The Oathbound Wizard-Wiz Rhyme-2 (45 page)

"If you're talking about my predecessor, he was assassinated, along with his king," Matt answered. "I, uh, attached myself to his daughter, helped her out of a few rough scrapes and such, so when she got her throne back, she made me her Lord Wizard."

"He speaks too modestly," Sir Guy interposed. "It was he, more than any man, who haled the usurper Astaulf from the throne of Merovence, and overcame his sorcerer, Malingo."

"Yeah, with you and Stegoman and a loyal giant to back me up--not to mention a few thousand monastic knights and a lot of loyal footmen!"

"Yet 'twas you who brought them all to her, Sir Matthew, and you who--"

"Milords! Good knights!" The old don spread his hands. "Enough, I pray! I see that the Lord Wizard was indeed a mighty ally of the queen's--yet thinks himself less than he was."

"Well--I certainly am not the great cure-all they seem to think. The queen's beginning to realize that, too, now."

"Is she truly?" The old man gave him a keen look that Matt felt all the way to his liver and lights. "Nay, I think there is more than a matter of faith and allegiance in this. And I have heard something of this struggle, too, yes--heard of a wizard who waked a giant made of stone, who brought down the castle of a witch who had enchanted hundreds of youths and lasses, then fought off a besieging, sorcerous army, not once, but twice--"

"With a lot of clergy to back me up! Not to mention the knights and men-at-arms."

"I shall not, since you ask it. But I doubt not you merit your title, Lord Wizard--I see that you are dedicated in your loyalty."

He saw a bit more than Matt wanted him to, so it was time to change the subject. "Well, I'll have to consider the source--and from what I see, you must be no mean wizard yourself. After all, you're attended by a flock of well-wists and holding firm against a sorcerous army next door."

But the old man was shaking his head. " 'Tis only cleverness and goodwill, Lord Wizard, and as much my grandfather's as mine. Nay, all I can claim is having befriended the well-wists, and my grandfather's grandfather did that for me."

"But you were the only one who did more than know they were there?" Again, that glance that cut through to his marrow. "There is no wonder in that. I was a young man, restless and unused to solitude--and the well-wists'

cavern was the only strange land in which I could wander, the only folk to whom I was other than the don's son. Their friendship given, they showed me the marvels of their domain--and when I saw the great store of black water, and how they could make it flame, I could not help but realize how the fire could repel the sorcerers."

"Couldn't help it, huh?"

"Could any man?"

"Many, I doubt not," Fadecourt rumbled, "myself included. What did you with this "black water' you speak of?"

"I drew it off, with the aid of my well-wist friends--drew it off into a great wheel of pipes that we pushed through the earth to surround the castle. Then, when the enemy marched upon us, we let the black water flow, and it spilled out to soak through the ground all about. It killed the grass, aye, and the bushes, more's the pity--but when I did shoot fire-arrows down into it, a curtain of flame sprang up, and the sorcerers could not douse it. Oh, if they had known it was rock oil, I doubt not they would have found a way...but who would have thought it? Nay, not I myself, had I not learned of it from the well-wists. Yet I had, I had."

"Maybe." Matt frowned. "Or maybe when the sorcerers tried, the well-wists were able to counter their spells. This is within the domain of their powers, after all, and they're obviously magical beings."

The old don looked up, surprised, and smiled. "There, now, do you see? You may well be right--but I would never have thought of such by myself, never! Nay, I am no sorcerer, but only a clever man."

" 'Tis the work of genius," Fadecourt assured him, "to see a defense 'gainst sorcery, where others saw naught but a lamp."

"A wick and a fuel." Matt nodded. "You've fought off the king's army several times, haven't you?"

"Oh, a dozen, yes, twelve, and a few more, for I am old, milords and lady, old."

Matt had a notion the old man was exaggerating again. "After all that burning, the soil is probably so calcined by heat that it's providing capillary action, and functioning as a sort of wick."

"A wizard! A wizard, surely!" De la Luce shook his head in admiration.

"There, you see it? Never would I have thought to phrase it so!" No, but he'd certainly had the concept, and the insight to apply it--and without any more background than having learned how an oil lamp worked. It took immense brainpower to make that kind of cognitive leap. Matt didn't doubt he was in the presence of a genius. He shook off the shiver the thought gave him and said, "Pushing the oil into the pipes must take some kind of power source. How do you do it? It can't be just gas pressure, if you're drawing it from a seepage pool."

