by Ron Miller
A small river tumbled from the hills, passed as quickly as it could through the village and, having had to do so, fell despairingly into the sea. Following this watercourse upstream, Brunello led her through a narrow defile and directly into the surrounding mountains. They rode silently in mutual dislike and mistrust.
The trail passed through dense forests and onto ever-higher and steeper mountain slopes. More than half the day passed before they came to a dizzying pass from which Bradamant could see the distant hazy shores of both Frankland and Cordova. From this height Brunello led her down a narrow track into a deep, circular, bowl-like valley. Bradamant immediately recognized it from Pinabel’s description. Just as he had said, from its center rose a rocky pinnacle which supported a silvery cluster of turrets, like a collection of tin cans. Bradamant saw the futility of even considering a direct attack on the steel castle if one could not fly.
“That,” said Brunello unnecessarily, his first words to her since leaving the village, “is where the magician Atalante holds his prisoners.”
Even from her distant vantage, Bradamant could see that the castle was as smooth, featureless and perfectly formed as a crystal of galena or iron pyrite. There was not a sign of an opening in the pinnacle, let alone a path or stairway. It was as inaccessible as the eyrie of some fabulous aerial beast, which of course it was.
“What do you know about this hippogryph?” she asked.
“The most important thing to know about it is that it’s no product of Atalante’s magic. It’s quite real and he can ride it like a saddle-horse. Everything else you might see may be a figment of his art, but make no mistake about the monster.”
The time had arrived, Bradamant knew, to seize the ring and kill Brunello, but she was beginning to have qualms. It went against every chivalrous instinct to spill the blood of an unarmed man (Brunello’s dagger being of course of no more account to her than his unkempt fingernails), to say nothing of a man she held as utterly valueless and contemptible. It would be too base a deed, like squashing a toad for the sake of the cruelty; she was certain—and grew more so every moment—that she would be able to obtain the ring without killing him.
Fortunately for her and unfortunately for Brunello his contempt for her as a woman proved to be his undoing. In spite of her bearing and demeanor, in spite of her apparent familiarity with her weapons and the ease with which she handled her warhorse, his conceit refused to allow him to attribute to a maiden any genuine prowess at arms. To him, she was nothing more than a child play-acting at being a knight. Even though she was fully armored and equipped with lance, sword and shield against his single dagger, his pride allowed no fear of her whatsoever, with the result that—even as cowardly as he was—he did not hesitate to turn his back to her. That he had done so once too often was suggested by a sharp blow to the base of his skull, precisely at the occipital protuberance. When he regained consciousness he discovered, to his shame and fury, that he was now tightly bound to a stout tree.
Bradamant was neither moved nor concerned by Brunello’s curses, which gained an imaginative and shockingly blasphemous vehemency when he saw that she had his magic ring on her finger. She concluded that such shocking language only proved that her original low opinion of the brute had been justified. The curses changed to wheedling pleas when he saw that she meant to abandon him, but she paid these no more attention than she had the curses.
She had indeed forgotten Brunello as thoroughly as she had King Sacripant before her horse had even begun to pick its way down the boulder-strewn slope—her mind was too busy anticipating the imminent release of Rashid.
She arrived at the base of the towering rock and, shading her eyes against the glare of the summer sky, craned her neck in an effort to see the gleaming fortress where it disappeared into the clouds, one of which it skewered like a needle. The rocky pinnacle seemed every bit as impregnable as advertised: it offered not so much as a fingerhold let alone a path or stairway. If the magician chose to ignore her, there was little, it seemed, that she would be able to do. So, she decided, she would make herself hard to ignore.
