Karel, waiting beside the Prince, was silent too, and almost motionless.
Breathing softly now, Mark dared to move, to dismount. Once on his feet he did nothing but stand and wait, while Kristin in the course of her next few steps emerged from the eerily visible haze of the Mindsword’s influence. Then, approaching in deliberate silence, she came to stop some four meters from her husband.
At that point she spoke. “Mark? I feel it is really you before me, and not the form I see.”
The Prince unbuckled Sightblinder from his belt, then handed the weapon, sheath and all, up to Karel, who still sat mounted. In the next moment the Prince turned and took a swift step forward, meaning to enfold his wife in his arms.
But Kristin stepped back quickly, avoiding Mark’s embrace; and as she moved she uttered a strange gasp, partly of relief and partly of something else.
Mark halted himself in mid-stride, reminding himself that the Mindsword’s spell could not be so easily dissolved. Considerable time and loving care would be needed to heal Kristin of its effects, even after she had emerged from the field of its direct influence.
There would be no point in beginning with an impassioned declaration of love. “What form did you just see?” he asked his wife, in as calm a voice as he could manage.
She tossed her hair. Her voice was almost bright. “Some anonymous courier, come to tell me that you were dead.”
“Kristin!” Again Mark spread his arms, and started to move forward.
Again with a swift, lithe movement she maintained the distance between them. “Mark, I have come up here to tell you, face to face, that from now on you must allow me to go my own way.”
Mark managed to edge a half-step closer without provoking a reaction. Silently he cursed all Swords; he cursed Murat. He could see now that he was probably going to have to seize Kris bodily, if he could, to keep her from darting back into the Mindsword’s sphere of magic. He could see the blue haze flickering almost at her heels.
Of course he should be subtle; but at the moment he could not.
“Kris, that Sword, his Sword, is making you go away from me.”
“No!” Her denial, though forceful, was calm and matter-of-fact. “The Mindsword shocked me at first, but—no. Do not think, my former husband, that I am its slave. Or Prince Murat’s.”
“I am your husband, now and forever—but later we can talk about that. Right now—”
“We must talk about it now. Or rather, I must convince you now that our marriage is at an end. You no longer have any right to command my people, my armies—or my magicians.”
Here she swung her gaze abruptly toward Karel. And Mark could see her pause, as if in renewed horror, at whatever image she saw in her familiar uncle’s place.
Since Kristin’s arrival the old wizard had waited in his saddle, silently and patiently. He was holding Sightblinder now, and when Mark glanced his way he saw instead a second image of Kristin, this one mounted, gazing reproachfully back at him.
When Karel spoke, he did not respond to what Kristin had just said to him. Instead he said: “Holding the Sword of Stealth, I can see more than I did. I see the two of you—”
His words broke off.
“Well?” Mark cried impatiently, at his wife’s mounted image. “What is it, old man?”
Kristin too was staring at her uncle, but Mark could not guess who or what she might be seeing in his place.
“Never mind,” said Karel at last. For Mark, his voice was Kristin’s too. “Never mind. Let us finish our business here.”
For Mark, it was, as usual, easier not to look at whoever was holding the Sword of Stealth.
And it was foolish, thought Mark, as he faced back to Kristin, for him to stand here arguing—because he was arguing not with his wife, but with the powers of Murat’s Sword. Kris in her present state was no more than a puppet, compelled to say these awful things.
As if determined to prove that the bond between the two of them might after all, when put to the test, be stronger than all magic, the Prince extended a hand toward his wife.
“Come with me, Kris.”
Without moving, she gazed back at him. Her expression, clear in the moonlight, was one of calm, patient rationality that chilled him more than any rage or venom might have done.
After a brief pause Kristin spoke. “I tell you, Mark, that you are my husband no longer. Do not blame the Sword, or any magic. That only helped me to see the truth. And the truth is that, even if no one had brought the Sword of Glory near me, I was ready to leave you anyway.”
Kristin glanced toward her uncle once more, and this time recoiled noticeably, closing her eyes for a moment. Evidently this time she had seen the old man as someone or something very terrible. When her eyes opened again, her gaze stayed averted from him.
Then with an effort she said: “Uncle, I know that it is you.”
“My Princess,” said the wizard heavily, while Mark, glancing sideways, now saw him as Murat, with half a dozen Swords hung from his saddle. “My Princess, you are not yourself.”
At that Kristin dared to look back at Karel again. “But I am myself, Uncle. More so now than—”
Mark broke in. “Kris, no one in the world outside that camp behind you really believes that we two have been divorced. Our children certainly don’t believe it. Nor does anyone imagine that I have really been deposed as Prince of Tasavalta.”
For the first time since she had climbed the hill, Kristin seemed shocked. “The messages I left in Sarykam—”
“Have all been read. Everyone understands that you were not in your right mind when you set them down.”
“I was completely in possession of myself.”
Kristin had raised her voice a little now. She still spoke with a deadly certainty, her eyes locked on Mark’s. “And every word I wrote in those notes was true.” Now she turned to cast a quick glance back over her shoulder, into the great web of the Mindsword’s magic, still invisible to her, at whose center Murat was sleeping deeply.
