But I could not do it. My fingers had no intention of obeying me. I had believed in wizardry and magic down to my bones since a very young man, and I could no more break an oath sworn on them than I could have duplicated any of Elerius's other feats.
Madly I tried a paralysis spell, to stop him from speaking, but he was ready for me and brushed my magic aside with the ease of brushing away a fly. Spinning around, I tried to wrench the study door open, to escape in the few seconds I might yet have. It was no use. The door was shut fast with magic. "By Satan, by Beelzebub," the words rose behind me, "by Lucifer and Mephistopheles!"
On the far side of the room I spotted Prince Walther, terrified, trying unsuccessfully to open a window a hundred feet above the ground. I doubted he yet had learned how to fly, and anyway the window was magically locked. I crossed the room in long strides, making a wide detour around the pentagram, and wrapped an arm around the boy. He was too young to have to meet a demon, or to see the wizard he had believed good turn to evil. He pressed himself, shaking, against me, and we both waited with averted eyes for the inevitable.
Behind me in the room there was a great crack and a flash of light. The demon is here, I thought with a kind of dead resignation. I had met a demon twice before and felt no need to look. In a second my nostrils would be assailed by the smell of brimstone.
The scent of roses, months out of season, drifted across the room.
My head jerked up, and I reflexively clutched Walther tighter until he cried out. The light in the center of the room was rapidly growing brighter, until its brilliance was almost unbearable. The light washed out the glow of the magic lamps and of the pentagram, filling Elerius's study like water filling a pond.
In the center of that light stood a figure. But it was not a demon. It was a saint.
* * * *
An old bearded man, burning with light, leaned on a staff in the center of where Elerius's pentagram had been a few seconds before. But the pentagram was gone, the chalk dust blown to the far corners of the room. I noted wildly that the man needed the staff because one of his feet was missing its big toe.
Visions in dreams I had often heard of, and had been very glad that I had never been visited with such a vision myself. But I knew now the true, annihilating terror of actually meeting a saint. The air of the study was soft, perfumed with flowers, more gentle than the air of the enchanted valley in the Land of Magic, and all I could feel was primordial fear. Dazzled until I was almost blind, so overcome that my bones felt like water, I gazed with living eyes on Saint Eusebius, the Cranky Saint.
He rapped his staff hard, and the tower swayed around us. "What do you think you're doing, young man?" he rasped out, glaring at Elerius with a fierce frown. I would have whispered a prayer of gratitude that the saint was angry with Elerius, not with me, but somehow I couldn't pray to someone who was so palpably right in the room with us. "Thinking of yourself again," the saint declared, "and of no one else! This kingdom belongs to my spiritual daughter, who bears my name in religion, and I do not want a demon in it!"
Elerius staggered backward, clutching a chair for support. The times I had met a demon I had thought there could be nothing more terrifying. I had been mistaken. The supernatural power of good was just as overwhelming as the supernatural power of darkness, and one could not even console oneself that that power was ultimately wrong. If there was any evil in the room, it was in us.
Elerius's face was completely white, but still he managed to gasp, "How did you get in here? This castle is protected by powerful spells, against dragons, against—"
The Cranky Saint interrupted him with another sharp rap of his staff. "I am not affected by your natural magic. You have certainly been taught, young man, that magic is only effective in this world—and let me tell you, it is well past time for you to start thinking about your soul's welfare in the next!”
I fell to my knees, pulling Prince Walther down with me. "This kingdom doesn't belong to anyone's daughter," the boy mumbled, stubborn even in terror. "It belongs to me."
The saint swung toward us, and I pressed my face against the floor. Walther, half under me, must have been nearly stifled. The saint said, somewhat more mildly, "I think, Walther my son, your destiny lies elsewhere. My spiritual daughter may not always be as obedient as I would wish, but she does try to follow the path of goodness, unlike some people, and I intend her to rule here."
