The Wizard at Mecq

by Rick Shelley

  —|—

  Silvas still had the marble. He wore it on a long chain over his heart. Thinking of it, he lifted a hand to cover it. Then he continued his interrupted walk to the keep. He stopped again near the door to sing with his birds for a few moments. Their minds touched him as readily as their songs—undemanding affection, simple contentment.

  "Ah, how I wish I could be as you," he said. Sometimes the birds repeated his clumsy trills. At other times they sought his echoes for their music.

  "How I envy your serenity." Silvas finally raised his head and blew across the palm at them. They replied with a three-note line in unison and climbed away from him, heading for their nests at the tops of the towers.

  Silvas swung open the door to the keep and was almost knocked down by the bounding welcome of his cats, Satin and Velvet. He barely had time to take a secure stance before they jumped against him. The cats were identical except for sex. Satin was the tabby, Velvet the tom. In coloring they appeared as Siamese cats, dark points and milky coats. But in size they were tigers, weighing twelve hundred pounds between them. Despite their size they were domestic pets, friendly as any cats could be. Their purrs were deep and throaty, their games rough. Silvas had to play with them for a moment or they wouldn't let him pass. Then Velvet and Satin fell in beside their master, one on each side, and accompanied him through the keep.

  Silvas walked the length of the great hall, returning the greetings of the half-dozen retainers who were about. There was a broad formal stairway in the corridor that bordered the side of the great hall, and several other ways up to the wizard's private quarters, but Silvas went to a narrow flight of stairs concealed behind a huge tapestry that covered the wall at the head of the great hall. Stone stairs spiralled up to the wizard's private apartments above the great hall—and beyond to the eastern tower of the keep.

  He heard a soft humming before he reached the landing that led to his quarters, a voice as musical and pure as the birds outside. Carillia was waiting, letting him know that she knew he was coming. The song came from the large parlor, near the landing of the stairs he was on. She even knew which way I would choose today, Silvas thought. He stopped on the landing. Briefly he glanced up the stairs that led to the top of the east tower, another seventy-five feet up.

  "Another time." He would not climb to the battlements with Carillia calling to him.

  Carillia. No one who ever saw her could possibly mistake her for anyone else. To Silvas she was the divine model of Woman, perfection in beauty and grace. She stopped humming as Silvas reached out to open the parlor door.

  "I felt you coming," Carillia said as Silvas stepped inside. He smiled, as he did whenever he came into her presence. Her hair, brushed out at waist length, was a delicate mahogany auburn, glossy, with a slight wave. Her eyes were an impossibly brilliant green, like paint scooped wet from an artist's palette. Slender and perfectly proportioned (to Silvas's eyes), she was dressed in layers of filmy silk that clung or flowed by turns, almost as if they were possessed of a magic of their own, a sorcery that made them show Carillia to her best advantage at any given moment. Her voice was a tonic whenever she spoke, musical, relaxing, a powerful weapon even without magic—and she did have a powerful magical presence, an aura that flooded Silvas with peace.

  "You must have heard my heart pounding with anticipation." Silvas pitched his voice to a seductive register without even thinking. He found it difficult to speak to Carillia in any tones but those of love. He crossed to the couch where she reclined as Romans had once reclined on their lecti to dine. Silvas leaned over and they kissed. When their lips touched, both felt the tingle of anticipation and the warmth of gratifying memory.

  Velvet and Satin circled the couch, as if looking to make sure that no threats were hidden, then took up positions at either end, snuggling down into position slowly.

  "Ah, my dear heart," Carillia said when the kiss ended. She raised a hand and snapped her fingers. The sound was not loud, but a servant, one of Bosc's porcine kin, came scurrying immediately into the room. "We need a tray, Koshka," Carillia said as gently as she spoke to Silvas. "That wine and a selection of fruit and cheese. Quickly, please."

  "Yes, my lady, at once." Koshka's voice was high-pitched and had a trace of gurgling about it, almost as if he were drowning. He bobbed his head and hurried out of the room with the same inelegant speed that Bosc had displayed.

  "Here, my heart." Carillia pulled her long legs off of the couch and sat up. She patted the cushion next to her. "You look so tired already and it's barely noon." Silvas started to sit, but caught himself halfway.

