The Haunted Wizard

CHAPTER 3

If anyone happened to be awake and noticing Matt through their windows that midnight, they must have shuddered and pulled the drapes shut, muttering a quick charm. Dressed in a dark brown leather jerkin and black hose, Matt looked pretty grim. Sir Orizhan wore similar clothing, and Sergeant Brock’s indigo livery was just as gloomy. It didn’t help their image that they were nosing around under the tavern’s window.

“What do you think to find, milord?” Sergeant Brock asked, but there was no respect in his tone.

“I was hoping for soft ground and a footprint,” Matt told him.

The sergeant gave a mirthless laugh. “In a back alley in the roughest section of your town?”

“He is correct, I fear,” Sir Orizhan said. “You will find only hard-packed earth with a light coating of garbage.”

“Gotta remember to tell the queen about a public health program …” Then Matt grinned “Whattaya know! Cheese rinds and horse dung work just as well as the soft dirt in a garden bed.” He pointed.

The other men stared down at the footprint in the garbage.

Sergeant Brock frowned, doing some pointing of his own, farther away from the wall, sweeping his finger in a broad arc. “There are more footprints there, many more. What makes you think this one was made by the foot of our runaway?”

“Because those are all going to left and right,” Matt said. “This is the only one going away from the wall. Besides, it’s cutting into the others and over them, which means it’s much newer.”

“Good enough,” Sir Orizhan said, frowning, “but I see only two prints going away; then they join the others. How shall you follow them?”

Matt took a vial of powdered chalk from his pocket, tapped a few grains into the footprint, then set the bottom of the vial on top of them chanting, “Marking powder carbonate, With this footprint resonate! On rocky road or bog path sodden, Show me where this foot has trodden!”

Sergeant Brock frowned. “You use wizard’s words among common ones, but what good will they do?”

“There!” Matt pointed.

The others looked and saw a trail of tracks gleaming brighter than the rest, reflecting moonbeams as though they, too, had been dusted with chalk.

Matt put the vial back into his wallet. “Let’s go!” He set off through the moonlit night, imagining sinister presences looking over his shoulder and watching him from the shadows— at least, he hoped he was imagining.

They came to a patch of shadow, and Sir Orizhan stared. “The footprints glow without light!”

“It’s a useful spell.” Matt glanced at Sergeant Brock. The man’s face was set and grim—maybe his response to fear of the supernatural; Matt had seen people react to his spells in a host of different ways.

The footprints came out of the shadow and gleamed in the moonlight again, and the knight and sergeant relaxed a little. Matt blessed the silver crescent and wished it could stay up a little longer, but it was a young moon early in the month, and had to be in bed at a decent time. If it stayed with him another hour, he’d be lucky. Of course, Sergeant Brock was holding a torch to guide them after that.

Mart’s spine prickled as he remembered that the man he was tracking wasn’t the only footpad in this part of town. “Y’know, men, we may be dressed for rough work, but our clothes are much better quality than most of the garments people wear around here.”

“What of it?” Sir Orizhan asked, frowning.

“He means that our garments show us to have money,” the sergeant explained. “Do you track a murderer, yet fear simple footpads, Lord Wizard?”

“Good clothing might be enough to put a small gang with clubs and daggers on our trail,” Matt told him.

“You are a knight as well as a wizard,” Sir Orizhan said softly. “You should have no need to concern yourself over peasants.”

“Don’t underestimate the poor, Sir Knight,” Matt answered. “They can be tougher than you think, especially if they travel in packs—and they could slow us down a lot.”

Sergeant Brock looked pleasantly surprised—he was a peasant himself, and not used to having knights view his kind with anything but contempt.

Matt rested a hand on his sword just in case.

Sir Orizhan couldn’t believe his ears. “Surely you do not fear them!”

“Of course not,” Matt said, nettled. He’d been knighted, after all, and courage was one of the side effects of the knighting ceremony, at least in this universe. “I think of peasants the same way I mink of electr—uh, lightning, Sir Orizhan. I don’t fear them, but I do treat them with a very healthy respect.”

Sir Orizhan looked scandalized, but Sergeant Brock almost smiled.

The footprints led out of the alley and into the street, which wasn’t much better—but the center was clear of refuse, and the footsteps disappeared as they hit hard-packed dirt. Matt sighed, wishing there had been a little rain early in the evening. Since there hadn’t, he took out his vial of chalk and sprinkled it lightly before him, chanting, “Powder of the old antacid, Show me where the foot has pass-ed!”

