PART SEVEN - LADY MARIA
I
At supper that night, cooked again by the cook and served by the serving maids, the duchess stood up between courses and came to lean over the back of my chair. I was sitting next to the Lady Maria, eating glumly and scarcely tasting what I was eating.
"Could you come to my chambers after dinner for a glass of brandy?" she said in a low voice.
Maria, who overheard, pursed her lips and shot the duchess's back a sharp look from narrowed eyes. This seemed to be the first time that I had made any woman in Yurt jealous on my behalf, and it was not the woman I would have selected for jealousy.
"I'd be glad to come, my lady," I said, "but your brandy is perhaps a little strong for a wizard. Could I join you in a glass of wine instead?"
"Of course," she said and returned to her seat. I just hoped she was not going to start teasing me again. I wasn't sure I could manage to be polite if she did.
But as she poured me some wine and herself an inch of brandy, she showed no sign of making provocative suggestions. "There's something wrong, Wizard," she said, hooking her leg over the arm of the chair. "Even I know that dragons don't normally leave the northern land of magic to come attack one of the smallest of the western kingdoms. What's happening?"
"I wish I knew what was happening," I said ruefully. "You're probably glad I didn't agree to become ducal wizard, since I didn't even know what to do with a dragon. Does everybody here realize something's wrong?"
"I think the rest have been too busy thinking about the Christmas festivities," she said, "but that's part of the reason I felt I had to get everyone out of the royal castle of Yurt and bring them here. And it's clear to me, watching you, that you're deeply worried."
I looked at her face, serious and very attractive, even if after the dragonfire she had had to cut her hair as short as a boy's, and even if it was not the queen's face. I decided to confide in her. "I'm worried because the dragon was summoned. And the person who summoned it is involved in black magic."
"Black magic? You mean they're doing evil spells?"
"I mean they're working with a demon."
"A demon? You mean there's a demon in Yurt?" She looked at me incredulously and went to pour herself more brandy.
"The old wizard told me, but I'd already guessed. There's a demon in the castle, one who roamed the world freely for three years. The old wizard caught it and imprisoned it, but it's broken free, and now it's stronger than ever."
"How do you imprison a demon?"
"It's hard to do," I said slowly, feeling as pinned down by her rapid questions as I would have been by a boar spear. Everything she said brought home to me again what the old wizard had told me, that this was my kingdom now and my demon. "In this case, the old wizard held it down with magic spells while Dominic drew a pentagram around it."
"That may explain a lot," said the duchess. "I wouldn't trust Dominic to draw a good pentagram.
"Normally, neither would I," I said, trying to smile. "But I know my predecessor would have checked it over thoroughly."
"Pentagrams have to be drawn in chalk, don't they?" she said, putting down her glass. "I remember asking my father's old wizard about demons years and years ago, while I was still young enough to think they sounded exciting and mysterious."
"That's right."
"And chalk can dry up, blow away, wash away in the damp, be rubbed out by the bold foot of a demon who has already been free in the world for three years."
"It shouldn't be that simple." I looked down at my glass, realized I had not been drinking my wine, and took a sip. It seemed to have no flavor. "Even a partially worn-out pentagram should still keep a demon from moving—and it can't rub out the chalk itself."
"But could a demon who'd gathered strength from three years in the world still cast a magic spell if there was any flaw in the pentagram? Would it be able to call the person who had summoned it originally and ask him or her to free it?"
She was posing questions as though this were the oral exam at the end of the demonology course—and I hadn't known the answers then, either.
"Who did summon it, Wizard?"
Now she was sitting with her boots planted solidly on the floor, gripping the arms of her chair, ready to spring into action. But there was no one against whom I could tell her to spring. "I don't know, my lady. I wish to the saints that I did."
"But you'll have to imprison it again."
I didn't even try to smile. "Hard as it may be to capture a demon that has been happily loose in the world for three years, it will be a thousand times harder to catch one who has already once escaped from a pentagram."
"Does this have anything to do with the message you got by the pigeons this afternoon? You looked terribly eager to get it, and then very disappointed."
"It was a theory I'd had, which might have accounted for a lot. I had suspected that the last young wizard to serve an apprenticeship under the old wizard, over eighty years ago, might have returned to Yurt to practice black magic. But from the letter I just got, he's been wizard in a count's castle for eighty-two years, a hundred and fifty miles away, and can have no relationship with what's happening in Yurt."
"What evil is happening in Yurt, aside from the dragon?"
"The king was very ill and almost died before the chaplain miraculously healed him."
She nodded. "I hadn't seen Haimeric for over a year, before all of you came this fall, but he looked better then than I'd seen him in ages. One of Yurt's servants told my lady's maid that a miracle had cured him, but I wasn't sure if I should credit that."
"There can be no doubt that the chaplain saved his life."
"But what else has been happening in Yurt, besides the king's illness and the dragon? As though that weren't enough!"
"Well," I said slowly, "we saw a mysterious stranger in the castle, right after we got back from here last month. He had apparently put the whole castle staff to sleep before we came, and the next day he kept slipping around the castle, appearing and disappearing, knocking me backwards with evil whenever I tried to touch him with magic. I don't think he did any damage, but he disrupted the castle and terrified me."
