They had a good journey to the castle. A holiday before things got difficult, Mordion thought of it. He could not let himself think more deeply about what he was going to find. Maybe Hume felt the same. Hume was definitely nervous, and a little tetchy with it. They took Hume’s boat, poling it downriver because they all knew that was the right direction, while Yam kept pace with them on the marshy bank, with Hume’s precious sword strapped to his back for safety.
Yam had refused to go in the boat. “I am too heavy and too delicate,” he said. “You do not treat me with the care I deserve.”
“Nonsense,” said Mordion. “I never stop tuning you.”
“And I refuse to take part in hocus-pocus,” said Yam.
“You just be your own charming self, Yam,” Hume said, grinning above his doubled-up knees. There was very little room in the boat for two. “We’ll do any hocus-pocus there’s need for.”
“I am not happy about this venture,” Yam said, squelshing among forget-me-nots and kingcups. “There are outlaws in the wood these days. And worse things.”
“Cheerful, isn’t he?” said Hume.
Mordion smiled. It seemed to him that the wood was putting forth its best as they journeyed. Downriver, where the trees closed in, it was floored blue-green with bluebells coming.
Ann – no, Vierran, she told herself – went past the yellow crisp packet and waved it a cheerful greeting. “And I’ll get you for that too!” she told the Bannus. Its field must have been miles outside this all along.
The river, when she came to it, was torrential – white water round all but the tips of the rocks. Vierran went over it very cautiously indeed. Even so, there was one quite horrible bit where she was balanced on a slippery spike with both arms cart-wheeling and many yards of torrent between her and the bank. She made it over in a panic rush.
It seemed to be winter still – or at least very early spring – on the other side. No ferns sprouted yet from the cliff, and the bushes near the summit had only the smallest of white-green buds. At the top, Ann stumbled over the corpse of a wolf. She backed off, horrified. It had been killed some time ago, very clumsily. Someone had battered its head in with the bloodstained stone that lay beside it. Sickening. This was not Mordion’s expert neatness, nor Hume with his sword. Yam? What had happened? She avoided looking at the animals filmy eyes, stepped over it and hastened round the house.
“Mordion!”
The hunched brown hairy figure squatting in the yard lifted its head. “Who calls Mordion?”
For one terrible instant, Ann thought it was Mordion, back to his worst despair. There was a mass of scraggy beard and greying shoulder-length hair. Then the thing lifted its face to her and she saw it was – something else. Something with nearly a true skull for a face, filthy, and eyes as filmed and dead as the battered wolf’s. She backed away quickly, with a hand out to tell her when she reached the house.
The thing rose up and stretched bony bloodstained fingers towards her. “Where is Mordion? You know. Tell me where he is.” The voice was hardly a human voice. But the dead eyes saw her. “I must kill him,” it croaked. “Then I must kill you.” It took a tottering step towards her.
Ann screamed. She found the scratchy mud of the house wall, handed herself along it, and threw herself round the corner just as the thing – corpse, ghost – leapt towards her. Screaming, she ran. Down the cliff she went in great scissoring strides. Rocks falling past her and rattling above told her the thing was still after her. She did not look. She just jumped to the nearest rock that showed above the roaring water, and then to the next, and was across the river almost without slowing down. Behind her, she heard a cawing cry and rocks rolling – was that a splash? She was too terrified to look. She scrambled up the bank opposite, clawing at the mud with her fingernails, and ran again, and ran even after she had passed the yellow crisp packet.
Behind her in the river, Reigner Five stared unseeing upwards. His back was broken. The water was forcing his body between the boulders, rolling him onwards, pressing him over to drown too. It took him a while to give in and admit that he had been dead all along.
As Vierran arrived panting in the pointed stone archway, wondering how she came to be so late, an agitated lady flew down the stairs towards her, with one hand to the veiling of her pointed headdress and the other holding up her gown.
“Where have you been, Vierran? She keeps asking for you! The wedding dress is wrong again!”
Vierran stared up at the lady’s worried fair face. “Siri!”
The lady laughed. “Why do you always get my name wrong? I’m Lady Sylvia. But do come on.” She turned and hurried back up the stone stairway.
