“Wizard,” Paul began ominously, but then he stopped without countermanding my order. The three knights, delighted to be chosen, ran to let themselves out the small postern gate and to cross the moat on stepping stones while I flew over the wall to meet the wolf.
I needn’t have worried about keeping its attention while the knights came around. It sprang at me with a howl, and only by rapid mid-air backing was I able to avoid getting my throat ripped out.
“That’s right,” I told myself, hovering twenty feet above it. The red gullet and teeth were improved by distance, but not by much. “Remember that it has fast reflexes. And can jump.” I lifted to thirty feet.
I started on a paralysis spell, something to freeze it in place. From the corner of my eye I spotted the knights coming around the corner of the castle, spears at the ready.
The wolf plunged through my paralysis spell as though it wasn’t there and tore toward the knights. Flying madly behind, I tried a quick and dirty binding spell with no better result. This wolf had been sent here with counterspells all ready to foil a wizard.
The startled knights had their shields up and spears braced for the onslaught. Abandoning my binding spell, I turned the air to glass in front of the wolf.
It bounced back with a snarl of pain and rage. So you weren’t quite ready for that spell? I thought in grim triumph.
But already it had sprung up and around the solid air, again toward the knights of Yurt. They might not be the king, but I couldn’t let them get killed either. Easily dodging the spears with which they tried to impale it, the wolf knocked the first one down and went for his throat.
I yelled behind it, trying to remind it that it had been sent to kill a wizard. It whirled away from the fallen knight and at me, a mass of furious teeth and fur. I snatched up the spear the knight had dropped and flew rapidly backwards.
The wolf ran right along with me. This was a beast, I reminded myself, able to match paces with the fastest stallion in a dozen kingdoms. Taking long bounds, it snarled again, baring vicious yellow teeth. I tried to fly faster, but it still had no trouble keeping up.
Once all the way around the castle. I was almost back to the knights. Should I go around again and try to tire it out? I could hear faint distant cheers from the battlements. But this wolf might not tire in twenty circuits of the castle, while I myself would long before then. This was no spectacle or race where the viewers cheered for me—or the wolf? I stopped fleeing and stood my ground.
One last bound and it was on me, trying to evade the spear point and going for my face. The two quick words of the Hidden Language that should have knocked it backwards had no effect, and it was a struggle to keep clear in my mind the words to speed my own movements. Whoever had sent this wolf had spelled it against western school magic.
My magically-aided reflexes were nearly as fast as the wolf’s, but it was appreciably heavier. It ran straight up the spear, not even seeming to feel the point driving into its chest, and knocked me flat. Protection spells seemed to have no effect. Dropping the spear I threw both arms across my face and throat, feeling the wolf’s hot breath and the slash of fangs cutting into my flesh. For a second there was no pain at all, then the wounds began burning like fire.
What an ignominious way for a wizard to go, I thought, feeling a rush of hot blood pouring past my ears. An enormous weight landed on my chest, and as consciousness left me I realized that I could no longer hear the wolf’s growls. Maybe I’d killed it after all. My last thought was that at least now I might deserve the Golden Yurt.
III
I did not get better.
I regained consciousness while being carried into the castle, just enough to realize that the wolf was dead. In the evening, after the village doctor had salved and bound up the slashes on my forearms, the king came and sat beside me on the bed, long booted legs stretched out before him. He told me how the knights had struck the wolf from behind with sword and spear while it was trying to kill me; the blood I had thought came from my own throat was in fact the beast’s.
“Damnation, Wizard,” finished Paul, sounding relieved and irritated at the same time, “aren’t you ever going to let me do anything?”
Groggy but comfortable, I fell asleep, resigned to general stiffness for a few days and bandages for a little while longer. I had really worn myself out the last week or two, I thought, and being heroically wounded was a good excuse to catch up on my rest.
