by Jeff Wheeler
She was surprised to find her grandfather awake and nibbling at a sweet pasty. He didn’t hear her approaching, of course, but when he saw her out of the corner of his eye, he quickly stuffed the half-eaten pasty back into the bread box as though he’d been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to.
“I’m going to head up to my tower for the day, Mair,” he said, moving to the sink. “Let me know if any petitioners come looking for me.”
“For the day?” Dwyn repeated, caught off-guard. “Grandda, it’s midnight.”
Her grandfather looked at her with a mixture of confusion and fear that broke her heart. He glanced out the dark kitchen window. “Oh . . . I . . . all right,” was all he said. He lowered his head and turned away.
Dwyn wanted to give him a hug and comfort him—she suddenly realized that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d hugged her grandfather. Instead, she pointed toward the sitting room. “Grandda, there’s . . . the royal minister is here to see you.”
Her grandfather looked at her, his brow furrowed. For a moment, she thought he hadn’t heard her; and then he suddenly swept past her out of the kitchen, walking more quickly than she’d seen him move in a long time. She followed.
“Neville?” her grandfather said as he entered the room.
The minister stepped forward from the door with a smile, extending his hand. “Arliss, it’s good to see you.”
Her grandfather was grinning. He shook the minister’s hand enthusiastically. “Goodness, Neville, how long has it been? I haven’t seen you since you were made minister of health . . . the first time.”
“Yes,” the minister said, his smile fading. “That was ages ago.” He released the handshake and cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to bother you so suddenly, and so late, but it is urgent.”
“What is the matter?”
The minister glanced at Dwyn and licked his lips. “Would you mind if we headed up to your tower? These are matters best discussed alone, and behind wards.”
“Oh . . .” Her grandfather’s face fell. “Well, there’s . . . there’s not much room up there . . .”
“I’ll step out, Minister,” Dwyn interjected quickly. “You won’t have to climb all those stairs, and the whole cottage is protected against eavesdropping by my grandfather’s wards, just as the tower is.” In a way, that was true. She’d placed the wards, of course, but they were her grandfather’s design.
“Thank you, miss,” the minister said with a nod. Dwyn curtsied and then hurried away to her room, a looming feeling of dread enveloping her. There were no pleasant reasons why the royal minister would be visiting her grandfather in the middle of the night.
As soon as her bedroom door was shut, she ran to the mirror on her dressing table. She spoke a few words of Old Welsh, and the mirror lit up, showing her the sitting room. She’d put the same eavesdropping spells in the cottage wards as in the tower, just in case. Suddenly, she was glad that she had.
The minister had opened the front door again. After a moment, a man in a double-breasted blue suit stepped into the room, thin and slightly taller than the minister. Dwyn touched the edge of the mirror, swinging the view around so that she could see the man better. It was the king. He nodded to her grandfather.
“Your Majesty,” her grandfather said, bowing. “You’ve gotten much taller, Albert.”
“High Wizard,” the king replied, nodding. He smiled slightly. “It’s George, now, actually. Thank you for receiving us at such a late hour.” He stepped aside to let in another man, one decidedly wider than he was. “Have you met Lord Wizard Churchill?”
“I have not,” her grandfather replied, bowing again. “It is an honor.”
“The honor is mine, High Wizard,” the lord wizard replied in a gruff voice. He shook her grandfather’s hand. Unlike the others, he wore a set of midnight-blue robes. “I am sorry that I’ve never had the opportunity to come and meet you before.”
Dwyn stared as the men seated themselves. Some part of her had always known, of course, what kind of people her grandfather had once worked with. Everyone knew. But seeing the royal minister, the first lord of wizardry, and the king himself sitting in her cottage was quite another matter. She winced—her rumpled grandfather looked so out of place.
“I’m not going to waste time, Arliss,” Minister Chamberlain said. “Early yesterday morning, the German Empire invaded Poland.”
