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Merlin's Crooked Cane
Oleh Rob Summers
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Mulai MembacaPanjangnya: 435 halaman5 jam
- Penerbit:
- Rob Summers
- Dirilis:
- Sep 5, 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781370177813
- Format:
- Buku
Deskripsi
Why doesn’t the world give a washed up sorceress a break? It isn’t bad enough that Deirdre the Damned blinded Lile, but now the wicked fairy Blackroot is planning to murder her. She needs a Mage to heal her eyes, but perhaps even more, needs to rely on a twisted cane that once belonged to Merlin. Then she may become the pivotal person in an Eonic battle that is rocking 1860 Philadelphia.
Tindakan Buku
Mulai MembacaInformasi Buku
Merlin's Crooked Cane
Oleh Rob Summers
Panjangnya: 435 halaman5 jam
Deskripsi
Why doesn’t the world give a washed up sorceress a break? It isn’t bad enough that Deirdre the Damned blinded Lile, but now the wicked fairy Blackroot is planning to murder her. She needs a Mage to heal her eyes, but perhaps even more, needs to rely on a twisted cane that once belonged to Merlin. Then she may become the pivotal person in an Eonic battle that is rocking 1860 Philadelphia.
- Penerbit:
- Rob Summers
- Dirilis:
- Sep 5, 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781370177813
- Format:
- Buku
Tentang penulis
The author of the Wizards’ Inn, Hila Grant, and City Allegories series is an administrative assistant at a university. He lives with his wife on six wooded acres in rural Indiana. After discovering, while in his thirties, that writing novels is even more fulfilling than reading them, he began to create worlds and people on paper. His Mage powers include finding morel mushrooms and making up limericks in his head. Feel free to email him at robsummers76@gmail.com
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Merlin's Crooked Cane - Rob Summers
Merlin’s Crooked Cane
Book 5 of the Wizards’ Inn Series
By Rob Summers
Copyright 2016 by Rob Summers
Smashwords Edition
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
No actual persons are represented in this book, with the exception of Cassius M. Clay, 19th century Abolitionist.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1: Give No Aid to the Enemy
Chapter 2: Avoid Night Marches
Chapter 3: Choose a Strong Leader
Chapter 4: Make Use of Enemy Traitors
Chapter 5: Prohibit Drunkenness in the Ranks
Chapter 6: Retire Weak Commanders
Chapter 7: Be Relentless in Pursuit
Chapter 8: Always Obey Orders
Chapter 9: Never Risk Being Captured
Chapter 10: Accept Advantageous Peace Terms
Other Titles by Rob Summers
About Rob Summers
Connect with Rob Summers
Chapter 1 Give No Aid to the Enemy
This Diabolus is indeed a great and mighty prince, and yet both poor and beggarly.
-John Bunyan
It was oddly quiet, and it was strange too, Blackroot thought, that he did not feel happier. Though many worshippers were crowded into the Temple of Gog, though he stood at the high gilded altar, the object of every eye, and though he would soon be intoning a chant of praise to his god; though no priest in Faerie could approach his power and influence, and though the Queen herself must sometimes acquiesce to his will; yet he felt sad, worried, and uncomfortable. Even covered in his thick, high priestly robes, he felt—cold.
The vaulted, gilded ceiling soared above his head and the great windows let in abundant light to show the brilliantly appareled congregation. Raising his golden staff of office, he began the chant of Gog. But oddly, so very oddly, the lesser priests standing around him at lower levels of the great altar did not join in the chant as they should. His lone voice ascended into the great spaces above, and it sounded—wrong, weak, trembling! He found to his shame that he was shivering, shivering from the cold. What was wrong with him? Why did he not speak forcibly as he should?
He woke in a miserable shed, moaning and quaking. Snow was blowing through cracks in the roof and walls and clinging to his thin, ill-clothed body. He was dirty and hungry. He remembered having come here in the night, still scared, still on the run so many months after having been exiled from Faerie.
For the days of his dream were now so long ago, hundreds of years ago; the days when Gog’s temple had been full, early in his priesthood, before he had begun losing followers. Something had failed, something had gone wrong before he had fully settled into the glory of his office, even before the war between Faerie’s Crown and the half-giant Nessan, before the statues of the brother gods Gog and Magog had been broken by some wicked person among the fairies of the Royal Camp. For even before that he had not carried quite the weight, the presence, the authority of his predecessor as high priest.
