The Well-Favored Man Read online

  The Well-Favored Man

  Elizabeth Willey

  www.sfgateway.com

  Enter the SF Gateway …

  In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britain’s oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint, created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the English language’s finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were languishing out of print at the time, they were – and remain – landmark lists, consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:

  ‘SF MASTERWORKS is a library of the greatest SF ever written, chosen with the help of today’s leading SF writers and editors. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written.’

  Now, as we move inexorably into the twenty-first century, we are delighted to be widening our remit even more. The realities of commercial publishing are such that vast troves of classic SF & Fantasy are almost certainly destined never again to see print. Until very recently, this meant that anyone interested in reading any of these books would have been confined to scouring second-hand bookshops. The advent of digital publishing has changed that paradigm for ever.

  The technology now exists to enable us to make available, for the first time, the entire backlists of an incredibly wide range of classic and modern SF and fantasy authors. Our plan is, at its simplest, to use this technology to build on the success of the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series and to go even further.

  Welcome to the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy. Welcome to the most comprehensive electronic library of classic SFF titles ever assembled.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Gateway Introduction

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Website

  Also by Elizabeth Willey

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  1

  THE MANTICORE HAD RUN, PURSUED BY the silent and deadly dogs, up the ridge through the rhododendrons. Trampled bushes marked its passage. I spurred my horse, Cosmo, and ducked branches as he scrambled up after it. Even I could smell the pungent stink of my quarry, which drowned the homelier scents of pine and soil in an unpleasant overlay of dung and ammonia. Ahead, there was a snarling and a roaring.

  A sandstone outcrop at the top of the slope had forced the manticore along rather than down. I turned and followed it; the outcrop became higher and developed into an overhang. The sounds of the dogs and the beast grew louder. There were boulders scattered around, a narrow foot-track threading between them, and the trees were fewer, straighter, and taller. The overhang was quite deep now, almost like a cave; fire circles on the sandy soil and soot stains on the roof showed where hunting parties had sheltered in the past. There were large splotches of blood in the sand also, punctuating the tail- and footmarks, and the sounds of the fight were immediately ahead.

  Abruptly the ground dropped down steeply, and there before me in a broad open place beneath the overhang, I saw the manticore set on by my dogs. One, apparently dead, was fastened to its near hind leg, jaws locked; several others dead lay about on the ground, crushed or disembowelled by swipes from the beast’s claws. The manticore was the biggest I had ever seen. I lifted my lance. Cosmo pranced and sprang forward at the touch of my spurs.

  We call them manticores here in Argylle, but they are not the same as the manticore known more widely in Pheyarcet and Phesaotois. For one thing, they are more lizardlike; for another, they are less intelligent. The latter trait makes it possible for a single skilled hunter to kill one, rather than the usual coordinated group activity.

  Cosmo stepped lightly and quickly around the beast, just out of its reach, as I whistled to my hunting allies. The dead dog on the hind leg had been trying to hamstring it. I decided that this was a good time to handicap my opponent further and whistled again piercingly. The manticore was annoyed by this and lunged toward me, hindered in its homicidal intentions by the overhang. Cosmo danced back out of range and I continued to urge him back and to one side, luring the beast out into the open. It swatted at dogs with its claws, but the remaining bunch were smart enough to avoid them and rush in for bites at the belly, harrying it after me, but hampering fast pursuit.

  We emerged from the semi-cave area and the level ground dropped away steeply below me. I signalled the dogs to hold the manticore where it was now and whistled again. Before the manticore could snarl and bounce forward over the dogs, a black-and-gold war-hawk plummeted down onto its head and pecked at its left eye.

  The moment for which I’d been waiting came. Screaming and flailing, the manticore reared back. Cosmo knew; he leapt when I kicked him and we raced forward. The hawk, as well-trained as the dogs for this work, disengaged and took to the air as we shot in on the manticore’s left. It snatched at the hawk and then turned, too late, to us; one claw ripped through my cloak and scratched Cosmo’s flank as my lance drove up beneath its chin into the brain.

  I had developed manticore slaying to a fine art of late. They are somewhat more intelligent than a wyvern, but they have their patterns like everything else.

  I let go of the lance and drew my sword as we circled away from the tail. No need, though; it was a good strike, and the animal was flailing about in death agonies. I called back the dogs and they collected in a pack nearby, out of range of the monster’s thrashing. We watched while it continued dying. Meanwhile, I took out a Key, a bell, and a candle stub and performed a Lesser Summoning in the shadow of the overhang. My sister Belphoebe, who dwelt here in the forest Threshwood and is in a way its guiding genius, should be informed at once of my success in the hunt.

  “Phoebe,” I said, “I have made a kill.”

  “Where are you? Is that Beza Ridge?” I saw her in the globe of light from my candle-flame. She squatted by a stream on a broad, flat stone. Her short straight hair, russet-brown and pushed back behind her ears, was damp, as were her brief leather tunic and her lean, muscular legs. Evidently she’d been swimming. A string of fish in various stages of gutting and cleaning were in front of her, and she had taken her arm out of its sling for the moment.

