The Warlock's Last Ride Read online

  "I wish I had some small share of that gift!" Diarmid sighed.

  "Comes from his mother, probably. Just think, if Anselm hadn't rebelled, Geordie would be saddled with running the duchy of Loguire now, instead of you."

  "More's the pity he is not!"

  "Yes, but the law is a funny thing," Rod said, musing. "I know attainder is usually not only for the traitor, but for all his descendants as well—but an exception might be made, if there were cause to believe the son might be as loyal as the father was treasonous."

  He waited.

  After a few seconds, Diarmid nodded. "There is merit in what you say, Lord Warlock. I shall have to discuss it with my father."

  He'd let Tuan discuss it with Catharine, though—after thirty years of moderating her harshness, Tuan had become a past master. Rod smiled. It might not be strictly according to the law for Geordie to become duke of Loguire, but it would surely be in the best interests of the people.

  Including Diarmid.

  "How could you!" Durer raged, pacing back and forth. "How could you let him stop it! We were on the verge of civil war, you could have seen it start right there, but no! You had to let that smooth-tongued villain talk you out of it!"

  "I was doing all I could to goad Anselm Loguire to draw his sword," the agent protested, "but that blasted Gallowglass managed to pull the fuse on the bomb I had so carefully primed!"

  "Blast Gallowglass! Blast him to bits! Draw and quarter him! Roast him over a slow fire!" Durer raged, then stopped dead, leaning on his desk, gasping for breath. Then, slowly, he raised his head. "We have to kill him. That's all. We have to—and be ready to rise the second he's dead!"

  "We've been trying to kill him for thirty years," the agent protested.

  "Yes, but now he's off on his own with none of his brats to protect him! Get a Home Agent, one of those Gramarye-born telepaths we've managed to raise and recruit! Surely one of them must be able to lay an illusion that will snare him! Get a telepath! Lay a trap! And when it closes, kill him where he stands!"

  Rod sat on a fallen log by his campfire, plucking minor chords from his lap-harp and chanting (because he knew he couldn't stay on key) of a wanderer grown old searching for the woman he had seen once, then lost—but as he sang, he saw a low branch sway at the side of the clearing where there was no breeze and heard an owl call a challenge. Wondering why the elves hadn't warned him, he laid aside the harp and came to his feet, hand dropping to his dagger-hilt, and called, "Who lives?"

  "A friend." The branch swung aside, and a tall young woman stepped into the firelight—very tall, more than six feet, with a staff even taller. "A friend seeking counsel."

  Rod breathed a sigh of relief, then frowned. "The forest is scarcely safe for an attractive young woman. What in the name of heaven did you think you were doing, out alone in the woods at night?"

  Alea's eyes flashed at the word "attractive," but softened amazingly as she smiled, seeming oddly pleased. "You need not worry for me, Lord Warlock. Your son has taught me well how to take care of myself."

  "Has he really!" Rod smiled, proud all over again. Then he nodded at the staff. "I suppose you do at that. A healthy young woman doesn't really need an oaken pole to lean on."

  "Not when I have Gar—I mean Magnus."

  Rod laughed softly, then gazed up at her a moment in wonder. How had Magnus ever found a woman so right for him?

  The same way Rod had, of course—by searching half the galaxy.

  "I really am a friend," she said, "or would like to be."

  Rod smiled and held out a hand. "Come sit beside me, friend, and share my fire." Then as an afterthought, "There's still tea in the kettle."

  "Tea would be welcome." Alea came to sit by him. "The evening is brisk."

  Rod took the second mug from his pack, filled it from the camp kettle, and set it in her hands. As he sat, he said, "You choose a strange place to look for advice—or have you lost your way?"

  Alea was slow in answering, staring at the fire. "I thought I had, for several years—but it was really scarcely two months."

  "Something horrible happened," Rod said with concern. "What could make a young woman lose her sense of direction so?"

  Alea was silent, clearly torn.

  "You don't have to answer," Rod said gently, "and don't worry, I won't read your mind. It doesn't come as naturally to me as it does to some others."

