Part 19 (1/2)

'Efiza&etfi Sorcerer and a (jent&man 177.

and he felt the rippling approach of Prospero's whirlwind. He was nearly to the first break; he would be vulnerable as he carried the plough over it, not digging, and so he tried to hurry the horse, so as to be past when the wind struck. The whirlwind st.i.tched and kinked, delaying; was Prospero controlling it from wherever he was? Dewar came to the pole; the whirlwind's roar was behind him, approaching swiftly, and the sorcerer jerked the ploughshare out of the ground and walked slowly forward.

The storm hit with a pummelling wind. Dewar screwed his eyes shut. The horse stumbled and caught his footing. The plough was pushed toward the ground; Dewar held it higher and pressed on, feeling the line of the Well's Fire burning from the center of his Bounds outward (the spell now suspended between his plough and the point where it had left the ground), drawing more power from the Well than before, and chanting still as the power built up and then shot into the whirlwind.

A rus.h.i.+ng implosion shook the plough in Dewar's hands. The whirlwind was gone; moreover, the rain had stopped. Panting, feeling hollow and light-headed, he arrived on the other side of the gap and dropped the plough to the ground again.

There came no further overt opposition. He had been tested and had pa.s.sed. Prospero had learned that he was facing a sorcerer, not a fool trying to plough a Bound without knowing what he did. They would meet again, later. Dewar wrestled the plough through the half-frozen earth, feeling the ground part before the bite of the blade, and pressed on, his mouth automatically continuing the Summoning chant, his hands beginning to bleed from the chafing.

He had never forged such a large Boundary before. Protecting the city Lys from Sa.r.s.emar had been far less difficult, because of Lunete; of Lys blood, a virgin, and the mistress of the city, she had gone around the ancient, weakened Bounds with him, dragging a half-peeled green staff on the gra.s.s, and that had been all: a festive occasion, a procession with flowers and drums and afterward a picnic and dancing.

Dewar had had to do nothing strenuous, and neither had blus.h.i.+ng Lunete, for the fortuitous combination of innocence and power in her person had made for a textbook-perfect Bounding. In this weather-blasted waste, fighting Prospero's wind, battered by bushes and stones, he seemed to be taking forever to reach the third gap, and then he must go even further to reach the end, the last pole.

The sorcerer was stumbling and the horse was barely lifting his hooves by the time he lifted the plough and set it back in the center of the first gap he had made, which now let on a causeway through the ditch-and-dike thrown up by the plough.

Dewar leaned on the plough's handles with his forearms, his knees locked, his back aching wretchedly, and hoped that someone would have the decency to bring him wine. The temperature was falling. He could feel the air drying, a different kind of weather blowing in.

”I am knackered,” he told Herne's horse. The horse had halted when Dewar did, his head hanging wearily downward, his back probably aching as much as the sorcerer's. Dewar began picking splinters out of his hands.

”Dewar!” someone yelled, and he nodded, not wanting to turn and look. Ottaviano shouted again; hoofbeats pounded nearer.

”Lord Dewar,” said the Prince Marshal, dismounting.

”How do you like it?” Dewar asked, pus.h.i.+ng himself up, his spine creaking.

”Well done,” Gaston said. ”It is nightfall, nearly.”

”Of course,” Dewar said. ”You must bury the plough here. Here. Tonight. Midnight. Don't forget.”

He and Gaston stood eye-to-eye for a minute. ”The rope?” Gaston asked.

Dewar half-laughed, a sharp sound, and jerked the rope sharply. Ashes blew away on the breeze.

Ottaviano galloped up now, and Herne on Dewar's horse, and Golias. Dewar gazed at Gaston, noticing with his Well-sharpened vision that Gaston was illuminated from within, that flame streamed in his every gesture. ”Forgive my lack of conversation,” Dewar said. ”I am imminently 178.

'ECizaftetfi asleep. Good sorcery is pleasantly tiring.”

