Voice for Princess (v1.1) Read online

  Through the flurry of airborne articles, Kedrigern saw her expression change to dismay at his entrance.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” he roared.

  His worktable crashed to the floor. Chair and joint-stool stopped in mid-caper. Books began to mount guiltily in unsteady heaps. Globes, jars, coffers and cabinets, phials and flaskets crawled into comers, where they huddled in untidy mounds.

  In a low, menacing voice, Kedrigern said, “Rupert…”

  “Just having a bit of a frolic, sir, me and Ellie. ‘When the work is done, it’s time for fun,’ as they say. No harm done, I’m sure. Look how nice she polished up. Does your heart good to see her shine, don’t it, sir?”

  “I’m looking at my study, Rupert.”

  “Ah, well. Couldn’t help myself, sir. I held myself back something painful when I was moving all those lovely things. Not a nick in the lot. It near destroyed me, sir. I’m a poltergeist, and that sort of thing goes against my nature. I need noise, and crashing about, and thumping, if you know what I mean, sir.”

  “You’ll get thumping, Rupert. I’ll see to it that you get such a thumping as never—”

  “Don’t threaten my Rupert!” Eleanor burst in. “I don’t care what you do to me—dent me, scratch me, hammer me into foil—I’ll never remember another thing for you if you mistreat my Rupert!”

  “Eleanor, get hold of yourself.”

  “Well said, old girl,” said Rupert in a stage whisper.

  Encouraged, Eleanor cried, “You’ll never part us! Never!”

  “If that’s what you want, Eleanor, then that’s what you’ll get,” said the wizard in a fury, raising his arms and flinging out his hands in a forceful gesture as he intoned, “Begone, spirit and brazen head, and never return to me!”

  As he stared in silent dejection, surveying the tumbled aftermath of their frolic, he heard a light footstep and turned to see Princess. She peered into the room and looked at him, wide-eyed.

  “Things are a little messy, I’m afraid. Rupert needed more firmness and less fairness.”

  “Brereep?”

  “Yes, both of them. Utterly banished from our ken. We’ll not be seeing them again,” he said. She laid a consolatory hand on his forearm, and he went on, “Just as well, I suppose. I’ll have Spot clean up in here, and when he’s done, I’ll get to work on the counterspell for you. I just have to find… Oh, dear,” he murmured. “Oh, dear me. I need… I have to locate…” He turned to Princess and placed his hands on her shoulders. “My dear, the spell upon you is a very complicated one. In order to undo it, I must first do considerable research. I’ll need all the resources of my library.” As one, they turned to gaze upon the higgledy-piggledy disorder of the study. “Eleanor was my filing system. She knew where every book is. Without her, it may take…”

  “Brereep?”

  “Longer, I’m afraid. Oh, my dear, can you ever forgive me?” he asked with a deep and desolate sigh.

  “Brereep,” she said.

  Five

  a hedge against alchemy

  Kedrigern took princess’s needs and his wizardly pursuits seriously, but he was a sensible man withal. On a beautiful morning in early summer, he saw greater wisdom in sitting comfortably in his dooryard, soaking up the sun and letting his mind wander idly, than in conning ancient lore in his study. The secret to successful wizardry, he reflected comfortably, was knowing when and how to relax. One must never strain at a spell; especially when one’s working area is an unholy mess and one’s library is all a jumble.

  He sprawled back in pillowed comfort, feet up on a cushion, and rang with languid gesture a little silver bell. From within came the sound of rapid motion, and soon the slapping of huge flat feet approached Kedrigern’s side, and there stopped. Spot stood trembling with eagerness to serve its master.

  “Ah, there you are,” said the wizard.

  Spot wagged its monstrous head, spraying saliva about in generous quantity, and said, “Yah, Yah!”

  “Good fellow. Spot. Listen carefully, now.”

  “Yah! Yah!” said Spot, bouncing up and down excitedly.

  “I will have a small mug of cold ale. Bring a pitcher, just to be sure. And bring with it a morsel of cheese just of a size to cover the mouth of the pitcher, and a loaf of bread. And ask Princess if she’d care to join me.”

