Chapter 6

Matt didn’t know which had shaken him more, the close shave or the manticore itself. Either way, it took until nightfall for him to work up the courage to try again-especially since the logical question was, why bother? After all, it wasn’t as if Latruria was about to attack Merovence! Or was it? What was going on in Latruria that King Boncorro didn’t want one of Alisande’s wizards to see? So the manticore itself was answer enough. If the king or one of his officials-say, his Lord Chancellor-had sicced the monster on Matt to keep him out, there must be a really good reason why he should go in! So he pumped up his courage, hunted around in the moonlight, and finally found a fold in the earth that he might have overlooked even in daylight. You couldn’t really call it a gully-it was only seven feet or so deep, and scarcely wide enough for Matt to walk through without turning sideways. It looked like the kind of thing a glacier might have gouged as an afterthought on its way back up the peak for the long summer. And if he might have overlooked it, maybe the manticore had, too-assuming that whatever sort of magical homing sense it had couldn’t pinpoint him too exactly. Which was quite a big assumption. Too big. Matt came tiptoeing up out of the cleft on its far end muttering a verse that ought to stop any attackers, just in case-and a yowl of triumph filled the air as an extra couple of crescents flashed in the sky. “Creep in a petty pace from now till day!” Matt shouted as he leaped back into the gully. “In halting syllables of unrecorded time!” He sprinted back toward the Merovencian border, not daring to look back until he shot out the other end of the drawlet. Then he whirled to look back, just as the yowl ended in a curse as the monster hit the ground. It bounded up again instantly, heading straight for him-but it moved so slowly that before its hind legs had fully cleared the earth, it had time to shout, “I shall be revenged! My master shall banish this spell in an instant!”

“Just glad I had it ready to shout,” Matt said with a shudder. He turned his back and walked away, leaving the manticore suspended in midair. Twenty feet more and he heard a sudden thud and a yowl of victory, followed by a SPLAT! and a howl of rage. Matt could almost see the manticore suddenly speeding up to normal, landing, and charging straight at him, but slamming into the Wall of Octroi again. He kept going. If King Boncorro was so determined not to have fellow magicians come visiting, maybe Matt ought to let him have his own way and be lonely-at least, intellectually. But he didn’t quite have it in him to quit. It was that same dogged persistence that had brought him to Merovence in the first place-he wouldn’t stop trying to translate an untranslatable fragment of manuscript, had just kept repeating its syllables over and over again until they had made sense-and had found himself in an alien city, understanding a language that had never been spoken in his own universe of universities and political offices for out-of-work actors. Now, for the same reason, he kept prowling about the border, feeling weariness drag at him more and more heavily-but every time he looked south around another rock, there stood the manticore, glaring balefully at him with glowing eyes and glinting teeth. The sky lightened with false dawn as Matt’s eyelids weighted with fatigue-so he wasn’t looking where he was going, or stepping as lightly as he might have, which was no doubt why he tripped over something that jerked bolt upright with a shout of fear and alarm. “Sorry, sorry!” Matt backed away, holding up both palms in a placating gesture. “I didn’t mean to wake you, didn’t mean to trip over… Pascal!”

“Why, it is the Knight of Bath!” Pascal threw his blanket back, rubbing his eyes. “How came you here?”

“Trying to cross into Latruria for a, uhm, visit, but I’ve got a stumbling block…”

“Aye-my leg!”

“I said I was sorry. Now it’s your turn.”

“What-to say I am sorry?” Pascal stared, trying to decide whether or not to be offended.

“No-to tell me what you’re doing here!”

“Ah!”Pascal nodded. “I,too, am seeking to cross into Latruria-for a visit.”

Matt smiled, amused. “Well, we seem to be going in the same direction. But why did you camp out on this side of the border?” He wondered if the young man had met the manticore, too. “There was no reason to hurry ahead, and there was a stream nearby,” Pascal explained. “But why have you not yet crossed? You set out a day ahead of me!”

“I’ve encountered a problem. What made you start right from the count’s castle, instead of going home first?”

“Ah.” Pascal’s face clouded. “As to that, there was some disagreement with my father.”

“Oh.” Matt instantly pictured a howling fight, ending with a box on the ear followed by a slamming exit. “About… Charlotte?”

“Aye. He was not happy to learn that I had told her I did not wish to marry. Her father, too, was angry, and had spoken ill of me to my own father.”

“He couldn’t understand that not being in love is a reason for not marrying?”

“Not when it was not he who would be doing the marrying,” Pascal said bitterly. “He told me that folk do not fall in love, they grow to love one another, as he and Mother had. I asked him if that was why there had been so little joy in their marriage. ‘Twas then that he struck me and I stalked out.”

“Afraid you might hit him, huh?‘

“Even so.” Pascal looked up, surprised. “You have had an argument much like that?”

“Several. My father didn’t see any sense in studying literature. Your father did have one point, though-Charlotte’s a pretty girl, and she certainly seems sweet.”

“Yes, she is!” Pascal said quickly. “A surer friend I could never hope for-but she is not the one I love.”

“Oh.” Matt lifted his head slowly, pursing his lips. “Yes, that would make Charlotte less fascinating, wouldn’t it? So your lady love lives in Latruria, and you’re traveling south to see her. What did you say her name was?”

“She is a lady of rarest beauty and grace.” Pascal gazed off into the distance with a fatuous smile. “Her hair is golden, her eyes the blue of the sea, her face a marvel of daintiness and sweetness.”

“Sounds like love, all right.” Personally, Matt thought Pascal was doomed to disappointment, if the girl really was that beautiful. The squire’s son was downright homely, with a long face, thin lips, and gaunt cheeks. His only claim to attractiveness was his eyes, which were large, dark, and expressive. Frankly, Matt thought he’d been fantastically lucky to attract Charlotte as much as he had. Of course, her father’s orders had helped… “How did you say you met this gem?”

“At a gathering last summer. Our Latrurian cousins guested us-and I met Panegyra! One look, and I was transported!”

Not far enough, Matt guessed. “Love at first sight, eh?”

“Aye, and ‘twas hard to find a moment to speak to her alone, so hemmed in was she with duennas and sisters and aunts! But I contrived-I bided my time and caught her in a quiet moment, with others far enough distant for me to tell her my name and praise her beauty. She laughed, calling it flattery-but I saw an answering spark in her eyes! She feels as strongly toward me as I toward her! I know it!”

“Lovers know many things that are not true,” Matt said slowly. “I seem to remember something about being cousins…”

“Aye, somewhere low on our family trees-third cousins at least, more probably fifth or sixth. Surely it could not matter!”

“Nothing does, to a lover-at least, not until after the wedding. So she hasn’t told you she loves you, and you haven’t proposed?”

“Nay, but I am sure she does, and I shall!”

“Seems pretty thin grounds for walking out on your family and heading south to see her.”

“But I must!” Pascal raised feverish eyes. “For yesterday, one of my southern cousins told me that sweet Panegyra has been betrothed! Nay, worse-she is to be wed within the month! I must stop her! I must tell her of my burning love, that she may turn away from this gouty old vulture her father would force upon her! I must save her from such a fate!”

“Oh. He’s older than she is, then?”

“Aye-twenty years at least! A dotard with rotting teeth, a swag belly, and a breath like a charnel house, I doubt not! How could they entomb so sweet a breath of spring as Panegyra in so foul a marriage, and she but eighteen?”

“Do you really think she’ll just cut all her family ties and elope with you?” Matt asked gently. Pascal’s shoulders sagged. “Nay, I fear not. What have I to offer, after all, save a gift for crafting verse, and a heart that would ever be true to her?”

“And love,” Matt said softly. “Love that should set the world afire! Love that should bind her to me forever! Love that should bear her aloft in bliss for all her life!”

Matt felt the vein of poetry in the words, and that was no metaphor-he could feel magical forces around him twitch in response to even so mild a flight of structure in wording. It gave him a chill-he had met a poet who couldn’t control himself, kept spouting verses at odd moments, and accidentally made some very strange things happen. “Say-you do know how to write, don’t you?”

“Aye.” Pascal turned to him in surprise. “Why do you ask?”

“Just make sure that if you get hit with a sudden attack of verse, you write it down instead of speaking it aloud, okay? You do seem to realize that poetry isn’t much of a basis for marriage, though.”

“Aye.” Pascal’s gaze lowered. “I am a poor choice, I know, for I have no money, no handsomeness of face or figure-and, now that I have rebelled against his tyranny, will no longer inherit my father’s house and lands! Still, I hope to make my way in the world, to win fame and fortune-and if I can only persuade Panegyra to wait for me a year or two, I may prove worthy of her love!”

Five years or ten, more likely-assuming the kid worked hard and had good luck. “But you have to reach her before the wedding.”

“Aye!” Pascal sprang up and rolled up his blanket “There is not a moment to spare! I thank you for waking me, Sir Matthew-I must be off!”

Well, Matt hadn’t wanted to say it. “Hold on a minute, friend.” He held up a cautioning hand. “You won’t get very far, running on empty. How about a bit of breakfast first? Besides, you may find it’s not all that easy to get into Latruria.”

“It shall be, for me! There is a clandestine route, one known only to a few families. I would not call it truly secret, but if the king’s soldiers know of it, they certainly pay it no heed.”

“Oh, really?” Matt pricked up his ears. “Say, I’ve got some journey rations here. How about we pool breakfasts and I tag along when you go?”

“Why, since you offer,” Pascal said, surprised. “I own I came away in such haste that I brought only a loaf. Nay, let us become road companions, then!”

“Great!” But Matt’s conscience bothered him. “I do have a little problem, though. There’s this monster that seems to have fixated on me, decided he’s going to have me for lunch, no matter where I cross the border-and he has an uncanny knack of knowing exactly where I am.”

“A monster?” Pascal looked up, suddenly alert. “Is it a manticore?”

Matt stared. “How’d you know?”

“Because it has been long known to my family. Never fear, friend-I have an old family charm that will tame the beast.”

“A family charm!” Then Matt remembered. “That’s right-you said your grandfather was a wizard. You mean you inherited his talent?”

“What, a knack for crafting verses and the sensing of unseen forces?” Pascal said it almost contemptuously. “Aye, I do. All of my family have it, in one degree or another.”

“Magic as a dominant trait,” Matt muttered, watching the young man as he knelt to feed the coals and blow them into flame. “How much do you have?”

Pascal shrugged “Enough to recite the old family spells and make them work-to summon brownies to the bowl of milk, that they may aid us; to kindle fire, banish warts, and suchlike.”

“Suchlike getting rid of manticores?”

“Only the one.” Pascal held up his index finger. “It is almost kin, my family has known it so long-and if there were more than one manticore in that county, ‘twould be surprising indeed.”

“Yes, I can see that.” Matt frowned. “If there were two, one of them would gobble the other up. Uh, may I ask why you didn’t include wizardry in your catalog of desirable traits for a suitor?”

“Wizardry has been no advantage, in Latruria,” Pascal said with a cynical smile, “not for many decades. Only sorcery is prized there-and I will be amazed if that state of affairs has changed greatly under King Boncorro’s reign.”

Matt frowned. “So you’re not interested in learning how to be a professional.”

“Nay.” Pascal shrugged impatiently. “What use is magic? Who respects the wizard? My grandfather was such a one-and all it brought him was advancement to the rank of squire!”

“You want to be something more, then.” Of course the kid did-he’d been born a squire, hadn’t he? No progress if he never became anything more. Pascal confirmed Matt’s guess with a nod. “There is little respect in being a squire, Sir Matthew. As you yourself know, one must be a knight, at least, to have any true standing in this world.”

“Well, there’s some truth in that,” Matt admitted. In fact, there was a lot of truth-being dubbed a knight magically gave a man better judgment and the power to prevail against his competitors. People listened to knights, but not to wizards. Matt had found that out the hard way, when he first came to Merovence. “I take it your father couldn’t become one, being the wrong kind of squire.”

“Oh, nay! A squire is a squire, after all, and he might have won his spurs-if he had wished to. But he was quite content to sit on his home acre, tending his peasants and watching them raise his crops.”

“You mean he never even tried?”

“Never,” Pascal confirmed. “But so little is not enough, for me! I shall have more, or die trying to attain it! Besides,” he confided, “the fair Panegyra might look more favorably upon me if I were Sir Pascal!”

Not much chance, Matt thought privately, unless some land and money went with the title-but he didn’t say so. They broke Pascal’s loaf between them, shared out some of Matt’s beef jerky, and Matt introduced the young man to tea, which was brand new in Bordestang, Queen Alisande’s capital. Matt guessed that some enterprising sea captains had found their way to China, and he wondered if those men came from Latruria, as they had in his own universe-where the peninsula was called “Italy.”

He expected he would find out very soon. They doused the fire and set off, Pascal actually whistling, now that he was on his way to the fair Panegyra, and Matt with a growing knot in his belly, now that he was on his way back to the manticore. Alisande’s army stood gathered in the courtyard of her castle in the chill light of false dawn, shivering and grumbling to one another. “We have been waiting most of an hour already!” one soldier complained to his sergeant. “Did not the queen waken when we did?‘

“ ‘Tis no affair of yours when she rises or when she sleeps!” the sergeant barked. “It is your affair only to be on your feet and ready when she calls!” Privately, though, he wondered. The queen had never kept her troops standing about for more than a few minutes before. Had she really slept while they mustered? “The queen grows lazy,” one trooper griped to another. “She would have us up and marching while she sits abed nibbling sweet biscuits.”

Food, however, was the farthest thing from Alisande’s mind as her ladies supported her away from the basin toward an hourglass chair. “You must sit, your Majesty,” Lady Constance crooned. “And whatever you do, you should not be riding when you are in so delicate a condition.”

“Condition?” Alisande forced herself to stand straight and tall, though the chair appealed to her mightily. “What condition? A moldy bit of cheese for supper last night, that is all!”

“And the night before, and the night before?” said Lady Julia with a skeptical glance. ‘Tell that to the men, Majesty, but do not seek to cozen we who have borne children ourselves.“

Alisande deflated. Her ladies took the chance to ease her into a chair. “I have not deceived you for a moment, have I?” the queen muttered thickly. “Well, for a week or two,” the elder lady allowed. “But a woman gains a certain glow when she knows there is new life within her, Majesty. The men notice it, but fools that they are, they think it is due to their own presence!”

“Well, it is, in a way,” Alisande muttered. “To more man their mere presence, I should think! But you know your husband will be overjoyed when he learns this glad news, Majesty-and sorely saddened if you should lose the babe while riding after him!”

“I must,” Alisande declared, though every fiber of her being cried out to stay home within the thick, safe walls of her castle and let all the silly affairs of die world go by, except for the single truly important business of cherishing the grain of life within her. But the babe must not be born fatherless! “I must ride.” She lifted her head, rising above the residue of nausea by sheer willpower. “I let him go from me once-I shall not make that error again!”

The ladies fell back before the sheer power of her personality, but the eldest objected, “The welfare of the kingdom requires an heir!”

‘The welfare of the realm requires the Lord Wizard!“ Alisande retorted ”Do not ask me how I know this-it is the magic of this land, that monarchs know what is best for their countries and their people!“

“Good monarchs, at least,” one of the younger ladies murmured-to herself, she thought, but Alisande turned to her, nodding. “We all remember the days of the usurper who slew my father and had no feeling for the welfare of the land or the people! We must not see such days come again!”

“Therefore you must not risk yourself,” Lady Constance scolded, “or the heir!”

“I must.” Alisande pushed herself to her feet. “If I do not, if I let myself be shorn of my wizard, the realm shall be imperiled. I must ride!”

But how, Alisande wondered, would she ever fight a battle, if she was to start each morning with her head over a basin! The “clandestine route”-presumably known only to every smuggler in the territory-was really pretty good; it consisted of a series of caves, joined by sizeable tunnels. They had to be sizeable, after all, since the goal of developing the route had been to smuggle not people, but goods. Matt could see, by the light of his torch, the marks of pickaxes where some of the passages had needed a bit of widening-maybe more than a bit. But from a functional point of view, it was marvelous-Pascal led him behind a small waterfall on the Merovencian side of the border and into a cave that widened as they went farther in. They had to stop to light torches, of course, but there was a whole stack of them, with jars of oil to soak their tow-wrapped ends, sitting about ten feet in from the mouth of the cave-far enough to stay dry, close enough to still be in the light There was even flint and steel. All they had to do was open one of the jars, dunk the torch ends in, and strike a spark with the flint and steel-re-covering the jar first, of course. Then Pascal set off into the lower depths with Matt following, wondering how many of the royal customs agents on both sides of the border knew about this route. After all, a secret known to two people is compromised, and a secret known to three is no secret at all, so with this route being common knowledge to the border families, it was scarcely possible that the excise men wouldn’t know about it-which led to the interesting question of why they ignored its use. At a guess, Matt hazarded, a trickle of trade was to the mutual advantage of both countries-after all, the Latrurian lords no doubt wanted Merovencian wines, and the aristocracy of Merovence probably prized the spices and silks brought in by Latrurian merchants. On the other hand, open and widespread commerce would have robbed the royal exchequers of tariff income. Matt saw the light at the end of the tunnel and reached out to touch Pascal’s elbow. “Remember the manticore.”

“Never fear,” Pascal assured him-but he went ahead a little more cautiously, reciting: “When the Merovencian smuggler meets the manticore in pride, He will shout to scare the monster, who will quail and turn aside. Then the monster will remember where his true allegiance lies, And will hearken to the orders of the man who bids him rise!”

As a verse, it was good, but it didn’t sound like much of a spell, and Matt was amazed that the young man still went on without trembling. He began to mutter his slow-down spell under his breath again, getting it ready just in case… Then Pascal stepped out of the cave, and a yowl split the world. At the last second Matt found he didn’t have it in him to let the kid die alone. He jumped out of the cave, yanking his sword out, seeing the speed-blurred brindled mass hurtling toward them, all teeth. Then Pascal shouted, “Down, monster! Down, to a son of the wizard who tamed you!”

Matt had never before seen a beast put on the brakes in mid-leap. It was really quite a sight-the manticore twisted in midair as if it were trying to change directions. It did, actually, swerving aside from Pascal and plunging right toward Matt, teeth first. Matt yanked a sugarplum out of his pocket and threw it, bull’s-eye, right between the serrated teeth. Then he jumped, as far as he could to the side-right, in fact, on the other side of Pascal. The manticore’s jaws clashed shut automatically, and its throat throbbed with a single swallow even as it twisted in midair again, to land on all four feet. The monster looked very surprised, actually closing its lips for the first time since Matt had met it. Then it began to look very, very pleased. “Delicious! What part of your anatomy was that, O Wizard?”

“Not part of me at all,” Matt said, “just some leftover dessert from the banquet two nights ago. I was saving it for a treat.”

“I must give you thanks! Perhaps not enough to spare your life, but thanks nonetheless! Quite the most delicious tidbit I have ever munched.” Then the manticore began to stalk toward Matt again. “Hold!” Pascal held up a palm, and Matt had to give him maximum points for bravery, but absolutely none for intelligence. Then he deducted from his own score, because the monster stopped on the instant, then crouched down and rubbed its head against Pascal’s leg, making an appalling grating noise that Matt vaguely recognized as a gigantic purr. The youth trembled, but stood his ground resolutely. However, he didn’t take his eyes from the monster for a second as he asked Matt, “When did you pick up that sugarplum?”

“Right after dinner, while you and Charlotte were settling your futures,” Matt answered. “How did you get that cat to obey?”

Pascal glanced down and shrugged. “I know not; ‘twas truly my grandfather’s verse. He it was who first tamed this manticore and forbade him to eat human flesh or steal food of any sort, in return for which Grandfather gave him a bullock a day, or two sheep when the cattle were all eaten.”

“Delicious!” The manticore looked up eagerly. “I had never eaten so regularly before! I mourned when the old man died, but grew hungry within a day. Still, in honor to his memory, I would not eat cattle, sheep, or people within his parish-so I fared south to Latruria, and have been here ever since! But it has been a dog’s existence, young man-nay, not even fit for a dog! Taking what meat I may, then fleeing with it before the knights or sorcerers come… Fighting with armies of peasants for my meals, which is painful, though tasty… Enslaved to one sorcerer after another, to feed on grain and their enemies only! Have you come to free me, then?”

Pascal hesitated, and Matt leaned close to mutter, “If you don’t, he has to serve whatever sorcerer sicced him on me-by eating me! Not your problem, I know, but…”

“But if I free him completely, he may turn on me!” Pascal muttered back. Not softly enough; the manticore said, “Never! I would never munch the flesh and bone of my Master Fleuryse! Nor drink his blood, no matter through whose veins it flows!”

