Voice for Princess (v1.1) Read online

  One

  a matter of principle

  The meeting went on and on and on. And on. Everyone, it seemed, had a report to deliver, and was determined to deliver it in the lengthiest and most tedious manner possible.

  Kedrigern heaved a desolate sigh, unfolded his arms, folded them again, shifted his weary bottom, and gazed forlornly out the small window at the glorious midsummer scene. Out there was where a man belonged on a morning like this. He should be smelling the flowers, counting the clouds, working small, helpful spells for jolly peasants—not sitting through a dismal business meeting. But here he sat, feeling as if he had been imprisoned in this room since the dawn of time, like a bubble in a stone.

  Hithernils, treasurer of the guild, paused and put down the ledger from which he had been reciting dreary strings of figures. Kedrigern leaned forward. Deliverance at last, he thought. But his hopes were dashed when Hithernils took up another ledger, cleared his throat, and began a new litany of expenditures, or collections, or projections, or some such foolery.

  Kedrigern made a soft throaty noise somewhere between a groan and a growl and abandoned his efforts at attention. This was all nonsense, he told himself, and he was foolish to go along with it.

  The very idea of a wizard’s guild was preposterous. Wizards were solitary workers, like spiders. An occasional get-together for purely social purposes was very nice, but formal organization, and such things as officers, and meetings, and by-laws, and dues, and passwords, and secret hand-shakes, and lofty titles, were simply ridiculous.

  One would think that the disastrous example of the Brotherhood of Hermits would have taught people a lesson.

  He blamed the alchemists for this notion of organizing. It was automatic with Kedrigern to blame the alchemists for anything that went wrong, even the weather, but in this case he had good cause.

  Alchemy was fairly new to Kedrigern’s part of the world, and it had caught on quickly. It was especially popular with the young, for reasons Kedrigern could only brood about with increasing disgust. Perhaps the attraction lay in the pompous titles, and the jargon, and the gaudy regalia, and the endless round of windy self-celebrating meetings, conferences, and workshops that filled the alchemical calendar; they were the sort of thing to appeal to infantile minds of all ages. And, too, alchemists were quick to speak of the immediate and lucrative employment opportunities in their field. No long, slow, rewarding struggle for them; they promised an immediate payoff, something attractive to far too many people. It took time, a lot of hard work, and a considerable risk to become a really first-class wizard. One could pick up a degree in alchemy in a few years, with no great effort, and at once haul in whopping great fees for the most egregious flimflammery.

  No wonder the field attracted the worst and the dimmest, Kedrigern thought sourly. And they’re welcome to them, to all the castoffs, washouts, and wimps who lack the stuff of a real wizard. He recalled Jaderal, a onetime apprentice of his, a weasely little scut who had spent his unobserved moments rooting about Kedrigern’s workshop for professional secrets and whom Kedrigern had at last ejected bodily, with great pleasure, from his service. Now, there was a man born to alchemy: he was rotten to the core.

  And yet the wretches were successful. Alchemists had quickly become serious competition for established practitioners of the subtle arts. Witches and wizards, warlocks and sorcerers, found old clients deserting them, fleeing to the faddish new alchemists, with their spacious laboratories and shiny equipment. It was all flash and glitter, of course. The alchemists never accomplished anything beyond a quick profit, and yet they somehow got away with it. And instead of taking direct and forceful action against the upstarts, his fellow wizards had reacted by forming a professional organization scarcely distinguishable from a typical alchemists’ chapter. A craven and ultimately self-destructive reaction, he thought. Things were falling apart. It was all downhill from here.

  While Kedrigern pondered the follies of his colleagues, Hithernils brought his report to an end. Amid restrained applause, Tristaver rose, smiling his bland habitual smile at everyone. Tristaver fancied himself a diplomat, an oiler of troubled waters. Kedrigern thought him too clever by half; a fair hand at shape-changing and simple straightforward love spells, but basically a shifty man. But if he was about to announce a recess, thought Kedrigern, Tristaver would be redeemed forever.

