The Oathbound Wizard-Wiz Rhyme-2 (40 page)

The torturer screamed, but kept the hand there, and Matt started chewing in spite of the taste. Suddenly, the hand yanked away, and a wad of cloth jammed into Matt's mouth. It smelled foul and tasted worse.

The duke loomed over him, panting and wild-eyed "Well tried, Wizard! But poorly struck! There are too many of us here, ready to stop you! You cannot prevail against us!"

Showed how much he knew. Matt glared at him, gargling a few dire noises through his gag, while his mind raced, trying to dredge up verses that would be effective even though unspoken.

"Know then," the duke panted, "that your familiars are taken, and slain." Matt frowned. Familiars? What was the man talking about?

"Your animals, your beasts!" the duke snapped. "The dragon, and that obscene hybrid! We have taken them, and drained their blood."

Matt stared, every muscle rigid. Then morality gave way--there could be no protection for so vile a man. He had forfeited all right to the protections of others' compassion or conscience. Matt would make him burn to death from the inside out, while his nails grew inward and his inner ears rocked... Calm flooded through him, almost as if some outer spirit had filled him with charity and restraint. The man was human, after all, and though it might be Matt's duty to remove him before he could hurt anyone else, he had no right to work justice upon him. Torture could wait until after his death, if he deserved it, which Matt didn't doubt for an instant--but it wasn't his job. Well enough. Back to high-powered, unspoken verses.

"Their blood will enhance my power enormously." The duke's eyes narrowed; he was all business now, sadism put aside for the moment. "So would your magic, though I can work quite well without it, if I must. Yet there is another source of power more vital by far." And he turned to Yverne.

Matt's heart nearly stopped. Then, frantically, he began to recite as much of the verse as he had worked out in his mind.

The duke's' eye gleamed as his gaze moved slowly over Yverne's form, but he was all business as he explained, "Your father's lands marched with mine, damsel, but also marched with Merovence. His lands ran along its border, through the mountains, for fifty miles. That distance is long enough to admit an army that could hamstring my forces from behind. I might take the capital only to find my own hard-won demesnes lost to the Bitch of Merovence." Matt froze for a moment; then his eyes narrowed, and he changed a line of verse for the worse.

"He was my prisoner, as you know." The duke watched her face carefully for signs of reaction to the past tense. "He was a brave, though stupid, man--he withstood all my tortures and would not cede his lands to me. Now he is dead." Yverne stared in horror.

"It is hard, I know," the duke said gently, fairly oozing sympathy. "Let the tears fall; grief must be vented."

It was; the tears flowed, though Yverne squeezed her eyes shut and bit her lip to stifle the sobs.

"Let it loose, let it loose," the duke soothed. "None here will blame you for wailing with remorse."

Remorse! For what?

"Oh, my father! My poor father!" Yverne gasped.

"Aye, aye, 'tis hard, 'tis hard," the duke commiserated. "Yet you must know, poor lass..."

Finally, the wail cut loose and wrenched into sobbing. The duke, tense as a tent rope, kept murmuring inanities, patting his captive's bound hand, completely ignoring the fact that it was he who had caused her misery. The strategy seemed to be working. As her sobs slackened, his murmurs turned to advice. "You are but a weak woman, damsel, and a young one at that. Nay, surely you are not schooled and hardened to the governing of a dukedom. 'Twill be a burden on you, a horrible burden. You will bend under it, you will break. The administering of justice alone will torment you. Can you truly order a murderer hanged, and sleep well o'night?"

Yverne wailed.

"Let her be!" Fadecourt barked. "Can you not allow her to be alone in her misery?"

The duke looked up at him, eyes narrowed, and nodded to a torturer. A hand slapped a wad of cloth over Fadecourt's mouth and nose; another set the glowing iron to his upper arm. The cyclops' body bucked, but he stifled his scream. Yverne, still weeping and faced away from Fadecourt, had not even noticed.

"Nay, certes you cannot take up the weight of such a task," the duke soothed. "Poor lass, I shall aid you! Only cede your lands to me, and I shall govern them for you, well and wisely!"

"Never!" Yverne's voice was raw with tears.

The duke's eyes sparked, but he said, " 'Never' is a great expanse of time, damsel. Your people suffer, even now, from the ravages of war. Can they wait your leisure to take up their governance?"

