Narlh's head swiveled to stare at Stegoman.
The dragon shifted restlessly. "In truth, I had liefer go than stay.—'Twill be a glorious exploit, live or die, and—"
"Yeah, that's right!" Narlh snapped his beak for emphasis. "And I need the reputation more than you do!"
"And are not the dragon's equal in courtesy," Sinelle said sweetly.
"Hey, now, wait a minute! You can't say he's willing to be more self-sacrificing than I am! i'm just as humble as he is! And I'll prove it! Dragon, you can go jump in the pool! I'll stay with the siege!"
"I would not rob thee of so rich a courtesy," Stegoman began.
"Then do not." Sinelle snapped both hands wide in a gesture of finality. "Allow him the gallant gesture. Do you let him ride the high air, whiles you do accompany us beneath the sea."
Narlh stared, as if wondering if he'd been tricked out of something good, after all.
Matt wondered, too. Sinelle had managed it very deftly—he had to keep reminding himself that she was twice his age. And she had definitely wanted Stegoman on the submarine raid. He wondered why.
Not that he had time to think about it. Robin Hood touched his arm, saying, "Lord Wizard, we are in readiness. Do you pass in review, and say if anything lacks."
He was going to tell Robin Hood if everything was ready for a raid? He, the little boy who had read Howard Pyle with the reverence due the Bible?
But he was the resident wizard, and it was the magical side of things Robin was asking him to check, not the physical. Matt dutifully paced the line of recruits, merry men and peasants, knights and squires, all the defenders who had stood together against the siege of evil at the castle, about to become besiegers in their own turn.
They looked ready. Very. If there was any flaw, Matt certainly couldn't spot it.
Then the irony struck—Robin Hood asking him for a magical review, when he had a wizard of his own handy. Or did he realize it? Slowly, Matt turned to Friar Tuck. "Good Father, may I ask you to survey us all and say if you see any defect of spirit that might weaken us before the army of evil?"
Robin and Marian both looked startled, and Tuck fairly blushed. "I am only a meek and humble friar..."
Little John nearly choked on a smothered laugh.
"It's part of your office," Matt nudged.
Tuck stood still for a moment. Then he lifted his head with a sigh and stepped forward to scan the troops.
And, suddenly, there was a great deal of tension in the room. Either these men knew Tuck's powers, no matter how modestly he disguised them, or they were taken by surprise—for everyone in the room felt a sudden, searching pressure pass over them all.
It vanished as Tuck turned away, eyes unfocused, as if still in a trance.
"Is all well?" Matt asked softly.
"With them, aye," Tuck answered, as if from far away. "Lord Wizard, step aside with me."
The troops stared, and Matt felt a thrill of alarm pass through him—but Friar Tuck was stepping over into a small chamber that opened off the great hall, into a screened passage, and what could Matt do but follow?
There, the monk slipped his stole out of his pocket, kissed it, and slipped it around his neck. He folded his hands, bowing his head, and waited.
Matt realized it was time for confession.
Trouble was, he had no idea what to confess. Sure, he'd made a lot of mistakes since he'd come to Ibile, but he hadn't exactly been absent from the confessional, and surely his chat with the angel had counted as reconciliation. He hadn't committed any major sins since then, if you didn't count killing sorcerers and their henchmen in self-defense. "Father...I have no idea..."
"Why have you come to Ibile?" The friar's voice seemed wafted to him on a breeze from distant places.
Matt began to realize he was talking to more than just Friar Tuck. "Why, to unseat the usurper from the throne and restore goodness to Ibile." A sudden urge for truthfulness overwhelmed him. "Or, at least, to open the way to goodness. I don't know if I can do any restoring myself."
"In essence, that is good. But your motive may contaminate your purpose, Lord Wizard. Why? What is your personal desire in this? Have you come to be a king?"
"Well...yes," Matt admitted. "I had planned on taking the throne. What's wrong with that? I'm certainly better than the current inhabitant. On the other hand, that doesn't take much—"
"Yet it requires a great deal, to be a good king." The monk sighed. "You are not of the blood royal, Lord Wizard; you have not the qualities required of a prince."
Anger sprouted, but Matt recognized that Tuck was not entirely speaking for himself alone. Maybe he had no right to catechize Matt, but Whoever was speaking through him did. "You're saying that I am no more the rightful monarch than the current king."
"Even so. Ask of yourself, Wizard-'Why do I seek to rule? Is it for the good of the people, for the greater glory of God?' "
"No—it's so that I can qualify to marry Queen Alisande." The words were out almost before Matt realized he was saying them, and he stood there, appalled at what he had just heard.
Tuck made a sound like the air expiring from a concert organ and said, "You must not take the throne for your own personal purposes, Lord Wizard, no matter how worthy. It is of the people we speak, and what is best for them. Know, too, that the rightful heir to the throne of Ibile stands within this Great Hall hard by us."
That was hard—it jolted Matt like a short circuit. His head snapped up, and he stared at the monk—who was staring past Matt at something that he couldn't see. No, he didn't doubt for a moment that Tuck had spoken the truth. "The...real heir? Not Sir Guy de Toutarien!"
"Nay. 'Tis the maiden holds clear title."
Yverne? Matt stared. Sure, she was noble—but he couldn't quite see her as a reigning monarch. Alisande, she wasn't.
Then he stood stock still, letting that last thought filter down through all the layers of his consciousness. No, she wasn't Alisande, was she? Beautiful, gentle, kind—but not his Alisande.
The pang of loss was sudden and huge. "But Father! All my plans, all my pain—and I still can't marry the woman I love?"
"If it is best for the kingdom and the people, you will wed." But Tuck went on inexorably, "If it is not, you will not. You must chance that loss, wizard. For you to seek to win a throne is hubris."
Matt knew the term. The ancient Greeks had used it, for the overweening pride of a man who sought to rival the gods. In his own time and place, it had meant a man who had thought he was something he wasn't—who had sought to become something that was alien to his true nature. Hubris—overweening pride, stemming from lack of self-knowledge.
"Neither a throne, nor a queen," the monk droned. "If you are not born a king, you cannot become one—you can only usurp, which is a heinous sin as well as a heinous crime."
"Usurp...a wife?" Matt croaked.
"Even so. If she is yours, God will bring you together. If she is someone else's, or no man's, He will not."
The rage boiled up, and for a moment Matt was on the knife's edge, near the point of bellowing his frustration at Friar Tuck and telling them all where to go...But he caught himself at the last moment, held back the words, let the rage fill him and start to slacken...
And remorse rushed in to fill the void where the anger had been. Matt bowed his head, realizing how close he had come to being untrue to himself, and therefore to Alisande; how close he had come to making both their lives miserable, and those of hundreds of thousands of common people, too. For a moment, he had almost played into the hands of the lord of evil; but thanks to Tuck, he had sheered off at the last second.
That didn't mean he had to like the friar for it, though.