Rod just sat, spellbound, then, slowly, he nodded. “So that’s the key to holding my temper? Just remembering that I’m myself?”

“And that Lord Kern is not Rod Gallowglass. Just so.” Simon closed his eyes and nodded. “Yet ‘tis not so easily done, Lord Warlock. To be mindful of thyself, thou must needs accept thyself—and to do that, one must be content with his self. Thou must needs come to believe that Rod Gallowglass is a good thing to be.”

“Well, I think I can do that,” Rod said slowly, “Especially since I’ve always felt Rod Gallowglass is an even better thing to be, when he’s with his wife Gwen.”

“Thy wife?” Simon frowned. “That hath a ring of great wrongness to it. Nay, Lord Warlock—an thou dost rely on another person for thy sense of worth, thou dost not truly believe that thou hast any. Thou shouldst enjoy her company because she is herself, and is pleasing to thee, is agreeable company—not because she is a part of thee, nor because the two of thee together make thy self a worthwhile thing to be.”

Rod frowned. “I suppose that makes sense, in its way. If I depend on Gwen for my own sense of worth, then, whenever she finds me less than perfect, or finds anything at all wrong with me, I’ll believe I’m not worth anything.”

Simon nodded, his eyes glittering, encouraging.

“And that would feel to me, as though she were trying to destroy me, make me less than I am—which’ll make me angry, because I’ll feel that I need to fight back, for my own survival.”

Simon still nodded. “ ‘Tis even as it happed to me—’til I realized why, with my wife and myself, each quarrel was worse than the last—for, of course, she felt even as I did—that she must needs attack me, to survive.” He shook his head, like a cautioning schoolteacher. “Tis wrong of thee, to make her the custodian of thy value. That is thine own burden, and thou must needs accept it.”

Rod nodded. “Learn to like being inside my own skin, eh?”

“Aye.” Simon smiled, amused. “And do not seek to so burden thine horse, either.”

“Yeah—Fess.” That jolted Rod back to the issue. “He was the symbol that pulled me back to my own identity. Does that mean I’m closer to my horse, than to my wife?”

“I think not.” Simon throttled a chuckle. “For when all’s said and done, a horse is a thing, not a person. It may have a temperament all its own, and some quirks and snags of mood, just as a person hath; and each horse may be as unique and separate as each human is from another—yet when all’s said and done, it hath not an immortal soul, and cannot therefore challenge thee in any way that will truly make thee feel any less. It cannot lessen thy sense of self, any more than a shoe or a shovel can.”

Rod nodded slowly. That made sense—more than Simon knew; for Fess wasn’t a living horse, but a computer in a body full of servo-mechanisms. Sure, the computer projected a personality by its vocodered voice—but that personality was only an illusion, a carefully-crafted artifact, albeit an intangible one. Fess was, really, only a metal machine, and his identity was as much an illusion as his ability to think. “My horse is like a sword, in a way,” he said thoughtfully.

Simon laughed softly. “In truth, he doth seem to be somewhat more than a shoe or a shovel.”

“No, I was thinking of mystique. For a knight, his sword was the symbol of his courage, his prowess—and his honor. Each sword was a separate, unique, individual thing, to the medieval mind, and its owner invested it with a full-fledged persona. He even gave it a name. Sometimes, in the legends, it even had a will of its own. You couldn’t think of a famous sword, without thinking of the knight who owned it. Excalibur evoked the image of King Arthur, Durandal evoked pictures of Roland, Gram brought to mind Siegried slaying Fafnir. The sword was the symbol of the knight who bore it.”

“As thine horse is the symbol of thee?”

Rod frowned. “That doesn’t quite feel right, somehow—but it’s close. Metaphorically, I suppose Fess is my sword.”

“Then use him.” Simon’s eyes glowed. “Draw thy blade, and go to slay the monster who enslaves us.”

Rod sat still a moment, feeling within him for fear—and, yes, it was there; but so was the courage to answer it. But courage wouldn’t do much good, really; in this case, it’d just let him go ahead into a situation that was too dangerous for him to survive. How about confidence, though? Could he summon Lord Kern, let himself fill with anger, and not be mastered by it? He thought of Fess, and all the qualities in himself that Fess represented, and felt calm certainty rising in response to the mental image. He nodded. “I’m up to it. But if I start to fall in, pull me out, will you?”

“Gladly,” Simon answered, with a full, warm smile.

“Then hold on.” Rod stood, grasped Simon’s shoulder, and thought of Alfar, of his arrogance, his insolence, and the threat he represented to Rod and his children. Hot anger surged in answer, anger building toward rage. Rod felt Lord Kern’s familiar wrath—but he was aware of it, now, as something that was a part of him, truly, not implanted from someone else—and, being of himself, it was as much under his control as his fingers, or his tongue. He opened his mind, concentrating on the world of thought. The world of sight dimmed, and his blood began to pound in his ears. Only the thoughts were real—the darting, scheming thoughts of the warlocks and witches; the dulled, mechanical plodding thoughts of the soldiers and servants—and the ceaseless background drone that had to be the projective telepath, who had hypnotized a whole duchy. What else could it be, that emitted such a constant paean of praise, such a continual pushing of thought against mind?

Whatever it was, Rod was suddenly certain that it was the key to all the pride and ambition that was Alfar’s conquest. He scanned the castle till he found the direction in which it was strongest, then willed himself to it.

 

15

It was a small room, a round room, a room of gray stone blocks with three tall, skinny windows. But those windows were sealed with some clear substance, and the air of the chamber was unnaturally cool—climate-controlled. Every alarm bell in Rod’s head screamed. He glanced at Simon. The older warlock tottered, dazed. Rod held him up, growling, “Steady. That’s what happens when a warlock disappears.”

“I had… ne’er had the opportunity aforetime,” Simon gasped. He looked around him, whites showing all around his eyes. Finally, he turned back to Rod, awe-struck. “Eh, but thou’rt truly the Lord Warlock, thou.”

“The same,” Rod confirmed, “but nonetheless your pupil in fathering and husbandry.”

“As I am to thee, in wizardry.” Simon pointed a trembling finger at the metal box in the center of the room. It sat on a slender pedestal at chest height, and had a gray, irridescent cylinder atop one end. The other sprouted a cable that dropped down to the floor, ran over to the wall and up it, to a window, where it disappeared—probably to a transmitting antenna, Rod decided. “What,” Simon asked, in a voice that shook, “is that spawn of alchemy?”

“Probably,” Rod agreed. “It’s a machine of some sort, anyway.” He could feel the insistent pounding of the message, extolling Alfar’s virtues over and over again. It was much stronger than it had been when he was in the dungeon. It belabored him, convincing, persuading by sheer repetition. Alfar was master, Alfar was great, Alfar was rightful lord of all that was human… “I think I know what it is, Simon—or, at least, what it does. If I’m right, the last time I saw one of these, it was alive.”

“How?” Simon stared, horrified. “A living thing cannot be a machine.”

“No more than a machine can be a living thing. But this one sure seems to be. If you didn’t know better, wouldn’t you swear that thing’s thinking at us?”