The Enchanter Completed

"Kind of young to have the ward heelers on your tail, aren't you, son?"

"What demons are those?"

"The very worst," said Sprague. "Petty demons."

"Now, Spraguie… stop playing word games. Let's help the boy move mountains, and then we can go home." She smiled at the tall man and at Emrys himself, and he thought it might not be the worst thing in the world?in all the worlds these strangers talked of?if they had to stay. If he could stay with them.

One thing about being even a bastard prince: Emrys could bring in guests, and they would be well treated. After they were warmed at his hearth, offered food, water, and linen, he realized his servants had decided they should be treated royally.

His guests looked magnificent. Lady Catherine's white linen, now topped by a great cloak, swept the ground, and she wore bracelets and earrings of amber the color of her hair. Sprague fastened a huge pena

Emrys pulled up heavy chairs for his guests at the trestle table that groaned with food: chickens, venison, a roast of boar, bread that tempted even Emrys' fledgling appetite, and grapes.

"I haven't been this dressed up since Bob and Pam Adams' wedding!" Sprague a

Catherine tapped her foot against the battered mosaic of the floor. In the soft shoe she now wore, it wasn't as impressive as her foot stamps earlier in the day, but she made her point.

"Now," said Sprague, "let's sit down and eat. Then, we'll make some plans."

"I have to confess," Emrys said. "I'm not really a prophet."

"That's as may be. One thing's certain: You're a scared boy, and you've got reason to be scared. Let's look at the situation. You may not be a magician, but you're shrewd. And any art that is sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic."

Never mind the bards. Martial himself could not have composed a better aphorism, Emrys was sure. He waved away the servants, and cut his guests' meat with his own hands.

The lady leaned over the table. "From what I gather?that story in our own world, as we told you, plus the scrolls and codices I see you've collected, you're a good mathematician. What you've got here is partly an engineering problem. For that, Sprague can help you, none better. And the rest of it is logistics: getting your people where you need them and making sure they have what they need to do what they have to do."

"What we haven't got is time!" Emrys protested.

"We have all the time in the worlds," said Sprague. "But you're grieving, you're way out on a limb, and naturally, at your age, you're in a hurry. You won't believe me now, no one your age ever does, but you'd be wise to plan now so you won't have to play catch-up later. And listen to my wife: she studied economics at Columbia along with languages."

"Emrys, you may as well accept that moving these stones is going to take time. The more people, the less time. That's only logical. But, if you have too many people, you'll run into a whole other set of logistical problems: they'll get in each other's way, and if you've pick the wrong people, from warring clans or people who aren't honest, they'll probably start a war."

A chill ran down Emrys' spine. He had not lived among ill-wishers, either in his grandfather's house, Vortigern's household, or now without being able to sense?no magic about it, just sharp eyes and ears?when he was being spied on. "They're watching," he mouthed at his guests.

Sprague raised an eyebrow, then dropped a hand to the pouch at his finely tooled belt. He rose and went to the fire, began to chant, and extended his hands. The fire erupted with a roar loud enough to drive the eavesdroppers away.

"Not the catalogue of ships again," his wife complained. "We may get a spy who's read Homer, and then what will you do? To say nothing of what happens when you run out of filings. No, don't tell me you've brought along iron or magnesium filings, too."

"The thing about clich?s, my dear," said the man, "is that they work."

Emrys went to the door, where one guard, more valiant than the rest, lingered by the wall.

"Young Gildas almost pissed himself when that fire went off," the guard said, gri

"It is forbidden to interfere when I and my guests speak together. They are great teachers."

Emrys could practically hear the guard's jaw clench as he snapped to attention and closed the door.

"Nice going, son," said Catherine. "But I wouldn't get any ambitions about being a boy actor, if I were you, though. They're a dime a dozen in Hollywood."

"What shrine is the Holly Wood?" asked Emrys. He should have known the lady was a priestess. Since the monks had swarmed all over Britain, he had known few Druids who dared to speak this openly.

"Never mind," she said, a little sharply. "Let's talk about logistics."

As Sprague watched with an expression of pleased?no, he wasn't surprised?he expected her to take charge, Emrys blinked. He supposed he should have been able to puzzle out «logistics» word from the Greek he'd learned.

"Robert?he's a… a wise man of our acquaintance, Emrys?says that dilettantes talk strategy, amateurs talk tactics, and real professionals talk logistics. Let's evaluate the situation."

"How could I have been so stupid as to say I'd adorn Aurelius' grave with the Giants' Dance?" Emrys lamented again. "The stones are enormous, and there's no one alive strong enough to move them."

"Man makes engines," said Sprague. "Pity you couldn't think of stones closer to home."

"It had to be these stones. It couldn't be stones from Little Britain; besides, they're allies. These stones belong to Gillomanus, a king in Ireland. They're big enough and important enough to be a proper monument for my… my father. Besides, if you pour water over them and bathe in it, they'll heal you. Or the water can be mixed with herbs and used to cure wounds. There isn't a single stone in the whole Giants' Dance that doesn't have some medicinal property." He paused to draw a breath.

"And besides," he said, "I promised. I've been doing some calculating…" He reached for wax tablets and stylus, rough parchment and pen, and pulled them forward, the wax half-smoothed from the last time he'd used it, the parchment already smudged and scraped. "Uther says he's damned if he's going to give me the fifteen thousand men he says it'll take to do the job right."

"The job being what? War with Gillomanus' Ireland or bringing home the memorial stones?"

"Probably both," Emrys said. "Gillomanus will never surrender the stones, I know that. We'll have to take them by force."

"You're a noncombatant," said Lady Catherine. "After they have their war, your work starts. Now, I don't need to be an engineer like Sprague here to know that brute strength won't work on those stones. You're going to need cranes and levers and ropes. Probably sledges or logs to get the stones to the ships once you take them down. But you men can talk," she said, rising and stretching, lithe as a cat. "I'm going to bed."

The Lion of Mithras who called himself Sprague paced in front of the dying fire, discoursing of siege engines and the Bible. At least, that's what the talk of the megalithic yards, fathoms, and cubits as opposed to what he called the "Stonehenge cubit" sounded like. "As my… my magister for these arts, Aubrey Burl, a learned man who went up and down the Isles seeking out these stones, taught… " Lord Sprague went on. "Oh never mind! It's in Pythagoras. I'm assuming you've studied geometry. The square of the hypotenuse…"