The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (49 page)

“Those incidents are not evidence,” Arlen said coldly. “They are coincidence magnified to significance through the lens of ambition. Where is young Campion’s army? Where are his allies? When would he have planned all this? And with whom? As I understand it, you are suggesting that Theron Campion is somehow destined to restore the monarchy. Under the circumstances, to believe in such an eventuality one would have to believe in magic.” Arlen paused. “Have you come across anything in your studies, Lord Nicholas, to convince you that magic actually exists?”

“Of course not,” Galing answered promptly. It would have been foolish to give any other answer to Arlen’s question, even though he’d begun to wonder privately whether there might not once have been something very like magic practiced in the courts of the ancient kings. But his private reflections, he thought, were not Arlen’s concern. Nor were any questions he might think to ask or friendships he might choose to foster in pursuing his own private ends. Which included, just now, putting a definitive stop to whatever Theron Campion might be up to. “You’re perfectly right, Lord Arlen,” he went on smoothly. “I do beg your pardon. It’s—well, disappointing to spend so much time on something and see it all come to nothing.”

“Of every twenty paths an intelligencer explores, only one or two will lead to a clear destination,” Arlen said kindly. “You must shrug and go on to the next project.”

Galing looked up eagerly. “I will, sir. Gladly. And what is the next project?”

“Gently, gently,” said Arlen, smiling. “I have nothing in hand just now calling for your special talents. Go home, attend to your affairs, forget all this tedious ancient history. And leave young Campion alone, eh? He’s too highly placed to be hounded to no purpose.”

“Of course,” Nicholas murmured, falsely submissive. “And St Cloud?”

“Let St Cloud’s own words dig his grave.” Arlen leaned forward, caught Galing’s eyes and held them with his predator’s steady gaze. “Let it be, Nicholas. And if you cannot, tread carefully. I would hate to lose such a promising ally.”

Galing nodded, rose, made his farewells, and left Lord Arlen’s house. He had no intention of letting it be. And he would not tread carefully. The best way to cross thin ice is not to feel your way, but to run lightly and quickly to the other side. It wouldn’t do to pursue the boy; he’d wait and see if Campion showed up for his theatre party. If he didn’t, well, his absence would provide Nicholas with a good excuse to call. The hunt was up, the quarry running. Soon enough, he’d bring him to bay.

TWO DAYS AFTER HIS QUARREL WITH THERON, BASIL WAS in a pitiable state of nerves. He had cast a magic spell from the forbidden book and it had revealed truths to him that, on reflection, he’d prefer not to have known. Or perhaps common sense had revealed them, and Theron’s own behavior, which had been very odd of late, and that was not magic at all, only delusion and coincidence. And then there were the dreams, vivid as life, which he could not remember when he woke, save for disconnected images of men with pelts and dainty cloven hooves, of his own hands turning to brown-furred paws, of a bright pool of water and oak and holly and a bone-handled knife. He felt restless, uncomfortable, out of joint, as though his skin were not his own. He could not work.

There were two possible explanations for all this. Either he was growing as mad as the kings had been, or else he was in sober truth becoming a wizard. The impression that his thoughts and words were not entirely his was very like madness, certainly. But it had all been true, hadn’t it, what he and Theron had said to each other? Theron had never admitted that the pearl had come from a woman; but neither had he denied it.

Madman or wizard? Basil wasn’t sure which explanation frightened him more. And there was no way of knowing which was the more likely without seeing Theron again. Their encounter had been so strange, limned by jealousy and colored with rage, that it seemed more like a painting or a play he had watched than a conversation in which he had taken part. Talking to Theron would at least make it seem concrete, palpable, subject to discussion. He would even apologize, if he had to.

But would Theron speak to him? Or was he too angry? Had all their winter’s loving pleasure been undone by one evening?

If it had been only the quarrel, Basil might have waited Theron out a little longer. But there was the Book, and his dreams, and Basil needed to know, finally, whether he was mad or not. So he went out in search of his lover, beginning with the places where rhetoricians were known to gather.