Why was he thinking such things? With chapped hands he brushed the snow from his ragged garments. The backs of his hands were covered with ugly scars, ineradicable marks of torture. He had schooled himself to look at the scars without thinking about them, but they were there, as were the scars on his face and, under his clothes, on his upper body. He would not think of that either. He stood stiffly and moved around, trying to warm himself.
When the cult of Gog had been so reduced as to be in danger of extinction, he had persuaded some, a few, of his most devoted followers to entrust their children to him. These boys and girls he had sacrificed at the altar of Gog, with sacred knife and incantation. This he had done, of course, in some secrecy for he could not expect that those not devoted to Gog would accept this return to ancient custom. But once the sacrifices were done he had not attempted to keep them a secret from the parents. Why should he? These were his own people, long accustomed to obey in all things, devotees of his favored inner circle for whom no sacrifice should have been called too great. But these parents, all their relatives, the Queen and court, all of Faerie, all of them, all had risen as one and had turned against him. Some of the victims’ parents had captured and tortured him, leaving these marks and nearly killing him. But Queen Tanaquill’s soldiers had come in time to save his life and had taken him away to her dungeons where he had been imprisoned for more than a hundred years.
He opened the door of the shed. Ah! The wind bit him so that he writhed to feel it. But he did not re-shut the door. He knew he must return to the road, on sore feet, or perish here. He had not a scrap of food nor a penny left in his pocket. He walked out, head uncovered, and turned eastward on a country lane between winter fields of stubble. All around him was England, England of the humans, of the famed King Arthur. How he wished the young ruler dead, if only because he was beloved of Tanaquill!
Tanaquill, the Faerie Queen, had proved a great enemy of Gog, for she had herself abandoned his worship and had encouraged others to do so. Much later she had imprisoned Blackroot in order to save him from the torturers, had spent most of a day in making laws supposedly ending his high priesthood and all formal worship of Gog, and then had left him in her dungeons, apparently forgotten. But recently her guards had detected correspondence between him and his cousin Meliagrance, high priest of Magog. The letters revealed their shared plans to improve the lot of the nobility in some of the human lands. Using this forbidden communication as evidence, Tanaquill had ruled that Blackroot was a danger to national security, and though that was legal nonsense, the red haired monarch had exiled him from Faerie.
She had warned him to stay far from where he was this day, the vicinity of Camelot and of Merlin’s Tower. If I hear that you’ve been within a hundred miles of those places, I’ll have you brought back and beheaded,
she had said, and he knew that she never spoke lightly. But he feared her less than others, less than parents of the children he had sacrificed, certain ones such as the implacable mother named Firefly who had never cooled her anger in all the 113 years of his imprisonment and who would follow him anywhere on earth to get vengeance.
Queen Tanaquill had rather hoped that Firefly and the other parents would succeed and so had done nothing to conceal just where Blackroot would be set free outside the protection of her laws. So it was that with many such on his heels he had been released outside Faerie’s northern border and only by some miracle had escaped them. Running, crawling, dodging, he had re-crossed the border (against Tanaquill’s orders), had disguised himself, and had made his way to the west, to the England Road.
Snow had covered Faerie when he had begun his flight. Another winter had now come, and he had only just managed to cross the western Faerie border into England, for the path of a lone fugitive must be circuitous and his progress slow. Sometimes for weeks, or even months, he had lived in some barn, or some shed like this one, or something worse; slipping out at night to steal food or the occasional garment from the local peasantry. When lucky enough to meet with a human, he had controlled him with his mind, as fairies do, and so had made him give him anything he wanted. But humans are rare in western Faerie, and at any rate such doings were always noticed eventually by some fairy, troll, or goblin, and then he had had to hurry on for fear of being captured, leaving behind the mind slave. Nowhere had he had more than a few days of relative comfort; in recent weeks he had had none.
When finally he had slipped into England, he had at first hoped to find a place of safety near Faerie’s border, from which he might recruit new followers. But of the few fairies he had met in this land, not one could be found who would acknowledge his high priesthood and serve him. His reputation everywhere, he was finding, was as shattered as when the children’s fate had first become generally known.
