The Book of Swords. Gardner Dozois

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      But the man in the robe addressed himself first to the imps. “Explain yourselves.”

      This the red one did, with much more prostrating and head-nodding, declaring that they were indentured to Thelerion the Exemplary, Grand Thaumaturge of the Thirty-Third Degree, while the spotted one mimicked every movement to support what was being said.

      “And that one,” the wizard asked, gesturing with the wand toward Baldemar. “What of him?”

      “Don’t answer that!” Baldemar said, leaping to his feet. “I will speak for myself.”

      But the interrogator made a motion with the wand and the red imp burst out with, “Oh, he’s a terrible man, and a willful liar! Trust not a word he utters!”

      “Hmm,” said the wizard. He pointed the black wood at Baldemar and said a few syllables audible only to himself. The man felt a cold shiver enter through the sole of his right foot, swiftly climb his leg, torso, and neck, then exit his left ear after performing what felt like a scouring of his skull with icy water. One hand trembled uncontrollably and he had difficulty suppressing an intense urge to urinate.

      “Now,” said the man with the wand, “what’s this all about?”

      Baldemar had been preparing a tale of misadventure and surprise, in which he featured as a creature of purest innocence. But when he opened his mouth to speak, his tongue rebelled, and he heard himself giving an unadorned version of how his employer, Thelerion the Exemplary, had sent him to recover the Sword of Destiny, in which endeavor he had failed. “Dreading my master’s wrath, I fled across the sea on this, his flying platform,” he finished.

      The wizard tugged at his nose, causing Baldemar to fear that another spell would be launched his way. Instead, he was told to accompany the wand-wielder down to his workroom. The imps were told to remain where they were. “I’ll send you up some hymetic syrup,” said the wizard.

      “Ooh!” said the red imp, as the two looked at each other with widened eyes.

      “Yum!” said the spotted one.

      The wizard’s workroom was depressingly familiar. Thelerion’s had much the same contents: shelves crammed with ancient tomes, mostly leather-bound, some of the hides scaly; glass and metal vessels on a workbench, one of them steaming though no fire was set beneath it; an oval looking glass hanging on one wall, its surface reflecting nothing that was in this chamber; a small cage suspended on a chain in one corner, containing something that rustled when it moved.

      The wizard gestured for Baldemar to sit on a stool while he went to pick through a shelf of close-packed books. “Don’t try to run away,” he said, over his shoulder. “I’ve been having trouble with my paralysis spell. The fluxions have altered polarity and the last time I used it …”—he looked up at a large stain on the ceiling—“well, let’s just say it was an awful mess to clean up.”

      Baldemar sat on the stool.

      The wizard sorted through the next shelf down, made a small noise of discovery, and pulled out a heavy volume bound in tattered black hide. He placed it on a chest-high lectern and began to leaf through the parchment pages. “The Sword of Destiny, you said?”

      “Yes,” said Baldemar.

      The thaumaturge continued to hunt through the book. “Why did he want it, this Fellow-me-whatsit of yours?”

      “Thelerion,” said Baldemar, “the Exemplary. It was to complete a set of weapons and armor.” He named the other items in the ensemble: the Shield Impenetrable; the Helm of Sagacity; the Breastplate of Fortitude; the Greaves of Indefatigability. As he spoke, the wizard found a page, ran a finger down it, and his face expressed surprise.

      “He was going to put these all together?”

      “Yes.”

      “To what purpose?”

      “I don’t know.”

      The long face turned toward him. “Speculate.”

      “Revenge?” said Baldemar.

      “He has enemies, this Folderol?”

      “Thelerion. He is a thaumaturge. Do they not attract enemies as a lodestone attracts nails?”

      “Hmm,” said the other. He consulted the book again, and said, “But these items do not … care for each other. They would not gladly cooperate.”

      He tugged a thoughtful nose and continued in a musing tone, “The helmet and the shield might tolerate each other, I suppose, but the greaves would pay no attention to any strategy those two agreed upon. And the sword …”

      The wizard made a sound of suppressed mirth. “Tell me,” he said, “your master, he is a practitioner of which school?”

      “The green school,” Baldemar said.

      The wizard closed the book with a clap and a puff of dust. “Well, there you go,” he said, after a discreet sneeze. “Green school. And a norther- ner, at that. Say no more.” He shook his head and made a noise that put Baldemar in mind of an elderly spinster contemplating the lusts of the young.

      The wizard put the book back where he’d found it and favored his visitor with a speculative assessment. “But you’re an interesting specimen. So, what to do with you?”

      He was stroking his long chin while the series of expressions on his other features suggested that he was evaluating options without coming to a conclusion, when another man appeared in the doorway, clad in black-and-gold garments of excellent quality. He was even leaner than the wizard, his face an intricate tracery of fine wrinkles spread over a noble brow, an aristocratically arched blade of a nose, a well-trimmed beard as white as the wings of hair that swept back from his temples. A pair of gray eyes as cold as an ancient winter surveyed Baldemar as the man said, “Is he anything to do with that contraption on the roof?”

      “Yes, your grace,” said the wizard. “He arrived in it.”

      The aristocrat’s brows coalesced in disbelief. “He’s a thaumaturge?”

      “No, your grace. A wizard’s henchman who stole his master’s conveyance.”

      The man in the doorway frowned in disapproval and Baldemar shuddered. The fellow had the aspect of one who enjoyed showing thieves the error of their ways. Indeed, he looked the type to invent new and complex forms of education, the kind from which the only escape is a welcome graduation into death.

      But then the frown disappeared, to be replaced by the look of a man who has just come upon an unsought but useful item. “Stole from a thaumaturge, you say? That’s an accomplishment, isn’t it?”

      The wizard did not share the aristocrat’s opinion. “His master is some northern hedge-sorcerer. Green school, for Marl’s sake.”

      But the man in the doorway was yielding no ground. “Say as you will, it’s an accomplishment!”

      Understanding dawned in the thaumaturge’s face. “Ah,” he said, “I see where СКАЧАТЬ