A few grains glowed dimly in the night.

Sergeant Brock gawked. “What are those spots that glow so?”

“Grains of the powder I sprinkled, that landed where the fugitive stepped,” Matt told him.

“How can they tell his steps from all the others?” Sir Orizhan was striving for composure.

“The Law of Contagion,” Matt explained. “I made the powder identify his footsteps back beneath the window, so it still does, even though we can’t see them.”

Sir Orizhan frowned, not understanding. Matt wasn’t sure he did himself, so he let it pass. He set off following the trail, sprinkling a little powder and chanting a couplet every ten feet or so. Sure enough, the faint glow confirmed that he was still going in the right direction. “Just hope our man went to ground nearby.”

“Why?” Sergeant Brock asked.

“Because he has a two-hour lead,” Matt explained. “If he just kept going, I can’t possibly catch up with him before I run out of chalk.”

“Is that all that substance is?” Sir Orizhan asked, wide-eyed “Just powdered chalk,” Matt assured him. “The magic is in the verse I made up, not in the powder itself.”

The footprints led him out of the maze of crooked alleys and into a nicer part of town, or one that was at least a little less run-down.

“Luck is with us.” Sergeant Brock pointed at the faint glow of the powder. “Either that, or your spell has weakened.”

The footprints stopped at the door of the first decent-looking inn.

“Or,” said Sir Orizhan, “our quarry is overconfident.”

“I don’t think it’s my spell.” Matt started to knock on the door, then hesitated; Sir Orizhan’s words raised a doubt.

“Yes, you see my point,” Sir Orizhan said. “The man we are hunting must be supremely overconfident to have done no more to escape than to take a room in an inn for the night.”

“You might be right,” Matt admitted. “I would have expected him to try to climb the city wall, at least.”

“The lout didn’t even choose a bolt hole that would be hard to find,” Sergeant Brock grunted.

Matt nodded. “We could have done nothing more than send a dozen soldiers knocking on the door of every inn in town, asking if a man had checked in within the last two hours. What would he have done then?”

“Gone out the window and into the night again,” Sergeant Brock answered.

Sir Orizhan agreed. “Soldiers asking questions would have been all the warning he needed.”

Matt couldn’t very well disagree, considering that their quarry had already gone out the window once that night. “I still can’t help feeling that we might be stepping into a trap.”

Sir Orizhan looked up, startled. “Why, so we might!”

“Aye, now that you mention it,” Sergeant Brock growled. “That might be reason enough for hiding so plainly, might it not?”

“I think we’d better take precautions,” Matt told them. “Sir Orizhan, you pound on the door and wake the landlord. When he lets you in, find the inside door to the yard.”

“A distraction?” The nobleman frowned.

“That,” Matt told him, “and enough noise to flush our quarry like a pheasant from a brake.”

“And you and I shall watch the windows?” Sergeant Brock asked, teeth gleaming in a grin.

“No,” Matt said. “If someone’s pounding on the door, he’ll expect soldiers outside. He’ll jump down into the innyard and hide in the stable or try to go out the wagon door.”

“Where we shall be waiting!”

“Right” Matt stepped back, addressing them both. “Let me confront him. You two stay in the shadows and be ready to help out if he tries to fight.”

Sir Orizhan nodded. “Surprise is always the best weapon.”

“Right. Let’s hope he thinks he’s safe. Give me a few minutes—count to two hundred slowly, then start pounding and yelling.” Matt turned away from the door. “Come on, Sergeant.”

They went around the side of the building to the great wagon door—like most medieval inns, this one was built around three sides of a courtyard, with the fourth side closed off by stables, and doors wide enough to admit carts and wagons. They were shut, of course, but it didn’t take Matt more than a few minutes to swing over the top and land lightly inside. He heard the soft thud as Sergeant Brock landed behind him, but didn’t look.

Stables blocked his view to either side; he went past them and looked about the innyard. The moon was still helping out, though it was very low, and he could make out the shape of the well with its watering trough, the railed balconies outside the guests’ rooms, and the dark shape of several wagons. But the moonlight struck only the center of the yard, making the shadows all about seem even darker. Matt noticed movement in those shadows, off to his left, and felt reassured that Sergeant Brock was sliding into place.

Then he remembered that the sergeant was one of King Drustan’s men, and the feeling of reassurance evaporated. He found himself wishing that he’d picked the Merovencian knight to steal into the courtyard with him. Then a form in black tunic and hose separated itself from one of the dark looming shapes and stepped out of the shadows. Moonlight flashed off a gloating grin, and Matt felt his stomach sink.

