Sorcerer of the North (26 page)

Outside, Max hurried to the side table to fetch the wine, while Keren came into the room, looking around, taking in the clutter of gowns, headpieces, makeup and shoes that Lady Gwendolyn surrounded herself with. Alyss indicated a chair by the fire.

"I'm sorry to bother you, Lady Gwendolyn," Keren began, "but I wondered if you heard a bit of a commotion an hour or so ago?"

"Why, as a matter of fact, so I did!" she said. "Horses galloping and men shouting. Who were they? Robbers? Or brigands, Perhaps?"

Keren was shaking his head sadly. "Worse than that, my lady. Far worse. I'm afraid they were traitors to the crown."

Alyss sat back, her mouth a perfect O of surprise. For a moment, she considered revealing her true identity and purpose to Keren. After all, he seemed like a solid type and she knew Will had been on the point of taking him into his confidence. But some instinct stopped her.

"Traitors, Sir Keren? Here in Macindaw? How terrifying! Is the castle safe?" she added the last question with a slight look of alarm on her face. Keren hurried to reassure her.

"Quite safe, my lady. We have everything under control. But I am afraid there is serious news. Lord Orman was one of them."

"Lord Orman?" she said.

Keren nodded somberly. "Apparently, he has been scheming to hand over the castle to a Scotti army before spring. And the jongleur Barton was working hand in glove with him."

"No. He's ..." Alyss began before she could stop herself. But Keren interrupted her.

"I'm afraid so. Apparently he's been passing messages to the Scotti for Lord Orman for the past three weeks—even before he arrived here."

Alyss's mouth snapped shut.

She could believe what he said about Orman. It was quite possible that the strange temporary commander could be in league with the Scotti. But why would Keren lie about Will's role in the treachery? She realized that Keren was waiting for some sort of reaction from her.

"But he has such a nice singing voice," she said. She thought it was the sort of vacuous reply Lady Gwendolyn would make. Keren's eyebrow rose slightly. Doubtless, he thought so too.

"Nevertheless, my lady, he is a spy. I felt it best to keep you informed as I'm sure you were puzzled by the commotion in the courtyard."

"Indeed I was, Sir Keren. And I thank you for your thoughtfulness. I shall be ..."

Whatever it was that she would be was interrupted by a further knocking at the door.

"Come in," Keren called. That was a little presumptuous of him, she thought, and not quite in keeping with the solicitous knight who had come to reassure her. She was beginning to have doubts about Sir Keren.

The latch rattled and the door was thrown open rather violently. A man entered, limping heavily. She could see his right thigh had been roughly bandaged. He was obviously looking for Sir Keren because, as he entered, he reported immediately.

"They got away, damn them. They went into that blasted forest." He turned toward Alyss and she couldn't suppress a start of surprise.

John Buttle.

It was over an hour later that Malkallam reappeared. Will had actually dozed off on the bench, as more and more of the sunshine crept in under the eaves and bathed him in its warmth. He started awake when the door latch rattled and the slightly built man stepped out onto the verandah beside him. Malkallam smiled as he saw the question in Will's eyes.

"He'll be all right," he said. "Although if you'd waited any longer, I'm not sure that he would have made it. His servant is still with him, watching over him," he added. Will nodded. He would expect that Xander would remain by his master's side until he recovered.

"He was drugged then?" he asked.

Malkallam nodded. "Poisoned, more accurately. It's a particularly nasty toxin called
corocore
. It's very obscure—not listed in any of the major texts on herbs and poisons. It takes about a week to take effect, so it was probably slipped into Orman's food or drink sometime in the last ten days. One small dose will do the trick. Nothing happens for days, but then, by the time you notice the symptoms, it's often too late."

"How is it that the castle healers didn't know that?" Will asked.

"As I said, it's very obscure. Most healers wouldn't have heard fit and even if they had, they wouldn't know the antidote."

"But you did?" Will said, and Malkallam smiled.

"I'm not like most healers."

"No, you're not. What exactly are you, if I may ask?"

Malkallam studied him for a few seconds before replying. Then he made a shooing gesture for Will to move over on the bench.

