Just as longtime teachers, physicians, and people in other specialized occupations can be recognized toward the end of their career as practitioners of their specialty, Malvinne—to Jim's eyes—could never be mistaken for anything but a master magician.
This had nothing to do with his general appearance or the clothes he wore. He looked about fifty years younger than Carolinus, whom Jim had understood to be Malvinne's contemporary. His hair was auburn without the slightest tinge of gray in it. Auburn, also, was the neat mustache on his upper lip. He was a small, brown-eyed, sparrowlike man, beautifully dressed, not in any kind of robes that would suggest the magician, but rather in the richest sort of garments—a red velvet cote-hardie above soft blue hose that a courtier might sigh for at the court of a monarch. A narrow sword, too light to be a broadsword, and too long to be a dress sword, hung by his side—almost as if he had anticipated the rapier, even down to its basket hilt.
To the untutored or casual eye, he might have seemed anything but a magician. But Jim, from his long acquaintance with Carolinus, responded to elements that Malvinne clearly shared with Jim's friend of the cottage at the Tinkling Water.
There was the same quick, bright gaze, the same indefinable air of authority and power, an air that went beyond the richness of his clothing. Added to this was an air of competence—almost arrogance—that he radiated. Even here, in his surprise at this unexpected appearance, everything about him seemed to indicate that he expected to dominate this situation, as he would any other.
And dominate he did, with a single word.
"Still!" he snapped.
Instantly, Jim and the others stopped and stood without moving. Jim struggled against whatever was holding him, but he was paralyzed. Malvinne's gaze, dismissing the others, fastened on him.
"By Bleys, the Master of Merlin!" he said, "an apprentice, a cubling, a bungling semi-amateur throwing his magic around in my château! Where would you get the impertinence—"
He broke off, his eyes narrowing.
"Are you that cubling of Skinny's—of Carolinus's? Only something like that could give you the overwhelming gall to be here at all! Is he behind this? Answer me! I give you back use of your vocal cords in order to answer."
"Carolinus has nothing to do with this," said Jim, suddenly repossessed of a voice that would work. "We're on a mission to rescue our Prince from you, that's all; and—Aragh! Help!"
Almost in the same second, Malvinne was on his back on the carpeting, Aragh's front paws pinning his shoulders down, Aragh's jaws parted in front of his face, and the hot breath of the wolf fanning the little, auburn mustache.
"I was waiting to see how this pretty play came out, James," snarled Aragh. "Couldn't you have let it go on a little longer?"
"You young devil!" choked Malvinne, helpless on the rug. "Where did you learn that the wolf wouldn't be affected?"
"A very large gentleman, quite some distance beneath us, said something that gave me that idea," answered Jim. "Now, how about freeing us?"
"I'll see you in the fires of Beelzebub first!" snarled Malvinne.
"Release," Aragh almost whispered at the fallen man, "or die."
Jim felt the constraint fall from him. He was free to move, and he saw out of the comers of his eyes that his companions were free also.
"What's this about someone beneath us?" snapped Malvinne. Flat on his back on the carpeting, he still retained the attitude he had had on his feet. "Only Carolinus could have told you my commands might not work on an—an animal."
"I didn't learn it from Carolinus," said Jim. "In fact, Carolinus simply turned me loose to learn by myself."
All the time he was talking, his mind had been racing. Malvinne, as long as he was anything short of dead, was essentially a stick of dynamite that could go off the minute Aragh released him. There had to be a way of immobilizing him. But the ordinary ways would not work. It stood to reason that simply tying him up would do no good. Jim had a fair idea that the other could release himself from any kind of bonds in a second.
The same uselessness would apply to locking Malvinne in the cupboard, or any such thing as that. Jim was willing to bet, in fact, that Malvinne could free himself from a situation in which his body had been cast in lead and dropped in the deepest part of the sea.
Abruptly, another touch of memory came to his rescue. It had been the King of the Dead's mention of Kingdoms between peoples that had made him gamble on the fact that perhaps the animal kingdom had some immunity to what a human magician could do. Humans—and this was the reason Jim had been granted arms that showed red upon them to warn anyone of his abilities—had to take their chances against those of their own kind who chose to go in for magical studies.
The most that could be done for ordinary men and women was to give them warning that the one facing them had such powers. But animals were in a different situation. They would have no means of defending themselves simply because they were warned that the human who had trapped or cornered them was able to handle magic. Therefore they must be largely untouchable by it. So, at least, Jim had reasoned. On it he had gambled; and the gamble had paid off.
Just at that moment, the other memory that had been tickling at his mind came brightly back to life. It was of Melusine throwing herself into his arms, exclaiming about how lonely she was—and passing out. Hastily he wrote on the inside of his forehead:
WATER/MALVINNE'S STOMACH→COGNAC
He had gambled again. This time the gamble was that Malvinne could not directly read the spells another magician made inside his head; although he might be aware of their making. It developed that he had gambled correctly.
On the rugs, Malvinne laughed.
"Do you think to place a charm upon me, cubling?" said Malvinne. "Whatever it is, let me assure you it was wasted. The minute I become aware of the nature of it, it will be as air, rendered null and void."
