The Wizard at Mecq

by Rick Shelley

  Silvas couldn't even enter into the light banter that Carillia's words, if not her tone, invited. When they reached their bedroom, Silvas sat heavily on the side of the bed, prepared to do no more than cast off his boots before collapsing in sleep. But Carillia was there, helping him out of his clothes, moving the comforter so she could cover him as he lay back and closed his eyes.

  Sleep.

  —|—

  Bay raced at full gallop across the plain, his mane and tail flowing with the wind of his speed. Silvas stared at the castle on the horizon. Its towers were white like the chalk cliffs that overlooked Dover Bay, but these towers were blindingly reflective, much too bright for Silvas to focus his telesight on them. It would be too much like the time he tried to see what a star was made of. Silvas couldn't judge how far away the castle was, or be certain that it really was Camelot. He wouldn't know until he reached it.

  Reaching it was proving more difficult than Silvas had anticipated, though. Bay's stretching gallop covered the miles quickly, but the towers remained as distant as ever. There was no detectable change in the perspective. Bay pushed on with an eagerness that matched the wizard's. The horse didn't waste time speaking, not even to reply to Silvas's occasional questions or exclamations of frustration.

  —|—

  "Auroreus, will you please at least tell me how many languages there are on this page?" Silvas pleaded, looking up from the indecipherable scroll to his mentor.

  The question seemed to startle the old wizard. His eyes narrowed, not in anger but in concentration or puzzlement. Finally he blinked and shook his head slowly.

  "I never pay attention to such details, and neither should you," he said. "I write as the thoughts travel through my fingertips. That is the only way to read it as well. The language is important only as it permits greater precision. Some languages do not treat particular concepts as well as others. I use the words that seem most appropriate, most correct."

  "But are there not groups of letters that exist in different languages with different meanings? There are only so many letters to use. There must be a limit to the combinations. How am I to know which word, which language, is meant?"

  "That is part of the instruction, lad." Auroreus hesitated, then reached for the scroll he had written for his apprentice. Silvas handed DEI ET DEAE to him quickly. Auroreus scanned the page that the boy had rolled the scroll open to, near the beginning of the treatise, and made a low humming sound.

  "There are no words here that are not clear as to which language they belong to, lad. As you develop a feel for reading like this, you'll be able to tell the language without much difficulty, if the question ever really arises." He handed the scroll back to the boy.

  "But how many languages, please?" Silvas asked, keeping his eyes on Auroreus, not on the scroll.

  Auroreus emitted a long sigh and shook his head again. "There are only five on that page, if you must know."

  —|—

  "The eldest of the gods is ———." Silvas could not hear the name. That was a magic that he didn't have the capacity to grasp. "The second of the gods is the lady ———." Silvas nodded, though he wasn't sure that anyone was watching him. He couldn't see whoever it was who spoke to him, but the voice held too much authority for him to speak. He couldn't even question this voice—unless he were invited to.

  The roster of the divines continued. It did Silvas no good since he couldn't take hold of the names, but he had to pay attention. He didn't spare much thought on his peculiar surroundings. It looked as if someone had taken a country vista, cut it into tiny patches, and fastened them back together without any thought to logic or proper position. Bits of sky were mixed in with the grass. Trees protruded from fluffy clouds. A brook crossed grass, tree crowns, and sky without deviating from its course. Silvas himself was sitting on a rock that bobbed along on the summery breeze, sometimes on the ground, more often in the sky or coasting among the leaves at the top of the trees.

  "The first conflict among the brothers and sisters came in the land of the Hindus, when both ——— and ——— decided that they wanted the worship of the same tribe. Their brothers and sisters forced an end to that feud, but the peace that followed was bitter, filled with suspicions and plots. Neither ——— nor ——— ever forgave the other. Their enmity continues to this day. In any question, if one supports a particular side, the other will automatically support the other, regardless of merits."

