Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Intrigue

“No, indeed he has not.” Julio, with a raised eyebrow, was matching Groot’s vocal projection. “You know I’ve never entirely trusted him.”

“There’s nothing to be done about it now,” Groot said, “except try to find out what role he’s played. I doubt there is even much left for us to do in the way of damage control, wouldn’t you say? What’s done is done. You’re right, though - we must look to the future. What about that barbarian fellow? Now that he’s back on his feet I have something for him to do. Before the barbarian, though, the first thing you do is hunt up a chemist.”

“Haven’t spent much time on a horse, have you?”

“Urr,” growled Jurtan Mont. Max had been acting disgustingly chipper ever since they’d left Roosing Oolvaya. Jurtan couldn’t believe Max was actually that much more comfortable than he was, except for obviously knowing his way around horses. Of course, the way Jurtan had been feeling, that mere difference alone could amount to quite a lot.

“Look at it this way,” Max said. The small farming community they’d passed through earlier in the morning had finally slipped back into the gentle hills behind them, and they had now traveled beyond the range of cultivated fields. Prairie grasses that reached in places higher than their shoulders surrounded them on all sides but the rear, where their passage had trampled out a trail. Long slow waves rippled across the surface in the small breeze. “Being saddle-sore is commonplace. Any out-of-shape body’s going to feel like it’s lost a fight with a determined elephant after sitting on a horse all day, at least for the first half-a-week or so. You did want to show you’re an individual, didn’t you? Well, concentrate on rising above your body, think about what makes you different.”

“I wish you wouldn’t gloat,” Jurtan muttered.

“Who’s gloating? I’m trying to help you be philosophical.”

“You sound like my father.”

“Really?” Max said thoughtfully. “Maybe that means I’m doing this right.”

“Urr,” Jurtan said again. All they’d been doing for days was plod across the countryside. Oh, all right, they had had a few moments of activity that had started to look more interesting, but none of them had lasted. Before leaving Roosing Oolvaya, they’d checked out the haunts of the guy with no real name, the Creeping Sword. Max had sniffed around the Sword’s office waving his hands in strange patterns and mumbling to himself; he’d said he was running tests. “ Something went on here,” he’d stated finally. “There’re still emanations leaking back off the walls.”

“What,” Jurtan had asked, “like a duel? Did he get himself blasted?”

Max scrutinized a patch of plaster near the door. “Whatever it was didn’t escalate that far. I think.”

Oh, don’t you know ? Jurtan had thought. You’re supposed to be such a big hotshot. He didn’t say this aloud, though.

‘‘I’m sure he wasn’t pulverized,” Max went on; Jurtan thought he might have been thinking out loud. “Even getting ground into dust always leaves some residue.” Max’s nose twitched and his eyes lost their focus. “Why was he tangling with god-level stuff? How’d he hold it off?”

“Maybe he just talked his way out of it.”

“Yeah,” said Max. “Maybe.” And that had been the last he’d said on the subject.

The next event that had been marginally more stimulating than bouncing up and down out of synchrony with his horse had come the first night out, when they were camped out under a tree set off by a ditch from the side of the road. Max had proposed to put Jurtan through some paces with a rapier but Jurtan was already feeling too bent out of alignment - between the bruises, the flayed-raw patches, and the muscles going stiff as iron torture rods - to do more than lie flat on the ground on his back. At that point Jurtan had had no idea of the stretching-out routine Max was going to inflict on him first thing in the morning, every morning, in the cold dim glow before a hint of sunrise. It clearly wouldn’t have helped if Jurtan had known, he realized, since he was in no shape either to sneak away from Max or to resist him while he was around. If he had known what to expect in the morning he might have forced himself to go to sleep faster so as not to lose out on his rest from both ends; another thing he had yet to appreciate at that time was that “morning” for Max always meant the predawn gloom, at least while he was on the road. On balance, though, Jurtan was happy he hadn’t understood any of this that first night. It wasn’t that he thought the state of ignorance was desirable. Rather, if he had nodded off promptly he would have missed Max’s activity when he thought Jurtan had been asleep.

Jurtan had been resting there, his eyes closed, listening to the insects harmonize with the constant background accompaniment of the sourceless music in his head. Ever since Jurtan had discovered that he could actually channel the music, sometimes, through teeth-clenching concentration, he had been working to increase his control. There was no question that the frequency of his contrapuntal seizures had been declining as a result. Now, he often could react without even being fully aware of it, almost as a reflex, and before he had felt more than a slight fuzziness around the corners of his vision or a distant roar in his ears; he hadn’t totally lost consciousness or fallen over on his face in at least two weeks. The steady clip-clopping rhythm of his horse alone would have once kept him in a perpetual stupor. Jurtan had also gotten better at pushing the music into the background where it wouldn’t overwhelm his thoughts on a constant basis, the way it had done for his entire life up until the past few weeks. Still, when the music wanted to draw his attention to something, it wasn’t shy about making itself felt. As Jurtan rested under the tree and the stars, doing a much better imitation of a stone sarcophagus than of a limber human, he thought afterward he might even have been dozing, when a slyly insistent clatter of castanets brought his eyes open.

In the light of the big moon he could see the horses napping on their feet in the same places they’d occupied when he’d settled down. Max’s bedroll, though, was empty. Jurtan raised his head. There, in the line of trees over by the stream … but who was Max talking to? All he could see were two vague silhouettes outlined against the moonlit shimmer of the birches. Well, it was none of his business.

Or was it? If Max was plotting with somebody to get them both in danger – more danger - that concerned Jurtan, sure enough. He creaked his way off the ground up into a crouch and headed for the stream. An attitude of care and stealth , Jurtan thought, as grass and shrubbery crunched beneath his feet, that’s the ticket . As he got closer, he realized that Max’s companion had a slight internal glow, a sort of will-o’-the-wisp effect, and that through the figure’s body he could vaguely see the birch behind him. The low babble of their voices was barely distinguishable from that of the brook. Gradually, though, Jurtan began to make out more than just a combination of liquid murmurs.

“ ... about Shaa?”

“I’ve been thinking about trying to slide something past the Curse Administrator,” Max said. “Try to get it annulled or superseded or even just lost in the paperwork cycle.”

“Tricky,” said the other form. “Not to mention chancy. I wouldn’t, if it were me. Jardin has ... more active. You may want to wait until we can better see what he’s up to.”

“ … “