A Well-Timed Enchantment (12 page)

No sign that anyone was watching or aware of them.

With Oliver several paces away to one side, and Baylen several paces away to the other, Deanna turned her attention to the cauldron. It was enormous, big enough that Deanna could easily have fit inside it.
Must have been awful
carrying it out here,
she thought. And it was filled, as Baylen had said it should be, with metal of all sorts. Mostly armor, she noted.
This is finally over,
she thought.
Look out, elves, here I come.
The small wooden box was perched at the top. Her hands closed around it, lifted it, removed it from the pile. Mostly armor, but it started to settle, to tip, and oh no, the guards would be sure to hear, except it wasn't settling after all, it was moving upward, and a silvery gauntlet grabbed hold of her wrist, and the gauntlet was attached to an armpiece which was attached to a cuirass, and it was an entire chain-mail-armored man who'd been crouched down in that enormous cauldron with a few stray pieces of scrap metal to camouflage him, but now he had hold of her, and the wooden box had dropped from her fingers, which were becoming numb from the pressure of his restraining her, and that was Algernon's face leering at her from underneath that helmet, and a dozen armed guards had jumped out from behind trees and bushes and clumps of dirt that had seemed too small to hide anybody, but now they had their swords and crossbows and pikes leveled at Oliver and Baylen and Deanna, and Algernon said, "Are you ready to talk now?"

"Uncle Algernon," Baylen said with a nervous laugh, "it's me, Baylen."

Still holding on to her, the wizard looked beyond Deanna to his nephew. "I see who it is, you meddling idiot. Put your hands up."

"Uncle Algernon!" Baylen tried to sound indignant, but the drawn weapons were obviously making him edgy.

"
Put your hands up.
"

Baylen put them up.

Oliver, wearing what Deanna considered his I-told-you-so look, raised his hands also.

"Somebody's going to get hurt, with all those weapons," Baylen grumbled as Algernon motioned two of his men forward.

"Nobody's going to get hurt," Algernon said, never loosening his grip on Deanna.

Ha!

"Now you've done it," she said. "You can kiss your gold good-bye, you know."

Algernon gave her that boy-are-you-a-halfwit look. "Gold?" he said. "Under the moon? Everybody knows gold is aligned with the sun, not the moon."

Everybody?

The men took Baylen's sword and Oliver's, then patted them up and down searching for hidden weapons. Oliver had a knife that Deanna hadn't known of. Resourceful—not that it made any difference now.

Baylen gave a baleful glare at the young man who searched him. "Boy, Norman, you just wait until I tell my father," he snarled. "Are you going to be in trouble."

Norman didn't appear overly daunted by the idea.

With her companions disarmed, Algernon finally released Deanna. He stood looking at her as though she were a minor annoyance, but mostly
weighing, evaluating. It was the sort of look Oliver—when he'd still been a cat—had given Aunt Emilienne's goldfish, as though wondering how good a dinner they'd make.

She stared at her feet to avoid Algernon's penetrating eyes.

"We'll bring them back to Belesse," he told his men. But then he glanced around as though he'd just realized something was wrong. He settled his gaze on Baylen. "Where's your brother?"

"Brother?" Baylen said innocently.

Algernon folded his arms across his chest.

"Oh." Baylen gave the nervous grin again. "Leonard? You mean where's Leonard?"

Algernon watched Baylen, and Baylen watched Algernon.

"In serf Guillaume's pond," Deanna said. At least she didn't have to carry Leonard on her conscience anymore.

The wizard didn't point out that it was late for swimming, even though it must be five o'clock in the morning, if not later. The night seemed determined to last forever. He sighed. "Norman," he said, "why don't you take Baylen to Guillaume's holding? See if Leonard needs rescuing."

The young servant saluted sharply, all the while sucking in his cheeks to keep from laughing. Perhaps that should have made Deanna feel better about Baylen leaving her and Oliver alone with Algernon and all his armed guards. It didn't.

The wizard took off his helmet and squirmed out of the armor he'd worn to hide in the cauldron. Like Oliver, he was dressed in black. But while the dark against Oliver's fair skin made him look dramatic and interesting, it made Algernon look positively cadaverous. Her watch still hung around his neck by the gold chain she'd seen that evening. "Torrance, you make sure our young friend doesn't try anything foolhardy," he told the burly man who was guarding Oliver. "The rest of you can bring all this back to the castle." He ignored the groans of complaint and indicated for Deanna to follow Oliver and the man Torrance.

