The Warlock in Spite of Himself

Something desperate flickered in her eyes; her hands clutched at the chair arms. "Love," she murmured.

Then the mockery was back in her eyes. "Yes, love—for Catharine the Queen ."

She looked away, into the fire. "Be that as it may. But I think you are in most comely truth a friend— though why I believe that, I cannot say."

"Oh, you may be sure that I am!" Rod smiled. "You knew that I was at the House of Clovis, though you couldn't say how, and you were right about that."

"Be still!" she snapped. Then slowly her eyes lifted to his. "And what affairs took you to the House of Clovis this night?"

Was she a mind reader, maybe?

Rod scratched along his jaw; the bone-conduction microphone would pick up the sound…

"There's some confusion Festering in my mind," he said. "How did you know I was at the House of Clovis?"

"Here, Rod," a voice murmured behind his ear.

Catharine gave him a look that fairly dripped with contempt. "Why, I knew you spoke with Tuan Loguire. Then where could you be but the House of Clovis?"

Very neat—only how had she known he was with Tuan… Loguire?

Loguire!

Rod stared. "Excuse me, but—uh—did you say Tuan Loguire ?"

Catharine frowned.

"I thought his name was, uh—McReady."

Catharine almost laughed. "Oh, nay! He is the second son of Milord Loguire! Did you not know?"

Second son! Then Tuan was himself the man he had been condemning for a fool!

And his big brother was the man who had "an ancient grievance 'gainst the Queen," and was a major threat to the throne.

"No," said Rod, "I did not know."

Fess' voice murmured, "Data indicate existence of excellent intelligence system."

Rod groaned mentally. Robots were a great help!

He pursed his lips, staring at Catharine. "You say you have no spies in the House of Clovis," he said, "and if I assume that you speak the truth, then that means…"

He left the sentence hanging; Fess would fill in the blank.

There was a moment of silence; then a loud hum behind Rod's ear, ended in a sharp click.

Rod cursed mentally. If Catharine had no spies, she logically couldn't have known what she did know. He'd given Fess another paradox, and the robot's circuits had overloaded. Epileptic robots could be very inconvenient.

Catharine glared at him. "Of a certainty, I speak truth!"

"Oh, I never doubted!" Rod held up a hand. "But you are a ruler, and you were reared to it; one of the first lessons you must have learned was lying with a straight face."

Catharine's face froze; then, slowly, she bent her head, looking down at her hands. When she looked up, her face was drawn; the mask had been stripped away, and her eyes were haunted. "Once again, my knowledge was true," she murmured. "You know more than soldiering, Rod Gallowglass."

Rod nodded heavily. He'd made another slip; blank-shield soldiers don't know politics.

"Then tell me," she murmured, "how you came to the House of Clovis, this night."

"My Queen," Rod said gravely, "one man was set upon by three, in an alley. I helped him out; he took me to the House of Clovis to tell me his thanks with a glass of wine. That is how I came to meet Tuan Loguire."

Her brows drew together in an anxious little frown. "If I might but credit your words with truth," she murmured.

She rose and went to the fireplace. All at once, her shoulders slumped, her head bowed forward. "I shall need all my friends in this hour that comes upon us," she murmured, voice husky, "and I think thou art the truest of my friends, though I cannot say why."

She raised her head to look at him, and he saw with a shock that her eyes swam with tears. "There are still some to guard me," she said, her voice so low he could scarcely hear; but her eyes shone through the tears, and an invisible band tightened around Rod's chest. His throat tightened, too; his eyes were burning.

She turned away, biting her clenched fist. After a moment, she spoke again, her voice trembling. "The time shall come soon when each of the Great Lords shall declare himself for or against me; and I think they will be few who ride to my standard."

She turned, came toward him again, eyes alight and a shy, trembling smile on her lips. Rod rose to meet her, staring, fascinated, heart pounding in his ears.

She stopped just before him, one hand touching the locket at her throat again, and whispered, "Will you stand by my side in that day, Rod Gallowglass?"

Rod nodded awkwardly and garbled out something affirmative. At that particular moment, his answer would probably have been the same if she'd requested his soul.

Then, suddenly, she was in his arms, lithe and squirming, and her lips were moist and full on his own.

Some timeless while later, she lowered her head and moved reluctantly away, holding to his arms as if to steady herself. "Nay, but I am a weak woman," she murmured, exultant. "Gonow,RodGallowglass, with the thanks of a queen."

She said something else, but Rod didn't quite follow it; and, somehow, he was on the other side of the door, walking down a wide, cold, torchlit corridor.

He stopped, shook himself, made a brave try at collecting his wits, and went on down the hall with a step that was none too firm.

Whatever else you might think of her political abilities, the gal sure knew how to bind a man to her service…

He stumbled and caught himself; his stumbling block shoved a hand against his hip to steady him.

"Nay, mind thy great feet," grumbled Brom O'Berin, "ere thou trip headlong and foul the paving."

The dwarf studied Rod's eyes anxiously; he found whatever he was looking for someplace between iris and cornea, and nodded, satisfied.

He reached up to grab Rod's sleeve and turned away, guiding him down the hall.

"What had you from Catharine, Rod Gallowglass?"

"Had from her?" Rod frowned, eyes unfocused. "Well, she took my pledge of loyalty…"

"Ah!" Brom nodded, as though in commiseration. "What more could you ask, Rod Gallowglass?"

