The Iron Tempest (9 page)

At the agonizingly slow pace set by the old magician, it took more than three hours to make the ascent (though it very much surprised Bradamant that Atlante was able to do so at all, she nevertheless arrived at the summit puffing and sweating like a workhorse while the sorcerer seemed scarcely winded, which annoyed her). The top of the staircase was plugged by a heavy stone that Atalante lifted with deceptive ease. Following him, Bradamant found herself rising into the sunny courtyard of the aerial castle. Seen from inside and at such close proximity, the castle seemed at the same time more impressive yet less grand than it had from the floor of the crater.

It certainly seemed larger: the interior walls surrounding the courtyard were high and smooth, made of overlapping plates, like two-inch-thick shingles, all fastened together with rivets the size of her fist. But unlike the gleaming exterior, these walls were streaked with rust and corrosion. An arch separated Bradamant and Atalante from the inner courtyard. Instead of a gate there was only a row of small urns placed across the opening, placed about two feet apart like the footlights at the front of a stage; above them rose a kind of haze, like the shimmering above a hot stove or superheated desert sands, as though she were looking at the image of the courtyard reflected in the quivering surface of a pond. It didn’t seem dangerous, but Bradamant realized—inexplicably—that the shimmering was more effective than any iron gate could have been. She had no desire whatsoever to see what would happen if she were to touch the haze. She had the uncanny and unpleasant sensation that, when she wasn’t looking directly at the iridescent curtain, the wavering shapes took the form of distorted, tortured faces—a disconcerting illusion if illusion it was. Taking a few steps forward, Atalante gently touched the urn on the farthest left with a fingertip and it popped like a soap bubble. Immediately, all of the others did the same, soundlessly, one after the other, sequentially from left to right. As they did so, the aurora-like haze faded and vanished. And when the haze vanished, so did the castle: walls, turrets, towers, barbican and keep—all evaporated like a morning mist melting before the rising sun. Bradamant was so astonished to suddenly find herself standing on the barren summit of the pinnacle that she allowed the end of the chain to fall from her hand. The instant she did so, Atalante gave a little hop into the air and, with the soft
pop
of a cork carefully extracted from a bottle, faded away himself. The empty chain dropped with a clatter to the bare stone.

In place of the magician’s company Bradamant now found herself surrounded by a large crowd of elegantly-dressed—and, for some, undressed—men and women, evidently the late inhabitants of now-vanished halls and bedrooms, not all of whom seemed pleased to find their captivity interrupted.

“Say, what’s going on here?” one of the men asked, thrusting a petulant lower lip toward his liberator, then added: “And who are you?”

Bradamant ignored the question. “Where is Rashid?” she countered.

“Where’s my dinner?” the man recountered.

“Where’d my bath go?” asked an obviously distressed man, naked except for an inadequately scant covering of soap suds.

“Where’s my man?” asked an extraordinarily naked fat woman who was ineffectually covering her grain-sack breasts and unnecessarily covering her well-buried pudendum. For all that Bradamant knew, the man she sought was lost somewhere within those soft billows, like a raisin in a mound of bread dough. “And who’s
this
little tart?” the fat woman added, glaring contemptuously at the female knight.

“Where’s
my
man?” asked a slender youth, petulantly. Then, spying the lanky armored girl, he batted his long lashes and cooed, “Well, hel
-lo
, soldier!”

She stared with incomprehension, then, as the man’s mistake dawned upon her, looked away in confusion and disgust. The youth laughed at her sudden blush.

“Bradamant?” someone called, “is that you?”

She turned to see an armored knight approaching and her heart gave a little frisk—prematurely.

“Prasildo?” she asked, recognizing her brother Reinhold’s lifelong friend. “Reinhold’s not here, too, is he?”

“No, but Iroldo is, and any number of other knights. Look! There’s Gradasso and Sacripant!”

She didn’t know the former except by reputation, but the latter’s sullen face was vaguely familiar. (How he had managed to lose Angelica and be captured by the wizard is another story altogether. Suffice it to say that his temper was in no way improved by the experience.) On the other hand, when the king saw Bradamant
his
eyes tightened with recognition.