“You really must have liked the old geezer,” Matt observed. “Vastly! He could have slain me, aye, slain me as easily as tamed me! Yet he chose to spare my life, and moreover to feed me!”

Matt could have pointed out that the spell probably would have stopped working if the old wizard had stopped feeding the manticore-hunger has a way of breaking down inhibitions-but it didn’t seem like the most politic comment at the moment. “Then I free you from any other spells or geas that have been laid upon you,” Pascal said, but he cast a worried glance at Matt. “Still, I had only planned to walk safely past you, not to have you accompany me.”

“Where you go, I shall bound!” The monster leaped to its feet. “Your paths shall be my paths, your enemies my dinners!”

“But you have to provide alternative menus when there aren’t any enemies handy,” Matt reminded. “How shall I do that?” Pascal wailed. “I have no money to buy cattle, no magic to conjure them up!”

“Oh, you’ll think of something.” Matt clapped him on the shoulder. “And if you don’t, I will. Don’t look so worried, Pascal-I have a few ducats in my purse. Besides, you never know when a voracious monster might come in handy. Think anybody’s gonna try and charge us tolls?”

He turned the young man away, sheathed his sword-and together they set off for the south, the manticore following a few yards behind. “You do not understand!” Pascal hissed to Matt. “For this beast, fondness for people is tied to fondness for food! If we do not feed it, it will feed on whatever comes first to fang! I shall be safe, for I am of the blood of the Wizard Fleuryse, but you shall not!”

Matt noticed that the day had suddenly grown chilly. “So I’d better really deliver on that promise to find him food, huh?”

“Aye, or discover a way to part with him!”

There was a growl behind them. “Careful,” Matt breathed, “I think he’s got very acute hearing. Haven’t you, Manny?”

“Aye,” the beast answered, full-voiced, “though ‘Manny’ is a strange name for me.”

“Do you have any other?”

“Nay. None have spoken to me as you do for decades. Even the Wizard Fleuryse called me only ‘manticore.’ ”

“Okay, so ‘Manny’ is short for ‘manticore’-or would you rather I called you ‘Ticky’?”

“Manny will do,” the monster said quickly. “Thought so.” Matt looked up and saw a peasant shamblingdown the road, driving a gaunt and spavined cow with lackadaisical flicks of a switch. “Well, look what came to order! Say, fellow, that cow for sale?”

“Sale?” The peasant looked up hungrily, then saw the manticore and froze. The monster licked its chops. “That’s for the cow, not you,” Matt said quickly. “Here, I’ll buy it for a silver penny.”

The peasant stared at the silver coin, then snatched it. ‘Take the cow, and gladly!“ Then he turned on his heels and ran, as Manny leaped on the cow with a howl of joy. It didn’t even have time to moo. Matt firmly turned Pascal away. ”I could tell it was dying of hunger; why not put it out of its misery?“

“It is tough,” the manticore complained. “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Matt called back, then to Pascal, “Don’t look so sad. Cows turn into food every day.”

“It is not that-it is the price! Three coppers would have been enough, and generous!”

‘Think so? Well, maybe you’re right. I’ll haggle a little next time-but there wasn’t time just now. Manny looked really hungry“

“I was,” the manticore mumbled around a bone. “It was the cow, fast, or the peasant,” Matt explained. “Fortunately, I’ve got enough silver to turn into lots of coppers.”

“We shall need them,” Pascal said with an apprehensive glance at the feeding manticore. “I hope your purse is never empty!”

“Good wish,” Matt approved, and decided to see if he could work up the appropriate spell. For his part, he hoped that the stories he had heard about the prosperity of Latruria were true-especially the ones about food being plentiful.

Chapter 7

Unfortunately, Matt was really very skeptical about the claims of good living in Latruria. The sight of that apathetic peasant and his spavined cow had been enough to remind him that up until a few years ago, Latruria had been the private property of a sorcerer with a reputation for delighting in human suffering. Matt had done a little homework before he started south, spending an hour or so reading up on what little history of Latruria Alisande’s library held, and had talked to oldsters he met on his journey about what the southern country had been like during their youth. He couldn’t talk to recent travelers, because there weren’t any-King Maledicto had closed the border as soon as he seized the throne. The only Merovencians who had been to Latruria between that time and King Boncorro’s coronation were smugglers, and so far Matt hadn’t had much luck finding any of those-until he met Pascal, of course. Privately, he wondered if this was really the young man’s first trip down this way. But what he had heard from the oldsters was hair-raising. He had decided right away that if he ever got back to his own universe, he could make a living just writing them up and calling them fiction. The only problem was that he couldn’t decide whether he should market them as horror or pornography. He ended by deciding that he’d be mortally ashamed if he wrote them at all. Of course, it could be that his informants had been making up those awful tales. Atrocity stories always grew up around the enemy-like the early stories about Phoenicians throwing babies into the fiery furnaces built into their idols. Only trouble was, archaeologists had found some pretty convincing evidence that the Carthaginians had done exactly that, and they had been a Phoenician colony… So, applying his scholar’s caution and training, Matt had made a stab at sifting fact from fancy in the reports of Maledicto’s reign, coming to the sad conclusion that most of what he’d heard could have been stone-cold fact. Even after allowing for exaggeration and propaganda, he still thought there was probably some truth in them. Maledicto had delighted in cruelty and encouraged it in his noblemen. But if that had been true, could King Boncorro really have reversed the state of affairs so thoroughly in just six years? He decided to check his findings under the guise of idle gossip. Besides, he needed to get Pascal’s mind off their faithful following monster. “Is it true that King Maledicto indulged in human sacrifice?”

Pascal shuddered. “Aye, from all I hear! He conducted obscene rituals to pagan gods of evil. Their names are only whispered, never spoken aloud.”

“Such as Kali and Hecate?”

Pascal shied as if he had just seen a rattlesnake pop up under his feet. “Forfend, Sir Matthew! I told you they are never spoken aloud!”

“Doesn’t do any harm, in a Christian universe.” But Matt wished he could be sure of that; the names he had mentioned could be powerful symbols in their own right. “Probably includes Satan in there under another guise. I also hear tell that he held a party every night, just himself and a few close friends.”

Again Pascal shuddered. “Aye, and vile carouses they were, too!”

“Mixing sex and torture?”

Pascal nodded. “And imbibing vile brews that drove them mad with lust.”

“Real sweethearts.” Matt glowered at the roadway in front of them. “I’ve also heard that King Maledicto came down with the pox now and then, but got rid of it by transferring it magically to some poor innocent peasant.”

“Not always innocent, I will say that for him,” Pascal answered, hard-faced. “Innocent folk of any rank became harder and harder to find, the longer he reigned. Must we talk of this, Sir Matthew? I find it distasteful in the extreme.”

“I’m not exactly happy about it myself, but I really do want to find out if there’s any truth in it.”

“Oh, be sure there is truth there! Through all those dark decades, our family did manage converse with relatives, or at least letters, borne by brave smugglers.”

“Weren’t they afraid King Maledicto would punish them for telling on him, if his agents captured the letters?‘

“Tell on him? He boasted of his cruelties! Nay, he wanted them noised abroad, mat all might shudder and obey him!”

That unnerved Matt for a minute-but only a minute. Then he plucked back his composure and maintained, “They couldn’t know whether or not the rumors were true, then. The king might have been spreading them himself, just to intimidate everybody!”

“Do not doubt their truth! My father’s cousin was taken for the king’s army, then wrenched from their ranks to be mutilated for his Majesty’s sport! There is no question that they would have slain him, had they not already had a maiden for the sacrifice. Nay, they let him go, with stern injunctions to tell all that he had seen!”

That unnerved Matt, for longer than a minute or two. A blood relation was as strong a piece of evidence as he was likely to get, and pretty thoroughly validated all the rumors. It was having to confront the fact that they were true that shook him. “I had wondered why you carried a lute on your back,” Pascal said. “Is it to trade songs of virtue for news of King Boncorro?”

“Something like that,” Matt admitted, “and because of that, I’d appreciate it if you’d lay off the ‘Sir Matthew’ sobriquet. Just plain ‘Matthew’ will do very nicely, for the nonce.” He looked back over his shoulder. “You, too, Manny!”

“My lips are sealed,” the manticore promised. “Somehow I doubt that. I’ll settle for you watching what comes out of your mouth a bit more closely than what goes in.” He turned back to Pascal. “Mostly I had in mind picking up gossip about the last few years in Latruria-and the current state of affairs. I find it difficult to believe that the new king could have reformed the land so completely, after almost a century of corruption.”

“I doubt it, too, and I intend to be extremely cautious as to whom I trust, and into whose power I let myself fall. The king may have forsworn needless cruelty himself, but his noblemen have been trained to it, all their lives, and may not so cheerfully forsake the old depraved ways.”

“My thought exactly,” Matt said grimly, “and though a knight might be treated with a certain amount of courtesy, a minstrel would not.”

Pascal stared at him, appalled. “You have deliberately made yourself their target?”

“Call it bait for the trap.” Matt just hoped he would be able to spring that trap if he needed to; he was getting very nervous about how weak his magic seemed to be in Latruria. “As long as there are only one or two knights against me, I can give them a very unpleasant surprise. I just hope I won’t have to sing.”

The chancellor laid another sheet of parchment in front of the king. “As you commanded, your Majesty-a summary of what we may expect to receive in the various taxes and levies, set against the monies we anticipate having to pay out in the next twelve-month.”

“Neatly done.” King Boncorro scanned the columns of figures. “Give the clerk an extra ducat’s pay-this was new to all of us, and he has invented a very good way to draw it up.” He laid the paper down with satisfaction. “It is well, Rebozo! For the third straight year our surplus shall increase-if we hold to this plan. The royal granaries shall be full, even the new score we are building. Famine shall not catch this country again.”

“No, your Majesty.” The chancellor didn’t sound all that happy about it. “Still, the surplus is due more to your own economies than to any increase in revenues. Surely you might now increase the taxes again!”

King Boncorro shook his head. “With taxes low, people spend more, thus giving work to others-who thereby gain money to pay their taxes. Merchants are using the money saved to set up new ventures, bringing me more tax money than they did five years ago, even though Grandfather demanded two parts in three, where I only demand one.” He nodded, pleased. “Yes, my conjecture is proved true-lower taxes yield higher revenues, though it did take some few years of tight living before the increase began to show. In fact, I see it is time for another experiment.”

Rebozo’s blood ran cold. “Majesty! Let us recover from your last! Whenever you say ‘experiment,’ I have premonitions of disaster!”

“This one is easily undone, if it fails,” Boncorro said, amused. “Have letters drafted to the noblemen who hold patents of monopoly on commerce in grain, timber, and wool. Tell them that henceforth, any man who wishes may traffic in those commodities.”

“Majesty, no! They shall rebel, they shall bring armies!”

“I think not.” King Boncorro lounged back in his chair. “They may still be active in the trade themselves, of course-and having held the monopoly and the means of transporting the goods, they shall have a huge advantage over any who wish to enter the trade. But if they have been charging extortionate prices, they shall find they have no buyers.”

“Exactly, Majesty! Their fortunes shall evaporate!”

“They have fortunes enough to maintain them in luxury for the rest of their lives, Rebozo-aye, and their children’s lives, too. We speak of counts and dukes, after all, who have vast estates to maintain them. No, they shall not starve-but they shall have to strive if they wish to continue to dominate the commerce of the realm.”

“Majesty, how is this?” Rebozo cried, distressed. “A king should not concern himself with commerce, like a grubby tradesman!”

“Every subject must be my concern,” King Boncorro contradicted, “from those who grub in the dirt to those who command armies. The lifeblood of the land is trade, Rebozo. The peasants may raise the food for their noble masters, but it cannot feed the folk in the towns if it is not transported to them. The stomach may provide the nourishment, but it does no good if it is not carried to the limbs. If the kingdom is the body politic, the king may be its head, but the army and the artisans are its muscles, the peasants are its hands, and the merchants its blood. That blood has flowed but sluggishly under my father’s rule. I have freed it to flow more freely, and do so again now-and the result will be more nourishment for me.”

“An excellent analogy,” Rebozo said with irony, “but perhaps not accurate. Abolishing monopolies only means that the merchants shall have more nourishment, not you.”

“They shall pay their taxes if they wish to be let alone to trade. More well-to-do merchants will arise, even though they charge lower prices to the people who buy-for thereby, more people shall buy. More rich merchants means that there shall be more spending by merchants, which shall yield richer tradesmen and shall even allow some artists a living, and higher wages for peasants as more and more of them leave the land to become merchants or artisans. Thus shall there be more and more who pay taxes, and my revenues shall increase.”

“Well, you are a worker of magics.” Rebozo carefully did not say what kind-primarily because he wasn’t sure. “If you can make more money flow into your coffers by levying less, it is truly a wonder, and I must not argue with what I do not know. But how if the noblemen gather their armies and march against you, Sire?”

“Then,” Boncorro said, tense as a stretched cable, “I shall work some of those magics of which you have spoken.”

“You cannot slay a whole army by sorcery!”

“Be not so sure, Lord Chancellor,” the king said quietly. “However, slaying armies will not be needed-only slaying their masters.”

“You cannot slay dukes and counts out of hand!”

“Why not? My grandfather did. Then, like him, I can replace them with men of my own choosing.”

“Their sons shall bring those same armies back on the instant!”

“Then I shall slay the sons, too, and the grandsons, and the nephews, if I must-and all the noblemen know it. They have not yet even tested my resolve, nor, I think, will they. They know I am no saint, like my father, and fear that I may be as cruel and as powerful as my grandfather. No, Rebozo,” he finished quietly, “I do not think they will rebel.”

Rebozo shivered again, for the tone of the young king’s voice had been as remorseless and bereft of emotion as his eyes had been chill and flat. It was almost as if a man of stone had been talking, and Rebozo found that he-even he whom the king loved as much as he loved any-could not be sure whether or not King Boncorro could really rain down destruction on a rebellious army. He didn’t doubt for a second, though, that Boncorro could and would slay every single one of his aristocrats if they sought to unseat him. He might not even have to turn to the power of evil magic, for every single one of the counts and dukes had been so deeply steeped in sin that Heaven surely must aid the young king in defeating them! In fact, it was a perfect summary of Boncorro’s strategy-he would commit the sin of killing without the slightest tremor of conscience, and would thereby free his people to be good if they wished it. He would lighten their burdens of despair and fear and even give them grounds for hope-and would thus balance Good and Evil so neatly that surely the sources of magic must be confused as to which he was! In fact, Rebozo suspected that the king wasn’t sure himself-or was determined not to be either. It was impossible, of course. No man could remain exactly half good and half evil for more than half a minute. As soon as he did one more act of good than he did of evil, he would begin the progress toward Goodness-and it would take an act of outright sin to counter it True, Boncorro was determined not to fall into his father’s fate any more than into his grandfather’s-but his yardstick seemed to be the good of the people, and surely that must indeed lead him to Goodness eventually. Rebozo had to do something to prevent that. “If you are going to remove so many monopolies, your Majesty, you should balance them by instituting a new one.”

Boncorro stiffened, but he was caught by the word “balance.”

“What monopoly can I set up that will increase trade?”

“A monopoly on prostitution. No, hear me out! Only think, Majesty-if brothels were legal, but maintained under a monopoly that held the condition that all prostitutes be free of disease in order to do business, more men would patronize them!”

“Aye, to debase and abuse them!”

Rebozo shrugged. “There will be prostitutes whether the law allows it or not, your Majesty-you know it well! Still, you could make it another condition of the monopoly that the women not be beaten by their pimps or procuresses, nor injured by their patrons! You could insist that any who treated them less than gently be hauled before a court-and you could station royal guardsmen within the houses to enforce that law! But you cannot impose any conditions as long as the trade is illegal!”

“But more trade means that there will be more prostitutes,” Boncorro said, frowning, “and that girls will be forced into it whether they wish to be or not!”

“Come, Majesty,” Rebozo wheedled. “If there shall be more money being spent, as you have said, there will also be more men wanting to buy an hour with a prostitute-and if there shall be more peasants leaving the land and coming to the cities, as you have indicated, there will be more girls drawn into the trade anyway! Why not have them all legally under your own eye, where you may at least insist they not be too heavily abused?”

The king frowned, stuck for a comeback-it was an issue he had never really considered. “Besides, you know there are some women who really prefer that way of life,” Rebozo said. “Or who choose it, at least.” It was as good as a capitulation, even though Boncorro followed it with, “… though their number never has been adequate to fulfill the demands of my more depraved subjects. Still, you do make some sort of sense-the women would be better protected under the eye of a duke who is under my eye. I shall consider it, Rebozo.”

“I rejoice that my feeble counsel has been of use to your Majesty,” the chancellor said, beaming. He bowed, thinking, A blow well-struck for corruption! He knew full well that the more twisted uses of prostitutes would continue to flourish illegally, as they did now-and that the king, by condoning prostitution of any sort, would be drawn toward the side of Evil. Indeed, convinced by Rebozo’s arguments and bored with his own stable of beauties, he would sooner or later patronize some of those establishments of vice himself, the ones he was even now discussing. Done once, done a dozen times-then twenty, then a hundred. Then, as his sexual prowess began to decline with age, he would be drawn to the more depraved amusements in a desperate attempt to flag his failing powers. The long slide to damnation was well begun indeed, and Latruria would one day be as securely on the side of Evil as it was in the old days. Everybody likes being the center of attention, but Matt was just paranoid enough for it to make him a little nervous. He dismissed it as stage fright and called out, “Come, good people! Tales and lays, poems and sagas! Listen and lose yourselves in far and fabled lands!”

They came flocking. ‘Tales from Merovence?“ one shopper asked. ”That’s neither far nor fabled, but I have the newest stories and tales.“ Matt was sure they’d be very new-in this universe, anyway. ”No songs?“ one teenager asked, disappointed. Matt grinned. ”I shall play the tunes and chant the words-but believe me, you do not wish to hear me sing.“

‘True, true,“ Pascal murmured. Matt flashed him a mock glare. ”You don’t have to agree with me, you know.“

The crowd laughed, and Matt began to realize that Pascal could be a very good straight man. In fact, the two of them could really clean up at every wayside fair between here and-He wrenched his thought back to the present with a major effort. He was supposed to be a spy, not a real minstrel! The ham in him was carrying him away, like Peer Gynt with the Green-Clad One. “A tale of the far north!” he cried. “A story of the wanderer Peer Gynt, and his fall from virtue! Who would hear it?”

The crowd clamored agreement, and some of them waved pennies. Pascal, quicker on the uptake than Matt would have thought, tossed his hat down at Matt’s feet and pitched in a penny of his own. It was like seeding the clouds, and produced a positive hail-storm of coppers. “I am persuaded.” Matt bowed with a flourish. He began to play “Morning Mood” from Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite, and intoned, “Peer Gynt was a lad of Norway, where the Vikings came from…”

“The sea robbers?” a boy cried eagerly. This far south, the Vikings were only storybook villains. Matt wondered how the story would go over even farther south-say, near Sicily. Had the Normans conquered the island in this world, too? “He was of their blood, but was himself only a poor farm boy whose father had died when he was young. His mother had reared him as well as she might, but he was always willful, and somewhat wild. He liked to ramble the mountainside with a sling and stones, claiming he was hunting, but really daydreaming.”

The boy’s eyes shone, and Matt realized the kid was hearing about a kindred spirit. Well, for him it would be a cautionary tale. ‘One day, when Peer Gynt was out hunting, he heard a wild pig’s squeal-and looking up, he saw a woman. But what a woman! Her form was everything a man could dream of, and her gossamer green gown clung to her in such a way as to show every curve!“

The women muttered, not liking the sound of this-was the minstrel going to say they should show themselves off? That was exploitation for those who did have figures worth looking at, but outright humiliation for those who did not! And the boy in front was beginning to look disappointed. Well, no matter, Matt decided-he would catch them all again when they got to the Hall of the Mountain King. He caught them sooner than that. “From the neck down she was the most lovely of women-but from the neck up, she was a sow! Aye, bristles, snout, pointed ears and all, the woman had a pig’s head!”

He went on, telling them of the Green-Clad One’s seductive invitation, of their ride on the back of a boar to the Hall of the Mountain King with its elves and monsters, of their attempt to hold Peer there, and of his escape. When he finished, the audience let out a collective sigh. “What then?” the boy cried, his eyes huge. “Oh, that is a tale for another time,” Matt said carelessly.

The audience complained, disappointed-but one man called out, “Have you news of Merovence?”

“News for news,” Matt answered. ‘Tell me what moves in Latruria, and I’ll tell you what transpires in Merovence! How fares your king?“

“Boncorro is well, praise Hea-” The man caught himself and glanced around, desperate to be sure no royal spy had heard him. “-praise him! Rumor has it that he sent his men to chastise a knight who still demands that his serfs give him three parts in four of their crop!”

