The Spell-Bound Scholar

Chapter 2

Moraga knelt at Gregory's side, put her lips next to his ear, and breathed, "Waken, Sir Knight. A damsel awaits you, famished and eager to satisfy her hunger ere the night ends."

Gregory sat, mute and immobile, eyes still gazing off into the lightening woods.

Irritated, Moraga moved toward the front and into Gregory's line of sight, bending toward him and wishing she had chosen a low-cut gown, though it would have been out of character. She could, however, undo the topmost button, and she did. "Come, sir! Would you keep a woman waiting? That is most ungentlemanly of you! Cease your vigil and celebrate life with me!"

Still Gregory gazed ahead unmoving, as though she had not even been there.

Moraga passed beyond irritation into outright anger. He would notice her, he would pay attention, she would distract him! She sat back on her heels, tossing her head so that her hair fell forward, its color lightened from the real Moraga's mousy brown to a rich, vibrant red. She smiled secretively, letting her eyelids droop and her lips moisten, then sat directly before Gregory, fingering the second button and purring, "Wake, sir, for the day will be upon us soon! Then we must be on our way, with no more excuse for. . . dalliance. ..." She let her voice trail off suggestively, leaving the nature of the dalliance to his imagination.

It would seem he had none. His eyes remained glazed, his posture rigidly upright, his expression unvarying.

"Oh, you might as well be made of wood!" she cried, and leaped to her feet. "This is like talking to a wall! Could a woman be more unfortunate than to be cursed with a man whose body is there but whose heart is not? Nay, sit in your trance, then, and may you have joy of your loneliness!" She turned on her heel and strode off into the trees, seething with rage.

Long she paced the wood, letting the anger crest, then subside. How could she begin to seduce a man who scarcely noticed her? How, if his mind was so absent that she could not gain his attention? And not only his mind, either—she found herself wondering if there was also something missing in his body.

Finally she calmed, her course of action becoming clear, her resolution hardening. She sat on a fallen log, letting her mind clear and emotions fall away, then thought, with clear precision and with all her strength,

She was very much aware that Gregory could be listening, of course, or any other esper loyal to the Queen. It was an old problem for the anarchists of SPITE, the Society for the Prevention of Integration of Telepathic Entities, one they had solved by developing a code that sounded much like children's nonsense verses. In this case it meant, "All home agents come to the Chief on the High Road twenty-one miles north of Castle Loguire."

She rose from her log with malicious satisfaction. Soon she would begin the ending of this farce, and the Gallowglasses' interference with SPITE's plans.

Gregory came up from his trance striving to fight down the thrill of Moraga's breath in his ear, the memory of her leaning close and the hint of voluptuous contours beneath her sacklike dress, the longing to discover what undoing that second button might disclose. She was quite right, of course—it was time to have breakfast, for the false dawn would not last long, and they should be on their way as the sun rose. He stood, stretching, and called, "Your pardon, damsel, but rising from my trance takes some little time."

He waited a few minutes for her reply, then frowned when there was no answer. He had watched her go off into the trees, but surely she could not have gone very far. "I do not truly scorn your hunger," he called. "Do you blow the coals aflame, and I shall fetch journeybread from my pack and ..." His voice trailed off as Moraga failed to reappear. He waited several minutes, but no voice replied to his. He frowned, eyes losing focus, the clearing about him becoming less real than the world of the mind as he listened for responding thoughts—but there were only the sharp sensations of small predators on the hunt, the fear of their prey, some child reciting a nonsense rhyme in her head, and more distantly, the grumbling thoughts of farmers as they stumbled about their morning tasks, cursing their lack of sleep.

Gregory frowned—what could have upset the damsel so that she would have gone so far away? Certainly it was rude of him not to answer when she spoke to him, but when he explained that it took a while for him to surface from his meditations, she would understand, would she not? It was scarcely a calculated insult. She was herself an esper and should understand the requirements of the mental powers that passed for magic on this world. Why should she be irritated if his reply were delayed?

Well, there was no accounting for it. He would simply have to seek her. He turned to saddle his horse, then realized that she had left her own.