  —|—

  Silvas didn't wake, but he felt himself tossing in bed. He was hot, sweating—as heavily as the Eyler had flowed before the rain, he thought. The wizard felt a heaviness, something more than his unease at the coming struggle, something less than a warning of imminent peril. He tried to extend his sleeping awareness to Carillia, but he couldn't reach her. Either she wasn't in bed with him or his mind was far more distant from his body and bed than he had thought. Memories and hints of memories pounded at his awareness, demanding that Silvas chase them down the alleys of his mind, taunting him with their incompleteness, laughing at him.

  He wished that he could wake up long enough to take a drink. His throat felt dry as the Egyptian desert that Auroreus had told him about. Egypt. Alexandria. The library that had been burned. The way Silvas's throat now burned.

  —|—

  "Silvas, are you paying attention?" The voice was harsh, unforgiving. Silvas blinked and nodded.

  "Yes, sir," he replied, not certain who he was talking to. "I'm sure I was." No, I'm not sure, he thought. In fact, I'm certain that I have no idea what he was talking about. Was he really talking? He must have been. Silvas looked around. Where am I? It wasn't the same place as before. It didn't rightly look like a place at all. There were no dimensions, no boundaries, no form within, no sense of "without" to measure it against. It's like the place where I hold my Councils, Silvas decided finally, and that gave him some measure of ease—a very small measure.

  "We were talking about the adventures of the god ——— at the time of the Macedonian Alexander, and of the episode in the Egyptian desert," the incorporeal voice said. "The episode of Alexander's announced apotheosis."

  —|—

  The shining white castle was no nearer, not a step, but Bay was slowing, finally reaching the end of his energy. The cadence of Bay's gallop became less regular, the ride became less comfortable. Occasionally he even stumbled, and that was unheard of. Then Bay abruptly dropped out of his gallop into a walk, and stopped.

  "It is no use," Bay said. "There's no way we can reach that castle. It is as I said, you can only get to the castle from inside it."

  "There must be a way," Silvas told him. "Others have reached it before us."

  Bay shook his head spasmodically. "Then they were already inside before they went there."

  "That makes no sense at all, my friend," Silvas said sadly.

  —|—

  When Silvas opened his eyes, he could tell that morning had fled completely. The shadows from the window showed that the sun was past the zenith. He had slept eighteen hours, or close to it. The bed clothes were drenched with his sweat. For several minutes Silvas could find no energy to do more than lie motionless. Only his eyes showed any life. Without looking, Silvas knew that Carillia wasn't in bed with him.

  "I feel as if I spent those hours hard at work, not sleeping," Silvas muttered. But it would have to suffice. There was another day to face. He had to face it.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  "Ah, my heart, you are awake at last." Carillia bustled into the bedroom. That, and the tempo of her words, caused Silvas to look up in some surprise. He had been so lost in his own thoughts that he hadn't heard her approach, and she was moving and speaking so much faster than usual. There was less of her normal grace. She might almost have been some shopkeeper's wife from the way she came into the room.

  "I cautioned everyone to stay away until you woke," she continued. "You were so spent last night that I was determined to let you sleep as long as possible."

 
Silvas nodded, rather dully. He needed another moment to collect his thoughts enough for speech. "Little enough good the sleep did me, my love," he said, recognizing the hint of wonder in his own voice. "But the night seems to have wrought great changes in you."

  The smile Carillia gave him was more mysterious than sweet. Silvas perceived a little additional depth to it, something new in the eyes that topped it.

  "The time seems to demand it, my heart," she said. "I knew that I had to be as strong as possible while you recovered your strength." She went to the wardrobe and pulled out fresh clothes for Silvas rather than calling for Koshka or one of his fellow servants.

  "I don't know how much strength I recovered," Silvas said, sliding his legs out of bed and sitting on the edge. "For all the hours of sleep, I feel little different than I did at the start."

