A touch fell on my shoulder.
I leaped five feet and spun around, wildly shaping protective spells against— Against a ragged man with a long beard, leaning on a staff.
Not the saint, I realized after a terrified second, but a man younger by some fifteen hundred years: the hermit who lived here. He hadn't had the beard the last time I saw him, but that had been a long time ago. "Are you dead, my son?" he asked me pleasantly.
I leaned back against the tree and tried to slow down my heartbeat. "No. Or at any rate, not yet."
"You are the Royal Wizard of Yurt, are you not?" he continued. His voice was rough, as if little used, but he certainly was taking advantage of an opportunity for conversation. "Perhaps the account I heard of your death was mistaken. The duchess's daughter came to the shrine of the Holy Toe to pray for your soul, but my conversation with her was very brief, so I must have misunderstood."
If I survived, I made a mental note never to fake my own death again. It made too many explanations necessary. For the moment I skipped the explanations. "I'm here to work some magic. I was hoping not to disturb you."
"I see many curious things here," the hermit said gently, "from the wood nymph to visions of the saint to creatures that I am never sure later I really saw. So you must forgive me for wondering if I might now be seeing a dead man. Though I must say," frowning toward my warriors, "those are some of the strangest things I have seen lately."
"Me too," I agreed. I took a deep breath, preparatory to setting them into motion, then changed my mind. There was no way I could get them to obey me long enough to march obediently to Elerius's kingdom without getting into trouble along the way. I was going to need help. But in the meantime I had to lock them up safely. "Would it disturb you if I put them into the cave?"
Carefully, one at a time, I lifted the dragon's-teeth warriors and transported them inside the mouth of the cave from which the river flowed. I lined them up so that they did not quite touch each other, not wanting them stuck together when I came for them. I also didn't want them suddenly activated when I wasn't here—for all I knew Elerius might have tracked my movements and be planning to set them loose the moment my back was turned. I erected a mat of branches across the cave mouth, held it in place with a magic lock, then slowly pulled out King Solomon's golden signet.
The Ifrit in his bottle I had left behind in the royal encampment, not daring to expose him to the intense magical forces of this valley, but the seal I had brought with me. I didn't have any molten lead—mud would have to do this time. The hermit watched with interest as I pressed the seal into a dollop of mud and spoke the activating words I had learned from Kaz-alrhun. The mat of branches shivered and went stiff. As I stepped back, I could catch a glittering shimmer of magic from the mud. No undead warriors were going to get out of the cave through this entrance.
"As I recall," said the hermit with his gentle smile, "many years ago when I was still an apprentice hermit, the other apprentices and I offered you hospitality at our huts in the grove. Would you accept my hospitality again?"
Back when he had been an apprentice I had been a much less experienced wizard, having neither a flying beast nor an air cart, and the long flight back from the valley to the royal castle had seemed much too hard to attempt late at night. Or maybe I was just getting too soft in my old age to find appealing sleeping on a hut's dirt floor, with the cold, dank wind coming in the open doorway and only a crust to look forward to for breakfast.
"Thank you," I said, "but I could not dream of disturbing your devotions." It might be for the last time in my life, but I was going to sleep in my own bed in Yurt again.
* * * *
But by midmorning I was back in front of Elerius's castle, talking again to the kings. "I've created my own army of undead creatures," I told them, leaving out the detail that I wasn't sure I could control them, "and as soon as I transport them here we can attack."
"What did you make them out of, old wine bottles?" asked King Lucas sarcastically. Reverence for the wizard who had miraculously returned from the dead seemed to be fading rapidly. I didn't dare ask Lucas whether his own royal wizard was back at the school or holed up with Elerius, but in either event he seemed to have lost any respect for wizardry he might once have had.
"I made them out of dragons' teeth," I said evenly, which at least silenced Lucas. I could hear several of the other kings asking each other in awestruck undertones how I could have possibly overcome a dragon—something I still sometimes marveled at myself. "And I'll be bringing them here this evening." At this I was pleased to note that several looked distinctly uneasy.
"Have you tested them in battle?" asked one grizzled old king, who wore a battered steel and leather helmet that might actually have seen service during the Black Wars.
Of course I hadn't. "Their enemies will not escape them easily," I said vaguely, trying to decide how I was going to get all the warriors down here without having them stick to every bush in half a dozen kingdoms. "With reinforcements on the way, I must ask you to wait until at least tomorrow morning to join the battle. Elerius would not listen to either reason or threats while he felt himself secure, but if my army can neutralize his we may still be able to avoid killing very many more of our men."
In the meantime, what was Elerius doing? His castle was silent and ominous. The sun had emerged today, but its rays were sharply slanted even in the middle of the day and did little to warm the chilly air. Leaving the kings arguing strategy, I went and found Hadwidis, sitting with Antonia, Theodora, and Gwennie beside her, staring toward the castle as though she could evict Elerius by gaze alone.
I sat down next to the runaway nun. "I saw your brother," I told her quietly. "He believes he is the heir to the kingdom, but he is learning magic with Elerius."
