Kingdom Of Argylle - A Sorcerer And A Gentleman Part 33

She left him alone all day and returned long after the brief sunset. No luncheon. Dinner was a plain dried-vegetable stew and bread. Dewar supposed he was being penalized for suggesting they eat less and made no comment nor complaint. His companion said not a word and, soon after the meal was ended and the dishes cleaned, she unrolled her bedroll and curled up in it with her back to him.

Dewar hoped she'd be in better temper in the morning.

She was not. The temperature had dropped again, and the cold drove her in to huddle by the fire and work distractedly at something that involved many needles sticking out in different directions-an apt a.n.a.logy, thought Dewar, for her spiky mood.

The screaming of the wind in the chimney was maddening, and it batted and fanned the flames and blew ashes and cinders into the room gustily from time to time.

Her crossness made him fidgety, and he could not keep his mind on his book.

That day went slowly and dumbly to its grim close.

On returning from her visit to the barn the next day, Dewar's companion presented him diffidently with a pair of crutches.

"Here. Try one under your left arm. You can't use the right yet."

He blinked. They were new-made; they smelled of fresh-cut, cold wood.

284.

'Etizahetfi "I'm sorry I've been so snappy," she added, looking down. "I don't like winter."

Dewar nodded and accepted a crutch. With her help, he got up and hopped awkwardly, then less so, across the room and back.

"A great improvement. I can make it to the Jakes alone," he joked.

She left him to practice s.h.i.+fting and moving his weight without hurting his broken arm and leg or still-sore ribs. Dewar limped to the door as she closed it and followed her into the hall. It was long and narrow, panelled with dark wood and unlit.

"Wait, wait," she called, unseen, "there's lumber all over, I'll make you a light-" and a moment later a light flared and settled halfway up the wall, some distance down the hall ahead of him, and showed him that the hall was an obstacle course of boxes, barrels, piled wood, and cans of water. She had laid all this up here, he guessed, to wait out the siege of the storms.

"There. .Be careful."

"I will."

"Mind the stairs, around there. Three down, and then a big flight, but you'll see the window. I must go back to the barn." She lit another wall-sconce from the first and thumped off around the corner and down.

Dewar, hissing when he jarred his leg, made slow progress down the hall to the light and paused there, staring at it.

It was shaped like a flower, the candle rising from the half-open petals at its base, polished silver leaves behind forming a reflector.

Dewar looked up and down the hall swiftly. Yes, the lights were the same, the panelling patterned at the top with a chequering of light and dark wood, the carpet soiled now but the same. Disregarding the flaring pain in his leg, he hastened to a door, opened it, tried another beyond it, thumped back past the chamber where he had been confined, and at the other end found a T-intersection beyond a door, "Ah," he muttered, and at one end, indeed, was the lava- Sorcerer and a Qentteman 285.

tory and jakes and at the other was the room where he had dined with Prospero.

Dewar summoned an ignis-spark and kindled a five-light candelabrum. The place had been ransacked since his dinner there. A draped brocade curtain had been pulled right down off its rail at one window; the window itself gaped through a shard-edged opening at the top. The desk was overturned, its drawers emptied; a sideboard had been tipped over, and there was broken gla.s.s in the fireplace. Dewar pegged slowly forward. Snow and rain had come in through the window, staining the lovely carpet; the table where he'd sat was still there, though the chair had been hurled at a mirror to break both.

Of course they-Herne from the look of it-would have searched the place for Prospero's effects. Dewar scowled anyway, disgusted at the desecration of a place where he had pa.s.sed a pleasant evening with an uncanny host. A few half-burned books were in the fireplace with the gla.s.s; was this where the woman had scavenged the books he'd been reading? Dewar riffled pages; these were estate account-books. He tossed them down. Gla.s.s jingled.

There was nothing left of the contents of the desk. All confiscated; Gaston or Herne had probably gone through it all. Dewar snorted. Were they any kind of sorcerers, they'd have pa.s.sed on the desk and searched for Prospero's bed and his clothes. Those things, attuned to him by his daily use of them, would have led them straight to him as surely as the ring Lady Miranda had had, if they knew how to exploit the link. He paused in his rummaging through the rubble by the desk. Very likely he had been lying in Prospero's bed himself.

