“But what’s happened?” I demanded. “Where are you?”
“I’m not sure. We’re in the royal castle of-” Someone behind him provided a name. “I think we’re about a thousand miles north of the City.”
“You and all the teachers?”
“Just three of us are here; the rest are spread out over hundreds of miles. It didn’t take us long, once we’d heard that something was wrong with the phone at the watch-station, to guess that the weak attempt of a very small dragon to fly south was a feint and that something much worse would soon follow. So we tried to telephone to the watch-station at once-and got through. We could always phone him, which was why we hadn’t realized there was a problem.”
Zahlfast wiped the sweat off his brow. I almost danced with impatience. “As I’m sure you already guessed,” he went on, “a whole horde of dragons had just flown up over the mountains and started south. Maybe a hundred of them.”
I froze in horror. This was even worse than I expected. “Were they heading for Yurt?”
“No. They were heading for the City.”
“And that’s why all the teachers went.”
“The dragons scattered when they met us,” Zahlfast continued. “One did come close to Yurt-it was finally killed a quarter mile from the cathedral city of Caelrhon.”
Then those waiting to protect Joachim’s cathedral from danger had seen something worth waiting for. I paused. “All of you overcame them all, I assume?”
“Well, yes,” said Zahlfast, with a flicker of a smile. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t be talking to you. Thank you again.”
“Wait, before you hang up! I have to ask you something. This spring when I left the school, you gave me a warning. You said that priests hated and feared the wizards and sought to destroy them. I know we’ve never gotten along well with the Church, but this was different. You were trying to keep me out of the affairs of the cathedral of Caelrhon. You have to tell me: had Sengrim, the royal wizard of Caelrhon, given you that warning before he died?”
“Yes, he did,” said Zahlfast in surprise.
“He must have had an apprentice,” I said grimly, “someone none of us even knew existed. Find him. He might be here in Yurt, or he could be anywhere. He’s the one who disabled the telephone, and he’s the one who summoned the dragons.”
For one of the few times since I’d known him, Zahlfast looked shocked. I hung up and ran back outside. Even if the hundred dragons had not been successful in destroying Yurt or the school-or both-they had effectively kept me from having any help here from another wizard for at least another day.
Theodora waited by the motionless lizards. I had grown to despise the sight of them. “Come on,” I said. “I’m going down to the tournament grounds to make an announcement. Thank God, the worst that I’d feared is not going to happen.”
“Daimbert, listen to me,” she said desperately.
“Tell me in a minute. The bishop and Paul and probably a lot of the others know I’ve been expecting an attack of dragons or worse, and I have to reassure them it won’t happen.”
The knights had now finished riding at the ring and had begun the jousts, the heart of the tournament. One joust had just ended; neither rider had been unhorsed, and they were waiting for the judges’ decision. The queen came up to me with a rather quizzical smile as we reached the lists. “Vincent’s been telling me about a very odd conversation the two of you had,” she began.
But I couldn’t take time to listen to her right now any more than I could listen to Theodora. “I have an announcement!” I called, then realized no one could hear me. There was a spell to amplify one’s voice; it took me a moment to find and apply it. “I have an announcement!” I tried again.
This time my voice boomed out gratifyingly loudly. The queen and Theodora, who had been standing on either side of me, both took a quick step back. The riders readying themselves for the next jousts had trouble reining in their startled horses.
“I’ve just been talking to the wizards’ school,” I said to a rapt audience, “and I wanted to tell you all that an attack on Yurt has just been averted!” It was in fact an attack on the school instead, but I didn’t have time to go into detail. “A hundred dragons were summoned from the land of magic by an evil wizard. But the masters of the school were able to overcome them all.”
There was a rapid buzz of conversation at this unexpected announcement. The bishop looked as though he had known all along that I was an excellent wizard. The riders, including Paul on his red stallion, had their mounts under control again. The young king settled his plumed helmet over his head.
“Daimbert, you must listen!” Theodora tried again. I turned toward her. “I’ve found the wizard. He’s right here. He’s been hiding from both of us.”
The pit of my stomach felt as though it had turned to ice. I grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her toward me. “Where? Where is he?”
“We should have known!” she cried in despair. “The old magician, the man we never worried about. He’s the wizard in disguise!”
He had been hiding right under my nose. And I had just told him, as well as everybody else, that his most elaborate plot had failed.
“But where-” I needn’t have asked. There was a crack and a flash like lightning, a burst of blue smoke, and he appeared directly before me.
The wizard’s disguise of ragged robes and heavy eyebrows were gone. His white beard whipped in the wind from his spell. And I recognized him now, the renegade who had eluded me for months. It was Sengrim, the wizard everyone had thought was dead.
Theodora and the queen retreated rapidly in opposite directions. Behind the wizard I could see several horses rearing straight up at the smoke and lightning. For a second even Sengrim was unimportant. Paul’s stallion had reared higher than any other horse and was going over backwards. But before I could seize him with a lifting spell, Prince Vincent had leaped forward to grab the dangling reins. With a sharp tug at the head, he steadied the stallion enough that Bonfire was able to find his balance and come back down safely. The king kicked his feet free of the stirrups and sprang off, and he and Vincent gave each other triumphant slaps on the back.
