While the man Bernarr still thought of as a ‘scholar’, rather than ‘wizard’, conjured, he remembered the first night they had met.
It had been the night of the big storm, hills and walls of purple-black cloud piled along the western horizon, flickering with lightning but touched gold by the sun as it set behind them. The surge came before the storm, mountain-high waves that sent fishermen dragging their craft higher and lashing them to trees and boulders, and to praying as the thrust of air came shrieking about their thatch. When the rain followed it came nearly level, blown before the powerful winds. The onslaught accompanied his beloved going into labour with the little monster they were now trying to find. His joy at the impending birth of a son caused him to be generous in offering hospitality to the stranger, an odd-looking man with protruding brown eyes and a large nose, made to seem enormous by a very weak chin. He appeared a few years older than Bernarr, in his middle to late thirties, but Bernarr was uncertain about his true age, for he appeared much the same as he had when he had first arrived some seventeen years before.
Lyman had introduced himself as a friend of Bernarr’s father, a correspondent who had never met the old Baron in person, but who had been consulted by Bernarr’s father occasionally on matters of scholarship. Most specifically, the purchasing of old tomes and manuscripts. He had come to enquire as to Bernarr’s intent with the library, not knowing if the son shared the father’s enthusiasm for scholarship and wishing to purchase several works should the son not wish to continue caring for the collection. He had been pleased to discover that Bernarr shared his love for learning.
And then had come the news that the Baroness was having trouble with her delivery, Bernarr remembered.
His memory brought Bernarr’s remembered pain. He leaned back, swearing. Then he saw the two hairs twined about the central needle were writhing, like snakes—snakes which disliked each other’s company. They wriggled away from the floating needle, pressed to opposite sides of the casing, and then went limp again.
That’s about the most emphatic case of non-similarity I’ve ever seen, the magician thought, his face impassive. If there’s one thing certain, this pair did not make a child together.
‘What does this mean, Lyman?’ Bernarr snapped. His eyes glinted with suspicion: when it came to matters concerning his wife, the Baron of Land’s End was rather less than sane.
As I of all men know, Lyman thought. Aloud he continued: ‘Ah . . . my lord Baron . . . could it possibly be that you have another child? One fathered before you met the lady Elaine?’
That stopped Bernarr’s anger; instead he shifted a little in his chair, and reached for his mug of hot, spiced wine. ‘Well,’ he said, his eyes shifting. ‘I was a man grown before I wed . . . thirty summers . . . a wench now and then . . . and of course, for all I know—’
‘Of course, my lord, of course; we’re men of the world, you and I,’ Lyman soothed. ‘But it would make the twined hairs incompatible with the nature of the spell, you see. That is why I begged another of your lady’s hairs. The spell will not be quite so sharp, nor function over quite so great a distance, but it should still function.’
He stood, moving his hands over the left-hand casing. And I’m not going to use the one with only your hair, my lord Baron, because I suspect it would be quite useless for our purposes.
Bram halted as he came to the crest of the hills and looked down on Land’s End. The city was familiar enough: he’d made several visits. He tried to see it as Lorrie would.
The first thing she’ll need is money, he thought.
He grinned, despite his anxiety, and the ache in his legs. He hadn’t wasted any time on the journey, and he was more than ready for sleep, not to mention ale and food. She wouldn’t get far on the few coppers he’d hidden under the mattress of his bed. While Bram’s life savings, he had a short life so far, and by city standards it wasn’t much. He suppressed an idle thought: he’d had daydreams about her lying in his bed, right enough, but not in quite that fashion.
He shifted the bow, quiver and rucksack into a slightly less uncomfortable position and strode through the usual throngs to be found on a road so close to the city gate. If he remembered rightly, there were a couple of horse dealers not too far outside the north gate.
‘Help you, lad?’ the horse-trader said, looking up.