The Witch, the Cathedral woy-4
Page 22
“Look at the stallion,” said Paul, interrupting my thoughts. I looked out obediently. Only ten yards beyond the invisible barrier, the bay stallion stood watching us, pawing the ground with one foot, shaking the fetlock from his eyes with a proud toss of his head.
I closed my eyes again. I almost thought I understood the structure of the magic barrier now, after a week of studying it. Several times I might have had it, and several times on closer examination I had been wrong. I was having to improvise everything, and I kept having Theodora’s feeling of being almost at the top and yet knowing that this time I would never make it. If I ever saw the school again I would have to relate my experiences to the technical division students as an example of improvised magic.
But this time- Quickly, delicately, I started putting a spell together, one designed specifically to overcome the spells that kept the air solid before us. I said the words of the Hidden Language and confidently reached out my hand.
It struck solidity so hard I bruised my knuckles. I probed again for the structure of the nixie’s magic. The spells had all been changed.
“What’s wrong?” Paul turned as I slumped down.
“She’s changing the magic structure of the barrier. I’d wondered why I wasn’t doing any better overcoming her magic, but now I know. As soon as I work out how to overcome one set of spells, she switches to another.”
“And then can you overcome the new set?”
“Yes, in time-just a few seconds slower than it takes her to change the spells again.”
There was a quick flutter of leaves, and the nixie burst into view. With a tinkling laugh, she planted kisses on Paul’s lips and my own and scampered away again.
“I have an idea,” said Paul with a half smile that made me hope he was not serious. “You and Lucas don’t want anything to do with the nixie, and I can’t say about Vor, but suppose just one of us were able to ‘fully satisfy’ her. Do you think she’d let us go?”
Out of several things I might have said, I chose, “When she was hoping for four men, I don’t think she’d settle for one.”
“Oh, I think I might be able to serve in the place of four men if I wanted to,” said Paul with that same half smile.
“I have a better idea,” I said. “Try to get some of your horses into the grove. They might be able to pass through the barrier the way the birds do, and maybe we could ride them out.”
“Of course,” said Paul in surprise. “What did you think I was doing?”
If the nixie was still nearby and listening to our conversation I had just given away what might have been our last chance. Even now she might be altering her barrier so that horses could not pass through it any more easily than could humans. Our only hope was that the nixie might never have needed spells to imprison horses.
“Quickly!” I said, low and urgently. “Try to lure the stallion in here. We have to go now! I’ll get the others.”
“I’m working as rapidly as I can,” said Paul mildly.
But as I hurried away through the trees he started a different series of whistles, so enticing that even my feet slowed for a second.
Both Vor and Lucas were asleep. I woke them with a quick hand on their shoulders. “Come on,” I said in a low voice. “We may be able to leave.”
I lifted Lucas with magic before he could protest and hurried back through the trees, Vor close behind. Because Lucas was well off the ground, his head some two feet above mine, several times he got a faceful of leaves before he could duck, but I ignored his insults.
We stopped well back in the trees so as not to startle the horses. Paul was talking to them now, softly, alluringly. If the nixie was listening, I thought, she must wish Paul would talk that way to her. The stallion and a black mare were only a few feet beyond the invisible barrier.
A bird shot by suddenly, scolding, and the horses tossed their heads, wheeled, and ran. I tried to swallow bitter disappointment.
But Paul kept on whistling and calling, not at all dismayed. Most of the herd stayed a quarter mile away, but the stallion and the one mare approached again, less cautiously this time. “Come, my beauties, don’t be afraid, we won’t hurt you, come my lovely ones,” Paul was saying.
He held out one of the nixie’s apples. The stallion snorted and stretched his neck forward, still ten yards away. He took one stiff-legged step, then another. And then he was coming through the invisible barrier.
None of us breathed. Very solemnly and deliberately, the stallion took the apple from Paul’s hand and crunched it between powerful teeth. With his other hand, Paul held another apple toward the mare. For a moment she held back, then with a nicker she too stepped into the grove.
My impulse was to leap forward, to seize the horses, but even I knew that would be fatal. Paul was stroking the stallion’s neck, still talking softly and constantly, his voice like a running brook where the words mattered less than the sound. And then abruptly he took a handful of mane and swung up onto the stallion’s back.
The horse jumped, all four feet together, and then whirled and began to run. The prince was almost lying on the horse’s back, his head down and his legs pulled up so that no part of his body touched the nixie’s barrier. It parted and let them through as though it were not there.
And then the two horses were off, racing across the plain, Paul clinging like a burr to the stallion’s mane. “He’s not abandoning us,” said Vor, but his tone made the statement almost a question.
“No, he’s not,” said Lucas before I could answer. “He has to accustom the horse to being ridden before anyone else can even try.”
The stallion reared, trying to shake Paul off. There was nothing I could do but watch; my magic could not penetrate the nixie’s barrier. The stallion came down again, Paul still firmly on his back. The whole herd swept off, galloping across the plain, and disappeared from our view.
