His sword dangled unheeded and his mouth came partly open as she gave a deep, graceful curtsey, her head lowered but her eyes giving him a look of assessment. “I am honored to meet thee, most high king,” she said then, one eyebrow cocked and an amused twitch to her lips. “I was told the king of Yurt was a boy. Verily my uncle the mage has inadequate information.” I decided I didn’t have to worry after all that Paul might not find women romantically attractive.
“I desire to learn all the quaint customs of the West,” Justinia continued. “Now here is another wonder!” looking Hildegarde up and down. “Is the royal guard made up quite entire of such women? Are they perhaps bred for this purpose? This one is of a certainty a fine specimen! Or is she perhaps thy concubine?”
“No, she’s my cousin,” said Paul with an embarrassed laugh, not looking at Hildegarde. She hooked her thumbs into her belt and frowned, although as if not entirely sure what about the Lady Justinia she found insulting.
Gwennie came hurrying up at this point, before Justinia could ask us further about our western customs. “This lady is a very important visitor to Yurt from the East,” I said hurriedly. “Her great-uncle once did all of us a great service. Could you find her some appropriate accommodations?”
“The stables should suffice for my elephant,” said Justinia. “He is still quite young.”
“Welcome to Yurt!” said Gwennie, as polite as Antonia in spite of her surprise. She gave the king a quick glance and looked away again. “What a lovely dress, my lady! And what a, well, unusual way to arrive! Come right this way; the best guest chambers are in the south tower.”
The automaton stepped off the carpet with a jangling of joints to follow them. Gwennie gave a sharp gesture behind her back and several servants sprang forward, somewhat belatedly, to pick up the rest of the baggage. Paul remained stock still until Hildegarde took him rather firmly by the elbow.
I looked thoughtfully after the Lady Justinia and Gwennie. As I recalled, in the East slaves were common, and even trusted servants might throw themselves on their faces to kiss the ground at a master’s foot. But the lady did not seem to mind the relative informality of Yurt’s staff.
The automaton returned in a moment to unshackle the elephant. Highly dubious stable boys led it away, leaving the dark red carpet by itself in the courtyard. The elephant stopped at the watering trough, drank deeply, then shot a trunkful of water across its back and all over the stable boys.
“Maybe I can see a dragon some other time,” said Antonia, to reassure me in case I thought her disappointed. “But I’ve never seen an elephant before. Or a flying carpet either.”
“I rode on one once,” I said, “all the way, hundreds and thousands of miles, from the East back to Yurt.” Antonia looked at me with new respect.
Five minutes later, while I was examining the carpet and wondering if I might be able to keep it long enough to learn how the underlying spells worked that made it fly, Gwennie came racing back from the south tower. Paul and Hildegarde had gone outside again, although the king had appeared distracted enough that I thought the duchess’s daughter might have a chance to defeat him today.
“Do you know what she said?” Gwennie demanded. Her eyes were wide and voice high. “She said she thought it very ‘quaint’ that Yurt has a woman as vizier! And then she asked if I would ‘bid the slaves’ to come draw her bath!”
“And what did you tell her?”
“I don’t think we have slaves,” provided Antonia.
Gwennie smiled for a second and ruffled the girl’s hair. “We don’t. That’s what I told her. I did tell her I could assign her a lady’s maid for her stay. She started to pull herself up, as though about to tell me I was a worthless vizier who should throw herself into the moat at once, but then she relaxed and said she was sure she could cope with some ‘inconveniences’ while fleeing for her life, especially since she also had her servant. Have you ever seen anything like that creature, Wizard?”
“The mage Kaz-alrhun makes automatons; I assume it’s one of his.”
Gwennie shook her head. “If I was fleeing for my life I wouldn’t be worried about a slave shortage! I’d better send her a maid before this fine lady has to resort to something as degrading as pumping the hot water herself. Now, let’s see, which of the girls would be both skilled and obsequious, and unlikely to be spooked by that thing …”
The maids Gwennie referred to as “girls” were all older than she was. I smiled to myself as she turned on her heel, her mind apparently made up.
