Robert Hughes - The Wizard in Waiting

lv Rosha shook his curly head to rid himself of these distracting fears and tried to think clearly. If they were in the tiassage below, as he believed they must be, they couldn’t A$afely get out while the pharmacist remained in the room.

a wondered if he could assist them… M-my apologies for b-b-bothering you,” Rosha said, sh-sure that it wasn-nothing just a bit of undigested breakfast.”

“Humph,” the gaunt man grunted, and he turned back to his pestle and his bottles of herbs.

“I imagine you are s-s-summoned often in the m-m-mddle of the n-night…”

“Too often,” the Lord of Herbs snorted. “Especially last flight”

“M-must get very little s-s-sleep…”

“Too little.”

“P-perhaps you sh-sh-should take off this morning, and cat eh a nap—”

“And leave my post?” the man exploded self-righteously. “Never!”

He turned back to his mixing bowl.. l “What are you m-making? A love p-p-potion?” /V The Lord of Herbs spun around and backed up against JMs table, aghast. “Wh-wh-what a ridiculous notion!” he bouted.

“Ah-ah-ah of course not.” Once more the blood filled his old cheeks, and they radiated warmth. A love potion was exactly what he was making, and once this intruder left him alone, he planned to steal away slip it, somehow, to a merchant’s lovely daughter. Not he actually believed it would work, of course… “Ah-ah-ah why do you ask?” he demanded.

“You really ought to d-do something about that Rosha goaded. Then he turned on his heel and talked out of the room. He decided if he couldn’t push the chemist out of the infirmary, he would summon him from…” Carlad fell into step behind him as he climbed the spiral stairs to return to his apartment. As he passed the door of the throne room he glanced in, just to check if the troupe night have somehow eluded his search and gathered here. It was empty but for the brocade-swathed dais and the Ornately carved throne. Rosha blanched, then, for he saw Something had been added a smaller throne, carved ex-y like Ligne’s, now sat on the floor to the right of her platform. Rosha knew who the chair was intended for, and his sudden nausea truly warranted his calling the doctor. He continued down the hall to his new apartment, thankful at least that Ligne had moved him out of his rooftop prison and down to this level. He was that much closer to the gate and freedom.

As he passed alone through the double doors into his room and closed them on his weary guard, he was contrasting Ligne to his thoughtful, sensitive Bronwynn, Then something slammed into his back.

Bronwynn had grown up inside this castle. While she’d known nothing of the nether tunnels until Admon Faye had revealed them to her, once she was through the infirmary floor and into the House proper she was loose on her home territory. She’d explored these halls as a child, had stuck her turned-up nose into every corner and closet. She’d learned thereby all the secrets to moving into and out of the hidden passageways that laced through the upper levels. Fortuitously, she escaped the infirmary without being seen. Mere seconds later, she was safely hidden in the walls.

She brushed cobwebs aside as she walked. Evidently, Ligne had either not discovered all of these narrow aisles, or else she used them infrequently. Either way, Bronwynn thought grimly, they would prove the wanton imposter’s downfall. Whether Admon Faye and the others survived the battle below her feet or not, Bronwynn was resolved to dispatch Queen Ligne by nightfall after she’d dealt with Rosha, of course. She made that vengeance her first order of business.

Methodically, she searched the rooms of the castle for him, quite unnoticed behind the drapes and panels.

She’d already determined that he could most easily be killed in his bed which she assumed would be in Ligne’s own apartments. She climbed a dark ladder, barely a foot and a half wide, to peer through a crack into the royal apartments on the second floor.

She watched as a trio of maidservants made up Ligne’s vast bed. She bit her tongue in rage, to think that the usurper of her throne now slept here, in her parent’s room. She choked back hot tears as she remembered crawling up into very bed between them, when common sounds made by the night drove her, frightened, from her own.

strained to hear the words of these servants, but the porn was vast, and the sound didn’t carry through the %WliBs. She shifted position, circling through the darkness to tiny portal closer to the women, arriving in time only to ice them leave. One half-heard comment was enough, how

QjfWt. As they left the room, the senior of the three said lky would need to do a complete cleaning the next morn-c’ffafr when the new young master moved in. It was fortunate for Bronwynn that the ladies made their tit then, for she couldn’t contain her boiling temper, and y occupant of the room could have heard her vent her ftage on the walls. Once she’d controlled herself, she concluded that Rosha must either be in one of the guest rooms left side the royal suite, or else In the rooftop room where her letter had himself placed Ligne. She shuffled sideways ilftound the perimeter of the wall to check the guest rooms.

The first room she reached puzzled her. The cracks and that would normally permit her to look into it had been filled or masked.

She thought for a moment, re-ering the trick to getting into this particular apart-and twisted a carved knob. A panel swung open, and stepped into the room of Jagd of Uda. Fortu-, he wasn’t home. She knew instantly to whom it be-, by the scarlet and purple cloaks that draped from the walls. Bronwynn smirked. Jagd had ever been the type.

In this environment he did well to be. Bronwynn slipped back into her hiding place and closed it panel behind her. She squeezed around another corner, ting her way by the dim light that filtered through tiny cks from the rooms on either side of this aisle. She a second guest room and found her vision unob-Ijrtructed. Once again, it was unoccupied at the moment. fpBhe recognized nothing that gave any hint of the one to it belonged. A quick pull on a hidden latch, and

|llronwynn danced lightly inside, moving quietly to the set. She found it filled with new clothes, imaginatively fled and richly colored. She held up a tunic to measure size of the shoulders and felt a fierce satisfaction. icse were Rosha’s new clothes, specially tailored for the isort of the Queen. At the moment, this was where the mudgecurdle was living. Well, here he would die as well. Bronwynn swiftly hung the garment back onto its hook, slipped her dagger from its sheath, and backed into the closet. She only had to wait a few moments.

The blow should have killed him. It didn’t. The summer before, when Rosha first left his father’s manor in the company of Bronwynn and Pelmen, Dorlyth mod Karis had given his son the chain-mail shirt he had worn himself throughout his adventures. Now, that shirt saved his son’s life. It turned the dagger, though Rosha’s covering garment was sheared into tatters, and Bronwynn cursed her own poor memory for not having planned a better stroke.

Rosha didn’t think. He simply grabbed his assailant by the arm and tossed her across the room. Only after he’d launched her past his head did he realize who she was, “Bronwynn!” he grunted. More emotions were summed in that one grunt than in any phrase the young man had ever uttered before.

“Did you call me?” Carlad shouted from the hall.

“No!” Rosha called back, stepping over to hold the doors should the man attempt to investigate. “N-nothing. G-g-go back to what you were doing.”

Bronwynn had by that time rolled to her feet and, seeing his back turned, charged him again. Rosha heard her coming and sidestepped her at the last moment. The blade of her weapon thudded heavily into the wood of the door jamb. The young warrior knocked the girl’s hand away from its haft before she could jerk it free, picked her up, and once again tossed her across the room. This time, however, he made sure to aim her for the bed.