A Fatal Humor, page 15
“A foolish prediction—written in water with a pitchfork, as my mother used to say.”
“So you think so, do you?”
Stasya looked at him, bright and handsome, with his face now silhouetted against the glowing river. He was smiling as if he knew something the rest of the world didn’t. “Wait, Ellard. You’re not seriously thinking that you are this ‘Gewahlt’ person, are you?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” He turned to her, grinning. “But who is to say, one way or the other?”
Before Stasya could begin to think of how to answer this remarkable, and thoroughly insane pronouncement, there was a trumpet call from the barricade at the end of the bridge, and a herald cried in a loud voice for “The one styling himself Caedmon Aldred and his assorted followers” to come and hear the decision of the Duke of Keelweard.
“Come on,” said Ellard, grabbing her hand and pulling her along. “Mustn’t be late now. Caedmon will get testy if we’re not all there.”
They got to the barricade just in time to meet the two older hillichmagnars, who were approaching from the direction of their camp. Caedmon looked at Ellard holding Stasya’s hand and scowled. Pallavi’s face lit up, and she gave Stasya an encouraging wink. Stasya responded by pulling her hand free from Ellard’s and moving to stand on the other side of Pallavi from him.
The herald, who was standing on top of the barricade, looked down his nose at them. “Are you,” he said to Caedmon, “the one who claims to be the famous sorcerer, Caedmon Aldred?”
“I claim that name because it is mine,” said Caedmon. “Has his grace decided to grant us an audience?”
“His grace,” said the herald, “has heard the most shocking stories of your behavior at Leornian. You and your...supposed hillichmagnars are requested to leave at once. His grace is quite occupied with the problems of his people and has no time to waste with petty tricksters and traveling magy shows.”
Caedmon rolled up his sleeve. “I apologize, but perhaps I misheard you. It sounded as if you were accusing us of being frauds.” He conjured a ball of blue flame and sent it flying around the head of the herald.
The herald ducked, and looked genuinely scared for a moment, but as soon as the flame vanished, he straightened his tunic and the plume on his hat and said, “I was told to expect such a show. Doctor Garnett has explained how you and your followers—”
“Garnett?” said Pallavi. “Is that who your duke has been listening to?”
“Yes, my lady,” sniffed the herald.
“He’s no more a doctor than I am a lady.”
A bass voice boomed out over the barricade. “I must say that I take exception to that statement. Or at least to the first part of it. I cannot say whether Miss Ratnam is a lady or not.” A second later, two white-masked heads poked over the top of the barricade. “You plotted against his grace, the Duke of Leornian, and I have no doubt that you will do the same against the Duke of Keelshire.”
“They must have ridden ahead of us on the other side of the river,” said Stasya.
“Oh, bugger it all,” said Pallavi.
Ellard turned to Caedmon. “You know, we could end all our troubles at once if we blew up that barricade right now, with Garnett on it.”
“I must admit I am tempted,” muttered Caedmon, “but that would achieve nothing. We are here to reestablish ties with Myrcia. If we go about killing people for no reason other than that they are asses, then there will, I am sorry to say, never be an end to the killing.”
“True,” said Ellard, “but at least it would make us feel better.”
“The duke does not trust us,” said Caedmon, “but if we kill his soldiers, he will have even less reason to trust us. I would have no objection to a violent demonstration of our powers if I thought for a minute that it would help us achieve our goals, but I do not see how it could.”
He stepped out in front of the other three and bowed to the herald. “I fear the time will come when your master will regret his refusal to meet with us. Tell him to beware Duke Rodgar, and tell him, if you will, that Diernemynster desires his friendship.”
“If you are from Diernemynster,” said Garnett, “which we all doubt, then you may go back and tell your Freagast that we in Myrcia have gotten along just fine without her supposed wisdom to guide us.”
Pallavi snorted. “Yes, you’re all at each other’s throats, and half your people are burning in plague pits. Sounds like you’ve got everything under control.”
“Peace, now,” said Caedmon. “We can do nothing more here. Let us go.”