"And has this ‘stranger’ been seen again?"
"He disappeared that afternoon, when the chaplain returned from a trip to the village. I think he's afraid of the chaplain, but he's probably enjoying the empty castle now. I think he lives in the cellars. Since he's already summoned a dragon, I don't want to think what he'll decide to do next."
The duchess picked up her empty glass as though to refill it, then set it down again, still empty. Watching her, I thought that she did not want another drink so much as an opportunity to act, and listening to me talk about the stranger provided no good opportunities for her to begin her attack.
"So," she said, "the problem is primarily that you have a demon living in the cellars, and he may be afraid of the chaplain. That means—"
"But, my lady, just because I think the stranger is afraid of the chaplain doesn't mean the demon is."
"Oh," she said with a quizzical look. "I'd assumed the ‘stranger’ was just a physical manifestation of the demon."
I had not thought of this and was furious at myself for not doing so. If I had actually read the Diplomatica Diabolica more carefully, it might well have told me that demons did not need to keep the small size, the red skin, and the horns of the one demon I had ever seen, the one in the pentagram in the school.
"It may be," I said thoughtfully, my mind trying to race through the implications of this to make up for its previous slowness. "It would certainly explain a lot. I had been thinking there were actually two people practicing black magic in the castle, the stranger and someone else, and it would be much simpler if there were only one person."
"But who is that person? Why do you think it's someone in the castle?"
She wasn't going to let me get away from that question, the one I could not answer. Even though I was confiding in her, I didn't w
ant to mention the coincidence that the old wizard had first discovered the demon not long after the queen arrived in Yurt. "Demons don't normally appear by themselves," I said, "at least not in this part of the world. They have to be called."
"So you have to find out who called it and find a way to imprison it, even with its new strength?"
She had summarized my problem very nicely. I was thinking rapidly. If the stranger was, as the duchess suggested, the physical manifestation of the demon, then I should be able to find him in the cellars, and I should be able to negotiate with him—I had, after all, already spoken to him once, even if he had not answered.
"But how can you imprison it? How can I help you?"
"You've helped by getting everyone out of the castle," I said, smiling and answering the last half of her question first. "I'll have to check my books, but I don't think there's any way I can imprison it again. Instead I'll have to treat with it, negotiate with it, persuade it to return to hell."
"But isn't treating with a demon dangerous? Couldn't you endanger yourself?"
She asked as though this wasn't something I had already thought about, many, many times.
"If you negotiate, what will it demand?"
It crossed my mind that the duchess, with her rapid-fire questions, might be able to pin the demon down on a technicality and persuade it to leave empty-handed. But this was only an idle hope. "Their chief currency is human souls. When I thought that the old wizard's last apprentice might have become a renegade, I'd even hoped I could persuade the demon to take the soul it had already been given and be content to leave with that. But now I don't know what I will do."
She leaned her chin on her fist, faced I assumed, for one of the few times in her life, with a problem which her rapid mind and forceful nature could not readily solve. "Should you get some help from that school in the City?"
"No, I really can't. My old instructor visited me this fall to check on how I was doing and to remind me that, once we leave the school, we have to solve our own problems. My predecessor at Yurt told me it was my problem now, and he was right."
"How about the chaplain, if the demon is afraid of him?"
"That's part of the reason I couldn't ask for his help. We might be able to chase the demon around the castle forever, but at some point someone has to talk to it, someone trained in wizardry." I was amazed to hear the calm tone of my voice, as though I actually believed I was going to do it. "I don't think the demon is afraid of the chaplain personally, anyway, but only of the aura of the saints. If the chaplain was able to put off that aura long enough that the demon was willing to approach him, he would be destroyed—he doesn't know magic, and he wouldn't know the words to say."
"Are you sure, in that case, that another wizard couldn't help you?"
"When the chaplain saved the king's life, he didn't ask for help from the bishop. When I go against the demon, I have to be able to do it alone." I lowered my wineglass, which I had finally emptied, and stood up. "Thank you, my lady. I think, from talking to you, that my mind is clearer." Not that it could have been any more confused than it already was!
She rose as well. I put my hands on her shoulders, bent down, and kissed her gravely on the cheek.
As I went down the broad staircase from her chambers to the great hall, I noticed that almost everyone else had gone to bed. But Dominic and the young count were sitting in front of the fire, talking intently. As they heard my step, they looked up hurriedly, even guiltily.
But I had too much on my mind to worry about them. All I had to do, before the twelve days of Christmas ended and everyone decided it was time to go home and start repairs on the castle, was to read the Diplomatica Diabolica properly at last, learn to deal with a demon as I had boasted to the chaplain when I first came to Yurt that I had been trained to do, find out somehow who had summoned the demon in the first place, and discover if that summons had involved asking the demon for the special advantages in this world which will destroy one's soul in the next.
II
The sunrise brought a clear and cold day, perfect, several of the knights assured me, for a boar hunt. The morning also brought the departure of the old count and his wife.
