The Oathbound Wizard-Wiz Rhyme-2 (3 page)

"Yet will he prevail?" she moaned. "For Heaven works through us, Lord Archbishop, in this world--but so can Hell, if we wish it to. Has Matthew enough goodness to stand against the sorcerers? For he was never a saint!"

"He may become so, in this striving," the Archbishop pointed out, "or come much closer to Heaven, at least. Besides, Majesty, be mindful--if Matthew Mantrell can topple Gordogrosso and purge the wickedness from Ibile, he will most surely have proved his worthiness to be a lord--and your consort." Alisande lifted her head, a strange light coming into her eyes. "True," she said, "if he still will love me."

The captain of the guard stepped through the archway, caught her eye, and bowed.

Alisande's mouth went dry; somehow, she knew he had bad news. "Approach, Captain!"

The young knight strode forward, trying not to look for a place to hide.

"What news have you for me?" she demanded.

The Captain bowed, and reported, wooden-faced, "Your Majesty, the Lord Wizard is not in his cell."

Alisande took it well, you had to say that for her--she sat still as a statue for a minute, then asked, "Was he bound?"

"Aye, Majesty."

"And gagged?"

"Aye, Majesty!"

Then Matthew had managed the impossible again, working a spell without speaking it aloud. Admiration for the man welled up within her, with an almost covetous longing for him--but too late, too late. Still, she managed to push the thought aside while she nodded crisply and said, "Thank you, my captain. You may go--and the rest of your guardsmen with you."

"I thank Your Majesty." And the captain meant it, nodding to his soldiers with relief and turning to march out. They followed unhappily, feeling that they should have done something more--but who could have, against the Lord Wizard?

Alisande turned to the Archbishop and inclined her head. "I thank you for your words of comfort, milord. And I will entreat you to pray for Lord Matthew."

"With every Mass." The Archbishop bowed and turned to go--he knew a dismissal when he heard one.

The great doors closed behind him, and Alisande let herself collapse, with the fleeting, vagrant thought that Matthew could at least have waited until after she had dined, so that he wouldn't have spoiled her appetite. Then the fact of his absence really hit her, and she felt the anger mount. Good, good! It would help her through this, might almost drown the feelings of desertion and remorse...

But what else could she have done? Really? As queen, she was blessed--cursed?--with Divine Right, always knowing which course of action was best for the welfare of her people, and never hesitating to take it--even if any action would prove useless. It was just her bad luck that what had been the best decision for the monarch had been the worst for the woman.

Or was it the other way around?

No Refund, No Return

Matt stared at the unfamiliar landscape around him, stumbled, then caught his balance and managed to right himself. Still agog, he decided he could see why magicians said their spells aloud. It definitely gave better results!

Then it hit him--well or poorly, the spell had worked! Even without reciting it aloud--the gag was still in his mouth. It had worked!

Why?

No time to figure it out now; he filed it away for analysis when there would be a moment of leisure--i.e., one not filled with trying to stay alive--and got down to the serious business of getting that gag out of his mouth. His hands were chained behind his back, and his mouth was filled with dry cloth. Free his hands, and he could untie the gag--or free his mouth, and he could make up a spell to get rid of the chains. Which to do first?

Make sure there were no enemies about to pounce on him--that did kind of take first priority. "Enemies" included mountain lions, wolves, and other mountain dwellers that might consider him to be just the right snack. He turned around slowly and saw that he was alone on a hillside. He relaxed a little--then realized that he hadn't had any trouble turning. His ankle had been manacled to the wall, but apparently the manacle hadn't come with him.

That made sense--the end of it being attached to the wall, it counted as part of the castle he had been trying to get away from. Therefore, it had stayed behind--but his wrist chains, being attached only to him, had come along. Well, he was grateful for every little bit of progress. Free feet were better than nothing. Then a light bulb turned on inside his head, showing him a scene of himself as a child playing the old game of trying to step through the circle of his own arms, with his hands clasped together. As he remembered, he'd managed it--but he'd been considerably more agile at ten than he was at twenty-seven.