They all turned and walked together back to the campsite, trying to ignore the jeering laughter from the soldiers. “They don’t know what they’re doing,” Stasya told herself. She was disgusted to find that part of her really wanted Ellard to obliterate those men. After what he had said at the ruins of Leofe’s chapel, she found his readiness to resort to violence disturbing. But even so, she couldn’t help feeling that they deserved it.
At their camp, they packed their scant belongings in silence, until Pallavi asked, “So where do we go next?”
“I think,” said Caedmon slowly, “that we ought to go now where we ought to have gone from the beginning. I was a fool not to see it earlier.”
“And where is that?” asked Ellard.
“Formacaster. We will go to the Summer Palace and see the new King Edmund. If anyone can repair the breach that separates Diernemynster from Myrcia, it will be his majesty.”
They were nearly ready to leave, but Stasya insisted on taking a moment to go down to the river and clean the mud off her trousers. She was still just as filthy as she had been when she woke up, and she wasn’t going to walk all the way to Formacaster with her shoes full of mud. When she got to the riverbank, though, the bridge, along with all the soldiers and Alwin Garnett, loomed over her, and she could not think of cleaning her feet and socks under their gaze, much less removing her riding trousers. So she walked along the river until she found a more secluded spot, and there she cleaned herself off. As she was putting her clothes back on, there was a soft cough from the long grass up the bank, and she turned to see Calleigh Dell, dressed in her white robe, approaching.
“What are you doing here?” asked Stasya.
“I came with Doctor Garnett,” said Calleigh. “I managed to slip away by saying I needed to relieve myself. The men do it off the bridge, but I said I wanted some privacy, and they didn’t seem to think that was suspicious, so here I am. Oh, my lady, I’m so very sorry for what Doctor Garnett did. You embarrassed him at Leornian, and he’s bound and determined to thwart you and your friends now.”
“Well, we’re leaving,” said Stasya. “So he doesn’t need to worry about us anymore. But tell me, do you really think the Duke of Leornian’s plan for breaking up Myrcia is right?”
“Oh, no. Of course not. But now the duke has changed his mind. Or rather, Doctor Garnett has changed the duke’s mind. We’re going to ally ourselves with Keelweard. And maybe with some other people, too. I don’t know the full plan. It seems to me like the doctor’s plans change every week. Sometimes oftener.”
Stasya let out a long, exasperated sigh. “Calleigh, you know you don’t need to stay with that man. We’re going to Formacaster. You could come with us.”
Calleigh’s pale, freckled face went pink. “I wish I could, my lady. But you are all angels of Earstien, and there’s no room in your company for a farm girl from Churton like me. What could I possibly do for you that you couldn’t do better yourselves? And anyway, the truth is, my lady, that I love the doctor. I know what he is. I know that better than anyone. But I still love him, and I won’t leave him. I’m sorry.”
Stasya hugged the girl. “I’m sorry, too, Calleigh.”
From up the bank, they heard Pallavi’s voice, “Stasya, dear? Are you down there? Did you fall in?”
Stasya and Calleigh hugged again, and then Stasya ran up the bank to join the other hillichmagnars, and Calleigh, with slow, sad steps, returned to the bridge.
Chapter 22
They were over there, still, following the group. Caedmon was sure of it. Every once in a while, he had looked over to the north bank of the river and seen two riders moving through the trees, keeping pace with them. They had abandoned their highly-visible white robes, but he was sure the two riders were Alwin Garnett and his assistant, Miss Dell.
Ellard’s solution, of course, would have been to send a fireball over the river and vaporize the two of them. But Caedmon hated the thought of having to kill people like that. They were ridiculous, perhaps even dangerous. But then he thought of Kuhlbert, who had been vastly more powerful and dangerous. Looking back now, he wished more than anything that he could take back the spell that had ended Kuhlbert’s life. And if that were true of a man whom they had killed in combat, how much more would it be true of people who were a mere annoyance, and who posed no physical threat at all? There was no point in killing them, no reason that could justify the crime.