  "No, love. I need to bathe first. If I sit now, it'll be too hard to force myself up again."

  "Where are you now?" Carillia asked.

  "A place called Mecq, just another marcher village that smells of manure and other rotten things."

  "Listen to yourself," Carillia urged in a voice tinged with sadness. "You don't normally speak like that of a new place."

  Silvas blinked twice, thinking not just of the few words he had just spoken, but also of his earlier exchanges with Bay, and his private thoughts.

  "You're right, as usual, my love." His voice suddenly sounded exhausted. He sucked in a deep breath. "Mecq is no worse than any other village of its kind. Most of its people are undoubtedly good and true." He shook his head. "And I've been..." He stopped and shook his head again. "I'm not sure I can explain. Since Bay and I first came in sight of Mecq, it has weighed on me. There is a foreboding too vague for me to make sense of it." He shrugged. "I am tempted to think that this is where I must meet my grand challenge." Saying that to Carillia was much different than saying it to Bay. Silvas did not share idle grousing with his love.

  "When it comes, it comes," Carillia said, rising from the couch. She was as tall as Silvas though much more delicately framed. She put her hands on his shoulders. "When it comes, whatever it is, you will meet it properly and with honor, and you will come out of the exchange the better for your efforts."

  "You believe that, don't you?" Silvas asked, wonder—or perhaps merely surprise—plain in his voice.

  "I know you, my heart," she said. "I know you have power and courage beyond what you believe you have."

  "You almost make me believe it as well." What magic you have, he thought, staring into those impossibly green eyes. A fountain of faith that you let me drink from whenever I feel a doubt.

  "I don't believe, I know," Carillia said.

  Silvas smiled and kissed her with more warmth than before. "And I call myself a wizard." He chuckled. "But now, love, I really must wash this stench off. Good people or not, their village still reeks."

  They kissed once more, then Silvas broke away for his bath. Servants had begun hauling hot water as soon as they spotted him entering the keep. His routine was well-known. When he traveled, he required a bath immediately upon his return. Auroreus had been thoroughly Roman. The habit of fastidiousness was only one of many he had left with the young boy he had selected from the mists as his successor.

  Another back stairway led from the living quarters to the kitchens. Koshka had gone that way. The stairs wrapped around a narrow shaft. A long rope connected to pulleys at top, and bottom held hooks to hoist buckets of hot water up to the master's bath. Servants would work on both ends of the hoist, preparing the tub.

  Silvas stripped before he entered the bathroom, hurling his dusty travel clothes toward a corner, keeping only the belt with his long dagger when he went into the room with the marble tub. He laid the dagger on a small table and climbed into the water to bathe. He scoured himself with enough concentration to shut out worries about what Mecq might bring. Thoughts of Carillia stayed with him, her looks, voice, fragrance. The way she gentles me with a word. At times like this he could only think of her, not about her. Like Bay and Bosc, Carillia remained something of an enigma to him.

  Servants returned to dump buckets of clean hot water over Silvas after he had scrubbed. He dried himself and dressed in
silk that had come from the farthest corner of the earth. He never affected the long robes that had been Auroreus's common garb. Silvas preferred the style of the eastern nomads—loose shirt that hung to his knees, equally loose trousers, both in a blue-black that would draw in the eyes of anyone. A person with powers beyond those of the flesh might notice ghosts of arcane symbols floating in the inky darkness of the silk, shimmering, moving. Silvas buckled the belt with his long dagger over the shirt. The hilt was ivory, jeweled with stones in all the colors of the birds of the Seven Towers.

  When he returned to Carillia, Silvas found that Koshka had been and gone again, leaving a large gold tray with bite-sized chunks of fruit and cheese and a crystal carafe of pale green wine. Carillia handed Silvas a golden goblet. He drank deeply. This wine was slightly sweet and spicy, a white wine from the foothills of the Alps. Silvas recalled the vintage immediately, and the first time he tasted it. The discovery had been a joy, and the wine remained a delight every time.

  "This is fast becoming my favorite," he told Carillia.

  She smiled. "I know. That's why I had Koshka bring it. I felt you would have need of it today."

