Living with Your Past Selves (Spell Weaver) (27 page)

“Well done, Taliesin. I see you have not grown too dependent upon your blade. Now, you,” he said, gesturing to Shahriyar. Another faerie warrior sheathed his sword and stepped forward. “Oh,” he said, turning to me again. “I almost forgot to mention—each warrior fights his own battle.” In other words, I could not use music or magic to aid any of my “warriors.”

But did Shar really need the help? Let’s just say faeries must not spend a lot of time watching boxing. Shar was considerably slower than the faerie and had no way of speeding up, but after watching my fight, he took a few faerie blows, pretended to be dizzy, lured the faerie close enough, and bam! The strength of his punch stunned the faerie, slowing him down enough for Shar to land several more. Even though he was being careful not to do something like hit the faerie in the mouth, knowing the faerie had no mouth guard, there was still considerable blood by the time the faerie yielded.

“Very well done! You too are worthy of the blade you wield. What is your name?”

“Shahriyar, Majesty.”

“Ah, Great King! Doubly worthy, then. Now, moving on from those who have weapons to those that seek them, will one of you step forward?” Dan did so. “Very good, then, this test will be in armed combat.” I had to snicker a little. The faeries were not doing so well in hand-to-hand, despite their speed, so Gwynn was switching tactics. Doubtless each of them was an expert with the blade—and still fast—while neither Dan nor Gordy had ever practiced with a sword. I could not see this part ending well. Perhaps Shar should have made the last faery bleed just a little less.

One of the warriors handed Dan his sword, and then stepped back, just as one of his fellow warriors charged Dan, who had not really even gotten used to the feel of the blade.

Dan tried his best to emulate moves he had seen me make, but one can only learn so much by watching. The test was explicitly not supposed to be a fight to the death, so all his opponent really did was scratch him, but each scratch inflicted a small wound that started bleeding, and Dan had something like fifteen of them in a couple of minutes. He kept trying to imitate Shar’s move in hitting my blade almost out of my hand. The problem was that the faerie did not let the swords collide solidly. He was in and out before Dan could complete his swing.

The ground beneath them was now red, and Dan’s strokes were visibly weaker. Gwynn looked about to bring the fight to an end, but Dan, perhaps sensing his intent, looked at him and said, quietly but clearly, “I do not yield.”

“He’s bleeding pretty badly,” I said urgently to Nurse Florence.

“He needs to yield. Gwynn knows I can heal him, so he is allowing this to continue, but there is a limit to what even I can do.”

“Dan, yield,” I yelled at him. Dan was teetering as if he would fall. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. The ground was slippery with his own blood, but still he did not yield. He staggered, and the faerie slowed, anticipating that Dan would either yield or pass out. And that’s when Dan got him with a head butt in the stomach. The faerie stumbled backwards, and Dan pursued with surprising energy, this time landing a couple of good blows that drew sparks from the faerie’s blade. On the third one, the faerie’s sword was ripped from his hand, and he yielded. Clearly, Dan had been faking a little, just like Shar.

“You are not much of a swordsman,” observed Gwynn, narrowing his eyes, “and you won by trickery, but I did not specify any rules, and the final blows were certainly struck with a sword. Besides, you showed great perseverance.” He turned to Gordy. “Ready?”

“I was born ready!” said Gordy, stepping forward, undaunted by Dan’s scraped up and bloodied condition. Dan fell back almost literally into Nurse Florence’s arms, and she began healing him as fast as she could.

Gordy had obviously been watching Dan’s battle. The moment the sword was in his hand, he charged the advancing faerie warrior, taking the battle straight to him instead of trying to take a defensive stance. Gordy was holding the sword, but not making much effort to protect himself, and the faerie got in a couple of good scratches. In a real fight, he would have thrust his sword deeply into Gordy, but he did not do so, and so Gordy was able to get away with a move he would never have survived to make in a real fight. He threw the sword aside at the last minute and tackled the surprised faerie. Evidently, faeries didn’t follow football, either. There was no getting out from under Gordy, and the faerie yielded.

“Another trickster? Taliesin, do you have any actual fighters besides Shahriyar?” Gordy looked incredibly downcast; clearly, he did not want to fail at this, but Gwynn’s tone left little doubt in his mind that he had.

