The Western Wizard

by Mickey Zucker Reichert

  Garn sagged, waiting until his heart rate slowed and the sentries had fully turned their attention from the brush. Then, he freed himself from the jabbing branches, using thunder to hide the rustle of his movements. In the flashes of lightning, he glimpsed trees and outbuildings that did not fit Sterrane’s description. Distant spying had already revealed that the crafted castle grounds had grown, the old wall had been dismantled and a new one carved to enclose more of the surrounding valley. In the nearly two decades since Béarn’s heir had escaped his uncle’s purgings, details of the castle and its courtyard had changed as well. Garn hoped desperately that Sterrane’s escape passage had survived, though its exit now lay within the repositioned and restructured fortifications.

  Once free of the bushes, Garn followed them and the wall eastward, skirting the castle’s few lit windows. Wind stung, numbly cold against his sodden tunic. He used each branching bolt of lightning to define the location of the sentries and tried to spot the ancient ash that Sterrane had called the “tree of life.”

  The brush grew denser until, at length, Garn was forced to crawl. Mud and thorns stung his cut knees, but the thick brambles hid him from the courtyard guards, and the springy green vines made little noise with movement. Bruised and wet, Garn cursed Sterrane. From the courtyard, the new wall towered higher than they had anticipated. He saw little chance of slipping past the wall sentries a second time to escape, and too many battles lay ahead. The steady patter of rain seemed to mock him, a lone soldier against the defenses of the West’s high kingdom.

  It never occurred to Garn to surrender. Time and again, Santagithi’s guards had shoved him into the gladiator pit to face adversaries who, under other circumstances, would have been strangers, acquaintances, or friends. Then, he had focused on the freedom that would one day become his and the woman whom he would one day marry. Survival had become his religion. And, once too familiar, despair became a stranger.

  Lightning arched above the castle spires, etching a dark ash tree from the gloom, less than a yard ahead. Irrationally afraid he might lose it in the blackness, Garn sprang for it. Bark scraped skin from his fingers. A low moan of thunder sputtered and died.

  Garn groped along the weathered trunk. His palm calluses grated against bark, then caught on the rim of a small hole. His fingers sank into wood chips and fur. Lightning flared. Fully revealed, Garn bit off an oath and dug furiously through the burrow, seeking some sign of the promised door, secured by inner hinges. A fingernail snapped against metal. Garn sucked air through his teeth. It required effort to shift the ancient, rusted latch, but the door yielded with a creak of corroded hinges. Swiftly, Garn ducked into the opening and pulled it closed behind him.

  Blindly, Garn drew the tinderbox and dagger from his pockets and a torch from his belt. He slashed the dagger across flint, scattering sparks. These met the wet torch and died. Damn! Garn used the unsharpened edge of his dagger to scratch wax from the torch head and then tried again. This time, the pitch sputtered feebly, then lit. The wax made a soft hiss. Garn headed down the passageway.

  Rats fled like shadows before the torchlight. The semicircle of light revealed intricate carvings on the walls, blackened in patches from dampness and partially obscured by moss. Masters of stone craft, the Béarnides had sculpted the castle and its city from the mountain. Yet, despite their skill and the solidity of their materials, Garn wondered if a path so old could withstand time. He tried to imagine innocent, naive Sterrane as a child, fleeing through a damp, rat-infested tunnel with the screams of his mother, six siblings, and the most loyal guards and servants echoing behind him. Garn shivered at the pictures his mind conjured, marveling at how Sterrane had remained so innocent and gentle after such a tragedy.

  Garn continued, the dense silence of the tunnel revising his conception of Sterrane’s escape. More likely, buried beneath thicknesses of stone, he had heard nothing of the battle. Still, regardless of how much or little Sterrane had directly witnessed, the fact remained that he had lost his family, all of them at once. At one time, before the birth of Garn’s own child, the significance of such a disaster would have been lost on him. His own father was a skilled gladiator who, offered freedom, had chosen the pit and died there. A scullery maid beaten and abandoned by her own parents, Garn’s mother paid him little heed. At the request of Garn’s father, Captain Rache had raised Garn, though little more than a child himself. But that relationship had degenerated into hatred the day Rache had helped capture Garn so that Santagithi could sentence him to life in a cage.

