So soon, then. Maggie had to get Davey’s heart so that she and the bear would have a bargaining point, in case they were overwhelmed by the sheer number of their foes after the gypsies arrived. “It seems to me,” she said, “that if I am to marry the gypsy, I ought to have his heart. He’s far too fickle for my taste as he is, and we didn’t part on exactly cordial terms. In fact, I think he quite dislikes me.”
“Impossible!” said her uncle indulgently, “What young man in his right mind could despise such a ravishing creature? He’ll be overcome with joy.”
She followed him as he went to the ladder he kept in the study for fetching scrolls from the topmost compartments. “All the same,” she said, “I would still feel better…”
He looked at her sharply. “You are unusually argumentative today, Maggie. Didn’t I tell you to trust me?” He moved the ladder to one of the high, deep-set windows above the tapestry that told of a sea serpent hunt in the middle of a map of the Sea of Smokings.
“Oh, of course I do, Uncle! Forgive me. I guess any girl is apt to be a little silly when she is first engaged.” Ugh, she thought, if he believes that one…
He cupped her chin between his thumb and forefinger and looked deeply into her eyes. Again she wondered if he could smell salt on her breath—or perhaps the fishiness of her excuse—but he said, “Naturally you would be, my child. And I can deny you nothing.” He climbed the ladder, and Maggie nearly swooned with the effort it cost her to keep from pushing it out from under him.
Light danced around the stone walls, sparking bright new colors onto the worn tapestries, encrusting Maggie’s worn woolen garments with gems of luminescence, and skipping around on the bear’s closed eyes ’til he turned over on his other side to sleep.
From the wizard’s hand dangled a crystal prism. “If you look deeply into it, you will see his heart,” he told her. Maggie examined the prism, which seemed to be made of solid light itself. There, framed by a thousand glittering facets, was a tiny rose, the color of heart’s blood.
“That came out of him?” she asked, in spite of herself. Her uncle jerked it back abruptly and Maggie struggled to resume her docile niece pose. It was no easy task to deceive such a professional sneak as her uncle. “I mean to say,” she said, “now that I know his heart, how can I help but love him?”
Mollified, her uncle set it into one of the pigeon holes of his desk. “How indeed?” He turned to the door the ghost had passed through the night before. “Ah, Lady Amberwine, refreshed from your nap, I trust?”
Winnie, pale as the proverbial lily, inclined her head, which was about all the communication she was capable of now that she knew the wizard’s villainous nature.
“You may as well know, too. Your gypsy friend, Davey, and his charming mother, are on their way here in order for Davey to marry your sister. We have just been discussing wedding plans. Perhaps you’ll persuade him to sing that song you’re so fond of.” He hummed a few bars of the tune for which Colin had so often fashioned lyrics, though on his lips it sounded strange and gloating. Winnie went rigid. If she was pale before, Maggie thought her ashen now.
This time Maggie was unable to control the anger that pounded in her ears and she had her hand on her dagger when there was a ringing of footsteps in the corridor without. “Brown!” Hugo shouted, “Come here and see what I’ve brought you!”
They turned to the doorway. The peddler was a burly fellow when he wasn’t all bent over pretending to be humble and holding his hat in his hand. Now it was Colin he held, a shirtless and disheveled Colin with his face contorted from the pain of the grip Hugo held on his arms, which were forced up behind his back.
Uncle Fearchar crossed to them. “Hugo, old friend, you’re so uncouth! Where are your manners? Is this how you treat a friend of my niece?” He made as if to dust Colin off, after Hugo released him, but it was difficult to straighten the collar of a shirtless man. So he settled for giving him his best sincerely convincing smile. “Minstrel Songsmith, I presume? But what has become of your raiment?”
“I never wear my shirt when I go swimming,” Colin said.
It was all Maggie could do to keep from rushing over to hug him. She had been terribly afraid that whatever end they were plotting for him had already come about, and an imaginative revenge would be all she would be able to do about it.