" 'Tis not, 'tis not. The well-wists aided me in making a pipe, and a way of pushing rock oil through it, as a lad shoots a bean through a straw. Will it please you come see it?"

He seemed pathetically eager to show off his handiwork, but it would have taken a giant octopus to hold Matt back. "Oh, you bet I would. Which way?" The way was down. They passed the dungeon early on, and the lower dungeon a little later. That surprised Matt; he'd expected that the tour would be in the lower depths, but he had thought they'd bottom out fairly early. He was getting tired just walking downhill; he was beginning to dread the thought of going back up. To make things worse, the old man kept up an enthusiastic monologue every inch of the way, pointing out minerals they were passing through, for all the world like a paid tour guide--and one who really loved his subject, too, to the point of never having any idea that anyone else might not find it at all interesting. Matt grew tired of the virtues of limestone very quickly and was actively resenting the gloss on celebration of sedimentaries, when he heard the old man say something about shale. He pricked up his ears and really looked at the wall passing by him. Sure enough, it had a darker look; it was oil-bearing. Then the old man turned off the stairway into a dark tunnel mouth. Matt had a very strong urge to keep on going, but the well-wists were crowding closely around them, and they weren't exactly eyeing him with favor, still seeming to harbor some resentment at his earlier conduct--so he followed. They came out into a cavern, so hemispherical that it looked as if it had been formed by a bubble in the rock. One look at what it contained, and Matt had no doubt that was what it had been--a gas bubble. For the light of a thousand well-wists reflected a thick-looking dark liquid, gently rippling under the breath of semisubstantial wings, and Matt knew by the aroma that it wasn't water.

Yverne wrinkled her nose. "Phew! What is this fluid, Milord de la Luce?"

" 'Tis the rock oil, milady--oil seeped from the rocks themselves. 'Tis as light as any lamp oil, but I would not set a wick to burning here." Too right he wouldn't! If he tried, they'd probably all go up in a bang that would knock the huge old stone pile above them into pebbles. "Stegoman," Matt called, "don't come in."

"I cannot," the dragon's voice called from outside the tunnel. "The cave mouth is too small."

"That's just fine." Matt turned to the don. "Seepage, you say?"

"Aye. There is no spring--it seems to rise from a thousand cracks in the stone."

"All light stuff, then--kerosene, gasoline, light oil." Matt turned away.

"It's an awe-inspiring sight, your lordship--but if you don't mind, I'd rather do my admiring from a distance. I'm already feeling a little light-headed."

"Aye--'tis not good to breathe in the presence of the pool for overlong." The old don ushered them out of the chamber.

As they came out, Sir Guy asked, "You channel this stuff to the land about your castle, then?"

"Aye. There is a pipe let into the wall of the pool, below its surface." De la Luce turned away down even more stairs. "Its own weight makes it sink down into the tube."

"But what brings it up?" Matt asked, following.

"Hark!" The old don held up a hand. "Do you hear?" They were quiet,. and heard, afar off, a hissing sound that rose and fell.

"The sea!" Fadecourt breathed.

"Aye. It moves my oil for me. Will you come?" De la Luce led the way down, and down again, and again.

Finally, the stairwell brightened with daylight. A few more steps, and they came into a low sea cave, perhaps ten feet high. Its floor was only a narrow ledge, alongside a twenty-foot-wide channel of seawater, five feet below them.

"The tide is flowing," de la Luce observed. "At its height, it will be scant inches below this track."

But Matt was looking at something else. "How on earth did you get the idea for that?"

It was a huge paddle wheel, almost as high as the roof, its lower arc already immersed in the seawater. With each surge of the tide, the wheel turned, but the ebb didn't turn it back. The old man had rigged an escapement, in a world that hadn't invented anything more elaborate than the water clock.

