The Warlock in Spite of Himself

He stretched, yawned." Well, that pretty well brings us up to date. Anybody got a poker deck?"

The two Loguires frowned, puzzled; but a flicker of recognition passed in Big Tom's eyes.

Rod smiled sourly at the big peasant, and Tom's face turned wooden. He stared back at Rod.

"Oh, come on now, Tom!" Rod snapped. "Your secret's official knowledge now. No more point to playing games, is there?"

Tom glowered at him; then slowly, his face livened again, to a brooding, meditative look.

He leaned back against the wall, half closing his eyes. "Aye, tha hast the right of it, as when hast thou not?"

With a sinking feeling, Rod began to realize that Big Tom saw him as more than just an employer, or a piece in the game.

"My lot is cast with thee now," said Tom," whether I would have it or no; so wherefore should I dissemble?"

"Dissemble?" Rod cocked an eyebrow at his serving-man. "Pretty high-falutin' vocabulary for a simple peasant, Big Tom."

Tom waved a hand impatiently. "Be done with your games! I am unmasked; do me the courtesy to take off your own."

Rod froze.

Then, slowly, he smiled. "You're quicker than the average ursine, Big Tom. How long have you known?"

The Loguires stared, totally lost.

Big Tom gave a short bark of laughter. "Why, master, since first you used judo on me!"

"Ah." Rod's eyebrows lifted. "From the first, then? So that's why you wangled the batman job."

Tom smiled lazily.

"Under orders?"

Tom nodded.

Rod lowered his eyes, studying the chain on his wrist.

"What are you, master?"

"A warlock." Rod winced inside; but it was the best answer under the circumstances.

Big Tom spat. "Games, master, games! Twas yourself said to be done with 'em! You are not of the councillors, else you would not ha' stolen the Lord Loguire away from them; and you are not of the House, or I would ha' known you of old. What are you, then?"

"A warlock," Rod repeated. "A new player in the game, Big Tom, and one who stands squarely behind the Queen. X, the unknown factor in the councillors' and Clovis' equations, here by pure happenstance and coincidence."

"Warruh!" Big Tom spat again. "I ha' small faith in happenstance, master. I ha' known that you back the Queen; may I ask who stands behind you"?"

"Strange manner of talk," growled Loguire, angering, "for a footman to his lord."

Rod smiled bleakly. "A most strange footman, my lord."

"Aye, and a most strange lord," Tom snarled. "Who backs you, Rod Gallowglass?"

Rod studied the big man, then shrugged. The word would mean nothing to the Loguires, and Tom was on his side now anyway.

"SCENT," he answered.

Tom stared; then, almost whispering, he said, "I ha' thought the last of them were dead." He swallowed, bit his lip. "Eh, but tha'rt alive. Tha might be a ghost, but nay; tha'rt alive, or the witch would scarce be so fond of thee. I ha' heard ye were dispersed, after ye won; but nay, I ought to ha' known. 'Twas secret, and secret from all, mayhap; but thou lived."

"Won?" Rod frowned.

And was answered by a frown of even deeper perplexity from Tom.

Then the big man's face cleared. He grinned, rocking back against the wall, and roared laughter.

The Loguires stared from him to Rod, who spread his hands, shaking his head. They looked back at Tom, wiping his eyes and eking the remains of his laugh into chuckles. "Eh, eh, now I see it, aye, now, and fool that I was not to see it before. What age art thou, master?"

"Age?" Rod scowled. "Thirty-two. Why?"

"Nay, nay!" Tom shook his head impatiently. "What age are thou from ?"

Rod's mouth formed a round, silent O as the light dawned. "It was a time machine!"

Big Tom's face froze as he realized the implications of Rod's answer.

"And," Rod pressed, "there's another one hidden in this building, isn't there?"

"Enough!" Big Tom snapped, and his eyes were very cold. "You know too much already, Rod Gallowglass."

Fear gathered in Rod's belly and crawled up his spine as he saw chill, amoral murder come into the man's eyes.

"Big Tom." He cleared his throat, spoke in a swift, driving monotone. "Big Tom, your own kind have turned against you now. You owe them no allegiance; and the wrongs they said they'd fix, I can fix, too. Go back to them, and they'll kill you. I won't, you know that."

The annihilation ebbed from Tom's eyes, the huge body relaxed.

"Nay," Tom growled, "thou hast right again, though not in the way tha knowest. They ha' but bottled me up for now, till the great deeds are done; but they will hale me forth again, for I am too costly a man to discard so lightly. But tha'rt right they will slay me—in a year, two years, or five, when my office is done. And I do wish to live."

Rod raised an eyebrow skeptically. "They don't doubt your loyalty?"

Big Tom chuckled deeply. "They ha' no need to, master. I disagree only on means, not on goals. But I disagree, and for that, soon or late, they will slay me."

"Rod," said in a quiet voice that only he could hear.

Rod held up a hand. "Hold it! Late news on the Rialto!"

"Rod, the Prince of the Elves has arrived. He is leading a squad of elves toward your cell." There was a touch of laughter to the robot's voice.

"All right, what's so funny?" Rod muttered.

"You have a surprise in store, Rod."

Two gnarled, bent, white-bearded figures scurried up to the window. Rod frowned.

"Fess, those are gnomes, not elves."

"Gnomes? Oh, yes, metal-working elves. Purely semantics, Rod. They are still incapable of dealing with iron."

