“He swears by paradox, I know,” Alisande agreed, “and to hear him swear at all makes me shiver with apprehension. Still, we shall need his help if Matthew is truly endangered. Send for him, milord.”
“By all Baal’s brass!” Rebozo swore. “Could that sniveling young lordling truly be so inept as this?”
LoClercchi shrank away from the chancellor’s anger. “Surely, milord, you did not truly expect the lad to slay the Lord Wizard himself!”
“No. but I had fondly thought he would at least be a strong enough opponent to force the man into using his magic! Yet what do I find? He was so poor a swordsman that this so-called ‘Sir Matthew’ scarcely had to work up a sweat, much less resort to wizardry! What do we know now that we did not before? That he poses as a knight and calls himself ‘Sir Matthew’-which is a name not uncommon in these lands, even among knights! And that he fares southward, through the pass-which he was almost certain to do, if he came south at all!” He crumpled the tiny note and threw it at the wall. “Nay, this boy Camano has achieved nothing, nothing! Send him a stomachache! Send him a flux! I should give him worse, but pain is fitting for a pain!”
“He has done no harm, at least.”
“Would he had! Well, at least we know this ‘Sir Matthew’ will try to cross the border.”
“Shall I send soldiers to set a trap for him, Lord Chancellor?”
“Nay! Instead send a monster to slay him, if he should set one foot across the borderline! A manticore to gobble him up or a chimera to befuddle him! For whether he does or does not intend treachery, it is most definitely not in the king’s interest for the Lord Wizard of Merovence to come into Latruria!”
“But what harm can he do?” the secretary asked, confounded. “What harm?” Rebozo roared. “You ask what harm? The man who stole back Queen Alisande’s crown from the sorcerer Malingo? The man who raised the giant Colmain? You know what upheaval followed his entrance into Ibile, his foray into Allustria-and you ask me what harm he might do, in a kingdom ruled by a king who will not kneel, nor go into a church? True, Boncorro is not as evil as the kings of those countries were-but I, his chancellor, have no wish to see him dethroned. Do you wish all the old ways to fall in this land, and yourself with them?”
“No, my lord, never!” the secretary said, very frightened. “I shall send to stop him straightaway!”
But the chancellor wasn’t listening. He paced the room, muttering, “Good or evil, my King Boncorro is technically not the legitimate monarch, since his grandfather usurped the throne and slew the ineffectual former king, himself the son of a usurper of a usurper of a man who was an excellent poet, but a very weak king-and that is how low the line of the Caesars had fallen!”
“Was that poet-king truly descended from the Emperors of Reme, then?” LoClercchi asked, wide-eyed. “He was, and they spread their seed far and wide, I assure you! Who knows but what this Lord Wizard might unearth one of their descendants to claim the throne from King Boncorro? Nay, best to take no chances-keep him out of Latruria, LoClercchi! Find a way, find ten ways-but keep him out!”
Chapter 5
Once again Matt wondered how he got himself into these things, and the reflection that it was his loving spouse and liege who had done it this time didn’t help much-especially since it had been his own idea to cross the border, and right now that seemed very dumb. He was still in Merovence, technically, but not by much-only a couple of yards at most, maybe less; it was hard to tell, when there was no fence marking the boundary, or even a dotted line along the ground. But the manticore facing him seemed to have no doubt about the demarcation. “Stay back,” it said, grinning-it couldn’t do much else, with a mouth like that. “If you cross into Latruria, you are my meat.”
Matt eyed the grin and decided he didn’t want to take the chance. At least he was talking to a man’s head-but it had double teeth, two rows above and two below, and they were all sharp and pointed. Worse, that almost-human head sat on top of a lion’s body-if you could count it as a lion’s body when it was covered with porcupine quills and had a scorpion’s tail arcing up over its back, aiming right at Matt. He eyed the monster warily, wondering why it was that all the supernatural beasties in this alternate universe could speak fluent Human, when the genuine animals didn’t seem to be able to manage a word. Probably because the monsters were magical, and magic seemed to permeate the very air here-they were communicating in their natural medium, so to speak. “Okay,” he said, and turned away. “What!” The monster stared at him, affronted. “No challenge, no insults, no combat?”
“No sweat,” Matt assured him. “I’ll just find another way in. This particular pass may seem like the whole world to you, but I’m sure there are other doors.”
“What manner of knight are you?” the manticore howled. “A knight who happens to be a wandering minstrel.” Matt pointed to the lute slung across his back. “Do I look like a knight?”
“You wear a sword!”
“It’s a dagger,” Matt corrected. “A big one, sure, but still a dagger.”
Actually, it was a very good reproduction of a Roman gladius-with a few modifications. Queen Alisande’s smith had forged it very carefully, according to Matt’s design, and the two of them together had done their best to sing a lot of magic into it. But Matt was a little uneasy about using it-he knew the quality of his own singing. “I’ll follow you!” the monster averred. “Wheresoever you seek to cross the border, I shall be waiting!” It began to stalk toward him, grinning from ear to ear. “Nay, on second thought, why should I wait? I’ll pounce on you now, in Latruria or not.”
Matt spun about, alarmed, and swung up his staff, on guard. “Hey, now, wait a minute! Isn’t that against the rules?”
“Whose rules?” the manticore demanded, and sprang. It slammed into an invisible wall, so hard that it seemed to crumple before it fell. It bit the ground heavily-with that much mass, it would have to-and answered itself. “King Boncorro’s rules, of course! I should have known!”
“What rules?” Matt frowned. “Why should you have known?”
“Because the king has laid a Wall of Octroi along the border, and enchanted it to keep all monsters out! I never thought he would have been so careless as to craft it in such a way that it would also keep all monsters in!”
Matt eyed the beast judiciously and decided King Boncorro hadn’t been careless at all. “Makes sense to me. You look as if you could be very useful to a Satanist king. Why should he let his rival monarchs get their hands on you?”
“He is no Satanist, but a vile equivocator!” the manticore spat. “And if I cannot go out, I cannot terrorize the peasants in the borderland at his will!”
Matt was liking Boncorro more and more. “Maybe he’s saving you for choice assignments.”
“Aye.” The multiple grin widened. “Such as devouring a knight named Sir Matthew, who comes in the guise of a minstrel!”
Matt’s blood ran cold. Boncorro had an excellent spy system. “The king himself sicced you on me?”
“What king ever did anything himself, that could be a source of blame?” the manticore said impatiently. “Nay, ‘tis a subordinate to a subordinate who has laid this geas on me-but think not to overthrow it simply because it comes not from the king himself! I shall be your Nemesis, man!”
For a moment Matt was tempted-it would be interesting to test the strength of his magic against that of Boncorro’s minion, and since the Latrurians already knew where he was, he wouldn’t change anything if he attracted their attention by using magic. But he remembered that they probably weren’t sure he was a wizard, and certainly not the Lord Wizard himself. Better to keep them guessing. “What could I do? I’m a mere minstrel!”