The Spell-Bound Scholar

Chapter 1

Duke Diarmid pronounced sentence and the witch Moraga rode away toward the north with no more guardian than the wizard Gregory.

The morning was beautiful, and so was Moraga, Gregory noted in a detached, clinical way. Either she improved upon acquaintance or her attractiveness was subtle—she had looked quite plain, even dumpy, when his brother had first met her fighting a knight and his men single-handedly.

Moraga chattered and smiled. "The day is so beautiful, is it not, Master Gregory? I do so love the early morning! The day is crisp and new, the air so fresh as never again in the day! If only it could remain thus forever!"

"It is indeed lovely," Gregory replied. He was bored with the conversation before it had begun but knew enough of manners to attempt to converse. He forced himself to look about him with a smile.

A small smile, Moraga noted. Everything about him was small—his height, his hands, his muscles, his whole body! Or at least what she could see of it. His heart must have been small, too, for his anger was only irritation, his delight only appreciation, his disgust only disapproval. That hussy Quicksilver had stolen that bulk of muscle and appetite Geoffrey from her, leaving her only this wraith! She was tempted to tie him to his saddle so that he wouldn't blow away.

No matter how brightly she chattered, she was seething inside. Her goal was to make sure none of the Gallowglass children reproduced, and she was only managing one out of four at the moment. Magnus she had effectively gelded, in emotions if not in body, but when she had tried to neutralize Cordelia by captivating her suitor, Crown Prince Alain, that grinning hulk Geoffrey had interfered and taught the royal idiot how to woo a lady, and his sister Cordelia was now engaged! To make it worse, Geoffrey was engaged himself to the female bandit Quicksilver, and she was left with this scrap of a man, this Gregory! Why, he seemed no more than a boy, a fuzz-cheeked stripling!

On the other hand, he certainly wasn't going to be much of a problem. He was clearly the weakest of the four younger Gallowglasses, seeming almost fragile and far too bookish to be much of a fighter. Certainly she'd seen absolutely no sign of his being a lover; after all, she was in a position to know, and would have liked nothing better than setting brother against brother in jealousy over her—but Gregory had shown not the slightest reaction to her charms. She wondered whether it were his interest in study that had kept him from girls or his fear of women that had driven him to seek refuge in books. She had to admit he had shown as little fear as he had lust, though. Still, that was no doubt a matter of hiding both well. Finister did not doubt that Gregory would fall very hard for the first willing beauty to come along—though she might have to be a bit more than willing.

Enough of planning; time for action. She adjusted her projection of her physical appearance, making the face and body a bit thinner in the right places, the eyes a bit larger, the lips a bit more full, the nose a little shorter. Then she turned to him with a lazy, inviting smile and said, "The day grows warm and the road long, Sir Gregory. Might we not dismount and rest awhile?" She made the word "rest" as suggestive as possible.

Gregory registered that not at all, only turned to incline his head politely. "There is only an hour or two of daylight left, damsel. Let us remain in our saddles a while longer; then we shall camp for the night." He turned back to the road before them, his lips in a slight smile, his gaze becoming abstracted again.

Irritated but shrewd, Moraga kept her smile in place, making it even more sultry. "As you please, my lord."

The lunk didn't even react to her emphasis on the word "please!" Really, he was useless as a man, a stick, a stone, nothing more! If she hadn't been assigned to slay or geld him, she would have ridden away and never bothered with him again.

But he was her assignment, and she had already failed with his brother and sister. In fact, she had only partially succeeded with Magnus! He still lived, and the Green Witch had halfway undone all her work; Finister had locked Magnus's heart in a box of gold, but the vixen had let him know there was a key! If she couldn't at least maim his youngest brother, the weakest of the four, she would indeed be a poor excuse for a femme fatale. It was a matter of professional pride, a challenge that had to be met.

Finister didn't acknowledge that it was very much a matter of personal pride, too.

That didn't mean she wouldn't have to be careful. On the way to Castle Loguire, she had learned that Gregory's magic more than made up for the strength his body lacked. Still, she knew her own forte to be projective telepathy and that her talent was so powerful that she was able to hypnotize people into seeing her in whatever form was convenient, from sultry temptress to baleful hag—even into believing they themselves were no longer human. She was one of the few who could change a prince into a frog, at least in his own eyes, and had even spellbound the High Warlock's redoubtable eldest, the wizard Magnus, into believing he was a snake.

