Andrew Offutt: The Tower of Death

“Will you join me in-ah! I see you’ve come armed!”

“So I have. And mailed. When I’m called from my bed by one who will not tell me who desires my company, suspicion thins my blood.”

“My housekeeper is unnecessarily mysterious. She thinks I am the equal of kings and is high-handed. She-”

“Does Lucanor think so?”

Lucanor waved a hand on which a single ring flashed. “The question need not be answered. I am but a tender to the sick and injured. I was about to offer wine.”

“Do you pour for yourself only, Lucanor; I’ll have none.”

The physician nodded, gestured to a chair, and himself took the couch. Splashed with yellow and made to glitter by the lamp-light, black eyes gazed on mac Art.

“Your housekeeper,” the Gael said. “Have you a wife as well, Lucanor?”

“None. Not ever.”

“And no… friend, from among the distaff?”

Lucanor shrugged. “None that lives here.”

“One awaits me,” Cormac said. “Speak our business.”

“Very well.”

The Antiochite leaned forward a bit and his hand stretched out to lie on the table. Now Cormac could see the ring it bore: the stone was milky, though no pearl, and was incused with a sign Cormac recognized. Again he looked on the mix of Persia and Greece: the figure on Lucanor’s ring was of Aquarius, bearer of water. In white opal, perhaps.

“Mac Art: I would tell you something for the good of yourself and all the Suevi of Galicia.”

And not the Antiochite of Galicia, eh? Cormac was silent and showed nothing. He’d been told this and that “for his own good” rather more than once. The phrase usually prefaced someone’s advising him against doing something, and that someone usually had a personal reason. He was about to be warned off something, he mused, and composed himself to show no reaction.

“Sure and a man ever appreciates being told that which is for his own good.”

“I beg you give up this quest for the so-called Sirens of this coast, mac Art of Eirrin. The danger is enormous, beyond your ken. The consequences of interference will be dire for all the Suevi of Galicia.”

“And the Antiochite, and the Gael, and the few Danes?” Cormac asked. Surprised, he essayed not to show it. “Ummm. It’s ‘so-called Sirens’ ye said. Ye have knowledge on ye of the creatures, Lucanor? Of what they be?”

“I will say only that I know them to be terrible enemies when they are thwarted or endangered, or threatened.”

“Ah, they and I have that in common, then.” Cormac spoke in a light tone, with his gaze level on the other man’s eyes. “Little else, I’m thinking. Is it their ally ye be, Lucanor Antiochus, or merely one who does only good and would warn and protect those of us not so wise?”

“You are bent on being hostile,” Lucanor said. And he spoke on, but again he gave no direct answer. Instead he talked here and there and around, dropping dark hints unpurfled by specifics. The gist was that he knew much, and there were more things and forces than Cormac or Veremund knew of; Cormac had better cancel his plans and desist, for the royal house and the people of this land would suffer else.

“Royal House?” again Cormac sought to hear a threat, rather than carefully worded warnings.

Lucanor nodded and his butter-soft, middle range voice only reiterated the words. Yet again he refused to be direct, but must mitigate by adding, “and all the people of this land.”

“And myself?”

Lucanor met his eyes directly, and spoke without change in expression or tone: “Go asea against the unknown and unknowable, mac Art, and it is your death, sure.”

“Umm. I am warned from inimical water-creatures by one who wears a ring of the water-carrier. With nervousness one hopes Lucanor Antiochus is not a carrier to the shores of water and its… unknown and unknowable creatures.”

Cormac had seen his host’s hand tense as he started automatically to withdraw it and the ring from sight. Lucanor was bolder than that, though, and on thinking he left it where it was, closely lit by the lamp. He who had been physician to the royal house said nothing. He stared hard.

“It’s said, then? All ye had to tell me-and ye will tell me?”

“You are determined to pay no heed and accept no counsel. I am not in love with words.”

“Hm-it did seem otherwise to me, when ye were speaking around and around the answers to the questions I posed!” Cormac rose in a rustle of linked rings of steel and stood over the other man, tall, mailed, sword-armed. “Lucanor… if it’s yourself the queen is coming to meet so many nights, ye’d best end it, man. For it’s yourself is endangered thereby, not the house of Veremund or his people.”

Lucanor stared, face working. Then he rose with the sinuous grace of a panther, and he smiled satirically at the taller man. “Ah, mac Art! The queen, coming to see me? Go to; it’s the Greek ways I learned whilst I grew up, and studied so far from here, and I assure you the queen is not coming to see me! ”

Cormac returned most thoughtfully to the hall of the king and to the young woman he called Kit-cat, who loved to hear piratical tales that fired her blood and who soon put brooding thoughts from his head.

Rain fell next day, in a blue-grey curtain that created mud everywhere while reducing visibility to little more than the length of a man’s arm held before him. Work on the scapha was delayed. The excursion asea must be postponed until the morrow.

Cormac conferred with Wulfhere on the matter of their new craft and very secret plans for the move against… “Ran’s Daughters”. Then the Gael gained privacy with Irnic Break-ax. To that respected fellow man of weapons Cormac strongly suggested that spies be set to watch Lucanor of Antioch.

“It’s something dark is afoot within this realm, Irnic, and he’s connected or I’ll eat grass. Best he be watched, and closely, but with great care that he knows it not.

“I will use several, then,” Irnic said, “that Lucanor may not grow accustomed to the same person about all the time. Aye, person, for there is this and that woman who acts for me, in Galicia.”

“Good that you love Veremund,” Cormac said, with a smile that was like a brief flash of light. Then, “And… Irnic… best too that this be secret for the present from all save yourself and me and your spies.”

Irnic lifted a brow. “All, Cormac?”

“Aye, Irnic. Even the king and queen. Will ye agree to that?”

“This… bodes naught sinister for them?”

“Irnic! Your spies at watch over Lucanor will not be bringing harm to your cousin and his wife!”

“I will agree; they need hardly be bothered with every detail of what goes on in this realm. Will you explain, Cormac?”

“Soon, aye. Will ye be humouring me, Irnic, and let explanations come after? And, commander: the leech from Antioch is to be watched night and day. ”

Irnic nodded, and made as if to speak, and reconsidered, looking into Cormac’s eyes while he held thought himself. Then Irnic went to see to it, without a word more. And another day passed, a grey-grim and ugly day of rain and mud, while a son of Eirrin fretted and fidgeted and aye, fell out too with his Kit-cat. And on the morrow Irnic had words for him, and that report was none too cheering.

“You saw the old temple, Cormac, there near Lucanor’s house.”

Cormac nodded.

“Was to the Old Gods of the Suevi that temple was raised, the gods my people held to when they abode back in Germania. It is long unused. That is, so we thought; it is officially unused. Now… I know not what transpires there now, but it was therein Lucanor went, on last evening. Nor was he open about it, but waited until darkness had closed and wore a robe my man had not seen on him afore, and too he took a circuitous route, all cloak-wrapped and hood-muffled-though this was after the rain had stopped and was not that, cold. He walked many minutes and came in by the grove alongside the temple, and-well, my man described it thus: Lucanor scuttled within. This, when his home is practically next door. My man continued his watch from outside, concealed, and watched a half-score others enter that temple, and not a one with a torch or without furtive behaviour. They were as clandestine much later when they left, so that my men-there were two, now, a relief having come and the first having decided to remain during this strangeness -my men identified but two of them. And… one more joined them, in that old temple.”