Her Majesty's Wizard

by Christopher Stasheff

  The point of light swerved sharply, then swung around in a circle, dimming as it swelled, spiraling down, till Matt could make out the sinuous, bat-winged form. Its voice echoed down, tinny with distance; "Who summons Glogorogh?"

  "'Tis I, 'tis Stegoman!" The dragon's wings exploded as he leaped into the sky, flapping heavily till he caught a thermal, then gliding upward. Glogorogh sank lower, crying, "Thou dost lie, for Stegoman is slitwinged and exiled!"

  "Nay, I speak truth! For my wings are mended, and I ride the high air again!"

  Glogorogh pulled up ten feet above Stegoman, his wings cupping air with a boom that shook the valley. "It cannot be! ... But thou hast his semblance!" And the dragon sentry flapped aside, veering away from Stegoman.

  "More than his semblance-himself! Why dost thou flee? Dost not know me?"

  "Aye, I know thee! I do nor hold thee ill, Stegoman-but hover far from me! I have no wish to risk thine antics!"

  Stegoman banked to a halt, sitting on an updraft, hurt and baffled. "Thou dost shy from me as though I were some unnatural thing!"

  "And art thou not?" Glogorogh countered. "How is it thy wings are mended? What foul sorcery is this?"

  "Not sorcery, but wizardry! A wizard from another world hath healed me, Glogorogh! And nay, not my wings alone, but all of me-my heady blood and flights of fancy! I could burn a forest now and still be clear of head as any of the elders!"

  "If that is so, then I rejoice to hear it." Glogorogh still sounded skeptical. "Yet pardon me, that I do doubt. Thou must needs understand, thou wert a thing of peril!"

  "Aye, I know it well," Stegoman rumbled. "Yet if thou dost doubt, then see!"

  He whirled away upward, blasting, tracing a great half circle of fire across the sky, then spiraled higher and higher, trailing a fiery gyre.

  Matt took a deep breath and crossed his fingers. Showing off had away of canceling out virtues.

  But this was evidence, not bragging. Stegoman's torch cut off, and he dropped like a stone .through the fading fiery spiral, then slapped his wings open with a thunderclap as he bellowed out, "Now see me! I am clear as any dragon could be!" And he wheeled away in a graceful series of curves. Matt stared, transfixed by the beauty of the flight.

  Glogorogh's breath rasped in. "Nay, 'tis the dance of victory! And sure, 'tis warranted-for thou dost fly it without the slightest fault of line or place!"

  Stegoman streaked back, hovering near. "Dost still doubt?"

  "I cannot; I can but ride amazed! How comes this, Stegoman? A lifelong failing, of more than a century's duration, cured in mere years!"

  Stegoman's mouth lolled wide in a grin. "'Tis no work of mine, as I have told thee, but all the gracious doing of this wizard that I spoke of. He came upon me and never once did he spy pity; nay, he's far too chivalrous for that! A lord he is, in bearing and in title, and a maze of scholarship bewildering, a very font of wisdom! He but chanted one brief verse, and my wings boomed wide about me! Then together we did face monster after monster, and, oh, Glogorogh! My spirit quailed within me! For at the last, there came a salamander-"

  "A salamander!" Glogorogh shied back twenty feet. "Nay, Stegoman, thou dost jest! How could a dragon meet the very father of our blood and live to speak of it?"

  "By wizard's power," Stegoman caroled, "by the aid of a familiar that he lent me! I drove it down with tooth and claw; too late, it saw the waters there below and struck into their bosom with a booming hiss that filled the world! The flowing element overbore the fiery; it lay chilled, damped out, extinguished! And all through the wizard's power!"

  "Indeed, he must be wondrous, if his strength through thee could best a salamander!" Glogorogh definitely sounded shaky. "Where does he lair?"

  "He has no home now," Stegoman rumbled, "for he fights for the Princess Alisande, to free the land from vile Malingo and Astaulf! He stands below, silver in the gleaming, knight, lord, and wizard!"

  Glogorogh looked down, startled, saw Matt, and quickly averted his eyes. "He doth appear- so slight-no greater than any other of the Handed Folk. Yet I cannot doubt your words." Reluctantly, he lowered his eyes to Matt again, dropping down to hover, wings rolling like great drums, just twenty feet above. "Great Wizard, thanks, from all the deepest wells of dragons' hearts! If we may ever aid thee, be sure we shall; all Dragondom doth stand within thy debt, for thou hast returned one lost to us!"