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “Hah, you will want me to come and help you clean up then.”

  “No, I’ll fire the corpse myself. I wanted you to know, though, that I have never seen one so big.”

  “Measure it,” she directed me.

  “Very well.”

  “Gwydion,” Phoebe said, stopping me before I disrupted the spell’s line from me to her, “these things oppress me.”

  “They worry me also,” I said. “We’re seeing more of them these days, and they’re stronger. I don’t know why. I just don’t know.”

  Phoebe nodded. “You said that you thought an Eddy might have ruptured.”

  I folded my arms, relaxed my stance. “I still think that’s the most likely explanation, but it will take much work to test its soundness. We have not had such a rupture
here.”

  “Perhaps we did not notice.”

  “I believe we would notice. Theoretically the natural state of the Spring—unlike the manipulated and unnatural Well of Fire in Landuc—should mean that we never see ruptures, because the Spring’s forces move liberally.”

  “Yet it would account for the monsters intruding. And we have been, relatively recently, under great stress as regards the Spring.”

  Belphoebe knows a little—more than most laymen do—about sorcery, but she’s no adept. I sighed. “I don’t know whether the stress on the Spring was so great that it made an Eddy or that an Eddy so created would rupture rather than disperse gradually.”

  “The monsters are—” she began.

  I interrupted her. “You know that I agree that the circumstantial evidence, the creatures intruding here, is strongly in favor of a nearby Eddy-world exploding very recently, but I don’t have any idea why that would have happened all of a sudden.”

  I was frustrated by the problem. It certainly showed in my voice and expression. Everyone knows Eddies occur in Pheyarcet in the currents of Landuc’s Well because those currents have been dammed and channelled to benefit Landuc; they hold worlds in their swift-swirling grips, worlds which come into being and go out of it unnaturally rapidly. When an Eddy flies apart under its self-induced stress, the vitality of the Well which has been pent in it is released and the world or worlds in the Eddy are destroyed. Some things from those worlds always survive and are cast willy-nilly into the surrounding area. However, we of Argylle do not bind or force our Spring’s flow, and therefore the Spring does not spin such volatile Eddies, though they are common to the Well. Eddies from Argylle’s Spring are uniformly slow and stable.

  “Gwydion,” said Phoebe, and her voice was like our mother’s in its gentleness and tone, “I do not think you are negligent.”

  I blushed. “I don’t either,” I said.

  “I have not felt any Eddy either. Yet I still deem it might happen without our noticing. I recall when an Eddy last ruptured near Landuc, the whole Empire was plagued by those horrid red long-clawed rats; none knew whence they came, for there was no other sign of the Eddy breaking.”

  “Phoebe, we agree on that. I am sorry to blow a stale wind at you. Certainly the characteristics of the creatures we’ve seen—the distortion, the strength—they are like those of the Eddy-worlds.” We had reprised everything either of us had thought for the past half-year. Yet we might, sometime, see a new face in the old review.

  “It is a canker-problem.”

  “When your arm heals—”

  “Yes. I will go out, along the Roads from here, and follow the Spring’s flow to see if there are any Eddy-like distortions. It seems that to go and see is all there is to be done.”

  “Thank you, Phoebe. I would go myself—”

  “You have much on your mind. This is work for me.”

  “Enjoy your fish.”

  She grinned quickly. “Hah, caught in my disobedience by the physician himself.” We nodded cordially to one another and I terminated the spell by snuffing the candle. I uncoiled a piece of rope from around my body and waited for the manticore to finish dying. It took a long time.

  When the carcass had burnt out, foul oily black smoke rising high into the deep-blue evening sky, I started for home. The dog pack trotted around me, businesslike and satisfied and untroubled by the loss of four of their fellows. I chose to take the long way home, going through the forest and then along the Haimance highway; there was no convenient Ley or Road anywhere close, and I wanted to unwind and think en route.

  A good day’s work. Phoebe, her arm broken, could not kill this one herself and had asked me to do so before it wandered from wild Threshwood to the nearby farmlands and really caused trouble. I had been more than happy to oblige. It is good to get out and kill something foul once in a while. It purges me.

  The hawk circled over the trees; I could not see her now because of the darkness and foliage, but I knew she was there over the canopy. Little night noises began as the air cooled; the trees seemed bigger and darker, and their litter muffled our sounds until we reached the highway. It was a good five hours’ slow ride home through the wood and fields. I had plenty of time to consider the manticore, all seven-and-a-half ells of it. Phoebe herself would have had trouble with that one on foot, I suspected. It had killed six of my dogs altogether, and they were all experienced with such creatures. It was bigger and faster than the usual monsters we saw here.