"Has he been turned to evil like that wizard?" she asked with a sideways glance toward me, then returned her eyes to the castle. A former nun, I thought, would still think in terms of good and evil. I wondered if she was regretting leaving the nunnery, in spite of her frustration with the restrictive atmosphere there, and in spite of the shove out the door the Cranky Saint seemed to have given her.
"He just seems like a serious boy," I answered, "who wants to learn magic but has a pretty clear sense of magic's limitations." I was most certainly not going to tell her about Elerius's efforts to summon a demon—or his false agreement to swear, on Walther's life, not to summon one. The saint had definitely shown up just in time.
"This is going to be terrible for him," she said, not looking at me. "But I know now that the saint's purpose for me all along has been to make me reveal what I know, to keep my mother from going to her grave impenitent, with her sin unconfessed. She must already be realizing the magnitude of her error, seeing her former lover turn to evil."
I must say that I had never before considered that the queen's adultery might be the problem behind all this.
"Why did you never tell me about Maffi?" Antonia interrupted by asking from my other side,
I smiled at my daughter and gave her a squeeze. I really should be starting back toward the valley of the Cranky Saint with Chin and Whitey, in the hope that advanced wizardry students would do where I really needed another competent wizard. "I hadn't known you would ever meet Maffi," I said to Antonia, "and I'm afraid at some level I assumed he would always be the boy I had known before—don't tell him that!"
"He is not a boy," replied Antonia, in her best I-am-not-a-little-girl voice. "And he knows lots of magic. We were talking about different kinds of spells while you were gone."
He was going to be jealous that I didn't use him, but it couldn't be helped. I needed someone with whom I could easily work mind-to-mind because he had been trained in the same school I was. "You know," I said to Theodora over the girl's head, "I'm not sure this is the best place for any of you. An army encampment is a dangerous place for women at any time, and now that—"
Hadwidis broke in, still not removing her eyes from the castle. "I'm no
t leaving, Wizard, with an enemy in the castle where I should be queen. Gwennie shall stay with me."
I turned to look at her properly, the blond hair starting to grow in thickly now, the determined set of her jaw, and realized that she had picked up more on our trip to Xantium than some new clothes and blue eye-shadow. When she left the nunnery she was ready to become a bar-maid rather than let herself be made queen; now she was determined to take over the rule that was rightfully hers.
She might almost have heard my thoughts, for she added, "You helped me, Wizard, when I had no one to trust, and I shall not forget that." I noticed she was delicately passing over her attempt to seduce me—something I too preferred to leave in the past. "But I need no more help in reclaiming my rightful castle—no more than the help that I know Gwennie shall provide at my side. The easy solution, I knew, would be to marry one of these royal warriors assembled here and spend the rest of my life at his castle, but I want my own back. Get that wizard out, and I shall do the rest."
Gwennie gave me a worried glance. Worried about the girl's well-being, I thought, since Hadwidis didn't seem to be competing for King Paul, unlike most of the other well-born young ladies of the West. I shook my head and turned back to Theodora.
But she put a hand over my mouth before I could speak. "If a runaway nun can stay in an army encampment, a witch can too. I hope you weren't planning to tell us to take the air cart, and nearly get captured with magic again!"
"Well, no—" Time to stop stalling. I pushed myself reluctantly to my feet. "I'm going to need the cart anyway, to help get my undead soldiers here."
V
The air cart was scarred and battered, covered with the imitation dragon bites I had carved into it, up on the borders of the land of wild magic.
I had to admit the fang marks were pretty authentic—looked like they'd cleaned up the blood, however. Still, the cart was ready to fly wherever I commanded it. Naurag, whose will was his own, was showing signs of incipient grumpiness, especially since he no longer wanted to have anything to do with the air cart, but a few gourds restored his good temper. With Whitey and Chin I flew off toward the kingdom of Yurt again, this time to get my warriors.
Elerius made no attempt to stop us. He must be watching my every move, I thought, but he was too far away to overhear conversations, even with the best magic—besides, I told no one, even the young wizards, what we were doing. Let Elerius worry himself, I thought with jaw set, as to what I could possibly be planning.
With Naurag flying fast, in the hope of more gourds, and the air cart magically speeded up, we were able to reach the kingdom in only a few hours. The two young wizards had been properly obedient—at least most of the time—ever since learning that I was the old Master's choice as successor.
The saint's valley was as quiet as when I had left it the night before, and my seal across the cave entrance was intact. Elerius hadn't followed me here, then, I thought with relief, pushing aside any lingering doubts whether Whitey and Chin might secretly be thinking that Elerius would have made a better choice as the Master's heir. I had to trust them because I had no alternative.
When I used my palm print to release the magic lock and broke the dried mud seal, the warriors stood as I had left them, unmoving, unbreathing. That was a relief. I hadn't told my young helpers, but I had been turning over in my mind all the way up here the possibility that they might decide to come to life by themselves.
"Let's get these out one at a time," I said, "without letting them stick together. And no mock battles with them!" when I thought I saw an overly-enthusiastic expression on Chin's face. "These aren't toy soldiers."
Just what I needed, I thought. Supposed helpers who were ready to play. But the two became very sober as they helped me transport the warriors out onto the grass at the base of the cliff. The creatures were short but solid, their arms heavy and powerful, their faces unfeatured except for lifeless eyes.
