He let go, shoving, and the body drifted away from him, turning slowly, trailing an arc of blood. It swung away, revolving, and faded into the mists, a thin red line tracing its departure.
Rod turned away, sickened. For a long, measureless instant, he drifted in space, numbed, absorbing his guilt, accepting the spiritual responsibility, knowing that it had been justified, had been necessary—and was nonetheless horrible.
Finally, the tide of guilt ebbed, and he opened his mind to other thoughts—Gwen, and the children! Had they all come through that melee alive? And what the hell had they been doing there, anyway? Never mind the fact that if they hadn’t been, they’d be short one husband and father by now—nonetheless! What were they doing where it was so dangerous?
Helping him, obviously—and they’d have to help him again, or he’d never find how to get out of here. He wasn’t scared of the Void; he’d been here before, between universes.
And, of course, he’d get home the same way now. He closed his eyes, and listened with his mind. There—Gregory’s thought, unvoiced, a frightened longing for his father—the same beacon that had brought him home before. Rod sighed and relaxed, letting the boy’s thought fill his mind. Then he willed himself back to his three-year-old son.
“Is that all of them?” Rod ground his teeth against a sudden stab of pain from his upper arm.
“Be brave, my lord,” Gwen murmured. She finished binding the compress to his triceps. “Aye, every one of them has come—every witch and warlock of the Royal Coven. E’en old Agatha and Galen have come from their Dark Tower, to flit from hamlet to village, speaking with these poor peasants, who have waked to panic, and the loss of understanding.”
“I don’t blame ‘em,” Rod grunted. “If I all of a sudden came to my senses and realized that I’d been loyal to an upstart for the last few weeks while my duke was casually bumped off, I’d be a little disoriented, too. In fact, I’d be frightened as hell.” He winced as Gwen bound his arm to his side. “Is that really necessary?”
“It must,” she answered, in a tone that brooked no argument. “Yet ‘tis but for a day or two, ‘til the healing hath begun.”
“And I didn’t even notice I’d been sliced, there.” Rod looked down at the bandage. “Well, it was only a flesh wound.”
Gwen nodded. “Praise Heaven it came no closer to the bone!”
“Lord Warlock!”
Rod looked up.
They were in the Great Hall of Duke Romanov’s castle. It was a vast stone room, thirty feet high, forty wide, and eighty long—and empty, for the moment, since all the boards and trestles had been piled against the walls at the end of the last meal, for the evening’s entertainments. The High Table was still up, of course, on its dais, and Rod sat in one of the chairs, with Gwen beside him—though pointedly not in the Duke’s and Duchess’s places.
An auncient, still wearing Alfar’s livery, came striding toward them from the screens passage, eyes alight with excitement.
“Did you lock up the traitors?” Rod demanded.
“Aye, milord.” The auncient came to a halt directly in front of Rod. “ ‘Twas that to be said for the sorcerer’s having used our bodies for his army, the whiles he lulled our souls into slumber—that when we waked, we knew on the instant which soldiers had been loyal to the usurper of their own wills, e’en though they’d remained wakeful.”
Rod nodded. “By some strange coincidence, the ones who had been giving the orders.” There had been a few opportunistic knights who had been loyal to Alfar without benefit of hypnotism, too. Rod had had to lock them in a dungeon himself, medieval caste rules being what they were. One of them had resisted; but after the others saw what happened to him, they went quietly. It was just too embarrassing, being defeated by a bunch of children… A couple of them, quicker to react, had escaped as soon as peasants started waking up all around them. That was all right; Rod had a few thousand mortified soldiers on his hand, who needed something to do to appease their consciences. A hunt was just fine.
But the common soldiers who had allied with Alfar, could be left to the tender mercies of their erstwhile comrades—once Rod had made it clear that he expected them to, at least, survive. “So you found the deepest, darkest, dungeon, and locked them in it?”
“Aye, milord.” The auncient’s eyes glowed. “We loosed its sole tenant.” He turned toward the screens passage with a bow, and in limped the prisoner. His doublet and hose were torn, and crusted with dried blood; his face was smeared with dirt, and his hair matted. There was a great livid gash along the right-hand side of his face, scabbed over, that would leave a horrible scar; and he limped heavily, his limbs sodden with inactivity; but his back was straight, and his chin was high. Two knights were with him, blinking, dazed, as disoriented as any of the soldiers, but straight and proud. Simon followed after, looking perplexed.
Rod shoved himself to his feet, ignoring the searing protest from his wounded hip, and the auncient announced:
“Hail my lord, the Duke of Romanov!”
Rod stepped down from the dais to clasp his one-time enemy by the shoulders. “Praise Heaven you’re alive!”
“And thee, for this fair rescue!” The Duke inclined his head. “Well met, Lord Warlock! I, and all my line, shall ever be indebted to thee and thine!”
“Well, maybe more the ‘thine’ than the ‘thee.’ ” Rod glanced behind him at the children who sat, prim and proper, on the dais steps with their mother fairly glowing behind them. “When push came to shove, they had to haul my bacon out of the fire.”
“Then I thank thee mightily, Lady Gallowglass, and thee, brave children!” The Duke inclined his head again.
Blushing, they leaped to their feet and bowed.
When the Duke straightened, there was anxiety in his face. “Lord Warlock—my wife and bairns. Did they… escape?”
“They did, and my wife and children made sure they reached Runnymede safely.” Rod turned to Gwen. “Didn’t you?”
“Certes, my lord. We would not have turned aside from what we’d promised thee we’d do.”
“Yes—you never did promise to stay safe, did you? But Alfar mentioned something about a dire fate in store for you…”
“Indeed!” Gwen opened her eyes wider. “Then it was never taken out from storage. I wonder thou wast so merciful in thy dealings with him.”
“Well, I never did like lingering deaths.” But Rod couldn’t help feeling better about it all.
“He also implied that the Duchess and her boys didn’t stay safe…”
“False again,” Gwen said quickly, just as the Duke’s anguish was beginning to show anew. “We saw them to Runnymede, where they bide safely, in the care of Their Royal Majesties.”
“Yes… what are monarchs for?” But Rod noted the flash of shame that flitted across Romanov’s features—no doubt in memory of his rebellion.
“We played with them not three hours agone, Papa,” Geoffrey added.
The Duke heaved a sigh, relaxing. Then the father and host in him both took over. “Three hours? And thy children have not dined in that time?” He spun to the auncient. “Good Auncient, seek out the cooks! Rouse them from their dazes, and bid them bring meat and wine—and honeycakes.”