The Oathbound Wizard-Wiz Rhyme-2 (41 page)

"Now we can get down to some real mischief! Which reminds me--I wonder what happened to Puck?"

"I should think he pursued the better course of valor and decamped when the knight was captured."

"Makes sense--but that means he probably has a grudge against the duke and his men."

"Have you any fault to find with that?"

Matt shook his head. "Sounds fine. Which means we should be seeing him making trouble pretty soon now."

"Aye, but we'll not be told of it."

"Until it reaches disaster proportions, anyway." Matt rose to a crouch, prowling about the cell. "Wonder what happened to Stegoman? We sure could use his light right now...Hey!" He looked up, appalled at a thought. "You don't suppose they really managed to catch him, do you?"

Fadecourt shook his head with conviction. "I had thought of it as soon as the duke said it, but knew it was not so. Even drunken, the dragon would be a formidable enemy--and it was by force of arms they captured us, not by sorcery."

"Good thought." Matt nodded, relieved. "The sorcery was only to suck us into the trap--but this military duke preferred to do the actual take by force of arms. And Stegoman is at least as dangerous drunken as sober." He didn't mention the dragon's tendency to blast at random when he was intoxicated--when he was surrounded by enemies, it really didn't matter much.

"What do you seek?"

"This!" Matt lifted a stick of rotted wood. "Max, could you set this flaming? Then you won't have to hover just to give us light."

" 'Tis no trouble to me--but if you wish it, why not?" The Demon floated over to the stick, touched its end, and it flared.

"That's fine. Thanks." Matt lifted the stick, squinting against the sudden glare. "Who'd have thought to have found a piece of wood in a dump like this? I could have sworn they wouldn't even have had furniture. Just a shot in the dark, looking for it."

" 'Tis not a stick," Fadecourt pointed out. "You hold the leg bone of a man."

"lyuch!" Matt nearly dropped the limb. "How come it burns so well?"

"Because it is so dry." Max's tone was tinged with contempt. "Still, I did have need of high temperature to kindle it."

Matt debated with himself and decided he needed light more than the previous owner needed a decent burial. He said a quick mental apology to the departed spirit, then looked around at the floor, trying not to notice the rest of the skeleton. He was just in time to see rat tails scurrying away from the light. He shuddered and knelt down with a sigh of relief, letting muscles knotted from crouching relax. He winced at the stab of pain. The muscles would stop hurting soon enough--but how about his feet?

"Call at need." Max winked out.

"Need," Matt croaked, "but not of his type of services. Fadecourt, I think we might see about tending a few wounds, here."

"Indeed," the cyclops agreed, "though your feet must hurt so badly, I marvel you can think at all."

"A wizard's gotta do what a wizard's gotta do," Matt groaned, and chanted,

"Within each wounded heel and sole

Starts the healing of the whole.

Knit up the epidermis neat,

So I won't fall into defeat."

The pain disappeared so suddenly that he groaned in relief.

"Are you not well?" the cyclops asked anxiously.

"Oh, yeah! Just fine. Give me ten minutes to work up my courage, and I'll even try standing on them."

"I rejoice to hear it." But Fadecourt still looked concerned. "Yet what of Narlh?"

Matt shook his head. "I don't think he ever came down--at least, not anywhere near us. Sure, the duke might have caught him--but so might any other sorcerer. I have a sneaking suspicion that he figured out he'd lost us and flew for the nearest clear air."

"In any event, the monsters have escaped him," Fadecourt agreed. "Had they not, the duke would have shown us their heads, to afright us." Matt nodded. "It would be just like him. Even if we didn't scare, he'd have a blast watching our grief."

Fadecourt's jaw hardened. "If they could escape, may not we? Wizard, I implore you, find us a passage! Exert your powers to the utmost! Expend your greatest efforts! The damsel lies in torment! We must to her!"

"Well, it might be easier to bypass the walls than to tunnel through them." Matt frowned and tried the verse he had used to escape from the dungeon in which Alisande had been imprisoned.

"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows..."

He had scarcely begun chanting before he began to feel inimical magical forces gathering about him.