But she stopped for a second. “I’ll tell you one thing, Wizard,” she said in a low, intense voice. “That lady would make a terrible queen of Yurt.”
“How about a ride?” suggested Antonia, tugging at the tassels on the carpet. “I wasn’t scared in your air cart,” she added when I did not answer at once.
“All right,” I said, giving her a conspiratorial grin. “It’s not our flying carpet, but the Lady Justinia won’t be needing it for a while. And I think I still remember the magical commands to direct one of these things …”
I seated myself, Antonia in my lap, and gave the command to lift off. The carpet shot upward, far faster than the air cart, and headed rapidly south. The girl’s braids blew back into my face. “All right there?” I asked cheerfully, holding her closer.
“This is exciting, Wizard!” she shouted over the wind’s roar. Birds dodged out of our way. “Can we take Mother for a ride too?”
“We’d better not—it’s too far to get to Caelrhon and be back before anyone misses the carpet.” And besides, I was supposed to be spending time alone with Antonia this week. Was it my fault that I too would rather have been with Theodora?
“And I’m looking for something,” I added. I slowed the carpet’s flight with a few words in the Hidden Language, and we hovered while I put together a far-seeing spell to examine all the distant clouds in the sky before us.
If Justinia was the object of an assassination plot, I wanted to make sure she had not been followed to Yurt. Since Kaz-alrhun had entrusted her safety to me, I had to make sure she wasn’t killed in our best guest-room. The mage, I thought, had probably done his best to get her off unnoticed, and he might not have told even the governor himself where he was sending her, but I didn’t like to take chances.
“Nothing there,” I said to Antonia after a minute. “Just clouds.”
“No dragons?” she said, making it into a joke.
“No. Dragons would probably come from the north anyway. Let’s get back to the castle.”
As we shot back home a chilling thought struck me. Suppose the arrival of the miracle-worker in Caelrhon—and his abrupt disappearance yesterday—were somehow related to the Lady Justinia’s arrival in Yurt?
But I could not think of a plausible connection. He had already been in Caelrhon when Justinia left Xantium, and I could not imagine that anyone in the East would have learned where she was going and gotten an assassin here so far ahead of her arrival. And the lady herself was unlikely to have spent the last few weeks in hiding, disguised as someone who healed broken dolls and dead dogs.
II
“I hope you realize,” said Zahlfast testily, “that I can’t send a demonology expert from the faculty racing off to Yurt unless you’ve actually got a demon! We have classes here to teach.”
When Antonia had been whisked away by the twins to take a nap after lunch, I had gone to telephone the wizards’ school. So far I wasn’t having any luck getting help there. Zahlfast, second in command at the school, had long ago become my friend in spite of my disastrous transformations practical in his course. But the faintest suggestion that I was being drawn into the affairs of the Church had always riled him.
“Of course,” I said quickly. “I’m not asking for anyone to come here now. But since this magic-worker appeared suddenly and inexplicably in Caelrhon and then disappeared again just as inexplicably, I wanted to warn you in case he suddenly shows up again working his miracles or whatever they are—with or w
ithout a demon—in some other part of the western kingdoms.”
“Well, certainly no other wizard has said anything to us about a—what did you call him? A Cat-Man? And do you know what we would do,” Zahlfast continued, an edge to his voice, “if there was a strange magic-worker in your region, one there in fact as well as in rumor? We’d ask a nearby wizard to look into it, someone experienced: one, say, who’d had his degree twenty-five years or so… .”
“Oh, I’m investigating all right,” I said lamely, though there wasn’t a lot I could do unless the Dog-Man came back. When Zahlfast rang off I stared gloomily at the stone wall before me, short of good ideas.
Part of my problem was that I felt too close to this situation. The irrational feeling kept nagging me that the Dog-Man had disappeared from Caelrhon in order to bring evil to Yurt. Zahlfast thought I was overreacting, and maybe I was, but I could not take any situation lightly when it could affect my daughter. Although wizards were usually in fierce competition with each other, in this case I would have been willing to admit to deficiencies in my own magic to get the help of another skilled wizard.
