The warlock insane (7 page)

"I'll take the low road," the doppelganger said quickly.

"But you'll get the high one," Rod answered. "Come on—let's see what tranquillity and solitude await us here."

It was out onto the highway then with Fess scrambling up behind them. They mounted the great iron steed and set off down the middle of the road.

The chill deepened as the sky darkened. To make matters worse, the trees began to crowd in at either side of the road.

"Maybe we ought to stop and consider digging in for the night," the doppelganger suggested.

"Just what I was thinking." Rod shivered. "A nice campfire and some roasting pheasants…" A huge snarling yowl tore the stillness, and six strapping figures leaped out of the woods, three on each side, muscles rippling under fur. They stood upright like men, but had the heads of cats. Their feet were encased in boots, but their arms ended in genuine hands, albeit fur-covered and clawed; and they wore knee-length mail-shirts, criscrossed by weapons belts.

They attacked with feline screams, two of them leaping for Fess's bridle; but the great black horse tossed his head, knocking one of them aside, and struck the other away with a hoof. Rod spun around on the horse's rump, drawing his sword and dagger, setting his back against the doppelganger's. A huge cat-man sprang up on the horsehair, scimitar swinging down. Rod parried, just barely managing to keep his blade intact, and riposted. The point struck a leather belt, skidded, and scored through fur. The cat shrank back, screaming—and slipped off the rump. Another landed in its place, splitting and snarling, sword flashing around in a flat arc. Rod ducked and lurched forward, hooking upward with his dagger. A tremendous shock jarred him, but he held his place, and the cat screamed, its eyes beginning to dull even as it slipped back and away. Then, suddenly, it was over. Two dead cats lay staining the snow with their blood, and the other four were fleeing back into the trees, spitting and snarling. Rod stared in surprise, then turned with a grin. "I don't know what you managed to do to them, O alter ego, but you…" The doppelganger slumped, slipped out of the saddle, and sprawled on the ground. Rod stared in shock.

"Rod?" Fess asked. "What has happened?"

Page 36

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"Can't you seeT' Rod leaped down and knelt beside his own huddled form. "Where'd they get you?

Quick! Maybe I can staunch the flow!"

"Too… late…" the doppelganger gasped. "Carotid… cut…" It was true. The whole front of his doublet was soaked in blood.

"What happened? No, don't answer—one of them got past your guard. With those claws, one swipe would do it." Rod leaped up and dug through the saddlebag frantically. "Got to be something in here!

Fess, I told you we should have packed some plasma!"

"Don't… trouble…"the doppelganger gasped.

"Don't trouble !" Rod whirled back down, staring at his own wan visage. "I can't let you die!"

"Do," the doppelganger urged. "Don't… trouble… I'll be back when… you need…" His voice trailed off, and his eyes dulled.

Rod stared, kneeling, frozen in the snow.

"Rod."

"Not now!" Rod glanced up at Fess in irritation, but when he turned back to the doppelganger, he was gone. There wasn't even a hollow in the snow to show where he had been. Rod stared.

"What has happened, Rod?"

"Six cat-men just attacked us,'' Rod heard himself explaining. "We killed two…" He glanced around. "I don't see them, either… And we chased off the rest. But one of them slit my double's throat."

"I had surmised as much," the robot sympathized. "But how shall we bury him, when the ground is frozen?"

'Rod glanced up at him in irritation. "Come off it! You know he wasn't really there." Then he stopped, startled by his own words.

"Neither were the bandits," Fess told him. "There were only two peasants, dressed in remarkably well kept brown jerkins and leggins. You drove them off."

But Rod wasn't listening. He was staring at the barren, unstained snow and muttering, "All the monsters we meet can't do more damage than cat-men do. Damn! Just when I thought I was getting to know myself, too!"

He sighed, mounted Fess, and turned away from the road, riding deeper into the forest.

Page 37

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

It was one of those nights that seem to last forever. As soon as Rod realized that, he developed suspicions. "Fess, how long has it been since I left the family?"

"Approximately three hours, Rod."

"Is that all?" Rod was appalled to realize how much had happened in so short a time. "Is something wrong with my time sense?"

