Wistril Compleat (9 page)

Kern smiled. He'd sought out a mirror, as he
dressed, and had seen himself revealed as a tall, cat-eyed vampire,
with fangs that hung a full inch below his lip, and long white
talons at the tip of every finger. Even as he had stared at his
reflection, his eyes had narrowed, and had begun to glow a ruddy
red in time with the beating of his heart.

Kern turned to the nearest man, and licked
his lips.

"Apprentice," said Wistril. "Cease. Fetch the
Baron more wine. Bring a bottle from the North Tower cellar."

"Is that your best?" said the Barn.

"It is," replied Wistril.

The Baron turned. "We shall see about that,"
he said. "Wizard!" He snapped. "Attend!"

Herthmore turned. "Yes, Baron?" he said, his
voice hoarse and wavering.

"Is there magic here? In this room?"

"Sir!" snapped Wistril, indignant.

"Silence!" boomed the Baron. He glared at
Wistril. "You are a White Chair wizard, are you not?" he said.

"I am," said Wistril, his round face
reddening and his hands clenching into fists.

"So your Oath of Peace forbids you to use
magic offensively, does it not?"

"It does," said Wistril. "How dare you accuse
me of perfidy!"

"I accuse nothing," said the Baron. "Save,
perhaps, your desire to impress your noble guests. Wizard!" boomed
the Baron. "I asked a question of you!"

Kern sent a single questioning glance toward
Wistril. Wistril saw him, and when the Baron turned his eyes away
he gestured Kern to silence.

Herthmore cleared his throat. "I hear,
Master," he said. He pushed back his chair, and stood, and Kern
distinctly heard him whisper a long, strange word before he fell
into a brief fit of wet, deep coughing.

"Then answer me," said the Baron. "Is there
magic in this room?" The Baron turned a wicked grin upon Wistril.
"Magic meant to confuse or confound?"

Herthmore twitched and yelped, and the men
seated about him scooted their chairs back and mouthed words of
their own.

"It is merely a simple glamour," said
Wistril, "Meant only to enhance the beauty of Kauph."

The Baron spat a word in Oomish, and the
wizard Herthmore bowed and pulled his hood back over his face. Kern
heard whispering, and then a moan, and then the Hall shimmered and
spun, and the candle-flames and lamps went briefly dim. When the
light returned, Kern saw that the Hall had changed.

Kern blinked. The Hall was dim now. Dim and
dark and sooty and damp, worse that the basement of the South Tower
after a rain and a spraying by a randy wumpus-tom. The floors were
covered with straw, and the rough-hewn table was missing a leg and
propped up on an empty beer-cask, and the ceiling was a low,
cracked mass of mold and spider-webs.

Kern looked down at his plate, and what had
been silver-worked china was plain, worn wood. His fork was bent
steel; his glass a cracked clay mug -- of all the things in the
Hall, only the plain food on his plate was the same.

The Baron laughed. He dismissed his wizard
with another hearty slap to the shoulder, and he turned instead to
Wistril and roared laughter in his face.

"White Chair magic!" he roared. "Think you me
a fool, wizard?" he said. "Think you that I would sit down to a
White Chair's table and eat tough boiled beef and old string-beans
from fine Delve china, and not realize I was dining more on
illusion that substance?" He roared anew, and glared at his men
until they followed suit. "Think you me a fool?"

Wistril glared, and rose. Kern stared;
Wistril's robes were patched and threadbare, and he bore an open,
festering sore square in the center of his bald, wrinkled
scalp.

"Forgive me," Wistril muttered. "I only
sought to make your stay more comfortable.

"Fetch me more wine, Master of Kauph!"
bellowed the Baron. "Fetch us all more wine, that we might be more
comfortable within the mighty walls of your splendid abode! Go, and
be quick about it!"

"Apprentice," said Wistril.

Kern rose, ignoring the glares and grumbles
about him, deftly stepping past the elbows and forks that sought
out his sides as he passed.

Wistril passed through the Great Hall door,
which now hung lopsided and loose on a single squeaking hinge , and
Kern followed quickly after.

Late that night, after the last of the
Baron's bellows had sounded, and the last of his men had stumbled
drunkenly up to their beds, Kern sought out Wistril in his study.
Finding the wizard seated calmly at his massive desk, Kern crossed
Oomish carpet and wearily sought out his own desk and chair.