No one had seen Campion at the Ink Pot or the Blasted Vine or the Bramble Bush. Basil ducked into the Gilded Cockatrice, where the noble students liked to drink overpriced claret.

The Gilded Cockatrice was a large, high-windowed room above a bookseller’s; an ancient presence-hall, perhaps, or a petty court, its ceiling carved with strange beasts and half-human creatures holding up the mantel over the great hearth. It was always a noisy place, but today the noise was deafening: at the other end of the room, noble students were knocking back drinks and toasting something, which seemed to involve jumping up on a table. Basil looked around. He didn’t see Theron, but Cassius, of all people, was sitting near the door with a glass of ruby wine in front of him.

Basil accosted him. “What are you doing here, Cassius? I thought you hated this place.”

“I was invited for a drink,” Cassius said shortly. “What’s your excuse? You should be home working on that challenge!”

“I’m looking for Lord Theron Campion,” Basil said tersely. “Is he in here?”

“Not anymore,” Cassius said. “He left—that is, he’s probably at the Nest. Hurry up, you just might catch him—”

A voice raised itself above the general roar: “I’ve got one, I’ve got one! To Campion: Netted at last—may we all be spared the same sad fate!”

“Well said, Perry! Man deserves better. How about this? To Campion: May his bride’s maidenhead prove as tight as his lover’s arsehole!”

There was a brief, shocked silence. “Hemmynge, you fool,” said someone.

Basil surveyed the crowd: faces turned up to him or down to their cups and tankards, flushed, pale, round, hollow-cheeked, waiting for him to react.

“Idiots,” Cassius muttered, taking Basil’s arm. “Never mind, old fellow, let’s go—”

“It is traditional,” said Basil, raising his voice to lecture-room pitch, “to toast a man on the occasion of his betrothal.” He took the cup from Cassius’s lax hand and lifted it to the room. “To Lord Alexander Theron Campion of Tremontaine. May his dedication to his name and his lineage prove true and just.” He put the cup to his lips and drained the excellent red wine to the dregs.

Silent bewilderment greeted his toast, breaking into murmurs that followed him as he turned on his heel and strode down the steps and out into a bright, cold afternoon. Basil felt no anger as he walked through the narrow streets, just a slow bleeding away of mind and spirit that could only be stanched by the sight of Theron Campion on his knees before him.

IF HE WEREN’T BUSY WITH THE DETAILS OF GETTING MARRIED, Theron thought, he would go mad. Anything to distract him from what had happened between him and Basil! He could not believe what he had heard himself say. The words had come out of his mouth without his thought, without his foreknowledge, as though he were reading lines fresh-written, still wet with ink.

The worst thing was, he knew that they were true. He and Basil had loved each other, yes, but as shadows love one another, each yearning toward a shape that was cast by something real, yet never looking beyond the shadow’s form. The year he’d studied metaphysics, he’d read about something like that. All his study, though, all his reading and thinking and discussing—all these years of work, and where had it left him? The same fool he would have been if he’d spent them learning surgery, or dog-breeding, or how to tell the difference between goose-turd green and peapod green taffeta! He’d learned nothing that did him any good. He fell in love and gave his heart and felt safe, and then he found out that he’d gotten it all wrong. Furthermore, everyone around him had known all along that he’d gotten it wrong and were only waiting to tell him. Though he still wasn’t sure how he had failed this time. Basil had been everything that anyone could wish for in a lover: beautiful, brilliant, devoted . . .

Fortunately, Theron mused, this time would be his last. He would marry Lady Genevieve, and maybe he’d be faithful to her after all. God knows he wanted her right now. Her inexperience only meant that they could spend a long time working on the basics. She struck him as a quick learner. Once she got the hang of things, he did not imagine that they would soon tire of one another. The fact that he did not love her yet probably counted in her favor. Probably, he could only have a decent life with someone he was not foolish enough to fall in love with from the start.