“The nixie’s not going to wait passively for two hours or two days or whatever it takes Paul to calm down that stallion,” said Lucas. I thought this one of his more intelligent recent observations.
Vor seemed to think so too. “There’s only one thing to do,” he said with his quick, fleeting smile. “I’ll try to keep her occupied.”
Lucas and I both turned to stare at him. “Oh, I’ll readily admit I’m not in the right mood right now,” he said playfully. “But nixies, happy nixies, can put one in the mood very easily. They do say that, if you live through the experience, satisfying a nixie is something you never forget.”
Lucas cleared his throat as though about to speak but changed his mind.
“The two of you are bound by oaths of marriage and of wizardry,” Vor continued, “but as long as I’m back home in the borderlands, I might as well take advantage of an opportunity I’m not likely to be offered down in the cathedral city among all the priests. With a little conversation, a little wine, and a few games, I should be able to stretch it out for several hours.”
Lucas and I had nothing to say. “Oh, Lady!” Vor called, moving back toward the center of the grove. “Where are you? Could you bring your delightful form closer to mine?”
He was gone. Lucas and I looked at each other. I arranged him as well as I could, his leg propped up before him, and sat down to wait.
An hour passed, and the horses reappeared in the distance. I thought I spotted a dark shape still clinging to the stallion’s neck. The stallion was not running now but walking.
“It looks like he may be taming that stallion,” said Lucas with reluctant admiration. “Look at how easily he’s sitting now.”
Paul slipped down from the horse’s back, a hand still in the mane, then leapt back up again. The stallion jumped, but this time only a small jump, and Paul guided an incipient gallop back into a trot.
Then he was off the stallion’s back again and moving toward the black mare. I could see him stroking her, talking to her, and then suddenly he was on her back and she was running, and the entire process started over again.
T
he whole herd disappeared around the far side of the grove. I thought of following them but was afraid of doing anything that might startle the horses. Paul was going to need absolute concentration to try to tame two wild beasts that galloped like something out of legend.
I wondered again where Bonfire had really come from. Having seen the bay stallion and the black mare up close, I was now certain that Paul’s red roan stallion had come from these borderlands. If the renegade wizard had been up here to find a gorgos, he might have taken back a horse for Prince Vincent at the same time. I was even more convinced that that horse was a trap.
Another hour passed. I was so tense that the very tension made me yawn with exhaustion.
And then Paul was back, appearing abruptly before us, riding the stallion and leading the mare with a hand on her mane. Both kept taking nervous little steps and jerking their heads up, but they kept coming. They passed without difficulty through the nixie’s barrier. Extreme fatigue and delighted pride were both on Paul’s face, but all he said was, “Where’s Vor?”
I let my mind slip away through the trees until I found him. Standing in the flow of magic by the edge of his mind, I called softly. “Vor. Paul’s back. We’re going now.”
Very few people not trained in magic can hear a wizard speaking to them directly, mind to mind. But there was an abrupt stir and I returned to myself, knowing he had heard. “He’s coming,” I said.
“The mare’s a little gentler,” said Paul. “You and Lucas try mounting.”
I rose up in the air, bringing Lucas with me, and set us down on the mare’s back as gently as I could. Vor came out of the trees, his face ashen and running with sweat but giving us a complacent smile. Paul reached out a hand, and Vor scrambled up behind him.
“Hold onto my waist,” said Paul. “All of you, keep your heads down and tuck up your feet. Let’s go!”
Paul urged the stallion forward, and the mare followed. The stallion was out in the plain again in a second, but Lucas’s wounded leg stuck out sideways from the mare’s back, and it hung up on the nixie’s barrier.
Lucas grunted with pain, and I caught him just before he was dragged backwards off the horse, just before the mare bolted out from under both of us. With a firm hand on her mane and my best imitation of Paul’s voice in her ears, I turned her in a tight circle and tried again.
And this time we went through, free of our leafy prison. “Run!” cried Paul. “Here comes the nixie!”
PART SEVEN — THE BISHOP
I
The graceful green form stood on the edge of the grove. Waves of sensuous emotion broke around us, but we kept galloping.
When the nixie’s call to us did not succeed in a few seconds, she tried to call the horses. Paul’s stallion threw up its head and stopped so suddenly Vor almost slid off. The mare too skidded to a halt and looked back.
But while a dead flying beast’s skin has no choice but to answer a call designed for flying beasts, a living horse can make a choice. Paul shouted to the horses and, almost reluctantly, they turned away from the grove, and abruptly the attraction spell dropped and we ran again.
Although Paul had been riding these horses hard for several hours, they showed no sign of slowing now. Half my attention had to go to the lifting spell that was all that held Lucas on the mare’s back. I was not nearly the horseman Paul was, and I quickly fell behind
But it did not matter. We were free.
