The Complete Compleat Enchanter (41 page)

“Sir,” he said, “I know not your name aright nor true condition, and I am hindered from giving you the kiss of peace, since I perceive my own condition is less than that which knight and gentlemen should hold. You have my favor; are you a necromancer?”

“I suppose I know something about magic,” said Shea, suddenly feeling modest.

“I trust your penance will be small. There be others of our brotherhood about, an I mistake not?” He looked toward where the moon was losing its struggle. “Let us seek them; I see it all, we must seek mount and away for time will press. Is the Lady Bradamant among them?”

Nine

The Lady Bradamant was not in the headman’s house where Duke Astolph and Reinald were laid out with straw in their ears, the latter on his back and snoring like a Diesel engine. What was more important for Shea, neither was the Lady Belphegor. He felt deflated, but Count Roland was quite evidently not of the same mind.

“Ho!” cried that worthy paladin, in a voice that would have made the windowpanes shake if there had been any windowpanes. “Will you lie slugabed when there are deeds to do? Rouse out, I say!”

In the dimness of the hut, Shea saw Astolph roll over, swinging his arms. Reinald’s snores checked for one moment, then began again in a higher key.

“Ha, rouse!” Roland shouted again, and somewhat unexpectedly, deposited a resounding kick on the recumbent form as Astolph came up, all standing. Reinald whipped up, light as a cat, one hand to his belt, and Shea caught a gleam of steel, but Roland laughed and extended both arms: “Nay, nay, my noble lord and brave friend, will you slit my weazand while still the Paynim danger lies on France?”

Reinald relaxed with a growl. Astolph threw a branch on the dying fire, and as it blazed up, looked keenly into Roland’s face. “I believe he’s all right again,” he remarked.

“Aye, my own man; grace to this young knight.” Roland swung toward Shea. “Sir Harold, were I not sworn to poverty, the treasures of Babylon would be too small for your reward. Yet know that you have all my heart and true support in whatsoever shall not run counter to my knightly vow of fealty to the Emperor Charles. I have the ring. And now gentles, we must out and away.” He cocked his head on one side. “Hark, I hear the shrill trumpet!”

“Then the trumpeter will have outwatched the bear,” said Reinald, dryly. “Look you, good Roland, this quest of Roger gains naught by a nightmarch while we have Astolph, who can ride after him by day on the wings of the wind. Take then your rest; with the dawn we’ll woo fortune.”

“He’s quite right, you know,” said the Duke through a yawn. “Besides, I daresay you could do with a bath and some weapons before undertaking anything serious, and tonight there’s precious little chance of your getting—”

He stopped, looking over Shea’s shoulder, and the latter turned with a jump of the heart to see standing in the low doorway—Belphegor, arrow on string and the firelight throwing lovely shadows on her face.

She came a couple of paces into the room. “I heard the bruit, my lords, and thought—”

Said Reinald: “That there was something toward which might permit that after all you should take comfort in my arms?”

“Nay, my lord, I sleep lonely this night—and every other, where you’re involved.” She returned her arrow to its quiver and relaxed the string.

“Hey!” said Shea. “I want to see you.” If that antiquated technique could work such wonders on Roland, there
was
better than a good chance that—

The girl inclined her head gravely. “Sir knight, you have made me your service. You may see me to my rest.”

“Where is it?” he asked, as they reached the door.

“I have made my bed in the branches of an oak that overlooks these cots,” she said. “My lonely bed.”

Shea smiled a narrow little smile. “Mean to say you positively, positively don’t remember being my wife?” And thinking that at best he’d probably have to break her of claustrophobia all over again. Being married to a girl who wouldn’t sleep in a bed, he had found, was an experience that did not grow on one with repetition.

She drew away from him a little. “Now, sirrah, seek you to cozen me again? Certes, you’d be a more adroit seducer than yonder lord of Montalban, but I’ll not be seduced.”

Shea grinned. “I should hope not by that big lug, anyway. But say, don’t you remember things?”

“Nay—that water of Forgetfulness whereof he drank have I never seen. I am free of the forests . . . and yet, and yet—there is a passage. I know not how I came to Castle Carena, save that I stood within beside a gray-haired wizard whom they called Sir Reed for his fair bride—ah, faugh!” She made a gesture of disgust.

