The people stood in silence, dazzled by what they had seen, exalted and humbled at the same time, and rejoicing that they had been there to see it.
CHAPTER 29
Masks and Matches
The air was split by a howl. Shocked, the crowd turned to see who had cried.
Fadecourt was up on the dais, hurling the cushions away from the throne, searching all about on his hands and knees, sifting through the dust that had been the king's robes, howling, "Where is it? Where? It cannot have been turned to powder with his robes! It cannot have burned with him—he was naked!" He leaped to his feet. "His workroom! It will be in his workroom!"
"His workroom was here," muttered a stunned guard. "He never moved from out of this chamber."
Matt looked up, startled; he'd have to check for warding spells.
"Then 'tis yon!" Fadecourt ran toward a tapestry, yanked it down. There was only blank wall, so he yanked down another, and another.
"Has he lost his wits?" Sir Guy said in a low voice.
"Assuredly, the sight of the demon has driven him mad," Maid Marian said. "Wizard, can you cure—"
" 'Tis here!" Fadecourt tore down another tapestry with a cry of triumph, revealing a long workbench with towering shelves above it. He leaped up onto the table and began to yank at jar after jar, scanning the labels, then hurling them aside. Glass crashed, pottery shattered. Dark and noisome things littered the floor; stench filled the air.
"Wizard, stop him!" Robin Hood coughed. "He will poison us all!"
Matt hated to do it, but he thought up a spell to sedate the cyclops—it was just a matter of time before he broke a jar that held some really toxic charm...
Then Fadecourt held up a small jar with a cry of triumph. "I have found it! 'Tis mine again!"
They all stared; trying to make out what was in the jar, but all they could see was a murky fluid with a lump floating in it.
Fadecourt yanked the lid off and scooped out the lump. Yverne cried out, but before they could stop him, he had pressed it against his forehead.
"He is surely demented!" Sir Guy moaned—but Yverne gasped, staring.
For Fadecourt was growing.
Growing, and swelling—his huge muscles redistributing themselves, the stone of his arm becoming living flesh, and his single eye moving over to leave room for the lump where Fadecourt had set it. As they stared, it came alive, gaining luster, and sank into his skin, the bone hollowing itself into a new socket—and two eyes stared out at them. Fadecourt cried out in pain, but also in triumph—and he stood before them, tall and straight, a normal human man, arms upraised in thanks. The ghost hovered beside, smiling.
This man was still very muscular, though—and very handsome. Alisande and Yverne both blinked, then stood a little straighter, and Maid Marian purred, "What a fine figure of a man is this!"
"Not too fine, I trust?" Robin looked up sharply.
"None could ever compare to you, my lord," she answered, taking his arm. "But I rejoice to see the man returned to his natural form."
"But is it his natural form?" Matt frowned. "Let's have it, Fadecourt! What happened? And what does the ghost have to do with this?"
"Call me not Fadecourt, friend Matthew," the tall man said, still in the cyclops' voice. He grinned as he jumped down to the floor. "That is the name the sorcerer gave me, in mockery, when he stole my eye by his magic. Call me the name I was given at birth—Rinaldo del Beria."
"The prince!" Alisande cried. "The rightful heir to Ibile, dead these many years!"
"Nay, lady and Majesty, to whom I stand in debt." The prince turned and bowed to her. "I had gone into hiding, many years ago, when still a child—and those who loved me gave out news that I was dead, the better to protect me till I was grown. But the sorcerer set hounds upon me, single-minded sorcerers, who rested not till they had found me. Then his soldiers came to take me prisoner, though I slew a dozen of them—I was no child then, but a man grown, though very young—and haled me here, to the king's throne room, there to transform me into a shape that my countrymen would never honor as a king."
"Thanks be to Heaven he did not slay you!" Yverne cried.
"Thanks to Heaven, indeed—but he said he would gain magical strength by my living in humiliation, and spurned me from him with his foot. My eye he kept as a charm—and I thank Heaven again, that he had not yet seen fit to use it in a potion! All these years since, I have sought a means of overthrowing him—and thanks to yon knight and the Lord Wizard, I have found it!"
"Yet here is a pretty mess." Sir Guy had turned somber, but he said the words as one who has to do a duty he would rather shirk. "This lady is the daughter of the Duke of Toumarre, the only lord left who was not one of the sorcerer's pawns, and great-great-grandchild of the last king! She is the rightful heir!"
Alisande looked as if she were about to ask how Sir Guy knew, but she held her peace; nobody really doubted the Black Knight's word, or wondered about the source of his knowledge.
They all turned to stare at Yverne.
" 'Tis true," she said. " 'Twas not for my father's lands alone, that the sorcerer and the Duke Bruitfort wished to catch me."
"Bruitfood" Alisande turned and beckoned to her knights. They parted, and two of their number hustled a man to the front and hurled him to the floor at the queen's feet.
"The duke!" Yverne gasped.
"Even so," Alisande said. "The wicked duke, none other, whose castle I invested whiles he lay unconscious, and his men rode willy-nilly in search of something that had evaded them."
Bruitfort looked up at them, drawn and forlorn, his massive shoulders slumped, his arms and legs loaded with chains. He looked about him, saw the final death of all his ambitions, and turned gray.
"Speak, sirrah!" Alisande commanded. "Is't true, what the maiden says? Did you seek her hand to assist you to the throne?"
The duke looked up, read the death notice in her face, and said, "Aye. Her claim is legitimate; she is the rightful heir. Thereby would I have gained the people's favor, as I sought to overthrow the sorcerer!"
"Wait a minute." Matt frowned. "Somebody else seems to have some doubts."
They all followed his gaze and saw the ghost, standing by the throne, shaking his head violently, looking appalled.
"He does not wish it—and, since he is party to the wisdom of the Afterworld, I should think he has good reason." Fadecourt, now Prince Rinaldo, turned back to Sir Guy. "I, too, am the great-great-grandchild of the former king, Sir Guy, and by the male line."
"She, too, is of the male line, and of the elder branch," Sir Guy said. "Milady, tell them your lineage."
Yverne looked at him with wide, frightened eyes—almost hurt, Matt thought—but she spoke. "Tomas, the last rightful king, had two sons. Of the elder am I descended, for he was my father's father's father's father's father."
"And I am descended from his younger son." Prince Rinaldo frowned. "From the elder sons of the younger son."
"But of the cadet branch nonetheless—and here's a stew!" Alisande looked from the one to other, frowning. "The lady is of the elder's line, but is herself a woman—and the male line holds strongest claim! While the prince is of the cadet branch, but is a man!"