  As always, bitterness welled up in Garn, accompanied by rage. He suppressed his wrath with the mental control to which Colbey had steered him more than a year ago. His thoughts returned to Sterrane, and he could not help but wonder how Béarn’s heir had managed to escape the hot, vengeful malice that had at times driven Garn to madness and volcanic violence, even against his friends. With Rache’s death had come a control, though not for the reasons Garn had expected. Now, Garn sincerely hoped he could fulfill Rache’s dying request, wished that he could raise Rache’s child better than Rache had raised Garn.

  The passage ended abruptly. With a vicious curse, Garn threw back his dark, dripping hair and assessed the presumed cave-in he would need to clear to complete his journey. Wedging the torch in the crevice of a carving, he drew his dagger and chopped at the moss. Dirt peeled from the surface, then the dagger rasped against rocks, uncovering an etching of a spitted deer. Rather than a collapsed barricade of rubble, Garn had discovered the far wall of the tunnel. Replacing the dagger, he grabbed the torch, raising it to the ceiling. Cracks formed a square hatchway, with a central hole. Once, Garn guessed, a rope had graced the middle section, the hemp now rotted away.

  Garn extinguished his torch, groping for the hatch in darkness. Sterrane’s description and Shadimar’s magic had revealed that the doorway would open into the room of a young girl who Sterrane could not identify. The brief research they had managed to do suggested that the child was Morhane’s granddaughter.

  Sterrane had also warned Garn that the closed hatch fell flush with the floor and could not be pried open from inside the castle, thwarting pursuit. Decades ago, Sterrane’s eldest brother had slept in this room, with the panel wedged open but hidden. Sterrane had come upon the hatch by accident. Unable to justify his jaunt into his brother’s room and fearing the elder boy’s wrath, he had never mentioned his find. On the day of Morhane’s attack, Béarn’s oldest prince had been away from his room. Sterrane alone had escaped, pulling the hatch closed so that Morhane’s men could not have followed, even had they known of the tunnel’s existence. At that time, the ash tree exit had stood just outside the castle wall. Now, the damp, rodent-filled darkness confirmed Shadimar’s claim that only the king, his heir, his most trusted bodyguard, and the Eastern Wizard knew about the route.

  Light diffused through the crack. Hearing nothing, Garn poked his head into a room dimly illuminated by a single candle. Despite the gloom, rich furnishings struck a vivid contrast to the moldering plainness of the hidden tunnel. Multihued streamers dangled from the ceiling. Across the room, a simplistic pastel rendition of an animal-crowded forest encompassed an entire wall. To Garn’s right, a shelf held a line of thin books with Béarnese titles and a silver mug. On a bed to his left, a child huddled beneath a finely-woven blanket. Wisps of sable hair spread across the pillow.

  From long years of habit, Garn listened to the child’s breathing, hearing the deep, slow regularity that indicated sleep. No other sound reached him. Quietly, Garn hooked his fingers through the crack and hoisted himself through the hatch, using his shoulders and back to support the door. As he eeled his legs through the opening, he twisted to catch a grip on the panel. The wood-lined stone slipped beneath his breeks. His grab fell short. Fear touched Garn as the hatchway slammed toward closing. Desperate, he thrust his left hand for the opening. The door crashed onto his knuckles, causing pain that momentarily incapacitated him. Garn hissed, choking off a cry.

&nb
sp; The sleeper stirred. Her breaths quickened and went shallow.

  Grasping his spent torch, Garn worked an end beneath the hatch, levering it open far enough to free his fingers. He left the torch in place to brace the hatch. Redness washed across his fingers, threatening a long, ugly bruise. He bit his lip, waiting for the agony to ebb.

  The child rolled toward him. Black hair framed a round, olive-skinned face.

  Garn froze, shielding the entryway with his body. Seeing no place to hide, he chose silence instead. The knife slid into his hand.

  The girl’s lids parted to reveal dark eyes. They rolled briefly, then she looked directly at Garn. “Noca?” She used the Béarnese word for “grandfather.” She sat up, the fur trim of her sleeping gown ending in a jumble at her thighs. She looked no more than five or six years old.

