A Sorcerer and a Gentleman

by Elizabeth Willey

  Prospero took out his loose-rolled Map and Ephemeris and began calculating the shortest path back to the neighborhood of Chasoulis in Landuc.

  Dewar threw his hands up and cried, “I concede!”

  A fresh spray of the Third Force, fine but there, rippled through Pheyarcet, and what he had taken for a rogue single-point reading had become a fixed feature among all the scattered transient lines.

  The sorcerer paced up and down next to his table, glaring at the clocks hard enough to stop them, then whirled on the table and, furious, measured again.

  The point; the new line.

  “All right, all right, all right,” he muttered, shaking with anger. “I’m not that stupid. I am going to travel to Landuc and I am going to nail this down. No bloody wars, no screwing around, no distractions. I am going to locate it and put my hands on it and study it until I know what it is and why it’s doing this. And then I shall know what cursed kind of system this is, anyway, that bounces around and never settles. By Fire and Stone, by the very Spheres, I shall.”

  He swept the papers into a pile, swept the pile into a folio, and knotted it shut with an air of determined finality.

  After breakfast the next morning, he packed a leather bag with things he had found useful on previous investigative journeys. He brought mineral samples in a flat compartmented wooden case, feathers rolled up in silk and tied with a wisp of the same, assorted dice of different sizes and probabilities, five bells in the tones of the pentatonic scale, a compass whose bezel was blank, a package of dried apricots, four pencils, a set of sorcerous lenses and gold lens-holders in an ivory case lined with velvet, a cloisonné enamelled traveller’s pen-and-ink case he had bought twenty years ago in Landuc and loved dearly, one new blank notebook and his current working notebook, a collection of scraps of hides and skins, a dozen usually-useful dried herbs in glass bottles rolled up in a special leather many-pouched carrier, one large ball of string and one small, a penknife and the whetstone he had had of Herne, a lump of something aromatic like wax or ambergris which he hadn’t yet identified, three clean handkerchiefs, a little bag of gold and silver money of various denominations and cultures, a level as long as his middle finger, a ring of assorted keys and some nails, a lump of chalk which left white marks on everything else as it worked its way to the bottom, empty phials with corks and wax for containing things, a slender book of sonnets, a dog-eared treatise on classification of plants which he was rereading, his Third-Force notes and the latest problematic diagrams, and a water-bottle filled at the brook that gurgled past his tower down to the far-off sunlit sea.

  In another bag he put a clean shirt, two pair of clean socks, a dark hat and a muffler, and a pair of plain gloves. On top of these he put his Map and Ephemeris. He could have made shift with a cloak and a sword, but the other things had often come in handy in the past and it was less trouble to carry them than to want them.

  And then, taking up his staff, he opened a Way to a certain spot in Landuc which he had chosen for its simultaneous, fortuitous, isolation and convenience, and he set off on the trail of the Third Force once again.

  “Where is my daughter,” Prince Prospero said, in a dry, distant voice, to Ottaviano, Baron of Ascolet.

  Otto kept his eyes straight ahead. He spoke moving his mouth and jaw as little as possible. Prospero had his very sharp sword resting against Otto’s throat, and he had pricked two neat ruby-beaded lines from side to side, guides for cutting. The blade of the sword was blotched as though blackened by fire: stained, Otto knew, by the late King’s blood.

  The stillness of the nightstruck forest around them was so deep Otto could hear his pulse echo from the trees around. He thought the cold rough-barked trunk at his back must be throbbing to his heartbeat.

  “Gaston has her,” he whispered.

  “Gaston. Where?” Prospero let his voice reveal none of his emotion. Ariel had seen her indeed. She lived: Golias had lied. She lived: he dared not leave her in their hands.

  “Couldn’t guess. Landuc best. Probably still has Neyphile’s spells on her.”

  “Thou think’st Gaston hath her in Landuc.”

  “Yes,” sighed Otto almost noiselessly.

  The sword moved fractionally to Prospero’s left. The chill of the tip returned to Otto’s windpipe.

  “Thou hadst her prisoner,” Prospero said, guessing.

  “Hostage,” whispered Otto. “To bargain.”

  “For the Emperor,” spat the Prince of Air.