Vierran followed the trailing end of the lady’s dress upwards, with her mind falling about in a mad mixture of hope and distress and amazement. This really was Siri. The cousin she thought she had invented for Hume. Did this mean the Bannus had somehow worked a miracle and brought most of her family here to Earth? Or were they really other people disguised to make her think so?
“Are you my cousin?” she called up to Siri.
“Not as far as I know,” Siri’s well-known voice called down.
Was this confirmation, or not? Vierran wondered about it as the two of them reached the stone landing and Siri – Lady Sylvia – very cautiously and quietly drew aside the hangings in the doorway there so that they could peep into the bride’s chamber beyond.
Morgan La Trey towered in the middle of the room amid a huddle of her other ladies kneeling round her, pinning parts of the dress. It was a beautiful room, with many doors and windows, a vaulted ceiling and tapestries in dim colours hiding the harshness of the stone walls. It was a breathtaking dress, white with a crusted sheen of pearl embroidery, and its train was yards long. Morgan La Trey looked wonderful in it. But Vierran’s eyes ignored all this and flew to the richly dressed young man lounging in the window-seat beyond Morgan La Trey.
“The Toadie’s with her,” she whispered. “We wait.”
She hated Sir Harrisoun almost as much as she disliked Sir Fors. Sir Fors grabbed any lady he found alone, but Sir Harrisoun had this sly way of pawing any female he could get near, whether they were alone or not. And he crawled to La Trey. She used him unscrupulously in all her plots. At that moment she was saying, “And if you can persuade Sir Bors to preach at the king, preferably about sin – get him to say these outlaws are a judgement onus, or something – that is all to the good.”
“Shouldn’t be difficult, m’lady,” Sir Harrisoun said, laughing. “That Bors preaches just asking for the salt.”
“Yes, but remember the important thing is to get the king to appoint Sir Fors leader of the expedition over Sir Bedefer’s head,” Morgan La Trey told him. “Have people pester the king about it. Give him no peace. Poor dear Ambitas does so hate to be bored.”
Sir Harrisoun stood up and bowed. “You know your fiancé inside out, don’t you m’lady? OK. I’ll get him pestered for you.” He grinned and lounged away to one of the doorways. A gasp and a bobbing among the kneeling ladies suggested that Sir Harrisoun had taken his usual liberties with them.
Morgan La Trey as usual ignored it. She turned to the curtained archway. “Vierran! I can see you lurking there! Come here at once. This dress is still not hanging properly.”
The wedding of Morgan La Trey to King Ambitas was only three days away now. Morgan La Trey was in a grand fuss about it, probably, Vierran thought, because La Trey knew that Ambitas would postpone the marriage yet again if he saw half a chance of doing so. She seemed to be keeping the kings mind off the wedding by intriguing against both Sir Bedefer and Sir Fors. A cunning lady, La Trey. But then she had been like that as Reigner Three too.
And I go along with it, Vierran thought, coming to kneel in the space the other ladies made for her. Whatever the Bannus has done to our minds, I still know I could break the illusion if I convinced the right people. But why should I? Everyone’s rotten, here in the castle.
As she put out her
hand for the pincushion one of the ladies was passing to her, Vierran found that her hand was muddy and its fingernails dark with earth. I wonder how I did that? she thought. She rubbed her hand on her dark blue gown before she took the pins. It was like an emblem of life in this castle, that mud. The dirt came off on you. As she took the four pins she saw she would need and put three of them in her mouth, ready, a great sadness came over her. She recalled the first time she and Hume had seen the castle, like a chalky vision across the lake that seemed to promise beauty, bravery, strength, adventure, all sorts of marvels. She had wanted to cry then too.
Perhaps I was so sad because I knew even then that all that beauty and bravery simply weren’t there, she thought, planting the first pin expertly in the waist of the dress. What fun it would be to ram the pin accidentally on purpose into Reigner Three – except that her life would not be worth living if she did. I just knew it was an illusion, invented by the Bannus. Maybe beauty and bravery are a sham and there are no wonderful things in any world.