Dwyn gasped, then covered her mouth before remembering that the men couldn’t hear her. It wasn’t really a surprise—rumors had been spreading for months. But still, hearing it so suddenly was a shock. Her grandfather simply frowned.
“They attacked without a formal declaration of war,” the minister continued, “and, as far as we know, they’ve completely overwhelmed Poland’s defenses. Information is still scarce.”
Her grandfather was silent for a moment longer. “What will you do?” he finally asked.
“We will go to war, this time, if we must,” Lord Wizard Churchill replied. “The Germans have pushed too far—we can’t allow this to continue.”
The minister sighed and nodded. “Tomorrow, we will issue an ultimatum for the Germans to withdraw from Poland or face war, as will France.”
“But . . . will they listen?”
The lord wizard scoffed. “It’s obvious they will not—they mean to have all of Europe, perhaps even more.”
Her grandfather shook his head. “What is Wilhelm thinking? He swore to us that he wouldn’t follow in his father’s footsteps.”
“Wilhelm might be kaiser,” Churchill replied, “but I do not believe he still runs the empire. That chancellor of his is disturbingly ambitious, and he’s somehow obtained the favor of the imperial hexmasters.”
King George sat forward suddenly. “Whoever is b-behind the invasion, it is of n-n-no . . .” He trailed off with a sigh, and the lord wizard quickly handed him a small vial. Dwyn squinted at the potion as the king gulped it down—the king used smoothspeak?
The king coughed and then continued, handing the empty vial back to the lord wizard with a grateful nod. “The fact is, war is upon us—and this time, if we allow it to progress, it will be worse than before.”
The room went silent. Dwyn stared at her mirror. Worse than the Great War, the war to end all wars? How could that even be possible?
“Worse?” her grandfather whispered.
Minister Chamberlain nodded. “It seems likely. The Germans and Italy are allied—Mussolini will join with Wilhelm, or whoever is running the empire. He’ll likely make another grab for Ethiopia, and perhaps more of Africa.”
“Japan has already invaded China—they’ll take advantage of the chaos to push further.” Churchill sighed and rubbed his face. “And we all know that Stalin fellow can’t be trusted one whit either. The Soviets will move west while the Germans move east. I doubt we can count on them to wipe one another out.”
Dwyn pulled her feet up onto her chair, hugging her knees as they continued to outline the precarious position the world was in. Another Great War. She closed her eyes, trembling, recalling the few memories she had of the war. Waving to her father as he walked away from the cottage, wearing green-and-black magical forces fatigues. Her mother enchanting fighter planes down at the factory. A late-night phone call, and falling asleep in her mother’s arms as both of them wept.
She opened her eyes, blinking back tears, and shook her head. Why were they even discussing it? The German Empire had been acting increasingly belligerent for months. Surely the Ministry of Wizards had long since prepared a new peace ward. Why had they come to her grandfather?
Her grandfather was shaking his head. “But . . . the Peace Ward. You just need to get into Poland and make another peace ward, and things will calm down.”
There was a brief silence, and then Chamberlain sighed. “That is why we’ve come to you, Arliss. The Ministry of Wizards, they . . . well . . .” he trailed off and glanced at the lord wizard.
“We cannot create a peace ward,” Ch
urchill said.
Dwyn stared. The expression on her grandfather’s face was the same as what hers must have been.
“Why not?” he asked.
The lord wizard sighed and seemed to deflate and droop. “You may not have noticed, High Wizard, but . . . magic is on its way out, these days. Fewer and fewer new wizards come to the academies each year, and each of them is a bit weaker than the one before. I’m one of the most powerful magic-workers in the ministry, and I can barely manage to perform the simplest of the spells you left with us.”
He shook his head and ran a hand over his balding scalp. “There are several theories as to why it’s happening, but it doesn’t really matter why right now. The fact is, you’re the only man in Europe—possibly in the world—who can make a peace ward.”
“High Wizard Arliss Bobydd,” King George said, leaning forward with a grim expression, “you once saved the world from the greatest destruction that it had ever faced. Now, as your king, I must ask you to do it again.”
