“Agreement?” Freia repeated. “What agreement?”
“Oh, my Lady,” said Scudamor. He and the Castellan looked at one another across the table, then at her where she sat in the seat to the right of Prospero’s empty chair. Dewar stood at a window at the other end of the table, gazing out and listening.
“The Emperor Avril made a writing agreement with Lord Prospero when Lord Prospero went to seek you,” Utrachet said. He spoke Argos to Freia, the language native to his tongue and Scudamor’s, and Dewar understood nothing of what they said, but did understand Freia. He puzzled over this with a piece of his thought.
“I didn’t know that. They didn’t tell me.”
“He did not w—did not like it,” Utrachet corrected himself, “but he decided that it was best to go along with it, better than leaving you prisoner and under Landuc’s power as you were.”
“The writing agreement, yes,” Scudamor said. “Lady, you have not seen him?”
She shook her head, their sick expressions frightening her. “No, no, he came once to me, went away, he said nothing of agreements, he only—I suppose he wanted to know I was alive. He said nothing.”
Scudamor swallowed. “The Emperor did propose to him an agreement of several points. I have the writing, the same writing copied. It is in the language of Landuc, not ours.”
“I can read that,” Freia said.
Scudamor nodded and left the room. They said nothing until he returned and handed her a rolled sheet. “This is a copy of what they gave him,” Scudamor said, “he made it and left it here.”
“Do you know—?” Freia paused in unrolling it.
“He did ask our counsel, Lady, and we gave it,” Utrachet said.
Dewar turned from the window and watched her read. Her eyes widened as she went down the document. Twice she cried “What!” and the second time Scudamor put his head in his hands and whispered, “Aye, Mistress, aye …”
“This is, this is horrible!”
“So he thought, but he could make little change in it,” Utrachet whispered. “Yet we did fear that to leave one of our own in their hands would be great danger to all, greater danger than any other herein.”
“He would have left me,” Freia said, going cold.
The room was very still, and then, quickly, Scudamor said, “Nay, Lady, I think not.”
“He would have left me,” she repeated. “These terms are harsher to him than death. He could not consider me worth so much.” She looked at Dewar and her eyes narrowed. “Especially if he knows about you.”
“Aye, Lady,” whispered Scudamor, looking down unhappily, before Dewar could equivocate.
She held the rolled paper under her icy hands and stared at it. “When did he go?”
“Five days ago.”
Freia looked at the paper. Five days previous had been the day she had rid herself of Golias’s burden, the hateful seed he had started: a day of evil for evil, fear for fear. “Fitting,” she whispered, her lips numb. The shock held her motionless.
“May I see?” Dewar asked softly.
She flicked the treaty; it rolled down the table toward him. He carried it to the window to read.
“I wonder if we can get to him in time,” she said.
Utrachet and Scudamor brightened. “Could try,” said the latter.
“He has Hurricane,” Freia said.
“Yes,” said Utrachet.
“Nothing can outrun Hurricane,” Freia said. “Nor do I know the way there. Trixie followed him when I went before; she knew. Where is Trixie?”
“I can find the way,” Dewar said.
“She fled,” Scudamor said, “she came and killed, but would permit none to harness her, and left after eating.”
Freia’s face fell further, injury and disappointment in every line.
“I daresay the gryphon could outspeed Hurricane, if you could find her,” Dewar said.
“She’ll be over the Jagged Mountains by now,” Freia said sadly. “Gone feral—not that she was ever truly tame.”
“Lord Prospero left other writings,” Scudamor said, “which he said were to do with you, and which he had us sign also, Lady. He said ’twould give the Emperor a prick in the arse to see them.”
“If you can find them—”
“I’ll fetch the copies he did not take,” the Seneschal said, and he left the room.
“He’s buried them deep in some burrow of his,” Utrachet said. “Nests in paper, not leaves. Lady, I will not conceal it, Lord Prospero was much oppressed.”