  “Yah! Yah!” said Spot, and windmilled off about its duties.

  Kedrigern looked after it affectionately. Trolls were a troublesome lot, it was true, but if you got them young and trained them properly, they could be devoted servants. They never did acquire manners, but one could not have everything. One could not, he reflected, have much at all unless one was very lucky, and he considered himself lucky to have Spot.

  And so lucky to have Princess that it did not bear thinking about.

  He settled back into the cushions, closed his eyes, and sighed with quiet pleasure. This was the life for a sensible man, he thought smugly. Let the others fret and stew and struggle in the squalid world down there; he would stay on Silent Thunder Mountain with Princess, where life was good.

  He frowned, thinking how very much better life would be if only he had found the counterspell to bring back Princess’s voice before Rupert had made such a mess of things. A long, hard, frustrating search lay ahead of him, and a long wait for Princess, poor girl. The proper counterspell was there among his books, he was certain, but locating it was going to be like finding one particular leaf in a windswept forest.

  There was only one possible alternative, and that was so remote that it seemed a foolish waste of time even to mention it to Princess; so he did not. The great Cymric bards were famous throughout the civilized world for their spells bestowing eloquence and sweet speech. One of them could probably solve her problem in a matter of minutes.

  But their land was far away, and they were a temperamental lot, and the price of their services was high. To find one, and bring him here—for their spells and charms could be worked only by them, and by no others—would require more time and patience than the most painstaking search through his scattered library. It would also require a large amount of gold, to be paid on the spot. Still, it was something to keep in the back of the mind; a last resort.

  Now, if he were on speaking terms with the guild, he could ask his fellow wizards for advice and assistance; but that was out of the question. They had chosen to embrace Quintrindus, that fraud, that alchemist, and forced him to resign from the Wizards’ Guild for the sake of his honor and integrity. So much for his erstwhile colleagues.

  He simply could not understand their unhealthy fascination with alchemy. After two years, he still had not come to terms with it. Wizards, of all people, should know better than to involve themselves with a pseudo-profession that was nothing more than a lot of smoke and stink and horrible messiness and pompous jargon about things no one understood but everyone felt obliged to discuss. Yet it seemed to be catching on. Clever young people were not interested in becoming wizards anymore. It was alchemy or nothing for them.

  Young people, at least, had the excuse of their youth. His fellow wizards had no excuse at all, and ought to be ashamed of themselves. They would learn the error of their ways soon enough, he reflected, and he would cheerfully point out— when they came to him on their knees to apologize—that he had told them so.

  It was just one more sign of the times, he believed, and bad times they were. Barbarians sweeping in from the east and burning the churchmen; churchmen issuing anathemas and burning one another; alchemists burning everything they could get their hands on, wild to turn lead into gold. Smoke and shouting and destruction, that’s all anyone cared for these days.

  Except for Kedrigern, who had Princess, and his work, and was happy with both. He was learning more and more about temporal magic and becoming rather good at it. He had reached into the future several times, even managed to pluck curious artifacts from that unformed age and retain them for study. There was much yet to learn, of course… much
to learn…

  He fell into a light doze, awakening with a frown when a shadow fell upon him. He opened his eyes and saw a great hulk standing before him, blocking out the sun.

  It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the light, and his wits another moment to reconvene in the here-and-now, and then Kedrigern saw that the creature before him was a man of a kind he had hoped never again to encounter—certainly not in his own dooryard.

  He was half again the wizard’s height and twice his bulk. Bare arms like the trunks of aged hornbeams hung from his beetling shoulders. Torso and thick legs were encased in coarse furs. A tiny head was centered between the bulging shoulders with no sign of a connecting neck. About him hung an effluvium of rancid animal fat and human perspiration. He was a barbarian, no doubt, and barbarians were not the friends of wizards. Or of anyone else, for that matter; not even of other barbarians. A thoroughly bad lot.

  “This road to Silent Thunder Peak?” the barbarian asked. His voice was like a fall of stone deep in a cave.

  “Yes, it is,” Kedrigern replied, smiling brightly. He pointed to his left. “Just follow the uphil track. If you hurry, you can reach the peak by sunset. Marvelous view, on a day like this. I’d offer you a drop of some cool refreshment, but I’m—”

  “You wizard?” the barbarian asked.