One afternoon, while Ellard and Pallavi gathered wood for the fire, Caedmon went down to the river with Stasya to fish. He tried several times to start a conversation with her—about the weather or the fish or her life in Loshadnarod—but she never spoke more than a word or two in response to his questions, and eventually he got the idea that she would prefer not to talk.
But then, after twenty minutes of awkward silence, she spoke. “Caedmon, can I ask you something?” He indicated that she could, and she continued. “Have you ever felt that...I know this sounds crazy, but have you ever found that you can’t remember things that have happened recently?”
He thought about the question. “Yes, I have.” It was one of the terrors of old age, actually. Hillichmagnars had famously long memories, but hardly a day went by when he didn’t find himself forgetting a name or a face. There were minutes, tiny moments in time, that he remembered with blazing clarity, even after centuries. But there were also entire years of his life that he couldn’t remember at all. “I think that is normal,” he told the girl, “but I find the sad thing is that I never manage to forget the things I want to forget.”
She shook her head, and her lip quivered slightly. “No, I’m sorry, sir, but that’s not what I mean. I have these thoughts—things that might have happened, or maybe they didn’t. I think I’m asleep, but it’s very confusing. Usually Ellard is there, and I’m not sure what to—”
“Ellard? This is about Ellard?” In view of his previous concerns, he found it somewhat disturbing that Stasya and Ellard were spending a lot of time alone together, particularly in the evenings. For all he knew, they were continuing their grisly research into the causes of the plague, though they hadn’t condescended to mention anything about that yet. At least not to him. Perhaps they had confided in Pallavi. For all he knew, they might be doing other, even less wholesome things, too, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to know about that. He didn’t want to judge, and he didn’t want to pry.
Trying to sound lighthearted, but respectful, in a way that would invite confidences but not require them, he said, “I have never felt compelled to know everything that young hillichmagnars do with their time.”
“Oh, I see. Well, never mind, then.” The girl seemed to shrink away, and their conversation died. A few minutes later, Stasya caught a fish, and then Caedmon had a bite, and they were too busy catching their supper to worry about Stasya’s odd problems.
Caedmon kept a close watch on Stasya over the next few days, though, as they continued traveling west. She seemed tired and harried all the time, and a little short-tempered, too. Often Ellard would sit with her when they camped in the evening, or walk beside her on the road, but she rarely spoke to him anymore. In fact, sometimes she even seemed annoyed by his presence. But then a few hours later, they would be laughing and joking about something again.
Caedmon kept an eye on Ellard, too, of course, searching for any lingering signs of romantic interest in the girl. There did not seem to be any, but Caedmon wondered whether he was seeing what he wanted to see. What did they talk and laugh about when he was too far away to hear clearly? They seemed entirely too happy to be talking about digging into plague pits. He had a sneaking suspicion that they were laughing about him.
At last, a week after leaving Keelweard, they saw the high, delicate towers and wide formal gardens of the Summer Palace, perched on the northern bank of the river to the east of Formacaster. The high-arched windows glittered in the sunlight and pennants in dozens of colors flew from every tower. Over the central great hall, there was a massive flag of blue and silver, showing a bird on a shield, and over the shield, a silver crown. That was the king’s own banner, and it meant they had, indeed, come to the right place.
For centuries, the Summer Palace had been a refuge for the royal family. Sometimes they fled there to escape the pressures of court life. Other times they retreated there just ahead of an angry mob. Now the new King Edmund was taking refuge there from the plague.
They were only a few miles upriver from Formacaster. The long, white walls of the city were plainly visible, along with the hulking mass of Terrwyn Cathedral—larger even than the one in Leornian. Beyond the cathedral, a flat, dark rock rose from the middle of the city. That was the Hafocbeorg, and on top of it, the towers and halls of Wealdan Castle and the Abbey church were barely visible, nearly blended, as they were, into the gray, heavy sky. The castle was the traditional seat of government in Myrcia, and that was where the kings and queens of Myrcia usually lived. The last time Caedmon had been there, Osrick II had banished him from court forever and had broken all ties between the crown of Myrcia and Diernemynster. “Soon,” he thought, “if it is Earstien’s will, I will return there again.”
