The Haunted Wizard

CHAPTER 25

Brion and Sir Orizhan turned to stare at the sergeant.

Brock, white-faced and trembling, slowly sank to his knees, bowing his head with a cry of anguish.

Matt risked a quick glimpse at Brock and noticed, for the first time, a tall archer in a peasant’s hooded smock standing in the shadows with an arrow nocked to his bow. His face was in shadow, but his leggins were furry. Matt felt his stomach sink and hoped Buckeye liked him today.

“Sergeant, you have been a good and trustworthy companion!” Sir Orizhan exclaimed. “Why have you done this dreadful deed?”

“Because he was one of the original synthodruids,” Matt said. “He didn’t really know what he was getting into, only liked the sound of it. Besides, Niobhyte told him battle was good and said the strong had the right to take what they wanted—very appealing, to a soldier.”

“It is true,” Brock said through stiff lips. “I forswore the Christ, to my shame, and followed Niobhyte with all my heart. Even when he bade me find a moment to slay the prince and promised me chaos to hide my deed, my heart sang with joy, for none wanted to live in a Bretanglia ruled by Gaheris—your pardon, Majesty…”

“Given,” Brion snapped. “What assurance have I that you would feel differently about me?” Then he answered himself. “Yet you do, for in that cavern in Erin, you had chance after chance to slay me if you had wished. You did not, though. Why?”

“Because you are a soldier!” Brock told him, and the gaze he lifted to Brion was filled with wonder and total loyalty. “You are a skilled commander who rarely loses, and arranges the order of battle so that as few of the common soldiers as possible will be slain!”

Brion frowned. “Can this alone be reason enough for loyalty?”

“It can,” Sir Orizhan told him.

“There is more.” Brock turned his gaze away. “The longer I marched behind you, Majesty, the greater my respect grew, for you are not only a good prince, but also a goodly man, loyal to your friends, courageous in the face of any danger, devoted to your fiancee.”

John cried out as though his heart were being stabbed, and Niobhyte snarled, “Traitor! You shall roast in wicker for this!”

“Traitor yourself!” Brock surged back to his feet, face suddenly suffused with rage, pointing a trembling finger at the chief druid. “You lied to me, to us all, you preached a travesty of the ancient religion! I learned the truth of it, heard it from real druids in Erin, aye, from a pouka’s mouth, from one of the ageless spirits of the land! There is no truth in you, betrayer of thousands, and I repent the day that ever I listened to your lies!”

Niobhyte stood unmoving, but his eyes glowed with malice, as though he were memorizing every slightest feature of Brock’s face and form, to work upon him a spell that would cause him endless agony.

The sergeant didn’t even notice. He turned to Brion again, dropped once more to his knees. “The longer I served you, Majesty, the more I came to know that you were as good as your brother was bad, and swore in my heart to serve you. So I still swear. My life is yours, to take or to give as you will.” He wrenched off his helmet and bowed his head, his neck level and naked, waiting for Brion’s sword.

“How did you know!” John hissed.

“Mostly by the silver sickle he had in his pack—he didn’t rank high enough to rate gold, did he?” Matt turned back to John. “He said he took it off a dead synthodruid when they raided a sacrifice and saved a maiden, and I never thought to doubt him. But seeing Niobhyte standing beside you made me realize how tightly politics and religion have been bound together in this, and Brock was the only man who was both caught up in that binding and had the opportunity to kill Gaheris. There were a host of small details, too, the look on his face when he saw Brion for the first time, the superstitious fear that fell over him now and then, his original wariness of me—a dozen of them, plus the fact that the wound in Gaheris’ back was too broad for a sword, but might have been made by a sickle piercing, then hooking to cut its way out.” He didn’t mention that Gaheris’ ghost had talked about a stabbing pain followed by a ripping, only looked down at Brock. “Niobhyte said it had to be done with the sickle, didn’t he? To make Gaheris a sacrifice to the old gods.”

“He did,” Brock confirmed, head still bowed, “and fool that I was, I believed him.”

“So you knocked out the other man who was protecting Gaheris’ back—how were you supposed to know it was Brion, dressed up as a trooper? Then you fought off a townsman or two, pulled out your sickle, and stuck it in Gaheris’ back. After that, you pretended to be knocked out yourself, fell down, and were just one more unconscious victim of a brawl, along with the rest.” Matt turned back to John. “That’s how I guessed I believe you said something about surrendering, Your Highness? A matter of your word of honor?”

“Honor is for fools and weaklings!” John snapped. “If I had known you had the slightest chance of guessing, I’d never have said it! Niobhyte, slay them!”

