A Tapestry of Magics

by Brian Daley

  Saynday stirred, nearly done. “Di Cagliostro rushed off to get everything ready for tonight.”

  Crassmor considered. The idea of denouncing di Cagliostro was the first that occurred to him, the first to be discarded. The man was firmly entrenched at House Tarrant, and Crassmor could hardly invoke Saynday’s testimony. It might only come to some sort of draw. In addition, there was the fact that Crassmor wished to know more about these unspecified plotters, what their scheme was, how it had to do with him. For—who knew?—it might even prove desirable, or acceptable.

  Saynday removed the beaded bag from the braided belt of his breechclout. “Carry this. My medicine’s a pretty strong thing, even here in your Charmed Realm.” Balloon-armed, ludicrous Saynday was in that moment the most honorable man Crassmor had ever met. The offer implied incalculable trust.

  The knight, humbled as he looked down at the Indian from his high saddle, shook his head. “It would not work for me, my friend. When the clock—yi!”

  Saynday jumped a little at the yelp. Then he took pleasure in the malicious smile that spread itself over Crassmor’s face. The Trickster replaced the now-unneeded bag at his waist.

  Combard, a servitor told Crassmor when he returned to House Tarrant, was with the Lady Arananth, showing off the place to her in the company of the Lady Tarrant and Sir Bint. Crassmor took himself off for a look at the room adjoining the study, where necromancies were taking place.

  The effort was for nothing; when he got to the study, Crassmor found the count waiting as if he’d expected the knight. Di Cagliostro was puffing on one of Combard’s prized old meerschaums, clouding the room with an aroma that made Crassmor think of his father. Candles and lamps glowed, filling the place with light that didn’t warm the knight. Di Cagliostro had unburdened himself of his elaborate vestments. He now wore a green velvet doublet, yellow knee breeches, and white hose with mauve shoes whose buckles were studded with lapis lazuli. He put down a book he’d been reading, one of Crassmor’s favorites, Cuthbert J. Twilly’s immortal The Art of Arising the Morning After.

  Di Cagliostro showed his smile. The dark eyes flashed, and again Crassmor felt the compulsion that resided in them. The voice was seductive, but it too was an instrument of its owner’s will, used to steer and sway the listener.

  The count asked genially, “You found the Lady Willow in good health?”

  “Very much so,” the knight answered cautiously.

  The register of that entrancing voice lowered a little. Though he knew it was a device, Crassmor couldn’t help feeling the sincerity, the weight of the thoughts behind it. “I understand something of your dilemma from your father and from other, less biased sources as well. I am in sympathy with you and Willow.” The intense eyes held such conviction that Crassmor found himself prepared to believe it.

  Di Cagliostro told him, “You find me about to award myself a modest compensation for the day’s labors. To wit: a small drink.” The count moved to a glass tuning fork which stood on a mahogany pedestal. “Will you join me?”

  His appeal was such that Crassmor had nearly mouthed assent before he knew what he was saying. The knight hastily changed it to, “You are kind, but no.”

  Di Cagliostro struck the tuning fork with a slender porcelain rod which was attached to the fork’s base by a chain. The curtains hanging before an alcove of the study parted. Out came one of Combard’s most prized possessions, an enormous clockwork tortoise all of brass, responding to the tuning fork’s vibrations.

  The tortoise ground along, its burnished body throwing back all the light in the room. Its articulated legs churned slowly across the carpet to the pinging and rasping of its works; its head swung rhythmically from side to side, the stylized beak opening and closing as the tongue lolled in and out and its ruby eyes rolled, while the enameled tail wagged. The top of its shell stood nearly as high as Crassmor’s waist; the machine was executed in superb detail, elaborately embellished. It reached the end of its preset path and stopped for a moment; then the top half of its shell popped open like a lid.

  Di Cagliostro drew out a half-empty bottle of the finest Tarrant vintage and a goblet of polished shell. That the count should feel so free to use the tortoise said a great deal about his status at House Tarrant. He continued speaking as he poured.