Somehow, that struck him more sharply than her mere absence. She had rejected the palfrey that Duke Diarmid had provided. Gregory knew it was ridiculous to feel that by doing so, she had rejected his company as well—but he did.

Of course, if she viewed him as her jailer, she might well reject him or, more to the point, believe that she had escaped him. Gregory sighed and tightened the girth. He would have to seek her out, for jailer or not, he was responsible for escorting her, and for seeing to it that she went to Runnymede and the Royal Coven. He mounted, took her palfrey by the reins, and rode into the wood with the palfrey following.

By the time Moraga reached the marker for the twenty-first mile, she was beginning to wish she had taken that palfrey, or at the very least, picked out a good, stout, dead branch for flying. The quarter mile had not seemed long enough to bother, but as she came up to the milestone, she saw that the men, having teleported, were already waiting. The first of the women came in for a landing as she arrived and the other two were in the sky.

"Good day, Chief Agent," said Mercu. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man of middle years who fought to hide his indignation at taking orders from a chit half his age.

"Good day," Finister replied. She surveyed her male lieutenants with satisfaction, for although she cast no glamour into their minds and they saw her with her natural form and face, she could feel their hunger for her. It was conditioning, no doubt—the residue of the sensuality she had projected into their minds, ever so discreetly, in months past. Like Mercu, Coyle and Lork might resent her rank as Chief Agent, but their hunger for her kept them subservient.

She turned to Leiku and Honoria, just dismounting from their broomsticks. Like the men, they resented her being their boss—but they resented her in every other way, too, envious of her power over men (surely it could not have been envy of her physical appearance!) and jealous of the males' attentions.

Resentful or not, they would do her bidding as long as her schemes worked out, for SPITE had enjoyed very little success on this planet in the past twenty years, and Finister's gains, though minor, were at least not total disasters. She studied the line of faces, taking stock of their abilities and merits. They were all home agents, born on Gramarye of the 10 percent who were operative espers. All had grown up as orphans; most were foundlings. Indeed, only Mercu knew who both parents had been, and that they had died when he was six months old.

They were highly skilled in telekinesis, teleportation, projective telepathy, and, of course, telepathy itself. Moreover, the SPITE orphanage had raised them as it had reared Finister herself—as though it were forging weapons, which in some sense it had. Each was single-minded, dedicated, and ruthless, hating the society that had spawned them and fanatically loyal to the organization that had reared them. There wasn't a one of them who would not cheerfully have died to win Gramarye for SPITE.

Except Finister, of course. In her, the early lessons had taken root too well; she knew she could trust no one but herself. It followed, both logically and emotionally, that she dared not let anyone have power over her, which meant that she could only feel safe if she had both wealth and the power it could buy. Her lieutenants might wish to win Gramarye for SPITE; Finister intended to have it for herself—and these were the weapons with which she would win the fight.

"It's time to divide and conquer," she told her lieutenants. "We're going to split the Gallowglasses away from one another, then hit each of them with an armed squad all at the same moment, so that they can't come to help one another."

The lieutenants stared in surprise for a moment. Then they began to grin.

"Smart, Chief," Coyle said. "They'll have a tough time fighting off a physical attack at the same time as a mental one—and if they call for help, they'll just distract each other. Why didn't anybody think of this before?"

Finister suppressed the urge to say, "Because the old Chief Agent wasn't a genius"; she knew the comment would be too revealing. Instead she said, "Because it was too simple. We were looking for elaborate plots that would tear apart the whole kingdom. We missed the fact that the problem is really personal."

The lieutenants nodded with approval; she could see they appreciated her including them in the credit. Of course, they wouldn't want to share the blame if the attack failed. She gave them a cynical smile.

"What about their psi powers, though?" Leiku asked.

"That will be up to the five of you," Finister answered. "Take some extra home agents with you. Mercu, you take the Lord Warlock. Coyle, take Geoffrey. Leiku, your assignment is Lady Gwendylon. Honoria, you get the chit Cordelia."

"And I?" Lork asked.

"You gather a band of rankers and hold them ready in the forest until I call."

"What are we supposed to be?"

"Bandits," Finister told him.

Lork nodded judiciously. "Shouldn't take much. We're going to take care of Gregory?"