“I think not,” the chief druid said, though his hands began weaving a spell. “Your army has abandoned you, and it is clear I shall not triumph by supporting you. What say you, King Brion? Would you have your kingdom so securely in the palm of your hand that none dares strike against you? Would you have every subject, from high to low, tremble in fear of your name?”

John whirled, screaming in outrage.

“No!” Brion snapped. “I will never stoop to hold power through fear, with no love! And I will never lower myself to borrowing power from a man who is such a coward that he dares not strike his own blows, but must suborn others into striking for him!”

“Then die, fool!” Niobhyte raised his hand to throw a death-spell—but John, still screaming, yanked a sword from under his cloak and stabbed.

Niobhyte fell, howling, clutching the wound high on his breast.

“He isn’t dead!” Matt shouted. “Sergeant, sap him! As long as he can still chant a spell, he’s a danger to us all!”

Brock stared up, amazed at still being trusted enough for an order. Then life flooded back into his face, and he leaped at the chance to serve—leaped up and over to Niobhyte as he pulled out a small cudgel and cracked his former leader over the head. Niobhyte went limp, but Matt snapped, “Tie the man up and keep him unconscious!” He knew from personal experience that it was quite possible to work magic just by thinking, if there was enough emotion behind the thoughts, and he was sure Niobhyte had some very strong feelings at that moment.

“My lord, I shall!” Brock took up station by Niobhyte, cudgel up, alert for the slightest movement.

“It is you who have unraveled all my plans!” John shrieked at Matt, “it is you who have stolen a tenth of my land, sinking it deep in the ocean! Feel the force of my hatred, fool!” He chanted a verse in an old language as he swung the sword down, but not in a blow, only pointing it at Matt, and a lightning bolt jumped from his blade.

Matt snapped out,

Light blinded him for a moment, and he felt a tingling all over his body. Then the room was clear again, and he was gasping.

“The lightning flowed down over him and into the stone!” Orizhan cried. “Yet he still stands!”

John screamed again, still in the arcane tongue, hands rolling as though molding clay, then hurling something unseen that leaped into burning light, a fireball sizzling straight at Mart’s chest.

“The fire returns unto its source!” Matt shouted.

“Ball, retrace along your course!”

He held up a hand, and the ball of fire bounced off without touching his palm, arrowing back toward John.

But John was already shouting another spell, even as he held up his own left hand, darkening the fireball to a cinder. His right hand snapped down, pointing at Matt. Silver streaks flashed.

“Let fire shroud the ice of hate!” Matt called.

“The strength of frost in flames abate!”

Flame blazed up about the icicles. With an explosive hiss, the ice sublimed into steam and the fire went out.

“You may be a powerful magus by the standards of your fellow aristocrats, Your Highness,” Matt said, “but compared to a real wizard, you’re not even a squire.”

John stared, his eyes wild. “But… but Niobhyte feared my magic!”

“He let you think so, as long as it served his purpose,” Matt said, “but you saw how quickly he turned his back on you when you outlived your usefulness. I’m afraid you weren’t as much in control as you thought.”

“So much for magic.” Brion drew his sword and strode toward his brother. “Now we shall test your swordsmanship.”

“My curse upon you all!” John screamed, and threw down his own blade. Then his nose and chin bulged outward, his whole body swelled, his purple robes turned into maroon and scaly skin, and a dragon stretched its neck ten feet above Brion to blast fire down at him.

Matt’s first instinct was to call on Stegoman—but he realized that the dragon couldn’t fit through the windows or the door, and by the time he’d have knocked down the wall, John the Dragon would have fried them.

Brion, undaunted, swung his sword back and waded in.

The dragon blasted flame down at him, but Brion leaped forward and stabbed at its chest. The beast slid aside like a snake and blasted again, but Brion pivoted, graceful and quick even in armor, and as he swung around, his sword slashed high at the base of the dragon’s neck. It writhed aside with a shriek of anger and fear, then blasted flame at Brion. He started to dodge, but the dragon blasted again, a little ahead of the knight. Brion howled with pain but sprang through the flame to stab blindly. His sword pierced scales and struck into the dragon’s shoulder.

The dragon roared in fear and anger and leaped back, one clawed forefoot coming up to press over the wound. It stared down wild-eyed at its own blood leaking out, then stared again at Brion, in shock that any mere man could actually hurt a dragon.

“I doubt that I could kill my own brother,” Brion told him, “but a dragon is another matter.”

The dragon body seemed to melt like hot wax, reforming until it was John again, right hand pressed to left shoulder, blood leaking through the fingers. “Curse you, Brion!” he screamed.

