When?!
Huge, round yellow eyes gleamed at him from the shadows like pools of the very wine he drank.
No! Madness! Begone! He held the cup of wine from him, regarded it as a traitorous friend become enemy. He looked back to the eyes. They remained, and now there was other movement…
A shape stirred there, a blocky black shape with a sinisterly tufted head. Immense wings ruffled and Sigebert heard them. Visions from a half-remembered-nightmare?-returned to him. Words had been spoken to him then, words that had since slipped his mind. It had been impossible anyhow. He looked upon that nightmare, now, materialized here within his privy chamber in his own home, in his waking hours. Eyes of topaz, wings of onyx.
Sheer freezing panic rooted him to his chair.
I have returned as I promised Sigebert of Metz. Dost thou know me?
Sigebert choked on words. “Not I, by the gods!”
I am the soul of Lucanor the mage. Luke-anner, magus. Indeed, your memory fails you. Once before, when thou wert wounded and ill, I came thus to thee. Neither wounded nor ill art thou now. Behold me, and believe.
“Believe?” Sigebert gabbled. “Yes, yes, I must! The soul of a wizard? Are you then a ghost?”
Nay. I enjoy bodily life yet. Mine is the power to leave my body and travel the night in this form, Sigebert of Metz, and my body is even now in Nantes-city. Far and far have I come on many a weary road, seeking thee.
“Seeking me?” Although chilled by this malevolent Presence, Sigebert One-ear maintained control over his nerves. Despite that it was uttered by such-such unnatural horror, this had the sound of the language of bargaining.
Siegbert said, “Why?”
We have mutual enemies, thou and I.
Sigebert was regaining confidence and aplomb. If what the apparition said-said? Sent, into his mind?-were true concerning its origin, the sorcerer had a fine sense of drama. Now Sigebert was supposed to ask “Who?” He would not. It was natural to him to seek to gain ascendancy; to hold it; having lost it or seeing it threatened, to regain and reaffirm. He sat silent, and forced the… owl, to tell him what it had to tell, unaided.
Their names be Wulfhere the Skull-splitter and Cormac mac Art of Eirrin.
“Ahhhh.” Sigebert gusted a slow, vengeful breath as those names unlocked the gates of memory.
Aye, this monster had appeared to him afore now. It had spoken then of those piratical thieves, reivers; had given him news whereby they might have been destroyed-and aye, he remembered: it had also predicted then that he would give no heed. As he had not. The black owl! Again! He remembered it. It had predicted too that when it came to him again, he’d give listen.
He would indeed.
“Aye,” Sigebert said grimly. “Now I call it to mind. A king over in Hispania cast you forth because of them, and would do death upon you, could he capture you. Was that not the way of it?”
It was.
The brief acknowledgment made the room suddenly heavy with a miasma of hate. Sigebert grinned, feeling himself on surer ground. He shared the hatred-and he knew it weakened a person, even though he did not seek to put it from him. His awe of the ghostly presence in his chamber diminished a good deal. Human, this Lucanor who sent giant owls in his stead, and driven, by hate. Ah yes.
“And now here in Nantes, in your corporeal body?”
I have said so.
“Your human body.”
So I have stated.
The haughtiness covered unease and Sigebert knew it: He did not know that Lucanor’s fleshly body was ragged, filthy, almost starving, and slept now in a stinking alley by the river front. The black owl was impressive and horripilating. It could feign to be free of these considerations and inspire terror in ways that a man, a most mortal man indeed, could not. The black owl could even kill. It was not merely a ghostly apparition; it was real.
Yet the black owl was Lucanor, and bound to his body. It dared not allow that body to be harmed.
A man had come to tell Sigebert that the ravens were flying: the black birds of war and death; Clovis’s war on Syagrius of the Roman kingdom. Now another bird came ‘to tell him other news… and once again a bird was involved, and once again it was the black bird of battlefields. Raven, for such Sigebert remembered was the name of the ship of Wulfhere and Cormac.
“It is a season of birds,” Sigebert muttered, and aloud, smoothly, “Well then, come to me in your own form on the morrow, and we will join forces.”
What said thee? It had the sound of an order. Bare, helpless to my talons and beak, you dare speak of joining forces? Foolish man! I am not here to accept thee as my equal, but because I can use thee. Beware! I can rend thee apart and find another tool!
Horripilation crawled over Sigebert’s skin like a migration of ants and a little frisson went through him. The creature could do as it threatened; he doubted that not. Yet… would it? Did it dare? Had it come for a tool or for an ally? Was he not strong, Sigebert of Metz soon to be Sigebert of Nantes, and coming on for being stronger? He thought to recognize the bluster of desperation in its seeming strength and big words. Was it not there?
Two things Sigebert the Frank was not: true coward, or poor judge of men. Indeed, his was judgment that kings might envy and seek. If only one knew… if only Clovis would hasten to take more power, and more; soaring power! Then, Sigebert thought, then will Sigebert come into his own. Valued, valuable, powerful… rich! As, of course, he deserved: surely advisor to Clovis, truly King.
Having thus bolstered and gathered his courage, Sigebert spoke in response to the threat of this fell creature.
“Then do so. Waste no more time on threats. I say that you bluff-and lie! None but I, Sigebert, will or would shelter you. None but I will give you your chance of vengeance and house you after. You know this, creature! An you can deny it-strike!”
The silence that followed his challenge was terrible.
In all the world Sigebert was aware of nothing but the lambent topaz eyes of the thing he faced, and of his own maddened heartbeat. He’d gone sodden from armpits to belt, and running sweat tickled. He bore it, unmoving, wishing that he had contented himself with the word “bluff” and not added the directly angering and challenging “lie.”
The huge black owl screamed. Never had Sigebert heard a more frustrated cry. In raging anguish it acknowledged that whether he walked in his own unimpressive body or winged abroad in baleful spirit-form as greatly enlarged bird of prey, Lucanor the mage of Antioch was a meager being who had need of a powerful ally… a powerful master.
The Frank suppressed his smile of relief. He sat impassive-seemingly-and he stared with flat, hooded eyes.
The vast wings beat wildly-and the black owl was not there. It vanished.
Sigebert sat for a time ere he reached for the flagon. Even after that pause it slid in sweat when he lifted it, and he must set it down again until his hands had ceased their shaking. He wiped them on his clothing and felt their chill. He lifted and looked at them with a sort of remote curiosity while they trembled. And then, cynically, he laughed. It was release.
“By the gods! Had I been wrong-!” More release, that; the sound of his own voice helped. Now more wine was required, and more.
The girl Cathula was not troubled by his attentions that night, after all.
10
The sun shone bright and warm next day on Sigebert the Frank. He was at practice with swords in his courtyard. A rack of long Frankish blades stood to hand. Five of Sigebert’s barbarian soldiers were present, in their close-fitting trews and hard leather vests. Three watched whilst two engaged their master simultaneously, at his bidding.