“He has hanged a squire for raping a peasant’s daughter!” a young woman said, eyes alight with triumph. “He has wounded our business,” one man complained, “by cutting the taxes on brandy and wool and brocades that come from Merovence and Allustria, aye, even those that come through the country of the Switzers!”

Matt frowned. “How does that hurt your business?”

“Why, I now must charge less for the goods I bring in!” the man said indignantly, and the audience laughed. Matt finally got the joke-the man was a smuggler, and the legitimate merchants could now undersell him. “News for news!” the first man cried again. “How fares your queen?”

“She is well, she is wed!” Matt cried. “That is old news,” a woman scoffed. “Has she birthed a babe yet?”

“No, sad to say,” Matt said, with genuine regret, “though we keep hoping.”

“More than a year wed, and still no sign of a child?” the woman said indignantly. “What ails her husband?”

Matt stared, caught speechless. “He cannot be much of a man,” another woman opined, “if he cannot get her with child.”

“Scarcely a man at all!” the first woman sniffed. “He is a wizard-not even a sorcerer!”

“A wizard, but not a miracle worker!” Matt protested. “Husbands are only the delivery boys-babies come from Heaven!”

The whole crowd fell silent, aghast. “Do not say that word!” a granny cried. “Are you a fool?”

“No, I’m from Merovence.”

They stared at him in shock for a moment, then burst out laughing. “Very good, very good!” a portly man chuckled, wiping his eyes. “But what of the crops? We have heard rumors of drought!”

“All false, thank-” Matt caught himself in time, deciding not 10 offend their sensibilities. “-praises be. The rain falls like a blessing, and the sun beams down.”

The crowd began to mutter again, apprehensive, glancing over their shoulders. Matt wondered if, seven years ago, mention of “Heaven” or “blessing” really had been enough to bring a vengeful sorcerer. If not, King Maledicto had brainwashed them into dreading even the words of goodness. Matt grasped for a change of topic. “The queen has made a treaty with the Free Folk, with the dragons! They shall no longer steal sheep and cattle, and the queen shall arrest the hatchling hunters who seek to steal dragons’ blood to sell to sorcerers!” Stegoman had pushed for that one. Again the crowd muttered, but wide-eyed this time-amazed that Matt could speak against sorcerers and not get burned up about it. Still, they edged away from him. “News for news!” But Matt was beginning to wonder if there were a single topic that wouldn’t edge into a taboo area, such as sorcery or Heaven. Maybe not, in this world. “But first, let me tell you of Peer Gynt and Solveg!”

The crowd murmured appreciation and came crowding back in, eager for more stories of licentious women. Well, they were in for a disappointment this time. “Solveg was a church-bred woman, a Lass who carried a prayer book about her wherever she went.”

The crowd edged away again, murmuring with apprehension. “But she was beautiful!” Matt cried. “Demure, sweet, modest-and beautiful!”

“Not with a figure like that of the Green-Clad one?” asked a teenaged boy, disappointed. “Who could know? Her clothing was so loose that none could see! But it was beautifully embroidered, and her skirts swung with the lilt of a May tune as she walked. The aroma of roses seemed to follow her, and so did Peer Gynt’s heart.”

The boys began to look bored, but the women pressed close, held by the promise of a good love story. Matt told them of Peer Gynt’s boastful courtship and of Solveg’s interest, though she saw through him in an instant Still, she found something to love in him anyway-but Peer went off in a huff, offended by her truthfulness. Then he encountered the darkness cast by the Great Boyg, becoming trapped and unable to fight his way free, as the monster called up harpies to feed on him-but Solveg came, singing hymns, and banished them all by her simple goodness. The men and boys were riveted by the tale, and the women sighed with happiness-then instantly looked apprehensive again. Apparently this was something really new for them-a story in which virtue triumphed, and they rather liked the novelty. They just weren’t sure it was safe, that was all. Matt and Pascal camped by the roadside that night, Pascal counting the day’s take by the light of the fire. “A silver penny!” he cried, holding up the trophy. “They must truly have liked your tale of Peer Gynt, my friend.”

“And want to give me good reason to come back and tell them Act Two,” Matt agreed. Pascal looked up, frowning. “ ‘Act Two’?”

“The second half of the story,” Matt said quickly. “If it is half so amusing as the first, you will make your fortune with it! We have a month’s living in this hat!”

“Latruria is having a boom,” Matt said. “They have become prosperous, if that is what you mean-but we knew that in Merovence. I fear that you have not learned much new here, Sir Matthew.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” Matt gazed at the pot that was stewing vegetables and beef jerky. “We’ve found out that King Boncorro really is trying to make life better for the common folk, but apparently isn’t doing it because he wants to do good.”

Pascal frowned. “Who told you that?”

“All of them-from their fright, every time I mentioned Heaven or a blessing, or Solveg’s church, prayer book, and hymns. They’re still scared of evil sorcerers punishing people for even talking about Goodness-which means King Boncorro certainly hasn’t taken a stand against the forces of Evil, and may not even have a quarrel with them.”

“Why, then, would he be doing what is good for the commoners?” Pascal asked, suddenly intent-after all, these were his kind of people. “Pure selfishness-or, if not pure, then at least basic.” Matt reached out to stir the stew. “He has some personal motive, some hope of gain. It might even be that he’s enlightened enough to realize that if the people prosper, the king gets richer.”

“Why, what an odd notion!”

“It is, around here,” Matt agreed, “so I don’t really expect that’s King Boncorro’s reason. I wonder what is, though.”

“Perhaps you shall find out at the next village.”

“Maybe,” Matt agreed. “One way or another, at least we should make another haul of coppers. Stew smells about ready, Pascal. Did you say you had a bowl in your pack?”

“The aroma is tempting,” a deeper voice answered, “but I prefer my food raw. In fact, I prefer it moving.”

“I already paid the farmer a quarter mile back.” Matt didn’t even look up. “Go have a cow, Manny.”

Chapter 8

It was nice to know how it felt to be a star. Everywhere Matt went, everyplace he stopped long enough for Pascal to toss down his hat, people came running to jostle each other as they tried to get closer, to see and hear the minstrel. Somehow, it never occurred to Pascal that they might be attracting more attention than he wanted-but it occurred to Matt, sure enough. For himself, Matt didn’t mind-he was the bait in his own trap, so to speak. But for Pascal, it was another matter. “I am likely to draw some unpleasant attention from an evil sorcerer or two,” he reminded Pascal as the young man poured him another stoup of ale from the inn’s pitcher. “I’d really rather you not get thrown into prison for my sake.”

Pascal shrugged. “It is worth the risk. Your glory reflects on me, and any ounce of fame is more likely to sway the fair Panegyra to my suit.”

Matt just hoped that suit wasn’t spades. That first village turned out to be typical; Matt had learned a lot there, but he didn’t find out too much more about conditions in Latruria, no matter how many towns and roadside inns heard his “songs.” The people were well fed and well cared for. The country looked very prosperous, and though the serfs and yeomen were deferential when a lord passed by, they didn’t cringe, nor did the lords treat them cruelly. The girls in the villages didn’t have to turn their faces to the wall as the gentlemen passed by. People gathered around, winced at any mention of Heaven or blessing, but looked similarly nervous at mention of the Devil. If ever there was a country that believed in the golden mean, this was it. They had been punished too often for having spoken of holy matters, and punished too often by those who were dedicated to Evil. Matt began to realize all over again that witches and sorcerers who had sold their souls to the Devil had done it in more ways than one. They were now completely devoted to evil and wickedness, to selfishness, hatred, and doing harm to others wherever they could. The only difference between the mighty sorcerers and the low seemed to be their capacity for hatred, and the magnitude of their sins-as Kipling said of the little devils, “They weep that they’d been too small to sin to the height of their desire.” The sorcerers devoted themselves to their work of misery-making with the single-mindedness of the fanatic, whether it was out of despair, a wish for revenge on their fellow humans, or the feeling that once having turned away from Heaven, they were doomed irrevocably. If “sold my soul to rock ‘n’ roll” meant that the person in question was so totally dedicated to his favorite form of music that there was little room for anything else in his life, so selling one’s soul to the Devil implied that the seller was totally dedicated to evil and the harming of his fellow beings. Small wonder that the mere mention of them still made the Latrurians start looking over their shoulders-or that, six years after King Boncorro’s coronation, there was still a feeling of jubilance, of release, like that of children let out to play on the first day of spring. But when grown-ups are turned loose to play, they do it with a bit more dedication than children, and some of their games are not nice at all-especially when they have been raised with no mention of morality. Matt leaned across the table in the common room of the inn and murmured, “Every girl I’ve seen seems to make flirting a major hobby.”

Pascal looked up at him in surprise. “Do not all girls?” So it had spread to Pascal’s home in southern Merovence, too. Matt wondered what had happened to the demure young miss who sat modestly by and waited for the boys to come to her. Gone and scarcely remembered, apparently-along with the mammoth and the saber-tooth. Didn’t any of them have enough confidence in their own beauty and attractiveness to be sure they were male bait? Not in this inn, at least. He looked around him, figuring percentages. The common room was long and wide, but low-ceilinged, filled with trestle tables, benches, and smoke rejected by a chimney that was almost drawing properly-not enough to make anybody choke or wheeze, but enough to drift up along the ceiling beams, where a century or so of such vapors had turned the wood black. Laughter and chatter filled the air, along with the clink of mug against pitcher and the sound of pouring. The air was pungent with the aroma of ale and roasting pork. The serving maids giggled at the pinches they drew, or turned on their tormentors with mock severity-or, if the men were handsome enough or looked prosperous enough, batted their eyelashes and exchanged a few double entendres before they hurried away about their errands. “Your fingers are too hard, sir! Belike from wielding the hoe!”

“Nay, lass, ‘tis from counting coins all the day.”

“Coins, is it? Your master’s they must be-for I see naught but coppers before you!”

“Oh, but there is more in my purse.” The man patted his pouch with a grin. “There now, weigh it and see for yourself!”

The girl leaned over to cup her hand under the merchant’s purse and judge its weight. “A man of substance, are you?”

The merchant shrugged. “Discover for yourself, if you wish-when you are done with your day’s chores.”

“And if I find none more appealing than yourself,” the girl retorted, “which should not be hard.”

“Should it not?” The man grinned. “When should I come to ask again?”

“When the moon is high, if you are not! Enjoy the savories while you may!” She went off with a swirl of her skirts, and the man turned with a grin to the pastries she had left. “Harmless enough,” Pascal judged. “Why do you frown so?”

“Mostly because the man was wearing a wedding ring. Doesn’t he even think about his wife?”

“Why?” Pascal shrugged. “He is far from home, and she is not likely to learn of what he does. Besides, do you think she will be any more chaste than he, while he is away on his travels?”

“Well, uh…” Matt turned back, feeling very naive. “I kinda had some notion like that, yeah.”

Pascal stared. “Is this the fashion in the queen’s capital?”

“It will be if she has anything to say about it,” Matt said grimly. “She also might start enforcing some of the rules of chivalry.” He nodded toward another amorous tableau. “They could use it.”

Here, it was no serving maid, but a lady in her traveling clothes who was sipping her wine and laughing at the remarks a knight was making as he stood beside her, leaning over to look down at her face and her décolletage. Another knight leaned close behind her, looking down over her shoulder, and murmured something in her ear that made her face redden. Then she blushed again at something the first knight said and lowered her eyes, but made no move to cover her décolletage-nor to edge away when the knight in front stepped so close that his thigh pressed against her, leaning close to murmur something, or when the knight behind sat down and slid up tight against her side, leaning around in front to add a comment of his own. She looked up sharply, a glint in her eye, then turned to the first knight and nodded as if accepting a challenge. She rose to take his hand and turn away toward the stairs. “‘Tis only sport.” Pascal frowned. “Why are you so pale?”

“Because those two going up the stairs are both wearing wedding rings-and I have the sneaking suspicion that whoever they’re married to, it’s not each other.” Matt turned back to the younger man. “Where I come from, that’s counted a deed unworthy of a knight-and as to it being only sport, I have a notion that it’s going to become a very strenuous sport indeed.”

Pascal shrugged. “Exercise is good for the body-and in any case, ‘tis no concern of ours.”

‘True,“ Matt said reluctantly. He had to remind himself that though they might be close to Merovence, they were nonetheless not in it Nor all that close anymore by medieval standards. They had been moving steadily for at least a week and were almost a hundred miles into Latruria by now. He certainly had no jurisdiction here. The lady turned back to give the seated knight a saucy, dismissive glance, saying something that apparently wounded him, for he leaped up and drew his sword. The lady fell back with a shriek, and the first knight whirled, his sword whipping out. ”Sir knights, no!“ the innkeeper wailed, but his cry was drowned in the clatter of overturned benches and the thunder of feet as the other patrons jumped up and leaped back, pulling their tables with them, leaving a wide clear space around the two rivals-then jostling one another for front-row seats. ”They’ve done this before.“ Matt frowned. ”Everybody knows what to do.“

“Aye, and what to expect. I’ll lay a silver penny on the one with the moustache!”

Matt turned to him, appalled. “A couple of men are ready to carve each other to bits, and you’re going to bet on them?”

“Why not?” Pascal shrugged. “Everyone else does. Besides, they will fight whether we bet or not-so why not wager?”

“We might be able to stop them instead!”

“Peasants, interfere with knights? They would both turn on us, and sliver us with their swords!”

Matt turned back to watch, numbed, trying to think of a way to stop them-short of using magic, of course. In passing, he noticed that both knights were wearing wedding rings, but it didn’t particularly surprise him. “Do not be so concerned, Sir-I mean, Minstrel Matthew. Be-like their honor will be satisfied with first blood, and none shall be slain.”

“You’re laying odds again,” Matt groaned. The fight was brief, and made up in verve what it lacked in skill. The knight who had lost out on the lady’s favors had a lot of unused testosterone to get rid of, but his rival was riding a high of having already won. Swords clattered and clashed as the two men fenced their way back and forth across the floor-and they did not settle for first blood. The spectators cheered when one knight’s point scored the other’s ribs-but the wounded knight only howled with anger and pressed the fight harder. A loud groan went up from the audience-the people who had bet mat first blood would end it, no doubt, and for a moment the clash of steel was drowned out by the clink of coins as the losers paid their bets, then turned right around and set a new stake. Matt noticed two portly peasants working their way through the crowd, collecting coins and putting them into their hats-primitive bookies, no doubt. Meanwhile, the knight with the bloody chest managed to tear through his rival’s doublet, where scarlet stained the cloth, spreading, making its owner spit with anger and redouble his efforts. Finally, one blade stabbed through the opponent’s arm, and the sword dropped from suddenly nerveless fingers as its owner howled with pain. The winner yanked his sword free, triumph lighting his eyes, as the man who had been the woman’s first choice sank back onto the nearest bench, clutching at his wound. The victor wiped his blade, sheathed it, and turned to offer his arm to the lady. Without the slightest hesitation, she took it-indeed, pressed up close to him with a look that would have melted a beehive-and up the stairs they went, both totally oblivious to the loser. Blood was welling up out of his forearm, and the innkeeper was shouting for a surgeon, but most of the crowd was making too much noise grumbling about losing or crowing about winning, for any to hear him. Certainly nobody seemed to have the slightest concern for the knight who sat staring at the blood dripping onto the floor. Matt felt a stab of pity for him, then remembered that he had been fighting for the chance to cheat on his wife, and felt only a grim regret that he was himself human. He went over to the man nonetheless and examined his wound. “The blood’s flowing evenly,” he said. “I don’t think he cut a vein or artery, by some miracle.”

“Be still!” the knight gasped. “Am I not in enough hazard, that you must speak of forbidden things?”

Matt looked up in surprise. “Forbidden things?” Oh-yes. Miracles. “Okay, you won on a real long shot.”

“Nay! I lost the lady’s favors!”

“But kept your life.” Matt looked up at the innkeeper. “Two measures of brandywine!”

The innkeeper stared, at a loss, but one of the serving wenches had a bit more presence of mind, and brought two small glasses of amber fluid. Matt handed one to the knight. “Drink it. You’ll need it.”

The man took the glass and drank greedily-and Matt poured the other over the wound. The knight howled and hurled the glass away, but Matt blocked the blow and said, “Just hold on, Sir Knight. That brandywine will do you more good where I’ve poured it than where you have.”

“It burns!” the knight cried. “Oh! The pain!”

“I thought knights never showed their hurts,” Matt jibed. The man went still and gave him a very cold stare. Matt didn’t pay attention-he was busy winding the nearest napkin around the wound. “The brandywine should stop the worst of the flow of blood, and it will make your arm a lot cleaner than you did. I’d tell you to find a doctor fast, but for some reason, I think you might have more luck with a poultice from the innkeeper’s wife.” He glanced up. “Or from your own.”

The knight reddened. “Mind your manners, peasant!”

Interesting, Matt thought-manners mattered, but morals didn’t. “As you wish, Sir Knight.” He stood up. “I’m afraid that’s all I can do for you, though, except for maybe telling you a story to take your mind off the pain.”

The man looked up at him with suspicion. “That might be welcome. What is its subject?”

Matt glanced around quickly and noticed the eyes turning toward him at the mention of a story. “Of the Lord Orlando,” he told the knight, “nephew of the emperor Charlemagne.”

“I have never heard of him.”

“Small wonder-he’s only a figment in a romance,” Matt sighed, “at least, in this world. Still, it’s a great story, and it never claimed to be historically accurate. Would you hear it?”

“Aye!” chorused all the customers, and Matt decided to get to work. One hour and two flagons of ale later, Matt and Pascal were two ducats richer. “Well, we have paid for our night’s lodging, and perhaps tomorrow’s as well.” Pascal didn’t seem to notice Matt’s part in the earning. “We could hire a chamber for the night!”

Remembering the couple who had gone upstairs, Matt was somehow not as eager for the idea as he might have been. He also remembered the bedbugs at the last inn. “No, let’s just wait them out and sleep by the fire.” He took his blanket from his pack. “They’ve started stacking the tables already. Any minute now, the innkeeper should be chasing out the ones who aren’t staying the night.”

“Well, we shall have to guard our money carefully,” Pascal sighed, “but when have we not had to? We should reach my cousin’s house tomorrow evening, at least. We can expect proper beds then.”

Privately, Matt thought they were much more likely to wind up in the barn-but maybe Pascal was right, maybe the fact that he was planning to run off with his host’s daughter wouldn’t make any difference. At least, if they didn’t tell the squire what Pascal was intending to do, he might not kick Matt out until after the young man had eloped. Or been immensely disappointed. Personally, Matt thought that was the much more likely option. When the daytimers had been chased out, and the all-night visitors were all wrapped up and arranged as near the fire as they could manage, Matt noticed that Pascal was still awake, with a brooding frown on his face as he gazed off into space at some un-seen horror. Matt told himself it was none of his business, but the assurances didn’t work. With a sigh, he sat up and moved closer to his traveling companion. “What’s keeping you awake?”

Pascal flushed. ‘Too much wine, belike.“

“Wine doesn’t hinder sleep-it helps. That fight bothering you?”

“Only the silver penny I lost on it.” But Pascal’s answer was too quick, too elaborately casual. “It is bothering you.” Matt frowned. “What’s the matter? I thought I was the one who was preoccupied with morals here.”

“You are! I am not! ‘Twas only… well, ’twas seeing that knight go off with that lady, ten years younger than he at least, and realizing what randy goats they must have been, both of those who fought over her…”

“Oh.” Matt straightened “It isn’t blood that bothers you-it’s the affluent older man soliciting the favors of the younger woman.”

Pascal just glowered at the fire. “I hope your cousin doesn’t find men’s brawling attractive,” Matt said. “I doubt it-or at least, I doubt that she is worse than any, in that regard. I have heard that all women thrill to see men fighting over them.”

“That’s a popular fancy, yes. But you think she might find older men attractive?”

“How could she?” Pascal demanded, his eyes glittering with anger. “He is twice her age at least, and belike is paunchy and foul of breath into the bargain!”

Matt frowned, studying him, then hazarded a guess. “You don’t think she’d be able to ignore all that if he were rich enough?”

Pascal shot up from his blanket, face an inch from Matt’s as he growled, “How can you defame a pure innocent maid so!”

“I didn’t,” Matt said hastily, “just made a guess. So you don’t know that he’s ugly and feeble?”

“How could he be aught else?” Pascal bleated. Matt forced a smile. “Some of us manage to keep in shape, even if we do have desk jobs. But not too many teenagers find forty-five-year-old men attractive. You’re probably safe on that score.”

