Reunion (6 page)

“Mercy, eh?” Vortimer mocked. “Very well, I shall not have you beheaded. But I will require a tax, a tithe, a fine for your failures. Let me see . . .” The prince glanced around the room. To Corwin's dismay, the prince's gaze fixed upon the shiny shell Corwin had brought. “Ah. This looks interesting. Might have fetched you a penny or three. I'll take this.”

There was a tiny wail of fear from the mind within Corwin's mind as Prince Vortimer snatched the shell from the shelf.

“If that is the large, round, spiral shell with a sheen of silver,” said Henwyneb, “then it is not mine to give, Highness. It belongs to another.”

“You dare to tell me what I can and cannot take?” Vortimer asked, his voice cold.

“It seems this rude lackey would like a beating,” suggested Faustus, who, from the cocky grin on his face, was enjoying the prospect.

“No!” Corwin cried, unable to hide any longer. He jumped out of the pile of sticks and antlers, shouting, “Leave him alone!”

The two noblemen stared at him as though he were a jester who had popped out of the earth. Vortimer handed the shell to Faustus and approached Corwin's corner. “Well, well, well,” said the prince. “It would appear the soothsayers spoke sooth after all. This is the very scoundrel we've been looking for.”

Corwin knew he was too weak to fight, but he didn't have to reveal that to the prince. “Get out! Leave us alone!” he snarled.

“Or you'll . . . what?” asked the prince, coming closer until his face was inches from Corwin's. “If you lay a hand on me, that is treason and punishable by death.”

Unfortunately, the prince was right. Corwin knew he had just ruined whatever hopes he could have for freedom. He tried to put a brave face on it. “I'm already dead if you capture me, aren't I?” he asked. “What do I care if I take you with me?”

“Oooh, this puppy growls fiercely,” purred the prince. “I wonder if his bite is as fierce as his bark.”

Both Vortimer and Faustus were older, perhaps in their twenties, bigger and stronger than Corwin, and noblemen trained to the sword since they were children. Corwin didn't have a chance. But as Fenwyck had always said, when life gives you no hope, do what you'd most like to do—then you can die with no regrets.

Closing his hand around a sharp piece of antler, Corwin mentally prepared himself to stab the prince in the belly with it. It wouldn't kill him, but it might surprise him, maybe enough that Corwin could run past him and Faustus and out the door. Assuming the noblemen had arrived without a guard. Corwin thrust his arm upward. . . .

But he was too slow. Vortimer grasped his wrist in a grip like iron and pulled Corwin out from behind the barrels. “Did you think I was so soft, you could kill me with
that
?” cried Vortimer in astonished humor. “The days of the pampered princes vanished with the Romans, silly boy. I've been training to fight since I was three. My father didn't want me to be easy prey like that fool Constans. Now come along like a good fellow and don't make me bruise you too much. My father's wizards want you alive, for the time being.”

“Why should I believe you?” Corwin asked, unable to free his wrist from Vortimer's grasp. It was so hard to keep the fear out of his voice and to ignore the constant demands of the mind within his mind saying,
What is happening? What is happening
?

“Why do I care whether you believe me?” Vortimer sneered. “Returning with you will please my father, and I want to keep him pleased, at least until his crown is mine. Now will you come along, or do we have to make mincemeat out of your old friend here first? He was caught harboring a criminal, after all.”

Corwin swallowed hard. His stomach felt sick, more from fear than from his mysterious ailment. He was angry at himself for not being able to do something, anything to hurt his captors or escape them. But he didn't want Henwyneb to suffer for his sake like Fenwyck had. “No. I'll come with you if you leave him alone. He doesn't know who I am.” Corwin allowed the prince to grab him by the shoulder and pull him to the door.

“Come along, Faustus. We've got what we were sent for.”

Faustus looked disappointed. “Do we have to leave so soon?” He put the shell into a pouch at his belt, and Corwin felt a strange sense of pressure around him. It was suddenly harder to breathe.

“The sooner I'm away from this filthy, foul-smelling place, the better,” Vortimer growled. He pushed Corwin out the door.

