Fortress of Lost Worlds (17 page)

“Familiar, eh?”

Gonji bowed. “
Domo arigato
.”

“Now,” the warlock urged, “make yourselves comfortable. I will rejoin you presently. Do not be alarmed, now—
ex
corporam
.”

Domingo’s body collapsed on the plush carpet, lifeless.

Buey was the first to draw his pistol, sucking in a sharp breath. Salguero and Orozco followed suit, glancing from the fallen form to their surroundings, expecting some imponderable attack.

“
Kyooshi
?” the captain called in confusion and urgency.

Only Gonji had not produced a weapon. His swords still sashed in his
obi
,
he knelt beside the small body and examined it closely. To their joint surprise, Domingo abruptly rose again, smiling dimly at each of them in turn.

But it was
not
Domingo. Not the person who had just shared their company. Something was missing. The light of intelligence in the now witless eyes. The small man seemed a bit wambly, at first, then swiftly regained his balance, tumbling in front of them and rising to spread his arms in a gesture that courted applause.

Salguero grabbed him by the arms. “What is going on? Tell us what trick you play now. Our patience grows short.”

“Salguero,” Gonji cautioned.

But the little jester pulled away, displaying no sense of being threatened. Pointing to his throat and shaking his head vapidly, he cartwheeled from the ornate salle and on into the corridor, slower and with less verve than he had shown before.

CHAPTER TEN

The four guests at Castle Malaguer were served dinner in the opulent salle. They partook of a thick potpourri that featured a variety of meats and vegetables, fresh bread, and wine from Madrid. Their fare was set on a sturdy, intricately carved French dining table, having been procured by servants under the watchful gaze of a stuffy chief steward.

The elegant cushions they sat upon reminded Gonji of the
futons
of his homeland, save for one major difference: These cushions floated magically, producing height and distance adjustments made in response to slight nudges of one’s posterior. And when one alighted, the cushions gently descended to rest on the floor until used again.

Orozco and Buey, relaxing with the wine’s spreading warmth and their gradual adjustment to the strange environment, soon learned to put the cushions’ gyrations to the test. Salguero finally put an end to their pranks in the name of military dignity after Buey took a backward tumble that landed him on his face.

They were in the middle of their repast when joined by a stranger who shocked them with the announcement that they were now truly in the presence of Domingo Malaga y Colicos.

This
Domingo was not a warlock. She was a witch.

“
Si
,
the last of my line,” she explained to the staring quartet, “but always the people have expected their Archmage to be male, so I’ve given them what they expect. I deliberated a long time before deciding to show you the truth, since it is the truth we all need now for mutual survival.”

They rose, one by one, in deference to her, Orozco falling from his floating cushion to grope back up, flushed with embarrassment. Domingo laughed and spoke words of comfort to him as she ushered her three sons—Hugh, Rowland, and Darien—to their places at the table, taking the head herself.

The sons were quiet and dignified, keeping their places and making only passing comments as they ate, answering inquiries with monosyllables. Evidently brought up with strict attention to manner and protocol, they seemed nonetheless much different from one another in appearance.

“So sorry,” Gonji said, “but you say you are the last of your line. Are these not, then, your true sons?”

“Oh, they are, to be sure,” she responded. “What I meant was they are all of different fathers, you see. And none, sadly, seem to bear any special sorcerous gift.” She smiled at them, and they seemed uncomfortable with her maternal hovering. “I am the last of a long line of Colicos adepts, by way of Greece. And last
hidalgo
of the Malagas—not
hijo
but
hija
, as you can see.” She laughed heartily at her own jest.

A ceramic hookah with a multifaceted base was brought to her. This she smoked as she picked at her food. Wisps of blue smoke curled about her, patterns and recognizable shapes forming as her lips twitched with amusement.

She was a handsome woman, Gonji decided, and of indeterminate years. Perhaps sixtyish, but flattered by her days in the fashion of women who learned to master age by their very acceptance of time’s wearying progress. Her eyes were the hue of spring on the Mediterranean, full of wisdom, poise, and intelligence. Her wit was keen, and she seemed ever on the verge of telling one something he had never known about himself.

“So, conquistador,” she addressed Gonji, “you find my favorite chamber rather vulgar, no?”

The samurai’s brow furrowed as he glanced around the tawdry surroundings, and he half shrugged.

Domingo laughed. “A little alchemy, a little earth magic—it goes a long way, doesn’t it? Oh—I hope you don’t mind the
olla podrida.
It’s my cook, you see. He can never decide what to prepare when I say it’s to be a special meal, so he throws in everything he can think of.”

They all agreed that the stew was succulent, then Captain Salguero spoke pointedly.