“But I have only youth,” Pascal mourned, “no beauty of face or form, no wealth, no rank! I shudder to think on it, but I cannot help it, not when I saw that knight ascend the stairs with that lady to their temporary ecstasy! What manner of man is he, who will soon be debauching my fair cousin?”

“Nice question.” Matt wondered how the prospective bridegroom had made his fortune. He also wondered what the knight’s wife would say if she ever found out what was going on tonight. He didn’t think her own infidelities would insulate her feelings, as Pascal seemed to believe. In his experience, most people thought that their own little sins were perfectly all right-it was just everybody else’s that were wrong. The windows were gray with the coming dawn as Matt shook Pascal awake. “Come on, lazybones! I want to get an early start.”

Pascal rolled one eye open, took in the light-or lack thereof-and closed his eyes with a groan. “ ‘Tis not yet dawn!”

“Yeah, but we have a lot of miles to cover, and we don’t want to get there staggering and worn out. We want to be at your cousin’s castle by mid-afternoon, remember?” Actually, Matt didn’t want to be there in the common room when the knight and lady came back downstairs-now that he was a husband himself, he found that he had a tougher time watching other people’s adulteries. He resolutely refused to think why. But before Pascal could even get up, the knight came down the stairs. It wasn’t the victorious knight, though, it was the loser-and it wasn’t the lady who was with him, but one of the serving wenches, hanging on his arm and laughing gaily at some jest he was making. Matt realized he was staring and wrenched his gaze away just before the knight happened to glance around the room, smiling, one arm around the girl’s shoulders, the other in an improvised sling. “You look like a fish being served up for dinner,” Matt muttered to Pascal. “Better get up and start moving.”

The young man had been staring as if his face wore a matched pair of fried eggs. Now he gave his head a quick shake and turned to climb out of his blanket, then fold it up. Matt followed suit, relieved to find that he wasn’t the only one taken by surprise. The knight sat down at a table, still grinning. “I could eat my horse, or at least as much food as he!”

“ ‘Tis early still, but I shall bring you whatever is hot.” The wench favored him with a slumberous look. The knight laughed softly, with one last tug at her fingers, and she turned away, tossing her head at the chorus of catcalls with which her fellow serving maids greeted her. “Jealous witches! Simply because he did not choose one of you!”

“Who else among us was so quick with comfort and nursing?” a buxom wench countered. “Was the loser worth your time?” The girl smiled and flaunted a brooch. “Gold!” The buxom one lost her smile, eyes round. “And more in coin,” the wench told her. The other girls hissed envy. She tossed her head again and flounced over to pick up her tray. “It is good to be charitable to poor wounded knights.”

“Aye, if they be rich and spendthrift!” another girl sneered. “And lacking in taste,” a third contributed. The chorus of jibes went on until she had taken her tray away, still with a self-satisfied smile; she obviously felt that she had pulled off a coup right beneath their noses. So, obviously, did they. “I find I have small appetite for breakfast,” Pascal told Matt. “Let us take a loaf and eat as we march.”

“Good idea.” Matt went to the innkeeper to pay their score and pick up some bread. He was glad to see that Pascal’s part of Merovence hadn’t been completely corrupted by Latruria-yet They passed out of the village, managing not to be shocked by the number of people who were up and about-at least to judge by the smoke rising from chimneys and, in the case of peasant huts, smoke holes. Pascal seemed not even to notice, and Matt had become inured to a culture in which people went to bed with the dark and woke with the light. It wasn’t quite that bad at Queen Alisande’s court, where the candles, fueled by the royal exchequer, burned until well after ten p.m.-but it still made Matt do a mental double-take when he realized that most of the common folk were up and about when he would have been just getting to bed in his protracted college days. They hadn’t gone more than two rods past the village limits when a soft padding behind them made Matt turn around. Sure enough, it was Manny. “Did you eat well?”

“Aye, though the cowherd seemed inclined to dispute ownership with me.”

“You didn’t eat him, too, did you?” Matt said anxiously. “Nay. After all, ‘twas in your interests he objected.”

“Ours?” Pascal frowned. “Aye. ‘Avaunt!’ cried he. ‘I’ve sold that beef to a minstrel!’ ‘He is my master,’

quoth I-it galls me, but I find these simple peasant folk cannot comprehend how a monster might be loyal to a family, even as one of its servants might be.“

“I have a little difficulty understanding it myself,” Matt confessed. “Not objecting, mind you-I guess Great-Grandpa did a better job enchanting you than he knew. So what happened to the cowherd?”

“He did not agree with me.”

“I told you not to eat him.”

“Nay, ‘twas with my words he failed to agree, not my stomach. At the last, I became angered and told him that ’twas for me you had bought the steer, and he seemed doubtful enough that he left me to my repast.”

Matt sighed. “I can’t imagine why.”

“Certainly the wisest choice,” Pascal agreed. “Then you slept well?”

“Aye; green grass is soft enough for me. Why you plaguey people seem to think you have need of feather beds and such, I cannot fathom-nor why you will not allow me to accompany you into the towns.”

“Bad for business,” Matt explained. “We’re trying to attract crowds, not chase them away.”

“So you have said-though I should mink that no matter how well they pay you, they would pay better to be sure I would go away.”

“Well, yes,” Matt said judiciously, “but that way, they might be a little more careful what they said around us, and I’m out to pick up gossip. Matter of fact, with you along, I don’t think we’d get close enough to overhear anything they said.”

Manny sighed. “Mortals are such flighty creatures. Delicious, mind you, but excitable nonetheless.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed that myself. But for the time being, Manny, we’ll keep the present system, if you don’t mind.”

“Not greatly,” the manticore sighed, “so long as you buy me a cow before you go parading into the town. Still, as I’ve said before, you need only whistle the phoenix’s call, and I shall bound to your rescue.”

“I remember the notes,” Pascal assured him. “But how can you be sure ‘tis the cry of a phoenix?”

“Why, because I heard the bird cry out thus just before he burst into flame.”

Pascal looked suddenly worried. “Don’t worry, you’ve done it once already, and nothing happened,” Matt said by way of reassurance. He turned back to Manny. “No chance that another phoenix will come to answer it, is there?”

The manticore shrugged. “I cannot say with certainty-but I have heard the phoenix is a most singular bird.”

“Meaning there’s only one of him, I hope,” Matt mused, “though I’m not sure I’d really be all that unhappy to see one.”

“Would it not depend on whether it came to help you, or hurt you?” Pascal offered. “Yes, that might affect the way I felt,” Matt admitted. “Now, Manny-when we get to the castle we’re heading for, village rules apply, okay?‘

“So long as there is a fat bullock staked out for me every night,” the manticore said, “I will be as invisible as the very wind. But you will make me feel unloved, mortal.”

“How about if I try to find a lady manticore for you?”

Manny’s grins widened. “That would be even better than a bullock.”

“No promises,” Matt temporized, “but I’ll keep my ears open for information about one.” And they went on down the road, with Matt pondering the complexities of manticore reproduction.

Chapter 9

Panegyra’s house was a moated grange-a large country house with low walls, a wide moat, and a drawbridge. So big a moat appeared rather extravagant to Matt, until he looked closely and saw that it had been made from an oxbow bend in the river, and that all the squire had needed to do was to dig another arc connecting the two prongs of the U. The house itself was fieldstone, and it was surrounded by a low wall, only four feet high-not enough to keep anyone out by itself, but enough to offer cover to archers trying to keep an enemy away. “Doesn’t look like they’re all that sure the peace will last,” Matt commented. “Her great-grandfather was not,” Pascal answered. “The land was still in strife then, between the forces of the kings and the counts.”

Matt pricked up his ears; that sounded like the medieval Italy he knew. “Did each noble family have a town it more or less owned?”

“Aye, or shared with another noble family.” Pascal looked at him quizzically. “I thought you knew nothing of Latruria, Sir Matthew.”

“Oh, I’ve heard bits and pieces-and hold off on the ‘Sir,’ okay? Around here, I’m just a minstrel.”

“As you wish,” Pascal said, “though I confess that without it, I begin to lose track of your station. Pardon me if I offend.”

“No need.” Matt was used to undergraduates trying to be too familiar with the professor. “If I can’t win your respect by my actions, the title isn’t going to do me much good.”

Pascal frowned. “I would have said that it was those who do not win respect who most need the title and station.”

“A point, but one I’d rather not admit. For myself, I’d just as soon not be left standing at the station.” He turned to the manticore. “Time to head for the tall timber, Manny.”

“Where?‘

The monster looked about at the wide plain, with nothing more than occasional outcrops of trees. “A point,” Matt admitted, “but I’m sure you can find someplace to hide. We paid that shepherd well to leave you two skinned sheep by the big rock in his meadow every night-so don’t ramble too far away, okay?”

“I shall not-but do not be gone overlong, I prithee. His flock is not overly large.”

“At the price I paid, he can buy sheep and still make a fat profit. In fact, he promised to do just that. Probably thinks I’m a bandit chief with a small army in hiding-so I don’t think he’ll try to cheat us.”

“He had best not,” Manny answered, and Matt wondered if it was his voice rumbling or his stomach. “All this talk of sheep makes me yearn for meat,” Pascal grumbled. “Come, friend Matthew! Let us knock on their gate!” But there was a hidden urgency about him; he was as taut as a hound on a leash. Matt gave him a glance, but only said, “Yeah, it has been a long hike. Off we go, eh?”

They crossed the drawbridge, and Matt counted it a healthy sign that there was no sentry stationed to watch. Come to that, the chains running up to the bridge tower were a bit rusty, as if they hadn’t been used in a year. Things must have been safe lately. They came through the tower-really just a stone arch, Matt discovered. He glanced back to see if Manny was watching them, but the manticore had already disappeared. “Good day! What do you here?”

Matt snapped around to see a man with a bucket and brush staring at them as if trying to decide whether or not to scowl-judging their class, most likely. He must have decided favorably, for he forced a smile and turned to Pascal. “I know you, do I not?”

“You do indeed,” Pascal told him. “We met at the family gathering last summer, though I fear I do not recall your name. Mine is Pascal de la Tour.”

“Ah! Young Master Pascal! You are welcome, sir, I am sure-though your coming is quite a surprise. I am only Anselmo, a footman-I doubt you would have heard my name, let alone remembered it. Come, let me conduct you to Squire dell Tour.”

He spoke with a heavy accent, but it was the same language-and Matt had grown accustomed to the dialect as they came south, after all. Anselmo set down his bucket and brush on the doorstep, then led the way into the house. He brought them to a small, spartan reception room where they waited for a few minutes before the door slammed open to admit a stocky, graying, bearded man in an open robe with open arms. “Cousin Pascal! What a happy chance!”

Pascal rose, just in time for the squire’s forward rash to carry the young man into his arms for a bear hug. Matt thought he heard Pascal’s ribs creak; then the older man held him back at arm’s length, looking him up and down with a grin. “Well, a bit of dust on you, but that’s to be expected in so long a journey. What happy chance brings you to my house?”

“Why, a wish to see something of the world, Cousin Giuseppe.” The answer was glib; Pascal had rehearsed it at least five times a day, all the way from Merovence. “I had thought it best to begin where I was not a complete stranger-and at the gathering last summer, you and my father did extend open invitations to each other’s families.”

“We did, we did indeed, and right glad am I of your company!” Squire Giuseppe turned to Matt. “And who is your companion?”

“Matthew, a wandering minstrel who has been good enough to let me accompany him. Even today, I have heard it is not wise to ‘ travel alone.”

“Indeed it is not-in fact, you are fortunate to have chosen a companion who did not try to cut your purse the first night.” The squire pumped Matt’s hand. “You are welcome, sir, welcome! I thank you for escorting my nephew! But come, gentlemen, come! You must see my house-then you must refresh yourselves, so that you may come to dinner!” And he swept them out the door and off on a whirlwind tour of his house, complete with names and dates of each ancestor who had built each wing or installed each convenience or had which picture painted or statue sculpted. He was indefatigable and never seemed to remember that his guests might not be-so when they had finally been deposited in a guest room, Matt sank down on a chair with a sigh. “Now I know what they mean by aggressive hospitality!” He eyed the great copper tub hungrily, but said, “You wash first, Pascal-I think you’ll take longer dressing. When do we get to meet this feminine paragon of a cousin of yours?”

“At dinner.” Pascal was already half out of his clothes, movements quick and nervous. “I can hardly wait, Matthew! A year and more, but at last I shall see her again!”

“Yes, at last.” Matt just hoped the boy decided it had all been worth the trip. “Your Majesty must not go!” The graybearded doctor trembled with agitation. “I have cast the runes, I have gazed within a pool tinted with a drop of your blood-and there can be no doubt! I have seen the babe that grows inside you! You are with child and must not risk the baby’s life by going on campaign!”

“I shall take no risks that I can avoid,” Alisande said with total determination, “but ride I must, or the child may have no father!”

The doctor’s face sank into a tragic mask. “At least ride in a litter,” he pleaded. “What! A warrior going forth to battle in a litter? Who would respect it?”

“I have heard of wounded kings who directed their battles from horse litters,” the doctor insisted. “I am not wounded!”

“No, but you will be if you do not take care. At the very least, Majesty, ride sidesaddle!”

Alisande tried to glare at the doctor, but she couldn’t keep it up with someone who was honestly concerned for her welfare. She dropped her gaze. “Very well, learned doctor-I shall ride sidesaddle. Until battle.”

“Do not ride in battle,” the old man pleaded. “What are generals for?”

Alisande looked up, eyes sparking. “Should not queens be generals, too?”

“Aye, Majesty-if they are not mothers.”

“I will not be a mother yet,” Alisande muttered, eyes downcast-but she put on her armor with a heavy heart. Then she took it off again. It no longer fit around the middle. When she was finally attired, her ladies sighed and ushered her out the door, shaking their heads but knowing it was useless to protest. As they came out into the courtyard, a shout went up and all the men stood straighter, all eyes locked on their queen, in her hood and coat of light mail, covered by the tabard with her arms emblazoned on it, and her battle coronet on her head. She stood a moment, looking out at them, feeling the old pride stir within her. Then she turned to the groom, who was holding the stirrup of her charger. She nodded and mounted, and her troops broke into another shout. She waved to them, acknowledging their tribute, and called out, “Men, the Lord Wizard may be in peril, for he rides south to learn what mischief brews in the kingdom of Latruria! We ride to be near if he learns tales of woe! It may be war, or it may be peace-but we dare not wait for the Latrurians to decide!”

Another mighty shout went up-then a grizzled sergeant began the surging chant of a war song. The queen smiled and joined in. But as the last chord sounded, the Lady Constance came riding up on a palfrey, herself clad in light mail, with a surcoat emblazoned with the arms of her family. Queen Alisande stared, astounded. “Milady! What means this?”

“If you are determined to ride when you should not, Majesty, then I must ride with you,” Lady Constance informed her. “Do not try to dissuade me! I shall ride with you, whether you will or no-for you must have at least one lady with you, to care for you at such a time!”

Alisande nearly ordered her back into the castle, but she froze with the words of command on her tongue, remembering that receiving loyalty had its prices, and accepting service when it is offered was one of those. She intended to be a leader, not a tyrant, and if she inspired her people to work for her, she had to accept their devotion. So she swallowed the words and let the smile that was straining inside her grow out. “You should not endanger yourself, milady, nor expose yourself to such rigors.”

“If you will, Majesty, I will!”

“And right glad I shall be of your company,” Alisande said, her eyes shining. “Come, let us ride!”

So she rode out to battle with Lady Constance beside her: she rode out wearing a gown, which she had never done before, with only a light coat of mail over it, and only her battle coronet atop her golden hair. There was a habergeon of heavy ring mail tied behind her saddle, though, with her helmet atop it. She rode sidesaddle, which she had never done before-but she did ride, head lifted high and proud, blond hair blowing like a banner, and her knights and footmen shouted with joy at the sight, then broke into an old marching song as they followed her. Out beneath the portcullis they rode, over the drawbridge and down the winding road to the plain, the troops marching behind them. Off they went, with the soldiers chanting a marching song, out across the valley floor-but an hour later, as they came up to the crest of the hills that surrounded the plain, she saw a lone rider in full plate armor silhouetted against the sky, sitting his charger and waiting for them. Her heart quickened with hope, and as they came up level with him, the face became clear, but the armor stayed black, and she saw that it was indeed he! “Sir Guy de Toutarien! You are well met indeed!”

“As are you, Majesty.” Sir Guy inclined his head as a courtesy between equals, not any token of subjection. “But why have you not come to visit your spouse?”

“We have said our good-byes already.” Sir Guy fell in beside her, and the army shouted with joy. Sir Guy turned to grin and wave, acknowledging their acclaim, then turned back and went on. “I would not trouble her heart again when I must be gone in an hour’s time. What of your spouse, your Majesty?”

“Why else would I ride south?” Alisande said with irony. Then her face creased with anxiety. “But tell me, Sir Guy-the messenger brought some talk of the Witch Doctor, Saul…”

Sir Guy contrived a look of sympathy. “I found him, Majesty, and spoke with him. The Lady Angelique is well, and they have indeed married, but there is as yet no sign of children.”

Well, Alisande thought, at least she wasn’t coming in last. That is good news, Sir Guy-but will he come to aid us in search of Lord Matthew?“

Sir Guy sighed. “Alas, I fear he will not. He persists in his claim that he is not overly fond of other folk-”

“Which the Lady Angelique stands to deny, if not to ameliorate,” Alisande said crisply. “What does he, that he will not come?”

“What he terms ‘research,’ though why he should search again where he has presumably already searched, I cannot tell.”

“Indeed! And what is it he searches for?”

“Ah! That, at least, I can say,” Sir Guy replied. “He still pursues his old goal.”

“What! Still seeking a magic that may work without drawing on either Good or Evil, God or Satan?”

“As earnestly as ever,” Sir Guy said, rather embarrassed for his friend. “He is absorbed in his studies and says that he does not wish to interrupt them unless ‘tis a matter of dire emergency.”

“Why, this case is just such an emergency!”

“Matthew is not yet in peril of his life, Majesty.” Sir Guy drew something out of his armor, dangling at the end of a chain. It was a ball about an inch across, perforated with tiny holes. “However, the wizard Saul gave me this talisman.”

Alisande frowned, peering closely at the bauble. “It is singularly unremarkable, though its silver polish is pretty enough. What use is it?”

“It is a talisman he has made, that we may call upon him if Matthew is truly imperiled.”

Alisande eyed the little ball warily. “How will it do that? Surely it cannot ring-it is a dumb bell!”

“Aye, but if we say the right words, it shall become most truly outspoken,” Sir Guy told her. “If we speak the phrase, it will make its mate, which Saul wears on his belt, to ring-or, at least, to give off a beeping sound. Then, promises Saul, he will talk with us, and if Matthew is sufficiently imperiled, he will come with all the speed a wizard may summon.”

“Fair enough,” said Alisande. “What is this magical phrase?”

“It is a set of numbers.” Sir Guy frowned; obviously it made no sense to him, either. “Nine one one.”

“Nine, one, and one?” Alisande stared. “What mystical significance has that?”

The hall was bright with the sunset, but there were four-branched candelabra waiting to be lit, all down the center of the long table. The dozen members of the family swirled about the room, chatting with one another, as Squire Giuseppe led Matthew and Pascal in. “Sons and daughters! Cousins! Hearken!”

Everyone stilled, turning to them expectantly, all gazes probing Matt and Pascal. Matt suspected they had been the hottest item of conversation in the house all afternoon. One young lady managed to step in front of the two men who had threatened to obscure her view-a blond vision in silk and taffeta, with a long braid curling down over one creamy shoulder, huge blue eyes seeking out Pascal. He saw her and went stiff as a hound on point. Matt took a closer look-this must be Panegyra. In beauty, at least, she certainly seemed worth all the fuss. He reserved judgment on her personality. When the introductions were done and they were sitting at the table, Pascal muttered, “I must be alone with her!”

“Easy, boy, easy,” Matt muttered out of the corner of his mouth, managing to smile about at his table companions. “Push it too fast, and you may get us kicked out of here. Take your time, fit in, and wait for your chance.”

‘There is no time!“ Pascal whispered. ”For all we know, she may be married within the week. Can you not contrive a chance?“

“That doesn’t strike me as very likely,” Matt said to his neighbor on the other side. “Not likely to have an alliance between Merovence and Latruria?” The lady stared at him. “But why not?”

“It’s a question of trust,” Matt explained. “When you’ve been enemies for so long, a few years isn’t exactly time enough to start believing your neighbor has nothing but good intentions.”

“Will you not answer?” Pascal hissed. “Hm?” Matt looked up as if the young man had said something surprising, then whispered, “Calm down and be polite, or you’ll be out of here before dessert!”

“Surely you can at least hold the company’s interest while I step aside with her!”

