Split Heirs (18 page)

Dunwin glanced around at the watching warriors again, then shrugged. “All right,” he said, “I'll do it.”

Chapter Nineteen

“You know,” said King Gudge to the freshly-severed head before him, “it's all right if
I
say stuff like that about Prince Arbol
—
the unnatural brat's my son, after all
—
but that doesn't mean it's all right for just anyone to go around making personal remarks about the spunkless little worm.” He belched eloquently and tossed the head backwards over his right shoulder.

Lady Ubri caught it in midflight and brought it back. “The
left
shoulder, my liege,” she murmured. “Left for luck.”

“Stupid woman's nonsense,” the king snarled.

“If you don't believe me, you can look it up yourself, Your Majesty; the facts are documented. Toss it over the right shoulder and we get rain.”

“Damned girlie mumbo-jumbo.” Gudge gave Ubri a dirty look, but he did toss the head over the rainless shoulder. Rain was nasty stuff; gave a man a bath whether he wanted one or not.

The remainder of Gudge's royal council sat in pale-lipped silence through the whole of this Gorgorian ritual. They had been shocked into utter stillness, to a man, when the late Lord Kaber had made his last, unfortunate remark, namely: “Boys will be boys, as you say, Your Majesty, and even though the brothel which our beloved Prince Arbol's Companions raided was one of my properties I am less distressed by the fact that I lost so much income last night as by the fact that your own dear son was not a member of the raiding party, and I do wonder
—
in light of how much time the young man seems to spend in the company of his food taster
—
if perhaps his, ah, inclinations ought to be looked into, with an eye to the future and the ultimate continuation of your own royal line which will
not
be continued, as you well know, if the prince does not show at least some casual interest in the female of the species.”

It was a very long last remark, one which Gudge edited curtly with his sword.

“There is nothing wrong with my son!” the king roared, slamming his fist onto the council table top.

“Of course not, Your Majesty,” came the instant reply from Lord Viridis. He was seated next to Lord Kaber's headless corpse and had suddenly developed a nasty nervous tic in his right cheek. “Not a thing. Perfectly normal young man.”

The king shook his head. “Why he's got to spend all that time with that masked-up food taster fellow, though
—
I can't say I like it.”

“You could kill the food taster if you want.” The suggestion came from a councilor who always chose a seat well out of sword's reach. He was therefore one of Gudge's bolder advisors.

“Think I don't know that?” the king bellowed. He chucked his empty goblet at the upstart.

The goblet was made of solid gold set with heavy jewels and large enough to hold a full bottle of wine. It made a lovely, ringing
p-toinnnng!
as it struck the outspoken councilor right in the middle of his forehead. He managed a shaky, “I th-thank Your Ma-Majesty for noticing this unwo-unworthy servant,” before he slid under the board.

“The trouble with having royal advisors,” the king muttered half to himself, “is that they're always trying to give a man
advice
!” He was still grumbling and grousing when Lady Ubri slipped unnoticed from the hall.

Lady Ubri knew that it was a normal part of living for human beings to sometimes wish they were someone or something other than what they'd been born. Some men wished they could become women, some women yearned to be men, many hard-working peasants envied the easy life of the cat by the fire while the starving stray desired nothing more than to be a peasant with a roof over his head and a belly that was filled at least some of the time.

At the moment, Lady Ubri wished the unthinkable: She wished she were King Gudge.

It wasn't about power, for once. No, what Ubri envied her royal lord was his brain. It didn't make sense, at first glance. Indeed, when the wish initially showed itself, her own fine mind had shrieked, “
What
brain?” But Ubri knew that Gudge had one; it was just very, very small. There was no room in it for doubts. He knew what was what, and acted accordingly. If he didn't like the way matters stood, he killed people until things got better. And he was never confused about his son, Prince Arbol.

Lady Ubri wished she could say the same. Her plot
—
her wonderful, shiny, simple plot to seduce the prince and rule the kingdom through him
—
had gone splat. If she didn't know any better, she would swear that Prince Arbol had a plot of his own, a plot called: Let's See How Fast I Can Drive Lady Ubri Crazy.

