The Warlock`s Companion

Chapter 12

They slept for the remainder of the day. As the sun was setting, they were rising for a quick breakfast of porridge and water.

"Are we to fight spectres with naught but oatmeal?" Geoffrey demanded.

" 'Twill stay with thee, and give thee endurance," Gwen assured him. She glanced at Magnus, then looked again. "Didst thou not sleep soundly?"

"Aye, yet with many dreams. This Hall was the Count's prime place, Mama. 'Twas not the setting for his most shameful acts, yet 'twas filled with an abundance of petty cruelties and large humiliations."

"Thou hast awakened angry."

Magnus nodded. "I cannot wait to brace him!"

"Good," Rod said. "Good."

When darkness held the castle, and the only light came from the fireplace and a single sconce nearby, Magnus turned and strode to the dais where the count had sat, presiding over debauchery, two hundred years before.

The great chair stood there still. Magnus laid his hands upon it and called, "Rafael Fer de Lance, Count Foxcourt! Come forth to judgement!"

The evil laugh began once again, distant, but swelling closer, till it rang and echoed all about them—and Foxcourt was there, fully formed, even with faint colors glowing, so strong was his spirit. He was in his prime, his early thirties, his frame still muscular, his harsh features darkly handsome—but filled with sixty years of knowledge of human perversity, and delight in cruelty.

"Judgement?" he sneered. "And who will judge me, stripling? Thou?"

"That shall I! Yet I confess to wonder, that thou hast not yet been called before the greatest Judge of All!"

"I have been too much addicted to the pleasures of this life—most especially the delight of witnessing the suffering that I've caused." The ghost advanced on Magnus, slapping his palm with his riding whip. "I find the joys of cruelty too great, to wish to depart upon my final journey; though I'd have no choice, were there not foolish mortals like thyself, whose curiosity gives me an anchor with which to hold to this, the scene of all my pleasures."

Magnus stood firm, almost seeming to radiate a glow of his own. "Thou hast come to thy last journey here. Yet an I weaken, I have stronger spirits than mine, or thine, to draw on." He gestured toward his family. "Behold!"

An eldritch light shone about the Gallowglasses. Gregory started, but the others held firm.

The Count's laugh rang through the room. "What have we here? Two babes? And, ah! Two beauties!" He came down from the dais, advancing on Gwen and Cordelia. "One young, one in the fullness of her bloom—yet both fresh female souls!"

"Aye," Magnus said, from behind him. " 'Tis meat and drink to thee, to despoil the innocent, is it not?"

"Thou speakest well." He lifted his hand as he came closer to the women.

"Hold, foul worm!" Rod stepped in front of his wife and daughter, rage seething just beneath the surface of his face.

The count paused. "What have we here? A peasant, come to face a lord? Begone, foolish knave!" And he reached through Rod to caress Cordelia's chin.

Rod erupted into flame. White-hot flares licked out from him, searing the night, crisping the flesh on the spectre's form till spectral bones showed through. The Count's ghost screamed, whirling away, arms coming up to shield his face. Then Magnus's eyes narrowed, and the fabric of the spirit tore, and tore again, parting and parting like mist in a wind, as his shrieks rang through the hall, until his substance was shredded. Finally, Rod's flames withdrew, and darkness returned.

Out of the silence, Magnus asked, amazed, "Is that all? Is there no more to do than this?"

"Wait," Rod answered. "See his tatters, drifting? They're coming back together now."

And they were—swirling through the air like flakes of glowing snow, they pulled in upon themselves again, coalescing, returning to a form.

"I am ever proud when thou dost stand in my defense," Gwen said, low-voiced, "yet mayhap thou shouldst not have spent so much of thy power so soon."

"No fear—I've just begun to tap it," Rod answered. "Not that I had any urge to control myself, you realize."

"He comes," Geoffrey said, his voice hard.

The Count was there again, though without color now, only a pale and glowing form, but one with fury contorting his features. "Foolish mortals, to so bait a ghost! Hast thou no sense of caution? Nay, I shall be revenged on thee!"