“You didn’t mention any rules this time, either, Majesty,” I pointed out in my most tactful tone.

“Well, so I didn’t, but I must confer with my warriors, nonetheless. Gwynn actually dismounted from his war horse and gestured for his warriors to follow him. They walked some distance away and spoke in grave whispers. Govannon eyed us inquisitively but said nothing.

“How is Dan?” I asked as I stepped over to where Nurse Florence was working on him.

“Lots of little wounds, but none of them anywhere nearly as deep as yours at UCSB,” she said absently, focusing most of her attention on the healing process. “He will heal fine. See if you can stop Gordy’s bleeding, and I will attend to him when I can,” she said, handing me a small first aid kit.

“I screwed it up,” said Gordy as I did what I could to clean his wounds. I had never heard him sound so forlorn.

“I’m not so sure. Gwynn let Dan get away with sort of the same thing. And anyway, what you did was clever. You sized up the situation really well and created a strategy to win on a moment’s notice.”

“You don’t have to sound so surprised,” snapped Gordy. “I know most people think I’m a dumb ass, but I thought you were different.”

“Gordy, I don’t think you’re a dumb ass.” Well, to be honest, I did have my doubts.

“Well, I’m not,” he said emphatically. “Nurse Florence figured it out from watching my dreams. I have ADHD. I’ve just never been diagnosed. That’s why I had so much trouble keeping up in school, and yeah, now I’m pretty behind. Nobody has been able to make me concentrate for long, well, except Stan. But now Nurse Florence promised that as long as I help you and Stan, my ADHD won’t bother me. The other day I sat down and did a homework assignment in ten minutes that would have taken me an hour before. And I understood it.”

Interesting. I would never have guessed, but treating Gordy’s ADHD was maybe easier than causing Dan to always perform at his highest level on the football field, for all I knew. It made me wonder what Shar was getting out of his bargain.

Then another thought occurred to me: ADHD had been unknown in medieval times. There would have been no spell to heal it, because no one knew what it was. So how could Nurse Florence have cured Gordy? Now I suspected I knew why Nurse Florence was so confident I could learn how to blend magic and technology—she herself had found a way to blend magic and modern medical knowledge!

Then I went back to marveling a little at Nurse Florence’s cleverness, not for the first time. She always seemed to know exactly the right deal to make, but she also knew whom to approach; she picked up on Dan’s latent friendship for me when nobody else noticed it. She kept finding people who had reasons other than just the bargain for working with us. Well, come to think of it, I was the one who suggested Shar and Gordy to her, and both of them had loyalty that transcended the bargain. Time to marvel at my own cleverness, well, at least a little bit.

“My warriors and I have conferred,” said Gwynn, almost right behind us, “and your last fighter’s approach, though…unusual, showed courage. He ran practically into a blade, left himself wide open, in order to catch my warrior by surprise. Even though he knew the fight was not to the death, he could easily have been gravely injured, if only by accident. He, too, is a worthy fighter…though what good swords will do two fighters without the skill to use them, I have no idea.

“They will have good teachers,” said Shar, coming to stand next to me. Gwynn chuckled a little.

“Well, I don’t doubt that. But they have only days in which to become proficient. Even the best teachers would have a hard time on such a schedule. Still, you have proven yourselves worthy of at least being given a chance.”

“Majesty,” said Stan abruptly, startling me. “I too request the right to prove myself.”

Gwynn looked dumbfounded. “But you are just a child, surely!”

“I am about the same age as the others,” said Stan, trying hard not to sound offended and not entirely succeeding.

“Stan,” I muttered under my breath, “what are you doing?”

“These contests don’t seem to be as much about combat skill as about character. At least they were for Dan and Gordy.”

Gwynn was looking at Stan, as if for the first time. “It is as you say. You are old enough to be a warrior. Do you too seek a weapon?”

“I do, and if it please your Majesty, I would like to wrestle for one.”

Another belly laugh. “Were you under the impression that it was your place to propose the nature of your own challenge?”

“Majesty, he meant no offense,” I said, stepping forward.

“Taliesin, he seems more than capable of speaking for himself. He is presumptuous, perhaps, but he too has courage.” He focused on Stan again. “I presume you want rules this time, or you would not have named a specific challenge. What are the rules for this wrestling?”

Much to my surprise, Stan started reciting the CIF rules.