“I have not cursed you,” Brion said grimly, “but for that, I shall chastise you most sorely.” He raised his sword and strode forward.

John howled and stooped, snatching his sword from the floor.

Brion halted, mixed emotions warring in his face. “It need not come to this, little brother. Repent, and I shall spare you for a life of atonement and prayer, though you shall be imprisoned in a hermit’s cell.”

“You call that life?” John screeched. “Fifty years in a barred stone room, when all that stands between me and a kingdom is you?”

Then he sprang at Brion, hammering blows at him from every direction, and the perfect chivalrous knight was suddenly on the defensive, parrying madly to keep up with the storm of John’s strokes. Finally the usurper slowed a little, and Brion swung a counterstroke, but John parried it easily and slashed at Brion’s helmet without even riposting. Again Brion staggered back, barely managing to parry, and one blow in five struck through to his armor.

I cannot be proud of his deeds, said a deep old voice inside Mart’s head, but I may boast of how well I taught him to fight.

“Yeah, but he’s fighting with the fury of a cornered rat,” Matt muttered.

Brion managed to beat John’s sword aside long enough to aim a blow at his shoulder, but the sword rang off steel, and armor showed through the tear.

Armor under his robes! Gaheris sneered inside Malt’s” head. Ever the coward!

John leaped back with a shout of rage and jabbed his sword straight at Brion—but it was the rash movement big brother had been waiting for. His sword blurred, spinning in a bind, and John’s sword flew across the room to crash into the wall. John shrank back, but Brion followed him closely, sword centered unwaveringly on John’s eyes. Still screaming, the usurper backed away and backed some more, until he jarred against the stone wall.

“He has the blood of thousands on his hands!” Brock cried in agony. “Strike, my liege lord, strike!”

Yes, strike! Gaheris said with vicious glee inside Matt’s head.

Not my son! Drustan’s ghost groaned.

“I cannot,” Brion said, his voice agonized. “He is my brother.”

John shouted with triumph and stepped away from the wall, then struck the flat of Brion’s sword blade with his fist and kicked with all his might. Brion fell like a tree, his armor clanging hideously on the stone floor.

With a howl of delight, John leaped on him and wrenched the sword from his hand. He held it like a dagger and swung it high, point straight above Brion’s face.

“No!” howled Sergeant Brock, and threw himself forward, diving to shield Brion’s head with his own body. The sword plunged down, stabbed through the sergeant’s leather armor, and bit deep into Brock’s shoulder blade. He screamed with pain, and John, howling curses, wrenched at the blade, but it was stuck fast. John set his foot on the man and wrenched again.

In the shadows, the bowman with the furry leggins drew his arrow to his ear and loosed.

The arrow stabbed through John’s eye. John screamed, clawing at the shaft, then fell—and for a moment silence held the room.

Then John’s screams came again, but somehow not in the chamber itself, but distant, fading, fading…

Downward.

Inside Matt’s head Drustan groaned in grief, and Gaheris, for a wonder, had the courtesy to remain silent.

Brion wrenched himself up, managed to flip over, and shoved himself to his knees. Walking on them, he went to John’s body, pressed a frantic hand over his heart. “There must be a heartbeat! There must!”

“I’m afraid not, Your Majesty.” Matt stepped up beside him, face somber. “Your younger brother is dead.”

Brion howled, throwing his head back, a long and grief-laden keening. Then he caught his breath and looked about him, wild-eyed. “Where is he that shot the arrow! Where is the commoner who dared to slay a prince!”

They looked about them, but the archer was gone.

“Where could he have sped?” Sir Orizhan asked, his voice muted.

“He disappeared, period, and flatly.” Matt gazed down into Brion’s face and spoke with the full authority of a master wizard and student of mythology. “It was no common soldier who loosed that arrow, Your Majesty, but a spirit of the land. Bretanglia itself chose to save the life of its true king, at the expense of the life of a usurper.”

He sent for Rosamund, and she came quickly, kneeling before Brion, holding his hands in hers, while noblemen bore away the body of Prince John, and jailors hauled Niobhyte off to a cell, already deep in a coma induced by the sleep-spell that had held Brion in stasis, recited by Matt but provided by the true druids. Then Matt went outside to pace across the meadow that could have been a battlefield, and into the trees at its edge.

There he stopped and said aloud, “It occurs to me that you can never have too many friends, but you sure can have too many enemies.”

“So it would seem.” Buckeye stepped forward from the shadows. “And so John has proved.”