Magnus was eyeing him narrowly. "He hath less hair, and more belly."

The Count whirled, staring at him in rage. "Avaunt thee, stripling! Up, men of mine! All mine old retainers, out upon him! Men-at-arms, arise!"

Magnus stepped down and over to his parents. "What comes now?"

Rod shook his head. "Can't say. Let's see if he can bring it off."

But the Count was succeeding. With drunken laughter, his retainers appeared—men-at-arms with ghostly pikes, and knights in spectral armor. But they were only outlines, and their laughter sounded distant.

"The lesser evils," Rod muttered.

"To horse, and away!" Count Foxcourt called—and suddenly, his knights were mounted on ghostly Percherons, and his men-at-arms advanced not with pikes, but with sticks and horns, blowing a hunting call.

"The game is up!" the Count cried. "Ho, bearers! Drive them from the covert!"

The men-at-arms came running, eyes alight, shouting with laughter and glee, thrashing at the Gallowglasses with sticks while the Count and his knights came riding, seemingly from a great distance.

"Avaunt thee!" Magnus shouted, and a wall of flame encircled the family.

"Oh, be not so silly!" Cordelia sniffed. "We must banish them, "not hold them back!" And the sticks writhed in the spectres' hands, growing heads and turning back on the men-at-arms, becoming snakes which struck at their holders. With oaths, the soldiers dropped them. Instantly, the snakes coiled and struck, then struck again, and the men-at-arms fled shouting in disorder.

"A most excellent plan, my daughter!" Gwen cried, delighted, and the hunting horns grew limp, then swung about, their bells turning into gaping jaws, glowing eyes appearing behind them as they sprouted wings, and dragons drove at the men who had them by the tails. The soldiers yelled in fear and fled, pursued by instruments of destruction.

Then the whole band of soldiers ran headlong into the advancing wall of knights.

Their masters rode them down with curses and galloped toward the Gallowglasses, faces filled with hungry gloating, their mounts' eyes turning to coals, flames licking about their outthrust jaws.

"This, then, is mine!" Fess galloped out between the family and the knights and, suddenly, he seemed to swell and grow to twice his normal size, bleaching into a pale and giant horse with mane and tail of flame, glowing coals for eyes, and bright steel teeth that reached out past the Percherons' heads to savage their riders as he screamed with insane, manic glee.

" 'Tis a pouka, a spirit horse!" Gregory shrank back against Gwen, and even Geoffrey had trouble holding his ground. "What hath possessed our good and gentle Fess?"

"The same thing that possesses him every time someone tries to hurt us," Rod said grimly, "and the foe are of his own form, this time."

But the horses were fleeing now, ghosts overawed by ghosts, while their riders saved face by kicking and cursing at them, as they dwindled into distance.

"The false cowards!" Cordelia stormed. "They were as struck with fear as their mounts—nay, more!"

The pouka had faded, darkened, and dwindled, and it was only their own, old Fess who came trotting back to them—albeit with a ghost of glee in his plastic eye.

"When did you learn how to do that trick?" Rod asked, fighting a grin.

"I have been considering its feasibility for some time." Fess said, with airy disregard. "I had wondered if I could exert the same ability to project illusions as you could. Indeed, use of psionic amplifier…"

"Aye, wherefore not?" Gregory said, eyes alight as he stepped away from Gwen.

"Yet would real folk see the seeming?" Geoffrey frowned. "Ghosts are illusions themselves, and would certainly hold another such to be as real as they. Folk of flesh and blood, though, might not."

"Yet 'tis ghosts we fight at this time and place," Gwen reminded, "and Fess's devising is most puissant with them."

Magnus's lip curled. "Assuredly, we shall have no difficulty with so tattered a band."

"We won't have any trouble with his lordship, either," Rod said, "except that he'll come back every time we tear him apart. We need to banish him, not kill him."

"How will that aid the damsel Sola?"

"It will not." Gwen touched Rod's shoulder. "Hurt his pride."

"Of course." Rod lifted his head with a grin. "He's nothing but egoplasm, now—where else would he be vulnerable?"