  Silvas sampled the treats on the tray. "Not too much just now," he said, as much to himself as to Carillia. "I need to visit the local inn, the Boar and Bear, before the afternoon ends. These villagers are as leery of strangers as any. I may have to put in more than one appearance before any will come to me with their problems." Silvas could not, by the code his Unseen Lord imposed, do anything for them until they asked for his help.

  Carillia didn't respond. She merely selected a small wedge of Persian melon from the tray for herself. She ate the bit of melon daintily, then licked her fingers to get rid of the juice.

  "I'll show you Mecq before I go, unless you'd rather not," Silvas said.

  "But of course, my heart." She got up from the couch. "I always want to see where you are working. Who knows, I may spot something to help you."

  Silvas smiled. "You have often enough, my love."

  Carillia linked arms with Silvas, and they went out to the landing and took the spiral stairs up one long flight, into the lowest level of the east tower. The tower rooms were Silvas's work area. The first room they entered was a library filled with scrolls and books—hundreds of volumes, a pope's ransom of hand-copied annals and treatises. A second spiral staircase, this one of iron, led up to another room. This chamber was large and almost bare. A pentagram of colored crystal worked into the stone floor dominated the room. Silvas held Carillia's hand and led her across the conjuring chamber, carefully skirting the pentagram, to a small doorway in the far wall. The cats followed Silvas and Carillia to the doorway and then curled up, remaining in the conjuring chamber.

  There were more stairs beyond the door, small and steep, rising to a small turret that projected from the side of the tower to look out over the curtain wall. A series of narrow windows let the viewer look around two-thirds of a circle.

  "The village of Mecq, my love," Silvas said. Only from this one location in the Glade could this scene be viewed. From any other window or any vantage on the battlements, only the normal environs of the Glade were visible.

  "It is a very hot summer day in Mecq, is it not?" Carillia asked after looking out through each window—as if the next might truly show her something that none of the others could.

  "Very hot and dry. Heat shimmers over the fields and dust dances against it."

  "Yet look, my flesh is chilled by it." Carillia held out her arms for Silvas to see the gooseflesh.

  "There is evil in Mecq," Silvas said, aware how like a formula that was beginning to sound, "and you are so sensitive."

  "I feel that the Devil walks the streets at night in this village." Carillia shivered against the ethereal chill. Silvas laughed softly.

  "Now you sound like some backland nun. I might expect that from one of these villagers, love, but you?"

  "You do not mock me," Carillia said—an observation, not a rebuke. "You are right, my heart. There is uncommon evil here."

  "I would never mock you, my love." Silvas sighed. "I almost wish you had told me that my fears are baseless." He moved closer to her. Their shoulders touched as he looked out at Mecq. The view put them high above the village green, with the inn at the left and the church at the right. Even the spire of St. Katrinka's was below them. There was a handful of people standing around, staring at the Glade... rather, at the pillar of smoke that concealed it from their sight. Other people came to look and then left quickly, most crossing themselves at least once.

  "And I will have to uncover this uncommon evil and fight it before our Unseen Lord lets me leave this place."

  "We have bested evil before, my heart," Carillia said. "We shall again, whenever we meet it."

  We will best it, Silvas thought, perhaps every time but once. But that time, if it comes...

  "I think you are about to have a caller. There is a rider galloping down from the castle of Mecq." Carillia pointed.

  Silvas nodded and focused his gaze. The rider appeared fairly nondescript, dressed too well to be merely a soldier or peasant. He wore no armor, but his tabard bore a crusader's cross on the left shoulder, and there was a broadsword at his side. The horse was gray, dappled.

  "I doubt this will be the thane himself," Silvas muttered.

  "Shall we go down to meet him?" Carillia asked when the rider stopped to talk to a couple of farmers at the edge of the village.

  "There's no hurry, love," Silvas said. "For now I'd rather watch and get some measure of the man."

  Silvas had no trouble following the dumb show below. The rider asked questions. The farmers replied and pointed toward the pillar of smoke. The rider said something else and nodded curtly, then spurred his horse and rode to the edge of the column of smoke.

