Galen slowly nodded. “A fascinating conjecture. Yet, how could one verify its accuracy?”
Rod shrugged. “By being inside the mind of someone who doesn’t have prefrontal lobes, I suppose.”
Galen lost his smile, and his eyes lost focus. “Indeed we could—an we could find such a person.”
Rod couldn’t help a harsh bark of laughter. “We’ve got ‘em, Master Wizard—more than we want. Much more! The peasants call ‘em ‘beastmen,’ and they’re raiding our shores.” He remembered the alarm, and guilt gnawed at him. “Raiding ‘em right now, come to think of it.”
“Truly?” The old wizard actually seemed excited. “Ah, then! When I finish my current tests I will have to let my mind drift into one of theirs!”
“Don’t rush ‘em,” Rod advised. “But please do rush me! I’m needed at the home front to help fight your test group—and I’d kinda like to take my wife back with me.”
“As truly thou shouldst.” Galen smiled. “Indeed, there is another here whom thou must also conduct away from this Dark Tower.”
“Agatha? Yeah, I want her too—but not for the same reasons. Would you happen to know where they are?”
“Come,” said Galen, turning away, “thy wife is without the chamber.”
Rod stared after him a moment, surprised at the old man’s abruptness; then he shrugged and followed, and Fess followed Rod.
The wizard seemed almost to glide to the end of the cavernous room. They passed through the maroon hangings into a much smaller room—the ceiling was only fifteen feet high. The walls were hung with velvet drapes, cobalt blue this time, and one huge tapestry. The floor boasted an Oriental carpet, with a great black carven wood chair at each corner. Roman couches, upholstered in burgundy plush, stood between the chairs. A large round black wood table stood in the center of the room before a fair-sized fireplace. Six huge calf-bound volumes lay open on the table.
Rod didn’t notice the splendor, though; at least, not the splendor of the furnishings. The splendor of his wife was something else again.
Her flame-red hair didn’t go badly with the cobalt-blue drapes, though. She stood at the table, bent over one of the books.
She looked up as they came in. Her face lit up like the aurora. “My lord!” she cried, and she was in his arms, almost knocking him over, wriggling and very much alive, lips glued to his.
An eternity later—half a minute, maybe?—anyway, much too soon, a harsh voice grated, “Spare me, child! Pity on a poor old hag who never was one tenth as fortunate as thou!”
Gwen broke free and spun about. “Forgive me, Agatha,” she pleaded, pressing back against her husband and locking his arms around her waist. “I had not thought…”
“Aye, thou hadst not,” said the old witch with a grimace that bore some slight resemblance to a smile, “but such is the way of youth, and must be excused.”
“Bitter crone!” Galen scowled down at her from the dignity of his full height. “Wouldst deny these twain their rightful joy for no reason but that it is joy thou never knew? Hath the milk of love so curdled in thy breast that thou canst no longer bear…”
“Rightful!” the witch spat in a blaze of fury. “Thou darest speak of ‘rightful,’ thou who hast withheld from me…”
“I ha’ heard thy caterwauls afore,” said Galen, his face turning to flint. “Scrape not mine ears again with thy cant; for I will tell thee now, as I ha’ told thee long agone, that I am no just due of thine. A man is not a chattel, to be given and taken like a worn, base coin. I am mine own man to me alone; I never was allotted to a woman, and least of all to thee!”
“Yet in truth thou wast!” Agatha howled. “Thou wert accorded me before thy birth or mine and, aye, afore the world were formed in God’s own mind. As sure as night was given day, wert thou allotted me; for thou art, as I am, witch-blood, and of an age together with me! Thy hates, thy joys, are mine…”
“Save one!” the wizard grated.
“Save none! Thine every lust, desire, and sin are each and all alike to mine, though hidden deep within thy heart!”
Galen’s head snapped up and back.
Agatha’s eyes lit with glee. She stalked forward, pressing her newfound advantage. “Aye, thy true self, Galen, that thou secretest veiled within thy deepest heart, is like to me! The lust and body weakness that ever I made public thou hast in private, mate to mine! Thus thou hast hid for threescore years thy secret shame! Thou hast not honesty enow to own to these, thy covered, covert sins of coveting! Thou art too much a coward…”
“Coward?” Galen almost seemed to settle back, relaxing, smiling sourly. “Nay, this is a cant that I ha’ heard afore. Thou wanest, Agatha. In a younger age, thou wouldst not so soon have slipped back upon old argument.”
“Nor do I now,” the witch said, “for now I call thee coward of a new and most unmanly fear! Thou who cry heed-lessness of all the world without the walls of thy Dark Tower; thou, who scornest all the people, fearest their opinion! Thou wouldst have them think thee saint!”
Galen’s face tightened, eyes widening in glare.
“A saint!” Agatha chortled, jabbing a finger at him. “The Saint of Hot and Heaving Blood! A saint, who hast as much of human failing as ever I did have, and great guilt! Greater! Aye, greater, for in thy false conceit thou hast robbed me of mine own true place with thee! For thou art mine by right, old Galen; ‘twas thou whom God ordained to be my husband, long before thy mother caught thy father’s eye! By rights, thou shouldst be mine; but thou hast held thyself away from me in cowardice and pompousness!”
Galen watched her a moment with shadowed eyes; then his shoulders squared, and he took a breath. “I receive only the curse that I have earned.”
Agatha stared for a moment, lips parting. “Thou wilt admit to it!”
Then, after a moment she fixed him with a sour smile. “Nay. He means only that he hath saved mine life six times and more; and thus it is his fault that I do live to curse him.”
She lifted her head proudly, her eyes glazing. “And in this thou mayst know that he is a weakling; for he cannot help himself but save us witches. It is within his nature, he who claims to care naught for any living witch or plowman. Yet he is our guardian and our savior, all us witches; for, if one of us should die when he might have prevented it, his clamoring conscience would batter down the weakness of a will that sought to silence it, and wake him in the night with haunted dreams. Oh, he can stand aloof and watch the peasant and the noble die, for they would gladly burn him; but a witch, who has not hurt him, and would render him naught but kindness—had he the courage or the manhood to be asking it—these he cannot help but see as part and parcel like him; and therefore must he save us, as he ha’ done a hundred times and more.”
She turned away. “Thou mayst credit him with virtue and compassion if thou wishest; but I know better.”
“ ‘Tis even as she saith,” said the old man proudly. “I love none, and none love me. I owe to none; I stand alone.”
Old Agatha gave a hoot of laughter.
“Uh… yes,” said Rod. The fight seemed to have reached a lull, and Rod was very eager to be gone before it refueled.
And since Galen’s brow was darkening again, it behooved Rod to make haste.
“Yes, well, uh, thanks for the timely rescue, Galen,” he said. “But now, if you’ll excuse us, we really gotta be getting back to Runnymede, uh—don’t we, Gwen?”
He paused suddenly, frowning at the old wizard. “I don’t, uh, suppose you’d consider coming back with us?”
Agatha’s head lifted slowly, fire kindling in her eye.
“I thank thee for thy kindness in offering of hospitality,” said the old wizard in a voice rigid with irony. “Yet greatly to my sorrow, I fear that I cannot accept.”
“Oh, to thy sorrow, to be sure!” spat Agatha. “Indeed, thou art the sorriest man that e’er I knew, for thou hast brought me sorrow deep as sin!”