The Haunted Wizard - Wiz in Rhym-6 (23 page)

The boy dashed off, feeling very important, and the friar turned to the innkeeper. "You are safe now, Goodman Dalran, Maid Darsti."

"Yes, thanks to you, friar!" The innkeeper wrung the clergyman's hand, then turned to Mama and Papa.

"And to you, good friends! By what magic you held the knight at bay until the friar could arrive, I know not, but I thank you deeply!"

Darsti caught Mama's hand and covered it with kisses.

"It was our pleasure," Mama assured him. "No woman should be subject to the whims of such a bully, virgin or not!"

"No woman should be forced, most certainly," the friar said with feeling.

"You must be my guests this night!" the innkeeper said.

"It shall be my honor to serve you myself," Darsti assured them. Mama and Papa exchanged a glance; then Papa turned to the innkeeper. "Under the circumstances, I think we will accept your kind offer, mine host—but we were glad we could help." A few hours later they finally managed to close the door of a private room on their grateful hosts. Papa poured them each a glass of wine and said, "A most interesting afternoon, my dear."

"It was indeed," Mama agreed. "At least the brutes still respect the clergy."

" 'Still' is the word," Papa cautioned. "I have difficulty believing the knights of this land have always been such oafs."

"Not in this universe," Mama agreed. "Not if Bretanglia has been a godly kingdom for centuries, as we have been told."

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"Ah, but you are speaking of the past," Papa pointed out. "King Drustan has, wittingly or not, unleashed the forces of cruelty and oppression upon his people."

"He has," Mama agreed, "but they are not very far gone in decadence yet. Friars can still defend the weak from the mighty but corrupt."

"Yes, but only because the knights and their men still have enough respect for the clergy to heed their words," Papa said. "How long can that last, my love?"

"How thickly can the ravens flock to this land?" she returned.

"Up, lazybones!" the voice shouted in Matt's dream. "Why do you lie here sleeping when you should be seeking my murderer?"

Even in his dream Matt came up fighting. "You dare to wake me up! You dare to deprive me of sleep when I've been hiking all day and seeking whatever scraps of information I can to—"

"How dare you talk so to a prince!"

"We've been through that already," Matt said through his teeth. "Do I have to recite an exorcism verse and kick you out of my head so I can get some sleep?"

"No, no!" Gaheris' ghost said quickly. "Not that!"

"Sure, because once I kick you out, you can't get in again." It didn't take much figuring. "So far I'm leaving the mental door open because you might be able to give me information about the crime. No, I don't have anything to tell you yet— but I do have a job for you."

"A job?" the prince cried, highly insulted. "For a prince?"

"Any ghost would do, but you're most likely to know the party in question. Tell me, has Prince Brion showed up on the other side?"

"Brion?" Gaheris pounced on the name. "Has he been slain, then?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out," Matt told him, "and the reports aren't exactly conclusive. It would help a lot if you could tell me you've seen his ghost roaming around looking for that tunnel of light you told me about."

"It would seek out him, not he it," Gaheris said quickly, "but he would be no quicker to go into it than I, if he'd been murdered. No, I have not seen him here…"

"Sure you might not have missed him in the crowd?"

"There are not so many who can or wish to resist that last journey, wizard! Besides, those of us related to one of the newly slain are drawn toward his ghost—several here have told me that! I assure you, if Brion were here, I would know it!"

"That helps." Of course, Matt suspected Brion might have been more likely to seek out that tunnel of light, and its exit to the afterworld, than Gaheris was, especially since for him it would probably be the
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express route to Heaven, or at least to a short stay in Purgatory. Still, Brion was worldly enough to want justice for his own murder. "Yes, that helps. Okay. Thanks. Check in now and then, and I'll let you know if I learn anything solid."

"If! You had confounded well best learn something or I'll—"

"Be kicked out of my head," Matt said, cutting him off. "Now get out of here, before I do my daily exorcises."

"But I—“

"Out!" Matt dream-shouted. "Go 'way and let me sleep!"

"Gone?" Petronille stared, her face ashen. "From a moated grange with a dozen guards and jailers? How could she be gone?"

