by Dave Duncan
The da-dum-ing grew a little faster.
“This,” the constable mumbled, “. . . my sage, Quentin of . . . Quentin. He handles my correspondence these days. My eyes are not what they used to be.”
Very likely his eyes had never been taught to read.
Quentin broke the seal and opened the letter. He read it out in the same strangely accented French that Francois spoke. The baron begged leave to commend Sir Neil, who had been visiting relatives, and was now hoping to return to France by sea. Undoubtedly Neil had written the letter himself, or had Durwin do it for him. The baron had signed it as requested.
“Better you than me,” Lord Richard said. “Can’t even smell the sea without getting sick to my stomach. Quentin, see that Sir Um is boarded. Boy, my goblet is empty!”
Eadig retrieved the flagon and went down on one knee to refill the crotchety old bastard’s goblet.
“And tell the bottler to send you back to the stables. You still stink of horses.”
“Yes, my lord.” Eadig thought the stables would be an improvement over this madhouse.
Neil held out his goblet, so Eadig filled that one also. But Neil gave him a hint of a wink that the others wouldn’t see, and that was both a surprise and a comfort.
“I will be happy to show you and your squire to your quarters whenever you wish, Sir Neil,” Quentin said.
Neil took a sip of wine to show that then was not now. “That will be most kind of you, Sage. Lord Richard, while I’m here, I’m anxious to meet with old Sir Courtney of Blanche. He fought beside my father at the battle of Lincoln, back in forty-one.”
Drumbeats! This time they went louder, and then slowly faded, to show, perhaps, that the damage was done. Eadig wished that his valorous leader had not led with his chin there, trumpeting out his real reason for coming to Lincoln.
“Ah, yes!” the constable said with some enthusiasm. “A grand warrior in his day. ‘Bone-breaker’ they used to call him. Getting past it now, of course. He can tell you how we had a wager on how many—”
“Sir Courtney,” the sage interposed, “has been called to the Lord. We buried him three weeks ago.”
“We did? Oh, if you say so. Slipped my mind.” The old man angrily drained his goblet.
Eadig watched Neil exchanging dismayed looks with Piers. There went the witness they had come to meet. Now what?
And Sage Quentin was watching all three of them with his reptilian eyes. He knew by now that Eadig was no page. He must know what Sir Courtney had died of, which likely had not been old age. Had that sad event happened before or after he wrote the letter to the king?
“That is sad news,” Neil said. “Also, I suppose I should pay my respects to Sheriff Alured.”
“The sheriff is not in residence at the moment,” the sage said. “He is currently making his rounds of the shire.” His eyes gleamed, more snakelike than ever. The noose was tightening.
Lord Richard uttered a noise halfway between a snort and a snore. The goblet slid from his hand, rolled down his lap, and landed on the rug with a thump. He lifted his head, opened his eyes, then closed them again. His head drooped forward. Eadig went to retrieve the goblet; Sir Neil handed him the other, which was also empty, and he placed them back on the chest. Good little page!
“Corneille?” Sage Quentin called.
Another man pushed aside the curtain and came in. How many of them were in there, eavesdropping? He was older and chubby, with a long black beard, and he seemed too old to be wearing an adept’s white cape over his gentleman’s robes.
“Lord Richard needs a nap now,” the sage said. “Please help him.”
Corneille nodded, and went to whisper in the old man’s ear. The constable blinked awake, or half-awake, then let himself be helped out of his chair. Supported by the cantor, he shuffled out through the curtained doorway, visitors forgotten.
Quentin shook his head sadly. “Come, Sir Neil. Pray let me show you to your quarters.”
Da-dum-da-dum . . .
chapter 10
lovise did not open the front door—she never would for an unexpected caller at dusk—until she had inspected him by looking through the grille. She spoke through it. We listeners could hear her voice, but not the words, and all I could make out of the response from outside was that the visitor was definitely a man.