“What’s the matter with Sir Reed?”

“Not he, but that great loutish booby of a Roger. It had been insupportable but for the visit of Lord Dardinell and his squire Medoro.”

“Huh?” said Shea in alarm. “What about this Medoro?”

“A most sweet lad. He took my part when all the others would have trapped me like a hare. Could I but count that he’d be more true to me than to a religion that bids him keep four wives—”

“My God, you can’t do that!” cried Shea. “That’s bigamy! Maybe I’d better—”

“Sir, you lose my favor when you still hold to the old tune like a musician who has only one note.”

“Oh, all right, all right. Honest, darling, I’m only trying—well, skip it. How did you get out?”

“How—? Oh, one of the men there leaned on a staff, so I borrowed it from him, clouted a couple of pates, and it was ho!—and away.”

“Didn’t they chase you?”

“Marry, that they did, but I am somewhat lightfoot.” (Shea could believe that. Looking at her hungrily as she paused under the big oak, he could remember her in a red bathing suit, easily outdistancing himself and a squad of friends along the beach of Lake Erie.)

“Okay. Now to go back a little. You don’t remember meeting Reed Chalmers and me in Faerie by shooting a Losel that was after us? And you don’t remember joining us in the campaign against the Enchanters’ Chapter? Or that fight in the air with Busyrane on his dragon?”

“No. Should I? These names have a barbarous, outlandish sound to me.”

“You certainly should remember, and you should remember some other things, too,” he said, grimly. “I think I can—”

“Put a spell upon me to work me to your will? Nay, I will assuredly contempt you from my grace, though I bade you accompany me that I might do you service.”

“I’m sorry. Honest.” (Shea wondered whether he ought to get down on one knee and kiss her hand, but decided he’d be damned first.)

She reached out one hand and touched his arm. “So. Well, the service is yours in any case—not for the pretty apology, but because we of the woods love not injustice.”

“What injustice?”

“Think you you have a true composition with these lords? Then think again. Duke Astolph may be moderate well affected toward you, but not Lord Reinald, who holds it lawful to deceive and despoil all Saracens, among which he’d place yourself and all your friends.”

Shea grinned. “I imagined they might be trying to clear out. But I’ll be watching.”

“Small service will that be. Astolph is to cast a spell of deep sleep on you tonight and they depart at dawn. He offered to take me and make me his leman, but I’d have none of him.”

“The—excuse me for what I’m thinking. I thought Astolph was on the square.”

“Oh, aye; a good wight, surely. But wrapped in law, like all the English, and when Lord Reinald spoke of his liege duty to the Emperor, and how with Roger beyond the castle, the victory of Christendom would be delayed by contention with you for his body—why then, Duke Astolph let himself be overborne.”

Shea mused. “Will Roland let them get away with it? He seemed grateful enough when I saw him, and he certainly owes me a favor.”

Belphegor laughed tinklingly. “I give him not a fig’s weight—oh, a most accomplished gentle knight that will swoon devotion like a rose, but will set duty to the Emperor and his war above all else, even more than Duke Astolph. Has he found the Lady Bradamant’s ring?”

“He said so.”

“Then even more. For look you, this Castle Carena is a haunt of paynim sorcery and nest of vipers, which being entered by the power of the ring, Roland would destroy and hold it for the day’s best deed.”

It was probably true. Shea remembered that the Count had made a reservation in favor of the Emperor in his promise of gratitude. “I guess I’m stuck with finding Roger on my own, then,” he said, a little sadly. “What are you going to do?”

“I? In sooth, live my free life of the woods and fountains, sobeit Medoro . . . Since Roger’s free of the castle, I hold myself free of my promise to help Duke Astolph hale him forth.”

“Why not help me find Roger then?”

“Wherefore should I?”

Shea felt his throat dry up. “Oh, to help beat injustice, or just for the fun of the adventure . . . or something.” He finished lamely, then went on again. “After all, you did promise to help Astolph.”

“Ah, sir, but a debt lay there. It was Astolph and none other who turned the pursuit from Castle Carena when they would have taken me with horse and hound.”