  "Magnus doesn't either," she said quickly, "no matter how badly he wants to. He has never betrayed me for an instant, not in the slightest way."

  She was silent, staring at the fire again. Rod decided she needed prompting. "You had expected him to betray you?"

  "Everyone else had," she snapped. "There was…" Her words dried up.

  "A seducer?" Rod said gently. "A young man who said he loved you but left you?"

  She turned to him, glaring. "How did you know!"

  "It's too common a story for young women," Rod said with a sigh. He turned away, admitting, "I tried it myself, once."

  "Tried?" Alea was intent again. "It didn't work?"

  "No," Rod said, "because I really had fallen in love with her. Took me a while to realize it, though."

  "I can't understand anyone not realizing they were in love right away," Alea said.

  "Can't you?" Rod looked directly into her eyes until she caught his meaning, then blushed and turned away.

  "Not first love, though," Rod said softly. "You can ask yourself day and night, 'Is this love?' but it isn't. When it is, you know it—you find yourself saying, 'So this is love!' But if that love ends badly and hurts you terribly, something within you will equate love with hurt and deny romance forever after."

  "Not 'forever,' " Alea said slowly. "For a long time, yes, but not forever."

  "If you meet a man who's worthy of your love?" Rod smiled. "Tell me, lady—how did he prove his worth?"

  Alea sighed and tilted her head back. "By patience. Time and again I lost my temper with him, but he never yelled back at me, only nodded and looked very serious. Mind you, I'm not saying he didn't argue—but it was more a matter of trying to persuade me to explain myself, of seeking to understand what I meant."

  Rod felt another surge of pride in his son but asked nonetheless, "When he understood, did he still argue?"

  Alea sat still a moment, frowning and searching her memories. Then she said, "He usually ended up agreeing with me." Then, "I don't suppose we ever argued about anything really important. Looking back on it, I'd have to say those quarrels were really his explaining his ideas to me three different ways and telling me all his reasons for them—and once I understood why he wanted to do a thing, I found he always made sense. Well, almost always," she amended, "but the other time or two, I was willing to go along with him and let him find out for himself how mistaken he was."

  Rod's smile fairly glowed. "But you didn't realize you loved him."

  "No, just that he was my shield-companion." Alea turned to him with a frown. "You don't mean that kind of patience can only come from love!"

  "Not always, no," Rod said, "but usually. How long did it take you to realize it?"

  "Four years." Alea's gaze strayed back to the fire. "It was only a few months ago, really. We were on a planet where the colony had deteriorated into a set of warring clans. I realized that I wanted him to hold me, to kiss me, to…" She broke off, blushing. "I still wasn't willing to call it love, though. That didn't happen until his little brother… until Gregory sent him word that…" She remembered why Rod was out in this forest and changed her wording. "…that his mother was ill. He became so worried then, so sad and solemn, and I knew that it was no time to pick a fight, that all I could do for him was to be quiet and wait for him to talk—then listen." She frowned, puzzled by her own behavior. "I suppose that was the first time I'd been so worried about him that I only thought about his needs, not my own—and he had done it for me so many times!"

  She was silent, staring at the fire. Rod sat and waited.

  "Y
es, that was the first time," Alea said. "Come to think of it, it was the first time I'd ever been sure that he was so preoccupied that I didn't need to be on my guard, that I let myself be really open to him. He was so vulnerable, hurting so badly, and it would have been so very wrong to do anything that might have wounded him then."

  Rod waited again, but she stayed silent. At last he said, "So you finally caught a glimpse of him as he really is."

  "Yes." Alea nodded. "The inner Magnus, the little boy inside the man, the very young man who'd been hurt so badly by love." She turned to Rod with a slight frown. "That's why I had to come find you, you see—to learn why Allouette hurt him and how the hurt could have stabbed so deeply that the boy inside would have been afraid to love again, no matter how fearless the man might have become."

  Rod gazed at her a minute and longer, then closed his eyes and nodded. "There are others who know him well enough to tell you that."