I listened for the sound of bolts being drawn, but did not hear them. Lovise returned and took her place at the table again.
“A man I have never seen before, Father. He said he was in pain and needed a healer urgently. When I insisted you were still out of town, but I might be able to help him, he said his complaint was not one he could discuss with a woman, and went away.”
“Did he ask where he could find another healer?” I asked. “No.”
Nobody was happy with the news. Even without the signal from the tambour spell I would have considered it suspicious, confirmation of my theory that I had given myself away by curing Harald’s curse. Harald himself was offended that a genuine patient might have been denied attention. I was pleased that my prediction had been fulfilled, and thus my theories about the conspiracy were holding up so far, but I heartily wished they weren’t. I had found that elusive idea I had sensed earlier, and it was terrifying.
“You do not employ a cantor, sir?” I asked Harald. He responded better when I sounded obsequious.
“My work rarely requires a second voice. Healer Nerian and I used to help each other out when necessary, until he met with his accident, and now Lovise is capable of filing in until Lars is a few years older.”
It was quite clear to me by then that Harald did not properly appreciate his incredible daughter. Lars, of course, would follow his father’s lead. Lovise herself might be so used to being treated as a serf that she didn’t even resent it. The idea that she might make a better enchanter than her brother would never enter their heads.
“You never use three-voice spells?”
Harald just shook his head. Those would be beyond his ken, and admittedly even in Helmdon they were rarely practiced. I had never heard of four-voice chants.
“How about five-voice?” I asked.
For a moment he looked outraged, as if I had grievously insulted him, but he was more stubborn than stupid, and he suddenly saw what I had grasped just a few moments ago. And he was equally appalled.
“No! They wouldn’t!”
“They can, though!” I said bitterly. “That cantor you met must be a fully fledged sage, so Quentin has found the fifth he needed: Corneille, Tancred, Henri, Walter, and himself. Five!”
Lovise and Lars were both lost in the woods, of course.
“You don’t know what sort of magic needs five voices?” I asked.
They shook their heads and their father said, “Pentacle magic!”
“The blackest of black,” I agreed. “We use the pentacle as the emblem of our craft, but we don’t use pentacle magic unless we want to raise major devils, possibly even Satan himself. Helmdon has many more than five sages, but we never dabble in that. The dean does have a couple of grimoires that are kept locked up, and there may be some demonic chants in those. I never asked.”
I had decided very early that my chances of defeating any sort of treacherous coven were poor, but if the enemy were wielding pentacle magic, I had arrived too late to have a hope. He had not used anything so dire on Harald, else Lovise and I could not have removed the spell, but his purpose must have been to see if anyone would do that. Yes, I had walked into a trap.
Pleading a long day, I asked for somewhere to sleep. I was shown to the second room upstairs, which was obviously Lars’s chamber. Lovise, I assume, slept in the attic. As the older child she ought to have preference, I thought, but I was being irrational. Ninety-nine out of a hundred families would rank even the youngest sons ahead of all the daughters. It’s easy to see now that my judgment was being warped by infatuation, but I hadn’t admitted that factor yet, even to myself.
Despite my weariness, sleep e
luded me for a long time. I couldn’t see how I could fight Satanism singlehanded. Ideas flashed through my head like falling stars, and died as fast. I might race back to Helmdon to enlist help—but the thought of a wagonload of geriatric sages advancing on Lincoln was ludicrous. I might approach the bishop, but why should he believe me? So far as he was concerned, I would be very close to a Satanist myself.
Sir Neil probably carried a royal warrant, but I had no such credentials. If I claimed to be a king’s familiaris, who would believe me? I might ride like the wind to London, to warn the justiciar—but again, why should he believe me? Go to France and King Henry himself? He would give me a hearing, but by the time I found out where he was and fought my way through the court officialdom to reach him, the damage might be done— whatever it was, and I still didn’t know that.
