“My lord!” Gwen was beside him, baby cradled in one arm, the other around him.
“Yes, I know you are drained.” Father Al had a shoulder under his arm. “That use of magic took every bit of reserve your body had. But pull yourself together—it’s not over yet! Hear that?”
Hear? Rod frowned, shaking his head, trying to clear it. He strained, and dimly, through the ringing in his ears, he heard shouts, and the clash of steel. War!
“Lord Kern’s troops are battling the Duke’s,” Father Al snapped.
Adrenalin shot its last surge, and Rod straightened up. “No… no, I can stand.” He brushed away their hands and stood by himself, reeling; then he steadied.
And a voice thundered through the castle, coming from the walls themselves: “THY DUKE IS DEAD! THROW DOWN THINE ARMS!”
There was a moment’s silence; then a low moan began, building to despair. As it died, Rod heard, dimly, the clatter and clank of swords, shields, and pikes rattling on cold stone.
“That voice,” Gwen murmured.
“What about it?” Rod frowned. “Sounded ugly, to me.”
“It was thine.”
“I believe your counterpart has come,” Father Al murmured, “to reclaim his own.”
“Good,” Rod muttered. “He’s welcome to it.”
Mailed footsteps rang on the stone of the hallway.
“Quickly!” Father Al snapped. “Hold hands! Link your family together!”
Rod didn’t understand but he reacted to the urgency in the priest’s voice. “Kids! Children-chain! Quick!”
They scurried into place, Magnus and Cordelia catching Geoff’s hands, Cordelia holding Gwen’s hand and Magnus holding Rod’s.
Just to be sure, Rod grabbed Father Al’s arm. “What’s this all about?”
“Just a precaution. Do you know what to do when you see your fetch?”
“No.”
Father Al nodded. “Good.”
Then the doorway was filled, and Gwen’s exact double stepped into the room.
Well, not exact—her hair was darker, and her lips not as full—but it was unmistakably her.
The “real” Gwen held out the baby. “Here is thy bairn.”
The woman gave a little cry, and leaped to scoop the child out of Gwen’s arms. She cuddled it to her, crooning to it in the same tones Gwen used.
“My thanks.”
Rod looked up.
The hair swept the shoulders, and he wore a jawline beard and close-clipped moustache—but it was Rod’s face behind all the hair. “I give thee greatest thanks, for the lives of my babe, and my King.”
Then Lord Kern’s face darkened, and he bellowed, “What dost thou here, what dost thou here? Seekest thou mine end? Get thee hence! Get thee gone!”
And the scene exploded into a riot of color.
Swarming colors, sliding into one another and back out, wavering and flowing all about him. Rod couldn’t see anything else; he was floating in a polychrome void; but he could feel the pressure of Magnus’s hand within his, and Father Al’s arm. And he felt yearnings and longings in different directions, like unseen hands trying to pull him five ways at once; but one was stronger than the others, and pulled him harder. He moved toward it; it was the direction Magnus’s hand was pulling in, anyway. Gregory, he realised—baby Gregory, calling Mama home. And Papa, too, of course—but who’s really important to an infant, anyway?
Then the colors began to thicken, blending into one another, then separating out again—brown stripes, and multi-hued ones, that coalesced into wooden beams and draperies; white, that bristled into stucco…
There was a floor under him. He let go of Magnus and Father Al and shoved against it, levering himself up, feeling dizzy—and gazed around the big room in his own home.
Near the fireplace stood a cradle, with Brom O’Berin bulking over it, scarcely larger than it was, staring.
Gwen scrambled up with a glad cry, and ran to catch up the baby.
Brom bellowed in joy and flung his arms around her.
“Uncle Brom!” the children shouted, and piled onto both of them.
“Fess?” Rod muttered, not quite believing it.
“Rod!” The voice cracked in his ear; he winced. “Is it feedback in my circuits? Rod! Are you real?”
“I’ll have to admit to it,” Rod muttered. “Never knew I’d be so glad to hear your tinny voice. You can shut down the transmitter, now.”
“Oh, Papa!” Cordelia scampered up to him, disappointed. “Just one more time?”
“No! Definitely not!… At least, not today.” He turned to see Father Al picking himself up off the floor. “If you don’t mind, Father, I definitely prefer technology.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Not that they made a practice of it, you understand—but this was one occasion when the Gallowglass family just had to have a horse for dinner.
Not that Fess ate as he stood at the end of the table—though he did stick his nose in a feedbag, to keep up appearances. After the mad flurry of greetings and rejoicings, Gwen had quickly parceled out victuals, and the whole family had sat down to their first meal in a day. Cordelia and Geoff had been packed off to bed (protesting), and the adults (and a bleary-eyed Magnus) sat down to tell Brom (and Fess) their adventures.
“The varlet!” Brom cried, when they were done. “Thou hadst oped his road to victory, slain his chief enemy, and succored his son—and what is his thanks? To bid thee get hence!”
“Oh, it’s not as bad as all that,” Father Al explained. “In fact, he probably was very grateful—but not so grateful as to be willing to die.”
“To die?” Brom scowled at him. “What is thy meaning, shave-pate?”
“He thought Rod was his fetch.”
Brom stared.
Then he slapped the table and threw back his head, roaring laughter. “Nay, o’ course, then, o’ course! What recourse had he, save spells of banishment?”
Rod looked from him to Father Al, then to Gwen; but she shook her head, as lost as he was. “Somebody wanna let us in on the joke?” Rod said mildly.
“A ‘fetch,’ ” Father Al explained, “is your exact double, and seeing it usually means you’ll die in the near future. It’s also called a co-walker, or in German, a doppelganger.”
“Oh.” Slowly, Rod grinned. “And in this case, the superstition would’ve proved true?”
“Well, we’ll never know now. But it could be that, with both of you in the same place, that universe might’ve cancelled both of you.”
“Wasn’t room enough in that universe for both of us, huh? Not the original and the analog?”
“Perhaps. At any rate, Lord Kern took no chances. He pronounced the traditional phrases for banishing a fetch—and it worked.”
“Banished me right back to my own universe.” Rod lifted his wineglass. “For which, I thank him.”
“Exactly,” Father Al agreed. “No harm or ingratitude intended, I’m sure.”
“Yes, nothing personal. So he gets to keep his universe—but do I get to keep his powers?”
“An interesting point.” Father Al pursed his lips. “I’m sure he retains them—but the experience of using his powers certainly should’ve eliminated any blocks you’d unconsciously set up, freeing you to use whatever powers you do have—and we’d already established that you had something of your own before you went to that universe.”
“Such as the power to manipulate the ‘magic field?’ ”
Father Al nodded. “You may still have that. And from what you’ve told me of Gramarye, the population here should be providing a very powerful magic field.”
“Then he is a warlock?” Gwen demanded.
Rod shrugged. “No way to say until I try, dear—and if you don’t mind, I’d rather not, just now.”
“Of course,” Father Al reminded him, “you could always draw on the power of one of your analogs…”
Rod shuddered. “I’d really rather not. Besides, their powers couldn’t work, in this universe.”