The study, unlike the rest of Kauph, was
unmarked by the new glamour of poverty and decay that marked every
room. Wistril's desk shone in the candle-light, its polished
ironwood top unblemished; the brass goblin-clock whirled away on
the corner, carefully marking off the seconds with small, precise
clicks. Kern squinted through the shadows, and found that Wistril's
face was once again his own, untouched by soil or sores.

"Have our guests retired?" asked the
wizard.

"If falling to the floor in a wine-sotted
stupor is retiring, then they have done so mightily," said Kern. He
yawned and stretched, weary from his night of wine-pouring and
beef-fetching.

"Were you abused beyond tolerance?" asked
Wistril.

"They were more interested in drinking your
wine and eating your meat than in abusing your humble, fleet-footed
apprentice," said Kern. "So the only injury done was to my
pride."

Wistril shrugged. "Pride must often make
deference to stealth," he said.

Kern groaned. "It's usually my pride that
makes the deference," he said. "Might I expect to defer again
tomorrow?"

"Indeed," said Wistril. He met Kern's
inquisitive stare with a grim half-smile. "The wizard," he said.
"Has that creature retired, as well?"

"He went first," said Kern.

"The wine," said Wistril, lifting his hands
and putting them before him, finger-tip to finger-tip. "Did the
wizard partake?"

"Not a drop, Master," said Kern, who frowned.
"Why? Was there something in the wine?"

"Incaution," said Wistril, his gaze far away.
"Incaution, and imprecision. I reckon yonder wizard cannot partake
of either, even for a moment."

"He mumbled and he stared," said Kern.
"Turned his head a lot, too. He either had bees in his hood, or he
was hearing things we weren't," said Kern. He shook his head and
pushed back his hair, then rested his chin in his hands. "But he
certainly had no trouble dispelling your glamour, Master," he said.
"Though I was surprised to find a second one beneath it."

"Let this be a lesson to you, Apprentice,"
said Wistril. "Deception wears many masks. Take care to remove them
all, should you undertake to see the face of truth."

"How long do you think it will take
what's-his-name to start tugging away at this mask, Master?" asked
Kern. "And why make us look like beggars? Baron Bully and his lads
will run roughshod over us, now that they think you're a
hedge-wizard and Kauph is a ruin."

"The Baron came here seeking an enemy," said
Wistril, waggling a finger at Kern. "He came to spy us out, to test
out mettle. Now that he thinks us mere peasants, he will likely
drink our beer and loot our kitchens, but that will be the extent
of his predations," said the wizard. "A poor man's door is seldom
worth breaking down."

"Unless you just enjoy the sound of the wood
breaking," muttered Kern.

"Indeed," said Wistril. "Still. I believe
this Baron will move on, in a day or three," said Wistril. "Until
then, we must accompany the glamour of poverty with an even less
pleasant glamour, Apprentice. I must feign cowardice, and you
foolishness. I have instructed the bulk of the staff to remain
hidden, until this ordeal is done," he said.

"I hope 'tis done quickly," said Kern.

"As do I," replied Wistril. The goblin-clock
clicked and spun. "Nevertheless, while we wait, I have need of one
of the haunts," said Wistril. "Preferably an old, experienced
specter given to patience and craft."

Kern lifted an eyebrow. "There's Lord
Essraven," he said. "Spry old chap. He's troubling the Baron's
sleep, even as we speak."

"Fetch him on the morrow," said Wistril. "Say
nothing more than that I wish to see him. In fact, Apprentice,"
said Wistril, leaning into the candle-light, "say nothing
concerning the remaining glamour or our plans outside of this room.
Here, we may meet and speak unseen, protected by spells no mumbling
necromancer could penetrate."

"What if he's better than you think he is,
Master?" asked Kern.

"Then we are undone," said Wistril. He
glanced at the goblin-clock, frowned, and snapped his fingers. His
favorite scrying glass appeared on the desk before him, and made a
face.

"Behave," snapped the wizard, at the glass.
Then he turned his eyes toward Kern. "Go, apprentice," he said.
"Rest. The morrow shall be trying, and one wrong word could bring
all those swords down on our heads."

Kern rose. "I'll limit myself to 'Yes sir'
and 'no sir,'" he said. "And I'll send you a haunt after
breakfast."

