A Sorcerer and a Gentleman

by Elizabeth Willey

Genres: Fantasy; Fantasy action & adventure; Historical Fantasy

Synopsis

Once there was only the land of Phesaotois, with a cold and baleful Stone at its magical heart. Much later came the land of Pheyarcet, younger and hotter, with its Well of Fire inextricably bound up with its ruler, the great Panurgus. Then Panurgus died, touching off a bitter struggle between his sons that ended with Avril on the throne and Prospero, mightiest of the sorcerers, in permanent exile. All that was an age ago. Now Prospero, grown ancient and subtle, has found a new, third land: bright Argylle, with its primal Spring of clear water. Argylle is a fair realm in its own right; but the children of Panurgus never forgive and never forget. And so Prospero decides it is an auspicious time to seize the throne of Phesaotois from Avril - thereby setting in motion a vast tale of romance and espionage, of talking animals and mythic beasts, of metaphysics and primal creation, of mannerly drama and gritty military detail: an epic that can only end in a conflagration of blood and honor.

Release date: December 18, 2018

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 467

Sample

IT IS A PROVERB OFTEN QUOTED but seldom applied, that all a gentleman needs to travel is a good cloak, a good horse, and a good sword. Indeed, given the style and comfort in which those on whom society bestows the appellation “gentlemen” usually travel, the picture of a well-dressed, handsome young man on a fine horse, armed with a blade housed in a long silver-chased scabbard, the end of which protrudes from his full-cut sea-green cloak with its shoulder cape flaring in the haste of his travel, would inspire a beholder to identify the gallant as anything but a gentleman. “A highwayman,” one might say; or, on a closer look, “a special messenger for the Emperor, who dwells in this great city here in the distance”; or more cynically, “a rake fleeing the city on account of his debts and his mistress’s husband”; or any of a hatful of titles might one append to this picture, before “a gentleman” be suggested.

And that one would be instantly derided as inaccurate. For, look! This man has no baggage but the saddlebags on his horse; he is alone, without a single servant to attend him; moreover he is on horseback rather than in a carriage with the fine horse ridden by his lackey; and furthermore, he is plainly galloping, as may be seen from the billowing of his cape and the elevation of his horse’s hooves, and his hair is blown about and his clothing disordered by the exercise. Lastly and most tellingly, it is night-time in the picture, as the swollen moon breasting the horizon and a few stars show, long after sundown, a time when any true gentleman would long since have been snugly established in his chosen inn for the night with a good dinner and a bottle of wine.

Thus do many antiquated proverbs suffer derision when they venture into the harsh environment of the modern world. Can he truly be a gentleman, though he ride swiftly, at night, away from the security of the city, alone and armed?

Only the rider knows. He is quite secure about his own estate, and perhaps is now observing to himself that he is the very picture of that proverb mainly quoted nowadays by gouty earls at the fireside deriding the softness of the younger generation, who travel with everything but a wine-cellar and purchase and consume one as they go. (The earls suffer amnesia regarding their own pasts and curse the present gout whilst recalling fondly wines of bygone days.)

He has no question in his own mind as to what he is, and if you were to ask him, he might tell you without hesitation.

You could not ask him. He was already gone by the time it occurred to you; his horse swift and his purpose clear, he went left at the crossroads on the hill where the moon cut a black shadow beside a kingstone. His first goal was to pass that crossroads at that time, exactly as the moon was clearing the horizon and casting the kingstone’s shadow as a pointer down the road he took. When he turned, he faded from sight, as if he rode into a fog bank when there was no fog there at all.

“ARIEL!”

“Here, Master!”

“The full moon’s rays are requisite for work I plan tonight. Dispel these scudding clouds without harsh wind or undue storm, that the rising lunar light may fall unfiltered on the world.”

“All of it, Master Prospero?” Ariel asked, dubious.

“This part where I am,” Prospero clarified, not unkindly. “Let us say, the eastern region of this continent, including this island. All night.”

“The breath of your order shall be gale, good Master,” Ariel said, and left with a gust of wind, racing east.

Prospero’s black-lined blue cloak flared and rippled with the Sylph’s passage; his dark hair stirred; the island’s trees soughed and whispered among themselves, then calmed. From his place by the mighty tree that crowned the island’s hill, he gazed over the river to the east and saw Ariel’s rippling wake pass over the landscape, out of sight, purling and streaking the fat gilt-shouldered clouds. Now he took his silver-wound staff and struck its bright heel on the ground three times.

