CHAPTER IX
NEWCOMER
I slept the rest of that day and all the following day and night, and woke to find myself notable once again: word ofthe king's brother being a magician had already spread throughout the palace and Lundinia as well.
More important to me at the moment, and not surprisingly after all the energy I had expended, I also woke ravenously hungry. I'd intended to look in on little Arn, but if I didn't get some food quickly, I wasn't going to be of much use to anyone. Shooing away the covey of nervous, curious servants who had been watching over my sleep at Estmere's command, I threw on the first clothes that came to hand and, too famished to stand on ceremony, went down from my tower to raid the royal larder.
One of the first to challenge my new status as princely magician was, predictably enough, Father Ansel, Estmere's personal priest. He cornered me, fed but irritable, on my way back from the kitchen through the little palace cloister where once my brother had harped.
Father Ansel is tall and lean, somewhat past middle years, a quiet, gray-eyed man in quiet gray robes. I wasn't used to the company of priests, particularly not one of a faith which has declared itself enemy to my own, but there was nothing of the witch burner in those shrewd, tranquil eyes. Besides, even though I was very much not in the mood for a confrontation, I could hardly be rude to a man who had given me no insult, so I offered him a seat and asked him what he wanted of me.
"Prince Aidan—" He broke off with a chuckle at my involuntary little start. "You're not yet used to the title, are you?"
"I don't think I ever shall be. It gets in the way."
"Now that's a complaint I've never heard before."
"I mean it, it does!" Impatiently, I added, "Listen: I've just come from the kitchen. There I found that one of the little pot boys had scalded his arm rather painfully. Granted, he was an ugly little thing who probably never had an overall bath in his life. But, och fi, he was still a child! Yet no one was even trying to help him! So I did my best to comfort him and heal the scald. It was a nasty wound, nasty enough to warrant the use of magic. But fortunately, the spell I needed wasn't a difficult one to work." Graying eyebrows shot up at that perilous thought, magic, but I ignored his start, continuing hotly, "Or it shouldn't have been difficult! But every time I tried to ask the boy if this hurt, or that, all I would get in reply was a scared, 'It don't hurt, Highness, honest.' I'd swear he wasn't afraid of the magic; peasant folk have usually seen some healing charm or other. It was the title that terrified him!"
"He was only a pot boy."
"Och, not you, too!"
"I . . . beg your pardon?"
"Gossip seems to spread like wildfire in this castle. Every noble I've met so far this morning has told me I'm mad for wasting my Power tending the lowborn. As though Power cares about social standing!"
"We are all God's children," the priest murmured; I think he meant it. "Prince Aidan, I must say you are not quite what I expected."
I shifted restlessly. "No bat wings or sulphur, you mean?'
"Please. To be quite blunt, I cannot approve of what you are."
"I assume you don't mean my parentage, but my magic."
"Of course." He fairly radiated discomfort; I must have seemed the very essence of everything he'd been trained against. Yet the gray gaze was steady. "If you were anyone other than the king's brother, I would have urged that you be—"
"Eliminated?"
"Sent back to your wild homeland. The Black Arts—"
"Black Arts!" I exploded.
He blinked, startled. "A poor choice of words, perhaps. Forgive me."
But I was in no mood for forgiveness. Still fuming over the incident in the kitchen, I snapped, "I lose a day and a half of my life saving a child—och, not that I regret it. I spend my morning helping another because not one of your good, pure, magickless souls was willing to lift a finger! Dyri Uffern, what do you think I am, some hypocritical idiot who heals on one day and conjures Evil on the next?"
He crossed himself at that. "I never meant—"
"Look you, what abilities I possess are mine by the grace of—of Heaven!" I'd almost said, of the Goddess. "They're born in me, part of me, no more unnatural than . . . than having black hair instead of blond!"
