The Secular Wizard - Wis in Rhyme - 4 (12 page)

"Still," said Lady Beatrice, "he should be reckless only on her be-half, not in spite of ... See! Her eyelids begin to flutter!" "Oh, where is that doctor?" Lady Constance cried.

" No ... doctor!" Alisande protested, forcing herself to sit up.

"No, Majesty!" Lady Constance cried in alarm. "Do not rise so suddenly! " "Do not speak as if I am ill!" Alisande snapped. "It was a moment's shock, nothing more!" But she stumbled as she pushed herself to her feet.

Lady Constance was there to catch her arm. "What could there have been in that letter to so alright your Majesty?" She glared Lady Beatrice to silence.

Alisande hesitated, torn between her very human need for a confidante and her monarch's duty to take the full weight on her own shoulders. Then she remembered that word of Matt's expedition was bound to become public knowledge, very public and very quickly, and allowed herself to speak. "My dunce of a husband has gone into Latruria! " The women gasped in shock. It wasn't difficult-they had never heard the queen refer to the Lord Wizard so rudely before.

"But Majesty!" Lady Constance regained her poise first.

"Latruria is a kingdom of sorcery and dark Evil!"

"Perhaps no longer," Lady Julia said quickly. "The young King Boncorro may not be so bad as his grandfather!"

" Or may be worse," Lady Constance said darkly. "I have heard tales to chill the blood about the doings of old King Maledicto! "

"Aye-the maidens ravished and tortured, the rebels flayed and quartered." Lady Julia shuddered.

But Lady Beatrice turned deadly pale. "More unnerving are the stories of the folk he had tortured so that he and the folk of his court might laugh at their screams!"

Laugh, and worse," Alisande said darkly. in spite of herself, she shivered, and her hand went automatically to her abdomen-but she forced it away.

"It is whispered that he commanded his sons be slain," Lady Beatrice gasped, "even that he slew the eldest with his own hand!"

"Aye," Lady Julia said severely, "and that only the youngest was saved from his murderous sire, by his devotion to God-surely amir

-acle, in the midst of a court dedicated to the Devil!"

"Surely," Lady Constance agreed, "and it is said that it was lust overcame him, and that one sin cracked his holiness enough to make him subject to the evil will of King Maledicto! " "And that the king would then have slain his grandson," Lady Beatrice finished, "had not some virtuous soul spirited him away into

73 hiding-a hiding so complete that even King

Maledicto's sorcery could not spy him out - " Lady Elise burst through the door with a dark-robed graybeard right behind her, puffing as he lugged a heavy satchel.

Elise cried, "Here is the ... Oh! Your Majesty is well!"

"No doctor, I said!" Alisande waved the graybeard away angrily, then instantly relented. "Your pardon, Doctor. It was only a faint, a moment's giddiness, nothing more."

The doctor didn't exactly look reassured. "Still, your Majesty should permit-" "Nothing! I need nothing! There is too much to do, too suddenly, to permit of time for medicine!"

The doctor started to interrupt, but Alisande overrode him.

"Away, kindly doctor! I must turn to planning strategy!" And she very deliberately turned away from him.

The doctor glared in outrage-he was one of the few members of the court privileged to do so-but when he saw she was not looking, gave it over and went out the door, shaking his head and grumbling. "I regret your bootless errand, Lady Elise," Alisande said, "but it was truly for naught."

All four ladies exchanged a very significant glance as Lady Elise said slowly, "A hundred bootless errands I will run gladly, your Majesty, so long as the one that is truly needed be among them. But what gave you cause for such distress?"

Alisande opened her mouth to deny, but before she could lie, Lady Julia said, "Her husband goes into Latruria. " "Oh!" Lady Elise gasped, covering her mouth. "Into that cesspool of evil, where the king is a triple-dyed villain?"

"The new king may not be," Alisande said with asperity. "I have had reports of the conduct of this young King Boncorro, and many of his works are good. In truth, I hear no evil spoken of himself, barring what any monarch must sustain . . . " "Even yourself?" Lady Elise's eyes went round.

"Even I have had to order the occasional beheading, and the more frequent hanging," Alisande said grimly. "In truth, I have ordered soldiers to their deaths in two wars now, and I do not pretend there was no evil in it."

