“Rest, eat, bathe. Do whatever you wish, but do not leave the building,” Gosa told them cheerfully. “I will be back this evening, and tomorrow . . . tomorrow we will see about answering some of those questions you have been harbouring for so long.”
He left. The old man clapped his hands and two younger versions of himself appeared, shut the doors of the room—which the company saw was a kind of foyer—and stood expectantly.
Murad and his soldiers were glaring about them as if they expected an armed host to rush out of the walls. It was Hawkwood who smelled the cooking meat first. It brought the water springing into his mouth.
Kersik said something to the old man, Faku, and he clapped his hands again. His helpers swung open side doors in the big room, and there was the gurgle of running water. Marble pools with fountains. Clean linen. Earthenware bowls of fruit. Platters of steaming meat.
“Sweet Saints in heaven,” Bardolin breathed. “A bath!”
“It might be a trick,” Murad snarled, though he was swallowing painfully as the smell of the food obviously tantalized him.
“There is no trick.” Kersik laughed, darted into the room and snatched a roasted rib of the meat, biting into it so the juices ran down her chin. She came over to Bardolin and stood close to him.
“Will you not try it, Brother Mage?” she asked, offering him the rib.
He hesitated, but she thrust it under his nose. That secret amusement was in her eyes. “Trust me,” she said in a low voice, vixen grin on her face, mouth running with the meat juices. “Trust me, brother.”
He bit into the rib, shredding meat from the bone. It seemed the most delicious thing he had ever tasted in his life.
She wiped the grease out of his silver beard, then spun from him. For an instant he could see her eyes in the air she had vacated, hanging as bright as solar after-images.
“You see?” she said, holding up the rib as though it were a trophy.
The men scattered, making for the piled platters and bowls. Faku and his colleagues stood impassively, looking on like sophisticates at a barbarian feast. Bardolin remained where he was. He swallowed the gobbet of meat and stared at Kersik as she danced about the gorging soldiers and laughed in Murad’s livid face. Hawkwood remained also.
“What was it?” he asked Bardolin.
“What do you mean?”
“What kind of meat?”
Bardolin wiped his lips free of grease. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.” His ignorance suddenly seemed terrible to him.
“Well, I doubt they brought us this far to poison us.” Hawkwood shrugged. “And by the Saints, it smells wholesome enough.”
They gave in and joined the soldiers, wolfing down meat and slaking their thirst with pitchers of clear water. But they could not manage more than half a dozen mouthfuls ere their stomachs closed up. Bloated on nothing, they paused and saw that Kersik was gone. The heavy doors were shut and the attendants had disappeared.
Murad sprang up with a cry and threw himself at the doors. They creaked, but would not move.
“Locked! By the Saints, they’ve locked us in!”
The tiny windows high in the walls, though open to the outside, were too small for a man to worm through.
“The guests have become prisoners, it would seem,” Bardolin said. He did not seem outraged.
“You had an idea this would happen,” Murad accused him.
“Perhaps.” Even to himself, Bardolin’s calm seemed odd. He wondered privately if something had indeed been slipped into the food.
“Did you think they would leave us free to wander about the city like pilgrims?” Bardolin asked the nobleman. The meat was like a ball of stone in his stomach. He was no longer used to such rich fare. But there was something else, something in his head which disquieted him and at the same time stole away his unease. It was like being drunk; that feeling of invulnerability.
“Are you all right, Bardolin?” Hawkwood asked him, concerned.
“I—I—” Nothing. There was nothing to worry about. He was tired, was all, and needed to get himself some sleep.
“Bardolin!” they called. But he no longer heard them.
FOURTEEN
W HAT is your name?
“Bardolin, son of Carnolan, of Carreirida in the Kingdom of Hebrion.” Was he speaking? It did not matter. He felt as safe as a babe in the womb. Nothing would touch him.
That’s right. You will not be harmed. You are a rare bird, my boy. How many of the Disciplines?
“Four. Cantrimy, mindrhyming, feralism and true theurgy.”
Is that what they call it now? Feralism—the ability to see into the hearts of beasts, and sometimes the craft to duplicate their like. You have mastered the most technical of the Seven Domains, my friend. You are to be congratulated. Many long hours in some wizard’s tower poring over the manuals of Gramarye, eh? And yet you have none of the instinctive Disciplines—soothsaying, weather-working. Shifting.
A tiny prick in the bubble of well-being which enfolded Bardolin, like a sudden draught in a sturdy house, a breath of winter.
“Who are you?”
Kersik! She has much to learn of herbalism yet. Rest easy, brother of mine. All will come to light in the end. I find you interesting. There has not been much to seize my interest this last century and more. Did you know that when I was an apprentice there were nine disciplines? But that was a long time ago. Common witchery and herbalism. They were amalgamated, I believe, in the fifth century and brought under that umbrella term “true theurgy,” to the profit of the Thaumaturgists’ Guild and the loss of the lesser Dweomer-folk. But such is the way of things. You interest me greatly, Bardolin son of Carnolan. There is a smell about you that I know. Something there is of the beast in you. I find it intriguing . . . We will speak again. Rejoin your friends. They worry about you, worthy fellows that they are.
H E opened his eyes. He was on the floor and they were clustered around him with alarm on their faces, even Murad. He felt an insane urge to giggle, like a schoolboy caught out in some misdeed, but fought down the impulse.
A wave of relief. He felt it as a tactile thing. The imp clung to his shoulder whimpering and smiling at the same time. Of course. If he had been drugged it would have been left bereft, lost, the guiding light of his mind gone from it. He stroked it soothingly. He had put too much into his familiar, too much of himself. The things were meant to be expendable. He felt a thrill of fear as he caressed it and it clung to him. Much of his own life force had gone into the imp, giving it an existence beyond him. That might not be to the good any more.
Drugged? Where had that thought come from?
“What happened?” Hawkwood was asking. “Was it the food?”
It was an enormous effort to think, to speak with any sense.
“I—I don’t know. Perhaps. How long was I gone?”
“A few minutes,” Murad told him, frowning. “It happened to no one else.”
“They are playing with us, I think,” Bardolin said, getting to his feet rather unsteadily. Hawkwood supported him.
“Lock us up, drug one of us—what else do they have in store?” the mariner said.
The soldiers had retrieved their arms and lit their match; it stank out the room.
“We’ll have that door down, and shoot our way out of here if we have to,” Murad said grimly. “I’ll not meet my end caught like some fox in a trap.”
“No,” Bardolin said. “If they are expecting anything, they are expecting that. We must do it another way.”
“What? Await yonder wizard with a tercio of his beast-headed guards?”
“There is another way.” Bardolin felt his heart sink as he said the words. He knew now what he would do. “The imp will go for us. It can get out of the window and see what is happening outside. It may even be able to open the door for us.”