C. Dale Brittain_Wizard of Yurt 05

by Daughter of Magic

  The road was hard-surfaced, but the margins were damp from the proximity of the water meadows. “Lots of feet,” said Paul, “an enormous number of feet just today. And look. Most of them are very small.”

  “Then you were right, sire,” I said, springing back onto the carpet, suddenly feeling enormously more hopeful. “We may still catch them by nightfall.”

  The carpet moved faster now. If Cyrus kept to the road, we should be able to hear the children even if we did not see them, as long as we stayed close over the treetops. It was a good thing we had the carpet, I thought, or my own flying powers would have been exhausted hours ago.

  Theodora still sat disconsolately, but Paul and I stared eagerly ahead. Gwennie, who had taken Theodora’s hand reassuringly, looked up at me. “Is there any chance Antonia has turned Cyrus into a frog?”

  “What?!”

  “When she stayed in my chambers, she boasted she knew how to do transformations. Does she?”

  I looked inquiringly at Theodora but she shook her head. “Not that I know of,” I said. “It would certainly make things easier if she did.” But even as I spoke I thought that if Cyrus knew she was my daughter, he might be especially careful around her and have counter-spells all arranged. I kept probing for his mind, but he must have his counter-spells all ready for me as well.

  Justinia suddenly shivered. “I still am not accustomed to what ye of the West call summer weather. It is scarce this cold in Xantium in winter!”

  She was right. Although I hadn’t been noticing, after being hot all day the air had rapidly grown cooler. Ahead of us, dark storm clouds loomed, trailing curtains of rain. “It’s going to be dark even sooner than we thought,” said Paul concernedly.

  “Not if I have anything to say about it,” I replied grimly and started on weather spells. Did this mean, then, that Vlad had finally arrived? And if so, had Cyrus taken the children of Caelrhon straight to him?

  The clouds began at once to lift, but in a moment they rolled together again, and lightning flashed directly in front of us.

  “There’s a mind behind this weather,” I said through my teeth, “and he’s very close. Theodora, do you know any weather spells?”

  She shook her head, still not speaking. But Gwennie asked her with interest, “Do you know magic too? I hadn’t realized that. Are there women wizards, then? Or are you a witch?”

  All of Theodora’s and my secrets were now on display. It hardly seemed to matter.

  I redoubled my spells, trying to force the storm clouds apart. But someone enormously powerful was trying just as hard to keep them together. This had better not be Vlad, I thought with the grim conviction that it was. I had overcome his weather spells twice, but the first time, in the eastern kingdoms, he had been badly wounded, and the other time, just before I met his wolf, he had still been a great many miles away.

  The others huddled together in the middle of the carpet as the temperature continued to drop. The king had his arms and wide cloak around both Gwennie and Justinia, though looking only at the latter, a faint smile at the corners of his mouth.

  Cold rain started falling, first a few drops, then a downpour. Rivulets of water ran down our hair and clothes and across the carpet to drip off the edge. “This was my finest silk dress,” announced Justinia, “but now it is ruined.” We flew on, slowly now, through heavy darkness as thunder rumbled around us. I wondered uneasily what a direct lightning strike would do to a flying carpet.

  As near as I could tell through cloud and rain, we were approaching the headwaters of the river that flowed through the city of Caelrhon. The road veered away as the ground rose abruptly into rocky cliffs. Justinia, huddled in on herself and shivering in spite of Paul’s arm, muttered that I might as well fly the carpet myself. We circled once over the tops of the cliffs, then I directed the carpet to follow the road out across the plateau.

  Theodora suddenly stirred. “Daimbert!” she cried excitedly. “I think I’ve found her! I’ve found Antonia! She’s alive!”

  Paul and I let out identical triumphant whoops. I turned the carpet at once to head back toward the cliffs, where she said she had sensed our daughter’s mind.