“You’re late, Lord Wizard.” The fugitive spoke with a strong Bretanglian accent. “I expected you when the moon was still high.”

“Well, you didn’t make an appointment,” Matt said, somewhat nettled. “Besides, the guardsman who reported the murder had to nerve himself up to telling us, and that took a while. It took a longer while to calm down Drustan and Petronille enough for them to start making sense.”

“Ah, were they distressed, then? Good, good!” The man grinned wide, fists on his hips, cocky as a bantam rooster.

Matt frowned and came closer, peering through the darkness, wary of traps and ambushes, but very curious about the man. At the very least, he wanted a good look at his face. “I take it you don’t like your king.”

“Who could?” the man returned. “His soldiers are everywhere!”

“Yes, I expect it’s gotten so a man can’t pull off a decent rape or burglary without some oaf in a uniform interfering,” Matt said dryly. He stepped to the side, but the fellow was standing in shadow, indistinct and menacing, his face invisible.

“The day will come when those soldiers will answer to me!” the man snapped. “Milksop kings have reigned too long over Bretanglia! It is time for a monarch with hot blood in his veins!”

If Drustan was a milksop, Matt surely didn’t want to see a tyrant “What makes for being wishy-washy? Putting down bandits and punishing murderers and thieves?”

“Oppressing strong and lusty men, and letting courts and juries say who shall be punished and who not!” the man declared.

“Oh?” Matt realized he might be able to work him up to such an emotional pitch that the man wouldn’t think about what he, the pursuer, was doing. “How would you decide who’s right and who’s wrong?”

“The old ways—trial by combat, and trial by ordeal!”

“So that the man who’s stronger and has a higher pain threshold will always go free to beat up his neighbors, eh?”

“Have not the stronger the right to thrive?” the man demanded, his voice rising. “Have not the…”

Matt let him rave while he muttered,

Light burst between the man’s feet, and Matt had half a second to study the face—square and blocky, mature, a little gone to fat, with a tawny jawline beard and close-cropped moustache. Bushy brows cast shadows over deep-set eyes.

Then he shouted, leaping back into the shadows—shouted a singsong verse in a language Matt didn’t know, and the fire died. The courtyard seemed much darker, for Matt’s eyes had started to adjust to the sudden glare. He could scarcely see his opponent at all. Alarm shot through him—his fugitive was a sorcerer!

“Aren’t we clever now, managing a bit of light to see my face?” the man snarled. “You’ll wish you hadn’t, my bawcock!” And he rapped out another verse.

Matt hated not knowing what spell he had to counter until it happened. On general principles, he chanted,

Something slammed into the earth beside him. Shaken, Matt spared it a quick glance; it was a fallen gargoyle.

The stranger shouted another verse. Fire burst from the ground. Some sixth sense gave Matt just enough warning; he was already leaping back as the flame roared upward. Even so, he howled as it singed the side of his leg before he landed on the far side of the stony monster. But the gargoyle gave him an idea; he chanted,

With a grinding of granite joints, the half-human, half-draconian sculpture rose to its hind feet and spread its wings.

The stranger leaped back, arm snapping down to point at the gargoyle as he shouted a verse.

Matt was ready for him this time, though—the man couldn’t aim a verse at him when he had to stop the gargoyle. Matt had the precious moments he needed to seize the offensive. He pointed at his enemy and shouted another verse.

The gargoyle froze, its eyes glazing as it turned to stone again—but the sorcerer screamed as he shrank, his body transforming. Those screams turned into a chant, though, in that strange musical foreign language, and he stopped shrinking, two feet tall and with paws instead of hands thrashing their way out of sleeves three times too long for his arms—or front legs. His face bulged into a muzzle with a sharp nose, but his tongue was still human enough to intone another verse in a high, squeaky voice as he pointed upward.

The picture he presented was so ludicrous that Matt couldn’t help but laugh. He was still laughing as the end of the hayloft broke off from the stables and buried him under several hundred pounds of wooden beams.

The invisible envelope of his first spell kept the boards from hitting Matt, but they knocked him to the ground anyway—hard, since the beaten earth of the innyard hadn’t been trying to do him any harm. He landed on his back, pain shooting through his abdomen, and he fought to breathe, but his diaphragm wasn’t cooperating. He heard a howling battle cry with a Bretanglian accent, but it was cut short. Then Sir Orizhan shouted in anger, but the sorcerer shouted back in his own language, and Sir Orizhan’s voice cried out in pain before it fell silent.