“Oh, all right,” Matt grumbled, “but if you try to elope, don’t expect me to hold the ladder.”

“Ladder?” His neighbor on the other side stared. “A ladder of diplomacy.” Matt turned back to her. “Each rung is another advancement in trust, then in treaties-cultural exchanges, trade agreements, and so forth. When you get to the top, you can develop a full-scale alliance.”

“Perhaps even a dynastic marriage?” His middle-aged neighbor dimpled prettily. Matt forced a laugh. “Yes, but that might have to wait until King Boncorro has married, and both royal couples have children.”

‘Surely Queen Alisande can rid herself of this lowborn trickster she has wed.“

Matt just stared for a second. “At least last till dessert,” Pascal muttered out of the corner of us mouth. Matt forced another laugh. “No, I don’t think there’s much chance of that She seems thoroughly enamored of him.”

“Besotted,” the woman sniffed. Matt decided he was going to have to watch his step-very carefully. When the last course had been devoured, the squire leaned back in his chair and said, “Minstrel Matthew! Will you not give us a song?”

“Why, I’d be glad to,” Matt said slowly, “but perhaps a little dancing first might settle the stomach.”

Whatever the squire thought of this bit of lunacy was drowned out by the joyful shriek from the younger generation. They were on their feet and clearing the tables back on the instant. “Not so fast, not so fast!” the woman next to Matt protested. “At least let me stand up and step back first.”

“Oh, all right, but hurry!” the young man near her growled. “The dishes!” the squire’s wife cried. “Have a care for the… oh!” The last accompanied by the sound of crockery breaking. “If you must clear the tables, take the dishes out first!” the squire bellowed. “Well, if we must, we must,” one of the girls snapped, “though there are servants for that sort of thing.”

“Then give them time to do their tasks!”

“No, we would rather do it ourselves,” another girl said. Matt stepped back, dazed. “Sorry,” he said to the squire. “Didn’t know I was going to stir up such a hornet’s nest.”

“You did not, I suppose,” the man grumped. “They are always like this nowadays.”

The tables cleared away, the young folk assembled in the center of the floor, one calling, “Give us a reel!”

“Nay, a jig!” cried another. “A hornpipe!” cried a third. “A hornpipe is only for sailors, lout!” snapped a girl. “And jigs are only for peasants,” he retorted, “though what difference it could make to one so clumsy as yourself, I could never-”

“Speak not so to her!” Another young man stepped in front of the girl. “People, people!” Matt held up his hands placatingly. “How about I just play it, and you figure out what it is?”

The suggestion met with unanimous protest, but it was too late-Matt had already started playing. “Hail to the Chief sounded a little odd when played on a lute, but nobody knew the lyrics, so they couldn’t very well protest about the sentiments. They did gripe about the rhythm, loudly and vociferously, but when Matt kept on playing in spite of the griping, they simmered down and started dancing to it. At a guess, Matt decided, it was a reel-some kind of line dance, anyway. He plucked the final chord, and instantly a boy was calling, ‘Too sedate! More spirit, minstrel!”

“Why?‘ Matt returned. ”Is the castle haunted?“

Wrong line-everybody immediately glanced over their shoulders. “Of course it is,” the squire said, scowling, “and our ghosts are not the sort of which we wish to be reminded. Play something jolly, minstrel, or I’ll see you given the haunted chamber this night!”

Matt wondered if the spectral company could be any more disagreeable than the live, but he said, “As you will, your Honor,” and began to play a tune that had recently been popular in Bordestang-ever since Matt paid a minstrel to start singing it around the streets. The young people looked up, startled, then began to nod in time, smiles growing, and turned to one another to begin a dance that Matt decided was well on its way to developing into a minuet. As they finished, one girl cried out, “How pretty! Are there words to it?”

“Yes, and they’re even out of copyright,” Matt answered, then rode over the confused looks as he began one of Shakespeare’s hits: “Tell me, where is fancy bred? Or in the heart, or in the head? How begot, how nourished? Reply, reply! It is engendered in the eye, With gazing bought, and sighing fed. Let us all sing Fancy’s knell! I’ll begin it-‘Ding, dong, bell!’ ”

“Sing it with me!” he cried, then repeated the line. A slight murmur answered him, and he called out, “I can’t hear you!” then played it again, with a little more verve from his impromptu chorus, but not enough, so he called out, “What did you say?”

“Ding, dong, bell!” everybody called back, looking angry. Sheesh, Matt thought, what a bunch of sourpusses! One fat and surly squire in a rich but gravy-spotted brocade surcoat under a velvet robe, scowled and said, “Have you nothing more fitting?”

“Squire Naughtworthy is to marry my daughter,” Matt’s host explained. “Surely he would not wish to hear of the death of true love.”

Marry his daughter? Matt took a closer look at Squire Naughtworthy. He was graying-fifty, at least, with little piggy eyes, a blotch of nose, and a ruff of beard. The mere thought of an old satyr like that with pretty young Panegyra made Matt’s blood run cold-but he noticed that Pascal was drawing the young lady aside for some private conversation, so he went on to the next verse. The audience sang the chorus line with a bit more verve this time, and Matt, emboldened, switched over to the version from The Tempest. “Full fathom five thy father lies. Of coral all his bones are made. Those are pearls that were his eyes. Nothing of him that doth fade, But all doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell. Hark! I hear it…”

And everybody joined in, with relish: “Ding, dong, bell!”

Everybody, that is, except Squire Naughtworthy, who turned purple and bellowed, “Would you rush us to our graves?”

The whole room fell silent, the whole family staring at him, taken aback. “My pardon, your Honor,” Matt said slowly. “I did not know you had a son.”

“I have not! But you clearly spoke of a man my age!”

Matt smiled with feigned relief. “No, good squire. I did not tell you how old the son was.” And before Naughtworthy could blast another objection, Matt struck the strings again, calling out, “Ding, dong, bell!”

“Ding, dong, bell!” The young folks grinned and sang it all the harder for Naughtworthy’s grousing. He turned magenta and swelled up for another blast-but his host very obviously disagreed with his complaint. He looked pleasantly surprised, and Matt guessed that it was the first time he had ever heard all the young folk agree on something-rather quarrelsome household, this. But Pascal and Panegyra were edging away toward the screened passage, so he decided to give his hosts a lesson. “Oh, the Hatfields and McCoys, They were jolly mountain boys, Till they both came down to town to do some dancing, And a McCoy there, stamping low, Trod on a Hatfield’s toe. And old Anse, he hollered loud to stop their prancing. ”Now, a swollen toe’s not bad, But this sullen Hatfield lad, Bore grudges long way out of all abettin‘, So he hid behind a rock Where McCoys were known to walk, And as one passed by, the Hatfield shot his head in. “Anse Hatfield took exception, Complained of vile deception, and led a troop of clansmen to the border. But the oldest male McCoy, Known as Randall, pride and joy, Saw them coming and laid ambush for a slaughter.”

Matt had them spellbound, but the greedy looks on their faces weren’t quite what he had hoped to evoke. Still, he was started now and couldn’t very well change songs in mid-verse-and Pascal had disappeared with Panegyra in tow, so Matt figured he had better hold the company’s attention awhile longer. Accordingly, he finished up the whole feud, managed to wipe out both families more thoroughly than the original feud had, then treated them to a brief scene in Hell where “old Devil Anse” met the real thing. The last part had them shuddering and looking over their shoulders again as he finished, and the squire frowned. “Has Pascal told you the history of our house, then?”

“Nay, cousin.” Panegyra had led Pascal back in during the last verse, looking flushed and very pleased with herself-but Pascal had a hangdog look that made Matt’s heart sink. He obviously needed a jolt, so Matt said, “You didn’t tell me you had resident haunts here.”

Pascal looked up, but didn’t quite focus. “Haunts?… Aye. What house of any age has them not?”

Matt was possessed of a sudden overwhelming curiosity at just what the girl had told his young friend, but he couldn’t very well come right out and ask. Instead, he said, “That’s true, but most of the ghosts I’ve heard of haven’t been malicious-just misunderstood.”

Pascal came out of his mood with a shudder. “Not this ghost, I assure you! Or the worst of them, I should say.”

“True,” the squire said judiciously, “and you have not even seen him, only heard tell of him.” He turned to Matt “We think him to be the ghost of my ancestor Spiro, who built this house-and seems to think himself still entitled to hold it.”

“He’s not willing to share?” Matt said carefully. “He would not if he could prevent it,” the squire said, “but he cannot-he is bound to the chamber in which he died.”

Matt grinned. “And that’s the room you were going to put me in if I was a bad boy, eh?”

“Oh, I would not truly have done so,” the squire protested-but Matt didn’t believe him. Still and all, when finally he retired, he had no complaint with the room they did give him-obviously a guest room, since it seemed to have been dusted in a hurry, though not too successfully, and the soot on the hearth looked to be ready for carbon 14 dating. The wall hangings were old enough to be brittle, but they were heavily embroidered and very attractive, and there was a very nice painting on the wall, though Matt really preferred his nudes to be somewhat less Neolithic in build. He did wonder why he had been moved out of Pascal’s room, then realized it might have been by Panegyra’s request. Well, getting away from the young man’s snoring wouldn’t be all that tough. He was just starting to unbutton his doublet when there was a knock at the door. He froze with a button halfway through the hole and called, “Who is it?”

“Pascal,” came the muffled voice. “Let me in, I pray!”

Well, so much for getting away from him. Matt stepped over to the door, drew the bolt and let the young man in. “Thought you were planning to sleep someplace else tonight.”

“Matthew!” Pascal stared at him, genuinely shocked. “Surely you do not think the fair Panegyra would-”

“No, but I figured you might.” Matt raised a hand to forestall the youth’s hot rejoinder. “I see I was wrong, though. No, you wouldn’t do a thing like that, would you? Not to her, anyway. So what did the two of you talk about?”

“Alas!” Pascal sank down on the bed, head in his hands. “She owns that she does not find me detestable, even finds me comely-but she will not bend from her father’s rule!”

“She won’t run away with you, eh?”

“Aye, and she owns that it is because she shudders at the life of poverty and hardship such a course of action would mean, even for the few years it would take before I built a good living for us.”

Matt thought it would take a bit longer than a few years, at least for the kind of living Panegyra had in mind. “She likes the soft life, huh?”

Pascal nodded heavily. “Not so much that she has a love of luxury, as that she fears poverty-and she fears what my fate would be if her father should catch us.”

Well, at least the girl was honest, though she added a bit of embroidery. Still, if it spared Pascal’s feelings, what harm was there? “And she doesn’t shudder at the sight of Squire Naughtworthy?”

Pascal shivered. “She claims to think him handsome, though I cannot see why!”

“Some women are attracted to older men,” Matt said slowly, even to men old enough to be their fathers-and they find strength and, urn, prosperity, attractive. Signs that the man would be a good provider. It’s possible, Pascal.“ But in Panegyra’s case, be didn’t think it was likely. The youth moaned and dropped his head back into his hands. ”She is sure he shall be a veritable kitten in her hands, that she will even persuade him to take her to King Boncorro’s court!“

“Men will do a lot for a pretty bride,” Matt sighed, “but I don’t think this one can get her into court-he’s just a squire, after all. She might change her mind, Pascal.”

“What could change it?” the young man said bitterly. “A knighthood,” Matt said slowly. He had to give the boy something to work for, something to hope for. “Or even becoming a squire with a definite chance of graduating to knight.”

“Aye!” Pascal’s head snapped up, his eye catching fire. “Women ever do dote upon men of arms-and a knight’s rank is surely better than that of an elderly squire with no prospect of rising higher!”

Matt wouldn’t have called Naughtworthy “elderly,” but he wasn’t about to slacken the head of steam he’d been trying to build. “That’s the spirit. A uniform always gets ‘em, even if it’s made of iron.” Privately, though, he doubted that Pascal had much of a chance of climbing the social ladder, or that Panegyra would really care much if he did. From the sound of her, she would definitely choose the older, wealthy squire over the younger but penniless knight. No, all in all, Matt didn’t think Panegyra was worth all the devotion Pascal was heaping on her. Love never did have much to do with the head, though. A cold gust suddenly struck, and the candle went out. In the sudden darkness, Matt froze, then asked carefully, “Pascal?”

“Aye.” The younger man’s voice trembled. “Did I leave the window open?”

“This chamber has no window!”

Matt was just beginning to realize that his host might have a peculiarly nasty sense of humor, when a faint moan began, swelling in a second to surround them, battering at their eardrums, and a pale, misty, glowing figure seemed to rise out of the bed to tower over them, grinning and drooling into its beard. It was a man, wearing a robe over a belted, knee-length tunic, with a medallion hanging from a chain about his neck. His eyes were holes, and his mouth split into a grin of malice and gloating pleasure, then split farther to reveal pointed teeth as he raised his hands, showing fingernails that stretched into claws, poised to stab and pierce. Pascal shrieked and dove under the bed. An eldritch howling filled the night, and he came bolting back out, shrieking even louder, pursued by a ghostly hound the size of a German Shepherd. “Get behind me,” Matt snapped, and stepped between the dog and Pascal just in case the young man was already too far gone to be able to understand. “Fool!” the ghost chortled, winding up to pounce, and the hound howled and sank its teeth into Matt’s leg. Fear clamored through him, but he reminded himself thatectoplasm can’t interact with protoplasm, and felt only piercing cold in his leg. He ignored it and recited, “From ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties, And things that go bump in the night, Dear Lord, preserve us!”

It didn’t rhyme, but boy, did that old formula work! The dog gave a howl that sounded as if its tail had been twisted in five places, then sank out of sight even as the ghost of the man screamed in frustration and fear, and winked out. The darkness was awfully quiet for a minute. Then Pascal asked, in a quavering voice, “Friend Matthew?”

“Here.” Matt tried to sound reassuring. “Just stay put, Pascal, while I kindle the candle.”

“Do not!” the ghost’s voice snapped out of the darkness. “Begone from my chamber! Or even your L-your appeal will not save you from my wrath!”

“Oh, come off it!” Matt snapped “If you could have resisted the Lord-”

The ghost gasped in pain. “-you wouldn’t have run at the mention of the word,” Matt finished. “And it’s a pretty general word, at that! I didn’t even specify Whom it referred to! Can you imagine what it would have done to you if I’d used a Name?”

“And what I would have done to you!” But the ghost’s protest sounded feeble. So feeble that Matt ignored it. “What are you getting so huffy about, anyway? You’ve got to know that we’re just guests…”

“That man who is with you is of my blood!”

“Nonsense-you don’t have any left.” But Matt wondered how the ghost could tell. Ectoplasmic genetic imprints? Could ghosts read DNA code? “Even so, you know he’s not a regular part of the household, and that we had no choice about which room we were given. What makes you so territorial, anyway?”

“I built this house!”

“And left it to your son,” Matt finished. “What’s the matter? Was he too eager to inherit?”

The room was ghastly quiet for a moment. Then the ghost’s tone was bloodcurdling. “How did you know?”

Chapter 10

“Just basic reasoning,” Matt said quickly. “That would give you something of a score to settle, and even if you had no way to do that-”

“No way?” the ghost said bitterly. “He laughed at my anger; he mocked at my pain!”

“Yes, the younger generation has no respect for its elders. Couldn’t you get back at him after he died, though?”

“Nay. He was not tied to his chamber by the violence of his death, he-his soul plunged like a stone into the depths, screaming as it went.” Sparks glowed in the ghost’s hollow eyes. “That was my revenge!”

“Then why do you keep trying to take it out on whoever sleeps in your room?”

“If you had suffered as I have suffered, you, too, would pounce upon any who happened within your reach!”

Matt shuddered. “I hope I wouldn’t! Is that all it is-just a colossal bad temper?”

The ghost fixed the glowing sparks on him. “What else should it be?”

“An attempt to communicate,” Matt said. “If it is, I’m not getting the message.”

The ghost just stood glaring at him, and Matt felt a thrill of accomplishment. Pascal stared at him as if he were a superman from another world. “There was a broken promise,” the ghost finally said. “And you think the current generation might be able to mend it, if they cared enough to do the research? You’re not exactly behaving in a manner calculated to inspire concern.”

“Nay, but any should wish to be rid of me!”

“Enough to look through the family records and try to find a reason for your haunting.” Matt nodded. “Well, I’m only here for the night, so I don’t have time for extended research. How about you just tell me?”

The ghost glowered at him, but said, “I am Spiro, the first squire of this manor. I built it-but I did not mean to lie near it for eternity.”

“Then it sounds as if your goals coincide with the current squire’s,” Matt said. “I’m sure he’d like to get this room back-though I must admit he seems to find it useful to hold over people’s heads as a threat, if they’re naughty.”

The ghost’s head snapped upright. “You mean he uses me as his whip and his goad? Why, the poltroon, the vile villain, the-”

“-inheritor of tradition,” Matt said, cutting him off. “I gather he’s just keeping up what his forefathers have done. So where-” Then the significance of the name hit. “Spiro? That’s Greek!”

“Your perception amazes me,” the specter said dryly. “Aye, I am Greek-and longed to return to my native Athens, to the Parthenon and the groves of Academe. I had intended to depart in two years’ time, and my son would have been rid of me-but he could not even wait that long!”

“Sure-you were going to take all the money with you. Probably sell the land, too, and he knew he didn’t have money enough so buy it”

“I doubt it not,” the ghost said with disgust. “Yet I had always intended that if I did not return to Greece to finish my days, then my bones would!”

Matt lifted his head slowly. “So. If they were to ship your coffin back to Greece, your ghost would go with it.”

“Aye-and once there, I could shuffle off that mortal coil and pass to my reward.”

“You… sure you want to do that?”

“I have naught to fear of the Afterlife, foolish youngling!”

“Maybe some time in Purgatory, but all in all, you think you did as much good as bad in your lifetime? Well, then, be glad you died before King Maledicto came to power.”

Squire Spiro shuddered. “I am. That blackguard would have made short shrift of any man who sought to abide by the rules of chivalry, let alone the Commandments!”

“You don’t fear the Lord?” Matt frowned. “Why did you back off when I recited the old charm, then?”

“You asked Him to preserve you from ghosts, fool! If I honor Him, of course I will honor those whom He protects.” Spiro drew down his brows, turning his eyes into caverns as he frowned. “But you are no mere minstrel, are you?”

“About that return to Greece,” Matt said hurriedly. “I’ll mention it to the current squire, but I can’t promise anything. If he wants a haunted chamber more than a usable one, he may opt to keep your mortal remains here.”

“If he does, then I shall howl night and day, I shall groan to break all hearts, I shall give him never a moment’s rest, I shall-”

“Haunt the whole house?” Matt said brightly. “Make it all unusable? Can you do that?”

The ghost looked daggers at him. “Nay. I am ever drawn back to this chamber. But I can make unceasing racket herein!”

“You might do better just not to bother anybody,” Matt pointed out. “Then he wouldn’t have any reason to keep you.”

“But no reason to spend the money it would take to ship my bones back to Greece and bury them and be rid of me, either!”

‘True,“ Matt admitted. ”Sure you can’t offer him some sort of inducement?“

“There is a treasure I buried,” the ghost said slowly, “since I had begun to mistrust my son. Two hundred years ago, it was only enough to take my bones back to Greece, but now-”

“-what with inflation, the price of gold has gone up, and it’s worth a small fortune?”

“Aye. When my body is buried near Athens, I shall come back to this house once, and once only, on my way to Purgatory, to tell him where to dig!”

“Giving him a nice, tidy profit.” Matt nodded, satisfied. “Good business all around, and everybody’s happy. Okay, Squire Spiro, I’ll broach the issue to your descendant in the morning. Of course, I’d be a bit more persuasive if I’d had a good night’s sleep…”

“My descendant is not the only one who needs a bribe, I see,” the ghost grumbled. “Very well, minstrel, I will leave you in peace for this night. But if you betray me, I shall find a way to smite you, soon or late! Remember that where my blood and bone may go, my spirit can go, though it takes a ruinous effort and causes me great pain!”

“Meaning that you can follow Pascal, if he sticks with me?” Matt cocked his head to the side. “Interesting! An ectoplasmic DNA link goes even further than I thought Still, not to worry, Squire Spiro-what I said I’d do, I will do. I can’t speak for your descendant, though.”

“You need not; gold speaks loudly enough,” the ghost growled. “Well, then I’ll leave you for this night-but remember your promise!” And with that he winked out and was gone. The room was totally silent, and totally dark, for perhaps a minute more. Then the candle glowed to life again of its own accord, revealing a shaken and sweating Pascal, who mopped his forehead and said, in a tremulous voice, “That was amazing, Matthew! But I think my ancestor was right-you are no mere minstrel, and are even more than a knight, are you not?”