I swung my attention back to the wizard before me. “So you think you and your school are safe now, Daimbert,” said Sengrim in cold fury. “But my magic is much stronger than yours!”
Behind me, I heard a strange hissing and honking sound. My head jerked around, and I saw that the red lizards, which I had been busily watching for hours, were now free of the paralysis spell and had started toward us.
Everyone in the lists seemed as paralyzed as the lizards had been a second ago, and for one horrible moment I thought the spell had been transferred to them. But they were not held prisoner by a spell, only by shock. They stared in horror from the lizards to the commanding figure before them.
And one person was moving, Paul. He had his sword out, the only real sword in the tournament. He very slowly advanced toward the wizard from behind.
I didn’t dare motion toward him. All I could do was to give him a quick stare that I hoped was a warning-if he could even see it through his visor.
“You’re so sure of yourself that you even tried to patronize me when we met in Caelrhon,” the wizard said grimly.
“But I thought you were just an old magician!” I protested. If I could keep him talking for a few more minutes, I thought, desperately trying to put a spell together, I might have a chance.
“Can you cast a spell like this?” cried Sengrim. Where he had been standing there was suddenly not a wizard but a pillar of fire, twenty feet high. Enormous eyes glared down from the top, and an enormous laugh rang out from the flames. Paul had the sense to back up rapidly.
Sweet Jesus, he was good. I had never seen anything like this.
A tongue of flame licked toward the wooden stands where the spectators were sitting, and in two seconds they were ablaze. The paralysis broke as people screamed and struggled, trying to get out.
> I abandoned the spell I had been working on and grabbed at what I could remember of Theodora’s fire magic. The only calm person in the crowd seemed to be Gwennie, directing people down the steps away from the fire. In a moment I was able to reduce the level of the flames enough that everyone was able to get out of the stands, beating at their burning clothes.
They tried to run, but they could not run far. Sengrim had set up an invisible barrier around the lists, as strong as the nixie’s, against which they shoved helplessly. The lizards were within that barrier and drawing dangerously close to the crowd. And then another tongue of flame came toward me and surrounded me. Protected from the blaze after two scorching seconds by Theodora’s magic, I advanced toward the pillar of fire, one arm held out.
“Stop!” I cried out, in a voice amplified by magic. “We both learned wizardry at the school, and we’re both sworn to help humanity!”
The pillar of fire seemed momentarily to contract, and I hoped for an instant that he was listening to me. But then I realized he was not reacting to what I had said. He was under attack by Theodora.
With another blinding flash of light, the pillar of fire was gone and the wizard was back. I realized that Theodora must have helped me put out the fire in the stands. In the five desperate seconds of breathing room which her magic gave me, I managed to cast a new paralysis spell toward the lizards. This time it held.
“So you think you’ve got a witch to help you,” the wizard said with bitter scorn, not even bothering to break my new spell. He waved out the last of the flames with one hand. Clearly fire magic had possibilities I had not yet explored. “No woman can know real magic. Just one more sign of your true debility, Daimbert!”
“But what are you talking about?” I demanded. “What can you have against me?” Again, I had to keep him talking while I tried to put a complicated spell together. Figuring out what had happened, why he was even alive, would have to wait.
Almost everyone had pressed themselves against the invisible barrier, as far from the wizard as they could go, except for the queen and Theodora, who stayed rooted where they had been when the wizard first appeared, and Paul, who again began a stealthy approach from the rear.
“Brute force is no more useful against me than magic!” cried the wizard. “I know you’re back there, knight!” He whirled and started firing knives toward Paul, real knives, no illusion, powered by magic. They clattered off his armor, sending him staggering back.
I gave up any hope of trapping Sengrim with a binding spell, or even of being able to oppose his spells individually. I briefly considered summoning him, regardless of whether summoning was the greatest wizardly sin, but then I would only have his deranged mind even closer to mine.
My only hope was to build around him a magic structure that would make it impossible for him to practice any magic within it. I had told Joachim, what seemed years ago, that I might have to put such a spell on their cathedral. At the time, I had had no idea how to do so; now, after spending the last week with my books, I might.
That is, if I even had a chance to finish assembling the spell. With Paul out of the way, the wizard turned his magic knives on me. The barrage went on for ten seconds, and I jettisoned my growing spell to repel them.
“Answer me!” I cried when the knives stopped coming. “I had nothing against you! Why are you so set against me?” I snatched up the remnants of the spell I had started building before it faded away completely.
“They always preferred you down at the school,” the wizard said bitterly. This was better. I could listen to him and work on my spell at the same time. But Paul was starting again what I feared was a suicidal advance.
“They made you, you, wizard of Yurt nineteen years ago,” he cried, “even though you’d barely been able to graduate, even though as wizard of Caelrhon I deserved to be transferred to the more senior kingdom and had already applied! And this spring they invited you, you, with your inferior magic, to the school to teach, something they’ve never offered me!”
