The Wiz Biz (12 page)

Six: Heart’s Ease

The morning was bright and sunny. Instead of dark and sinister, the Wild Wood was fresh and green. There was almost nothing among the trees and ferns to remind them of the night before.

Their path led out of the glade and back up the heavily wooded hill above the door. There was no hint or scent of danger, but still they moved along quickly.

They climbed a series of forested ridges, each looking down on the tops of the trees in the valley below. At the top of the third ridge, Moira scanned the valley while Wiz sat puffing on a rocky outcrop.

“There!” the hedge witch said, pointing. Below and off to one side a square stone tower stood rough and gray above the trees of the forest. About its base clustered outbuildings enclosed by a stockade of peeled logs. Heart’s Ease,” said Moira. “Our journey’s end.” She shifted her pack as Wiz struggled to his feet and they headed off down the path.

“Will we be safe here?” Wiz asked as the trail flattened out in the valley and he found he had breath for more than walking.

“In daylight nothing dare come close,” Moira told him. “Anything magic here would be immediately known to the Watchers. There are non-magic agents, of course, human and such, but . . .” she shrugged. “We are safe here as anywhere.”

“Thank God!” Wiz said fervently.

Moira frowned. “Do not be so free with names of power.”

“I’m sorry,” Wiz said contritely.

The forest enclosed them until they were almost on top of the castle. The trees were as huge and hoary as anywhere in the Wild Wood, but they didn’t seem as threatening here.

“It feels friendly,” Wiz said wonderingly, aware for the first time how oppressive the Wild Wood had been at its most benign.

“It is friendlier,” Moira agreed. “The forest folk hereabouts are kindly disposed toward the inhabitants of Heart’s Ease. They watch over the place and those who live there.” She shifted her pack with a swell and jiggle in her blouse that made Wiz’s heart catch. “Besides, this is a quiet zone. There is almost no magic here, for good or ill.”

###

Atros returned to his sleeping chamber fuming. It had been a long, frustrating evening.
Damn those elves and their impudence!
They had spirited his quarry out from his very grasp, humiliated him in front of the entire League and ruined his plans. His impromptu army disintegrated once they knew the elf duke guested the two they sought.

So they had been making for the elf hill after all,
the wizard thought as he stripped off his bearskin cloak by the light of a single lamp glowing magically in one corner.
He did not understand it and he was too tired to really think upon it. Perhaps the one who had been Summoned was some strange kind of elf and not a man at all? True, Toth-Set-Ra’s scrying demon had called the Summoned a man, but demons could be wrong.

Too many possibilities,
he thought as he pulled his silken tunic over his head.
For now sleep and in the morning . . .
He moved toward the great canopied bed and then stopped. There was something, or someone, making an untidy lump under the sheets. He stepped back cautiously and possessed himself of his staff. He muttered a protective spell and then moved to the bed again. Reaching out with his staff, he flipped back the fine woolen coverlet and recoiled at what lay beneath.

There on the gore-clotted sheets was a thing which had once been a man. His back was broken, his ribs were smashed, his arms and legs dislocated and cruelly contorted, and his head lay at an impossible angle. But worse, he had no skin. He had been so expertly flayed that even his nose remained in place. His pallid eyeballs stared up at the ceiling and his ivory white teeth seemed to smile out of the mass of bloody tissue that had been a face.

Even in its present state, Atros had no difficulty identifying the body as Kar-Sher, Keeper of the Sea of Scrying.

“Do you like my little present, Atros?” hissed a familiar, hateful voice. The dark-haired giant started and looked around. In the shadows behind the feebly glowing lamp a face took shape. The face of Toth-Set-Ra.

“I told one I know what he was called,” the wizard’s voice went on, soft and full of menace. “Not his true name, Atros, just what he was called. And you see the result.” The old wizard cackled. “Oh, I did take his skin afterwards. I needed it, you see. It is amazing what you can do with the skin of a wizard, even a wizard who set himself so much above his station. A wizard who was such an inexpert plotter as this one.”

Atros looked around wildly, swinging his staff this way and that to try to ward off an attack.

“I tell you again Atros, the League is mine!” The skull-face image said. “You, all of you, exist to serve me. And serve me you shall—one way or the other. Meditate upon that, Atros. Meditate upon it while you sleep.”

