There was another moment of shocked silence. Prince John broke it with a cry of distress and dropped to his knees by his father, lifting the older man by the shoulders and feeling for his pulse.
For himself, King Drustan knew only sudden darkness that after a while lightened. He seemed to float in a void of mist, hearing voices talk around him.
“Yes, Your Highness, I am sure he will live.”
“Praises be!” said John’s voice, though it was shaking. “But will he be well?”
“Ah! Nicely asked,” the older voice sighed. “No physician can answer that while he sleeps. We can only wait and see how he fares when he wakes.”
“I am awake,” King Drustan grumbled—but why were the words so slow to come, so hard to form? He forced his eyes open and saw Prince John and Dr. Ursats, staring at him. Behind them he saw the tapestries of his own bedchamber, and the curtains between them and himself were those of his own tester bed. He sat up, assuming his most arrogant posture— then realized that he hadn’t, that he had scarcely stirred. Panic gripped him, and he hid it by shouting. “A pox upon you! Do you not hear me? I am awake!”
This time, though, he heard his own voice—only a gargling mixed with a sort of braying, a mouthing of vowels with scarcely a consonant. The panic surged higher, and he would have screamed, only John stepped up to him, gripping his hand. “He wakes! How are you, my father?”
“What nonsense to worry!” Drustan said, mollified. “I am perfectly well!”
But he wasn’t, and he knew it. He couldn’t hear the words he had spoken, heard only a sort of cawing in their place.
Now the doctor stepped up on his other side and took his hand. “I am relieved to see you conscious, my liege. Do you remember what happened?” Then, before the king could answer, “Allow me to remind you. You were about to drink a toast to the queen when you fell down, unconscious.”
The king frowned, remembering.
“Suffer my impertinence, Majesty.” The doctor leaned over and lifted first one eyelid, then the other, staring intently into each orb in turn. Then he straightened and said, “Squeeze my hand, Majesty.”
“What idle game is this?” Drustan snapped, but heard again only an ass’ braying. Appalled, he resolved that he would never talk again. He did, however, squeeze the doctor’s hand, and Ursats nodded, satisfied. He took the king’s other hand from John and said, “Squeeze with this hand now, Majesty.”
The king repressed the urge to make a withering comment and squeezed.
The doctor’s face was completely neutral. “Have you squeezed my hand, Your Majesty?”
“What the devil sort of question…” Drustan heard his own cawing and clamped his jaw shut. He forced a very stiff nod.
“Yet I felt nothing,” Dr. Ursats said sadly.
“What does this mean?” John cried.
“That His Majesty has been elf-shot,” Ursats told him, then to Drustan, “Some malicious sprite has aimed his miniature crossbow at you, Majesty, and struck your temple with his tiny dart. Country folk find their minuscule arrowheads in the dust of a road sometimes, after a thunderstorm. This barb has lodged in your brain, though, and will be some time working its way loose.”
The king stared, and tried to ignore the fear that threatened to overwhelm him.
“Until it does,” Ursats went on, “your speech will be slurred, and the whole right side of your body will move only with difficulty, if at all.”
The king brayed denial.
“Peace, Your Majesty.” Dr. Ursats patted his hand. “Is not the life a greater thing than the body, and the body itself greater than the ability to walk without a limp?”
“No!” the king shouted, and this time they understood him.
The doctor smiled. “You see, Your Majesty? With effort, you can still make yourself understood! With practice and work, you shall one day speak again, almost as well as you did before.”
“But my leg!” Drustan howled. “My arm!”
Ursats explained as though he had understood. “You shall have to work as hard as you did when first you learned swordplay, practice as diligently as when you strove to master jousting by riding at a quintain. But with constant effort, you shall gain in strength and smoothness as the arrowhead works its way free. Then, someday, you shall walk again, perhaps with only the slightest of limps!”
“Learn to walk, as though I were a toddling babe?” The king howled at the injustice of it.
John gripped his hand again. “You shall not face this daunting prospect alone, Father! I shall be here beside you every day, here to comfort and sustain you! Only tell me what you need, and I shall see it fetched!”
“Don’t patronize me, boy!” King Drustan snarled.
John frowned. ” ‘Don’t’ … ? You said something else, then ‘boy.’”
The doctor looked up with keen interest. “Can you understand him, then?”
“A little, I think. Was I right, Father?”
Drustan stared at him, gears meshing in his brain. Slowly, he nodded.
“We captured the Count of Tundin in battle,” John reminded him, “but his youngest son fought in Earl Marshal’s entourage. Shall we hold both father and son attainted, then?”
Drustan scowled. “Why speak of such trivia at a time like this?”
“Again, more slowly,” John urged, and Drustan realized what the boy was trying to do. Slowly and with great effort he said, “Attaint the father. The son is Count.”
“You say the father is attainted?”
Hope thrilled in Drustan; he nodded.
“But the son? What of the youngest son?”
Trying even harder to be clear, Drustan said, “He is now Count.”
“Did you say that you declare the youngest son to be Count of Tundin?” John asked with great intensity.
One corner of Drustan’s mouth lifted in a leer intended to be a smile. He nodded.
“Excellent!” John squeezed Drustan’s hand with both of his own. “Thus shall you rule still, my father! I shall come to you with all the questions of state, and listen until you have made yourself clear! I shall bear all your commands to your ministers, and see that each is carried out as you would wish it! I shall come to talk to you twice a day, three times a day, as often as it takes—and at least once, at supper, only to enjoy your company!” He shivered. “For you must know, Father, how much afraid I am, without your shield to ward me! How badly I need your presence to give me the strength of will to face your ministers!”
Compassion flowed; for a few minutes Drustan’s own fear submerged under concern for his son—the only son left him now! He squeezed John’s hand and muttered, “Be brave, lad! I shall be here for you, ever at your call! How could I desert you, when you do my work?”
John smiled, reassured, and gave as good as he got. “Courage, my father! You have beaten many enemies, great enemies— surely now you can defeat one so tiny!”
Half an hour later John returned to his own apartments. He closed the door behind him and let out a long sigh, folding in on himself.
“Was it as difficult as all that?” asked a resonant baritone.
John snapped upright, remembering the rendezvous he had set. “It went well enough, Niobhyte. It went just as you said it would.”
CHAPTER 12
John went to the side table, his steps unsteady, and poured a goblet of wine with hands that trembled from the release of tension. “The spell worked as you said it would—I understood him, but no one else could. How did you persuade the elves to shoot him?”
“There are some things sorcerers must not confide.” Niobhyte didn’t tell John that the stroke had been as much of a surprise to him as to everyone else. He had been quicker to take advantage of it, though. “Did I not promise you that you would rule within six months of our pact?”