Still shivering, he pulled his ragged robe tighter around his short, spare body and looked about worriedly at the horizons. The snow, descending on his uncovered blond head, kept him from seeing as well as he wished. Some of the human tramps he had been forced into contact with had passed on to him the news that a dragon was ravaging this part of the country between Camelot and Merlin’s Tower. He must not be found by it. At present he must not be found by anyone!
The vengeful fairies would certainly still be looking for him everywhere, even in this poor and dingy country. Without powerful help, he could not be expected to last long. Since no one was helping, he was mentally chasing a Will o’ the wisp, a memory that had haunted his dreams while in prison. For in his cell he had sometimes dreamed of the Dimstone Urn, that is desirable above all else. If he could only place his hands on it, all would be redeemed, nothing would be impossible for him. The chessboard would be cleared and the pieces reset with himself as the triumphing king. He did not know where the urn was, but knew that at the time of his imprisonment it had been in Merlin’s Tower.
Just a few years ago, Merlin had been betrayed by the damsel Vivien, a disciple of Morgan Le Fay, into a millennium-long enchanted sleep, and at that time the tower had been raided by a band of human thieves in league with Vivien. These were of the sort that trespass on the Magi roads. The urn had probably been stolen then, and if so, who knew what place and time it had been carried to? But this seemed his only hope, that the urn might still be in the tower, and that the Mage of the Watch, who now ruled there in Merlin’s absence, would not have discovered its secret, and that he, Blackroot, might somehow lay his hands on it and steal it and keep it.
Now he saw the top of Merlin’s Tower above the bare limbs of the trees that lay between. Protruding from its roof were the great branches of a mighty oak that grew, by some sorcery of Merlin’s, up through the middle of the round building. This was a mightily conjured place and the center of a time swamp, so that as he crept nearer, now beginning to favor sheltered paths, he sensed that he was going further back in time with each step. When he would leave the vicinity, were he so fortunate as to do so, he would return to the time of Arthur’s England.
Someone who knew little of him might think that he had come here because his cousin Meliagrance was imprisoned within. But truly he cared nothing for Meliagrance. The Dimstone Urn was everything. But how could he dream of obtaining it? Though he was a fairy of greater than usual powers, he was no match for the multiple magic defenses enwreathing Merlin’s home. This quest required the wealth and influence of a king, the sort of diplomatic clout he had once had. He was keenly conscious of how he used to have connections, political leverage, prestige, secret agents, and a small army of prebendaries and secretaries to accomplish these things for him. Now all he had was his ragged self, his native wit, and a persuasive tongue.
After more weary walking, always wary and careful not to show himself openly to the tower’s windows, he came at last to a wide clearing before the door. This he must cross without cover. With a ferocious prayer to his daemon master Gog, he stepped clear of the woods and approached, finding that the tower seemed taller, stronger, and more menacing the closer he came to it. No one was visible at the windows.
He found the great door of the place suspiciously unlocked. Blackroot was no fool. A locked door might have been interpreted as indicating that master Devon Clark, the Mage of the Watch, was not present, and that therefore, there was some hope—though even then practically none. But the unlocked door fairly shouted, ‘Trap!’ He had been seen and was invited in to join cousin Mel in the dungeons beneath the tower. This was certain, and what else might he have expected?
Certain! Certain! Suddenly he felt it, the smug assurance of the Mage within. What a fool he had been to come here! He turned and ran, and as he ran he heard barks. Looking over his shoulder he saw a pack of dogs emerge from the half open door, knocking it wide open. When he stumbled to a stop and faced them, he had a few moments to take in impressions: of the tower, of a patch of blue sky which the snow clouds had vacated, and surprisingly, almost humorously, that these were not all guard dogs. Some were small, were lap dogs! But whatever they were, he would control them with his mind as he had done before when any sort of dog had come his way during his recent foot travels.
But no! One of them, he sensed, the leader, was a Mage dog, a huge beast of rare powers, including an exceptionally strong will, and all the others were under this dog’s influence, following at full speed, their bestial natures straining eagerly forward for the prey. To take over minds so wild and inflamed is very difficult. Given time, he could have mastered them, but there was no time. As he began to run again, he remembered having heard somewhere that the Mage of the Watch owned a Mage dog called Looper, named after the Lupris people of the lost continent.
