by K. E. Mills
Lional slid a hand into his breeches pocket. 'On the contrary, Gerald. I'm afraid you're far too good.'
He frowned. There was a note in Lional's voice that he'd never heard before. Gone was the petulance. The peevishness. The volatile good humour. The handsome face was suddenly older. Grimmer. Suddenly Lional's face was frightening.
He felt himself take an unintended step backwards. His heart was beating so hard he felt sick. 'You knew all along I had no intention of joining you.'
Lional laughed. At his feet his hunting hounds whimpered. 'Of course. It's true you have ambition—just not enough. Or the right kind. But it was amusing watching you try to pretend. A piece of advice, Gerald: don't go on the stage. I'm afraid as an actor you make a very fine wizard.'
His heart pounded brutally against his ribs. 'Are you mad, then? Or are you evil?'
Lional shrugged. 'I'm both. Or neither. It's not significant. They're just words, Gerald. Hot air. Blah blah blah.'
'You must know I'm oath-bound to stop you.'
Another shrug. 'You're oath-bound to fry.' Lional's lip curled, sneering. 'You orthodox wizards, you're all the same. Cowards. Hidebound by rules and regulations. Rigidly unadventurous. Suffering from a catastrophic failure of imagination. Incapable of seeing past your oaths and your artificially imposed boundaries to what is possible. Just once I wish I could meet a wizard who—'
Without warning and with blinding speed he pulled his hand from his pocket and threw something, very hard and very fast.
Gerald flinched. Pure, unthinking reflex raised his hand, outstretched his fingers, curled them around the flying missile…
Oh my God!
... and he was caught, trapped in a web with strands of metaphysical steel. He could breathe, move his eyes, but that was all. He couldn't run. He felt his fingers convulse around the thrown lump of rock… and then he cried out, assaulted by a tornado of dreadful images and excruciating pain. Faces screaming. Flame-licked bodies writhing. Greasy smoke spiralling into the air. And Lional, his golden face a glowing mask of power…
'I must say, Gerald, it's rather a pity you have to die,' said Lional, plucking the rock from his nerveless grasp. 'There are a number of incantations requiring the involvement of two wizards that I'd really like to try and you're the first wizard I've met who could manage them. Ah well. Life is full of small disappointments. I'll just have to console myself with the taking of your formidable powers.' A gentle hand reached out and patted him on the cheek. 'I expect you're wishing you'd made me that dragon now, aren't you?'
Speech was beyond him, his mind and will held as fast as his body. But inside the confines of his skull he was screaming.
'I'll kill you… I'll kill you… you bastard, I'll kill you…
'Useful little gadget, this, don't you think?' Lional said brightly, tossing the rock from hand to elegant hand. 'It's called a Wizard Trap. An appropriate title, don't you agree? I made it courtesy of an interesting little book I—well, let's just say I inherited it.'
There was sweat beading on his forehead, rolling down his face and into his eyes. Lional's a wizard? That isn't possible. This can't be happening…
Lional's smile widened. 'Ah, Gerald… but it is'
And then the forest clearing was filled with power, a black seething maelstrom that boiled inside Lional's deceptively commonplace aura as though searching for a way to burst free. The hunting hounds howled and fled into the shadows. Dorcas broke her bridle and bolted. Demon, sweating, stayed where he was.
Ignoring them, Lional stepped forward and raised his hands, eyes narrowed, face contorted into something no longer human. From between his lips hissed a stream of filthy words that burned the air to a stinking foulness… and a searing ball of power exploded from his outstretched fingertips.
It struck Gerald over his heart. Lifted him high into the air. Flung him against a tree.
The world ended.
The first thing he heard as consciousness begrudgingly returned was a voice saying, 'He's not dead, is he? Please tell me he's not dead. You've no idea of the paperwork that's involved if he's dead.'
A second voice said snippily, 'Your stupid brother almost gets him killed and all you can think of is paperwork?'
The first voice replied, seeing the snippy and raising it a snide, 'If anybody here is stupid it's your precious wizard, falling off Dorcas for the love of Saint Snodgrass! The wretched pony's one hundred and one in the shade and can barely get out of a trot!'
A third voice said silkily, 'Melissande? What are you doing here? Have you changed your mind about marrying Zazoor?'
