The Spell-Bound Scholar (10 page)

"You are free," Gregory said. "You may go where you will."

Once again he looked as inoffensive as a doormouse, and if the battle had whipped up passion in him, he showed no sign of it. Finister felt the sharp bite of angry frustration again but fought it down, remembering the purpose of this whole charade—to come close to Gregory with his defenses lowered.

"Go?" she stammered. "Go where? I cannot go back to my village now, and if I wander away into the forest, I shall most surely be set upon—perhaps not by these bandits, but by ones every bit as bad! Would you condemn me to loneliness and abuse, sir?"

"Certainly not!" Gregory said, shocked. "Come, I shall escort you to a safe haven."

"Come I shall." Peregrine stepped forward, only inches from him. "The only haven I wish is here, in your arms. Oh, sir, how may I thank you for such gallant rescue?"

Still he stood with his arms outspread like a scarecrow, face foolish with surprise. "Why, by finding a village where you may live your life in peace!"

She needed to push harder. Peregrine began to tremble; tears rolled down her cheeks.
"
Oh, when I think what those men might have done—what other woods runners will surely do if they can! Alas, that I was born a woman and weak, prey to every whim of brutal men!" The trembling grew into shivering.

By reflex, Gregory's arms closed around her, gathering her head to his shoulder. "There now, you should not weep! There is no need, damsel, believe me, for though the world may seem harsh now and then, there are more good people

than bad in it, and you shall find that your life grows wonderful again."

"How, if no man will have me?" Peregrine wailed, burrowing her head into his shoulder—and pressing her body against his. "None will wish to wed a damsel debauched! All will turn in disgust from the bandits' leavings!"

"It is you who have spurned them, not them you." Gregory stroked her back, voice a murmur. "Let them out, the fear and the horror—let them out, I say, let them be gone, and let the hardness they have given your body go with them. Let the tenseness be gone from your arms and back, for there is no longer a need to brace yourself against a cruel fate."

As he said this, Peregrine let herself relax even more, letting her body soften and meld to his—and felt all of him tense in response. She let sobs join her tears, and wept softly but audibly.

Dazed, Gregory stroked her and kept up the flow of soothing murmurs, amazed at the feel of a woman's body against his, mind swimming in a hormonal haze, astounded that a woman could cling to him seeking strength and that he should actually feel he had such strength to give. Confused but delighted, he revelled in sensation, and when her face turned up to his, when the lovely eyes fluttered closed as the moist rosebud lips parted, to brush them with his own was so natural that he did not even think of anything else—and as those lips trembled, then melted under his, they became all there was in the world, and as the kiss deepened, his whole existence became the sweetness of her mouth and the unbelievable thrill of the touch of lip and tongue and teeth. His telepath's nature took over and his mind opened even as his heart and his mouth had, sensing the wealth of emotion in her, the boiling confusion of fear and relief and desire, a tidal wave that swamped him.

Then the sun exploded in his mind and there was no sensation but its heat and its searing light. He clung to the woman in his arms, terrified for her, horrified that the explosion might hurt her.

The afterimage faded from his mind and he felt her in his arms again but not her mouth against his. Wind cooled his

cheek, and finally sight returned. But fear paralyzed him, for the woman in his arms was limp, her eyes closed, her mind empty, and she was not Peregrine or Moraga but a stranger, a flaxen-haired beauty with an unbelievably voluptuous figure. Grief overwhelmed Gregory as he realized what had happened. It was Finister he held, as he had known in the back of his mind—Finister in her true form, for when he was lost in her kiss and his mind was wide open to her, she had gathered all her strength to hit him with a mind bolt, one with enough power to have burned out his brain. But the automatic defense system he had constructed had come into play, reflecting the bolt back into her own mind and serving her as she would have served him.

She had meant to kill him, he knew that, but her final spell of desire had done its work too well, and Gregory wept with grief as he knelt to lay her body gently on the ground—wept with grief, and felt the pall of despair descend as he felt for the pulse that he knew could not be there, for surely she had meant to kill.