With that, I clamped my mouth shut before I said something I would really regret, sure that Father Ansel was going to storm out of there to have me banished. But to my astonishment, I caught a hint of relief in the gray eyes, almost as though I'd just passed some arcane test. Just as I was feeling the slightest bit complacent, deciding that maybe he really had been listening to what I was trying to tell him, maybe he really wasn't such a bad fellow after all, Father Ansel got to his feet.
"The question's academic, at any rate," he said as coolly as the politician a royal priest needs must be. "You are the king's brother. Good day to you, my son."
No you don't, you fox! You're not leaving me the one off balance! "A draw," I called after him, and he turned, puzzled. I grinned. "I declare our duel a draw."
For all his unease, that forced a genuine smile from him. "A draw," he agreed.
He went his way, and I continued on mine to pay a visit to little Arn. The boy was sound asleep, curled up like a puppy and, judging from the coolness of his brow and the feel of his injury, healing nicely. A relief, to be sure.
But I was too restless after my meeting with Father Ansel to wait till the boy awoke. I doubted he'd need me, at any rate. So instead, I went down into the city to let off my excess energy, carrying my pouch of healing herbs just in case and shrouded in a hooded cloak to disguise my too-similar-to-royal features.
And there I came upon Stephen, the silversmith, and his wife, Janet, the baker, who pressed a sweetcake into my hand as though I were a child after I helped her move a heavy tray of bread. Munching peacefully as I wandered on, good spirits returning, I found myself tending an unexpected patient, a stocky, embarrassed glass-blower who had burned his leg "like a fool apprentice." (This seemed to be my day for burns.) To my delight, he turned out to be originally from just this side of the Cymraen border, accepting things magical without a qualm and not at all impressed by titles. Once I had taken away the pain and danger of infection, we chatted happily together in Cymraeth for a time, and I left feeling much more cheerful.
A cheerfulness that lasted only until I ran into the guards who'd come down from the palace to find me. They were a solid, competent lot, mail shirts under red and gold royal livery, open helms squarely on their sweaty heads. They also blatantly weren't comfortable with the idea of being ordered to find a magician, but there was such an air of grim determination to the lot of them that I asked wryly:
"What's this? Am I under arrest?"
That sent ripples of shock among them. "No, my lord!" one guard assured me hastily. "It's just that your royal brother . . . uh . . . wished to speak with you. Besides, he . . . uh . . . feared you might come to some manner of harm down here."
Can't you find a better excuse than that, Estmere? And don't you trust me yet?
The guards eyed me warily as I fumed. "You . . . will come with us now, my lord? If it. . . uh . . . pleases you?"
Well now, it didn't. The idea of being brought back like an erring child didn't please me at all. But I'd be a small sort to take out my anger on innocent men, so I nodded brusquely and obeyed.
I was still fuming when I was ushered into Estmere's presence. He was sitting in one of the smaller audience chambers, a white walled room barely large enough to hold twenty folk and hung round with hangings of sunny forest scenes, his hair glinting dramatically in the rays of sun slipping through the arrow-slit of a window. Before him was a table piled with scrolls, and around him crowded a swarm of advisors, all of whom stared at my approach like so many startled geese.
Estmere raised a brow at my curt little dip of head. "You sent for me?" I asked, biting off each word.
"I did."
With a wave of his hand, my brother dismissed the advisors and the overzealous servants who would have stayed to listen. "Sit," he told me once we were alone. "First, I assume you're quite recovered from healing ht-tle Arn?"
"Yes."
"And the boy is recovering nicely. Yes, I've already been informed of that. And of your conversation with Father Ansel, for that matter."
"Gallu! Is nothing secret in this place?'
"No. I thought you'd already realized that. Now, why are you glaring at me like that?"
"Am I your prisoner, brawd?"
"I . . . beg your pardon?"
"That armed escort back to the palace. Am I not free to come and go as I please?"
"Ah. That. No, Aidan. Not really."