The Gorgorian noblewoman ground her pretty teeth as she recalled, in painful detail, every single encounter she had had with the prince. She had been very lucky, managing to get the boy alone a score of times. Unfortunately, her luck only went as far as giving her the opportunity to seduce him. Half the time, he had been either cold to her advances or just not aware of them. The other half she imagined he was warming up nicely, but what good did it do her? Despite his obvious interest in her charms, the prince kept fidgeting around as if he had somewhere else to be and a lot of important people waiting for him to be there.

“He toys with me,” Ubri murmured darkly. “It is like
skizbrax
, the happy game of my childhood, where you hang an enemy naked from a tree in a pit, using a noose too slack to strangle him immediately. Then you release a starving wolverine, only you keep yanking the rope every time the beast leaps.” She could not help but smile over the innocent pastimes of her youth.

A hard glint came into the Gorgorian lady's eye. Hers was a stubborn race. If they hadn't been so stubborn, they would still be sitting around dung fires in the middle of the Gorgor Plateau, waiting to see what happened next. Stubbornness had gotten them where they were, off that damned plateau and into a palace. Stubbornness was going to get Lady Ubri onto the palace throne or she'd know the reason why.

“Quitters never wear crowns,” she told herself, and set out once more to locate the vacillating prince.

* * * *

“Well?” said Prince Arbol as Wulfrith stole back into the royal heir's private rooms. “Did you fool them?”

Wulfrith threw himself heavily down in a chair by the fireside and wiped cold sweat from his brow. “Let's just say I tried.”

Arbol dragged a stool nearer Wulfrith's chair and assumed an eager, listening pose. “Tell!”

“Well, your Companions aren't as stupid as they look.”

“Who could be
that
stupid?” Arbol commented pleasantly.

“When I told them I wasn't going to take part in the fighting practice today because I had the case of the Gorgorian Sliders, most of them just grunted and nodded. A few of them
—
the ones with no teeth?
—
even fell to their knees and said a thanksgiving prayer.” Wulfrith pondered, then asked, “I wonder why such young fellows don't have any teeth left?”

Arbol just grinned.

“Anyway, I said I only wanted to watch. Then up comes this big bastard, Pentstemon by name, and he says to me, ‘So it
is
true; you heard I bought this new sword and you're afraid of it!
'
”

“What new sword?” Arbol's brows knotted.

“Oh, a silly thing, not worth much, really. It seems he bought it off a Gorgorian woman who claimed it was magic.” As he spoke, Wulfrith felt a throb of professional curiosity as to the Gorgorian method for enchanting cold steel, but in his present circumstances he was unable to pursue that course of inquiry. Clootie had always been more inclined to study the effects of magic on living beings, and Wulfrith followed suit. Privately he resolved to check out the royal library as soon as possible. Perhaps there were some books down there that covered the subject.

And if not, there were always those…
other
books that did quite well at
un
covering a number of far more interesting subjects.

“Well, go on!” Prince Arbol demanded. “So Pentstemon said I was afraid to face this so-called magic sword of his. Then what?”

“Then…” Wulfrith took a deep breath. It wasn't a comfortable memory. “Then I had to prove he was wrong, of course. I mean, that's what you would've done, isn't it?”

“You bet I would!” Arbol leaned closer. “So you fought him, Wulfie?”

“It is what you'd have done. I challenged him to a match on foot, swords only, with just a couple of the Companions present to act as field marshalls. Neither one of us wanted more witnesses.”

Arbol nodded. “Magic swords are contraband. If Pentstemon's blade did anything spectacular, the other Companions wouldn't want to be hauled up before Dad as witnesses.” A wistful, childlike expression came into the prince's eyes. “
Did
the sword do anything spectacular?”

