Voice for Princess (v1.1) Read online

  “Brereep?”

  “Oh, dozens of times. And they all got their memories back. No need to worry.”

  Princess seemed to take comfort from his words. With a squeeze of her hand, Kedrigern led her to a comfortable chair. He took the writing implements indoors and emerged with a small tankard.

  “Drink this, my dear. It will cheer you up,” he said. “I’m going to my workroom and start making a list of spells.”

  At dinner that evening, Kedrigern was silent, as if too preoccupied to speak. Later, strolling in the arbor, he broached a new idea to Princess.

  “It occurred to me while I was working. I recalled the first time I helped Vosconu,” he explained. “The poor man was certain he was being haunted, and he wanted me to drive the tormenting spirit off. I settled the whole thing to everyone’s satisfaction, and now Amos owes me a favor, and I thought—”

  “Brereep?” Princess interjected.

  “Oh, Amos is the ghost. He didn’t really intend to haunt Vosconu’s palace, he was just looking for a place to stay, and he rather overdid his ghostly presence and upset everyone. If it hadn’t been for me, Vosconu would have had him exorcised, and that’s a very unpleasant experience for a ghost. Amos promised that if he could ever do me a favor, he’d drop…”

  Princess looked at him in puzzlement. He smiled, rubbed his hands together briskly, and explained, “If Amos can contact someone who was present when Bertha placed the spell on you, then we may be able to learn the exact phrasing and the subspells attached to the basic spell. Once I know all that, I’ll have you speaking within the hour.”

  “Brereep?”

  “Absolutely. I think it’s our best chance. Mind you, I generally avoid summoning up departed spirits. If they’ve gone to a better life they resent being disturbed, and can’t wait to get back. They give you curt answers, and get all fretful and impatient when you press them. And if they’ve gone anywhere else, they keep pleading to stay here, or they threaten, or try to bribe you. They’re a difficult lot to work with, either way. But Amos shouldn’t be a problem. Someone Out There lost his records, and so he has to wander about, homeless, not quite here and not quite there, until The Proper Authorities can get to his case. It’s a lonely afterlife, and Amos appreciates any human contact that’s offered.”

  “Brereep,” said Princess, softly and sympathetically.

  “Not all that sad, actually. In fact, I think Amos rather enjoys it. There’s one drawback, my dear. Amos can only contact a fellow ghost. Since you’ve been out of touch with the family for a while, you might be in for a nasty shock… I mean, if he should mention someone, you’ll know that… well, that they’ve gone Out There since your eighteenth birthday.”

  Her eyes widened in sudden alarm, and she raised a hand to her lips. Taking her other hand, Kedrigern said, “What I can do—if you’d rather not know—is ask Amos not to contact anyone in the immediate family. I can tell him to stick to courtiers and officials.”

  Princess nodded, and said “brereep” with obvious relief.

  “All right, then, I’ll get in touch with Amos. I’ll go inside and start setting up the spell. Come to my workroom as soon as it’s dark, and we’ll do it,” said Kedrigern.

  Princess entered the wizard’s workroom at the appointed time to find the table pushed back against one wall and a figure marked in colored chalk on the floor. Two fat blood-red candles stood on either side of the figure, and two slender tapers waited, unlit, in candlesticks on the table. Kedrigern closed the door behind her and led her to a chair, one of a pair facing the figure. Lighting both tapers, he gave one to her and seated himself in the other chair.

  “One more thing, my dear. At the first sign of Amos’s approach, I’d like you to act terrified,” he said softly.

  “Brereep?”

  “No, he’s as harmless as a kitten. It’s just a thing with Amos. It makes him happy.”

  In the candlelight, a look of growing impatience spread over Princess’s features. Hitching his chair closer to hers, Kedrigern said, “Amos used to be as nice and quiet a ghost as you’d care to meet. He skulked about in the shadows, not making a sound, scarcely ever showing himself. Whenever he did appear, he tried to smile and look friendly, so no one would be frightened. Then he picked up a book of ghost stories somewhere. Amos was always an impressionable sort, even when he was alive. In no time at all, he was rattling chains, and leaving ineradicable bloodstains, and carrying his head under his arm, and leaping out at—”

  A low, hollow laugh reverberated through the chamber. The candles fluttered and began to burn with a blue flame.