  "Not any longer," Alea said. "His brothers and sister told me that themselves. He's changed so much, they said, that they don't really feel they know him any more."

  "But they do know who hurt him, and why," Rod said gently.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  "Well, so do I," Alea said. "It was Allouette, I've learned that much—but I don't know how she hurt him, don't really understand how she could have cut him so deeply." She scowled, anger gathering. "I don't think I can ever forgive her for that!"

  "Don't be sure," Rod pleaded. "It wasn't the Allouette we know now that scarred him. The woman you've met still has to be distracted from hating herself for her crimes."

  "I'll agree with her every word," Alea said bitterly. "How could Cordelia and Geoffrey forgive her? How could Gregory fall in love with a woman who could do that to a man?"

  "Because he didn't have much choice." Rod turned away to gaze at the fire. "Of course, they all think they know what Allouette did, but Gregory was too young to understand. Even Geoffrey didn't, though I'm sure he thought he did. Cordelia, though, she was old enough to know. In fact, it was she who helped patch him up."

  "But she won't talk about it," Alea said. "She won't violate his confidence, she told me. That means you're the only one who knows Magnus well enough to tell me what I need to know, and who might be willing."

  "He won't tell you himself?" Rod's brow creased with sadness. "There was a time when he was very open."

  "Was there really?" Alea stared into his eyes with an intensity that was almost frightening. "When he was a boy? Tell me of him!"

  Rod studied her a few minutes, then smiled with nostalgia as he looked away. "He was bright and quick, though always with that exaggerated sense of responsibility that comes with being the eldest…"

  "There must have been a time when he wasn't eldest," Alea pressed. "Cordelia is two years younger than he, isn't she? What was he like when he was an only child?"

  "Bold." Rod smiled back over the years. "A sunny disposition, always happy, somewhat mischievous—and very bold. It never occurred to him to be afraid." He turned to her, a wrinkle forming between his eyebrows. "He was blond then, you know—golden-haired."

  "No." Alea stared wide-eyed, drinking in every bit of information. "How could he have grown to be black-haired?"

  "That was the result of a little family trip we took," Rod said, "an excursion into a land of faery, where magic really worked, and where we discovered that we each had an analog, a person very much like us fulfilling a role very much like the ones we hold here on Gramarye."

  "This is only a story, isn't it?" Alea asked.

  "No, it's quite a bit more." Rod told her how three-year-old Geoffrey had been kidnapped through a dimensional gate and how the whole family had gone after him and how, years later when all four children were in a predicament that went beyond even their powers, Magnus had reached out to that alternate self and borrowed his talents—but had gained more than he expected, for his hair had turned black, as his analogue's was, and his sunny nature had developed a somber side that was usually hidden but surfaced when he was distracted.

  "Too fanciful to believe," Alea breathed, but Rod could see in her face that she did.

  "I came back from it with a temper that was absolutely vile," Rod admitted. "It took years for me to expunge it—and that, only with Gwen's help."

  "Is that what Magnus meant when he said you were cured when he was cursed?" Alea asked.

  "Did he say that?" Rod asked in surprise, then, "Yes, I can see how he would. Not then, of course—years later. I'd lapsed into mental illness, you see—the aftereffects of an attempt at poisoning, but it's past now…"

  Alea remembered what Magnus had told her and reserved her own opinion on the issue.

  "I've always felt very guilty about that." Rod stared into the fire. "If I hadn't gone crazy just then, if I could have been more patient and understanding, maybe I could have protected him…" His voice trailed off; his stare intensified.

  Alea saw his pain and reached forward to rest her hand on his in sympathy. "You can't blame yourself for being ill," she said softly.

  "No. No, I can't, can I?" Rod turned to her with a bleak smile. "Or if I can, I shouldn't. But the timing was absolutely deplorable—a cursed coincidence, if you will."

  The word struck an alarm inside Alea. She stiffened and said, "Magnus told me that you taught him to be wary of coincidence."

  Rod stared at her.