The engagement had been formally announced at the ball where Genevieve had given him her earring. The wedding was set for autumn; it was too late to plan a spring wedding, and everyone would be in the country during the summer. He would probably go to the country, too. The city was always rife with fever in the summer, and it wouldn’t do to have him die before his nuptials. He thought he’d go to one of the Tremontaine estates, maybe with the twins and their babies. Di and Is could spend the warm months giving him pointers on how to be married; they’d enjoy that. He would certainly not go to Highcombe, even though all the people there who’d known him since he was a sickly baby would want to congratulate him on his betrothal. He would not risk running into Basil’s terrible father, the cock of the Highcombe walk.

Theron was now a welcome visitor at the Randalls’; indeed, it turned out he was supposed to be paying visits almost every day or it would be remarked on. He wished that he could go to the country right now; the number of things that turned out to be expected of him were a little bit more than he had bargained for. His Talbert cousins were giving a dinner for the newly betrothed couple, and Katherine was making him go over a list of invitations to distant relatives. She was even sending announcements to Jessica, wherever in the world she might be, in hopes that she might arrive home by the fall. He wondered what on earth Ysaud thought of the whole thing; surely she had heard.

And Basil? Did Basil know? Someone must have told him, by now. He wished that he had been able to tell him himself. It would have been hard, but at least he would have been able to explain that it was not in despite of their love, but rather, in a weird way, because of it. Perhaps he should write to him. Perhaps he should not. He still had classes to go to. But he would avoid the Blackbird’s Nest. Tony Lindley and that crew would be thrilled.

The dreams were back, too; he knew they were the same ones, though this time he was not himself at all. It was as if the dreams no longer bothered to draw him to themselves; instead, they had a part for him and he walked into it. He was a man with braided hair strung with beads and bells. Other men, his brothers, watched him from the shadows of the leaves as he walked toward that same damned grove. He was very much afraid, and it was important that he let no one know it. He wanted what was there, although he did not know what it was. It was like an itch in the part of the back you cannot reach. It was like trying to remember the thing that would save your life.

BASIL SAT IN HIS ROOMS ON MINCHIN STREET. HIS DOOR was locked and his worktable was bare of everything but a single, fat, leather-covered book. Basil laid his hand upon the oak leaf stamped into the cover. It was time.

He was very calm. Theron had betrayed him. That was unimportant: lovers betrayed one another. Kings had even betrayed their wizards—often, if there were any truth in his researches at all. Alexander Ravenhair had betrayed the great wizard Guidry by falling in love with Rosamund of Brightwater and wanting to marry her. But the wizards always managed to bring their kings to heel in the end, even if the end, like Alexander’s, was death.

The problem, of course, was that Theron was not yet king. Basil had pieced it all together over the long winter nights, a phrase here and a hint there, with the commentary on the spells to help give it all context. He’d started something at MidWinter, lying with Theron when he’d returned from the Hunt, and now the time had come to take the next step. Imprisoned in the city, lost in a labyrinth of stone and mortar and dry, dead wood, he had no connection to the Living Land as the Northern wizards had before him. But he had his dreams and he had his learning, and the ability to analyze data and reason from premise to conclusion. He’d reasoned long and hard, and he had concluded that he and Theron had come together because they had been brought together: by fate, by magic, by the Land that desired, after all these centuries, a wizard and a king to serve it.

Sudden tears blurred Basil’s sight. It was too much. He was unworthy, unprepared, untaught. He would never understand the words of the spells he cast, never be a true power-master like Guidry, whose own hand had inscribed the words he studied, or even Pretorius or Ranulph, though their power had been weakened by the South. But his study, his devotion, had taught him what the spells meant and why, deep down in his bones and blood where mere words had no meaning. By some process past his understanding, Basil had become a wizard, and worthy or not, it was his duty, his holy obligation, to set the young king to his trial and bind him at last to the Land.

The Spelle of the Great Tryal
was long and complex. Basil read it through once and again, emptying his mind of thought and emotion, filling it with images of green leaves and running waters, of a young man with long dark hair and a stag leaping like a breaking wave through the forest branches.