“Caliban!” he called.

“Aye,” grunted a voice beneath his feet. The stone roiled and rose: a torso; a rough head coarse-featured; a square slab-body and hard arms textured like fine-grained unpolished granite. Caliban squinted in the beating midsummer sun.

“Here at this living tower’s roots I’ll have a basin sculpted in the stone whereof it grips,” Prospero said, lifting his staff and then setting it down, “a hollow which is spherical, circularly exact, such that the diameter be measured from here—” he struck the stone with the heel of the staff and paced—“to here at its broadest point below the surface of the ground, and such that its opening be from here—” and he paced again— “to here.”

There was a perplexed silence, and then, “Ah. Like an orange with the top cut off to suck at it.”

“Even so.”

“That will fill with the waters of the Spring that rises here in its middle, Master—”

“Even so.”

“Ah.” The black stone over which the tree’s roots ran and into which they had forced their way rippled as Caliban moved. “If it’s a well you’d have me delve, Master—”

“No well, but a bowl, which shall cup the Spring’s unstinting flow for my night’s work.”

“The basin shall be scoured as you command, Master.”

“Be finished ere the sun sets,” Prospero said, “ere the sun’s disk is a fist’s width above the long horizon, for it must fill, and I’ve preparations to complete.”

“Aye, Master.” Caliban sank into the stone, which hissed and heated with his hasty passage.

Prospero watched as the stone began to move. The rest of his preparations were made; the stage was being set; there remained but one vital piece of business before the hour of his sorcery came. He left the hilltop and its great tree and went down a footpath, winding through the straight trunks of high-crowned trees and along a rocky outcrop, until he came to an end of the cool-shaded wood. A garden lay before him in casual beds and terraces, clumps of fruiting trees and clusters of exuberant blossoms, and at its farthest end he descried a bent back and a mill-wheel of a yellow straw hat radiant in the sun.

A neat gravelled path led him to the gardener.

“What cheer, daughter?”

She sat back on her heels, grubby and smiling, dark curling tendrils falling from under the hat to nourish themselves on her damp neck. “I suppose you want strawberries,” she said.

“Were they less sweet and thy care of them less fruitful, I’d have none,” he replied, smiling, “so ’tis a tribute to thy own hand that I have devour’d so many; they are the very heart of summer and their goodness nourished of thine, therefore must I love them as I love thee. But nay, ’tis thee I’ll have. The heat’s great, the day wears long; thy labor’s never done, and as well ceased now as ever. I bid thee lunch with me.”

“It’s early,” she said.

“Not untimely so,” Prospero disagreed mildly. “Go thou, bathe and dress; I’ll look to the meal, and we’ll meet on the green where the table is. Take our ease as the wise beasts o’ the wood do when the sun is fiercest on the flesh.”

“It is hot. Yes. We must have strawberries, though—they’ll rot if we don’t eat them, and the idea of cooking even more jam …” Her voice trailed away.

“Well enough. Hast thy basket?”

Prospero picked the strawberries with her, though they both ate any number of the winey-ripe ones as well, and carried them off while she ran ahead to fetch clean clothes and a towel. He had already made some preparation of the meal, and now he finished and laid a cold roast pheasant, poached fish, a salad of peas and tiny vegetables dressed with vinegar and mint, a dish of hot-spiced grain with raisins, and a pyramid of fruits out invitingly on his huge dark table, its single-slab top upheld by the wings of two carven birds of prey which clutched lesser earthbound creatures in their brass claws. The table, as was their summer custom, stood outside beneath a spreading tree on the little lawn before the small scarp wherein lay his cave, its thick door open to the soft air.

He was just opening a cool bottle of sweet white wine when his daughter came up the path that led to the river, bathed and fresh-gowned in gauzy green. Prospero set the bottle down and watched her approach, approving and appreciative. Her tailoring skills were simple, thus all her dresses were little more than smocks, ribboned and laced to fit: indecent in civilized society, but charming here in the wilderness.

“In such heat,” she said, “the forest is a better place to be. Tomorrow, will you hunt with me?”

“What of thy garden?”

“Oh, well, as you say, ’tis never done.”

“No ground to shirk,” he chided her gently, and poured wine for her.

She curtseyed slightly, as he had taught her, and took the cup. “Thank you, Papa. It was you who tempted me from work with swimming and a lovely luncheon; you can hardly blame me for wanting a holiday.”

“I blame thee not at all. Come, all’s ready, and my appetite as well.”