Gerald unglued his eyes. Slowly, grindingly, the world swam into fuzzy focus. He was in bed. Somebody was sitting on his aching chest. They were wearing feathers and an outraged expression. Reg. And to his left, camouflagingly trouser clad, on her feet and staring at his bedroom doorway with a mixture of hostility and apprehension, was Melissande.
'Oh,' she said, chin lifted. 'Lional. I can explain. I was just—'
'Returning to your apartments. Where you shall remain until you agree to do your duty. I shall be along presently to chastise you.'
'Chastise me!' she echoed, furious. 'You're not my father and I'm not five years old! How dare you—'
'Melissande!
She went red, then white. 'Fine. Banish me to my rooms. Put a guard at the doors while you're at it, why don't you, and see to it I'm fed on nothing but bread and water from now until doomsday! I don't care. You're making a mistake with the Kallarapi, Lional, and the only duty I have is to see that you realise that!'
She marched from the room without a backwards glance. Lional stepped aside to let her pass then approached the bed, his expression grave. Despite his pounding head Gerald tried to sit up. 'Your Majesty…'
'Gerald!' screeched Reg. 'You're awake!'
'More or less. What happened?'
'What happened?' Lional echoed. 'Don't you remember?'
'No,' he said, after a moment's frantic thinking. 'The last thing I recall is riding out of the stable yard. I take it I fell off?'
'Comprehensively,' said Lional, smiling. 'I'm afraid Dorcas put her foot in a rabbit hole and threw you headfirst into a tree. It's a miracle you didn't break your neck. You are concussed, though, according to my doctor.'
'Ouch,' he said, and with tentative fingers explored the top of his head. 'Ouch.' He looked at Lional. 'What about Dorcas? Is she all right?'
'Who cares?' said Reg. 'Are you?'
He took a quick inventory. 'I think so. Apart from my head… and my chest.'
'Your chest? Ah. Yes,' said Lional. 'Possibly you were bruised by my saddle. I carried you home on Demon, you see.' He laughed. 'Draped before me just like a kill.'
Oh. How embarrassing. 'Your Majesty, I'm sorry, I—'
'I say!' said an excited voice from the bedroom doorway. 'He's awake? That's marvellous.'
Rupert. Underneath a voluminous green apron he wore canary yellow plus-fours and a bright violet shirt. His socks were striped red and pink.
'Blimey' breathed Reg. 'That's no sight for a sick man to bear!'
Lional speared his brother with a look. 'Yes, Rupert. Now isn't there a butterfly somewhere you can chloroform?'
Rupert blinked. 'No. I never chloroform my butterflies, not unless they're suffering.'
'Trust me, Rupert, that can be arranged! Now go away. The professor doesn't need to be disturbed by your mindless drivel, he needs to rest.'
'Oh,' said Rupert. 'All right. If you say so, Lional. I'm so happy you're not hurt, Gerald. If you're feeling up to it later perhaps you'd like to come visit me? The Grandiose Feather-Headed Lobbet babies hatched an hour ago and they're ever so sweet.'
'That would be very nice, Your Highness,' he said weakly, not daring to look at Lional. 'Once my head stops aching.'
'Wonderful!' said Rupert, beaming. 'Only Grandiose Feather-Headed Lobbet babies don't stay sweet for very long, so—'
'Rupert!
Rupert departed. 'Dreadful man,' said
Lional, shuddering. 'I sometimes wonder if he isn't a changeling.' Then he smiled. 'Now, Gerald, you must rest. There are urgent matters of state about which I must ask your advice, as soon as you feel up to it.'
Wonderful. Just what he needed. I really feel rotten. I'll never ride again. 'Of course, Your Majesty,' he said weakly. 'Thank you, Your Majesty'
'Oh, no, Gerald,' said Lional, and pressed a friendly hand to his shoulder. 'Thank you'.
'Well!' he said as the door closed quietly behind the king. 'Do you suppose he's concussed too?'
'Don't know, don't care,' said Reg. 'How bad are you feeling really? Can you get up?'
He raised his head from the pillow and nearly vomited. 'I don't think so. I feel hideous. And why would I want to get up, anyway?'
'Because we're leaving.'
'What?'