  But now she seemed confused. Probing myself, I found no hint of any humans in the vicinity. “But I know I sensed her,” Theodora said doggedly. “Unless it’s some kind of trick—”

  “Wait a minute,” said the king, peering over the edge of the carpet at the nearly invisible naked rock below us. “There’s supposed to be a castle here.”

  “What castle?” I cried.

  “There’s always been a ruined castle right below us, on top of these cliffs,” said Paul patiently, trying unsuccessfully to wipe rainwater from his face. “Or at least I assume it hasn’t always been ruined—but it must have been since the Black Wars. We’re close to the border of the kingdom of Yurt here. This is the castle I told you about that I was exploring earlier in the summer.”

  I did remember now that he mentioned it. “Well, you must be mistaken,” I said wearily, not even trying to wipe the streams of water from my face. “I know it’s hard to tell distances from the air.”

  Suddenly I stopped and grinned. Maybe we had them after all.

  “You’re absolutely right, sire. A ruined castle would be exactly the place to hide a large group of children. And all the easier if you’re a wizard with the powerful spells to make a whole castle invisible.” Vlad’s obsidian castle in the Eastern Kingdoms had been invisible unless he wanted someone to see it. If it weren’t for Theodora’s witch-magic breaking through his defenses for a brief moment, and for Paul’s knowledge of local geography, we would have gone right by these cliffs without a second look.

  “Now I just have to find the way in,” I said fiercely. Antonia was still alive. “The castle’s stones are here though hidden, and we could rip the carpet landing on a jagged wall even if we can’t see it.” With the heavy darkness and the rain, we wouldn’t have been able to see much of the castle even without a spell of invisibility.

  “Down at the bottom of the cliffs,” said Paul, “there’s a back entrance that was probably where they once brought up goods from the river.” I immediately directed the carpet slowly downward. Rain was now falling so hard it bounced from the carpet’s surface. “Do you think, Wizard,” the king added as we descended, “that they’ll know we’ve arrived?”

  “They’ll have a pretty good idea,” I said shortly.

  Would it just be Cyrus we had to face, I wondered as I gently landed the carpet amid jagged rocks that must have fallen from a ruined wall above, or did he have Vlad with him now? And had these two dark wizards brought a demon along?

  “The rest of you had better stay outside,” I said quietly, setting my jaw determinedly. “I don’t know how long this may take. But if I’m not back by dawn, Justinia, take the carpet and—”

  But none of them wanted to be left behind. Theodora cared as little about her personal safety as I cared about mine when it came to Antonia, and Paul flatly refused to wait patiently for the adventurers’ return. Justinia insisted she would freeze to death if forced to stay out in the driving rain for five more minutes, and Gwennie had no intention of being left alone on a night of magical darkness and hidden evil.

  It was going to be hard enough to get myself out of this alive without worrying about all of them. I should have dumped them all off miles ago. But then I would never have located the castle. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s try to find the way in.”

  PART SEVEN - THE RUINED CASTLE

  I

  “Here’s the door, Wizard,” called Paul, feeling his way along a cliff face streaming with water. “I can’t see it but I can touch it.” Standing next to him I could feel it as well, a half-open old door, falling from its hinges, with a musty passage beyond.

  I had groped for and found pieces of driftwood that had come ashore here where cascades from the hills above flowed together to form the river: torches if we could discover a way inside out of the storm. �
�Hold hands,” I told the others over the rumbling of thunder, and led them straight into and straight through what looked, in what little light we had from lightning flashes, like unbroken rock. Theodora was right behind me, and I could feel the bite of her fingernails as we passed through the illusion of solid cliff face, but no one spoke until we were all inside and wringing out our hair.

  At least this castle was perfectly visible once we were within the walls. “God be praised, it is dry in here,” said the Lady Justinia

  Paul blew out the air between his lips and commented, “Glad you never decided to make my royal castle invisible, Wizard.”

  Theodora and I lit the torches with fire magic; they never would have burned properly without a spell. With me in front and she in back, we started cautiously up the tunnel before us. The torchlight showed a shadowed and dismal passage, hung with dusty festoons of cobweb, its floor strew with rubbish where animals had denned.