Matt struggled for breath, but couldn’t pull in enough to speak.

Footsteps came near, and the enemy sorcerer’s voice said, “I know you are alive and whole in there, for you spoke a spell that told anything falling not to strike your body. Listen well, Lord Wizard. I know who you are, but you do not know me. You will, though, be sure of that—for King Drustan will declare war on Merovence now, in revenge for the death of his son. He has wanted to battle Alisande for some time, for he seeks to rule both Bretanglia and Merovence. Now he has an excuse, and will defy you to find a way to keep him from it.” There was a sound of gloating in his tone as he went on. “Try to stop this war, and you will find yourself fighting me at every turn. Let the war run, and you shall meet me on the battlefield. In either case, we shall meet again, and fight. I cannot kill you now because you have cobbled up some sort of spell to defend yourself, but I shall be ready to counter it when we meet again.”

Matt caught his breath and shouted,

“Aroint thee!” the enemy sorcerer cried, and chanted a couplet in his flowing language. A soft explosion sounded, and Matt ended his verse with a curse, knowing his enemy had escaped and thereby won the fight.

Matt resolved the man wouldn’t win the war. He tried crawling forward, and beams bounced off the unseen bubble that protected him. At the edge of the pile Matt shoved himself to his feet, and boards fell around him. He stepped out into the moonlight, gratefully drawing a breath of clean air and looking about him.

He saw Sergeant Brock lying facedown in the dirt, and ten feet across from him, Sir Orizhan, on his back and unconscious with his sword by his hand.

Matt stared in alarm, then ran to the sergeant first, to flip him over and make sure he had clear breathing. He did, so Matt checked for a pulse, found it, then went over to Sir Orizhan, still concerned—but as he came close, the knight sat up suddenly, shaking his head. “What… where…” He looked about, then shoved himself up, catching his sword as he looked about wild-eyed. “Where did he go?”

“Disappeared,” Matt said. “He’s a wizard.”

“I saw,” Sir Orizhan told him. “He struck me down with a chant and a wave of his hand. Why did you not call us to attack him sooner, Lord Wizard?”

“I thought I could handle him by myself,” Matt answered, and the words were gall on his tongue. “He turned out to be a better sorcerer than I thought.”

“A sorcerer?” Sir Orizhan frowned. “How can you be sure that he uses his powers for evil?”

“Just a feeling,” Matt said, “but when you’ve held magic duels with enough sorcerers, you begin to recognize that feeling. Besides, he helped murder a man, maybe even did it himself, and is trying to start a war.” He started toward Sergeant Brock. “Come on, let’s see if we can get this soldier on his feet again. We have to go back to the castle and tell the king—” He broke off, gritted his teeth, then forced himself to say,”—tell the king I lost, and the murderer got away.”

“He will not like that.” Sir Orizhan joined him, scooping an arm under Brock’s shoulders and pulling him up.

“No, he won’t.” Matt shuddered at the thought of facing the king. “He’s going to like it even less when I tell him the man was Bretanglian.”

“He will not believe you,” Sir Orizhan said flatly.

“No, he won’t,” Matt agreed, “but you heard his accent— didn’t you?”

“I heard most of what passed between you, yes.”

Matt started patting Sergeant Brock’s cheeks. “Where would you say the man came from?”

“Bretanglia—but I have seldom heard so strong an accent.”

Matt paused. “You mean he might have been laying it on too thick because he wanted me to think he was Bretanglian when he wasn’t?”

“That, or making sure you could not mistake him.”

“Makes sense, if he’s trying to start a war,” Matt said grimly, “which is what’s going to happen, when I have to tell the king I failed.”

“Are you sure the man you fought was indeed the murderer, though?”

Matt froze, the light dawning. Then he turned to Sir Orizhan with a smile. “No, I’m not. We really should try to make sure before I report in, shouldn’t we? Come on, let’s wake up this man and visit the crime scene.”

Matt cured Sergeant Brock’s headache by massaging his temples and reciting a verse. Then the two men led him deep into the twisting alleys of the oldest part of the town, to the Inn of the Courier Snail. They came in to find the common room silent, with sixteen very glum patrons, an extremely worried landlord with trembling serving wenches, and a dozen grim-faced soldiers stationed around the room, their halberds on guard, Merovencians on one side, Bretanglians on the other.