"From a mill wheel, naught but a mill wheel." The old man smiled, obviously pleased by the praise. "Though I did need long hours of pondering upon it, ere I seized upon a means of holding the wheel against the backwash of the tide's surge, yes, and longer hours yet to dream of a means by which that device could be reversed, so that the wheel could give me power at both ebb and flow." Matt shivered, more certain than ever that he was in the presence of a genius. To make clockwork is no big deal, when someone else has shown you how--but to invent it yourself is quite another matter. "How do you harness the power of the wheel, so that it raises the oil to the soil?"

"By a thickened disk of metal, pushing the fluid up through a pipe. There are holes at top and bottom, the one to let the oil in, the other to let it out.

'Tis simple enough, once 'tis seen."

Simple, sure--but he hadn't seen it. Except in his mind's eye... The old man stepped closer to the paddle wheel, frowning and reaching out to touch a slab of wood. " 'Tis cracked; I must replace it soon." He turned to Matt. "For it turns, day and night, to keep it fit, even though I've no need of its power, no, not more than a dozen times these fifty years. But I make it work once each year at least, yes, to be sure it will bring the oil when I want it."

"Wise precaution." Matt swallowed. "And still you're going to tell me that you're not a wizard."

"Certes! For surely, I am not!" the old man said in surprise, then smiled gently. "Be not deceived, Lord Wizard--there's naught of magic in this."

"Only in your mind," Matt muttered. He had a brief vision of an attack on the castle--enemy troops charging forward with scaling ladders, as the pump pushed hundreds of gallons of inflammable fluid into the ground around the castle, now charred as porous as pumice. Then a fire-arrow would come arcing up from the battlements, stabbing down into the earth--and a wall of flame would explode all about the assault troops. Matt winced at the imagined sound of their screams, and mentally cheered them on as they charged back into their own lines. Then he remembered what their officer-sorcerers would probably do to them, and forced the vision away. "No wonder it's been awhile since you had an assault."

"Aye." The old man nodded with a sad smile. "Why waste troops, when the king has simply to wait? For I have no heirs, no, nor anyone else dwelling with me here, save the well-wists--and the sorcerer could deal with them quickly enough had I not bade them flee when I die. Nay, they think I am alone here, all alone, though I thank Heaven I am not. There is a lovely lass who visits me, bless her--aye, and not once a year, but once a day and more!" He gave Matt a keen look with a knowing smile. "You shall think her to be but a vision of my fancy, and myself but a crazed old fool." The sorrow evaporated from his smile. "None will believe that she is real, as real as I myself--so mine enemies think that I must die the sooner for want of company. Well, let them learn their folly! I shall endure, thanks to her friendship--and, God willing, I will survive them all, to see the deliverance of Ibile, and the destruction of its sorcerers!"

"Amen to that," Fadecourt said fervently, and Sir Guy and Yverne echoed,

"Amen."

For his own part, Matt agreed with the sentiments, but wasn't too sure about the means. He didn't doubt for a second that the "lovely lass" was every bit as imaginary as the old man's enemies doubtless said. Loneliness could do that to a person.

Yverne, however, took him at his word. "A lass who visits you? When all other folk have fled this island? Nay, whence could she come?"

"From the sea," the old don explained, "from the sea itself. Betimes she does in truth come up out of the sea, to converse awhile with me--but nothing more." The sad smile returned. "Nay, surely nothing more, though I had some hope of that when I was younger, a lad of forty or so--yet I aged, and she did not. She is my friend still, and anon takes me with her down under the waves to visit with her father, where they dwell forgotten in their watery palace. Ah, 'tis sad! 'Tis sad!"

Yverne looked up at Matt in alarm, but he shook his head. There was nothing he could do; the poor don was sunk in illusion. Sure, Matt might be able to banish the delusion with the appropriate spell--in fact, one was nudging at his mind right now-but would he really be doing the old man a favor? None of his business, for sure.

But Yverne looked so forlorn.

Then she mustered a brave smile as she turned back to the old man. "Is she a beauty, then, this lass of yours?"

"The queen of beauty to me," he said, then surprised Matt by adding, "though I doubt if others would find her fair, for her skin shimmers with scales ever so delicately wrought, and her hair is green, as are her eyes. Yet she is no mermaid, no, for she walks upon feet as delicate as shells, and her lips are coral."

Matt made one try at dispelling the illusion, though it earned him a glare from Yverne. "How could she come in, milord? She can't very well come knock on your raised drawbridge."