"You'll help—but I'll take care of Gregory," Finister said, "personally." She grinned, adjusting her mental projection so that her lieutenants saw shark's teeth. "Gregory has become a bit of a challenge."

Geoffrey and Alain went out hunting at dawn the next day. They started home about noon, sending their entourage ahead with the day's trophies, so they were riding down the forest path alone when the peasant maiden stepped from the bushes, hair dishevelled, hollow-cheeked, eyes seeming huge in her gauntness, face streaked with tears, skirt ragged where briars had torn it. Her arms were crossed, holding together the tatters of a blouse that had been slashed and burned, "Good knights, pity, I pray you! Pity on all my village, for we are sorely beset!"

Geoffrey reined in, excitement soaring—a good fight was his second favorite pastime, and it was far more fun when it was in defense of the weak. Alain, however, reined in with alarm; then the fierce protectiveness of the rightful king for his subjects came to the fore. "What has struck you, maiden? Bandits?"

"How badly did they harm you?" Geoffrey asked, taking in the state of her blouse and beginning to be angry.

"Only the bruises and cuts that you see, sir, for I ran as soon as I caught sight of the riders. One of them saw me and dashed away from the pack to chase; he even came close enough to slash at me with his sword before the captain called him back. Some cinders blew upon me from the first cottage they burned, but I thank Heaven they charred only my garment!"

Geoffrey could see they had burned her skin, too, even as the sword had left trails of blood—not deep, for they were already drying—but the woman was clearly in shock and did not yet feel the pain. Frowning, he asked again. "Who are these men who have fallen upon your village?"

"Our own baron, sir! Baron Gripardin. impatient that we were slow to pay our taxes! But sir. we could not—we had scarcely enough to hold body and soul together after all he took last year, and the new crop is only half grown!"

"No wonder the poor thing is so gaunt," Geoffrey muttered to Alain.

"Indeed." The prince's face was set in cold anger. "This cannot be the first time he has chastised you, then."

"Indeed not. sir. but it is the first time he has burned more than one hut. Always before, he contented himself with turning out only a single family, taking the wife and daughters to amuse his men and shackling the father and sons with the cattle who turned his gristmill. Now, though. I know he bade his men set fire to two huts, perhaps more!"

"I have not heard of this Gripardin." Alain said to Geoffrey.

But Queen Catherine had. She told them about the man as they sat in the audience chamber, waiting for the young woman to appear in new homespun. "His grandfather was a bandit who grew fat on the plunder of merchants who dared the forest."

King Tuan nodded heavily. "It would seem his grandson lives by the same rules."

"Wherefore was he ennobled, then?" Alain protested.

"Because he carved an estate out of the rim of the Forest Gellorn. my son." the Queen said, "and your grandfather had need to either put him down or grant him the legitimacy he sought. The man had indeed seen to the clearing of farmland and a better life for fugitives who had run off to the greenwood—nay, even given them a way to rejoin the world, and a guarantee they would not turn robber again. Your grandfather thought him reformed and giving of service to the King and the people, so he granted him a patent of nobility."

"His son has been a rough lord," King Tuan said, "but a fair one, by all accounts, and has seen his people prosper, though he has governed them with an iron hand."

"It would seem that the grandson has kept the iron hand," Alain said, "but has lost the prosperity, at least for his people."

"He must be chastised," Catherine said, pale with anger. "No lord may treat his people thus and be safe from the Queen's Justice!"

"Even so," Tuan agreed, "but we must have proof of his misdeeds, for if we move against him without showing that he has broken the law, all other lords will rise in revolt."

"They would not dare!" But it was bluster; Catherine had already faced one such revolt and had put it down only with the help of Tuan, Rod Gallowglass, and the High Witch Gwendylon.

Geoffrey rose with a wolfish grin. "I shall find that proof, sire. I shall go in disguise and witness his misdeeds myself."

"I, too!" Alain was on his feet in the instant, chin firm.

"You shall do no such thing!" Catherine had finally found a target for her anger. "What, sirrah! Shall we risk the heir? What would the land do if you were slain?"

"There is Diarmid. ..."

"He shall have his hands full with the Duchy of Loguire! Never think of it, my son! You shall stay close at home! Your mother commands it! You shall not go gallivanting over the land like a fox-errant! Your Queen forbids it!"

