The Drawing of the Dark

cold,' he said. 'My feet are as numb as if they belonged to someone else.'

'We'll rest soon,' came the voice of the attendant. 'When we reach the bank of yonder lake.'

He painfully raised his head from the pallet on which he was being carried, and saw ahead a vast, still lake reflecting the full moon. After a while he was set down by his two panting companions, and he could hear water splashing gently among rocks and weeds, and could smell the cold, briny breath of the lake.

'My sword!' he whispered. 'Where is it? Did I -'Here it is.' A heavy hilt was laid in his hand.

'Ah. I'm too weak - one of you must throw it into the lake. It's my last order,' he added when they began to protest. Grudgingly, one of them took the sword and strode away through the shadowy underbrush.

He lay on the ground, breathing carefully, wishing his heart wouldn't pound so. My rushing blood is sure to force the wound open again, he thought, and I'll die soon enough even without that.

The attendant came back. 'I've done as you said, Sire.'

Like hell, he thought. 'Oh? And what did you see when you threw it in?'

'See? A splash. And then just ripples.'

'Go back, and this time do as I said.'

The man shambled away again, confused and embarrassed. It's the jewels in the hilt, the dying man thought. He can't bear to think of them at the bottom of the lake.

The attendant looked subdued and scared when he returned this time. '1 did it, Sire.'

'What did you see?'

'A hand and arm rose out of the water and caught the sword by the grip, before it could splash, whirled the sword three times in the air, and then withdrew below the surface.'

'Ah.' He relaxed at last. 'Thank you. I want to leave no debts.'

A boat rocked at the edge of the water now, and a woman in muddy shoes leaned worriedly over him.

'Our son has killed me,' he told her, controlling his chattering teeth long enough to speak the sentence.

'Put him aboard my boat,' she said. 'He's not long for this world.'

He awoke frightened, on a hardwood floor, not daring to move for fear of attracting the notice of something he couldn't name. It was dark, and he didn't want to rouse his memory. Whatever has happened, he thought, whatever this place is, whatever is the name of my enemy - and myself - I'm better off ignorant of them. If I know nothing, admit nothing, acknowledge nothing, perhaps they'll leave me alone at last, and let me sleep. He drifted again into treasured oblivion.

* * *

Chapter Thirteen

'Insensibly drunk! I expected it, of course. And on my beer, which I daresay you neglected to pay for, eh?'

Duffy opened his eyes and blinked up at Werner. He tried to speak, but produced only a grating moan; which was just as well, since he'd intended to voice only reflexive abuse. The Irishman loathed waking up on The floor, for one couldn't, in that situation, pull the covers up and postpone arising. One had immediately to get up and begin dealing with things.

Getting to his feet proved a little easier than he'd expected. 'Shut up, Werner,' he said quietly. 'Don't mess about in things that don't concern you. And tell one of the girls to bring me a big breakfast.' Werner just stared at him, anger growing in his face like a spark on a fur cloak. 'Did you even hear,' Duffy went on, 'about the siege gun somebody tried to blow this place up with last night? If it hadn't been for those Vikings in the stable, you and the rest of the city's dogs would right now be scavenging through a rubble pile on this spot.' Werner looked only bewildered now. 'Your beer,' Duffy added contemptuously, shambling to his table and collapsing into a chair.

Like a man beaten by bandits who sits up in the ditch later and feels for broken teeth or ribs, the Irishman gingerly prodded his memories. I'm Brian Duffy, he thought with cautious satisfaction, and I'm in love with Epiphany Vogel and employed by Aurelianus. It's the day after Easter, 1529. I'm Brian Duffy, and no one else. His breakfast and Lothario Mothertongue arrived simultaneously. Duffy concentrated on the former.

'Brian,' Mothertongue said, tossing his cloak across a bench and rubbing his chilly hands together, 'the time draws nigh. I am gathering my knights about me once more. And,' he smiled graciously, 'there is a place for you at my new round table. I heard of your courageous behavior last night.' He turned a speculative eye on the Irishman. 'Tell me, do you feel anything, any long-lost echoes, when

I say the name... Tristan?'

Duffy, his mouth full, shook his head.

'Are you sure?' Mothertongue went on, his voice tight with an intensity of emotion. 'Tristan! Tristan!' He leaned forward and shouted in the Irishman's face, 'Can you hear me, Tristan?'

Duffy seized a bowl of milk from the table and flung it into Mothertongue's face. 'Snap out of it, Lothario,' he said.