Taillefer hesitated, then turned to Valadrakul. “Does this device what she says?”
“Aye,” Valadrakul said, blinking at Susan. For a moment, Raven thought the wizard intended to say more, but in the end he left the single word to stand alone.
Thoughtfully, Taillefer turned back to face the Earthwoman. “See you, mistress, the position you put me in,” he said. “An you make good your threat, I perish. An I accede to your demands, then too do I perish, but at Shadow’s hands rather than yours. Either way, I am dead. If ’tis Shadow that slays me, then mayhap others die with me. Now, consider likewise what you’d accomplish; an I refuse, and you slay me, you do not gain what you seek, for there’s none but I who can do it. An I yield, you may yet see Earth, but I die, and there shall be none who can restore the portal for the delivery of the weapons you say this worthy who calls himself Raven seeks; thus, Shadow triumphant, my people forever enslaved. I’d not have that weighing upon my soul in the afterlife.”
“I don’t need an argument,” Susan said harshly. “I need a decision.”
“And I say that you shall have one, in a moment-if you see it not yet. Think you, if you slay me, you shall be forevermore trapped in our world; if you refrain, the chance shall remain, so long as I live, that some way shall be found that I may safely send you home.”
“You’re refusing, then.”
“Aye, mistress; I refuse you.”
Slowly, Susan lowered the pistol. Then she shrugged, and said to Amy, “I told you it wouldn’t work.” She turned away.
And Raven let out his breath.
He had not realized, until that moment, that he had bated it.
Nor had he realized, until the danger was past, that he had thought Susan would shoot. Yet it was with surprise and wonder that he saw her put the weapon away, and saw Taillefer standing unharmed.
Had it been he himself who held the weapon, and who held Susan’s position, Raven knew that Taillefer would now be dead.
Which would, as Taillefer had said, be a disaster.
This bore some thought.
* * * *
“Maybe you should have wounded him,” Pel suggested quietly, leaning on one elbow. The stone pavement of Castle Regisvert was cold beneath him. “If you’d put a bullet in his leg, say, maybe he’d have believed you, not called your bluff.”
Susan, lying nearby, raised her head and shook it no; Pel could just barely see the movement in the darkness. “Too risky,” she said. “What if he bled to death, or the wound got infected? No, it was all bluff, and we lost.”
“So what do we do now?”
“We go to sleep, Mr. Brown. It’s late, it’s been a long day. You heard Raven and Wilkins and Taillefer. We’ll talk it all out tomorrow, by daylight.”
“But how do we get back to Earth?” Pel heard his own voice rising in pitch; he realized that he must sound almost hysterical.
That was reasonable; he was almost hysterical. He had to get home. He had to get out of this fairy-tale world, this pulp fantasy story he had found himself in, back to the sane and normal world of lawn mowers and income taxes and marketing consultation, back to the world of Nancy and Rachel. He couldn’t stay in Faerie; he simply couldn’t take it.
And his only way back was Taillefer, and Taillefer was refusing to cooperate.
How could he go to sleep?
“How do we get back?” he repeated, a bit more quietly.
“I don’t know, Mr. Brown,” Susan said. “I don’t know, and no one here knows. You’re tired, we’re all tired, we’re distraught-get some sleep. It’ll help.”
“But what…”
“Maybe Taillefer will be braver by daylight; had you thought of that? People are like that sometimes-everybody is, whether they admit it or not. It’s easier to take risks by daylight. Go to sleep, Mr. Brown.”
Pel hesitated, then rolled over, and tried to sleep.
It was easier than he had expected.
Chapter Fourteen
Amy sat up, stretched, then immediately leaned over and threw up-or tried to; her stomach held nothing she could bring up.
Susan awoke at the sound; Amy saw the attorney’s eyes, closed a moment before, open and watching her. Pel, on Susan’s other side, stirred.
Taillefer, already up and about, turned and looked at her with interest.
“What ails you, woman?” he asked.
“I dunno,” Amy muttered, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Have you a fever, then?”
Amy shrugged; Susan, who had felt Amy’s wrist and forehead the night before, answered, “No fever I could find.”
“Is’t bad food, perchance? What had you to eat, of late?”
“Garbage,” Amy muttered.
“The same as the rest of us,” Susan replied.
Taillefer considered that. “Well, betimes a poison may strike one and pass another by, yet…how long has this troubled you?”
“A few days,” Amy said, wiping her hand on a clump of grass.
“Has it…your pardon for my coarseness; has it troubled your bowels?”
Amy shook her head. “Not really. Not yet, anyway.”
“Feel you weak and weary, perchance? An so, did that come ere the vomiting?”
“I’ve felt rotten for weeks,” Amy agreed. “But it’s just this place-I need to go home!”
Taillefer shook his head. “I think that’s not the cause, mistress.”
Amy glared up at him. “Oh? Is this something people get here? You recognize it?”
Taillefer smiled crookedly. “An I read the signs aright, mistress,” he said, “’tis something that women must surely ‘get’ in every land, be it here in the True World, or in the Galactic Empire, or on your Earth. Are you wed?”
For a moment, Amy didn’t understand what Taillefer meant; the sudden question seemed to come from nowhere, to be completely irrelevant.
Then she saw the connection. The anger drained from her stare, to be replaced with shock.
“Oh, my God,” she said.
* * * *
Pel returned from the bushes still blinking sleepily as he buttoned his pants; he wished the Galactic Empire had developed the zippered fly, but they apparently hadn’t. He looked up to see that Amy was crying, and Susan was comforting her-again.
Pel frowned slightly. Whatever was bothering Amy, she didn’t seem to be taking it well. It didn’t seem to be getting much worse-or any better.
He had heard her asking Susan whether she thought it could be the same thing that killed Grummetty and Alella, that her system was somehow incompatible with this entire universe; he didn’t see how that could be it, since no one else was affected, and he certainly hoped it wasn’t that.
Well, whatever it was, there wasn’t anything he could do about it except help her get back to Earth. The sooner the whole group sat down together and figured out how to do that, the better.
Amy and Susan were sitting against the east wall of the great hall, in the shade; Ted was still asleep nearby. Taillefer and Valadrakul were talking quietly over toward the northeast corner. Raven and Singer and Prossie were doing something together in the sunlit center of the hall, shadows stretching far out to the west-Pel hoped they were getting breakfast. Wilkins and Marks and Sawyer were moving about over at the south end, where thorn bushes had grown up through the broken floor.
Stoddard was nowhere in sight; Pel guessed he was out gathering firewood. The morning air was chilly and damp, fragrant with mosses and weeds, and he still had no shirt; a fire would be welcome.
But there was no need to wait for that; if everyone but Ted was awake, it was time to start discussion.
“So what are we doing?” Pel demanded loudly, of no one in particular.
“Getting breakfast, I hope,” Wilkins replied. “We’ve been trying to catch something here-might be a woodchuck, if you have those here.”