“I think my sister and I would probably prefer to hear Colin sing at my wedding,” Maggie said. “Colin, it’s too wonderful,” she winked from behind her uncle’s back. Hugo had gone to poke up the fire that was kept burning in the drafty hall to keep out the chill. “Uncle has arranged for me to marry Gypsy Davey and be a queen and everything.”
“Oh—er—how nice,” he said, not quite sure what the wink was meant to convey.
“Mrrow?” asked Ching, sauntering through the door left open when Hugo had forced Colin into the study.
“Animals in the house. Disgusting,” said Uncle Fearchar, moving to shoo the cat.
“I beg your pardon?” said His Highness the bear, rising from his nap.
“Er—present company excepted of course, Your Highness,” amended the wizard, crossing to his desk, where he began rummaging in the papers.
Ching triumphantly leaped to Maggie’s shoulder and began to purr.
“Now that we’re all together again,” said Fearchar jovially, “I thought you might like to see the writ of abdication I found for Your Highness that you may sign to leave your throne to young Davey and Maggie.”
“There was another item involved, wasn’t there, Wizard?” asked the bear, lumbering over to the desk.
“Ah, yes, of course. Davey’s heart.” He picked up the crystal, waved it around a bit, and laid it on the desk, out of the bear’s reach. “Have it right here, so when the boy comes all you’ll have to do is hand it over to him and—poof—there you are, good as new, in all your regal splendor!”
“Let’s see,” said the bear, putting his forepaws on the desk and extending himself to where he could sniff at the crystal. “Yes, I guess that about does it. There’s the heart, the boy’s on the way, here we all are, and there’s young Colin. I think the time has come.” He rose to his full height and roared deeply. “Run along, now, children, unless you want to see me tear him to pieces,” he told Maggie and Colin. “I’ll meet you at the boat.”
“Watch out, prince!” cried Maggie as her uncle snatched a phial from the desk and flung it at the bear’s face. But it was too late, for no sooner had the white powder been released from the phial to float into the bear’s nostrils than the huge, menacing prince subsided into a sleeping roly-poly heap of fur at the sorcerer’s feet.
“Maggie, I am seriously shocked at you,” said her uncle, as he tried to fix her with his expression of sincerely, seriously, shocked injury.
“Oh, dry up, you conceited ass!” she cried, unable to control herself and maintain the charade any longer.
“What a way to talk to your only uncle! You’ll watch your nasty mouth when you address me, my girl.”
“I’ll do nothing of the sort, and I’m not your girl!” Maggie informed him, anxiously watching at the same time as Winnie and Colin bent over the fallen bear.
“Is he dead, then?” asked Winnie.
“Not yet,” snapped Fearchar. “I just happened to have laid that dragon-strength sleeping powder there. You’ll be meeting the dragon soon.”
Colin had straightened, having wit enough to retain his bewitched expression. “Oh, Master Fearchar, sir, do you think that’s safe? I understand dragons can be hazardous to one’s health.”
Maggie knew she would explode if she heard one more syrupy answer from the lying wizard. Facing him squarely, she threatened. “Tell him the truth now. Go on, tell us all the truth if it’s in you. I’m sick to death of your hokery pokery.”
Her uncle seized her wrists and glared at her. Hugo had twisted Winnie’s arms behind her now, and had a dagger at Colin’s throat, in case he wasn’t so enchanted as he seemed to be. “You will
not refer to my magical powers as hokery pokery, niece. Hereafter you will be respectful and will do precisely as you are told.” He smiled unpleasantly, “Too bad you didn’t array yourself as I asked so you would be pretty for your bridegroom. As it is, there will just be enough time for you to accompany us to the feeding grounds to give the dragon his evening meal. You will soon see, while my scaly friend feasts on Lady Amberwine’s tender flesh and that of the minstrel, that I am to be reckoned with. Your little deceits have cost you their lives. You understand that you are responsible for this unfortunate turn of events, not I. You force me into violent action. By the time the gypsies arrive, the effects of your salt will have worn off, and you’ll once more be docile, if somewhat saddened by the loss of your friends. You and the bear will do my bidding, and when he has signed the writ, you will be married and he will be removed to the dungeon ’til the next feeding.”
