gnawing on a goose leg while he thought about the Voices.
Were they saints or demons? Why would they never explain or answer questions? There had to be a reason for that reticence. The prospect of another ride through limbo was daunting, and if the price was to be the same as before, he would refuse to pay it. Yet now he had healed Anton, and perhaps the unseen countess, and had suffered no pain for it.
He tossed away the bone and took a drink from his wine flagon. An excellent wine-the kitchen staff had done well by the count’s brother. He started in on a thick slice of salted ham.
It was all very well to brag to Madlenka about changing the government’s mind. A Speaker, however inexperienced and untrained, might hope to manipulate a senile, maundering king, but the calculative Cardinal Zdenek had ruled Jorgary with a steel fist since before Wulf learned how to breathe. And if the Spider could stoop to using Speakers, then so could other statesmen-the Church obviously did. So Zdenek would certainly have built defenses against Satanism into his web. He would deny it, of course, but any attempt to bewitch him must lead straight to toasted Wulfgang. Merely delivering Anton’s letter at any time short of eight days from now would be an admission of Satanism. Zdenek, in short, was a necessary ally, but a highly dangerous one.
The advisor Wulf needed was Baron Magnus of Dobkov. Even if Anton had not assigned the two thousand florins to Otto instead of Baron Emilian, Wulfgang would have headed first to Otto.
He licked his fingers, took another drink, and then laced up his saddlebag. Copper had slowed to an easy pace, happy to run over the moorland road with a competent rider. They were too far from Castle Gallant for a magical disappearance to be noted, and the only person in sight was a shepherd about a mile ahead, driving his sheep down to lower pasture for the winter. The sun was very close to the horizon. Time to go.
“Holy Saints Helena and Victorinus, hear my prayer.”
Copper decided he was not being addressed. He obviously did not notice the Light that dawned all around him.
Helena: — We are here, my son.
“My lady, if I ask you to take me home to Dobkov, what price will you demand?”
— We do not demand any price. You decide what it shall be, but it is not paid to us.
Talking with disembodied Voices was never simple. “What choices do I have?”
Victorinus, harshly: — Agony, or madness, or death.
Helena, more gently: — All of us must meet with death eventually.
Victorinus again: — Our help puts you in greater danger every time you ask for it.
They sounded just like Anton daring him to put his first pony over a ditch. “Can I refuse the pain and accept the danger?”
— You can refuse immediate pain, but the danger you accept may be of greater pain deferred or death advanced. We cannot foretell the end.
“Burning at the stake, for example?”
— That is one possibility.
Wulf decided that life must offer more profitable enterprises than trying to make sense of this. “Then know that from now on I refuse immediate pain and accept any future peril. Can you take me to… where is Ottokar, my brother?” Otto owned many estates and spent much of his life traveling between them.
Copper shied violently, making Wulf grab for the saddle pommel, and the world seemed to jar sideways and blur. He saw words, written on vellum, only about two of them legible, and then another two in their place. The vellum vanished and there was a man’s face… another man’s face… a tapestry…
“Whoa! Steady, Copper. Steady, fellow!”
A sudden breath of wind, or a rising partridge?
He calmed the shivering horse, wondering which of them had scared the other. His reaction to that flickering vision might have startled Copper, or the horse’s fright might have jarred him out of a Voice-inspired daydream. The Light was still there. He had not had time to read the writing and had not recognized the two faces. But he knew the tapestry. It hung in Otto’s counting room in Dobkov.
“Was that a warning you just sent me?”
Helena chuckled. — You spurn our warnings. Your brother is at Dobkov and you should go there at once.
“What? Why?”
Victorinus’s voice came then, harsher and more commanding. — Because great rejoicing awaits you there now, but later will bring great sorrow.
“You’ve never given me such advice before.” He should not be arguing.
— You stand higher now.
What did that mean? “Please take me to Dobkov as fast as possible.”
The moor shimmered and grew misty. Copper whinnied in alarm and bolted. Wulf gave him his head. Soon the familiar pearly haze of limbo closed about them and the sound of the wind and beat of hooves died away. Trees and buildings flew by, flickering light and shadow.
He stood higher now? What did that mean? It might be a saint’s-eye view of a man that Marek had called “a hardened practitioner of the black art.” Marek had spoken of a first sin and a second sin. St. Helena had said he was not ready for another “step.” A step could be another view of a sin in this instance. He could summon miracles without pain now, so he was progressing. To what? How many steps could there be? What was he becoming, saint or devil? Had he imagined that glimpse of Dobkov, or was he becoming a seer now?
Was he blessed beyond other men, or already damned?
The world was shimmering back into reality. Copper neighed in fright, but his hooves beat on dirt again. The high roofs and tall chimneys of Castle Dobkov showed against the sky ahead, making Wulf’s eyelids prickle with nostalgia. He knew this road through the coppice like the nails on his fingers. It was not quite a month since he and Anton left home, and it felt like years. Even their arrival in Gallant last Sunday seemed an age ago. He let Copper have his head to run off his fear. The big lad had a fine turn of speed.
Soon the road emerged from the trees onto open pasture, and then he could view the whole castle, ancient and mossy, with sunset blazing red on its windows. No mountains here, only a few gentle hills, but the castle stood on an island in the river, half a mile or so upstream from the village. The channel was wide enough to need a true bridge on pillars with a drawbridge at the island end. Copper slackened his pace at the sight of the change ahead. He tried to veer to the right, then to the left, and Wulf would allow neither, so he slowed to a cautious walk, flickering his ears as the timbers boomed under his hooves. A bored porter on the gate sprang to life.
“Wolfcub! Squire, I mean! You’re back! Chief, it’s the Cub!”
Wulf shouted a greeting and carried on through the archway into the bailey, which occupied most of the area enclosed by the curtain wall. Part was grassy, part cobbled, and there the local residents and their herds could take refuge in time of war. Near the gatehouse stood the forge, stables, granary, and castle ovens. Most important for him was the house at the far side of the bailey, which still felt like home. He reined in at the main door.
As his feet hit the ground, a tumultuous torrent of house dogs came racing out to greet him. Even the hunting hounds in their pen caught the excitement and set up a chorus of baying. Voices called his name. Achim, former childhood playmate and now a junior hostler, came running, with several others in hot pursuit. For a moment Wulf thought they were all going to mob him in a group hug, but they remembered their station in time. They stopped and saluted.
And last, but never least, old Whitetail, who had been his constant childhood companion, came shuffling out to greet him, now lame and almost blind, but tail wagging furiously.
“Welcome back, squire!” Achim grinned, showing missing teeth. “We missed you. Place didn’t seem the same.”
He had noticed Wulf’s bruised eyes, of course, as everyone would. He should have had the Voices cure them.
“I should hope not!” Wulf was detaching his saddlebag with the fortune in it. “But I was homesick for all your cheerful faces.” It was also good to hear someone speaking properly. The strange dialects started just a few miles from home and grew steadily worse the farther one wandered. “Where is everyone?”
“All inside. Got some visiting gentry. And Sir Anton?”
“He’s… fine. Doing very well, in fact, but I must tell the baron the news first. This is Copper. He will be your friend if you give him a rubdown and a handful of oats. And tell him how pretty he is.”
He greeted the other smiling faces quickly, then ran up the steps into the lesser hall. He had already seen