"Perhaps," the robot said slowly, "since you have experienced a multiplicity of events during that period."

"Well how long has it been since I found Granny Ban with her arm stuck in that tree?"

"Was that her difficulty? From the sound, I thought perhaps she had been ensnared by a troop of bandits."

"Not that I saw." Rod frowned. "Or should I say, 'That's not what / saw.' Anyway, how long?"

"Two hours and forty-three minutes have elapsed, Rod."

"You're kidding! That was two hours, if it was a minute!"

"It was more than a minute, Rod, but considerably less than two hours. It is nearly midnight."

"I could have sworn it was the wee hours, not the hours of wee folk. Y'know, I should be feeling sleepy by now."

"Perhaps you will be when the adrenaline ebbs."

" 'If,' not 'when.' What's that light up ahead?"

Fess expanded his video image. "I see no light but the moon's reflection, Rod."

"Not another hallucination! Well, I suppose I might as well get it over with." Rod dismounted. "Stay close, okay? And don't let me hurt anybody."

"I will endeavor to prevent damage, Rod—but I believe there is no cause for concern. I see absolutely nothing."

"Wish I could say that." Rod turned away, gathering his cloak about him, but he still shivered as he plowed his way through the snow toward the glow ahead.

In the distance, the bells of theRunnymede cathedral chimed midnight. Rod stopped on the edge of a little clearing. In its middle, a campfire burned—a tiny campfire, its flames guttering. A man knelt before it, his back to Rod, wearing a cowled cloak. Rod wondered what a monk was doing out at this time of night, then remembered that foresters' cloaks looked very much like monks'

robes—especially when you couldn't make out colors. Whoever he was, he was racked with shivers as he groped in the snow. At last, he brought up a small branch, knocked the snow off it, and threw it on the fire.

Page 38

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

There had been enough light for Rod to see the boniness of the hand. There was no doubt that the man was old, quite old. Rod felt a surge of sympathy and stepped out into the clearing, kicking up the snow, bending to pick up fallen branches and sticks. "Here, Grandfather!" He stepped past the old man and knelt by the fire, holding one of the smaller sticks in the flame till it caught, then laying it carefully on the coals and setting a small branch over it. "We'll have it burning merrily in no time."

"It is good of you," the old man whispered, sitting back on a fallen tree.

"Glad to help. Glad of the warmth, too." Rod put a three-inch branch over the others, then turned to the oldster. "There you go, Grandfather."

He froze, staring.

"Thank you, Grandson." From under the hood, the old eyes glinted with amusement. "But then, you always were a generous, warmhearted boy. I am glad to see you have grown into so fine a man."

"Grandfather," Rod whispered again. "My real grandfather. " And it was—Count Rory d'Armand, in the flesh. Or seemingly.

"You can't be real." But Rod stretched out a hand anyway. "You died twenty-six years ago." Count Rory winced. "Hardly generous of you, my boy."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Grandfather! But how did you get here? I mean, Gramarye is light-years and light-years away from this solar system!"

"Why, I came with you, Rodney." The old eyes glowed into his. "In your genes—for surely, as long as you live, so does part of me. And in your heart and mind, too, I would like to think!"

"Oh, be sure of that! If the foundation of my personality is Mother and Father, you're the foundation of the foundation!"

"The sub-basement, eh?" Rory smiled, amused. "And all that I have thought and dreamed, Rodney—what of that?"

"I can't say 'all,' " Rod said honestly, "but a large part of it—yes. I think your ideals are within me, too—for they're embedded in the stories you told me, and those stories will always be with me."

"Ah. My stories, yes." The Count nodded, turning his gaze to the fire. "And if you live within my stories, then Rodney, you certainly can have no question as to how I came to be here."

"What?" Rod frowned. "I think I missed something."

"Why, I am Rory, Lord Chronicler." The old man lifted his gaze to Rod's again. "For surely we are in the realm of Granclarte."

Rod stared at him.

"Yes, surely," he said softly. "Why didn't I realize ^hat?"
Page 39

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"Because you had not thought of it," the Lord Chronicler said, smiling. "Yet did I not tell you the tales of this magic kingdom would ever be your shield and your refuge?"