Corwin saw his chance and started to stagger into a run—only to find himself running into the chain-mailed arms of a guardsman, one of two standing next to the horses.

“What have we here, Highness?” asked the guard, grinning. “ 'Tis a large rabbit you've flushed from its warren.”

“It's a thief and a false prophet, not a rabbit,” Vortimer grumbled. “Tie him to the back of the horse and let's get going.”

“What kind of prophet can't foresee his own capture and avoid it?” asked the other guard.

“As I said, he's a fraud,” Vortimer replied.

The forest was so near, and the inner voice was not distracting him at the moment. Corwin decided to bolt for it. He kicked the guard in the knee and tried to push him aside. But as the first guard fell in astonishment, the second guard came up swiftly with his sword drawn. Faustus and Vortimer each grabbed one of Corwin's arms and pulled back tightly.

“It would seem,” Vortimer hissed in Corwin's ear, “that your word can't be trusted for anything. But at least now I can truthfully claim that we had to do you harm to prevent you from escaping. You are giving Faustus the opportunity to deliver the thrashing he has been dying to give.”

With an ugly smile, Faustus drew back his fist.

“Stop!” cried a high-pitched voice from somewhere down the path.

And everyone did. And stared.

Chapter Four

She was incredibly striking, with long, silvery-blond hair—not the silver of old age, but the shine of newly minted metal. Her eyes were a shade of green-blue that Corwin had never seen before. She was slender, yet muscled, and wore a glimmering but tattered gown of blue and silver fish scales. She didn't look much older than Corwin, but there was strength, determination, and not a little desperation in her eyes. But the strangest thing of all was, when their gazes met, he
knew
her, as if he'd been acquainted with her all his life. He knew that she was from another world vastly different from his own, a world of water, and that she felt very strange upon land. And he knew a dire purpose drove her and had caused her to come seeking . . . him?

He carefully took in every inch of her, and he let out a small gasp as he noticed her hands. He knew those hands—he had seen them during his visions in the forest. He realized that some of those visions must have been her thoughts—that it was she who had mourned over the old drowned merman.

New thoughts struck him—he saw himself, suddenly, from her eyes.
What a skinny, disreputable-looking rat I am!
He felt the other mind within his mind leap with joy at the sight of her, a feeling not unlike Corwin's reactions to the memory of his mother.
What new kind of madness is this? Who is this girl? How does this other mind know her, and why am I caught up in all this? I just wanted to be free and left alone!

Corwin and the girl's entwined thoughts demanded of each other the same questions:
Who are you? How is this possible?

Vortimer, Faustus, and the guards were beginning to recover their composure. “Go away, girl!” Prince Vortimer commanded. “This is none of your concern.”

She furrowed her brow and didn't budge from where she stood. “Give . . . me . . . the . . . prince,” she said, haltingly, as though she were unfamiliar with their language and was still learning it. She was so otherworldly, with such determination in her eyes, that she truly seemed a force to be reckoned with.

Vortimer and Faustus looked at each other. “What do you want with me?” Vortimer asked, an edge of fear to his voice.

Faustus giggled. “Maybe she is the Queen of Fairyland, come to take you off to her bower to be her husband.”

“Maybe she is a renegade from some gypsy playacting troupe,” suggested one of the guards. “If so, they need a better costumer.”

“She doesn't mean
you
,” Corwin blurted to Vortimer, somehow knowing this to be true, although the images he was sharing with the strange girl confused him. It had something to do with the shell he had found and the leviathan.

“What? You don't mean to say she thinks
you
are a prince?” Vortimer asked. To the silver-haired girl, Vortimer said, “This boy is only a Prince of Thieves. You're better off without him. Now go, before I lose my good humor.”

One of the horses stretched out its neck to get a good whiff of her and she shied back a step.

“It won't hurt you,” Corwin said.

“But we will if you don't get out of our way,” said one of the guards.

The girl stood her ground and shook her head. She stared at Corwin, her eyes piercing him. “Where is . . . ?” she started to ask, trailing off. In his mind he received the image of the shell again.

She has come to claim the shell. Is that why I'm cursed? Did I steal something I shouldn't have from a princess of the sea?
Corwin nodded toward the pouch at Faustus's belt. “He has it.”

