“Is not the murder of his father and his king reason enough?” Drustan thundered.
Matt winced. “Hold it down, there. I can’t think too well if I’ve got a headache, either. Besides, what proof do I have? Only your word.”
“The word of a king!”
“Yeah, but anybody who hears me say it will only have the word of a wizard that he has the word of a king’s ghost. Would you have believed anybody who came before you with a story like that?”
Drustan grumbled something incoherent.
Gaheris crowed with delight. “Well asked, wizard! What say you, O Mighty King? Would you have believed such a tale?”
“I have to be able to back up your charge with evidence.” For a dizzy moment Matt felt like Hamlet, trying to find physical proof of what the ghost of his father had told him. Trouble was, Matt knew he couldn’t afford several years of indecision. “Was there any proof that John poisoned you?”
“The doctor,” Drustan said, “he who examined me as I lay dying. I saw the alarm in his eyes, then the look of soul-sickness.”
“Probably from realizing he knew too much, and that John would have him killed,” Matt inferred. “We’ll have to find out where he is and try to keep him alive, if he still is. Where did John find the poison? He doesn’t strike me as knowing enough to brew it himself.”
His answer was a startled silence from both ghosts. Then Gaheris said, “He is right, Father—the little toad wouldn’t know how to brew beer, let alone poison.”
“It is well asked,” Drustan said, musing. “I will think on it.”
“That would be nice,” Matt told him. “In the meantime, we do have one other way of getting John off the throne, and maybe even into prison.”
“‘Prison is not enough!”
“Yeah, but it will keep him from doing anything worse while we dig up evidence against him.”
“A good point,” Gaheris said. “How will you oust him?”
“By bringing Brion back,” Matt said.
Another startled silence followed, then Gaheris burst out, “That sanctimonious prig, sit on my throne? That lumbering self-righteous booby?”
“He is dead,” Drustan said.
Matt was surprised to hear a genuine note of sadness in his voice. “Maybe not, Your Majesty. Is his soul there where you are?”
A third shocked silence followed, then both voices said, “No… I have not seen or sensed him… if he is dead…”
“Enough!” Matt commanded. “Any chance he would have gone on to Heaven?”
“That young goat?” Gaheris scoffed. “There are several young mothers who were kitchen wenches when he met them, and have been taking his gold every month to raise his brats.”
“He is a fool of chivalry who gallops off to battle at the slightest sign of a war,” Drustan said heavily, “and has slain more than a few enemies on the battlefield. Besides, I have seen him go to confession often, far more often than is healthy for a virile young warrior. No, he has committed too many sins for Heaven, but not enough for Hell.”
“How about Purgatory?”
“Purgatory calls to me constantly, and with voices I recognize!” Gaheris snapped. “Surely we would know if he were here!” Then, more subdued, “At least, I hope it is Purgatory…”
“But there’s such a huge population,” Matt said automatically. Most of his mind was wondering how could they be called to Purgatory if they were in his dream—but he remembered that the afterlife was more a state of existence than a place. “Isn’t this a bad location for you to be looking for revenge?”
“I ask only justice,” Gaheris said, his voice surly.
“I, too,” Drustan grumbled, “but I am also concerned for the fate of my land. I wish to save my people from John.”
“And make sure that he doesn’t profit by your death, of course.”
“Well, of course,” Drustan said in a tone of surprise.
“Just your duty, I’m sure,” Matt said sourly. “By the way, Your Majesty, if you wanted somebody to bring justice for you, why didn’t you appear to the Earl Marshal or the Lord Chancellor or somebody else in your own country? Why come to me?”
“Because I knew you would listen,” Drustan growled. “No one else ever would—certainly not Petronille or any of my sons.”
Matt tried to suppress a stab of sympathy.
“I thought John did,” Drustan’s ghost said, with a sardonic echo, “but he listened only as an enemy listens—to find my weaknesses, my points of vulnerability.”
“And to think he seemed such a fool!” Gaheris marveled.
“Be still, boy,” his father grumbled, “and be glad you did not live long enough to learn in your own turn.”
They woke with the sun, made a quick breakfast, and were just breaking camp when the pouka stepped out of the bushes in horse form. She let Rosamund ride, but none of the men. Sir Orizhan thanked her for carrying his princess, but Sergeant Brock kept his bola ready to hand.
Matt walked beside the pouka, marveling that she could have seemed so absolutely breathtaking as a woman but seemed merely pretty as a horse. Of course, a stallion might not have thought so—but it did raise an issue. “If you don’t mind my asking a personal question—what’s your true form?”
The tawny mare turned to him, puzzled. “What is a ‘true form’?”
It was still unnerving, hearing a horse speak.
Rosamund answered from her seat on the pouka’s back. “It is the form into which we are born, and from which we mortal folk can never change, except by growing.”
“Ah.” The horse nodded. “But if you could, you would— and therefore there is no such thing as a ‘true form.’ “
“Plato would disagree with you,” Matt sighed, “but I don’t think I’m quite up to arguing philosophy with a shapeshifter.”
They wound their way through the amazingly green hills of Ireland, going steadily inland and steadily higher, steadily northwest. Finally, after three days’ travel, they came to a cleft between two hills, spilling an outcrop of rocks that glowed golden in the sunset. The pouka halted, so the rest of them had to, too.
“I take it this is where we pitch camp for the night?” Matt asked.
“If you live that long,” the pouka answered.
Matt was instantly wired for alarm. “If we live? What might stop us, pray tell?”
A band of stocky men in tunics, breeches, and cross gartered sandals stepped out of the woods. They all looked tough, hardened, and resolute—just like the spears they held leveled at the companions.
“Behind us,” Sergeant Brock warned, his voice tense with battle-readiness.
Matt risked a quick glance. The Irishmen seemed to have appeared out of the very roadside, and had them completely surrounded.
One man, older than the rest, with gray streaking his red beard, called a question in Gaelic.
Matt spread his hands. “How can I answer a question like that?”
“With the truth,” the pouka answered. “Come down from my back, maiden.”
Rosamund slid to the ground quickly.
The leader called the question once more, sounding a little angry.
The pouka changed into a woman again.
The Irishmen stared, catching their breaths. Then some of them crossed themselves and began to back away, white showing all around their eyes. The others stood transfixed.
The pouka stood poised in the glow of the setting sun for a minute, making sure of her effect on the sturdy sons of the sod, then called to Sir Orizhan, “Your cloak again, Sir Knight.”
Sir Orizhan whirled his cape off his shoulders and about hers. The stupefied Irishmen blinked and shuddered, awaking from a trance of beauty. The others moaned with superstitious fear and kept backing away.
The leader called out in angry protest.