  Tristaver beamed his smile at those assembled around the table and said, “My brothers and sisters, I have an announcement that I’m sure will gladden the heart of every wizard in this room…”

  Kedrigern smiled and hitched forward on the hard seat in anticipation of the blessed word adjournment.

  “… And all our absent friends, as well,” Tristaver went on. Kedrigern’s heart sank. No release after all. More gab.

  “We have a surprise guest this morning, a professional gentleman of the highest standing in his field. While his chosen field is not our field—indeed, there has been regrettable ill feeling between our callings in recent times—we feel that the recognition of true accomplishment must take precedence over such petty rivalries…,” Tristaver continued.

  There was a good deal more of this sort of talk, to which Kedrigern paid only marginal attention. His mind was on the import of Tristaver’s babbling, not the babble itself. Surprise guest? Ill feeling between our callings? What on earth was Tris up to? And who was up to it with him? He glanced around the table; Hithernils looked smug and Tristaver looked unctuous, but there was nothing unusual in that. The others appeared to know no more than Kedrigern himself did. Conhoon scowled, Belsheer nodded sleepily, Axpad and his neighbors gazed dreamily into space, but no one looked like the bearer of a secret. It was puzzling.

  The words “honorary membership” seized Kedrigern’s attention, and he listened more carefully as Tristaver concluded.

  “… By the unanimous vote of the executive committee. And so, without further delay, I would like to present our special surprise guest, Professor-Doctor-Master Quintrindus, formerly of the University of Rottingen, presently Visiting Alchemist at—”

  “Tris, are you crazy?” Kedrigern shouted.

  “What? What?” Tristaver said, looking about in alarm. “Who said that? Who spoke?”

  “I did,” Kedrigern said, rising. With arms akimbo and jaw thrust forward, he looked coldly across the table at Tristaver and said, “If this is a joke, it’s not funny. And if it’s not a joke, then you’re crazy. The whole executive committee is crazy.”

  “Brother Kedrigern, you’re out of order,” said the President.

  “Me? Out of order? I’m not the one who invited an alchemist to become a member of the Wizards’ Guild.”

  “It’s entirely within our prerogative,” said Tristaver primly.

  “Prerogative, my foot! The man’s an alchemist—a notorious alchemist! He’s the enemy!” Kedrigern cried.

  Tristaver had regained his poise. Smiling graciously on Kedrigern, he said, “But Brother Kedrigern, there’s no need for Professor-Doctor-Master Quintrindus to remain our enemy. We’ve been having private meetings for quite some time—”

  “Skulking around in back alleys,” Kedrigern muttered.

  “Really, Brother Kedrigern,” said the President.

  Tristaver ignored the interruption. “And we have discovered a very real community of interest between our disciplines. It occurred to us that if we were to cease belaboring each other and join forces, the mutual benefits would be considerable.”

  “Oh, I see,” Kedrigern said scornfully. “We’ll make them respectable, and maybe they’ll send back a few of the clients they’ve stolen from us.”

  An angry murmur arose on all sides, and Kedrigern took heart. It was clear that his colleagues
were as outraged by all this as he was. He turned to his fellow wizards and said, “Are we going to let—”

  “Sit down, Keddie!” someone shouted.

  “Yes, sit down and let’s get on with the meeting,” another voice said peevishly.

  “Don’t you realize what’s going on? They want to make an alchemist a member of our guild. An alchemist!” cried Kedrigern, investing the term with all the loathing and revulsion he could muster.

  “Quintrindus is a very influential man,” said Hithernils, wagging a finger at him.

  “He’s a big name, Keddie,” said old Belsheer gently. “Everyone knows Quintrindus.”

  “Everyone knows he’s a fraud. They’re all frauds. Alchemists don’t do anything, they just natter on about turning lead into gold,” Kedrigern said, looking from face to face. “Have you ever seen one of them do it?”

  “No… but if they ever do, it would be good to have them on our side,” Axpad pointed out.

  Tristaver pounced on the remark. “Our thinking exactly, Brother Axpad! It will do us no harm to permit Quintrindus, and perhaps a few other carefully selected alchemists, to join our guild, and the benefits could be enormous. Now, if there’s no further discussion…”

  “I want a show of hands,” said Kedrigern.