“What! You didn’t tell me that.” Shea felt a homicidal impulse toward Sir Reed Chalmers, who hadn’t told him either. Sir Reed evidently felt that he’d put his foot into it about as far as he cared to.

“Aye; slew one of the Saracens and scattered the rest. But come, sir, you impose sleepless hours upon me to no purpose. You must find me an acuter reason if I am to join your search for this Roger.”

“Well—he’ll head for the Saracen camp to get into the war, won’t he? You might find—Medoro—there.”

“Oh, fie, Sir Harold! Would you have me pursue a man like that great, buxom warrior-wench, the Lady Bradamant? You think but ill of those to whom you pay your devoirs. . . . Not that you are wrong as to the fact; poet though he be, Medoro will hardly neglect the summons of the trumpet at such an hour. Nay, your reason is against companioning with you for a search in that quarter. Now I must have a new one, doubly strong.”

So, the dope’s a poet, is he? thought Shea. “I don’t know anymore reasons,” he said stoutly, “except that just I want you to come along because I love you.”

Belphegor-Belphebe caught her breath for one second, then extended her hand. “So you have found the key at last, and are my true knight. It is covenanted. I give you rendezvous at this spot, so soon as the paladins be again in slumber. Now go, ere stark suspicion o’er spread their minds.”

“What shall we do? Steal their horses?”

“Nay, the hippogriff? And Roland’s steed is the great Bayard, who’d rouse his master on the instant.”

“Oh, damn. I know a man named Bayard, but he’ll never wake anybody up. What else—?”

“Go, sir, I said. Nay, no embraces.”

“Goodnight,” said Shea, and made for the hut, feeling a tremulous half-hope such as he had not known since they were both prisoners of the Da Derga in Faerie.

He found the three squatting around the small fire on a hearth in the center of the floor. A hole in the ceiling above let out about a third of the smoke.

Astolph stretched, yawned, and with the air of a man preparing for a long sleep, began carefully unwinding his red-blue-brown scarf. Catching Shea’s eye fixed on him, he remarked, “School” then: “One can’t exactly wear a tie in this country, you know. I had the colors made into a scarf instead.”

“What school is it for?”

“Winchester,” said the Duke, with just the right note of pride. “Oldest of ’em all, you know. Merlin’s on the board of trustees. Wonderful thing, the public school system, though I don’t know what will become of it with all this socialism.”

“I went to a public school in Cleveland myself.”

“I daresay.” Astolph regarded him with an air redolent of mistrust, and Shea perceived he had not taken the right way to influencing people. Before he could smooth matters out, Reinald lifted his head from where he was already down in the straw again: “Peace, you twain! A pox on your babble that keeps honest men from their rest.”

“Righto. But first I fancy I’d better make certain Sir Harold here doesn’t wipe us in the eye. Oh, you’re a man of honor and a jolly good fellow, but this is merely a sensible precaution.” Astolph had reached his feet as lightly as a cat while speaking and picked up the big sword, which he now pointed at Shea. “Lie quietly, old thing and take your medicine.”

“You lie on a blanket of cloud, soft and white,

And you sleep, sleep, sleep through the murmuring night,

Your limbs are so heavy, your eyelids must close,

You’re torpid, you’re drowsy; you loll, drift and doze—”

Shea, fully aware that this was a sleeping-spell, fought to keep his mind alert while casting about for a counterspell. There was the one with the paper . . . no, that was a weakness spell . . . no . . . his thoughts were losing coherency.

“Come, ye spirits who generate pandiculation.

And your brothers who revel in wide oscitation—”

The spell corresponded to something like hypnotism, and it was hard to keep his eyes from the tips of Astolph’s fingers, moving in the passes. It was almost not worth the trouble of trying to beat it. After all . . .

“Come Morpheus hither, and Somnus and Coma—”

There was a story where you mustn’t sleep.
King of the Golden River?
No . . .
Kim—
and the boy there had used the multiplication table. The memory jerked him to effort. Three times three is nine . . . if he could only keep on . . . this part was too easy . . . six times seven is forty-two, six times eight . . . The spell droned on, apparently without end . . . eleven times thirteen is one hundred forty-three . . .