The gnomes pulled out a hammer and cold chisel with a faint bronze sheen, then stepped back and handed them to a larger, darker figure that blocked out the sunlight.

The Loguires, chained under the window, craned their necks backward to try to see as the first blow sounded.

Big Tom frowned. "There be something that pricks at my memory about that form at the window. Ah, for light, to see his face!"

Rod frowned. "What's so great about his face? Probably pretty ugly."

Tom gave a toothy grin. " 'Twould be excellent fine to tell my children, good master, if I should live long enough to sire them. No mortal has yet looked upon the faces of the royalty of the Elves, though they are said to be aged past believing. They are… uh… ah… mmmmmm!"

Tom's head lolled forward; he began to snore.

Two other snores answered him. Turning, Rod saw the Loguires, chins on their chests, sleeping blissfully.

Rod stared.

A metal bar dropped from the window and bounced on the floor. The ends were sheered through.

Rod whistled. This Prince of the Elves might be old, but he certainly wasn't languishing—not if he could still cut through inch-thick iron with nothing but a cold chisel and a mallet.

The third bar fell down. There was a scrabbling sound, and the squat, broad form shot through the window and leaped to the floor.

Rod stared, squeezed his eyes shut, and shook his head. Then he looked again, and understood why Tom and the Loguires had suddenly dozed off.

He swallowed, fought for composure, and smiled. "Well met, Brom O'Berin."

"At your service." The little man bowed, smiling maliciously. "I owe you a rap on the head, Master Gallowglass, for the way that you spoke to the Queen: a rap on the head, or great thanks, I know not which."

He turned to the window and called softly in a strange, fluid tongue. The cold chisel arced through the air and fell to his feet. He reached up and caught the hammer as it dropped.

"Now, then." He dropped to his knees and pressed Rod's forearm flat against the floor. "Stir not, or thou'lt have a gouge out of thy wristbone." He set the chisel against the first link of chain and tapped lightly with the hammer. The link fell off, sheared through. Brom grunted and moved to Rod's other side.

"Thou'lt wear bracelets when I've done," he grumbled, "but no chains. The manacles must wait till we're at the castle smithy."

"Uh… that's pretty hard bronze you've got there," Rod ventured, watching the chisel slide through the iron.

"Most hard," Brom agreed, attacking the ankle chains. "An old recipe, known long in my family."

"Uh… in your family?"

"Aye." Brom looked up. "There were elves in lost Greece, too, Rod Gallowglass. Didst thou not know?"

Rod didst not; but he didn't figure this was the time to mention it.

He stood up, free of the chains at least, and watched Brom cutting the others loose. The Prince of the Elves bit explained a lot about Brom: his size and bulk, for one thing.

"Never knew you were royalty, Brom."

"Hm?" Brom looked back over his shoulder. "I would have thought thou'd have guessed it. Why else am I named as I am?"

He turned back to his work. Rod frowned. Name?

What did that have to do with anything? Brom? O'Be-rin? He couldn't see the connection.

"There, the last," said Brom, cutting through Big Tom's foot shackle. "Do thou now lend me aid of thine shoulder, Master Gallowglass."

He jumped back out through the window. Rod got a shoulder in Tom's midriff and, staggering, somehow manhandled him over to the window as a rope flew through.

Rod tied it under Tom's arms, threw the loose end out, and called "Heave!"

He heard Brom grunt, and marveled again at the little man's muscles as Big Tom moved jerkily up the wall, still snoring happily.

What with the beerbelly and the muscles, and the minimal size of the window, Big Tom was a tight fit.

"Why don't you just wake him and let him shove himself out?" Rod grunted as he shoved at Tom's ample rear.

"I have no wish for my office to be known among mortals," came Brom's muffled reply.

The window now framed only Tom's sizable posterior and sequoia shanks. Rod eyed the former, weighing the merits of a well-placed kick, and decided against it.

"So, why'd you let me stay awake?" he grunted as he pushed.

"One amongst you must needs aid me with the others," answered Brom, but Rod had a notion that wasn't quite the whole story.

He left off the questions, however, until his cellmates were deposited on the ground outside the window. Tuan's shoulders had proved even more of an obstacle than Tom's belly; they had to back him up, feed his hands through in front of his head, while Rod wondered fleetingly about brachiator ancestry.

Then Brom hauled Rod out, muttering something about the fish being undersized these days. Rod snarled a return compliment as he gained his feet, then bowed double, putting his head on Brom's level.

"And what's that for?" Brom growled.

"For belting," Rod answered. "You owe me a rap on the head, remember?"

The dwarf chuckled, clapped him on the shoulder. "Nay, lad; you did only that which I should ha' done myself years ago; but I had never the heart. But come now, we must away."

Brom caught up Tuan's midsection. The gnomes took his shoulders and feet, and bore him away toward the ruined fountain in the center of the courtyard.

More gnomes materialized out of the stonework and tucked their shoulders under Big Tom.

Rod shook his head wonderingly, and stooped to sling Loguire over a shoulder.

Brom fumbled with a stone at the fountain's base and pulled it away to disclose the dark mouth of a small tunnel three feet in diameter.

Rod tapped Brom on the shoulder. "Wouldn't this be a little easier if we woke them first?"

Brom stared, scandalized; then his face darkened. "We go to Elfland, Master Gallowglass! And no mortal may journey there and remember it!"

"I have."

"Well, truth," Brom admitted, turning back to the Tuan problem," but then thou' rt not so mortal as some. Thou'rt a warlock." He disappeared into the burrow.