He was fleet but not fleet enough. They soon caught him and sank their teeth into him, Looper still foremost and most vicious. He tried to fight them without so much as a stick in his hand and was almost down on the snow when he heard a voice calling. Their master, a young red-headed man, was standing outside the tower door and calling off his hounds. Reluctantly, they gave him up and ran back.
Blackroot was on his knees and now stumbled upright and wobbled on into the woods. From behind him came the faint shout of the Mage, You, Blackroot! You’d better get out of this country! I’m going to report to Queen Tanaquill, and if she catches you here, she won’t be merciful!
There was more, but he was now out of earshot. He was gasping, reeling, and bleeding in several places. He kept on until he could not go any farther and then sat down on a log near a stand of young yew trees. Gradually his mind cleared and he began to tear off strips of his thin robe to bind his freely bleeding bite wounds.
What a fool he had been, what a fool! But the call of the urn was strong. Even now he felt it. He had wanted it even before he was incarcerated, but had been blocked by interfering fairy lords. When he had requested to be its custodian, his reputation was already such that he had received polite put-offs. What he had been unable to accomplish in the days of his power, he had tried to bring off now as a tramp. This was sheer desperation.
Help for restoring himself to power, if any was to be found, he must seek elsewhere, and also he must surely leave England. To be more certain of leaving behind his pursuers, he would probably have to go by Magi roads, those magic paths that twist here and there through both place and time, so that one might go, for instance, to China of the 3rd century A.D.—or of the 33rd. He knew that his cousin Meliagrance had gone by such roads to the year 1859 A.D. and a city of the humans called Philadelphia and that he had there commanded in an ongoing Eonic Battle, an attempt to bring back aristocracy to a country ruled by rabble. Meliagrance had been received there by a Mrs. Weal, a wealthy devotee of the Old Powers.
Though Meliagrance had been detected, captured, and made a prisoner in the very tower Blackroot had just run away from, and though Mrs. Weal’s husband was imprisoned there too, yet Blackroot had not heard that Violet Weal had ever been captured. Furthermore, Meliagrance had taken a deadly chimera to Philadelphia, and the beast had been released there. No doubt much terror and destruction had resulted. The chimera Scorcher had presumably turned things in Mrs. Weal’s favor.
Without the Dimstone Urn, Blackroot had no way to harm Faerie but might do great harm in 19th century Philadelphia, where lived Tanaquill’s favorite human, the Mage Deirdre, and the Queen’s friend Bis, also a Mage. Among weak and unsuspecting humans, he might take up the command in the Eonic War, personally kill Deirdre and Bis (supposing them not already devoured by Scorcher), and perhaps put an end to their United States of America, as the country was reportedly called.
He would not die here in pain and hunger. He would get up and go on. There was still someone who might help him, was there not? The half-fairy, the sorceress. Having finished his crude self-bandaging, he stood and limped forward. He must have revenge on Tanaquill if only in this secondhand way, by destroying the cause and the lives of the Queen’s friends. This he would do and he would do more. He must also have Faerie followers for his revived cult. When he would leave England, ahead of his vengeance-seeking enemies, he would not go straight to Philadelphia but would first go to an expatriate colony of fairies he had heard of. These, he was sure, would be ready to follow him, for they too hated the she-tyrant Tanaquill. They too had committed what Tanaquill called unspeakable crimes.
Blackroot’s thoughts were interrupted and he stumbled to a halt. As the clouds had cleared, a hill had become more starkly visible on the horizon, and above it there poured upward a quantity of smoke too great to be the result of some cottager’s chimney. The dragon then. He pulled his tattered robe tighter about him and tried to make his tired legs hurry. Yes, it was miles to the Castle of Maidens, but there he would find shelter with the Fay, sister to King Arthur, Queen of Gore, and mistress of a School of Evil for Young Ladies (the Mysteries of Evil Explained).
Truly, I might try to adopt your point of view but I’m afraid I would find it suffocating,
said Queen Morgan Le Fay. One does not so easily see things inside out. You ask to stay longer. Surely you see that I have done you a great favor merely by briefly harboring you? I cannot continue to risk the safety of Gore.
