The Haunted Wizard

CHAPTER 20

Two minutes later he wished he hadn’t said that. In fact he wished Drustan hadn’t come calling at all. He was only glad that Drustan’s memories hadn’t included smell as he saw Prince John’s gloating face from Drustan’s point of view, bending over the dying king to ask, “Do you remember your philandering, Father? Of course you do, it was your pride and your boast! The number of times I had to listen to the sickening accounts of your conquests nearly made me die of nausea! But do you remember those horrible howling fights with Mother whenever she found out about your little paramours? Do you remember how she refused to live in the same castle with you? Did you even care that you drove her away and thereby robbed me of my mother, and my chance to win her love? No, of course not! All you cared about was your own pleasure, and indulging your own temper!”

A gargle of denial sounded in Mart’s ears, filling his whole head, and he realized it was Drustan’s response, seen and heard from the viewpoint of a dying, aphasic king.

“Do you remember how you sat back and watched when Gaheris beat me?” John snarled. “Oh, you could have told him to stop, but no—you had to yell at me to put my fists up, to block his blows, and scold me for failing! You could have protected me from Brion’s contempt, from his rebukes and his lectures—but you were too busy with things of greater importance. After all, one lonely child couldn’t have been all that important, could he, Father?”

Again, Drustan gargled a protest.

“Where were you?” John asked. “When I was a little boy, tormented and beaten by my brothers, where were you? Off fighting the Irish and gaining a few miserable square miles of bog, that’s where! Or off wenching with one or another of your paramours! Even after you took me away from my mother, where were you? Gone on missions of state as often as not, until I was old enough to be useful as a weapon against Mother and Gaheris and Brion, by your threat to make me king!”

The king croaked something in protest; Matt, inside his memories, understood it: “But I loved you!”

“Loved me?” John’s lip curled. “If you had loved me, you would have kept me with you! Oh, now and again you felt fatherly, and took me out to give me a drubbing with a stick and call it teaching me swordplay! If you loved me, you had a very odd way of showing it! But that’s all right, Father—I loved you, too, and my way of showing it is to set you on the road to your reward more quickly than you would have gone otherwise.”

Drustan’s brows pulled down in puzzlement.

“Can’t understand?” John jeered. “Where is the vaunted genius of statesmanship now? It is I who have killed you, Father— I who fed you your bowl of gruel this morning, and a dram of poison with it.”

Drustan’s eyes widened in horror.

“Oh yes, you understand now,” John said, grinning with glee. “I’ve set you off on the road to Heaven, all right, but it will be a long, long road, Father, because you’ve committed enough sins for an army in your life, not the least of which was my upbringing! You’ll burn in Purgatory for thousands of years to pay for those sins, and I will delight in imagining every wince, every torture, every scream!”

A roar rang through Mart’s head, and the room seemed to tilt downward as Drustan forced himself up. John retreated in fear—but the room swung again as Drustan fell back, eyes filming over, breath rattling in his throat. The room was silent for a second; then John’s face swam into view again, grinning once more. “At the end, of course, I goaded you into enough anger to make your poisoned heart burst—and to make sure you died in sin, in the sin of anger. Sleep well, Royal Father. I’ll think of you every morning—think of you, and delight in your torments.” He stepped up to close the king’s eyes, saying softly, “Goodbye.”

Darkness closed in, and Matt could feel the king’s desperation and clamoring fear of the supernatural as consciousness dimmed and was gone.

In the darkness of dream and memory Matt drew a deep, shaky breath. He realized that what he had seen might have been augmented by the king’s own guilty memories, but that didn’t matter—it was memory, however distorted, and he didn’t doubt for a second that John had really boasted of killing his father as the king was about to cross the threshold of death. He could almost sympathize with the prince, but not enough—he could have found another form of revenge, after all, such as succeeding where his father had told him he would fail.

“So I know who murdered me.” Drustan’s voice seemed to echo all about Matt. “I know it by his own confession—nay, his boast! Go you now and see justice done!”