"What—"
"Before you erupt, think." Estmere leaned forward in his chair, eyes all at once too weary for someone only a year or so my senior. "You are my brother. Despite our different coloring, the resemblance between us is just too strong for any to miss, even if I hadn't already openly claimed you as kin. And that kinship makes you almost as much a target as I."
I opened my mouth, shut it, opened it again. "Estmere," I began at last, "by now everyone knows what I am. Do you really think anyone is fool enough to attack a magician?'
"Are you proof against arrows?'
"No, but—" Och, I'd never thought of it: any malcontent might try to kill me to hurt my brother. "But I will be brushing up on defensive spells," I finished grimly. "Do you really live in such perpetual danger?'
The grin I received was downright sardonic. "Not as much as I might be in if I didn't look the way I do. Oh yes, I'm very well aware of being the golden young king, everybody's dear. Their dear until I start making some edicts folks don't like. Or some of the nobles decide they'd like someone a little more manipulable on the throne."
"Some noble like that sly-eyed Baron Aldingar."
Estmere's grin turned downright predatory. "Ah, Aldingar! You're sure you can't read minds?"
"Quite sure."
"A pity. I'd so like to find out just what's going on in his head. But why do you think Aldingar and others of his ilk are at court?'
"So you can keep an eye on them?' I hazarded. "So they can't start plotting something because they know they're being watched?"
"Aha! You do know something about guile!"
"Something about logic," I corrected. "Look you, I understand the need for caution. But I'm used to the freedom of the forest. I can't live under perpetual guard. My word as a magician, I won't let myself be used against you. Is that good enough?"
Estmere hesitated, then sighed and held up a hand in resignation. "So be it. Besides," he added, "I suspect that if you're allowed to roam as you will, you'll prove a nice source of information as to what the commons are thinking. You seemed to get along well with them today."
"Your spies are amazing!"
"They are, aren't they?" he agreed blandly. "Aidan, now that you're here, what exactly do you plan to do? You don't strike me as the sort to be happy simply bickering over the cut of a tunic or hang of a cloak."
"Duwies, no! I'm perfectly willing to start earning my keep, brawd."
Estmere gave a startled laugh. "I didn't mean you'll have to labor like a peasant!"
"What, then? I'm willing to do my share of healing, but most healing doesn't really need magic. And— Estmere, what are you doing to that scroll?"
He'd been fidgeting nervously with the edge of it. Estmere glanced down as though he'd never seen the thing before and let it go, sitting with primly folded hands. "I'll be frank. For the last day and a half I have been plotting ways to use you, use your Art."
"What—"
"Wait, hear me out! I'm not proud of it. And now none of it seems right or just."
With a sudden burst of that same nervous energy, he got to his feet, staring as well as he could out that ridiculously narrow window. "I have honorable ministers at court," Estmere murmured, "men I trust. And my guard is loyal to me, I know that. But still . . .
"But still you want the security magic can give you."
He whirled to face me. "Exactly. I don't want anything dramatic from you; I can't risk having the court think I'm holding the throne through magic. What I ask from you, as my brother, is simply that you attend certain of my royal audiences at my side. You told me you can't read others' thoughts, but I imagine you do have . . . well, abilities to tell you when something isn't quite right?'
"To winnow out would-be traitors and assassins, you mean. Yes, brawd, that I will do, as best I can." A flash of memory: that day back when I'd frightened away the boar, when I'd felt another magical self brush my own . . . If there was any real peril there, it was something I'd roused. And something I must, of honor, guard against as well.
"Thank you, uh, brawd." Estmere grinned in relief. "Oh, and I also think it might be a wise idea for you to accompany me on my spring progression."
Progression? Didn't that Anglic word merely mean a movement from one thing to another? "Your what?"
"You'll find out." Mischief glinted in the bright blue eyes. "I trust you have a taste for travel?"
"I came here, didn't I? Besides," I added with a grin of my own, "whatever this progression of yours turns out to be, it has to be better than staying stuck in the palace and bickering over fashion!"