Then the ladies brought the maiden in, bandaged, cleaned, and groomed, still pale with shock but clad in a light blue homespun bliaut with a black bodice. Both young men stared, for without the streaks of tears and smudges of soot, she was indeed a beauty.

The Queen turned to consoling, reassuring, and discreetly questioning. Geoffrey caught Alain's eye, jerked his head toward the door, then turned to the King and Queen and asked, "Shall we leave, Majesties?"

"Aye, go," Catherine said absently. "We shall have our hands full here."

Both young men bowed, then sidled out the door.

As it closed behind them, Alain exploded. k My mother commands, my Queen forbids! Am I never to ride forth among my people? How shall I fare if I must lead an army in war when I am King?"

"You may notice that the current King did not forbid the expedition," Geoffrey pointed out.

"What matter's that? He is King only by marriage! It is my mother who is true monarch!"

"Then let her blister your hide with invective after you have returned in victory," Geoffrey said. "Can you not stand her chiding?"

"Of course I can." Alain turned to him with a frown.

"Well, when she is done, she shall have to laud you for having protected her people." Geoffrey grinned. "Ride with me as far as the wood's edge, Alain—and if you should happen to ride farther, I promise I shall not tell."

Alain stared at him a moment. Then he began to grin.

The next morning they both mounted, inhaling the chill of the morning air, eyes bright with the lure of adventure.

Cordelia reached up to give Alain the token he had begged—her scarf. "Be mindful, sir. If there is trouble, only think my name, and I shall fly to you!"

"I shall indeed," Alain promised, "and the thought of you shall strengthen me throughout the journey." He leaned down.

As they kissed, the peasant girl, escorted by a servant woman, came forth from the kitchen door.

Geoffrey smiled down at her. "Will you show us where your village lies, maiden?"

"Gladly, sir." Her voice was so low he could scarcely hear her; her eyes were huge, darting from one to the other. Now that the shock had worn off, she was like a rabbit, frightened by the presence of royalty and nobility.

Alain straightened in the saddle and asked the maiden politely, "Will you ride?"

"Of course she will, Highness." Geoffrey moved his horse closer to the girl and reached down. "But she shall ride upon my mount. You would not risk your fiancee's wrath, would you?"

Cordelia eyed the peasant, whose beauty was considerable now that she had recovered. "Ride with my brother, lass, but ride warily."

"Surely you wrong me, sister!" Geoffrey swung the young woman up behind him. "Ride behind me, lass, and guide us to your people."

"Surely, sir, as you wish it," the young woman said, her voice still low.

"And what shall I tell your fiancee when she returns from her errand of mercy?" Cordelia asked pointedly.

"Shh!" Geoffrey laid a finger across his grin. "Tell her no more than you have to, or she will come to join in the fun."

His grin was wide, but she saw the anxiety that touched his face and was gone. "She has faced an army, brother," Cordelia said softly. "You need not fear for her safety if she joins you in fighting a jumped-up bandit's grandson and his thugs."

"Ah, but before, she had an army of her own," Geoffrey reminded.

"And if you should be hurt in the fray yourself, brother? Is it fair to her to leave her to worry over you?"

"Worry over me?" The anxiety disappeared completely, and Geoffrey's grin was as wide and cocksure as ever. "Come, Cordelia! You need not deal in fantasy!"

While her henchmen gathered their forces and laid their plans, Finister became a bit more deliberate in her attempts. She ambushed a milkmaid, knocked her out with a bolt of mental force, changed clothes with her, and left her to waken and explain to her swain why she was wearing such unattractive charcoal-gray robes that draped her without any hint of a figure and were eight sizes too large for her in the bargain. To be truthful, Finister didn't even think about the effects her actions might have on the milkmaid; she was intent on finding Gregory again.

She found him wandering disconsolately along a woodland path, eyes downcast, shoulders slumping. Elation filled her— had she had some effect after all? Did he miss her already?

Then common sense cleared her mind. He was probably depressed only because she had so easily slipped away from him, and disgusted with himself for having failed in his duty. Either that, or he was contemplating one of his endless problems again.

Well, she would end that, at least.