Rod gave his head a quick shake, eyes opening wide. What the hell more could he ask, anyway? What in heaven's name had he expected? And what, in the seventh smile of Cerebus, was he getting moon-eyed for?

His jaw tightened, sullen anger rising in him. This bitch was nothing to him—just a pawn in the Great Game, a tool that might be used to establish a democracy. And what the hell was he getting angry about? He had no right to that, either…

Hell! He needed a little objective analysis! "Fess!"

He meant it as a mutter, but it came out as a shout. Brom O'Berin scowled up at him. "What is a fess?"

"An unreliable gear train with a slipped cam," Rod improvised. Where the hell was that damn robot, anyway?

Then he remembered. Fess had had a seizure.

But Brom had stopped, and was studying Rod's face with his ultra-suspicious look. "What are these words, Rod Gallowglass? What is a gear train? And what is a cam?"

Rod pressed his lips together and mentally recited the books of the Bible. Careful, boy, careful! You're at the brink! You'll blow the whole bit !

He met Brom's eyes. "A gear train is the pack mule a knight uses to carry his armor and weapons," he growled, "and a cam is a half-witted squire."

Brom scowled, puzzled. "Half-witted?"

"Well, some kind of an eccentric. In my case, it all adds up to a horse."

"A horse?" Brom stared, completely at sea.

"Yes. My horse, Fess. The sum and total of my worldly goods and supporting personnel. Also the only soul—well, consciousness, anyway—that I can tell my troubles to."

Brom caught at the last phrase and held to it with all the vigor of a drowning man. His eyes softened; he smiled gently. "You are of us now, Rod Gallowglass, of we few who stand by the Queen."

Rod saw the sympathy in Brom's eyes and wondered what bound the deformed little man to Catharine's service—and suddenly hated Catharine againfor being the kind of bitch that enjoyed using men.

He set off down the hall, striding long. Brom marched double-time to keep up with him.

"Unless I miss in my judgment of a man," Rod growled through his teeth, "the Queen has another friend in the House of Clovis; yet she calls him her enemy. Why is that, Brom? Is it just because he's the son of her enemy the Duke of Loguire?"

Brom stopped him with a hand on his hip and looked up into Rod's eyes with a half-smile. "Not enemy, Rod Gallowglass, but one that she loves well: her uncle, blood-kin, who gave her sanctuary and cared for her five years while her father tamed the rebel Northern lordlings."

Rod raised his head slowly, keeping his eyes on Brom O'Berin's. "She chooses strange ways to show her love."

Brom nodded. "Aye, most truly strange, yet doubt not she loves them, both the Duke and his son Tuan."

He held Rod's eyes a moment, not speaking.

He turned away, pacing slowly down the hall. Rod watched him a moment, then followed.

"It is a long tale, and a snarled one," Brom murmured as Rod caught up with him. "And the end and beginning and core of it is Tuan Loguire."

"The beggar king?"

"Aye." Brom nodded heavily. "The lord of the House of Clovis."

"And one who loves the Queen."

"Oh, aye!" Brom threw his head back, rolling his eyes upward. "One who loves her right well, be certain; he will tell you as much!"

"But you don't believe him?"

Brom locked his hands behind his back and stamped as he walked, head bowed. "He is either truthful, Rod Gallowglass, or a most excellent liar; and if he lies, he has learned the way of it right quick. He was trained only in truth, in the house of his father. Yet he is lord of the House of Clovis, of they who claim the ruler should be chosen as the ancient King Clovis was, or as they say he was—by the acclamation of those whom he rules."

"Well, they've warped history a little bit there," Rod muttered. "But I take it their plans calls for pulling Catharine off her throne?"

"Aye; and how can I then believe him when he says that he loves her?" Brom shook his head sadly. "He is a most worthy young man, high-minded and honest; and a troubador who will sing you the beauties of milady's eyetooth as quick as he will twist the sword from your hands with his rapier. He was always a gentleman withal, and in him was nothing of deception."

"Sounds like you knew him pretty well."

"Oh, aye! I did, most surely I did ! But do I know him now?" Brom heaved a sigh, shaking his head. "They met when she was but seven years of age, and he but eight, at the keep of Milord Lo-guire in the South, where her father had sent her for safety. There two children met and frolicked and played—under my eye, for I was ever a-watch over them. They were the only two of their age in the whole of the castle, and"—he smiled, and gave a bitter laugh—"I was a miracle, a grown man who was smaller than they."

Brom smiled, throwing his head back, looking past the stones of the hall into the years that were dead. "They were so innocent then, Rod Gallowglass! So innocent, aye, and so happy! And he worshiped her; he would pluck the flowers for her crown, though the gardener scolded him. Did the sun chasten her? He would put up a canopy of leaves! Had she broken milady's crystal goblet? He would claim the "fault" for his own!

"Spoiled her rotten," Rod muttered.

"Aye; but he was not the first to play Tom Fool for her; for even then, she was a most beautiful princess, Rod Gallowglass.

"Yet over their happiness stood a dark, brooding shadow, a lad of fourteen, heir to the keep and estates. Anselm Loguire. He would look down from the tower, watch them at play in their garden, his face twisted and knotted all sour; and he alone in the land hated Catharine Plantagenet—why, no man can say."