  The ache in Garn’s fingers receded enough for him to drive it from his mind. He knew pain too well to let it steal his concentration when matters of consequence needed handling. It joined the background throb of his knees and the branch-stabbed bruises that peppered his body. He rose from his crouch, the dagger hidden, couched against his wrist. The steel felt cold and solid on his flesh, and the child looked small, no threat to his venture. Still, she only needed to cry out once to bring Morhane’s guards, to cause Garn’s execution, and to see to it that Sterrane never returned to his throne. Garn had hated the murder that Santagithi’s guards had forced him to commit in the pit, and the idea of harming a child seemed an evil too repulsive to contemplate. What must be done must be done. Garn grimaced at the thought. Damn! Why did she have to wake so easily. Stalling the inevitable, he spoke. “Hello,” he said in his best Béarnese, his voice sounding thick after the long silence. “Who are you?”

  The girl yawned. “Miyaga,” she said in a tone that implied he should not have needed to ask.

  Miyaga’s confident fearlessness, despite the wary stranger in her bedchamber, aroused Garn’s suspicions. He studied the room by the rapidly dimming candlelight. Nothing moved. He heard no breathing other than his own and the girl’s. Satisfied they were alone, he dried moist palms on his tunic and headed to her bedside with the assurance of a man in a place where he belonged. “Is King Morhane your noca?” He guessed that her bravado stemmed from years of exposure to foreign courtiers. She had little to fear in a heavily guarded castle.

  Miyaga hugged her knees to her chest, giggling. “You talk funny.”

  Garn fought impatience, kneading his fingers to restore the circulation and to work away tension and pain. He supposed his Béarnese must sound as imperfect as Sterrane’s broken rendition of the trading tongue. “So, is he your grandfather?”

  Still snickering, she nodded assent.

  Garn threw up his hands in an exaggerated gesture of sudden understanding. “Then I’m your uncle, Garn.”

  “Uncle . . . Garn?” She examined Garn, apparently uncertain of the significance of the title, but intuitively understanding it meant family.

  “Which is Noca’s room?” Garn dropped his voice to a soft, conspiratorial whisper. “I’ve got a surprise for him.”

  Miyaga’s eyes fairly danced. “Can I see?”

  “Not yet. First tell me where his room is.”

  “Down there.” Miyaga pointed to the left of the door to her room, stretched the trim of her robe to her knees, and smiled. “Two down. Are you really my uncle? What’s the surprise?”

  Garn fingered his dagger, the child’s coy innocence like a lead weight in his chest. Miyaga’s description only confirmed the location of Morhane’s chambers, and Garn recognized his discussion with the child as a delaying tactic. No doubt she had to die; Garn dared not take a chance with his own life, the safety of his wife, and Sterrane’s kingdom. But the idea of killing a child awakened a deep-seated ache of guilt he never knew he could feel. Sorrow descended like a storm. His own son, Rache, might be nearly as old as Miyaga before Garn held him again.

  Memories surfaced in a hot rush, of the baby’s near weightlessness against his chest and the joy that lit Mitrian’s eyes whenever Rache had smiled. Yearning formed a hard knot in Garn’s stomach. While his parents tended politics in a distant kingdom, Rache lived with the grandfather who had kept Garn a slave. While Garn attempted to usurp the mountain king with only a dagger and a flask of drugged wine, Rache was learning combat from the master of all swordsmen, adopting a reckless, savage heritage that might turn the world against him. Garn tried to picture his child, now a little more than two years old, but he could only visualize the baby he had not held for longer than a year. He knew that, in his place, Mitrian could not have slaughtered this little girl. And neither can I.

  Garn slid the dagger back into his pocket. As he did, his arm brushed the bulge of the drugged wine, and it gave him an idea. Surely, the Wizard had left a margin of error on the amount of wine he would need for Morhane. Even if there’s not enough for both, I’d rather put the girl to sleep and kill the usurper than the other way around. “This is the surprise.” Crossing the room, he plucked the silver mug from her book shelf. “I brought a special drink for your noca. But because you’re so beautiful, I’d like you to taste it first.” He removed the bladder of wine, returned to Miyaga’s side, and perched on the edge of her bed. “You’ll try it for me?”

  Miyaga stared into his green eyes. She wrapped a hand about his well-muscled arm as he filled the mug with wine. “I like you, Uncle Garn.”