After five miles, at the hills that ringed the plain, Paul pulled up the stallion. “The horses don’t want to go farther,” he said. “And I don’t want to exhaust them.” A light dampness had finally broken out on their coats. “We’ll have to walk the rest of the way. Lucas, the wizard can carry you.”
None of us objected, not even Lucas, whose ankle had been healing nicely in the nixie’s grove until the slam against the invisible barrier had twisted it anew. We slid to the ground and Paul embraced both horses, putting his cheek in turn against each of their necks. “Goodbye, my beauties, my lovely ones. I’ll give your greetings to Bonfire.”
He then turned to the rest of us. “The nixie made us fight among ourselves, but if we are going to make it home again we all have to help each other.” All of us nodded soberly. Paul was clearly our leader now. I thought it a nice diplomatic touch for him to blame our disagreements on the nixie. We stumbled up into the rocky hills, Lucas hovering a short distance above the ground due to my magic, and the horses pranced away across the grass to rejoin the herd.
It took two days to get back to Vor’s people’s valley. Vor was able to climb up and down even the steepest inclines without difficulty, but on several occasions I had to carry both princes up a nearly vertical slope or across a crevice.
Late the second day, when cool blue shadows stretched out across the barren land, we finally reached a river, rimmed on either side with verdure, and followed it upstream until we came through a narrow divide into the valley.
Word spread quickly that we had arrived, and people came hurrying down from their homes in the cliffs to greet us. I was too tired to notice much of what was happening, except that Vor gave everyone a lively account of our exploits. Several long-fingered women brought hot stew, which certainly helped. As the stars came out, lights twinkled on all up and down the cliffs, and, as Paul had hoped, it looked like fairyland. Someone realized that, although Vor seemed prepared to talk all night, the rest of us were about to fall asleep sitting up. We were boosted up ladders and given blankets and dropped into oblivion at last.
“Vor,” asked Paul, “do you want to come back to Caelrhon with us, or do you want to stay here with your people?”
The air cart, I was happy to discover, had indeed obeyed my last commands after tipping us out, and it had returned to the valley. In the morning we were preparing to fly home.
“I’ll come back with you,” said Vor in his normal laconic style. “The lads will want me once they start construction again.”
And they might be starting again very soon, I thought. It had already been three weeks since the old bishop’s death, and I did not think they would delay the election of his successor for long.
Paul echoed my thought. “I wonder if we’ll be too late for the new bishop’s enthronement.”
“We can telephone from the mountain and find out what’s been happening,” I said.
And so once again, after a day of flying, we came up the icy vertical side of old Book-Leech’s mountain and landed next to the little blue house. I let Paul tell most of the story.
“Well, I’ve heard about nixies, of course, but I’ve never met one,” said the wizard, pouring out tea. “I’m sure you found it all a, well, interesting interlude.” Paul blushed up to his hairline. “There was certainly clever of you, young fellow, to find a way out of her grove-guess old ‘Frogs’ has been teaching you his tricks, eh?”
Paul had tried to downplay his role in saving us, but Book-Leech, of course, had realized what an accomplishment it in fact was. It really had owed nothing to me, and I said so.
“I’d like to use your telephone,” I said in a pause in the conversation. “The priests of the cathedral will want to know that the gorgos has been destroyed.”
I expected him to offer me the phone at once, but he hesitated before answering. “Well, you’re welcome to use it, of course, but I’m not sure it’s working.”
“Not sure it’s working?!”
“It may be because we’re so far away from any other telephone,” he said apologetically, “or because there’s interference due to the magical influences from the north.”
“But there have been wizards posted here for years-”
“Well, you see, it used to work. But it didn’t use to have a far-seeing attachment. It was just put in this summer, and, well … Elerius himself installed it, so I know it must have been working at first, and now I’m afraid I’ve broken it somehow. I’ve never been any good at technical magic myself. Could you look at it? It is, after all, your invention.”
He took it out of a drawer. “It does work for the school to call me. That’s why I didn’t realize at first there was a problem.”
A quick glance at his shelves showed that he, like me, owned no books that might have helped. “If you can’t telephone the City for help,” I asked, “what’s the point of having you posted here? I would think they would want to have this fixed immediately.”
“I can usually get it to work once,” he said, “so I could call the school if there was any sudden problem up in the land of magic. But- Well, I guess I can tell you this without embarrassment. I don’t like to tell the school that I, a thoroughly-trained wizard, can’t solve a magical difficulty.”
It was rather reassuring that someone who might in another year have been first in his class could also have patches of incompetence. But I myself had had so many blows to my pride over the years that I might have been willing to admit my failure in a case like this.
The two of us bent over the telephone, probing its spells, communicating mind to mind. Suddenly I thought I saw the problem. Breaking off pieces of the flow of magic with words of the Hidden Language, I adjusted the spells, reorienting the telephone within magic’s four dimensions.
“There,” I said aloud. “I think it should work now.”
“Of course it will. That’s the spell I have to use to get it to work at all. You can make one telephone call now if you like, but you won’t be able to make another until tomorrow. So who do you want to call?”