Split Heirs (24 page)

Chapter Twenty
-
Seven

“
There
you are, dear,” the queen whispered as a hooded figure sidled up to take the seat beside her in the Hallowed Hall of Sacred and Ever-Flowing Royal Enthronement. “I've been so worried. Where have you been?”

Wulfrith's head was still terribly muzzy. He recalled leaving the rightful heir to Gudge's crown in possession of the tower suite. He recalled turning the two guards into hamsters. He recalled feeling very pleased with himself as he skipped down the winding tower steps two at a time.

Most especially, he recalled how all that skipping made his hooded mask get turned around with no warning whatsoever. He was in midskip when half his vision became obscured abruptly, ruining his depth perception and causing him to land not on the next step down but face first up against the tower wall.

This, in turn, had made his rate of descent go from brisk to faster-than-a-rolling-beer-keg as he barrelled all the way to the bottom of the tower. He had only just awoken a few hours ago and had spent the intervening time trying to find out where the coronation rite was being held in
—
he had never bothered to learn the ornate Hydrangean names for the various chambers and halls
—
and whether he had missed it.

He hurt.

“Precious child, what is the matter with you?” the queen pressed, laying a hand on Wulfrith's sleeve. “And what in the name of the thirty-four hundred styles of sonnet are you wearing?”

Wulfrith looked down. He was still clad in the richly-embroidered tunic proper to a king-in-the-making, neither he nor Arbol having thought to switch clothes as well as identities. “Uh…I thought I should change into something appropriate for the coronation,” he explained. The excuse sounded feeble, but so did he.

The queen's brow furrowed. “You're not planning on making a scene, are you?”

“Who, me?”

“You must swear to me that you will do nothing to disturb the rituals until the coronation itself is finished.”

“Oh, I swear.” Wulfrith made the arcane sign of the Wizard's Seal of Truth by using the first two fingers of his right hand to trace a large X over his heart.

“After all,” Artemisia went on, “I know how much you want to be king, and…”

“No, I don't,” Wulfie replied. “Not really. You see, I've thought it over, and I don't think I'm really cut out for the job.”

The queen's frown deepened. A look of downright skepticism etched its bitter way across her face. “Are you all right, dear?” she asked suspiciously. “You didn't fall on your head or anything, did you?”

Before Wulfrith could lie, there was a flourish of trumpets, a roll of drums, and a rumble of many bronze wheels coming down the central aisle of the Hallowed Hall as five snow-white milk goats accompanied by seven fair-haired virgins clad all in blue entered, hauling the biggest, shiniest, most ornate marble bathtub in the kingdom. Virgins and goats alike wore garlands of pink and white flowers, but only the virgins were singing the Old Hydrangean hymn to the new king.

The goats would have done it better.

The bathtub reached its destination, the foot of a canopied, damask-draped platform at the head of the Hallowed Hall. Here the virgins and goats were relieved of duty by eleven strapping guardsmen, Gorgorians all, who saw to hoisting the tub onto the platform. There was much sloshing, but only a little of the foaming water slopped over the lip. The scent of orange blossoms and rosewater filled the hall, overpowering the aroma of goats, virgins, and Gorgorians.

Seated beside the queen in a place of honor reserved for the Old Hydrangean nobility, Wulfrith had an excellent view of the proceedings. As soon as the tub was in place, the curtains behind it parts and three men emerged. Wulfrith immediately recognized young Lord Alsike carrying a scepter, the overenthusiastic former apprentice Clerestory carrying a sword, and a mighty glum-looking Bulmuk the Gorgorians bearing the great royal crown of Old Hydrangea on a cushion.

“Would you look at that!” the queen said, with a sniff of disgust. “Those beastly Gorgorians have attached a band of oxskin to the crown, and
—
oh, my gods, tell me that's
not
an oxtail hanging off the scepter!”

Wulfrith couldn't tell her anything of the sort. It was most definitely an oxtail. “It's only a
little
one,” he temporized.

