He smiled broadly, if a trifle insincerely. “In that case, we assume that you have come here for your reward.”

  “Yes, your Majesty, I...”

  “Which one do you want?” He gestured at the five princesses, wasting no time on preliminaries; Tinira, somewhat more awake than her older sisters, blushed, and Zerréa giggled; Alorria licked her lips nervously. “Pick one, and then we can all get back to bed.”

  Somewhat distressed at the king’s cavalier treatment of his own daughters, as well as dismayed at the assumption that he would marry one, Tobas began, “Ah ... your Majesty, I...”

  Peren interrupted, “If it pleases your Majesty, I would ask for the hand of the Princess Tinira. My comrade, Lord Tobas, has voiced no objection to my choice in previous discussion.”

  “Good enough, then.” The king’s smile seemed suddenly more sincere. “Tinira, step forth to meet your betrothed!”

  The princess stepped forward, eyes downcast, and made her way to Peren’s side. He took her hand gravely.

  “Had you left the choice to me,” the king remarked casually, “I would have offered Falissa, and I do wish that you hadn’t lost the other two members of your original group, but this will have to be good enough. My blessings upon you, Peren — it is Peren, isn’t it? Peren, and Tinira. And now, wizard, what of your choice?”

  “Your Majesty, I’m already married,” Tobas answered boldly. “The witch Karanissa of the Mountains is my wife as well as my comrade.”

  The king stared at him for a moment, every trace of his smile gone, then demanded, “What of it?”

  Tobas stammered for a moment, then said, “I mean only that I cannot take one of your beautiful daughters as my wife. I will be pleased and honored to accept the other promised rewards, but...”

  “You don’t understand,” Derneth said, cutting him off. “You obviously don’t understand the situation at all. Someone has misled you badly. You do want the reward money, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I...” Tobas began.

  “Well, then,” the king said, cutting him off, “you must marry one or more of my daughters. The gold and the positions in my realm are their dowries. The sole reward for slaying the dragon is the hand of a princess; the dowry comes with that, but you can’t have the dowry without the bride. If we had simply wanted to pay out a thousand gold pieces to have the dragon slain, do you think we would have gone about it the way we did?”

  “I hadn’t thought...”

  “Of course not! That would be stupid and wasteful. For half that much we could get a professional dragon-hunter down from Aldagmor, or a really good magician of some sort from Ethshar — no disparagement of your own powers is intended, since you were obviously capable of the job, but you must admit you had no prior reputation. No, we wanted to find husbands for my daughters, husbands who would prove their worth against the monster!”

  “But...” Elner had been right all along, Tobas realized, and his own suspicions well-founded. Once again, his protest was cut short by the king before it truly began.

  “It didn’t work out the way we planned, though, with only three of you involved and one of you a woman. We’ve promised the full thousand to whoever slew the dragon, and we’ll honor that, but we’ll be damned before we’ll let you get away with not marrying at least one of our daughters into the bargain!” He glowered down at Tobas.

  “But I’m already married!” Tobas said in almost a wail, suddenly very aware of his own youth and insignificance before this suddenly-formidable figure.

  “And what difference does that make?”

  Tobas had no good answer to that. He had certainly never intended to have more than one wife; very few men did. However, there was no law against polygamy, nor even any strong custom; Tobas had known men with two wives, back in Telven, and had even heard of men with three. The only restriction custom imposed was that a man had to have enough money to keep two families, and a home big enough for them.

  With the dowry a princess would bring, and living in Dwomor Keep, Tobas realized he would have both. Even if he left Dwomor, he and Karanissa owned a large enough castle for any number of families.

  He did not want a second wife, though. He started to prepare a polite little speech declining the honor, tel
ling the king to keep the gold; after all, with Derithon’s magic he was sure he could earn all the money he would need elsewhere. “Your Majesty, I must...”

  Karanissa’s elbow jabbed him in the side. “Don’t be stupid!” she whispered fiercely, obviously aware of what he had in mind, whether by witchcraft or common sense Tobas could not tell. “We can use the gold and the good will, and I don’t mind having another wife around. I’m not the jealous type; I couldn’t be, with Derry what he was, but I do like money. Go on and take your pick.”