My eyes squeezed shut, in fear, in reverence, in reaction to the blinding force of the light pouring from the saint. "Dearest Lord," I murmured, wishing I had, even once, asked Joachim for the correct way to address a saint, "I thank you for your mercy, your benevolence, your answer to my poor prayer—"
"Call no one Lord but God," the saint snapped, but then his voice softened for a moment. "Your prayers are not unheard, my son, but it is above all two others who have reached me with their constant imprecations: Bishop Joachim, and the woman who has taken the name of Sister Eusebius."
Elerius, half hiding behind a chair on the far side of the room, peeked out and said, "You can't keep me from summoning a demon. That would violate human free will."
"It would do nothing of the sort," said the saint with a snort. I lifted my head—I could just bear to look at him as long as his eyes were not fixed on me. "Don't you wizards learn anything about metaphysics? Certainly we allow you to make your own decisions, even damn your own souls if that is your determined choice. But if humans call for our aid, of their own will, it is certainly within our powers to respond. Or," and he glowered until I, in Elerius's position, would have used a spell to sink bodily into the floor, "did you think that demons could be summoned, but that humanity was somehow immune from the influence of saints?"
"Well, no, Your Sanctity," muttered Elerius, eyes averted, with no more idea of how to address a saint than I had. "But I thought—"
"I do not care what you erroneously thought," announced the saint with another snort. "I found you here in the process of breaking the most solemn oath you could imagine—and the detail that you had not yet spoken the words does not make it any less solemn! Perhaps that is all that I should have expected from you—although I hope you do know it is within the power of your will to seek the good! I must say, I was rery disappointed with your conduct at Daimbert's funeral. Instead of reverently commending his soul to God, all you could think of was asserting some claim of worldly authority, completely disrupting a sacred ceremony!"
"But Daimbert wasn't dead!" Elerius protested, sweat run-ling down his face.
"You didn't know that," the saint shot back, "and, indeed, you hoped he was. Do not try to deny it! Do you think I didn't know your inmost thoughts, your wicked hope that if he did not intend to help you he would be killed? No, you are clearly not one to be trusted. Therefore I intend to keep this castle safe from demons until my spiritual daughter can reclaim it. You may stay here as long as you like, but I shall be watching! Any further attempt of yours to summon a demon here, in defiance of the oath you should have sworn, will utterly fail.
"Beyond that—" and he spun toward me again with another rap of his staff "—you are left to your own devices. I may have helped you and guided you a few times in the last few weeks, Daimbert, my son, but you are now approaching a difficult test. Demons I can save you from, at least demons summoned by Elerius, but I cannot save you from yourself."
I made an affirmative mumble, wondering wildly what he could mean—did he think that I was about to summon a demon?
"As for all this nonsense about running your wizards' school," the saint continued, "I have not the slightest interest in any of it. Work that out if you must, but set yourself above all, all three of you, to work out your souls' salvation! And be assured that you shall do so with absolutely no demons here."
Strong winds swirled around the Cranky Saint, even here in Elerius's tightly-sealed study, lifting his gray beard and whirling his cloak as he began to glow even more brightly. Elerius on the far side of the room had buried his face in his a
rms. Another enormous crack rent the air, and even through my eyelids I could see the great burst of light that accompanied the saint's transit from this world into the world of the supernatural.
And for a second, in spite of all my terror in his presence, I felt a tearing sense of loss. I had, for a few moments, been in the presence of supernatural good, and the ordinary world reasserting itself around me, material, neither good nor evil but fundamentally confused, was achingly empty without that goodness.
But I had no time to consider the sensation, for as soon as the saint disappeared Elerius's magically-locked window flew open, and I found myself plucked from the floor and Prince Walther wrenched from my grasp. My own spells were completely ineffective. I was catapulted through the air, sailing away from the castle far faster than I could have flown myself—even faster than Naurag could have flown.