“I have
what
?” Faustus demanded.

Sighing, Corwin answered, “She wants the shell you took from Henwyneb. He said it wasn't his, remember? Just give it to her and maybe she'll go away.”

“In exchange for a kiss, perhaps?” asked Faustus, smirking.

Corwin felt a flash of anger and drove his elbow hard into Faustus's stomach. The nobleman doubled over with a grunt.

“You . . . misbegotten . . . son-of-a . . . ow!” Faustus grunted.

The two guards whipped their swords from their scabbards. “Shall we kill him, Highness?”

“For trying to teach Lord Faustus manners? Alas, no,” replied Prince Vortimer. “My father's wizards want the boy alive. They said nothing about damage, however—”

At this, Corwin was flung to the ground, his teeth grinding against the dirt. Faustus kicked him in the back, and Corwin grunted as pain radiated up his side.

“No!” cried the girl.

Corwin felt a hot blast of wind course overhead as if a dragon had unleashed its breath. The horses shrieked. He heard the men around him fall to the ground. Then all was silent.

Corwin dared to glance up. Prince Vortimer, Faustus, and the two guards were splayed on their backs in the dirt, utterly baffled. The horses were rolling their eyes at the girl and straining at their tethered reins. The girl herself was staring at her hands in amazement, as if she couldn't believe what they had done.

“Sorcery,” Prince Vortimer hissed as he jumped to his feet, fists clenched and teeth bared like a cornered dog.

Corwin's gut clenched with fear. Only the king was permitted to employ mages—to use magic against the nobility was treason, which was punishable by death. Corwin stared at the girl, trying to convey to her the trouble she was in. “Go!” he cried. “The shell isn't worth your life.”

But she didn't leave. “Give me . . . the prince . . . the shell!” she demanded again. “Please . . . it is . . . important!”

Corwin received images that didn't make any sense. A leviathan, but a small one, inside the shell. And this girl called the little leviathan a prince. “Your prince is in the shell?” he asked, bewildered.

“Aha!” said Faustus, snarling with hurt pride and rage. “Somehow you have got the Prince of Darkness himself living in this shell, have you, girl? Is the Evil One the source of your power? Well, you'll not get him back from me. I'll drop him in the nearest font of holy water and banish him back to Hades!”

One of the guards held up his sword by the blade so that it made the sign of the cross. “Begone, witch!” he intoned.

The girl merely tilted her head in puzzlement. “I . . . we . . . need the shell . . . to save my people.”

“His Royal Highness, Vortimer, son of King Vortigern and prince of the realm,” intoned the other guard, his voice a little shaky, “has commanded you to leave. Do so at once.”

The girl gazed at Vortimer with her beautiful aquamarine eyes. “I, too, am of . . . noble family where I come from. My cousin is . . . was . . . going to become a king. But he is dead and . . . my homeland and people are in terrible danger. I might be able . . . to save them. But I must . . . have . . . the shell or I—
we
—,” she said, pausing to look at Corwin, “—will die.”

Corwin felt his stomach curdle like old milk
. Die? Me? Why? What do I have to do with her people being in danger?

After a moment's silence, Prince Vortimer started to laugh. “This is the most amazing claptrap I have ever heard. My father has taught me the names of the royal families of every kingdom of importance, particularly princesses, in case a diplomatic match might be made. I have heard of no one who looks like you. Frankly, I don't care if you live or die, sorceress. But I promise you, you will surely die if you stay an instant longer.”

The girl sighed heavily and Corwin could feel her frustration and despair, but also her determination and courage. She didn't leave.

If I weren't hurting so much,
Corwin thought,
I could take this opportunity to run away. I don't want anything to do with her sorcery or this curse or her prince. I don't want to die. I wish this were all just a bad dream or a hallucination.
But the mind within his mind said,
Stay. Help us. We need you.
As if it
knew
his thoughts.

“Very well,” Prince Vortimer said. “I hereby accuse you of using sorcery to attempt harm against the crown of Britain. I sentence you to summary execution. Guardsman, see to it.”