“Me?” Matt protested, all innocence. “Pascal! If you don’t know my secrets, who in Latruria does? Off to sleep, now. If I were you, I’d take a blanket and head for the barn. I don’t particularly fancy sleeping in this bed alone, but I think I’ll get all sorts of kudos if I can emerge bright and fresh in the morning. You don’t have to, though.”

The primary kudo was the look of shocked amazement on the races of the squire and his family when Matt came in to breakfast the next morning. He allowed himself a feeling of satisfaction as he sat down behind a huge slice of bread that was serving as a plate, and accepted a portion of something fried from a serving girl. He nodded a pleasant thank-you, then looked about at the family with a bright smile. “Good morning!”

“Ah… good morning,” the squire said. “Did you… sleep well?”

“Oh, very well, thanks! Took a little while to calm down and doze off, that’s all.”

Pascal nearly strangled on his porridge. “Remarkable,” the squire’s wife murmured, and Panegyra was staring at him with awe-no, not awe, Matt realized: fear. “You had no… dreams?” the squire pressed. “No, but I did have an interesting conversation with the resident ghost.” Matt looked up. “Really very reasonable man, once you can get him talking.”

The squire turned white as a sheet. His wife nearly fainted, and Panegyra almost fell off her chair. Fortunately, she fell toward Pascal, and he caught her neatly and helped stabilize her. She murmured her thanks as she resettled herself, and Matt wondered if the move had been entirely accidental. “You… managed conversation with the ghost?” the squire stammered. “You… you were not… afraid of him?”

“Well, sure, anybody would be, the way he appeared out of nowhere!” Matt said. “But I know an old charm or two-minstrels collect those sorts of things-so he backed off and tried to order me out.”

“And… how did you refuse him?” The squire’s wife was recovering nicely. “I asked, ‘Why?’ ” Matt said simply. “And he told you?”

“Well, there was a little more to it than that.” Matt was beginning to enjoy himself. “But the long and the short of it is that he wants to go back to Greece.”

“Wants to go?” the squire said blankly, and his wife seized his arm. “Instantly, husband! Whatever he wishes, give it! If we can be rid of that specter, it will be well worth it!”

“Let us first see the bill before we pay it,” the squire said cautiously. “It is old Spiro’s ghost, then?”

“The founder himself,” Matt confirmed. “That’s why he feels he has a right to have the room to himself-he not only built it, he also died in it.”

“The grandest room in the house!” the squire’s wife wailed. “But how can he go back to his homeland?” the squire asked, staring. “He is dead!”

“Yes, but he seems to think that if you can dig up his coffin and ship it back to Greece, he’ll go with it.”

“It might be worth the attempt,” the squire said, gazing off into space. “Worth?” His wife dug her fingers into his arm. “Worth it a hundred times over! Then we can have the chamber exorcised, re-open the bricked-up windows-and we can reside there!”

“There will be some expense in it,” the squire warned. “There is the summerhouse you wished to build-that would have to wait a few years.”

His wife turned away, sulking. “All the best families have one!”

“All the best families have at least one ghost, too,” her husband reminded her. “We have two to spare-I shall not miss this one! He is so disagreeable, so malicious, so… frightening!”

“But is he worth your summerhouse?”

“Oh, aye, I would say he is!” The wife capitulated. “But there shall still be enough money to redecorate the room, shall there not?”

“Plenty,” Matt said. “He left a few gold pieces buried some place on the estate, to dig up and pay for his passage when he was ready to sail-but he was killed first.”

The squire turned avid. “Where is this treasure?”

“It’s not that much,” Matt warned. “He said that once his carcass is back in Athens where it belongs, he’ll make one last visit on his way to Purgatory, to tell you where it’s buried.”

“I may have my summerhouse still!” The wife clapped her hands. “I wouldn’t go that far,” Matt cautioned. “He said it is no treasure-belike enough to cover no more than the shipping and reburial of the coffin-and it may be a lie, to induce us to do what old Spiro wishes. Still, it is worth the gamble,” the squire said. “But there should be enough for redecoration,” Matt said. “There should,” the squire agreed, then turned back to Matt. “ ‘Tis a noisome task, digging up a coffin that is two centuries old.”

“Lots of wormholes,” Matt agreed, “and probably falling-apart rotten. If I were you, I’d have a new casket waiting that was large enough to hold the old one-and I’d dig double-wide, so that you can set the new coffin right next to the old one before you try to lift it.”

“A coffin inside a coffin? The notion will bear thought,” the squire mused. “I’ll leave you to think about it, then.” Matt finished his last bite and stood up. “You’ll pardon me if I have to eat and ran-but I’m bound for the king’s court; I hear he’s generous to musicians.”

“He is?” the squire said blankly, and Panegyra’s eyes lit. “Surely, Father! His court is always filled with music! You do not think his courtiers dance to their own singing, do you?”

“Please!” Matt shuddered. “Amateurs are bad enough in their own homes!” And he managed to make it out the door while the squire’s wife was still trying to decide whether or not to be offended. They swung down the road with a long, easy stride. Matt was pushing the pace a little, hoping that sheer exertion might pull Pascal out of the doldrums. “Buck up, squire’s son! At least she didn’t tell you that she doesn’t love you!”

“No,” Pascal admitted, “but she did not say that she does, either.”

“The fortunes of romance,” Matt commiserated. “I had that problem with a girl, too.”

“You did?” Pascal looked up, eyes wide with hope. “What did you do?”

“Everything I could,” Matt told him. “Made it clear that I was doing my best for her and wasn’t planning to stop.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, she finally admitted that she loved me.”

“What did you do then?”

“I married her-after a very long wait. So do your best to prove your worth, and you never know what could happen.” From what Matt had seen of Panegyra, though, he thought he knew-but at least the effort might give Pascal a new interest in living. The young man was frowning, though. “If you have married a wife whom you love, what are you doing wandering the roads so far from your home?”

“Who do you think sent me?” Matt retorted. “Look, just because she loves me, doesn’t mean she wants me hanging around the house and getting underfoot all the time. Say, who are those kids on the road up ahead?”

Pascal turned to look, and stared at the large, boisterous group coming into sight around the next bend. “None that I know-but why are there so many of them?”

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Matt replied. “Well, let’s go ask.”

They caught up with the happy songsters, who were passing a bottle of wine from hand to hand-and if one of the boys occasionally paused to sip the wine from a girl’s lips, who minded? Not even the half-dozen middle-aged couples who swung along a little way in front of the pack of juveniles, with occasional glances back at their traveling companions. Matt left the young folk to Pascal and went ahead to the nearest mature pair-who, he noticed, were holding hands, but not wearing wedding rings, not even the little brass circlets most peasants wore. “G-” He was about to say “Godspeed,” but caught himself in time. “Good day, good folk! Where are you bound?”

“Why, to the capital, of course!” said the man. “To the king’s town of Venarra!”

“Why should we languish in the hamlets of our births?‘ the woman asked. ”There is nothing but boredom and grinding labor there! We shall go to Venarra, where all are paid in gold for their work, and there is continual revelry!“

Matt had a notion they were due for a severe disappointment, but it wasn’t his place to say so. He did notice the use of the plural, though. So they had come from different towns-which meant that, in a society like this one, they had probably never even met before. Was he looking at the saturated end of a long-delayed love story? Or a tale of double adultery? He decided not to stay too close, in case there was an angry husband following with a knife-not to mention an angry wife. “I take it this gaggle of overgrown children are bound toward Venarra, too.”

“Oh, let them enjoy life while they may!” the woman said, and the man agreed. “Before they must settle into the traces, let them kick up their heels awhile.”

Matt knew from his own generation just how long that while could be-but surely not in a medieval society! “You sound as if you speak from experience.”

A shadow crossed the man’s face, and the woman said, “Which of us does not?” She held up her hand for display. “See the wrinkles, the shriveling, the calluses? I do not rejoice in them, believe me! But any woman who has reared a family shall show you the same. Unless, of course,” she said bitterly, “she is wealthy enough to have servants, who may then ruin their hands for her!”

Matt guessed that he was speaking to a former chambermaid and mother. “Ah, yes, sweet lady, but what would any of us do without mothers to care for us?”

“Then there should be fewer of us,” she retorted, “so that a woman might have fewer years of drudgery. Nay, let the husbands bear the children, if they want them so badly! Let the husbands rear the ones they claim to treasure, but would as soon kick as feed when they come home o‘ nights! And let the women go free!”

Not all women enjoyed mothering, Matt knew-and the more often he heard diatribes like hers, the greater he thought their number must be. But that was in his own world. In this world, it was a very new idea indeed. “Have you done that, then?” He forced a grin. “Left a husband to take care of his children?”

“I have,” she said with a defiant toss of her head. “If he wants them so badly as to beget one after another upon me, then let him care for them! For myself, I shall seek excitement and adventure-and, aye, revelry and pleasure!”

“You, too?” Matt asked the man. After all, it was kind of a logical conclusion.

The peasant shrugged. “My wife was at me night and day to cease trying to order her about and order the children about. At last she cried that she would be better off alone, for all the good I did.”

The woman frowned, moving a little away from him. “She did not say that she wished you to go!”

“Not in words, no,” he said, “but in her looks, in the tone of her voice, in the hatred flashing from her eyes, she did”

“So you think that you should lord it over your wife?” The woman’s tone was dangerous. “A wife, yes.” The man grinned and caught her close around the waist. “But a woman who comes with me for revelry and delight, and the pleasures we may give one another-nay. I have no claim upon her, nor she on me, but only company, while we are agreeable to one another!”

He pulled her close for a kiss, and she yielded, but without quite as much zest as she had before. At a guess, Matt decided, this was the first time the two of them had discussed that particular issue. Pascal showed up beside him with a grin, eyes shining. “They have all left their parents and the labor of the plow and the kitchen, to seek wealth and gaiety in the king’s capital of Venarra, friend Matthew!”

Matt eyed him narrowly. “You sound like you think they’re doing the smart thing.”

“Well, they may not have found wealth,” Pascal said, “but they have surely found gaiety! If you will excuse me, friend Matthew, I find their company quite enjoyable!”

He dove back into the happy, singing throng. Matt gazed after and saw him flirting with a pretty girl. Well, it certainly did pull him out of the doldrums over Cousin Panegyra-but it didn’t say much for his fidelity to her. Admittedly, the treatment she’d given him was only one step from a brush-off, but more vicious, in its way, since it was designed to keep him bound to her-no doubt she was one of those girls who rated her worth by the number of boys she kept on strings, which boded ill for her future as wife to an older man. Pascal was ripe to lose himself on the rebound, for better or for worse. Matt hoped it wasn’t worse. On the other hand, the merry band did afford excellent cover for Pascal, and Matt wasn’t exactly going to be glaringly obvious with the middle-aged adventurers. Okay, he was a little young, being only in his thirties, whereas everybody else looked to be in their late forties or early fifties-though in a medieval society, that meant they were probably late thirties, or younger; sometimes peasants looked positively ancient by thirty-five. Okay, so being right between the two groups, he stood out a bit-but he was a minstrel, and nobody would be surprised to see him attaching himself to such a festive crowd. Matt, however, was a little concerned about this southward migration. These village kids just didn’t know enough to be able to cope with the big city-and none of the elders were wearing wedding rings; he suspected they had all kicked over the traces, just like these first two. “All” because he could see more of them ahead, as the roadway straightened out-two groups of youths, laughing and passing a skin of wine from hand to hand, and several smaller groups of older people, talking and jesting and flirting just as baldly as their juniors. Was half the countryside migrating to Venarra? And what was the other half doing at home, abandoned? Besides taking care of the kids, of course-if they were even bothering to do that. He found out when their band stopped at a wayside inn for lunch-along with half a dozen similar groups. “We are full inside!” the harassed landlord said, standing in the doorway, waving them off. “We will gladly sell you meat, bread, cheese, and ale-but there are no more places to sit!”

In a few minutes he and his serving-girl staff had a thriving business going in take-out orders-but as the older folk stepped up for service, a middle-aged woman came out of the inn door and berated them. “You clods, you lumps of earth! You have no more heart than a stone! Would you leave your wives and children to the wolves, then? Would you sacrifice them to your own greed and lust? For shame!”

The older travelers looked up in surprise. Then one buxom matron threw back her head and laughed. “I have not left a wife, I assure you!” The whole crowd joined in her laugh, with a note of relief. The woman flushed. “But you have left children! The pretty little ones who sucked at your breast-you have left them to the blows and rages of their father! You have left your husband to fend for them all, trying to plow the fields and somehow manage to care for the little ones! Can there be anything but disaster for any of them?”

“It would have been disaster for him if I had stayed,” the errantwife retorted. “I doubt not he will find a woman to fill his bed-let her care for the children!”

“Care for your own!” another woman called, and the whole crowd broke into angry hooting and insults. Red-faced and trembling, the woman went back inside the inn. Matt put a coin in Pascal’s hand. ‘Two of those little meat pies and a flagon of ale, okay? I think I want to go inside and hear the rest of this.“

“Nay, then, I’ll come with you,” Pascal said “Suit yourself.”

“I cannot-I am no tailor.”

Matt gave him a doubtful look. “Maybe I could work you into the act, after all. Well, let’s venture.” He stepped up to the doorway. The landlord spun to block his way. “All full, I said. No entry!”

“Not even for a minstrel?” Matt brought the lute around and struck a chord. The landlord’s eye lit, but he said, “There is no seat.”

“I usually stand while I’m working, anyway.”

“I will not pay!”

“It’s okay-my partner will pass the hat.” Matt nodded to Pascal, who yanked off his cap. The landlord gave him a quick look that weighed him and found him harmless, then stepped inside and nodded. “Enter, then.”

Matt stepped in with Pascal right behind him. A few of the other travelers saw and surged toward the door with a yell of delight, but the landlord stoutly blocked their way. “Only the minstrel, so that he may entertain!”

The crowd grumbled and groused, but didn’t try to push their luck. Matt stepped into the comparative gloom of the common room, to hear the woman who had been standing in the doorway still running her stream of invective. “Poltroons and adulterers! Abandoners and jilters! They deserve no better than hanging, any of them!”

“They shall learn the error of their ways.” The man sitting across from her clasped her hand, gazing at her with concern. “They shall come straggling back in grief, I fear, Clothilde. They shall come straggling back, begging for alms to take them to their homes, where they shall pick up the traces they have kicked aside, sadder but wiser-all of them. As my Maud shall, and your Corin.”

“I shall not take him back, not if he comes crawling! Not after he has left us without so much as a word of parting!”

“We must forgive,” the man murmured. “We who remain must be steadfast.”

“Not too steadfast, I trust.” Clothilde raised her eyes to his, her bitterness transforming into a hot-eyed stare. The man goggled, then squirmed, taken aback. “We are both married, Clothilde!”

“Does your Maud care about her bond? Does my Corin care about his ring? Nay, call him mine no more!” Clothilde angrily pulled her ring off her finger. “If they will not keep faith, why should we?”

The argument hit the peasant hard, you could see it in his face, and for a moment his longing was written naked on his features. Matt glanced at Clothilde more closely, and could understand the man’s desire-she was still a fine figure of a woman, and he could imagine what she must have looked like twenty years before. At a guess, the man had burned for her when he was a teenager-but when she married someone else, he had fallen hard on the rebound, then settled for second best. Could that have had anything to do with why Maud had left? “If they do not feel bound to us, we should not feel bound to them!” Clothilde gripped his hand with both of hers, eyes burning into his. “Nay, this could be our revenge upon them! What harm could there be in it, Doblo?”

“What harm indeed!” he said deep down in his throat, and his hand trembled as he clasped hers and he rose. Together they turned away to mount the stairs. That brought Matt’s attention to the sounds he was hearing overhead. Now he knew what the stay-at-homes did in Latruria. Pascal was looking around and frowning. “Are there none here of my own age?”

“No,” Matt said. “All the young folks are out there, joining the crowd that’s heading south. Take off your hat and get ready to pass it, Pascal. I’m going to have them rolling with mirth in a few minutes. They won’t start thinking about the lyrics until after I’m gone.”

But then, they would start thinking. He knew that. An hour later, as they came out to join the other travelers, who were finishing up on lunch and preliminary encounters, Pascal shook the cloth bag they had bought from the innkeeper and shook his head, marveling. “Make them roll with mirth you did, and made them generous into the bargain! But where did you learn that song about man’s slavery to sex, or his lying when he sought to resist temptation, or the moon over the street by the docks?”

“From two men named Brecht and Weill. Never met them myself, but I just love their songs.”

“Do you truly believe the folk there will think about the meanings of those ditties when you’re gone?”

“Oh, yes,” Matt assured him. “You bet they will-maybe even soon enough to prevent disaster. Brecht designed them that way.” He wasn’t sure that was the issue the playwright had wanted his audience to think about, though. “Have Latrurians always been so loose, Pascal?”

“Not from what I heard at the gathering last summer,” the young man answered. “The old folk were remembering how life had ground them down, with toil in the fields from sunrise till sunset, then laboring to keep the hut from falling down until well after dark.”

“Not enough leftover energy to philander.” Matt nodded. “Now that the taxes are down and the draft oxen aren’t being taken by the landlord, though, they can fill their bellies with only eight or ten hours of work a day.”

“There is time to think of games and songs,” Pascal agreed. “Ah, the miserable folk! To have had their lives so poor for so long!”

“Poor indeed,” Matt agreed, and assured himself that all he was really seeing was people adjusting to having some leisure time again. Now that they all had decent housing and clothing, they had become discontent, wanting something more, but not knowing what-so they fought boredom with affairs. “I’m surprised none of them seem to worry about their spouses finding out what they’re doing.”

“How,” Pascal asked, “when their spouses are a hundred miles away?”

Something about his tone bothered Matt. He gave the youth a sharp look and saw that Pascal had a faraway look in his eye. “You aren’t thinking about having an affair with Panegyra, are you?”

“If I cannot dissuade her from marrying that old fool-why not? She cannot truly wish to lie with him. I might have to make it seem like a kidnapping, but I do not think she would be loath.”

“Pascal,” Matt said carefully, “that could be very dangerous.”

“What could be wrong with it?” the boy challenged. “If everybody else is having sex without marriage, why not we, too?”

Well, it was natural to think that the peer group was always right. Matt had to try to counter the idea, though. “But the errant husbands will be back when they find that they’re not going to make their fortunes in the capital-and when they come home, some neighbor who has a grudge against the wife will tell on her.”

“If they truly thought that,” Pascal argued, “why would they take the risk?‘

“Because the danger of discovery adds some excitement to a very boring life, especially if you think you’re tied down to it because you were the one who got left with the kids. You heard Clothilde-part of her argument is revenge on her husband. How’s she going to have that revenge unless he comes home and finds out what she’s been doing while he’s gone? And what do you think is going to happen when he does?”

They found out at the next inn.

Chapter 11

Matt and Pascal were playing another inn-like the first, travelers stayed outside with take-away orders while the locals got together to commiserate inside, and Matt and Pascal had played their way in. Matt was just finishing “There Is a Tavern in the Town” with a sing-along chorus, when the Irate Husband came slamming in. “Where is he?” he bellowed. “Where is that cur Simnel? Where is the thief who has stolen my wife?”

A couple jumped up at the back of the room, the man turning to scrabble frantically at the window latch while the woman jumped in front of the him. “ ‘Stolen,’

forsooth! Taken up what you cast away, more likely! So now you have come back from your philandering, and think I shall be yours again, Perkin?“

“You are mine!” Perkin was in no mood for sweet reason. “And I shall beat you soundly to show it to you, Forla! What, do you think this puling coward will protect you?” He swept her aside with the back of his hand and lunged past her, grasping at the pair of heels that were just disappearing out the window. He bellowed in frustration and turned to charge back out the door. His wife was in no condition to interfere-a knot of sympathetic women were gathered around her, counseling her to lie still. Pascal stared at Perkin as he disappeared through the doorway. “He is bent on murder!”

“Some men take sexual jealousy to extremes,” Matt agreed. “After all, it’s the only honor they have.” For himself, he was rather shocked that none of the other adulterous husbands seemed, at all inclined to stop Perkin. “Come on, let’s go outside. I want to see how this ends.”