"Be mindful," Sir Guy said in a low voice that nonetheless seemed to fill the chamber, "mindful that he may lie. Your father may still be alive, damsel, yet so badly hurted as not to be able to govern. It may be your regency you cede to him, not--"

"Be still!" the duke snapped, and daggers stabbed Sir Guy's chest muscles. His jaw clenched against a howl of pain, and a beefy hand covered his lips. But his words had done their work. Hope glowed in Yverne's eyes, and she said, "Never, vile duke! Torture me as you will, I shall never yield my father's poor peasants and rich lands unto your cruelty! Far better that I should suffer for them!"

"Then be assured that you will!" Bruitfort bellowed in sudden rage. "Your father truly is dead! He died at these hands, mine own, wielding the instruments of agony--but the fool refused to cede his lands! The same fate awaits you!" Pale and trembling with rage, Yverne snapped, "I can do no less than to follow the example of so worthy a sire!"

"Then you shall have the opportunity!" the duke thundered. But he calmed just as quickly as he had flared, the anticipation of depraved pleasures filling his face with unholy glee. "The power you deny me, I shall rip from you! If I cannot have the fullness of power from your lands and people, I shall have it by debasing and corrupting you! Aye, ceding your people to me would have been the ultimate abasement--but I shall do nearly as well, by ripping your virginity from you and grinding you down by pain and degradation, till you beg me to have my will, if only I will lessen your agony!" Spittle drooled from the corner of his mouth again. "I shall break your soul and drink its strength with mine! Yet we shall begin this feast of torture with the hors d'oeuvre of the knight's pain; you shall join me in watching as I ply him with agony so exquisite that he, even he, shall regale me with his screams!"

Sir Guy threw off the hand that gagged him with a mighty heave and cried,

"Even if he should wring wailing from me, damsel, pay it no heed!" Then the torturer backhanded him across the mouth, and it was Yverne who cried out, "Foul villain! Do you think to ruin a man so goodly?"

"Easily," the duke sneered. "Think you his God will save him? Nay, for He only works through human agents, and I can best any of those! If you wish to free him from the throes of excruciation, you may cry out, at any moment, that you cede your lands to me. Yet be assured that if you truly summon the fortitude to remain silent until the Black Knight is dead, you will take his place on the rack!"

Matt couldn't take it any longer. He thought with all the energy he could, Both back and side, go bare, go bare,

Let chains and ropes go slack,

Until each hemp or metal strand

Detach, upon the ground he back!

Yverne's bonds broke, and she leaped off the pallet, filled with sudden vigor, even as Sir Guy and Fadecourt sprang up, leaping upon the torturers and wrenching instruments from them, then striking them down.

The duke shouted something in a corrupted form of Latin that Matt couldn't quite make out; it had something to do with laying low his enemies and binding them fast. Fadecourt, Sir Guy, and Yverne fainted dead away, and as Matt felt the dark tide pressing in, he recited inside his head,

Gaudeamus igitur, Iuvenesdum sumus!

Gaudeamus igitur, Iuvenesdum sumus!

Vivat amicus meam, Non habebit humus!

For good measure, he repeated in English:

Therefore let us all rejoice,

While we're young and sprightly.

Long live all these friends of mine,

May earth not clutch them tightly!

But the unspoken verse was much weaker than those spoken aloud. The dark tide did lessen, and Matt struggled against it long enough to hear the duke say,

"Bind the knight again--and throw the cyclops and the trickster into our most foul dungeon cell, bound and gagged. We shall have our pleasure of them, when we are done with the maiden. Go, begone!"

"The wizard wakes!" a voice cried behind Matt.

Bruitfort spun, swinging a truncheon. It cracked down on Matt's skull, and the dark tide bore him away.

About Fates

Matt landed hard, but Fadecourt bounced--partly because his head landed on Matt's belly. Matt said, "Oof!" and Fadecourt bellowed, "You loathsome villains!" as he leaped to his feet. "Nay, unbind mine hands, and I shall--" The door slammed shut, laughter echoed away, and they were left in the dark.

"Toadies!" Fadecourt raged. "Vile excuses for humanity! Nay, do not tell me, I know--they but did as they were bid, and would have been made to suffer an they had not."

Matt gargled something through his gag.

"Yet an 'twere no more than that, they would not have grinned like japing apes, nor have taken such pleasure in so cruelly hurling us within! So do not tell me of their goodness."

