"Milord, do not be tricked by the puny magicks of this – "
"Hush, mage," replied King Caen evenly, regarding Dorsoom through changed eyes. He turned, then, to address the thin nobleman. "Lord Ferris, I know the hand of my daughter has been pledged to you since before you could understand what that pledge meant. But time has passed, as it does, and has borne out a nobler man than thee to take the princess's hand. Indeed, he has taken her heart as well, and mine too, with many great deeds that not a one of them is equalled by the full measure of your life's labors."
"But-"
The king held up a staying hand, and his expression was stern. "I am now convicted in this matter. You cannot sway me, only spur me to anger, so keep silence." His iron-hard visage softened as he looked upon Sir Paramore. "By royal decree, let the word be spread that on the morrow, you shall wed my darling child."
A cheer went up from all of those gathered there save, of course, Lord Ferris and the mage, Dorsoom. The joyous voices rung the very foundations of the palace and filled the stony vault above.
It was only the plaintive and piercing cry of one woman that brought the hall back to silence. "My Jeremy!" cried the noblewoman, wringing a light blue scarf in tender, small hands as she came through the doors. "Oh, Sir Paramore! I've looked and looked through all this crowd and even checked with the doorguards, and he is not here. Where is my Jeremy?"
Sir Paramore stepped down from his rightful place before the king and, tears now running down his face, said, "Even I could not save your son, with what these butchers had already done to him…"
"And her cries were piteous to hear," the cloaked man muttered low, and the crowd in the pub soaked in the sibilant sound of his voice, "so that even evil Dorsoom shut his ears – "
"That's it, then. No more ale for any of you. I don't care how strong the gale's ablowin' out there; there's a stronger one in here, and it's ablowin' out this stranger's arse!"
It was Horace, fat Horace who'd tended this bar in this tiny crevice of the Snowdonia Mountains and fed eggs and haggis to the grandfathers and fathers and sons of those gathered here. In all that time, the good folk of Capel Curig had learned to trust Horace's instincts about weather and planting and politics and people. Even so, on this singular night, regarding this singular man, Horace didn't strike the others as their familiar and friendly confidant.
"Shut up, Horace," cried Annatha, a fishwife. "You've not even been listening, back there banging your pots so loud we've got to strain our ears to hear."
"Yeah," agreed others in chorus.
"I hear well enough from the kitchen, well enough to know this monstrous man's passin' garbage off as truth! He makes out King Caen to be a dotterin' and distracted coot when we all know he is strong and just and in full possession of himself. And what of Dorsoom, cast as some malicious mage when in truth he's wise and good? And Lord Ferris, too?"
Fineas, itinerant priest of Torm, said, "I'm all for truth – as you all know – but bards have their way with truth, and barkeeps their way with brandy. So let him keep the story coming, Horace, and you keep the brandy coming, and between the two, we'll all stay warm on this fierce night."
Now the stranger himself extended that trembling left hand that did the work for two and said with a rasping tongue, "It is your establishment, friend. Will you listen to your patrons' desires, or turn me out?"
Horace grimaced. "I'd not throw a rabid dog out on a night like this. But I'd just as soon you shut up, friend. Aside from lyin', you're puttin' a dreamy, unnatural look in these folk's eyes, and I don't like payin' customers to go to sleep on me."
This comment met with more protests, which Horace tried unsuccessfully to wave down.
"All right. I'll let him speak. But, mark me: he's got your souls now. He's worked some kind of mesmerizin' magic on you with the words he weaves. I, for one, ain't listenin'."
Nodding his shadowed and dripping head, the stranger watched Horace disappear into the kitchen, then seemed to study him hawkishly through the very wall as he continued his tale. "Though Lord Ferris's forked tongue had been stilled that morning before the king and nobles and children, his hands would not be stilled that night when he stalked through the dim castle toward Sir Paramore's room.
"But one other child of the night-the ghost of poor dead Jeremy-was not allied to the sinister plans of Ferris. Indeed, the ghost of Jeremy had sensed evil afoot and so hovered in spectral watch on the stair to Paramore's room. When he spotted Lord Ferris, advancing dark at the foot of the stair, Jeremy flew with warning to the bed foot of his former bosom friend, Petra…"
Petra was a brown-haired girl-child and the leader of the pack of noble children. Jeremy found her abed in a castle suite, for the children and the parents had all been welcomed by King Caen to spend the night. Poor Jeremy now gazed with sad ghostly eyes on the resting form of Petra, sad ghostly eyes that had once gazed down on his own still body, lifeless and headless.
"Wake up, Petra. Wake up. I have terrible news regarding our savior, Sir Paramore," the child-ghost rasped. His phantom voice sounded high and strained, like the voice of a large man pretending to be a child.
And Petra did wake. When she glimpsed her departed friend, her brave girl-heart gave a start: unlike greater ghosts decked in diaphanous gossamers, poor Jeremy had no body upon which to hang such raiments. He was but a disembodied head that floated beyond the foot of her bed, and even now his neck slowly dripped the red life that had once gushed in buckets. So grotesque and horrible was this effect that Petra, who truly was a brave child, could not muster a word of greeting for her dead companion.
"It's Lord Ferris," the ghost-child said urgently. "He plots to slay our Sir Paramore where he sleeps tonight."
Petra managed then a stammer and a wide stare.
"You must stop him," came the ghost's voice.
She was getting up from the feather mattress now, arraying the bedclothes around her knees. With the sad eyes of mall boys-who see small girls as mothers and sisters and lovers and enemies all at once-poor Jeremy watched Petra's delicate hands as she gathered herself.
At last she whispered, "I'll tell Mother-"
"No!" Jeremy's voice was urgent, strident. "Grown-ups won't believe. Besides, Sir Paramore saved your life this morning. You can save his life now, this evening!"
"I cannot stop Ferris alone."
'Then get the others," Jeremy rasped. "Awaken Bannin and Liesle and Ranwen and Parri and Mab and Karn and the others, too. Tell them to bring their fathers' knives. Together you can save our savior as he saved us."
Already, Petra was tying the sash of her bedclothes in a cross over her heart and breathlessly slipping sandals on her feet.
"Hurry," commanded Jeremy. "Even now, Lord Ferris is climbing the stair toward Sir Paramore's room!"
Upon this urgent revelation, Petra gasped, and Jeremy was gone.
Alerted and assembled in the next moments, the children followed Petra to the stair. It was a long and curving stairway that led to the high tower where Sir Paramore had chosen to bed. The steps were dark, lit mainly by a faint glow of starlight through occasional arrow loops in the wall. But when Petra and her child warriors began to climb, they saw ahead of them the vague, flickering illumination of a candle.
"Quiet now," whispered she.
Bannin, a brown-haired boy half her age, nodded seriously and slipped his small hand into hers. The twins Liesle and Ranwen smiled at each other with nervous excitement. Meanwhile, Parri and Mab and Karn and the others clustered at the rear of the pack and set hands on their knives.