Part 50 (2/2)

It rolled on and on, never stopping. She floated into an uneasy dream of storms, of Prospero raging at her for a misbegotten creature of coa.r.s.e and amoral appet.i.te, and then Prospero's wrath invoked monsters from the heaving earth at her feet and when she fell, they leapt upon her, bouncing on her face and head, thick scaled limbs choking her, mouths gaping foul-breathed in her face, and a tearing of claws in her belly- ”Freia?” woke her.

The pillow was lifted tentatively from her face. The thunder rolled up and down. Strangely, the room was brilliant with light, dazzling her. She was panting, damp with sweat.

”Good morning,” Dewar said.

The dream of storm and terror clung to her senses. ”Isn't it raining?”

”No, that was in Landuc,” he said, amused.

”What's that noise?”

”What noise?” He listened, then laughed. ”The sea, Freia. The sea. Come see,” he said, and he went to the window and opened the outer cas.e.m.e.nt. The white curtains filled with wind and swelled into the room, bellying around him. The room was white: white walls, white furniture, white bedding. Even the long loose nights.h.i.+rt she wore was white. ”See?” he said, though she didn't get up.

Now the crash of the waves was audible, the hiss of sand, the roll of stone. Salt and moisture seasoned the air. ”Oh.” The sweat chilled her as it dried in the breeze.

He closed the window, smiling still, and returned to the bed.

Sorcerer and a gentleman 417.

”Where's this?” she asked, pulling the coverlet to her chin.

”A place I have for stopping,” Dewar said. ”Nowhere very travelled. I like the sea.”

”I don't,” Freia said.

”Why not?”

”It's too big.”

Dewar shrugged mis...o...b..fully. ”How are you?”

How was she? Sick-she was sick. Her body was churned and disoriented, unwillingly changing around her. She was afraid. She was alone. The only cure for all must be found in Prospero. ”I need to get home,” she said.

”I can help you with that. Gladly.” Dewar sat on the very edge of the bed, looking intently at her. He wore snug bottle-green trousers and a voluminous blue-green s.h.i.+rt that flowed and fell from his arms and shoulders in liquid ripples. In the white room, he glowed with vitality.

Uneasy, Freia edged away. The claws of her dream became sickness curdling in her stomach.

”Where's your home?”

”Why do you want to help me now?” Freia asked him.

He shrugged.

”You just left me there,” she said in a low, haunted voice.

Her eyes held no mirth, no trust, no opening for him to build a conversation, and her words were blunt, forestalling badinage. ”I didn't know you were in trouble,” he said honestly.

Freia swallowed hard.

”I'm sorry,” Dewar said. He looked at the cold white floor. ”I'm sorry you-you got hurt. I didn't know you were in trouble. The gryphon was there.” He wasn't to blame for her injuries, he told himself; yet he knew they two had gone into that fight companions, and he had saved himself and left her behind. A sorcerer should feel no qualms, but the sorcerer was losing the argument-had lost it when Ot-taviano had told Dewar of Prospero's daughter.

”How can I-” Freia began, and stopped. How could she trust him? What reason was there? He did nothing without self-interest. He wanted something now. s.e.x? Her body hurt 418.

all over and she felt as if she might vomit at any moment. Freia shuddered. No. ”What do you want?1' she asked. ”Why do you want to help me?”

”I want to take you home,” he said. ”That's all I want.”

”But why?”

Dewar met her eyes again. Fear, distrust, pain: written in lines and taut shadows on her face. ”I'd like to tell you that when we get there,” he said, ”because it's an odd and personal thing. I don't want to tell you now because-well, honestly, I don't think you'd believe me. But you will when I tell you there.”

”1 don't have anything,” she said. ”I can't give you anything.”

”I don't want anything from you but for you to let me escort you home.”

The sea boomed and crashed. It sounded as though it were battering down wails. Freia's head ached. Her stomach was knotted, nauseated. Her body burned around her.

”You wanted me to take you to Prospero,'1 she said.

”Yes-”

”You left me there,” Freia said. ”You went away in the fire and left me.”

Dewar couldn't look at the deep, dark smudges of her eyes, the chalky pallor of her face. Something unpleasant quivered in the air around her.

”You won't help me,” Freia whispered, drawing her knees up and hugging them, watching him, on her guard. ”You'll leave me somewhere again.”

The burn of her gaze on him was too much, the emotion under her hoa.r.s.e voice too naked. Dewar stood. ”I'll get you something to eat,” he said, and he fled out of the room.

There were two people whose intelligence and discretion Prospero trusted so highly as to take counsel with them. He considered it particularly necessary now, given the terms which had been presented to him by Avril. The net was that for his daughter's liberty he would pay with his own.

He was aware that his thinking on this could not be unbiased, and he was also aware that the agreement be- Sorcerer and a gentleman 419.

tween himself and Landuc must affect his fledgling world forever, coercing its tender new growth into some forced and artificial old form. The Emperor had acted greatly amazed when Prospero said he must take counsel on the proposal. Prospero had insisted, though, and had left the Palace and Landuc without seeing Freia again-sparing them both, he thought.

On tireless Hurricane, untiring himself for most of the journey, he made his way through the Gates and Road of Pheyarcet, leaving the settled, fertile areas for the barren zones. Panurgus had controlled and directed his fiery Well; the center flourished at the expense of these, devouring them in a sense. The barriers the King had set up, the Gates and others, kept most of the flow of life-feeding energy from the Well from the outer worlds, and thus the inner regions burgeoned with the vitality of an area four times their size. Life of a sort persisted outside the favored area, but the places it had to dwell in were harsh and hostile.

Prospero, since becoming aware of this, had ever been of two minds as to its wisdom. Certainly there were areas naturally spa.r.s.e in life. To create such intentionally, though, required a ruthlessness Prospero knew he could muster yet misliked to exercise. Such a decision, in a way, faced him now.

As Hurricane cantered fluidly into a grey desert unbroken by movement other than his own, Prospero on his back sounded his future. He must preserve what he had found; it must be his, must remain his. Freia had been a folly of weakness. He regretted her now. She endangered something unique and irreplaceable. Of course she was unique herself; but he had a son, he could sire more children, and where there had been one there might be another. The great good fortune of finding and claiming, without compet.i.tion or objection, the Spring, a Source different in nature from either other power in the world, would never come again. In Pheyarcet, the fiery Well was in the control of the ruler of Landuc-presently the Emperor was not competent to do much with it, yet even without consciously exercising himself he manipulated it. In Phesaotois, the power of the Stone 420.

'Elizabeth Sorcerer and a Qentteman 421.

was divided by sorcerous adepts among themselves into territories and domains, and woe be to he who trespa.s.sed.

The Spring was Prospero's, only Prospero's.

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