  Carillia finally stopped her bustling and stared at Silvas. Her eyes narrowed in a look of intense concentration that was as alien to her normal habits as scurrying about and rapid speech.

  "Your sleep was troubled?" The question was tinged more with sharpness than solicitude.

  "Troubled and full. And yet..." He hesitated, then shook his head. "Yet I can grasp so little of it. The memories are confused, incomplete, like fever dreams."

  Carillia laid her hand on his forehead. "You are sweaty but not hot." She looked at the bedding. "If you had a fever in the night, it has broken." For an instant her voice modulated into more familiar tones, but then the new briskness was back. "The water for your bath is being heated. That and a good draught of one of your elixirs will put you as right as possible."

  Silvas's new smile almost widened into a grin. He was beginning to find an appreciation for this new manner of Carillia's. "You are probably right, my love." He could hear the amusement in his own voice. "You usually are."

  This time Carillia gave him a more familiar smile. "We have to make use of the time we have before the Blue Rose comes again," she said, with almost her accustomed softness.

  There was a quick knock at the door and Bosc came in, hardly waiting for Carillia's call. He bobbed his head at her, then focused on Silvas.

  "I'd not bother you so, but Lord Bay is quite restive." Bosc bobbed his head a couple more times in the peculiarly jerky fashion of his kind. "And I feel most on edge myself, Lord Silvas." He shifted his weight back and forth from one foot to the other.

  "What is Bay so restive about?" Silvas asked, noting at the same time that the water was being poured for his bath. He stood and stretched.

  "He rumbles and moans like, lord, about this village and about the Blue Rose and a dozen other things all jumbled together, and he paces his stall like there's a mare in heat just out of reach."

  "Tell him I'll be out there as soon as I can," Silvas said.

  "Aye, lord." Bosc bobbed his head one final time before he hurried out the door.

  "It appears that everyone is out of sorts this morning," Silvas said quietly, heading for the bathroom. "The evil of the Blue Rose is still working on us, in one fashion or another."

  "We are merely preparing to face it, my heart," Carillia said. She didn't bother to follow him to the bath.

  —|—

  Silvas settled himself in the tub and closed his eyes. The water came almost to his chin. It was hot, steaming—too hot at the start, but that meant that it would remain comfortable longer at the end.

  I need time to think, Silvas told himself. If I could but remember all that I experienced in the night. But the images and sequences had come so rapidly on the heels of each other that each new segment had overlain and erased the one before. Try though he might, Silvas could do no more than capture isolated scenes and phrases, and that bothered him.

  The lacunae might be the most important parts. That seemed to be the way of life, even for a wizard-potent. It was like trying to reconstruct a fine Italian mosaic from one tile in ten, not knowing what the complete picture had originally been. Silvas spent the time in his tub trying to recall the general pattern of his nocturnal experiences.

  After a few minutes, he took a deep breath and slid down in the tub until he was completely submerged, and he stayed down until his lungs felt ready to burst. When he pushed himself up he took in several deep breaths of the humid air. He leaned back, head against the stone of the tub, eyes closed, while water dripped from his hair and face.

  Nothing, he thought. There weren't even enough fragments of the puzzle in his mind to space out the framework for the missing majority. And it might be vital. There were certain spells he could try, but they would take considerable time and energy, and Silvas doubted that enough of either remained for him to spend them, particularly since those spells were not certain, not when he applied them to himself.

  As the water started to lose its warmth, Silvas hurriedly went through the motions of scrubbing, trying to scour himself into greater alertness. Satin and Velvet came prowling into the bathroom. Each sniffed at the water and at Silvas. Their growls were more throaty than normal, their movements as uncommonly edgy as Carillia's had been.

  "This has got to all of us, hasn't it?" Silvas said softly. He didn't reach out to pet the cats. They wouldn't appreciate wet hands. The cats left the room, but they were back in less than a minute, going through the same routine of sniffing the water and Silvas before turning to leave again.

