The Oathbound Wizard

"A wizard's gotta do what a wizard's gotta do," Matt groaned, and chanted,

"Within each wounded heel and sole
Starts the healing of the whole.
Knit up the epidermis neat,
So I won't fall into defeat."

The pain disappeared so suddenly that he groaned in relief.

"Are you not well?" the cyclops asked anxiously.

"Oh, yeah! Just fine. Give me ten minutes to work up my courage, and I'll even try standing on them."

"I rejoice to hear it." But Fadecourt still looked concerned. "Yet what of Narlh?"

Matt shook his head. "I don't think he ever came down—at least, not anywhere near us. Sure, the duke might have caught him—but so might any other sorcerer. I have a sneaking suspicion that he figured out he'd lost us and flew for the nearest clear air."

"In any event, the monsters have escaped him," Fadecourt agreed. "Had they not, the duke would have shown us their heads, to afright us."

Matt nodded. "It would be just like him. Even if we didn't scare, he'd have a blast watching our grief."

Fadecourt's jaw hardened. "If they could escape, may not we? Wizard, I implore you, find us a passage! Exert your powers to the utmost! Expend your greatest efforts! The damsel lies in torment! We must to her!"

"Well, it might be easier to bypass the walls than to tunnel through them." Matt frowned and tried the verse he had used to escape from the dungeon in which Alisande had been imprisoned.

"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows..."

He had scarcely begun chanting before he began to feel inimical magical forces gathering about him.

He strained, sweat starting from his brow—but the web of force held him tight. He relaxed, shaking his head. "He did put an enclosure spell on this dungeon."

"Can you not break it?" Fadecourt asked anxiously.

"Let me try a little better verse.

"And thus when they appeared at last,
And all my bonds were cast aside,
I asked not why, and reck'd not where,
So it was far outside!"

Again, the magical field pressed around him, grating on his nerves, raising the hairs on the back of his neck—but there was a greater sense of tension, and he felt the strain physically. Byron's verse was working better than his adaptation of Shakespeare, but not better enough.

"Can you not shift us?"

Matt shook his head. "It's very heavily enchanted. This is no amateur job. Either the duke is a better sorcerer than he looks, or he's got a crackerjack working for him."

"What is a `crackerjack'?"

"I am—or at least, I'm a jack who's trying to crack us out of here." Matt frowned and tried again.

"Alas, my foe, you do us wrong,
To bind us up so close to death.
Yet we will match you, song for song,
Until we draw a free man's breath,
For dying in a prison strong
Is not the destiny that waits,
For good men who still seek and strive.
For them shall open many gates
If they keep faith, and onward drive
Till they behold their hard-won fates!"

The magical web enwrapped him again, but not so tightly. His whole body was raked with tension, though, as his spell contended with the duke's.

Then something seemed to lance through to Matt, and the tension was gone with an almost-audible snap. Matt went limp, staring about, startled.

They were still in the cell. "Naught has occurred," Fadecourt said, severely disappointed. "The duke's spell must be too strong for you."

"But I could have sworn I broke it!" Matt protested. "I felt some outside force reach through to me! We ganged up on him—or his spell, anyway! We broke it!"

"We are still here," Fadecourt pointed out.

"Yeah, we sure are." Matt frowned, then looked up, eyes widening. "I didn't say anything about moving us out of here! I only said we'd keep trying!"

Someone cackled just outside the cell door.

Matt stared at Fadecourt, the hairs rising on the back of his neck.

Fadecourt stared back.

"Either that's a hen with a very odd idea of the ideal roost," Matt said, "or we've got unexpected company."

Fadecourt glanced sidelong at the door. "There is light through the wicket."

Matt stared at the glow through the little, barred window, hearing the cackle again, then a gabble of low-voiced conversation. Almost against his will, he sidled across and looked out.

A small fire lit a small area—it couldn't be called a chamber, there weren't any walls. In fact, Matt could have sworn the hall outside his cell had only been two feet wide. Now it was broad enough so that the walls were lost in shadow.

Around the fire stood three old ladies—at least, Matt hoped they were ladies, because they seemed to be discussing his future—or was it his past?

"Have you more thread upon your spindle, Clotho?" the one with the yardstick asked.

"Aye," Clotho said. "It could make his life longer—or make another life, anew."

"What, two lives for one man?"

The middle sister shrugged. "It would be rare, yet I have known wizard folk to achieve it aforetime. Sorcerers, now, some have spun out their lives to unbelievably long spans..."

"Yet I have cut them off, natheless," the third lady muttered darkly, "cut them off at last—have I not, Lachesis?"

"That you have, sister Atropos—and I have shown you where their threads must end, in such fashion that they would have no hint of their end coming."

"Indeed you have, and well done, too, for such as would cheat Death."

Matt shuddered. These three hags didn't play around, did they?

"Yet a wizard who holds to the straight and straitened path has no such cheating done. And, too, this one is young."

"Who speaks?" Fadecourt hissed in Matt's ear.

"I'm not sure," Matt muttered back, "but I think it's the Norns."

"Nay, surely not! I hear Greek names!"

"Cut him now," the middle sister mused, "and Ibile will surely subside in slavery and misery. Merovence, too, may falter—for see! In my tapestry, the queen will waver 'twixt despair and faith, 'twixt the slough of despond and the iron of duty."

Well. At least Alisande would miss him. That much was good to know, anyway.

Atropos clacked her shears impatiently. "Have done! Whether all of Europe succumbs to the rule of the Prince of Evil is not our care! Ours is the destiny of human folk, not nations or races! 'Tis for God to concern Himself with them!"

"Yet are we not His tools?" Lachesis argued. "Nay, I must listen for His voice, sister."

"How about my voice?" Matt called out. He shook one of the window bars and demanded, "Only a few more years! Let me finish what I've started, at least!"

But if the women heard him, they gave no sign. "My care is for the tapestry." Lachesis held out her cloth, frowning at it with a critical eye. "If one forgets that each thread is a human life, and regards the design as a whole, it grows to a harmony of balance. Yet will the myriad threads that must surely spread out from his actions enhance that pattern, or weaken it?"