They stood in silent rows, absolutely motionless but giving the impression that at any moment they would burst into action, as ferocious and implacable as the dragon from whose teeth they were made. "By the way," I said to the two young wizards, as casually as I could when my own heart kept pounding hard, "after you graduate, don't give up when you discover how little you actually know. There will still be plenty of time to turn you two into half-decent wizards."
Now came the hard part. For this we needed Naurag and the air cart for more than comfort in flying. We weren't going to have enough attention to spare from the soldiers to be able to fly properly ourselves. Instead we needed all our magic to lift the soldiers.
We had to link our spells, working mind-to-mind. It was horribly difficult because we had to keep the warriors separated from each other. One tipped over while we were trying our first lift, and it rose covered with leaves and pebbles. Two swung too close at the second attempt and bonded firmly and irrevocably together. But at last, concentrating and sweating in the cold air, we had them all raised up about thirty feet, in a reasonably stable configuration, and started the long flight back toward Elerius's kingdom.
As I gritted my teeth, willing the dangling warriors to remain together, the wind to remain gentle, and the student wizards to stay attentive, I thought I saw one of the warriors blink.
No. Impossible. My imagination. I bit back an exclamation that would have broken the others' concentration and ended up with all the warriors tangled in the brush below. The creatures' stares were all blank and unseeing. I steadied my breathing, never letting up on the spells, and hung on tight to Naurag's neck.
We flew slowly, avoiding villages and castles, staying far enough up that the creatures did not become tangled in the trees, low enough not to tax our thinly-stretched lifting spells any further than we had to. Twice I could have sworn I saw from the corner of my eye one of the warriors blink, as if the magical currents within the hermit's valley had somehow brought it to life. But each time that I spun around to stare, aghast, I saw nothing but a stiff, unliving creature, and Whitey and Chin gave no sign of seeing anything unusual.
It seemed as though I had been flying back and forth over this route dozens of times in the last few days. This time was the hardest. The clouds overhead became lower and darker all afternoon, leaving only a thin clear area off to the west, where the sky toward evening turned as green as the sea. It had still been morning when we left for the valley; and now, four hundred miles later, we arrived in darkness.
We set the warriors down carefully at the inland edge of the army encampment, away from the castle. I didn't dare go any closer, for fear that Elerius might again try to seize control of the air cart. Soldiers with flaming torches came out to stare and exclaim over what we had brought.
Whitey and Chin collapsed where they stood. It was almost a physical relief to break contact with their minds, which had struck me all day as sloppy and greasy. But as I leaned against Naurag's flank I realized I was not through yet. I still hadn't worked out how I was going to control the warriors, but they had better be out in front, ready to march in the vanguard, because I very much doubted I could get them to detour in an orderly way around the camp, and I didn't even want to think about them, alive, marching through its center. With no energy to try more than one at a time, I slowly started moving the warriors through the air, over the royal encampment, to set them down in a line facing the enemy.
I had to work fast, before the last of my own strength went. If there were any chance they were going to come to life during the night, then even more reason for them all be on the same side of the camp, the side toward Elerius.
From the corner of my eye I caught motion, a small, slim person running toward me. "Let me practice my lifting spells," said Antonia. I nodded, concentrating too hard to speak, and she immediately began, using the same skills she had used on a volleyball in the castle courtyard, in a distant time that could have been years earlier. Teeth set in her lip, she lifted one of the warriors, carried it through the air in a great arc a quarter mile l
ong, over the soldiers and horses and tents and watchfires, and set it down on the camp's opposite side, on the edge of the trampled no-man's territory. She gave me a quick grin and started the spells for another. After a moment I realized she was moving hers faster than I was moving mine.
"They're impressive, Wizard," said King Paul behind me, which made me jump. But it was good, I thought as I nodded to him, for the commander of this camp always to know what was going on in it. "Dragons' teeth, you said? They're almost like—you remember that time." I did indeed. "But why are they so still?"
"Not activated yet," I said shortly.
Antonia was now experimenting with two warriors at a time, carefully keeping them spaced so they didn't stick together. I gave up trying to help her and just took deep breaths.
"Well," said Paul, looking out toward Elerius's castle, "I've told King Lucas and the rest that they can expect to attack at dawn. Do whatever you need to do to get these creatures activated, and I'll match your magical monsters against anyone's!”
He turned his back on the castle and the warriors then, his head cocked to listen to a distant challenge; it sounded as if someone had just ridden into the camp. The king hurried off to investigate. But I had no time to wonder who it was or what message he might bring. In the flare of the torches I was quite sure I had just seen one of my creatures move.
A quiet voice spoke beside me, Theodora. "That one's trying to wake up."
I was so tired that for a moment my mind went blank. Would a paralysis spell work? Would I have to disassemble it altogether? If it woke up would it bring all the rest of the warriors to life?
It stopped twitching abruptly. Startled, I checked with magic. It had a very tidy if rather unorthodox binding spell wrapped around it.
"There!" said Theodora. "Now aren't you glad you didn't send the two of us away?" Sometimes it was very useful being married to a witch.
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