The God-Touched Man Page 6

  “Lady Sethemba, you need to pretend you do not understand Dalanese,” he said in Santerran, in a low voice that wouldn’t carry very far.

  “You speak my language!” she replied in the same tongue.

  They were rapidly approaching what was probably a tavern, judging by the light and noise coming from it. “I think we may have slipped rather farther in time than I initially believed,” Piercy said. “But we cannot stand here dallying in the street for the length of time it will take me to explain everything. Please. Just follow me, pretend not to understand what you hear, and with luck someone will know of our mystery magician.”

  Lady Sethemba looked at him skeptically, then nodded. “But you will explain everything,” she said, and Piercy nodded, his attention already elsewhere.

  The tavern was likely also an inn, since it had two stories and some large windows made of tiny panes of thick glass. Piercy pushed open the door, bowing Lady Sethemba in, and the noise dwindled to silence. “Her Highness Princess Ayane requires food and drink,” he announced, enunciating clearly. “Pray make room for her.”

  No one moved except for a few people standing at the back who craned to see the “princess.” A tall, bony woman came forward and, in a barely intelligible accent, said, “A Santerran princess? Here?”

  “We were attacked by bandits in the forest,” Piercy said, “and her Highness’s attendants fought them off, but they made away with her carriage and all her possessions. I am sure you are sensible of the honor she does you in gracing your inn with her presence.” If he hadn’t been sure before, he was now; the thick accent told him they were more than two hundred years in Dalanine’s past. He tried not to fall into despair, since they were equally trapped whether they were two years in the past or two hundred, and maintained his haughty, demanding expression. He’d learned to tell better lies over the last five years. Simple and uncomplicated, that was the way, though he still had to suppress his urge to add unnecessary corroborating details.

  The woman examined Lady Sethemba, who behaved exactly as if none of them existed. It was no wonder they’d all been fooled; she looked more like a princess than Princess Jendaya did. Then the woman said, “Clear f’r her Highness! Ser, we’ve naught but boiled chicken stew, ‘tes not noble food, ser.”

  “Her Highness appreciates your gesture of hospitality and accepts what you have to offer.” To Lady Sethemba, in Santerran, he said, “Say something. I don’t care what.”

  “Your audacity stuns me,” she said. “What if they didn’t believe you?”

  “Then we’d run for our lives.” In Dalanese, he said, “The princess agrees you may tell others she patronizes your inn. She will not charge you for the privilege, since you are so generous in hosting her.”

  “O’ course,” the woman said, bobbing a nervous curtsey, “o’ course, take naught from her, a true Santerran princess in my house…” Trailing more words of astonishment, she disappeared into the kitchen.

  The guests had cleared a space for Lady Sethemba at one of the battered trestle tables, and Piercy ostentatiously dusted the seat of the bench with his linen handkerchief before allowing Lady Sethemba to sit.

  “May I speak now, or will that interrupt your string of falsehoods?” she said in Santerran.

  “My string of falsehoods, as you call it, is going to get us supper and possibly information on our magician.”

  “That wasn’t a criticism. I’m truly impressed. How did you know what they would do?”

  “I realized we are approximately two to three hundred years in the past. At that time in Dalanine, few people knew more of Santerre than the tales explorers brought back from the south, in which all Santerrans were—forgive me—warriors or princesses with ebon-black skin.”

  “I see I’ve underestimated you.”

  “Well, I did take top honors in history at Houndston School and then a degree in the same at university. And to think my mother wanted me to study engineering. I am certain even her renowned sagacity could not have predicted the situation we now find ourselves in.”

  Lady Sethemba eyed the other guests, who were still staring at her in fascination. “Do they expect me to do something obviously foreign?”

  “You’re already doing it just by speaking. You have a lovely voice.” To the bystanders, he said, “I’m quite certain her Highness does not need an audience for her meal.” The men and women, muttering between themselves, found seats elsewhere, though Piercy could tell they were all still watching the “princess,” if covertly.

  He glanced back at Lady Sethemba and was surprised to see her glaring at him. “I would prefer you stop trying to charm me, Mr. Faranter,” she said icily, “since you know by now it won’t work.”

  “I wasn’t—very well,” Piercy said irritably, and at that moment the innkeeper bustled up to them with two bowls of steaming, aromatic soup, which she placed in front of them. “Sorry ‘tesn’t more.”

  “This will be sufficient. Ah, mistress…I don’t suppose another of her Highness’s party arrived here?”

  The woman’s eyes widened. “O’ course, c’n see the semblance, o’ course. ‘Tes upstairs. Said nothin’ ‘bout princess.”

  “He is her Highness’s…tutor, and unworldly,” Piercy improvised. “He fled the attack and we have been seeking him, concerned for his well-being. Thank you for making him welcome.”

  The woman flushed and bobbed a few more curtseys. Piercy picked up his spoon and began eating. “Shouldn’t we capture the magician?” Lady Sethemba said.

  “I think it unlikely he is going anywhere,” Piercy said, “not at this time of night, and my stomach is under the impression that I have deserted it in favor of some other, less demanding organ, such as my spleen. We can spare a few minutes to eat and refresh ourselves.”