"I know not, Majesty." Lady Ashmund spoke with tears in her eyes; she too had been fond of the princess. "I know only the news I have been given—that the king went to bring her the news of his victory himself…"

"And I am sure how he meant to celebrate it!" Petronille snapped.

"Perhaps, Majesty, but he found only a wooden statue. Of the real princess, there was no sign."

"No sign, is it? No sign of which he dares tell the world!" The queen turned away to the tall, multipaned windows and stared out at the courtyard, unseeing. "He has spirited her away to some secret bower where he can have her at his mercy for as long as he wishes! Oh, a pox upon this gilded prison!" She turned to catch up a porcelain vase and hurl it into the fireplace. The crash echoed hugely in the stone-walled room, in spite of all the tapestries and thick carpets; Lady Ashmund suppressed a start of shock.

The queen strode the length of the solar and back, raving, "I have silks and satins, I have grandeur and silver and servants, but I cannot go to find the poor child who needs me! Curse the day that ever I met that snake Drustan! Curse the day that I sought a southern princess for my son! How could I ever have believed that she could alloy his spirit with some gentleness, some courtesy, some grace? All that has happened is that Gaheris taught her his roughness and hardness, and that my husband has set his lecherous course toward her! Alas, the poor lady! How shall I ever save her now?" Lady Ashmund sought for a word of hope to give her. "Might it not be that the Lord Wizard of Merovence has rescued her by his magic?"

The queen turned to give her a stony, contemptuous glance. "You know nothing of the old, old sorcery with which this land is imbued, my lady. Even I, who have learned some magic, can only guess at the weight and mass of this cold northern runimancy! It is heavy enough to drown any magic I seek to work, I know that, and I cannot believe that the Lord Wizard could fare better than I! Oh, a pox upon this false husband of mine! A murrain upon him, for the cruel ox he is!"

Lady Ashmund blanched at hearing the curse.

The queen raised her fists before her, calling out, "O elves and sprites of Bretanglia! O pouks and ghasts
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and night-walkers all! If you hear me and can do it, strike down this false king who has foisted himself upon your land! Pouks, smite him! Ghasts, fill his sleep with nightmares! Elves, aim your bolts at his temples! One and all, hear this foreign queen he has brought to misery! Save the southern princess, save the land, and lay him low!"

The king was at dinner the next night, with Prince John at his right hand and Earl Marshal at his left. Two dukes and their duchesses sat at the head table with him, the lower table filled with lesser aristocrats. Drustan was in high good spirits in spite of the nasty surprise Rosamund had left him—he was, after all, the victor, and knew that the queen who had caused him so much frustration and pain with her deprecating remarks and encouragement of his enemies was now eating her heart out in isolation. The Duke of Boromel, sensing His Majesty's mood and its reasons, rose and lifted his cup, crying, "A toast!"

"A toast!" the others cried, and rose, then fell silent with their cups on high.

"To our sovereign liege, who dines upon the rich fare of victory in glittering company—and to our queen, who drinks the bitter wine of defeat in solitude!"

There was a moment's shocked silence, and Earl Marshal frowned—it was a most ungallant toast. Then the king crowed with delight, surging to his feet and lifting his cup. "To the queen!" The other aristocrats took up the cry with relief. "To the queen!" they cried, and laughed and drank. The king set his goblet to his lips, tilted its base high—then turned rigid, eyes bulging, and let out a single hoarse cry as he fell, the goblet slipping from his fingers and dashing wine all over Prince John. There was another moment of shocked silence. Prince John broke it with a cry of distress and dropped to his knees by his father, lifting the older man by the shoulders and feeling for his pulse. For himself, King Drustan knew only sudden darkness that after a while lightened. He seemed to float in a void of mist, hearing voices talk around him.

"Yes, Your Highness, I am sure he will live."

"Praises be!" said John's voice, though it was shaking. "But will he be well?"

"Ah! Nicely asked," the older voice sighed. "No physician can answer that while he sleeps. We can only wait and see how he fares when he wakes."