Dewar poked with his crutch among the broken bits of wood and gla.s.s that had been chair and mirror. No, this hadn't been a sorcerous mirror, though Prospero had been using it as such. His rage at the vandalism was replaced by melancholy. He turned from the ruin and limped out, his leg aching and burning.

In the hall he yelped when he b.u.mped into a barrel, and he cursed the pack-rat behavior of his companion. She was 286.

'EtizaBetfi as bad as the plundering soldiers who'd fouled Prospero's study, a mess-leaving animal with no appreciation for a fine house or a fine carpet. In fresh fury he made his way to the stairs, where he practiced going up and down.

"How are you getting on?" she asked, coming into the hall at the bottom.

Dewar shot her a quick glare, softened it when she stared startled back. "The house is very cold," he said. "The exercise heats me."

She said it was colder outside.

'Tti not attempt that today, I think," he said.

"Not for many days. Spring maybe," she nodded, and walked step-by-step up and down three times with him.

When he grew tired, she took the crutch and added padding to the handgrip and armrest, velvet-covered wool wadding, and Dewar bit his tongue to keep from asking her what the h.e.l.l was in all the barrels and boxes and whatever did she think to do with them.

Instead, he went back to bed and rested there, feeling pleased beneath his irritation. The leg hurt, but not agonizingly. Dewar drew on the Well, attending to it. He was certain he could get around his tower without a.s.sistance. Tomorrow he would leave this place of war and woe, making his Way to the agreeable surroundings of his own library and workroom.

She had put his satchel by the bed when she had first brought him in. Dewar knew she hadn't rummaged in it, for it was tied just as he'd left it. He lay abed in the darkness after she had gone out, as she did every morning, and counted deliberately to one hundred, then rose and dressed rapidly. The satchel he hung on his neck after taking from it a square cube of stone, his token for returning to his tower in its cul-de-sac of Pheyarcet, and then he threw wood on the fire until, despite the battling wind, flames roared perilously high up the chimney.

Dewar, holding the stone before him in his right hand, lifted his voice above the fire and began to chant, invoking Sorcerer and a (jentteman 287.

the Well of Landuc through the fire and his thorn-girdled tower through the affinity of his stone for its origin.

The fire whirled and whorled, became a bright tunnel leading into darkness.

The door opened and Dewar did not allow himself to be distracted by a gasping scream of shock from the young woman; he stepped forward into the tunnel and was swept through it to its conclusion: just on his own doorstep, surrounded by flowering, bristling vines which drew away from him. The red and white blossoms bobbed with the breeze of his arrival and then stopped. It was summer here; the heat was welcome on his head as he opened the tower door and hobbled in happily.

There was no place like home, he thought, and smiled.

THE ROADS OF Lvs WERE FROZEN and buckled with the freezing. The fields of Lys were greenless and cold, and the trees bore no leaf nor bud. Dewar hastened past scenes which would have caught his eye in fairer seasons and delayed him. There was no snow, only ice; durable black ice on the ponds, brittle white fringes of ice in the road-ruts, and the earth around wore mourning colors. He met few travellers, and they laconic or silent. The wind grieved unceasing, Prospero's curse on the realm.

He stopped at a kingstone he recalled pa.s.sing before with Otto and Lunete, and there under the ice-bearded head of Panurgus he composed and uttered a glamour-spell which put an outer likeness of an unremarkable and unmemorable stranger on him. This accomplished, he mounted again and continued toward the city of Champlys. His intention was only to get word of Otto's and the army's whereabouts and fortune, and he believed the most reliable source would be Otto's wife, Lunete, who had shown clearly that she trusted Dewar in their earlier acquaintance. He had recuperated a 288 -3 ttizabeth fWiOey quarter of a year in his tower, and that time here had been but days owing to the rapidity of the Eddy which housed the Tower of Thorns' pocket-world.