Of course, most men had such raging sex drives that they were eager to believe whatever she cast upon them. It would be interesting to see if she could rouse enough lust in Gregory to make him succumb to her hypnotic charms, even as his brother had. So far she was doing well—he didn't seem to question her being the plain, lumpen witch Moraga. She wondered idly if the elves had found what was left of the real Moraga yet—not that it made much difference. If she could captivate Gregory, all the warnings in the world would do him no good.

If.

She rallied her wiles for another attempt. "There is no need for us to hurry, sir wizard. The royal witches will not expect us on any definite day."

"That is true." Gregory came back out of the clouds instantly, turning to her politely—but not completely; she could see in his eyes that he was still turning over a mathematical problem in the back of his mind. "Accordingly, if I discover the presence of that for which I seek, I shall beg your leave to turn aside and investigate."

That startled her; then it angered her. Even if she had only been Moraga, she would have been an esper powerful enough to be his sole concern on this journey, and as the assassin who had maimed his eldest brother and attempted to kill both his other brother and his sister, she certainly was worth his undivided attention. "What do you seek?'' She kept her voice level, even managed to sound mildly interested. "What is it that is so vital as to be deserving of your time?"

The sarcasm was lost on Gregory; he answered gravely, "A site of power, a place in the land that resonates so strongly with my mind as to enhance my natural abilities."

Moraga had seen some of his natural abilities. The idea of their being enhanced turned her spine into an icicle. "What.. . what would you do if you found such a place?"

"Settle for twenty years or so to study aspects of psi 'magic' that no one else has investigated."

Moraga simply stared at him in disbelief. For a wizard of such ability to find a means of multiplying his power, then use it for no other purpose than research? Unthinkable!

But not for this bookworm. Moraga smiled with relief. "What a splendid task! And how delightful, to be able to do nothing but think and discover for so long!"

"Do you truly think so?" Gregory looked at her with interest, the first interest he had shown.

That gave Moraga an idea. She broadened her smile and let her eyelids droop, saying, "Of course. Who would not wish such a retirement from the world if they could have it?"

"Even so!" Gregory said, pleased. Then, though, his eyes seemed to glaze and his gaze drifted away, as though a new thought had come into his mind.

Moraga stifled a shout of frustration. The man was impossible, so completely removed from the world that he seemed scarcely human! She turned to face the road again, hoping that the gentle swaying of her horse would calm her, but it did not. Site of power indeed! Gregory was not only a milksop with more brains than sense, he was also a credulous and superstitious fool as well as a virtual eunuch! What would she have to do to capture and maintain his interest—a complete seductive striptease?

The idea was worth considering—but she suspected that she would have to spike his food with an aphrodisiac before even that would work.

She closed her eyes in concentration a moment, mentally "listening" for Gregory's thoughts. The probe yielded nothing, as had her earlier attempts, only an impervious sense of nothingness inside Gregory's mind—he was psionically invisible. If she hadn't seen his intelligence and the strength of his psi powers for herself, she would have thought him a mental vegetable, even more insensitive than an ordinary human being. Knowing he was a powerful esper, though, she suspected that his psychic invisibility was quite deliberate, an excellently wrought shield.

Perhaps she was wasting her time, perhaps her assignment was in vain—as far as she could tell, Gregory didn't have a sex drive! But she had to make sure, had to be absolutely certain he could not reproduce—though she couldn't for the life of her think of any woman who would want him.

Besides, there was always the chance of an opportunity to kill him. When they stopped for the night, she would see about gathering hemlock or perhaps some belladonna.

Of course, there was always the possibility of crawling into his bed in the middle of the night—but Gregory made even that impossible. They pitched camp and ate dinner, making idle talk—or at least Moraga made idle talk. Gregory listened politely, giving her his complete attention—well, almost complete—and asking the occasional question to keep her talking. She willingly told him of Moraga's past—it was real enough, after all, and her telling of it was calculated to tenderize the hardest of hearts. Gregory, however, only listened, smiling with sympathy and making occasional comforting noises.

Moraga inched her way around the campfire, closer and closer to him as she told the tale, remodelling her face and form inch by inch until Moraga was really quite attractive, certainly voluptuous, and the telling was so masterful that she actually began to weep at the end of it. Any real man would have taken her in his arms to comfort her, and she could have turned the comforting into a kiss and the embrace into caressing—but Gregory only slipped a handkerchief from his sleeve and offered it to her, saying, "Let the tears flow, damsel. They will hurt nothing, but will lighten your heart. Certainly it has cause to be heavy, for you have been most abominably used."