“This breeze is good,” said she. “It is nearly cool here, in the shade.”

They ate side-by-side, looking down the slope below their tree and table, which she had planted with flowers and small trees. When the cold fish and meat were gone and the fruits being picked at leisurely, Prospero turned the conversation abruptly from the flowers.

“I have in mind to make some alterations in our life,” he said.

She set down her wineglass and tilted her head to one side, puzzled. “Alterations?”

Prospero leaned back. “Long ago I told thee, Freia,” he began, “that I am a Prince in my own realm, far-distant Landuc—a Prince, and should be King, but that my brothers conspired against me and denied me my rightful place.”

“I remember,” she said.

“Dost remember? ’Twas many winters past, and we’ve not spoken of’t since. For it displeaseth me to chew it over.”

“I do remember,” she said, “for you told me of your friends there, and of beautiful Lady Miranda, and of the great city and the Palace gardens.”

“Thou rememb’rest, then, that my pompous brother inflated himself from King to Emperor ’pon his accession to the stolen throne.”

She nodded.

“Thou rememb’rest that I told thee ’twas not finished.” His eyes were like high grey clouds with the sun behind them.

She nodded again, wary of his intensity.

“Time’s come,” Prospero said, “for me to make my move ’gainst that false popinjay and knock him down. I’ve labored long here and elsewhere, setting my plans in slow motion, and now the hour is nigh for swifter action.”

“What are you going to do?”

He seemed not to hear her. “To move that action shall require changes here. I warn thee now; I’ve spoken of some to thee ere this, and I saw them little please thee. Yet change cannot be denied.”

Freia tensed, straightened. “Why not? Why shouldn’t we live as we have, here, you and me and your sorcery and my garden and things? I like this. Don’t you?”

“I like it well, wench, but a man cannot sup on strawberries all the days of his life,” Prospero said. “ ’Twill change, I tell thee, and we’ll change too. My idleness ill-fits my nature, and it must end and this idyll withal.”

She shook her head, contrary. “This is perfect, just as it is, and there’s plenty to do and I’m not idle. What are you going to change? What is lacking? Why shouldn’t we stay the same?”

“Freia, Freia. Think’st thou that I was always as I am today? Wert thou? Nay; I’ve bettered thee, hast said it thyself. What thou art today, is what I’ve made of thee; my daughter, a lady, and soon a princess: bettered again.” He had taken her hands in his and held them as he held her gaze.

“I don’t want to be a Lady or a Princess! Why do you want to be a Prince, or a King? Aren’t you happy here?”

“Freia, ’tis more than a thing I wish to be. ’Tis what I am. This place is comfortable enough, were I but a sorcerer, but I am not. I did not choose this place to be comfortable in, but to labor, and my labor here draws near completion; the fruits of my patience come ripe, e’en as thy garden beginneth with hard work and small shoots, then groweth to savorous maturity. And thou, thou didst not choose this place; ’tis all thy world, I know, and though thou’rt content enough here solitary ’mongst thy fruits and flowers, I know the little discontents that shall fret thee to aversion in morrow-days. Better to remember thy garden-isle fondly later than to hate it.”

“I love this place, I always shall, I love it as it is,” she said, heart-wringingly. “Please don’t change it. Please. What are you going to do, Papa?”

“We must have a city, Freia, walled and strong—”

“No!”

“—and bridges o’er the river, therefore great numbers of hardy men to build—”

“No!”

They stared at one another. Freia’s expression of stubborn determination mirrored Prospero’s, and Prospero’s hands tightened around hers balled into stone-hard fists. “Darest thou contradict me?” he snapped. “I’ll not countenance it; the world moveth forward, be thou retrograde as thou wilt. It must happen, Freia, and it shall, and thou’lt see: ’Twill like thee better than thou think’st.”

The Prince of Madana, Heir of Landuc, lay on his bed fully clothed and stared at the white-and-blue scrolled ceiling.

Something had happened to him last night. It was something unpleasant. He was dressed, and that was wrong; he never slept in his clothes—he would sooner go naked to dinner. His head ached. Shreds of dreams still clung to his thoughts: suffocating dreams, drowning dreams, entangled dreams of nets and sticky webs.

“Sir?” someone said.

The Prince turned his head and saw the concerned faces of five people who stood at his bedside. They were all leaning toward him, eyes wide, and the same expression of relief and rejoicing washed over all five.

“Doctor Hem,” said the Prince, wondering what was wrong with him.

