'On his side?' said Reg. 'What are you talking about? You're not on his side!' 'No, but I have to make him think I am.'
'You mean really spy on him?' she shrieked. 'Gerald Dunwoody, are you out of your mind?' He snorted. 'Probably.'
'Then get back into it! That Lional's as flash as a rat with a gold tooth! You'll never bamboozle him into thinking you're after a life of crime. What do you think you are, a government secret agent?'
'Of course not,' he said impatiently. 'But I'm partly responsible for what's happened. If I don't do everything in my power to put things right I don't deserve to be a wizard. Now you can either help me or get out of my way.'
After a brief internal battle she heaved a sigh, wings drooping, and said, 'All right, Gerald. But when you're up to your armpits in alligators, don't say I didn't warn you.' He blew her a kiss.'I won't.'
'I think I should come with you in the morning,' she added. 'Just to be on the safe side.'
'You can't. Lional said to leave you behind, and flouting a royal command won't help me discover his secrets.' Brooding, he picked at a loose thread in his trousers.'I wonder if a truth incant would work on him? I don't see why it shouldn't. I mean, they work on everyone else…'
Reg fluffed up her feathers. 'You don't know any truth incants.' 'No,' he agreed.'But I'll bet you do.'
'That's not the point,' she said, looking harassed. 'Truth incants are restricted to law enforcement, and for very good reason. They're extremely temperamental and can even cause brain damage if something goes wrong. I won't be responsible for turning you into a vegetable, Gerald.'
And there she went, treating him like a wayward little brother again. He sat up. 'Look, Reg, I appreciate the concern but I'm prepared to risk it.'
'Well I'm not,' she said. 'Just you stick to your original plan, sunshine. At least for now.'
'And if I can't convince Lional to let me in on whatever he's scheming? What then?'
She shrugged. 'Then we'll just have to wait for the other shoe to drop, won't we?'
'When the other shoe drops,' he said sourly, 'it's going to hit me on the head and give me concussion. And when that happens, Reg, I'm going to blame youV After a restless night filled with disquieting dreams, Gerald walked into Lional's private stable yard at two minutes to seven. It was a pretty cobblestoned place with neat flowerbeds and some twenty stables with horses in most of them. Another ridiculous extravagance; what did one man need with twenty horses? Lional was little more than a gluttonous child, snatching at everything he saw just because he could.
And everyone else in the kingdom goes without to keep him in ponies. Whoever thought royalty was a good idea?
It was a dank, cool morning; mist draped the treetops and curled in tendrils across the damp ground. Moisture beaded his hair and stippled his shiny black boots, his breeches and the jacket hastily conjured up from his existing wardrobe. Maybe when this was all over, provided he was still in one piece, he could set up shop as a magical tailor? He was certainly getting enough practice with clothes…
Lional, of course, had arrived before him. The king stood in the middle of the yard surrounded by a milling horde of black and tan hounds, all barking and snapping and slavering, competing for his attention. Lional laughed at them, his face alight with pleasure. He was sheathed in silk and supple leather, dark as midnight. A long-bladed hunting knife rode his right hip. 'Good morning, Professor!'
'Good morning, Your Majesty,' Gerald replied, giving the hounds a wide berth and trying not to look at the prancing black monstrosity of a horse making a spirited attempt to flatten its handler as it was led from its stable. If Lional thought he was going to ride that thing he really was mad.
'Looking forward to our little expedition?' said Lional, taking the black monstrosity's reins and feeding it a sugar lump. '1 know I am!'
'Ah…' Even though his belly was empty, he still wanted to be sick. 'Certainly, Your Majesty. Wouldn't miss it for the world.'
'Excellent. Now, let's mount up, shall we?' He clapped his hands. 'Stable boy! The professor's horse, if you please!'
Oh hell, oh shit… He turned, braced for the sight of a second fire-breathing monster.
'This is Dorcas,' said Lional as he vaulted — vaulted, the bloody show-off — into the black horse's saddle. 'I'm sure the two of you will get along like peas in a pod.'
Dorcas was a pony. A short, fat, mud-brown pony with a resigned expression and sleepy eyes. She stared at Gerald with a minimum of interest and he stared back with a maximum of surprise. Then he realized. Of course he was riding a Dorcas: how likely was it that Lional would risk being upstaged by his wizard?
'Get a leg over, Gerald!' said Lional, as his wild black horse fought the restraint of the bit and plunged amongst the excited hounds like something possessed. 'The morning gallops away, sir, and so must we. Come, Demon'.' Clapping his spurred heels to the black horse's flanks he charged out of the stable yard, scattering gravel and grooms. The hounds bolted in his wake, yelping.
The stable boy rolled his eyes as he manhandled Gerald into the saddle. 'Have fun, sir.'
He managed a faint, sickly smile. 'Oh, yes. Fun. I knew I was doing this for a reason…' And then he bounced up and down until Dorcas reluctantly took the hint and shuffled off in the black horse's vanishing wake.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It didn't take long for the hounds to flush their first quarry. Lional and Demon pounded after them across the open fields that stretched towards the woodland on the west side of the palace. Gerald and Dorcas laboured doggedly in their wake. Despite his rapidly increasing physical discomfort and his distaste for the purpose of the outing, he had to admit it was good to be outside breathing clean, fresh air. He felt… released.
More swiftly than he could believe, the palace and its problems had become his whole world, swallowing him alive. He felt like a sailor whose ship had been shrunk and forced into a bottle, its confines so close he could reach out and touch them with his fingertips.
And with the wide world beyond the bottle unattainable, the narrow world within it became… everything. Far ahead, Lional drew rein and beckoned impatiently. His voice floated back on the damp morning breeze.'Hurry up, Professor!'
'Aye, aye, Captain,' he muttered. Gritting his teeth, he clapped his heels to Dorcas's unenthusiastic sides and hurried.
Seven rabbits and two foxes later, he swore he'd never go hunting again.
Lional had let the hounds devour the rabbits and the foxes but their latest prize, a deer, he forbade them. By this time they were plunged deep into the Crown Forest, according to Lional an exclusive royal hunting preserve. The mist had cleared and the sky was a patchwork of blue and green, with golden columns of sunlight shafting cathedral-like between the lacework branches overhead. The only sounds as they rode further and further in were the muffled thudding of the horses' hooves, the panting and padding of the hounds, the jingling of harness, the occasional startled cries of invisible birds… and the last desperate gasps of the doomed creatures who could run no more.
Lional looked up from wiping his hunting knife on the flank of the slain doe. 'Ah, Professor! There is nothing to match the taste of freshly roasted venison. Particularly when the kill is your own. We shall dine like kings tonight!'
The deer had been brought down in a small clearing littered with leaf mould and pocked with poisonous- looking mushrooms. Gerald, who couldn't bear to watch Reg humanely despatch a fieldmouse, swallowed nausea. He'd be dreaming of dagger teeth snarling and brown eyes glazed crimson with terror for the rest of his life. He slid down from happily dozing Dorcas and tied her reins to the nearest tree branch. Demon, trained to a hairsbreadth, stood like a statue with his reins still trailing. 'Well, Your Majesty, one of us will, anyway.'
Lional laughed. 'You're a witty man, Professor. I like witty men.'
He nodded. / wonder if he also likes men who vomit at the sight of blood? He snuck a glance at his watch. Four hours they'd been out here, charging across the countryside, and all he had to show for it was blisters on his backside. In four hours the only thing he'd gotten Lional to discuss was how much he enjoyed killing things.