“I by this authority conjure you, sleep!”

It was over. Shea lay with his eyes closed, but his brain wide open, working on seven times fourteen. Reinald’s voice came drowsily, as though the paladin were talking through fur: “Will he sleep till the morrow?”

“Through several morrows, I should say,” said Astolph. “I gave him a jolly good dose.”

“Almost put me to sleep myself,” said Reinald. He rolled over once, and in less than a minute was back in the low-register snore that had preceded Roland’s kick.

Shea waited, wishing his nose would stop itching, or that Astolph would quiet down next to him, so he could scratch without being caught at it. His eyebrow began to itch, too, then the rest of his face in patches, so agonizingly that he wriggled it, trying to throw off the feeling. Astolph turned over and Shea froze into immobility, wondering whether a snore would be convincing, decided against it and discovered that the itch had shifted to a point inside his left ear. The Duke made another turn, loosed a sigh of comfort and seemed to drift off. But it was a good ten minutes—every one of which Shea counted—before he dared to let his eyelids flicker open.

There was a small red glow at the center of the room and an oblong of gray that was the door. Beyond, he judged it would be near the hour of false dawn; the moon had long since disappeared. The three figures in the draw made darker blacks in the blackness of the hut, but lay perfectly still, and under the beat of Reinald’s snores the rhythmic breathing of the other two was audible. Asleep all right, but he could not afford to take chances, therefore gave it another good ten minutes before stirring an
experimental arm. The dark gray patch of the door turned abruptly bright blue, then dark gray again. Far away, thunder purred softly.

Shea thought a few unpleasant things about his luck and the weather. If the storm came this way, it would rain through that hole in the roof, certainly rousing Astolph and probably Roland. If he were to make a getaway, it would have to be right now.

He moved his hands slowly in the straw beside him, gathering up his turban, which had been serving as a pillow, and his sword. At the next rumble, he rolled to his feet, took two cautious steps and lifted his flowing outer garments from the peg where they had hung. The next two steps took him out.

A flash showed a huge pile of thunderheads nearby, and the sound came long-continued, rolling closer. A little puff of wind whirled down the village street. The hippogriff was huddled where Astolph had left it, squatted head down and eyes closed. It trembled unhappily in the lightning flashes, its feathers stirring in the vagrant dashes of wind. When Shea touched it, the beast, bound by the Duke’s magic, did not lift its head. To loose the spell on it would take fooling around, time, and maybe more skill than he had. The first drop struck his hand.

A brilliant flash and an avalanche of thunder. Shea, thinking he had heard a shout from the direction of the headman’s house, whipped the jelab around him and ran just as the rain came pattering down, heading without equivocation along the street and toward Belphebe’s tree. As he reached the edge of the forest shade, she stepped out before him, as wide awake as an owl, unperturbed by the rushing rain.

“Did they—” she said; a crash of thunder drowned the rest.

“I think the storm woke them up,” said Shea, shedding his outer cloak and hanging it around her. “How are we going to get out of here?”

“You an enchanter and know not this?” She laughed gaily, turned and whistled a low, lilting tune in a minor key, less than a third audible under the pattering leaves and whipping branches.

Shea strained his eyes toward the village and in the repeated lightning glare, was sure he saw figures moving. “Hurry,” he said, then he heard a trampling behind and a voice shouted, “Whee-he-he-he! Who calls?” Almost instantly it was answered by another and higher one: “Who calls?”

“Bel—Belphegor of the woods—a daughter of—” her voice seemed to check oddly.

“In whose name call you us?” bellowed the first voice.

“In the name of Sylvanus, Ceres and the Fountain of Grace.”

“What desire you?”

“To be carried faster and farther than man can run or beast gallop.”

The trampling sounds closed in. Shea smelled damp horse, and the next flash showed that the voices belonged to centaurs, led by one with a grizzled beard. He said: “Belphegor of the mountains, we know you by all names, but who is this? Is it our mission to carry him as well?”

“Aye.”

“Is he an initiate in the mysteries of wood, wold and fountain?”