  “I would that things were different, Sir Crassmor. Hard feelings among family members are a grievous thing. I have put it to your father that he’s been harsh with you, but he is difficult to approach on that subject. Yet I mean to devote what modest influence I have to bettering your situation.”

  Where he’d ordinarily have demanded what business it was of an outsider, Crassmor found himself extending wary thanks. Then he saw that the count was already making inroads and went on the offensive. Pointing to the necromancy chamber, he asked, “Has my father spoken to Sandur yet?”

  Di Cagliostro stopped with goblet half raised. He took only the slightest sip, replaced the bottle, and closed the shell lid with a click. “He has not. My arts do not function here quite as they did where I come from. Control is proving difficult in some operations, less so in others.”

  That didn’t surprise Crassmor; it was often the case with the enchantments or machinery of a wanderer-in.

  “But I am making progress,” the count added, “and I have high hopes.” Then, more sharply, “It would give your father great comfort to commune with the spirit of the Outrider. Moreover, anything Sandur would say about you would be in your favor, and you know that. Do you, then, disapprove?”

  Crassmor answered carefully, only beginning to see how winning this man could be. “As long as no harm comes of it, no.”

  Di Cagliostro struck the tuning fork again. The tortoise began a slow reverse crawl to its alcove. “I desire to harm no one,” he intoned, so that each syllable penetrated Crassmor’s brain with a pulse of conviction.

  Then di Cagliostro sighed as the tortoise disappeared backward into its alcove. The ratcheting of its escapements stopped. “I seek only to do good, though that has brought me into disaster more than once. I am said to have some gift for winning friends, but confess to a talent for the making of enemies and rivals as well, though no man wants them less. I would hope that we can be friends.”

  He trained his eyes on Crassmor, who found himself wishing the same. The knight caught himself again, replying, “You see before you a man with no desire whatsoever to cultivate enemies of any kind.”

  Di Cagliostro beamed at the answer. He went to the knight, arms outstretched. Crassmor avoided him, pacing around his father’s desk, which was all of a piece of ebony and fashioned after the likenesses of titans bearing up a flat slab. Even though this man was prepared to loose some sending on the knight, that voice and that gaze were too persuasive; di Cagliostro’s touch was to be shunned. Crassmor temporized. “Has my father made plans to go to the court, or Gateshield?”

  “Your father takes Sir Bint and the Lady Arananth with him to the court of Ironwicca tomorrow evening, to see the King and meet with the Grand Master, who is returning from an inspection tour. There will be festivities; Arananth is eager to see them. Certain of the Knights of Onn will be there: Myles of Roudel, Cyrus Scattersword, and the brothers Granville and Bors of the House Morkor. Your father wished your company there.”

  Crassmor’s brain burned. My brother’s closest friends! No!

  “I, however, made a case for the contrary,” di Cagliostro finished. “Lord Combard reconsidered. At last he had no objection to your absence, as long as you forbore to visit the Jade Dome. I said I would have your word on it. Was I mistaken?”

  “In no particular,” Crassmor confessed, struck again by the count’s acuity. Not only did this turn leave Crassmor free to attend the meeting with Mooncollar, but it put Crassmor in di Cagliostro’s debt. An evening spent across the table from Sandur’s oldest comrades would have been trial indeed. Almost, the knight thought, I could be grateful.

  Di Cagliostro was convivial, encouraging. “Your word, th
en? Against visiting the Jade Dome?”

  Crassmor saw that di Cagliostro was impressed with the adherence of Knights of the Order to their sworn word, a death matter for most of them. But Crassmor betrayed no cynicism; it was some small advantage if the count thought that he was of the same stuff as those heroes. With a liar, lie!

  “Done,” the knight proclaimed. Honesty made him add, “And thank you.”

  It wasn’t the first time Hamdor the elderly caretaker of the hunting lodge, had received similar treatment from Crassmor: a handful of coins to cover the cost of the old fellow’s cups and those of his friends besides; the evening off; and instructions not to return until noon. Hamdor grinned crookedly, tugging his forelock, recalling the fair and charming game Crassmor had been wont to pursue and capture as a youth, all without leaving the lodge.

