The Warlock Wandering (37 page)

"I would indeed," Gwen said instantly. "Eh, my little ones!"

Rod nodded, grinning. "Yeah. I think I've had my fill of high-tech society for another dozen years or so. Send me home." '•'

McAran turned to Chomoi. "What do you want to do, 0 worm in the woodwork?"

"Worm?" She leaped to her feet. "Who the hell do you 292 Christopher Stasheff

think you are, throwing insults around like lava?"

"The volcano on whose slopes the tyrants live," Doc Angus snapped, glaring.

Chomoi's eyes narrowed. "I made a mistake. It was a bad one, and I helped hurt a lot of people. But I think I've kind of paid for some of that on this trip—even if Gwen and her husband did help me as much as I helped them." McAran's smile was sarcastic. "Oh. You don't like dictators anymore, huh?"

"No," Chomoi snapped, "especially on the personal level."

"Prove it," McAran jibed. "Join GRIPE." Chomoi stared, totally floored.

"He means it, Miz," Yorick said softly.

"But... but... how can you?" Chomoi exploded. "For all you know, I could be the worst PEST agent alive, trying to infiltrate your organization!"

McAran nodded. "Possible, very possible—but if you were, you wouldn't have been helping fight totalitarianism at every turn."

Chomoi frowned. "When did I do that?"

"When you helped avert a war on Wolmar," Yorick reminded her, "and when you helped us fight off Eaves and his buddies on Otranto. Listen, Miz, if you were really a PEST agent, you would have shoved a knife in Whitey the Wino's ribs at your first chance. He's at least as important to democracy as we are."

Rod nodded. "Charley Barman, too, and you never lifted a hand against him."

"But... but... I didn't know! I didn't know either of them were important to democracy!"

"Yeah, but you would have, if you were still a PEST

agent. Besides, you helped get the Gallowglasses through."

"Only because I liked them—personally!" Gwen's smile was radiant.

"Him, too!" Chomoi stabbed a finger at Yorick. "It's not just them, you know!"

"Yes, I know," McAran said grimly, "and I'll bet this is the first time in your life you've found people who liked you."

Chomoi stood very still.

"I'll take personal loyalty," McAran said. "I'll take it over loyalty to an idea, any time—even if it's loyalty to the group, and not to me."

"I might not like your other people as well as I like him," Chomoi said slowly.

"Then again, you might." The frosty smile was back.

"Why don't you circulate a little, get to know them better?"

"Yeah—kick around for a while, Miz!" Yorick grinned.

"I've got some buddies here I think you'd like."

"Buddies?" Her tone was frigid. "No women?"

"Of course." Yorick shrugged. "What do you want me to say, 'bosom buddies'?"

Chomoi's eyes narrowed. "Definitely not."

"Okay, then—friends. A person's a person. So I've got friends, all right? And I think they'd like you. Okay? So why don't you come and meet them?"

"Yes," Chomoi said slowly. "Yes," she said, nodding.

"Yes, I think I will."

Yorick grinned, and held out an elbow.

Chomoi hooked her hand through it, and turned to Rod and Gwen. "Major—Milady—a pleasure meeting you." She actually inclined her head, smiling.

Rod grinned, lifting a hand. "See you in the time zones." Chomoi smiled, tossing her head proudly, and whisked away on Yorick's arm. They stopped two tables away, where Yorick introduced her to a small troupe of Mongolian barbarians. She pressed palms. McAran watched her go with a victorious smile. Then he turned back to Rod and Gwen, leading them away. "That's the basis of our organization here—misfits. None of my people ever had any friends, never felt they belonged—

until they found us." He cocked his head to the side. "Doesn't apply to the two of you, of course."

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"Oh, I wouldn't say that," Rod mused.

"Thou hast never been a Gramarye witch or warlock," Gwen agreed.

"Could be." The frosty smile turned into amusement.

"Could very well be."

They came up to a thirty-by-thirty area, lined with time machines. One of them had a large sign over the portal, which said in Gothic lettering,

Rod's eyebrows lifted. "We rate a machine all to ourselves?" McAran nodded. "I told you Gramarye's important to us. It's locked onto real-time there, dating from..." he coughed into his fist. "... from that little incident we had, with those Neanderthals."

"Yeah." Rod frowned. "I've been meaning to ask you about that."

"Some other time, okay?" McAran said quickly. "Right now, there're some people who've been waiting to see you for a couple of weeks."

"Aye—we must needs be gone to them, right quickly!" Gwen leaped into the time machine's cubicle. "Send us to them at once, doctor, an it please thee!"

"Oh, I could send you quicker than that." McAran peered closely at the date. "I could set it back a couple of weeks, and return you to the same night you were kidnapped." Gwen's eyes lit, but Rod frowned. "How long would it take?"

"Only a minute, to reset the machine," McAran answered, "but the trip itself would take a couple of hours, because the time-matrix would have to readjust itself into a different configuration."

"I cannot wait so long." Gwen clasped Rod's arm. "1

doubt me not an they have been well tended in our absence—and I bum to see them once again!" Rod shrugged. "It'll probably have done them good to be without us for a while, especially since their baby-sitters have probably been indulging them horribly."