  "Uh ..." Matt swallowed. "I was just helping out a friend."

  "Nay, I'll speak then for him," Stegoman bellowed. "We ride against the sorcerer and his pawn, good Glogorogh-and we ride without an army! Any aid that we may have, we'll need-and do not hover overlong in waiting. Go to the elders and the Council. Ask that I be restored to fellowship and tell them of his deeds! Then if they acknowledge tribal debt, ask that they aid us now, myself and this great man to whom I have sworn fealty!"

  "Indeed I shall!" Glogorogh sheered off, winging upward in a high, wide spiral. "I shall lay the matter before them ere tile midnight and demand their aid! I mind some few who owe me debts of battle, and more who stand in blood debt to yourself!"

  "Conjure them by debts," Stegoman agreed, wheeling up with him. "Conjure them by honor! Conjure them by every means and bring them to us on the morrow, if thou canst! The storm gathers, and any hour may bring the deluge!"

  Glogorogh turned and hovered. "Aye, we have felt great forces about to brew and boil around us. Yet we are loathe to act, seeing no part within this quarrel, and fearing that one act may start that which will force us again to fight for every inch of our high mountains!"

  "Fight now, while you've got a few allies," Matt shouted up at him.

  Glogorogh looked down, startled, then nodded. "I'll trumpet loud the cry. If the elders will not send a force, I, at least, shall come to aid you, and, I doubt not, several score of good young dragons!"

  "My thanks and blessing on you!" Stegoman trumpeted.

  "And mine!" Matt shouted, waving.

  Glogorogh wheeled away over the mountain and was gone.

  Stegoman spiraled down, swung over the valley in a long, great arc, and landed in the meadow before Matt, his wings booming shut. "'Tis done; and my heart sings high within me! Aye, I'll fly in my home mountains once again!"

  "He certainly didn't seem to have too many reservations about accepting you." Matt lifted his visor, yanked off a gauntlet, and wiped his brow. "Whew! Your folks don't stop to mull things over much, do they?"

  "What need?" Stegoman demanded. "Act, and if thou dost later find thyself deceived, act again to counter it."

  "Leave the worrying to the High Command, huh?" Matt nodded judiciously. "But you might have been a little deceptive yourself, the way you sang my praises."

  The dragon fixed him with burning eyes. "I was not," he said. "When wilt thou learn?"

  It might have been Matt's imagination, but he could have sworn that Alisande had been trying to avoid him all day. To test the theory, he sat down next to her at dinner time.

  Her back stiffened. She seemed to pull in on herself and inch just the slightest bit away from him. "Good even, Lord Wizard."

  Good even? They'd been riding in the same company all day! Matt clamped his jaws on a tough strand of partridge. "Good evening, your Highness."

  Off to a great start, wasn't it? Where did he go from there? "Pardon my ignorance, but-is this the Plain of Grellig?"

  She seemed to think it over before she answered. Then, unwillingly, she nodded her head toward the two peaks to the west. "Nay, 'tis beyond-a high plateau."

  "Just over there, huh?" Matt raised his eyebrows, looking across her. Sure enough, what he'd thought was a long saddle between the peaks was actually a bit beyond them, and was the lip of a high tableland. "Why did you make that the rendezvous point?"

  "'Twill likely be the scene of our final battle," Alisande said offhandedly. "Malingo must know why we are here and also that, once we wake Colmain, he must crush us ere we can begin to march back towards Bordestang; for then, with every mile we march, w
e'll gain a hundred men."

  Matt sat there, letting the chill of her words sink in. As soon as the giant turned back into flesh, then, they'd be facing a set of stacked odds that would make Crecy and Agincourt look like an even match. "That soon, huh? Well, I hope we'll be tooled up."

  "The abbess and her warrior nuns ride to meet us." Alisande's face was stone. "And the abbot of the Moncaireans comes with all his men."

  "Shouldn't we wait a little for them to catch up with us?" Matt asked.

  The princess shook her head. "Malingo may try to crush us ere we wake Colmain-if he can."