But in the morning the fire was back in the wounds and my head ached so badly I could barely think. The doctor, returning, pronounced that there might be “some infection.” When I tried to explain to him in a voice that didn’t sound anything like my own that there was a certain blue-flowered plant he had to find, one good for healing infection through herbal magic, he shook his head, told me to try to stay calm, and went to talk to Gwennie at the doorway without even listening to the plant’s description.
All that day I kept sliding in and out of evil dreams in which the wolf leaped at me again and again, causing me to jerk convulsively, throwing off the blankets and almost falling out of bed. Behind the wolf I could now clearly see Vlad’s face, dead white and with eyes of stone.
“The Romney woman told me he’s coming,” I told Gwennie when she put cool cloths on my brow. “You have to keep watch for him. Tell the wizards’ school he’s coming.”
“Of course we’ll tell them,” she said in the voice of someone humoring a child.
“And stop putting cold water on me,” I said irritably, stirring a bandaged arm enough to throw the cloth away. It felt like the scab had ripped free under the bandage. Just as well. I didn’t trust the doctor and whatever he had been putting on me, and I would tell him so. “This room is freezing already!”
“This room is very warm,” said Gwennie. “But you have a fever.”
Unconsciousness washed over me again. When I again felt cold water dripping into my ears—maybe later that day, maybe the next day—I tried to tell Gwennie that Vlad and the doctor had conspired to kill me. But it wasn’t Gwennie bending over me. This time it was Celia.
Nuns, I thought vaguely, nursed the dying. If I died from my wounds, would that count as having been killed by the wolf? But there was something wrong with Celia being at my bedside in Yurt.
“You’re not here,” I told her. “You’re a nun.”
“Not according to my mother and father,” she said with a sad smile. “Do you feel any better?”
“No.” And I passed out again.
Later I was never sure how long I wandered through fever and nightmare. I couldn’t keep my eyes open, but when I closed them demons leered at me while my body, especially the arms, seemed to grow distorted and enormous. Elerius kept slipping through my dreams, always one step ahead of me, looking back from under his peaked eyebrows and giving an ironic smile. Various people nursed me and tried to feed me soup as I slumped, only slightly conscious. At one point I became convinced that Theodora sat beside me, holding my hand, but when at last I was able to open my eyes all my fist clutched was the edge of the pillow.
“I’m sorry,” I came to myself to hear my own voice mumbling. “Won’t you forgive me? I thought priests were supposed to forgive people. I just wanted information, and I know he’s evil. You can tell because he tried to kill me.”
Whom was I addressing? It sounded as though I thought I was talking to the bishop. I got my eyes open and saw not Joachim but a man over seven feet tall, whose blond beard was streaked with white.
“Good,” I told him confidently. I knew who this was. No more nightmare illusions for me, I thought with assurance. “You can go hunt the wolf.” It was Prince Ascelin, Hildegarde’s and Celia’s father and a noted hunter. He bent over the bed, paying more attention to what I was saying than anyone else seemed to have lately, his blue eyes dark with concern. “The wolf poisoned me when it tried to bite me, but if you kill it I’ll recover. Just don’t let the doctor in. He doesn’t know anything about infection.”
I sank back beneath the surface of consciousness, but not as far or as long this time. They seemed to be doing something with my arms. Probably cutting them off, I concluded. The wounds must have become so infected that the doctor had decided to amputate before gangrene spread to the rest of my body. Little did anyone realize that this was all part of Vlad’s plot against me.
Well, I wasn’t going to let them do it. With a roar of anger, I forced myself to sit up and awake, jerking my arms back.
But it wasn’t the doctor who had taken hold of me. It was Prince Ascelin, and, this time, truly and not in a dream, Theodora.
“That sounded like a fairly healthy yell,” said Ascelin. “And it looks as if the wounds are healing at last.”
“His forehead doesn’t feel as feverish,” said Theodora, putting a cool palm against my head.
“Don’t talk about me as though I’m not there,” I said pettishly. “Who said you could cut off my arms?”
