"Nay, surely not." Finally, the old man smiled. "And if you are indeed his enemies, you are welcome in my castle. But how came you hither?"
"Looking for a hiding place from the king," Matt explained, "but one where we could keep watch on him and try to lay some plans about invading his castle. Our dragon friend—" He nodded over his shoulder at Stegoman. "—brought us to your roof, and we came down the stairs. You don't seem to keep many guards, sir."
"I am the Don de la Luce, and I keep no guards indeed, save these my friends, who will come at my call—yet I would not trouble them without need."
"Neither would I." Matt gave the indignant well-wists a guilty glance. "I hadn't meant to hurt friends—but I didn't know you were on my side."
The biggest well-wist buzzed angrily.
"He says that they did not know you were not assassins sent by the king," Don de la Luce interpreted. "They knew only that you were intruders, and as such, sought to protect me by driving you away."
"Yeah, I can understand how I must have looked from their point of view. Well, uh, I'm sorry, well-wists."
Another moth-man—or was it woman?—stepped up beside the biggest, buzzing in an indignant tone.
"She says you might show your contrition by healing them," the don explained.
"Oh, yeah! What's wrong with me? No, don't answer that! Yeah, I should have fixed them up in the first place." Matt turned away, frowning while he tried to dredge up the appropriate verse, then turned back to the well-wists, spreading his open palms to include them all, and chanting,
As he spoke, the very air began to shimmer. The well-wists buzzed and sang, churning together in consternation, just beginning to become alarmed when the coruscation died. The creatures looked at one another, their tones turning into chimings and flutings of delight.
"They are healed indeed!" the Don de la Luce said, staring. "You are a wizard brave and doughty!"
For a moment, Matt thought he had said "knave and dotty," and was about to agree with him. Fortunately, he realized what the old don had said, just in time to change his comeback to, "Glad to be able to make amends. Have we hurt any guardian spirits on your stairway, too?"
"Nay; there is only a charm laid on it. In truth, I should have guessed that you were not malignant, for the stairwell is enchanted only against those with evil magic."
Matt shook his head. "For all you knew, we might have been king's sorcerers who had managed to disable your spell."
"True, though none such have ever been able to rise to such heights within this stronghold."
"Sounds like you could use a few human guards. Don't you have any flesh-and-blood retainers?"
"Nay, I dwell alone in this great old stone pile; all our soldiers and servants fled, in my grandfather's time, to serve the evil tyrant." He shook his head at the memory. "I was but newly come to manhood then, yet I remember well the ferocious battles of my boyhood, when my grandfather strove against the king with his knights and men-at-arms, keeping the shores of this isle secure by sword and steel, even as his wizards battled with the king and his sorcerers. But they died, the wizards—they died, and the people fled to the mainland, sick and weary of battle, and afeard of the king's sorcery. I hope they fared well, yet I misdoubt me of it." His mouth tightened. "Ah me! What may have happened to them! Some we knew of, for their tattered ghosts spoke to my grandfather of torture and degradations as they flew past on their way to Heaven or Purgatory, and not a one but did not wish he had stayed to fight and died a clean death. Oh, yes, oh, yes! 'Tis better far to die in battle, than to fail by inches, serving the king's pleasure! Yet there were none to battle by our sides, my father and my grandsire and myself, save my mother and her ladies, yes, but no bride for me, no, for the ladies had fled and gone, fled and gone." A tear trembled in his eye; he blinked it back.
"But I remembered, aye, the well-wists, and the tale my grandfather told, of the time of his grandfather, when the land was newly sunk in evil, oh, yes, and our most doughty ally sunk beneath the wave, the waves. Oh, 'twas then the well-wists came flocking, filling our castle with aimless anger, and folk would have fled their haunting had not my grandfather's grandfather seen 'twas fear that moved them, and not anger. He found they feared the sea, oh yes, and fled to find a roost for their mates, since the sea was claiming their caverns below. He showed them the caverns 'neath this castle, yes, and gave them all his dungeons, and at this they rejoiced, for they do not like the light, you know."
"No," Matt said. "I hadn't known that."
"Had you not? They do not, you know. They are creatures of the under-earth, who need no light, but see by the essence of each stone and grain of sand. Nay, the dungeons were their delight, and the caverns beneath—the dungeons that are now their home, and there they dwell, to keep me safe in my loneliness."
The solitude, Matt realized, had touched the poor dotard's brains. How much of what he was telling was truth, and how much demented imaginings?
"Safe?" Yverne asked, pity underscoring her tone. "I can see that they are company for you—but how do they keep you safe?"
"Did I not tell you? Oh, I see—I did not, did not. But you, pretty child—who are you?" The old man advanced, hand reaching out to touch Yverne's.
She did not shrink. "I am the Lady Yverne, daughter of the Duke of Toumarre."
"Ah, yes! I knew them well, or knew of them, I should say, for never have I gone forth from this island"
That hit Matt with a jolt. To have spent his whole life on this miserable piece of rock! No wonder the poor old guy had never had a girlfriend.
But how could he have left? Sorcerers hemmed him in on all sides, waiting to smear him into paste and gobble his island and castle. Not much choice—though Matt wondered if he'd have the courage to keep living, in the old man's place.
"They were good men, your ancestors." The old man patted Yverne's hand reassuringly. "Or as good as they could be, when they had sworn allegiance to the king. Nay, they must needs then have given themselves over to the evilness of his reign—yet by all reports and all the tales my grandfather told of those days, they strove for goodness in spite of all. Oh, the king would have haled them down and slain them root and branch, had he dared—or so my grandfather said. Slain them, but he dared not, for only they knew how to keep the borderlands safe from the soldiers of Merovence, yes, the soldiers who were hot to bring down the sorcerer then, they were."
"He dared do it in the end," Yverne informed him. "I am the last of my line, unless my father still endures, languishing in his enemy's dungeon."
"Oh, poor child!" The old man's head lifted, eyes huge. "But he must still live, must he not? For the king cannot gain full power over those lands of yours, unless one of your line gives them to him, yes. Without that, oh, he may hold them, but the magic of them he will never master, no. And failing that power, the land itself will welcome the champions of Merovence. Oh, yes, it will."
Yverne turned to Matt and Sir Guy, eyes wide. "Is that how you came unharmed through my father's lands, then?"
"Are they of Merovence? Oh, delight! Delight! Then mayhap the king's last hour is at hand. Could we not hope it? Yes, of course we could." The old man released Yverne's hand and turned to the cyclops. "What is your house and station, sir?"