  “Oh, really now,” Hithernils sniffed, but Tristaver, smiling benignly, said, “I think we can accommodate Brother Kedrigern. Perhaps when he sees the will of the meeting, he’ll decide to be more reasonable.”

  Kedrigern snorted.

  “Will all those who support the committee’s decision to admit Professor-Doctor-Master Quintrindus as an honorary member of the Wizards’ Guild please raise their right hands?” Tristaver said. Hands went up all around. “Thank you, brothers and sisters. And those opposed…?”

  Kedrigern’s hand rose in splendid solitude. Tristaver glanced around the room, chuckled, then said, “Now, perhaps Brother Kedrigern would like to withdraw his vote so we can go on record as unanimously approving of Professor-Doctor-Master Quintrindus’s membership.”

  “I do not approve of that fraud or of any alchemist who ever lived, and I will not change my vote.”

  A groan arose from the assembled wizards, and Kedrigern heard several unflattering remarks. He held his tongue for a time, but then he could take no more. He glared from face to face around the table.

  “Brothers and sisters, you’ve made your choice. You got Quintrindus, but you lost Kedrigern,” he said. Turning and swirling his cloak about him with a dramatic sweep of his arm, he stalked from the room.

  That evening, camped in a flowery meadow by a swift-running brook, he thought things over. He had no regrets about his resignation, and wished that he had never gotten involved with the guild in the first place. The invitation to become a charter member had appealed to his vanity and overridden his good sense.

  One thing was certain: there would be no more organizations in his life. And there would be no more wandering, either. The time had come to settle down.

  He had long possessed property on Silent Thunder Mountain. It was a very picturesque spot, abandoned and long unfrequented.

  Barbarians avoided the place because there was no one left there to kill, and nothing to steal. Alchemists, with their cravings for public attention and their greed for profit, tended to flock to the cities; and the nearest wizard was many days distant. All other people feared the ghosts known to haunt the approaches to the mountain.

  Here Kedrigern would enjoy peace and solitude befitting a wizard. He would have no neighbors, no random visitors, no passers-by. He could pursue without interruption his study of counterspells and his experiments in temporal magic.

  There was no question of running short of funds. He was already the best counterspell man for hundreds of leagues around, and everyone knew it. He would be semiretired, but still available for consultations—at a stiff fee.

  And not to alchemists, or their friends. Especially their friends in the Wizards’ Guild.

  Best of all, he would squander no more of his life on windy meetings, where the only thing anyone ever decided was that it was not time to make a decision unless it was a bad and stupid one. However things worked out, the only voice he would have to listen to in future was his own.

  Kedrigern had never been a gregarious man, and the prospect of solitude appealed to him. If, in time, he grew lonely, there was always the possibility of seeking a wife; but he did not want to rush into marriage. The life of a wizard’s wife was not for every woman. It was, in fact, for very few women. A wizard had to marry with great caution, not impetuosity. He was still young, for a wizard—little more than halfway through his second century—and still engaged in study. There would be plenty of time to think of marrying in another century or so.

  He yawned and looked up from his litle fire. The sky was dark now, and the night comfortably cool. He laid a simple warning spell around the perimeter of his campsite and settled down snugly under the stars. He went to sleep directly, and slept soundly until after midnight, when a low, reverberating rumble brought him awake.

  There was no danger near, for the spell had not responded. What woke him was noise: a sound like a large wooden box, half-filled with stones, being tumbled end over end. It filled the air and made sleep impossible.

  Kedrigern sat up, nibbing his eyes, muttering angrily, and looked about. He could see nothing. The noise seemed to come from the direction of the brook, and as he listened, Kedrigern perceived an undertone of sadness in it—as if a mountain were bemoaning some mishap. He groped inside his shirt and drew out the medallion that hung around his neck, the only useful thing he had gotten from the guild. Raising it to his eye, he peered through the tiny hole at its center, the Aperture of True Vision, and saw what was causing the commotion.

