Hildegarde’s role, I gathered from snatches of conversation from the far side of the room as I repeated my instructions back, would be much simpler. After the rest of the ceremony was over—so that it was clear that the nuns had accepted Celia for herself, not for any payment—Hildegarde would convey to the abbess the stone, the clod of earth, and the applewood staff that symbolized the property which the duchess had agreed to give the nunnery if her daughter really did insist on joining.
“Come,” said the nun briskly. “It is time to go down to the chapel.”
IV
The chapel was hot and stuffy, a small room with an altar at one end and rows of nuns packing the sides. In their black robes and headdresses, they looked very much alike in spite of variations in size, shape, and age. All had wedding rings on their left hands—brides of Christ, I reminded myself. Their faces wore identical expressions of reverence.
Hildegarde and I took our positions at either side of the door, opposite the altar. I looked for but did not see Celia. The room was heavy with the scents of lavender and incense. The nuns must have received some signal I didn’t catch, for they abruptly began to sing in unison, a sweet hymn of praise.
When the hymn ended, the abbess swept in, three priests scrambling to keep up with her like small boats in the wake of a ship. Even in a nunnery, I thought, they used men for priests. It looked as though Celia’s original plan never had a chance.
The abbess was even taller than the twins, and her piercing blue eyes didn’t look as though they missed much. She nodded rather distantly to Hildegarde and me and went to stand by the altar. There was a stone font next to it, like a baptismal font, that I assumed must hold the sacramental water. Forefinger, I reminded myself, both eyelids and the chin.
Then Joachim entered, formal in his best scarlet vestments that Theodora had embroidered for him. He caught my eye for a second but gave no other sign of greeting as he joined the abbess. Each of them gave the other a slight bow, but she showed no sign of kissing his ring. He might be the chief spiritual authority in two kingdoms, but this was still her nunnery and he was here on her sufferance.
The nuns began to sing again, and then the novices entered. They made a striking contrast with the nuns, for they were dressed in white rather than black and thus sprang into relief against the background of the older sisters. They wore no wedding rings. All carried white wax candles that flickered in the still air as they walked.
Although the novices wore identical, very simple white robes, and all had their heads shaved, the differences between them were much more pronounced than between the adult nuns. Many were girls, who would remain novices until they were sixteen and old enough to choose their own vocation. One didn’t look much older than Antonia; she walked with great solemnity, keeping her eyes on her candle. Another, a graceful girl about the same age as the Princess Margareta, had somehow managed to pin or tie her plain white robe in a way to suggest great elegance, without doing anything blatant enough to draw the abbess’s censure. Her shaved head was carried at any angle that suggested that she personally knew that women without hair were much more alluring than women with hair. She looked at me a moment longer than necessary as she passed, raising an eyebrow in a way I would have had to call coquettish. She at least would not be here once she turned sixteen.
The other novices were older, one or two young women like Celia, and a handful of mature women who were probably widows. These would all be full nuns within the year, unless the abbess found them unsuitable or unless they changed their minds.
The novices, holding their candles, lined up in ranks in front of the black nuns. They began a new song then, one that startled me so much when I heard the words that I nearly spoke out. This had better just be something symbolic out of the Bible.
“Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine. Because of the savour of thy good ointments, therefore do the virgins love thee. The king hath brought me into his chambers: we will be glad and rejoice. His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me.” I almost felt I should rush over to the girl Antonia’s age and cover her ears—but she was singing too.
The door beside me opened, and Celia came in: dressed like a bride and carrying roses.
She walked very slowly, not looking at Hildegarde and me or at anyone else. Her black hair hung loose over the shoulders of a white lace gown and down to her waist in back. It would all be shaved off by nightfall, I thought. White ribbons and white rosebuds formed a headpiece. The singing continued until she reached the middle of the chapel, facing the bishop and abbess, and halted.
Joachim stepped forward. First the bishop’s address, I thought, then the prayer by the abbess’s chief priest, then, right after the Amen, I would say my piece. Two Amens, I told myself. Don’t be hasty. Then the second prayer, then Celia would pronounce her vows, then—
The bishop had just opened his mouth to speak when there were quick footsteps in the passage outside, and the door burst open. The abbess took a step forward, eyes snapping at this interruption. A woman hurried into the chapel but froze when everyone turned to look at her.
She wore a dark blue dress and a white apron—housekeeper, I thought. Before the abbess’s glare she became silent and rigid, even started to walk out backwards. The novices’ candle flames swayed in the slight breeze from the open door.
But after only a few seconds the housekeeper remembered the reason she had come with such urgency and stepped forward again. “Excuse me, Reverend Mother, but it’s a very important message for the bishop from the cathedral.”
Joachim crossed to stand beside her. She spoke quickly and in an undertone, which a quick and highly irreverent spell allowed me to overhear. “I’m so sorry to interrupt, Your Holiness, but a pigeon-message just came in, and it said at the top that you must receive it at once. It’s something about your goddaughter.”
The blood turned to ice in my veins. Antonia!
“Excuse me just for a moment, Reverend Mother,” said Joachim quickly and hurried away. Without excusing myself at all, I was right behind him.