Artemisia's teeth made a harsh sound as they ground together. “If they have taken any more liberties with the regalia, I shall…”

She didn't complete the threat, for just then the curtains parted once more and the prince emerged, looking as splendid and purely Old Hydrangean as the queen might desire. Arbol wore a long, unbelted robe of cloth-of-gold, exquisitely brocaded in a pattern of pomegranates and peacocks. Silver slippers were on the prince's feet, and a slender diamond diadem bound the royal brow, small potatoes indeed when seen beside the ornate tangle of gems, wire, and velvet that was the Volnirian crown
—
and that was equally true with or without oxskin hatband attached.

The curtains parted one last time as an old man hobbled forward to the edge of the platform and almost toppled off. Only the prince's quick reflexes saved him. “Yes, yes, that's all right, I'm fine,” he said, nodding vaguely to all quarters of the assembly. “Just the thing for this time of year, a nice hot…oh!” He blinked as if just waking up, then looked over at Lord Alsike. “This is it, is it?” he asked him.

“Yes, it is, so get
on
with it,” the young Hydrangean lord replied.

“Just so, just so.” The graybeard bobbed his head, then found he couldn't stop until Arbol gave him a sharp whap on the back. “Beloved people!” the sage cried out, and for a wonder his quavery voice carried the length and breadth of the Hallowed Hall. “Behold your king-that-shall-be! Behold that he comes to you having acquitted himself nobly of all the tasks, labors, challenges, and proofs of royalty laid before him! Behold that he is a worthy ruler! Behold that he shall here enter into the ritual bath, in sight of you all, and wash himself clean of any lingering taint or folly of his younger days! Behold that his trust in you, his people, is without flaw or imperfection, even as his royal body is without flaw or imperfection…”

There were several more
beholds
in the old man's speech, but Wulfrith missed them because suddenly Artemisia gave him an elbow in the side and snarled in his ear, “
I thought I told you to kill her!
” The queen's finger jabbed across the aisle to where Lady Ubri sat, watching the coronation's progress and smiling.

“Um, I meant to,” Wulfrith began, “but I had to change my clothes, and…”

“Is that what you were trying to tell me with all that gibble-gabble about not wanting to be king any more?” Artemisia's eyes shot sparks. “Because if that's so, let me tell you that it's not just kings who have an obligation to keep their word to their mothers. Just wait until this is over and I get you alone!
Then
you'll hear…”

But Wulfrith was not destined to hear another word on the subject of filial duty to commit murder. The old man on the platform had reached the end of his oration. Servants scurried up to remove the prince's silver slippers, other servants materialized behind, poised to remove the golden robe just as the gaffer proclaimed, “
Behold your king!
”

The robe came off. The people beheld. There was a very loud hush, and then…

“The king's a
girl!
” someone bellowed. It was Bulmuk. Arbol punched him in the stomach, kicked him where it counted, slammed both fists down hard on the back of his neck when he doubled over, and snatched the sword from his hands as he collapsed.

“Call me that again and I'll make you sorry!” she shouted.

“But
—
but he
is
a girl!” the old man stammered. “I mean
she
is.
You
are, your Majesty. Don't hit me. Oh, dear. There's nothing in the rituals about this.”

A wild hubbub seized the assembly. The Old Hydrangean aristocracy froze where they sat, their breath coming in strained gasps. The Gorgorians were equally divided between those who were making rude remarks while shamelessly ogling their king and those who were muttering, making strange handsigns, and mistrustfully eyeing all the Gorgorian women present.

“Oh dear,” the old man said. “Oh dear, oh dear.”

The queen stood up and screamed.

“
Witchcraft!
” Artemisia cried, wringing her hands. “Vile witchcraft! See how it has unmanned my beloved son, your rightful prince, your king! Oh, evil, loathsome, wicked machinations! Oh, desperate strategem of most atrociously infernal premeditation which has rendered my darling son effeminate, willy-nilly!”