“I already tried to tell you,” said Ascelin patiently. “I have no intention of cutting off your arms. But nothing the doctor had seemed to be working, so I’ve been attempting a little of your own herbal magic. Don’t you remember that blue-flowered plant you found on our trip to the East? It’s hard to find around here, let me tell you, and I don’t think it works as well without a wizard to mumble magic words over it, but I think it’s drawing the infection out at last.”
“I tried to tell the doctor,” I said, sinking back against the pillows, “but he wouldn’t listen.”
“Either that,” said Ascelin with a quick smile, “or you weren’t making a lot of sense. You haven’t the last few weeks, you realize.”
“Few weeks?”
Theodora pushed me back into bed again with a hand on my shoulder. “Lie still and I’ll try you on the soup.”
I let her spoon chicken soup into my mouth, trying to sort out what was reality and what nightmare. My head felt strangely light, which I decided was the absence of headache. The wolf, it seemed quite clear, really was dead, and Ascelin and Theodora assured me that nothing else had attacked the castle.
“I tried to get some help in herbal magic from the wizard of Caelrhon,” said Ascelin, “but he told me nobody teaches it at your school anymore.” He was right. I only knew what I did from my long-dead predecessor’s rather grudging lessons. “So let’s hope I remembered that plant correctly!”
Something else was nagging at me. I identified it at last. “What are you doing here?” I asked Theodora, swallowing soup. “And where’s Antonia?”
“She’s staying with her friend Jen. And I’m here because your queen sent me for me when—when she thought you were dying.”
“Was I?” I asked, interested. “Am I still?”
“Considering that this is the first time you’ve been coherent in a very long time,” said Ascelin with his quick smile, “I trust you aren’t.” After a moment he added soberly, “But the bishop came last week and gave you the last rites.”
So I hadn’t entirely imagined Joachim being here. I wondered if he’d actually heard anything I tried to say to him. And if he’d forgiven me, would I stay forgiven even if I didn’t stay dead? “But Celia should have given me last rites,” I said, remembering my daughter’s plan to give everyone a chance to do what they most wanted.
A shadow passed across Ascelin’s face at his own daughter’s name. “She nursed you as assiduously as anyone, but—” He stood up abruptly. “You need to sleep. Come on,” to Theodora. “We can talk to him more in the morning.”
That night I slept deeply, without the nightmare of fever chasing me, and when I awoke toward dawn I almost felt like myself, though very weak. I took a quick glance at my arms—still there—and then looked across the room to see Theodora dozing in a chair.
She awoke when I stirred and came to sit beside me. Her amethyst eyes were gentle. I took her hand, an action which seemed to require an enormous amount of effort. “I’m so glad you’re here,” I whispered. “But how did you know?”
“I told you,” she said gently and bent to brush her lips across my forehead. “Your queen sent for me. She knows about you and me.”
“It’s a secret,” I said, trying to open my eyes enough to look at her properly. “Nobody else knows.”
Theodora shook her head slowly and kissed me again. “I think just about everyone in the castle has worked it out. After all, when a mysterious woman is sent for as a wizard lies dying, and everyone recalls that he very recently produced a ‘niece’ no one knew he had, one who seems remarkably adept at magic for a little girl, a secret is hidden no longer.”
“I’m sorry, Theodora,” I murmured. So much for the privacy she had worked so hard to maintain! “I didn’t want to have them all get to know you thinking of you as some—”
“As some fallen woman?” she said with a smile tugging the corners of her mouth. “Since they do, at least nobody has questioned whether it’s suitable for me to spend the night watching you alone in your chambers.”
“What does King Paul think about it?” I asked as though casually. Inwardly I was thinking gleefully that now Theodora would have to marry me. It would be the only way to restore her reputation, and although this wasn’t the best way to have told Paul about her, now that the secret was out he would have to agree that I could stay on as Royal Wizard once we were married. This should take care of Theodora’s final objections.