Reg lowered her voice. 'Look, sunshine. I don't know exactly what happened out there because I zigged when I should've zagged and lost you for a bit in all that dratted greenery, but I do know this. Whatever happened didn't have anything to do with that horse sticking its clumsy hoof down a rabbit hole!'
His jaw dropped. 'You were following me?'
She had the grace to look guilty. 'I had a feeling, all right? And my feelings are never wrong.' She leaned closer. 'I think Lional tried to murder you.'
Oh, for the love of Saint Snodgrass. This was taking the little brother routine way too far. 'Murder me? Why would Lional want to murder me?'
Her expression became mulish. 'There could be any number of reasons. Lord knows I've been tempted once or twice. But when I finally found you in that wretched forest, Gerald, you were laid out like a corpse at the base of a tree and Lional was staring down at you as though you'd just swallowed the keys to his Treasury. Proper put out, he was, swearing and muttering and carrying on.' She sniffed. 'Very unroyal behaviour.'
He rubbed his aching head. 'Really? Knowing you I thought it was par for the course.'
'Gerald, stop trying to be clever and listen! Not only was that sluggard Dorcas nowhere to be seen, because it had bolted for home, when I looked it over in its stable I couldn't find hide nor hair to prove it'd fallen flat on its face.'
'So?'
'So a fall like Lional says it had, should've broken its knobbly knees! That nag shouldn't have been able to hobble ten yards, let alone gallop all the way home to bed!' Reg snapped. 'And I'll tell you something else. There wasn't a rabbit hole within a hundred yards of that tree you were supposed to have been thrown against. Show me your chest.'
'What? No, I'm not going to show you my chest!'
With an impatient cackle she tugged open his night-shirt. 'Lional says his saddle bruised you. Well, I'm not looking at any bruises, sunshine, I'm looking at three chest hairs and some underdeveloped pectoral muscles. And what does that tell you?'
'That you've got no respect for a man's privacy' he muttered, covering himselt again.
'No, you idiot! Lional's lying! If you got yourself knocked silly by falling off that pony then I'm Shugat's maiden aunty. And trust me, I'm not.'
'Reg, this is ridiculous. If Lional wanted to murder me he could've done it while I was unconscious on the ground! Why bring me all the way back to the palace? You've got this all wrong.'
'Oh, Gerald.' said Reg, stamping one foot for emphasis. 'Forget about my outside and remember what I am on the inside. What I was. I know about these things, you fool, they were my meat and drink and they put me in a feathered dress for the rest of my unnaturally long life and I don't want you to end up the same way or worse! Just because I don't know why Lional wants you dead doesn't mean he doesn't! Or that he won't try again! That's why you've got to get out of here. You might not be so lucky next time.'
He frowned. He'd never seen Reg this upset before. She was really frightened. He felt an answering stab of fear. If Reg was really frightened… He brushed a fingertip across the top of her head. 'Sorry' he said gently'It's just a little hard to believe, that's all. As a rule, tailor's sons from Nether Wallop don't have kings trying to kill them.'
She rattled her tail feathers. 'Not unless they've done a very poor job with their pin tucks, no.'
It was ridiculous. But Reg was so convinced… 'Oh lord,' he groaned. 'What's Melissande going to say when I tell her you think her brother tried to kill me?'
'Nothing useful,' Reg said briskly. 'She probably won't believe you. Lional's got her well and truly hoodwinked, the cad.'
'Well, I have to tell somebody in authority here.' He screwed his eyes shut against the pounding pain inside his skull, I suppose I could tell Rupert.'
Reg laid a wing across his forehead. 'Don't look now, Gerald, but fever is making you delirious.'
He managed, just, to push the wing away. 'He's next in line for the crown, Reg. It's my duty to tell him.'
'And if you tell him, Gerald, what is he going to do? Send his trained attack butterflies to carry Lional off the throne and put him under lock and key?'
He hardly heard her exasperated question. Suddenly there was a fuzzy kind of ringing in his ears and the world was going smeary round the edges. 'No. No, of course not,' he said vaguely. 'But something…'
'Gerald?' said Reg, sounding alarmed and querulous. 'What's wrong? Gerald! Talk to me!'
He tried, but his tongue felt like a fat roll of flannel, his eyes wouldn't focus and none of his limbs would obey him. Reg was saying something else but he couldn't hear her, she sounded as though she were speaking from the opposite end of a very long tunnel.