After a cold welcome the previous evening, Blackroot had been fed simply and dressed in plain clothes. The queen had even gone so far as to send him a speechless hag to dress and bind his wounds, and the crone had proved remarkably adept. This did not surprise him for he sensed fairy blood in her. He had been put to bed in what was little more than a horse stall—a bare room half under the inner side of one of the castle walls. Now it was morning and some of Morgan’s servants had led him to her for a delayed interview. Oh, her insolence! For rather than bringing him to her throne room or some fire-warmed chamber of counsel, she received him in the main courtyard under the sky, where she stood on the cobblestones with an air of impatience. She was dressed in thick, luxurious finery suitable for winter, and so were the five damsels who accompanied her, a sampling of her little army of sorceresses. These beautiful girls, though very young, looked nearly as arrogant as their mistress. Here in the Queen’s school, they all spoke in Kreenspam, the language of the fairies.
You have had my poor hospitality,
Morgan went on (quite accurately), and now I’m sure that, when you fully consider the matter, you won’t want to linger. You do not answer... I wait a moment and you still do not answer. Ah, then know that regardless of your wishes, and as I’ve said, I find myself incapacitated for sympathy. You will take to your road at once, will you not?
Blackroot bowed and straightened with twinges of pain in his multi-bitten body that he could not entirely mask with a smile. Your Majesty, I go. But do you wish me to go on foot? Isn’t it probable, then, that my enemies will catch me still within the borders of Gore? Tanaquill will be angry to find that I have been allowed to stay the night here.
Morgan laughed merrily and her breath showed white in the winter air. Blackroot, do you begin to make an argument that I imprison you here and turn you over to her? Or perhaps behead you?
He winced. He was not used, even in prison he had not been used, to be mocked. He controlled himself and answered, The queen of Gore wishes me to be gone. I only ask to depart more hastily and so fulfill her wish more readily. Hastiest of all, I trow, would be a ship. The queen has small ships I believe? I ask a brief loan of one, even the smallest, nothing more.
The beautiful blonde sorceress gave him a sharp look, a look not so much of annoyance as of hard shrewdness. I have but one ship at hand,
she said, and it’s worth a king’s ransom, being deeply enchanted, as you must well know. Indeed you may have it as a loan if you will put up a reasonable sum of money as surety. What then? Let us pass over your shamed admission that you have no money at all. My ship is therefore not to be discussed.
I will again be high priest,
Blackroot said in anger. The price of your wretched rowboat will then be paid back to you thrice over.
Morgan looked amused. I am a woman of business and do not extend credit to vagrants. As for your hope of preferment—from Tanaquill?—you might as well hope to be universally loved.
As she paused to say something quietly to the damsel standing nearest her, Blackroot thought to himself that both hopes she had mentioned could be fulfilled if only he could somehow obtain the Dimstone Urn.
Morgan finished whispering and turned to him again. My students are impatient for our morning walk, one that will include a school lesson. Let us conclude our business. I find that there have accumulated about my castle certain persons who would do well to leave me, ones who, I confess, I’m eager to part with. My desire to be charitable to the useless and indigent has faded as the months have passed. You, Blackroot, must have traveling companions, so I send them with you.
No, Your Majesty!
Blackroot’s hatred for this half-human was erupting within him. I want no companions!
Nevertheless, you shall have them. You see, every year or two I do my house cleaning, cleansing the castle of such leeches as they. Whitney, fetch me out the travelers.
A dark haired girl bowed and went for them, reentering the keep, and brought them forth immediately. Blackroot looked at them in disgust and disbelief. They were the same hag who had tended to his wounds, a gray-headed man in tattered finery, and a blind minstrel girl whom he had noticed the evening before in the castle’s main hall. Each of them carried an over-the-shoulder bag and the girl had also her lute. None of them looked happy.
My former servants,
Morgan said to them, let me introduce you to your new master Blackroot, former high priest of Gog in Faerie and presently an exile from that land. I have a gift for each of you as you leave my service and go with him into the world. Fidessa, approach me.
The little hag hobbled forward making slight garbled noises such as she had addressed to Blackroot the evening before. Having now heard her name, Blackroot placed her as the infamous Boundary Witch of southern Faerie, she who by report had murdered so many. The witch literally fawned on Morgan with her hands, giving her ingratiating looks. Morgan pushed her away casually.
You will have heard of Fidessa, whose real name is Duessa,
the queen said to Blackroot, she who lost her natural tongue in a sorceress’s duel. While in one of Queen Tanaquill’s dungeons in Cleopolis, she was relieved of the magic silver tongue some Mage had made for her, and so she became visible even to humans as she truly is.