“Give me justice first,” Gaheris demanded, “or I’ll never give you a night’s peace!”

Drustan started a roar of outrage, but Matt cut him off— after all, it was his mind. “Shut up, both of you! I can’t help either of you if I’m so groggy from lack of sleep that I can’t think straight. Besides, why should I?”

“Because if you don’t—” Gaheris began in his most threatening manner.

But Matt cut him off again. “Remember, I’m a wizard, and if I want to clear you out of my skull, believe me, I can. But it so happens that getting rid of John is now probably the only way to save Merovence from war, because if we let him have Bretanglia, sooner or later he’ll attack Merovence.”

“Why, that is so,” Gaheris said in surprise. “The fat little toad is that envious!”

“He will lose,” Drustan said with certainty.

“Sure, he’ll lose, but tens of thousands of soldiers will get killed in fighting him off. No, if I can come up with a good reason for kicking him off the throne he has stolen, I will!”

“Is not the murder of his father and his king reason enough?” Drustan thundered.

Matt winced. “Hold it down, there. I can’t think too well if I’ve got a headache, either. Besides, what proof do I have? Only your word.”

“The word of a king!”

“Yeah, but anybody who hears me say it will only have the word of a wizard that he has the word of a king’s ghost. Would you have believed anybody who came before you with a story like that?”

Drustan grumbled something incoherent.

Gaheris crowed with delight. “Well asked, wizard! What say you, O Mighty King? Would you have believed such a tale?”

“I have to be able to back up your charge with evidence.” For a dizzy moment Matt felt like Hamlet, trying to find physical proof of what the ghost of his father had told him. Trouble was, Matt knew he couldn’t afford several years of indecision. “Was there any proof that John poisoned you?”

“The doctor,” Drustan said, “he who examined me as I lay dying. I saw the alarm in his eyes, then the look of soul-sickness.”

“Probably from realizing he knew too much, and that John would have him killed,” Matt inferred. “We’ll have to find out where he is and try to keep him alive, if he still is. Where did John find the poison? He doesn’t strike me as knowing enough to brew it himself.”

His answer was a startled silence from both ghosts. Then Gaheris said, “He is right, Father—the little toad wouldn’t know how to brew beer, let alone poison.”

“It is well asked,” Drustan said, musing. “I will think on it.”

“That would be nice,” Matt told him. “In the meantime, we do have one other way of getting John off the throne, and maybe even into prison.”

“‘Prison is not enough!”

“Yeah, but it will keep him from doing anything worse while we dig up evidence against him.”

“A good point,” Gaheris said. “How will you oust him?”

“By bringing Brion back,” Matt said.

Another startled silence followed, then Gaheris burst out, “That sanctimonious prig, sit on my throne? That lumbering self-righteous booby?”

“He is dead,” Drustan said.

Matt was surprised to hear a genuine note of sadness in his voice. “Maybe not, Your Majesty. Is his soul there where you are?”

A third shocked silence followed, then both voices said, “No… I have not seen or sensed him… if he is dead…”

“Enough!” Matt commanded. “Any chance he would have gone on to Heaven?”

“That young goat?” Gaheris scoffed. “There are several young mothers who were kitchen wenches when he met them, and have been taking his gold every month to raise his brats.”

“He is a fool of chivalry who gallops off to battle at the slightest sign of a war,” Drustan said heavily, “and has slain more than a few enemies on the battlefield. Besides, I have seen him go to confession often, far more often than is healthy for a virile young warrior. No, he has committed too many sins for Heaven, but not enough for Hell.”

“How about Purgatory?”

“Purgatory calls to me constantly, and with voices I recognize!” Gaheris snapped. “Surely we would know if he were here!” Then, more subdued, “At least, I hope it is Purgatory…”

“But there’s such a huge population,” Matt said automatically. Most of his mind was wondering how could they be called to Purgatory if they were in his dream—but he remembered that the afterlife was more a state of existence than a place. “Isn’t this a bad location for you to be looking for revenge?”