Pascal stared at him as if he were mad, but when Matt headed for the door, Pascal came along in his wake. As they rounded the corner of the inn, Matt handed his lute to Pascal and checked his dagger to make sure it was loose in its sheath. There Perkin was, charging after his rival! They were just in time to see him bring down the fleeing man with a tackle that would have done credit to an NFL halfback. Simnel kicked at his pursuer’s face in a panic-and connected. The attacker let go with a howl of rage, then leaped to his feet and swung a haymaker that grazed the fugitive just as he was regaining his feet, and sent him staggering. The Irate Husband followed up hard and fast, fists pumping like the pistons of an engine. The fugitive did his best to block, but most of the punches got through. He howled in anger and slugged back-and one of his blows clipped Perkin on the chin. Perkin rolled away and sank to his knees. Simnel shouted with satisfaction and followed up, punching and swinging a haymaker. Perkin’s head rolled aside with one punch, but he surged up inside the haymaker, a knife glinting in his hand. “That’s just a little bit too much,” Matt said, and stepped in to catch Perkin’s arm, twisting the knife out of his hand. “No steel!”

“What business is it of yours?” bellowed a voice behind him, and a rough hand yanked his shoulder, spinning him around just in time to see the fist that cracked into his jaw. Matt sank to his knees as the world went dark for several seconds, shot with sparks. He shook his head and staggered up, vision returning just in time to see his attacker pull a knife from his boot. The blade came in low. Matt dodged, and the thrust went short. Then Matt jumped in to try to catch the knife arm, but the attacker was too fast for him-he pulled the blade back, then slashed. Matt leaped back just enough to let it swing past him as he drew his own dagger. Crowd voices shouted with excitement, but he blocked them out and concentrated only on his antagonist. Matt saw the man’s eyes flick downward, to his own knife, and he slammed a kick at the elbow. The man shouted as he leaped back, then lunged with a speed that caught Matt off balance. Matt managed to twist enough so that the knife only grazed his side; he heard the cloth tear, and the searing pain made him suddenly realize that the thug was very, very serious. He wasn’t just out to even the odds in an entertaining fight over a woman-he was out to kill Matt! What had he ever done to him? They were total strangers! He brushed the thought aside-all that mattered now was staying alive. Could a peasant knife artist really bring down a belted knight? He could, Matt saw in the next two passes. The man’s skill was just too great; he had to be a pro. What was he doing here, at a roadside inn near a rural village? File the fact for later. For now, leap back from that blade, draw him into lunging, then lunging again, then again and again… Finally the attacker lunged just that much too far, off balance for just half a second, and Matt whirled in, catching the knife arm in an elbow lock and pushing down. The man howled with the sudden pain, and his knife dropped from suddenly nerveless fingers. The crowd shouted with delight, but Matt just spun back in, set his blade against the man’s throat and growled, “Who paid you to kill me?”

“None!” the man blustered. “None needed to, when you butted into a fight that was none of your-” The sentence choked off in a rattle of pain as Matt hit a nerve center.“Nay, no more! I’ll tell! The man who paid me was-” Then, suddenly, his eyes rolled up and he crumpled to the ground. The crowd cheered, and half a dozen men surged in to lift Matt up on their shoulders. Matt held on, their clamor ringing in his ears while he let the sudden numbness within him fade. When they set him down inside the tavern and thrust a mug into his hand, he faked laughter and sipped a little, nodding thanks for their shouted compliments, then started a drinking song. In a few minutes the men were all swinging their tankards in time to the music and bawling the chorus, leaving Matt free to welter in morose remorse. Why? Well, the peasant who burst in the door said it best. “He is dead!”

The whole room went instantly silent. Matt froze. Then Forla asked, in a trembling voice, “Who?”

“Simnel,” the man cried, and Forla burst into tears, wailing, “Oh, my love! To have found you so late, and lost you so soon!”

“Be still, woman!” her husband snarled as he staggered in the door. His face was a mass of bruises, and blood trickled from a cut on one cheek, but he lurched toward her, lips drawing back in a snarl. She saw him coming and screamed. Then a man in a fur-collared velvet robe strode in the door. A gold chain held a medallion over his breast, and his gray hair and lined face made him look all the more stern as he pointed at Perkin and shouted, “Seize him!”

A dozen men leaped to obey with shouts of glee. “Who is this guy?” Matt muttered to Pascal. “The local reeve, by the look of him,” the youth answered. “Someone with more sense than blood lust must have gone to fetch him.”

The reeve stepped over to the biggest table in the room and sat himself down majestically. “The court is now convened! Who will serve as jury?”

There was an instant clamor of eager willingness, and hands waved to volunteer. “You, you, you…” The reeve picked his jury by pointing at them one by one, until he had twelve good men and true. Well, twelve men, anyway. Out of the corner of his eye Matt noticed Forla edging toward the door, then slipping out. The reeve may not have known how the case was going to come out, but she sure did. On the other hand, the reeve probably had made up his mind before the trial, to judge by the way he ran it. “Perkin, husband of Forla!” he snapped, pointing at the cuckolded husband. “You are charged with the killing of Simnel, of your own village!”

“He had cuckolded me!” Perkin cried. “He had bedded my wife!”

“Then you admit to killing him?”

“I had every right!”

“Did you kill him? Yes or no!”

“Yes!” Perkin shouted. “As I would kill any man who laid a hand upon her! Do you tell me I am wrong?”

“Do you tell him he is wrong?” the reeve demanded of the jury. The twelve men put their heads together for a quick, muttered conference, then turned back to the judge. The tallest said, “He was right to kill Simnel. It was adultery.”

“The killing was justified!” The reeve slapped his hand on the table. “Set him free!”

The men holding Perkin stepped back, letting go, and the cuckolded husband stood looking about him, rubbing his arms where they had gripped him, looking dazed. Then fire lit his eye and he demanded, “Where is she? Where is my faithless wife? Where is Forla?”

The whole room went silent. Then the men began to mutter to one another, concerned but excited, and the women exchanged uneasy glances. “Where is she?” Perkin shouted. “They can’t think it’s right to let him kill her, too!” Matt protested.

‘“I think not,” said Pascal, “but they shall not mind if he beats her sorely.” He was very pale. “Where is she?” Perkin bellowed at the women. “You know, do you not? Tell me where!”

They rocked in the blast of his rage, but the stoutest woman said, with determination, “We know not where she is fled-but fled she has, and the more fool she if she has not!”

Perkin snarled and raised a hand, but the reeve thundered, “Nay! This one is not yours to abuse!”

Perkin cast an uneasy glance at him, then turned and bolted out into the night, bellowing, “Forla! Where are you, Forla? You may as well come forth, for I shall find you soon or late!”

“Come on,” Matt said urgently, and led Pascal toward the door. But a matron stopped him with a hand on his arm to say, “Do not fear for Forla, minstrel. You are a good man, and no doubt seek to save her, as you sought to save Simnel-but you need not. Where she has gone, no man can follow.”

Matt wasn’t sure what she was referring to, but it did reassure him. “Thanks. I need to be going anyway, though. Good night, goodwife.”

She flushed. “Good woman, rather! Though I was a good wife indeed, till my husband fled.” Then anxiety creased her face. “Do not follow Perkin-for he is maddened now and might strike you down without knowing what he did!”

“I’ll stay out of his way,” Matt promised. He patted her hand. “By the way, what do you think the jury would have decided if it had been the other way around-if Simnel had killed Perkin? If the adulterer had killed the husband?”

“Simnel would have been outlawed,” she said grimly, “with his life forfeit to anyone who wished to kill him, for revenge or for pleasure, or for any reason at all.”

Pascal blanched dead white. The woman noticed and scowled at him. “Are you an adulterer, too?”

“Not yet,” Pascal answered, “and I think not ever-now.”

As they slipped out the door, Matt said, “Wise decision, if running away with Panegyra, or even officially kidnapping her, would give her fiancé grounds to kill you out of hand, and the local reeve and jury would virtually ignore it.”

“It does seem the wisest course,” Pascal agreed. “Do you think they would do that to me even if we eloped before she married him?”

“I don’t doubt it for a second,” Matt assured him. “In fact, even without having done anything, I think we’d better go, and go fast!”

Pascal glanced at him in surprise, saw the grimness there, and hurried down the path toward the main road with him. As they came out onto the highway, Pascal asked, “Shall we not wait for our fellow travelers?”

“Yes,” Matt said, “five miles down the road. Then we’ll let them catch up.”

“Why the haste to go so quickly now?”

“Because that man I fought is dead,” Matt said, “and I don’t want to be around when the locals discover it.”

Pascal’s eyes went wide and frightened. Then he turned away, paying serious attention to making speed. “They will be after you with the reeve and all his men!”

“I don’t think so,” Matt said. “I don’t think any of them will even recognize him-I’m pretty sure he’s from out of town.”

“Why?” Pascal was getting very used to staring. “Because he was a professional assassin-I could tell by his style.”

“Oh! Then you killed him because if you did not, he would have killed you!”

“No.”

“Then why?”

“I didn’t kill him at all,” Matt explained. “I forced him to tell me who had hired him to kill me-but before he could talk, he died.”

“Sorcery!” Pascal gasped. “That was my guess, too. You might want to find a different traveling companion, Pascal. Almost anybody would be safer.”

The young man didn’t answer for several minutes; he only hurried along, watching the road and keeping pace with Matt. When he did speak, it was only to say, “I must think over my future again.”

“Yes,” Matt agreed. “That might be wise.”

“Hell and damnation!” Rebozo swore. “Can you not find a single assassin who is competent?”

The secretary cowered away from his master’s anger-Rebozo was, after all, a sorcerer, and a powerful one. Now was not the time to remind him that, so far, he had chosen all the assassins himself.

“First that fool of a knightling in Merovence, then that debacle of a manticore, followed by a ghost who proved to be as easy to bribe as any clerk-and now this! Two tavern brawls in a row, and neither slays him? Are your assassins all fools and oxen, or is this wizard of Merovence proof against any assault?”

The secretary grasped at the last phrase. “Perhaps, Lord Chancellor. He is, after all, Queen Alisande’s Lord Wizard-and her husband. Perhaps he is invulnerable to all but the mightiest spells.”

“Yes, perhaps he is.” Rebozo calmed with amazing speed, gazing off into space. “Her wizard-and her husband! Ah, if we could capture and hold him, we could bring that proud queen to her knees, and all of Merovence with her, at our mercy!”

The secretary shivered at the audacity of it-and the danger. “How could we hold so mighty a wizard?”

“With sorcery,” Rebozo told him, “sorcery of the foulest sort. The king might have to join with me in such an effort, if the wizard proves too much for me alone-but we shall attempt it! Send word to that chowder-headed reeve that he has tried the wrong man! Bid him arrest this wizard for the murder of your agent!”

“It shall be done, Lord Chancellor.” LoClercchi scribbled out a quick note, then passed it to Rebozo, who sealed it-carefully not signing it-then worked his magic over it until it disappeared in a flash. He leaned back and nodded, satisfied. “The note shall appear by him, no matter where he may be. He shall lead forth his men to capture and hold that wizard forthwith! If all goes well, he will be in our power by dawn!”

But the secretary knew better than to think all would go well-at least, if the minstrel really was Matthew Mantrell, Lord Wizard of Merovence. And if he was, it might be better if they did not capture him-for rather than ransom him by money or deed, Queen Alisande might very well march south against Latruria, with all her armies behind her. The secretary found himself wondering if King Boncorro was really ready for a war. Alisande was ready for a war, and growing more ready with each passing minute. The only problem was that so far, she had no one to fight. Of course, they were still in her own country… As they rode, peasants working in the fields looked up to see the marching army and the silver figure at its head with the glitter of sunlight on her crown. They shouted to one another and came running, to cheer their queen and bow as she passed. No one rode out to command them, none forced them-they came to catch a glimpse of her of their own free will. Alisande’s heart expanded within her at the sincerity of their devotion. Perhaps she was doing right by them, after all. She turned to watch them straggling back to their work as the vanguard passed… and saw a flutter of wings beating upward, a bird launching itself into the sky. Launching itself? Surely not! It sprang up too smartly for that, lofted too high as it was still unfurling its wings. Was some loyal peasant releasing his tame pigeon to honor her? A crossbow quarrel sprang up to meet the bird-sprang up from her own army, behind her, and a soldier broke ranks to run and catch the tumbling, bloody ball of feathers as it fell from the sky! Alisande stared, outraged, frozen by the sudden, callous stroke. Then anger broke loose. “Bring me that man!”

The soldiers looked up, startled, then amazed by their queen’s wrath. Red with anger they might have understood-but pale with rage? Over so little a thing as a pigeon? A squadron hustled the luckless crossbowman out of the field and up to the queen, where he stood like the Ancient Mariner with a very small albatross, while his queen sat fuming above him. “For shame, sirrah!” she cried “Are you so starved that you must seize upon every tiniest scrap of meat? For surely, one pigeon cannot make a pie! Do I feed you so poorly that you must devour every feather that floats by? Is there not enough food in my wagons to feed an army, that you must seek your own provisions from the countryside?”

It was her tone that did it, more than the words-the sheer icy rage that daunted the crossbowman and made his hands tremble. Again and again he tried to protest, but he was so terrified that no words came. “Royal rage” was no empty phrase, not now! “Surely there was but little meat on its poor tiny carcass-but there was as much life in it as in you or me! By what right do you deprive a fellow creature of breath? What need was there for killing?”

In answer, the soldier held out the tiny carcass with shaking hands-but two fingers held up a foot, so that Alisande could clearly see the capsule tied to its leg. She stared, taken aback. Then she glanced at the sergeant and nodded. He plucked the capsule from the bird’s leg and passed it up to her. Alisande opened it, shook out the scrap of parchment inside and read. Her face settled into hard, grim lines. Nonetheless, she looked down at the crossbowman. “You could not have known this was there.”

“Nay, Majesty.” The man swallowed thickly. “I am countrybred, and saw only the escape of meat that might help feed a peasant’s family.”

“Give it to the next peasant we pass, then!” Alisande commanded. “For now, get you back to your sergeant! Good fortune has saved you-but see to it that you shoot no more birds without reason!”

“Yes, Majesty! I thank you, your Majesty!” The crossbowman ducked his head, then ran off, relieved. Alisande sat staring after him, amazed at her own reaction. Why had she taken the death of a mere pigeon so hard? She had killed hares, even deer, for her own supper, and never thought twice about it! She had flown hawks to seize just such birds as this, and never given it a thought! Where had this sudden concern for even the tiniest life come from? And what did it bode for her prowess as a general? “What was it, Majesty?” asked Lady Constance. The woman was right-she should have been far more concerned about the message, than about the messenger. “A spy’s report, to the Chancellor of Latruria,” Alisande replied. “Some one of my peasants has learned to read and write, and taken the pay of another sovereign!”

“Or is not truly one of yours at all?” Lady Constance said quietly. “If that is the case, he is a most brave man,” Alisande said grimly. “Sergeant! Alert the home guard to seek out a peasant who keeps pigeons and can read!”

The man ducked his head and ran back along the ranks. “What did it say?” Lady Constance asked, eyes wide and round. “Only that the Queen of Merovence rides south with her army.”

“Why, that is not so damaging!” Lady Constance said in surprise. “There is no secret in this-every peasant in the parish knows it, and rumor will spread the word almost as fast as that pigeon could fly!”

‘True,“ Alisande agreed. ”It is not the news itself that angers me, but the simple fact of a spy living so close to my castle.“

“Small wonder in that,” Lady Constance said with irony. “Again, true-we must expect that every monarch about will set spies upon us, even those who are our friends. But to know that we will be shadowed every mile of the way, that the Chancellor of Latruria will not only know of our coming, but will surely know our exact strength, down to the man! And what the chancellor knows, King Boncorro shall know!”

“We could not hope to take him by surprise, I suppose.” Lady Constance sighed. “No, we could not,” Alisande said with regret. “I suppose it means no more than that King Boncorro is competent, or has competent men about him-but it serves notice on me to brace for a true battle.” She turned to her adjutant. “Give orders to shoot down any pigeons that we see flying near.”

The man nodded and turned away, but that odd pulse of pity welled up in Alisande again, the lament that any living thing should die without need, and she called out, “No, stop! It is ridiculous to even attempt it, when for every bird we see, there will be five that we do not! Let them go, mine adjutant-it is better that we know how much King Boncorro knows, than that we believe he knows nothing.”

And she set her face firmly to the south, ignoring the adjutant’s stare of confusion, no matter how quickly it was masked.

Chapter 12

Five miles was all it took for the twilight to thicken to the point at which Matt had to call a halt. “If we go any farther tonight, we might as well go wandering among the trees-we won’t be able to see any more out in the open.”

Pascal shuddered. “Not the forest, I pray you, friend Matthew! There are still so many outlaws that one does not ask whether one will be robbed, but when.”

“Doesn’t sound too good,” Matt said. “This road passes through the forest, doesn’t it?”

“Aye, but my relatives have told me that the road itself is safe. The king’s foresters and reeves have seen to it that the trees are cut back for seven yards to either side, and the reeves’ men patrol it frequently.”

“So travelers are never robbed anymore?”

“Almost never.”

Matt didn’t like the sound of “almost,” but reminded himself that they had a backup. “Okay, Manny! You can come out now!”

There was a moment’s pause, during which Pascal sidled around to put Matt between himself and the only nearby outcrop of trees-so of course the manticore stepped out from the boulder behind him. “I thought to accompany you openly on the road, mortals, but there were too many other folk abroad.”

“Yüü!” Pascal’s head seemed to jump a foot, though his shoes stayed on the ground, stretching him out, then snapping him back. “He does move quietly,” Matt agreed. “Yes, Manny, thanks for staying undercover. Half of northern Latruria seems to be hiking south on the highway.”

“The other half are staying at home seducing one another,” Pascal grumbled. Matt could see he was beginning to have doubts about Panegyra’s fidelity-and this before she had even married! But the man was far too old for her, and Matt thought Pascal was right-the little snip would probably be planning her first affair even as she was marching down the aisle! Assuming she wasn’t working on her second. Or third, or fourth. But maybe he was doing her an injustice. He turned to the manticore. “I’ve got a question, Manny.”

“I am hungry.” Both sets of teeth grinned. “I paid a fanner to tie out a brace of goats for you-he seemed to be overstocked, judging by the state of his clothes.”

“Where!”

“Ah, ah!” Matt wagged a forefinger, then pulled it back quickly, just in case. “Answers first, before you get my goat!”

“I thought they were the farmer’s.”

“Mine now-I bought ‘em. When Pascal introduced us, you mentioned that somebody had sicced you on me.”

“I had been commanded to eat you if you crossed the border, aye.” The manticore’s tongue slurped around its lips. “It took little urging to induce my accord.”

“Good thing you didn’t follow through-I’m not a man of good taste.”

Pascal winced. “That was old.”

“That’s why it didn’t taste good anymore. Besides, I believe in recycling. So tell me, Manny-who was it who told you to put the bite on me? Of course, if you can’t say…”

“ ‘Tis simplicity itself!” the manticore assured him. “The man who bade me gobble you was Rrrnimmmmmmmm…” His lips sealed themselves shut and his eyes widened in astonishment. “Mmmm! MM, mm!”

“I was afraid of that,” Matt said unhappily. “What’s your name, manticore? Not your true one-I can see you wouldn’t want to go spreading that around. Just the nickname I’ve given you.”

“Mmmmmanny!” Then the manticore clacked its jaws shut, looking even more surprised. “Easy for you to say. But how about this guy who compelled you to hunt me? What was his name?”

“Mmninmimirürimmmmm…” The manticore stared in outrage. “Mmmmm! Mmm, mmm, mm!”

“Can’t even get his mouth open this time.” Matt sighed. “Okay, what’s the name of my partner, here?”

“Why, he is Pascal!” Then Manny frowned, puzzled, and opened and closed his jaws a couple of times. “Don’t worry, they work just fine-as long as I don’t ask you to tell me who told you to get me. What was his name, by the way?”

This time the manticore hesitated. “I know, I know, your lips are sealed-or will be, if you try.” Matt held up a hand to forestall the answer. “Don’t blame you for not even wanting to try-the condition might become permanent, and then what would those poor lonely goats do? Not to mention all the spare cattle that are for sale between here and Venarra. Okay, Manny, go find ‘em. They should be staked out in a meadow about a mile back.”

“I go!” the manticore cried with a toothy grin. “Just try to snap ‘em up before they even know what hit them, okay?”

The manticore pouted. “I am a cat, Matthew! A large one, and mixed with a scorpion and a hedgehog, perhaps, but a cat in bulk, and a cat in nature!”

“Yeah, but just feed, okay? No recreation. Okay, go.”

The manticore disappeared in a blur. “Remind me not to get his goat.” Matt turned away. “Well, let’s pitch camp, Pascal.”

“Are you not concerned that the reeve may send his men after you?”

“Not terribly. Nobody seemed to notice my would-be murderer dying, in all the excitement over Perkin and Simnel.” Matt remembered the scene with a shudder. “Besides, out of sight, out of mind.” He only wished they were. “Well, mere living is a hazard, in Latruria,” Pascal sighed as he dropped his pack. “I was mad to come here!”