"Make a little room there and we'll talk about it," he said. He sat down next to Will and looked around the clearing, Trobar was still laying with the dog, tossing a leather ball for her to fetch. Each time she retrieved it, she would bring it back and then drop her nose onto her front paws, the ball between them, her hindquarters high in the air, challenging him to take it from her. Most of the other inhabitants of Malkallam's little compound had dispersed while fill was asleep. A few of them were engaged in mundane everyday tasks such as drawing water or sawing and stacking firewood.

"So let's begin," Malkallam said. "What do you know about me?"

"Know?" Will repeated. "Very little. I've heard the rumors, of course: that you're a sorcerer—the reincarnation of the black wizard Malkallam who murdered Orman's ancestor over a hundred years ago. I've heard that your home is in Grimsdell Wood and that the wood itself is home to strange apparitions and sights and sounds, I've seen and heard some of them myself."

"Yes," Malkallam mused, "you visited my wood several nights go, didn't you? And you weren't scared off by the dreadful fight Warrior?"

"I was terrified out of my wits," Will admitted.

"But you came back."

Will allowed himself a wry smile. "Not at night. By daylight. That was when we saw that the apparitions were caused by some kind of gigantic magic lantern show."

Malkallam raised his eyebrows. "Very good," he said. "How did you work that out?"

"Alyss figured it. She found the burned patches on the grass where your lantern had stood."

"I take it Alyss is the young lady who accompanied you the other day?" Malkallam asked. He frowned. "What's become of her?"

"She's still in the castle," Will said.

Malkallam raised his eyebrows. "You left her there?"

Will frowned. "Not for long," he said. It was obviously a sore point with him, but Malkallam made a soothing gesture with his hand.

"Time enough for that. She sounds like a remarkable young lady."

"She is. But we were talking about you," Will pointed out, deciding that he had been sidetracked long enough.

Malkallam smiled at him. "So we were. Well, as you seem to have guessed, I'm no sorcerer. I used to be a healer." His voice became wistful. "I was very good at it, as a matter of fact." He nodded once or twice as he thought about the past. "I really enjoyed life then. I felt I was doing something worthwhile."

"What happened to change it?" Will asked.

Malkallam sighed. "Someone died," he said. "He was a fifteen-year-old boy—a delightful young fellow everyone liked. He had a simple fever and his parents brought him to me. It was the sort of thing I had cured dozens of times—it should have been straightforward. Except he didn't respond to the herbs I gave him. Worse, he reacted to them, and within a day he was dead."

His voice quavered a little and Will looked quickly at him. There was a single tear rolling down his cheek. He noticed Will's glance and looked at him, wiping the tear away with the cuff of his sleeve.

"It happens that way sometimes, you know. People can die for no apparent reason at all," Malkallam said.

"And the villagers blamed you?" Will said.

Malkallam nodded. "Not immediately. It began as a whispering campaign. There was another man who wanted to take my position as healer. I'm sure he started it. He said I just let the boy die. Gradually, I noticed that fewer and fewer people were coming to me. They were going to the new man."

"I assume he was charging them for his services?"

Malkallam nodded. "Of course. I used to charge too. Even a healer has to eat, after all. Gradually the rumors got wilder and wilder, and if a person in the village died after seeing the other healer, he had a convenient excuse: he said I'd cursed them."

"That's ridiculous," Will said. "You don't mean to tell me people believed it?"

Malkallam shrugged. "You'd be surprised what people will believe. Usually, the bigger and the more improbable the lie, the more willing they are to believe it. It's often a case of
that's so outrageous, it must he true
. Anyway, people started muttering whenever I passed them. I was getting black looks from all and sundry and I decided that my own health might be improved if I left the village. I quietly disappeared one day and came into Grimsdell Wood. I lived in a tent for months while I built this house. I knew the locals would hesitate to follow me into the forest. After all, the original Malkallam was supposed to have his lair in here."

"Why did you take the same name?" Will asked, and the healer gave a short scornful laugh.