Thinking that what had worked for the unlucky Gradasso ought to work for her, she took a curled brass hunting horn from where it hung on her saddle and gave it a hearty, if tentative, blast. Its yelping whoop reverberated from the walls of the crater. The second time she took as deep a breath as she could hold and tried to force all the air in her lungs through the coiled tube instantaneously. Her face purpled, tears squirted through her tightly-squeezed eyelids and she thought that she was for sure straightening the brass coil by sheer force of air pressure. The rocky amphitheater quivered as though in pain and the great tower itself seemed to twitch a little, as though wincing at the horrible, discordant blast. She did it a third time and then a fourth. Perspiration poured down her face, which was red as a pomegranate from the strain. Even when she was not blasting away with the horn, the sound continued almost unabated, rebounding from rock to cliff like a tennis ball. The pinnacle quivered like a tuning fork and tiny rocks rained all around her in a lithoid hail.
She had to take a long pause after the fourth hoot; she had grown so dizzy from hyperventilation that she feared she would pass out. As the cacophonous echoes damped, she heard a tiny voice crying out, like a distressed ant. Looking up and straining her eyes to the utmost—she had extraordinarily perfect vision—she could just make out an infinitesimal figure at the parapet of the castle, the frantically waving arms heightening its resemblance to an ant.
She pulled her sword from its sheath and waved it over her head; it flashed in the sunlight, sending the magician an unmistakable heliographic challenge.
The distant figure stopped waving its tiny arms and disappeared behind the parapet. A moment later a larger blackness appeared. Bradamant’s hooked brows clenched in puzzlement for a moment, then she realized that she must be looking at the hippogryph—at the same moment the monster launched itself into space. It hovered directly over her head, so that she had to lean far back in her saddle, bracing herself with one hand, in order to see it. It was so far away and the sky was so bright she could make out few details; the hippogryph looked like an eagle or an osprey lazily searching out a rabbit or fish. Suddenly its wings folded and it plummeted like (if she only knew it) a Stuka upon a Polish village. Bradamant stood her ground, holding her sword rigidly above her head, like an accountant’s spike waiting for its first invoice. In her peripheral vision she could see the hippogryph’s shadow racing across the floor of the crater toward her.
The monster had grown so large and close that she could clearly see its eyes, glittering like oiled ball bearings, and the armored man perched behind that great head. She had the presence of mind, even when confronted with that rushing terror, to notice that the magician was apparently so confident of his superior position and the power of his creature that he bore neither sword nor lance. He carried only the sheathed shield that Pinabel had described. In his other hand was something flat and square that might have been a book. She was certain that she felt, for just a split second, the hot breath of the monster and thought that perhaps the magician had made the suicidal decision to crush her into the earth beneath the meteoric crash of himself and his monstrous mount. Suddenly the wings unfolded like vast black tents and the hippogryph roared past her head like a tornado. The turbulence almost blasted her from her place and her brave horse, which had been as sturdy as rock, stumbled and nearly fell; it danced nimbly on its heavy feet in an effort to remain erect. She turned and saw the monster shooting like a black rocket straight back into the sky.
“Coward!” she cried after the retreating magician. “You missed me!”
The hippogryph slowed and began to describe lazy circles, perhaps five hundred feet above the rocky slopes of the crater. She watched it warily, certain that Atalante was planning some new trickery.
Then, so suddenly that she nearly dropped her sword in surprise, the hippogryph appeared not a spear’s length in front of her, its black
-armored rider brandishing a flaming sword in incandescent circles. She swung her own weapon, but the apparition vanished with a blink only to instantly reappear on her left. Experimentally, she again swung her sword and again the creature and its master vanished, reappearing to attack her right side. She knew then that the magician was attempting to enchant her and that he was no doubt engineering this mock battle from some safe distance. He must think me simple-minded, Bradamant concluded. She thanked the power of the purloined ring that helped keep her head clear of ensorcelment. She saw the illusions but she was aware of what they were. She was careful to show no sign that she was undeceived and continued to strike out against the empty air as though she believed the phantoms were real, playing the role of mouse to Atalante’s cat. In order to enhance the reality of her counterdeception, she leaped from the back of her horse and ran to attack the illusory magician on foot, trying her best to mimic desperation and panic and fearing that her inexperience at play-acting was all too obvious.
