A Wizard In Absentia

by Christopher Stasheff

  Ian looked up at Gar, astonished. He hadn't known the free-lance was a captain!

  Oswald cocked an eyebrow at Gar. "Have you fed?"

  "Not for hours," Gar said, grinning.

  "Well enough, my lad," Oswald chuckled, "though you've called me an old mother hen often enough." He thrust back his sleeves. "Naetheless, I think we can fill that belly of yours, even if 'tis with naught but porridge. Come along."

  He led them down a short flight of stairs, and Ian found himself marveling. This was the second time in his life he had seen such a staircase, the first having been in the Stone Egg. What a fine thing it was to be a gentleman!

  They came down into a hall walled with rough plaster. Oswald turned to his right and led them through a narrow door into a kitchen. A lean woman with a sharp chin leaned over a pot, eyes narrowed against the smoke.

  "Two more for breakfast, Matilda!" Oswald called. "We would be grateful for the porridge, Matilda," Gar said. "I have journeyed all night on your master's business, and the least he owes me is a hearty meal."

  The old cook gave him a gap-toothed smile, which seemed surprising in so severe a face. "Eh, seat yourself, Master Gar. I'll have your porridge shortly—another pot for me master." She squinted, peering at Ian. "And who is this?"

  "My new apprentice," Gar said easily. "His old master thought him too quarrelsome to be a weaver."

  Matilda frowned. "A blank-shield soldier, taking an apprentice?" She hobbled over to Ian and bent down to peer into his face. Then she grinned again and turned back to her stove, cackling and shaking her head. "Aye, he's naught but your apprentice, Master Gar! Aye, surely!"

  "How now, you old hag!" Gar's voice was still good-natured. "He is my apprentice, nothing more and nothing less, I say!"

  "Aye, aye." Matilda nodded, stirring her porridge. "Your 'prentice and nothing more, I'll be bound, and no reason to take him save to aid a poor weaver who had a ruffian on his hands! Oh, aye, Master Gar! And there is none of your blood in him, as these old eyes can see!"

  "Well . . . " Gar contrived to look embarrassed, and cleared his throat. "You have caught me fairly, Matilda. He is, my, uh, nephew."

  "Oh, aye." Matilda looked up at him wide-eyed, then nodded wisely. "Bless thee, Master Gar. Oh, how you could have fooled me."

  Ian looked up at Gar in surprise. Could there really be any resemblance between himself and the swordsman?

  Then he realized that the cook was old, nearsighted, and probably half-blind, and the resemblance was probably more in her mind than in his face.

  Gar squeezed his shoulder, and Ian looked up to see the free-lance wink and smile. He grinned back. If the cook believed the story Gar had intended to tell anyway, so much the better.

  "Seat yourselves," Matilda called, tilting the pot and scraping out two huge bowlfuls of porridge. "Sit and eat your breakfast, before it sets."

  They ate in a room just for dining, with Master Oswald—and they ate hugely, with milk and honey on their porridge. Ian could scarcely believe his eyes, or his mouth—milk and honey were for the lords, and thick porridge was only for the gentry! His own breakfast, as long as he could remember, had been only thin gruel.

  He ate his fill and a little more, until the bowl was empty; then he sat back with a great sigh and a very full stomach.

  Gar looked up and smiled. "Had enough, lad?" Ian nodded and blinked. Suddenly, he felt very sleepy. He yawned hugely, and Gar chuckled. "Aye, I'm beginning to feel the night's strains a bit myself." He turned to the cook. "Where shall my nephew doss down?"

  "In the attic, good soldier," the cook answered. "He can fall asleep on a pile of straw, like any other young 'prentice." She hobbled over to Ian and scooped him out of the chair, more by gesture than by strength, and ushered him out into the kitchen.

  Once there, though, she paused, pursing her lips. "Nay, I think not—the other 'prentices will be just waking as you'd be lying down. Bad for them, that—give them ideas of laziness, it would. Besides, you'll need long sleep, after being on the road all night, with Master Gar." She glanced down at Ian. "You did ride by night, didn't you?"

  Ian wasn't sure whether or not he should tell her, then realized he couldn't dissemble much if he were going to sleep during the day. "Aye, mum."