  It wouldn't take much, Matt knew-and something just as dangerous was shaking his confidence. "Uh, your Highness..."

  She seemed to steel herself. "Aye?"

  "We may have a grave interior weakness at this last battle.. ."

  "We will not." She said it with utter finality, like the crash of steel doors-but there was a hollowness behind them. That unquestionable conviction with which she spoke on public matters was lacking.

  Therefore, it had to be a private matter.

  "That's not what the Reverend Mother thought," Matt reminded her.

  Alisande's chin tucked up another notch. "I am mindful of her admonition, Lord Wizard-and I mind me there were two courses of action for me."

  For her? Did she really think she could make this a unilateral decision? Come to that, did she think she could resolve it by a simple decision? "There were two," Matt agreed carefully. "That we pledge, or finish."

  "I choose the second." Alisande bit the words off. "Purge any feeling you have for me, Lord Wizard, as I have done regarding you."

  "Oh, really? You've totally canceled any emotions you might have toward me?"

  "Completely," she answered, her face like flint.

  "Just by an act of will, eh? You just kicked out anything you felt for me, except possibly regarding my strategic value. Right?"

  "Indeed." She seemed to be wilting inside the armor of her skin.

  "Well, there's a word for that, where I come from ..."

  "I care not to hear it."

  "Repression," Matt grated. "It's bad business, your Highness, very dangerous. Repressed emotions tend to leap out at you when you least expect them-and usually at the worst possible moment!"

  "They are not repressed," Alisande ground out, "but banished."

  "An interesting theory." Matt tossed away a pheasant bone and stood up. "But for myself, I don't like going into battle on the strength of an hypothesis. You're the solar plexus of this army, Princess; so if there's a weakness in you, there's a weakness in the whole body of us!"

  "But there is no weakness in me." She glared up at him.

  "Oh? In case it hasn't occurred to your Highness, this isn't a public concern-that's only the fringe of it, the side effect. This matter is personal-and your infallibility just failed!" He turned away into the night, stalking past Sir Guy's raised eyebrow with a snarl.

  CHAPTER 18

  It had been a low blow, he had to admit an hour later, when everyone was bedded down and only the embers of the campfire lighted the site: When would he learn to control his tongue-and his temper? If Alisande had ever had any notion of admitting any feeling for him, she certainly couldn't now. He'd spoken in anger born of hurt-and now, alone in the dark, looking for the roots of that hurt, he had to admit his care for her was a lot more than he'd wanted to feel about anyone. He'd never permitted himself to want anything beyond the physical level, and that not strongly or often-because he'd known, instinctively, that any physical act would pull emotion in with it. There were people, he knew, who could split themselves so that desires of the body didn't touch the heart-but he wasn't one of there.

  He stared out into the darkness, unseeing, trying to blank his mind until he could sleep.

  His eyes focused on a spark.

  He went rigid, nearly jumping out of his skin. Max-the Demon! What was it doing, out of his pocket?

  Then his eyes adjusted to the contrast between the brilliant dot and the face next to it. It was Sayeesa, sitting up with her blanket about her, watching the spark intently-almost, it would seem, happily. The faint humming stopped, and she nodded eagerly. Her lips moved, and he could hear the low murmur of her voice. It went on for awhile; then the spark hummed again. The Demon seemed to be striking up quite a rapport with her.

  That worried Matt.

  He was still worrying about it an hour later, when the spark finally winked out, and Sayeesa lay down, rolling over in her blanket and drawing the fabric up about her shoulders.

  Matt lay still, feeling the tension prickle through him, feeling like a lightning rod just before the lightning struck. What was going on here? He could feel huge forces gathering around him, vast, grinding, groaning, welling up about this valley and the plain beyond, ready to smash in, twisting, rending, destroying anyone who got in their way.

  Which force would win? Good? Or Evil? Both were probably really quite impersonal-but not from his viewpoint.

  They rolled down over his soul, wrapping him in a thick, unseen, dark cloud. He felt as if he were lying at the bottom of a well of molasses-felt he could almost hear the gnashing and grinding of those great forces, louder and louder...

  He sat bolt-upright, staring out into the darkness, heart hammering. He was hearing a huge, slow, grinding sound, like a glacier chewing its way through a quarry.