I thought briefly of Elerius, generally considered the best student the school had ever produced. He had learned or guessed quite a bit about Theodora and me, and he might even feel he owed me a favor since I had never told anyone several secrets I had learned or guessed about him. But on the other hand I had never quite trusted him, and when we last met our relationship could hardly have been called cordial.
This was my problem. Zahlfast didn’t want other wizards investigating purported miracles in Joachim’s cathedral city any more than the bishop did. As long as the man didn’t return—and as long as nothing touched Antonia—I could act as though I was on top of the situation.
In the meantime I intended to learn more about the plots against the Lady Justinia and how the decision had been made to send her to Yurt. After all, the mage had sent her specifically to me.
Out in the courtyard I was startled to see a small blue-clad figure, carrying a doll, walking purposefully toward my chambers. I ran out to meet her.
“There you are, Wizard,” Antonia said, looking up at me with pleased sapphire eyes. “I was just looking for you.”
I had to smile back, although all the dangers a child could get into wandering around a castle by herself flashed through my mind. “I thought you were with Hildegarde and Celia.” Theodora, I thought, must have to be constantly alert to what our daughter was doing; maybe having her away in Yurt was a welcome respite.
“I like them,” said Antonia as I hoisted her onto my shoulder. “But they wanted me to take a nap, and I didn’t want to. I came here to see you, Wizard, not some ladies.” So she had been regretting not spending more time with me while I was regretting the same thing! “Celia is sad,” she added as I walked toward the south tower. “She wants to be a priest and the bishop won’t let her.”
And Hildegarde wanted to be a knight and Gwennie the queen of Yurt, and it didn’t look as though any of them stood a chance. “What do you want to be, Antonia?”
“A wizard. I already told you that. Do you think,” she added thoughtfully, “that it would help if I talked to the bishop about Celia? He’s my friend.”
I gave her a bounce, tickled to hear such adult concern in a child’s high voice. “He’s my friend too, but I don’t think it will help for anyone to talk to him.” A cold thought struck me. “You aren’t by any chance also friends with—with someone they call Dog-Man?”
“No,” she said regretfully. “Mother said I couldn’t play with him any more. But my friend Jen got her doll burned all up,” she added with enthusiasm, “and he fixed it. That’s what I’ll do when I’m a wizard: fix toys for people.”
This was certainly a novel motivation for becoming a wizard. But I did not respond because we were now at the Lady Justinia’s door. Gwennie had put her in the finest rooms the castle had to offer guests, the suite where the king of Caelrhon stayed when he visited.
Her automaton answered the door, stared at me with its flat metallic eyes for a moment, then motioned us inside. Antonia, staring, squeezed me around the neck until it was hard to breathe.
Justinia rose from the couch and came to meet me. I managed to loosen Antonia’s arms from around my neck and gave a reasonable approximation of the formal half-bow. “I trust you are finding everything satisfactory, my lady?” I said. From what Gwennie had said, she had better be. “Now that I hope you’ve had a chance to settle in, I’d like to learn more of why you had to leave Xantium.”
She waved me to a chair and reseated herself but did not seem immediately interested in talking about her affairs. Antonia perched on my knee. “That cold meat at luncheon, O Wizard,” Justinia asked, “prepared in a most bland style: was it perhaps beef?”
“Of course it was,” Antonia provided, with an air of showing off her own superior knowledge.
Justinia smiled. “Know then, my child, I have had but brief acquaintance with beef. It is eaten rarely in Xantium.”
Antonia thought this over. “How about chicken? How about bread? How about onions?”
But I interrupted before they could go into culinary comparisons of east and west. “Since the mage entrusted you to me, my lady, I hope you will allow me to ask what foes forced you to leave home, and what likelihood there is that they will follow you here.”
