The Wizard (35 page)

is plain. Was one present tonight, when we spoke with that fair lady who rules these great ladies?" I said, "There may have been, Your Grace, but if there was I wasn't aware of it." We sat sipping ale and staring into the fire, a fire too great for any human cook to roast meat on, until Marder said, "In speaking of that other matter, someone whispered that it was done for love. The words were addressed to you, I think. Was it the queen who spoke so?" I said it was not, and begged him not to examine me further, explaining that any answer would betray a friend. "That being so I will not, Sir Able. I will ask one question more, however. I did not know this person present. Did Her Majesty, in whose pavilion we sat, know it?" "Yes indeed, Your Grace. She was aware of it from the beginning, rest assured." Then Borda, a fur woman as tall as the mainmast of a caravel, said, "The knight would leave our queen's matters to our queen. I know little of knights and nothing of dukes. Still it seems knights are wiser." When I returned to my own fire, Pouk and Uns lay asleep; and a woman sat warming her hands while Gylf dozed beside her. I asked how I might serve her, and when she turned, I thought that it was Jynnet. "Sit with me," she said, and her voice was not Lynnet's. "No. You're weary and fuddled. Lie here with your head in my lap, and I'll talk to you." I did, and she told me many things: her girlhood in America, how she met my father, and how they came to wed. The journey south was long and slow, and one day I asked leave to ride ahead, explaining that I wished to see Redhall. South I galloped down the War Way, telling Wistan, Pouk, and Uns to join me when they could; and when Cloud and I were out of sight, we mounted into the air, higher and higher until the whole land spread below us like a map on a table and we saw the War Way as a thread, and the companyBeel's and Marder's and the Daughters of Angr whom Idnn was leading to the southlike a worm crawling along that thread. Ulfa's Glennidam was a dot by a silver stream, while on the margins of the Griffin I saw where Griffmsford had stood. Then the Irring, and ruined Irringsmouth where it met the sea. Behind us the mountains rose, a mighty wall with parapets of snow and ice; but Cloud and Gylfand I upon Cloud's backrose higher than they. Until I saw a castle like a star. The Valfather stood upon a battlement, tiny and far but clear. One hand was lost in his beard, the other gripped his spear; on his head, in place of the broad hat he wore when walking the little roads of Mythgarthr, was the horned helmet that is his crown. Our eyes met, and Cloud rolled at his glance, her hooves to Skai and her back to our world, so that the Valfather and his castle were far below us. Had he indicated that he wanted us to descend, we would have done it at once. As it was we rose, although I felt that he wishedor at least invitedme to return to his hall. We climbed far before Mythgarthr lay below us again. This I am tempted to omit: that I mistook another manor for Redhall. Mistake it I did, and to its door came Cloud, Gylf, and I; and I hammered it with a great iron ring, and hammered again, for it was late. At last a servingman came. I asked if it was Redhall (it was on the road to Kingsdoom), and he assured me it was not, that Redhall stood some way to the south. He supplied particulars of the manor house and its gate, and offered me a bed for the night. I thanked him but explained that I was determined to sleep in Redhall. Even then I knew I would not spend many nights there, and I wanted to make them as many as I could. Away we went, galloping hard, with Gylf running ahead as if hot on some scent, until (long after any horse would have been exhausted) I turned aside to ask again, for we had come far and I feared we had passed Redhall in the dark. The gate was ruinous, the house beyond it more ruinous still. I was about to leave without knocking when I realized that the stone figure beside the entrance was a manticore. After that I knocked indeed, shouted, and beat the weatherworn panels with the hilt of my dagger. The woman who came bearing a candle was old, bent, and nearly toothless. Knowing she might be frightened to find an armed man at her door so late, I gave my name and assured her that I was only a lost traveler who meant no harm. "More's the pity. I hoped you had come to kill me." "Only to ask directions," I said, "and bring good news. Is this Goldenlawn?" She nodded in silence. "And where stands Redhall?" "A league and a half." She pointed south. "It has no lord. I doubt they'll open for you, and we've little here." "It has a lord again," I told her. "I'm him, but I haven't seen it." At that she stood straighter; and although she did not smile, it seemed almost she did. "The Frost Giants came at first-frost, years and years ago." "Yes," I said. "So I understood." "He was away, Sir Ravd was." She sucked her gums. "Off to the wars. He would've