The image winked out, leaving Atros alone in the chamber cold and shaking. Did the old crow mean to spare his life? Or was this just some torture designed to shake his will before he too was killed?

Atros spent the rest of the night in sleepless suspense and confusion. Plots to replace Toth-Set-Ra were very far from his mind.

###

A woman waited to greet them at the stockade gate. She was beautiful, tall and stately as a ship under sail. She was not young, yet not as old as her long white hair proclaimed. As Wiz got closer he saw that the lines around her eyes and mouth were those of one who had lived hard, not long.

She wore a long gown of midnight blue velvet, caught with a silver cord at her waist. The dagged sleeves of her dress fitted her upper arms tightly and swept halfway to the ground at her wrists.

Her right hand rested on the shoulder of a bent, manlike creature with a long sharp nose and huge hairy ears. He was as ugly as she was beautiful, but the contrast was not incongruous.

“Merry met and well come,” she said in a voice like ringing silver. “I am Shiara, the mistress of this place, and Heart’s Ease is your home for as long as you care to stay.”

“Thank you, Lady,” said Moira, curtseying. Wiz hastened to bow.

“Not ‘Lady’,” the woman told her. “Just plain Shiara.”

“Not plain either,” said Wiz, moved by her beauty.

Shiara smiled but did not look in his direction.
She’s blind!
he realized.

“Your companion is gallant,” Shiara said to Moira.

“He has his moments,” Moira sniffed.

“You are called ‘Sparrow’, are you not?”

“Yes, Lady. Ah, yes Shiara.”

“Well, merry met at Heart’s Ease, Sparrow,” the lady said. “You must both be tired. Ugo will show you to your rooms.”

The ugly little creature sniffed and shuffled through the stockade gate without a backward glance.

The ground within covered perhaps two acres. There were six or eight small buildings, huts and storehouses and a large garden laid out behind. Attached to the base of the stone tower was a large building, also of peeled logs, roofed with shingles and chinked with moss.

“Is she a wizardess?” Wiz whispered to Moira as they came up the flagstone walkway.

“She was of the Mighty,” Moira said and motioned him to silence.

Ugo led them into the building and Wiz saw it was a single large room, a great hall with a huge smoke-blackened fireplace in one side and a table big enough to seat twenty people down the center. In spite of its rude exterior, the hall was richly furnished with heavy velvet drapes on the walls and massively carved furniture placed carefully about. The whole effect reminded Wiz of a picture he had seen once of J.P. Morgan’s hunting lodge.

Ugo took them down the hall without pausing and through a low stone door into the tower proper. There was a narrow stair twisting off to the right and climbing so steeply Wiz was afraid he would lose his balance. At the second floor landing Ugo opened a door for Moira and bowed her through. Wiz started to follow but Ugo blocked him with a rough hairy arm.

“Lady’s room,” he said gruffly. “Come.” He led Wiz on up the stairs to the very top of the tower.

“Your room,” Ugo grumbled as he opened the door.

The room was small and simply furnished with a narrow rope bed, a table and single chair. But there was a fire laid in the fireplace and a basin and pitcher of steaming water sat on the table. The bed was covered with a bright counterpane and a snow-white towel lay beside the basin. Against one wall, next to the fireplace, stood a full-length mirror.

“Dinner at sun’s setting,” the goblin told him. “Do not be late.”

Dinner was simple but savory. Most of the dishes were vegetables and tubers from the castle garden, with wild mushrooms from the forest and forest fruits for dessert. There was very little meat, which suited Wiz.

“Moira has been telling me of your travels,” Shiara said. She held a knife in one hand and extended the other hand, palm down and fingertips spread, over the table, finding her plate by the heat from the food.

“It was quite a trip,” Wiz said. “Lady,” he added hastily as Moira frowned.

“I understand you rescued Moira when you were beset by trolls.”

“Well, kinda. Mostly she rescued me.”

“Still, from what Moira tells me it was a bravely done deed.” She smiled slightly. “Though perhaps charging a troll with a stick is not the wisest move.”

“Thank you, Lady,” said Wiz, ignoring the second sentence. “Uh, Lady, do you know if they are still looking for us?”

