“Now, you won’t be able actually to talk with the little girl,” said Cyrus, “but—”
Theodora whirled on him so fiercely that he backed up a step. “You said we could see her! You said she was all right!”
“Yes, yes!” he said quickly. “You can see her, but she won’t see you. Vlad has imprisoned all the children behind an invisible shield.”
I didn’t want to dwell on what Vlad’s plans might be for them. Would he think children’s flesh, because younger and fresher, better for rebuilding his body than that of adults? “How hard would it be to break this shield?” I asked, thinking fast. I might be able to improvise a way to dismantle the spell—if doing so didn’t bring Vlad racing through the castle at once to stop me.
“Very hard,” said Cyrus, looking concerned for a moment, but he immediately cheered up. “I know! I can have the demon break it!”
“You said you’d done your last demon-assisted spell,” Gwennie pointed out, her lips white.
“Whoops! So I did. See how difficult it is, Daimbert?” he said, hurrying ahead of us through an arcade. “You have to be constantly alert.”
Beyond the arcade was a final passageway, shadowed and reeking with menace. But the light from Cyrus’s candle bobbed down it without hesitation, and after a second I reached for Theodora’s hand and followed. The passage opened onto what must have once been a chapel. But the stained glass windows were gone and the cracked stone altar had a rooks’ nest built on it. Desecrated long since, I thought—no aura of the saints lingered here. And in the chapel were the children.
There were at least a hundred of them. Theodora threw herself forward with a cry, to be stopped by air turned to glass. I probed the spells even while straining to see Antonia beyond the barricade. It was complicated magic, seemingly built on different principles than what I had used against the undead warriors and the wolf.
The chapel was lit only by a few candles. Most of the children were asleep, curled up in heaps like puppies on the stone floor. Their shoes were worn to ribbons. “The poor little things,” said Cyrus, as sympathetic as though it hadn’t been his own piping that had brought them here. “They must be exhausted!”
The few who were awake seemed unable to hear or see us. I spotted the Princess Margareta, who must be the oldest person there, sitting with two very small children on her knees.
Margareta’s slightly squeaky voice was loud in the ruined chapel. “And of course the children were frightened in the dark house,” she said in the voice of a storyteller. “But they would have been much happier if they had only known that, just a few miles away, a brave knight was on his way to rescue them!”
Nobody was going to rescue these children unless I found a way through this barrier. I looked toward Theodora, wondering if she might have a possible approach with her witch-magic, but she was still trying to spot Antonia.
“The brave knight was very handsome and very strong,” Margareta continued. “He had blond hair and green eyes, and he rode a red roan stallion.” I caught Paul’s eye; his jaw was set in angry determination.
“But did he rescue the children?” piped up the little boy on her lap.
“Of course. I’m just coming to that part.”
Theodora put a hand on my arm. “There she is.”
Antonia was on the far side of the room, sitting up talking to an older boy and drawing a horned figure on the wall with a piece of chalk. We hurried around to be closer. “You see, you really can’t be friends with a demon,” she was saying seriously. “My wizard has a book that tells all about demons. So therefore the Dog-Man must either be a very bad person—though I don’t think he is—or else in big trouble.”
Cyrus giggled beside me. “What a sweet little girl, Daimbert! Big trouble! You’ll have to teach her magic—and a little more accurate demonology—when she gets older.” He turned to Theodora. “But now, my dear, I’m afraid we have to get back to those nice chambers I prepared for you.”
“No!” I said brusquely. “I’m going to get my daughter free!” And, not caring anymore if it did attract Vlad, I plunged into the forces of magic, trying to find a way to unravel this spell.
“Stop! Stop!” cried Cyrus. “Don’t call Vlad’s attention to the children now! There’s still time to rescue them if—”
He was trying to put a paralysis spell on me, but I really had studied wizardry a lot longer than he had. School magic worked just fine blocking the not-quite-thoroughly understood spells of someone who had only been Vlad’s apprentice, learning from him the magic of blood and bone but never completing his studies.