Dewar's summer in his tower had been shadowed by a cloudy, swelling desire to find Prospero again and come to a clearer understanding of their relation, though Dewar was ambiguous as to what that understanding was to be. Were Prospero his father-and there were ways to be certain- then what importance were they to place upon that? Blood-kins.h.i.+p created only disagreeable complications in the social interactions of sorcerers. Dewar's past was criss-crossed with such limits. In Phesaotois, he had seen Lord Oren chafing under blood-restrictions in his sorcery, his territory surrounded by descendants of Primas, his power limited by their prior claims and his ability to challenge them limited by their blood. Oren, with Dewar's help and careful scheming, had managed to get a senior brother killed in a duel and increase his standing. Dewar could live only under Oren's protection, for Odile's vendetta against Dewar prevented him from claiming any territory of his own. In the end he had left for Pheyarcet, seeking a foothold there-and he had easily found one, a stable, strong Eddy, among the Well's disintegrating strands. Would he have to defend that now against a compet.i.tor? None of the other sorcerers and sorceresses of Pheyarcet had deigned to notice him. Would Prospero claim the Tower of Thorns, seek to steal and use Dewar's spells, sap him and oppress him? Dewar was determined that he should not. Dewar might leave Pheyarcet when he had solved his Third-Force problem, but in his own chosen time, not hounded by another parent.

In a Champlys ale-house he learned that the Countess was in the city and that her husband was still at the wars with many men of Lys, and he heard Otto's name spoken less kindly than it had been before. Ottaviano was named an adventurer who had taken advantage of the Countess's favor, and the men of Lys muttered that no Lys blood would have been spilled had Ottaviano not wed the Countess and dragged them into his quarrels. They seemed to be forgetting that the Emperor would have levied troops from Sorcerer and a Qentkman 289.

Lys anyway, as was his right. The Countess, curiously, took no blame; rather her late guardian Sa.r.s.emar and the Emperor were held responsible for not marrying her off to a better man.

Dewar nodded sagely and said empty things. He left the ale-house to find another near Lunete's small castle.

At this better ale-house he bespoke himself a room, and that night when the curfew had rung he closed himself in and worked more sorcery.

Unseen, he opened his small chamber's cas.e.m.e.nt and climbed agilely down the rough stone wall. Unseeable, he pa.s.sed through the streets and, close on the heels of some guards, he slipped into the castle of Lys itself. Once inside his way was easily made to the Countess's bedchamber, which was reached through a solar.

The heavy-panelled solar was empty; linens hung before a fire there, and candles burned, but no one sewed or sang. The chamber door was ajar, and it too was empty, though ready; the fire warmed the room and made it drafty and the bedclothes were turned back. There were candles burning here, too. Dewar snuffed three of them and waited in the corner so made dim.

Laudine, Lunete's maid, entered and put wood on the fire, fetched something from a cabinet, then went out again.

Dewar waited. Women's voices murmured in the outer room, heralding the Countess of Lys herself preceded by light-bearing Laudine and followed by two maids. The maids began undressing the lady, and Dewar grinned invisibly and then turned his back as a gentleman ought. Lunete's women were clumsy, and she chided them often; they were slow to undo laces, careless with the gown, too rough with her hair while brus.h.i.+ng it.

"That will be all, Laudine," Lunete said presently.

Dewar turned. Lunete was seated on the edge of the bed now, dressed in finely pleated saffron linen, her rich-colored hair gold-glinting.

Laudine was kneeling at the fire with a long-handled bra.s.s bedwarming pan; she looked round at the Countess. "My lady, shall I not warm the bed?"

290.

'Eliza&etfi 'Wiftey "That's my husband's duty, Laudine," snapped Lunete. "I said that will be all. Leave me."

"Yes, my lady." The maid set the warming-pan aside quietly, rose, and curtseyed. "Good night, my lady," Lau-dine said, bland-faced, and went out, after extinguis.h.i.+ng all of the candles but the one at the bedside, which was sweet beeswax as thick and as long as Dewar's arm.

Lunete lifted her voice irritably. "Do close the door! There is a draft." The door clicked.

The Countess of Lys opened a casket on the bedside table and took out a small object. "Lunete," called Dewar softly.

She jumped and stared around the room, at the door. Dewar whispered the words to dispel the spell around him.

"Don't call out," he held up his hand to caution her as her shocked gaze fixed on him. "Dewar!"

He came forward into the candle's fight and bowed. "How came you here?" whispered Lunete, and she put the thing-a locket-into the casket again and closed it quickly.

"Sorcerers have ways," whispered Dewar back, smiling. Lunete stood. "This is my bedchamber, sir, and an untimely hour for an audience," she replied, but she did not sound annoyed.

"I knew not what manner of reception I might find in your house, Countess," he said. "I am here only to glean gossip-grains, and for no baser purpose."