The Ifrit's bronze bottle was still heavy in my pocket—not that his power could ever be even slightly comparable to that of a saint. My dazzled eyes blinked hard, trying to readjust to the darkness through which I flew. I was able to identify the army's encampment ahead, toward which I was speeding. The fire around which the kings had taken counsel was still burning, though low now, and only a few soldiers waited there, leaning on their spears.
The saint's power let me go then, leaving me feeling even more naked and alone than when he disappeared. I dropped the final thirty feet under the power of my own magic, to land next to the startled guardsmen.
It was only then that I realized that my leg was completely healed.
II
As the exalted savior of the western kingdoms, I had been given my own tent. There I lay awake for hours, missing Naurag's comforting warmth, even missing Maffi, next to whom I had slept on the whole trip back from Xantium, and feeling less like an exalted savior than I ever had in my life.
A miracle had been worked on my behalf, a miracle I didn't dare tell anyone about, but which made me feel that everything I did from here on had better be worthy of such a great concession. Joachim I could have talked to about the saint, but the bishop wasn't here. I rolled over for the dozenth time, trying unsuccessfully to find an angle where I could close my eyes without seeing the overwhelming burning goodness—and irritated frown—of the Cranky Saint.
* * * *
The dawn reveille woke me from an uneasy doze. I rolled out of my tent and nodded in response to the respectful greetings of the guardsmen, wondering how even more respectful they would be if I told them I had been talking to a saint. The early morning sky was dark and lowering, heavy with stormclouds.
I shivered, looking around the encampment. The rows of tents and banners stretched far in all directions. Knights were scrambling from their tents, rubbing their eyes and shivering. I had sent a message to King Paul when I got back last night that Elerius would not listen to reason, but I was afraid the kings would take that as an excuse to start the war at once. If I couldn't find some way to stop it, the brute strength of thousands of men would be thrown against the spells of a handful of wizards. Even if Elerius wasn't demon-assisted, I felt a queasy certainty who would prevail.
Unless— Unless I could find some way to fight Elerius's undead warriors without involving human soldiers. I leaned against a flag pole, tapping my foot and thinking hard. I had never tried making any such warriors of my own, had never before even contemplated doing anything of the kind, but I might—might—be able to do so. My predecessor as Royal Wizard of Yurt had once made a creature from dead bones which would move of its own volition, and I still had his notebooks.
This thought cheered me enormously, until I remembered that Elerius, in happier times, had once visited me in Yurt and systematically read through those very notebooks. He would thus be able to find any flaw in the magic propelling the creatures I made, and then dismantle them—after all, even I had been able to improvise a way to stop my predecessor's monster, after it had killed him.
And it was no use trying the same approach I had used then on Elerius's warriors, because his would be substantially improved, imbued with some of the dark spells Elerius had picked up from eastern wizards during his years in the kingdom next to the mountains—even picked up from Vlad. Vlad's own monstrous creations had eventually been stopped, when they had showed up in Yurt years ago, but Elerius would have had ample opportunity to develop spells to overcome any weakness there as well.
No use, then, matching him spell for spell, where I was bound to lose. My only chance lay not in dismantling his warriors, but rather in using entirely different magic to make even better warriors of my own.
And I had just had an idea.
King Paul was drinking tea from a tin mug when I found him. "Do we have any alternatives, Wizard?" he asked me soberly. "If Elerius won't agree to stop this war, do we have any choice but to start it?"
He was not quite so eager, in the early morning's chill light, to start killing people as he once might have been. Nothing like facing real bloodshed, I thought, to make a restless young king rethink the fun and glory of going to battle— not to mention the responsibility of being treated as the chief king among them all. Now I just had to make sure that the bloodshed he was facing in his mind stayed hypothetical.
"I have a plan," I said with more confidence than I felt. "I'm going back to Yurt today, to look at my books, but I think I can make some soldiers that will match those inhuman creatures of Elerius's. If the unliving destroy each other first, it should make things substantially easier for the living."
