The old man's mouth tightened, and he gave a single curt nod. "Be assured she does! This is no delusion, Lord Wizard, but only honest fact!"
"She must love you more than you think, then," Matt sighed, "to be willing to go up all those stairs. No way around it, though, is there?"
The old don gave a ghost of a smile, his good humor reviving. "Nay. As we have come down, Lord Wizard, so we must rise up."
For a moment, Matt was tempted to try a transportation spell—but there was always the chance that it might go wrong, and besides, he was going to need every ounce of magical energy he had. He started climbing.
The don bustled around, finding them some cold meat and bread—which, he claimed, the well-wists gave him. He also opened a bottle of wine which the sea-maid supposedly brought, and Matt could almost believe it—it certainly had an odd flavor. Then the don excused himself and bustled away, with an air of repressed anticipation that Matt didn't trust. He tried to relax, assuring himself that the old man was trustworthy—but he stayed on his guard in spite of himself.
"At last, a moment of tranquility!" Yverne sighed—and with surprise, Matt realized that she was right; since their escape from the duke's dungeon, they hadn't had a moment to relax.
Then she turned to Matt, and those limpid blue eyes suddenly held his gaze, unwinking. "Now, Lord Wizard, you must tell me—how did you bring Fadecourt and yourself forth from that dungeon cell?"
Matt stiffened, then forced himself to lean back and look casual. "Oh, just the ordinary escape spells."
"Aye, and they did not work," Fadecourt reminded him.
Matt spared him a quick glare. Shut up, Fadecourt! But the cyclops' mental telepathy wasn't working that day. "Surely you cannot have forgotten so quickly! You had need to attempt a more powerful verse, and it brought you not escape, but the three weird sisters."
"No, wait a minute," Matt was getting desperate now. "You've got the wrong story; the weird sisters belong in that play about the Scottish usurper..."
"Nay, they surely did come from the far north..."
"South. Definitely south. I keep telling you, they were the Fates, not the Norns."
"The Fates!" Yverne gasped, eyes huge-and Matt mentally cursed, because he really had no one to blame but himself; Fadecourt may have egged him on, but it was he himself who had let the fateful word slip. "Oh, they're not really so terrible as that. Wouldn't take any beauty prizes, mind you, but—"
"You summoned the Fates!" It was almost a scream. "The Fates themselves! Nay, surely they have now conspired against you!"
"Be of good heart, maiden." Fadecourt was patting her hand. "They did naught against him; nay, in truth, 'twas he overcame them."
"Surely not!" Yverne was about to cry. "You did not bait the Fates themselves!"
"That's right, I didn't," Matt said quickly. "I just recited a quick spell to protect us from them."
"But they shall have revenge! They shall not brook a mere mortal man to balk them!"
"Can't do any harm." Matt's reassurances were beginning to sound a little frantic. "I was planning on a short life, anyway. I positively shudder at the thought of growing up...I mean, old!"
There was a cackle from the far end of the great hall.
Every hair on Matt's head tried to stand on end, but he forced himself, slowly, to turn and look.
A globe of light shimmered in the gloom at the far end of the great hall, and within it stood the three old ladies, spinning, measuring, and, most especially, clacking scissors. Matt squinted, but he couldn't see through the shimmer clearly enough to notice any particularly devastating results from their last encounter. Whatever their screaming had signified, apparently it hadn't done any real damage. That beam of sunlight may have hurt—or had it just shocked them? Maybe even just startled.
"So! The upstart gives boast, sisters!" Clotho cried.
"Is't a boast to say he wishes a short life?" Lachesis demanded.
"Aye, since 'tis as much as to say he does not fear us!" Atropos snapped. "Come sisters! What shall we do with the braggart, eh?"
"Oh, now it comes!" Yverne cried.
"Why, take him at his word!" Clotho cackled. "If he wishes a short life, give him a long one!"
"Very long!" Atropos nodded sagely. "He shall wither in his age; his sight shall fail, his teeth shall fall out."
Clotho squinted at her web. "Nay, I cannot give him all of such infirmities, for I see he knows the counter to the most of them. Howsoe'er, a long life is by no means a peaceful one."
"Aye!" Atropos cried. "Fill his life with strife! If death is slow in coming, what matter? That does not preclude horrendous wounds in battle, maiming cuts, and dire mischances!"
"He shall beg for death," the youngest crooned. "He shall seek it! It shall become his most ardent quest!"
"A quest he must resolve himself!" Clotho cried in a fit of inspiration, her fingers flying. "He shall have to earn his death!"
"Alack!" Yverne cried. "How can they be so cruel?"
"Comes with the job." Matt's brave front was wearing thin.
"He shall attempt the impossible, he shall achieve the improbable!" Atropos shrieked. "And then, only then, when he has suffered to save his world, may he die!"
"Then he shall save Ibile?" Fadecourt cried.
"The saving of Ibile shall be the least of his labors," Clotho chanted, as if she had heard him. "He shall discover the ways in which the world is threatened to be engulfed by evil..."
"As it ever is," the youngest added. "He shall confront the most evil of men, he shall suffer at their hands! And when he has saved all of Europe, aye, and half of Asia, then may he die!"
Matt's skin crawled. She wasn't really siccing him with having to wait until Genghis Khan showed up, was she? That would be hundreds of years! Matt felt every instinct he had balking. "That's not for me to say! Shouldn't the people of Europe choose their own fate? Shouldn't the common folk of Ibile choose their own government?"
Now, finally, Clotho looked up, eyes boring into his—and, for a moment, the mist thinned; Matt saw a swath of smooth, flawless skin across her ravaged countenance. And, finally, she spoke directly to him. "Foolish mortal! How much choice have those people now?"
"Well...I suppose the sorcerers are pretty strict dictators...
"The people are but slaves!" Clotho's lip curled in contempt. "The king and his sorcerous nobles dictate every step, every act their people make! And they are cruel, most horribly cruel, in their enforcement."
"The poor folk dare not even embrace one another in the solitude of their huts," the youngest said, "for fear the sorcerers might be watching in their crystals. Nay, 'tis the foulest, most oppressive tyranny ever known!"
Matt was about to ask them about Herod and Nero, until he remembered that he was talking to experts. If anyone knew, it was the Fates. He hid a shudder at the thought of just how bad the sorcerers must be. "But that doesn't give me the right to impose a government on them!"
"Can you free them, yet leave them in anarchy?" Clotho challenged. "Nay, then surely sorcerers will rise among them again! Yet be truthful, Wizard—had you not meant to take the throne for yourself?"
Sir Guy and Yverne looked at him, startled.
"Well...yeah," Matt admitted, "but I was going to give them a good government."
"With no tyranny nor oppression? No taxes, no torture?"
"Well...there have to be some taxes, or the government doesn't have any money to provide even the most basic social services. But torture? No! Definitely not! And I'd honor the basic human rights, even if I wouldn't tell them about them all at once."
"Then you, too, would steal their freedom!"
"Not at all! I'd start an educational campaign first thing—well, second, after I'd taken care of basic administration-and build it, slowly and gradually, until they understood the basics of government. Then, in about twenty years, I'd start a national assembly, and slowly turn it into a real parliament."