The Enchanter Completed

"Where are your demons?" demanded the young monk. He stood unevenly, the firelight gleaming off the cross hung round his neck. "I heard them speaking of forbidden magics."

Forbidden to whom? Gildas never quite understood that not everyone was a Christian. Or cared.

"My guests are gone." Where you will never find them.

"To rob the High King's tomb?"

"Have you been swilling sacramental wine again?" Emrys asked. No need to waste what he was coming to think of as his gift, or curse, or even logic when insults would do.

"Blasphemer!" With the high hot temper of the Celt, Gildas rushed him, torch out to strike and maim.

It was the moment Emrys had been waiting for.

He threw the handful of metal filings he had drawn from the Lion's pouch onto the torch, then hurled himself back as it exploded into violent light.

Gildas shrieked and fell, but not before the torch set his robe ablaze.

Emrys kicked out the fire?perhaps more vigorously than need be. Thoroughness, his teachers had always said, was a virtue.

When the fire was out, and Gildas safely unconscious, Emrys hoisted him over his shoulder and carried him to the nearest guards, dropping hints the monk had wrestled with a demon and been saved through Emrys' wisdom.

After all, if Gildas was going to hate him, he might as well have some grounds for his grudge.

He could just imagine how his guests would smile if only they knew.

If only.

He waited until the guards had left before he sighed and returned to his quiet rooms.

None of the servants had touched the triangles inscribed the night before: how should they dare? Emrys set the pouch down, and carefully arranged the parchments.

He clapped his hands for his body-servant. The man entered so fast that Emrys knew he was under constant scrutiny. He knew that, from now on, he would always be watched, and awe?maybe turning to respect should he deserve it?struck him as better than hatred and suspicion.

"Set out clean clothes for me. Then go and ask whether the High King will receive me."

He washed, then smoothed his hair and dressed as neatly as if Lady Catherine were going to approve him. He was attaching his new pouch to his finest belt when the word came: Uther would indeed grant him audience.

Picking up the parchments that showed him how to satisfy his boast?perhaps for all times, he swung his cloak about himself and went to see the king.

He had a vow to fulfill.

Tom O'Bedlam and the Mystery of Love

Darrell Schweitzer

Love is madness and madness is love, and never the twain shall part.

Winter. London. Fifteen Hundred and Something-Something. In his bed at Whitehall, King Henry VIII dreamed of love, of lovely maidens who became his numerous queens, some of them now minus their heads… which sometimes happened in the entanglements of love, a way of cutting through the Gordian knot of the heartstrings, so to speak… He dreamed of dancing, of songs, of roistering, of maidens and meat pies.

Courtiers, with their heads in their hands, serenaded him with lines he'd stolen from another but of which he was nevertheless inordinately proud, "Alas, my love, you do me wrong…"

He sniffled. He started to sneeze.

Tom O'Bedlam dreamed. Nick the Lunatic dreamed with him, his bosom and boon companion, whom Tom had redeemed long since from the labors of Reason, from the ardors, the cruelty, the slavery of Sanity. This same Nicholas, who had once been gaoler in Bedlam before Tom spoke to him with the true Voice of the place and set him free, which is to say mad; AHEM! This very Nicholas walked with Tom O'Bedlam in the dream they both dreamed together, in the cold and the dark of the night.

They passed a troop of the Watch, pikes and armor gleaming in the pale moonlight; but sober watchers do not affect to see madmen, particularly madmen abroad in dreams; therefore, dreaming, Tom and Nick went on their way without any interference.

Dreaming still, they reached the countryside, drifting down empty lanes, past trees naked of all but their last leaf. And that last leaf rattled mournfully, one leaf per tree, as it was the custom among trees in winter to retain but one.

Tom and Nick jangled their bells, mournfully, by moonlit midnight, as was their custom to reply; but they felt, the both of them, a certain emptiness, a melancholy, and remarked on it without words, for two madmen dreaming the same dream surely do not have to trouble themselves to speak.

They passed through a forest of branchless trees, the naked trunks like enormous, tangled blades of silver grass. A wind rustled through the forest, sighing far away.

The forest gave way to open country, but like none Tom had ever seen. The ground was white in the moonlight, but not covered with snow; more leathery than earthen. It had a distinct bounce to it.

Nick did a handstand, bells jangling. He clapped the sides of his soleless shoes and wiggled his dirty toes, then flung himself high into the air as if from a trampoline… high, high… until great black, winged things began to circle him hungrily, eclipsing the Moon as they passed.

He called out to Tom, who leapt up to catch Nick as he tumbled and caught him by the ankles and hauled him down, out of the clutches of the fiery-eyed, softly buzzing flyers with their gleaming-metal talons; down, down?

They bounced for several miles, soaring over another stand of forest, coming to rest before what seemed a vast mountain with two oval caves in it, side by side. Here yawned the very abyss, the darkness which swallows up even madmen.

Fortunately more of the silvery strands grew thickly about. Tom and Nick clung to them, at the very edge of the abyss, to avoid falling him.

And standing there, gazing into the depths, Tom O'Bedlam had a vision, as if he were dreaming his own dream within the dream and had now awakened from it.

He understood, as only a madman could.

It was this: he and Nick had become as lice. They had travelled for what seemed like hours across an enormous face, through the forest of the beard, escaping the flying peril of the gnats (or perhaps flies) until they found themselves deposited at the very lip of No! No! That wasn't it. Abysses may have lips but nostrils don't!

He and Nick clung desperately to a giant's nose hairs as their presence had unfortunate consequences.

"AH-AH-AH!"

Now the wind roared more profoundly than all the world's hurricanes — profound, yes, though it didn't actually say anything; for the hurricane is the philosopher among storms, Tom always said, or one day would, or so said in his dreams (some confusion on this point), and its profundity is so profound that even the hurricane ca

"AH-AH-AH!!"

— the one certainty being the thunder of its blast, as the eye of the storm passed, or in this case perhaps you might say it was the nose of the storm; and the winds reversed themselves and Tom and Nick lost their grip and went tumbling into an abyss vaster than any that yawns between the grave and the world, between the world and the stars-