“I thank you for stepping in at the last moment.” Matt frowned at the bauchan. “I have to say I’m surprised, though. Glad, mind you, but surprised. I thought you had left me.”

“Not quite yet.” The bauchan shrugged. “Once I do, life will be dull, and for a very long time. It is far more interesting around you.”

“But much more dangerous?”

“There is some truth in that,” Buckeye admitted.

“One thing I don’t understand, though,” Matt said. “Don’t get me wrong—I appreciate your loyalty—but I would have thought John was just the kind of man to delight you.”

“He was indeed,” the spirit agreed. “I understood John’s pleasure in caprice perfectly.”

“Then why did you help kill him?”

“Ah!” The bauchan grinned, and his teeth looked to be very sharp. “Because I, too, am a creature of caprice, Lord Wizard.”

Matt shivered for the rest of the day.

Matt and his parents stayed around to see Brion’s coronation—under the circumstances, they wanted to make sure he was well and thoroughly established in power. They needn’t have worried, if the cheering of the London crowd was any indication.

Sir Orizhan led the way, bearing the scepter on a purple cushion. Rosamund rode next, bearing the orb. The crowd knew she was their future queen, and cheered her every bit as loudly as the tall, regal young man who rode behind her, in a purple robe trimmed with ermine—Brion, their rightful king. Behind him rode all the lords who had ridden with his army on his march from the coast. After them marched the leaders of the peasant army, all in new royal livery.

Inside the cathedral, the dukes and earls waited, even those who had been loyal to John, but who had declared for Brion as soon as they could. The younger sons took their places among the older men—dukes and earls themselves now, in place of fathers or elder brothers who had been attainted in the bloodless civil war, and who had not had a chance to declare for Brion in time. They had taken up with the synthodruids and enforced John’s edicts with relish and zest. Some of them sat in prison on this day, others had retired to monasteries, but most were simply exiled to their lands at home and barred from any further use of power.

As many of the London crowd as could, followed Brion’s homespun army into the cathedral. As the archbishop set the crown on his head, they rocked the rafters with their shouts of approval.

Then, though, a hush fell over the great church, for the new king commanded, “Let the assassin be brought forward!”

Two soldiers led the way with halberds, two followed, and between them came Sergeant Brock in chains, his wounded shoulder bandaged—but also dressed in new livery of fine cloth. He knelt before Brion, bowing his head.

“Did you slay my brother Gaheris?” Brion demanded in a voice that all could hear.

“Your Majesty, I did!” Brock’s voice was as loud as Brion’s, but still held the anguish of a man who bitterly regretted his actions. “I was fool enough to believe the lies that Niobhyte preached, thrice more foolish to do his bidding and slay your brother with a silver sickle!”

“Have you confessed your sins?” Brion demanded.

The archbishop stepped forward. “Your Majesty, he has. No matter what you do to his body, his soul will go to God—eventually.”

The whole crowd shuddered at the vision of Purgatorial tortures that “eventually” conjured up.

“I have repented, and am once again a Christian, and more devout than ever for my having strayed,” Brock called out. “But no confession or repentance can change the fact of what I have done! Do with me as you will! Send me naked into the forefront of battle or smite my head off here and now! It shall be as you wish, and I’ll not resist, nay, not even in the slightest!” So saying, he bowed his head again, stretching out his neck.

The crowd murmured in awe and apprehension.

“To slay the heir apparent warrants a traitor’s death,” Brion told him, face grim, “hanging, drawing, and quartering. But you have guarded the body of your rightful king, and saved my life at the risk of your own. What the one action has lost, the other has gained, and I have no doubt of your loyalty or good faith. Rise, good sergeant, and live!”

The crowd cheered, and Brock stood up, dazed, looking about him, seeming almost sad to be alive, so ready had he been to die.

When the clamor slackened, Brion said, “But such an action cannot go completely unpunished.”

Brock braced himself.

“You shall be exiled now and again,” Brion pronounced. “You have served the good Sir Orizhan as squire in battle— so may you serve him on your travels.” He turned to the knight, drawing his sword. “Sir Orizhan, kneel.”

Completely confused, the knight stepped forward and knelt at the king’s feet Brion laid the flat of his blade on one shoulder, then the other. “For your service to your princess and to the crown, I create you Earl of Orkney, and mine own vassal!” He sheathed his sword. “Rise, my lord!”

Sir Orizhan stood up, dazed.

Brion turned to Sergeant Brock. “An island off the coast of Scotland should be far enough to be counted as exile.”

Brock finally understood. A grin a yard wide broke out on his face; he fairly glowed.