helped us. You going to stay?" "In Redhall? For a few days, perhaps." "Here." "No, I'll sleep in my own bed tonight, though it's a bed I've never seen. I said I was Sir Able of the High Heart, I know. That's true enoughthe name I've had for years. I have to learn to say Sir Able of Redhall, too." "I wish you rest, Sir Able." Her door began to close. "Wait," I said. "You haven't heard my good news." "I thought that was it. What is it?" "Your mistress, Lady Lynnet, is returning." She stared at me so long I thought that she would never stop, and I backed away. At that she said, "You're an Aelf!" "No. Sometimes I wish I were." "Come to torment me!" "I would never do such a thing. Lady Lynnet's coming to resume possession, with Mistress Etela. You must sweep the house, and make everything as presentable as you can." "This is my house," the old woman said, "and I am Lady Lis." With that she shut the door; I heard her sobbing on the other side for as long as I stayed there. No Angrborn had taken Redhall, or it had been repaired. Stone pillars topped with lions marked an entrance road of half a league, narrow but in good repair. It led to a broad gate flanked with towers in a wall by no means contemptible. The gate was barred, but a blast on the horn hung from it brought four sleepy men-at-arms. The eldest said, "You come late, sir knight. Early, rather. This gate closes with the rising of the evening star, and does not open again until a man can use the bow. Come back then." "It opens when I want it to." I pushed him aside. The bailey was pounded earth, wide and overlooked by a manor too lofty to blush before castles. The mastiffs who guarded it were scarcely smaller than Gylf, broad of chest and great of head. How they knew me I cannot say; but they did, and stood in turn with their paws on my shoulders to look me in the face, and fawned on me afterward. "Who are you?" the oldest man-at-arms demanded. "What's that shield you bear? I must have your name." I turned on him. "I'll have yours right now. Give it, or out sword and die." To my surprise he drew. He was standing too near; I got his arm, wrenched his sword away, and laid him at my feet with his own point to his throat. Prodded, he gasped, "Qut. My name's Qut." "From the south?" "My mothertaken prisoner. Married and stayed." The others had stood gaping all this while. I told them they had to learn to fight if they were to be men-at-arms of mine, and offered to engage their best then and there with Qut's sword. They knelt instead, three bumpkins with not a leader among them. Taking my foot from Qut's chest, I said, "I am the new owner, Sir Able of Redhall." The three nodded. Qut scrambled up to one knee. "You." I pointed. "Take Cloud to the stable. Wake my grooms. She's been ridden hard. She's to be unsaddled and turned out to pasture. Tell them I'll know of any injury to her, however slight, and it'll be avenged in blood." He took her reins and hurried away. "There's a steward here?" Qut said there was, and that his name was Halweard. "Good. Wake him. Wake the cooks as well." "It's barred, sir. I'll have to rouse somebody" A look and a gesture sent him. Our scuffle, brief as it had been, had ended any thought of sleep. I decided to eatwe had been on short rations, and I was ravenousand stay up, retiring early the next night. Which is what I did. I inspected Redhall, finding its barns, fields, and larders in good order but its men-at-arms and archers undrilled and a little slovenly. Next day we began contests for the bow. I gave a ham to the winner. (I had offered a piece of Marder's gold to any archer who outshot me; none did.) The one whose score was next to worst was to strike the one with the worst smartly on the bottom with his bow. He struck soft, so I had the next worst hit him for it. That was a whack that made dust fly. My men-at-arms had been spectators to this and enjoyed it. Recalling the Angrborn, I decided to see whether they had profited as well. There were bows, as well as arrows by the hundred, in our armory. I gave each man-at-arms a bow and arrows, and had each shoot at very moderate range. After that we held a contest (while the archers laughed and jeered) with the same prizes and punishment. That evening Qut confided that there was grumbling among those who had done badly. The sword, they said, was their weaponsword, partisane, and halbert. Thus on the third day we cut saplings for practice swords, as Garvaon and I had, and I drilled them all morning, and fought them that afternoon, knocking them about. On the fourth day we cut quarterstaves, I explaining that the man who knew the quarterstaff would be a fighter to be reckoned with when armed with partisane or halbert. When I had beaten a round dozen, one knocked me sprawling with such a blow as might have done me real hurt had I not been helmeted. I gave him the promised gold, and engaged him again for another. The storm-surge returned in that match, and it seemed almost that Garsecg swam