“I ask only justice,” Gaheris said, his voice surly.

“I, too,” Drustan grumbled, “but I am also concerned for the fate of my land. I wish to save my people from John.”

“And make sure that he doesn’t profit by your death, of course.”

“Well, of course,” Drustan said in a tone of surprise.

“Just your duty, I’m sure,” Matt said sourly. “By the way, Your Majesty, if you wanted somebody to bring justice for you, why didn’t you appear to the Earl Marshal or the Lord Chancellor or somebody else in your own country? Why come to me?”

“Because I knew you would listen,” Drustan growled. “No one else ever would—certainly not Petronille or any of my sons.”

Matt tried to suppress a stab of sympathy.

“I thought John did,” Drustan’s ghost said, with a sardonic echo, “but he listened only as an enemy listens—to find my weaknesses, my points of vulnerability.”

“And to think he seemed such a fool!” Gaheris marveled.

“Be still, boy,” his father grumbled, “and be glad you did not live long enough to learn in your own turn.”

They woke with the sun, made a quick breakfast, and were just breaking camp when the pouka stepped out of the bushes in horse form. She let Rosamund ride, but none of the men. Sir Orizhan thanked her for carrying his princess, but Sergeant Brock kept his bola ready to hand.

Matt walked beside the pouka, marveling that she could have seemed so absolutely breathtaking as a woman but seemed merely pretty as a horse. Of course, a stallion might not have thought so—but it did raise an issue. “If you don’t mind my asking a personal question—what’s your true form?”

The tawny mare turned to him, puzzled. “What is a ‘true form’?”

It was still unnerving, hearing a horse speak.

Rosamund answered from her seat on the pouka’s back. “It is the form into which we are born, and from which we mortal folk can never change, except by growing.”

“Ah.” The horse nodded. “But if you could, you would— and therefore there is no such thing as a ‘true form.’ “

“Plato would disagree with you,” Matt sighed, “but I don’t think I’m quite up to arguing philosophy with a shapeshifter.”

They wound their way through the amazingly green hills of Ireland, going steadily inland and steadily higher, steadily northwest. Finally, after three days’ travel, they came to a cleft between two hills, spilling an outcrop of rocks that glowed golden in the sunset. The pouka halted, so the rest of them had to, too.

“I take it this is where we pitch camp for the night?” Matt asked.

“If you live that long,” the pouka answered.

Matt was instantly wired for alarm. “If we live? What might stop us, pray tell?”

A band of stocky men in tunics, breeches, and cross gartered sandals stepped out of the woods. They all looked tough, hardened, and resolute—just like the spears they held leveled at the companions.

“Behind us,” Sergeant Brock warned, his voice tense with battle-readiness.

Matt risked a quick glance. The Irishmen seemed to have appeared out of the very roadside, and had them completely surrounded.

One man, older than the rest, with gray streaking his red beard, called a question in Gaelic.

Matt spread his hands. “How can I answer a question like that?”

“With the truth,” the pouka answered. “Come down from my back, maiden.”

Rosamund slid to the ground quickly.

The leader called the question once more, sounding a little angry.

The pouka changed into a woman again.

The Irishmen stared, catching their breaths. Then some of them crossed themselves and began to back away, white showing all around their eyes. The others stood transfixed.

The pouka stood poised in the glow of the setting sun for a minute, making sure of her effect on the sturdy sons of the sod, then called to Sir Orizhan, “Your cloak again, Sir Knight.”

Sir Orizhan whirled his cape off his shoulders and about hers. The stupefied Irishmen blinked and shuddered, awaking from a trance of beauty. The others moaned with superstitious fear and kept backing away.

The leader called out in angry protest.

The pouka turned a level gaze upon him and answered in Gaelic, in a tone of authority.

The leader stared, then placed his hand over his heart and called back to her.

