The Complete Compleat Enchanter (21 page)

“Sir Blandamour’s lady, Florimel!” he announced, and drew the veil from the woman with whom Chalmers had been talking. Shea heard Chalmers gasp. The girl who advanced to the front of the dais with a sleep-walker’s step and wide eyes was the most beautiful thing Shea had ever seen. Clapping and murmurs foretold who would win.

But there was a buzz of talk as well. Shea’s ear caught Britomart’s remark to Chalmers: “Good palmer! You who are skilled in magic and supersticerie, mark her well!”

“Why . . . why, Miss Britomart?”

“Because there’s something here very strange. She’s as like that Florimel of the Sea to whom the girdle really belongs as one pea to another. Yet I will swear it is not the same woman, and see!—all here are of the same mind.”

In truth the hall was shouting for Florimel as the winner, but they were shouting for “Blandamour’s Florimel,” as though to distinguish her from the true owner of the girdle. Satyrane bowed and extended the jeweled trinket toward her.

With a word of thanks she took the belt. She clasped it around her middle. There seemed to be some difficulty about buckling it. She fumbled, worked at it a second, snapped it tight, lifted her hands—and the enchanted belt, still buckled, slid down her hips and thumped on the floor.

A low murmur of laughter ran around the room. Everyone looked at Blandamour, who turned beetcolor. Florimel stepped out of the circle of the belt and picked it up, a frown of puzzlement on her perfect features.

“Here, let
me
put it on,” said the red-haired Duessa, and snatching it, suited the action to the word. As soon as she clasped it, the girdle popped open and slid down. She caught it and tried again. Same result. Shea noticed her lips were moving as though pronouncing a charm.

“At least
I
can do it,” said Cambina, and Duessa threw the belt at her angrily. But Cambina could not make the belt stay either. No more could the others, as they tried one after another. With each effort the knights’ jokes grew louder and more barbed. Satyrane looked worried. Shea sympathized with him. This backwoods knight had tried so hard to give a polite tournament and party. Blandamour had ruined one with his back blow at Britomart, while the girdle was ruining the other.

But Satyrane was not done yet. “Ladies!” he shouted. “Cease, I pray you! The rules of the contest only provide that this girdle should go to the winner with nothing about her trying it on. That’s Florimel, and she
is
now the lady of the winner of the tournament, who is—by the seven thousand virgins of Cologne, it’s the Princess Britomart!”

The tall blonde stepped forward and said something to Satyrane, then turned to the company. “I do refuse this gift,” she said, “since I am sworn to accompany Amoret till she finds her Scudamour.”

Chalmers whispered: “Harold, I’ve simply got to talk to that girl. For . . . uh . . . scientific reasons. Couldn’t you persuade Britomart to accept her for—”

“I say to me!” Blandamour’s shout drowned every other sound. “If the winner won’t have her, then she’s mine again by right of reversion!” Satyrane, scratching his head, was the middle of a knot of knights.

“Assotishness!” shouted Sir Cambell. “If the winner won’t have her, then she reverts to the champion of the other side and, marry, that am I!”

“I overthrew more knights than you today,” cried Sir Ferramont. “If it comes to a question of the second best—”

Britomart cut in icily: “Good knights and gentles, I have changed my mind and will accept the charge of this lady.”

“By my halidom, no!” bellowed Blandamour. “You refused her once, and she’s mine!”

“Hey,” Shea put in. “Didn’t I knock you for a loop this morning? Then doesn’t that—”

Blandamour spat. “That for you, springald! Pox on these legal points! I’m on my way!” He strode across the room, grabbed Florimel’s wrist, and dragged her after him, snarling something inaudible through his mustache. Florimel whimpered with pain.

Shea bounded after them, spun Blandamour round and slapped his face. He jumped back and got the épée out just in time.

“Stop, fair sirs!” wailed Satyrane. The clash of steel answered him. His guests scattered, pushing furniture back. To them, stopping a good fight would be wicked waste of entertainment.

Shea remembered that in dealing with these broadswordmen, you had to rely on footwork. If they got close enough for a good swing, you might get your blade snapped on a parry. He felt rather than saw the approach of a corner, and drove in a stop-thrust to keep from being backed into it. He heard a voice:

“Nay, bid them cease. Blandamour uses but one arm.”

“So does the other,” came the answer, “and he has the lighter blade. Let them go.”