  Hamdor gone, Crassmor made his preparations. First he set Shhing and his parrying dagger in a wooden rack built under the head of the big dinner table. The rack had been put there at Combard’s command; meetings of many sorts had taken place in the lodge over the years, and the Lord of House Tarrant was not one to rely on the good intentions or peaceful demeanor of those with whom he negotiated. There was room in the middle of the rack; there, Crassmor set a crank-wound crossbow, its stock carved of walnut, a broadhead bolt in it, aligned toward the opposite end of the table.

  Those things were secondary. Crassmor doubted that a Klybesian monk would be inclined to straightforward violence. Mooncollar would expect the knight to take precautions and would rely on di Cagliostro’s demon. And the knight didn’t expect any assassins to be lurking about the place for the simple reason that the demon would be doing so.

  This matter of a demon was particularly disturbing in that di Cagliostro was confident of his ability to summon it within the confines of the Charmed Realm. It implied rare talent for the arcane arts. For that reason, Crassmor concealed on his person certain fetishes and amulets intended to ward off infernal entities. He didn’t have complete faith in those devices; sorcery was made to be countered. The effects of the actions of warring spells were unpredictable and imprecise. Therefore he made his major preparation, which was to turn the tall, glittering water clock in the lodge’s main hall ten minutes slow.

  At the tenth hour and a little more, Mooncollar appeared. Crassmor greeted him from the open doorway with no light behind him, acting as cautiously as he would be expected to, while Mooncollar dismounted and tethered his horse in the rippling glare of a ring of burning cressets. As the trees and undergrowth had been cleared back around the lodge for a distance of close to an arrow’s flight, Crassmor was assured that there was no one with the monk, at least for the moment.

  The knight thought about the Klybesians, that resolute army of scholar-monks, indefatigable cataloguers of every belief system that had been heard of in the Singularity, who claimed to have boiled the hodgepodge down to a virtuous simplicity that Crassmor had always found rather confusing and boring. The Klybesians were a powerful force in the Charmed Realm; many sons of Elder Houses were, like Furd, important clerics. The holdings and influence of the Klybesians gave them vast leverage; they maintained monasteries, schools, libraries, charity centers, and hospitals. They were secretive about the inner workings of their organization, loyal by dint of indoctrination and hidden ceremonies, diligent—some called them fanatical—in supporting and advancing Klybesianism. They numbered among them no women.

  “Good evening, Sir Knight,” Mooncollar greeted, bowing low, singing another benediction in which Crassmor held no faith whatsoever. The monk presented two earthenware bottles. “I have taken the liberty of fetching a little refreshment for us.”

  Crassmor put the bottles aside after cursory thanks, no surprise to Mooncollar. They would eat and drink only what the lodge provided. The knight made no search of Mooncollar’s person; Klybesians were not warriors. Then the Tarrant son turned up the lamps, relit the candelabras, and threw back the screens on the massive fireplace. He’d already set out an assortment of food and beverage. Mooncollar helped himself to a beaker of ale, which Crassmor graciously mulled with a poker from the fireplace. The monk also lit a rum-soaked cigar from a candle, and Crassmor a Durango Negro. Then they found seats at opposite ends of the dining table, where Crassmor has set out places, each of them harboring a reason not to sit too close to the other—the same reason.

  Crassmor drank from a flagon of wine he’d prudently and liberally thinned; strong drink was his weak suit. There was a toast to Crassmor’s safe return to the Home Plane, but none to Mooncollar’s, since Crassmor was theoretically ignorant of that. There followed a round to Mooncollar’s health, and one each to the Circle of Onn and the Klybesians. During this, Mooncollar eyed the magnificent water clock more than once.

  The talk was general for a time; neither man expected otherwise. But Mooncollar’s conversation took on a slant, with frequent allusions to Crassmor’s hardships in the Beyonds, the dangers and loneliness there, and the companionship of which he’d been deprived. The point, Crassmor reflected, would not be more conspicuous if whitewashed on the side of a buffalo.