  “Against the Emperor.”

  “Thou didst seek to use her to thy advantage with Avril, who’d then use her ’gainst me.”

  “For Ascolet.”

  “Ascolet?”

  “Barony now. Want it a Kingdom. As it was.”

  A boy’s own fancy! “Fool. Wouldst hold it an hour. Till Gaston or Herne lopped thy lofty head.”

  “Not with Lys.”

  “Lys?”

  “My wife.”

  “How sweet. A love-match, I’m sure. So thou, Neyphile’s former apprentice, journeyman troublemaker, claimest Ascolet.”

  “Sebastiano was my father.”

  The Prince laughed unpleasantly. “Cecilie was thy mother, at least,” Prospero said. “No man can be sure of more than that. Didst prison my daughter and tell Avril she would be his as ransom for the Kingdom of Untrammelled Ascolet.”

  “Yes.”

  “And didst think thou wouldst live after.”

  Otto said nothing.

  “Fool.”

  “I tried to get her away,” he whispered. “Golias took her from Perendlac. He and Neyphile did. To Chasoulis. Tried to get her from there.”

  “Am I to believe thee?”

  “Ask her.”

  “So shall I, when I find her, be assured. And what moved thee to do thus? Greed again? Folly on folly? Love of treason? Meseems thou hast a taste for’t.”

  “Wanted to get her back to you. Away from Golias.”

  “What didst think to gain from me for the restoration of mine own flesh and blood’s freedom, first stolen by thyself?”

  Otto licked his lips.

  “Tell me,” Prospero suggested.

  The sword moved a fraction more. A red bead welled up under its tip.

  “Favor,” Otto whispered drily.

  “Favor? From me? Such flattery! What sort?”

  “Indeterminate. Later.”

  Prospero moved the sword again. “Having kidnapped my daughter, thou didst hope to win some favor from me in return by returning her. Belike I be not the most diligent of fathers, Ottaviano of Ascolet, but I am a passionate one. My daughter’s welfare is of perfervid import to me. I assure thee I’d have no favor for thee but a curse, and that hast thou assiduously earned.”

  Otto remained still. He had little choice. He was tightly tied to a tree.

  “Now,” Prospero said, “hast given me great heartache and balmed it little with the tidings that my daughter languishes still in Landuc somewhere. I shall find her anon. I shall reward thee for thy help when I do.”

  The sword was wiped on Otto’s shoulders, a parody of knighthood, then flashed back and away. Otto did not allow himself to relax.

  “Farewell, fool,” said Prospero.

  His black, silent horse stepped up to him. He sheathed the stained sword and mounted in a swirl of deep blue silk-and-wool. A gust of wind followed his passing.

  The girl would not talk.

  Prince Gaston had questions for her, but he deemed it wiser to respect her silence than to break it forcibly, and while she was conveyed to the Palace of Landuc in soft-bedded litters and carriages he took no offense at her dumbness. Distrustful, he kept Golias far from her after the former’s gracelessly-tendered sword-point surrender. The Emperor, counselled by Prince Herne and Count Pallgrave, directed him to accept the surrender and Golias’s lame excuses and repentance, and the Marshal did so without confidence in Golias’s good faith—so little that he removed him from command and paid off and discharged his merc
enaries. Herne hired most of them, replacing men dead in Prospero’s war.

  The Fireduke took charge of the girl, nursemaiding her, bringing her meals, talking to her quietly. He bathed her after she was first carried, insensible, from Chasoulis, and held her immobile while his chief army surgeon Gernan treated her. Gernan took the tiniest possible stitches to close the deep wound in her breast, saying that men’s scars were maids’ mars. The catalogue of her injuries was long. Gaston the man shuddered over it; Gaston the Prince Marshal observed it as evidence of what Baron Ottaviano and Prince Golias were capable of; and Gaston the Fireduke knew that such insults would not go unanswered.

  When she had been installed in heavily guarded and Bounded rooms in Landuc, the Emperor had many questions for the prisoner. She ignored him, at first lying in bed, then sitting up, then in a chair, staring at her hands, or at nothing, or turning her head away with eyes closed.