"Oh!" Gwen clasped her hand over her mouth, eyes wide.

"Robin will be wroth with us, to have been so long away!"

"Yeah, but think how glad he'll be to see us come back!"

"There's some truth to that." Gwen turned back to McAran. "Send us now, doctor, I beg of thee!" McAran shrugged. "As the customer orders." He reached out and pressed a button.

Rod and Gwen felt a twisting lurch, and were just fighting down nausea when they realized they were staring around at twilit woodlands, and the calm sheen of a pond. Rod blinked, staring around him in surprise. "Well! Right back at the pretty little woodland pool I told you about!"

"An thou'lt pardon it, I'd liefer not stay to contemplate it," Gwen said, "especially an I doubt the virtue of that crone who told thee of it."

Gwen threw her arms around his neck. "Eh, husband!

We are home!"

"Yeah!" Rod hugged her to him with massive relief. Then he remembered the power he'd seen her wield, and that reminded him how much she'd learned about electronics; and he felt the cold fear seeping through him, at the thought of grappling a woman who could wreak such mayhem—especially since it was his own kind of mayhem. And wreaked at least as well as he could, himself.

She felt the change. "Husband? My lord?" He held her off at arm's length. "We're not exactly the same people who left here, are we?"

"Wherefore not?" Gwen stared, startled and hurt. "We are still ourselves, my lord. Who else could we be?"

"Well, all right, still us," Rod growled, "but we've changed. And you, shall we say, have learned a lot in the process?"

"Yet it hath not changed who I am, nor the way I do feel toward thee," Gwen protested. "Nay, my lord. Do not think—

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ever!—that only because I learn more, or gain more skill or power, that I shall ever love thee less!"

"Yeah, but it's not just your kind of learning." Rod hooked his hands in frustration at trying to find the right words.

"It's that you're learning my kind of knowledge!" Gwen stilled, staring up at him. Then she said, "Ah, then. So that is the way of it."

"Yes," Rod admitted. "The skills and knowledge I had, that you lacked, were all that were keeping me thinking I was good enough for you."

"Oh, how poorly thou dost know thyself. Rod Gallowglass!" She threw her arms about his neck and pulled his head down to hers. "Thy goodness and thy greatness have so little to do with thy knowledge or skill, or even thy power!

'Tis thy gentle, caring self that drew me into love of thee, and the strength of thy resolve that doth shelter me and mine! 'Tis thee I love—not thine attributes!" She drew back a little, cocking her head to the side. "And, in fairness, thou must needs own that thou hast learned my skills and knowledge, even as I've but now learned thine."

"Well, yes," Rod admitted, "but that's different."

"Only in that I rejoice at such joining, where thou dost seem to dread it," Gwen returned. "Yet thou hast no need of such trepidation, for 'tis thee I love, that inexplicable, unwordable, indescribable essence that is Rod Callowglass—and only that! Not thy power or knowledge!" Then she frowned as a new thought came. "Or dost thou love me less, because I know summat of thy magicks?" Rod stared at her, horrified. Then, slowly, he smiled.

"Love you less, no—but I do feel threatened by it. I'm sure I'll get over that, though." He caught her hands. "After all, if you've managed to adapt magic to advanced technology, I've learned to adapt technology to magic!" Gwen threw her head back with a silvery laugh, and kept her lips parted as she swayed back up against him. He buried himself in her kiss.

Finally, he had to give up and gasp, though he did wish he'd seen the kiss coming in time to hyperventilate a little. He hooked an arm about her waist and pointed at the path that wound away through the trees. "We do have to get back to the children, you know. Besides, we have a bed in the house."

She beamed up at him. "I think 'twill be an early slumbering for them this night, my lord." And, arm in arm, they strolled away through the trees, hand in hand, mind in mind, pausing only occasionally to scan for mental traces of ambushers.

They came in the door with a word of cheery greeting—

but it died on their lips. Rod stared, aghast. The table and chairs had been pushed back against the walls. A giant of a man, at least eight feet tall, took up most of the living room floor, with two people of standard size beside him, one wearing a robe and pointed hat of dark blue, sprinkled with signs of the zodiac, and the other a pretty lass in her twenties with her hair bound in a kerchief. The three of them were so tightly wrapped in hempen rope that they looked like candidates for a joint sarcophagus.

Geoffrey stood over the giant with a cudgel in his hand; Cordelia sat at the woman's feet, singing lightly and embroidering a handkerchief; Magnus stood over the wizard, arms akimbo, as though he were daring the man to try a spell; and Gregory sat cross-legged on the mantelpiece, contemplating the whole mess.

By the hearth sat a very worried-looking Puck. At the sound of Rod's voice, his head snapped up; he took one look at Rod and Gwen, moaned, leaped into the fireplace, and darted up the chimney with a howl of despair. Gwen stared, appalled.

Then she took a deep breath. ^.

But Rod beat her to it. "And just what do you think you've been doing!?!"