Count Scar - SA (36 page)

"Father Melchior, Count Caloran, come closer!" Seneschal Guilhem called in a weak voice. His face already looked like that of a cadaver as we knelt by him; only his eyes seemed alive.

"Well, sirrah, I can understand your crying for Father Melchior if you have decided to make a final confession in hope of reclaiming the True Faith before you die," said the count. "But after
betraying me to ambush, and then leading my enemies into my castle, what can you have to say to me?"

"I never betrayed you." He reached out a shaking hand and gave a massive key to the count. "I escaped tonight by the postern gate—I had to kill a man to reach it, and was stabbed myself—to
warn you."

"Warn me?"

"Of the true traitor. It is Raymbaud, the bouteillier."

"Raymbaud; but that is impossible!" It had been the duke who shouted; Count Caloran and I were too stunned to speak. "Raymbaud served at my court for years before— that is, I already knew
him well when I sent him to the countess upon her marriage to Lord Thierri. I was sure that I—that is the countess—could trust him."

I happened to be standing on the count's good side, so I saw his sudden hard smile. "So, Duke Argave, you acknowledge openly that it was Raymbaud who has been your man within Peyrefixade
all the time!" he said with his barking laugh.

I saw the duke wince at having betrayed himself, then flash his own dark smile. "Well caught, Count, that he was. He was a good man for a double game."

"For more than a double game—my lord duke," the seneschal rasped. "He was Prince Alfonso's spy in your court—when you chose him to be your spy in the count's. But even the prince did not
know what he was in truth. He was an agent of the Perfected!"

For a moment, no one so much as moved. Then Count Caloran threw back his head and gave a laugh like the one he'd let out the time he threw his arms around the startled Prince Alfonso. "If
this tale is true, the rogue is as peerless a traitor as Roland was a knight!"

The duke did not look so amused. "Why should we believe any of this?" he demanded, bending low over the seneschal.

"I am a dying man—why would I lie? Even after the enemy were in the castle he continued to play at deception. He never let the rest of the men—the ones you ransomed, Duke—see that he and
the two fellows who had been working for him were anything other than prisoners like themselves. Instead he let it seem that—that they had been kept as hostages when—when the others were let
go."

"But why should he bother; why not reveal himself now that his own side was in possession?" the count asked him. "Because of the plan—which I escaped—to warn you— about." The seneschal
stopped, gasping with pain yet clearly anxious to continue. The physician hurried to his tent and returned a moment later with a flagon. He crossed to Prior Belthesar, who sprinkled in
something and spoke over it, adding magic to medicine. Seneschal Guilhem drained the draught as soon as it was offered, shivered throughout his gaunt frame, then resumed speaking in a far
stronger voice. "They knew that you and Father Melchior had escaped the men who'd been sent after you, and that you'd be coming here with the conviare. They want it badly, because while they
are quite sure the great telesma is concealed within Peyrefixade, it will be very difficult to recover without the conviare's aid. Their scheme was put into motion as soon as you were seen this
morning. Raymbaud was to have appeared here tonight with a minor wound, claiming to have escaped by the postern gate. He knew you'd have welcomed him, Count: congratulated him, given
him a place to sleep near your own tent, perhaps even in it. Later, when the camp was asleep, he was going to murder both you and Father Melchior, steal the conviare, and take it back to his
friends in Peyrefixade."

Count Caloran bent over the seneschal with a skeptical face. "And how did you come to know all this?"

"Oh, Raymbaud took me from my cell and let me roam free once your loyal men were safely out of the castle. He'd always talked to me, you know: telling me about the Perfected doctrine,
countering my doubts, answering my questions. I had been interested even before he came, and I think he still saw me as a likely convert. Besides, he needed me—as an audience. I was the only one
who had been there, knowing what he was, to see him playing his game of mirrors the whole time, you see, the only one who could truly appreciate his boasts about how cleverly he'd fooled you
all. But tonight I overheard something, listening to his two comrades talking in the courtyard, that he never intended I should know, and that was when I resolved to break with him and warn
you. It was he who killed the countess, fully intending to do so!"

