Hildegarde shook her head. “I’m afraid Celia and I are going to be busy for a while. By now our parents will have heard that she wants to be a nun, and they’re either furiously telephoning Yurt or else riding right down from Father’s principality.”
“Then I’ll stay with you!” cried Antonia, turning to Gwennie.
I turned her around toward me again. “We’ll drop everyone else off and go straight to Caelrhon,” I said slowly and clearly.
Antonia frowned darkly for a moment, but then her expression cleared. “I can tell my friend Jen all about the castle. And I can see the Dog-Man again!”
It grew darker as the day moved on, and the air felt much too cold for this time of year. The air cart’s pace slowed as its wings had to beat against a strong east wind. The women shivered, though I kept Antonia warm in my arms—she did a good job of keeping my chest warm too. But whatever storm was building did not yet break. We landed in the castle courtyard under a lowering sky, and everyone turned out to greet us. They were too pleased to see us all safe to start taking me apart at once, though I was discouraged to see the king showing more solicitude for Justinia than for Gwennie.
I paused only long enough to collect Antonia’s things, then took off for the city, leaving the others to give the details of our adventure. The duchess had indeed telephoned, leaving a message that Celia was not to do anything until she arrived.
The sun never had shone through the clouds, and I wanted to get to Caelrhon before it really did begin to storm. Besides, the sooner I faced Theodora the better. Probably I should go around to the cathedral and apologize to Joachim too if he’d even agree to see me. He’d forgiven me for a lot of things in the past, although in this case I hadn’t just insulted the bishop himself but someone under his direction.
Antonia was not reconciled to going home in disgrace—she kept hoping I would change my mind until we were actually in the air—and hugged her Dolly rather than me as we flew along. “It’s for your own good,” I tried to reason with her. “Your mother said you should do what I said, and you didn’t. Suppose Elerius hadn’t been able to stop the carpet, and you’d ended up flying for days and days across the Outer Sea until you either fell off or died of hunger?”
“You never told me not to fly the carpet,” she replied indignantly, her chin trembling only the slightest amount.
But she sprang from the air cart with a glad cry and threw herself into her mother’s arms when I set the air cart down in the quiet cobbled street of the artisans’ quarter of Caelrhon. And she agreed only slightly reluctantly to kiss me good-night once she had been fed and washed.
I told Theodora everything that had happened, sitting again on her couch with my arm around her, the room bathed in the glow of the magic lamp. The only part I didn’t tell her was the bishop deciding that he had had lusty thoughts about her for years without realizing he did. It began at last to rain, a cold, fitful drizzle, and the wind howled in the chimney. At several points Theodora took a deep breath and started to lean forward, but she always settled back again against my arm without speaking.
“Well,” she said at last, her cheerful tone sounding almost normal, “it sounds as though Antonia’s visit to Yurt was a little more exciting than I had expected. But everyone is fine now, and that’s what’s important. Shall I make us some tea?”
As we sipped our tea, its warmth welcome this cold night, she suddenly said, “I’ll have to try to find out what spells Elerius taught her.”
“But he said—” Then I realized Theodora was quite right. When I returned to Yurt two days ago, my rooms had been thick with magic. Elerius would not just have shown off for Antonia. He had decided to win her affection by teaching her spells.
“Were you learning magic when you were five?” Theodora asked, pouring more tea.
“I must have been twelve or so,” I said slowly, remembering back. It had been years since I’d thought about this. “An old magician who sometimes worked the street corner for pennies showed me how to make an illusory gold coin in return for quite a pile of real copper coins. As I recall, I’d been saving them for months.” I promptly made Theodora an illusory gold coin of her own to show I hadn’t lost the knack. “But remember that I grew up in the great City, nearly in sight of the wizards’ school, where it perched on a pinnacle at the center of town. I’d always dreamed about learning magic, of being one of the very wise masters we would occasionally see, or even one of the student wizards who were always getting into trouble with the city Guardians after spending too long in the taverns. After my parents died and it was clear that the choices were to help my grandmother run our wool import house or else go up to the school and beg the Master to take me on, the decision wasn’t difficult.”