“I taught him those,” Gordy whispered to me, “and I have shown him some moves while we were working out.” I recalled that Gordy’s winter sport was wrestling, but I didn’t remember any wrestling coaching going on while Stan and I were working out with the football team. Then again, I had been pretty preoccupied part of the time.

Actually, wrestling was an astute choice in the sense that it did not leave as much scope for the use of a faery’s natural speed. However, there was a problem, which Gwynn was not slow to perceive.

“I have no warrior here who is in your ‘weight class,’ as you would call it.”

“I will accept the disadvantage.”

“Very well.”

“One other thing, if it please your Majesty.” Wow, Stan was pressing his luck like, well, like me. Gwynn looked at him, clearly waiting.

“I would like to change the rules I just gave you in one way—the match doesn’t end until I yield.” Gwynn raised an eyebrow, but nodded.

Watching the “match” was painful. Stan was outweighed, and if Gordy really had done much coaching, it was clear that Stan hadn’t absorbed much. He knew what he was supposed to do; he just couldn’t do it. He got pinned over, and over, and over. To make matters worse, I think the faerie warriors, despite their gracious manner, were heartily sick of getting their butts kicked by mortals, and the one wrestling Stan was determined to win, perhaps to help his friends save face.

Finally Gwynn asked, “Do you yield?” which should have been hint enough for most people.

“No,” said the pinned Stan, through clenched teeth. Gwynn nodded reluctantly, and the slaughter, uh, the match continued.

Stan must have been exhausted, and, though at least he hadn’t been cut up in a sword fight, his skin looked gray. He was drenched in sweat, and his expression suggested that by now he was actually in pain. This was far more twisting in awkward positions than he was used to—he had probably pulled a muscle somewhere along the way, maybe more than one.

By now the match had dragged on so long that Nurse Florence had actually finished healing Dan. Gordy waved her off. “Save it for Stan,” he said, not taking his eyes off the spot where Stan and the faerie continued their unequal struggle.

“Do you yield?” asked Gwynn again, this time more insistently. Stan shook his head no.

Gwynn gave me his most piercing stare. “The boy should yield. I cannot guarantee his safety if this continues.”

“I am not a boy!” Stan nearly shouted. I was both surprised he had the energy to shout and shocked that he was coming so close to conflict with the leader of the Welsh faeries, not someone you exactly wanted as an enemy.

“Your Majesty…” I began.

“Taliesin,” he almost roared, “do not presume to counsel me. Counsel your b…your warrior, if you will. Having agreed unwisely to that rule about yielding, I can do nothing now to change it. They could fight for all eternity, except that your friend will die much sooner than that. I have seen a man’s heart give out in this kind of situation.”

“Majesty,” said the faerie wrestler, “in the interest of ending this contest in accordance with your wish, I am willing to yield.”

“Are we of one mind?” Gwynn asked, addressing the warriors and Govannon, all of whom nodded. “Then yes,” he said, addressing the wrestler again, “by all means yield.” The wrestler yielded, nodding to Stan, and returned to his place in line.

“Well, little warrior,” began Gwynn. “Oh, yes, let me save you the trouble, you are not little. Well, warrior, you have the ability to endure pain and even humiliation for a cause. You, too, shall have a weapon.” Stan, contrary to protocol, had not bowed to the king, but since he was still lying on the ground, Gwynn did not seem to mind. I moved in his direction, but naturally Gordy beat me to it, practically carrying him over to Nurse Florence. I bowed to the king, who seemed to be watching the healing on the sidelines with some amusement, and then quickly walked over to where Stan was being tended.

“He’s going to be all right,” said Nurse Florence without my asking, “but he did push himself dangerously hard.” Stan looked up at me and smiled.

“Now I’m not just the sidekick anymore,” he whispered to me.

“You were never just the sidekick, Stan.”

“Well, now everyone knows I have guts.”

“Knew that too. So if you get into battle, try to keep them inside of you—no need to display them.”

Stan laughed a little and closed his eyes. At about that point three faeries approached, each with a golden goblet. One collected a little of Dan’s blood, one a little of Gordy’s tears—not that he would admit he had teared up a little while Stan was getting his butt kicked—and one a little of Stan’s sweat. They took the goblets to Govannon, who nodded and left immediately.