She turned to Matt. “I have told them that you are people who may be trusted, though you are foreigners. You may go with them in safety. They will not harm you so long as I am near.”

“Uh—thanks,” Matt said, “a lot.” He looked around at his companions. “Put away the weapons, folks.”

Rosamund brought her hand out from under her mantle. Matt wondered how long her dagger was. Knight and sergeant both took their hands away from the hilts of their swords.

“Okay, we’re following,” Matt said.

The pouka called out to the leader in Gaelic, a phrase that must have meant “lead on,” for the men lifted their spear points and turned to follow the eldest through the cleft. They still formed a ring around the companions, but nobody seemed to be ready to stab anymore. In fact, each one glanced at the pouka from time to time, glances filled with both admiration and awe.

Matt followed the leader, too. After all, he didn’t have any choice.

They walked a mile or so, while the sun slid below the horizon, leaving the moon to grow brighter and brighter. At last they came to a grove of huge old oak trees, heavy with mistletoe, silvered by moonlight.

Seven figures stepped forth from the trees, their white robes also glowing like silver. They stood in a “V” with the point toward Matt, a point that was a man with hair and beard as silver as his robes. He held up a palm, intoning a question in Gaelic.

Matt shrugged and shook his head.

“He asks who you are, and why you have come,” the pouka interpreted.

“That makes sense,” Matt said. “Tell him we are the Princess Rosamund and her bodyguard, seeking the body of Prince Brion of Bretanglia.”

The pouka made a brief statement in Gaelic. The lead druid stared at the group in surprise, a surprise that quickly focused on Matt. He answered in a tone that sounded considerably more respectful.

“I have told him your true nature and title,” the pouka informed Matt.

“Well, now I’ll have to make shop talk,” Matt sighed. “Ask him—”

The pouka interrupted him. “I will not. You have named the princess as leader of this quest. She must speak.”

“But he is truly the leader!” Rosamund protested.

“Not here,” the pouka told her. “Come forth, maiden, and speak with the druid!”

Rosamund obeyed, wide-eyed and uncertain. “What shall I ask him?”

Matt started to answer, but the pouka forestalled him. “Whatever is in your heart.”

Slowly, Rosamund turned to the leader and asked, “Can you tell me where Prince Brion lies?”

The druid answered in Gaelic.

“He asks why you wish to know,” the pouka interpreted.

The answer came rushing out. “Because he was the companion of my youth! Because of all the brothers, he was the only one who did not torment me or insult me! Because he protected me from them, because he is and always has been honest and fair-minded! Because he cared enough that my barbs could hurt and anger him, and oh! How I wish I had never spoken such sharp-edged words! How could I ever have done so?”

“Belike because you were in love with him, but could not admit it,” the pouka told her. “After all, you were betrothed to his brother.”

Rosamund turned to her, trembling. “How can this druid have said such a thing!”

“He did not,” said the pouka. “I did.” Then she turned to the druid and spoke a single sentence.

Gravely, the druid bowed his head and answered.

“He says that of course you have the right to know the prince’s fate,” the pouka translated.

“What did you tell him?” Rosamund demanded.

“That you are his rightful fiancee, since you were engaged to the future King of Bretanglia,” the pouka replied.

Rosamund gasped, but had no time to deny it, because the lead druid stepped aside, bowing and gesturing her toward the grove. The other six stepped aside as well, also bowing and gesturing.

“Am I to step within?” Rosamund asked “You know you are,” the pouka told her. “Have courage.”

“We’ll be right behind you,” Matt assured her, and was very glad when the pouka didn’t contradict him.

Rosamund led them down the aisle of druids. Matt suddenly realized the pouka wasn’t with them, and glanced back to see her talking with the lead druid. Turning forward again, he saw Rosamund hesitate at the pointed archway of living oak branches that formed the entrance to the grove.

“Courage, lass,” Sir Orizhan said at her shoulder. “Whatever lies within is vital if you wish to save your prince.”

“He is not mine!” Rosamund said hastily.