"But it was for a good cause! Indeed, it was to fight Evil itself!" "Even so, men slew other men at my orders," Alisande said inexorably, "and I cannot pretend I was innocent of all guilt. No, any monarch must strain her conscience in defense of her people-for the

welfare of the commonwealth must be guarded, and where a common man can plead self-defense, a monarch cannot."

" No-she can plead the defense of others!"

"I can and do," Alisande agreed, "and so, I doubt not, does King Boncorro. " "Does he?" Lady Constance said darkly. "Or does he only secure his own power and fortune as well as he may, with least risk to his soul?" "There is that," Alisande admitted.

"Still, if reports are true, I need not fear for my husband's safety."

"Then why do you fear? " Lady Constance retorted.

"Because reports may not be true." Alisande shivered again.

"Send for the Lord Marshal, Lady Elise, and summon Master Ortho the Frank, my husband's assistant. I must call up my armies. Still pale-faced, Lady Elise bobbed a curtsy and fled out the door. Queen Alisande turned to Lady Beatrice. "Do you send a fearless groom to Stegoman the dragon, milady-and send a courier to seek for Sir Guy de Toutarien."

Lady Beatrice departed, wide-eyed. It must be truly an emergency for the queen to seek the aid of the elusive Black Knight!

But Alisande and the party she assembled had to go out into the courtyard to meet Stegoman. The dragon could fit through the hall-ways of her castle in a pinch, but a pinch it was, and quite unpleasant for him, especially since his wings had been mended.

Stegoman lowered his head and raised it in salute-he was one of the Free Folk, not a subject of her Majesty; never mind that he lived in her castle compound now and scarcely ever saw another dragon, except on vacations. "Majesty! Thou dost wish me to fly and bring back my errant companion, the Lord Wizard, dost thou not?"

"You are as perceptive as ever, Stegoman," Alisande answered.

"Yes, I do ask that of you-for he has sent to tell me that he will cross the border into Latruria!"

"I knew he would fall into trouble if he did not travel in company with me," the dragon huffed. "But would he listen? Nay, never! "He was supposed to move in secret," Alisande hinted. "And is a dragon so rare a sight as all that? Oh, aye, I know-we are, most especially in company with a mortal! Yet I could have laired nearby where'er he sought danger! Then, at least, I would have known where to find him!

"That much, I can tell," Alisande answered, "or where he was three nights ago, when he wrote his most recent letter: at the castle of the Count d'Arrete."

"That is something, at least," the dragon rumbled, "though as thy Majesty hath said, it was three nights agone! " "Two days ago he was at the border station near the Savoyard Pass," Alisande offered helpfully.

"That is something more," Stegoman mused. "There should be a road running south from the pass. At least I know where I shall begin to search."

Anxiety stabbed Alisande, and she put out a hand to the warm, dry scales. "Go as cautiously as you may, Great One. I would be loath to lose a friend."

The dragon's mouth lolled open in a sort of laugh. "It is even as you have said, Majesty-the Free Folk cannot travel in secret. Still, I shall fly warily. Fare you well!"

Alisande barely had time to leap back before the dragon sprang into the air, pounding his way aloft with wing beats that boomed and blasted them all with grit and sand. She shielded her eyes, then looked up to watch him circle the keep and fly off toward the south.

"God be with you, great friend," she murmured, "and bring you back safely, with my Matthew on your back." Then she turned to the Lord Marshal. "Have you sent to seek out Sir Guy de Toutarien?"

"Aye, Majesty." The grizzled old knight smiled. "His path is like he wind, I know-but he cannot be so footloose as once he was, now

that he is wed."

Alisande wasn't altogether sure she liked the tone in which the old knight said that. "If he wed the Lady Yveme," she reminded him.

"The Princess Yveme, rather, though none knew that of her till she was about to leave. We know only that she rode off into the mountains in his company, and that they meant to find a priest along the way."

"I never knew the Black Knight not to do as he had said he would," the marshal told her. "Still, as you have said, he shall be difficult to find. I have sent not one man, but ten, to quarter the mountains and seek him out.

Nonetheless, it is a trail two years old, and discovering it will take time."

"Unless he wishes to be found," Alisande amended. "Send also to Matthew's friend Saul."

"The Witch Doctor?" The marshal stared in surprise. "I doubt he will come, Majesty. He seems to have little liking for people gener-ally, now that he has found one to dote on."

