Robert Silverberg: Dark Times at the Midnight Market

“Literature is full of examples of similar cases,” Ghambivole Zwoll said. “The tale of Lisinamond and Prince Ghorn, for example, in which the prince, after at long last consummating the great desire of his life, discovers that she—”

“Spare me the poetic quotations,” the marquis said. “I don’t regard a single night’s success, followed by icy repudiation the next day, as in any way a fulfillment of your guarantee. I require fuller satisfaction.”

Satisfaction? What did he mean by that? A duel, perhaps? Ghambivole Zwoll, appalled, did not immediately reply. In that moment of silence Shostik-Willeron stepped forward. “If you will pardon me, your grace,” said the Su-Suheris, “I must point out to you that my partner did not stipulate anything more than the assurance that the potion would secure you the lady’s favors, and it does appear that this was—”

The Marquis Mirl Meldelleran whirled to face him and flicked his sword savagely through the air from side to side before him. “Be quiet, monster, or I’ll cut off your head. Just one of them, you understand. As a special favor I’ll allow you the choice of which it is to be.”

Shostik-Willeron moved into the shadows and said nothing further.

The marquis went on, “To continue: I regard the terms of our agreement as having been breached.”

“A refund, milord, would be very difficult for us to—”

“I’m not interested in a refund. Make me a second potion. A stronger one, much stronger, one that will obliterate all other affections from her mind and bind her to me forever. You make it and I’ll find some way to get it to her and all will be well, and my account with you will be quits. What do you say, wizard? Can you do that?”

The Vroon pondered the question a moment. Shostik-Willeron was right, he knew: Shostik-Willeron had been right all along. They never should have had anything to do with this grimy business. And they should refuse now to continue with it. Like all his kind, he had some slight power of foretelling the future, and the images that came to him by way of such second sight were not encouraging ones. Whether or not the law was on their side, the great lords of Castle Mount certainly were unlikely to be, and if this slippery marquis continued his pursuit of the Lady Alesandra he would sooner or later bring down the vengeance of those mighty ones not only upon him but upon those who had aided and abetted him in his quest.

On the other hand, that consideration was a relatively abstract one, at least when compared with the sharp and gleaming reality of the sword in the Marquis Mirl Meldelleran’s hand. The great lords of Castle Mount were far away; the sword of the marquis was right here and very close. That alone was incentive enough for the Vroon to plunge ahead with this new task that the marquis required of him, regardless of the obvious riskiness of it.

The hard blue eyes were bright with menace. “Well, little magus? Will you do it or won’t you?”

In a low, weak voice the Vroon said, “I suppose so, your grace.”

“Good. How soon?”

Again Ghambivole Zwoll hesitated. “Eight days? Perhaps nine? The task will not be an easy one, and I realize that you will accept nothing less than complete success. I’ll need to consult many sources. And beyond doubt a great many rare ingredients must be obtained, which will take some little while.”

“Eight days,” said the Marquis Mirl Meldelleran. “Not an hour more.”

Compounding such a powerful potion, far more intense than the one he had given the marquis, would be perfectly feasible, of course. It was years since he had made such a thing, but he had not forgotten the art of it. It would call for the utmost in technical skill, Ghambivole Zwoll knew, and would require, just as he had asserted, some rare and costly ingredients: they would have to go back to the moneylenders once again to cover the expense.

But he had no choice. Doubtless Shostik-Willeron was right that there was great peril in meddling in the romantic affairs of the aristocracy; the marriage of a Coronal’s son to a princess of Muldemar must surely be a matter not just of romance but of high political intrigue, and woe betide anyone who sought to undo such a match for his own sordid purposes. Still, Ghambivole Zwoll wanted to believe, even now, that whatever consequences might befall such meddling would fall upon the Marquis Mirl Meldelleran, not on the lowly proprietors of some unimportant sorcerers’ shop in the Midnight Market. The real peril he and Shostik-Willeron faced, he told himself again and again, was not from so remote a thing as the displeasure of the great lords of the Castle, but rather from the uncontrolled anger of the rash, reckless, and frustrated marquis.

Gloomily Shostik-Willeron concurred in this reasoning. And so they floated a new loan, which left them almost as deep in debt as they had been before the marquis and his twenty-royal commission had come to plague their lives. Ghambivole Zwoll sent orders far and wide to suppliers of precious herbs and elixirs and powders, the bone of this creature and the blood of that one, the sap of this tree, the seed of another, potations of a dozen sort, galliuc and ravenswort, spider lettuce and bloodleaf, wolf-parsley and viperbane and black fennel, and waited, fidgeting, until they began to arrive, and began, once the proper ingredients for the basis of the drug were in his hands, to mix and measure and weigh and test. He doubted very much that he would have the stuff ready by the eighth day, and in truth he had never regarded that as a realistic goal; but the marquis had insisted. The Vroon hoped that when the marquis did return on the eighth day and found the potion still incomplete, he would see that the magus was toiling in good faith and did indeed hope to have the job done in another day or two, or three, and would be patient until then.

The eighth day came and midnight tolled, and the market was thrown open for business. As Ghambivole Zwoll had expected, the drug was not quite ready. But, to his surprise, the Marquis Mirl Meldelleran did not appear to claim it. He was hardly likely to have forgotten; but something pressing must have cropped up to keep him from making the short journey downslope to Bombifale to pick up his merchandise tonight. Just as well, the Vroon thought.

Nor did the marquis show up on the ninth night either, though Ghambivole Zwoll had brought the stuff to the verge of completion by then. The following afternoon, by dint of having worked all through a difficult sleepless day, the Vroon tipped a few drops of the final reagent into the flask, saw the mixture turn to a rewarding amber hue shimmering with highlights of scarlet and green, and knew that the job was finished. If the marquis came here at last this evening to claim his potion, Ghambivole Zwoll would be ready to make delivery. And the marquis would have no complaints this time. The new potion did not even require the recitation of a spell, so powerful was its effect. So the poor highborn simpleton would be spared the effort of memorizing five or six strange words. Ghambivole Zwoll hoped he would be grateful for that.

With midnight still a few hours away, the market had not yet opened for business. Ghambivole Zwoll waited, alone in the shop, tense, eager to have this hazardous transaction done with at last.

A little while later he heard the sounds of some commotion in the hall: an outcry from the warders, someone’s angry response, a further protest from one of the warders. In all likelihood, the Vroon thought, the Marquis Mirl Meldelleran had finally come, and in his usual blustering way was trying to force his way into the market before regular hours.

But the noise outside was none of the marquis’s doing this time. Abruptly the door of Ghambivole Zwoll’s shop burst open and two sturdy-looking men in fine velvet livery brightly emblazoned across the left shoulder with the image of the Muldemar Ruby, the huge red stone that was the well-known emblem of that great princely house, came thundering in. They were armed with formidable swords: no foppish dress swords these, but great gleaming grim-looking military sabers.