Dwyn felt herself begin to tremble. They couldn’t really be asking her grandfather to do that. Not at his age.
Her grandfather seemed thunderstruck, staring at the king slack-jawed. Then, after a moment, he pushed himself to his feet, his joints creaking and popping. He straightened his back, adjusted his robes, and then nodded. “Well, all right. I mean . . . of course. I’ll do it.”
* * *
“You can’t do it,” Dwyn said, trying to keep her voice level.
Her grandfather dug through a pile of books and newspapers. “You had no right to eavesdrop on that conversation,” he said, his voice muffled by papers and years of dust. “What did you do to my wards? They should have kept you from prying.”
“You don’t have any wards, Grandda. I’ve told you a dozen times that I replaced them all after you let them decay.”
They were in the top room of his tower, which was illuminated by a single lantern that Dwyn had enchanted months before to float over her grandfather’s shoulder when it was lit. He, of course, thought that it was the lantern he’d enchanted himself over a decade ago. Outside, it was still night—the king and his retinue had returned to London, where her grandfather was to join them in another day.
“I know that book is in here somewhere,” he muttered. “Mair, did you move it?”
“No, I didn’t.” Dwyn pulled him away from the pile and turned him to face her, trying to be patient. If she got mad, he would just become stubborn and ignore her all the more determinedly. “Grandda, you can’t do this. When you made the Peace Ward, it left you bedridden for over half a year. Even if you could somehow get into Poland right now . . . if you try to make a peace ward in your current health, it could kill you.”
“It will be fine, Mair,” he grumbled, pushing her hands off his shoulders and turning back to the pile. “It will be easier to cast early in the war, before the fighting begins in earnest. I can handle it.”
“I’m Dwyn,” she said, more loudly than she’d intended. “Grandda, this is—”
“Where is that book?” he said, cutting her off. He glanced at her with a sudden look of angry realization. “I know what must’ve happened to it—it’s those goblin neighbors of mine. They took it when they broke in here!”
Dwyn clenched her teeth and her fists. Of all the times for him to start in on that again . . . “No, they didn’t, Grandda. It’s just deeper in one of these rooms somewhere.”
“Well, I can’t believe this,” her grandfather said, moving to the window that faced southeast over the rest of Cardiff, overlooking the cottage and their neighbor’s house beyond it. “It’s bad enough they’ve been taking my tools and ingredients, but I’m not going to stand by while they steal my books.”
“The Jameses aren’t stealing your books, Grandda!” Dwyn said, stalking over to stand beside him at the window. “They’re good people, and far nicer to you than you deserve, the way you talk about them. Besides, the tower is warded—there’s no way they could get in here without me knowing about it!”
“Well . . . you don’t know goblins like I do,” her grandfather replied, cupping his hands to peer out the window, as though he were going to catch someone in the act of sneaking through his garden. “They’re tricky. I guess I’ll have to go over there and get the book back—I just hope they’ll give it up if I threaten to call the police.”
Dwyn clenched her fists again. “No, that’s a great idea,” she said. “Let’s call the police.”
“What?” Her grandfather seemed taken aback.
“Let’s call the police, Grandda,” she repeated with all the insincere sweetness she could muster. “If they’ve stolen from you, then they should be arrested. We’ll just call the police, and tell them the neighbors somehow broke into the warded tower of a high wizard and stole his spellbooks.”
Her grandfather frowned. “Well, I don’t want to get them thrown in jail. I just want my spellbook back.”
“No, Grandda. If you’re so sure that this is what happened, then we need to call the police.”
Her grandfather looked back out the window and then hunched his shoulders. “Goblins would probably just trick the police, anyway,” he muttered, turning back to the room. He shuffled to his bed and began digging through a pile of old clothing there. “I guess I’ll just have to do it from memory, since someone doesn’t want me to get my spellbook. You try to be good and decent in this world, but look what it gets you . . .”
Dwyn just managed to refrain from punching a stack of newspapers into the air. Instead, she closed her eyes and took a slow breath, carefully unclenching her fists and forcing the muscles to relax.