“You say you’ve plied alchemy?”

She sighed indulgently. “
Si, capitan—
quite forbidden by the Church, I know. But I love the luster of gold, and I make only enough to please myself. It is hard work anyway, make no mistake, and I would never create a flood of it so as to cheapen its value. No alchemist with even a jot of reason would ever devalue her own work. Greed confines one in her own gilded prison.”

Gonji’s eyes smiled. He was fond of matters of discipline and self-imposed ethics. It was difficult to reconcile this dowager-witch with the territory’s image of the nefarious Black Sunday.

“It’s amusing,” Domingo went on pensively. “They search for El Dorado in the New World, and I’ve created it here. I must be growing senile to be showing so much of myself to Spanish soldiers.”

“What exactly happened to force you into action against Barbaso?” Gonji asked.

“What were we just talking about—greed?” she asked tellingly. “In the past, my ancestors protected this valley against incursion. You’d have found no criticism of my grandfather’s spells when the bandit hordes plagued Aragon. We had a fine symbiotic relationship. They provided certain goods, did our trading for us, and lent us manpower and servants as needed. In exchange the Malagas kept peace in the valley, sometimes affected the weather to favor them, and even—probably ill-advisedly—granted them certain boons of our work from time to time.”

“Now you destroy their crops and their game animals, deprive them of trade—not even a solitary chapman will come to this valley anymore—and you starve them out,” Salguero grumbled.

“Oh, come now, captain. They’re hardly starving, despite their posturing as the long-suffering oppressed. And by all the spirits, they’ve stolen enough golden granadillas from my enchanted arbor to keep them robust for decades to come. And what about my oxen? The hybrids I bred—how many times did you and your men partake of their tender flesh?” She turned to Gonji. “My ancestors produced a beast of burden of unusual characteristics, wayfarer. A wonderful animal of prodigious strength and endurance, easy to train to all tasks. They possess the wonderful virtue of a long maturation, at which time they lay down and die, yielding in death the best meat you’ve ever tasted. We once had a large herd of them. I now have
two
left, thanks to the thieving denizens of this valley, and those two will not breed. I suppose
they’d
be gone if I found a way for them to butcher themselves after they died.

“My garden of miracles,” she continued, heating up with her tirade, “they’ve picked over
everything
there. I’ve had to place it under constant guard. I have vines that dance to music—trampled under their feet in their eagerness to steal my singing blossoms for their ladies’ hair. And neither flora nor fauna dare stand in the path they beat to my orchard for the granadillas. They grow in frustratingly small quantities; nothing we’ve done causes them to proliferate. But eating just one of them produces hardiness, vigor, good health—many days’ nourishment. More than one—”

She drew back, eyebrows arched as she looked piercingly at the soldiers.

“More than one provides the languid narcotic effect they all crave in that foolish town. Euphoria and lassitude and endless good will—nothing that a good flagon of rum wouldn’t provide, with the exception that rum releases its grip the next day, though not without the residual effects the granadillas spare them. Don’t you people understand that respite from work is the just man’s reward while escape is the fool’s dream?”

The captain bristled. “My men are forbidden to eat your bewitched fruit.”

“Is that so? Well, we shall see.” She engaged Gonji again. “This went on, you see, for a long time. There’s no remonstrating with an avaricious spirit. And then other things began to happen. Things even I would call evil. And all attributed to me. People disappeared. Monstrous apparitions ravaged their crops, their flocks. Hunters were murdered by fiends on the misty plains. And it was all my doing, so they said. And so they appealed to the Church, and the
adelantado
of this province sent these staunch lancers to destroy me.”

“Our orders came not from Duke Cervera but from the High Office in Madrid itself,” Salguero corrected, “and I’ve seen nothing in this valley to convince me of your innocence.”

“That is not my concern, captain.”

Gonji stiffened at the sound of Cervera’s name but forgot it at once as he moved to dampen the smoldering inferno the pair were stirring.

At that moment Luna Invierno tumbled into the room to curl up next to the witch. He grinned up at her like an innocent babe confident of a parent’s protection.

Stroking Luna’s hair affectionately and purring down at him, Domingo caught Gonji’s questing glance. “This is Paco. You wonder how, eh, wayfarer? How I was able to enter Paco’s body, to share an adventure with you, to tilt at you so masterfully? Well, I don’t think I’ll tell you!” She laughed toward the ceiling in her throaty fashion, a laugh filled with gentle jest and warm camaraderie. But then sadness tinged her noble features, and she seemed to reflect aloud as she continued.