Blackroot understood from this that the silver tongue, besides enabling Fidessa to articulate, had been made a conjured token that had given her the appearance of youth, that is, to human eyes. Their stays in Cleopolis’ dungeons had somewhat overlapped, and he remembered having seen her pass his cell door while she was still masquerading as a raven-tressed beauty.
Considering her vile deeds,
said Morgan, "it’s a wonder she was not executed. Legal difficulties intervened. Though the Queen assembled reports of Fidessa’s many hideous crimes, they had all been committed against humans in the South, none against fairies. These humans would have had to travel far to testify in court at Cleopolis. Not practical, you see, and yet Tanaquill is so punctilious about correctness in legal proceedings that she could not bring herself to execute the wretch unconvicted by a court.
"So instead Fidessa was to be remanded to the South to stand trial there. However, it was found that no proper court of law yet existed in those southern realms ruled by the fairy sisters Lady Esma and Queen Poppet. Both their dominions were in disarray after the death of King Nessan, and still are. If Fidessa had gone south, she would have had to be held prisoner there for years until such an important trial could be properly arranged. But the sisters had no secure place of confinement for her comparable to Tanaquill’s marvelous dungeons. Good security was essential because the goblins have been staging small uprisings in the area. Had Fidessa been imprisoned there, certain evil goblin thanes, seeing her as an old friend, might have helped her to escape. No, it would not do.
Therefore, Tanaquill grudgingly did no more than banish her from Faerie on the basis of what little evidence she did have against her, that is, that she had once escaped from custody. ‘Let her die in a ditch, the dirtiest ditch in England,’ Tanaquill is reported to have said. So Fidessa was released, and she hobbled here to the Castle of Maidens, having, as she thought, some claim on me. I find that she will not work hard enough to earn her gruel, and besides, her appearance doesn’t suit. She is considered harmless without her silver tongue, unable to speak spells. Take her, Blackroot, she is yours.
The witch turned her bleary eyes to him with something like hopeful expectation. Could she really want to go away with him? He felt sick with revulsion.
Morgan beckoned the gray-headed man to come forward. Ben Cooper, I... But I forget that I have not given Fidessa her parting gift.
She gently turned the little crone around to face her and then, with shocking force, slammed her right palm into the witch’s forehead. Fidessa’s head flopped back and she nearly fell over. After staggering this way and that, she gradually steadied herself and stood as still as her trembling would allow.
This filthy creature betrayed me at the time of the Battle Among the Tents outside Cleopolis,
Morgan explained. I would have killed her as soon as she returned to me from prison, but I find it more pleasing to allow her to live in this state, without voice or magic and turned out penniless to, as Tanaquill said, die in a ditch. Her gift is a mark of infamy. Please examine her forehead.
Blackroot had already seen that a single word now appeared in dingy green on her wrinkled forehead. It was the name Judas.
And so she is marked as a warning to others,
Morgan said coolly. Now, Ben Cooper.
Yes, milady.
Cooper’s clean-shaven face looked too young for his gray locks. His smile seemed an attempt to feign that all was well between him and his mistress.
"This one is a Mage who lost his powers due to a lack of integrity. Then he fell in with Nineveh’s Rebels and was one of the few to survive the fall of their palace stronghold. Then he came to me. I confess that I half believed him at first when he told me of the fine, brave ways he might serve me. After trial, the truth comes out: he is lazy and cowardly. He talks much and achieves nothing.
I sent him with my damsel Igraine and my servant Nog on their failed mission to poison King Arthur. Ben was jailed there simply for being Igraine’s companion. But Igraine Arthur killed with the same poisoned cloak I had meant for him, and Nog disappeared, so no one could be found to testify against Ben. Arthur had to send him back to me. Now I would be glad to be rid of him if only as a gesture to demonstrate to the king that I wish for a truce in our war: Arthur shall hear of it and approve. And as I said, this fellow has proved unreliable again and again. Let him go with you as your servant-guide and hope vainly that he won’t run from your side when there’s danger about.
Now she called Ben to her and, drawing his head down to her, kissed him lingeringly on the forehead. The man did not resist this but tried to laugh as if it were a joke. When she released him and he straightened up, he was still forcing laughter.
What does it say?
he said brightly to all, pointing to his forehead.
No one answered. Blackroot saw that, in lettering similar to that on Fidessa’s face, Ben Cooper now bore the name Braggadocio.