  "So I thought." Matilda thrust her lower lip out and sucked on her few remaining teeth, considering. "We'll put you in the pantry for the day. Let me see, now—what stores will I need? A sack of potatoes, another of flour, and two measures of dried pease." She nodded, satisfied, and pushed him toward the door at the back of the kitchen. "Bring me those, then settle yourself!"

  Ian made two trips of it, reflecting that this fetching and carrying didn't guarantee him a sound sleep. Matilda was bound to think of something she'd forgotten, and come bustling in to fetch it, or to send her scullery maid, if she had one—and she might make a second trip, or a third. Ian determined that he would sleep soundly no matter how much noise she made. He brought the sack of flour last, and could just barely manage it—it was very heavy. Matilda blinked at him, surprised. "Well, then, manikin! Master Gar may make a soldier of you yet!"

  But Ian scarcely heard her; he had already turned away to the pantry, nodding. He threw himself down on three huge bags of flour, and was instantly asleep.

  Ian was awakened by a loud clatter of dishes and Matilda scolding at her scullery maid. He sat bolt upright, startled by the noise, then realized what it was, smiled, and lay down. The sun was coming in the eastern window; he could only have slept a few hours. He closed his eyes and settled himself for sleep again . . .

  * * *

  "But how did the boy find the entrance to one of the Safety Bases?"

  Ian opened his eyes, surprised. He frowned and looked over the side of his improvised bed. There was a crack between the floorboards; through it, he could see Master Oswald's bald head. Was there a secret room beneath him? No, surely not, he chided himself—only a very ordinary, and un-secret, cellar. Surely. He heard Gar's voice rise in answer to the draper: "It must have been an accident. He certainly could not have reasoned out how to open the hatch."

  Ian squirmed. It wasn't right to eavesdrop. He was sorely tempted, but he resolved to be good. He forced himself to turn over, face away from the crack in the floor, and closed his eyes tight, willing himself to sleep.

  However, he might have been willing, but sleep was not, and he couldn't shut out the voices—nor could he come out into the kitchen after so short a while. What would he say if Matilda asked him what he was doing up and about when he'd been told to sleep? That he was turning away from the voices? When he wasn't even supposed to know about them?

  "How could they have known he was there?" It was Master Oswald's voice. "They must have, for they came to bring him back."

  "He must have activated the beacon by accident," Gar answered. "Certainly a boy from this culture would never have figured out a control panel by himself. Serfs can't even read."

  "True," Master Oswald rumbled. "Even the freelance who hid there with me couldn't figure it out, and he was a gentleman, who had had some education, or what passes for it in a medieval culture. But how do you know this boy isn't a spy from the lords, who does know how to operate such controls?"

  Ian stiffened. Could Master Oswald really think such of him? But no—Captain Gar's voice indicated that by its tone, as he answered. "Possible, of course—but unlikely, since he's a child. And if he were, why would he have come out before his help arrived?"

  "Perhaps he knew it was close."

  Ian could hear the smile in Gar's voice. "If his help had arrived, why would he have run away with me? No, I'm almost certain he's a local boy."

  "Almost certain." Master Oswald pounced on it. "You're not really sure, then."

  "Quite sure." Gar was still amused.

  "But just in case, we have him where we can watch him."

  So that was why Gar had helped him! A knot twisted itself up in Ian's belly. Had the free-lance aided him only because he did not
trust him? "Besides," Gar went on, "I like the boy." The knot loosened, a little.

  "You've taken a liking to him awfully quickly." Master Oswald growled.

  "Amazingly so," Gar agreed. "Any kid who's willing to brave the dangers of that forest, and take on a two-hundred-mile walk at his age, just because he wants to be free . . . well, I'm on his side."

  "So am I," Master Oswald admitted. "But encumbering yourself with a child could be very foolish. I needn't remind you how much of a liability he could be, to someone who has to stay on the move—and secretly!"

  "Or how much of an asset," Gar countered. "He knows things about this culture I could only guess at—and I'd trust him a lot further than any adult."

  The knot loosened the rest of the way, and Ian resolved that he would prove Captain Pike right to have trusted him.