Galvanized by the royal mother's anguish, for the first time at any public occasion Old Hydrangeans and invading Gorgorians were heard to join voices and with one accord respond, “
HUH?
”

“She did it,” Artemisia explained, pointing at Lady Ubri.

The guards closed in on the shocked Gorgorian woman, the prince was disarmed and bundled off to points unknown, and the whole beautifully-orchestrated coronation dissolved into amateur night at the hog-slaughtering festival. In the midst of chaos, a stunned Wulfrith slewed his eyes toward the queen to see how she was taking all this.

He could understand hysterical tears at such a time. He could understand hysterical laughter.

He had never heard of hysterical cartwheels.

Chapter Twenty
-
Eight

Tired and a little dizzy, Clootie dismounted in front of the Tavern of Wonderfully Digestible Foods. After a moment's thought, and seeing no hitching post or rail, he slipped his homemade harness off his horse, and released the poor, terrified animal.

He felt a twinge of guilt that he couldn't turn the miserable creature back into the rabbit it had once been, but he still hadn't found a way to make his transformations reversible. He hadn't found any way to decide what a given specimen would turn into, either; it had taken him twenty-six tries before he had gotten something he could ride, and he had left an astonishing variety of wildlife roaming the vicinity of Stinkberry before he had produced the horse.

Of course, having once been a rabbit, the horse had a tendency to charge headlong in one direction for awhile, then abruptly make a right-angle turn and dash off in another direction entirely. The makeshift bridle hadn't done much to combat this tendency, which accounted for the wizard's dizziness. His route to the capital had been only a very vague approximation of a straight line.

The beast had, however, gotten him there very quickly indeed. And a rabbit never tried to attack anyone, not even someone who climbed on his back and kicked him, which was certainly an advantage.

There had been distractions along the way, of course
—
every time the animal had scented a female rabbit, for example. If someone could redirect that enthusiasm from the old species to the new, Clootie thought, that horse could be worth a fortune in stud fees.

But having now reached the capital, Clootie had no more need for rapid transportation, so he released the creature, and marched into the tavern in pursuit of food, drink, and news.

Was he in time for the coronation?

He could just ask, he supposed, but he hated to draw any attention to himself, even the minimum amount such a query would bring. Surely, if he just listened, someone would mention it
—
a coronation was a major event, after all, and bound to be the subject of gossip.

He found a seat at a mostly empty table; there were none that were completely unoccupied. This was a small one, with two empty chairs and one unconscious old man slumped across the table. Clootie could see little of his sleeping companion except a ragged coat, a battered, wide-brimmed hat and a pair of wrinkled hands, one of them locked in a death grip on an empty bottle. From the height and angle of the hat, Clootie judged that the head beneath it had the right ear to the tabletop; the sound of rather damp snoring emerged from beneath the drooping headgear, and one edge of the hat's brim vibrated erratically in response. A rather rank odor accompanied the snores.

Whoever the fellow was, he raised no objection to Clootie's presence, and there were no tables completely free of custom; the wizard settled in his own chair, turned raised a finger to the proprietor, then dug in his purse for a coin. When he found one he tapped it on the table and sat back to listen.

He could hear the murmur of voices at the surrounding tables as he waited for his ale. A lively discussion was going on; Clootie couldn't follow all of it without visibly eavesdropping, but he caught snatches.

“…crazy Gorgorian women…”

“Probably didn't know about the bath
—
maybe they thought if we had a girl for a king they'd be able to get away with their schemes…”

“…didn't know those witches could
do
anything like that…”

“Pretty damn frightening, the idea that if I get some Gorgorian bitch mad at me I could wake up one morning with a draft in my pants, if you know what I mean…”

“
I
don't think it was those women at all,” one man proclaimed, very loudly. “
I
think it's some trick by our own Old Hydrangean wizards, trying to get back at Gudge for killing them all!”