Then, once more meeting Mark’s gaze firmly, his dear wife said to him: “The simple truth is that I have found one who matters much more to me than you do.”
The Prince could feel his scalp crawl with shock and anger, though at this stage the words should have come as no surprise. He said in a weak voice: “Kris?”
Her fists were clenched. “I tell you, Mark, that the Sword in my Lord Murat’s hand really had very little effect on me. It provided only a momentary shock, a stimulus to help me see things as they really were. Only Murat himself do I now see in a new way; it did not make me see anything new about you at all—”
“It is useless for the two of you to argue these matters now,” broke in Karel in a dull voice, this time recognizably his own. Perhaps, thought Mark, the old man, feeling secure in the knowledge that the three of them were quite alone, had dropped Sightblinder to the ground.
Mark edged another half-step closer to his wife.
“You say that Murat’s control over you is not absolute?”
She shook her head impatiently. “You persist in misunderstanding, despite all your knowledge of the Swords. Murat does not control anyone—except by being the glorious person that he is, so anyone who sees him for what he really is must serve him faithfully from that moment on. He does not know that I am here now, talking to you, and he would certainly not approve—but I have come here anyway, because I hope that I can serve his interests, by persuading you to let us alone.”
Karel grunted as if with satisfaction. “I did not expect that his followers would necessarily obey his every wish—as long as they are convinced that by disobeying, they can more truly serve him. Well, that is reassuring.”
Mark, ignoring the magician’s comments, said to his wife: “Our son is waiting in my camp to see you.”
A shadow that might have been guilt crossed Kristin’s face. “Then Stephen is safe. Very good. I was sure he’d be able to take care of himself under the circumstances.”
“He saw what happened to you.” Another half-step closer. “He was not happy about that.”
“He did not understand.”
“Oh yes he did. That’s why it was so terrible.”
Mark’s last half-step had been too much. Kristin let out a small cry and turned to dash back into the Mindsword’s zone of domination.
But the Prince, who had been shifting his weight forward and making every other subtle preparation he could contrive, was a shade too fast for her. He had no need to turn before he pounced. His left hand caught her by the arm in a crushing grip, and yanked her back from the fringes of blue haze.
Kristin, who had come unarmed, tried to bite, and screamed, and struggled, but her husband held her now in both arms and swung her off her feet, toward his waiting mount. Karel, having wisely maneuvered himself into the exact place where he was needed, leaned from his saddle, Swordless, wheezing, recognizably himself. The wizard’s large right hand, pale and gemmed with rings, moved out to palm Kristin’s forehead softly. In the next instant she went limp.
* * *
Murat was awakened by the sounds of distant screaming. Not quickly wakened, for it seemed to him that he spent endless time struggling toward consciousness from a slough of oblivion. But at last he was conscious, sitting upright on the floor of the upstairs hall in the expropriated farmhouse, the Mindsword’s hilt still grasped in his right hand.
He shouted for Vilkata, but at first only a sleepy mumbling answered. In any case it was now too late. He needed no wizard or demon to tell him that Kristin had somehow fled or been snatched away.
Chapter Fifteen
Kristin came drifting upward out of oblivion, joyfully cradled in a small canoe wrought from the stuff of dreams, borne by this craft with no volition of her own into a beautiful dim grotto that reminded her of someplace, sometime long ago. This was a condition of great happiness but it proved transitory. The Princess yearned for the enchanted canoe to stop at this point but it would not, instead carrying her along a stream that flowed with increasing swiftness.
And then her canoe jolted against reality, and turned abruptly into a plain field cot. With the sudden arrival of full wakefulness the blessed environment of watery dim stream and grotto transformed itself into the dim interior of a military field tent, where a single candle on a map table was all that held back darkness.
And Kristin knew that something horrible had happened.…
Her eyes wide open now, the Princess lay without moving on the field cot, covered by a brown army blanket. The desolate rush of returning memory confirmed her fears; Mark and her uncle had captured her, seized her violently just outside Murat’s encampment. They had dragged her away by force, detached her from the one being in the universe who now meant more to her than all the rest.…
Yet her separation from Murat was not the mortal pang it might have been. A pleasant haze of dulled perception, relaxed indifference, kept her from feeling the full pain that ought to have come with such a loss.
Turning her head, Kristin saw that she was almost alone inside the tent. A woman soldier of the Tasavaltan army, uniformed in blue and green, was dozing, her head nodding, in a camp chair almost within arm’s reach of the cot. The woman in the chair roused herself as soon as Kristin stirred, and a moment later had hurried to the doorway and was passing word to someone outside the tent that the Princess had awakened.
Kristin remained inert, trying to marshal her strength, for what kind of effort she was not sure. After the passage of an interval, which to the Princess seemed neither short nor long, her uncle Karel’s face appeared above her, swimming dimly in a pleasant haze of lethargy; and soon, beside it, the familiar countenance of Mark.
Speaking tenderly, and as calmly as they could, the two men took turns explaining to Kristin that she was safe and secure in Mark’s camp, surrounded by her own loyal soldiers.