And then all the lights went out, and he tumbled headfirst into welcome oblivion.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
When Gerald opened his eyes again, morning sunlight was streaming through the bedroom window, bathing his face in golden warmth and painting the cream bedspread butter yellow. His headache was gone, and the dull pain in his chest with it.
'Hmmph,' said Reg's slightly muffled voice from above him. 'You're awake.' He looked up: she was sitting on the bed's padded headboard, consuming a mouse. 'It's about time. The clock's just struck seven.'
'Reg! How many times do I have to say it? No eating in bed!'
'Now, now, keep your underpants on,' she replied, unmoved. 'I'm not a young woman any more and a sight like that might do me a mischief.'
'So help me, Reg, if you leave the tail in the bedclothes again .…'
Hopping onto a convenient pillow she slurped down the last inch of mouse and gave a genteel burp. 'Happy now? Right. The way I see it, if we get a move on we should be back through the portal to Ottosland before that murderous lunatic Lional has even opened his eyes. Do you want to start packing or shall I?'
He sat up. 'Neither. I'm having a bath.'
Closing the ensuite door on her outraged shrieks, he inspected himself in the mirror as the tub filled with steaming water. The lump on his skull had almost disappeared and the sore spot on his chest barely protested when he poked at it. That was the good news. The bad news was his memory still hadn't returned. And, after yesterday's hours in the saddle, the rest of his body felt like it had been racked.
Inching himself into the bath, moaning as the seeping heat began to unknot his tortured muscles, he closed his eyes and tried to make sense of the chaos that was currently his life. In the sober light of morning, and without that vicious pounding headache, the idea of Lional as a homicidal maniac seemed increasingly unlikely. Not only was the king completely without motive, wizards just weren't that easy to murder. They had in-built alarms. Extra sensitivities. Wizards got murdered by other wizards, not civilians, even if said civilians were royal.
So. That disposed of one problem. Unfortunately it still left him with several others, the most pressing of which was the Kallarapi situation.
Even if Lional had tried to murder him, which he hadn't, he couldn't possibly leave New Ottosland before making sure he'd prevented a full-scale religious conflict with the kingdom's neighbour… or found a way to stop Melissandes unwilling marriage to Zazoor.
If Li
onal was so keen on asking for his advice, he'd make sure to give him some. Forget the marriage. Pay your debts. Pull your head in. And no religious hanky-panky.
Once all that was accomplished then he'd go home to Ottosland.
Much cheered, he finished bathing.
Reg had made herself comfortable on his pillow and was in the middle of a half-hearted primping session. She took one look at his face as he emerged pink, damp and towel-wrapped from the bathroom and groaned. 'You're not leaving, are you?'
'I'm sorry' he said, hunting through his chest of drawers for fresh clothing. 'I know you're worried but I can't leave until I've stopped Lional from provoking a war when he doesn't have an army to protect his kingdom with.'
'He doesn't have one now! said Reg. 'But that doesn't mean he can't get one.'
He looked up from buttoning his shirt. 'How? There's no such thing as a mail-order defence force.'
'There doesn't need to be. You forget that somewhere in this drafty old pile of a palace there's a nursery with a whole battalion of tin soldiers in it.'
'So?'
'So you've got a nifty knack of turning one thing into another, haven't you?'
He gaped at her. ' What? You think I'd turn tin soldiers into real ones? That could hurt people?'
'Not willingly, no,' said Reg. 'But I think if Lional put his mind to it he could be very… persuasive.'
'I would never use my magic to make something that could hurt people, no matter what Lional said!'
Reg considered her wing tips. 'It's not his pretty speeches that worry me, sunshine.'
'So now you're saying he'd try to—to torture me? How? I'm a wizard, Reg! A damned powerful one as it turns out. He wouldn't get close enough to torture me, I'd have him flat on his back and across the other side of the room before he took one step towards me.'
Reg shrugged. 'He managed to lay you out cold and get you to forget how it happened, Gerald. Right now I wouldn't put anything past him.'
'Oh, don't start that again! For Lional to do what you're suggesting he'd have to be a wizard himself, and he's not. I can smell a wizard a mile away'
She considered him steadily. 'Really? You didn't smell that tatty old Shugat, did you, till he was right under your nose.'