Wistril Compleat (11 page)

And thus when Wistril took in a breath, Kern
knew what he was going to say.

"Prepare to shut the gates," said Wistril.
"Allow the Lady and her party in. No one else. Is that clear?"

Gargoyles hooted.

Wistril turned, faced his House, faced Kern.
"You may leave," he said. "Any of you. All of you. With no shame,
no dishonor. You know what we face."

No one stirred, except Sir Knobby, who spat
and casually pulled a yard-long club from the shrubs about the
gate. "Hoot," he said, brandishing the club. "Hoot."

"I second that," said Kern, and Wistril let
out his breath in a whoosh. "Then hide," he said. "Hide, until such
a time as you may strike a blow," he said. "Apprentice," he said.
"Accompany me."

He walked away, and Kern fell into step
beside him. "Where are we going?" he said.

"We are fetching a white bed-sheet and a
lance," he said. "We shall affix the sheet to the lance, and then
we are going to hoist a wedding flag over the ramparts of Kauph.
Heaven help us all."

"Amen," said Kern, and the doors to the North
Tower flew open, and Wistril disappeared inside.

Kern heard the horses first. A moment later,
a billow of dust rose up, and then the Lady and her entourage
thundered across the Wizard's Bridge and charged toward Wistril's
gates.

Behind them rode the Baron. Kern twisted the
brass tube of his spy-glass until he caught sight of the Baron
himself. He stood up in his stirrups, his helmet askew, a bottle of
Wistril's good wine in his left hand, and wine dribbling down his
face. He's been enjoying the chase, Kern thought, and he savored
the moment when the Baron's jaw fell open at the sight of Wistril's
bright walls and the wide, sturdy gates.

"He's seen us, Master," said Kern.

Wistril squinted through a much larger
telescope which rested atop a three-legged stand. "So has the
Lady," he said. "Ride, woman! Ride! Why does she stop?"

Kern pulled his eye away from his spyglass.
"Can't put it off any longer, Master," he said. "It's time to fly
the flag."

Wistril sighed. "Confound it," he snarled.
"Raise it."

A line of gargoyles hooted the order to the
wall above the gate.

The bedsheet rose, and began to snap in the
wind. Kern turned his spyglass back on the Baron.

The man's jaw dropped, and he flung Wistril's
wine-bottle to smash against the road. He bellowed an order, and
charged, and his men followed suit.

Kern lowered his glass. The Lady Hohnserrat
-- that must be her, out in front, he realized -- shouted something
and motioned her party forward, toward the gates.

And then she turned her exhausted mount back,
and charged headlong at the foremost of the Baron's men. In an
instant, something long and bright rose up waving in her hand, and
only after the sun glinted off it twice did Kern realize the Lady
Emmerbee Hohnserrat had taken up a sword and was charging the
Baron's army, all alone.

"Fool woman!" shouted Wistril. "What is she
doing?"

"Saving her folk," said Kern. The Lady
charged forward, and Kern saw blades lifted in response, the
Baron's among them. "Master, you've got to -- "

Wistril was gone. Kern whirled, mouth agape,
searching the walls and the courtyard and the wide-eyed stares of
the gargoyles, but Wistril was gone.

A gargoyle hooted and pointed. There, between
the Lady and the Baron, a darkness fell over the ground. It fell,
and grew, and then it leaped suddenly upon the Lady, and it
vanished, and with it the Lady and her horse.

The Lady's party charged through Kauph's open
gate. Shouts rose up from them when they realized the Lady was not
in their number.

Beyond the gate, the Baron's men charged on,
the Baron himself at the fore.

Kern scrambled down the winding rail-less
stair that led to the courtyard, leaping off them when he was half
a dozen worn treads away from the ground. "Close the gate!" he
shouted. "Close it, and get me a bow!"

He charged into the courtyard just as the
gates swung shut. Twenty burly gargoyles struggled with the
closing-bar, and when it fell into place a shadow fell over the
courtyard, and left Wistril, standing, and the Lady Emmerbee, still
charging, in its wake.

The Lady's horse came to a wild-eyed halt
just inside the gate, causing the sweat-soaked party of strangers
there to scatter before breaking out into a hoarse, ragged round of
cheers and fist waving.