  Startled, Tobas stammered again, glanced at Karanissa, saw her nod firmly, then turned back to the king and said, reluctantly, “Your Majesty, I must apologize for the delay; all of your daughters are so beautiful that making a choice is agony.”

  “Take them all, then!” Derneth said, waving an arm recklessly.

  “But,” Tobas said quickly, before the king’s suggestion could be taken seriously, “if choose I must, I will choose Alorria.”

  “Oh, Tobas!” Alorria shrieked gleefully, her eyes widening with what Tobas could only interpret as delight; she ran to him and hugged him fiercely.

  Tinira was somewhat more restrained in embracing Peren.

  With that, except for the polite farewells, the audience was over; details of distributing the dowries would be settled only when the heroes were safely married. The king slipped quietly out a back door, presumably to return to his bed, and a moment later Tobas found the Lord Chamberlain at his side, discussing wedding arrangements.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The wedding was to be a grand festival, the biggest event Dwomor had seen in years; it was not only a double royal wedding, after all, but a celebration of the dragon’s death. The entire population of the kingdom of Dwomor was invited — which, Tobas learned to his dismay, was slightly under eight thousand people. All his life he had heard them called the Small Kingdoms, but he had never realized before just how small most of them were. He remembered the endless thronged streets of Ethshar of the Spices and resolved that, princess or no, he would not spend the rest of his life in Dwomor.

  He recalled that he had once intended to spend his entire life in Telven, with its population of a hundred or so, and found it hard to believe. It was not that he had any great urge to travel, but that places such as Dwomor seemed so limited in what they might provide in the way of opportunities and comforts.

  Karanissa had great difficulty in not laughing when she heard the population estimate. “I’ve seen army camps with more camp followers than this so-called kingdom has people!” she remarked truthfully.

  She did not think much of the attempts the castle’s population made at pomp and elegance, either. Dwomor Keep simply did not have a great deal of wealth to display; most of the guests would be fed on simple wooden plates, many of them freshly carved for the event. Banners flew from every turret of the castle, and bunting was hung above the gate, but much of the bunting was faded and the banners did not match. Her own garb, repaired and enhanced by her witchcraft, was finer than Alorria’s wedding dress, though Tinira, as the older sister, managed to outshine Karanissa in an ancient, vividly blue gown of some magically-woven fabric one of her distant royal ancestors had somehow acquired.

  Due to the time required for all the preparations, and the need to spread word of the event throughout the realm, the date was set for the twenty-second of Snowfall, and fervent prayers offered to the gods for continued good weather. A sprinkle of snow on the sixteenth caused minor consternation, but as it had the good grace to melt away within a day or so hopes remained high.

  Tobas spent several evenings staring longingly at the tapestry, but Karanissa remained firm in her insistence that he marry Alorria.

  “It won’t bother me,” she insisted. “And you need the money, and it will put you solidly in good with the king here.”

  “But I don’t want to stay here!”

  “But the flying castle is in Dwomor — or maybe Aigoa, but this castle is closer and on the way to Ethshar. Until you either get the castle airborne again or weave another tapestry, or until you give up the tapestry castle for good, you’re tied to Dwomor whether you like it or not.”

  “I don’t like it. Kara, how can I manage being married to both of you? I’m only eighteen; one wife is plenty for someone my age.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she insisted. “Alorria and I will work out the details between ourselves.”

  Tobas was not at all sure he liked that. “Besides,” he said, “I hardly know her!”

  He quickly found, however, that the entire population of Dwomor Keep was determined to do their best to correct that; wherever he went, other than his own suite, Alorria was either there waiting for him or would arrive a moment later.

  He found it difficult to talk to her; she was too impressed by his magic and his supposed heroism, and had led a life too different from his own. Save for a brief state visit or two to neighboring kingdoms, she had spent her entire life inside castle walls. She was educated and well-read, but clearly had little real understanding of the world.

