Lady Claudia, looking quite smal in the spacious court of her manor house, waving her handkerchief after us.
There were rumblings of thunder in the distance as we headed back toward the great eastern route. “Do you have your weather spels ready, Wizard?” Dominic asked.
Normaly, I didn’t like to use weather spels. Any magic, no matter how trivial, has far-ranging effects and to change the weather for any reason less than protecting the crop from hail had never seemed very responsible. But I didn’t want to get soaked to the skin any more than Dominic did. I puled up my horse and shaped a few spels in the Hidden Language to move the densest of the clouds a little further away from us.
The sun came out above us though the air stayed damp, and the darkness over much of the landscape gave the sunlight an artificial quality. I was about to hurry to catch up to the others when I realized that Ascelin was standing beside me.
“What do you think, Wizard,” he asked, his blue eyes intent. “Are we carrying the Black Pearl now?”
We both looked toward Joachim, riding with the others a few hundred yards ahead. It seemed horribly likely.
“But why would Claudia give it to us to take back to the East?” I asked.
“Maybe she wanted to get it out of their house before its curse affected her family. Or, maybe, knowing its powers for good were so strong, she wanted to give it to a man she loved more than her husband.” I thought that Ascelin would have to tel Prince Paul some of the stories of his vivid imagination—assuming we made it home to Yurt. “If so,” I said, “why didn’t Arnulf object?”
“He may not have realized what it was.”
If Ascelin could guess, Arnulf would certainly have guessed—unless he had deliberately had his wife try to renew her earlier friendship with Joachim for the express purpose of getting that package into his saddlebag. I immediately thought of several other “presents” Claudia might have given the chaplain, including a love potion to make him return to her or a deadly viper sealed in a ceramic vase ready to leap out and bite him when he broke the seal. More prosaicaly, the package could have held a miniature portrait of her in a marble frame or even a new Bible. But I did not think so.
“We have to make him open it right away,” said Ascelin.
“We can’t ‘make’ the chaplain do anything,” I said. “But I’l certainly ask him about it.”
The others had stopped and were waiting for us. As Ascelin and I hurried to catch up, I wondered how I should ask to see a present I was sure was highly significant and highly dangerous.
Part Three. Bantrifs
I
“She said to wait to open it until we were far from there,” Joachim told me. “We aren’t far away yet.”
His comment was quite reasonable if Claudia had given him a portrait of herself, quite unreasonable if it was actualy the Black Pearl—or some other dangerous magic object that Arnulf wanted us to take into the East for reasons of his own.
I tried probing with magic to see inside Joachim’s saddlebag. A variation on the far-seeing spel would alow me—or so I hoped—to peek inside the foil-wrapped parcel. Unfortunately, it was completely dark inside. Delicate magical probing from the outside wasn’t going to tel me much, other than that whatever was in there was not alive. Not a viper then, I tried to reassure myself, and certainly not an Ifrit.
By evening, the thunderstorm had moved off, though the air stayed damp. We sat around our fire eating Ascelins cooking again. Joachim’s brother had sent along a bag of rice as wel as replenishing our other supplies, and Ascelin had made a fairly successful stab at cooking it. I wondered how rude it would actualy be to open Joachim’s present behind his back. Unfortunately, the answer seemed to be very rude.
But the more I thought about it, no matter what Ascelin believed, the more I doubted it was King Solomons Pearl. In fact, I wasn’t even sure there
There were rumblings of thunder in the distance as we headed back toward the great eastern route. “Do you have your weather spels ready, Wizard?” Dominic asked.
Normaly, I didn’t like to use weather spels. Any magic, no matter how trivial, has far-ranging effects and to change the weather for any reason less than protecting the crop from hail had never seemed very responsible. But I didn’t want to get soaked to the skin any more than Dominic did. I puled up my horse and shaped a few spels in the Hidden Language to move the densest of the clouds a little further away from us.
The sun came out above us though the air stayed damp, and the darkness over much of the landscape gave the sunlight an artificial quality. I was about to hurry to catch up to the others when I realized that Ascelin was standing beside me.
“What do you think, Wizard,” he asked, his blue eyes intent. “Are we carrying the Black Pearl now?”
We both looked toward Joachim, riding with the others a few hundred yards ahead. It seemed horribly likely.
“But why would Claudia give it to us to take back to the East?” I asked.
“Maybe she wanted to get it out of their house before its curse affected her family. Or, maybe, knowing its powers for good were so strong, she wanted to give it to a man she loved more than her husband.” I thought that Ascelin would have to tel Prince Paul some of the stories of his vivid imagination—assuming we made it home to Yurt. “If so,” I said, “why didn’t Arnulf object?”
“He may not have realized what it was.”
If Ascelin could guess, Arnulf would certainly have guessed—unless he had deliberately had his wife try to renew her earlier friendship with Joachim for the express purpose of getting that package into his saddlebag. I immediately thought of several other “presents” Claudia might have given the chaplain, including a love potion to make him return to her or a deadly viper sealed in a ceramic vase ready to leap out and bite him when he broke the seal. More prosaicaly, the package could have held a miniature portrait of her in a marble frame or even a new Bible. But I did not think so.
“We have to make him open it right away,” said Ascelin.
“We can’t ‘make’ the chaplain do anything,” I said. “But I’l certainly ask him about it.”
The others had stopped and were waiting for us. As Ascelin and I hurried to catch up, I wondered how I should ask to see a present I was sure was highly significant and highly dangerous.
Part Three. Bantrifs
I
“She said to wait to open it until we were far from there,” Joachim told me. “We aren’t far away yet.”
His comment was quite reasonable if Claudia had given him a portrait of herself, quite unreasonable if it was actualy the Black Pearl—or some other dangerous magic object that Arnulf wanted us to take into the East for reasons of his own.
I tried probing with magic to see inside Joachim’s saddlebag. A variation on the far-seeing spel would alow me—or so I hoped—to peek inside the foil-wrapped parcel. Unfortunately, it was completely dark inside. Delicate magical probing from the outside wasn’t going to tel me much, other than that whatever was in there was not alive. Not a viper then, I tried to reassure myself, and certainly not an Ifrit.
By evening, the thunderstorm had moved off, though the air stayed damp. We sat around our fire eating Ascelins cooking again. Joachim’s brother had sent along a bag of rice as wel as replenishing our other supplies, and Ascelin had made a fairly successful stab at cooking it. I wondered how rude it would actualy be to open Joachim’s present behind his back. Unfortunately, the answer seemed to be very rude.
But the more I thought about it, no matter what Ascelin believed, the more I doubted it was King Solomons Pearl. In fact, I wasn’t even sure there
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