Ynyr was up there someplace, alone, likely walking toward his death. He'd listened to the wise man's words and understood the wisdom of them, but he still couldn't help feeling that he'd be of more use up there on the rocks instead of down in the forest, safe and unthreatened.
Yet Ynyr had ordered him to remain behind and remain he would.,. but he chafed anxiously at the restriction.
A hand touched his sleeve and he started, relaxing when he saw who it was. That young girl who'd come from the village to help Kegan's woman… Tella—no, Vella her name was.
She carried a bowl of hot stew and held it out to him. Her voice was soft, soothing. 'You must eat something.'
'I'm not hungry.'
'Of course you are hungry.' She gestured behind her. 'All the others are hungry, so you must be hungry, too.'
He smiled down at her. 'Your logic is as simple as your dress.'
She looked down at her attire and smiled back at him. 'I would that I could look like a fancy court lady, but such is not my destiny.'
'Never mind,' he told her, 'you look just fine.'
'Then if my appearance pleases you, please eat something. For me?'
'I've done more for lesser beings. All right, I am hungry. Thank you.' He accepted the bowl. 'Do you forgive me for lying to you about my appetite?'
He was teasing her, but she took his words seriously. 'Sometimes a man can carry such a burden that he forgets the needs of his body.' She was eyeing him intently now, blue eyes burning from behind the mask of soot and dirt. 'I forgive you, Colwyn.'
He smiled uncertainly at her, then sat down. Still glancing occasionally up at the mountain, he devoured the stew. She took a seat nearby and watched him. When he was almost finished, he gave her a curious look.
'Don't you have anything else to do except sit there and watch me eat?'
She shrugged. 'I do what Merith asks of me. She asks nothing of me now. She is busy enough with matters of her own.' Colwyn looked past her but could see no sign of Kegan or Merith. Their absence spoke volumes, or at least a modest number of pages.
'You're a funny little thing.'
'That's what the people in the village tell me. I try to keep out of their way. No one bothers me. Are you a real king?'
He grinned. 'By accident of birth that is my lot, yes. It's nothing to boast of. None of us can help what we are born into. Mere chance seems an unfair way to begin existence.'
'Yes, it does,' she said with more solemnity than he'd expected. 'I had not thought of it that way before.'
Ergo had seen Merith and Kegan vanish into the woods. Now he watched as Vella sidled close to Colwyn. He cursed his luck along with the stew. It suddenly occurred to him that he'd been so busy feeding everyone else that he'd not had time to eat himself.
Bending over the pot, he inspected the remaining stew, selected a healthy mouthful with the stirring spoon and downed it. After a moment's reflective chewing, he grimaced, looked around to make sure no one was watching him, and slung the rest of the spoonful into a helpless bush, muttering to himself.
'The foul filcher was right. It does taste like his boot.'
Before long only the remnants of the cooking fire illuminated the camp, mixed with what moonlight filtered down through the great trees. Bushes moved and several figures stealthily approached the sleeping camp. A tall shape moved silently among them, gently awakening Torquil, Kegan and Oswyn, motioning the startled men to silence as they awoke. They restrained their curiosity as they followed Rell back into the forest, knowing that their unvoiced questions would be answered soon.
Several minutes later Titch appeared, stole across the grass until he stood alongside the recumbent Ergo. He tapped the exhausted cook on the shoulder.
Ergo rolled over, blinked. 'Oh, so it's you. Come back with your tail between your legs, eh? Well I'm not having any of it.' He shook the boy's hand off and turned away from him. 'Leave me alone. Go back to your one-eyed friend. Friends do not keep secrets from each other.'
'Sometimes it's necessary,' the boy said.
Ergo's reply was slick with sarcasm. 'Did your wonderful seer tell you that?'
'No. I figured it out for myself.' He glanced backward, saw the three thieves and the cyclops emerge from the woods. Between them they carried a bloated, misshapen object of impressive but irregular dimensions. Titch nudged Ergo once again.
'Do you know what I think, chef to the unappreciative? I think your nose is asleep.'
'Asleep?' Ergo let out a derisive snort. 'This nose? This nose works day and night, ready to sniff out friends and potential enemies alike. This nose is attuned to the finest culinary works our civilization has produced. This nose has never loafed an hour in its life, a paragon among nostrils, possessed of an olfactory—' He stopped, inhaled sharply. 'What?' He sniffed a second time, started to sit up.
'No. Impossible. This nose asleep while the ambrosial aroma of gooseberries fills the air?' He sat up the rest of the way, grabbed Titch hard by the shoulders. 'Where are they, boy? Tell me where they are and I forgive you everything, from your insufferable precocity to your choice of companions— including myself.'
'Take it easy.' Titch grinned hugely, enjoying himself. He looked to his left and nodded. 'They're right behind you.'
Ergo turned, saw the three men and Rell standing next to a gooseberry trifle. The vision was impossible, surreal, but Ergo's nose did not deceive him. The trifle stood eight feet high. In the moonlight and firelight it gleamed as brightly as the walls of the White Castle.
His voice was reduced to an awed whisper. 'A gooseberry trifle as big as a house.'
'A small house,' Rell admitted modestly.
'Did you think I'd forgotten your wish?' Titch said pridefully. 'After you'd granted mine, if only temporarily? Rell and I had to sneak into the village to find the rest of the ingredients, then build a cook-fire far enough away from here to conceal the smell of baking. Rell's a good cook.'
'Comes of living alone with a large appetite,' the cyclops informed them all.
'I smelled out the gooseberry bushes,' Titch added.
'Prince of nostrils, emperor of odors. I will crown you myself, boy.' Ergo's voice was unnaturally subdued. He was unable to take his eyes from the dream become reality. 'A small house you say? And what do you think a small person lives in, foolish cyclops? How deceiving you two were! I never would have imagined you were leaving me behind to mope while you and the boy were off arranging my assassination.'
Titch frowned. 'Assassination?'
«
Ergo rose slowly. 'Do you not think I'm going to eat myself to death this very night? Hah? A supreme end, fit only for a king or master chef. How can I thank you both? Mere words will not suffice.'
Titch smiled shyly. 'If you don't die, sir, I'd still like a puppy.' But Ergo was beyond hearing. At last he would be one with the upper crust. He worshipfully approached the trifle. Never was there a pastry so inaptly named.
'Look at its beauty,' he murmured. 'Rell, you are not a cook. You are an architect of the kitchen for all that you use flour instead of cement and berries instead of wood. Look at its lines, its color, its beauty.'
Torquil stepped forward and held out a large spoon. 'Look at its insides.'
Ergo turned to him, held up both hands. 'No! Not yet. This moment must be made to last, for all that my stomach is threatening me. Let me hug and kiss it a little. Let me run my fingers over its lovely skin.'
Off to one side Oswyn shook his head sadly, whispered to Kegan. 'You'd think the man was going to make love to it instead of eat it.' Kegan withheld comment.
Ergo strolled slowly around the trifle. When he did not speak again, Titch moved to follow him. . . and followed until he'd circled the trifle completely.
'He's gone! Has he turned himself into a puppy again?'
As if in response, Ergo's head ripped through the top of the trifle, his face awash in gooseberry juice and bits of pulp and pastry.