“I guess it really is a good thing we came,” Matt said.

“Aye, milord, unless you wish the war to start here,” Sir Orizhan said.

The soldiers all looked up. The Merovencians smiled with relief, the Bretanglians glared. The civilians quaked.

Matt decided it was time to be authoritative. “I am Matthew Mantrell, Lord Wizard of Merovence, come to investigate this night’s doings.”

The Bretanglians turned surly. Matt was a lord and a knight, so they had to do what he said, unless they’d had orders not to—and they hadn’t.

Matt strode up to the landlord. “Okay, mine host. Tell me what you saw.”

“Very little, my lord,” the man said quickly. “We were very busy, no time to be nosing into anything but business, when this horrible scream tore the room and we all turned to see the prince—well, we didn’t know that’s what he was then, did we? But we saw Laetri come flying down the stairs and slamming into the wall, with the prince stalking after her calling her a thief.”

Matt frowned. “Who’s Laetri?”

“One of the regular prostitutes who visits here, my lord,” the innkeeper said.

Well, Matt hadn’t really believed Gaheris was killed defending a maiden’s honor. He fixed the innkeeper with a steely gaze. “And you didn’t chase her out?”

The innkeeper squirmed. “This is a public house, my lord. I serve all who come.”

“Of course, and I’m sure you don’t charge extra for letting them use the rooms upstairs;—which they must have done, or the prince wouldn’t have thrown Laetri down the steps.” Matt said evenly, “You know that pimping is against the law, don’t you?”

“I know,” the innkeeper said with dread.

“And visiting a prostitute, too?”

“Yes,” the innkeeper said in a faint voice. Then he rallied. “Why does the queen not make it a crime to be a prostitute?”

“Because prostitutes are usually victims, not perpetrators,” Matt told him. “Very few of them choose their line of work. Most of them are forced into it by their pimps. For the rest, it’s whore or starve.”

The innkeeper didn’t look convinced, but few men wanted to believe the facts when it came to sexploitation. Matt said, “What happened when the prince caught up with Laetri?”

“He raised his hand to strike her again,” the innkeeper said, “but Pargas, her pimp, stepped in to stop him and ask the reason for his anger, and the prince told him that Laetri had stolen his purse. She denied it, of course, and Pargas sided with her, again of course, and the prince struck at Pargas. Well, Pargas didn’t know the man was royal, so he struck back, and this sergeant here”—he nodded at Brock—“stepped in to protect his prince, and in a few seconds the whole common room was one big brawl. I tried to stop it, but it was like spitting into the wind. Then Laetri screamed again …” He shuddered. “It was the worst scream I’ve ever heard, sir, and when we turned around, we all saw why—the prince lay there in a pool of his own blood, and Pargas stood over him, bloody but with his club in his hand. Then I saw a man trying to climb out the window, so I raised the hue and cry, and everyone ran out into the night to catch him—except Pargas and Laetri, of course, and I tried to kick them out to end the trouble, but this nobleman stopped me.” He pointed to Sir Orizhan.

“Even so.” Sir Orizhan nodded. “The man Pargas had clearly killed the prince, and I wasn’t about to let this fellow help him escape.”

“And that was the end of it?”

“As far as I know,” Sir Orizhan said.

Matt turned back to the innkeeper. “How did you get all your customers back?”

“The soldiers brought them, sir, when they couldn’t catch the one who went out the window.”

“All?” Matt turned to Sergeant Brock.

“We lost him quick enough,” the sergeant said, “and herded the rest of the civilians back in here, though you may be sure they didn’t like it. We might have lost one or two, but no more, I’ll wager.”

“Yeah, but that one or two might include the murderer.” Matt turned away with a sigh.

“The murderer?” Sergeant Brock stared. “Are you ma— I mean, it’s clear Pargas killed him, sir!… Isn’t it?”

“Then why did you all chase the man who went out the window?”

Sergeant Brock stared at him, at a loss. Everyone else stared, too, and Matt could see they were all asking themselves the same question.

“It’s an instinct,” Matt explained. “If somebody runs, it’s natural to chase them, because why would they be running if they hadn’t done anything? But in this case the man was trying to decoy you all out of the inn so the real murderer could escape.”

Sir Orizhan frowned. “How can you be sure it was not Pargas who struck the fatal blow?”

“Because you said the prince was lying in a pool of blood,” Matt told him, “and Paiges only had a club.”