Back and forth they went,
swish, clang, tzing!
Shea caught a ferocious backhand cut with a parry sixte, but his light blade was borne back by the force of the blow. The edge chopped through the sleeve of his jacket and barely nicked the skin. Blandamour laughed. Shea, thinking fast, grunted as if with pain, jumped back and dropped his épée. But he caught it with his left hand and, as Blandamour came hurling in, nailed him just above the knee. The knight’s blade whistled round and clipped the tip off Shea’s hat feather before Blandamour crashed to the floor on the stabbed leg.

“Enough!” shouted Satyrane, jumping between them. “Let there be an end of manslaying! Now I rule that Sir Blandamour has his just deserts for unknightly behavior, both here and at the tourney. Let any who challenge this prove it on me! Squire Harold, ye have won Florimel for your lawful paramour—Why, pest take it, where is she?”

Florimel, the fair bone of his knightly contention, had disappeared.

Five

Shea said: “I get sick of the flatness of this country. And doesn’t it ever rain?” He sat on the white gelding he had purchased at Castle Caultrock, the armor that had been Sir Paridell’s bundled up behind him. He had tried wearing it, but the heat made it unbearable.

Chalmers was just taking his bearings with a crude jackstave he and Shea had managed to patch together. He remarked: “Harold, you’re an incorrigible varietist. If we had cliffs and a downpour, you’d doubtless complain about that.”

Shea grinned. “Touché Doc. Only I get bored. I’d even welcome a lion for the sake of excitement.”

Chalmers climbed back onto the ass. “Gidddap, Gustavus,” he said, and then: “I daresay you’ll have plenty of excitement if this wood harbors as many enchanters as they say. I rather wish you wouldn’t challenge all the . . . uh . . . hard characters we encounter on the strength of your ability to fence.”

“Well, what the hell, I’ve gotten away with it so far.”

“Undoubtedly. At the same time it is just as well not to carry matters too far. I should hate to be left alone.”

“A nasty, selfish point of view. Say, Doc, it’s too bad the girls wouldn’t come with us. That ebony spear of Britomart’s gave me a feeling of solid comfort.”

“You’re not acquiring a . . . uh . . . sentimental fondness for that brawny lady?”

“Good Lord, no! She reminds me of Gert. I was just giving her practice in the theory and practice of feminine charm, for snaring her own boyfriend. But, say, if anybody’s loopy over a girl it’s you! I saw the look on your face when Satyrane suggested Florimel had been carried off by enchantment.”

“Why . . . ahem . . . nothing of the sort . . . that is, very well.” Chalmers looked worried. “The trouble with traveling with a fellow psychologist is that concealments are impossible. However, I will say that Florimel’s manner gave me to pause. When the girdle refused to stay on anyone, I became certain of the operation of magic. The laws of probability should have produced at least one faithful lady among so many.” Chalmers gave a sigh. “I suppose Florimel was just an illusion. It was fortunate in a way. It gave us a good excuse to ask how to find an enchanter. Otherwise they might have suspected us of trying . . . uh . . . to make common cause with their enemies. The Faerie knights seem convinced that all enchanters are working against them. Perhaps they are right.”

They rode in silence for a while. Then Shea said: “Looks like the woods begin about here.” A little stream crossed the track in front of them, and beyond it the sparse timber gave place to dense forest. They dismounted, tying up Gustavus and the horse, which had been christened Adolphus, and produced their lunch.

Both munched in silence for a moment. Then Chalmers said: “Harold, I wish you’d promise not to get into any more fights if—”

“Hey!” said Shea, and leaped to his feet.

Out from among the trees loped a pair of naked, hairy, seven-foot apemen. They had huge ears with tufts of hair sprouting from them, and throat pouches like orangutans. In their hands were clubs. For a moment they stood at gaze, then came splashing through the stream at a gallop.

Chalmers ran to untie the animals, but they were leaping about, crazy with fear. In a glance Shea decided he could never reach Sir Paridell’s sword. He would have to use the épée, feeble as that toothpick was against those huge clubs.

The first of the apemen ran at him, bellowing. Shea never knew whether he had gained his senses or lost his nerve, but the next instant he and Chalmers were running round and round the tethered animals, with the apemen foaming through their tusks behind.

One of the creatures boomed something to the other. On the next circuit the fugitives were surprised to run head-on into one apeman who had stopped and waited for them. Shea was in front. He saw the club swing up in two hairy hands and did the only thing possible—extend the épée and fling himself forward in a terrific fleche.