That left magic, but what magic? At that point I should probably have climbed out of bed, lighted a candle, and reviewed all the spells I had brought with me in my pack. Instead I tried to do it from memory, which kept me awake for another hour or two. I decided I had nothing that could possibly stand up against the demons Sage Quentin could conjure up with pentacle magic. Hic non sum, would let me be invisible, but only if I didn’t move. Oculos deceptus, which I had once used in a disastrous effort to make one man look like another, only worked, if it worked at all, in very poor lighting. And, of course there was Mori vermes, which could stun a crow. I knew by heart Cambrioleur, a one-voice spell to open locks, but I couldn’t imagine it would work on the gates of the castle. And I could think of nothing else useful.
chapter 11
“i fear that Lord Richard is fading fast,” Sage Quentin said as he closed the door. “Everyone tells me what a fine man he was in his day.” He turned to the two chess players, who were again on their feet, having started another game since Eadig saw them previously.
“Adept Corneille is putting his lordship to bed, Tom. Go and help him.” Both men hurried off into the solar.
“Old Tom and Young Tom,” Quentin told the visitors. “They’re both Tom son of Tom. Some people have no imagination.” His smile never reached his snaky eyes. He paused, looking at Neil and Piers, comparing them. “You must be brothers!” “We are. I couldn’t hope for a better squire than Piers.”
And then the cold, cold eyes turned to Eadig. “And who might you be?”
Eadig didn’t need the sudden thunder of the Tambour drum to warn him. He might not know how to act as a page, but he had a very good idea of what enchanters could do to you if they knew your real name.
“Ereonberht of Nottingham, may it please you, sir.” He held his breath in case one of the D’Airelle brothers corrected him, but neither did.
“It certainly wouldn’t please me that my mother had been so thoughtless,” the sage said, “but if it doesn’t bother you, then I suppose it’s all right. Come, your honors, please.” He started down the stairs.
Neil followed. Piers shot Eadig quizzical looks. He made violent gestures of cutting his own throat with one hand and pointing after Quentin with the other. Piers nodded. Eadig trailed along behind as the brothers followed the snaky sage.
Darkness was closing in on Lincoln. Back down at the postern door, the sage enlisted a real page to carry a lantern and serve as linkboy. Eadig hung back farther as Neil and Piers proceeded down the long wooden stair to ground level, but he dared not lose sight of them, for the bailey was a maze. Being a long way back from the lantern, and treading in the others’ shadow, he found the rutted ground hard going.
Sage Quentin seemed to be doing all the talking.
So! The constable was in his dotage; the man who had written the letter warning the king was dead; the sheriff was away on business. It was all much too convenient. Sage Quentin was now in charge of the castle, or thought he was, and Eadig needed no magic to tell him that he did not trust Sage Quentin.
He wished Durwin were there.
Or maybe it was better that he wasn’t?
The drumming in his head seemed to be getting steadily more urgent. The sun had set and the light was fading to dusk. The sage led them across the bailey, zigzagging between buildings, coming at last to a one-story stone cottage near the north wall. The door was open, light showed inside and through the window next it, although two other windows were dark. With any luck there would be food there.
But as Eadig approached the door he heard the drum again, louder this time, almost frantic: DA-DUM-DA-DUM-DA-DUM . . . He slowed down—way down—and yet his stomach kept egging him on. There might be food there, and he was starving—real, eat-your-boots, famine starving! That Newark cheese had long since done all the good it would ever do. Francois’s cockroaches roasted with cheese sauce?
No, there was no sign of food. There was a squad of men-at-arms, jumping to their feet as the sage and visitors entered. Eadig halted well short of the doorway and watched in horror as the men-at-arms quietly encircled Neil and Piers, who looked around in alarm.
“Just as I thought, Sergeant,” Quentin said. “These men are the traitors we were expecting, imposters pretending to be from His Grace the king. Lock them up securely, and don’t believe a word they tell you. You can give them water, but no food. Adept Corneille and I will question them later, so leave a light on up here when you leave.”