“Grandda, please listen to me,” she said, opening her eyes. “You’re not up to sneaking through a war zone anymore. You’re not up to creating a peace ward again—you just aren’t. It will kill you.”
“Well, I have to try,” her grandfather replied, frowning at her. “Even if I might die. The world is depending on it.”
“Grandda . . .” Dwyn sighed and rubbed her face. “You can’t do it.”
“Oh, just stop it, Dwyn. You’re as bad as your mother, always thinking about your own wants before the needs of others.”
Dwyn froze, staring at her grandfather. “What did you say?”
“You just don’t want me to leave.” Her grandfather tugged a natty old robe free from the pile and held it up to the light. “Your mother was always doing that, after the Great War, stopping me from going out to help people like I used to. All she cared about was what she wanted.”
“You think my mother was selfish?” Dwyn said. “You? You think that your daughter, who spent years looking after your needs and putting up with everything . . . you think she was selfish?”
“Oh, don’t go acting like Mair was some sort of saint,” her grandfather said. “She made me take care of the tower all by myself, even when I was sick, and I had to do most of the chores around the cottage too. Why, she once—”
“You can’t perform a peace ward, Grandda!” Dwyn snapped. She was shaking.
Her grandfather rolled his eyes. “I already told you, I—”
“I’m not saying that you shouldn’t, I’m saying that you can’t!” Dwyn shouted over him. “You’re not the lord wizard anymore—you are incapable! You can’t tell when your wards have decayed; you can’t even tell a weed from starleaf anymore!”
“Well . . .” her grandfather looked startled and confused. Dwyn should have cared; but she didn’t.
“And this!” She stalked over to where his battered, cracked cauldron still lay on the workbench and dipped her finger into the remains of the potion he’d botched that morning—which he still hadn’t cleaned up—holding it up for him to see. “What color is clearthought potion supposed to be, Grandda?”
Her grandfather stared at the brownish goop on her finger, his eyes unfocused and distant and his brow furrowed.
“It’s supposed to be light blue!” she said, waving her finger. “This looks like you were tr
ying to make a shapechange potion and failed completely! And you think you can create a peace ward again? From memory?”
Her grandfather hunched his shoulders and stuck his chin out stubbornly. “Well, that may be what you think, but—”
“What I think?” Dwyn shrieked. The room was growing blurry—there were tears in her eyes, she realized. The piles of junk were leaning in on her, and it was difficult to breathe. “Grandda, you blew up your tower today! I have to switch out all of the potions and spells you make for people with ones I’ve made, because the ones you make might kill them! You eat rotten food, you can’t hear anymore, and you make up stories about the neighbors stealing from you . . . do you want to know what really happened to all of your missing things?”
Her grandfather simply stared at her.
“It’s all buried somewhere in a senile old man’s . . . useless . . . trash!” she screamed. She grabbed the table near the window and heaved, toppling it on its side. Dust-covered newspapers flopped across the floor, filling the narrow pathway from the worktable to the bed. Other odds and ends clattered into the wall and against her feet—glass marbles, forgotten cups and plates, a stack of old plaques and commendations, and a brown, decayed potted plant that had been covered up and forgotten.
Dwyn stared down at the mess. She put her hands over her mouth in horror, sobbing. After a moment, she forced herself to look up at her grandfather.
She caught a glimpse of painful, terrifying awareness on his face, and her breath stopped. His eyes were wet, just on the verge of spilling tears. Then his chin jutted out again and his eyes hardened. He turned away.
Dwyn ran from the tower, slipping and stumbling over newspapers and books.
* * *
She hid in her room. She didn’t even make it onto the bed, instead ending up curled in a ball on the floor, crying. At one point, she heard her grandfather come into the cottage. He went to his room, and then his footsteps moved to the back of the house, to her workroom. Probably stealing supplies that he thought he needed. She didn’t care. She just pushed herself into the corner and covered her face with her arms.