The Oathbound Wizard

Matt could only stare while little prickles ran up and down his spine. What kind of a spell did it take to make Puck succumb to the smell of the demon rum?

"Roashted crabzh!" Puck muttered. "Roashted crabsh, floatin' inna bowl!" His grip loosened, and he slid back inside Sir Guy's armor.

"Wizard," Yverne's voice said behind him, "can you not banish this unholy elixir?"

"Well, I can try, I suppose." Matt tried to remember the spell he had used to dispel a fog three years before.

"Western wind, come now to save us!
Restore the breezes you once gave us!"

He felt the magical forces strengthen about him, felt as though he was trying to push his way through a wall of molasses...

"Clear this fog that you've allowed!
Rid us of this reeking cloud!"

He was actually surprised when the fog began to lighten.

Surprised, with good reason—the magic field strengthened, in a way that gave him a peculiarly nasty feeling inside, a feeling that reached all the way down to his groin with a painful, sickening wrench. Then the fog thickened again.

"You had some small success, Wizard," Fadecourt noted.

"Small, yes. Then my opposite number, whoever he is, clamped down with a counterspell." Matt turned to Sir Guy. "Gor—uh the king, that is, has some really powerful sorcerers, doesn't he?"

"He always said so." Sir Guy frowned off into the fog, his feet still moving in time to the dragon's waddling. "Yet an he had some who were so much more powerful than you, surely he would have sent them to the siege we but now broke."

"Yeah, you would think that, wouldn't you?" Matt frowned as though he was only puzzled, but inside, he was hollow with dread. He had a nasty, unpleasant notion that he was opposing the magic of the king himself. "Let's give it another try, though.

"When the moan of the breeze
Echoes through the trees
And the mist lies low on the plain,
From earth and stones
Come boulders' groans
As the heat rises from them again!
And away the fog goes
As the warm breeze blows
In tatters and shreds quite soon,
For the sun's rays quench their holiday,
The end of the night's high noon!"

It must have been his imagination, but he could have sworn a male chorus echoed those last two words. Certainly the chord of magic seemed strained all about him, and for a moment, the mist glowed about them as sun rays broke through the clouds above—then dimmed and vanished, as the evil magic strengthened about him. Matt shook his head. "Too strong for me—and I think it's several sorcerers working in concert, not just one."

"In concert!" Yverne sounded appalled. "Nay, surely it must be the king himself who leads them—for none other can compel sorcerers to meld their powers!"

"I was afraid of that," Matt grunted. "But we're not licked yet. We have one more weapon in our arsenal, anyway." He opened his pouch and saw the glow within. "How about it, Max?"

"Indeed, how?" the Demon sang. "How could I clear this fog for you, Wizard?"

"Precipitate it," Matt said. "Bind the droplets of water together into raindrops."

"And how shall I do that?"

Matt took a deep breath. He had forgotten just how explicit Max wanted his instructions to be. "Reduce the surface tension, so the water vapor will condense into bigger drops."

"No sooner said than done!" the Demon cried.

"Put your hoods up, everybody," Matt called. "Sir Guy, we'd better see about some rust remover."

The air began to clear a little, and Matt felt a few raindrops strike his head. But only a few; they stopped, and the fog thickened about them again.

" 'Tis too much for me," the Demon reported. "Some power resists; a greater force than mine seeks to maintain the surface tension."

Of course, Matt's shiver could have been from the weather. He could only think of a few sources of power that could surpass entropy, and only one of them had always tried to cloud men's sight and lead them astray in a world gone murky. "Try heating it! Accelerate the Brownian movement of the water molecules! Make it all evaporate!"

"I shall," Max agreed, and again the fog lightened for a few moments—but thickened again. Max began to jump about, agitated. "Again it thwarts me! Some agency that has greater control over heat than I has bound it into mist!"

"He exceeds your power, and that of all our allies," Sir Guy said heavily. "In truth, it must be the king himself whose power you encounter, Lord Matthew!"

"I'm afraid you're right" Matt muttered a quick prayer to Saint Iago, his own tap into a high-Power line, then turned back to his friends. "Not much we can do except forge ahead, no matter how slowly, and try to stay together. We'll call out to one another and home in on voices." He boosted his own volume. "Do you think that will work, Robin Hood?"

"We shall essay it," the outlaw leader called back. "Should our good friar join you in leading the way?"

"No—I think we'll be safer with one wizard in each half of the party..."

"I am not a wizard!" Tuck said quickly.

"Whatever. We'll all follow Stegoman. Sir Guy, deploy your forces."

"Sir Loring, lead the right flank!" the Black Knight called. "Sir Michael, the left! Sir Dai, lead the center in pursuit of me!"

The knights answered him with a chorus of "ayes." Matt wondered how the other noblemen and knights had come to acknowledge Sir Guy's leadership—not that he doubted it had been earned. They'd had two years to figure out how vital he was. It was no doubt a fascinating, not to say hair-raising story, and Matt intended to hear every word of it—some day, in front of a roaring fire inside a stout castle, without an enemy for miles around.

At the moment, though, he needed to try to get his forces through this mess. "Ready, then? Away!"

"Away, he shayzh!" Stegoman muttered. "Doezh he have to lead the way? Nay! Izh he the one who getsh blamed if we go ashtray? Nay!" But, griping and protesting, he lumbered into motion and began a slow, if constant, movement across the plain.

Matt felt Sir Guy's hand on his shoulder, so he knew his own immediate party was together, linked hand to hand. "Robin Hood! Are you near me?"

But his voice echoed strangely in the fog. "Aye; I am nigh!" Robin's voice called from behind him—then called again, off to his left, "Aye, I am nigh!"

Matt frowned. "You only needed to say it once." He was startled to hear his own voice completely echoed from behind—"Say it once!"

"I spoke but the one time, in truth!" Robin called, but he hadn't quite finished before the words sounded again from Matt's left, then a third time, from his right.

Matt felt the dread creeping higher. "The sorcerer is trying to confuse us by making our voices sound from different directions!"

"Sir Loring!" Sir Guy called. "Do you follow me?"

"You follow me," the voice repeated, from behind and left.

"Follow," it said again, from ahead and to the right.

"Aye, Sir Guy! I follow the sound of your words!" But Sir Loring's voice faded even as he called—then came back, more strongly, from Matt's far side.

"Sir Nigel!" There was a tinge of iron in Sir Guy's tone. "Guide on my voice, and touch hands with me!"