“I cannot believe he agreed to do these things for me. I don’t understand any of this. Why couldn’t he do as you did and break the bonds? He got away from Malperdy himself. Why couldn’t he free me?”
Dewar coughed. “As a sorcerer, madame, I can give you a number of reasons. In Malperdy, the Bounds around Prince Prospero were forged differently than in Landuc, where you were bound yourself to the prison. Otto, who pent him in Malperdy, had not the art to do so well, and so Prospero was able to use his familiar creatures, whatever they are, to free him.”
“Where is Caliban?” Freia asked Utrachet.
“Not seen in long and long, Mistress—yet that is not uncommon,” Utrachet added.
“At least you’re still here,” Freia said mournfully to the Castellan. He bowed his head.
Dewar waited and went on, “Stonework is a branch of sorcery possibly less familiar to Prospero than to me, as I apprenticed in it. Thus it may be that he does not know the ways in which such Bounds as held you are broken, though he can perhaps see how they are made. I suspect he could have broken them, given much time to study—did he not break Chasoulis’s walls, which were Bound by Neyphile?—but such an examination is difficult without time and with interruptions by guards.”
“So you think he couldn’t,” Freia said to him.
“That is what I said.”
“I don’t believe it,” said she.
“Mistress,” Utrachet said, “alas, it is true as far as I have seen.”
“How can he renounce sorcery?” she cried. “It is all he does. He cannot just forget it.”
“There are oaths,” Dewar said, “which he can be forced to take, which are strong enough to prevent him from using what he knows, or speaking of it, or meditating on it.”
“This is evil, evil,” whispered Freia. “I knew no good would come of his war. He wouldn’t listen to me.”
Scudamor returned and set a wooden box before Freia. “Lady, here are the writings.”
She opened the box. “They are in Argos and Lannach,” she said.
“Yes,” said Scudamor.
Freia read, and they waited, the sorcerer by the window and the Castellan and Seneschal to either side of her.
“Why does he do this?” she whispered.
“What has he done?” Dewar asked.
“He has bestowed things on me, my name here and here—Titles, lands I’ve never heard of—Argylle,” she said, coming to the last, her eyes widening. “How can this be?”
“They are titles?” Dewar asked.
“They say he renounces—whatever it is, each is different—in order to bestow it upon me. So here he says I own lands in a place called Penrun, and in Wallong, and others …” She leafed through the sheets. “And here it says Argylle is mine.”
“This city, Argylle?” Dewar asked patiently.
“This city?” Freia repeated.
Scudamor, Utrachet, and she all looked at one another.
“It is where you are, Dewar,” she said. “All of it. The city—” She made a dismissing gesture. “That’s new. At first Prospero called it Garvhaile, but I could never say it properly, and now it is Argylle. But that is not what I don’t understand. Why has he done this? He knows I don’t want this kind of thing. We argued about it. I won’t take these things from him. He can’t make me.”
“They are titles to lands,” Dewar half-asked, “and estates, things of that nature—”
“Yes, I guess that
’s what they are. If that’s what it is when you give somebody something they don’t want.”
“Then they are deeds of gift of title,” Dewar said. “Prospero is a shrewd man, and the Emperor’s getting less than he hoped from the bargain, but still much.” He came around the table to stand behind her and look over her shoulder.
“Why?”
“In the agreement Prospero has made, he yields up his titles to lands to the Emperor—any he has. But before he went to sign the agreement—see, all is dated and witnessed, and I daresay he is doing the same with some honorable folks of Landuc—he has divested himself of every scrap of earth he could claim and places all in your hands.”
Freia stared at the papers.
“You cannot refuse; it’s not a question of accepting or refusing. You can ignore the properties, but legally Landuc cannot touch them. They are yours, by perfectly legal gift. Hm, this is rather older. And odder.” Dewar paused and picked up a parchment, written in Prospero’s perfect penwork.
“That was when he had just begun planning the war. I didn’t understand what it was, but he made me sign it and he put a copy into some place he said was important. What is this word?” She pointed to a particularly intimidating one.
