"But wherefore?" Sir Guy asked in surprise. "What I have sworn, I have sworn - and if I have enlisted in a noble cause, so much the better."
He said it so easily that Matt found himself sure Sir Guy hadn't bumped into them by accident-but the princess looked very pleased indeed. "Well, then, sirs!" she said, looking from Sir Guy to Matt and back. "What is your counsel? Whither should we march?"
"Away from your enemies," Sir Guy said, totally serious. "We are too few to encounter them successfully."
"Uh, toward your friends," Matt amplified. "I'm afraid we do need numbers."
"The greatest of my friends is the giant Colmain," the princess said judiciously. "He helped Deloman, the founder of my family, to win to his throne three centuries ago."
"Aye, he slew the foul giants that plundered our land," Stegoman added, "and locked the accursed titan Ballspear in combat, till the blessed wizard Moncaire could change him to stone."
"Accursed?" Matt propped up an eyebrow. "Ballspear? What was so bad about him?"
"What was not?" Stegoman snapped, spitting sparks. "He led the foul horde in their looting, caught fledglings in flight from the air for his food, and crushed mothers and hatchlings beneath his vast feet! A thousand foul tales we tell of him still." Flame licked and curled around his mouth as he finished.
Matt noted the emotion. "Yes, I see why the dragon folk would curse him. And if Colmain could beat him, or even hold him in a stalemate, I see why we should go looking for him."
"Yet Colmain himself is now stone," Sir Guy pointed out. "'Twas the last, vindictive stroke of Dimethtus the sorcerer, when Deloman came against him, with Colmain and Conor the wizard, besting his troops and his powers of Evil."
"This I know as well as my name," Alisande answered, unruffled. "Yet also I know that a wizard accompanies me." She turned to Matt. "How say you, Lord Wizard? Can you turn a stone giant to flesh, even as you did with Master Stegoman?"
Matt remembered he was supposed to be a great wizard now. He spread his hands, shrugging. "What can I say, Highness? I'll give it my best shot."
"No more can I ask." She seemed far too satisfied.
"You might ask for an army," Sir Guy reminded her, "and you will find one in the West. Thence am I lately come - and they are strong, Highness, in all things but hope. Landless barons I saw, leading troops of knights whose suzerains had died, hiding in forest and glen, and riding out to harass the enemy. Yet most gather at monasteries, at houses of God, where the powers of Evil are weakened and confounded. Here gather peasants whose homes have been destroyed, masterless knights, landless barons, and all the good clergy who escaped Astaulf's sword. Strong in arms and in fighters they are, and armored with courage!"
"Yet you say they lack hope?" the princess demanded, frowning.
"Aye, Highness. Beneath their courage and faith, their foundations are crumbling-for who, they ask, can rise up to lead them? King Kaprin is dead, his daughter imprisoned. Who, then, shall win the throne from Astaulf? And how can they triumph, with no one to win? So they fight, determined that Evil shall fall along with them - but believing nothing shall rise."
"I must to them!" Alisande cried, her face flaming. "They must see me and know that their princess is free!"
"But they're in the West," Matt reminded her. "Where's Colmain?"
"Why, in the West also," Alisande cried. "He stands in the far western mountains, guarding our land in a long, silent vigil."
"Oh."
"Aye." Sir Guy nodded in sympathy. "There is no real choice. Bordestang lies in the East, with her enemies; Colmain stands in the West, with her friends. Where else could she go?"
"Unfortunately, I can't help thinking Malingo will figure that out, too," Matt pointed out. "You don't really think he's just going to let us ride peaceably along toward a welcoming army, do you?"
Sir Guy shrugged. "That lies at hazard, Lord Wizard. There is no war without risk; it must be borne."
"Maybe a slightly more devious route..."
"Nay." Alisande's voice rang like a bell. "If we deal in the devious, Lord Matthew, we lose - for Malingo is leagued with the powers of Evil, of prevarication and deviousness. If we wish to triumph against him, we must be open, honest, direct. We must travel west; I know this to be our best course!"
"With all due respect, your Highness, that might be good morality, but it's lousy strategy."
"What!" Sir Guy cried, scandalized. "You doubt the word of blood royal."
Matt smiled thinly. "Titles don't mean quite so much where I come from, Sir Guy."
"Yet thou art not in thine homeland," Stegoman rumbled at his shoulder, "and art now bound by the rules of this world, not thine own."
Matt's smile soured as he turned to the dragon. "Here or at home, Stegoman, a title by itself means nothing."
"Yet blood royal does," Sir Guy declared. "A king or queen cannot be mistaken!"
"Oh, come off it!" Matt cried, exasperated. "There isn't a human being alive who never makes a mistake!"
"There do, an they be kings and queens," said Stegoman, "in matters politic, whether they be of the public weal, affairs of state, or the conduct of war."
"In these matters, royalty's infallibly right." Sir Guy spoke more gently, patiently. "There are those among men who are gifted, Lord Wizard - you above all should know that for truth. And there are many sorts of Gifts, as there are types of people. He who is right in all matters public is made king, for the welfare of all - and those who inherit his blood inherit also his Gifts."
It did kind of make sense, in its own weird way. Matt couldn't deny, now, that magic worked here - he'd done it too often. And if he could have the Gift of magic, why couldn't Alisande have infallibility by Divine Right?
No reason, really. None he could think of.
He looked up at Alisande, a little sheepishly. "Uh-your Highness thinks we oughta go west?"
"I do," she said, very seriously. "'Tis our best chance."
Matt stood looking at her. Then he nodded. "Right."
He turned to Stegoman. "Care to come along? Seems like a shame to bust up the old gang now."
"Shame, indeed." Stegoman nodded. "'Twould shame me greatly, to abandon a princess in quest of her rightful crown."
"It's not exactly going to be guaranteed safe," Matt warned.
"Yet it will, at least, be of interest. Life can grow dull, Wizard."
I'd just love to be bored, Matt thought. Still, he could see Stegoman's point. With none of his own kind around, and not much chance of ever being with them again, there wasn't much to do but watch the antics of these quaint two-legged creatures. "Good to have you, Stegoman."
The dragon fixed him with a glittering eye. "How goodly?"
Matt halted, feeling a bargaining session coming on. "Uh, what did you have in mind?"
Stegoman glanced at Sir Guy and the princess. "Come aside with me; this is talk for dragon and wizard, and need not concern other folk."
"Uh-excuse me, your Highness. Sir Guy." Matt touched his forelock apologetically and followed Stegoman.
The dragon only moved about fifty feet off before he growled, out of the corner of his mouth, "There is ... a certain matter in which... Well, if a wizard cannot manage it, none can ... 'Tis one which doth touch me tenderly, a matter which ... well, no doctor of physic could mend it, so..."
Matt suddenly recognized that Stegoman was trying to talk about something extremely embarrassing to him; the dragon couldn't quite bring himself to put it into words.
"A-a matter of appendages," Matt supplied. "Of certain members which are as vital to your people as hands are to mine?"
"One could say that, yes." The dragon growled it, but Matt caught a definite undertone of relief at not having to say it. "Canst thou mend where doctors of physic must fail?"
"I don't know ... I certainly don't know any spell that would do what you want. Not offhand. But give me some time, and I might be able to work something out."