  “That’ll be Amos,” said Kedrigern. “Would you please act frightened?”

  “Brereep!” Princess whispered angrily.

  “Please, my dear. It means a lot to Amos. We can’t offer him anything to eat or drink. We might as well make him feel good.”

  Frowning, Princess sighed, put her hands over her eyes, and shrank back into the chair, all the while making little terrified noises. She peeked out from between her fingers.

  “Perfect, my dear,” Kedrigern whispered. Then he gave a melodramatic start, looked about wildly, and cried, “What fearsome denizen of the worlds beyond comes to fil us with fear and trembling? Speak, dread ghost, and harrow our poor frail hearts no longer!”

  Another peal of deep hollow laughter filled the chamber, echoing eerily and rattling all the loose objects on tables and shelves.

  “Are you frightened?” a ghostly voice demanded.

  “We are limp with horror,” Kedrigern replied.

  “Oh, that’s very nice. Really very nice,” said the ghostly voice, softening. “It’s all right, you know. You’re perfectly safe. This is Amos.”

  “Amos? Really?”

  “None other. You did summon me, didn’t you?”

  “I did, Amos. But for a moment there, I thought I had somehow come in contact with a spirit of cataclysmic malevolence. Such a paroxysm of sheer cosmic terror came over me, I couldn’t believe it was anyone I knew.”

  “Sorry if I gave you a start, old chap. I didn’t realize there was a lady present, or I’d have gone easy. Has she fainted in horror?”

  “Quite possibly,” Kedrigern said.

  “I do apologize. If I had known…”

  “Not your fault, Amos. As a matter of fact, it’s for my wife’s sake that I’ve asked you here.”

  “Your wife? Congratulations, old man!” said the ghost heartily. “What’s the lady’s name?”

  “Princess. She’s a princess. We’re having a bit of a problem with an enchantment that was placed on her, Amos, and I was hoping you could help us out.” Kedrigern described the situation briefly, to the accompaniment of little grunts of amazement and sympathy from Amos.

  “A terrible thing, dear lady,” Amos said. “Tell me the names of your parents, and their kingdom, and I’ll get right to it.”

  “Brereep,” Princess said, extending her hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  Kedrigern interpreted. “She can’t remember. She doesn’t remember anything, Amos.”

  “That may complicate matters.”

  “Couldn’t you just ask around? If anyone knows anything at all about a beautiful princess turned into a toad on her eighteenth birthday, it could be a great help.”

  Amos sighed. “All right, Kedrigern,” he said.

  “You’ll do it, then?”

  After a brief silence, Amos said, “I’ve done it.”

  “So quickly?”

  “You forget, time moves differently Out Here. I’ve found a chap who claims to be a court philosopher. His name’s Sam. He’s right here, if you wish to conjure him to speak.”

  Kedrigern looked to Princess. She shrugged, and gave no sign of recognition. “Maybe you’ll remember the voice,” he said, patting her shoulder for reassurance. Raising his hands, he said in a clear, ringing voice, “Speak to me, Sam! Spirit, I conjure thee, speak!”

  Out of the profound silence that followed the wiza
rd’s words came a soft voice. In calm and reasonable tones it said, “This point is then agreed between us: I am to speak, viva voce et omnes impositura, and you are to listen, cymbae citharaeque in horas peste futura, and thus to perceive, immediately through the senses, the insensible sense of my signification, ut trepidas in rebus. Is that not so?”

  Kedrigern hesitated, frowned, looked at Princess, shook his head in confusion, and asked, “What?”

  “Though my words, once spoken, exist tergo diluxisse quae non manet,” the voice went smoothly on, “Yet you do not perceive their meaning, for to exist and to be perceived are different states. Thus the perceived and the unperceived, praetulerim delirius paplitibus, like the negative and the affirmative sides of a question, contain between them all possibility, non alium videre patres, and by containing all, contain nothing. And thus we see that though I speak, I cannot answer, for while speech may exist without perception, it cannot be perceived without existence, quid quisquae vitet. Is this not likewise true?”

