Andrew Offutt - The Tower of Death

“Was you suggested a talk,” Cormac said at last, “but we talk not. It’s but tentatively feinting each of us is, and almost desperately parrying. Methinks is because neither of us really wishes to tell the other aught of his knowledge and arcane powers.” Of which I have none, Cormac added, but only in his own mind.

“Straightforward words. And true. Might one ask how came ye by the medallion ye showed us?”

Cormac but smiled, very slightly. He could be seen; it was answer enow.

“Well then… might I see it again, now we are sure we serve the same king?”

Cormac paused, turned to the other man, and stared.

Zarabdas at last frowned. “Ye seem to have suffered a seizure of the tongue, mac Art.”

“What I have suffered, mage, is a seizure of the sigil! It vanished during the night just passed. Nor can I fathom how anyone entered my chamber without awaking me-unless by some sorcerous means. Too, Zarabdas, no one has been so interested as yourself, in that… bauble.”

“Stolen!” Zarabdas hissed. “And I hear myself being accused without so many words… mac Art, I have it not. I do not steal. Nor do I believe that medallion to be other than a piece of Egyptian jewellery of no great age.”

“Then why would someone in the hall of the king himself be going to such trouble to steal it? Surely no paupers sleep within the keep!”

“I cannot say,” Zarabdas said, meeting Cormac’s slitted eyes straight on; the two men stood still now, face to face. “Mayhap I am wrong about the medallion’s meaning, and possible… use. And mayhap another thought it to be valuable, of thaumaturgic use. Hmm. The thief woke neither you nor your bearish friend?”

“He… took his rest elsewhere.”

“Ah. Rest, eh?” Almost, Zarabdas smiled. “Of course… Cormac mac Art: do you bolt your door this night.”

“It had occurred to me,” Cormac said with exaggerated dryness. “It’s thinking too I’ve been of leaving it unlocked-and sleeping not, but waiting with sword in hand.”

“Not unwise; save that when one sleeps in the hall of the mighty, one must be most cautious as to whom one attacks, in one’s own chamber or no.”

“I do not believe it’s the king will be visiting me this night,” Cormac said.

“I will think on this,” Zarabdas said, and turned and returned to the hall while a surprised Cormac stood and watched.

Things were seldom what they seemed; Cormac mac Art had learned that, and too many times had he learned and re-learned the lesson to his anguish. Could Zarabdas be sincere, and guiltless, and without knowledge of the accursed sigil?

Mayhap I be well rid of the damned bauble! Well, I’ll be going on in and-oh, blood of the gods! Trapped!

It was the Lody Plotina, wearing a darkish dress draped with care to disguise the fact that her belly extended considerably farther than her bosom, which was a considerable distance. Nothing sinister, at least, in that dissemblage-or in her brazen suggestion.

“My lady is a follower of the dead-of Our Lord the Nazarene?”

Frowning, Plotina asked, “Aye-and why do you ask? What has that to do with thee and me?”

“It means that you will understand my sad state, my gracious lady; I have taken a vow of chastity.”

“Oh!”

She was most sorry, and departed with little grace, though she tried. A grimly smiling mac Art reflected on his lie and was most happy that Behl and Crom of Eirrin were not like the Dead God of the Saints or Christians, threatening vengeance on those who professed a faith other than theirs.

He made a little bargain with a kitchen maid, who was not unhappy to be groped or to proffer a jug of wine and a cup on the king’s guest. She asked twice, looking up from under long darkened lashes, if that were all “my lord Mackert” wanted of her. He assured her that it was, and was wondering at his own sanity by the time he was in his room and sitting back, sipping the best fate of Hispanic grapes. It was not the best wine he’d tasted-though it far exceeded in quality that stuff the Britons made from the wrinkly grapes their chill wet climate produced.

He filled a second cup, thinking, and was soon yawning-when there came a tap at his door. He set down the pottery mug, looked thoughtfully at his mailcoat and sword, and have his head a jerk. In the manner of a civilized man, he inquired who was there. It was Zarabdas. Cormac admitted him.

Zarabdas, whose pate was so clear of hair and yet whose beard was so dark, wore a different robe, light and ungirt. And he held a stemmed, round object with a piebald pattern on its knob, which was a bit larger than the Gael’s fist. Merely a dried gourd, Cormac saw.

“A talisman?”

Zarabdas smiled, and shook the gourd. It rattled, dried with its seeds within. A nice children’s toy; some folk hung them outside the door to rattle in the wind and frighten night-demons.

“No,” the Palmyran said, “a doorstop.”

Cormac blinked, then nodded his understanding.

“Ah.” He took the gourd, thanked the mage, and closed the door. He set the gourd carefully against its base.

And he retired, dagger close to hand and his sword standing in a corner on the other side of the bed. The wine soon enveloped him in sleep.

A strange sound aroused him. Cormac awoke as fully alert as any pirate, and but a moment passed before he realized that what he was hearing was a child’s rattleball rolling along the floor. He had his dagger in his fist and was out of bed and several feet from it in an instant.

“It’s in me hand my sword is, and if ye ope the door to depart ye’ll become a sheath. Came ye to slay, or to steal more than ye did yester night?”

“Neither,” a tiny female voice quavered. “I am come to return that which I… borrowed on yester even.”

“Eurica?”

“Aye,” she squeaked, and there was a pause while she swallowed and found her voice, which was very small even when she’d not been terrified. “And unarmed. Please don’t hurt me-I am walking toward your voice. I bear no arms. Shall I stretch out my hands or put them behind my back?”

“Behind your back,” he said, and stretched out his left hand. He heard the approach of her voice, but now she had fallen silent he heard not even the whisper of feet.

So! Who’d have guessed a girl who liked so to stamp her feet could be as silent as a cat walking on velvet! His armpits prickled, and he held forth his left hand, while his right held the dagger ready to strike upward. Then he heard a whisper of cloth, and knew she was close enough to touch, and damned himself mentally for a fool: she was short, and he was holding his hand too high. He lowered it-directly onto her head, and she made a frightened mouse sound.

“Hands at your sides. Be perfectly still. My blade is ready in my other hand.”

He felt her, with his left. A long cloak, silk sewn to wool. An empty hand; another. Aye, and within the cloak a slender chain. Tracing his hand down, he found two well-spaced little hills of flesh, almost hard in youthful firmness. Betwixt them was the winged medallion. And a low-necked shift of some gauzy stuff. Her under-dress, or perhaps a nightdress; he knew some wore such, even when the weather was far from wintry.

“Why took ye this?”

“I-came for an-another purpose,” she said, and he both felt and heard that the girl trembled still. “I had not the-the courage, once I was within and found ye-s-s-sleeping. But-I took the sigil I knew you had worn. I… have liked having it between my breasts, this day.’;

“Ye’ve warmed it for me.”

“Aye,” she said, signally tiny of voice.

“And shall I be taking it now?”

In an even tinier voice: “Aye.”