Wistril walked toward the Lady. "Welcome to
Kauph," he said, halting long enough to bow. "I regret -- "

The Lady Emmerbee threw her sword down hard
upon the ground and clambered wearily down from her saddle. "You've
doomed yourself, Master of Kauph," she said. "If you've half the
sense I think you have you'll open the gates and apologize and I'll
let yonder Baron marry my sword."

Kern slowed to a trot.

So that's the missus, he thought. She's
certainly not the dainty Lady I was expecting.

Indeed, the Lady Emmerbee Hohnserrat was
anything but dainty. She was tall. Taller than Wistril, certainly,
by a good half-foot, if not more. Her hair was brown, shorn as
short as Kern's; her arms were long and tanned, and her hands were
strong and brown. She wore tan cotton breeches and tough black
boots and a man's brown work-shirt, and except for the delicate
gold-rimmed spectacles perched sideways on her sunburnt nose she
looked more like the cook at the Laughing Horse than she did a
baroness.

The Lady saw him looking, and glared.

Wistril spoke. "I shall apologize for
nothing," he said.

"He'll strike you down and burn you out," she
said, turning her gaze back to the wizard.

"He has tried once already," replied Wistril,
calmly. "As you can see, he was less than successful."

A booming knock sounded at Wistril's gate.
"Open this gate!" bellowed the Baron. "Open it, or I shall break it
down!"

Wistril spoke a word, and the sound of men
and horses milling about beyond his gates was silenced. In fact,
Kern realized, everything was silenced. No birds sang, no wind blew
-- the whole of Kauph was as silent as a tomb, as if it had been
suddenly and utterly removed from the rest of the world. The trees
beyond the walls were still, as though painted, and Kern watched in
wonder as the crow that had been flapping its way up the mountain
froze unmoving in the air above him.

Wistril turned to him, and pointed toward the
Lady's confused, dusty entourage. "See that they are made welcome,"
he said. "I shall attend to the Lady. We shall dine promptly at
six."

And with that he held out his arm.

The Lady pushed her spectacles straight, and
regarded Wistril as though her were mad. Kern caught her eye, and
nodded, and spoke.

"We'd best all do as he says, Lady," he
said.

"We shall dine while that madman looses
demons upon us?" she said.

Kern shrugged. "Welcome to Kauph, Lady," he
said. "Dinner before demons. Shall I show your horse to our
stables?"

Wistril sat behind his desk, his eyes closed,
his breathing steady and deep.

Kern sat and shuffled papers. He'd tried
finishing a letter to the College, in which he declined an
invitation to speak on Wistril's behalf, citing as reason the press
of research and the length of the journey. But try as he might,
Kern couldn't concentrate, and finally he put down his pen in
disgust and rose.

"Master," he said. "What are we doing? How
long will your new spell last? What happens when it fails?"

Wistril didn't stir. Kern sighed and stamped
across the room and gazed out at the sky. The crow still hung
there, motionless, frozen in time.

For now. Kern had no idea what Wistril had
done, but he knew that no such spell could last forever, or even
for very long. And when Kauph rejoined the mountain and time took
its course once again, Kern knew an angry jinni would be there to
greet them.

Wistril, though, had bidden the Lady and her
party welcome, and had shown them to their rooms, and had
steadfastly refused to respond to any of Kern's frantic queries
concerning his plans for surviving the jinni's inevitable wrath.
Instead, the wizard had instructed Cook to start supper before
marching to his desk, closing his eyes, and, for all appearances,
drifting off to sleep.

"Please, Master," said Kern. "Say
something."

"Cease this useless hand-wringing," said
Wistril. Kern turned, and the wizard opened his eyes. "It does not
become you."

"Sorry, Master," he said. "Jinnis make me
nervous. I'd be less nervous if I thought you were doing something
about our current situation."

Wistril, shrugged. "I can do nothing while
Kauph remains in stasis," he said.

"And how long will that be?" asked Kern.

Wistril looked at the goblin-clock. "Another
seventeen days," he said.

Kern shook his head. "Seventeen days," he
said.

"Only a fraction of a second will pass,
beyond the spell," said Wistril. "Which is why the jinni has not
appeared; Herthmore has not yet uttered the words which will send
it against us."

"But when the spell fails?"

"We shall be set upon in a matter of
moments," said Wistril.