“And what would the Master say,” asked Theodora, “if our daughter asked him to take her on?”
“Well, they’ve never had a woman there. I’ve told you they mention the possibility from time to time, but either no women have applied or else they haven’t been the right ones.”
“That is,” said Theodora, mostly to herself, “they haven’t been women who are in fact men.”
“That may change, though,” I continued thoughtfully. “They’ve always thought extremely well of Elerius, and I know he’s got plans of his own to start revitalizing the school once he has a position of power there—which he’s certain to have soon. Maybe he was teaching Antonia magic because he intends to have women in the school when he’s in charge.”
“Or maybe,” said Theodora, giving me a quick look, “he’s trying to get a hold over you through her. Didn’t you just suggest something of the sort yourself?” The rain tapped against the dark panes, and somewhere down the street a dog howled mournfully. I wondered irrelevantly if it was the dog Cyrus had brought back to life. “She is good, Daimbert. I’ve taught her a little of what you call my witch magic, and she learned it far faster than I ever did. If she starts on school magic too she’ll soon be far ahead of me.”
“If I came and stayed here more often I could give you private tutoring in school magic,” I suggested with a smile.
“Maybe I’ve already learned just about all of your magic I particularly care to learn!” she replied saucily.
I pulled her to me, nuzzling her hair, but thinking about Elerius and Antonia. I could try to teach our daughter myself, but if she really had a flair for magic she deserved to be taught by a better wizard than I was. I had never trusted Elerius, but if he was planning to get women into the school he might be Antonia’s best chance for the education she deserved.
But then I chuckled. “Maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. She’s only five.”
“Yes,” said Theodora. “A five-year-old girl who already knows enough magic to steal a flying carpet.”
III
The clouds were even heavier the next morning although the rain had ceased. Theodora settled down to her sewing almost on top of the magic lamp. “Couldn’t you try some weather spells on this?” she asked. “Nobody’s going to be able to see anything all day.”
“Well, I don’t like to affect the weather unless it’s for something important like saving a crop,” I started. “After all, the spells can have unexpected results—”
But then I stopped. Suppose Cyrus was affecting the weather for his own purposes? I felt very reluctant to try to question him any more, especially since I was quite sure I would get no answers out of him, but the Romneys should be able to tell me if he had worked weather spells for them.
Antonia was still asleep, worn out from her adventures. I bent to kiss Theodora. “I’m heading back to Yurt.”
She turned around to kiss me properly. “I’m very glad Antonia visited you. We’ll have to do this again.” No mention of missing me but I would take what I could get. I thought as I went down the street that allowing oneself to love someone always gave that person the power, intentional or unintentional, to inflict pain. Maybe the wizards in renouncing marriage wanted to avoid any pain that woul
d distract them from their spells.
But if so it was much too late for me. I stopped by the cathedral office and left a note for Joachim. An acolyte told me rather loftily that the bishop was much too busy to see me without an appointment, but I didn’t know if that meant that he had left orders to keep all wizards away or if he really was very busy—I tried to reassure myself that most of the times I had seen him the last five years had been in brief interludes he could snatch from his duties.
The Romney circle of caravans was still at the edge of town, smoke rising from their chimneys, but on this cold, raw day no one was outside, and the ponies looked at me disconsolately. I thought I saw a brown rat disappear into the grass ahead of me. But the bright blue door of one of the caravans swung open as I approached, and the Romney woman I had first spoken to a week before called to me.
“Come to have your fortune told?”
I laughed and mounted the wooden steps. “Wizards can manage much better fortunes than I expect you can.” I’d never get the Romney children by themselves today. “Isn’t this terrible weather!” She stepped back as I ducked my head to enter.
Inside her caravan was smoky from the stove but laid out very compactly and neatly, with copper pans gleaming on the wall and all the cupboards painted blue like the door.