  Then he began to detect a pattern to it, a dipping, swinging, modulation that slowly formed itself into a word:

  MMMAAATHHHEEEWWW

  The hair on his head tried to jump at the stars. He sat very still, digging his fingers into the grass, trying to hold himself down.

  MMMAAATHEWWW! the groaning voice ground out again. W W WIZZARRDD MMAATHEW W !

  He looked around him wildly. The rest of the company was asleep-and he should know better than to go out alone at night. Something bad always happened when he did. But...

  He shook his head and slowly climbed to his feet, knees trembling. Whatever it was that was calling him, he had to find out. He picked up his helmet, fastened it on, picked up his shield, and turned away toward the sound of the voice with one hand on the hilt of his sword.

  He was walking toward the Plain of Grellig.

  The call was not quite to the plain itself, he found, as he toiled up the slope that led to a ridge between the two peaks. The voice was coming from the southern peak. He turned, following it, his footsteps slow, though the sound of his name was coming faster now, in a low, rumbling voice that shivered through his bones. He forced himself onward, step after step, till he came to the bottom of a forty-foot rock outcrop.

  He peered up into the starlight and saw that the top of the peak was rounded off into a very craggy dome. Maybe it was a trick of the light, but he thought he could make out pocks and crevices whose shadows gave the appearance, very roughly, of a brow ridge, nose, and a slash of mouth.

  "You come," the mountain grated. "At last you come. Have waited, Wizard, waited years by hundreds."

  Matt tried to speak-had to try again. "Who... who are you?"

  "Am Colmain."

  Matt couldn't move. He was rooted to the spot. This was the end of the long chase, then-this great slab of granite with the voice of the earthquake.

  But it seemed wrong, somehow. He'd expected more from a giant with Colmain's reputation-illogically, of course; giants weren't even really human. "How do you know me?"

  "Know ye? Summoned ye, Wizard!"

  "You? You're the power that's been backing me all this time?"

  "Aye, aye!" the great voice rumbled. "Hundreds of years, sought through worlds while body stood here, seeking sphere where wizards learned changing of substances."

  "Transmutation? Lead into gold?"

  "Aye. Only wizard from world where can change lead to gold could change stone back to flesh! So summoned ye!"

  "Well, you called the wrong wizard. I'm from the right universe-but I don't know anything about transmutation. My study is words a
nd the things men make of them."

  "What else is wizard?" the giant bellowed. "Knowing ye, or not have called ye! Wizard, change to flesh!"

  Reluctance crystallized, and Matt balked. " We're planning on it in the morning. At the moment I'm worn out from a long day in the saddle. If I tried to do it now, I might botch it."

  "Try!" the granite thundered. "Must try! Must do-and now! Sorcerer-force comes! Army of Evil nears! Ye feel their coming?"

  So that was the sense of great powers gathering that Matt had felt. "Uh... yeah, I've felt it."

  "Then why nay-say? Hurry! Do now! Ere sorcerer blasts stone to gravel, and not waken ever!"

  Matt stood immobile, hung on a decision.

  "Do!" the cliff face bellowed. "Now! Or Hell takes!"

  He was right. Malingo was gathering his powers, both physical and magical; and the forces of Good were approaching in response. It had to be done-and done quickly.

  "All right. But I've never done anything on this scale before. It may take me a few tries to get it right."

  "Once only!" the giant thundered. "Or lose life!"

  Matt looked up, irritated. The giant wasn't in much of a position to threaten-or was he? If he had pulled Matt to Merovence...

  He turned back, knowing he was going to try; overbearing or not, the giant was necessary. But how the hell was Matt going to work this miracle? Sure, he'd managed to turn Stegoman back from stone to flesh. But that had been a small job compared to this, and the change to a statue had been too recent then to have had time to set. This had been resting for centuries.

  Still, maybe the theory was the same. In changing the giant to rock, the carbon must have been converted to silicon. That would cause a complete change in chemical bonds, resulting in a whole new set of molecules. If the silicon could just be turned back to carbon, maybe the process would reverse and the whole structure would come alive again.

  He gathered pebbles into a small mound, added a handful of sand, and mixed grass into it. He really needed flesh, but he'd eaten it all for dinner. Still, what counted was having carbon in organic compounds.