Part 23 (1/2)

”Sounds good to me,” Oliver said. ”What I'd really like to know, though, you don't happen to be holding a magic horse for me, do you?”

”A magic horse? What color magic horse?”

”Well, that's it, you see, I don't really know. I was told there was a magic horse just ahead for me, and it would lead me to a golden candlestick. After that... Actually, I'm a little unclear as to just exactly what is to happen after that. I believe I am to be lord of a large body of armed men. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?”

”No,” Alwyn said. ”I really have a very small part in this thing.”

She smiled. Her dark hair was lovely and tousled, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s high and well rounded. Oliver followed her inside.

They pa.s.sed through several rooms, all decorated in scarlet and black and silver and containing armorial bearings, arms, and dark portraits of stern-looking elders. In each fireplace a fire sparked and glowed gaily. They walked through six rooms altogether. In the seventh a table was set with a gleaming white cloth and silver service.

”Oh, I say, this is rather decent!” Sir Oliver said, rubbing his hands together. There were wonderful-looking foods before him, goose pate and gooseberry jam, eggs and seed bread, and a great variety of drinks. The table was set for two, and Oliver began to wonder if the table were not the only thing that had been set up for him.

”Do take a seat,” Alwyn said. ”Make yourself comfortable.”

A white kitten came under the archway and pranced and danced its way into the room. Alwyn gave a merry little laugh and bent to play with it. As she did so, Oliver seized the opportunity and exchanged plates with her. The two plates were almost identical, the only difference being that his had two radishes on the side and hers but one. He quickly placed one of his radishes on her plate to disguise his subst.i.tution. When she straightened up, Alwyn appeared to have noticed nothing.

They ate, and Alwyn poured two gla.s.ses of Burgundy from a great bottle on the damask-covered table.

Oliver found a moment when Alwyn's attention was taken up by a small foxhound that came into the room with a definite gamboling motion. Seizing the moment, he switched gla.s.ses. She didn't notice a thing.

Congratulating himself, he now turned to his a.s.sault on the provender, his favorite sort of a battle by far. He ate greedily and drank deeply, for the food was of a luscious perfection. This was fantasy food, magic food, just nothing in the world like it. Soon he felt the unmistakable sensation of some opiatelike drug attacking his sensorium and making him dizzy and faint.

”Is anything wrong, sir knight?” Alwyn asked as he slumped low in his seat.

”Merely a moment of fatigue,” Oliver said.

”You've switched plates!” Alwyn said, staring at the knight's grimy thumbprint on her plate-proof enough of what he'd wished concealed.

”No offense intended,” Oliver said sleepily. ”Old custom of my people. You take this stuff on purpose?”

”Of course. Without my sleeping potion, I have a devil of a time dropping off at night,” Alwyn said.

”d.a.m.ned sorry I took it,” Sir Oliver said through rubbery lips and eyes that seemed already to be rolling back into his head to reveal that pa.s.sage into dreams that he would rather not take. ”How long before it wears off?”

Her reply was lost in a cras.h.i.+ng wave of sleep that broke over Oliver's head. He struggled in it like a man caught in raging surf; then he was out of the surf and falling deep into the black pool that lapped around him like a warm bath. He struggled to keep his head above the soapy marble waves sent by Morpheus. He wrestled with strange thoughts, unaccountable insights. And then, before he even knew it, he was gone.

When he came to again, the woman was gone. The castle was gone. He was in a different place entirely.

Chapter 7.

When Ylith returned to the pilgrimage, she found all in a state of confusion. Sir Oliver had vanished suddenly during the night, leaving no trail. His valet, Morton Kornglow, was at a loss to explain his disappearance except through magic.

Ylith looked around the area and finally went to the room Sir Oliver had occupied. The faint smell of prussic acid could be taken almost as proof positive that a Moronia spell had been used here within the last twenty-four hours.

That was all Ylith needed. She waited until she was alone in Oliver's room, then quickly performed her own enchantment. She used ingredients she always carried in her witches' kit-a thing she had never abandoned, despite her conversion-and soon, taking on a vaporous form, she was off and away, pa.s.sing through the great forest into which Oliver had disappeared.

Presently she came across the knight's trail and followed it to Alwyn's castle. Ylith knew Alwyn slightly from the old days. Alwyn was another witch, of the old, un- reformed kind, and Ylith knew she was probably doing a job for Azzie.