“Oh, shut up, Dudbert,” a companion said. “If the wizards could've done it, why'd they get Gudge's
son
, and not the old man himself?”

“Because how long did those spells of theirs always take, anyway?” Dudbert persisted. “They've probably been working this one up for the whole fifteen years since the Gorgorians got here! All our Old Hydrangean stuff's all like that; I mean, look at all that silly rigamarole they went through instead of just saying, Here, Arbol, here's the crown, you're king now.”

“Well, if they hadn't done it all up proper, there wouldn't have been a public bath, and we wouldn't know the king's a girl, would we?” someone argued. “The old ways have got their uses, you know
—
if you ask me, Dudbert, someone might think you're about half-Gorgorian yourself, the way you talk sometimes.”

Clootie listened to all this in puzzlement.

King Arbol was a girl?

If they'd already gotten to the royal bath, then the coronation was over
—
but if someone had turned Arbol into a girl…

Just then the old man across the table made a noise like a tornado sucking up mud and stirred himself sufficiently to turn his head over onto the left ear.

“Say, friend,” Clootie said, tapping a mildewy shoulder. “Do you know anything about this stuff about the king?”

“Murmph,” the old man replied.

“The Disaster of the Bath, the scholars are already calling it,” someone said from just behind Clootie; startled, he turned, and almost spilled the tankard of ale the proprietor was delivering.

“Oh?” Clootie said.

“That's right,” the tavernkeeper said. “Someone turned the prince into a girl last night, at the coronation, right as he got ready to step into the bath
—
big flash of light and a sound like thunder, they tell me.”

“Really? And then what happened?”

“Well, Queen Artemisia said it was the Gorgorian women as did it, and everybody went running about screaming and hitting each other, and that was the end of the coronation, and now nobody knows which way is what. There's the Gorgorians saying they'll have to have a match to pick a new king by seeing who can kill the most peasants
—
they used to do it by killing each other, I hear, but they've got civilized now, they say, after living here all these years. Most of 'em, anyway. And there's the Old Hydrangeans saying that they have to trace the royal family tree and find another claimant, 'cept for the ones say we could just have a queen, like as we done three hundred years ago with Queen Nilemia. And meanwhile nobody's in charge, and it's like the whole stupid war might start up again and the Gorgorians start killing everybody, and not just peasants, neither.”

“Amazing,” Clootie said. A situation such as this would surely provide opportunities for someone; as the wizard gulped his ale he tried to think what he could get out of it for himself.

Just then the old man, scenting alcohol, lifted his head and stared at Clootie.

The wizard lowered his tankard, licked his lips, and then stared back.

“By all the little gods who crawl around in the dark,” Clootie said. “It's old Odo!”

It was, indeed, Odo the shepherd; he stared at Clootie, recognition slowly dawning.

“You,” he said, “it's
you!
”

“It's good to see you again,” Clootie said. “Have you found your Dunwin, by any chance? Or seen Wulfrith anywhere?”

“
You!
” Odo screamed. He jumped to his feet, sending his chair over backward, and stood, swaying slightly, as he pointed an accusing finger at Clootie. “You're the stinking wizard who turned my boy's sheep into a dragon, and made him run off, and ruined my life!”

“It was an accident,” Clootie protested.

The other patrons of the tavern were all staring at the two travelers. Odo turned to face them and announced, in slurred and unsteady words, “This is the wizard who turned m'boy's sheep inna a dra…dragon!”

Then drink overcame him once again, and he toppled forward, sprawling on the floor.

“What'd he say?” someone asked.

“He said that fellow's a wizard,” someone answered.

“Said he turned a boy into something in his sleep.”

“Something about someone in drag?”

“I thought he said damsel.”

“Turned a boy into a girl?”

“Did what?”

“He turned a boy into a girl.”

“You mean the king?”

“What, him?”

“Is he the one?”

“He's the one turned the king into a girl?”

“He's the one turned the king into a girl!”

“He did it!”

“Get him!”

“Make him turn her back!”