The housekeeper led us up flights of stairs and down echoing, vaulted corridors to a little enclosed courtyard off the kitchens. The pigeon loft was on the far side, and several maids stood there, looking uneasy. One smiled with relief when she saw me. “Oh, are you named Daimbert? A second pigeon just arrived, with a message to you from the royal castle. It says it’s urgent.”
Both messages, Joachim’s and mine, were ultimately from Theodora. She had, it appeared, bullied the cathedral priests into letting her use the telephone in the office there to call Yurt. When Gwennie told her I wasn’t home, she had instead sent a pigeon-message to Joachim, at the same time as Gwennie was writing a message conveying the gist of the phone call to me. “She was nearly hysterical,” Gwennie wrote at the end.
Hildegarde came panting up. “There you are!” she said cheerfully. “When you both left the chapel so abruptly I knew it had to be something pretty important! I’m afraid I don’t have my weapons with me, but it shouldn’t take long to stop back at the castle for them. What’s happening?”
I felt almost hysterical myself. “It’s Antonia,” I managed to gasp. “And all the other children of Caelrhon. Cyrus has piped them out of town and no one can find them.”
My heart was pounding so hard it was almost impossible to think clearly. The flying carpet, I told myself over the roaring in my ears. It could fly a lot faster than I could. Even with a detour back to the castle to get it, I would still reach Caelrhon faster than by my own unaided flying. And if we had to quarter and search all the rivers and forests and fields around the city, it would be good to have the fastest transportation possible.
“Tell Celia I’m sorry, but she’ll have to have a different spiritual sponsor,” I said to the bishop and shot off, not even caring if it was irreverent to fly within the precincts of the nunnery.
This was so horrible I couldn’t let myself belie
ve it. It had to be some mistake. The children had gone for a picnic and someone had started a foolish rumor. They would all be home, laughing to hear how frightened everyone had been, by the time I reached Caelrhon.
The pit of my stomach didn’t buy any of this.
A summoning spell like the one Cyrus had used on the rats, I thought as I flew madly back toward the castle, but a spell with a subtle change to summon children instead. Feeling aggrieved at the bishop for making him give up the prayer sessions where people essentially came and worshipped him, at me for exposing his use of magic, and at the mayor and council for not coming to find him in the seminary with some even better reward than the key to the city, he —or the demon—had decided to take his revenge through the children. His piping would have drawn them all as surely as it had drawn the rats; Antonia, whose flair for magic made her particularly susceptible, wouldn’t have stood a chance.
Now I just had to try to find some clue to show where they had gone. Not taken downstream and dropped off like the rats, either to drown or wander away, I tried to persuade myself. According to Gwennie’s account, fuller than what Theodora had written the bishop, Cyrus had invited a number of his old friends, the children from the artisans’ quarter, for a country stroll. Antonia’s friend Jen had apparently been one of them, and Antonia had gone along. Adults had heard piping in the distance, but only Theodora had realized, when she felt a faint tug herself, what it meant, and by then other children were leaving their chores and their games to race through the city streets and out the gates. By the time the grownups went after them, every child under fourteen was gone.
But was there even more to this? Had Cyrus been especially interested in my daughter? He had seemed to know who I was when we first met, and if he was, as I intermittently suspected, part of Vlad’s planned revenge on me, then seizing Antonia would be doubly sweet, since he was already furious with me. Any of several people could have told him I was Antonia’s father—Theodora’s neighbors, even the Lady Maria, who had been so uncharacteristically closed-mouthed since coming home. Was summoning the rest of the children both generalized revenge and also a chance to conceal his nefarious plans for one particular child?
I flew over the walls of the royal castle and went straight to the Lady Justinia’s chambers. “I need your flying carpet, my lady,” I said with minimal effort toward politeness. “And I need it now.”
Her automaton leaned threateningly toward me. “This is passing abrupt, O Wizard,” Justinia said coolly. “The carpet is mine, given me by the mage Kaz-alrhun for my own transportation to safety, not for the convenience of western wizards and their daughters.”
I didn’t have time to explain properly or to respond to the sarcastic note in her voice. “Antonia’s been kidnapped by an evil wizard, and I have to go after her.”
Justinia immediately looked much more sympathetic. “She is always getting herself into one difficulty or another, of a certainty! I give thee leave, then, to use my carpet to help in the search for her, on this condition: that I myself accompany thee.”
I didn’t have time to argue. All I said was, “In that case, please leave your automaton behind—last time it tried to kill me.” It already seemed as though hours rather than minutes must have passed since the pigeon-messages arrived at the nunnery. We dragged the carpet, with the automaton’s help, out into the courtyard. Gwennie and Paul, hearing the commotion, came running.
The king must have gotten the details from Gwennie. “I will help you, of course,” he said, very sober and very concerned. “Move over. Are there handles or anything on this thing?”
“You just sit on it and hope it doesn’t tip,” said Gwennie from experience.
I didn’t want them along but I really didn’t have time to argue. The automaton glided nervously around the courtyard, and Justinia’s elephant trumpeted from the stables, angry at being left behind. The flying carpet shot off toward Caelrhon carrying, besides the foreign princess to whom it actually belonged, the king, the constable, and the wizard of Yurt.