"It may be," answered Jim. "We'll wait and see. Meanwhile, maybe you'd be good enough to tell us the most direct and secret route out of your castle."
Malvinne laughed again, wildly.
"Why the child is insane," he said, "to think I would tell him what he wants!"
"Perhaps you'd rather die, after all," said Aragh.
"No, no," said Malvinne sneeringly, "that won't work twice. Kill me because I don't give you an answer to that question and you, youngster, will be in very deep trouble indeed. Trouble from which even your teacher won't be able to rescue you. The most you can gain from this wolf who is crushing my shoulderbones to powder with his weight, is to keep me from taking further action against you. The wolf has the right of defense, and you're connected with the wolf; at least for the moment. So for now, at least, you're safe from me. But that'll change."
"You really think so?" said Jim interestedly. "Perhaps you'll tell me how."
"I?" Malvinne laughed again. "Carolinus is the one charged with your education, not I. Figure it out for yourself if you can."
He laughed yet again from where he lay.
"Actually," he said—and Jim's ear heard that the word came out a trifle blurred, as "achuallsy." Malvinne was obviously a teetotaler, and the enchanted water already in his stomach was apparently beginning to work. The only question was whether Malvinne had drunk enough. But the size of the carafe and the lowness of the water now in it made it probable that he had most of the original liter's-worth of water in him, now in the form of cognac.
The thing was to keep him talking.
"Maybe you'll explain why you're so confident," said Jim.
"How could I be anything else?" said Malvinne. "Your wolf can't stand over me forever, and once his touch is removed from me, I can so ward myself with materials he can't get through that I'll be able to do what I wish. And believe me, I will do what I wish then."
Jim felt that he had to keep the man talking. He was afraid Malvinne would become aware of the fact that the water in his stomach had been turned to an alcoholic liquor. So far he did not seem to have noticed it; and
also, possibly because he ordinarily was a drinker of water only, he had not identified the feelings of incipient drunkenness that must be even now beginning to overcome him—judging by that blurred word of a moment ago.
"What would you do?" said Jim, trying to sound uncertain.
Malvinne laughed raucously. He was, in fact, doing a lot of laughing, which in itself seemed another indication that the alcohol was having its effect on him.
"Didn't Carolinus teach you the laws—I mean all the laws—I mean all lahws, of maggishk?"
His speech was really beginning to give him away; but he still seemed entirely too full of energy and purpose to be trusted with Aragh's paws off his shoulder.
"How y'like to be speci-speciminnines, pinned to a board?" said Malvinne, somewhat slowly and unclearly. "How'd you like that? Onna board, like bu'rfly specimennines. Eh?"
His attention and his eyes wandered for a moment; then his gaze came back to Jim's face. "But I asked you question. I asked if you knew the Laws. You don' know Laws, do you?"
"Actually,'' said Jim, "as I say, Carolinus hasn't really been teaching me; he's been letting me learn by myself; and—"
"And so you donno," said Malvinne triumphantly. "Well lemme tell you one'f them. There's a Law says when there's a group got a magician 'mong them, like you, they're fur-fair game for 'ny other magician. And your rating with the Counting Office's nothing't'do with it!"
"Well, well," said Jim, trying to sound unconcerned. Actually, inside, he was in sudden turmoil. It struck him that Carolinus might have told him at least about this Law. "That does make it rather uncomfortable, doesn't it?"
"That's right," slurred Malvinne, "uncomfortab-tab-…"
His eyes closed; and for a moment Jim's optimism began to come back. Then the eyes opened again.
"So don' think… don' think… don' think…"
Malvinne's voice trailed off. His eyes closed again. They waited, all of them, tensely, but the eyes did not open again.
"I hear him breathing like a man asleep," said Aragh at last.
"All right," said Jim, "maybe it's safe to let him go. Try stepping off him; but be ready to jump back on if he shows any sign of coming to. Remember you have to be touching him to control him."
Slowly Aragh stepped back, taking his paws off Malvinne's shoulders. Malvinne began to snore lightly.
"I think the sooner and the faster we get out of here, the better," said Jim to the others. He explained to them what he had done to the magician.
"Should we not gag and tie him, first?" asked the Prince.
"Nothing we could do that way would really hold him, Highness," said Jim.
"And then what?" asked Sir Brian. "When he wakes up, he'll be after us with everything and every creature and every man and woman he controls, will he not?"
"He might," said Jim. "On the other hand, you heard him. The man drinks only water, according to His Highness. So he can't be used to being drunk. He may not wake up until tomorrow morning; and then he may wake up so sick as not to be able to arrange a hunt for us for hours, if not a full day. The one thing we can do, though, is make him as comfortable as possible; to encourage him to sleep as long as he can."
"Strange thing to do to an enemy," growled Aragh, "tuck him into bed."
Nonetheless, they picked him up and carried him into the room that held his own sumptuous bed, took off his boots, loosened the neck of his shirt, and left him with his head on a pillow and a light cover over him. Then they headed once more for the secret staircase down to ground level.
They went as rapidly as they could. Still, it was a long climb down the secret stairs for a second time.
As they got close to the bottom, Jim suddenly remembered something.