“No.” Wulfrith closed his eyes and once again saw himself standing in the little courtyard, facing off against Pentstemon. The courtyard adjoined the palace dungheaps and there was a good supply of blowflies buzzing about. It had taken the work of a moment for Wulfrith's magic to attract one of them to perch unnoticed on the tip of Pentstemon's sword. Then, a swift transformation spell uttered just as the burly youth raised his weapon, and
whoops!
, over backwards Penstemon tumbled with a fat, startled albatross clutching the edge of his blade with wings and flippered feet. The bird flew off, bewildered, and Wulfrith grabbed his chance. He had his own sword pointed at Pentstemon's throat before the other lad could rally.

All he told Arbol, though, was, “I cheated, so I won. It was no honorable victory.”

“Who cares?” the prince said. “It's the winning that counts. Dad says that all the time. Isn't this a
fun
game Mom invented for us, Wulfie?”

Wulfrith thought about it. “No.”

“Oh, all right, you don't have to pretend you're me for fighting practice any more; just for those stupid court ceremonies and sometimes with my math teacher. Besides, I like fighting practice myself too much to give it away. Good thing, too. If you
did
like to fight, and since we're getting so slick at swapping places, one day you just might get it into your head that you could take my place for keeps.” Arbol sighed. “Then I'd have to kill you.”

“Don't bother.” Wulfrith stretched his feet to the fire. “You can keep your crown. I'm happy being who I am, doing what I do and liking what I like.” He reached into his belt pouch and pulled out the hooded mask. Settling it over his face as he rose, he said, “And one thing I do like is going to the library. May I, Your Highness?”

“
‘May I, Your Highness?
'
” Arbol taunted. The prince leaped up and gave his friend a Hydrangean hotknuckle on the upper arm. “I thought we were pals, Wulfie! What's all this 'Your Highness' dung?”

“Well, you were getting so all-fired protective about being the prince, I just thought
—
” Wulfrith rubbed his sore arm. “All right, if that's how you want it, I'm going to the library whether you want me to or not…Stinky!”

“That's my pal!” The prince laughed and sent Wulfrith on his way.

Wulfrith almost raced to the royal library. As much as he had come to enjoy Prince Arbol's friendship, his first love would always be books.

Especially
those
books. The ones in the alcove. The books whose text and helpful illustrations were a source of never-ending fascination to Wulfrith's young eyes.

“I am a wizard; nothing human disgusts me,” Wulfrith remarked self-righteously as he closed the library doors behind him, removed and stowed his mask, and made a beeline for the alcove. He did not have the plain honesty to admit to himself that disgust was hardly the sentiment
those
books stirred in him. And they stirred plenty.

He was deep into chapter twenty of
The Pomegranate Chamber: An Instructive Inquiry into the Flexibility of the Nubile Youth or Maiden
and had just reached the part about winning the confidence of the Untried Partner, when he became aware of a heavy, musky presence in his immediate vicinity. Discretely he gave his underarms a cursory sniff, then realized that he was not alone.

“Ooooh, Your Majesty, how happy I am to find you.”

She stepped from between two bookcases, her eyes smoldering. With an undulating walk that would leave most snakes perishing of envy, she smoothly approached him and draped herself over one arm of his chair. Leaning forward so that poor Wulfrith was left breathing bosom, she said, “I've heard how much of a scholar you've become, my lord. I, too, am most interested in ancient knowledge.”

“Ungh,” said Wulfrith as the full impact of her scent got him where he lived.

Snuggling partway into his lap, the lady went on: “Now isn't this a marvelous coincidence! You're reading the very same book I've been studying in my spare time. Alas, I am only a simple woman. I'm afraid I lack Your Higness's wisdom. There is
so
much of what I've read that I don't understand.” Ubri slowly licked her forefinger and turned a few pages in the book until she found an illustration that she thought would do. She could not read to save her life, but one look at the open book in the prince's lap told her all she needed to know. If she tossed away this gods-given opportunity, she deserved to let Queen Artemisia rule in peace forever.

“Ah! There it is.” Ubri slipped fully into her prey's lap when she pointed to the illustration of her choice. A sly smile curved her lips as she sensed the young man's growing interest. “I really don't know anything about such matters.” She brought her lips so close to his ear that her tongue gently brushed it. “Would you explain?”