"At our age, all this excitement and upheaval become a little wearying," the countess explained to the duchess as they pulled on their gloves in the great hall.
"But we're still willing to have everyone come after New Year's, if you want!" the count assured the king. "Just send us a message so we'll expect you."
No one in fact believed this, and it was not meant to be believed. I was fairly confident that the duchess would be able to keep the party here for another week, through Epiphany, but at that point the king and queen would insist on returning home. Considering that I had been wondering since summer who had been practicing magic with evil intent, a week did not seem very long to discover who had summoned the demon and how to send it back again.
The old count's departure caused some shuffling in rooms. The Lady Maria, as royal aunt, took the chamber the count and countess had shared for herself, while some of the ladies who had been squeezed in together took up the space that she vacated. The ladies insisted that they had to be along to see the boar captured, so the hunt did not actually leave until mid-morning.
"Don't expect pork for supper even if you do catch it," the cook said darkly. "Game's got to be hung at least a few days, as I hope you know, or it will be too chewy to eat."
"We'll have it for New Year's, then," said the young count.
I rode out with the hunt because almost everyone healthy enough to ride was going, and I had some vague hope that someone might reveal his or her evil nature in the excitement of the chase. The duchess was wearing a disreputable man's cloak, already stained with the blood of scores of hunts. The queen, as if in response, mounted her stallion wearing an extremely elegant scarlet riding habit that I knew she had ordered packed in from the City.
We were joined by several men from the village, both mounted and on foot. The duchess's hounds were loosed and raced off across the stubble and into the woods, sniffing intently. I wondered absently if it would be possible to breed a hound who would have a nose to sniff out black magic.
For half an hour almost nothing happened. Then I discovered I was riding next to the young count, who was wearing a beautifully-tailored riding jacket and whose very horse seemed to be looking at mine with scorn.
But he spoke without scorn. "Look, Wizard, we've been talking, and it's clear you need some help."
My first thought was that the duchess had betrayed me. "What kind of help?" I said as casually as I could. I certainly did not want the young count trying to meddle with the demon.
"Prince Dominic told me your problem," he continued. At least, I thought, I could retract my bitter thoughts about the duchess. "He said there's a renegade wizard back in the royal castle."
I had, I remembered, told the knights of Yurt that the stranger was some type of wizard, but I had hardly expected Dominic to start telling the young count about it.
"He told me you'd been having some trouble with it, and we guessed that it might even have summoned the dragon."
I didn't like the way his guesses were getting closer and closer to the mark, and I especially didn't like the slightly patronizing air in which he said it, an air calculated to stop far short of the insult that might bring on another transformation but present nonetheless. I tried to adopt an air of mysterious wisdom and nodded in silence.
"Well, do you want my help, or don't you?" he said. My silence was beginning to irritate him.
"Wizards can only be combatted by other wizards. Surely Prince Dominic understands the powers of magic even if you don't."
"Well, I hope you don't mind my saying this," in a tone that implied that he certainly hoped I did mind, "but Sir Dominic suggested that you were still a fairly inexperienced wizard, which was why you hadn't been able to make any progress against this other wizard. So my plan was to go to Yurt and catch him."
"Go to Yurt and catch him?" I repeated idiotically.
"Of course," he said, clearly thinking Dominic was right about me. "It was my idea. Even a wizard won't be able to stand up against an army of knights!"
"You'd be surprised at what a wizard can do. Did Dominic tell you that he and the other knights already spent most of one day chasing that ‘wizard’ without being able to catch him?"
He dismissed this with a wave of his elegant hand. "This time, I'll be leading. There's no need to thank me; as the king's loyal vassal, I'm always eager to assist." He kicked his horse and rode away, toward the baying of the hounds, before I could answer.
Last month, I thought, the demon had only showed itself to us because it wanted to taunt me. If a body of knights suddenly tried to roust it by force from the cellars, it would be furious, furious enough that I would never be able to negotiate with it, even assuming I knew what to say. And a non-cooperative demon was going to be the least of my problems. If the count led a band of knights toward Yurt tomorrow morning, I was quite sure they would all be dead by night.
In desperation, I sought out the duchess. She was having an argument with her master of hounds, which argument she was apparently enjoying hugely, but when she saw my face she told him, "Then blow whenever you like," and pulled her horse over next to mine. The master blew his horn to summon the hounds, put them on their leashes, and led them over the next hill while we sat our horses, talking.
The horses stamped and snorted clouds of white breath. "The count is planning to lead a body of knights to attack the demon," I said.
"Does he know it's a demon?"
"No, but I don't think he'd care. He has no respect for magic and probably has none for the supernatural either. What am I going to do?"
"Stop him, I presume," she said thoughtfully. "You know, you shouldn't really be surprised. There have scarcely been any wars in the western kingdoms since there started to be school-trained wizards in all the chief political courts. If you wizards want to stop all fighting, you certainly have my support; too many people without any sense end up leading the battles. But you've got to realize that the knights are starting to seem almost superfluous, even to themselves. They're trained as warriors, and the most war-like activity they normally have is escorting someone like me to the king's castle for Christmas. No wonder they're excited at finding someone to attack!"
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