She stared at him. Her breast rose and fell. She moistened her lips. "Gossip?" she repeated.

Dewar nodded. "What have you heard from Otto of late?" he asked.

Lunete's eyes blazed. "You'd know better than I," she snapped, and repented when he lifted his eyebrows. "Why do you ask that?" she added.

"Madame, I have given offense in the intrusion, but I a.s.sure you-"

Sorcerer and a gentleman 291.

Lunete's eyes moved over his face, his body, and she clenched her hands to stop them shaking. "Did he send you?"

"Otto? No. n.o.body sends me, my lady. I am a free agent," Dewar said, and he wryed his mouth. "So you have no news," he said, "no fresh news, at least."

"Nor any stale news, to cram a goose and cook it," said Lunete, walking to the fire. Dewar followed her. She stood holding her hands to the flames, trying to warm them.

"No news at all?" Dewar said, frowning. "Well, I do not mean daily reports, Countess-"

"Lunete," she corrected him in an undertone.

"Lunete," he said softly, looking at her high firelit cheekbones, her straight mouth. "I only ask in general."

"I cannot marshal you even a general report, Dewar. 1 have not heard from Otto in-I will show you his letters-"

He caught her arm, detained her at the fireside. "No need. He doesn't write." Dewar released her arm, but somehow kept her hand.

Lunete shook her head, looking at him with a certain hauteur. "He is a mean correspondent, a miser with his words as with his hours," she said. "I have had no word, and no sight, nor message, since you all left Ascolet. Nothing to speak of. Quick lines-nothing telling, nothing speaking, nothing such as a husband might write his wife in time of war."

Dewar felt constrained to put some small defense forward. "He was very busy in Chenay," he said, "with the fighting."

"Has no courier gone to or from the army?" She lifted her eyebrows in disbelief.

Dewar looked down and shook his head. "I ... certainly they have, Lunete. The Marshal's lines of communication are superb."

"The Baron's are not."

He sought for something to say and found it. "I am sorry, m'lady. I am sorry to have flicked a wound, and I am sorry to have no better report of him for you."

"He sends no message by you."

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'EtizaBetfi < p="">

Her other hand joined his, ten fingers cradling five. "We have had rumors of a victory. They say Prospero is taken."

"Taken and escaped, Lunete. It is but a piece of victory."

Lunete lifted her chin, defiant. "I cheer for him, then, and I curse the Emperor's fortune and Landuc's. May Prospero win and rule, and may he throw down all those who oppose him."

"Including Ottaviano," Dewar half-inquired.

"Indeed," said Lunete, and her eyes burned at him.

"I confess," Dewar said, "that I myself was the agent of the Prince's escape, for he had-he has conducted himself better than many others would, and generously, and as a gentleman, and I loathed to think of the Emperor taking his head."

"Good," said Lunete, and pressed his hand. "Good. When you return-"

"I shall not be returning to Gaston, Otto, and their armies," Dewar said. "I have no interest in benefiting either side in the quarrel, and there are better ways by far for a sorcerer to spend his time. I intend to engage in some of them."

Lunete's eyes on his were dark. Her lips were slightly parted; her fingers, still clasping his warmly. Barely above a whisper, she said, "Indeed, the time may be better spent on many things."

The fire's heat lay on Dewar's thigh and leg. He looked into Lunete's wide eyes, surprised and then comprehending: she was sincere. A s.h.i.+ver, not of cold, went over him. In a voice softer than hers, he agreed, "Indeed," and put his mouth on hers, and as he did she released his hand and embraced him. They swayed together, twining arms around one another, and stood close-locked on the hearth. Lunete's kiss was uncertain at first, and Dewar ran his hands down her back, pressing her body against his as he kissed her more and more deeply, inflamed by her unexpected heat.

Sorcerer and a gentleman 293.

"Bed," he breathed against her temple, kissing her eyes, her cheeks, her forehead, and thus they did.

Heated, they pushed the wool and linen bedclothes back and lay cooling in the candlelight. Dewar stirred first, moving to one side, kissing Lunete's body up and down, shoulder, chin, throat, breast, belly, knees, thighs. She sighed and started, trembled with surprise, and he went on kissing, moving his tongue and mouth on her and stroking with his hands, rolling in sensation as he loved to do in the sea's waves.