  “It’s not very far,” Paul said in a low voice, “a straight way leading slightly upward, and then the big storage cellars. It’s possible the children are there.”

  Sitting in the dark, I thought, in utter terror. Would we see them even if they were there, or would they be as invisible as the castle itself was from the outside?

  The light flickered on the uneven walls, and our footsteps echoed hollowly. It really would be night soon, I thought, and the night would be Vlad’s, with nothing to stop him before the dawn. The weight of the cliffs above seemed to press down on us, and a fetid odor rose in the stale air from beneath our feet.

  I kept straining, both with my ears and my magic, for indications of life, and at first found nothing, either good or evil. The sound of the thunder was very distant here, and I could hear nothing beyond our footsteps and our rapid breathing. Were the children even in this castle, or was it all an elaborate feint? But after only a few dozen yards I picked up the sound of distant moaning.

  We came to an abrupt halt. “Antonia!” Theodora whispered.

  But I shook my head. “Wait,” I whispered back. The floor before us came alive in the torchlight: glossy black cockroaches, spiders, and a six-foot viper that looked at us with glittering eyes, then slithered away. Gwennie was at my shoulder, and I could feel her trembling. In any of the others’ position, I would have run screaming back down the passageway, with a new appreciation for spending the night in the pouring rain, but no one moved.

  Then, faint in the distance, I picked up a sound like the rattling of dry bones.

  “What was that?” hissed Paul.

  “Oh, Christ,” I said, mostly under my breath. It sounded to me exactly like a skeletal apparition, the residue of death and evil left over in this old castle from the time of the Black Wars, now given life by a demon. It seemed to be getting closer.

  The slightest whiff of brimstone, I said to myself, and I’m gone.

  As if in response, the roughly-quarried stones on either hand rapidly began to grow warmer. Justinia, in relief, started to lean against the wall, but she pulled away with a sharp intake of breath as it grew hotter and hotter. Raw horror, even beyond what was rational given what I had just seen and heard, seemed to roll down the tunnel toward us. And wafting through the air came a small cloud of stinking smoke, poisonous yellow in the torchlight.

  “Right,” said a rational voice in the back of my brain. “Zahlfast can’t argue with you any more. Time for the demonology experts. Fly the carpet back to Yurt and telephone the school.”

  “And when will they arrive?” I asked myself testily.

  “Tomorrow,” said the rational voice, sounding less certain. “And in the meantime, while we’re waiting, you can try to locate Elerius and Evrard—they must be around somewhere, looking for you.” But I couldn’t wait for tomorrow. Antonia was in this castle now.

  And could she and all the other children be sitting, not just in the dark, but in a dark they shared with vipers, with brimstone, with skeletal apparitions, and with a demon that was even now killing them one by one with terror?

  “No, of course not,” babbled the rational voice. “Cyrus loves children. He may use a demon to help his magic, but he doesn’t want to hurt them. He’s always wanted the children to love him back.”

  The voice had a point. If Antonia was indeed still alive, then Cyrus must have brought the children here for a reason, rather than dumping them into the first convenient widening in the river. He therefore wanted them for some specific purpose—ransoming perhaps, or a refined revenge—even if he did not love them for themselves.

  And I therefore had to find them before his purpose took effect.

  This mental argument with myself had taken only a few seconds. “The children are not in the big storage cellars,” I said in a low voice, not mentioning what I was fairly sure was there. “Sire, is there any other way up to the rest of the castle without going through the cellars?”

  “There’s a narrow staircase on the left,” said Paul, “just a little further on.” I noticed he’d drawn his sword—not that it would do any good. “It’s partially blocked by fallen stone, but it’s passable.”

  “Theodora,” I said, “light the others back to the doorway and stay there until I get back. And if—”

  But it was no use. In spite of what we had seen so far, and in spite of having to assert through chattering teeth that they were not at all frightened, Paul and Theodora had not given up their intention of accompanying me. Gwennie and Justinia claimed they preferred staying with the rest of us, even if it meant advancing through giant cockroaches, to waiting alone with hot walls and the moaning and clattering and no magic to keep a damp torch lit. Three of them, not knowing magic, might not be as susceptible as I was to the disembodied and demonic terror pouring out of the storage cellars—but Theodora was.