“Tell the Emperor and Empress,” said Doctor Hem to the footman beside him, who hurried out. “Yes, Your Highness,” he added to the Prince, smiling, bowing.

“What’s that stink?” The Prince frowned, swallowing and beginning to sit up.

“No, no! Do not rise, Your Highness, the crisis is only just past; do not rise, lest the balance of humors be disrupted again,” cried the Doctor, and made him lie down again.

“What the blazes is going on? What’s the matter?” demanded the Prince, grabbing the Doctor’s arm.

The door banged and the footman cried hurriedly, “His Majesty Emperor Avril—”

“Silence,” said the Emperor impatiently, entering, and glared at the others as he did. “You. What are you doing here? Nothing? Out! We know you, you’re Hem’s boy. Out.”

They got out, all but the Doctor and the Emperor. The Emperor glowered at his son from the side of the bed.

The Prince thought he’d much preferred the gratifying audience now departed. He played a filial note, cautiously. “Father, am I ill?”

“Perhaps you can tell us. You’ve been asleep like this since we don’t know when.”

“What?”

“What have you been smoking? Drinking, perhaps?” demanded the Emperor furiously. “With whom? Some bastard you dragged in off the street—”

“Your Majesty,” said Doctor Hem hurriedly, “still the balance of humors is very delicate and it would be best not to—”

“Silence. Well? What have you to say for yourself?”

The Prince stared at his father, confused, and shook his head a little, and sat up again. Hem started forward to stop him and retreated at the Emperor’s look.

“Tell us,” said the Emperor, arms folded, glowering at his son, his eyes like coal.

“I don’t remember,” the Prince said, shaking his head again.

“Don’t remember?”

The Prince rubbed his temples.

The Emperor hissed through his teeth with impatience. “You came in at the tenth hour yesterday with someone your chamber-boy identified as Harrel Brightwater—”

“Brightwater,” the Prince said. “Yes. That was.… We met at the armorer’s. Bellamy’s.”

“Not for the first time, in all likelihood,” his father said sarcastically, and noticed the Doctor again. “Get out. We’ll call you if you’re needed.”

Doctor Hem left, bowing. He had served the Palace for long enough to know how his service might best be extended.

When the door had closed on him, the Emperor went on with the beginnings of a fine rage in his voice. “Josquin, we have had enough of—”

“We dined here,” the Prince said, ignoring him, rubbing his temples. “I remember that. Chess first, dinner. Talked about fencing. Horses. We had one bottle, didn’t even finish it, the new stuff.”

“It is surprising that you remember that much. What else did you have?”

“Nothing. Nothing. Just … We sat after dinner with the chessboard again.… Let me think. Nothing. Didn’t smoke anything. Hm,” he muttered, still rubbing his head. “It’s—he threw something.”

The Emperor, who had listened with mounting anger, said, “Threw something!”

“I didn’t see what it was.”

“Threw you, more likely—”

“Father. He … Where is he?”

“He left, in your coach. Your standard treatment for your catamites after you—”

“Father.” Josquin’s headache was worse than ever. He ground his teeth and pressed his palms to his temples. “Throwing,” he said, “I was standing … He followed me in. I set the candles down. He— I turned around and he threw something.”

“Threw what?” asked a new voice. They both glanced at the door, where the Empress stood; a pair of attendants hovered behind her straight, slender back at a discreet distance, listening for all they were worth.

“ ’Cora, don’t—” began the Emperor.

“Jos, what happened?” She joined them, quick but graceful, and sat on the edge of the bed.

“I don’t know. He—he threw something. I remember … I felt dizzy,” whispered Josquin hoarsely.

“What did he throw?” the Empress asked softly.

“Nothing. He had nothing in his hands. Nothing. But he threw something. It …” Josquin put his hand over his face. “Like that.”

“How could he throw nothing?” she wondered, frowning.

“How …?” the Emperor began, and stopped. “Nothing,” he repeated.

“Yes.”

“He shall be arrested and questioned,” decided the Emperor, and opened the door. A few words to his ever-handy secretary Cremmin, and he returned.

“My head is splitting,” Josquin said to his mother.

“Poor dear. Doctor Hem will have a powder for it.”

“It may unbalance me further,” Josquin muttered. He disliked Doctor Hem intensely.

“If he has none, my maid Mellicent will,” said the Empress, stroking his forehead. “Who was this man who threw something at you, Jos?”

“Glencora, leave it for now.”

“No. I am very puzzled as to how throwing nothing could make Josquin sick.”