“This document declares that you are an emancipated freewoman and that he holds no claim on you or anything you possess. It is a thing that is filed sometimes in Landuc when women are widowed and thus become legally wards of their brothers. If the brothers and the woman can come to some agreement, they will grant her the independence to manage property or money left to her by her husband or in her dowry and renounce claims on it. It is very rare,” Dewar added, “and I’ve never heard of it being done with a daughter. You must ask a man of law if it is legally possible to emancipate a daughter.”
“He doesn’t own me!”
“That’s what this paper says.” Dewar sighed.
“I mean he certainly does not own me, and he never did, and he knows it! This is an insult!”
“Not in Landuc. In Landuc it is a scandal,” said Dewar, grinning.
“Damn Landuc!” Freia banged the lid of the box closed. “Can you open a Way there? We must stop him from going through with this horrible business the Emperor has forced on him! It will kill him.”
“No, it won’t,” Dewar said, “but it will cripple him, and the Emperor will like that better.”
38
“FREIA, THERE IS SOMETHING IN THIS place which tickles my curiosity,” Dewar said, sitting beside her and selecting a nut from the dish before them.
“I don’t know anything,” Freia said dully. She was rolling three nuts around the rim of the dish, her head heavy on her hand. He had been playing with odd instruments for several hours now, things with lenses and things with prisms and swinging balances, things with finely-graven marks and his Map and thick Ephemeris. She had been contemplating Prospero’s disregard for her, past and present. Neither had much to show for the time so spent.
Dewar cracked his nut in his fist and picked the meat out. In a honeyed voice he went on, “There is some force here which overwhelms my sorcery. Do you know whether Prospero has placed Bounds or barriers hereabouts? I felt Bounds at the city walls, but not strong enough to account for the difficulty I’m encountering.”
“He doesn’t tell me anything. Perhaps Utrachet or Scudamor would know,” she replied bitterly.
Dewar ate his nutmeat and cracked another more neatly. He tidied the shells into a pile as he constructed his next remark. “Lady,” he said, “a chance encounter made us comrades, and a chance of genealogy made us siblings. Though we’re mostly strangers still, yet I think we’ve travelled and done enough together that I can ask you to tell me what’s troubling you now.” He leaned forward to look at her face.
“Everything,” she said after a short silence, during which the nuts were allowed to roll to a halt. “I do not understand what Prospero is doing, or why, and he has never told me anything that mattered. He told Utrachet about you, Utrachet said so, yet he never told me. He doesn’t trust me,” she finished.
“I do not think he has known very long that I exist, and less that I’m his son,” said Dewar gently. “How long have you lived here with him?”
“I don’t know. Always.”
“Well, you have the advantage of me there,” Dewar suggested. “I have not had more than an hour or so all told with him, much of that in the war when we were adversaries. Has he taught you sorcery?”
“No,” she said. “He wouldn’t. He said it would be bad for me to learn that from him. You don’t have that problem,” she added in her bitter tone.
Dewar understood. She was jealous. Prospero had excluded her from his confidence in the past, and she foresaw further exclusion because Dewar was a sorcerer and she was not.
“He wouldn’t let me go with him,” she went on in an undertone, “but if it had been you he would have.”
“Freia, I do not know him well enough to second-guess him, but I surmise he left you behind to protect you.” And rightly too, Dewar thought, if he had emancipated her and endowed her with lands. But he went on, “If he has gone to the trouble of having you with him for a long time, Freia, you shouldn’t be afraid that he’s going to cut you off. Surely he loves you. He has gone to Landuc to get you back.”
She was silent, but he could see that she was troubled still. Dewar touched her shoulder and then cautiously half-embraced her. “Freia,” he said, “do not let such ideas gnaw you. Let us work together as we have before to find him and then, when we have done so, we can begin to figure out what we are to one another.”