  Gaston slept in a room adjoining hers, broke fast with her, looked in on her during the day, bade her good-night each evening. When she moaned and cried out wordlessly with night terrors, waking him, he carried light to her, soothed her with soft-spoken reassurances, and sat beside the bed until she slept again. With his own hands he collected and poached eggs to strengthen her starved weakness, and he prepared and fed her bread in warm creamy milk, caudles, possets, and broths. As she improved, he brought her stronger fare—pigeons from the Empress’s dovecote braised in wine, hothouse grapes, baked apples with cream, and capons cooked in bouillon. Her food disagreed with her as often as not, and she would be sick not long after eating; Gaston would empty the basin and fetch her another meal.

  On successive consultative visits, Doctor Hem, whom the Empress had sent as a courtesy, recommended mud-plasters, then frog’s-leg soup, then bleeding and purges, and finally a decoction of snails, until Gaston forbade him to darken the doorway again. The Bounds laid by Oriana, a favor she had offered gratis to the Emperor as, she had indicated, payment to Prospero for some trespass, permitted entry to Prince Gaston and the Emperor and no other, and they prevented the girl from leaving the room, yet Gaston still had misgivings about her safety—hence his dedication to her comfort and his attendance on her person. Daily the Fireduke thought of Prospero, ripping apart Chasoulis to find her—where was he now? Why had he made his Way and left? Did he think her dead, or did he abandon her?

  It was unclear who had stabbed her, an injury clearly intended to be fatal. Prince Gaston questioned Golias, who denied it, and Ottaviano, who denied it red-faced, and since no witness came forward and the sorceress Neyphile had fled the place, the deed was laid to Neyphile’s hand by the Emperor, who did not deeply concern himself over the matter. The Baron of Ascolet had a confused story of seeking the girl in the dungeons and seeing Neyphile leaving through a Way, and they had found the place as he described it; Golias had been here, there, everywhere in the place; and the girl herself made no accusation. Yet Prince Gaston could not help but form an opinion: he had seen Ottaviano close by her; the boy had behaved guiltily when queried; he would gain from her assured silence.

  She had as much to say to Gaston as to the Emperor. It struck him as remarkable that no one knew her name. She would not tell it. Not a word had passed her lips since she had asked him to kill her, and Ottaviano had admitted she would say nothing to him when he’d questioned her in Perendlac. Gaston admired her stoicism: she would not weep, no more than she would speak; no tears slid down her pale cheeks when he cleaned and bandaged her wounds, when he sat with her at night, when the Emperor berated her. The Fireduke understood her need for self-command and defended it against the Emperor’s displeasure.

  “Sullen brat. She ought to be whipped or starved,” the Emperor growled, glaring at the girl after an interview with silence.

  “So hath she been,” Gaston said, “by Golias,” and he looked at the Emperor coldly.

  “Prince Gaston, we find you are tending to thwart our wishes,” the Emperor said softly.

  “Avril,” said Gaston, “our niece is weakened and ill. Would you be a greater Golias, a jackal that savages the helpless, or be a king? For myself, I am a Prince, and thus I comport myself; and my niece is a Prince’s daughter, and thus shall she be hosted.”

  The Emperor whitened, furious at the disrespect in the presence of an intransigent chit. But he left at once, and Gaston heard no more of the idea.

  That evening, before bidding her good-night in the tapestried chamber with its crimson-curtained bed and black-barred windows, Gaston knelt by her chair. He had just mended the fire and pale young flames shimmered in the mouth of the sooted red-tiled fireplace.

  “Child,” he said, “an thou have need of aught, mayst ask me for’t.”

  She did not look at him.

  “An there be questions thou wouldst have answered, put them to me …”

  Her eyes were on the fire.

  “… in confidence,” Gaston finished softly. “I’ll answer what I can.”

  She said nothing, arms folded tightly.

  “If not now, then later. When thou wilt.” He looked at her—purple-yellow-green shadows still lay on her skin, bruises fading—and said, “Hast suffered sore, and I swear to thee, lass, an it lie in my power to turn harm from thee, thou shalt take no more hurt from any man. Th’art under my protection, and that shall I cause to be known.”

  Her lower lip moved; she bit it, but her expression did not change and she did not speak.

  “Good night, then. Rest thee well.”