“And you really think I’m going to go along with all this?” she asked, fingering the dagger in her pocket.
“Oh, my dear child, I’m afraid you have no choice. It is not actually you who will be queen at all once you marry Davey. Your charming appearance will remind the Ablemarlonians who really rules them, but you will work no more tricks, make no more unwise decisions. You will be quite subdued—permanently. I think I have just the spell to do it.”
Ching’s ears had been flattening as Fearchar’s voice rose higher and higher while he leaned into Maggie’s face to emphasize his point. He had been so intent on making his effect, he failed to notice the cat’s laid-back ears and the tail he lashed behind Maggie’s shoulder. The wizard could not, however, fail to notice the lightning slash of claws that ripped across his face, catching the corner of his eye.
Screaming with pain and clutching his eye with one hand, the enchanter slapped Maggie to the floor with the other hand as he grabbed the cat by the head and flung him into the fireplace.
Maggie recovered quickly enough to shriek at the fire to stifle itself. With a terrible yowl, Ching leaped out of the coals and streaked out the door.
“Catch that beast, Hugo!” ordered Fearchar. But Amberwine took advantage of her proximity to the peddler to stretch out a dainty foot and neatly trip him. By the time the wizard recovered his composure, the cat had disappeared.
Fearchar, still clutching at his injured eye, was stalking toward Maggie, who lay sprawled by the fireplace watching his advance. His uninjured eye tried to skewer her where she lay.
The pulses in her throat were throbbing so that she kept swallowing, and her hands trembled as she drew the dagger from her skirt pocket. Colin leapt forward to help her, but was checked by Hugo’s knife. Maggie lost her balance once and had to support herself on the mantel as she stood to meet the wizard. Her eyes felt dry as paper and fastened on him with awe and an odd loathing respect. His was the first real malevolence she had ever encountered, and she found it shamefully attractive. It crossed her mind that all she would have to do to be back to their relationship of yesterday would be to smile, apologize, offer repentance, marry someone she hated, and sit idly by and watch her friends murdered. Not so attractive after all. When she took a backward step, he took a deliberate step forward.
“You have a lot of nerve abusing Ching,” she said. “I don’t know what Gran will turn you into for that—a weasel perhaps. I don’t think there is an animal suitably vile enough to hold your form. You’ve injured my father, disgraced my sister, and threatened your own sisters and my friends. I don’t think we want you in our family, Uncle.”
“I resigned from your family a long time ago, niece,” he snarled. “But I was willing to adopt you into mine.”
“Only when you thought I could be useful. You didn’t even want to use me for my own power—just because I look like you. But my magic is all my own, not stolen, like your castle, or gotten by lies, like the spell for Davey’s heart and probably, if you could tell the truth, the one for changing His Highness to a bear. I can do an honest month’s work in a half an hour if I’m pressed. That’s not very grand by your standards, but all you seem to be able to do is convince people of things that make fools of them and cause their food to spoil, and play a few parlor tricks you’ve begged or stolen from your betters. You’re not even a decently magicked village wizard, and you think you should be king on a magical supremacy platform!”
He kept coming after her, but she was drawing courage from her own speech. She stood, dagger poised to meet him, in the middle of the study. Her voice quavered, and to her annoyance hot tears began to flood her eyes.
“You ought to have listened to me, Maggie. It will be very hard on you now. You don’t know the extent of my power,” the smile he wore as he stalked her was not pleasant. “I can control you completely—so completely you will have to have my permission to bathe or dress yourself in the morning.”
“Not if I keep salt on my tongue at all times, and I will if it dries and cracks it in my head, rather than submit to you.” She shook her head slowly from side to side, raising the dagger slightly. “I won’t be your creature. You cannot injure my cat, murder my friends, and expect to take over my body before I’m done with it. I may be a dilute witch, as you think, but I am powerful enough to prevent your doing that. You can have no power over me that I don’t cede to you. You’re a wretched wizard, and a villain, and I think you may be a coward as well.”
He let drop the hand that held the swollen, bloody eye and stepped as close to her as possible to still be out of striking range of the dagger. “Perhaps. Shall we see…?”