Queen Catherine was livid. Even as the guards hauled the assassins away to the dungeons of Castle Gallowglass, the Queen, alerted by a royal witch, paced the flags of her solar, fuming, "How dare they rise against my son? How dare they strike at his Cordelia? I shall flay them within an inch of their lives! I shall make them howl and gibber and beg for death!"

"They will be fortunate that you do not punish them as harshly as they deserve," King Tuan said with a completely straight face.

"They shall indeed!"

"Nonetheless, my love, before the torturers have reduced them to babbling husks, might we not ask them a few pertinent questions?"

Catherine halted, pivoting to glare at him, beginning to feel the slightest bit abashed. "What questions are these?"

"Why," King Tuan said, "who sent them, why they wished to slay Alain and Geoffrey and Cordelia and Quicksilver, and most importantly of all, how they managed to penetrate Castle Gallowglass even to Lady Gwendylon's private garden."

Catherine gave him a long and steely glare beneath which fury simmered, warring with common sense. At last she said, "You have the right of it in this. Set the investigation in train, husband, an it please you."

In those very gardens, Cordelia and Quicksilver watched the guards haul away the last of the assistant gardeners, or gardening assistant assassins, whichever they truly were.

"Why did they set upon us?" Quicksilver demanded. "I know your family has no shortage of enemies, Cordelia, but

even here? Which ones are these, and why did they set upon you?"

"They are likely agents sent by a government yet unborn." Cordelia took a deep breath and explained to Quicksilver about the futurians who were trying to sabotage the government of Gramarye in order to win control of the planet in centuries to come, and why. She had expected to have to wheedle and work her way around disgusted disbelief, but Quicksilver only listened with narrowed eyes, nodding every now and then as points connected to make her kind of sense. When Cordelia had finished, she asked only, "So you think these fools were of those who seek to abolish all government?"

"I do," Cordelia said. "Assassination is more their sort of work. The totalitarians prefer to foment rebellion, setting the peasants to slay the aristocrats."

"There is reason enough for that, surely!" said the woman who had been driven into outlawry by a rapacious lord. "Still, from what I have seen of how your family manages their estates, your peasants would not be among those rebelling."

"I would hope not," Cordelia said with a grateful smile. "But the most recent of these futurians, sister-to-be, is the one who sought to seduce Alain from my side, then under a different disguise, to woo Geoffrey from yours."

"You do not say it! That caitiff Moraga?"

"That was neither her true name nor her true form," Cordelia said. "No one knows what they may be. She appeared to my eldest brother Magnus in four separate shapes to drag him into heart's torture and devastating humiliation."

"As a result of which, he will never trust women again." Quicksilver nodded heavily, her face stormy. "So you think it is she who sent these backstabbers'*"

"She, or the one who commands her."

Quicksilver's scowl darkened even more. "But you say this witch Moraga is only one of her disguises. Was not she dispatched to Runnymede under guard of your little brother Gregory?"

"She was," Cordelia replied. Then she caught the implication and her eyes widened in horror. "Dear lord! Gentle

Gregory! If she could so mangle our great towering Magnus, what has she done to my sweet, mild lad?"

"A question well asked," Quicksilver replied, "and I think you had better answer it as quickly as you may."

Cordelia's eyes lost focus as she paid more attention to the world of thought than to the world of the senses. Abruptly they sharpened again with horror. "He is alive, but his whole soul is filled with mourning—and with thoughts of death! Your pardon, Lady Quicksilver! I must go to him!"

"
With all speed!" Quicksilver cried.
"
I shall follow with all the haste four hooves can muster!"

Minutes later, Cordelia spiralled up from the garden on her broomstick and shot off toward the south.

She landed in a meadow, looking about her in alarm. The vista was peaceful, a grassy carpet adorned with wildflowers and surrounded by murmuring trees, set off by the roughness of a boulder in its midst.