Now it was Lord Thierri who bent over the dying man, with an expression not of anger or skepticism but terrible eagerness. "How, man!? Speak, tell them how, and lift this awful suspicion from
me!"

"In telling it, I must ask your forgiveness, Lord Thierri." The seneschal's face looked gray now; he was clearly sinking again. "Along with having mastered the ways of the courtier and the
knight, Raymbaud had learned—learned some magic from his own people while growing up. Not so much as a Magian, but enough to work with certain magical objects Perfected Magians gave
him when he began his life in the duke's court, and others that they—they sent to him in secret later, when he was already here. His magical map was only one small element of what he could do.

He told me of this during our many talks, after he discovered my interest in his people's doctrine, and my hatred for—for you, Lord Thierri. Yes, I hated you! I thought you a climbing schemer
unworthy of our dear countess, whom I had loved from her girlhood. Also, I was convinced you'd challenged the good old count to a race while hunting that day the winter after you and the
countess were married, knowing full well he would likely take a fall that would put an end to him, and Raymbaud agreed with me. I wanted to kill you, had even tried to plan ways to do it so no
one would know, but without success. Then, one day last autumn, Raymbaud told me he had decided to help."

"He had, he said, recently been sent a magical object which could be used to drive and confuse and frighten anyone who came up onto the battlements at night into fleeing along the walls until he
fell to his death. It was supposed to have been yourself who went up from the hall to investigate a strange sound and meet your death, not my beloved lady! When I pretended to come in from the
kitchens that awful night after having placed the terrible thing—only to meet Raymbaud hurrying to find me and learn that she had gone out while you remained with the guests—oh, it was
terrible! I rushed back outside, trying to reach her in time, but then I heard her scream and met her servant babbling of apparitions, and I knew that she was dead. I almost threw myself from the
battlements then and there, but Raymbaud appeared and stopped me. It was an accident, he said; the thing had been set to act upon whomever came upon the wall at that time. He had never
imagined that the dear countess would go instead of you, he told me, and only realized the mistake when he came up from the cellars with more wine to find her already gone from the hall. So I
blamed myself alone."

"So I began to study and to fast in the Perfected manner—seeking only to purify myself as much as possible so that my prayers for the dear countess should be most efficacious and that I might,
perhaps, one day hope to join her in heaven—and longing only for death. I suspected it was Raymbaud who put the fire telesma into the hearth to attack Count Caloran, but he persuaded me it
had been someone among the masons. But it was he, just as it was he who—who told my dear countess to go up onto the walls that night!" He paused; his breath was starting to sound labored
again. "If I had had a weapon when I heard that, I would—would have gone straight to the great hall—and stabbed him then and there, in the midst of all his friends. As it was, I had to fight the
sentry at the postern gate—for his dagger, and was stabbed myself before—before I could kill him. I knew I could never succeed—in killing Raymbaud—with such a wound, so I resolved to use the
last of—of my strength to make my way here—and warn you all of his treason. Even though I die, I know you, Count—and you, Duke—shall see that God's justice—is done upon him."

"You see!" cried Lord Thierri, springing up to face the duke. "I always swore I was innocent. This proves it!"

The duke's only answer was a nod and a noise in his throat. Meanwhile, Count Caloran had knelt at the seneschal's side. "My friend, if you have spoken the truth you have indeed remained true
to me, and both Father Melchior and I most likely owe you our lives. And I also owe you another debt, for revealing who committed a black crime against my house and family. Have you any final
request of me?"

"I have a widowed sister—a good woman—she lives in Ferignan. Send her my things, and the—the balance of my wages. Other than that, I wish—wish only to make my last confession to Father
Melchior and receive absolution—if he will hear me."

