Chance (20 page)

“I have not!”

Merric strode forward to confront his father.

No loving reunion, this.

The prince was full of shock and wrath. “I would never—I have been here all along. I abhor—if you knew how I despise all such schemes of power—”

But Emaris did not answer the anger, for all his passions were lost in astonishment. “Merric!” he whispered. “But—when did you come here? And
how
did you come here?”

“Five days ago. Or six …” The youngster stood more quietly before his father. “The black swam me across.”

“But—that crossing—” The king shook his head dazedly. “It is fearsome. The haze, the gloom, unnatural. Only my desperation gave me courage to try it. And my despair gave me no choice.… And my dapple-gray carried me through the darkened day and into the tempest of the night, until finally it foundered and sank, and I swam on alone. And only at the limit beyond limits of my strength did I make the shore. So how could you, a youngling …?”

“I am no stranger to despair,” said Merric very quietly. But he had never known such despair in his father. King and youngest son stood gazing at each other as if they had never seen each other before, and watching, Wystan forgot to harden his face.

I—have let myself be drawn nearer to that peopled shore. My island floats closer to it, even as I sleep. Else he would never have attained it …

“My mother?” Merric asked at last.

“She is in safety on your uncle's estate. In hiding. There is a small cottage in the wood.…” Emaris let his words trail away, thinking. But it was the boy who voiced his thought.

“My brothers are not evil youths. They would not have harmed you or my mother, I think. They let you escape.”

“Yes. However roughly.”

“They are impatient. They think too much of power.”

“I have taught them all too much of the usages of power,” said Emaris, and for the first time he looked kingly, speaking his regret. He straightened himself, and the haggard look left his face. Wystan stirred uneasily.

“King,” he addressed him, not calling him liege, for he gave allegiance to no monarch, “King, what is it that you want of me?”

“Hope.”

Food and a warm fire, dry clothing and sleep half answered that, and the wizard bestowed them. Emaris slept past noon of the next day. But Merric was wakeful and troubled, and wandered the woods with the black pony as Wystan sat at his loom.

“What ails you?” the sorcerer asked him curtly as he sat by his father at the evening meal of bread and cold mutton.

Merric did not hesitate, though he had to swallow twice before he spoke. “I feel that what has happened is somehow my fault,” he said softly, and Wystan snorted.

“How so?” he demanded. Emaris listened intently.

“My—spleen, my hatred—”

“That is a child's talk. Feelings don't count. Deeds do.”

Child's talk, is it? Feelings have made me flinty. Feeling breached, invaded. How long has it been—?

“But,” Merric said, words rising on a wind of desperation, “I—thought of something like this, or imagined it, blood shed for the sake of power and the throne. I—and I did not face it, it frightened me. I fled from it.”

“So that is what sent you here,” said Emaris, wonder in the words.

“I—should have stayed. Perhaps—they would have been ashamed, in front of me.”

“It was a cruel time, lad,” said his father with fervor. “Far too fearsome for a youngster. You were well out of it.”

“And speak no more of fault,” Wystan told Merric sternly. “Of foresight, perhaps, but not of fault. The Sight, misunderstood.”

Emaris turned to him. “You mean—the boy has—”

“The Sight, and perhaps some powers. Yes. I think so.”

“Well.” The former king stared at his son. “He was always—different. And I, like a fool, I combatted it.”

“If his powers can now be nurtured, he might yet mean your hope.”

“We can go to the cottage, join your mother, bide our time.” Emaris leaned toward his son. “And when you are ready—the throne. Perhaps not for me. Perhaps for you.”

Merric stood up, shaking, his face taut with anger no longer hidden. “I detest such schemes of power,” he said in a voice potent with fury. “I will have no part of plots of power, now or ever, power of magic, power of the sword; I do not want them. Nor do I want the throne.”

“You've small choice, my son.” Emaris stood up as well, but not to intimidate, nor to plead, only, for once, to speak truth. “Your brothers will quarrel—see if your Sight does not tell you the same. There will be turmoil, black times for courtiers and common folk alike. The throne wll tremble. Invaders will come, they who always lie in wait. Yondria will fall—unless the rightful king can save her.”