  When she heard the tale of how Peren had been robbed and beaten she found it almost impossible to believe that the local peasants in that part of Amor had not immediately swept out of their homes in a righteous fury and hanged the entire caravan. When she heard how the wizards of Ethshar had refused to teach Tobas more spells, she assumed that it was because he had somehow been unworthy, not having proven himself yet, or perhaps he had offended them in some way, by failing to make some Guild recognition sign. And she flatly denied almost everything Karanissa said about the Great War and the nature of Old Ethshar.

  Tobas found her sweet-tempered but stubborn, intelligent but naïve. She seemed far younger than himself, though he knew she was no more than two years his junior. He could not imagine living with her from day to day, or taking her to his bed.

  The days passed, however, and the wedding drew ever nearer.

  The snow began falling around midday on the twenty-first, and on the morning of the chosen day it had reached a depth of six inches, with drifts over a foot. The Lord Chamberlain had anticipated a crowd of perhaps two thousand; a tenth of that actually showed up.

  That was still quite enough for Tobas. Going through the ceremony, vowing to the gods to cherish a near-stranger, was almost worse than facing the dragon.

  Peren seemed to be enjoying his part of it; he and Tinira made a much better couple than Tobas and Alorria, quite aside from the complications Karanissa’s presence created. They both seemed very happy with their situation, and Tobas supposed glumly that their marriage would be a success. He doubted they felt any great love for each other, as yet, but they did seem to like one another, which was as much as could be said for most marriages.

  After the ceremony came the delivery of the promised dowry, carried out in a small locked room; Tobas and Karanissa counted out seven hundred pieces of gold as their share, and Peren took the remaining three hundred. Karanissa took charge of the larger share, and Tobas did not worry about it further; he was too busy worrying about the rest of the day and night that lay ahead.

  When the gold was taken care of the feasting and the merry-making began; three different minstrels had composed odes in honor of the dragon-slayer, and Tobas found himself acutely embarrassed by all three. One singer had a trick of jamming extra syllables into his lines; another couldn’t carry a tune, and the third, though his songs were well-written and lovely, had embroidered the truth beyond recognition, adding a long dialogue between Tobas and the dragon wherein each listed the other’s offenses, against dragonkind and humanity respectively, and then went on to boast of his own prior achievements.

  “But the dragon didn’t talk,” Tobas insisted quietly to Alorria, while trying to keep up a polite smile. “If it’s true that dragons can learn when they grow old and wise enough, then I suppose it never had anyone to teach it a language, living alone up there in the hills — or maybe it just didn’t think we were worth talking to, but in a
ny case, it never said a word.”

  “It was just a bloodthirsty monster,” Alorria agreed.

  “I think that it was just hungry, really; there isn’t much for something that big to eat around here, except livestock and people.”

  Alorria shuddered delicately. “Don’t talk about it like that.”

  “Why not?” Tobas asked, startled. “These idiots have been singing about it!”

  “That’s different. It sounds so awful when you talk about it eating people just because it was hungry.”

  “What other reason could it have? And they’re singing about the same thing! Listen to that — ‘You have swept the fields with bloody slaughter, devouring the peasants’ sons and daughters.’ I never said anything like that!”

  “Tobas, it’s just a song; be quiet and enjoy it.”

  Tobas realized he was being unreasonable. What he actually wanted to protest was not the minstrels’ songs, but that he was marrying Alorria. She, however, was not likely to be a receptive audience to any complaint of that sort; she was obviously delighted to be marrying him. Morosely, he settled back and drained his winecup.

  A servant promptly refilled it; Tobas made no protest. One good thing about Dwomor was the local wine, which was of truly exceptional quality. He had been without any wine worthy of the name for some time, and intended to enjoy the stuff now that he could.

  When at last the happy couple was sent off to their chamber, with much cheering and a smattering of bawdy remarks, Tobas was somewhat tipsy, though still able to navigate well enough. The combination of alcohol and an evening spent in close proximity to Alorria’s beauty had worn away his reservations and left him looking forward to the night.

  Their bridal chamber was the same room that Tobas and Karanissa had been using for the past two sixnights; no better accommodations were available. Alorria had, until now, shared a chamber with Zerréa, so that her former residence was not a possibility. Karanissa and Peren had tactfully been given smaller, separate rooms elsewhere.