V
“When I couldn’t reach you,” said Theodora, fighting to keep her voice steady, “I telephoned Elerius. He seemed to know who I was without my having to tell him. I know you don’t trust him, Daimbert, but you’ve always said he’s the best wizard of your generation, and—” Her mouth quivered, making it impossible for her to go on.
I put an arm tight around her. “We’ll find her. Everything will be just fine.” I wished I believed it myself.
“And the mayor’s just phoned the royal wizard of Caelrhon,” she continued, trying to compose herself. “It turns out that the Princess Margareta is among the missing.”
“Poor kid,” said Paul, showing unexpected sympathy for the girl he mostly referred to in the context of not wanting to marry her. “She must be terrified. And she’s started developing a woman’s form—what will an evil magic-worker want with her?”
“Come on. We’ll find them,” I said with a desperate effort to sound assured. “Cyrus won’t be able to hide from three wizards.”
The carpet shot off into the air again and out over the city walls. I had probed for and not found any lingering trace of Cyrus’s magic by which we might have followed him. He’d covered his tracks, which meant we had to assume the children could be anywhere. There might once have been footprints, but any physical traces of their passage had been obscured by the feet of desperate parents. The fields near the city were thick with the citizens of Caelrhon, shouting their children’s’ names, thrashing their way through clumps of bushes, dragging every body of water. A few looked up and pointed as we sailed past.
It was a good thing, I thought, that the Romneys had been gone for two weeks. Otherwise the people who had already been suspected, at least by some, of setting fire to the high street and of bringing the rats to town would probably find themselves killed by hysterical parents.
“I hope the Thieves’ Guild in Xantium does not learn of this stratagem,” commented Justinia. “They could win an exceeding number of concessions from my grandfather the governor in return for the city’s children.”
“It’s all my fault, Daimbert,” said Theodora, breaking down completely. “I told her she could spend the day with Jen. I should never have let her out of my sight. Will you ever forgive me?”
“It’s not your fault,” I murmured, holding her close. “There’s nothing you could have done. The piping would have drawn her just as surely as it drew all the other children.”
We were now some two miles from the city, beyond where the parents were beating the underbrush. They probably assumed their children could not have gone far. I, on the other hand, realizing the force of a summoning spell, knew that they would have kept running, following the piper, even with their legs worn down to bloody stumps. “We’ll circle the city by air, and if we don’t see them on the first circuit we’ll go out a few more miles and try again.” My attempt to sound calm and rational was a failure in my own ears. “That many children can’t have disappeared without a trace.”
The flying carpet turned at Justinia’s command and briskly traced a wide circle around Caelrhon. All of us lay flat, our heads over the edge, desperately searching the land below with our eyes. Gwennie and Justinia, on either side of the king, kept giving each other surreptitious glances over his head, but I had no time for them.
I had never realized before how much forest covered the hilltops and river valleys of the kingdom of Caelrhon, dense stands of trees that could have hidden hordes of children and were impervious to my magic unless I probed each clump individually. In spite of a far-seeing spell my vision kept blurring—wind, I told myself.
We saw nothing on the first circuit and started on a second, larger circuit. How much time, I tried to calculate, since Cyrus’s piping had summoned the children? The sun was well down the western sky. They could be miles from home by now, or they could be concealed in some cave only a short distance from town. On this circuit we spotted the towers of the royal ca
stle of Caelrhon—Evrard, I thought, was probably now somewhere looking for us. Well, let him and Elerius start their own hunt. I had no time to try to make contact with them. Maybe they’d have better luck than we were.
Gwennie nudged me. “Wizard,” she said in a whisper, “don’t you think it just a little suspicious that someone you say knows eastern magic should show up in Caelrhon at the same time as an eastern princess shows up in Yurt? Especially since she seemed to know Antonia was your daughter before anyone else did?”
“I don’t find it suspicious at all,” I whispered back. Justinia had done nothing I could see to make me suspect her of evil. She was just a woman in hiding from her enemies—who, assuming the undead warriors and the wolf had been aimed at me rather than her, had so far hidden successfully.
“Wizard,” said Paul briskly as the flying carpet approached our starting point again, “I know this is the most systematic way to search the whole area, but we’ll only be able to spot them if they’re out in the open. And it’s going to be dark before very long. It’s time to make a guess and go that way.”
“What do you suggest?” I asked bleakly.
“The river road heading upstream from the city. It’s a good road, so even children could travel fast on it, and it’s tree-shaded most of the way. Because it’s not a major trade route, Cyrus might hope he wouldn’t meet anyone to bring the tale to Caelrhon. If we fly low we may be able to pick up something.”
It was worth a try. We swooped down over the treetops and swung back near the city, then started following the road from just beyond where the parents were dragging the river. Justinia ordered the carpet to fly more slowly, and I probed magically as we flew, trying without success to pick up some indication that the children had come this way.
The direction we were following took us slowly and obliquely toward Yurt. After several miles the road emerged from the trees and ran a short distance in the open, among meadows where cows grazed unconcernedly. Justinia set the carpet down, and Paul and I leaped off.
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