Matt tried to make agreeing noises.

"How is that?" Fadecourt's voice became louder; he must have turned toward Matt Without light, it was rather hard to see. "Ah. Thou canst tell me naught, canst thou? Nay, not with that gag...Faugh! Away, thou crawling ferleigh!" There was a small, meaty thud accompanied by an outraged squealing, then a splatting noise off in the dark.

"Begone! You, and you and you!" Fadecourt stamped with vigor. Rats! Matt scrambled to his feet--as well as he could, with his hands tied behind him.

" 'Ware the roof!" Fadecourt cried. " 'Tis scarce high enough for one of my stature, and for you--"

Something cracked against the top of Matt's head, and he slumped back to the floor, senses reeling.

"...it would be a danger," Fadecourt finished. "Ay de mi! My regrets, Lord Matthew! I should have thought..."

Matt gargled something very nasty as he rolled up to a groggy sitting position.

I deserve no such malediction!" Fadecourt protested. "I was but tardy in my warning, not omitting entirely."

Matt mumbled as loudly as he could, beginning to feel a little frantic.

"What...? Oh, the gag. Aye, I would loose it an I could, Lord Wizard--but they have bound my arms in some manner of leather casings, like to gloves without fingers. I cannot aid thee, unless I can..." His voice broke off into a straining groan that rose up the scale till it broke in a massive gasp. " 'Tis no use; they have manacled my wrists with a steel most excellent. Nay, I fear I cannot loosen your restraints, Lord Matthew."

Matt made a noise that he hoped sounded philosophical and set himself to working out an escape spell. The duke struck him as the muscle-bound sort who had taken up magic as if he were learning to use a new weapon, rather than trying to discover how and why it worked--sort of a consumer's view of sorcery, without bothering to look in the owner's manual. He probably hadn't bothered putting a containment spell on his dungeon, either; he was the type to trust in metal and rope.

Blest be the tie that binds

This cloth that I taste of,

And falls from off my jaw

So that the wad inside may move.

The knot started to loosen itself before he finished the second line. It must have been the word blest--nothing in Duke Bruitfort's castle wanted to receive a blessing. Matt worked his jaws, pushing with his tongue until the wad of cloth fell out. It had never felt so good to close his mouth. Still painful, but a definite improvement.

"I would I could help you," Fadecourt mourned.

Matt worked up some saliva, moistened his lips, and croaked, "You don't need to."

"What in Heaven's name...?" Fadecourt cried, and Matt felt magical forces enwrap him. "Shh! Don't talk about anything holy! We don't want to attract attention!"

"You can talk! But how?"

"Magic." Matt dismissed the issue with an airy toss of the head that went unseen--and shot another wave of pain through his skull. "But I think we need our hands free, too, and I'd rather not use another spell if I can avoid it. Max?"

"Aye, Wizard?" The Demon was there before him, a spark amazingly bright in the total darkness. Matt's eyes had adjusted to the dimness; he could see Fadecourt clearly in Max's glow. "Well, you've taken care of one of our problems already. Think you could crystallize the metal in our manacles, too?"

"Can a cat make kittens?" Max scoffed. "Only hold your places a moment." He shot over to Fadecourt and sank behind his back.

"What does he?" the cyclops demanded.

"Magic," Matt explained again. "Just hold still." The Demon rose back into sight. " 'Tis done."

Matt nodded. "Give a good yank, Fadecourt."

The cyclops grunted, his shoulders, chest, and upper arms all bulging. A metallic crack sounded, and he brought his freed wrists up in front of his single eye, staring in astonishment.

"Don't know your own strength, do you? Okay, Max--try mine."

"Even so." The Demon zipped around behind Matt. A moment later, he sang,

"Pull!"

Matt yanked as hard as he could, and the manacles clanked, but didn't loosen. "How about dissipating the molecular bonds?"

"Well thought; this primitive iron is far from pure." Suddenly, Matt's hands were free. He lifted his arms, staring at the clean wrists. "I didn't say to dissipate them all the way."

"You did not say to stop," Max pointed out.

"Wise. Well!" Matt rubbed his freed hands. "Let me see what I can do about those mittens, Fadecourt." He untied the thongs around Fadecourt's wrists. The cyclops groaned, and Matt was appalled at the darkness of the skin he revealed on the hand that was not stone.