Bardi clapped his hands and uttered a word; the lion faded back into smoke. He gathered and snuffed the candles, saying:
"Belike a month; then it needs renewal. Time was when I had to crush and mix the ingredients of that pill myself, and a tedious business it was. Now I need but call at the shop of Frigered the Apothecary, where I can purchase many magical preparations made up in pills and drops."
Thorolf said: "When I studied at Genuvia, a professor of natural philosophy said that men were working on simpler forms of spells. Instead of all the complications of pentacles, invocations, gestures, and smokes, the complete spell would be contained in a pill, dispensed by an apothecary. This anti-illusion spell, me-seems, is a step thither."
"I've heard such rumors," grumbled Bardi, "but I do not believe 'twill ever come to that. If it be ever reduced to ready-made pills and powders, it will be time for me to take down my sign and retire."
"Why? You could still sell the pills and powders."
"So can any man with wit to read a formula and keep his stock in order."
"So he won't mistakenly turn his client into a tentacled sea monster?" said Thorolf with a grin.
"Nasty, nasty!" Bardi wagged a bony forefinger. "But if all my special skills and knowledge were wasted, I should become a mere file clerk."
"You could learn the new—"
"My son, there comes a time when one is just too old and tired to cram new skills into one's aged skull." Bardi rapped his scalp with his knuckles. "At any rate, methinks those Serican tubes whereof I hear will put many of my colleagues out of business, since one discharge can wreak more woe in the blink of an eye than a wizard can work with a month of spells."
"What about your fee? Orlandus will have beggared us by the time he's through."
Bardi waved a hand. "Since he hath forced us into alliance, forget the fee for now. When we be again solvent, it will be time to settle our mutual accounts. Now excuse me; I must to my rest."
Thorolf left Bardi's house well before dawn. Back at the Green Dragon, whose guests were not yet stirring, he found the room empty. Yvette had taken her beautiful new clothes and her reticule, including the contract offered to Thorolf, and vanished. Vasco had not seen her go.
Thorolf hastened back to Bardi's house, finding the iatromage at his meager breakfast. The soldier reported Yvette's disappearance.
"Curse of the green slime!" cried Thorolf. "I should have locked her in, or tied her to the bed, or something to restrain her. Now she'll have returned to the castle."
Bardi raised bushy gray eyebrows. "It would have accomplished nought. If I know aught of delta possession, she'd have climbed out the window, or screamed for help and asked Master Vasco to release her."
"Then I should have stayed and taken my chances on being able to refuse that indenture."
"But had ye remained steadfast in your refusal, she would still have departed."
"I could have held her by force."
"Then she'd have cried for help and charged you with kidnapping."
"I should natheless have thought of something. I am nought but an idiot." He pounded his skull with his knuckles.
"Take it not so to heart, Thorolf. Ye did your best, which is all any of us can do. Here, share my feeble fare. 'Twill cheer you up."
"I doubt that, Doctor," gloomed Thorolf. "But thanks anyway."
Fortified with Bardi's breakfast, Thorolf repaired to the barracks to take up his duties. After the morning's drill, he hied himself up Castle Hill. Over the castle gate, above the portcullis, workmen were installing a banner. This was a long yellow ribbon of yard-wide cloth on which was painted in scarlet letters the legend: SOPHONOMY SAVES THE WORLD!
Thorolf's heart beat faster, as it always did when he thought he was nearing Yvette. As the gate guards crossed their halberds before him, he said: "Pray inform Yvette, Countess of Grintz, that Sergeant Thorolf would speak with her."
The guard soon returned, not with Yvette but with the stout, red-haired, red-robed man with whom he had spoken on his second approach to the castle. This one, eyeing Thorolf coldly, said in a voice like a steel blade on a grindstone:
"What do ye here, sirrah?"
"I wish to speak to Countess Yvette."
"Forsooth? Know that she does not wish to speak with you."
Thorolf felt a flush of anger rising; he fought to keep himself under control. "If you will send her out, or admit me to where she is, she can tell me so in person."
"That is unnecessary. I have told you all you need know; now depart and cease to trouble us."
"Pox on you!" shouted Thorolf as his self-control began to slip. "You've put her under some damnable spell, for which you shall answer to me!"
"Ye have mine answer," snapped the red-haired man. Turning to the guards, he said: "Call out the duty squad!"
The guard blew a whistle, and more mailed men bustled through the gate, drawing swords as they came. The two on guard lowered their halberds, pointing the spearheads at Thorolf's chest.
By reflex, Thorolf whipped out his own sword. He was enraged enough to take on the whole duty squad singlehanded, though the rational part of his mind knew that he would be hacked to pieces in a trice. As the guards crowded toward him, he backed warily toward the downward path. If he could get them where they could only come at him one at a time ...
"What's all this?" said a mellow voice, as Orlandus appeared. "Call off our hounds, good Parthenius. My dear Sergeant Thorolf! So you are fain to renew your pursuit of the Lady Yvette? Even after you rejected our perfectly reasonable offer?"
"Not reasonable at all. You wish me to become spellbound like the Countess. I demand that you exorcise the spirit possessing her and release her, forthwith!"
Orlandus chuckled. "My dear fellow! We cannot undertake so drastic a change in our program on your mere say-so. I'll tell you. Come in to drink and dine, and we'll discuss these matters. I am sure we can reach an amicable arrangement."
Thorolf snorted. "Me, enter that nest of vipers so you can have your men seize me and work your magic? How stupid do I look?" He had forgotten that, just before, he had demanded admission to the castle. "Send out Yvette!"
He made a slight motion with his sword. At once the men of the duty squad crowded forward, blades bared.
Orlandus sighed. "What a pity, to waste such a fine body and keen brain! Do your duty, men, to the foes of our Order!"
The guardsmen rushed forward, mail jingling. Thorolf, the first flush of whose rage had subsided, knew that, unarmored, he had no more chance against these bravos than the proverbial snowball in the fires of Mount Vasaetno. He ran down the path, easily outdistancing them and bearing with fortitude their shouts and jeers.
Thorolf walked the Street of Clockmakers furious, not so much with the Sophonomists as with himself, for having lost his temper in a circumstance that called for guile. He seldom let himself go so far, but once or twice a year the pressures built up and his composure ruptured. He should, he told himself, have had better sense than to voice loud demands upon his antagonists when he had no means of enforcing those demands. Thus he had achieved nought but to make himself look foolish.
Perplexed, he wandered across the city to Bardi's house. When the old wizard had dismissed his last client, Thorolf spent an hour fruitlessly mulling over plans for storming the Sophonomist stronghold, rescuing Yvette, and ridding her of the spell whereby Orlandus controlled her.
"Tell me something, Doctor," he said. "Meseems that all of Orlandus' folk who wore those yellow robes spake in that toneless voice, as if it proceeded from some contrivance mechanical. Does that mean that they were commanded by deltas—or, I should say, commanded by Orlandus through his deltas?"