You remember, I suppose, the vainglorious fellow of that name that Arthur encountered in Faerie during his youthful ramblings?
Morgan glanced at the angle of the morning sun, now rising over the battlements. But let us hurry and finish this. Lile!
The girl, her eyes covered by a strip of black cloth, stepped forward. Despite the burden of a traveler’s sack and her lute, she managed to keep a hand free to hold a crooked cane, and with this she tapped her way forward a few paces.
Yes, your Majesty?
Her voice was choked with fear.
For the first time paying any real attention to the girl, Blackroot was surprised to see that she was accompanied by a spirit. No human could see it in full daylight, but Blackroot’s fairy eyes showed him a Will o’the wisp clinging to her with the orange glow of a dying fire. This was odd, for wisps are seldom found within walls, tending more to swamps and cemeteries. They also are fond of haunting treasure troves, but this girl was hardly likely to be carrying gold.
She was once a student in my school,
Morgan said, and obligingly murdered several people whom I found it convenient to have out of the way. But she was too dependent on me for planning all the details. A damsel such as Igraine could plan out a murder for herself, might even proceed without a positive order; but not this one.
She gripped the edge of Lile’s blindfold and drew it up, revealing her upper face. Still pretty, you see, and one seldom finds hair so flaming red.
She returned the blindfold to its place. "Lile was one of those who accompanied me last year on my visit to Cleopolis to seek alliance with the Faerie Queen. While we were there, I sent her and other girls to eliminate an enemy of mine, the Curse Mage Bis. A very simple murder, yet they all failed me. This little idiot allowed herself to be blinded by Deirdre the Damned, who, I will just mention, turned traitor to me at the time along with Fidessa and Vivien Wizardbane. The Battle Among the Tents was a sad debacle. Afterward, I was actually taken prisoner by Tanaquill as a result of so much treachery and failure on the part of my girls. I was to be remanded to Camelot to stand trial for supposed crimes. But I never went there, for though Arthur and I are at war, he allowed me to return to Gore instead, due to politics, a supposed lack of proof, some remaining affection for a half-sister, and what not. I believe he has had some second-hand assurance from Tanaquill that I will no longer seek his life.
Well, what do you suppose? Though Lile too had been imprisoned by Tanaquill, she managed to get herself released and made her way somehow to Camelot, took up the life of a wandering minstrel, and showed up here one day. She wasn’t so stupid as to think she could be my student again, for she knows I only accept the physically whole, but asked only a minstrel’s place by my hearth. I took her in out of mere curiosity and because I always do take in passersby who might be of some small use to me. But I had forgotten how ill she plays the lute, or hoped that she had somehow improved. Lile, play for Blackroot that song you gave us when you first came. Charm him with it. Oh, but you have broken the strings!
Blackroot saw that three of the lute strings were indeed broken.
I am sorry, your Majesty,
Lile said. An accident, just this morning, as I descended the south stairway.
Because you are blind, yes, no need to belabor it. Nevertheless, sing your song unaccompanied and so let Blackroot hear your lovely voice.
Please, milady, excuse me.
Do it!
The girl began to cry stickily, but even in her wretchedness she forced herself to this penance of singing in order to escape something worse. The result was reedy and breathless.
I am a vile thing,
Brushed by an owl’s wing,
Stopping at nothing,
Lost to all good;
Given to scheming,
Nightmarish dreaming,
Not being but seeming,
Want and not should.
I am a vile thing,
Other’s goods coveting;
Fingering, pilfering;
Ruined by my greed.
Sheer wickedness I sing,
Darkness descending;
Evil is everything:
That is my creed.
That will be enough, Lile,
said Morgan. "Now I don’t fault the words. My girls and I rather like them: just the sort of thing we appreciate at our school; and we may yet steal the song for our use. But you perceive, Blackroot, that a blind girl ought not to take up minstrelsy on the supposition that her hearer’s pity for her condition will overcome their distaste for a bad performance. She has been an imposter here long enough. Still, I might have kept her a bit longer if it weren’t that she was caught with two of my silver forks in her apron. I never taught my girls ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ but rather decidedly I taught them, ‘Thou shalt not steal from me.’ I suppose it was about that time that we noticed the Will o’ the wisp haunting her bedchamber. It must have wandered in
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