  A lumpish figure stood at the edge of the stream, hunched over in a posture of desolation. It looked like an effigy made of wood and stone and dirt by inept, hasty hands which then concealed their handiwork by winding it in coarse rags. Its head was a hemisphere covered with warts and patchy hair, with a nose like a flabby conch shell protruding a good distance before it. It had no discernible chin. Under its thick arm was a bundle of rags. From its appearance Kedrigern knew that the thing was a troll; and from the pink ribbons binding up its tufted hair, he gathered that it was female.

  The creature was wholy absorbed in her sorrowing. Kedrigern, with cautious step, approached to a few paces’ distance and cleared his throat. When the troll did not respond, he cleared his throat again, louder, but was drowned out by a fresh lament. This time he could distinguish the words.

  “Ah, woe and alas, what’s to become of my darling, my dear, my beautiful one!” rolled around the meadow like the breaking of storm-driven surf against rocks.

  “I beg your pardon, ma’am,” Kedrigern shouted in as polite a tone as one can manage while shouting.

  The troll-woman turned, slowly and ponderously, and fixed her tiny black eyes on the wizard. She stared at him for a moment, then rumbled, “And who do you be?”

  “My name is Kedrigern,” he replied, with a deep bow.

  “Do you be Master Kedrigern, the great wizard?” she asked.

  “I do. I am. Yes.”

  “Do you be truly able for making spells, and unmaking them if they go bad, and all?”

  “Yes, I do. I can.”

  “Then that is good fortune to me, for I think that only a wizard can do help to me now.”

  A female in distress—even a female who resembled an overgrown midden—stirred Kedrigern’s noblest instincts. If this poor creature needed his help she would have it.

  “I am at your service, ma’am,” he said, bowing once again, and adding a bit of a flourish of the hand.

  “Oh, now, that do be nice,” she said. “Always such a pleasure to meet a real gentleman.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. Now, if you’ll just tell me your problem, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Well, it do be with my husband to start. Fin
e big troll he do be, name of Gnurtt. He be usually found under the Red Prince’s Bridge, or thereabouts. Do you know my Gnurtt?”

  “I don’t believe I’ve ever…”

  “Well, no matter. Gnurtt do be nothing but a big stone now, and no good to anyone.” She paused and sniffled, and then broke out into a wail. “Oh, my darling, my pet, my beauty, what’s to become of you now? Oh, cruel, cruel!”

  “I beg your pardon,” Kedrigern said gently. “Did you say that Gnurtt is now a stone?”

  “He be that. A lovely big menhir, standing proud and alone in the middle of a field of daisies. He stayed out too late on Midsummer Night, and the sunrise caught him in the middle of his capering.”

  “And you’d like me to change him back?”

  “Oh, no, Master Kedrigern, never that. I would not ask you to tamper with nature. That’s the way Gnurtt always hoped to go, and he do make a lovely stone. A beautiful shade of gray he do be now, with a nice rugged surface. Suits him perfectly, it do. Gnurtt never looked better.”

  “I see. Then do you want me to turn you into a matching menhir?”

  “No need for that, though it do be kind of you to offer. Before dawn I will go up to the field where Gnurtt do stand, and wait there beside him for the sun to fall on me. And then there will be two fine big menhirs in the field, and lots of daisies around, and butterflies, and all. Lovely it will be, I’m sure.”

  Kedrigern nodded at the idyllic image. He waited a moment, scratched his chin, and said, “You seem to have it all worked out. I don’t understand what you’d like me to do.”

  “Oh, it’s the little fellow I do be worried for, Master Kedrigern. If you could give it a decent home…”

  Kedrigern looked around. “What little fellow?”

  She drew the bundle from under her arm and held it out for his inspection. It appeared to contain a miniature version of herself, sleeping peacefully. The troll-woman’s huge lumpy face creased in a smile, and her tiny black eyes lit up with maternal pride. “Look at that, Master Kedrigern. Isn’t it the dearest little thing you ever saw? Takes after my side of the family, it do,” she said warmly.