"I am awake," King Drustan grumbled—but why were the words so slow to come, so hard to form? He forced his eyes open and saw Prince John and Dr. Ursats, staring at him. Behind them he saw the tapestries of his own bedchamber, and the curtains between them and himself were those of his own tester bed. He sat up, assuming his most arrogant posture— then realized that he hadn't, that he had scarcely stirred. Panic gripped him, and he hid it by shouting. "A pox upon you! Do you not hear me? I am awake!"

This time, though, he heard his own voice—only a gargling mixed with a sort of braying, a mouthing of vowels with scarcely a consonant. The panic surged higher, and he would have screamed, only John stepped up to him, gripping his hand. "He wakes! How are you, my father?"
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"What nonsense to worry!" Drustan said, mollified. "I am perfectly well!" But he wasn't, and he knew it. He couldn't hear the words he had spoken, heard only a sort of cawing in their place.

Now the doctor stepped up on his other side and took his hand. "I am relieved to see you conscious, my liege. Do you remember what happened?" Then, before the king could answer, "Allow me to remind you. You were about to drink a toast to the queen when you fell down, unconscious." The king frowned, remembering.

"Suffer my impertinence, Majesty." The doctor leaned over and lifted first one eyelid, then the other, staring intently into each orb in turn. Then he straightened and said, "Squeeze my hand, Majesty."

"What idle game is this?" Drustan snapped, but heard again only an ass' braying. Appalled, he resolved that he would never talk again. He did, however, squeeze the doctor's hand, and Ursats nodded, satisfied. He took the king's other hand from John and said, "Squeeze with this hand now, Majesty." The king repressed the urge to make a withering comment and squeezed. The doctor's face was completely neutral. "Have you squeezed my hand, Your Majesty?"

"What the devil sort of question…" Drustan heard his own cawing and clamped his jaw shut. He forced a very stiff nod.

"Yet I felt nothing," Dr. Ursats said sadly.

"What does this mean?" John cried.

"That His Majesty has been elf-shot," Ursats told him, then to Drustan, "Some malicious sprite has aimed his miniature crossbow at you, Majesty, and struck your temple with his tiny dart. Country folk find their minuscule arrowheads in the dust of a road sometimes, after a thunderstorm. This barb has lodged in your brain, though, and will be some time working its way loose." The king stared, and tried to ignore the fear that threatened to overwhelm him.

"Until it does," Ursats went on, "your speech will be slurred, and the whole right side of your body will move only with difficulty, if at all."

The king brayed denial.

"Peace, Your Majesty." Dr. Ursats patted his hand. "Is not the life a greater thing than the body, and the body itself greater than the ability to walk without a limp?"

"No!" the king shouted, and this time they understood him. The doctor smiled. "You see, Your Majesty? With effort, you can still make yourself understood! With practice and work, you shall one day speak again, almost as well as you did before."

"But my leg!" Drustan howled. "My arm!"

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Ursats explained as though he had understood. "You shall have to work as hard as you did when first you learned sword-play, practice as diligently as when you strove to master jousting by riding at a quintain. But with constant effort, you shall gain in strength and smoothness as the arrowhead works its way free. Then, someday, you shall walk again, perhaps with only the slightest of limps!"

"Learn to walk, as though I were a toddling babe?" The king howled at the injustice of it. John gripped his hand again. "You shall not face this daunting prospect alone, Father! I shall be here beside you every day, here to comfort and sustain you! Only tell me what you need, and I shall see it fetched!"

"Don't patronize me, boy!" King Drustan snarled.

John frowned. " 'Don't’ ... ? You said something else, then 'boy.'" The doctor looked up with keen interest. "Can you understand him, then?"

"A little, I think. Was I right, Father?"

Drustan stared at him, gears meshing in his brain. Slowly, he nodded.

"We captured the Count of Tundin in battle," John reminded him, "but his youngest son fought in Earl Marshal's entourage. Shall we hold both father and son attainted, then?" Drustan scowled. "Why speak of such trivia at a time like this?"

"Again, more slowly," John urged, and Drustan realized what the boy was trying to do. Slowly and with great effort he said, "Attaint the father. The son is Count."