But from her reply she hadn’t looked at it quite the same way. “I’m not sure what your king thinks about me,” she said slowly. “He has gone out of his way to talk to me, almost as though wanting to demonstrate that he is not passing judgment on a fallen woman. In the same way, he has been struggling to act as though he considers you no differently than he ever did—which suggests of course that at some level he must be.” Theodora, I thought, had always had a quick insight into other people’s thoughts—due to being a witch, or maybe only to being herself.
“King Paul has been extremely concerned about you, of course,” she continued, “and has been at some pains to tell me all the wonderful things you’ve done for the kingdom over the years, going back to when his father was still alive. He’s even grateful for the times you’ve kept Yurt’s knights—and him—from fighting as they were trained to do! It was touching, Daimbert: as though he hoped that by talking about you he could keep you alive. Since I don’t live here in Yurt, maybe he thought I was the best person to tell, the one least likely to know all the stories already. And I must say some of the events sounded better in his telling than when you’ve told me about them!” She squeezed my hand. “He was very happy last night to hear that you were improved—nearly as glad as I.”
I blinked against the early light coming through the window. Maybe I would try tea and cinnamon crullers this morning, I thought—my mouth tasted like old chicken soup. Well, even if Theodora and Paul hadn’t realized yet that she would have to marry me and come live in Yurt, they would soon.
“The chaplain is planning a thanksgiving service for when you’re a little better.”
“I don’t want the chaplain to have anything to do with it,” I said peevishly. “I want the bishop.”
Theodora smiled. “I’m sure he’ll be offering his own thanks to God in Caelrhon. You don’t want to act as though you thought only one priest had access to God and His saints!” Actually that was exactly what I thought, but I kept quiet. “I know he’s been your friend for years, Daimbert,” she continued, “but he’s even busier than usual with his duties this summer.” It sounded then as Joachim had given up his plans to resign, I was pleased to hear. “Especially with the rats in the cathedral—”
“What rats?”
I had been lying comfortably, holding Theodora’s hand, but now I tried to sit up with a great deal of thrashing.
She pushed me down again easily. “It’s just that the river rats seem to be fairly numerous this summer,” she said in a casual voice that immediately made me suspect this was much more serious than she wanted me to th
ink. “They’ve always lived along the docks, but now they’re getting into houses and a whole swarm seem to have settled in the cathedral. An acolyte even found one chewing on the altar cloth! So you can understand why the bishop is concerned.”
“It’s Cyrus,” I said darkly. “He summoned the rats.”
“The Dog-Man?” said Theodora in surprise. “After his prayers restored the burned buildings, I doubt if anyone in Caelrhon would suspect him of such a thing. There are some who have blamed the Romneys— But I’m sure everyone realizes it’s just a result of higher water along the river this year,” she finished briskly.
“It’s Cyrus all right,” I repeated obstinately. “But the bishop won’t believe any evil of him, and neither will Celia. Maybe if I tell her that he’s behind the rats she’ll give up this notion of being a nun. She never wanted to be one anyway.”
Theodora looked somewhat pained. “I think Celia is taking this hard,” she said quietly. She tried then to smile and added, “It feels so strange to be meeting all these people properly at last. You’ve told me about them, of course, and some of them I saw at King Paul’s coronation, but the twins were just overgrown girls then, not young women.”
But I wasn’t going to let her change the subject. “What is Celia taking hard? The rats?”
Theodora shook her head fractionally, looking somewhere over my head. “Finding out that Antonia is your daughter. I think she’d gotten the notion that wizards should be as pure as priests. And she had trusted you, Daimbert, with her religious vocation . . . She won’t speak to me at all, though her sister does all the time, as though to make up for it. Hildegarde told me she’s afraid that Celia is talking herself into really wanting to be a nun, in part to avoid having any more unpleasant discoveries in the secular world.”
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