  No time to argue. “Then let’s hurry,” I said and strode forward. Pushing against waves of horror was like pushing against the tide. I kept my feet moving with sheer will. The rattling of bones kept coming closer, as insects scurried out from underfoot. Paul’s narrow stairway was an empty black opening in the tunnel wall.

  Good thing it wasn’t any further or I might not have made it. I felt inside the opening with my hand—not as warm as the tunnel where we stood. When I thrust in the torch it was to see worn and cracked stone stairs spiraling upwards. There would be halls, chambers, and passages higher up, some certainly roofless, but some doubtless still whole, and Antonia had to be up there.

  I led the way again, climbing as quickly as I could on the uneven steps, my heart pounding wildly. The staircase was so narrow that there was scarcely room for my shoulders between the stone central post and the outer curved wall. A little rivulet of water found its way down the spiral, making surfaces slick and forcing me to be careful when I wanted to do nothing but run and run. The moaning and the rattling faded behind us. Someone slipped but caught themselves after a hard thump.

  “Do you think the children had to climb all these stairs?” Gwennie whispered.

  “I’m sure they were brought in the front way,” I whispered back. Wild terror receded as we climbed—unfortunately rational terror did not. “But we couldn’t even find the front way, and I’m still hoping we can get to wherever they’re being held without being discovered.”

  I spoke confidently, but whatever hope I had was a desperate one. Someone who went to the trouble to make his castle invisible and to surround it with dark clouds would certainly have set up spells to detect a wizard sneaking in.

  How far had we come? It was impossible to tell distances, except to know that we had climbed high enough that my legs were aching. My wet clothes had begun drying on my back into clammy stiffness. This had once been an expensive black wool suit, I recalled, bought just for Celia’s vocation at the nunnery.

  Ahead I thought I could pick up the smell of rain-washed air over the general mustiness, and then I began to hear a louder dripping. We came around a twist of the stair and saw Paul’s “partial blockage” before us.


  Part of the wall had collapsed inward, leaving a gaping opening looking out into night. Rain still lashed down. I redoubled the fire spell on my torch and put it and my head outside—still sheer cliff above and below, but we must be getting close to the top.

  The collapsed wall covered the staircase with chunks of stone, but beyond it continued to spiral upwards. The stones cast heavy shadows in the torch light—had that been another viper? No, I tried to reassure myself, just another shadow.

  “You have to climb carefully over the loose stones,” said Paul. “It was daylight when I did this before, but—”

  I stopped him and lifted myself with magic to fly up and over. One at a time I then lifted Gwennie, Paul, and Justinia to bring them past the obstacle and up beside me. Theodora flew unaided, holding the flaring torch well away from herself. Gwennie, impressed, started to say something but didn’t.

  Flying spells, I thought as Theodora found her footing, would announce to any wizard paying attention that another wizard had arrived. I would feel more comfortable about this if I could pick up the slightest trace of him—or if I didn’t keep imagining what might already be working its way up the stairs behind us, heating the stones as it came until the rivulets of dark water vanished into steam.

  “We’re almost there,” said Paul quietly. “We’ll come out in what was once the kitchen. The roof is long gone, but there’s another passage—still covered—that should take us to the great hall in the central keep. That’s the most intact part of the castle: the children may be there.”

  A final turn of the stair, and we staggered out onto a level if gritty surface, next to an enormous fireplace. Ducking under the stone mantle to shelter from the rain, now falling harder than ever, we all paused to catch our breaths.

  I kept straining to pick up any sound over the rain’s steady drumming or any magical indication of who else was in this ruined castle, but still found nothing. I lifted an eyebrow at Theodora, but she shook her head. “I haven’t sensed her again since that one time.”