Or was he? His first few weeks in Merovence had put him back into very good shape, and he hadn't lost much of his muscle tone in the last three years--Alisande had kept him very busy going from place to place in the kingdom, trouble-shooting and wiping out leftover pockets of sorcery. Most of it, he had to admit, had been necessary, at least for the first two years. The third year, though, had been full of make-work errands. The memory galled him, especially since he was pretty sure what had instigated them--Alisande's need to be away from him.

The thought scored his heart, so he thrust it aside and got down to experimenting. Carefully, trying not to lose his balance, he bent his knees, getting his wrists as low as he could and stretching the chain as far as it would go. Then, slowly, he lifted his left foot and tried to push it over the links.

His toe caught.

For a second, he teetered, madly trying to keep his balance, then fell crashing to the ground. He lay still for a second, trying to contain the burst of anger--it wouldn't do any good to let it out at the moment, anyway. Why not just make up a spell? If he could get out of a prison, he could get out of a chain.

Two reasons. The first was that the transportation spell had worked well enough, but not perfectly. In fact, Matt's spells frequently tended not to have quite the effects he had planned, anyway, and the imperfections that came from reciting the verse silently might have very painful results. The second was that magic had a way of attracting the attention of other magic-workers, and Matt would just as soon have his hands and mouth free before having to try to deal with any wizardly tracers Alisande might manage to have her second-class magicians try on him.

Or any hostile locals, for that matter...

On the other hand, now that he was on the ground, he had no balance to lose. The idea made sense--so much so that he thought he should have tried lying down in the first place. Well, now that he had, voluntarily or not, he could try stepping through the chain with a bit more leisure. He pulled his left foot up, jamming his knee against his chest, and very carefully moved his toes past the chain. Then he straightened the leg--with a feeling of victory. Now, if he could just do it with his right...He rolled over onto his left side and slowly, carefully, raised his knee and pulled his right foot through. Then he sat up, smiling around his gag as he looked down at his hands, there in front of him. He felt an immense sense of accomplishment.

He stretched the chain tight again and lifted it over and down behind his head. His fingers pulled at the knot in the cloth. It wasn't easy--the guard had tied it to stay, as tightly as he could. A fingernail snapped, but Matt had needed to trim it, anyway--and, finally, the gag was off! He pulled the wad of cloth out of his mouth, spitting out lint, then working his mouth to bring saliva, moistening his tongue and lips. Finally, he opened his mouth again, to sigh with relief--and to recite a quick verse that made his manacles spring open and fall to the ground. Then, at last, he could stand up again, and really look about him.

Matt took a breath of cool air as he gazed at the high slope before him. Then he stilled--that air had been cool, hadn't it? Funny--it was high summer, in Merovence.

Therefore, he wasn't in Merovence.

The thought sent prickles along his scalp. The first spell--the one that hadn't worked--had been the same one he'd used when he'd spelled Alisande out of prison, three years before, and he'd still expected to wind up next to a little brook, under a canopy of musk roses, eglantine, and woodbine. This place, though, looked to be at a much higher altitude, and the evergreens certainly didn't resemble the deciduous bower he'd had in mind.

Well, you couldn't expect a spell that had only been thought to be as effective as one that had been recited aloud, could you?

Or had somebody wanted him someplace else?

He went back to looking at the scenery, trying to ignore the hollowness in his stomach, and decided that the landscape was definitely uneven--not in quality, as pine forests and alpine meadows are always beautiful, but in terrain. He was hard put to find a horizontal line anywhere, and the ground rose up toward the edge of the sky like the back of a giant stegosaurus, shadowing half the little valley in which he stood.

Behind his back stood the sun.

He hauled his stomach back up from the gulf it was trying to sink into and reflected that it could be much later in the day--he could have traveled really far. But somehow, he doubted that he'd moved more than a few degrees in longitude--one time zone, at the most. He'd arrived at Alisande's castle right after dawn, and would have escaped no later than mid-morning. That meant the sun had still been in the east--so if it was on the far side of those peaks, he was on the western side of the mountains.

