Matt turned the pad around for Papa to read, feeling he should say something in defense of the younger generation. “On the other hand, when the elders agree with the teenager, he’s really sure he’s right. Me, I’d put Tafas’ attitude down to a good old-fashioned case of religious fanaticism.”
Papa read, then wrote, What if they have chained us with magic? But aloud, he said, “Fanaticism, yes, and adolescents are especially subject to intense and narrow convictions.” He smiled. “Convictions which experience, and greater knowledge, sometimes prove to be entirely wrong.”
Matt wrote, Then we have to outsmart their spells. But Papa’s spoken comments were making him squirm inside as he recognized himself at seventeen… and eighteen, and nineteen. “You just taught college for too long,” he protested. “Me, I was only a teaching fellow for a couple of years… not long enough to become jaded.”
“But long enough for a little tarnish to cloud your ideals?” Papa’s eyes were gentle with sympathy… but he read the note and wrote back, That will take time, no? “A little,” Matt allowed, then clarified, “A little jaded. I did decide that not all college students really wanted to learn, anyway.” He wrote, It could take a while, yes. Any urgent appointments!
“But they do expect to receive high grades.” Papa wrote, Not I, but perhaps you do.
Good point, Matt wrote. I’d better check. Aloud, he said, “Just as well I washed my hands of them. In fact, might not be a bad idea to wash my hands, period. You never know, they might bring us dinner.”
“That would be pleasant,” Papa agreed.
Matt poured water into the bowl, then passed his hand over it, murmuring,
The water darkened, even as he’d said, then began to churn about and about. Bubbles arose; then the surface stilled, became glassy, and Matt told it,
Papa’s eyes widened as he saw an image take form in the water, three-dimensional, seeming chaotic at first until he realized he was looking down from above… down at Bordestang and the countryside about it, with the river curving like an embracing arm. It was a freckled arm, though, and Matt stared. “Ships!
Burned hulks! And ones that could still sail, tied up at the wharfs!”
“What is that ring around the town?” Papa asked.
“Tents!” Matt was tense in an instant. “And soldiers! They’re charging the wall!”
Cavalry galloped up the boulevard to the huge town gates. Behind them rolled a wooden tower, archers ready at its windows, spearmen standing at its doors with plank bridges to drop onto the battlements.
“Here comes the artillery!” Matt cried as genies appeared to hurl huge boulders at the gates.
But the boulders slowed in midair, then dropped onto the Moorish host.
“Well done, Jimena!” Papa cried with glee. “She is a spellbinder indeed!”
“You knew that before anybody else.” Matt watched with concern as the boulders faded, growing insubstantial, until they were only clouds that wreathed themselves about the soldiers. “They’ve got their magicians, too.”
The Moors plowed through the fog anyway, but met a storm of arrows from the archers on the wall… arrows that looped in midair, turning to speed back at the men who had launched them. But they slowed abruptly as they crossed the wall, and the archers reached out to snatch them and set them to bowstrings again.
“That could have been Mama, or it could have been Saul,” Matt muttered.
Then the ground exploded in front of the Moors, sending up a cloud of chicken feathers that filled the air, blinding the invaders… and, Matt was sure, making them gag and choke as well.
Then the gates swung open, and a band of horsemen charged out led by a knight in black armor.
“Sir Guy!” Matt cried with relief. “He came to join the party!”
The clash in front of the gate was brief and furious, but the defenders could see clearly, and any attacker riding against them was still half-blinded by feathers and gagging on down. The Moors retreated in chagrin. In one last punctuating action, a small catapult on the wall released a boulder that took the top off the siege tower. The scene faded as Sir Guy’s sally party rode back into the city, the gates closing behind them.
Matt was livid. “The bastard! The sneak! The genius! He sent his army around by sea! As soon as we were out of sight, they came sailing up the river! No wonder he’s sitting here by the Pyrenees, instead of attacking Rinaldo!”
“Why, yes,” Papa said, his eyes widening. “He has only half his army, has he not? And that half must wait for the queen to come through the mountains!”
“No wonder Rinaldo’s courier got through… Tafas wanted Alisande to come riding to the king’s rescue! Damn! I could strangle that kid, if I wasn’t awed by his strategy!” He waved a hand over the bowl.
“We’ve got to tell Alisande… if he hasn’t ambushed her, too!”
The vision of the castle dissolved, and another image grew in its place… an army on the march, filling a road that strayed between newly planted fields.
Papa frowned. “It is night here, but we see them by morning light.”
“Predawn,” Matt pointed out. “It’s grayish, and there’re no shadows. Must be some kind of time delay here.” He pointed out the figure at the front, golden hair spilling around armored shoulders. “Alisande!
She really does get her troops up and moving at first light.”
“She is well,” Papa pointed out. “They march, and are not ambushed.”
“Yet,” Matt said darkly. “How can I get word to them?” His brow knitted as he searched for a message spell.
“Perhaps there is no need,” Papa suggested. “Do they march toward the rising sun, or away from it?”
“Good question!” Matt seized on the notion and passed his hand over the bowl again, muttering. The army shrank in the circle, the surrounding countryside filling more and more of the aperture, until golden light burst at one side.
“Sunrise!” Papa said, then remembered the listening ears. He seized the pad and wrote, She marches away.
“Thank Heaven,” Matt breathed, as softly as he could, and took the pen to write, Back to Bordestang.
Saul must have gotten the word to her somehow. Then he frowned and wrote, She’s going back to catch the Moorish army between her forces and the city wall. I ought to be there.
Perhaps, Papa wrote. He watched his son for a moment, frowning. Had he realized that his wife was riding away and leaving him to his fate? If so, it didn’t bother him… but this wasn’t the time to talk about it.
Papa said aloud, “We must consider how much good you’re doing here. You show a knack for diplomacy that I had never suspected in you, my son. It may be that you can shorten this war by thinking and talking, or even end it completely.” On the pad, he wrote, Stay.
“I have difficulty believing I can do that much good,” Matt said sourly. But he realized that his father had a point… if he could show Tafas which force really lay behind his invasion, he might sue for peace, and Alisande might not have to fight when she arrived back in Bordestang.
Guerrilla, Papa wrote, and Matt nodded grimly. If diplomacy failed, he might do better to organize a resistance movement. After all, he wouldn’t be the first member of his family to be a Spanish partisan.