  “Wait a minute, now…” said the wizard uneasily.

  “For it is impossible to deny real existence to a primary quality when one affirms the existence of the secondary qualities, ille tamen inclusium, without which the primary quality cannot be perceived, minaequae murorum ingentes, by the senses.”

  “I think—” Kedrigern attempted to interject, to no avail.

  “Therefore, since to be perceived it is necessary first, non elaborabunt in aeternam, to exist, and to exist is, mos olim, to perceive, then it follows that that that… that which which that… which thus, iam desiderium insomnia… quicquid delirium… that that which perceives must be perceived first, to exist, and secondly, to be perceived to exist before, thirdly, being perceived to perceive that which exists, odium melodiumquae sperabitur, and that that which is, is, per se and ad hoc… that which… is perceived as… et cetera inter alii that which exists,” the ghost of Sam concluded uneasily.

  “Brereep?” murmured Princess, utterly befuddled.

  “Balderdash!” cried Kedrigern. “Gibberish! Absolute drivel from beginning to end! What kind of philosopher have you got there, Amos? He sounds like someone who’s read every other page of an epistemology text written by an alchemist!”

  “He said he was a philosopher. He seemed all right to me,” Amos said, sounding miffed. “You didn’t give me much to go on, Kedrigern.”

  “I’m not blaming you, Amos. Sam! Don’t try to slip away,” the wizard snapped. “I want a simple straightforward answer from you. No more Latin. What do you know about Princess?”

  After a pause, Sam said, “To know, what is it but to perceive? And as I have proven, to perceive—”

  “You don’t know a thing about Princess, do you? You’ve never heard of her before, have you?”

  “To a philosopher, all knowledge is one; ergo, to know of a princess is to know the essence of princessness, and to one who grasps the essential—”

  “Where do you get off calling yourself a philosopher?” Kedrigern demanded angrily.

  “All men are philosophers. I am a man. Ergo, I am a philosopher. Is that not so?” Sam inquired, composed once more.

  “It is not so. It is nonsense, like everything else you’ve been yammering. Your major premise is one of the silliest things I’ve ever heard. All men are not philosophers, and you know it. And even if it were true, it’s irrelevant—you’re not a man anymore, you’re a ghost.”

  Sam was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “All right, then. Some ghosts are philosophers. I am a philosopher. Therefore… therefore, I must have been a man.”

  “That syllogism is the ultimate proof that you are no more a philosopher than my house-troll,” said the wizard coldly.

  “What are you trying to pull, anyway?” Amos demanded, his voice menacing. “Are you trying to make me look silly in front of a wizard and an enchanted lady? An enchanted princess! You said you knew something about the curse on her.”

  “What you perceived me to say is not necessarily what was said, nor was I necessarily the speaker nor you the auditor, per ipse nullius dubitantur; for that which is, and that which is perceived, and that which the perceiver perceives to be that which is and is, quomodo, perceived, is neither substantially nor accidentally—”

  “Oh, be quiet!” Kedrigern said angrily. “Just tell me this, Sam: are you connected in any way at all with the court of Princess’s parents?”

  “Are not all things connected? In this anjverse of infinite gradations, all that exists exists in harmony with all, and that which—”

  “I take it you’re not connected with the court or with her parents any more closely than you’re connected with my right foot,” Kedrigern broke in.

  “In the cosmic sense, all things are joined in an indissoluble bond. In the narrow sense in which I perceive you to speak… no,” Sam confessed. “I am not.”

  “Then why did you volunteer? Why did you take up Amos’s time, and Princess’s, and mine, with all that jabber?” the wizard demanded.

  Sam remained silent for a moment, then he howled in a bitter voice, “What do you know? What does anyone? No one knows, no one cares! Do you know what it’s like to be a jester?”

  “No,” Kedrigern said. “Do you?”

  “I was a jester all my life. Can you imagine what it’s like to be a jester? He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding or, a smile and a coxcomb. He’s always on, always expected to be funny—a riddle, a jape, a pun, a pratfall, a silly face, a bawdy song… and when they start not smiling back… Have you any idea what it’s like to have to be funny on demand?”

  “Difficult, I imagine,” Kedrigern said.