“But before Lord Orizhan goes to take up the rule of his new domain, I shall require one further service of him.” Brion turned back to the new earl. “I bid you go, my lord, to Toulenge, to your homeland, and tell the princess-mother, the regent of Princess Rosamund, and all her people, that by the time you arrive there the princess shall be Queen of Bretanglia, and that if any wrong them, they shall have redress not only from the Queen of Merovence, but also from the King of Bretanglia.”

The crowd cheered, and Rosamund lowered her eyes, blushing modestly.

Then Brion turned and bowed to his fiancee. “Highness, have I your leave to send your liegeman to bear word to your home?”

“Majesty,” she said, “you have.”

Brion turned back to Lord Orizhan. “Take your squire now, and tarry with us two more days, then be off to Merovence and the south!”

Lord Orizhan bowed and stepped back as the crowd cheered.

“It would seem they approve of the king’s justice,” Papa said.

They stood in the sanctuary with the highest lords, but far enough away from Brion to get away with muttering.

“He decided well,” Matt said, “but he was still eating his heart out about it last night when I left him. It sort of condones the killing of the heir apparent, you see, providing you’re the agent of the new king, and that bodes ill for Brion’s children, if he has any.”

“How did he decide?”

Matt shrugged. “I left him to talk it out with Rosamund.”

“Of course.” Mama smiled. “I have a feeling our princess of Merovence will have a great deal to do with the governing of this land, though I doubt she’ll want it known.”

“Yes—everybody and his brother would be pestering her for favors,” Matt said. “Better to let Brion be the heat shield. That’s what a king is for, isn’t it?”

“One of the things,” Papa agreed.

“What has he decided to do with Niobhyte?” Mama asked.

“He can’t quite see his way clear to killing him in his sleep,” Matt said, “especially since he feels any man should have one last chance at repentance and confession—but I pointed out that if he wakes Niobhyte at all, there might be hell to pay.”

“Literally,” Papa said darkly. “So?”

“There’s a promising young wizard in the Abbey of Glastonbury,” Matt said.

Mama turned to him, staring. “A monk who is a wizard?”

Matt shrugged. “We don’t choose our talents, Mama, or our vocations, as you kept pointing out to me during my teen years.”

“Well, that is true,” Mama said, frowning.

“When the young monk is a mature monk,” Matt said, “and I’m convinced he’s powerful enough to handle a wide-awake Niobhyte, I’ll come back and stand guard while the kid offers him one last chance at redemption. Then Brion will hold a very quick trial and an execution.”

“Whether Niobhyte repents or not?”

“Right” Matt shuddered. “It doesn’t feel right, but Brion is convinced it’s the only way to go. Me, I just hope Niobhyte doesn’t find some way to wake up before then.”

“If his synthodruids are imprisoned or converted, he shouldn’t,” Papa said. “What will you do with them?”

“Brion is sending out all the young knights who are eager for reputation to scour the kingdom looking for false druids, and is sending the word to all his reeves and magistrates, too. If they find any, they’ll arrest them fast.”

“But most of them fled south,” Mama pointed out.

Matt nodded. “I had Stegoman do a reconnaissance, and most of them are indeed on the new Isle of Jersey. They’re going crazy without congregations to boss, trying to pull rank on each other.”

“And what do you mean to do about them?”

“I’ve already done it.” Matt grinned. “I put Buckeye into a magical sleep and hired a fisherman to row him to Jersey. He woke up as soon as the boat landed and went ashore.” He shrugged. “From there on he’s just following his natural inclinations. By this time next month any druids who haven’t sacrificed one another should be more than ready to surrender and repent”

Papa grinned. “Then you have managed to pass the bauchan!”

“That is the one last service you asked of him, then?” Mama asked, smiling.

“Yes, and I certainly do hope it will be the last… Whup! Next part of the ceremony, folks!”

Hidden musicians peeled forth a solemn but joyous tune, and the crowd parted to form an aisle. Down it came Rosamund, dressed and veiled in white lace, a bouquet in her hands. Lord Orizhan had ducked around to take his place beside her.

As she came up to the altar, Lord Orizhan gave her to Brion, who clasped her hands, eyes wide and incredulous as he stared through the gossamer at her shining, but demure, face.

“This is how it should end,” Mama said with a sigh. “This is how it should always end.”

“Yes, but also how it should begin,” Papa said, with a meaningful glance at his son, “for this is only a wedding. Now begins their greatest work—building a marriage.”

“You don’t have to tell me” Matt gazed at the couple kneeling before the archbishop, but he was really seeing Alisande.