In a few seconds I had Cyrus tied up in a binding spell. “Now!” I said firmly. “That should keep you from interfering any more while I find out how Vlad put this invisible wall together and take it apart again.”
Cyrus looked desperate. “Don’t do it, Daimbert. I’m serious! If you start dismantling Vlad’s spells he’s bound to notice. Don’t you know what he plans to do with the children—doubtless starting with your daughter? I’ve got him practicing weather spells all night, but you and I have to work together in the meantime on a plan to free these children. Let’s go back to those comfortable rooms where Vlad won’t even find us! We can plan there.”
I had stopped to listen to him, but now I started on magic again. This was an arcane, highly convoluted spell and might take a while. “I can’t wait any longer, Cyrus. I can’t trust the man who kidnapped my daughter to help set her free.”
“But how will I make restitution for capturing the children if you don’t give me a chance to release them?” His mouth was pulled into a grimace. “Don’t make me do this, Daimbert! I know you think you’re going to help them, but you’re putting their lives in immediate danger! I’ve stopped asking the demon for his help, but I’ll do it again if it’s the only way I can stop you from hurting the children.” He dropped his eyes. “Amen, ever and forever, glory the and power the and kingdom the is thine—”
“Stop,” I said harshly. “All right. Let’s go back. You’ve made your point.” He didn’t even have to say the whole Lord’s Prayer backwards. The demon would come aid him with only a single mental call. I sniffed but smelled no brimstone—yet.
Nothing, I thought bitterly, would do any good at this point. Vlad might hold off whatever plans he had for the children for a few hours yet, but as soon as Cyrus and I figured out a way to free them —assuming we could, and assuming I could trust Cyrus’s assistance—he would be on us. I broke the binding spell that held him.
“This is much better, Daimbert,” said Cyrus, rubbing his arms to restore circulation. He started back down the passageway, and Theodora took my arm, her amethyst eyes sober, as we followed. “I realize,” Cyrus said gaily over his shoulder, “that wizards always have trouble working with those who follow the path of true religion, but you and I should be able to manage!”
I turned for what might be my last glimpse of my daughter. Antonia had again taken her colored chalk out of her pocket—the same chalk the bishop had given her a few weeks ago, I thought—and was drawing something else on the floor, to the evident interest of the boy with her. “And so they were rescued,” came Princess Margareta’s voice. “There! Wasn’t that a good story?”
Paul, I could see, could hardly contain himself. Cyrus and I, back in the chambers the demon had provided us, became involved in a rather desultory discussion of magic and whether it was possible to break Vlad’s spell from here, where theoretically Vlad would not spot us at work. There didn’t seem to be any way. The king, on the other hand, was ready to act, to act now, to start on a bold plan to rescue us and a hundred children, and waiting for something to happen was not an acceptable alternative.
The women, exhausted by fear and the long night, huddled together, half-dozing, but after a while I looked up to see Justinia slowly rise. She met my eyes for a second, put her finger on her lips in silent warning to Paul, who had also glanced toward her, and advanced toward Cyrus.
“If there
isn’t a way to dismantle the barrier without Vlad noticing,” he was saying, “maybe we’ll just have to give him even more to think about than the thunderstorm.”
Again, while discussing strategy and spell structure he had become, at least for the moment, disconcertingly sane. “Could you come up with a diversion to make him think this castle is under attack?” he continued. “Illusion won’t do, I’m afraid. And I’m also afraid I used my whole supply of spell bones attacking your castle.” He gave a chuckle. “But almost any commotion might work if it was over on the far side of the castle. Your manservant,” meaning Paul, “seems to know this castle, so he can guide you. If you could try something, then in the meantime I—”
He noticed Justinia then. Her long black hair, damp and uncombed but still magnificent, swung over her shoulder as she came closer, hands on shapely hips. “I have not yet had a chance,” she said with a slow smile, “to thank thee for saving us all from Vlad.”
Cyrus was even more startled than I was. “Well, you’re welcome,” he said, flustered. “I’m glad you’re starting to trust me at last.” In a moment he recovered his composure and leaned suavely back, a gratified-but-humble expression on his face.