“Not like summer at all,” the woman agreed, giving me a gold-toothed smile. “At this rate we’ll have frost! We haven’t seen weather like this since we left the Eastern Kingdoms this spring.”
“Did Cyrus help you with weather spells as you came over the mountains?” I asked casually.
Her expression changed at once and so did her tone, from friendliness to the resonant and artificial note of someone telling a mysterious fortune in which she herself did not believe. “I will look into the future for you, Wizard,” she said, “and see shadowed doings beyond even the knowledge of the wise, but you will have to pay me first.”
Puzzled, I reached into my pocket and pulled out some coins, substantially more than what I had paid the old magician to teach me my first illusion when I was twelve. Had Cyrus ordered her not to tell me anything about him, even threatened her with his dark magic if he did?
She dropped my money into her own pocket without counting it, then opened a cupboard to take out a crystal ball. In sunlight a crystal will make rainbows and weird reflections of everything around, but today it showed only dark blues and grays, with at the center a flash of light from the fire in the stove. She put the ball on the little table in the center of the caravan, and I obediently sat down across from her.
She stared into the crystal for a moment, playing with the long whisker on her upper lip, while I wondered if she was going to try to impart actual information through an alleged fortune or was just doing something that would plausibly explain my presence and also get rid of me.
The caravan was silent except for the crackling of the fire. The smoke in the room seemed to become denser. At last she spoke, so suddenly and loudly that I jumped. “Someone is coming. Someone from far away. Someone who travels by night.”
She spoke with such conviction that I stared into the crystal myself, seeing nothing. Irrational fear made the cold day even colder. “Is this anyone I know?” I asked after a minute when she seemed reluctant to add anything more. “Will he be here soon?”
“He comes slowly, and he comes by night,” she said again. Abruptly she rose and put the crystal ball back into the cupboard. “And that,” she said loudly, a poorly-concealed nervous tremor in her voice, “is all the fortune you will have from me.”
She swung open the caravan door in case her point wasn’t clear enough. I thanked her and left, glad to breathe fresh air again, even if damp and cold, after the smoky atmosphere of the caravan. As I retrieved the air cart I wondered if this was recent information the Romneys had acquired, or if they had heard while still in the Eastern Kingdoms of someone heading this way. The Romney children had told me Cyrus had asked them about Yurt; had someone else in the East also inquired about us?
As the air cart flew slowly against a dank wind I thought about the princely wizard Vlad and his obsidian castle, guarded by wolves. Once I had been reassured that Cyrus was not Vlad in disguise, I had tried to dismiss fears of the dark wizard I had made my enemy many years ago. But suppose Cyrus had been sent as Vlad’s agent, to find me, even to kill me? Cyrus however had shown no sign of wanting to kill me on the two occasions when I met him.
But somebody had sent unliving warriors to attack Yurt, warriors that had dissolved in daylight although a spell had lingered in their bones, a spell to drive men—and women—mad. And Vlad’s black castle in the East lay under a permanent bank of clouds, to make even day as dark as night. Sunlight was the one thing he could not bear, even with all his powers.
I leaned back against the edge of the air cart and shouted the heavy words of the Hidden Language at the black clouds overhead. If Vlad was trying to make the twin kingdoms of Yurt and Caelrhon as dark as his own principality, he would not succeed.
The wind swirled stronger, and a small scudding cloud dumped hail on my head. But then the sky split open, and the sun’s rays shone placidly down. The thick clouds started to swing together again, regrouping, but I replied with more shouted spells, and they scattered, dissolving as they slid away over the horizon.
There, I thought, looking down at the fields below washed with light. That was better. The air was becoming warmer by the moment. If Vlad came to Yurt after me, we would meet on my terms.
The air cart flew faster now with the wind no longer against us. The sun beat down on my hair. Now that summer weather had returned, it was easy to think of the cold and the clouds as something trivial. I smiled, recalling how quick I had been to assume that some enemy would attack the castle as soon as I took off after Antonia. In fact, there had been no problems at all since I overcame the undead warriors, other than those directly due to Antonia’s high spirits.