  “I like you, too.” Obviously. Garn handed her the cup, doubting Shadimar had given him enough of the sleeping poison for two, even if one was a child. Still, Garn did not brood. Getting Morhane to drink the drug-laced wine had always seemed the weak link in an otherwise reasonable plan. Shadimar had insisted that Garn take Morhane alive, leaving the pronouncement of punishment to the true king. When the time came, Garn hoped he would find some way to incapacitate Béarn’s usurper king.

  Miyaga took it from him, sniffing doubtfully at the sweet, red vintage. With Garn’s encouragement, she took a mouthful and swallowed with a grimace. “Oh, it’s wine. Mother won’t let me drink it, but she’s dead and Noca doesn’t care if I. . . .”

  Garn waved her silent. “It’s good. Finish.”

  Obligingly, Miyaga took another swallow. Garn welcomed the reassuring return of caution that memory had dispersed. He placed his hand lightly on Miyaga’s knee as she drank, but his senses were focused beyond the door. His eyes riveted on the exit, alert to any subtle movements. He listened for the gentle tap of footsteps or the soft hiss of voices.

  Miyaga shook Garn’s arm. “Can I have more?” She raised the empty mug.

  Garn frowned. Shadimar had said the poison worked quickly and that it was reasonably safe, but he did not want to give the child too much. “Rest,” he said. Limited by time and the language barrier, he said nothing more.

  Thankfully, that seemed enough for Miyaga. She yawned, crawling beneath the blanket. “You’ll be here in the morning?” She took his hand, her warm and sticky fingers nearly lost in his callused palm. Her squeeze, though feeble, reawakened the ache in his fingers.

  “Yes,” Garn lied, uncertain what the morning would bring yet believing Miyaga would sleep through it anyway. With his other hand, he returned the wine pouch to his pocket. He remained at her side until her grip went lax and he recognized the familiar pattern of slumber that years caged beside other gladiators had taught him. He had learned to sleep on the barest edge of awakening, aware of every movement of his neighbors and their relation to himself, his food, and the tattered, foul-smelling rag that served as his only blanket.

  Garn disengaged his hand, rose, and crept to the door. Back pressed to the wall, he clasped the hilt of his dagger and eased the door open a crack. The dimly lit corridor seemed deserted. Apparently, Morhane believed his outer gates impenetrable, and he saw no need for sentries in the inner bedchambers. At least, not in the hallways, which explained why the falling of the hatch had awakened Miyaga so easily. A child accustomed to booted footfalls marching outsi
de her door all night would have slept through the noise.

  Garn stepped into the corridor and pulled the door shut behind him. Many torches had burned to ashes in their wall sconces. Others guttered in a draft that swept the hall, creating a wave of flickering shadows. Anticipation tightened in Garn’s chest. As he crept down the passage, he cringed at the faint scrape of his sandals against stone. He passed a bronze-bound teak door with only a casual glance and stopped before a set of metal doors emblazoned with the royal crest, a rearing bear beside a crown. He smeared sweat from his palms across his tunic, then pushed on the door. It opened on well-oiled hinges, without a sound.

  Finery dazzled Garn as he slipped inside Morhane’s room and eased the door closed behind him. In each corner of the room, hooks of gold and ivory supported hooded lanterns. A wardrobe crafted from silver lined one wall. Three chairs and a divan stood in a neat array, all padded with blue silk that matched the sapphires circling the lock of a chest beside the couch. In the center of the room, a curtain trimmed with lace partially hid a dais.

  Sinews taut, Garn studied the room, gaze playing across the ornate furnishings. Snoring obscured any other noises in the chamber, but instincts nurtured by years of living like an animal alerted Garn to a movement in the shadow of the wardrobe.

  Garn crouched, dagger whipping free. A smoke-colored hound advanced toward him, stiff-legged. A ridge of fur rose along its back. Head low, the dog curled its upper lip to expose wickedly sharp teeth. It growled.

  A single snort sounded from the dais, then the snoring disappeared.

  Garn’s fingers locked on his dagger. His other hand hovered protectively near his throat. “Call off your dog.”

  No answer came from the bed, but Garn knew whoever lay there had awakened. The dog continued toward him.