“Paco is my
gracioso
,
my dear sweet jester, who drives away my melancholy moods with his pranks. It’s a position of more honor than you’d guess. His family has served mine thusly for generations. But poor Paco was born defective. Crippled, you see, his limbs twisted in such a pathetic fashion that his dear mother despaired of his life—and her own. I was moved by her pain. It became my own. I employed every arcane philtre and potion in my experience to render the child whole. I finally succeeded—
thought
I did—with a complex spell I’d often been warned against. His body was made whole again, an athletic marvel, really, but… There was a price to pay, you see… But
together
we may become Luna Invierno—whole and mighty!”

The simple-minded jester grinned up at her trustingly, then laid his head in her lap. Her lips trembled slightly.

“I’ve always thought I should have paid that price myself. More divine retribution for—evil practices, you’d say, eh, captain? Ah, well… I’ve tried to make it up to him. He seems to enjoy it when I assume control of his body and show him how to perform such nimble tricks as he’s unable to discover for himself. His kindly spirit curls up in some dim recess and—I can fairly cry for the delight he seems to feel when we bound off together. Don’t look at me that way, gentlemen. Between your reproach and my mawkishness we’re fouling the air in here.”

The spell of her strange tale broken, the guests looked from one to the other uncomfortably, the powers she claimed over life processes making them ill at ease. Only Gonji could render comment.

“At least his innocence is preserved. That’s hardly the worst quality of the human spirit.”

She gazed at him penetratingly. “They call you the Red Blade from the East, do they not?”

Gonji was mildly startled. He’d not heard that appellation in some time.

“Among other things,” he replied.

Domingo nodded with matronly grace. “Come, gentlemen, let me show you some things that disturb me.”

They moved from the salle into the keep’s myriad halls and spatially distorted corridor network again, the witch guiding them through the ever-fascinating phenomena. It seemed they walked an amazingly long distance before exiting to the north bailey, which was surrounded by a series of fortified stone curtains that, to their gasping apprehension, extended forever into the horizon.

Buey and Orozco halted in their tracks, and the big soldier blurted an epithet, in wonder.

“New construction, you see,” Domingo explained in amusement, gesturing for them to move on.

They passed through a gatehouse in the nearest wall and into another ward. Supply wagons were strewn about. A long bakehouse occupied a portion of one wall, and on the opposite wall was a barracks. Mercenaries lounging outside took note of their employer’s passing, saluting and posturing respectfully as they jostled and whispered. It was clear that her identity was a revelation to most of them.

They passed another bailey wall, and still the castle’s sprawl went on. The area encompassed could have accommodated the needs of a respectable-sized city. They at last passed outside the castle proper, exiting beneath an immense drum tower to a large area warmed by some hidden source. It seemed as though winter had not reached these grounds in the least.

Here they passed Domingo’s arbor and what she called her Garden of Miracles. And so it literally seemed to be, for it was a place landscaped by the hand of some artistic god. Bright and beautiful, even by moonlight, its floral patterns rivaled those of the Alhambra. Birds flitted about within its confines, setting swaying blossoms into mellifluous tinkling. Strange animals stiffened in alarm at their passing, only to trot near the topiary border when they scented their mistress.

Domingo stopped and sniffed deeply at the heady aromas issuing from the garden. “There are more things in heaven and earth…” she began to quote, throwing up her hands in surrender to failing memory. “Ah, those perceptive Ingelese!”

A small unicorn approached the witch, and the men held their breaths to behold its delicate gracefulness. It seemed hardly to touch the earth as it padded forward.

Domingo stroked its muzzle through a break in the molded hedges. “All the wonders of the world fall before the sword. But soon you warriors will have nothing left to fight, and then you’ll destroy one another. And the magic will shed the darkness, and live again.”

“Karma,” Gonji said quietly. There was neither defiance nor rancor in his voice.

“Come, Red Blade,” she said. “I think you’ll rather enjoy this. You, too,
amigos—
follow where you see me go. Have no fear.”

She rounded a corner of the hedge and stopped before a spot where the bushes were cut square. Smiling impishly over her shoulder, the witch walked straight at the thick shrubbery—and disappeared as she struck its surface.

Gonji made to follow, seating his swords properly in his sash. Salguero touched his shoulder, a look of concern tugging the crinkles around his eyes.

“We risk God’s judgment, I fear, Gonji, being parties to such sorcery.”

“We bring no harm to anyone,
senchoo
, in exploring the world’s wonders. Come, let’s see what she’s about.”

Gonji steeled himself and stepped into the hedge. There was a moment of vertigo and blindness. He sucked in a cold breath. A sensation of weightlessness, then his feet struck solid ground, his knees buckling slightly as though he had missed a stair. He caught himself, felt the sobering wash of icy wind about him, and saw the smiling face of Domingo.