The Count had rallied his courtiers now, primarily by banishing their horses. "Slay them!" he screamed, pointing toward the Gallowglasses.

The ghosts turned to look, then began to march with low, gloating laughs.

"Show me how he looked when he was old,'' Rod suggested.

Magnus frowned, concentrating—and, at the head of his troops, the Count began to age visibly. His hairline receded, then crept down the back of his head as his belly grew, and his whole body began to swell. His cheeks thickened as liver spots bloomed all over his skin.

His courtiers began to mutter among themselves, pointing. Someone giggled.

The Count halted, his lascivious leer turning into a scowl. He turned to look at his retainers, saw the pointing fingers, and turned to look back at the Gallowglasses. His face had swollen with fat and sagged into jowls.

"Is this how he truly looked at the end of his life?" Gwen asked.

Magnus nodded. "So say the stones."

"What kind of illnesses did he have?" Rod asked.

Magnus grinned.

The Count took another step, and howled with pain. "My gout!"

"Thou art no longer young," Gwen informed him. "Thou art an aged fool!"

But the malice in those eyes was anything but foolish.

"Didn't you say something about jaundice?" Rod muttered.

Magnus nodded, and His Lordship's skin gained a pale yellowish cast.

"Summon Sola," Gwen ordered.

Sweat beaded Magnus's brow, and the ghost-girl was there, wailing, "Wherefore hast thou brought me forth?"

The Count looked up, aghast, trying to balance on one foot while he cradled the other.

"Behold," Gwen called out, "thy tormentor's triumph! Old age!"

Sola turned, her weeping slackening. Her eyes widened, her lips parted. Then she began to laugh.

"Be still!" the Count commanded, alarmed.

Sola laughed the louder.

"Now!" Rod said to Magnus. "The pratfalls!"

The Count's remaining foot skidded out from under him, and he landed flat on his back with a howl.

Sola howled, too.

His courtiers stared, astounded.

The Count scrambled to rise, but he was too heavy. He roared in anger, trying to turn over, but even then, he had to kick a few times before he could finally work up enough momentum.

Someone in his court began to snicker.

"I—I shall be… revenged!" the Count panted, getting his feet under him, and treating his courtiers to a great view of his expanded backside. They began to laugh openly. He looked back at them, startled, then managed to heave himself to his feet and turned on them, his hand going to his sword, crying, "Be still, dolts!"

"The sword," Rod muttered. Magnus nodded.

The Count tugged at his hilt. He tugged again, then frowned and looked down. It was still there, all right. He set himself and gave a mighty pull—and the blade flashed out, describing a glittering arc through the air, heaving him around. His feet tangled, and he fell again.

The courtiers bellowed with mirth.

Livid, the Count tried to scramble to his feet once more, giving Sola the posterior vista. She howled the louder. "I should… not…"

"Nay, do!" Gwen encouraged. "Thou dost owe him far more!"

Sola's eye gleamed.

The Count struggled to get his knees under him.

Sola stepped forward, her dainty foot swinging hard in an arc.

The Count slammed down on his face again, and the Great Hall rocked with hilarity.

"Husband, this is humor of the lowest," Gwen said, trying to contain her laughter.

"Not quite." Rod turned to Magnus. "Aren't there always dogs under the tables, at these feasts?"

And the dogs were there, sniffing at the Count and wrinkling their noses in disgust. One fastened its teeth in his pants, then let go with surprising haste, hacking and coughing as it backed away. The rest of the curs gave a snort, turned their backs, and scratched dust into his face. He was roaring, of course, but nobody could hear him any more.

"Nay, let me join this mirth," Gwen said, and, suddenly, a duplicate of the Count appeared, advancing toward Sola, but with his rum-blossom nose a bit more swollen, the malice in his face somehow become foolish. "Behold, milord!" Gwen called, and the Count turned about, on hands and knees, and looked up to see—himself.

Himself, as others saw him, waddling toward a pretty girl with a swollen paw outstretched, burbling, "Nay, my pretty, dost thou wish advancement?"