Shiara turned serious. “Somewhat, I understand. Although your guesting the night in an elf hill seems to have thrown them off the scent and dampened the ardor of many of the Leagues allies. There are few who would willingly try conclusions with any of the elven kind, much less an elf duke.”

“Then are they likely to find us here?”

She considered. “Perchance. But in this quiet place it would be hard. We do not use magic at Heart’s Ease, so they cannot find you directly. There
is
little magic here to reflect off us and show us those with the Sight. No, Sparrow, if they find you at all it will be by accident.

“Besides,” she continued, “finding you and getting here are very different things. In a quiet zone such as this any attempt at magic would be seen instantly by the Watchers and countered. We are a hundred leagues or more from the shores of the Freshened Sea so they cannot come at us overland. The forest creatures are our friends, so they would find it difficult to sneak close. All things considered we are safe enough.”

“That’s a relief.”

“Just do not get careless,” Moira said sharply.

“True,” their blind hostess said. “Safety is at best relative and we are deep in the Wild Wood. Do not wander off, and leave things you do not understand strictly alone.”

There was silence for a bit while they ate.

“Lady, what do we do now?” Wiz asked at last.

“You remain here as my guests while the Mighty consider your situation.”

“And Moira?” Wiz asked, dreading the answer.

“I am to remain as well,” said the red-haired witch, in a tone that showed she didn’t like it. “In their wisdom, the Mighty have decreed that even here you need a keeper.” She grimaced. “And I am chosen for the task.”

“You don’t have to stay on my account,” Wiz protested.

“I stay because the Mighty would have it so.”

“Peace, peace,” said Shiara. “Lady, I think your quarrel is with those not present, not the Sparrow.”

“True, Lady,” Moira said contritely. She turned to Wiz. “I am sorry I spoke so.”

They contrived to get through the rest of dinner without snapping at each other.

###

At first Wiz simply luxuriated in life at Heart’s Ease. He had a bed to sleep in, a roof over his head, no one was chasing him and, best of all, he didn’t have to walk all day.

But that palled quickly. There was nothing for him to do. Moira made herself useful, cooking and helping to clean, but Wiz had no domestic skills.

“Is there anything I can do?” he asked Ugo one day as the goblin was sweeping out the great hall.

“Do?” Ugo grunted.

“To help.”

Ugo bent to his sweeping. “Don’t need help. Take care of Lady by myself.”

It wasn’t that he was interested in doing housework, Wiz admitted to himself; he was bored and he felt completely useless.

He wandered out into the garden where Moira was on her hands and knees weeding an herb border.

“Can I help?”

Moira looked up and did not rise.

“How?” she asked suspiciously.

Wiz spread his arms. “I just want to make myself useful.”

Moira snorted skeptically, as if she felt his offer was a ruse to get close to her. Since that was partially true, Wiz reddened.

“Very well, weed that section over there.” She nodded her head toward a part of the border on the other side of the garden.

The border contained tall fennel plants, their feathery pale green foliage smelling strongly of licorice. Sprouting thickly around them were broad-leafed seedlings, each with two or three yellow-green leaves.

Even though the smell of licorice made Wiz slightly nauseous, he set to work with a will, pulling up the tiny plants without damaging the fennel. The summer sun beat strongly on his back and before he had weeded five feet he was sweating heavily. The border was wide and he had to reach to get the weeds at the far side. In ten feet his shoulders were twinging from the reaching and by the time he had done twenty feet his back was sore as well. He took to stopping frequently to rest his aching muscles and to watch Moira at work on the other side of the garden.

Moira worked steadily and mechanically, flicking the weeds out of the bed with a practiced twist of her wrist. Her long red hair hung down beside her face and every so often she would reach up and brush it out of the way, but she never broke the rhythm of her work. There was a smudge of dirt on her cheek and her skirt and blouse were grimed and stained, but she still took Wiz’s breath away.

At last Wiz reached the end of the fennel and went to Moira for further instructions.

“It took you long enough,” she said as he approached.

There were a lot of weeds,” said Wiz, bending over backwards in an effort to get the kinks out of his back. “I don’t think that patch had been weeded in some time.”