She had meant to kill him, he knew that, but her final spell of desire had done its work too well, and Gregory wept with grief as he knelt to lay her body gently on the ground—wept with grief, and felt the pall of despair descend as he felt for the pulse that he knew could not be there, for surely she had meant to kill.
Chapter 7
Queen Catherine was livid. Even as the guards hauled the assassins away to the dungeons of Castle Gallowglass, the Queen, alerted by a royal witch, paced the flags of her solar, fuming, "How dare they rise against my son? How dare they strike at his Cordelia? I shall flay them within an inch of their lives! I shall make them howl and gibber and beg for death!"
"They will be fortunate that you do not punish them as harshly as they deserve," King Tuan said with a completely straight face.
"They shall indeed!"
"Nonetheless, my love, before the torturers have reduced them to babbling husks, might we not ask them a few pertinent questions?"
Catherine halted, pivoting to glare at him, beginning to feel the slightest bit abashed. "What questions are these?"
"Why," King Tuan said, "who sent them, why they wished to slay Alain and Geoffrey and Cordelia and Quicksilver, and most importantly of all, how they managed to penetrate Castle Gallowglass even to Lady Gwendylon's private garden."
Catherine gave him a long and steely glare beneath which fury simmered, warring with common sense. At last she said, "You have the right of it in this. Set the investigation in train, husband, an it please you."
In those very gardens, Cordelia and Quicksilver watched the guards haul away the last of the assistant gardeners, or gardening assistant assassins, whichever they truly were.
"Why did they set upon us?" Quicksilver demanded. "I know your family has no shortage of enemies, Cordelia, but even here? Which ones are these, and why did they set upon you?"
"They are likely agents sent by a government yet unborn." Cordelia took a deep breath and explained to Quicksilver about the futurians who were trying to sabotage the government of Gramarye in order to win control of the planet in centuries to come, and why. She had expected to have to wheedle and work her way around disgusted disbelief, but Quicksilver only listened with narrowed eyes, nodding every now and then as points connected to make her kind of sense. When Cordelia had finished, she asked only, "So you think these fools were of those who seek to abolish all government?"
"I do," Cordelia said. "Assassination is more their sort of work. The totalitarians prefer to foment rebellion, setting the peasants to slay the aristocrats."
"There is reason enough for that, surely!" said the woman who had been driven into outlawry by a rapacious lord. "Still, from what I have seen of how your family manages their estates, your peasants would not be among those rebelling."
"I would hope not," Cordelia said with a grateful smile. "But the most recent of these futurians, sister-to-be, is the one who sought to seduce Alain from my side, then under a different disguise, to woo Geoffrey from yours."
"You do not say it! That caitiff Moraga?"
"That was neither her true name nor her true form," Cordelia said. "No one knows what they may be. She appeared to my eldest brother Magnus in four separate shapes to drag him into heart's torture and devastating humiliation."
"As a result of which, he will never trust women again." Quicksilver nodded heavily, her face stormy. "So you think it is she who sent these backstabbers'*"
"She, or the one who commands her."
Quicksilver's scowl darkened even more. "But you say this witch Moraga is only one of her disguises. Was not she dispatched to Runnymede under guard of your little brother Gregory?"
"She was," Cordelia replied. Then she caught the implication and her eyes widened in horror. "Dear lord! Gentle
The Spell-Bound Scholar
Gregory! If she could so mangle our great towering Magnus, what has she done to my sweet, mild lad?"
"A question well asked," Quicksilver replied, "and I think you had better answer it as quickly as you may."
Cordelia's eyes lost focus as she paid more attention to the world of thought than to the world of the senses. Abruptly they sharpened again with horror. "He is alive, but his whole soul is filled with mourning—and with thoughts of death! Your pardon, Lady Quicksilver! I must go to him!"
"With all speed!" Quicksilver cried. "I shall follow with all the haste four hooves can muster!"
Minutes later, Cordelia spiralled up from the garden on her broomstick and shot off toward the south.
She landed in a meadow, looking about her in alarm. The vista was peaceful, a grassy carpet adorned with wildflowers and surrounded by murmuring trees, set off by the roughness of a boulder in its midst.
The boulder! By it knelt her brother, and he was weeping! Cordelia ran to him, heart hammering in panic.
She slowed as she came near him, almost embarrassed, uncertain how to begin. His gaze was fixed on the face of a sleeping woman, one whose beauty shocked Cordelia and filled her with instant envy even as anger rose in her, for she recognized the witch, and she was as far from the dumpy Moraga she had seen at Castle Loguire as Terra was from Gramarye.
Silent tears rolled down Gregory's cheeks. "Good afternoon, sister. It was good of you to come—though I cannot say what good you may do here."
"Whatever happens, you shall not face it alone." Cordelia sent a quick probe into the woman's mind and found it sleeping, but alive. "Gregory ..." She broke off in confusion.
"You wonder why I weep," Gregory said, his tone leaden, "but who would not weep at the death of beauty?"
"Death?" Cordelia darted another quick look at the sleeping woman but saw her breast rise and fall. She smiled with fond condescension, relieved that his grief was mistaken. "She is not dead, poor lad—only sleeping." She dropped to her knees beside him and caught his hands. "Gregory—she means you harm! No matter how beautiful she is, her heart is hideous! It is she who maimed Magnus and who sought to slay Alain! I do not doubt that she means to slay you, too!"
"I am quite sure of it," Gregory said, but his gaze stayed on the sleeping woman. "She has already made the attempt, but I had forged a mental shield that reflected her own assault back at her, and this is the result—save that the reflection must have scattered the energies, if she only sleeps."
Cordelia stared down at the unconscious woman, appalled. "Why, the vile witch! But if you know she sought to kill you, why do you weep for her?" She guessed the answer, though, and her heart sank.
"Because I have fallen in love with her." Geoffrey's whisper confirmed her fear.
Blind rage struck and Cordelia knelt rigid, waiting for it to pass. It would not help her brother for her to slay the sleeping woman out of hand. In fact, such a deed would lose him forever. But the fury ebbed, leaving her panting. She had not the slightest doubt that the creature had manipulated Gregory's emotions shamelessly—and had made him fall in love for the first time! The very first! And with such betrayal and such hurt for so sensitive a young man's first, he might very well never be strong enough to love again! "Gregory—you cannot think to woo her. ..."
"I do not," Gregory said in a flat, lifeless tone. "Be assured, sister, that I have tested her goodwill and found it lacking. Greatly though I desire her, I know that if I reached out to her, she would try again to kill me, and again and again. Therefore must I never touch her." The tears rolled down his cheeks with renewed force.