“Perhaps,” Justinia continued, her head tilted sideways, “thou and I might step into one of these other rooms and I could thank thee more personally.”
What could she be planning? To distract him from everything around him just long enough for Paul to stick a knife into him? The king, standing in the background twitching with readiness, seemed to think so.
“Well, my lady, you seem to be making a very attractive offer,” said Cyrus, blushing a little, “but at the moment Daimbert and I are busy planning our strategy, and you should also know that I am in training to become a priest.”
Before Justinia could make her offer of thanks even more attractive, the entire castle shuddered. There was a clang, as though from an unimaginably huge bell, and the castle shuddered again. All around us we could hear falling stone, as half-ruined walls and roofs subsided further. But the distant sounds of falling seemed to take place in the heart of a strange and eerie silence.
“What—” cried Cyrus, but his words were cut off. The fire, the fireplace itself, the couches and tapestries were abruptly gone. Cyrus and I smacked to the stone floor from the chairs on which we had just been sitting but which no longer existed.
He jumped up, looking wildly around a room now as bleak and bare as the one where Vlad had originally put us. Only one candle still burned—the rest had been upended. I reached wildly for Theodora, my heart pounding horribly, as raw, unfocused terror poured through the room.
“The storm!” cried Cyrus. “The storm!” That explained the strange silence. The thunder and the lash of rain had abruptly stopped, though the night was just as dark.
Panting hard, Cyrus started mumbling, too low and too fast for me to follow though it sounded like the Hidden Language. Nothing happened.
“My demon!” he cried in heart-broken despair. “My demon is gone!”
“Then let’s go!” cried Paul, jerking the now-rotten door open.
I sprang in front of him. The primeval terror I felt made it seem that a demon had just arrived, not gone, but I would try to understand that later. “Wait, Paul! It’s the demon’s magic that has protected us from Vlad!”
That demon’s thunderstorm and comfortable room had disappeared, and it was no longer answering calls from Cyrus. Vlad, suddenly not tied up with weather spells and able now to spot us with his magic, would be on us at once.
“Then it has also protected the children!” the king shot back. “We have to get to them before Vlad does!”
Theodora evidently agreed with him, for she grabbed my hand to pull me along. Cyrus glanced up from the floor and appeared to decide at the last second to accompany us. I thought briefly of binding him again and leaving him behind, but it wasn’t worth it. If he’d been abandoned by his demonic helper, all he had left was an irretrievably lost soul.
I tried a spell of light as we hurried out into the corridor, but it still didn’t work. The demonic spells were broken, but Vlad’s magic seemed to be operating fine. “This way,” said Paul, running down the broad stairs with the candle in his hand, the rest of us hurrying to keep up. Cyrus, at the rear, had begun sobbing uncontrollably.
“I am exceeding glad,” muttered Justinia beside me, “that this distraction came before rather than after I had to kiss him.”
Down the first corridor, through an open-roofed chamber where heavy clouds, no longer raining, hung overhead, down another passageway, Paul led us at a trot. He was right. Without a demon’s supernatural power hiding us from Vlad, that wizard would know at once that we had eluded his capture. He would also know that I had been trying to tamper with his spell that kept the children imprisoned and would guess that torturing them, especially when he found out which was my daughter, would make me grant him anything he wanted far faster than torturing me.
But what could have happened to the demon? Could—and for a second I felt wild hope—this mean that the bishop had arrived and overcome it?
I shook my head even as I ran. Even Joachim wouldn’t be able to make a demon obey him. Humans had been given free will in this world, which meant that saints and angels were very unlikely to step in and dispose of demons that humans had summoned.
Might Vlad have somehow caught the demon and imprisoned it in a pentagram? It was ironic, I thought, hurrying across an open area where I looked in all the shadows for Vlad, that I didn’t know whether that wizard might protect us from the demon or the demon from him. But if Vlad had caught the demon, it had been done extremely rapidly. According to the Diplomatica Diabolica it might take days even for demonology experts to capture and imprison a demon someone else had summoned. The quick way required negotiations—in hell’s currency of human souls.