But first they had to woo the new king, warn him of his rebellious dukes, and slowly win him over to the idea of a new alliance with the hillichmagnars. And before they could do that, they needed to get across the river. Ellard offered to take everyone individually across the mile-wide expanse, but Caedmon vetoed this as impractical and likely to leave members of their band vulnerable to possibly unfriendly soldiers. So they spent the better part of the morning walking up and down the bank, trying to find any dock with a boat, and any boatman willing to take them across.
After yet another fisherman had slammed his door in their faces, Ellard said, “It seems we are not very welcome on this side of the river. It strikes me that when you and I came east, Caedmon, we were on the other side, and could easily have stopped to see the king.”
“Yes, but then we were on our way to Leornian,” grumbled Caedmon. He really was not in the mood for Ellard’s impertinence, so he gave the boy a look that he hoped would put a stop to any further attempts at humor.
At last, they found a man who was willing to at least consider taking them across. When Caedmon offered him gold, however, the man laughed, showing a toothless mouth. “I can’t eat gold,” he told them, “and neither can my family. I’ll take whatever food you’ve got.”
“Then what will we eat?” asked Ellard.
The man shrugged. “You’re going to see the king, aren’t you? They say he has tons of food over there in his cellars. Meanwhile, people are falling down dead of hunger in Formacaster.”
“Of hunger?” asked Pallavi. “Not of the plague?”
“Oh, of the plague too, of course. But mostly now from hunger. The bastards up at Keelweard won’t let any boats down the river. And the damn pirates and river smugglers are hoarding everything, just like the king over there in his palace. So honest people can’t buy food, even though the Lord Mayor declared that they have to sell at fair prices.”
Eventually, they settled on a price of two fish and Caedmon’s remaining store of dried beef, and the man rowed them across, while cheerfully enumerating all the many, many faults of the new king. He was lazy, he was said to be dishonest, he was a coward for shutting himself away from the people, and worst of all, he kept his money to himself, rather than spreading it around in extravagant purchases and charity, like everyone knew a king ought to do. At last, Stasya asked, “So is there anything about this king that you do like?”
The man frowned thoughtfully as he tied the boat up on the northern bank. “Well, since he’s such a bad king, I suppose we should all be grateful that he stays in his palace and doesn’t bother us.”
The boatman had landed them about a quarter mile upstream of the palace, so it took them a few minutes to walk up to the public road and find the gate. At first, no one answered their calls and knocks, but eventually two old knights came out. They both had cloves of garlic suspended from their helmets and sword belts. Caedmon assumed that this was some strange protective measure against the plague, but he did not ask. Instead, he took a deep breath and explained yet again who he was and why he and the other three hillichmagnars had come to see the king.
“Many years ago,” he said, “I lived at court and advised the kings and queens of Myrcia. If his majesty will have us, we would like to do so again.” The knights looked skeptical, but he carried on. “It is particularly vital that we work together at this time, when plague stalks our land, and the nobles of Myrcia, who should be his majesty’s greatest support, plot treason instead.” Briefly, he described their experiences at Leornian and Keelweard.
“That’s...rather surprising,” said one of the knights. “If you’ll wait here, sir, I’ll go speak with the king’s chamberlain.”
After nearly an hour, they were joined at the gate by a fat, silver-bearded gentleman with an enormous red velvet hat. He had a silk handkerchief pressed to his nose and mouth, and the scent of lilac and chives was almost overpowering. He introduced himself as Lord Gainford, chamberlain to the king. “And who might you be, my dear ladies and gentlemen?” he asked.
Caedmon repeated what he had told the knights, forcing himself to remain calm. Lord Gainford insisted on being introduced to each of the other three hillichmagnars, too. When Caedmon presented Pallavi, the Myrcian nobleman studied her with undisguised interest. “Sahasran, are you?” he asked. “Do you dance?”