Looking from one face to the other, she asked in a small voice: “Loyal to whom?”
The two men exchanged glances. Then he who had once been her husband said quietly: “To their land, and to their Princess.”
“Is Rostov here?”
“He is.”
“Then kindly convey my compliments to the general, and tell him that I wish to see him.”
Another interval went by in the dim tent without looming faces; when they returned, Rostov’s steel-stubbled black countenance was there between the other two.
“General, I have orders for you,” Kristin murmured sleepily. Somehow she was having trouble calling any authority into her voice.
Rostov nodded. It had never been his fault to waste much breath in unnecessary speech.
“You are to accept no further orders from this man” —the Princess indicated Mark— “who was formerly my husband. Instead you are to send messengers to the Lord Murat, and place yourself and your armies entirely at his disposal. Is that clear?”
The general must have been warned, before he came into the tent, to expect something of the kind. He only bowed lightly, and responded calmly enough.
“As I love you, my Princess, and as I would serve you, I cannot accept such orders from you now.”
Mark was silent, but Kristin’s uncle standing on the other side of Rostove said to her: “Your soldiers will obey you gladly and most lovingly, Madam, as will I, once you are thinking clearly again.”
She shook her head, back and forth on the flat pillow. “I am thinking very clearly now—or I was, until you befuddled me tonight with your magic, Uncle. What kind of enchanted existence have you condemned me to?”
With an effort the Princess sat up, shaking her head some more and trying to clear it. She saw when the blanket fell back that she was still wearing the clothes in which she had joined Murat two days ago—could it have been only two days, or was it longer? For a moment the grief of separation threatened to overwhelm her.
Karel said: “I am sorry to befuddle you, as you put it, Princess. But you must be allowed a chance to rest.” And the wizard made another magical pass or two.
The Prince realized that Karel was allowing Kristin to drift up slowly out of her enchanted sleep. But the old magician did not allow the young woman to return all the way to full awareness, holding her rather in a state of soothed tranquility, numbed enough so that her sadness at being separated from her new lord was quiet and gentle; not the violence of rage and hate that, as he had assured Mark, it would otherwise have been.
Mark, in whom strong feelings of relief and rage contended each time he looked at Kristin, now had a new idea. Drawing Karel away from the cot for a moment, he whispered to the old wizard that they might try giving his wife Sightblinder to hold, in hopes that she would be enabled that way to perceive the true state of affairs.
Karel, after some hesitation, agreed.
Mark sent for the Sword of Stealth, which one of his officers was now guarding. While they were waiting for Sightblinder to arrive, Rostov excused himself and left the tent.
When the black hilt was at last presented to Kristin, she refused to touch it, withdrawing her hands under the blanket.
Mark had reclaimed the Sword Sightblinder, and was about to leave the tent with Karel when, to his surprise and momentary delight, Kristin called him back.
She gazed at him, her eyes luminous with the haze of Karel’s relaxing magic. But there was urgency in her voice. “There is something that I must tell you.”
“What?” Putting the Sword of Stealth aside again, Mark knelt beside the bed. He reached automatically for Kristin’s hand, but she pulled it away from him.
Shuddering, the woman on the cot said: “In—in Murat’s camp—there is now a demon. And also a man—if you can call him that—who is the demon’s master. The Dark King himself. I saw him.”
Mark and Karel exchanged glances. “We know about the demon, and the magician,” said the Prince, trying to make his voice confident and soothing. He paused. “Did either of them harm you?”
The luminous blue eyes flickered. “Harm m
e? No, they would not have dared do that. My gracious Lord Murat has ordered all his followers to honor and serve me. But—for his sake I must warn you about the demon, and about its keeper. Because I fear that in the end such servants and counselors will destroy him.”
Mark paused. “I will destroy the demon,” he said, “if I can. Or I’ll send it hurtling to the ends of the earth.” Then he patted Kristin’s hand gently, touched her hair once, and got to his feet. Then impulsively he started to bend over her, meaning to kiss her on the cheek. But again she shrank away.
He straightened up.
“As for the Crown Prince Murat, I can promise you nothing. I am glad you told me about the Dark King, and the demon,” he assured her quietly. “Will you tell us anything else—about Murat’s intentions, for example?”
“His intention was to leave Tasavalta quietly, before you began to attack us.”
“To leave, taking you with him.”
“Of course.”
“To Culm?”
“That I will not tell you.”
Mark turned away and started to leave the tent. Then he halted as Kristin spoke again.
“I say again, to you my uncle and you my former husband, that I wish neither of you ill. But it is not for your sake that I warn you about the demon—and about the other, the man who sees with demon’s eyes, and who is worse than any demon. What I tell you is for my lord’s sake.”
“We understand that,” Karel murmured.
“If I do not hate you, who are his enemies,” she said, “it is only because he does not. I tell you that my Lord Murat wishes no one any harm—not even you, who are now bent on killing him.”
Mark stared at her. Before he could answer, a guard put his head into the tent to whisper that young Stephen had wakened, learned his rescued mother was now in camp, and was demanding to see her.
“Let him come in,” sighed Mark. Earlier he had spoken to his son about the possibility of frightening changes.
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