“Having nothing thrown at him.”

“Exactly. How could it make him sick?”

“Was I sick?”

“You wouldn’t wake up,” she said gravely, and pressed his hand.

“Oh,” said Josquin.

“Who was he?” the Empress asked.

“A … friend.”

“One of his good-for-nothing prancing pickups—”

“Father, he—”

“What is his name?” the Empress interrupted.

“Brightwater. Harrel Brightwater.”

“One of the Anburggan Brightwaters? I don’t remember any Harrel among them,” she said doubtfully.

“Doubtless some bastard,” growled the Emperor. “What do you know of his family?”

Josquin thought and shrugged. “Don’t know, really. He seemed a gentleman. We never discussed it. That’s women’s business,” he added in a tone tinged with contempt.

“What did you discuss?” the Emperor asked through clenched teeth.

“Cards. Horses. Swords. He has an eye for good weapons. Ask Bellamy. He bought a sword from Bellamy yesterday; I fenced with him in Bellamy’s yard and he beat me. As good as the best of Uncle Gaston’s students.”

“If he has studied with Gaston—”

Josquin shook his head. “No, I asked him about that. I don’t think he has. He would have admitted it, I think.”

“Hm. So you know nothing of his origin.”

Josquin began to contradict him and stopped. “No. Come to think … No.”

“Were you ever in his rooms?”

“No.”

“Hm. We shall have to investigate further into his movements and associates. In the meantime you are confined to the Palace and grounds.”

“What! Why?”

“Because you display abominably bad judgement in your activities outside them.” The Emperor left; his absence made the stifling room seem cooler.

“I suppose it could be worse,” Josquin said. “He could have confined me to my apartment. What is that stink?”

“Hem was burning incense, I expect,” the Empress Glencora said, wrinkling her nose, and rose and went to the windows, opening them, waving her hands in the air, which was warm and still today. The incense hung in the room like a veil. It smelled, Josquin thought, like burning bananas flambéed with cheap cologne and quenched with piss.

THE BASIN WAS COMPLETED IN GOOD time. Prospero stood over it as it filled with splashing water from the Spring, which arose at the foot of the great tree and which soaked again into the hilltop after running over the stone.

The first battle of his war he’d won with guile. Freia slept, her senses fogged by his gentle postprandial sorcery; he had borne her heavy with dreams to her bed and laid her there, and she’d not wake until morning came. He looked up. The dusky sky was still fringed with clouds to the west; the massive, swift-rising wind driven by Ariel had torn them to shreds and swept them away.

In the south above the tree-canopy Prospero saw the first blue-white star of the evening. He stared to the east and discerned, in the deepening line of darkness, the first orange-gold sliver of the moon beyond the sea. The wind that had ruffled his hair and snapped his cloak died. The world was still.

“Master, it’s done,” whispered Ariel.

“Bide,” Prospero said.

He bent and dipped his hand in the water, brought it to his lips and tasted the jolting freshness. Invigorated, he smiled and, as the moon with gravid dignity rose from her bed, lifted his staff and began to Summon the powers at his command. A light swelled from the water in the basin and from the Spring as he stirred and shaped the force that slept there. It grew into a spindle, four threads of which wove and knotted around him and four others of which began curling, turning with the spindle, reaching out and away through the trees and silver moonlight.

The best of his sorcery always seemed like a dream to him afterward. This had that stamp, the inevitability and perfection of every act, every word, every event at once foreseen and occurring. Prospero’s staff hummed and trilled in his hand, and around him the stillness of the world, into which his voice rolled like the very music of the night sphere that turned overhead, brightened with the light of the moon and rustled with life. He knew, as he worked, that this was going to go very well.

“By this hallowed Spring I stand and by it I command all of its nurturing; all that row in the limpid air, all that are borne in the soft water, all that earth and stone engender, all that spawn in the constant flame; here to the heart of the world I Summon ye, here to the Source of your existence, here to me above the Source, gather ye air and water and earth and fire, gather ye within the Bounds I draw by this hallowed Spring …”

The arms of power swept outward, stirring like the wind but moving nothing, reaching and gathering. The darkness around Prospero began to fill with rustlings, movements, warm bodies and cool, tense and quick breathing.

The Air Summoning brought birds large and small, lone and mated, who crowded into the branches of the tree behind Prospero, to the north of the Spring. One brilliant dovelike bird with butter-colored feathers and a bright golden crest boldly settled on his shoulder and nestled against his cheek a moment before joining the others. Prospero did not leave off his Summoning, but he smiled.