"Why, so they have been, in metaphor," Rod said slowly, "but I never thought they could be so, in actuality."

Rory tossed his head impatiently. "There is a sickness of the soul upon you, my boy, a darkness of the spirit. Where else could you shelter from that night, except in the Courts of Great Light?"

"Yes." Slowly, Rod sat down beside the old man, on the log. "God bless you, Grandfather, for giving my soul a shield against its own lances."

"Be not so sure they are its own, my boy, for you have many enemies, with many weapons. Yet do be sure that, in the realm of Granclarte, you shall find a magic guardian to shield you from any of them."

"I'll remember that," Rod said fervently. "But Grandfather, I've gone mad on Gramarye. How can I be in the realm of Granclarte?"

"Because you inherited it from me, Rodney, inherited it within your soul, just as your body inherited my genes. The events and ideals within its Chronicles are part of the sub-structure of your personality, of the way you see the universe around you. It is yours now—I bequeath it to you."

"I'm not worthy…"

"On the contrary, you are eminently worthy; you have proved yourself so. Even as the Four Kings strove to avoid war, so have you—and even as they strove mightily when war could no longer be avoided, so have you."

Rod was quiet; he couldn't deny his accomplishments, but was too modest to speak of them. Granclarte, after all, had been founded as a neutral meeting place by four kings who sought to spare their subjects the devastation of war; they had reigned all from the same palace over their adjoining realms. How could he compare himself to any one of them? "The Four Kings were enlightened, Grandfather, and all inspired with the same idea at the same moment—to have a common court, and thereby bring knowledge, wisdom, and peace. I have had no such moment of enlightenment in my life."

"Perhaps you had, but did not recognize it. Perhaps you are having it now. Or perhaps this is the beginning of the greatest period of your life."

"Now, when I'm forty-seven? That's too late for the glory of youth, too early for the wisdom of age."

"Yet it is also the time when wisdom and energy most thoroughly blend—just as the pinnacle of the Courts of Granclarte came in its middle years, when the knight Beaubras set forth in quest, and returned with the Rainbow Crystal. Its light suffused the nobility and, aye, all the folk of the court, with harmony and generosity."

"And its effect spread out from them through all the Four Kingdoms, yielding a Golden Age of peace, prosperity, and happiness. But Granclarte endured only through the generation of the Four Kings, Grandfather. In the time of their sons, the sorcerer Obscura stole away the Rainbow Crystal."

"Yes, in vengeance for King Alban's refusal."

Page 40

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Rod nodded. "The King refused to grant Obscura the hand of his daughter Lucina, the most beautiful damse^of the court—for he knew Prince Dardinel loved her, and that she loved him."

"He knew also that their union would more tightly bind his kingdoms with that of Dardinel's father, King Turpin. But Obscura did steal the Great Crystal, and cast a death-spell on King Alban—and without its light of harmony and grace, the king sickened and died. His son Constantine became king in his place—but the young kings, whose hearts knew not the importance of Glancarte, fell to vying with one another in richness and pomp, then in their champions' passages at arms."

"And tournament gave way to battle," Rod said, remembering, "and the confederation fell apart. But why did the young kings have to tear down the palace, Grandfather?"

"Because each feared that the other might use it as a stronghold, reaching out to conquer all three other kingdoms. Thus is it ever—the center suffers the greatest strain, when balance is lost. As it was, certainly, when Obscura ingratiated himself with King Agramant, and persuaded him to attack King Turpin."

"And King Turpin died in battle, so Prince Dardinel became King before he had learned restraint," Rod mused. "Then Obscura planted a rumor that Lucina had been imprisoned by her brother, so Dardinel declared war on King Constantine. But the knight Beaubras awoke from his enchanted sleep, and came forth to rid the earth of the evil sorcerer.''

"Yes, Grandson, but he was slain himself in that battle. Oh, do not grieve, for I promised you that Beaubras shall rise again; Beaubras shall ever rise again. Yet in his death, King Dardinel realized his folly and made peace with King Constantine. But their realms had been devastated, so King Agramant allied with King Rodomont, and invaded."