  Usual monsters. That was the real problem: there had been too many of the cursed things wandering around, and Belphoebe had soberly told me when I had set her arm for her that she was now perfectly sure not all of them were left over from the problem we had lately had with Tython, whose ill-nature had drawn such creatures to him en masse. There were new permutations on the old standbys appearing, she said, and the old standbys had acquired a heightened viciousness and boldness. Her arm had been broken by a wyvern which had taken a fancy to sleeping in a farmer’s stone barn in the south. Wyverns are usually shy and retiring creatures, occasionally nesting in abandoned buildings, but preferring caves, and shunning inhabited areas as much as possible—though occasionally a herd of goats or flock of geese will tempt them out of the wastes.

  I resolved to spend the next day or so winnowing through the records and making a study of exactly what unusual things had been happening lately. I might find some pattern that eluded me now, discover some overlooked source besides that of a hypothetical Eddy’s unlikely rupture. And once I knew what had caused this I would be able to rectify it. That was what Mother would have recommended. Collect information, think, and act.

  After I had done my collecting and thinking, though, I must consult my elders before acting—my siblings, uncle if possible, and grandfather. This was more than a courtesy; any action would doubtless require cooperation from them, for one thing, and for another, they might see things I did not.

  The City was peaceful, smelling of cooking and smoke. Golden light glowed from windows, bluish from the streetlamps’ faceted balls, lighting my way from the Haimance gate to the Citadel’s Island. I cleaned up and fed Cosmo myself and settled the dogs in for the night. The hawk soared up to the top of the East Tower. I felt I had accomplished something; in reality, of course, the greater problem was still there, lurking in the forest with the uncouth things like manticores.

  Behind the tall rose-and-lily decorated doors, the Citadel was quiet. Guards saluted me and a few domestic staff nodded politely. I climbed up the winding central stair, intending to go to my study, but took the long way around the residential wing instead of making the sharp left that would put me by my rooms. I passed my older brother and sisters’ rooms, Alexander and Marfisa and Phoebe’s (never used), my mother’s untenanted, locked bedchamber …

  Gaston’s apartment, connected to hers, was closed and silent. He was travelling, or so we hoped. It had been long years since anyone had heard from him. My grandfather Prospero, whose rooms were beside his, was down the Wye, in the seaport Ollol, having gone there this morning to meet Walter and the envoy from Landuc. I was the only family member currently in residence at the Citadel. There were many other people there, there always are, but it feels a bit lonely when I’m on duty, as I think of it, by myself. I unlocked and entered my own rooms.

  Lonely, but not alone; when I was very tired, I often felt as though someone else were in the room with me. I felt it now: a silent companion’s amiable, invisible presence somewhere just behind me or beside me in my blind spot, never directly intruding. Every family has its ghost, or ghosts. My siblings and Prospero had mentioned similar feelings. I had never dared ask Gaston when he was still here.

  My foot hit something flat which had been slipped under my door: a concert advertisement from my brother Walter with a note on its reverse.

  Gwydion, I’m home again. All went well. When I left Landuc about twelve days ago Avril asked me to give you this: personal, not official correspondence, he
said. Come to the concert! You’ll enjoy it. I have new music to show you. Small-ensemble works—just what you like best. Come see me tomorrow or I’ll come see you and pry you out of here with true brotherly devotion. Walter.

  There was an envelope folded inside the announcement, sealed in three places with substantial blobs of red wax and impressed with a familiar ring. I opened the concert advertisement first, standing in the hallway and leaning on the vine-carven doorjamb to use the hall light for reading. Hm. Something called a brandenburg concerto by one Bohk. What might a brandenburg be? I sounded the word out. A horn, perhaps? Walter had wandered into the ever-changing outlands of Pheyarcet in his recent travels before this errand, and the music and instruments he had brought back were getting a varied reception. My own feelings were mixed. Some of it certainly was garbage, but some was very good, at least when adapted to the taste and instruments of Argylle. The stuff from Faphata, played on twelve-tone glass-belled drums, was popular in Haimance now, I’d heard.

  The heavily-sealed note was unaddressed. I broke the seals and opened it.

  Unto Lord Gwydion of Argylle from the Emperor Avril his Uncle, Salutations. Walter’s visit to us has brought to our full realization how long it has been since last we spoke with you. We hope that all goes well and request the favor of speech face to face, that we might but change a few words between us and assure ourselves (and Her Serenity, who agitates at times) of the health and well-being of our kin. By our hand with all affection, Avril.

  I didn’t believe a word of it, except perhaps the part about Her Serenity (the Empress Glencora) agitating to know how we all fared. Walter would surely have passed on to them any recent news when he was there. He had conveyed our cousin Ottaviano here from the Empire of Landuc at the burning heart of distant Pheyarcet. In addition to negotiating a trade agreement with Prospero and the merchants, Otto would certainly be absorbing as much information about Argylle as he could and transmitting it back to the Emperor. Avril wanted something else, and I thought I knew what it might be: something he could not ask of Walter.