beside me. I broke his quarterstaff and knocked him to his knees when he tried to defend himself with the halves. After that I had him teach them first, and afterward set them against one another, with us to judge between them. Balye was his name. That night I ate supper with Gylf. Halweard brought my bread and soup and ale, staying until I should dismiss him. "Winter's blast tonight, Sir Able," he said. "It was cold in the north, I'm sure." I said it had been very cold at times. "We haven't had it here.just a nip to ripen the apples. We'll get it good tonight. Hear the wind in the chimney?" I was on my feet in a moment and back in my boots in two. Out the sally port we kept barred but unguarded, and across three meadows. I found her in the wood, and our hugs were sweeter than any wine, and our kisses more intoxicating. She showed me a shelter her guards had woven for us, and in it we lay on moss and kissed a hundred times, and kept each other warm, my fur cloak for her and her great cloak of leaves over us both; we talked of love, and all we said would fill a book thicker than this. Yet all we said was only this: that I loved her and she loved me, and we had waited long and long, would be parted no longer. At last she told me, "I took you for my instrument, and filled you with the words I'd have you say to Arnthor, and to every king of human kind through all the world, and made of you such a man as might speak to kings, and thought that I did well. It was foolishness, all of it, and there is only love. I'll be your wife this moment." As she spoke, she changed, her green skin white. "No," I said, and made as if to rise. "I'll be your wedded wifeor we'll tell men soand live in shadowed rooms, and comb my hair by the pearl of your night, and perfume myself for you." "No," I said again. "I'll love you in any shape you choose, but I love you best as you were here." "Do not speak to the king. Promise me that." I laughed. "I've faced an army of the Angrborn. Is there worse at Thortower?" "For you? Yes." I thought about that; and at last I said, "What about you? Are you afraid just for me? Would you be safe there?" She wept. I returned to Redhall with snow in my hair. Halweard had waited and brought me a pot of hot ale, which was kindly done. I told him I would leave in the morning for Thortower. "Do you know it well, sir?" I sat. "Not at all. I've never been there." "It might be wise to find a friend to introduce you, someone familiar with the court." I explained that until Beel came I had no such friend, and sent him off to bed. That was where I should have gone myself. I did not, sipping ale that had been hot enough to hiss, staring into the fire, and thinking of what Disiri had said. She had not made me as Kulili had made her race; my parents had done that. Still she had made me in a sense, teaching me, and most of all teaching me what I was to say in Thortower. I shut my eyes and heard the cries of the gulls outside Parka's cave, the waves, the fluttering wings. What was I to say? It was no ordinary message, clearly, since I knew myself no ordinary man. I had burned for renown and skill at arms, and had not known I had burned for them so the king would listen. Toug had met Disiri as well as I; but she had no message for him, and he longed only for the plowfor the slow turn of the seasons and the life his father had, in which ambition was the wish for another cow. In Redhall I could live for years, shaping my men and overseeing the fields and dairy. If Marder called on me for knight-service I would go. But if he did not, I would stay, visiting Forcetti once a month and Sheerwall three times a year. Disiri would come; and if it seemed to my maids that a woman not quite human frequented our corridors, why, let them gossip. What was it Ulfa had called me? A wizard knight, though Gylf and Cloud were wizardry enough for any man. . . . The darkest corner of the room, that point farthest from the fire, grew darker. I thought it no more than the failing of the fire, and told myself that there was small point in piling more wood on it; I would go to bed soon, and coalsand fire as wellwould remain for morning. Dark and darker. The hearth rug, the horns of the noble stag on the wall, and the pot that held my ale were lit as before. Yet night had come in and waited in the corner. I called for Uri and for Baki, thinking it might be some trick of theirs, then to all the Aelf. Several clans were of that color, Mani had said, and they had often played tricks on Bold Berthold. But if the scraps of darkness there were Aelf, they made no reply. At last I called for Org, although I thought him behind me with Svon and the rest. He answered from behind my chair. "Good Lord!" I exclaimed, and at that there was laughter from the corner, a laugh that made me think of ice in the northern caves, and the icicles that sang (as Borda had told Marder and me) if a spearhead touched them in the dark.

CHAPTER TWENTYEIGHT MORCAINE AND MORE MAGIC