"Why, aye, my lord," the ghost-girl responded, and stepped aside. The doppelganger blundered on by, groping about, finally managing to stop, while Sola watched it, giggling. There was nothing threatening about it now—it turned back, still groping and loosely grinning, merely an old, ugly, coarse, and foolishly leering dotard.

But Count Foxcourt laughed, too. "Why, what old fool is that?"

"Who?" Cordelia cried indignantly. "Art thou so blind? Nay, then, here's thy mirror!"

And a full-length cheval glass appeared in front of Foxcourt, right next to his doppelganger. He could not help but see, and blanched, turning to stare at the co-walker, then back to stare at the mirror, glancing from one to the other as his visage slackened.

Then rage contorted his features. "Nay, thou shalt not mock me! All men of mine attack! Or wouldst thou yet be banished?"

The laughter died as though it had been cut off, and the ghosts stared, horrified. They all knew what awaited them.

"Now!" the Count howled, and they started forward, faces grim.

"Remember, all they can do is scare you," Rod said quickly to his children. "Everybody take a dozen or so, and keep them from being scary."

"Like this, dost thou mean?" Gregory chirped, and Sir Boreas's ghost slipped, skidded, and flopped floundering down.

"Yeah, that's the idea! Keep it up!"

Sir Dillindag hauled out his sword, and found it was a daisy. A man-at-arms chopped with his halberd, and it kept on going, spinning him around and around in a circle while he howled.

"Good idea," Rod grunted, and another halberdier went spinning, but this time rose up slowly, his halberd acting as a helicopter rotor, until he dropped it, screaming with fright.

Then Fess reared, his whinny a scream of fury as he whirled and struck out with his forehooves at advancing knights.

It was a mistake; this, they could understand. The knights descended on Fess shouting, englobing him in seconds, a melee of flailing swords and ghostly battle axes.

"Get away from that horse!" Rod shouted, humor forgotten in the threat to his old friend, and he waded through the knights, struggling to reach his companion.

He got there just in time to see Fess go rigid, knees locking; then his head dropped to swing between his fetlocks.

"A seizure," Rod groaned. "Too many enemies, too fast."

"Who is elf-shot?" cried a treble voice.

" 'Tis the horse!" answered a crackling baritone. "Yet who did fling the shot?"

" 'Twas none of us," answered a countertenor, and Rod drew back, staring in disbelief—for miniature ghosts were climbing out of chinks in the walls and coalescing out of thin air, translucent and colorful, and none more than a foot high.

"Mama," Cordelia gasped, "they are ghosts of elves!"

"Yet how can that be?" Gwen marveled. "Elves have no souls!"

" 'Tis he hath done it, mistress!" An elfin dame pointed at Magnus. "He doth call up memories of such of us as once did dwell here."

"Yet what can have slain thee?" Gregory wailed. "Elves are immortal!"

"Not when we're pierced by Cold Iron—and so cruel were this Count and his men that they did hunt us out to slay us!"

" 'Twas good sport," said Foxcourt, with a feral grin. "And it shall be again, if thou dost not take thee hence!"

"Indeed it shall," chuckled a pretty elfin damsel, "yet 'tis we who shall make sport of thee! Gossips, what use is a count?"

"Why, for numbering," answered a dozen voices. "Shall we tally all his bones?"

And a skeleton grinned in the dark, a foolish thing that busily ticked off each of its own pieces—and somehow bore Count Foxcourt's face.

"How dost thou dare!" the Count cried, livid with rage.

"Why, for that thou canst not slay us now, foul count," said a larger elf, grinning with malice, "for we are dead. Now ward thee from the wee folk!"

People were laughing again, and in the gloom, a ring of merry elfin faces was appearing—faces crowned with caps and bells, forms bedecked in motley. The fools and jesters had come to take their turns in the audience.