Tears got in the way of the second pin. Vierran had to wait for them to clear. While she did, she tried to contact her four voices for some comfort. And, as always in the castle, the voices were silent. Damn it! Vierran thought, putting in the second pin, and then the third, quickly. Those four are good people. They do exist. It just shows you what this castle does. And, suddenly, as if her head cleared, she was quite sure that wonderful things did indeed exist. Even if they’re only in my own mind, she thought, they’re there and worth fighting for. I mustn’t give in. I must bide my time and then fight.
She put the last pin in and stood up. “There, my lady, if you have it sewn like that, it should be perfect.”
She did not expect La Trey to thank her. Nor did she. The king’s bride simply swept out of the chamber to have herself changed into a more ordinary gown.
Rumours flew in the castle all that day. It was said that Sir Bedefer had knelt and implored the king to send his army against the outlaws. Sir Fors strode about declaring that the outlaws were no danger and Sir Harrisoun agreed with him, but most people felt that Sir Bedefer was right. The outlaw knight, Sir Artegal, had now been joined by a crowd of rebels from the village, under the leadership of a villain called Stavely, and it seemed possible that the two planned to attack the castle. The Reverend Sir Bors was known to have talked to the king for an hour on this matter.
By mid-afternoon it was known that Ambitas had given in. Pages and squires raced about and there were mighty hammerings from the courtyards, where the soldiers were preparing for war. But it was announced that Ambitas had not yet decided how many men he would send, nor who would command them. He would give his decision at dinner. This caused some consternation, because, as everyone saw, this meant there was a contest for commander between Sir Bedefer and Sir Fors, and everyone in the castle – except Ambitas, it seemed – knew that there should have been no contest at all. Sir Bedefer was the only right choice. People assembled in the great hall for dinner in a state of great doubt and expectation.
“This Ambitas is a feeble fool,” Vierran murmured to Lady Sylvia, as they filed in behind Morgan La Trey and took their places at the end of the high table.
“It’s his wound. He’s not well,” Lady Sylvia whispered.
“And I shudder to think how much worse things will get when La Trey is actually married to him,” Vierran said. “Don’t be a dumb blonde, Siri. You aren’t usually.”
Lady Sylvia giggled. “You got my name wrong again. Hush!”
Ambitas was being carried in and they all had to stand.
Vierran looked sideways at Siri – Lady Sylvia – while the king was being settled on his cushions. Siri was clever. This girl seemed to have no mind at all. Yet Vierran remembered Yam saying that the Bannus could not force any person or machine to act against their natures. Could it be that Siri had always secretly yearned not to be clever as well as beautiful? Or had the Bannus simply obliged Vierran by producing the cousin she had told Hume about? Lady Sylvia looked real. Perhaps she was some other girl entirely. Oh, it was confusing.
As soon as King Ambitas was comfortably settled, he gestured weakly for them all to sit. “Be seated,” he said. “These are trying times we live in. I have an announcement to make that should cheer us all up.” He took a sip of wine to clear his throat. Everyone waited anxiously. “I have decided,” said Ambitas, “that we should wait to eat until a marvel presents itself.”
Everyone was confounded.
“Oh, not again!” groaned Sir Fors. A chef, who had been entering the hall with a boars head, turned round and carried it out again. Sir Fors’s eyes followed him wistfully.
“This is a treat?” Vierran muttered, staring at her empty plate.
“I’m sure we will not have to wait long, loyal subjects,” said the king. His pink face twinkled roguishly at Sir Harrisoun. Those two knew something.
Everyone’s heads snapped round eagerly as the herald, Madden, threw open the great main doors of the hall and advanced up the aisle between the long tables. “Majesty,” said Madden, “I have great pleasure in announcing the arrival at the castle of a great magician, sage and physician, who craves the pleasure of an audience with you. Will you be pleased to admit him to your royal presence?”
“By all means,” said Ambitas. “Tell him to come in.”
Madden stood aside, bowed, and announced ringingly, “Then enter the magician Agenos to the king!”
A tall man in brown, with a brown cloak, strode in carrying a staff with a mysterious blue light bobbing at the end of it. He bowed with a flourish and then knocked the staff smartly on the flagstones. His assistant, an equally tall youth in shabby blue, entered dragging a wooden boat-shaped cart in which lay a silver man-shape with pink eyes.