Her amateur theatrics must have satisfied Atalante for the false images immediately disappeared. He swooped toward her, stopping to hover not twenty yards away, so close to the ground that the beating wings raised heavy clouds of dust and gravel. She saw that he was about to resort to his ultimate spell as he pulled the silken sheath from the deadly shield. Even protected by the ring, she was dazzled by a glare that seemed to pass through her head as though it were made of glass. She was hardly dissembling when she fell to the ground as though poleaxed, her hands clutching her dazzled, stinging eyes. She could not move: it was as though a great spike had been driven through her forehead and into the ground beneath. All too slowly she felt the ring’s countermagic dissolving the agony—like an underdose of medicine gradually alleviating a headache. She lay as though dead as the hippogryph, after circling once or twice, came to rest a dozen paces away. She felt the confident steps of the magician as he dismounted and approached her. She resisted the impulse to steal even the most surreptitious peek and held her breath, hoping that she was not posed overdramatically.
As soon as she heard the scuffling of his feet in the gravel by her ear, she leaped to her feet and wrapped one arm around the magician while pressing the edge of her sword to his throat with her free hand. The man struggled feebly, but he was held as immobilely as though he were bound in iron bands. At his feet lay a chain with which he had evidently intended to bind her and the flat, square object that he had been carrying—which proved to be, as Bradamant had surmised, a book. She gave the cowed sorcerer a shove and he fell to the ground like a collapsing house of cards. The man seemed as small, light and feeble as a child. As he rolled over to face her, she placed a foot on his chest and raised her sword with every intention of dispatching him then and there, but, upon seeing the face of her imminent victim, she held her hand, amazed to discover that she was in possession of not a mighty warrior but a very small, elderly man who was shaking with fear in his oversized brunia with a sound like a baby’s rattle. His face, as wrinkled and red as a newborn babe’s, was surrounded by a straggling wreath of yellow-stained white hair and a wispy beard. He didn’t appear to have a tooth in his head. She had seen bodies dessicated by years of desert air that looked younger and healthier than this formidable wizard.
“Go ahead and kill me, young knight,” he squealed petulantly. “Go ahead and finish me off—kill me, for the love of Allah! What are you waiting for? Lop off my head! Disembowel me! Gut me like a catfish! Spill my steaming entrails over your feet!”
Oddly, the more the old man encouraged her to complete her sworn task, the less inclined she felt to accept his invitation. Instead, she told him to shut up; she then bound him tightly in his own chain. Propping him in the shade of a boulder, she asked him what his intentions had been in building the uncanny castle and inhabiting it with kidnappees.
“I didn’t mean any harm by it,” Atalante whined, tears dripping from his matted whiskers.
“Oh?” Bradamant asked doubtfully. “And what do you consider harmful, if not that? And what do you need a steel castle for? Are you asking me to believe you’re nothing more than a common bandit?”
“No, no! It was love, not greed, that made me a brigand. Love for the life of an uncommon young knight.”
“A knight?” Was he, she wondered with a frisson of revulsion, a practitioner of the Greek vice?
“Yes. One who was in mortal peril! The thread of his life was at its final inch! I had discovered by means of my magic that, left to pursue his life unhindered, he would certainly die. And worse, although born a true Muslim he’d be murdered as a Christian, Allah forbid.”
“And who is this wonderful knight?” she asked, though she had little doubt what the answer would be.
“His name is Rashid and nowhere between the two poles does there exist a youth more noble or worthy.”
Bradamant couldn’t agree more, but only said: “I still don’t understand your interest in him.”
“I raised him from an infant—that’s my interest!—and loved him as though he were my own flesh and blood. Unfortunately, his thirst for ever greater honor, his unequaled prowess at arms and his own irresistible destiny encouraged him to enter the service of King Agramant.”