  "Yes," Master Oswald mused. "That brings us to why he ran away from home. As to that, I had some news last night, after you had gone. It seems one of Lord Murthren's serfs had helped his daughter to escape into the forest—just in time, too, because Lord Murthren had noticed her, all too favorably."

  Gar whistled. "The lord himself? The poor lass was in for trouble!"

  "A lot," Master Oswald agreed, "a great deal of trouble. Her father helped her escape, and they whipped him within an inch of his life for it."

  Ian squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw, fighting to keep from crying out, trying to banish the sight of his father lashed to the post.

  "Brave man," Gar whispered.

  "Very," Master Oswald agreed. "He went on to urge his son to run away—when he'd just been taken down from the whipping-post and needed somebody to care for him, he told his son to run away right then, when they'd least expect it. The kid ran—a boy too young to have a brand."

  "And they flogged the father again?" Gar asked. "No, he cheated them. He died first, before they discovered the boy was missing."

  The cellar was very quiet. Ian felt the ache within him expand, hollowing him out; two hot tears forced their way through his clenching eyelids.

  "So." Gar's voice was soft. "Our young guest really needs a friend."

  "He's a brave boy," Oswald admitted, "and an orphan now—the mother had died a while before."

  "You had the news quickly," Gar said, in tones of respect, "and thoroughly."

  "That's my job," Oswald growled.

  "Well, I have some information for you, too," Gar said, "something we very narrowly managed to avoid on the way back here."

  "A troop of soldiers, of course."

  "More than that—Lord Murthren himself."

  "Lord Murthren!" Master Oswald sounded amazed—and, yes, alarmed. "Out hunting a simple serf boy by himself?"

  "No, he had a troop with him," Gar said grimly, "but yes, he was definitely leading them in person. He said something about the boy having violated one of the Secret Places of the Old Ones."

  It was very quiet in the room below. Ian lay very still, and tried not to breathe.

  "He couldn't have known that when the boy escaped," Master Oswald said.

  "No," Gar said. "So . . . "

  "So he received the distress beacon, too," Master Oswald snapped, "which means he has a scanner."

  "And knows how to operate it," Gar pointed out. "Yes." Master Oswald's voice had hardened, but began to sound sarcastic now, too. "And, although Lord Murthren is one of the two or three top aristocrats in the land, he's hacked his way to that position on his own. His father was only a count."

  "Of course," Gar said, "it's possible that the King gave him a scanner, and taught him how to use it after he'd become a top counsellor. However . . . "

  "However." Master Oswald sounded as though he were grinning like a cat, licking cream from his whiskers. "However, he probably inherited the rig from his father, who inherited it from his father—and on and on back."

  "Chances are that it's probably been there since the colonizing ship landed," Gar put in.

  "Exactly," Master Oswald grumbled. "And if even a petty count in the backwoods has a scanner and knows how to use it . . . "

  "Probably," Gar finished, "all the lords do."

  "So that's one more piece of technological knowledge they've kept," Oswald said, with an air of satisfaction. "Possibly ritualized—you know, you push this button, and then that button, and twist this dial, and the thing does what it's supposed to do, and they do it as part of their daily duties . . . "

  "The same way that they know how to operate their machine guns and pocket nuclear bombs," Gar agreed, "and how to make more ammunition. And they're lucky their ancestors made the blasted things damn near indestructible."

  "They know how to clean them and maintain them, presumably," Oswald said, "but again, only as a ritual. 'You must do this and this and this to your machine gun when you waken every morning, or it will fail you when you need it.' That's how they know how to make gunpowder, too—just follow the recipe, pour the powder into the casing, and squeeze the bullet in on top."

  "Making brass casings is a strain on a Baroque metalsmith, I'll agree, but it's possible, especially with hand-me-down equipment from a high-tech culture," Gar said, "once he's been shown how. He wouldn't understand what he was doing or why, but he could do it."

  "Rimfire," Master Oswald said. "Who couldn't? And that's why the ancestors went to slug-throwers instead of beamers, of course—something just barely within the capabilities of a Baroque society. That's probably the way they use their safety bases—by rote."