Foxcourt couldn't stay on his feet; the floor kept sliding out from under him. At one point, he was actually bouncing about on his head, while Sola laughed and laughed, one hand pressed to her mouth, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Behind him, his court were chopping frantically with swords that sprouted wings and chicken's heads and fluttered, squawking indignantly. Knights kept grabbing at armored pants that kept slipping down, and men-at-arms kept skidding on squashed fruit, as overripe pears and plums flew from the jesters and clowns all about them, and the manic laughter made the whole hall shake.

"What ails thee, milord?" a voice called. "Hast thou a bout of gout?"

"Good night, bad knight!" another cried. "When thou canst not prevail, thou must needs take to thy bed!"

"Yet he'll not prevail there, either," a third voice answered.

A fourth called, "In what cause hast thou fallen, Sir Borcas? Art thou down for the Count?"

"Why, he doth flounder!"

" 'Nay, a flounder's a fish!"

"And so is he—he's found his fin!"

"Hast thou downed the Count?" a new voice cried; and another answered,

"The Count is down!"

"Nay, Count up!"

"He doth not count at all!"

"Then he is of no importance?"

Pale with humiliation and rage, the Count was inching back within the ranks of his courtiers. But, "Nay," Gwen said, "how unseemly of thee, to depart ere the festival is done!" And the audience of fools seemed to curve around as the howling, cursing mob of courtiers faded, leaving the Count encircled by jeering grotesques, pointing and laughing.

"Be damned to you all!" he shouted, despairing, but the audience only laughed the louder and cried, "Brother, will he seek to step?"

"Nay, he'll step to stoop!"

"An he doth stoop, he'll never stand up straight again!"

"Why, gossip, he hath not been upstanding since he came to manhood!"

"Aye, nor hath been upright since his birth!"

"What, was he born?"

"Aye, borne in triumph! See his noble stance!"

Which, of course, was the cue for the floor to slip out from under him again.

"Away!" the Count screamed. "Avaunt thee, monsters!"

"Doth he speak to himself, then?"

"What, shall we show him the true shape of his soul?"

"Nay, do not!" the Count cried in panic. "Go leave me! Get thee hence!"

"Why, I have hence, and roosters, too."

"And so have I. Wherefore ought we seek more?"

"To give us eggs."

A pale spheroid flew through the air and struck, breaking open on the Count's head and oozing down over his cheeks. He howled in dismay and turned to run—but he could only run in place.

"There is only one direction in which thou mayest go," Gwen said, her voice hard.

"Any! Any way is good, so that it takes me from these loons!"

"What—a loon, doth he say?"

"A loon he needs, for he doth weave."

"Hath he a woof?"

"Nay, for they did spurn him."

"Then must he have a warp!"

"Aye. Now see him take it."

And the ghost began to diminish, shrinking into the distance as he bumbled away in a limping run; though he stayed in the same place on the dais, he grew smaller and smaller, with his crowd of hecklers hard on his heels, till they all shrank away to nothing, and were gone.

The Gallowglasses were silent, listening.

Faint, ghostly laughter echoed through the castle, but it was hilarity now, not the wicked gloating they had heard before.

"We have won," Magnus whispered, unbelieving.

Rod nodded. "I had a notion we could, if we just kept from being scared. Embedded memories aren't going to hurt you, you see—they can only make you hurt yourself."

"Yet if they're naught but memories, how could we best them?"

"By making new memories to counter them," Gwen explained. "Now, if the Count's wickedness should echo within thy brother's mind, these scenes of humiliation will arise, to make him slink away again. For look you, all that he did truly seek in life were pride and power—pride, gained by shaming those about him; and power, by giving hurt wheresoe'er he could. 'Twas that which was his true pleasure—the sense of power; his fornicating and his cruelty did feed that sense most vividly, for him."

Cordelia's eyes lit. "Yet here, he was himself held up to ridicule, which did shame him unmercifully."

"Aye, and at the hands of a victim, too."

"And he found he had no power, to strike back! Nay, small wonder that he fled, even if 'twas to his just desserts!"

"If 'twas truly his soul." Magnus frowned. "If he was only memories embedded in the stone, brought to seeming fullness by my mind, then what we have seen may have been but illusion."