Paul gave a sudden grin, though his emerald eyes remained serious. "I knew you would find a way to stop renegade magic!" He offered me a rather stale piece of bread, all he was having himself, which I wolfed down. "You didn't really return from the dead, did you?" he added thoughtfully. "This was all a ruse, though I must say a very good one!"
"Have you been talking to Gwennie, sire?" I asked though a mouthful of dry crumbs.
The king poured me a mug of scalding tea. "She told me one or two things about your trip, after you left for the castle last night," he said stiffly, not looking at me. The lovers' reunion, I thought, must have hit a snag—doubtless the same snag that had hung up Paul's original proposal, to say nothing of Gwennie's justifiably wounded feelings at knowing that the king had followed up his proposal to her with one to the Princess Margareta.
"But how long will you need to be in Yurt?" he asked then, putting the fate of the western kingdoms firmly ahead of his own love-life. "I can stall the other kings for a day or so, but some of them—especially Lucas—are pretty hot-headed. And if the kings who already tried to face the undead monsters get into a quarrel over their manly courage with those who arrived later, I don't trust them all not to start fighting each other. That would certainly help Elerius!"
"I'll be back tonight," I said, swallowing the last of the tea and feeling more confident by the moment. It must have been twenty-four hours since I had last had something to eat—facing a saint was always bad enough, but I had had to do so on an empty stomach.
And tomorrow evening the truce I had sworn to Elerius would be up, and I could try attacking him with the Ifrit— assuming, of course, I figured out how to do so in the meantime.
"Then I'll see you tonight," said Paul and grinned again. "It's good to have you back, Wizard."
* * * *
But I didn't leave at once after all. I had just lifted into the air to start flying inland, intending to stay well away from the castle where Elerius's magical defenses kept flying spells from working, when I spotted something purple, flying fast toward me out of the cloudy eastern sky.
Where could Naurag have possibly gone? The last I had seen the flying beast, he had been with Maffi and Hadwidis, being closely observed by several curious knights. He had flown so far and so fast on our trip west from Xantium that I had thought to leave him here today, but it looked as if he had gone somewhere on his own.
Quickly I shaped a far-seeing spell, and then realized it wasn't Naurag after all. It was an ai
r cart. And riding in it were my wife and daughter.
I laughed out loud with surprise and joy. I should have known that the two of them would want to join me, for all my firmly telling Theodora last night to stay safely in Caelrhon. Antonia had become quite proficient in the spells that commanded the cart, during her trips back and forth between Yurt and the cathedral city. My search for creatures out of the old magic could wait a little longer.
But as I flew to meet them, I realized something was wrong. Theodora was gesturing emphatically, but not toward me. The air cart had altered direction, and its wing beats were no longer taking it toward the kings' encampment.
Instead it was heading straight for the castle. And it was picking up speed.
My insides went cold as I madly doubled my own speed. I tried shouting encouragement, but my words were carried away by the wind. Agonizingly slowly, I drew closer, but not close enough. The air cart flew on steadily, its head with its mseeing eyes and wired jaws held high. With my far-seeing spell I could tell that both Theodora and Antonia were trying new commands to regain control of the cart, but it was no longer listening to their spells. Theodora looked down, over the cart's side, but they were several hundred yards up, much too far to jump, and neither of them had an entirely reliable grasp of flying spells when they were under pressure.
That cart was governed by school spells, and the world's greatest practitioner of school magic was drawing them toward him. I had faked my death in the first place to avoid something just like this, but it appeared I had made everyone sad needlessly, only to have Elerius use my family as a pawn in the end.
What would he do to them? My imagination provided half a dozen horrible answers, from painful dismemberment to killing them outright and using their dead bodies to make new warriors. And he wouldn't even have to carry through with any of it—all he had to do was threaten. At this point a demon was unnecessary for his victory. In five minutes I would be back at the castle, promising any assistance he wanted and giving him the Ifrit, just to assure my family's safety.
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