  "Self-repairing," Gar said, "not that they'd need anything beyond cleaning, hardly any maintenance. Last forever."

  "As they have," Master Oswald agreed, "or for five hundred years, at least."

  They were silent a moment. Then Master Oswald said suddenly, "Where's the boy heading, anyway?"

  "Castlerock," Gar said. "So he says, anyway."

  "Castlerock!" Master Oswald was delighted. "No! You mean it? That far in the backwoods, and he's heard of Castlerock?"

  "Heard enough about it to want to go there," Gar confirmed. "After all, it's the only place an escaped serf can go and be even halfway safe."

  "So even here, they've heard there's an island off the north coast that serfs have been escaping to for the last dozen years! That campaign is taking very firm hold."

  "Word gets around," Gar said, "especially among an oppressed population. When virtual slaves hear of an island in the Central Sea where serfs can actually hold off their masters' armies, it captures the imagination."

  "Hope," Master Oswald agreed. "Even if they can't escape, they can hope—for themselves, but even more for their children."

  "Which plants the seed of unrest," Gar noted, "and which is why the masters have to stamp it out, as quickly as they can."

  "They may have better capabilities than we've seen so far," Master Oswald growled. "If they have scanners, they may have blast-cannon, and fliers. Besides, there's that slender, very well-contained offplanet trade. What's to stop them from hiring a merchant captain to land on Castlerock, and burn everyone to cinders with his exhaust?"

  "Nothing but his conscience," Gar said grimly. "Are our men working on the captains?"

  "We're making some progress there . . . " And Master Oswald was off into a sea of terms that Ian didn't understand, words like "capital" and "interest" and "extension of terms."

  Actually, there had been so many of those that he had only barely been able to grasp the gist of what they had said. What was a "scanner," he wondered, and a "distress beacon" and a "machine gun"? He grasped the general idea, though: when he had accidentally pressed that circle on the table in the Stone Egg, it had somehow sent out a message that had called in Lord Murthren. Fortunately, though, Gar seemed to have heard it, too, and had come and saved him.

  The nobles had magical things—everyone knew that . . .

  Except, perhaps, Gar and Master Oswald? They had been talking as though these magical talismans were news to them, as though they had just discovered something that they
had only suspected before. And, since everyone in the kingdom knew about the talismans, these two men must be from a foreign country.

  Spies!

  Ian's blood chilled, sending a shiver through him. He lay there wondering, dread pooling in him . . . Then he remembered—they had spoken of Castlerock, spoken of it as though they had something to do with it. They were helping Castlerock, then! Helping serfs, like himself! They were on his side, to protect him against the lords, against Lord Murthren. He relaxed again, smiling—his judgement of Gar had been right—the man was good . . .

  And Castlerock was real.

  Ian closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep in spite of the murmuring voices from beneath the floor. He would go to Castlerock, and be free!

  Ian woke after sunset. He came out of the pantry, yawning and rubbing his eyes. Matilda peered at him. "Eh! It's you, is it? Slept well enough, did you?" She pointed a finger at a chair by the wall. "There be your new clothes. Into them quickly, and don't be long about it, for your new master . . . " (and for some reason Ian could not understand, she giggled at this) " . . . your new master has a wish to be up and away right soon. You're to be setting out for the north tonight, the both of you."

  The north! Ian's heart leaped. Yes, he would certainly be dressed quickly!

  He turned toward the chair to pick up the clothing, then stood still, frozen in amazement. "But—these cannot be for me!" There on the chair were not a serf's rough tunic and leggins and cross-gartered sandals, but a jerkin and hose, such as a gentleman's son might wear, though they were made out of plain broadcloth—a green jerkin and brown hose, and real leather boots! And hanging over the back of the chair was a sword, a real sword—boy-sized, but real for all that!

  Matilda gave him a gap-toothed grin. "Aye, they're for you, manikin. Not what you're used to, I'll wager. But your new master is a man of means, and you'll have to get used to it." She brandished her big wooden ladle in a mock threat. "Get along with you, now, for there's no time to waste!"

  Ian gathered up the clothes and ducked back into the pantry. He came out a few minutes later, feeling like a prince in his finery.