  Two wooden tankards foaming over at the top appeared in front of them. “T’best beer we have,” said the innkeeper. “Make it m’self.”

  Piercy and Lady Sethemba exchanged glances. “Act as if it’s the best thing you’ve ever had,” Piercy muttered, and took a deep swig. It was delicious. “This is wonderful beer,” he said with enthusiasm, and took another draught. Lady Sethemba gave him a skeptical look, but drank without showing signs of revulsion. The innkeeper beamed at them and bustled away.

  “We should hurry,” Lady Sethemba said, though she was putting away the soup as heartily as he was. “If he comes downstairs and catches us off-guard—”

  “I am watching the stairs. And these patrons. I hope they are sufficiently awed that they will not molest us.”

  “Let them try.”

  “Is bloodthirstiness an ineluctable part of your character?”

  “I don’t call it bloodthirsty to be proud of my abilities.”

  “So long as you don’t seek out opportunities to display them, we may survive this.” Piercy lifted his bowl and drained the last drops of broth, though his soul cringed at displaying such bad manners. “Now we find our quarry,” he said, finishing off his beer and wishing he had time for another.

  Lady Sethemba rose and walked toward the stairs. The crowd parted for her, their eyes avid as if hoping she would do something mysterious. Piercy hurried after her, pushing a few people out of the way with his walking stick; he clearly wasn’t foreign enough. The stairs creaked as they ascended, which Piercy welcomed. It would give them warning if anyone followed them.

  The creaky stair came out on a short hallway built well enough that it might still be standing three hundred years from now. When we get home, I’ll have to see if that’s true, Piercy thought, then wanted to laugh at the irrelevancy of it. Lath and plaster walls gleamed in the light from the one lantern hanging at the head of the stairs. Four doors of solid oak lined the walls. Three of them stood slightly ajar and were dark. The fourth, at the far end of the hall, was closed, and light came from beneath it.

  Lady Sethemba strode rapidly down the hall. Piercy grabbed her shoulder to bring her to a halt, then snatched his hand away when she turned on him.
“If we simply fling the door open and attack him, he will certainly have time to respond,” he whispered.

  “Not if we’re fast enough,” she replied.

  “Nevertheless, shall we try a less direct approach?”

  She eyed him suspiciously. “What do you suggest?”

  “Just wait for me before you act.” He went to the door and rapped on it with the hawk-head of his stick. “Ser, ‘tes food,” he said in a fair approximation of the innkeeper’s voice.

  “I already ate, mistress innkeeper,” said a voice from behind the door. It opened, revealing a short, middle-aged man with somewhat tousled fair hair and dark eyes. Piercy rapped the man smartly in the throat with his stick, making him clutch his neck and stumble backward, speechless and unable to cast spells.

  Lady Sethemba launched herself at him, driving him farther backward into the little room, and Piercy quickly followed and shut the door behind him. He went to help her subdue the man, but to his astonishment she already had him face down on the bed with his hands pinioned behind him.

  “Quickly, find something to bind him,” she said.

  Piercy unwound his neckcloth and used its long folds to tie the magician’s hands despite his thrashing and bucking to be free. The man coughed, spat, and opened his mouth to say something, or scream. Suddenly there was a knife in Lady Sethemba’s hand and she pressed it into the side of his neck. “Silence, or I will silence you permanently,” she said in a low voice, and the magician shut his mouth.

  Piercy realized his own mouth was hanging open and closed it. “Where did that come from?” he said, rather faintly.

  “I do not give away all my secrets,” she said. “Now, magician, you will remove us from this place—”

  “This time.”

  “This time, then, and you will live.”

  The magician’s eyes were wide with terror. “By the Gods, I am so sorry,” he said, barely moving his mouth. “I thought you were free of the portal. I never meant to involve anyone in this.”

  “Your little jape with the velocitor left at least a dozen people dead,” Piercy said. “I call that a rather fatal kind of involvement.”

  “I’m sorry,” the man whispered again, and tears came to his eyes. “It was more powerful than I anticipated. I truly did not mean for anyone to be hurt.”

  “Then what did you mean?” Lady Sethemba said.

  “I needed the magic of the velocitor to create the place of power, the portal,” he said. “Please, let me sit up and I’ll tell you everything.”

  Lady Sethemba glanced at Piercy, who nodded, then removed the knife from his throat and stepped back. The magician awkwardly rolled over and managed to get into a sitting position on the bed. “No, I think not,” Piercy said, and helped the man to the room’s only chair, then stood behind it so he could see the magician’s fingers. If Evon could cast a spell with his hands tied behind his back, who knew what this magician could do?

  Lady Sethemba went to stand in front of him. “Talk,” she said, knife still held at the ready.

  “I don’t know where you want me to start.”

  “Start with the place of power,” Piercy said. “I believed creating such to be impossible.”

  “It is impossible,” the magician said. “That amount of magic…we just don’t have access to it anymore. Much of it is tied up in existing places of power. The velocitor is—was—the only thing that contained nearly enough magical energy, and even then it could only create a place of power for a short period of time. That’s why I called it a portal rather than a place—it allowed me to move from our time to the present.”

