Matt could have pointed out that the spell probably would have stopped working if the old wizard had stopped feeding the manticore-hunger has a way of breaking down inhibitions-but it didn’t seem like the most politic comment at the moment. “Then I free you from any other spells or geas that have been laid upon you,” Pascal said, but he cast a worried glance at Matt. “Still, I had only planned to walk safely past you, not to have you accompany me.”
“Where you go, I shall bound!” The monster leaped to its feet. “Your paths shall be my paths, your enemies my dinners!”
“But you have to provide alternative menus when there aren’t any enemies handy,” Matt reminded. “How shall I do that?” Pascal wailed. “I have no money to buy cattle, no magic to conjure them up!”
“Oh, you’ll think of something.” Matt clapped him on the shoulder. “And if you don’t, I will. Don’t look so worried, Pascal-I have a few ducats in my purse. Besides, you never know when a voracious monster might come in handy. Think anybody’s gonna try and charge us tolls?”
He turned the young man away, sheathed his sword-and together they set off for the south, the manticore following a few yards behind. “You do not understand!” Pascal hissed to Matt. “For this beast, fondness for people is tied to fondness for food! If we do not feed it, it will feed on whatever comes first to fang! I shall be safe, for I am of the blood of the Wizard Fleuryse, but you shall not!”
Matt noticed that the day had suddenly grown chilly. “So I’d better really deliver on that promise to find him food, huh?”
“Aye, or discover a way to part with him!”
There was a growl behind them. “Careful,” Matt breathed, “I think he’s got very acute hearing. Haven’t you, Manny?”
“Aye,” the beast answered, full-voiced, “though ‘Manny’ is a strange name for me.”
“Do you have any other?”
“Nay. None have spoken to me as you do for decades. Even the Wizard Fleuryse called me only ‘manticore.’ ”
“Okay, so ‘Manny’ is short for ‘manticore’-or would you rather I called you ‘Ticky’?”
“Manny will do,” the monster said quickly. “Thought so.” Matt looked up and saw a peasant shambling down the road, driving a gaunt and spavined cow with lackadaisical flicks of a switch. “Well, look what came to order! Say, fellow, that cow for sale?”
“Sale?” The peasant looked up hungrily, then saw the manticore and froze. The monster licked its chops. “That’s for the cow, not you,” Matt said quickly. “Here, I’ll buy it for a silver penny.”
The peasant stared at the silver coin, then snatched it. ‘Take the cow, and gladly!“ Then he turned on his heels and ran, as Manny leaped on the cow with a howl of joy. It didn’t even have time to moo. Matt firmly turned Pascal away. ”I could tell it was dying of hunger; why not put it out of its misery?“
“It is tough,” the manticore complained. “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Matt called back, then to Pascal, “Don’t look so sad. Cows turn into food every day.”
“It is not that-it is the price! Three coppers would have been enough, and generous!”
‘Think so? Well, maybe you’re right. I’ll haggle a little next time-but there wasn’t time just now. Manny looked really hungry“
“I was,” the manticore mumbled around a bone. “It was the cow, fast, or the peasant,” Matt explained. “Fortunately, I’ve got enough silver to turn into lots of coppers.”
“We shall need them,” Pascal said with an apprehensive glance at the feeding manticore. “I hope your purse is never empty!”
“Good wish,” Matt approved, and decided to see if he could work up the appropriate spell. For his part, he hoped that the stories he had heard about the prosperity of Latruria were true-especially the ones about food being plentiful.
Chapter 7
Unfortunately, Matt was really very skeptical about the claims of good living in Latruria. The sight of that apathetic peasant and his spavined cow had been enough to remind him that up until a few years ago, Latruria had been the private property of a sorcerer with a reputation for delighting in human suffering. Matt had done a little homework before he started south, spending an hour or so reading up on what little history of Latruria Alisande’s library held, and had talked to oldsters he met on his journey about what the southern country had been like during their youth. He couldn’t talk to recent travelers, because there weren’t any-King Maledicto had closed the border as soon as he seized the throne.
The only Merovencians who had been to Latruria between that time and King Boncorro’s coronation were smugglers, and so far Matt hadn’t had much luck finding any of those-until he met Pascal, of course. Privately, he wondered if this was really the young man’s first trip down this way. But what he had heard from the oldsters was hair-raising. He had decided right away that if he ever got back to his own universe, he could make a living just writing them up and calling them fiction. The only problem was that he couldn’t decide whether he should market them as horror or pornography. He ended by deciding that he’d be mortally ashamed if he wrote them at all. Of course, it could be that his informants had been making up those awful tales. Atrocity stories always grew up around the enemy-like the early stories about Phoenicians throwing babies into the fiery furnaces built into their idols. Only trouble was, archaeologists had found some pretty convincing evidence that the Carthaginians had done exactly that, and they had been a Phoenician colony…
So, applying his scholar’s caution and training, Matt had made a stab at sifting fact from fancy in the reports of Maledicto’s reign, coming to the sad conclusion that most of what he’d heard could have been stone-cold fact. Even after allowing for exaggeration and propaganda, he still thought there was probably some truth in them. Maledicto had delighted in cruelty and encouraged it in his noblemen. But if that had been true, could King Boncorro really have reversed the state of affairs so thoroughly in just six years? He decided to check his findings under the guise of idle gossip. Besides, he needed to get Pascal’s mind off their faithful following monster. “Is it true that King Maledicto indulged in human sacrifice?”
Pascal shuddered. “Aye, from all I hear! He conducted obscene rituals to pagan gods of evil. Their names are only whispered, never spoken aloud.”
“Such as Kali and Hecate?”
Pascal shied as if he had just seen a rattlesnake pop up under his feet. “Forfend, Sir Matthew! I told you they are never spoken aloud!”
“Doesn’t do any harm, in a Christian universe.” But Matt wished he could be sure of that; the names he had mentioned could be powerful symbols in their own right. “Probably includes Satan in there under another guise. I also hear tell that he held a party every night, just himself and a few close friends.”
Again Pascal shuddered. “Aye, and vile carouses they were, too!”
“Mixing sex and torture?”
Pascal nodded. “And imbibing vile brews that drove them mad with lust.”
“Real sweethearts.” Matt glowered at the roadway in front of them. “I’ve also heard that King Maledicto came down with the pox now and then, but got rid of it by transferring it magically to some poor innocent peasant.”
“Not always innocent, I will say that for him,” Pascal answered, hard-faced. “Innocent folk of any rank became harder and harder to find, the longer he reigned. Must we talk of this, Sir Matthew? I find it distasteful in the extreme.”
“I’m not exactly happy about it myself, but I really do want to find out if there’s any truth in it.”
“Oh, be sure there is truth there! Through all those dark decades, our family did manage converse with relatives, or at least letters, borne by brave smugglers.”