Chance (19 page)

“But I deemed a man of wisdom would feel no need to harm a child.”

Wystan's face moved; his mouth twisted ironically. “A child, is it, now, when it suits you? You who make shift to ride the steed of a man, a warrior? Go away.”

Merric stood where he was. “This is the horse my father has given me,” he said hotly, “and not of my asking.”

“So you are a child, then. Am I your nursemaid? I welcome no strangers here.”
I dare not.
“Folk do well to fear me. Go.”

“You cannot send me away!” the boy blazed. “You are—you are curious about me.”

Now how in all the seven kingdoms did he know that? Is the youngster wizard get?

Man and Merric stood glaring at each other. Insects ticked away the moments amidst the grass.

“Very well,” said Wystan at last. “Stay, then. But that great horse must go. This is only an island; there is not sufficient pasturage for him here.”

Merric stiffened, turning his head to look at the black steed which stood sweating and puffing with its head drooping to its knees.

I could provide such pasturage, but I will not. This is a small test for you, my bold one.

“The beast is far too big for you, anyway,” the sorcerer added scornfully. “It is as ridiculous to see a child on such a destrier as it is to see a big man on a pony.”

“True enough. I had to climb the stall side-bars to get onto him.” Merric looked stricken. “But he carried me here bravely.”

“Take him down to the shore,” said Wystan indifferently, “and let him swim back.”

“But no, I cannot do that! He is stable bred; he would come to harm on his own. I will …” Merric swallowed, and his thin shoulders sagged. “I will take him back.”

True for you, lad. Though now I am certain you lie. Back to what?

Defeated, the boy turned numbly, feet scraping, gathering up the reins.

“Gently, Prince, gently.” Wystan took a step closer to Merric and the tall steed. “If it is verily the horse you feel for, and not your own pride in his size and beauty …”

“I am no longer a prince,” said Merric, “and there is some pride in me, yes, but more chiefly a wish to do no harm.”

That is interesting. Harm whom?

The lad was watching the wizard.

“Then see here,” Wystan said, and fixing his inscrutable eyes on something in the distance, he laid a hand on the horse's lowered forehead. As Merric watched, the great black steed shuddered, shrank, and changed somewhat in shape, until all in the moment it was a bright-eyed, shaggy black pony. It lifted its head and glanced about curiously. The red cloak dragged by small ebony hooves.

“Bigness is a great burden,” said Wystan, “for man and beast alike.” His voice was gentler than before, and something had changed in his face, his eyes.

“Many thanks.” Merric's voice shook, he was surprised by childish tears. Blinking to hide them, he turned away, patted the pony, bent to retrieve his cloak. But Wystan frowned, for the boy had staggered as he moved.

“When have you last eaten, Merric?” he inquired sharply.

“Some few days ago. I was in haste.”

“And would it have been above you to beg a bite from some peasant, or from me? Come on!” Wystan took the boy by his arm.

“I—must see to the black—”

“The beast is fine; look!” The sorcerer was shouting in exasperation. “His weariness is gone with his bulk. Come on!” He tugged the lad into his cottage, plainly furious.

Hours later Merric was fed, more or less washed, and bedded down in a pile of straw. Wystan sat close to the hearth fire, reading by its ruddy light, and Merric watched him sleepily.

“Your face is completely changed,” he said when the sorcerer had closed the book.

For a moment Wystan went rigid; then he sighed, softened, and nodded. His eyes were glimmering, deep as the lake on which his island floated, and his lips moved in curves as subtle as its shores.

“I wore a mask earlier, as we all do from time to time.” Wystan glanced at the boy. “As you still do. Have you not wept for your father and your brothers?”

“There was no time!” Merric snapped, all his sleepiness gone. “I had to ride or die!”

“But now there is time.”

Merric did not answer. He stirred uneasily.

“I cannot see them in your eyes, your father and your brothers, your mother and uncle,” the sorcerer said. “Tell me about them. Their names?”

“Some other time,” Merric muttered. He turned his face away, pretending to sleep, and Wystan smiled.

He will stay here until he has ceased to hide.