Freia looked at him sidelong. She didn’t want a brother. If they two had dallied in the haystack before going to Perendlac, what would they be now? She had wanted Dewar painfully then; she didn’t want him now, her body was sick and shocked still, but she knew that she had ached for him then and that everything she had seen in him was still there.
He had seemed antagonistic toward Prospero and she had thought to mediate between them, to help her father and please herself at once by finding a mate whose interests, talents, and affection could be brought to Prospero’s aid.
“I thought you sought Prospero to quarrel with him,” she said.
He looked down. “Yes and no,” he said. “He had dismissed me suddenly—then did it again—and I misliked his arrogant way of doing so. It seemed to me—and still does—that we’ve much to discuss. We were adversaries, but without personal feeling, in the war. I’ve left the war.”
“He does that to everyone,” Freia said. “All at his beck and call.” She looked out the window at the forest, on the other side of the low course of stone that was becoming a wall.
“It befits a sorcerer and a Prince both,” Dewar said, “and it pricked me, as I said, but now I would not see the Emperor strip him of his powers. It sets a dangerous example, for one thing.”
Freia noted that he did not speak of affection for Prospero. He had none, probably.
“I would not gladly see any colleague so treated,” Dewar was saying, “least of all one for whom I have such respect and whose prowess is as great as his nobility. I would like to know more of him.” His arm, still across her shoulders, tightened. “Lady, we are allies in purpose. Doubtless you have been taught to trust none, believe none, but I promise you I bear him no ill-will.”
“What return do you want for all this? Nobody does anything for kindness,” Freia said, turning from the forest to his face.
“You yourself misprove that,” Dewar said. “You have imperilled yourself and taken grave hurts for love of your father. Grant me some small share of your own altruism, Lady,” he concluded in a near-whisper.
They sat eye-to-eye, breaths mingled, motionless. Finally Freia nodded fractionally.
“Thank you,” Dewar replied, and bowed his head slightly.
Freia relaxed. She had been bow-tight.
“I am meeting great difficulty in working sorcery,” Dewar said, “for there’s something
here which overwhelms and turns awry my least effort, just as I could not bring us closer to the place than that wasteland. Do you know of anything which could be the cause?”
“I think I do.”
“What is that?”
“I think I’m not supposed to tell you,” she said unhappily, biting her lip.
Dewar began to frame arguments and further wooing persuasions of confidence and then altered his plan. “Well. I would not have you flout your father’s will. Then I must go from here to get to Landuc, and it will take precious time to do that. Several days, I should think, to leave the reach of this spell which confounds me.”
She blooded her lip and Dewar forced himself not to look away.
“Dewar, I am not used to—” she started, but did not conclude the thought. “Let me think. Just do let me think.”
“Surely.” He lifted her hand and kissed it lightly.
Freia thought, weighing Prospero’s safety against Prospero’s fury, love against fear. “There is a Spring here,” she said. “It is a source of power for him in some ways. He uses it to—to—change things. Sometimes. I don’t understand very much of it,” she said unhappily, “I wish I did, but he doesn’t tell me things like that—you look strange; what’s wrong?”
Light of knowledge and realization had broken over Dewar, a pure and intense emotion of recognition and desire. The Third Source was here. Someone had found it before him.
“A Spring, you say,” he said, and his voice shook.
“It’s just water. I bathed in it once,” she said, his expression unnerving her.
“Water,” he repeated. Yes. It would be Water. It made perfect symmetrical sense. He had suspected Water, all along, and yet he had never quite found the place. Ottaviano’s and Prospero’s wars had distracted him from his quest. Facts snapped together, forming new structures of reason and truth. Prospero had deeded the place to his daughter to keep Landuc from destroying it and being destroyed, as destruction must surely follow such a subsumption of Water to its antithesis Fire. Freia untrained might well see it as only water, to drink and bathe in; that was the oddly impenetrable part of her, the part of her that was attuned to the Spring—most of her. This was why he did not understand the speech of these people, nor had anyone in Landuc who had passed the Well’s Fire; these were aliens, true outsiders whose essential nature was other than Fire.
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