The Water Summoning included a few great white-winged birds who settled awkwardly on the ground before the Spring; there were splashing and swishing sounds from the night-dark river that ran around the island, just to the south.

The Fire Summoning netted nothing; within the reach of Prospero’s spell there were no Elemental or Essential creatures of fire, for the Spring was antithetical to Fire. So east of the Spring was darkness.

But the Earth Summoning drew as many of its kind as that of the Air. West of the Spring, first on a rocky bare patch exposed in the light of the moon and then filling the wood that stretched down over the island to the water that surrounded it, assembled creatures unnamed with horns and claws and hard feet and soft, with long teeth and flat, with bodies of every description adapted for every use. From the forests that overspread the round-shouldered hills came the animals, hopping or sliding some, bounding and leaping some, pacing with aloof dignity or, sun-eyed, stalking through the undergrowth, plunging fearlessly into the river and swimming to reach Prospero. The forest itself shivered and woke, altered by the tendril forged of the Spring and Prospero’s sorcery that curled through it and then held steady, encircling and Binding the Summoned.

Arms upraised, Prospero paused, lit by the light of the moon filling the water and shining out more brightly than the moon herself, who hung just at her fullest as Prospero completed his initial Summoning.

He lowered his arms slowly, barely breathing, wholly sustained by the Spring. His eye fell on the foremost of the animals who crouched, unafraid but overawed and worshipful, to the west. It was one he knew well, a furry, broad-shouldered, blunt-eared creature of long and lumbering body and thick black claws who had dug his burrow by the very Spring. The animal’s nose twitched. It rose on its haunches to look at Prospero from bright black eyes, its coarse black-and-brown ticked fur still dusted with the earth of its run.

Prospero bent and cupped water from the shining basin, which overflowed now; the Spring was tentatively exploring a little water-course down the hillside. The water gleamed golden in his hand. The sorcerer poured it onto the unflinching animal’s head, starlet drops falling.

The moon, imperceptible to any but the sorcerer, was turning from full.

“Born of earth, be born again a child of Spring and moon and man,” Prospero said in a low, deep voice, and the water plashed into the coarse fur; the animal dropped to its fours, shook dust away, and its body flowed and took on bulk below the serene, benignant countenance of the moon; and where the animal had fallen, now a man knelt, sitting back slowly on his heels.

Prospero and the man gazed at one another. The man’s expression was bemused. He blinked, then smiled, then shook his head again. He was naked. His dark skin held hard muscles and drops of water glistened on his hair. His merry face was bearded and his square hands lay on his legs.

“I am yours to command,” he said, in a rippling language that had but once before been heard in the world.

“Bide,” Prospero said, and returned his smile.

The man inclined his head and settled back on his shins. He watched as Prospero repeated the transformation with a dun-furred, lean, sharp-clawed, stump-tailed animal who came to drink at the Spring from time to time, and this one tossed his head and shouted from a mouth losing fangs and acquiring lips and a joyous, fierce smile as he became a man.

“Master!”

“Bide,” Prospero said again, and as the moon proceeded above in her pirouette with grace and precision, he worked his sorcery on the earth-creatures. When the moon was a good ways down the sky, he turned to the birds, and with the invocation, “Born of air, be born again a child of Spring and moon and man,” he touched them with the ever-replenished water of the basin and they became men and women, dazed, smiling, wide-eyed with wonder, looking at their hands and feet and abiding Prospero’s command.

The eastern sky took on tints of rose and the moon hovered in the west. Prospero worked over the children of the waters, and he stirred his staff in the basin to make a cloud of light and water which rained down on those who had assembled in their element. In their odd new form they splashed and waded, stumbling, onto the island and crowded it with their number.

The sky brightened. The moon lingered over the horizon. Prospero looked around himself at the quiet, waiting people he had created and nodded. It had gone well.

With a stir of air, the cream-gold bird came to his shoulder again. Soft feathers brushed his cheek. Prospero lifted his hand and brought the bird down, admiring. There had been none other like it among the rest; he had forgotten to make sure—

“There’s an instant left yet, and I’d not leave thee, pretty friend, behind,” he said, and stooped to the water. He cupped his hand and reached, but a dark streak sliced through the surface before he touched it.

It was a snake, a black, thick-bodied, long reptile which had its hole among the roots of the tree; ofttimes he’d seen it basking on the rock, and once it had frightened Freia badly. Dwelling near the Spring, even swimmin