"And if it was," said Gregory, "his soul's been frying in Hell these two hundred years."

"Gregory!" Gwen gasped, shocked at those words coming from an eight-year-old.

Gregory looked up at her, wide-eyed. "The good fathers do speak such words from the pulpit, Mama. Wherefore may not I?"

Rod decided to save her from an awkward answer. "I think it's time to revive Fess."

"Oh, aye!" Cordelia leaped to the horse's side. "Do, Papa! How can I have not have thought of him!"

"We were a little busy," Rod explained. He stepped up to Fess and felt under the saddlehorn for the reset switch—an enlarged "vertebra." He pushed it over and, slowly, the robot raised its head, blinking away the dullness from its plastic eyes. "I… haddd uh… seizurrre?"

"Yes," Rod said. "Just wait, and it will pass."

"More quickly for me than for a human," the robot said slowly. It looked about at the empty chamber, and the small boy building up the fire again. "The ghosts… are… ?"

"Gone," Rod confirmed. "We embarrassed them so much that they decided to seek out new haunts."

Cordelia winced. "The elfin ghosts have affected thee, Papa."

"Ghosts of… elves?"

Magnus nodded. "I, unwitting, served for thee to bring them forth."

"I? But how could I…"

"The folk hereby do think a seizure's brought by elf-shot," Gregory explained, "so when thou didst seem to be so shot, the elves came forth to seek the slinger."

"But elfin ghosts could be nothing but illusion!"

" 'Tis even as thou sayest," Cordelia agreed, "yet were the Count and his men any more?"

"Yet if the ghosts are but illusion," Geoffrey said, frowning, "how can this battle we have held banish them?"

"By counteracting them," Fess answered. "Believe me, Geoffrey—it is a process with which I am intimately familiar."

Rod looked up, surprised. He had missed the analogy between the computer's program, and the interactive loop between psychometricist and stored emotions—but of course, they were much alike.

"Then Sola's ghost was not truly her soul?"

Gwen spread her hands. "I cannot say. Yet soul or dream, I think she's freed for Heaven."

"Still," Rod mused, "it wouldn't do any harm to have Father Boquilva over for dinner. He understands computers, and he carries holy water."

Faint in the distance, a hoarse, raw masculine scream rang out one last time, diminishing into the fading echo of dying laughter. Then, finally, all was quiet.

"Is it cleansed now?" Gwen asked softly.

Magnus frowned, went to Foxcourt's chair, and grasped the wood firmly with both hands. After a moment, he nodded. "Not even a trace doth linger—naught of him, nor of any old angst or melancholia."

And, suddenly, she was there, radiant in the darkness before him, glowing with faint colors, vibrant, alive, and more beautiful than she had ever been. " 'Tis done—thou hast wrought famously!"

Magnus could only stare, spellbound.

So it was Cordelia who asked, "The wicked lord is fled?"

"Aye." Sola turned to her, glowing in more ways than one. "Foxcourt saw that he would be forever mocked, if he dared to linger here—so he hath fled to try his fate in the afterworld, convinced it cannot be worse."

Rod asked, "Didn't he ever have a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher?"

"Aye, and therefore called a priest, and confessed his sins, when he foresaw his death—yet that part of him that lingered here did seek to turn again to some pale shadow of its old delights."

"Foul!" Geoffrey glared, indignant. "Is there no justice in Heaven, either? Will he not be dealt with as he did deal?"

"Not so." Gwen's hand was on his shoulder. "For, though he may yet be redeemed, he must first come to know his guilt, and to believe in it, in his heart of hearts; then may he make reparation. He shall be long in Purgatory, son—if he doth win to it at all. He may not have been truly repentant when he was shriven."

Geoffrey still didn't look content, but he was silent.

"Justice, I desire," Sola admitted, "yet I'll be content with his wickedness ended. Thanks to thine aid, good folk, none shall ever again suffer from the cruelty of Count Foxcourt. Thou hast proven the worth of my father's death, and my brother's; thou hast given their chivalry meaning, and vindicated my mother's suffering. Thou hast made their fates worthwhile by encompassing the downfall of a villain!"