But things quickly turned nasty: Torrance took Oliver by the arm and Oliver twisted away from the touch. The guard roughly took hold of him again and Oliver looked ready to fight about it "Oliver," she said.

Oliver narrowed his eyes.

He's not going to listen to me,
Deanna thought.

However, when Torrance tugged on his arm once more, Oliver went with him quietly.

Deanna was aware that Algernon had taken in all this.

"Who are you?" he asked as they started toward the castle. "And what are you doing here?"

"That's for me to know and for you to find out," she said, estimating, after she'd already said it, that it made her sound about five years old.

"This ... thing, which Baylen called a watch: What is it?"

"Never saw it before," Deanna said—so what if he knew it as a lie?

"The numbers change."

"Do they?"

"They count something. But they count strangely. They go to fifty-nine, then start all over again."

Sounded like seconds mode: the button must have gotten pressed while she tried to disentangle the watch from her sweater, sitting—all that while ago—on the side of the well in Chalon. She didn't say that; she said, "That is strange."

He grabbed her arm and swung her around to face him.

She scrunched her eyes closed to avoid his eyes.

"What's a Taiwan?" he fairly screamed, shaking her. "Who's this creature with the big ears and the long nose and the white gloves?"

"I don't know. Leave me alone."

She heard a scuffle from up the road and looked. Oliver was struggling with Torrance. The bigger man had him on his knees, his arms twisted up behind his back, but Oliver was still fighting to get back to her, to protect her. "It's all right," she called, thinking, If
Torrance hurts him, I'll
... She didn't know what she'd do, but she was determined that she'd make him pay somehow. "I'm all right, Oliver."

Oliver stopped struggling and Torrance hauled him to his feet. Algernon released Deanna, and Oliver let himself get yanked around, back toward the castle.

"What do the numbers count?" Algernon asked from between clenched teeth.

"Beats of your heart," Deanna said, spitting out the words as fast as she could think of them. "Each time your heart beats, the watch subtracts a day from your life. Take it off soon or you may well drop dead before breakfast."

She was angry enough to be careless. She let her eyes meet his. But he was angry also, angry and scared, in no mood to try mind control. He shoved her, hard enough that she had to take two quick steps, not hard enough to hurt, or to make her fall.

They walked the rest of the way in silence. The sky was definitely getting lighter. Castle Belesse
loomed darkly ahead of them, looking for all the world like a fortified prison. The drawbridge was open, as it had been all the while she'd been here. Torches burned at that entry and at the entry to the main building. The courtyard was faintly illuminated by the torches along the inside of the encircling wall, but there were no lights showing in any of the windows. Except for a lone guard pacing along the top of the wall, no one seemed to be stirring at this early hour.
Seven o'clock?
she guessed.
Seven-thirty?
Normally she got up at seven-thirty. She'd never before been the whole night without going to bed. The cooking staff would be awake and about, but busy in the kitchen. No one would know where Algernon was taking them. No one would know he had taken them.
People disappear,
Leonard had told her.

She must have unintentionally balked, or Algernon expected her to try to escape, for he took firm hold of her arm. In the silent dawn their footsteps clattered noisily on the drawbridge. Noisily enough to wake castle sleepers? She doubted it. Should she scream? Should she assume Sir Henri would defend her against his own brother?

"To the tower, sir?" Torrance asked.

"Stable."

So he had something planned for them. Something so terrible he didn't dare do it here at the castle where normal (more or less) people could find out about it. She remembered Baylen summoning him to the stable to deal with a horse with a broken leg. She stiffened, refusing to walk. If she screamed and nobody came, still that wouldn't make their situation any worse. It could only help. Perhaps the wizard sensed the scream building in her throat, for he clapped his hand over her mouth. "Come on," he muttered between clenched teeth. She let herself drop so that he had to support her weight. His free hand circled her waist and he started dragging her across the courtyard, away from the entry hall, away from civilized behavior. "I'm not going to hurt you."

Sure he wasn't.