"I don't suppose we could sneak out the back,
while the spell is in place," said Kern. "Not that anyone
would."

"No one may enter," said Wistril. "Sadly, no
one may leave, either."

"So what are we going to do?" said Kern.

"Dine," said Wistril. He lifted an eyebrow at
Kern's wrinkled white shirt and dusty breeches. "You should see to
your attire, beforehand," he said. "The day seems to have taken its
toll on your garments."

"So a madman, a sorcerer, and a jinni are
gathered at the gates, and we are to press our shirts and sit down
to roast turkey?" asked Kern. "Master, please tell me you've done
more than set a menu."

Wistril smiled. "Apprentice," he said. "See
to your clothes. Inquire as to the Lady Emmerbee's needs. And rest
assured that after we dine, I shall insure that House Carthrop and
its varied minions shall trouble us no more."

Kern smiled. "I knew you were up to
something, Master," he said. "I'll see to the Lady,
straightaway."

And he turned, and was gone.

Alone, Wistril let out his breath. The goblin
clock turned its face toward him, and it's steady tick-tock took on
a accusatory tone.

"Oh, hush," said Wistril. "I shall think of
something." He closed his eyes, once again. "I tell you I
shall."

The clock ticked on, softer than before, but
no slower.

No night fell to Kauph within Wistril's
spell, so Kern marked the passing of days with the goblin-clock and
his desk calendar and, of course, the passage of Cook's grand
meals. The Lady's folk, thin from their long flight across the
Southlands, attacked Wistril's Great Hall table thrice daily with
gusto befitting larger, more numerous folk; even the Lady Emmerbee
had seconds and thirds, noted Kern, and once Cook had to make a
fifth tray of soufflé© when the first four massive servers went
empty before dessert.

Kern sat across from the Lady, that first
meal, and watched her as she dined. Kern had thought her lean and
somewhat mannish at first sight of her, out in the courtyard; now
he saw that the Lady Emmerbee, after a bath and with a change of
clothes, was quite fetching. She was thin, true, and her glasses
never quite sat straight across her sun-pinked nose, but her eyes
were green and merry, her smile was quick and easy, and her manner,
when she wasn't being pursued by villains, was gentle and kind.

She sees first to her people, Kern noticed.
Though she must have been starving, she didn't lift a fork until
the last and the least of her people, a skinny, wide-eyed groom of
perhaps twelve years of age, was seated and served. And she spent a
good part of the meal making sure everyone had their fill, and then
some.

I think I like you, thought Kern. And even as
he'd thought it, she'd looked up at him and met his eyes, and
smiled, and Kern had smiled too.

Though awkward at first, Wistril's elegant
meal and calm manner had soon pulled her out, and before the Cook
set the second course she and Wistril were chatting merrily away
about the courtship rituals of Southern vampires and their possible
origins in the courts of far-off Arnentot.

Kern noted, with mild shock, that so taken
was he with the conversation that Wistril let his favorite
garlic-stuffed eggplant go cold in his plate.

This was hardly the last such shock; if Kern
had named the days of the Baron's first siege by the unpleasantness
that befell him, he named the days of the Lady's stay by the
surprises she brought. First had been The Day Wistril Invited a
Lady Into His Study; then had come The Day The Lady Joined Wistril
in His Laboratory, and the Day We Heard Them Laughing in the
Courtyard.

Even old Genner, the Lady's grizzled,
sunburnt butler, took note and shook his head. "I'd have never
thought it," Genner said to Kern and Sir Knobby, one dark-less
night just after dinner on The Day Wistril Put on His Good Robe For
No Apparent Reason. "She's a wearin' dresses. She's taken to doin'
up her hair." Genner slapped his knee. "I hear tell your Lord Kauph
was just like her before they met. No marryin' for me, and talk
such as that, day in and day out."

"Hoot," said Sir Knobby, and Genner laughed.
"I knowed it," he said. "I knowed it the minute they started
talkin' over them glasses. Up all hours, they was. All hours."

Kern lifted an eyebrow. "Really?" he said.
"All hours?"

"You betcha, sonny boy," said Genner. "And
when we saw that white flag -- well, if that manure-eatin' Carthrop
hadn't been on our heels, we'd a' all dropped down dead outa shock.
Who'd have thought it?"