His face was buried in fur and he was clutching at it for support. The hilt was wrenched from his hand, and the animal-man went screaming off, with the weapon sticking through him.

Shea himself was running; over his shoulder, he saw Chalmers was running, with the other apeman gaining, twirling up his club for the blow. Shea had an instant of horror and revulsion—the poor old Doc, to pass out this way, when he couldn’t help—

Twunk!

The feathered butt of an arrow appeared in the thing’s side, as though it had just sprouted there. The club missed Chalmers as the creature staggered and turned.
Twunk!
The second arrow took it in the throat, and it collapsed in a clump of bracken, screeching and thrashing. Shea tried to stop; Chalmers careened into him and they went down together.

Shea sat up and wiped leaf mold from his face. Footsteps preceded a tallish, slim girl in short-skirted tunic and soft leather boots. She had a bow in one hand and a light boar spear in the other, and she moved toward them at a springy trot as though it were her normal gait. A feathered hat like Shea’s sat on her red-gold hair, which was trimmed in a long bob.

Shea got up. “Thanks, young lady. We owe you a life or two. I think the thing’s about dead.”

“I’ll make certain. Those Losels are hard to kill,” said the girl. She stepped to the bracken and jabbed. She seemed satisfied as she pulled the spear out, wiping its point on some moss. “Is the old man hurt?”

Chalmers gained breath enough to sit up. “Just . . .
puff .
. . winded. I am . . . uh . . . merely middle-aged. To whom do we owe our rescue?”

The girl’s eyebrows went up, Shea noticing they were a delightful color. “You know me not? I hight Belphebe.”

“Well,” said Shea, “I . . . ah . . . hight Harold Shea, esquire, and my friend hight Reed Chalmers, the palmer, if that’s how you say it.”

“That would be your blade sticking in the other Losel?”

“Yes. What happened to it?”

“I will even show you. The creature did when erst I saw it.”

Losels.
Shea recalled the table at Castle Caultrock, with Britomart telling Sir Erivan he would not find it easy to come to grips with Busyrane the enchanter, because Busyrane’s castle was in “the wood where the Losels breed.”

“We’re on the right track, Doc,” he said to Chalmers as he helped the latter up and followed Belphebe.

Chalmers merely gave him a sidelong glance and sang softly:

“But when away his regiment ran,

His place was at the fore, oh,

That celebrated, cultivated, underrated nobleman,

The Duke of Plaza-Toro!”

Shea grinned. “Meaning me, I suppose? I was just setting a good pace for you. Here’s our other Losel.” He pulled the épée from the repellent corpse.

Belphebe gazed at the instrument with interest. “Marry, a strange weapon. May I try its balance?”

Shea showed her how to hold the épée and made a few lunges, enjoying to the full his first recent chance to show off before an attractive girl.

Belphebe tried.
“Ouch!
Those poses of yours are as awkward as a Mussulman at Mass, Squire Harold.” She laughed and tossed the épée back to him. “Will you show me more another day?”

“Glad to,” replied Shea. He turned to Chalmers. “Say, Doc, it seems to me we were eating lunch when the fracas started. Maybe the young lady would like to help us finish it.”

Chalmers gulped. “I had—this harrowing experience had quite driven the thought of food out of my mind, Harold. But if Miss Belphebe would like to—by all means—”

“If I may give that I may get,” said she. “Hola, attend!” She pulled out an arrow and tiptoed slowly away from them, peering intently into the greenery. Shea tried to follow her gaze, but could see nothing but foliage.

Then Belphebe brought up the bow; aimed, drew, and released all in one movement. To Shea it looked as though she had loosed at random. He heard the arrow strike. Down from the trees fell a large green macawlike bird. It struck the leaf mold with a thump, and a couple of green feathers gyrated down after.

###

Gustavus and Adolphus still trembled and tugged at their reins when the three approached them. Shea soothed them and took them down to the stream to drink while Chalmers started a fire and Belphebe stripped the feathers from the parrot. Presently she was toasting the bird on the end of a stick. She was so deft in resulting a meal in the open that Shea felt no desire to compete with her in scoutcraft.

Chalmers, he was surprised to observe, was holding his right forefinger against his left wrist. He asked: “What are you doing, Doc? Taking your pulse?”