“Lovers generally are-and you really were mad for a sight of Panegyra. Don’t worry, you weren’t exactly the only mad soul in that house.”

A low moan began all around them. Matt froze. “Speak of the-” He clamped his jaw shut; in Latruria, it probably wasn’t a good idea even to speak about speaking of the Devil. “-of the ghost, and you hear him moaning!” He turned around. “That you, Spiro?”

“How did you know?” A wavering tendril of mist curled up from the ground, thickening and spreading to a little above Matt’s head. The top of it sculpted itself into the rough semblance of a human face. “Deduction,” Matt answered. “A form of reason? Foolish mortal!” The face firmed into Spiro’s countenance, and the body began to define itself into clothing. “When you deal with the supernatural, what good is deduction?”

“If it’s good enough for the tax man, it should be good enough for you,” Matt answered, nettled. “What’s the occasion? Decided it was going to be too long before they gave your room to some other poor sucker, so you might as well track me down and have another try?”

“Nay.” The hollow eyes scowled down at him. “I have come to thank you, if you must know!”

Matt stood frozen in astonishment for a minute, then said slowly, “Well, I guess I must, if you’re going to say it. Uh, you’re welcome, Spiro.”

“I have not even thanked you yet!”

“Okay, so I’m premature. My mother always said I was. Let’s try again. Uh… glad to see you, Spiro.”

“A pleasure, minstrel.” The ghost bowed. “Say, how’s it been going?”

“Most marvelously well! The current squire has already unearthed my coffin and built another around it. Even as we speak, it trundles through the night toward Genova, where it will take ship for Greece!”

“Hey, congratulations!” Matt grinned and reached out to pat Spiro on the back, then thought better of it. “I never thought he would agree so quickly!” Pascal said, eyes wide. “Who should better know the nature of my descendants?” the ghost said dryly. “Nonetheless, he succumbed to his wife’s pleading-and his own dislike of my claim on the manse, no doubt! I must thank you indeed, minstrel, for I shall soon be all at sea!”

“Must run in the family,” Matt said with a glance at Pascal. ‘Well, I’m really glad for you, Spiro-and glad I could be of service.“ He almost volunteered to help out if the ghost developed any further little problems, but caught himself in time. Besides, Spiro beat him to it. ”I am in your debt, mortal, and I dislike that state. If you need my aid, call upon me.“

Matt stared. Then he recovered and said, “Oh, that’s not necessary! I was just trying to help out a little, that’s all.” As a matter of fact, all Matt had really been doing was trying to get a very intimidating specter out of his room. He felt guilty about taking any kind of payback for it, even gratitude.

But Spiro was determined. “I must repay my debts, mortal! That is the nature of Purgatory!”

“Well, uh, thanks-but you’re going to be in Greece!”

“I shall be farther than that, if I have any choice,” Spiro assured him, “and I have, or I would not be here. Nay, even from Purgatory, I can hear and come to aid you-in whatever manner a soul may, who has Passed Over.”

“I’m sure there’s some medium of communication there,” Matt assured him. “Okay, nice offer! Thanks, Spiro! If I need a friend Over There, I’ll call! Assuming I can find a way to send a message, that is.”

“You have it.” Spiro nodded at Pascal, who instantly did the best he could to become invisible. Unfortunately, there was no cover besides the tent, and he hadn’t even started to pitch it yet. “Pascal?” Matt turned to frown at his friend. “He’s no medium!”

“Nay, but he is of my blood,” Spiro assured him, “and blood speaks to blood; like will to like. Have him call upon me, and I shall hear.”

“C-C-C-Call?” Pascal stammered. “Have you no wits?” Spiro demanded. “My blood has grown weak if it reposes in such as he!”

Pascal stared. Then his face darkened and he stood up straighter, clenching his fists. “Ah, that is better!” Spiro allowed himself a smile. “Never forget that you are the son of a squire, lad-especially if you truly seek knighthood! Stand tall and remember your honor! Even as your friend does.” He turned to Matt with a frown. “I would think you were a knight, if you were not so plainly a minstrel.”

“Appearances can be deceiving.” Matt just hoped they were. He needed a quick change of topic. “Say, if you founded the whole line, then you must have been the wizard!”

“Nay, he was my son.”

“Then you must have something of his talent for magic.”

“Not ‘must’-but I think I may have a trace.” The hollow eyes creased in a smile. “I shall hear young Pascal call, never fear-and I think I may find a way to answer. Farewell!”

“G’bye.” Matt waved as Spiro’s form blurred into the tendril of mist again and sank into the ground. Matt watched it recede, then gazed at the bare grass. “Well, I always said I needed every friend I could get”

“Then you must have some very odd friends indeed!” Pascal wilted, knees gone rubbery. “I am amazed that you are so undaunted! You truly are a knight!”

“Yeah, well, just don’t noise it around.” Matt turned back to the pile of canvas. “You want to cut the sticks for the tent, or shall I?”

The low whistle brought Matt out of a light sleep. He looked around, but the campsite lay still in the pale light of a quarter moon. There were no trees, just the boulder and a copse across the road. Maybe a night bird? Then the whistle came again, and Matt was sure no bird really sounded like that. He was on his feet with his dagger in his hand in an instant, fumbling for his sword. “Pascal! Visitors!”

His answer was a snore. “Pascal!” Matt hissed. “Wake up!”

“Oh, do not trouble him,” said a deep voice, and harness creaked as mounted figures loomed up out of the night. “It is yourself whom we have come for.”

Well, that let out bandits. Matt brought his sword out slowly, turning it to make sure the moonlight gleamed off its twenty polished inches. “And who might you be?”

“I am Vanni, bailiff to the reeve of this shire-and these are my watchmen.”

“Oh.” Matt lowered his sword. “Well, that’s a relief. What can I do for you?”

Pascal, awake now, stared at him as if he were crazy, but rose to stand at his side. “You can come with us.” Vanni sounded a bit surprised himself. “We have come to arrest you in the king’s name.”

Matt stood still for a few seconds, letting the news soak in-and, oddly, found that he had almost been expecting it. “On what charge?”

“For the murder of a man.”

“I murdered no man.” Matt frowned. “Who is my alleged victim?”

“We do not know his name,” Vanni answered, irritated. “He was a stranger-the man with whom you fought.”

“Oh.” Matt shrugged, making sure the movement made the light gleam on his blade again. “No problem there-I wound up fighting in self-defense. He tried to kill me.”

“I did see the stranger wielding a knife,” one of the watchmen said.

“And I saw the minstrel strike it out of his hand,” Vanni snapped. “Innocent or guilty, it is not for us to say.” His gaze stayed on Matt. “It is only for us to bring you to the reeve.”

Why did he have the feeling that the reeve was not going to give him an unbiased hearing? Matt wondered. Maybe the mention of the king? “The stranger just died all of a sudden. His heart stopped. I had nothing to do with it.”

Vanni barked a laugh. “Died while fighting you, and you had nothing to do with it? Nay, surely!”

“We’re in a land of sorcery,” Matt countered, “and you doubt it?”

Vanni frowned. “The young king is no sorcerer!”

“What kind of magic does he work, then? Even in Merovence we’ve heard that he’s powerful enough to protect himself-and in a kingdom with a lot of unemployed and vengeful sorcerers running around, that’s no mean skill!”

“The king’s magic is not your affair,” Vanni snapped. “Obeying his law is!”

“I did.” Matt decided it was time to call in reinforcements and raised his voice. “Didn’t I, Manny?”

“Indubitably,” the rich voice said out of the night. Vanni frowned, peering into the darkness beyond the circle of firelight. “Who said that?”

“I did.” The manticore stepped into the light, grinning and lashing his tail. The horses screamed and tried to bolt. A few of them managed it, with riders shouting halfhearted protests. Most of the men fought their mounts to a standstill, though-and looked as if they wished they hadn’t. “The minstrel obeyed the king’s law in every particular,” the manticore said, giving Vanni the full double grin. Vanni goggled at the monster, then managed to wrench his gaze back to Matt. “What manner of man are you, who keeps company with a manticore?”

“Just a traveling companion, really,” Matt answered. “Manny isn’t so much with me as he is with my friend, here.” He slapped Pascal on the shoulder. The young man gulped and managed a rather queasy grin. His nervous glance was ticking back and forth between the bailiff and the manticore so regularly that Matt found himself wondering if his eyes were run by clockwork. “The youth?” Vanni stared down at Pascal. The young man’s lips twitched in an attempt at a grin. “He is an old family, ah, friend.”

“A DNA-linked spell,” Matt explained. Vanni’s stare snapped up to him. “Are you a sorcerer, too?”

“No,” Matt said truthfully. After all, Vanni hadn’t asked if he was a wizard. “But I’ve heard talk about it.”

Vanni forced himself to look the manticore straight in the eye again-a brave man indeed, Matt decided. “Is your name truly Manny‘?”

“Of course not,” the manticore spat. “What fool would let his true name be known far and wide, so that any passing sorcerer might enslave him? ‘Twas one such incautious lip-slip that gave this youth’s ancestor power over me, to bind me to himself and his family for all my days! Forbear, foolish man-I will not step into your trap.” His toothy grin lolled wider. “Though you might step into mine.”

“I asked only from curiosity, I assure you!” It was amazing how fast Vanni could backpedal, even on a horse. “Say, Manny,” Matt asked, “do you remember my telling you not to eat human flesh?”

“Aye,” Manny said, his grin now so wide it was amazing his own head didn’t disappear into it. “And bitter am I about it, for mortal folk have a most excellent flavor.”

“I was thinking about taking it back.”

“Were you indeed!” Manny looked at the reeve’s men hungrily, and a slab of tongue drooled out of his lower pair of teeth to circle around his lips, slurping. “I am convinced of your innocence!” Vanni said quickly. “I thank you for your testimony, minstrel-and friend! I shall return to my master the reeve and tell him of your arguments, so monstrously persuasive!”

Or of my persuasive monster, Matt thought. “Why, thank you, bailiff. It would really be quite an inconvenience to have to go back to your village.”

“But we shall.” Vanni reined his horse around. “Ho, men of the Watch! Back to our quarters!”

“I am sorry to see you go,” Manny pouted. “Perhaps another time,” Vanni said uneasily. “It has been fascinating to make your acquaintance! I shall tell my grandchildren about you.”

“You’re too young,” Matt protested, and Manny concurred. “You cannot have grandchildren yet.”

“No, but I intend to. Farewell!” And away they rode, barely managing to hold their horses in from blind flight Matt caught a few mutters about, “Manticore for a friend! Can he be more fell than it, then?”

“He seemed pleasant enough.”

“Aye, one you could pummel with impunity.”

“‘Tis quite unfair-one never knows who will have powerful friends.”

As they disappeared into the night, Matt turned to the manticore. “Thanks, Manny. You take a hint beautifully.”

“Hint?” The monster stared. “I spoke in all earnestness, Wizard! Did not you?”

The next day passed without incident. Matt and Pascal joined up with another group of roistering travelers, much larger than the first; a few discreet inquiries revealed that this crowd comprised three or four smaller groups that had all set out from different villages with the same purpose: living the good life in Venarra. There was constant laughter, constant singing, and the wineskins passed freely from hand to hand. Matt wondered where they found the money to buy them. He found out at the next wayside inn, where the landlord sold them provisions at what had to be cost or below. In fact, when a few of the peasants took the wine and forgot to pay, he made no mention of it-just looked tense and nervous until they had finished lunch and started on. Looking back, Matt saw him wipe his forehead and collapse onto a bench with relief. Matt could sympathize-there were at least fifty men in the group, thirty of them young, and all of them strong and able enough so that together they could have torn that inn apart. No wonder the landlord had wanted to keep them in a good humor. Matt had also noticed that the servers were all male, and all wound tight as springs, as if nerved up to expect trouble. There wasn’t a one of them who wasn’t carrying a small club hanging from his belt. At a guess, Matt decided, the landlord had told the serving girls to hide and called in his hostlers, plus men from the nearby village, to hurry this crowd along. They were probably having to go through this at least once a day. Matt was impressed-it would have been more in keeping with Latruria for the landlord to use his female personnel to try to keep the vagabonds satisfied enough not to cause trouble. Of course, there were more women than men in the group, but still… Still, he proved to be wise, as Matt found when the crowd came upon a peasant girl working in the fields but sneaking covert glances at the wanderers. Matt could almost see her wondering whether or not she should join them-but she must have decided not, when the boys gave a shout of glee and started chasing her. They coursed as hounds chase a pretty doe, and brought her to bay the same way, then took her down, and what they tried to do to her was not pretty at all. Tried, because Matt muscled in, holding off the boys with wine, jokes, and occasional punches that everybody could pretend were all in good fellowship. He did all this while he was giving the girl a recruiting spiel about the joys of the capital, emphasizing all the fun she could have with boy after boy, then sent her home to pack without asking whether or not she wanted to. He turned back to face a glaring semicircle of youths, but grinned easily and rested his hand on his sword hilt as he said, “Well, back to the road, eh, lads? I doubt not she’ll catch up with us when she wishes.”

The looks they gave him made him determined not to turn his back on a single one of them-but they glanced at his sword, noticed that he didn’t have his lute on his back, and let themselves be moved by his jolly slaps on the back off toward the roadway again. Matt sang them Kipling’s “Smuggler Song,” with its refrain, “Turn your faces to the wall, my dear, as the gentlemen pass by,” and they took the excuse to start grinning and feigning good spirits, though every glance said its owner would delight in seeing Matt spitted upon his own rapier, if he’d had one. Of course, Matt was so intent on trying to calm them down that he temporarily forgot the power of verse in this world-and that melody strengthened the impact of the words. When they caught up with the crowd again, they found everyone reveling in the goodies that had magically appeared among them. The girls oohed and aahed as they fingered the laces, the men got drunk on the brandy, and Matt was quite content to let them give King Boncorro credit for long-distance generosity. Somehow, he wasn’t eager for fame at the moment. As twilight drew in, they came to a large open meadow where another couple of groups their size were already encamped, more or less. Local peasants were bringing in pigs, and the travelers were gleefully spitting them over slow fires. More wineskins appeared, again courtesy of the locals-anything to keep the strangers from foraging. The vagabonds proceeded to eat, drink, and make merry, and the locals faded away into the dusk-but several of them cast envious looks back over their shoulders as they went. Matt gave them two days before they hit the road themselves.

It was the wildest party he had ever been to, even including his one visit to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. There was a carnival atmosphere over the whole throng, a hundred fifty strong; inhibitions were thrown to the winds, along with random articles of clothing. No, not random-the more cloth that went sailing on the breeze, the more purposeful the selection became. Matt was shocked to see couples tumbling to the ground right out in the open, without the slightest attempt at concealment or seeking of privacy, eagerly stripping one another with laughter and lewd comments. Of course, he was a little more shocked to discover that he was shocked. Was there still a Puritan lurking deep within him? Or just a romantic who held the quaint old notion that sex should somehow be linked to love? Of course, he supposed love didn’t have to be private-but if love there was, then lovemaking grew out of intimacy, which cannot by its nature be public, for if it is, it is no longer intimate. He didn’t seem to be completely wrong, judging from the young lass sobbing on the shoulder of another girl, who was leading her toward the outer edges of the crowd, her face a study in compassion and anger. “He told me last night that he loved me!” the teenager sobbed. “And here he is, stroking that hussy who just joined us today!”

“There, there, Lucia. Perhaps it is only the wine.” But the look of hatred the older girl threw at a callow fellow who was unbuttoning a giggling young woman’s garments said that she didn’t believe her own lie for a second. “He was the first man I ever let bed me! He told me he loved me!”

They passed beyond Matt’s hearing, to his relief; he felt a pang of sympathetic hurt for poor little Lucia. Her dreams had already crumbled, after only a day or two. Maybe now she would go home, though… But no, she couldn’t, could she? Not in this culture, not without the man who had taken her to bed-if you could call a patch of grass a bed. He looked around for Pascal, to remind him to be a gentleman, but he was gone. A moment’s panic ended with concern as he saw his traveling companion drinking and laughing with a group of five other young people. One of the girls was making eyes at him; another was stroking his arm. Pascal? Homely Pascal? Matt began to suspect there was something going on here besides mere lust. Of course, maybe he was being unfair-Pascal might be attractive in ways Matt couldn’t see; after all, he couldn’t look through a woman’s eyes. The older folk were looking on with indulgent smiles, then glancing at each other with knowing looks that turned lustful as, slowly, they kissed, decided they liked the flavor, and kissed again, deeper and longer. Work-worn hands began to loosen ties and buttons-but the middle-aged did seek some kind of cover-even if it was only a bush-before they took anything off. A bit more decorum? Or only an unwillingness to display flesh that was no longer in its prime? Matt noticed one of these more mature women leading a young girl away-only this time, both of them were sobbing. Matt couldn’t detect any family resemblance. He decided the young weren’t the only ones having their hearts broken. Nor girls, either. One young man was huddling in the shadow of a cask, glaring down into his mug and muttering, “I told her I loved her! Why would she lead me on like that, then turn away to that great lout?”

“At least she let you bed her last night,” said his buddy. “Yes, and I thought it meant she loved me! All day I was burning for her, aching for her! Then she laughed at me and turned away with him!”

“Courage!” His friend clapped him on the back. “Give as good as you’ve gotten! There is no shortage of willing wenches here! Bed another and let her see how little she meant to you!”

The brokenheart looked up with a glint in his eye. “That would be the fitting revenge, would it not?”

They got up and sallied forth into the crowd, while Matt watched with his blood running cold. Okay, so the kid would bury his pain in some other girl-but what would that do to her? You worry too much about other people, he told himself sternly, but himself wasn’t listening. Now that he looked around with those last few conversations in mind, he detected the signs of the aftermath-the hard, brittle tone to the laughter, the determination, the desperation with which the young folk were pushing themselves to have fun. The girls were throwing themselves away, the boys were scalp-hunting-all of them trying to convince themselves that sex didn’t really matter. Pleasure shouldn’t be so much work, Matt thought. He remembered when he’d been in the same state, after the breakup of his first big romance. The rebound had been hard, and he’d ricocheted for a long time, slamming into a lot of walls. He winced at the memory of the people he’d collided with, and wondered how badly he’d hurt them. Any pain Alisande had caused him, he’d more than deserved… He wouldn’t do that to her. Never. He wondered about Pascal. What kind of shape would the boy be in, come the morning? What would happen to him tomorrow night? “A tankard, friend!” A buxom woman at least ten years Matt’s senior sailed up to him with a foaming mug in each hand. “Will you not join in the revelry?” The look she gave him left no doubt as to what she thought his place in the festivities should be. “Why, thank you!” Matt took the tankard with forced cheerfulness. “But before I take part, I must give part, for I am a minstrel, and song is my donation!” He took a drink that wasn’t as deep as it looked, handed back the flagon, and struck the strings of his lute. After all, she couldn’t quibble if his hands were busy making music, could she? “Will there not be time for music later?” she asked, pouting. She was still a very attractive woman, and Matt wondered how much of her own escape from mundanity had to do with a desperate determination to enjoy using her charms before they finally faded. He rippled out a sequence of chords, grinning at her, and tried to remember that the verses would work magic, and which song would have the least ruinous effect. What else? “Alas, my love, you do me wrong To cast me off discourteously, When I have loved you oh, so long, Delighting in your company! ”Greensleeves was my delight, Greensleeves was all my joy, Greensleeves was my heart of gold, And who but my lady Greensleeves?“

The crowd quieted and turned to look at him, listening. There were still pockets of giggling and sighing and moaning, but the simple fact that he could hear them meant people were paying attention. Matt sang on, remembering how many verses Childs had chronicled, and choosing among them carefully. He thought he as having a good effect-but remembering what one professor had told his class, about which feminine profession wore green sleeves in the high Middle Ages, he could only hope. He struck the last chord and bowed, doffing his cap as the crowd broke into applause with cries of “More! More!” But before he could begin gain, several women of all ages crowded in, eyes shining, with such choice comments as, “Can you finger me as well as you do your lute, minstrel?”

“Shall we make music together?”

“Is it true you only sing about things you cannot do?”

“Never run away with a musician,” Matt counseled. At least they had crowded out the matron with the first invitation… A shout of anger, the sound of a blow, and a chorus of cries of alarm and excitement The women swung around, avid for the sight, and Matt’s heart sank. Was that what came of singing about broken hearts in this universe? Apparently not-the wench who was the cause of it all stood to the side, eyes glowing as she watched two stalwart youths face off, each with a knife, one with his shirt open and the love bite already swelling on his chest, the other with a day-old mark on his neck and all his clothes buttoned more tightly than he no doubt wished. “Villain! She is mine!” He shouted, and leaped forward, slashing at his rival.