Part V
"Did you have to beat him up before carting him up here?"
"He was already beaten up when we fetched him."
Sevris slowly swam awake but kept his eyes closed as he tried to orient himself. The two voices were most assuredly not that of the duke or the witch-hag. The first speaker had been a woman with a low, timorous voice. He could tell that she was annoyed, but the tone somehow soothed his badly bruised nerves. The second voice was gruff and not quite human and sounded slightly exasperated. He opened his eyes and looked up at a warmly lit ceiling. He moved his head a fraction. He was in a bed with linen sheets faintly smelling of roses.
He moved his head a little more and saw a woman in a white nightgown standing barefoot in front of three wrinkle-faced dogs, one larger than the next and all of them with impossibly large green eyes. The woman had left her long dark hair loose, the ends slightly curling. Her back was to him, but by the tone of her voice, she was not done berating the dogs. I must be dreaming, he thought. I can't be awake if I'm in an inn room with a woman and three dogs—one of them probably as large as a horse.
"Well, what's done is done," the woman concluded. "Meeny, Miney, go get some salve and hot water."
"What about me?" said Moe.
"You're to stay here and make sure he doesn't try anything." The woman turned. "Oh, you're finally awake."
Sevris thought the hag had probably addled his brains when she had thrown him against the wall. The woman's face was angled, like that of a wicked blade. Her gray eyes clear and assessing and her mouth, lush. He stared at her mouth thinking that his libido had finally caught up with him after his month long imprisonment. Or perhaps he really had finally gone mad. Her words belatedly penetrated his foggy thoughts.
"How are you feeling?"
He swallowed and croaked, "Horrible."
She helped him sit up and handed him a glass of water. His head still pounded and he winced when he took a sip. "You are the wizard-king of Tarsica, aren't you, your majesty?" she said doubtfully.
"I am," he replied, thinking there was no harm in talking to a dream. "You can call me Sevris, under the circumstances."
Her eyes narrowed. "I am Velessa. Or Vel, if you prefer. You don't look like a wizard-king. Have you been in a fight?"
"A terribly one-sided one, I'm afraid. The Duke of Corona and his witch-hag aunt decided to convince me again to give them the key to the scepter room. They weren't particularly happy when I said no."
"The Duke of Corona?" she said. "The regent on the throne? Why was he talking to you? I thought you were away somewhere…"
"I'm a prisoner in my own home and I can't do anything about it since the hag put this magic collar on me," he shrugged. "Although I wonder how it is that I've ended up in your bed. This is a pretty vivid dream."
"A dream, huh?" she said, suddenly amused.
"I can smell and feel things. You even have a faint accent. Where exactly are you from?"
"Catonia."
"That explains it." Despite his throbbing headache, he leaned forward and kissed her. Her mouth was as soft as he had imagined it. She made a small, startled sound at the back of her throat and he pulled away, wishing his dream had been more willing.
"What was that for?" She glared at him.
He found himself grinning. "It's been a while since I've had such a pleasant dream. Playing hard to get, aren't you?"
She raised an eyebrow although she made no move to get away from him. "This is no dream, wizard-king." Before she could say anything else, the other two dogs appeared with a container of salve and a bowl of hot water. She took these and began to tend to the wounds on his face in a dispassionate manner, heedless of his protests.
"How can I be sure that this isn't some dream cooked up by my fevered brain?" he demanded when she finished applying the salve.
"You can't be sure, can you?" she replied coolly. "Tell me why you're a prisoner in your own home."
He told her. If she was just a dream, it would be harmless. If she wasn't—then she must be an incredibly powerful sorceress to get him out of his prison cell. She appeared pensive after his explanation. "If you were to suddenly disappear from your prison cell, what would they do?"
"Ordon would send out men to search for me, naturally," he said. "Without me, he can't get to the scepter."
"What's so important about the scepter?"
He frowned. "Does its importance matter to the problem at hand?"
"If it's so important—I'd imagine it's an important piece for the Duke of Corona to take control of the country." She rubbed her eyes and got up to pace. The dog-spirits followed her with their eyes. "I think we would have to return you to your cell for the time being and think about this. I have heard rumors that the duke may be planning to attack Catonia and if you could somehow free yourself…" She stopped and looked pointedly at the golden collar at his neck. "Is there any way to get that off you?"
"Aside from the witch-hag's key? I'm afraid not. It's magic."
"Meeny," Vel addressed the smallest dog-spirit. "Do you think it is possible for you to retrieve the collar's key?"
The dog-spirit pounced into the bed and sniffed at the collar. Sevris stoically stayed still as the mutt made a sort of snuffling sound and drooled over his shirt. "No mistress. The collar can only be unlocked by dark magic. I cannot touch such a key. We could try fetching the witch-hag, if you wish."
"No," Sevris and Vel said at once. Vel shook her head. "If you can't get the key, we'll have to find another way to obtain it. Yes, I think it is a better idea that we return you to your prison while we think about how to approach this."
"You sound like a war general experienced in strategic maneuvers," he said.
Vel looked thoughtful at his remark. "I could have advanced to the rank of general if the war lasted a couple of more years," she said.
"You, a general?" Sevris had a hard time envisioning the pretty woman in a nightgown barking orders to hardened troops.
"I was a captain for the Catonian army when the war ended. Unfortunately, I couldn't get any job better than messenger when the rebuilding began. I was thinking about settling down to a comfortable retirement in Garren and possibly marrying one of those fat merchants. It would be a comfortable life. Of course now, with my friends," she waved her hand to the three dog-spirits, "I will probably revise my plans."
"Oh?" He couldn't picture her marrying a fat merchant either, but with their trade wealth, fat merchants usually had their pick of women whether the women wanted to or not.
"Like nixing the marriage with the fat merchant," she explained. "Would you want to bed a fat merchant if you didn't absolutely have to?"
He blanched. "Well, since you put it that way…"
She whispered something into Meeny's ear and the dog-spirit nodded, bounding away. In another moment, he was back with a cup of what looked like tea. Sevris looked suspiciously at it.
"This will help your headache go away," she explained.
"How will I know if it will put me to sleep?" he replied. "And how will I know that this is real and not just some strange dream?"
She took out a gold coin from a sack sitting by her bed and slipped it in his pocket. "If you find it the next morning, it would be proof enough."
Sevris awoke again and discovered that he was lying back on the straw cot in his prison cell. What an odd dream, he thought to himself. Perhaps it was a sign that he was going mad? He rubbed his jaw and felt smooth skin where the scratches from the duke's slap should have been. Startled, he immediately began checking the pockets in his clothes and retrieved a gold coin which glimmered faintly as the sunlight streamed from the tiny window in his cell. He clenched the coin in a fist. He saw Velessa's face in his mind and dared to hope.