The phrase conjured up a brief vision from her own adolescence, but Finister clamped down on it instantly, shoving it back into the depths of her mind—one did not dare think openly in the presence of a skilled telepath. She took the square of silk, throttling her frustration, and sniffed, dabbing at her eyes in her most becoming pose. "I—I thank you, Sir Gregory. I had not meant to burden you with my sorrows."

"A burden shared makes a lighter heart and a brighter future, damsel," Gregory assured her. "If I can make amends S for some of the wrongs done by my sex, be sure that I shall."

So appealing to him because of her own abuse had been exactly the wrong approach to take; bound and determined g not to put her through even a reminder of such a violation again, Gregory forbore to lie down. When she had dried her tears, he said, "Sleep now, and let your dreams heal your heart, for you go to a place where your gifts shall be valued, and you shall have true friends among others of your own kind. Indeed, you shall discover for the first time that you have a kind, that you are not alone. Nay, lie down, damsel, and let slumber bear you away into sweet oblivion."

Moraga felt a moment's panic, for she knew what she would have meant by such a phrase—but she reminded herself that it was the weakling Gregory who spoke, not herself or any of her fellow assassins, and lay down planning to stay awake until he was under his own blanket and more vulnerable than ever to the warmth of a woman seeking comfort.

But what was this? Gregory did not lie down—he stayed sitting by the campfire, back straight, legs crossed, hands palm upward on his knees, gazing off into the night with a dreamy, absent look.

"My—my lord?" Moraga asked, trying to sound timid instead of indignant. "Will you not sleep?"

"I shall not, damsel." His voice was remote, like a distant call carried on the wind. "Someone must keep watch in case a bear or wolf should come, or even to keep the fire from burning down."

Moraga sat up. "Then I shall take the first watch!" She would abandon it, too, as soon as Gregory was lying down.

"Thank you, but no. I shall spend the night in a trance that will restore me quite as much as sleep would, but that shall let me remain vigilant. Do take your rest; there is no need for any sentry other than myself."

"If... if you say so, my lord." Defeated for the moment, Moraga lay down again. She actually tried to sleep—it didn't seem there was much point in anything else, now—but found she could not; she was seething at this latest obstacle, and it brought to mind again the Gallowglasses's defeat of her plans. She thrashed about, trying to banish them all from her mind, trying to forget Magnus's return from the Green Witch's healing, Cordelia standing triumphant with Alain's hands in hers, Geoffrey kneeling to propose to Quicksilver there before all the court at the end of her trial, and the memories of the thwarting of her plans whipped up such a fury in her that she began to shake. She took slow, deep breaths, remembering the ritual for calming that her martial arts teacher had shown her, and gradually managed to let her anger fade, her harmony return to bury the feelings of hurt and outrage that were always there in the depths of her heart, waiting to spring out and betray her whenever she most needed to think clearly. After a few minutes, drowsiness came with a suddenness that surprised her. She was grateful for it and let it sweep over her, bearing her away into a deep and calming sleep, and if dreams of her triumphs surfaced, then submerged as she slept, all the better to restore her confidence in her struggle against this emotionless boy who watched over her slumber.

The dreams, of course, were not entirely the product of an angry and frustrated mind, nor were the memories of her defeats at the hands of the Gallowglass family. Warned by anomalies in her behavior during their trip to Loguire, Gregory suspected that he had an enemy in his keeping, not an innocent victim who had talents the crown badly needed. The suspicion was strong enough to warrant a breach of the esper's ethics he had been taught, so he inserted key images into Moraga's seething mind that made her remember her various crimes against the family and her defeats. Then he projected a soothing, calming drowsiness, and when she had drifted into sleep, he slipped other key ideas into her mind and paid close attention to the memories they evoked. He witnessed each of the three assassinations she had carried out, even as she had been assigned to do—first winning the man's trust, or at least relaxation of his vigilance, by the sexual magnetism she projected, then slipping a knife between his ribs as he slept, or poison in his food as he ate. He was surprised to discover that she thought herself plain and unattractive but had an amazing amount of confidence in her telepathic ability to convince her victims that she was intensely desirable. He even witnessed her latest and unassigned murder—that of the former Chief Agent, making sure that he left a letter appointing her Chief Agent in his stead.