Sir Orizhan was wise enough not to contradict her.

Trembling, she went forward into the grove, step by reluctant step, and it seemed as though they were stepping into a lightless cave.

Bait as they passed through the leafy archway, light seemed to glow into being all about them. Myriad fireflies sparkled throughout the grove, and moonbeams shone through gaps in the leaves overhead. It was enough light to show them that the interior of the grove was clear, a broad open expanse of clover and moss. At the far end the branches interlaced so heavily as to form a roof, through which a broad shaft of moonlight struck to form a pool of silver light.

In that pool stood a bier, four feet off the floor—a bier holding a coffin with no lid, and in that coffin lay a body, skin waxen and pale, paler than the light itself.

Rosamund gave a little cry, quickly stifled by her own hand.

“Yes, it is Brion,” Sir Orizhan said gravely. “But they would not leave him here if he were fully dead, my lady. Approach, and look more closely.”

Footsteps dragging, Rosamund went to the coffin, trembling as though with a fever. As they came closer, Matt saw two druids sitting by the body, watching. Silently, they rose and moved back as Rosamund came up.

She stepped to the coffin, looking down, and gasped with horror. Hesitantly, she reached out to touch the long, gaping wound that showed where a sword had sheared through the mail between helmet and breastplate, driving down.

Sir Orizhan frowned, studying, then said, very softly, “The angle is wrong—the stroke could not have pierced his heart, though it let out a great deal of blood.”

With a cry of despair, Rosamund threw herself on the pale, still form. “Oh, Brion, why didn’t I know you for the darling you were? How could I have been so blind as not to see the gentleness, the kindness you showed me? How could I ever have denied the trembling within me that came whenever I looked upon your handsome face, your speaking eyes? Now must I suffer for my folly, suffer the pangs of heartbreak all the rest of my life, and be lonely all my days no matter how many folk I gather about me!”

The tears flowed freely now, bathing his face as she lifted her head a little to demand, “Yet give me this at least, that I should have taken in life but must now seek of your corpse—this alone, that I may treasure in my heart of hearts and imagine as having the sensation of life!” Her hair swung forward to brush his face as she lowered her own, to press her lips against his mouth. She lingered, exploring the sensation thoroughly, for the memory of it would have to last her all the rest of her days. Gradually, her lips loosened, expanded, until they seemed to devour his…

The prince’s whole form stiffened. Then his head moved ever so slightly, and his lips opened to envelop hers. Rosamund went rigid with surprise, but never for an instant relinquished his mouth, then relaxed again, lips working around his with fervor as she wept anew, bathing Brion’s face with her tears. Slowly, stiffly, steadily, one iron-clad arm rose to encircle her shoulders, but did not rest there, only touched very lightly, as though Brion were afraid she might break.

Finally, they ran out of air, and Rosamund lifted her head, eyes wide and wild, staring down at him in amazement and wonder and, yes, in fear, too—but not of anything supernatural. “I never knew,” she whispered. “I never guessed … it could be…”

“And I only dreamed.” The prince’s voice was rusty, grating, but soft and caressing. “I could never know—but now that I do, I can only want more.” Then the arm about her shoulders grew heavier, pressing her down to him, and she went willingly, covering his mouth with hers, then nibbling his lips, then kissing him fully again.

Matt stepped up beside Sir Orizhan. “He does have to breathe now and then, you know.”

The knight turned to Matt, beaming and radiant, with tears in his eyes. “There will be time enough for breathing later, Lord Matthew—time enough, now that she has wakened him. Let her give him all the reason she can, to wish to live.”

“Maybe we should turn away,” Matt suggested, “leave them a little privacy.”

Sir Orizhan shrugged. “It is you who are the healer.”

“We’d better stay,” Matt said automatically.

When he decided there was a distinct danger of their lips bonding together permanently, he stepped in on the next gasping break for air and said, gently but firmly, “Enough, maiden. Your kiss may have started the flow of blood again, but it hasn’t given him back any of the gallon or so he lost.”