"Excellent," said Wistril. He waved his hand
over the glass, and a silvery light grew from a spark deep within
it.

Kern passed by it and stole a glance into the
glassy depths. A sigil rose and spun, taking the shape of a broken
sword and a rearing lion, but then Wistril glared and Kern hurried
past, wondering just who the Master was calling, this late at
night.

Kern counted the days, naming each after the
most unpleasant incident that occurred upon it. First came The Day
the Baron Kicked Me in the Shins, then came The Day the Baron's Men
Set Fire to Wistril's Schooner, and finally The Day the Baron Rode
His Horse Into the Great Hall and Drank the Very Last of Wistril's
Good Upland Beer.

The nights belonged to restless sleep, and
the haunts. Kern lay awake for hours, grinning at the shrieks and
the moans and sound of the Baron's men shouting and cursing and
striking at the walls with their swords. Midway through the second
night, the Baron had bellowed at his wizard to banish the haunts,
but Kern heard them again just before dawn, and he knew they would
return with the sunset.

Kern barely saw Wistril, whose absence was a
source of hilarity for the Baron and his men. "I may make you Lord
of Kauph, sirrah," said the Baron one evening to Kern. "At least
you'll fetch a man a flagon of ale when called. Where's that mighty
wizard of yours hiding, these days? In the root-cellar, is he?" He
propped his boots upon Wistril's Great Hall table, and his brutish
officers roared. "Or is he holding court in the privy?"

Kern had just smiled and nodded and bowed,
until the Baron shoved him away and joined his officers in another
of their seemingly endless bouts of drinking, bellowing, and
dicing.

Beyond the walls, the Baron's soldiers fared
little different, though they were forbidden to partake of
Wistril's cellars or his table. Instead, they sent a contingent of
ruffians down into Dervanny; later that day, the band returned,
bearing innkeeper Fergot's own wagon and a dozen barrels of the
Laughing Horse's name-sake ale. There was meat aboard the wagon,
too -- meat that Kern was sure the men had simply torn from hooks
in Fergot's smoke-house, probably, thought Kern, while the old man
clenched his fists and watched.

"Send a letter, secretly, by Sir Knobby,"
said Wistril, when Kern relayed the Baron's men's banditry to the
wizard. "Tell the Mayor that I shall bear the cost of any damage,
and buy any goods they steal," said Wistril. "Warn him that any
attempt to meet force with force will only result in bloodshed to
the villagers," he added. "Remind him that these are not soldiers,
bound by law, but brigands, driven by hunger."

"I'll send the letter," said Kern. And then,
before he could say another word, Wistril's door shut, and Kern was
alone in the empty hallway, standing beside a bright ray of sun
that shone through a hole in the roof above.

"Ale!" shouted the Baron, "Ale-boy!"

Kern glared at Wistril's door, and hurried
away.

Kern counted beer-barrels and frowned. "Only
four left," he said, in disgust. "The Master will have a conniption
fit."

"I shall have no such thing," said a voice in
the air, beside Kern. He jumped and started, but was alone in the
East Tower store room.

"We may speak freely, for a time," said
Wistril.

Kern looked warily about. "Very well,
Master," he said. "What shall we speak about?"

"The shade of Lord Essraven has been most
ingenious," said Wistril. "I now know the secret of the Baron's
wizard's powers. Also, I have ascertained the location of the Lady
Emmerbee."

Kern nodded. "Is she heading this way?" he
asked, in a whisper. "Because we simply cannot host a wedding on
the good Baron's leavings."

"There will be no wedding," said Wistril.
"And we shall soon command our own House, once again." Kern could
not see Wistril's disdainful pout, but he could hear it in his
voice. "These are not to be wasted upon the Baron and his
hirelings," he said. "You shall inform him that the larder of Kauph
is empty. You shall feed him flour-cakes and tepid water, tonight,
and if he is to have breakfast he will provide it for himself,"
said the wizard.

"What if he wants to complain about the
hospitality?" asked Kern. "Shall I send him up to your rooms?"

"You shall tell him I have gone," said
Wistril. "Indeed, earlier I send a fetch sneaking down the road,"
he said. "It appeared to be me, with a sack slung over my shoulder,
and a stolen pair of boots upon my feet," he said.

"Did the wizard see?" asked Kern.

"He saw," said Wistril. "Now then. Do as I
have said."