He strained, sweat starting from his brow--but the web of force held him tight. He relaxed, shaking his head. "He did put an enclosure spell on this dungeon."

"Can you not break it?" Fadecourt asked anxiously.

"Let me try a little better verse.

"And thus when they appeared at last,

And all my bonds were cast aside,

I asked not why, and reck'd not where,

So it was far outside!"

Again, the magical field pressed around him, grating on his nerves, raising the hairs on the back of his neck--but there was a greater sense of tension, and he felt the strain physically. Byron's verse was working better than his adaptation of Shakespeare, but not better enough.

"Can you not shift us?"

Matt shook his head. "It's very heavily enchanted. This is no amateur job. Either the duke is a better sorcerer than he looks, or he's got a crackerjack working for him."

"What is a `crackerjack'?"

"I am--or at least, I'm a jack who's trying to crack us out of here." Matt frowned and tried again.

"Alas, my foe, you do us wrong,

To bind us up so close to death.

Yet we will match you, song for song,

Until we draw a free man's breath,

For dying in a prison strong

Is not the destiny that waits,

For good men who still seek and strive.

For them shall open many gates

If they keep faith, and onward drive

Till they behold their hard-won fates!"

The magical web enwrapped him again, but not so tightly. His whole body was raked with tension, though, as his spell contended with the duke's. Then something seemed to lance through to Matt, and the tension was gone with an almost-audible snap. Matt went limp, staring about, startled. They were still in the cell. "Naught has occurred," Fadecourt said, severely disappointed. "The duke's spell must be too strong for you."

"But I could have sworn I broke it!" Matt protested. "I felt some outside force reach through to me! We ganged up on him--or his spell, anyway! We broke it!"

"We are still here," Fadecourt pointed out.

"Yeah, we sure are." Matt frowned, then looked up, eyes widening. "I didn't say anything about moving us out of here! I only said we'd keep trying!" Someone cackled just outside the cell door.

Matt stared at Fadecourt, the hairs rising on the back of his neck. Fadecourt stared back.

"Either that's a hen with a very odd idea of the ideal roost," Matt said,

"or we've got unexpected company."

Fadecourt glanced sidelong at the door. "There is light through the wicket." Matt stared at the glow through the little, barred window, hearing the cackle again, then a gabble of low-voiced conversation. Almost against his will, he sidled across and looked out.

A small fire lit a small area--it couldn't be called a chamber, there weren't any walls. In fact, Matt could have sworn the hall outside his cell had only been two feet wide. Now it was broad enough so that the walls were lost in shadow.

Around the fire stood three old ladies--at least, Matt hoped they were ladies, because they seemed to be discussing his future--or was it his past?

"Have you more thread upon your spindle, Clotho?" the one with the yardstick asked.

"Aye," Clotho said. "It could make his life longer--or make another life, anew."

"What, two lives for one man?"

The middle sister shrugged. "It would be rare, yet I have known wizard folk to achieve it aforetime. Sorcerers, now, some have spun out their lives to unbelievably long spans..."

"Yet I have cut them off, natheless," the third lady muttered darkly, "cut them off at last--have I not, Lachesis?"

"That you have, sister Atropos--and I have shown you where their threads must end, in such fashion that they would have no hint of their end coming."

"Indeed you have, and well done, too, for such as would cheat Death." Matt shuddered. These three hags didn't play around, did they?

"Yet a wizard who holds to the straight and straitened path has no such cheating done. And, too, this one is young."

"Who speaks?" Fadecourt hissed in Matt's ear.

"I'm not sure," Matt muttered back, "but I think it's the Norns."

"Nay, surely not! I hear Greek names!"

"Cut him now," the middle sister mused, "and Ibile will surely subside in slavery and misery. Merovence, too, may falter--for see! In my tapestry, the queen will waver 'twixt despair and faith, 'twixt the slough of despond and the iron of duty."

Well. At least Alisande would miss him. That much was good to know, anyway. Atropos clacked her shears impatiently. "Have done! Whether all of Europe succumbs to the rule of the Prince of Evil is not our care! Ours is the destiny of human folk, not nations or races! 'Tis for God to concern Himself with them!"

