Part 20 (1/2)

They sat. Prince Prospero poured the wine. Dewar, the Prince noted, was indeed hungry; he, the host, urged him to eat well and did not demand conversation.

His guest seemed completely at ease. ”This is very pleasant,” said he, smiling suddenly at Prospero, pus.h.i.+ng his pudding-plate away from him at last. ”I have not had a meal like this in long and long.”

184.

tlizabetk ”I'm grieved to hear rations are so short,” Prospero twitted him.

”I mean-oh, I don't know what I mean. Never mind. I don't mean the food, the wine-not just those anyway. I should not have spoken.”

Prospero smiled and topped their gla.s.ses off with the last of the third bottle of heavy red wine that had accompanied their supper of onion-tart, venison, baked mushrooms, small game-birds in a sauce of currants and cherries, ham pie, and other rustically wintry fare. The cheeses lay before them still: a thick golden hemisphere with a criss-crossed rind and a richly turquoise-veined beauty, gently reeking.

The geas whirled around Dewar as the wine ran into his gla.s.s, surprising him in mid-sigh before he could resist. ”Odile the Black Countess of Aie,” said Dewar suddenly, almost explosively.

Prospero's goblet was b.u.mped from the table by his elbow as he jerked away, straightening.

The wine spread over the carpet unregarded. The crystal goblet did not break.

”What of her?”

Numb with shock at what he had said, Dewar replied, ”My mother.” d.a.m.n the geas, and d.a.m.n Prospero for laying it! What had Dewar's ancestry to do with anything? Odile was all the ancestry he had, and he had renounced her.

How strangely her name lay upon his tongue. He had not said it in years, not since he had fled her house, not in the years with his master, nor after, not even on this side of the Limen between the Stone and the Well. People in Phesaotois knew better than to speak such a curse-freighted name lest they draw the attention of its owner to themselves. Dewar's skin p.r.i.c.kled into cold b.u.mps, all in the instant as he realized what he had done.

”Thy-” Prospero's throat tightened suddenly, and he had to set the bottle down very carefully to be sure it stayed upright. A cold inevitability gripped him: here was his fate, here his nemesis, here his end. ”Thy mother.”

”Yes.” The geas lightened. Dewar could feel its ebb, as he had felt its presence for so many years. It left a curiously Sorcerer and a Qentkman 185.

irksome vacancy in the underpinnings of his thought, and he wondered, afraid and then detached, how much it had influenced him.

Prospero leaned on the table, over it, supporting himself on both his hands. ”Thy father?”

Dewar blinked, coming out of contemplation.

”Who was thy father, then?” demanded Prospero more sharply.

Dewar shrugged, puzzled. ”I don't know. She receives few callers. Some poor fool she ensorcelled, I suppose.”

”Suppose.”

”I don't know which particular pig he might have been,” Dewar snapped. ”How is it you know her? There seems to be little commerce between Pheyarcet and Phesaotois.”

”Once I knew her full well,” Prospero said softly.

Dewar looked at him more warily now. ”She has no love for me,” he said. ”Nor I for her.”

Prospero stared at him still, quivering. ”When wert thou born?” he asked.

”It doesn't matter.”

”It does!” The Prince's blood pounded in his ears.

Dewar stared at him. The geas pulsed; his tongue held the answer; he temporized. ”I suppose you're right,” he said, ”it's part of the geas-”

”Dost know when?”

Dewar withdrew from his intensity. ”I might be able to figure it out,” he said. ”A moment.” He closed his eyes, clearly calculating. ”In the fifteen hundred and twenty-third Great Circuit, fourth dodecade, twelfth year,” he decided. ”Give or take one or one and a half or so.”

Prospero lowered his head, displeased, and growled, ” Tis hardly nice.”

”Nothing in Aie is-almost nothing.” Dewar glanced at the door involuntarily, the door through which the hooded servant had departed. The niceties of Aie were unpleasant in their elegant rigor.

Prospero resumed his seat. His foot struck the goblet, which rang faintly; he bent down and picked it up, frowning at the winestain, deeper red on crimson.

186.

*Elizabeth 'Wiliey Sorcerer and a (jentteman 187.

Fifteen hundred and twenty-third, twelfth of the fourth. Or thereabouts. No end, but a beginning.

He bore something of her face in his. Hard to tell with that beard, though. Her straight nose. Her brows were smoothly-curved neat lines, and his were nothing like that, angled and arched. Eyes . . . How could Odile's son have missed inheriting Odile's beautiful eyes, the dark windows on Otherness? Because he was a man, and there was no Otherness to him?

”Prince Prospero, you are far from here.”

”Aye,” Prospero replied curtly, and leaned back in his chair to study the man further. ”I've seen thee in the battle, too,” he remarked after a moment. He had held his sorcery back one day to see what Dewar would do. Dewar had spurned the opportunity; he had not attacked. Instead he had held his defenses and had ridden down to fight in a melee beside a fellow in the old Ascolet colors, using earthly weapons as effectively as his sorcery.

Dewar pushed his chair back slightly, slouched a little, put his right ankle on his left knee and steepled his fingers.

”Who taught thee swordsmans.h.i.+p?”

Dewar let his head tip a little to one side. ”Sir, I think that is a piece of my history that does not concern you.”

”It concerns me nearly, boy. Was it Gaston?”

”No.”

”No. Canst handle the blade like a gentleman born to it, yet ... thou'rt a sorcerer.”

”I am a sorcerer.”

”d.a.m.n it, I'm not challenging thee. I brought thee here with the intent of arranging such a match, but I think now 'twere unwise.”

”You flatter me.”

”Hardly. I dislike killing people; 'tis difficult to undo.

Wasteful.”

”How odd that both you and Prince Gaston have expressed similar sentiments about killing, yet both of you-”

”Don't be fatuous,” Prospero snapped.