The boulder! By it knelt her brother, and he was weeping! Cordelia ran to him, heart hammering in panic.

She slowed as she came near him, almost embarrassed, uncertain how to begin. His gaze was fixed on the face of a sleeping woman, one whose beauty shocked Cordelia and filled her with instant envy even as anger rose in her, for she recognized the witch, and she was as far from the dumpy Moraga she had seen at Castle Loguire as Terra was from Gramarye.

Silent tears rolled down Gregory's cheeks.
"
Good afternoon, sister. It was good of you to come—though I cannot say what good you may do here."

"
Whatever happens, you shall not face it alone." Cordelia sent a quick probe into the woman's mind and found it sleeping, but alive.
"
Gregory ..." She broke off in confusion.

"
You wonder why I weep," Gregory said, his tone leaden, "but who would not weep at the death of beauty?"

"Death?" Cordelia darted another quick look at the sleeping woman but saw her breast rise and fall. She smiled with fond condescension, relieved that his grief was mistaken. "She is not dead, poor lad—only sleeping." She dropped to

her knees beside him and caught his hands. "Gregory—she means you harm! No matter how beautiful she is, her heart is hideous! It is she who maimed Magnus and who sought to slay Alain! I do not doubt that she means to slay you, too!"

"I am quite sure of it," Gregory said, but his gaze stayed on the sleeping woman. "She has already made the attempt, but I had forged a mental shield that reflected her own assault back at her, and this is the result—save that the reflection must have scattered the energies, if she only sleeps."

Cordelia stared down at the unconscious woman, appalled. "Why, the vile witch! But if you know she sought to kill you, why do you weep for her?" She guessed the answer, though, and her heart sank.

"Because I have fallen in love with her." Geoffrey's whisper confirmed her fear.

Blind rage struck and Cordelia knelt rigid, waiting for it to pass. It would not help her brother for her to slay the sleeping woman out of hand. In fact, such a deed would lose him forever. But the fury ebbed, leaving her panting. She had not the slightest doubt that the creature had manipulated Gregory's emotions shamelessly—and had made him fall in love for the first time! The very first! And with such betrayal and such hurt for so sensitive a young man's first, he might very well never be strong enough to love again! "Gregory—you cannot think to woo her. ..."

"I do not," Gregory said in a flat, lifeless tone. "Be assured, sister, that I have tested her goodwill and found it lacking. Greatly though I desire her, I know that if I reached out to her, she would try again to kill me, and again and again. Therefore must I never touch her." The tears rolled down his cheeks with renewed force.

Cordelia searched for words of comfort and found some— of a sort. "It is not you alone she has sought to slay, but all of us, even Quicksilver and Alain. She has even plotted to kill the King and Queen!"

"Do you not think I know?" Gregory's tone became utterly devoid of emotion. "If I had not known it before, I certainly do now, for I saw it in her mind when, in panic, I sought to discover if she lived. Therefore must I execute her."

"Execute!" Cordelia cried, appalled. Striking the woman down in self-defense she could have understood, but not this, not cold and emotionless killing! "Gregory, you must not!"

"Conspiring to regicide is a capital crime," the lifeless voice answered. "So is attempting to murder the heir apparent. Both are high treason—and I assure you, sister, that I have seen three successful murders in her memory, done for her own personal reasons, not for her Cause. The woman is a murderer, and the law demands that she die."

"Then leave it to the law! Leave it to a judge and a jury!"

"Wherefore?" Finally Gregory turned to her. His tears had dried and his eyes become like chips of ice. "I know her guilt from the evidence of my siblings. If more were needed, she stands convicted by her own memories."

"But. .. but you love her!"

"I do." The words seemed wrenched from his heart; then his tone deadened again. "It is wrong for me to let my own feelings sway me from the path of justice. I know her guilt; I must execute her." He turned back to the sleeping witch. "Best to stop dithering and be done with it. Logic forbids any other course." His gaze sharpened.