Vierran swallowed down an exclamation. Mordion! With Hume and Yam! They seemed to have put wheels on Hume’s boat. It now somewhat resembled the stone-age rollerskate Hume had made as a small boy. And how huge Hume had grown! Vierran’s heart battered in her chest. Her eyes shot sideways along the high table to see if anyone had recognised the great magician. At least, she thought, he had had the sense to call himself Agenos. After what that mad monk had said, everyone in the hall was going to remember the name Mordion.
Ambitas clearly did not know Mordion. He looked like a child about to watch a conjuror. Sir Fors frowned a little, and then gave it up. His mind was on his postponed supper. Oddly, Sir Bedefer leant forward almost eagerly, as if he had just seen an old friend, then sat back, puzzled. But Vierran’s eyes sped on to Morgan La Trey, slender and beautiful in a purple gown and headdress, sitting beside the king. La Trey’s face was white and her eyes glared. Vierran could not tell if La Trey knew Mordion or not, but that look of hers was pure hatred. Sir Bors seemed to feel much the same. He made the sign of the Key and looked horrified.
“Will it please Your Majesty to have me display to you my miraculous mechanical man, and many other marvels?” Mordion asked.
“Display away, great Agenos,” Ambitas said, delighted.
Everyone else would have preferred to have supper first. It said a great deal for Mordion’s showmanship that he kept every soul in that hall enthralled for the next twenty minutes. He had Yam rise up out of the boat and dance about, while he pretended to guide Yam with his staff. He had Yam do bends and twists that only robots could. Then before people ceased gasping at that, Mordion gestured to Hume. Hume took up his bone flute and warbled out a flight of butterflies, which Mordion changed to birds, and the birds to blue, to white, to rainbow colours. He gestured the birds up into the rafters in a whirring flight and then made them cascade down from the beams as paper streamers exhaling sweet scents.
As they descended around Mordion’s shoulders, the streamers became multicoloured silk handkerchiefs, which Mordion handed to people at the nearest tables for souvenirs – except for one white one, which he drew out into a line of little flags and sent back to Hume’s flute as butterflies again. Everyone clapped. Clever, Vi
erran thought as she clapped with the rest. It was all so harmless and pretty that she would have betted large money that most people in the hall thought Mordion was really using conjurors’ sleight of hand and not magic at all. If they did chance to connect him with the traitor the monk had warned them of, they would not realise that Mordion could defend himself with powerful magics, and he would have a chance to get away. But she must warn him about the way Morgan La Trey had looked.
Mordion was now strolling his way up the aisle towards the high table. “For my next piece of magic,” he said, “I shall require the assistance of a young lady.”
Here’s my chance to warn him! Vierran thought. Will he recognise me? She sprang up from her chair at the end of the table.
But Lady Sylvia sprang up beside Vierran, crying out, “Yes, I’ll help you!” Vierran was then guilty of scuffling with Lady Sylvia in a most unladylike manner, treading on Lady Sylvia’s toe and hanging on to her arm. Lady Sylvia won the scuffle, partly by being taller and stronger, and partly because her chair was on the outer edge of the table. She jumped down from the dais, pushing Vierran backwards as she went, and went speeding towards Mordion. “Here I am!” she said, laughing and flushed from the scuffle.
Hume stared at her. As for Mordion, he put his head on one side admiringly – Vierran had seen so many people do that when they first saw Siri – and a smile of appreciation lit his face. “If you could lend me that pretty girdle of yours for five minutes, my lady,” he said.
Vierran’s knees let her down. She sat down, with queer pain mowing through her innards and her breath refusing to come. She could gladly have killed Siri – Sylvia – who was now holding her jewelled girdle out and simpering – yes, simpering! – while Mordion cut it in two with his knife. The hall seemed dim to Vierran and she was not hungry any more.
Oh damn! she thought. I’m in love with Mordion. Oh damn! Maybe this was why that vision of the castle had once nearly broken her heart. She must have known then, as clearly as she knew now, how hopeless it was to love Mordion.