  The whole business, he thought, closing and locking her door, was enough to make a man gag on his own breath. Prospero would find some way to make Avril pay Hell for it. And Otto and Golias? Death for them, at best.

  Dewar, hard on the Third Force’s trail in western Ascolet, looked at the deepening blue of the heavens and wondered where he could stop for the night. He had no map of the area, but any fool knew that inns were few and far between in the bush—through which he had been riding on a weak Ley on which path the Third Force appeared to travel in an overlay—and more common on the Emperor’s highways. He had crossed such a highway at midday.

  His dilemma was complicated slightly by the knowledge that if he was seen in an inn and recognized by one of Ottaviano’s people, there would more than likely be an incident of the sort both a sorcerer and a gentleman of quiet habits would prefer to avoid. Dewar’s horse, who had been drinking at a stream while his master thought about beds and mulled wine, blew and shook his head, jingling harness.

  The area was not uninhabited. If he continued along this Ley by the stars’ light, he was likely to come on another road, or a cot and a barn, or something more sheltered than the frozen earth and dry snow.

  He nudged the horse and they climbed a ridge slantwise, dark trunks and the pallid snow monochromatic around them. At the ridgetop, the Ley ran on, and two streams seized by ice lay to either side below; Dewar could sense them without seeing. The horse went more quickly, but cautiously on account of the dark. Dewar pulled him up and took out his staff, and a few minutes later they had the company of an indignant little ignis bound to the end of it.

  “… ay …” came a bleating sound from the dark gully below the ridge.

  Dewar’s horse pricked his ears and looked toward it.

  “Some dumb sheep,” Dewar said. “I’m sick of mutton. Gee.”

  The horse began walking forward. Between his steps, the sound rose again, louder.

  “Hey!”

  Dewar frowned.

  “Hey! Help!” shouted the man’s voice, weak but carrying.

  “Oh, hell,” Dewar said.

  The horse waited again, uncertain.

  “I suppose it would be bad luck to leave him there,” Dewar said. “He’d curse us or something. Though they’re pretty ignorant of that hereabouts. Come on, Cinders. Humph, and he can give us hospitality for the night in return. Yes.” He raised his voice. “Hey yourself!”

  “Help! I …” the voice faded.

  “You hurt?”


  “Can’t … move,” the voice replied.

  It was a rustic who’d fallen and hurt himself, Dewar supposed, probably chasing a dumb sheep. He turned the horse and began descending the ridge aslant as before, listening. At the bottom, he called, “So where are you?”

  “Here … here … near the brook …”

  He was east of Dewar. Cinders had harder going here; it was stonier and icier than the other side. Dewar dismounted and they proceeded carefully, by ignis-light, together.

  “That’s not a—” began the voice, much nearer, and Dewar recognized it as the light showed him Ottaviano, Baron of Ascolet, tied to a tree. A trio of huge black birds, screaming disappointment in rasping voices, flapped up into the branches above the stubble-bearded Baron and sneered down at him. There were large-pawed, long-clawed footprints in a circle around the tree, close to Otto.

  “Well, well,” Dewar said, and stopped.

  A bow and a quiver of arrows hung from another tree.

  “The deer fighting back nowadays?” Dewar asked.

  “Dewar. For love of life, untie me. I’ve been here two days. I’m frozen. And I’m perishing of thirst.” Hoarse and white-faced, Otto still looked healthier than he ought. Dewar suspected he had drawn on the Well to preserve himself.

  “Why?”

  “Why?” repeated Otto. “It snowed yesterday, I can’t feel my hands—”

  “Why should I untie you—hm. Interesting tattoo you’ve got.” Otto’s throat and collar were stained with blood. Dewar leaned closer, looking at the marks, holding the light near so that the tree-limbs’ writhing fretwork above was illuminated from below. The birds sat just beyond the sphere of light, watching, striking their bills on the ringing wood.

  “I’ll tell you, but untie me! What have I done to you?”

  “Shall I make a list?”

  “Dewar! Please!” Otto whispered. “Please. Oaths, rewards in my power to give, deeds—name it—it’s yours—”

  Dewar studied him by the light of the ignis. “I imagine being bound to a tree in a wilderness for a couple of days gives a man a degree of perspective on life,” he said.