And when I delicately probed with magic I could still sense—in the second before my mind drew convulsively back—the black evil of an active demon lurking somewhere in the ruined castle below us.
We reached the old secret stair in the wall, squeezed in, and started down. The candle flame flared wildly as we groped our way.
Except that we were suddenly not standing on broken steps but on air.
V
We all grabbed at each other, and the candle smashed and went out. But it too lay on what appeared to be solid air. My shoulder touched what felt like stone, yet my straining eyes saw no stone. All around us was a gray dimness, and the ruined castle, the stairs, the stones, and the eyeless windows, no longer seemed there.
“Cyrus?” I began fiercely.
He had been ranting to himself as we came down the narrow staircase, but he now paused and looked around. “Vlad knows where we are,” he said in desolation. “And he’s made the castle invisible from the inside as well as from the outside.”
This went far beyond any capabilities of mine. At least, I thought grimly, keeping such a powerful spell operational would require an active mind; this wasn’t the kind of spell you could set up and then walk away. Maybe his own magic would distract him for the moment from catching us.
“How do we get down to where the children are, Cyrus?” I demanded urgently. “You know the way—take us there, invisible or not.”
But he had begun to babble, swaying on an invisible step, looking wildly at the empty drop beneath his feet to the cliffs.
“Don’t look at it,” said Gwennie suddenly. “Close your eyes. It’s no worse than going into the storeroom for something and not bothering with a light. Paul, you know where the children are. Keep on going.”
He gave her a quick grin. “You’re better at this than I am. Hold my hand. Down to the bottom of the staircase, over that pile of stones—we’ll have to do it by feel—and then turn left.”
Our progress, already terror-ridden, now became a nightmare. Unable to see where we were, we groped by feel down invisible passageways, moving what felt incredibly slowly as Paul tried to r
ecreate in his mind what he had seen both on earlier exploring jaunts and on our previous trip to the ruined chapel. Cyrus was no use at all. I tried it both ways, keeping my eyes squeezed tight shut and leaving them open. Neither seemed to work, especially as with every step we seemed closer to raw evil and to despair. The sky above, I noticed, was moving toward dawn at last, but Vlad’s cloud cover kept growing thicker, to keep any sunlight from reaching him.
I stopped abruptly, causing Cyrus to smack into me from the rear, but I hardly noticed. “Paul, wait,” I said desperately. “We’re going the wrong direction. You aren’t taking us to the chapel. You’re taking us down to the storage cellars.”
He looked back at me. “This is right,” he said quietly but firmly.
“Don’t you smell it?” I cried. Faint on the air before was a whiff of brimstone.
And then, as suddenly as it had come it was gone again. The demon coming up for a quick peek? But he seemed to have abandoned Cyrus and all the spells he had been helping him with. I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Paul. Keep going.”
We crept onward. The king was leading more and more slowly now, stopping at every intersection to grope, to pace off distances, to consider whether to turn or continue straight. I listened, both with my ears and with magic, for either children’s voices or Vlad’s footsteps, but heard nothing but our own breathing. He had not come after us at once, not even to get revenge on his own pupil who had so recently tried to thwart his magic. That meant— I didn’t want to think what it meant, but I feared the logical conclusion was that he was starting with the children.
“Wait,” said Paul, so quietly I hardly heard him. He stood facing an invisible wall, feeling along it in both directions with his hands. “There’s supposed to be a door right here, into the last passageway that goes to the chapel. I can’t find it.”
Then we had taken a wrong turning someplace, I thought. “Back the way we just came?” I suggested.
Paul shook his head. “No, this should be it. I know that last turning was right. Unless—” We all waited. Fatigue and the strain made the king’s face hard and tight in the dim pre-dawn light. He did not curse, he did not shout at Cyrus, who should have at least as good an idea as he did where we were. Instead he said after a moment, “Wait for me. Let me retrace our steps just a little way—”
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