As the air cart and I flew on I tried to plan my next move. The Romney woman had certainly wanted to warn me against somebody, and there might be other spells I could try in order to detect a distant, evil presence. Certainly I could telephone some of the other wizards stationed closer to the Eastern Kingdoms to see if they had heard of someone who came by night.
We came over the forests and fields that surrounded the white-washed royal castle of Yurt. Looking ahead, I saw that the drawbridge was up, which seemed overly cautious for daytime.
But then I saw the wolf.
It was a fenris-wolf, huge and white, as tall at the shoulder as a man. The only shading on its coat was a ruff of black guard-hairs around the neck. Long yellow teeth protruded from the jaws, and its eyes were a light china blue. It paced before the moat, ears forward, growling low and steady. I had seen a wolf like this in the Eastern Kingdoms, in fact outside of Vlad’s obsidian castle, but this was no time for reminiscences.
I dropped the air cart fast into the middle of the castle courtyard. The knights, heavily armed, stood along the battlements, watching. The wolf stared back at them, sunlight flashing like fire from its pale eyes.
King Paul came up to me, looking very serious, though an expression lurked at the corner of his mouth that suggested he was enjoying this. “Has anyone been hurt, sire?” I asked urgently. “Where did the wolf come from?”
“No one’s hurt. The saints only know where it came from, though it must be another attack on the Lady Justinia. It first appeared when I was out riding about an hour ago. The sky was so dark it could have been evening, and it was getting darker and colder by the minute, so I had just turned Bonfire back to the castle when I heard a howl.”
Down below the walls the wolf howled, and inside the stables Justinia’s elephant trumpeted wildly.
“Like that,” said Paul. “Bonfire was spooked, of course, and in the darkness I couldn’t even tell where it was.” It sounded to me that he had come extremely close to being killed, but he seemed almost cheerful about it. “But then the sun brok
e through the clouds, and I saw that beast looking at me. It didn’t take much persuading to get Bonfire to run! What’s most impressive is that the wolf was—almost—able to keep up. But I was fifty yards ahead when I reached the moat, and they’d seen me coming and were cranking up the drawbridge even before I was off it.”
It looked as though I had saved my king’s life with my weather spells. I took a deep breath and let it out again. “We should be safe then. It won’t be able to get over the walls unless it can fly.”
“That’s all very well for us,” said Paul, no longer sounding as though he was enjoying this. “But there are no stone walls around the village. If it gets bored here it can trot down and have its pick of the villagers’ herds—or of them.”
“Has anyone tried shooting it?”
“We did. But it seems to be able to dodge arrows easily.”
I had been probing the wolf as we spoke. It was a real wolf all right, but with a faint magical aura about it. Bigger and stronger than a normal wolf, it also appeared to have faster reflexes—and doubtless stronger jaws. I could try transforming it into something innocuous, but if it was a creature from the land of wild magic the spell would blow up in my face.
“Now that you’re here,” said Paul, “we’ll try a sortie against it. If you could put a binding spell on it we should be able to capture or kill it. But we’d better move fast in case those clouds come back—or before it really becomes night.”
“Not you, sire,” I said. “I’d certainly like a few sword arms at my back, but not yours. As your mother keeps on telling you, you don’t have an heir. If you get yourself killed by a wolf, who’s going to be king? You don’t want Yurt run by some fourth cousin from somewhere who doesn’t even worry about his villagers.”
Paul frowned, but I wasn’t going to wait for an argument. I might be pledged to his service, but a wizard could never be expected to obey with absolute, unquestioning loyalty. Our highest oaths were not to our kings. “Let’s get a few people down to the postern gate,” I called to the other knights. Hildegarde was among them and turned eagerly at my voice, but I ignored her. “You, you, you! I’ll distract the wolf on this side of the castle while you get out the back.”
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