Free The Secular Wizard - Wis in Rhyme - 4 by Christopher Stasheff

that one of the young ladies might inflame me to the point of granting favors to her husband, if she has one, or even of proposing marriage, if she has not-such hope will keep my courtiers ancing attendance upon me, vying for my favor and thereby falling even further under my sway." It is one of the reasons why he was resolved never to marry, though he would not let even Rebozo know that. The chancellor shook his head sadly. "A misspent youth, your Majesty! A lad your age should be riding to the hounds and rolling in the hay, not sealing himself away with parchment and ink until the blood in his veins has run dry!"
    "Oh, I find exercise enough, I assure you," Boncorro said, eyeing a young countess fresh from the country and thinking of the newest of his personal maids. "Beyond that, I find delight enough in witnessing the pleasures of my courtiers."
    He nodded to himself as he glanced about the great hall. It was no mere extravagance to maintain a lavish court, but a political necessity. "Yet I must find some other game to occupy their attention when their delight in the pleasures of the body slackens, so that they may vie with one another for some goal other than the bed of the most beautiful, or the attentions of the most dashing, so that they will not turn to intrigue out of sheer boredom."
    "Your grandfather's courtiers were scarcely bored, Majesty," Rebozo grunted, but without much conviction, for he knew it was a lie-and worse, knew that tall-. young king knew it, too. Boncorro held his cup out, and a servant refilled it. He traced the sign of skull and bones over it as he murmured a verse, then lifted the cup to his lips ...
    The dark wine turned bright red-the red of blood.
    King Boncorro dashed the wine to the floor with a curse. The courtiers fell silent, staring at him, wide-eyed.
    "Majesty!" Trusty old Rebozo was by his side, hovering over him, I
    anxious, solicitous. ' Majesty, what was that foul brew?"
    "Poisoned wine, of course!" Boncorro snapped, seething more with contempt than with anger. "Have you not found the assassin who set that gargoyle to fall on me, Rebozo?
    "Yes, Majesty, and he confessed. He died in agony!
    "He confessed under torture, you dolt! ... No, I wrong you." The king throttled back his exasperation at the attentive old man, and his desire to throttle him, too. "But I have told you a hundred times that a confession under torture proves nothing! Now it is clear that the man was guiltless or, at the worst, only one of many-for the true assassin has struck again!"
    "My apologies, Majesty!" Rebozo had turned ashen. "My most ah-ject apologies! I would never have thought-"You should have," Boncorro snapped, "since this is the twelfth attempt in five years!" He reined in his temper again and forced his voice to be more gentle.
    "Though perhaps I wrong youthis one was far more clumsy than its predecessors. Poison in the wine, indeed! The work of a rank amateur, if ever I saw it! Any churl could slip poi-son in the wine-and I want the bottler and his servers all questioned, to discover who did it!
    Questioned, mind you, with no more torture than suffices for each to give you a name, not a confession!" "Majesty," Rebozo protested,
    "that entails scarcely more than a beating-and how can you be sure of an answer gained with so little pain? " "By comparing it to the other answers, of course! Those given by the other servants! I tell you again, Rebozo, that an answer given to stop pain proves only that the subject will say anything he thinks you wish him to! And as often as not, that will be a lie! Though I do not think this would-be murderer will prove to be the same one who has striven to slay me these five years past. Rebozo stared. "How ... how does your Majesty see that?"
    "Because the other attempts required evil magic of a very difficult kind. To make a block of stone fall, when none were near it, and that at the exact moment I was passing beneath it? 'Twas only my own warding spell that made me