  "You want me to hurry too?" Silvas chuckled. Satin growled in a particularly short-tempered fashion. Silvas chuckled again. "If I thought it would help, I would have foregone my bath, kittens. But it wouldn't help, and it won't help for me to hurry now. But I am nearly done."

  The cats fled the bathroom when Silvas stood to get out of the tub. Staying meant getting wet as Silvas splattered and splashed and toweled himself dry. Satin and Velvet were no more thrilled with wet fur than any other cats.

  Silvas felt much better when he returned to the bedroom to dress. Carillia was gone. Satin and Velvet came and went, as if they were still checking to see how much longer he would be.

  "Such impatience," Silvas said as he adjusted his knife belt. "It's not like you." The cats left the room again.

  Breakfast—a selection of fruit and cheese, with spiced wine on the side—was waiting for Silvas in the small sitting room. He sat but did little more than sample the food.

  "I think I'm ready to face the world now," he said after only a few minutes. "At least for a time." He stood and stretched, then headed for the stairs. His first stop had to be the mews.

  Bay was pacing rapidly around the confines of his stall. Though it was much larger than most, even compared to Bay's unusual size, the stall was hardly sufficient for such frantic pacing.

  "You want to go out into the bailey so you have more room?" Silvas asked when he looked in the open top of the stall's half door.

  "It would not be room enough," Bay said, coming to an awkward halt. "The itch I have makes me want to run as far and as fast as I can, in any direction. Or even in circles, if the circles are large enough."

  "That wouldn't help," the wizard said, uncomfortable at the echo of his own dream. "We could ride forever and not reach our destination."

  Bay nudged open the bottom half of the door with his nose. Silvas stepped back to let Bay come out of the stable.

  "Bide a moment," Bay said. When Silvas nodded, Bay started along the wall, moving from a walk into a slow canter, an easy lope that consumed distance quickly. Bay lapped the courtyard a dozen times before he returned to Silvas.

  "It is not enough, but it must suffice for now," Bay said. He looked closely at Silvas. "They told me you were sleeping."

  "I was, little good it did me," Silvas replied. "My slumber was long but not easy."

  "It shows," Bay said. "Are you fit for what may come?"

  "I won't know until whatever may come does come," Silvas said. "I feel better than I did when I first woke. I might have the strength to get through the next hours." He looked at the sky. There were no clouds over the Seven Towers. "I didn't stop to look at Mecq," Sil
vas said, as much to himself as to Bay.

  "Braf says that the sky over Mecq remains overcast," Bay said. "When you had not appeared by mid-morning, I bade him look for me." The turret that looked out over Mecq, or whatever location the pillar of smoke was in, was as far out of Bay's reach as the stars were for Silvas. The narrow circular stairway leading to that turret was much too small for the horse.

  "You told Sir Eustace to be especially watchful of the passes from Blethye," Bay said. "You could make the passage much more costly for Blethye, if that is the source of this disease."

  "If," Silvas said, seizing the single word. "But focusing too narrowly on Blethye might make us overlook an attack from elsewhere until too late."

  "Not focus, simply prepare," Bay said. "Something to make the more distant pass even harder for soldiers. Something to drop on the near pass if an army tries to come through."

  "And the energy it would take?" Silvas asked. "The Blue Rose wizard appears to be my equal. I can't afford to waste myself now, not when every confrontation already drains me so thoroughly."

  "As for wasting yourself..." Bay started. He didn't need to finish. Silvas glared at him anyway.

  "The levels do not compare," Silvas said. "Anyway, it is all part of the dance. The Blue Rose was behind many of the ills I cured here, and mending the injuries was just as important. I couldn't give the enemy the satisfaction of seeing their evil abide, or endanger our support any further."

  "We have come too far to worry about support," Bay said. "If the battle is upon us, they have no choice but to support us or perish."

  "I can't be that callous," Silvas said. "If we forget the people we help, how are we different from the Blue Rose?"