I’d never known a wizard who lost his mind before. Normally I would have been interested in observing the symptoms.
“Even when you abandoned the principles of wizardry by making friends in the Church, the school refused to believe the worst about you!”
I almost had my spell together. If I could keep him talking just a few more seconds, if Paul would only stay back, if the spell even worked-
He didn’t give me a chance to find out. “And you can’t even begin to match spells with me!” he cried. “Can you do this?”
He held both arms straight out, and lightning flashed from each hand. Thirty feet on either side of him, crevices in the earth opened up, opened directly beneath the queen and Theodora.
I had no time to think, only time to react. I couldn’t possibly save them both. I grabbed the queen with magic and tossed her to safety.
As I flew toward the crack where Theodora had vanished, the pillar of fire reappeared, swirling with diabolical laughter. But as I dropped down the crevice I finished my spell and hurled it at him.
The crevice was some twenty feet deep. Theodora lay limp at the bottom. I snatched her up and flew out as the ground shifted with a roar and the crack slammed back shut.
I had him. Highly startled, the wizard stood within my trembling spell, his magic stripped from him. His barrier around the lists collapsed, and with it many of the people who had pressed against it. I dropped to the ground, Theodora in my arms. Her eyes were shut but she was still breathing.
“It won’t work, Daimbert!” roared Sengrim. “I may not be able to work magic while I’m standing here, but I can walk right out of your spell!” And he proceeded to do so.
But he had not counted on Paul. The young king’s long, stealthy advance had finally reached its goal. He sprang forward, naked sword in his hand, and thrust it with all his strength into the wizard’s back.
Blood spurted over Paul’s silver armor. He wrenched off his helmet; a stripe of red across his eyes showed where the blood had penetrated the visor. He slowly pulled his sword back out of the wizard’s body and wiped his face with the other hand.
Clasping Theodora against me, I went to look. The wizard lay without moving. It all came back to me why I had taken Paul to the borderlands: I had wanted his sword arm between me and danger.
The flow of blood from the hole in the wizard’s back slowed to a trickle and stopped. I turned him over with one foot. He flopped lifeless, his eyes open and empty. “Thank God,” I said. “He’s dead.”
“My God,” said Paul, his face under the blood completely white. “I’ve killed him.”
II
The constable had, of course, arranged for a doctor to be present at the tournament. I dragged him away from attending to our guests. Due to good fortune and to Paul, none of the knights or spectators had been killed, although most had burns, bruises, or at least badly strained muscles. The worst off were two knights who had been less quick than Paul at getting off their spooked horses-one had cracked ribs and another had a crushed leg where his horse had rolled on him.
“She’s going to be all right, I should think,” the doctor said sourly, looking at Theodora lying stretched out on the queen’s bed, absolutely still except for the faintest rise and fall of her chest. “She got a bad scare and a bad knock on her head, but her skull’s not cracked, and I don’t think her neck is broken. Sleep’s the best thing for her. Now, if you’ll excuse me-” He escaped back to the wounded knights before I could say anything else.
I had already flown madly around the castle’s hill, ripping up whatever leaves and twigs seemed at all promising for herbal magic, and had made a poultice which I put on the bump on her head. The doctor had shaken his head at it but said nothing.
I took her hand. “Theodora,” I said, both aloud and directly to her mind. “It’s me, Theodora.” There was no response.
Joachim put his head in, as sober as I had ever seen him. “How is she?”
“The doc
tor claims she’ll be all right. But I’m not so sure.” I seized him by the arm. “Please, will you pray for her?”
He opened his mouth to say something but stopped. Instead he nodded.
“I know what you’re thinking,” I said desperately. “You heard Sengrim call her a witch. You think a witch is something evil, but it’s not-it’s only what wizards call women who know a little magic. She does know magic, a little magic, but she’s not evil. You talked to her. You must know that. Please, Joachim.”
He took a deep breath and eased his arm out of my grip. He looked at her for a moment, then turned his enormous dark eyes on me. “I realized all along that she knew magic,” he said quietly. “I told you she reminded me of you. All I had been going to say was that I was already praying for her.”
I sat down on the bed next to her. “Will you stay with us?” I asked timidly.
“I can’t. Your royal chaplain has just told me that Paul’s up in the chapel, lying sobbing on the floor in front of the altar. I’ve got to go talk to him.” He was gone before I had a chance to answer.
The queen sat with me later that day, watching Theodora. It was still daylight, though it felt like the middle of the night. The rest of the festivities had been cancelled. The castle around us seemed silent as a tomb.
“Her color looks a little better,” said the queen, though I hadn’t noticed any change myself.
“Suppose she never wakes up?”
“She will,” said the queen positively, though she had no basis on which to be so positive. But I appreciated the gesture and tried to smile. “Thank you for saving us all again-especially me,” she continued. But then she remembered that in saving her I had let Theodora tumble down the crevice. She became silent, rubbing absently at a bruised arm.
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