Merric turned and ran outside, into the gathering dusk, fleeing over the meadow to take refuge with the black pony.

“Where has he gone?” Emaris exclaimed.

“Never mind.” Wystan stood, keen-eyed, nodding to himself. “He will be back soon enough. He is not one to hide for long.”

Unlike one whom I know. It was not the father so much, the mother—though they did not understand me, they tried to love me, but I would not let them, and I scarcely understand myself, I, the great sorcerer. And it was not the comrades who had their own concerns, or the sweethearts, the ones who spurned my timid courtship, or even that one special beloved, she who loved another. So I swore never to let myself be hurt again. But it was all these things—and no one of them nearly as bad as what has happened to this man, this boy. And they will soon find their way back to the fray.

In the morning the boy was at the door with the pony. The little black had been brushed until its shaggy fur shone; its full mane had been brushed and combed into a silken fall, its ebony hooves polished with oil.

“Is that—your charger?” Emaris let his jaw drop in astonishment.

“I like him like this.” Merric hugged the black pony around the neck; its head stood no higher than his. “But if he is to carry my father and me homeward,” the boy added with a reluctant glance at Wystan, “I suppose he will need to be tall again.”

“Stand back,” said Wystan. He came forward, caressed the pony under its chin, and it shot up again into a war-horse of eighteen hands' height, powerful and graceful.

“Well.” Emaris swallowed. “We must both thank you, Sir Sorcerer.”

Wystan said nothing, only brought a packet of food and a blanket, new woven. He glanced at Merric, gave a small, wry smile. There was that between the two of them that went deeper than words, than thanks. The wizard stood by silently as the boy bridled the giant black.

There were no surprises for me, anymore, until these two came.

“You take the reins,” Emaris told his son. “He is accustomed to you.” The man mounted, helped the boy up before him.

“Come back, someday, and be my apprentice,” Wystan said to Merric. “I will send the island to meet you sooner next time.”

“You …” Merric gaped at him. “You did that?”

“Even as I send it closer to the shore now, for your sake.”

“Come with us, rather,” Emaris offered, “and be his tutor.” But Wystan shook his head.

To leave my longtime refuge? Unthinkable …

It was an awkward parting. Father and son rode away, hands half-raised, hesitant, in farewell, and the wizard stood darkly, wrapped in himself. His hands did not move out of the folds of his tunic. Before the black horse had traversed the meadow, the boy chirruped, and it broke into a canter, then passed out of Wystan's eyesight, into the lapis forest.

Nor did he watch it any longer with his inner eye.

Mount, man, and boy found the island shore. Beyond the quiet water of the lake, the mainland showed plainly in the distance, unobscured by any hint of mist or haze. Sunlight rested on the green hilltops.

“Forward,” Merric ordered.

The black steed leaped into the water, swam strongly. The mainland soon grew nearer, but the shore just departed seemed to fall no farther behind. Merric glanced back at it, puzzled, and then Emaris. It took the two of them several moments to comprehend.

“By my body,” the former king exclaimed at last, “it's following us!”

Black hooves caught on gravel bottom. The horse carried them onto the shore of their homeland. Once on grass, Merric pulled his destrier to a halt, turned. Father and son watched as if spellbound while the island glided up to the main as gracefully as a tall-masted sailing ship coming to port. It joined almost seamlessly to the shore.

Wordlessly they got down off their horse and waited. In a few moments Wystan appeared from between the blue trees, walking fast, with a neatly wrapped bundle on his back and a staff in his hand. He stepped to the mainland. But the feel of that unmagical earth seemed to stagger him for a moment, and Merric and Emaris went quickly to his side. Wystan let his hand rest on the shoulder of the boy.

And as they watched, the island sailed away, into the distances of the nameless lake, into a bright sunlit haze, into oblivion.

I—swam out there, years ago, thinking to drown. The island formed itself out of my dreams as I went under.… I climbed back to life by clinging to the roots of it. Now it is gone.

