244

A WIZARD IN ABSENTIA

“Ignore them? Can you ignore a live hand grenade under your dinner table? They can’t allow it! We can’t allow it!” Then Allouene caught her breath, realizing what she had said.

So did Magnus. “Try to stop me,” he said.

Allouene’s eyes narrowed. “We will.”

245

They tried. Oh, nothing overt—they couldn’t let their intervention be obvious, after all—but Oswald had recruited dozens of locals as his agents before Allouene and her team ever arrived, and had several in the lords’ camp; he saw to it that word of the fugitives’ whereabouts leaked to the noblemen.

Magnus, however, made sure he and Lord Aran weren’t there.

Oh, there were times when he couldn’t evade their hunters completely, times when Oswald out-guessed him and he found a squadron of soldiers in his path, or was ambushed, or betrayed by an inn-keeper or a ferryman; but a society with plenty of hounds and some modern technology was pitted against a psionic master with a medieval heart and a modern education. The lords didn’t really understand how their gadgets worked, but Magnus did. He saw to it that they stopped working; he saw to it that/p>

the soldiers were looking the other way as he and Lord Aran crept by; he countered the ambushes with telekinesis reinforcing karate.

Siflot, meanwhile, found the children and brought them to Magnus and Lord Aran, and together they fought their way through seventy miles of patrols and sentries, of checkpoints and cordons, until finally the day came when they found the escaped serfs, or the serfs found them.

And so they came to Castlerock, and stood atop its highest pinnacle to look back over the way they had come, the freelance and his apprentice, the lord and his little granddaughter, and the jester. How they got there is another tale, to be told in another time and another place; for now, all that matters is that they did come there, despite all the efforts of the lords and of Master Oswald and his team; and Lord Aran said to Magnus, “What comes now?”

Magnus shrugged. “You are the lord here, not I.”

“I am the lord,” Lord Aran rejoined, “but there is more to you than there seems.” He peered keenly at his bodyguard. “You are not of this world, are you?”

Magnus stood very still for a moment, gazing out at the countryside.

Siflot looked up, more alert than alarmed.

Slowly, Magnus turned to the lord. “You have guessed it,” he said, “and I should not be surprised. I knew you were acute, my lord.”

“Thank you for the compliment,” Lord Aran said, with only a trace of sarcasm. “May I know your true name, and station?”

“I am a knight,” Magnus said slowly, “and heir to a lord.”

Siflot stared, wide-eyed.

Lord Aran nodded, triumph in his gaze. “I knew it!

Breeding cannot be hidden long, especially in such crises as we have weathered together, young man.

What is your house and nation?”

“I am a d’Armand, of Maxima,” Magnus said slowly, “though I grew up far from there.”

Lord Aran nodded. “And how have you come to be here?”

“That, I am not at liberty to say,” Magnus answered, “though I will tell Your Lordship that my spaceship awaits in orbit.”

“And will you leave us, then?”

lan looked up, alarmed.

“I fear I must,” Magnus said, “for to aid you further would be to betray my comrades.”

“Have you not betrayed them already, in aiding me?”

“They believe so,” Magnus said, “but I know otherwise. They will find that their plans to help the people of this planet are advanced more than they could have hoped for in a single year, and will find that they merely need shift their strategy to incorpo-rate the fact of your survival, and coming to Castlerock.”

“Indeed!” the old lord said, with some asperity.

“Then it was not loyalty alone, or friendship, that bade you save myself and my granddaughter.”

“It was,” Magnus contradicted, “but I had need/p>

also to find a way to salvage the plans of my …

friends, by saving you.”

“Resolving a conflict of loyalties? Magnificent, if you achieved it! But how?”

“Yes, this is really quite interesting,” Siflot said, composing himself to listen. “How shall Lord Aran survive, and Castlerock with him, without disrupting the plans of… our friends?”

“Why, by his own action,” Magnus said. “I shall leave you a transceiver, with which His Lordship can access a transponder that will beam his voice to Terra. By that, he can declare Castlerock to be a sovereign nation, desiring associate membership in the Decentralized Democratic Tribunal, and asking its aid.”

“But the D.D.T. will never interfere in the internal affairs of a planet!” Siflot protested.

Lord Aran glanced at him keenly, and Magnus, with a sense of satisfaction, knew that the old lord would not lack good advice. “It may, when that planet is not a member of the Tribunal, but is one the D.D.T. wishes to count among its members.”

“But SCE—” Siflot coughed, then said, “Our friends would never allow it!”

“No, it would take the situation out of their control, wouldn’t it?” Magnus smiled. “So they will, of course, intercept the message, and offer to give Castlerock support in their own right.” He turned back to Lord Aran. “They will give you weapons, my lord, and instruction in their use, enough for you to be able to withstand the siege of the other lords.”