  “You mean to the past,” Piercy said.

  “The present is wherever you happen to be,” the magician said, shaking his head. “If it were the past, if you were still anchored to the time you think of as the present, you couldn’t affect anything in this time. Now is the present, and that other time is yet to come.”

  “I do not understand,” Lady Sethemba said.

  “Neither do I, but I suspect we do not need to,” Piercy said, hoping it was true. He was already beginning to have the brains-scooped-out feeling he did whenever magical theory was discussed. “What matters is you were able to link one time with another, enter that second time, and then the…portal…collapsed? Disappeared?”

  “It’s more complicated than that—but it doesn’t matter,” the magician said quickly as Lady Sethemba made a small motion with her knife. “You understand the gist of it.”

  “What I do not understand is why,” Lady Sethemba said. “Why would you do this?”

  “It’s personal,” said the magician.

  “Indeed, and you have made it personal for two other people, however inadvertently,” Piercy said. “I believe the lady asked you a question. I suggest you answer her before she asks it with steel.”

  Piercy couldn’t see the man’s face, but he could guess as to his expression, because Lady Sethemba smiled, a rather unpleasant smile. “I was searching for something,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  Piercy prodded him in the back of the head with his walking stick. “If your next words are to tell me it is a matter of life or death, I shall roll my eyes at you in a derisive manner.”

  The magician craned his head, trying to look at Piercy. His eyes were very large and very dark. “How did you know?”

  Chapter Six

  “Enough talk,” Lady Sethemba said. “Return us to our own time, whatever you call it.”

  “I won’t,” said the magician. “You can do whatever you like to me, but I won’t do it.”

  “Very well,” Lady Sethemba said, flipping her knife into a different position. The magician squeaked.

  “My lady, this will not solve our problem,” Piercy said, debating with himself whether he should try to take the knife away from her and deciding he liked having all five fingers on his right hand.

  “I won’t hurt him,” Lady Sethemba said in Santerran. “But a healthy fear is sometimes an interrogator’s friend.”

  “To my surprise, I agree with you. But I think we would do better to find a conversational way to gain what we want. He seems primed to tell us everything, if we find the right questions.”

  Lady Sethemba scowled, an expression which didn’t mar her loveliness at all—stop thinking of her that way, you idiot!—and said, “Very well. You question, and I’ll glower at him in a threatening way.”

  Piercy choked back a laugh. Up until now she hadn’t displayed even the most vestigial sense of humor. “I think, if you are forthcoming with us, we will have no need to hurt you,” he said to the magician. “But no more nonsense about what we will or will not understand. Tell us what we want to know, and we shall see what happens next.”

  The magician sagged in the chair. “All right,” he said. “Do you know what it is to love someone? To truly love another person with your whole soul?”

  It caught Piercy off guard. “I—” he began. “I have loved, yes.” No need to tell this man how fleeting his loves had been, but even so, he knew what love was.

  “My Dalessa—no, I cannot call her mine,” he said, and Piercy was struck by the longing in his voice. “I love her more than my own life, and she barely notices me. Though why should I expect her to, since I’m unworthy of her? I have strived so long to win her heart, but she’ll have none of me.” He shook his head. “But she’s been sick for many years. No one can do anything for her. She lies near death, a slow, terrible death, and I…I cannot bear to see her suffer, though she doesn’t return my love.”

  “I take it this action of yours relates in some way to restoring her?”

  “I studied for years, looking for a solution,” the magician said. “I learned of an artifact—an object with magical power—that according to the stories has the power to restore anyone, even from the grip of death itself. I tracked its location down through the centuries until it disappeared from the records entirely, two hundred an
d fifty years before our time. Then I set out to discover how I could retrieve it.”

  “Why did you not simply scry to find its present location—that is, its location in our time?”

  “I did. The scrying failed because the artifact is too powerful. I had to come to a time before it disappeared to retrieve it.”

  “But if it disappeared, would you not interfere with…with the course of history, or something like that, by carrying it into our own time?”

  The magician sighed. “Please don’t stab me,” he said, “but this is something you really won’t understand unless you are also a magician. I realize this is sort of a ludicrous request, but can you just trust me that what I’ve explained to you will work?”

  “I think you have not earned our trust,” Lady Sethemba said. “But I have seen your magic at work and I will take your word in this one matter.”

  “Agreed,” said Piercy. “So, to sum up: you wish to save your true love from death; to do so, you needed to come to a time more than two hundred years before ours; and you intend to find a magical item and bring it back to our…what we would call the present.”

  “Then you do understand.”

  “Everything except how you have the brazen nerve to destroy government property and involve other people in your monomania.”

  “I thought you knew what it was to love.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever lost sight of basic human decency in the pursuit of the fairer sex.” Piercy sighed. “I take it you do have a way to return? Why not simply open a way for us, then proceed on your merry quest?”

  “I can’t,” the magician protested. “I took the magical energy left from the…the destruction of the velocitor, and that will allow me to open another portal, but only one. If I let you go, but stay here to find the artifact, I’ll be trapped and Dalessa will die. I’m sorry, but I haven’t done all this just to fail now. And you can’t force me to do magic against my will.”