"Of course I shall hear you," I said, knowing there was little time now. The same magic draught that had temporarily increased his strength would, as it ebbed, carry him away into death far
faster than if he had never drunk it. So I followed as they carried the seneschal into the physician's tent. There I heard him out, then pronounced an absolution, reminding him that it would be
efficacious only if he were truly repentant in heart when death came. Then I sat with him, holding his gaunt hand while he slipped slowly away from consciousness and life, until a knight came
and whispered, "Come, Father, they want you."

Reentering the pavilion, I found the council of war already in progress. As soon as he saw me, Count Caloran declared, "Father Melchior, with luck they have not yet discovered that the seneschal
is gone, nor the way he came out. I intend to try and enter Peyrefixade tonight, to recover this great telesma before the Perfected get it. But I'll need your help with the conviare. Are you prepared
to go with me?"

"Not so fast, Caloran!" Lord Thierri interrupted. "You are still hampered by your wounds. Besides, the traitor Raymbaud killed my wife and led to my being dispossessed; I should be the one to
go. I'll need a Magian, of course, and I'd be happy to have Father Melchior."

As I stared from one to the other, taken aback, the duke spoke in his smoothest voice. "You appear troubled, Brother Melchior. Are you certain you are up to the task? Do you perhaps fear coming
to grips with the Perfected?"

"I—I do, my lord Duke. But my concern is not for my life, nor for whether my skill is sufficient."

"What, then?"

"I fear that if I come too close to the Perfected, they may perhaps be able to claim me for themselves."

The duke arched his thin black brows while Count Caloran and Lord Thierri both looked at me in surprise. I saw the prior signaling to me with his hand and heard his second voice start to speak a
firm warning inside my ear, but I knew I had to go on. "My lords, my first tutor in magic, my own grandfather, had been a Magian of the Perfected in his youth. He was a good man, a kind man,
and though he died in the flames unrepentant, I loved him. I am an anointed priest of the True Faith, but I was a Magian before that, one who began as the pupil of a Perfected master. I—I have
always feared those first roots of my training could be used to draw me onto their side if I ever came into close quarters with Perfected Magians."

Count Galoran's face looked grim and the duke's captain shocked, while Lord Thierri actually took a backward step away from me. Duke Argave, however, rounded on Prior Belthesar with
furious,eyes. "Prior, how can this be? You yourself vouched for this man when the question of what Magian to assign the new count was raised! How can I trust either him or the count now?

Perhaps we can send someone else—Lord Thierri—no, perhaps not him, but my captain. But even if we do send Caloran, it must be you who goes with him to employ the conviare, Prior!"

"Perhaps you are right at that, though I am a bit old for such a hard work of magic," Prior Belthesar told him with a thoughtful expression—but his second voice was saying something entirely
different within my second ear.

"If I am the one who goes, Duke, I will accept no companion but Father Melchior," the count said flatly, and I felt my heart leap. If both the prior and the count believed that much in me, should I
not also believe in myself?

"Indeed? Then it shall have to be anoth— what is that?"

The duke, his captain, Lord Thierri, and all the knights whirled to look toward the lower end of the camp. Confused shouting and the sound of hooves were coming from that direction, growing
louder every instant. Suddenly, spectral horsemen on skeletal horses appeared galloping

among the tents. As men shouted to each other and clawed for their swords, Prior Belthesar looked calmly in my direction and one more short phrase from him echoed in my second ear, "Now:
both of you, go." I stood still for a moment, then obeyed.

The count gave me a startled look when I stepped to his side and gripped his sword arm. "This is only a distraction to draw away their attention, Count Caloran. We are going now."

His eyes widened briefly, then he gave that quirked smile that I had so gradually come to like. "Lead on, Father Melchior."

As we slipped away, I saw the Lady Arsendis briefly appear in the door of her father's tent where she must have been listening the whole time and gaze after us without saying a word to anyone.