Neil roared and shouted that the sage was lying. Piers reached for his sword, but of course it wasn’t there, since he had surrendered it at the gate, and a man behind him kicked his legs out from under him. In seconds the fight was over, Neil being held in an arm lock and his brother pinned on the floor.
Cyningswice! Eadig fled into the night. The drumming faded and slowed, but did not completely stop.
He ran to a store of firewood outside the nearest building and dodged behind it. No one followed him; there was no one else around to notice. He scrambled up on top of the stack, collecting several splinters and ripping his cloak in at least one place. The pile had a thatched roof over it to keep rain off, and there was just enough space for him to squeeze in under it. There he was hidden him from any casual view and could keep watch on the doorway he had left. He made himself as comfortable as he could, which wasn’t very, and told his belly to stop rumbling. The drumming was barely audible now, so he was safe— relatively safe—for the moment.
How hard would Quentin hunt for the missing Ereonberht? Not knowing Eadig’s real name, he couldn’t make him answer a summoning spell. The castle’s main gates would certainly be closed by now, although the posterns might still be open. But they would be guarded, and guards were always more suspicious at night. Eadig was trapped there until morning or death by starvation, whichever came first.
The sage departed, following his linkboy. After a while the sergeant led his men away, closing the door, but not locking it, so far as the lurking Eadig could see. He waited what felt like a long time, but there was a still a faint light inside that window alongside the door, and none in the other windows, so obviously there were two or more rooms. His teeth were chattering, but he thought it was hunger more than the temperature that was making him feel so cold. He decided to risk some exploration.
He scrambled down, went back to the building, and walked all around it, staying close to the wall. The windows at the rear matched those at the front, and all of them were barred. There was only the one door. In the darkness, he couldn’t see whether it was marked with a pentacle, but that was usually more a warning than a real trap, for it was a point of honor among enchanters not to ward a door so heavily that it would seriously harm an intruder. Would traitor enchanters feel bound by such a custom? He tested the door as he had been taught, passing his hand over it without ever actually touching it; he detected a spell, but a very faint one. Using a trick that Durwin had taught him, he whispered a Paternoster before trying the latch.
That worked. Eadig felt no bad effects when he opened the door. Pushed very slowly, it did not even squeak. There was no one in the first room, the one he had seen before. A lantern on the table held
a tallow candle, which gave the only light, however bright it had seemed from the outside. Right beside him was another door, which must lead to the other room or rooms, but no light showed beneath it. When he tested it, the warning chill almost froze his hand off, so he backed away quickly. Whatever that warding did was ferocious! If Neil and Piers were in there, then even Durwin’s skills might not suffice to rescue them.
There was also a cellar, as Eadig discovered by very nearly falling headfirst into it, because the trap was open, with the flap lying flat on the floor, conveniently placed to trip people. He was not going to go down there without some light, and there were no handy spare candles lying around—anything at all useful or valuable must be kept behind the warded door. So he would have to take the lantern, and anyone outside watching the window would know the prisoners were not alone.
He decided he had to risk that and he had better move quickly, because the sage had clearly said that he would be coming back with Adept Corneille. The wooden staircase was very steep, almost vertical, and lacked a handrail, so Eadig decided to treat it as a ladder and go down backward. The cellar felt shivery cold after the stuffy cottage above.
He was halfway down when Neil’s voice said, “It’s Eadig.”
“Ereonberht!” That was Piers correcting him. The squire lacked his brother’s brawn as yet, but he had more brains. Perhaps Neil preferred to joust without his helm.
Eadig-Ereonberht reached the bottom of the ladder and looked around with horror and disgust. The cellar was much larger than the room he had just left, underlying the entire area of the building, but it was divided it into the same two unequal parts as the upper floor, in this case by a wall of stout iron bars. The ceiling beams were low enough to be uncomfortable for a full-grown man, but not enough to trouble a midget like him. The floor was paved with bare flagstones. As he moved his lantern, spooky shadows crept everywhere.