“Nay, not that I wot on. But that am I, and he a friend in need.”

“Whee-he-he-he! We are forbid by an oath more dreadful than death to take none but those who have reached the degree of the three great mysteries.”

“Hey!” shouted Shea. Another flash had shown him the three paladins, leading their mounts more accurately in his direction than one would have believed possible. “What’s this? Those lug’ll be here in a couple of minutes.”

“There be rituals and vows through which all must pass who seek to live by the forest ways, Sir Harold,” said Belphegor. “A thing of many days.”

“Okay, skip it. I’ll shin up a tree and hide.”

“Nay, not from Duke Astolph’s magic. One blast of that great horn, and you’d come tumbling like a ripened nut. Will you stand, then? My bow is useless in this wet, but we have made compact, you and I, and will guard your bare side with my hunting knife.”

“It won’t work, kid,” said Shea, “even though it is damn white of you.” The pursuers were a bare two hundred yards away. Astolph had the big sword out, and the lightning flash was reflected from it. Then inspiration reached him. “Wait a minute, I used to be a boy scout, and I had to pass an examination and take vows for that. Would that get me by?”

“What says he?” asked the bearded centaur. “I know not the chapter, yet—” Shea snapped out a brief account of the organization and the merit badge he had won in woodcraft, looking over his shoulder. Two or three centaur heads came together, and the bearded one returned. “It is believed that we can lawfully take you, man, though this is the first we hear of such wonders, and your craft be that of the small things. Mount!”

Before he had finished the sentence, Belphegor had vaulted lightly onto his back. Shea scrambled somewhat less gracefully onto the back of the other centaur, finding it wet and slippery.

“Ayoi! Ready, brother?” asked Shea’s mount, pawing with its front feet.

“Ready. Whee-hee-hee!”

“Whee-he-he-he!” The centaur began to bounce, and as Shea, unused to this kind of ride, wiggled on its back, turned around: “Put your arms around me and hold on,” it said.

Shea nearly released his grip in surprise as the first long bound was taken and a shout came from behind. It was a female centaur.

He looked over his shoulder. The last flash showed the pursuing paladins before they were hidden among the trees. The hippogriff, its feathers bedraggled, looked more melancholy than ever, and its expression would remain with him all his days.

Ten

The centaurs halted upon a smooth knoll. Behind them rose the slopes of the western Pyrenees, and before them the country rolled and flattened away into the high plateau of Spain. The sun was just pinking the crests.

“Here we rest,” said Belphegor’s centaur. “We cannot take you further, for lo! the Amir’s camp is in sight, and our forests lie behind.”

Shea slid off—legs stiff, eyes red, behind feeling as though it had been paddled, and teeth as furry as chows. Belphegor came down lightly on the balls of her feet, increasing Shea’s already vast admiration for his wife. They thanked the centaurs, who waved farewell and galloped off as though their all-night run had been merely a warm-up, sending their “Whee-he-he-he!” after the travelers.

Shea turned in the other direction and shaded his eyes. Through the early-morning haze he could just see a village with white walls and flat roofs three or four miles off. And away beyond it, a patch of little tan humps would be the tents of Agramant, Commander of the Faithful.

Shea gave Belphegor a long, searching look, noting how fresh she seemed after an all-night ride.

“Is it the chivalry of your land to stare?” she asked coolly.

“Sorry. I was just wondering what made you sort of—hold up and change your mind about your name. Last night, when the centaurs asked you.”

A tiny frown appeared between her brows. “In sooth, I know not. ’Twas as though a veil were drawn, and I swam between worlds with my tongue framing words spoken by another.”

“I can clear that up so it won’t happen again.”

“Nay, no more of your spells, Sir Magician. I lay it upon you as a condition of this adventure we undertake, that you attempt no enchantments on me for whatever purpose.” She looked at him earnestly, but her regard faded into a small yawn.

“Oh—all right,” said Shea ruefully. “Wouldn’t take much of an enchantment to put you to sleep though, now would it?”

“Marry, that shaft is not far from the clout. Could I but find a grove!” She looked around. “But this country is bare as a priest’s poll.”

“Shucks, why don’t you try sleeping in a bed again?”