The next day Merric rested, for the most part. The cottage seemed larger than it looked, all in towers and alcoves; he explored it. But a day later he went to look for his host. He took the black pony and hauled water from the spring to the garden, for the season was dry. Wystan had set up a big loom in the sunshine and was weaving a blanket out of wool. Though the cloth was coarse, it was long, tedious work. The sorcerer sat patiently on a tall stool, sending the shuttle back and forth.

“That is woman's work,” Merric told him peevishly.

“Very well,” Wystan remarked and instantly changed into a muttering crone who puttered about with the warp and weft. Merric stepped back, startled and frightened.

“Which one is you?” he cried.

“Which one is you?” the crone cackled back. “Which is you, the prince or the water-bearer?” Merric fled, and she laughed heartily as he trudged up the dusty hill to the spring.

Time after time, that day and the next, he led the pony down with clay pitchers full of water and poured them in futile-looking patches on the arid earth. The third day he did the same. But when the sun was high, Wystan spoke to him, and he changed his pitchers for baskets and led the pony toward the forest to gather fuel. His legs ached with walking; the way seemed long. The pony plodded and nipped at weeds, as a pony will.

“Come on, damn you!” Merric shouted, for perhaps the dozenth time that day, tugging hard at the strap. This time, being out of sight of the cottage, he lashed the little beast on the belly with the whiplike leather end. The pony gave a frightened leap, showing the whites of its eyes, and Merric turned away from it to lash fervidly at the trees. In a moment his shoulders slumped, his hands went slack. Frightened yet further by this odd and perverse flogging, the pony lunged away from him, snatching the lead from his loosened hands, and it galloped back toward the cottage, its hooves making a sound as of stamping rabbits.

There was still the wood to be gotten in. Hardening his face, Merric followed the black pony.

It had taken refuge with Wystan and was grazing placidly beside his loom when Merric plodded into view. He went to the pony softly and picked up the trailing lead strap. Wystan seemed to take no notice. Merric turned—

“Do not go,” said Wystan tonelessly from behind the loom, “if you are going to beat the little black. I can fetch wood myself.”

“I do not mean to,” Merric said in a muffled voice, but even as he spoke his arms stiffened, his hands clenched into fists. He flung away the lead line, let himself drop to the hard, dry earth, pummeled it.

“Damn the beast,” he cried, “it was the power and beauty of it that I loved, to my shame. Now that it is a drudge, like me …” His tears sprinkled the sere earth.

“Now I know for certain,” said Wystan coldly, “that you are, as you said, a child.”

“Damn you too!” Merric shouted at him.

So who is the child here? For all his spleen, I think he is not one to hide himself for long on a mystic isle.

Merric was struggling up, tears spent, turning away, bound away somewhere, anywhere. Wystan got up from his loom and went to stand beside him, stopping him with a touch.

“We are all children,” he said far more softly. “And the most part of grief is rage. So weep for your dead.”

Merric faced him, unable to hide from his eyes, unable to do otherwise than face the one he had just cursed. “I lied,” he told him, hot fury shaking the words. “My father and brothers are not dead. I wish they were! I hate them!”

Wystan nodded, odd glinting lights swimming into his gaze. “Yes … and the most part of your rage is grief.”

“I hate them, I could kill them, I fled from my own hatred!” Merric shouted, tears starting again. “By my soul, Wizard, what manner of monster am I?”

Wystan snorted. “You'll have to study long to be a monster.”

“But …”

“'Twas not I who stayed your hand from flogging yon pony. I or anyone else. You did it yourself.”

“But …”

“But nothing!” Wystan roared.
Furious. Furious at him for making me feel.
“It is past noon; would you fetch the wood? There is no fuel for a cooking fire, and I am hungry.”

“I—am sorry—”

“Stop whimpering.” Wystan glowered darkly. “You are worthy of whatever friendship you can wring from me, and not because you are a prince, either. Because you are here; no better reason. Go fetch wood.”

Merric went, afoot and with the baskets over his arms, leaving the pony to graze.

The cottage stood silent that evening, and Merric went early to his bed. Much later, after Wystan was asleep, the prince got up and quietly went out. Wystan was awake instantly upon the soft closing of the door, following Merric anxiously with his mind's eye.