Rod looked around at his family. "You'll pardon me if I feel a certain sense of satisfaction about that.''

"As well thou shouldst." Sola stepped forward, arms outstretched as though to embrace them. "I thank thee all, most earnestly; thou hast rescued me from ancient suffering." She turned to Magnus. "Yet most greatly I thank thee, good youth, for I do know 'twas thee who did most earnestly press to aid me. 'Tis thou hast ope'd the way for me, that I may leave this mundane sphere, and commence my journey up toward Heaven."

"I… I was honored…"

"As I am honored by thee! Be sure that, if I do gain the Blessed Mede, thou wilt ever have a friend in the hereafter!"

Then she turned, lifting a hand. "Farewell, good friends—and pray for me!"

Then she was gone.

The hall lay dark and still, except for the murmuring of the flames on the hearth.

"Pray I shall," Magnus murmured, gazing at the space where she had been, "and may thy journey be brief and blessed, beauteous lass."

But a friend, Rod noted, was not what he'd wanted.

The hall was quiet, and Cordelia and the younger boys were finishing straightening the furniture that had been tumbled about in the wake of the ghosts. Geoffrey, of course, had complained before, during, and after. "Wherefore hath Magnus not aided, too, Mama?"

"Hush," Gwen said. "Let thy brother alone awhile, to let the pieces of his heart join together again."

Cordelia looked up, startled. "Was he heartbroken, then?"

"Let's just say that his feelings had become too thick on one side, and too thin on the other," Rod hedged. "He needs to get them into balance now."

"It makes no sense," Geoffrey grumbled, and went off to Fess, in search of sanity.

Gwen looked out the nearest of the high, thin windows, and just barely espied the small, antique cemetery outside the castle walls.

"What do you see?" Rod said softly.

"Our lad," she answered, equally hushed. "He doth stand quite still, gazing upon a tombstone."

"Ah." Rod nodded. "Sola's, no doubt. Poor kid—I know how he feels."

Gwen turned to stare at him, startled. "Dost thou so!"

Rod gazed deeply into her eyes before he let the smile lift the corners of his mouth. "Why, of course, dear," he said quietly. "You know you had to heal my heart, when you found it."

She gazed back at him, then slowly smiled, too. She turned to wrap his arms about her, her back to his chest, resting her head against his shoulder as she gazed out at the youth confronting death below them. "Will he, too, find one to heal him?"

"We can only hope," Rod breathed, "hope that he, too, will someday meet a woman who will make all his previous wounds unimportant."

She looked up into his eyes, and hers held stars.

Across the hall, Cordelia watched them, pensive and thoughtful. "Fess?"

"Yes, Cordelia?"

"Was Mama the only lass who ever fell a-love with Papa?"

"I have spoken to you before, about asking personal questions about your father's past." Fess was instantly severe. "Such information is definitely confidential. You must ask your father to tell you."

"But he will never tell me of these things that truly matter, Fess!"

"Then neither shall I, Cordelia."

"But are we never to learn more of Father's wanderings?" Gregory asked.

Fess was still a moment, then said, "I cannot say, children. It will depend on your father's permission, of course…"

"And he will never give it!" Geoffrey said, in disgust.

Fess stood mute.

Cordelia noticed, and said, "Dost thou think he might, good Fess?"

"One can never tell, Cordelia. Even I cannot tell what your father will agree to, when the time and the circumstances are correct."

"There may be more tales, then?" Gregory asked hopefully.

"Oh, certainly there will be more stories! You had many ancestors, children, and not all of them lived dull lives. Whenever you wish, you have but to…"

"Now!"

"Another ancestor, Fess!"

"They are ours, after all!"

"Tell!"

"Well, not immediately," the horse temporized. "Even I feel the need of rest and reflection, after the upheaval of our confrontation with Count Foxcourt."

"At bedtime, then?"

"At bedtime," Fess agreed, "or perhaps another day."

"Tomorrow," Cordelia said brightly, "is another day."