“Again? I have never—”

Shea suppressed a grin. “Sure, sure, I know. But lots of people do without dying of it, you know, and it even gets to be fun after a while.” He looked towards the village.

“There ought to be an inn in that town, and we’ll have to go there anyway if we’re going to stand any chance of finding Roger.”

Amiably doubtful, she fell in beside him as he led the way down the slope to where a track took them toward the village. The matter still hung in abeyance when they reached the place, which did have an inn. This was a small house that differed from the private dwellings only by having a dry bush affixed over the door.

Shea banged with the hilt of his sword. Above, the shutters of a window swung outward. A villainous-looking head peered out to look in astonishment at the unshaven man in Saracen costume and the red-golden-haired girl with a longbow. Presently the proprietor appeared at the door, scratching himself under a leather jerkin whose laces were not yet tied. The request for breakfast and lodging seemed to depress him.

“O lord of the age,” he said, “know that neither in this village nor for miles around is there so much food as would satisfy a sparrow, save in the camp of the Amir Agramant, on whose sword be blessings.”

“Heigh-ho,” said Belphegor, “then sleep we supless and dine our souls on dreams.” She yawned again.

The innkeeper looked more lugubrious. “On my head and eyes, Allah preserve me from your displeasure, lady; but there is lacking in my poor house a place where such a moon of delight as yourself may companion with her lord. For behold, I have neither secluded alcoves nor a bath for the performance of the Wuzu ablution.”

The girl’s foot began to tap dangerously. However, Shea averted the storm by saying; “Don’t let it worry you. We really want to sleep; and besides, we’re Christians, so the bath doesn’t matter.”

The landlord looked at him with an expression of cunning. “O man, if ye indeed be Christians, then there is nothing for it but you must pay ten dirhams before entering, for such is the regulation of the prince of this place, who is none other than that light of Islam, the Lord Dardinell.”

Shea, hearing the girl catch her breath slightly, remembered that Dardinell was the name of the man who had brought the poetic Medoro to her attention. It also occurred to him that the innkeeper was probably lying, or cheating him, or both. To these peasant-village characters, a member of an outgroup was fair game . . . Shea, becoming annoyed, reached into the twist of the cloth belt where he had put the remainder of the coins Chalmers had given him. He pulled out a handful—a small handful.

“Listen, pickle-puss,” he said menacingly, “I haven’t got time to argue with you, and the lady is tired. You take these and give us a place to sleep, or you can take a piece of this.” He indicated the sword.

“Hearing and obedience,” mumbled the innkeeper, dropping back a couple of steps. “Enter, then, in the name of Allah the Omnipotent.”

The entry was dark and somewhat smelly, with a set of stone steps going up to the right. The innkeeper clapped his hands twice. A door opened at the rear, and a very black Negro, so small as to be a dwarf, and naked to the waist, scuttled in. He grinned from ear to ear, and the speed with which he came suggested that he had overheard some of the conversation. The innkeeper did not seem to like his cheerfulness, for he fetched the dwarf a crack on the ear that sent him spinning against the wall, and said: “O miserable buffoon, cease from mockery! You shall conduct these guests to the upper room and provide them with coffee of the night, as is the custom, for they have been long abroad and desire to sleep the day.”

The dwarf got up, rubbing ear and cheek with one hand, and wordlessly motioned Belphegor and Shea up the stairs. The room at the top ran the whole width of the inn. It held ten beds like very low couches, only a few inches off the floor and covered with thin and moth-eaten Oriental rugs.

Belphebe looked at them with distaste. “Sir Harold, I know not how men can bear such shabby habitation, when they may live among clean trees.”

She began to pace the floor, looking out of one window after another.

“It could be better,” Shea admitted. “But anyway, we won’t get rained on. Come on, kid, try it for once.”

He yawned. The dwarf came trotting upstairs with a brass tray holding two little cups from which floated the appetizing smell of coffee. He set it on one of the beds, then bowed low. More out of the habit of tipping than anything else, Shea fumbled one of the odd-shaped coins and held it out. The little black man half-reached toward it, looking at Shea’s face as though he suspected him of playing a joke in questionable taste.