"I didn't take it. People gave it to me," he said. "My name is Malcolm. After I disappeared, the locals put two and two together and got seven. They decided that Malcolm was merely a disguised form of Malkallam. From there it was easy to make the next step. I was the infamous sorcerer returned from the dead."

"I must say, I took advantage of the fact to protect myself. I set up the apparitions and tricks that you saw. If anyone did get up the nerve to come into Grimsdell, they quickly lost it when they saw my Night Warrior, or heard my voices."

"How do you do the voices?" Will asked. "They seemed to come from all around me when I heard them."

Malcolm smiled. "Yes. It's a rather good effect, isn't it? It's done with a series of hollow tubes set among the trees. You speak into one end and the voice is carried to the other. There's a large trumpet-shaped bell at the end that amplifies the sound. We usually place that in a hollow part of the tree to conceal it. Luka there provides the voice."

He indicated a man who was gathering kindling together at the far side of the clearing. His torso was massive but the legs that supported it were short and malformed so that he hobbled awkwardly when he walked. One shoulder was badly hunched and the features of his face were twisted sideways. The man had grown a bushy beard and long hair in an unsuccessful attempt to conceal the deformity.

"He has the most wonderful voice," Malcolm continued. "That barrel of a chest lets him produce a sound of tremendous force and timber. He can project words with great clarity and volume through the system. Mind you, he isn't used to people answering back. You caused him a considerable deal of fright when you started waving that big knife of yours the other night."

"He caused me a lot more, I can assure you," Will said, studying the misshapen man. "Tell me, where do these people come from? Luka and Trobar and the rest."

"I assume you thought I created them?" Malcolm said, a slightly bitter smile playing around his lips. Will shifted uncomfortably on the bench.

"Well ... that thought did occur to me, as a matter of fact," he said.

Malcolm's face grew sad. "Yes. People occasionally see them and think the same thing. These are my deformed subjects. My creatures. My monsters ... The truth is, they're rejects. Ordinary people who aren't wanted in their own villages because they don't look ordinary. They look different or sound different or move differently. Some are born that way, like Trobar and Luka. Others are burned or scalded or disfigured in accidents and people decide they just don't want them around."

"How do they come to you?" Will asked. The healer shrugged.

"I go looking for them. Trobar was the first. I found him by accident when he was eight years old. That's eighteen years ago now. He'd been driven out of his village because he had grown so big. They drove him into the forest to die. He tried to take his dog with him. It was his only friend in the world. It didn't care that he was ugly and deformed. It loved him because he loved it. Dogs are like that. They're very nonjudgmental."

"What happened to the dog?" Will asked. He thought he knew the answer.

"It tried to defend him, of course, and one of the villagers killed it. Trobar carried it into the forest and they finally gave up the chase He was nursing its body and crying when I found him. We buried the dog together and I brought him back here. Then, over the years more and more of these people joined us. We'd see them driven out of their villages and we'd collect them and bring them here. Sometimes, they needed the sort of treatment that I could give them with herbs and potions. At other times, they needed a different kind of healing."

"Which you also give them?" Will asked, and Malcolm nodded.

"I try. Often it's enough for them to know they belong somewhere. That there are other people who don't judge them by the way they look. Mind you, it takes time. It's a lot easier to heal an injured body than a damaged soul."

Will shook his head as he considered the story. "So for nearly twenty years, you've been looking after people like, this, and you're still regarded as a black magician?"

Malcolm shrugged. "Partly my fault, I suppose. I created the illusion to keep people out. But in the past year, somebody else seems to have realized he could turn the Malkallam fable to his own advantage."

"Keren?"

"It would appear so. The question is, what does he hope to achieve from it all?"

"As soon as I find out," Will said grimly, "I'll be sure to let you know."

Alyss froze in her chair for a second as Buttle's gaze passed over her. What on earth was he doing here? How did he get here? Had he recognized her? The questions raced through her mind and it took all her role-playing skill to maintain the outer façade of the air-headed Lady Gwendolyn.

"They got away, blast them!" Buttle said roughly. Noticing Alyss, he grunted in what passed for an apology for interrupting. Then he turned back to Keren, although a slight frown creased his forehead. There was something familiar about the girl. Then he dismissed the thought.