She tried to bite his hand, but it was large, and firmly centered over her mouth, and she couldn't get to it. Already they were away from the main entry, halfway to the stables. Her heels had left tracks in the packed earth of the courtyard. Would anyone notice and wonder? She could smell the animal pens: the goats, the pigs, the horses.

"Move," Algernon snarled at a clutch of half-grown chickens too intent on pecking at something in the dirt to get out of his way.

Oliver must have thought he was snapping at her, or he heard her muffled cries for help. In any case, he whirled around, and Algernon hissed into her ear, "Stop being stupid." And Torrance, who appeared to be the kind of man who didn't mind hurting people, drew his sword. It left its sheath with a sibilant whisper reminiscent of Aunt Emilienne sharpening her kitchen knives. The slitty-eyed expression Oliver wore reminded Deanna that he was used to claws and teeth: he was probably imagining himself going for Torrance's throat.
Don't fight him,
Deanna wanted to warn him, but Algernon's hand still covered her mouth.

Her watch intervened.

Or, rather, the musical alarm did.

"Dah-da dah-da dah-da dah..." It gave its tinny rendition of the opening notes from the "Mickey Mouse March."

Two bars into it and Algernon had let go of her and ripped the chain from his neck and was holding the watch away from himself at arm's length.

Drop it,
Deanna wished at him.

He looked at it in horror, his hand tight on the chain.

Drop it, drop it.

The music stopped, its message complete. (Seven-thirty, time to get up.) He looked from the watch to Deanna. He wasn't going to drop it. He wasn't going to stampede in helpless panic.

But the pigs were.

Behind him, the pig keeper's charges had roused themselves from dead-asleep to oinking, snorting pandemonium.

"Down, Squeakers. Back off, Patch," the little pigman cried. He'd been asleep on a pallet in one corner of the pen, and he rubbed his eyes with one hand, tried to restrain the pigs with the other. They continued to squeal and hurl themselves against the gate and the sides of the pen. "Charlemagne, you stop that right now."

Torrance, looking at the swirl of pigs open-mouthed, had let his sword arm drop. He and Oliver backed away from the gate, which rattled loosely in its rawhide bindings. Deanna and Algernon backed away from the side of the pen, which looked considerably less secure than it had five seconds ago.

"Patch! I'll stew you for dinner for sure 'less you get away from there!" No sooner said than the old man looked up and saw Deanna. Saw Algernon, with one hand still gripping her arm, the other holding out her watch. She saw something go on behind those eyes—she didn't know what. "Yey!" he called, giving the nearest pig a smack on the rump with the flat of his palm. "Walk! Walk time." And with that he flipped the rawhide thong that held the gate closed. "Yey, pigs! Walk!" A diversion!

The pigs headed for the courtyard.

Or, to be more precise, the pigs headed for Deanna and Algernon, who were standing between them and the courtyard.

The pigman put his hand next to his mouth and gave a cry that was half yodel, half yell. "Yah-yah-yah-yah! Snowy! Blacky!" One pen over, between them and the courtyard, a pair of young goats jumped their fence.

"Hey!" their keeper yelled at the pigman. "Don't do that." Too late.

The goats were headed for the pigman.

Or, to be more precise, the goats were headed for Deanna and Algernon, who were standing between them and the pigman.

Deanna scrambled up onto the railing of the pigpen. Algernon was half a step behind her.

"Whoa, Charlemagne! Back, boy." The pigman stopped the biggest of the pigs from getting past them. He headed it off toward where Algernon was perched on the fence. Other pigs got confused and started milling about, bumping into each other and into the side of the pen.

Deanna felt the boards rattle under her. Algernon had his knees pulled up to his chin.

Meanwhile the boy who tended the goats had opened the gate to his pen in order to lead the two escaped goats back in. Instead the others got out.

"Bah! Bah!" they bleated, heading straight for the confusion. "Oink! Oink!" the pigs snorted. The dust they raised swirled thickly. The goats were the worst. They butted, some gently, some not so gently, against the pigs and the pen and the other goats. One began to nibble at Algernon's left sleeve while he had his attention on holding the watch away from another on his right side. As soon as he got distracted by noticing what was happening to his shirt, Deanna thought, she was going to grab the watch and run.