  "I am Henry Fitz-Matthew, steward to Sir Eustace Devry, thane of Mecq," he announced loudly. Silvas and Carillia could hear him as clearly as if he were in the room with them.

  "I'll admit him," Silvas said. "There's no need for you to come along unless you want to meet this man for yourself."

  "I would just complicate your meeting, my heart." Carillia smiled and drew her fingers softly across Silvas's cheek. "If he is important, we may chance to meet later." Silvas nodded. "And I think I should keep the kittens up here," Carillia added. "Master Fitz-Matthew might not take kindly to their attentions."

  "He'll have enough to occupy his mind," Silvas said. He kissed Carillia and descended quickly to the courtyard, angling toward the pedestrian entrance through the gate tower. The permanent stone bridge disappeared into the smoke. Silvas plunged into it without hesitation and emerged at its outer edge, almost directly in front of Henry Fitz-Matthew.

  "I am Silvas. Please, follow me in." Silvas took a step to his right and entered the smoke at a slightly different angle, to escort his visitor across the drawbridge.

  Fitz-Matthew dismounted and led his horse. The gray animal balked at entering the smoke, but Fitz-Matthew kept a tight grip on the reins. He himself showed some reluctance, but stayed only a step behind the wizard. As the smoke closed around him, Fitz-Matthew heard his horse's hoofs striking the wood planking of the drawbridge and looked down in surprise. When he looked up again, the massive gate to the Glade stood open before him. He could immediately see that the castle was much too large to fit within the column of smoke. He stopped and looked over his shoulder. He could no longer see Mecq.

  "You have nothing to fear, Master Fitz-Matthew," Silvas said, waiting for his visitor. "Come on inside."

  Fitz-Matthew moved slowly between the gate towers into the courtyard and then stopped to look back at the smoke through the gate. Shock was plain on his face. He tried to speak but couldn't get any of the words that were rising through his throat to come out. Silvas gave him several minutes to struggle against the shock while he broadcast a silent spell of calming at the horse. There was no need to make the animal suffer, and the impossibility of the situation had outraged the
horse as much as the master.

  Fitz-Matthew was no taller than the village peasants, though he did appear better fed. His face was weathered. He had clearly done some fighting, but he was no knight. A peasant raised in station for some service rendered, Silvas thought. He finally relented and broadcast his calming spell at the man as well as the horse. Even with that Fitz-Matthew needed a moment to find his voice.

  "You have an impressive home, Lord Wizard," he finally managed, shakily. "I'd not have expected anything so fine in a pillar of smoke." He had the proper words, but the voice had not the cadence or fluidity of his station.

  "I believe you have some message for me?" Silvas prompted after another moment of fumbling by the steward.

  "Aye, sir. Sir Eustace Devry, lord of Mecq, loyal vassal of His Majesty, sends his regards and requests you come to call as soon as is convenient." Once into the substance of his message, Fitz-Matthew recovered some of his poise. The words were still right, but not the tone. Silvas smiled. Beneath the diplomatic phrasing, the message was blunt. Get yourself up to the castle of Mecq at once. Sir Eustace waits to pass judgment on you.

  Silvas gave the man a moment to squirm, staring him in the eye, holding his gaze, not letting him look away. Mecq might be the fief of Sir Eustace, but the Glade was Silvas's, and the extent of the Seven Towers ought to give Eustace's steward some idea of the power he had come to call to account.

  "If you've nothing else to do in the village at present," Silvas finally said, his voice as smooth as any courtier's, "I'll accompany you to your master now." He put only the slightest stress on your, uncertain that Fitz-Matthew had acquired enough polish to catch it.

  "That would be my honor, Lord Wizard," the steward said... but his voice was shaking again.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Almost as Henry Fitz-Matthew spoke, Bosc came trotting around the corner of the keep, leading Bay. Silvas didn't have to look. He heard Bay's shod hoofs on the cobblestones and knew that Bosc would be with him, scurrying to keep pace. Silvas watched the steward's eyes. Fitz-Matthew hadn't completely recovered from the shock of the Glade, and here were two new blows for him to absorb. He must have been told about Bay, Silvas allowed, though rumors could scarcely do justice to Bay, and there was no way that Fitz-Matthew could have anticipated Bosc.