Rosamund glanced at Brion’s wound, then stepped back with a cry of anguish. Looking down, Matt saw blood seeping all along the sword line.

“How can … I… lack blood … when she has set my heart… to pounding so fiercely?” Brion panted.

His body tensed, but Matt pressed him back down before he could start to rise. “Just as you’ve said, Your Majesty. Your heartbeat slowed and became so rare that everybody thought you were dead, and wondered why you didn’t start to decay. All your body’s systems slowed with it, and they’ll take a while to work up to their normal rate again. Push them, and you really will die.”

“Lie still!” Rosamund commanded her prince, face pale with fear. She pressed him back, palm against his breastplate.

But his mailed hand still lay on his breast where she had dropped it, and Brion covered her hand with his own, beaming up into her face. “Why, so I shall, if you wish it—but I beg that you give the touch of that hand to flesh that can feel it, not to the iron that covers it.”

Rosamund stared down at him in surprise, then pulled her hand out from under his gauntlet and pressed it to his forehead. “You are so cold!”

“I shall warm amazingly at your touch,” he promised her.

“Yes, and if you feed him plenty of chicken soup and small beer,” Matt told her, “whenever he’ll take it.” He took off his pack and began to rummage in it. “Sergeant, get that armor off him—but gently!”

Sergeant Brock stepped up to obey, but Rosamund said fiercely, “Touch him not! That is my office!”

The sergeant stepped back in alarm, and she relented “You may take the pieces from me, though, and lay them aside to clean and burnish. Here.”

She began to unbuckle Brion’s armor. Brock had to help her lift the breastplate, it being more awkward than heavy. Then Rosamund frowned over the next problem, and opted to have him help a bit more. “I shall lift my prince, Sergeant, and you shall slide his armor from beneath him.” She slid an arm under Brion’s shoulders and strained, raising his torso. Sir Orizhan stepped up to help, but Rosamund said fiercely, “No! He is mine!”

“Why, so let it be,” Brion murmured, his face only inches from hers, his eyes adoring. “So let it be, for the rest of my life.”

She looked down at him in surprise, then blushed and looked away. “Is the plate out, Sergeant? Yes, thank you!” She lowered Brion and unfastened the chain mail about his head and neck. He sighed happily at her touch, and she blushed again.

“My turn now.” Matt elbowed her aside. Reluctantly, she gave way, but not very far.

“Water, please,” Matt told the druids, and one stepped up, holding a metal bowl, watching Matt curiously and closely. Matt took one of his home-sterilized cloths, dipped it in the water, and bathed the wound, with Rosamund studying his actions as closely as the druids. Then Matt said, “Hold your breath, prince.”

Rosamund bent to kiss Brion.

“Well, that’s one way,” Matt acknowledged. He painted the wound with his home-made antiseptic, largely alcohol, but Brion didn’t even stir. “Talk about anesthetic,” Matt muttered, and stoppered the bottle, then put it aside. “Okay, Highness, you can let him go.”

Reluctantly, Rosamund ended the kiss. She made up for it by helping Matt apply the bandage, then wind clean cloth about it from Brion’s neck to his armpit, making him sigh with happiness again.

Matt stepped back, eyeing the prince narrowly. “That’s all I can do. We’ll have to check that dressing periodically, but as far as I can tell, all his enemy did was pierce muscle tissue and give him one hell of a concussion.”

“I shall watch him closely,” Rosamund promised.

“Well, maybe not so closely as all that.” Matt picked up his pack and turned toward the entranceway, then turned back with an afterthought. “Oh, and get the rest of that armor off him.” Then firmly to knight and squire, “Come on, gentlemen. I’m sure the druids can help her with anything else she needs.”

Reluctantly, and with many backward glances, they followed him out.

There, Matt found the high druid waiting for him. Before the man could say anything, Matt dropped his pack and demanded, “Now, why did you help the son of your enemy?”