”Like s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g, eh?” Herne said. Otto guffawed, throwing Dewar's cloak around his shoulders as Dewar's eyes closed.

”Sorcery's better,” Dewar mumbled, and sighed, and slept, still standing balanced.

”Well,” said Gaston. He had not expected such exhaustion; Panurgus had never seemed wearied by sorcery- rather, invigorated, rejuvenated-on the few occasions when Gaston had seen his father ply the Art.

”Leave him there,” muttered Golias. Herne was grumbling about his heaving horse.

”Baron, do thou bide here with him,” Gaston said, ”and I'll send a litter. Let us move him aside until there is a tent for him. Hath done as honest a day's work as any man in the Empire today.” And he took off his cloak, and they tipped Dewar into it gently to carry him slung in it, and he stirred as much as a log might.

All night, unearthly lights played up and down, earth to stars and higher, at the edge of the Bounds Dewar had made. Gaston stood and watched a long time, and he saw that the lights were made by shapeless dark things from Prospero's direction striking the Bounds and immolating themselves on Dewar's defenses.

”For the nonce are we more evenly matched,” the Fire-duke whispered to the faraway sparks of Prospero's camp-fires. ”Let us see what cometh now.”

16.PRINCE PROSPERO STOOD TO RECEIVE HIS gUCSt.

Ariel's arrival made the flames in all the candles flatten and gutter; the door swung open and the cloak-tangled man stumbled in.

”Here he is, Master,” said Ariel triumphantly.

”Well done, Ariel. Tis all for now.”

”Shall I go and-”

Sorcerer and a gentleman 179.

”Aye, do that. I'll Summon thee later.”

Ariel left with a gust and a bang of the door.

”A Sylph,” said the windblown man, shaking himself out of the blue-green wool, turning to watch Ariel go.

”Aye,” Prospero said.

”And powerful.”

”Aye.”

He ran his hands through his hair, and looked at Prospero. ”I find myself fairly ba . . .” His voice trailed away, and he stared at Prospero.

Prospero regarded him steadily. Now that he saw this fellow face-to-face, in the same room by the still-trembling light of the candles, now that he traced the line of brow and nose and jaw with his own eye directly, there was something to him Prospero knew he knew.

The young man closed his eyes and shook his head as if dizzy.

He looked at Prospero again with a new expression of wonderment.

”It was you,” he said. The dream-memory, brief and intense, ringing with the clarity of a true experience, flickered through his mind.

”Was't?” Prospero blinked, feeling the Well purl and catch at him.

”You. Your tomb. Strange custom they have here.”

”Barbaric. I'd Hever be composted in a mushroom farm than trapped in one of yon ego-fattening marble mausolea. What of my tomb?”

The other was surprised. ”Do you not remember the geas?”

Prospero caught at the Well, which, he recognized, knit the two of them together in an ancient pattern. ”A geas.” He moved closer to the man, studying his face in the calmed candlelight for a clue, and found it in his remarkable eyes. But once before he'd seen such eyes, their intense color matched by their intense intelligence; he had seen them in a dream, a portentous dream on an important day, the memory now dredged from its bed beneath the sediment of intervening years. Yes, they had met after a fas.h.i.+on. ”Aye. The ISO.

Itfttey geas,” he repeated. ”Other things too,” he muttered, stilt studying the younger man's face. ”I do remember. Indeed. Come sit down.'1 ”Why did you lay that geas on me?”

”I desired to know why 'twas I should have seen thee in my dreaming, and I guessed that we were bound one day to meet: thus I wished to know thee. For such visions are never insignificant. Now. I trust Ariel did not drag thee through ditches nor drown thee in streams?”

”Not at all. Not at all.” Slowly, Dewar sat down. The geas was strong. It rose in his throat and seized him, and before he could halt himself he stood, bowing, and said, ”Dewar.” He sat again, fighting down the compulsion to say more. Some of the geas-pressure was gone; the rest could be put off.