"Yet are we not His tools?" Lachesis argued. "Nay, I must listen for His voice, sister."

"How about my voice?" Matt called out. He shook one of the window bars and demanded, "Only a few more years! Let me finish what I've started, at least!" But if the women heard him, they gave no sign. "My care is for the tapestry." Lachesis held out her cloth, frowning at it with a critical eye. "If one forgets that each thread is a human life, and regards the design as a whole, it grows to a harmony of balance. Yet will the myriad threads that must surely spread out from his actions enhance that pattern, or weaken it?"

"Enhance!" Matt opined. "Definitely enhance!"

" 'Tis for you to say, sister, not us," the spinner said. "Natheless, I would hazard the notion that the bright strands he will enliven will neatly balance the uncolored throng that have stemmed from the first usurper of Ibile."

"Can you not stop them, Wizard?" Fadecourt stood at his elbow, ashen-faced.

"Uhhhh..." Matt's mind raced furiously. "Not 'can,' Fadecourt--'will.' The question is, can I justify lousing up the rest of the world just to save my own life?"

"If you do not act, you will die!" the cyclops cried. "Ibile will have lost its one chance to be free of the reign of the Devil, and you will have lost the hand of the queen!"

Matt stood, galvanized by the thought of annihilation--not just of himself, but of all the bright dreams he had ever had of precious private moments with Alisande: the lovemaking he had ached for, the children he had hoped to gather about them, his determination not to let the little princes and princesses be raised by nannies, the physical training he would give them in the guise of games, the love of learning he and Alisande would imbue in them by their conversations...He steeled his resolve, and recited:

"The raging rocks

And shivering shocks

Did break the locks

Of prison gates,

And Phoebus' car

Did shine from far,

To make and mar

The foolish Fates."

Sudden and savage, sunbeams lanced down from the solid rock ceiling as the lock on the door exploded. The shafts of light caressed the women's faces, but wherever they touched, a face flowed like wax. The three women screamed, a horrible ragged cry, and their firelit chamber shrank, as if receding, to a globe, then a globule, still shrinking until it finally winked out.

"I did not mean you should smite them so!" Fadecourt said, aghast.

"That makes us even; I didn't mean to." Matt pulled in a deep breath to try to still his inner quaking. "Talk about power! That man couldn't write poorly even when he tried!"

The cyclops eyed the broken lock, then reached out a forefinger to nudge the door. With a groan, it swung open. "You have indeed taken the first step to bringing us forth from this dungeon, Wizard. Yet how shall you take us up this stair?"

"The steps should be easy." Matt was acutely aware of the word should.

"After all, bringing the Fates here broke the confinement spell. But just to be on the safe side, I think I'd better try to work up a stronger transportation spell."

"How shall you..."

"Quiet! I'm being creative." Matt frowned, running over verses from a couple of old, old songs. Then he chanted,

"The autumn winds blow coldly through

The castle of Bruitfort.

Yet anguish in its deepest depths

Is wrought in chamber darke.

Alas, foul Duke! You do her wrong

Who never sought to hurt ye,

You make her suffer horribly,

So we'll be in your company!

To beard you is my delight,

So I now come for fiercest joy!

I come with all my heart and zeal,

And shall confront you instantly!"

He was barely aware of Fadecourt's hand, clamping onto his arm like a vise, and of the room suddenly rocking in a tilt; he was already preparing the next verse in his mind...

The room jolted straight, but it was the torture chamber they stood in, with Yverne and Sir Guy stretched seminaked on tables, and bulky semihumans standing over them with arcane metal instruments. One was screwing a blocky boot-shaped object onto Sir Guy's foot, and Yverne was screaming at the mere sight of it as the duke, spittle running down his chin, watched another torturer pushing her skirt up, dagger poised over the smooth skin of her thigh.

Her screaming drove Fadecourt crazy. He bellowed and leaped for a guardsman, wrenching his halberd away with one stroke and felling him with another, then whirling to attack the torturer.

But Matt's attention was all for the duke, who was just looking up at him in stupefaction.

"Then reach this lecher-duke a blow!

Strike with might and maul!

Force him to reel about and land