Bradamant was eager to ask Gradasso where Rashid was since they had been captured together, but she really didn’t want to again deal with Sacripant (though she thought she’d not half mind finding Pinabel among the crowd). The king’s glare made it clear that he was altogether too ready to find an excuse to even the score between them. She was not the least bit frightened of him—it was the delay she feared more than the man. She decided that she would find Rashid unaided.

Prasildo was of no help—he was unaware of anyone named Rashid among the castle’s late occupants. This, he suggested unhelpfully, perhaps only indicated that the man she was searching for was a newcomer, if he was there at all. She elbowed her way through the milling, confused crowd, ignoring the questions and complaints, calling out Rashid’s name again and again.

“Bradamant?” came a voice she had only heard once before in all her life but which was as familiar to her as her own. The sound seemed to pass through the length of her body like a golden lance.

“Rashid?
Rashid
!”

It was indeed her lost knight. Though they had met but a single time, and on a battlefield at that, and had not exchanged more than half a dozen words even then, she embraced him like the most intimate lover, shamelessly oblivious of the surrounding spectators.

“I’ve been searching for you for months!” she said, her tears pouring over one of his expansive shoulders like a hot spring overflowing its broad travertine terrace. She felt her heart swell like a blowfish.

As tall as the warrior-maiden was, Rashid was taller; she wrapped her arms around his neck and lifted herself to cover his face with kisses, her feet dangling inches above the ground, her body pressing his like moss hugging an oak. His bristling black beard pressed into her cheek and she was aware of each particular prickle. She had not seen him since that one brief earlier time, clad in armor, mail and blood, clad in the stink and haze and clamor of battle; now her poor brain spun before the magnificent figure, greater than she had imagined, in the blood-red velvet doublet and silk tights, all intricately embroidered with gold, that clung to his body like the skin of an apple, as though he were the living embodiment of some illuminator’s masterwork. He had eyes as large and black as ripe olives and skin as brown and smooth as fine suede. She understood how soul-struck Pygmalion must have been when he saw his Galatea miraculously transformed from cold marble to hot flesh.

“I was afraid you were dead,” he said, prying her arms from his neck and holding her so he could see her face. “You took a grave wound for my sake and I’ve never been able to thank you.”

“It was nothing like the wound my heart received.”

“Good heavens! I thought you’d only been hit over the head!”

“No, I mean . . .yes, well . . . I caught a glancing blow from a lance—here—”

He parted her short locks with his fingers. She winced when he found the scar, though the pain of the wound had long since passed. He smoothed the hair back into place and kissed it. She felt a rush of wind pass through her body as though it were a hollow reed; she shuddered from the inside out, seismically, radiating in concentric waves from a shocked core and a strange, fugitive memory fluttered for a moment—as though some animal had stirred in its sleep—but she failed to recognize it. How, she wondered, could feelings so peculiar and foreign seem at the same time so familiar? She suddenly felt exposed, as though her protective armor had evaporated as easily as the castle had done, leaving her as naked and vulnerable as a peeled shrimp, as transparent as a jellyfish, as helpless as a newborn mole. Rashid could surely see every tremor that shook her, see how her heart raced so she could scarcely breath, see the obscene yearning of every particular organ, straining toward him like salmon heeding the ineluctable call of their sex. She gasped, but her lungs refused to inflate.

“Whatever can you be doing here?” Rashid was saying, all unaware of her distress. Or, more likely, entirely misinterpreting her flushed face and shuddering body. “How did you find me? Did you have anything to do with the disappearance of the castle?”

“Yes. But it wasn’t my fault,” she added, just in case he didn’t like the idea.

“Where is Atalante?”

“I’ve no idea. He disappeared just before the castle evaporated.”

“Well, I doubt if the old crank is dead. Frankly, I hope not. He’s really been like a father to me and I owe him a lot. His heart’s in the right place, you must understand, even if his methods are sometimes a little highhanded.”

“He has a peculiar way of acting fatherly.”

“I hope you’ll understand after I get a chance to explain. In the meantime, we’d best get down from here. This crowd is getting a little surly.”

“If they were decent people, they’d be thanking me!”