Not even the great black steed could carry three.

“Well,” said Emaris gruffly, “let us all walk together, then, and the horse can bear the packs.”

“A pack animal,” Wystan stated, “ought to be of a more manageable size. Do you not think so?”

Emaris merely smiled, but Merric nodded eagerly, his eyes shining.

Then Wystan turned to the mighty war-horse. It put its head down to greet him, and he laid one hand on the glossy mane between the ears. The steed whinnied gladly, gathering, shifting shape beneath his touch. When he took his hand away, standing on the shore was a small, bright-eyed black pony.

COME IN

Come in, Reality, come in.

Bloodied body on my doorstep,

Crawl across my good clean floor,

Clutch at my ankles,

Pull me down,

You corpse,

Long-nosed, barbaric, fetid

—Don't care what you did—

Come in. The fire is in my groin,

My gut.

I'll put you in my pot

And melt you into wine and tears

And incense.

THE PRINCE OUT OF THE PAST

Kam Horseleech awoke with a start, not knowing for a moment where he was. That always happened to him at Ithkar Fair, starry sky overhead instead of the familiar thatch, no warm form of wife. Usually the drunken cries of ill-assorted fairgoers served to alert him, but there was no noise, it must have been that most hushed time of night a few hours before dawn. What had roused him?

Still groggy, he sat up and glanced around. Moonbeams, shadow and soft light, tents and wagons. Smells and sounds—quiet stirrings of all sorts of animals, someone's nag stamping, lop-eared rabbits rustling in their cage and a cheetah in one farther away—nothing untoward. Kam yawned, his mind moving hazily. Sleep after a trying day, that nomad's mare foaling breech and the cut on that supercilious noble's prize ambler, the man peering over his shoulder as he worked. No matter. Go back to sleep.

Yet he had felt a summons, firm as the grip of a hand on his upper arm. But no one stood near.

Well, it would do no harm just to have a look about.…

Kam got up, stumbling slightly over his own sizable feet. Automatically he ran a hand over his shock of hair and through his rough beard, picking out bits of straw. A big hand, not at all clever by the looks of it, but good with horses.… He stumped off at random, trying to be wary. It went against his nature to be suspicious, but this was the most disreputable sector of the fair, as he had been warned many times by both friends and experience. All those who stank, whether animal or human, were pushed outward from the sweet-smelling temple center of the fair to lodge here at the fringes. So if he did not want to be knocked on the head by bravos or to step on a snake-charmer, he had to be careful. What lay in shadow of tents and trees … and that moon-glade, now, just ahead. It would not do to step out in it without having a bit of a look around.…

He stepped out in it nevertheless, for he was one who liked the light, and a most unaccountable feeling took hold of him.

Now what was that grip, gentle, invisible hands of—moonlight?—on his bony wrists, tugging at him, on his shoulders that were round and stooped from toil, guiding him? Not even crying out—but with bushy eyebrows arched high in astonishment—Kam found himself threading his way quite surely through a haphazard maze of sleeping bodies, past the offal of distant food booths to a region that smelled strongly of manure—

Until he came to a stop, and all the stench and squalor around him seemed distant and unreal, for he saw only those who stood in the moonlight before him.

Being what he was, he noticed the horse first. It stood very still, white flanks mottled gray by leaf-shadow in moonlight, shimmering, almost spiritous, but so big, a destrier without peer, massive neck highly arched and the small ears almost hidden in mane, noble nostrils, dark eyes, ripple of muscles in great shoulder—and standing with one hand resting lightly on the great shining curve of barrel, the master—

Kam turned his eyes slightly to see who it was who owned such a steed. Another mincing noble, he judged it would be. But no—this man looked to be neither perfumed noble nor worldly priest nor commoner nor nomad nor soldier nor merchant nor any other sort of man that Kam could put a name to, nor even one of those nameless overseas barbarians. He was—what was he, in the moonlight? He met Kam's stare quite equably.

“Goodman horseleech,” he said, “thank you for coming.”