“Stop him before he gets away!”

“Hang him!”

“Burn him!”

Clootie didn't even have time to phrase a coherent protest before the crowd came surging toward him.

Thinking quickly, he unleashed his transformation spell upon the first of his attackers; unfortunately, he got a gorilla, and no one even noticed the change. A second brawler became a very surprised snake, and managed to crawl away under a table; a third found himself suddenly wearing the shape of a wombat, which was to prove particularly distressing in the coming months because he would be unable to find anyone who could tell him what he had become, as wombats are unknown in Hydrangea and the surrounding lands. Matters of proper diet and behavior would be a mystery to this unfortunate ever after, and though he might make do as best he could, he would be always aware that he might be letting his adopted species down.

For the moment, though, the wombat followed the snake's example and simply tried to get out of the way, as did a new-made pigeon and an unexpected ant. The ant, alas, did not make it, and had Clootie been able to spare any attention, he might have been gratified to learn that his transforming spell was indeed permanent, and was not terminated by the death-by-squishing of the subject.

The wizard, however, had no time to worry about matters of craft; he simply wanted to create enough of a distraction to allow him to reach the door. He thought he might have a chance, until some person far too clever for his own good called, “Grab his arms! It's that waving about he's doing that's turning people into things!”

The gorilla took this suggestion, and the transformations ceased. Clootie looked into the big yellow eyes, studied the big yellow teeth, and decided against further resistance.

Someone found a rope, and a bar rag made an adequate gag; moments later, the wizard was securely trussed up, the gag in his mouth, his hands tied behind his back, legs lashed together from ankle to knee, arms strapped to his sides.

That done, the crowd stepped back and gazed admiringly down at their handiwork. Clootie stared back, regretting that he had ever heard those idiots outside his cave. If he had stayed safely at home…

“Now what?” someone asked.

No one had thought that far.

“Now,” someone suggested, “make him turn the king back into a boy!”

“Right!”

“Yes!”

A score of voices shouted agreement. Someone knelt before Clootie's face and demanded, “Will you turn the king back?”

Clootie replied, “Mrmf.”

The spokesman snatched the gag from the sorcerer's mouth and repeated, “Will you turn the king back?”

“I can't,” Clootie said, regretfully. “I mean, I'd
like
to, but I don't know how.”

The crowd muttered angrily, and Clootie suddenly realized he should have lied. If he'd waved his hands about and chanted something, and said, “There, all fixed,” they might have let him go. But no, he'd had to go and tell the truth.

Having started off that way, though, he thought he might as well continue. “Listen,” the wizard said, “I could turn her into something
else
, maybe
—
a frog, or a cat, or a horse, or something. Would that help?”

The mob considered that, but eventually decided against accepting the offer
—
the determining comment came from someone in the back who shouted, “I'm not going to take any royal decrees from a damned pussycat!”

Clootie decided it was time to abandon honesty as a policy, and was about to explain that if someone would fetch him a gill of virgin's blood and a dragon's liver he'd be
glad
to restore the king's manhood, he just hadn't had the right ingredients before, but before he could get a word out the crowd's spokesman stuffed the gag back in his mouth. As Clootie made unhappy noises and strained against his bonds, the spokesman asked, “What'll we do with him, then? He won't turn her back!”

“Kill him!”

“But then we'll
never
get the king back.”

“Take him to the palace!
They'll
make him turn her back!”

“Take him to the palace!” The shout became an enthusiastic chorus.

“Who at the palace?” the spokesman asked. “The Gorgorians, or who?”

“Whoever we find,” someone answered. “Let
them
sort it out.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Me, too.”

“Right, then,” the spokesman said. “I'll get his feet, a couple of you get his arms, and let's go.”

Together, the entire crowd spilled out into the street, about thirty people and a gorilla; together, they carted Clootie away, leaving the tavern occupied by a disgruntled proprietor, an unconscious shepherd, a snake, a pigeon, and a very confused wombat.