“Well, dear Bradamant, I’d have to say that, saving my fellow knights here—to say nothing of yourself of course—few of these people are at all very decent. They were perfectly happy being kept as pets and now you’ve taken away their home and master. They have no more brains than—than furniture. They know no more what to do with themselves now than if they were goldfish whose bowl’s just tipped onto the floor.”

“Disgusting!” Bradamant said with pious fervor.

At the bottom of the stone column they found dozens of horses milling about—from ladies’ palfreys to powerful war-mounts—all waiting for their rightful owners. Where they had come from Bradamant had no idea—they must have been magically cached away somewhere, she imagined. She found hers, which, although not battle-tested, had borne itself so bravely during the attack by Atalante and his aerial monster. She had been afraid that some knight from the castle would claim it for his own, but no one stepped forward. Tears poured down Rashid’s face when he was reunited with his beloved Frontino and the animal likewise affectionately slobbered the knight’s face.
I wish he’d been as glad to see
me, Bradamant thought with unchristian jealousy.

They found the hippogryph patiently waiting exactly where Atalante had left it. Not being made of magic, it had survived the magician’s debacle. Nevertheless, it looked dour and mistrusting, knowing full well that things were not as they should be. Still hanging from its saddle was the draped shield. Bradamant looked for the book of spells that Atalante had dropped, and was vaguely disturbed that it was nowhere to be found.

“Well, well!” said Rashid, going directly to the monster’s vast, feathery head and thumping as he would a horse’s. “Old Papillon’s here!”

“Papillon?” replied Bradamant, appalled at the sight of that ghastly head rubbing against the knight like a friendly cat. “That’s the Frankish word for butterfly, isn’t it?”

“And fitting, too, don’t you think? Been with Atalante almost as long as I can remember. I can still recall when he got him. Just a puppy, fresh from the frozen Urals, where hippogryphs are extraordinarily rare. Wish I had a bunny with me; he loves a bunny, you know. Don’t you love a bunny, Papillon? Yes, you do! Come here, Bradamant, and I’ll introduce you.”

Bradamant approached gingerly, unwilling to allow either Rashid or the monster to see her nervousness. Papillon’s horny beak looked as large and sharp as a steel plow and its black eyes, as large and hard-looking as cricket balls, followed her expressionlessly.

“Here, take these,” Rashid said, handing her the reins. She had only just reached for them when, at the moment the knight’s own grip was most lax, the hippogryph’s enormous black wings unfolded with the sound of luffing sails and it shot into the air with a dull roar. It settled a hundred yards away, on the lowest slope of the crater. It sat there and glowered at them. Bradamant was fascinated at the sight in spite of herself; the landing had been peculiar-looking because the hippogryph’s taloned forelegs bent backwards like a bird’s.

Rashid was furious with frustration and embarrassment. He was like a small boy whose attempt to walk on his hands had instead resulted in a bruised head.

“Damn it, Papillon,” he growled, “what do you think you’re doing?”

Rashid and Bradamant—who wisely thought better of making any comment—mounted their horses and rode to where the beast perched and, just as before, as soon as they got within arm’s reach the recalcitrant monster took off and settled back to earth a dozen yards away. Bradamant was reminded of the crows she used to watch as a child, who would tease the hunting dogs by luring them back and forth across the fields, all the while laughing like fiends.

As Rashid’s temper became ever shorter, the funnier Bradamant found the whole thing. She began to enjoy chasing the damnable creature from rock to rock. Her laughter, however, was entirely misunderstood by Rashid, who eventually turned his back on his pet and descended the rubblely slope, glowering blackly.

“I won’t play games with that misbegotten menagerie,” he said as he joined the girl.

“I think he’s cute,” she said.

“Cute? Would
you
think it cute if you had to chase your horse all over the damned countryside?”

“Of course not, but that would never happen. This is entirely different.”

“Oh, yes—different! Ha!”

The monster watched the retreat with its cold, disinterested, reptilian gaze. It rose clumsily to its feet (like the flamingo or pelican it really looked its best while flying) and began to follow. For some reason it chose not to fly and its ungainly walk and sagging wings gave an impression of contriteness.

“Oh, look!” cried Bradamant, as the huge beak gently prodded Rashid between his shoulder blades. “It’s come to apologize!”