  After a minute, he turned back to the fire, nodding. "Yes, I did teach him that. Should have remembered it myself. Odd that I didn't see it till now—but the female viper who hurt him might very easily have reached into my mind and kicked off the madness again, to keep me from helping him."

  "Who was that female viper?" Alea demanded, and when Rod sat silent, looking guilty, she said, "It was Allouette, wasn't it?"

  "Her name was 'Finister' then," Rod told her, "almost a different person. 'Allouette' is the name her real mother had given her, before she was kidnapped—only a baby." He turned to her with a very earnest gaze, covering her hand with his own. "You mustn't blame her for what she did—she does enough of that herself. She'd been reared by a pair of emotional assassins who brainwashed her into paranoia, crushed her self-esteem, twisted her natural goodness into a thirst for blood and for mayhem, and left her an emotional cripple. Curing her was the hardest job Gwen ever tackled—but also her proudest accomplishment, next to the children she'd reared herself."

  Alea noticed he didn't mention his own role in that upbringing but was prudent enough not to ask why. "All right, I'll try not to blame Allouette, even though I can see how hard Magnus has to try not to. Why? What did she do to him?"

  "Promise you won't hold it against her."

  "I'll do my best," Alea said, "I'll try my hardest to be kind and understanding and not judge. I can promise not to take revenge, but I can't promise not to want to."

  Rod gazed into her eyes a minute, then gave a short nod. "Good enough. That's all I have any right to ask. Well, then, here's what she did." But he turned back to gaze into the fire as he told her of Allouette's gigantic capacity as a projective telepath, of her ability to make people who met her think they saw someone quite different—more beautiful or more ugly, depending on what she needed of the situation—and her talent of instant hypnotism, of bending her victim's mind to fall in love with her even at her ugliest. He told her of Finister's pose as the young unfaithful wife of an old knight, who enticed Magnus into her bedchamber and arranged for her "husband" to burst in upon them. Then he told of Finister's posing as the ugliest witch in the north country, of her compelling Magnus to fall in love with her anyway, of his resistance, and of her compulsion making him believe he was a snake bound forever to crawl around the base of a tree—then of Cordelia's breaking that spell and restoring her brother to humanity. He went on, telling of the wild, fey beauty who led Magnus on a wilder chase and, when he had fallen in love with her, leaving him cold, plunging him into despair, into a depression so deep that he couldn't even see that it wasn't real
, couldn't wrestle his way out of it—but had, at his parents' urging, ridden to find the Green Witch, who had cured him of the worst of that depression, though she couldn't relieve him of the residual self-contempt deep within.

  "So the Green Witch left him in such condition that he could be healed, but wasn't yet," Alea said slowly.

  "That was beyond her," Rod said, "maybe because Magnus needed to let time dim the pain, or because he had to reach the emotional point at which he could realize, not just with his mind, but deep within, that those seemingly-different women were really only one in three disguises, and that not all women were like them."

  "That not all of us seek to enslave him or degrade him, you mean?"

  "That." Rod nodded. "And more."

  "Then you think he can still fall in love?"

  "Oh, yes," Rod said. "He was reared in a very warm and loving home, you see, even if he did have a father who might fly into a rage without warning. That was certainly enough to let love happen."

  "In spite of what he's been through?"

  "His ordeal will certainly make it harder for him to love again," Rod admitted, "especially since those experiences, as well as being the son of two exceptional people, has left him with low self-esteem. That doesn't mean he can't fall in love, though—it just means that it's going to take time—plenty of time with a woman he can trust who never turns on him no matter what kinds of opportunities she has."

  Alea sat very still.

  "Lost your temper with him a few times, did you?" Rod said softly.

  Alea tensed but managed a curt nod.

  "That wouldn't matter," Rod said, "so long as it was open and honest, not a matter of throwing every insult you could think of to try to hurt him, or accusing him of things he didn't do and making him try to guess what they were."

  "No," Alea said slowly. "I've been open, at least—confronted him squarely—though what I was quarrelling about wasn't always the real cause."