So, then. He dealt not only with the witch who had mangled his brother's emotions and striven to murder Cordelia, Alain, and Geoffrey, but also with the Chief Agent of the anarchists of Gramarye—not only his family's personal nemesis, but a public enemy, too.

What would she do? He could not say, but he knew the thrust of it would be to kill him or twist his emotions toward a solitary life that would not result in reproduction. He smiled, amused—that last would require no effort at all, would require only that she leave him alone, for he had seen the emotional cripple that Magnus had become, had watched Geoffrey waste an immense amount of time dallying with wenches, and had resolved himself to avoid women as anything but friends and to sublimate his sex drive into research. Moraga had already given him an impulse that should result in a conceptual breakthrough, for though he had been careful not to show it, her flirtations had been most stimulating. He needed the night's meditation badly; he had a great deal of sublimating to do.

He began it by constructing an automatic defense system. He had learned enough about computers from the horse's mouth—the horse being Fess, his father's computer-brained robot charger—so that he knew how to weave a response program into his own mind, conditioning himself to respond to telepathic aggression by reflecting any hostile energy back to its source. Then he relaxed, sure that, though he would not himself take any offensive action against Moraga, anything she tried to do to him would instantly be done to her instead.

Of course, he would still take her to Runnymede, Their Majesties' capital, would still escort her to meet the royal witches—not to apply for membership, but for trial.

He recited a mantra and relaxed into his trance, letting images of quanta rise into his mind—but they kept being overlaid with images of the real and natural Finister as she saw herself in her mirror, a sight that she found repulsive but whose beauty Gregory could only admire. With it came a sensing—only that, a vague mental perception, not even a hunch or a clear thought coming to the surface of her mind and certainly not images, only glimpses of tattered ghosts— but he suspected that there were qualities in Finister that she fought to deny and ignore, a tenderness and ability to empathize, a caring for others that she had been taught to regard as vulnerability and weakness and had consequently suppressed, hardening herself in denial. She had been instructed to use her sensitivity to others' feelings as a means of finding their weaknesses, had been taught that her natural sensuality meant she was born to be a slut and had worth only as a sexual being. Her teachers had told her she could rise above whoredom by using her sexuality as a weapon and becoming an expert assassin, both emotionally and physically.

Gregory's heart wrung with sympathy for the sweet, loving child of whom he gained such furtive glimpses; he was strongly tempted to probe more deeply in an attempt to learn more, perhaps even to cure—but even the ethical penetration of an enemy's mind had its limits, and Finister had not yet shown evidence of being so dangerous as to justify such an invasion—at least, not very dangerous to himself.

Besides, Gregory was afraid of causing more trauma than he might cure. Firmly putting temptation behind him, he turned his mind away from Moraga and concentrated on his favorite mantra, the reconciliation of general relativity with quantum mechanics and the search for an equation that would unite the two.

Moraga woke before dawn, amazed that she had slept so deeply and so well. She stretched, then remembered her current mission and sat up, stretching again as luxuriously as possible, chin up, back arched, arms reaching backward. She glanced at Gregory out of the corner of her eye but saw him in profile, glassy eyes gazing steadfastly ahead. If he had seen her at all, it was only out of the corner of his eye.

Piqued, she pulled her robe on over her shift, a shift far more clinging than any true peasant would have worn—after all, it had been made with artificial fibers spun by a very advanced technology—and went off into the bushes to perform her morning ablutions. When she came back, she found Gregory as she had left him and reflected that she really need not have risked a poison ivy rash—she had only needed to step around behind his back.

That thought made her toy with the notion of giving herself a sponge bath where she had slept, at the corner of his eye— but no, Moraga was supposed to be modest, if not truly innocent. That would have to wait.

On the other hand, Moraga was no virgin and, being a normal, healthy young woman, might very well have normal, healthy appetites—perhaps even more than normal. She stood eyeing Gregory, letting her face and form adjust a little farther toward their natural state. She might feel herself heavy and distasteful, but she knew by experience that men thought just the opposite, no doubt because of the sensuality she projected into their minds. Besides, she had to admit that her natural figure was voluptuous and her mane of blond hair was her glory. Her face she would have characterized as goggle-eyed, snub-nosed, fat-lipped, and frog-mouthed, but she had learned that men wished to kiss those fat lips and lose themselves in those goggling eyes. She didn't understand it, really, but she knew how to make use of it.

She advanced on Gregory with the intention of doing exactly that.