  “Difficult, he says!” Sam wailed, setting every small object in the room to shaking. “Difficult! What does a wizard know about difficult? Does a wizard get roused out of bed when he’s half-crippled with rheumatism and have to cut capers for a bunch of drunken knights? Does a wizard have to hop around strumming a lute and singing ‘tirra lirra lirra and a hey nonny no’ when he has a headache that makes his skull feel like a cracked eggshell full of hot pebbles?”

  “What are you whining about?” Kedrigern demanded indignantly. “Does a jester have to undo enchantments of fiendish intricacy that could turn him into a bedbug if he mispronounces a single syllable? Do jesters confront giants and demons and barbarian swordsmen? Are jesters always being accused of being in league with the devil?”

  “All right, so wizards have it tough. So do jesters,” Sam retorted. “And nobody gives them sympathy. Nobody understands. Nobody cares.”

  “Do you think people care about wizards?” Kedrigern shot back.

  “I guess I was lucky. I was a shoemaker,” Amos said.

  Ignoring that, Kedrigern asked, “But why did you pretend to know about Princess, Sam? Why did you try to pass yourself off as a philosopher?”

  “I wanted respect. Nobody respects a jester, or pays any attention to what he says. But when a philosopher opens his mouth, people listen. They don’t understand a word he says, but they listen. They make me feel like somebody.”

  “Well, yes, they listen, but after they’ve listened to a sentence or two they realize that it’s all gibberish,” Kedrigern pointed out.

  “You did, but you’re a wizard. I can handle ordinary people. I just give them the stuff I remember hearing around the court, and they eat it up. Amos was impressed. Weren’t you, Amos?”

  “Yes… but what does a shoemaker know about philosophers?” Amos said grudgingly. “All I remember is that they were hard on shoes.”

  “All right, Sam. You had your moment. Attention was paid. Now go away and let Amos find us someone who can help Princess,” Kedrigern said.

  “Look, is there anything I can do?”

  “No, Sam.”

  “Would you like to hear a funny song? A joke? How about a joke to cheer everyone up?”

  “No need for that, Sam.’ Just let us get on with what we’re doing.”

  “I could have made it if
I hadn’t run into a wizard. I could have been an authority. It was the Latin that gave me away, wasn’t it? If I hadn’t tried the Latin, I would have passed for a philosopher, wouldn’t I?”

  “You were a little shaky with the syllogisms, Sam.”

  Suddenly an unfamiliar and rather nasal voice called out sharply, “Amos! Amos, are you here?”

  “Right here, Your Honor!” Amos cried.

  “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Your papers have turned up, and we’d like to attend to your case right away, but if you’re going to go wandering off… what are you doing, anyway?”

  “Nothing, Your Honor, nothing at all. Just a chat with a few friends.”

  “Well, say good-bye and hurry over to the Routing desk. Who are you?” the nasal voice demanded.

  “Who, indeed?” Sam answered. “Let us consider the question under its constituent headings: first, the existence of I-ness; secondly the existence of not-I-ness, or otherness; thirdly, the perception of I-ness by other, and otherness by the I. And let us, furthermore, consider each of these considerations in the light of both the interconnectedness and the distinctness of I and other,” he went on, his voice slowly fading.

  “You must be a philosopher,” the other voice observed, faint with growing distance. Sam’s response was lost, drowned out by Amos’s close whisper.

  “I have to go now, Kedrigern. You heard the Chief Clerk —they’ve found my papers!”

  “But Amos…”

  “Sorry, old chap. Must rush. Did my best. Good luck with your search, my lady,” Amos said as his voice, too, faded into silence.

  Kedrigern stood for a time, listening. The stillness in his workroom was profound. At last he called upon Amos, and receiving no reply, on Sam. No answer came. He stalked to the table, blew out his taper, and said, “Ghosts!” in a tone of deep loathing. “Can’t depend on a single one of them. Can’t believe a word they say.” Turning to Princess, he said, “Well, you saw them. You heard the whole thing. They’re utterly irresponsible. I was foolish to think I could trust Amos. I was silly to waste my time on Sam. I must have been an idiot to think I could accomplish anything with the likes of them!”