“So to protect him you built this castle and trapped him in it? You think he’d prefer prison to honorable death?”
“But it’s a beautiful castle! It really is. You should see it. I’ve stocked it with everything he could possibly desire, including every knight and lady who passed within my influence so that he’d not want for decent company.”
“I’m overwhelmed by your thoughtfulness.”
“There’s no need to be sarcastic, young sir. As I said, my motives were the best, whatever you may think of my methods. Not only did I consider Rashid’s every amenity, I took no fewer pains regarding the comfort of my other guests. I’ve scoured the earth to bring to this place every pleasure, every luxury, every pastime that could possibly be desired. No one wants for the slightest, rarest delicacy, the finest music, the most philosphical conversation, the sublimist songs, the most moving poetry, the most delicious food, the scarcest wines, the most beautiful women, the handsomest men . . . whatever their hearts’ desired—except, of course, their freedom. But what of that? I really don’t think you’ll hear many complaints. Indeed,” he finished bitterly, “everything was going just fine until you came along.”
“I wish that I could say I was sorry.”
“It’s not too late. Look here: take the shield, take the hippogryph, take whatever I possess; if you have a friend or two in the castle, take them, too, if that’s what brought you here to torment me. But leave the others. And if you must release them, too, then at least leave me Rashid.”
“I could care less about the others. It’s Rashid I want.”
“Rashid! No, no! Absolutely not! Weren’t you listening to me?”
“I was listening. But I’m still not leaving without Rashid.”
“What interest could you possibly have in him? What is he to you?”
“I’m in love with him.”
“What? Impossible!”
“Impossible? Why?”
“Don’t be ridiculous! You’re...you’re a man—a boy—scarcely more than a child, that’s why!”
“I am not.”
“Yes you are. You don’t even have a beard yet.”
“Of course I don’t, you idiot. I’m a woman.”
Atalante slumped as though his last remaining bones had suddenly disintegrated. The bluster went out of his voice and when he spoke it was scarcely above a whisper. “I should have known it. I’m either older or blinder than I thought. You may as well release this poor old soul now,” he whined, melodramatically exposing his scrawny breast. “You’ll be condemning Rashid to death and I’ll have nothing else to live for.”
“I don’t care what you do, but I’m taking Rashid with me.”
“Take the shield! take the hippogryph!” Atalante cried, wringing hands that were so
skinny they crackled like a fistful of uncooked fettucini. Bradamant, long grown tired of the argument, looked at this display with disgust.
“They’re mine anyway, by right of conquest. Even if they were still available to you to offer, I’d never trade them for Rashid.”
“But the prophecy! Rashid’s destiny!”
“What could you know of such things? You evidently couldn’t foretell my coming, or your defeat at my hands, or your loss of Rashid to me. Since you obviously can’t tell even your own fate, what can you truly know of another’s? If you want to die, go ahead and get it over with, it doesn’t matter the least bit to me. Just don’t ask me to do it for you. But if you do plan to do away with yourself, would you do me the kindness of releasing the prisoners first?”
“Oh, all right.”
Taking the sorcerer at his word, as was her wont—always willing to believe that another was as truthful as herself no matter how much actual experience counted against the viability of this worthy tenet—Bradamant was something of a professional naïf—she unbound his legs and, prodding him with the point of her sword, followed him to the base of the pinnacle. He led her to a long, narrow cleft that she had earlier dismissed—or had been magically caused to dismiss—as nothing more than a shadow. Deep inside the dark fissure was a spiral staircase cut from the living rock. She may have overlooked the cleft, but she couldn’t have overlooked such a thing as the stairs; she decided it must surely have been another one of the sorcerer’s illusions. The ring was obviously not entirely foolproof. She freed Atalante’s arms from the elbows down, for the sake of his balance; as a precaution, however, she took up the chain’s slack as a kind of leash.