"His wife Angelique does seem to be world enough for him," Alisande admitted, "at least to judge by report, for we have not seen the man since the two of them went off into the wilderness together. Still, danger to his friend Matthew may bring him out, just as it brought him to our world-and at least we know where to seek him."

"Aye, in the Forest Champagne," the marshal grunted, "and surely there was never a place so well-suited to a man! A forest named for open land! A wizard who declares he cannot work magic and will not believe in Good and Evil as sources of magical power! Oh, the contra-dictions are apt, Majesty, most apt indeed!"

"He swears by paradox, I know," Alisande agreed, "and to hear him swear at all makes me shiver with apprehension. Still, we shall need his help if Matthew is truly endangered. Send for him, milord."

"By all Baal's brass!" Rebozo swore. "Could that sniveling young lordling truly be so inept as this?"

LoClercchi shrank away from the chancellor's anger. "Surely, milord, you did not truly expect the lad to slay the Lord Wizard himself!" "No, but I had fondly thought he would at least be a strong enough opponent to force the man into using his magic!

Yet what do I find? He was so poor a swordsman that this socalled

'Sir Matthew' scarcely had to work up a sweat, much less resort to wizardry! What do we know now that we did not before?

That he poses as a knight and calls himself 'Sir Matthew'-which is a name not uncommon in these lands, even among knights! And that he fares southward, through the pass-which he was almost certain to do, if he came south at all!" He crumpled the tiny note and threw it at the wall. "Nay, this boy Camano has achieved nothing, nothing! Send him a stomachache! Send him a flux! I should give him worse, but pain is fitting for a pain! " "He has done no harm, at least."

"Would he had! Well, at least we know this 'Sir Matthew' will try to cross the border."

"Shall I send soldiers to set a trap for him, Lord Chancellor?"

"Nay! Instead send a monster to slay him, if he should set one foot across the borderline! A manticore to gobble him up or a chimera to befuddle him! For whether he does or does not intend treachery, it is most definitely not in the king's interest for the Lord Wizard of Merovence to come into Latruria!"

"But what harm can he do?" the secretary asked, confounded.

"What harm?" Rebozo roared. "You ask what harm?

The man who stole back Queen Alisande's crown from the sorcerer Malingo? The man who raised the giant Colmain? You know what upheaval followed his entrance into Ibile, his foray into Allustria-and you ask me what

harm he might do, in a kingdom ruled by a king who will not kneel, nor go into a church? True, Boncorro is not as evil as the kings of those countries were-but I, his chancellor, have no wish to see him dethroned. Do you wish all the old ways to fall in this land, and yourself with them?"

"No, my lord, never!" the secretary said, very frightened.

"I shall send to stop him straightaway!"

But the chancellor wasn't listening. He paced the room, muttering, "Good or evil, my King Boncorro is technically not the legitimate monarch, since his grandfather usurped the throne and slew the ineffectual former king, himself the son of a usurper of a usurper of a man who was an excellent poet, but a very weak king-and that is how low the line of the Caesars had fallen!"

"Was that poet-king truly descended from the Emperors of Reme, then?" LoClercchi asked, wide-eyed.

"He was, and they spread their seed far and wide, I assure you!

Who knows but what this Lord Wizard might unearth one of their descendants to claim the throne from King Boncorro? Nay, best to take no chances-keep him out of Latruria, LoClercchi!

Find a way, find ten ways-but keep him out!"

Once again Matt wondered how he got himself into these things, and the reflection that it was his loving spouse and liege who had done it this time didn't help much-especially since it had been his own idea to cross the border, and right now that seemed very dumb.

He was still in Merovence, technically, but not by much-only a couple of yards at most, maybe less; it was hard to tell, when there was no fence marking the boundary, or even a dotted line along the ground. But the manticore facing him seemed to have no doubt about the demarcation. "Stay back," it said, grinning-it couldn't do much else, with a mouth like that. "If you cross into Latruria, you are my meat." Matt eyed the grin and decided he didn't want to take the chance. At least he was talking to a man's head-but it had double teeth, two rows above and two below, and they were all sharp and pointed. Worse, that almost-human head sat on top of a lion's body-if you could count it as a lion's body when it was covered with porcupine quills and had a scorpion's tail arcing up over its back, aiming right at Matt.