Justinia gave a flick of her graceful wrist, jangling her bracelets as though to dismiss such dangers as unimportant. “It is the old controversy between my grandfather and the Thieves’ Guild, of course,” she said in a bored voice. “It was destiny’s decree that the controversy arise again. All believed it settled a great many years ago, when I was but very small, back when—” and for a moment her voice became faint “—back when they assassinated my parents.”
“What’s assassinated?” Antonia asked, but I shushed her.
“My grandfather the governor declared that the thieves were becoming far too frequent on the streets of Xantium, even in the harbor which was forbidden them, and that he would shut down the Thieves’ Market if they could not conform to their earlier agreement. The Guild replied that they could not be responsible for the doings of non-Guild members, and that the governor’s taxes on their Market had risen most exceedingly. Tensions were such that— Well, my grandfather did not desire the lives of any of his family again used as negotiating tokens.”
“I understand, my lady,” I said gravely, glad Yurt had never had anything like this deadly political maneuvering. But then the wizards of the western kingdoms would never allow it to come to this. “But why did you come here?”
She had been playing with her rings while she talked, but now she turned to look at me over a half-bare shoulder with her dark almond-shaped eyes. “It is very far from Xantium. Or if I may speak boldly, from anywhere else.”
This was reasonably accurate; Yurt, one of the smallest of the western kingdoms, would not normally be a place of which anyone in the East had heard. But our quest fifteen years ago had alerted a number of powerful people, not just the mage Kaz-alrhun, to the existence of Yurt. I hoped that none of them would be people in contact with the Thieves’ Guild.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I thought the mage operated out of the Thieves’ Market himself. Why should your grandfather trust him?” I had no intention of being manipulated into being part of a devious double-edged plot against a lovely young woman.
“When one’s life is in most dire danger,” she said in a tone that sounded not young but very old and weary, “one trusts no one.” She nodded toward the automaton. “That is why I brought him with me.”
And the mage had doubtless made the automaton as well. I had been able to work with him in the East because our purposes coincided, and we had eaten his salt—I wondered how long the beneficial effects of that were supposed to last.
As I left the Lady Justinia’s chambers one of the castle servants met me. “You have a telephone call, sir,” he said, looking anxious.
“I think—I think it’s from the bishop.”
“Tell him I’ll be right there!” I darted across the courtyard, delighting Antonia, who was riding on my shoulder again, and opened the door to my chambers. “Stay here,” I told her. “I’ll be back soon. Don’t leave for any reason.”
“All right, Wizard,” she said agreeably. “Or should I call you Daimbert, the way Mother does? Would you like that better?”
I closed the door without answering and hurried to the telephone. Whatever the bishop had to tell me, I did not think Antonia should hear it. But I immediately began to imagine the harm she could do to herself in my rooms, starting with pulling down a bookshelf on top of herself.
The bishop was actually smiling. “I must apologize, Daimbert, for bothering you yesterday. The man has returned, and I believe all my questions have been answered.”
“Well, that’s wonderful,” I said in amazement. “But— What happened?”
“He came up to me in the cathedral after the noon service,” said Joachim. “As you can imagine, I was quite surprised.” So was I, but I almost dared be encouraged. A demon would not, I thought, enter a consecrated cathedral to talk to a bishop. “He told me he wants to be a priest.”
“A priest?” First Celia and now the Dog-Man. I tried unsuccessfully to tell from the tiny image of Joachim’s face if he actually believed this or was only trying to persuade himself of it.
“He told me he has powers in himself he does not fully understand, but he feels God has called him and he wants to be trained to use those powers to help others.”
I myself didn’t believe a word of it. If what I had sensed down by the docks was accurate, this man had the highly unusual combination of magical abilities and contact with the supernatural. A holy man who could heal a wounded dog, maybe. A magic-worker who had the power to fix broken toys, just possibly. But this man had, if the stories were right, begun to kill just to restore life, and he did not dare talk to a wizard.
At least Antonia was safely in Yurt. “That’s good to hear, Joachim,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say without more information. “Let me know how it all works out.” As I returned to my chambers I thought that this man, whoever he was, seemed to have found the one certain way to defuse the bishop’s suspicions.
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