Abruptly, he used the inside of his forehead again to correct the earlier spell that had led him astray at the foot of these stairs.
ME/SEE→ALL MAGICWORKS EVERYWHERE INRED
He envisioned this.
It was what he should have done in the first place; but he at least had remembered it now, before they got to the foot of the stairs and faced the problem itself. They went on down to the foot of the stairs. Once there, they stopped as they had before; but this time, to Jim's eyes, both stairway and pathway shone an unmistakable, dusky red.
"Why are we stopping, Sir James?" came the voice of the Prince from behind him. "Surely we take the stairs to the left, this time?"
Jim glanced again at the stairs to his left. There was no doubt that they, like the path to the right, were an unbroken red in color.
"I'm afraid, Your Highness," he answered, "that both ways are part of a magical trap that Malvinne has set. At the present moment, I'm seeing magical signs that tell me both ways are dangerous."
"Both ways?" echoed the Prince, then fell silent. The others were silent also.
Jim was busy thinking. There must be a way around this. But the only way he could imagine would be for him somehow to be able to nullify the trap—cause it to cease to exist, by preference.
"At the moment," he told the others, "I'm still trying to find some way of handling this. Let me study it a while longer."
The others responded to him with courteous silence.
The more Jim thought of it, the more likely it seemed to him that either way would lead them to some undesirable end. Possibly, both would lead them right back into the Kingdom of the Dead; and that was the last place they would want to be again.
A wistful wish passed through his mind that he could pass this problem over to Sir Brian, and have the other find a simple, practical, everyday solution to it.
The thought was like a catalyst. He almost struck his forehead with the heel of his hand, in annoyance at his own stupidity. It was a good thing, he thought, that Carolinus could not see him in this present situation. Carolinus had sent him out to learn; and one of the things he had already learned was that a magical command could be put to use in more than one way, to deal with different situations. For example, he had effectively immobilized Malvinne, a master magician, with exactly the same bit of enchantment he had used to immobilize Melusine.
He had also, he remembered now, come up with a command to open doors that were supposed to open only to Malvinne. There was no reason why a small variation on that command could not solve the present problem, also.
He wrote on the inside of his forehead:
ME-MALVINNE→REMOVE/REPLACE THIS MAGIC
Nothing happened. Then, it occurred to him that he had not completed the full, necessary, magical process. He added a further command:
REMOVE →THISENCHANTMENT
The red color vanished; but that was the least of what happened. The stairway suddenly smoothed out into a level passage leading off to their left; and where the path to their right had been, there was no nothing but a stone wall.
"All right, everyone," said Jim, turning into the new passage that had replaced the staircase, "the enchantment's been lifted. Here we go."
He led them down the passage a little way, then stopped.
"Wait," he said.
He turned and went back a short distance, but stopped well short of the foot of the staircase they had just come down and wrote another command on his inner forehead:
REPLACE→ ENCHANTMENT
Immediately, all sight of the staircase and what had been at the foot of it was blocked out by the underside of stone steps that led up into the roof of the passage and glowed an unmistakable red. The appearance of things as usual would not fool Malvinne for long. He might even be able to make the cross-passage speak, and tell him what had happened. But the appearance of everything being unchanged might slow the pursuit by the master magician down a bit.
Jim turned back, rejoined the others, and moved up in front of them.
"Now we can go on," he said.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The new passage they were in jigged and jogged, turning at an abrupt right or left angle every so often.
Clearly, it was built within the interior
walls of Malvinne's castle; and at least one reason for this became apparent as they went along.
After the first twenty paces or so, the magic illumination of the secret staircase was no longer with them. But now it did not matter. Sufficient light for them to travel by came in through what amounted to peepholes in the walls on either side of them.
Evidently, Malvinne believed in keeping an eye on his household without their knowing it. Also, his household was clearly used to being active until all hours of the night. What could only be described as a general, castlewide party seemed to be going on, lit by sconces in the wall and large torches. As a result, the air coming through the peepholes was hotter than an August day in broad sunlight.
From Jim's point of view, the light these peepholes gave was their greatest recommendation. But his human companions seemed to find themselves attracted to the point of fascination by the idea of looking through the peepholes at what was happening on the other side of the wall.
Jim could really not blame them. Under different circumstances, he himself would have been interested in the behavior of Malvinne's household—if only for the purpose of gathering information about Malvinne himself. But there was no real problem until all of those with him, except Aragh, stopped at apertures at one particular section of the wall, at once. Brian and Giles, in particular, were not only peering, but commenting about what they saw in tones of admiration.
Jim gave in to the general pressure and found a hole through which he could look, too. What he found himself looking at was a room filled only with women, in various stages of dress and undress. It seemed to be a sort of combination robing and gossip center for those within it.
"Damme!" Brian was saying. "Will you look at the one with the green thing about her, there, Giles—"
"Gentlemen," said Jim, standing back from his eyehole, "interesting as this may be, I think perhaps—"
"I mind me two years ago," the Prince had started speaking at exactly the same time, "that my Uncle John, Earl of Cornwell, took me—Sir James, you interrupted me!"
He stood back from his peephole and looked haughtily at Jim.
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