  “It’s no short while that I was out there,” the knight conceded. “I confess a certain desire for errantry a little closer to home.”

  Mooncollar liked this drift well. “Under present circumstances, you might despair of the likeliness of that. However, changes in the state of affairs in the Singularity might work changes for Sir Crassmor as well.”

  Crassmor touched up his mustache, drawing on the Durango Negro. “How so?”

  Mooncollar’s smile wouldn’t have been out of place on the snout of a weasel. “Would a new Grand Master of the Order be expected to send himself back out into the Beyonds?”

  Me? Crassmor was jolted. This game was for the highest stakes, he knew then; it might involve the downfall of Ironwicca himself. “The proposal holds great appeal; life in the Beyonds can be unpleasant.”

  “You are far from the most discontented man in the Singularity tonight, Sir Crassmor.”

  Crassmor took a sparing sip of his wine and shoved the flagon away from him. “The bargain, then?”

  “You can be of great use to us, and we can be of cardinal profit to you.”

  Crassmor was trying not to think too hard about what an answered prayer Grand Mastery would be, or of how Combard and Willow would feel toward him if he fell in with conspirators in rebellion and treason. “What service can I do you that is so valuable?”

  Mooncollar selected a candied fruit from a silver bowl. “You have access to the Jade Dome. You know the layout of the place and have the Sight that will not be confused by its protective glamours. You know how to select the right handle for safe passage through that final door.”

  Crassmor had forgotten all wiles. “Is this a plot against the Lady Willow?” The smooth walnut of the crossbow stock was under his hand, his finger near the release, the weapon aligned directly with the opposite end of the table. Mooncollar’s life was no longer his own.

  But the monk was chuckling. “Am I fool enough to approach you with a plan to work her harm? No. We know your feelings for her. You two shall be free to be together, and that I’ll swear to.”

  Unseen beneath the table, Crassmor’s hand fell away from the crossbow. “I would hear more.”

  “You’ve heard a great deal already, Tarrant son. You could work much damage with what I’ve told you. To say on, I must have your answer. Have we your loyalty in return for the Grand Mastery and Willow?”

  Mooncollar drew from his cassock a document limned on fine silk so sheer that the light passed through it easily, Crassmor knew that his signature on it would be difficult to explain away later, whatever might happen. More, this was an instrument of the Klybesians, and Mooncollar, like most of them, was something of a practitioner of magics. There might be a compulsion involved in being a party to this document.

  “I shall need time to consider,” Crassmor answered carefully. “You will have my decision soon.”


  Mooncollar regarded Crassmor for a moment, the silken page held in the air. Then he relaxed, whisking it back into his cassock with elaborate indifference. “To be sure; what hurry, eh? We are willing to be patient.”

  “Does ‘we’ include my uncle Furd?”

  Mooncollar waggled a finger. “That you’ll find out when we have your pledge.”

  The monk turned the talk to other things, drawing Crassmor into it. The knight went along with a show of comradery, gulping down his much-weakened wine. They laughed and gossiped and made faces over the telling of risqué stories.

  After one such, Mooncollar said, “By the way, is that clock quite on time? I must leave not long after midnight, to arrive at my priory in time for matins.”

  The clock was a famous furnishing of the lodge, well known for its accuracy, a much-prized precision piece of Combard’s. Crassmor assured the monk that it was on time, and knew that, here in the forest, no temple bell or town crier could prove otherwise.

  “That leaves us time for a song or two,” Mooncollar declared. “What say?”

  Crassmor was all in favor of it. He took up a lyre that rested on a shelf, one he’d often used in the lodge before as he’d pursued the world’s oldest, gentlest, friendliest sport. Hamdor kept the lyre tuned; Crassmor made a great show of tuning it anyway, refamiliarizing himself with it. It was after the eleventh hour by the water clock that Mooncollar joined his rather shaky alto with Crassmor’s solid voice. They had a good go at “More’s the Pity” and derived enough confidence for an assault on “The Tale of the Slower Hare.” At Mooncollar’s instigation, Crassmor sang the long, sad “Ballad of Amelia Earhart.”