  That was the sort of question one did not rush to answer. Far too many people were wandering about these days with the notion that slaying a wizard was somehow a deed of great benefit to the commonweal.

  “Wizard?” he repeated, squinting up. “Do I understand you properly? Are you inquiring about the whereabouts of a wizard?”

  “You wizard?” the barbarian asked, exactly as before.

  An uneasiness came over Kedrigern. It was not at the barbarian’s great size and ugliness, nor his noisomeness, nor even at his appearance here, in this isolated retreat, where one did not rum up by chance. It was intangible; a sense of presence. He had the eerie sensation that a member of his brotherhood was near, and that was manifestly absurd. This creature was no wizard.

  “Interesting that you should ask,” said Kedrigern thoughtfully. “It suggests an open-mindedness not immediately evident in your manner and your appearance.” As he spoke, he slipped his hand behind him to work the figures necessary to a spell for the deflection of edged weapons. “Most people expect a wizard to go about in a long robe covered with cabalistic symbols, and wear a conical cap, and have a long white beard flapping down around his knees. I, as you can see, am plainly dressed in good homespun tunic and trousers, wear no headgear of any sort, and am clean-shaven. Consequently, a casual passer-by seeking directions, or the whereabouts of a world-famous wizard, might easily assume that I am some honest tradesman or artisan who for personal reasons has chosen to live apart… when I am, in fact, an adept in the rare and gentle arts.”

  With the spell completed, he hoped earnestly that this great brute would not decide to smash him flat with a club before he could proceed to a further, more comprehensive, protective spell. Even with the aid of magic, it was difficult to be ready for all contingencies.

  The barbarian’s tiny black eyes, set closely on either side of a shapeless little smudge of nose, peered at Kedrigern from behind a fringe of lank greasy hair. In them shone no glimmer of reason.

  “You wizard?” he repeated.

  “Me wizard,” Kedrigern said resignedly. “Who you?”

  “Me, Buroc,” said the barbarian, thumping his chest loudly.

  “Oh, dear me,” Kedrigern whispered.

  Buroc was the consummate barbarian, the barbarian’s barbarian. Compared to Buroc, Krogg was a playful tyke. Buroc was known throughout the land as Buroc the Depraved, and had added to his name such epithets as Flayer of God’s Earth, Fist of Satan, and Torch of Judgment, as well as other terms emblematic of mayhem and savagery. It was said of Buroc that he divided the human race into two parts: enemies and victims. Enemies he slew at once. Victims he slew when he had no further use for them. He recognized no third category.

  Looking into that flat expressionless face, crisscrossed with pale scars, Kedrigern believed all he had ever heard of Buroc. The barbarian’s face reminded him of a cheap clay cup shattered to bits and hastily glued together.

  “You come with Buroc,” said the barbarian.

  “Well, now that’s an offer that raises some unusual possibilities, but I’m afraid murder, rape, and pillage aren’t my line of work, Buroc. I’m more the bookish sort. And I’m not as nimble as I used to be. Thoughtful of you to ask, though. Now, perhaps you’d best be running along,” Kedrigern said, hurrying to the end of a backup spell against indeterminate violence. With that done, he felt secure against Buroc’s displeasure.

  “Buroc find golden mountain. Need magic.”

  “Oh?” Kedrigern was puzzled. Seekers of golden mountains often required the assistance of magic. Finders of golden mountains, as a rule, did not.

  “Mountain all gold. Spell hide mountain. You break spell. Split forty-forty,” said Buroc in an outburst of eloquence.

  “Fifty-fifty,” Kedrigern quickly corrected him.

  Buroc’s eyes glazed, and for a moment he stood immobilized. Then he nodded his tiny head and repeated, “Fifty-fifty.”

  “Where is this golden mountain, Buroc?” Kedrigern asked, spacing his words and enunciating carefully.

  Again the barbarian’s eyes glazed over, and Kedrigern realized that this was the outward manifestation of a reasoning process going on in the recesses of that little head. “You come. Buroc show,” the barbarian replied.