In Ibile. The kingdom of black magic.

He put the qualms behind him--he was the one who had said he was going to invade Ibile and capture its throne. In fact, he'd sworn it--and he couldn't blame the Powers That Be if they had taken him at his word. He should have been more careful with his language--in his anger, he'd fallen back into lifelong habits and used expressions that were a trifle more emphatic than they should have been. By the rules of this nutty universe, that meant he was bound to do what he'd said. Totally unfair, he decided, but not all that unjust. It was a great way to break a man of swearing, but it seemed a trifle extreme. He put the issue aside and forced himself to smile, enjoying the simple pleasures of the moment, drinking in the wild beauty of the place, and he allowed himself to feel a bit of guilt over having left Alisande so suddenly. But only a little--he had to admit it had begun to pall on him, having a girlfriend who could handily order his head chopped off if she wanted to. The notion was decidedly intimidating, even though he knew Alisande would never do such a thing.

Unless it was in the best interests of her people, of course. He grinned, his spirit feeling as though it had wings. These mountains were so free! He hadn't realized how confined he'd felt.

And soiled. Alisande might have been good and a force for right, but the forces of corruption were always at work, and the backbiting at court had been growing nastier lately. After only three years, too.

Well, he was out of it, now. He started walking up the valley. The land rose up, and the woods opened out, until he could see that the path led up to a notch between peaks. At a guess, he was in the mountains that formed the border between Ibile and Merovence--the Pyrenees, in his own universe. Probably called that here, too. He stopped, looking about him, and saw a few fallen trees lying by the path. He went over to them and picked up a likely looking one, held it up, and thumped it on the ground. It bent too easily for inch-and-a-half thick wood, even though it looked sound. He frowned and cracked it over his knee. It crumbled, and he nodded in vindication--rotten inside. He tossed it away, picked up another, and thumped its butt hard on the ground as he looked up at its twisted top. It was hooked and gnarled, but it held. Matt smiled in satisfaction and turned back to the path, then attacked the slope with his new staff in hand.

The problem, he reflected as he panted to the top, was that he hadn't had time to magic a horse away with him. He could conjure one to him, of course, but that would be just as good as putting up a sign that read "wizard here," if any of the magical brethren were looking--which they were bound to be; Alisande would surely waste no time hunting up a minor magus for a bloodhound. And, of course, not to mention the sorcerers of Ibile...

He wished he hadn't; the thought gave him a chill.

Of course, he didn't have to stay here.

Certainly the Powers of Right wouldn't hold him to an oath he'd made in anger, on the spur of the moment! Especially now that he'd had a chance to realize what he'd really gotten himself into.

Would they?

Surely not! So he could go back to Merovence easily, just by reciting the right spell! He thought one up, started to speak it--then paused, with the words on the tip of his tongue, remembering about Alisande's journeyman wizards being able to detect his use of magic--and Ibile's sorcerers as well. Well, it wouldn't matter if he was out of there. He took a deep breath and chanted,

"Send me back to Merovence,

Where the flying songbirds dance,

And the dawn comes up serenely,

Giving sinners one more chance!"

He held himself braced, waiting for the momentary disorientation, for the sudden jolt of ground against his feet...

Nothing happened.

He swallowed against a sudden thickness in his throat and tried again. After all, maybe the Powers just didn't like his choice of destination.

"Take me back to Bordestang,

Where the swinging church bells rang.

Let me stand by the cathedral

Where the outdoor choir sang!"

He held himself braced and ready, knees flexed, breath held... Nothing, again.

He let his breath out in a sigh, relaxing and reluctantly admitting to himself that he wasn't going to get out of this one that easily. He'd been dumb enough to swear to unseat Ibile's evil tyrant, and Heaven had taken him at his word. He couldn't really complain.

Actually, he didn't dare. What might happen, if he let loose a stream of profanity about the situation? He was going to have to be very careful what he said from now on.