“Maggie!” Winnie cried, “The gypsy’s behind you!”
She swiveled to see Xenobia flying toward her, skirts like bat wings flapping as she ran. Maggie threw the dagger and missed. She plunged a hand into her pocket and flung the next heavy object she found, the vial of love potion. Her aim was better this time, and the vial struck the gypsy woman squarely on the forehead, where it broke, its contents mingling with her blood as she fell to the ground.
For a moment Maggie and the others were frozen as Davey, handsome and cool-seeming with only his bolero covering his chest and a dark curl falling over his forehead, turned to his mother. “Are you all right, mum?” he asked. The woman’s head lolled backwards, but even from where she stood, Maggie could see the battered bulging bodice of the green silk gown that had been Winnie’s rise and fall.
She was spun around and her teeth knocked together, bright spots exploding behind her eyelids as her uncle slapped her hard twice across the face. She kicked him as hard as she could with her old boots, but had not gotten her head clear from the slapping when his fist slammed into her jaw and she fell crashing into darkness.
20
Lady Amberwine cradled Maggie’s head in her lap as the swan-propelled boat sped them near to their doom. “When will you ever learn to be still?” she murmured tenderly to her sister. “If only you had kept your tongue, he would have spared you.” Maggie said nothing, nor had she done more than breathe since being knocked senseless.
Colin scowled and struggled with the ropes that bound him. The bear was also bound, but starting to recover from the effects of the sleeping potion. In the far end of the boat sat the sorcerer, looking appropriately sinister now that he had covered his eye with a black patch. Xenobia’s usually sour expression was fragmented with what Amberwine, had she not known the gypsy queen better, might have called emotion. The gypsy was wearing her kerchief as a bandage for the wound made by Maggie’s missile. Davey looked sleek, attractive, and bored, swinging his feet restlessly against the equipment storage box he sat upon.
The little boat stopped, and Hugo lumbered over the side to tie her up.
“Ladies first, Hugo. Show Lady Amberwine to the stake of honor. The others will have to make do with lying on the rock ’til the dragon notices them.”
“Right.” Hugo took Maggie from Winnie’s lap and dumped her unceremoniously onto the beach. From the corner of her eye, Winnie saw Colin’s mouth tighten and the bear gave a feeble, slee
py growl. Hugo handed Winnie out of the boat, and the stench of the animals and remnants of animals who had been left there all week for the dragon to feed upon nearly knocked her over.
“Come along, milady,” mocked the peddler, manhandling Amberwine, “We have an excellent viewpoint reserved just for you.” He pushed her off the beach into the throng of milling animals. The island rose to a central mound and in the center of this was a metal stake driven into the sheer rock. To this pole Hugo lashed Amberwine’s wrists, ankles, neck, and middle. “This is reserved for Master Brown’s special guests, milady. You might say it’s the dragon’s rotisserie.” He went on to describe in great detail, as he finished tightening the knots, in what condition they had found the remains, if any, of former occupants of the stake. Winnie was not listening, having conveniently fainted after the initial explanation of the pole’s purpose.
Colin raged at his inability to do anything to help Maggie and Amberwine, but was unable to do more than shuffle off the boat and onto the island. Davey and Fearchar rolled His Highness off a miniature gangplank, where the enchanted nobleman flopped onto the beach in an excellent imitation of a stuffed nursery bear.
Hugo returned, and the wizard gestured at the bear. “Skin him out here. He’s too dangerous to have running amok. I can control Ablemarle without him through that spineless brother of his, if need be. The dragon may have his meat, but I want that handsome hide for my floor.” Before Colin could decide whether to butt him with his head or bite him on the leg, Hugo had grasped His Highness by the furry throat and raised his knife.
But before the peddler could make the cut, a screeching Xenobia leaped upon him and flayed him with raking claws until her son and the sorcerer pulled her off him.
“No! You can’t! I will not allow it!” she cried as they strove to subdue her strong, squirming body. The sorcerer, who was beginning to like that sort of thing, slapped her hard across the face.
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