  “I have to have some idea of how far it is, so I’ll know what to pack. Is it very far? Many days from here?”

  After a time, Buroc said, “Sun. Sun. Golden mountain.”

  “Three days from here, I take it. Not bad. Not bad at all,” said Kedrigern, his interest growing by the minute.

  This was an opportunity indeed. It would set the alchemists on their ears and put them in their proper place once and for all. Let them stink up the countryside with their furnaces and fill the silence with their babble of Philosopher’s Egg and Emerald Table and suchlike pseudo-magical rot in their feeble attempts to manufacture a pinch of third-rate gold dust. Using only his magic, Kedrigern would possess a golden mountain. Well, half a golden mountain. And with such resources, he could recruit his own choir of Cymric bards to come to Silent Thunder Mountain double quick and unspell Princess. Whatever the risks, magical or physical, Buroc’s offer was too good to pass up.

  “You’re not the ideal client, Buroc, nor are you my first choice as a business partner. And I’m sure that somewhere in that miniature head of yours lurks an inchoate notion of mincing me small once we’ve achieved our goal. But I can’t resist your offer,” said the wizard.

  “You come?”

  “I come. And Buroc, may I inquire whether you saw any ghosts on your way up the mountain?”

  “Ghosts?”

  “Ghosts. Spirits. Sheeted fiends, squeaking and gibbering. Pallid wraiths and ghastly apparitions. Any or all of the foregoing.”

  “No ghosts.”

  Kedrigern nodded ruefully. It was as he had feared. In banishing Rupert, he had not only lost the services of Eleanor, he had also inadvertently released all the horrifying spirits that guarded his solitude. One must always be very precise in casting spells, even when angry. Now anyone, even a barbarian, could grope his way through the twisting paths and burst in on Kedrigern and Princess practically at will. Something would have to be done about that.

  At this moment Princess made her appearance, entering on delicate and silent feet. She bore a silver tray on which stood a frosty pitcher, two gleaming silver goblets, a fist-sized chunk of golden cheese, and a loaf of pale brown bread.

  She halted abruptly at the sight of Buroc.

  Princess was somehow even more spectacularly beautiful than usual this day. A tumble of glistening raven hair cascaded to her hips; her eyes were the color of a midday August sky; her features wer
e sculpture perfect. A silken dress of emerald green clung to her slender form, and a circlet of gold ringed her brow. Buroc’s little eyes gleamed at the sight of her. She moved close to Kedrigern and glanced at him, wide-eyed, in frightened appeal.

  “No need to be nervous, my dear. This fellow and I are discussing business,” he said, rising and taking the tray from her, setting it on the little table.

  “Brereep,” she replied softly.

  “Lady talk funny,” Buroc observed.

  “That’s my Buroc, always the gentleman. A connoisseur of linguistic elegance. Depend upon Buroc for the mot juste,” said Kedrigern amiably, taking Princess’s hand in his and raising it to his lips. His irony was lost on the barbarian.

  “Lady talk like frog,” Buroc said.

  Princess glared at the hulking malodorous figure. Kedrigern squeezed her hand and said, “This lovely lady is my wife, Buroc, and we manage to communicate quite effectively. Don’t we, my dear?”

  She touched his cheek gently and murmured, “Brereep.”

  “Sweet of you to say so,” he responded. Turning to the barbarian, he said, “Now, do you have horses for us?”

  “Lady come?”

  Kedrigern weighed that for a moment. He could leave Princess here, protected by a spell. But if anything befell him, she would be alone, and long unaware of her plight. And with the terrifying spirits banished from the mountainside, even a powerful spell could not provide the protection he wished for her. Much as he disliked subjecting her to Buroc’s hungry eyes, he felt that the best course was to bring her along.

  “The lady comes,” he said.

  Buroc’s eyes again glazed over in deep thought, then he lifted one columnar arm and pointed down the road.

  “Horses there.”

  “We’ll pack some food and be with you shortly,” Kedrigern said. His glance lighted on the tray Princess had brought. “Meanwhile, be my guest. Eat. Drink,” he said, presenting the tray.