I—had not thought he was of the sort to run away. Not more than once—

Then the sorcerer sighed and smiled, a genuine, warm smile with no one to see it. The prince had gone to the moonlit meadow, searching for a certain dark and shaggy form, and when he had found it, an ungainly, soot-colored lump dozing on the ground, he had curled up beside the warm, furry flank of the black pony. Wystan watched him for a long time as he slept with his face half-buried in the coarse mane.

Merric came in groggily for breakfast the next morning. “You smell of horse,” Wystan told him.

Merric said nothing, only made a small face at him over the food.

“I can see them in your eyes now,” Wystan remarked after the eggs were gone. “Your father, your brothers. I do not think they intended to be cruel to you.”

“Perhaps not.” Merric sighed, pushing his plate away. “Perhaps it is just that—they are interested only in power and the usages of power, indifferent to everything else.”

“And they assume that your interests are the same.”

“I must wear a royal cloak, ride a tall horse—” Merric stopped himself, recalling how he had missed that horse. “I am not so much unlike them,” he admitted. “But—they are indifferent to the other things in me, things they do not care to see—”

“Poetry,” said Wystan.

And magic too, I think. Though I will not say so at this time.

“I suppose,” said Merric in some small surprise. He gave the sorcerer a searching glance. “How did you know?”

“I merely surmised,” Wystan hedged, and the boy did not persist, for another thought shadowed his face.

“I daresay I should go back.” Reluctance dragged at the words. “They will be looking for me, and they will be angry.”

“I think not angry,” said the sorcerer, for he knew family. But he had been doing some questing, three days past, and he had seen no sign of searchers in the forest beyond the lake or the meadows beyond the forest, the villages, the strongholds, no one looking for the golden-haired prince. Odd. Sufficiently odd to make him uneasy.

“Stay a few days yet,” he told Merric. “If anger there is, it will have passed into fear by then, and they will welcome you home the more ardently.”

“I am willing enough to stay,” said Merric.

Rain had come to water the garden. They spent the day in the cottage, animals and all. Merric brushed the cockleburrs from the black pony's mane, then turned to Wystan for amusement. Presently the sorcerer found himself showing the boy his books, talking of his craft, telling tales, describing wonders, talking as he had not talked to another mortal in perhaps a decade. They did some small magics at the table, laughing, making a marvelous game of it. Supper was late. Rain darkened into dusk and wind and thunder, fearsome, but the cottage felt snug. Merric slept peacefully on his bed of straw, and that night Wystan slumbered soundly.

Thus it was that he did not sense the stranger's coming.

The man pounded at the door in the darkest of the dark hours before dawn, and Wystan stood rigid, shocked stark awake in consternation. No one had ever come upon him so unawares, not since he had withdrawn to his magical island. No one.

I have let down my defenses, somehow—

Merric merely stirred drowsily on his pallet of straw.

“For the love of mercy!” the man cried in the night, and Wystan stirred up the fire for light, then moved stiffly to the door, his face a mask. The stranger stumbled in, soaking, out of the downpour.

“Sorcerer,” he appealed, “I am the most miserable of mortals.”

A stocky man, one who was losing the battle with age. Face pulled downward now in long, haggard collops of flesh that looked gray even in the firelight. Wystan let his mask slip for a moment in his astonishment, for this was the man he had seen in Merric—though the fellow's look then had been one of authority.

“I am King Emaris of Yondria.” Just a hint, a flash, of the authoritarian in those words, at once gone. “Or, until four days past I was.… My sons have turned against me. My sons, my very own blood and get, have turned on me to strike me down.” The king spoke in a torrent, tempestuously, glaring all the while intensely at the sorcerer, scarcely noticing the youthful servant or apprentice who stood in the shadows beyond the hearth. “My eldest, Morveran, and the next younger, Emerchion, they who were supposed to be the comfort of my old age, though as of yet scarcely past their passage—they have plotted together and seized my crown and throne. Only by grace of my wits have I escaped with my life. And the youngest, Merric, has gone into hiding somewhere, in league with them to get himself out of the way of their scheme—”