Carrying the heavy black box, I walked slowly away from the cart, trying to probe for magic. What I found was almost overwhelming. I was used to the orderly channeling of magic, but here magic whirled and spun in complete confusion. There was too much detail, too little focused, for me even to try to identify the source.
I closed my mind resolutely against these magical influences. This must be one of the spots in the borderlands where human habitation was only a short distance from wild magic.
Fifty yards from the air cart I set the black box down. Slowly, cautiously, I pulled open the lid and peeked inside. The frog was still there, glaring at me furiously. As soon as daylight touched it, it began to kick. The rope with the binding spell in which I had originally tied it was gone; I wondered if the frog had eaten it.
I swung the box forward, catapulting the gorgos frog out. It hit the side of a rock, rolled down, and righted itself. I realized I was trembling as I watched. It started to work itself along, although a frog's feet do not do well on rough stone.
"Go ahead," Vor called. "Turn it back into a gorgos."
I hesitated. There seemed no reason not to leave it a frog. Sooner or later it might be able to overcome the transformation spell by itself, but in the meantime we should be able to get well away.
On the other hand, I feared that part of my own mind might still be attached to the gorgos. I had summoned it to me while transforming it, and there might still be enough attachment that it would be compelled to follow me.
Carefully, feeling my way into my own magic and trying to avoid the swirling alien magic around me, I put together the words to break the transformation spell. When I said the final syllables to restore the gorgos to itself, my mind leaped back out of the calm channels of magic into a body whose heart was pounding madly.
It had worked. The gorgos crouched on the ground where the frog had lain a second before. It was appreciably larger than I remembered, especially the fangs.
Both terrified and exhilarated, I started flying backwards toward the air cart. My mind was clearer than it had been for a week, and for a second I felt that nothing could overcome me and my magic. The gorgos seemed to be startled at its abrupt return to itself. It glared about with burning eyes and scratched its side with long, curved claws.
Then, behind me, I heard a shout. I spun around. It was Vor.
Beyond the tumbled boulders, in the direction in which I thought I had seen stones heaped into a hut, I heard an answering bellow.
The gorgos spread its bat-wings and rose into the air, looking back toward the bellow but moving toward me. I retreated more rapidly.
And then I saw, rising over the boulders, a second fanged gorgos.
The first gorgos, my former frog, saw it too. He turned from pursuing me and, with a great flap of its wings, launched himself toward it. The two monsters rushed at each other, slavering mouths wide open, claws ready to rend each other's flesh. Just before they met, I thought I sensed something very odd about the second gorgos.
Not stopping to analyze it, I rushed after the air cart, which had taken off and by now was careening across the sky. The two gorgoi roared and screeched, apparently ripping off major parts of each others' bodies.
I caught the cart after a mile's pursuit. The magic words to lift off had put it into the air, but without further direction the purple flying beast's skin had started flying on its own with little regard for the people in it.
Vor and the two princes clung to the edge, looking ill. I dropped inside, stopped the cart's spinning, and straightened out the course. "Back to your valley?" I asked Vor, as calmly as if I dealt with gorgoi every day.
He blinked. "Yes. That would be good."
Paul looked at me wide-eyed. "I don't know how I could have gone all these years without realizing what a good wizard you are." I nodded gravely at this praise from my future king.
The cart banked and started to return. I could still hear faint bellows in the distance. I turned from Paul to address myself to Lucas. "I trust, Prince, that you will be able to report to the dean that I did indeed destroy the gorgos."
His lips tight, Lucas nodded slowly. I had plenty of questions for him now that my mind was abruptly clear again, but even more pressing were my questions for the construction foreman.
"You knew about the second gorgos, Vor," I said. "Ever since the first one appeared in the cathedral city, you've been working to bring the two gorgoi together. Now that, I hope, they're finishing destroying each other, I would like you to tell me what's really been happening."
Vor looked at me in silence for a moment. The two princes leaned back against the far side of the air cart, their elbows hooked over the side. Paul appeared interested and amused, Lucas suspicious.
"The second gorgos wasn't really a gorgos," I prompted Vor. "It's something—or someone—turned into a gorgos. Was it a person?"
He smiled suddenly and fleetingly. "The prince is right—you are a good wizard." I had scarcely received so many accolades in one day before. I hoped they would remember to relate all the details when we stopped at the blue house on top of the mountain on the way home.
"It used to be human," Vor continued, "a man from my valley." Once I had him talking, he seemed uncharacteristically willing to continue. "As I'm sure you already guessed, it was the man I mentioned to you, the one who determined he was going to kill a gorgos. He did kill it, too, but its gorgos spirit overwhelmed him, body and soul, as it died."
"And that's why you warned me not to try to kill the gorgos frog."
He nodded. "Maybe another wizard could have overcome your gorgos with wizardry." So much for the compliments! "But when it became clear that you were either going to have to take it back to the land of wild magic or else kill it by force, I decided I'd better come along. I knew where to find a second gorgos, and I knew if they killed each other they would both be dead, with no more humans taken over by their spirits."
"There's more to it," I said, watching Vor's face. His willingness to tell me all this now, I thought, was an attempt to hide something else. "You didn't merely want to dispose of the gorgos from the cathedral city. You had always known about the gorgos here, and you had been wanting to kill it for years." He blinked in what might have been agreement.
"You brought me and the transformed frog up here on purpose to kill the gorgos that was already here," I continued, holding him with my eyes. "The gorgos here, the one that used to be a person: that was the reason you left your home in the valley originally. What did it do to you?"
Again he gave that fleeting smile. "It killed my father," he said in his normal laconic tone.
As he seemed unwilling to add anything else, I said, "So is that why you had to leave? You couldn't live on in your valley with your father unavenged, but you couldn't avenge him without becoming a gorgos yourself?"
He did not answer. My brain, awakened fully from the miasma into which the gorgos had dragged it, had at last worked out something important. Let the others imagine that I had realized it all along. "Vor," I said with my best wizardly scowl, "this all started when you became involved in the plots of a renegade wizard. Since his gorgos nearly killed me, I think I have a right to know about it."
The two princes looked startled, but I ignored them.
"Nothing worked out as you had planned, Vor," I said sternly, "at least until the two gorgoi destroyed each other. Did you think that I would believe it was sheer coincidence that a gorgos should appear in the very cathedral city where the foreman of the construction crew wanted revenge on a gorgos? No," shaking my head, "it was not coincidence."
The air cart flapped steadily, carrying us across the brown borderlands of the land of magic. I paused to let Vor say something, but he seemed willing to listen in silence. "You had struck up a friendship with a certain wizard," I continued, "and he knew you'd come from the borderlands. He asked you, very casually, what would be a good type of creature to call to the city. And this is where things began to go wrong. Not letting y
ourself think about why a wizard would want to call a monster, you suggested, equally casually, that a gorgos would be just right. If the gorgos who had killed your father left the borderlands for Caelrhon, you thought, you could go home again without shame—especially if, as you let yourself imagine, the wizard planned to destroy it. But he called the wrong gorgos!"
Vor answered at last. "It wasn't like that! I would never have had anything to do with him if I'd known he was planning an attack on the cathedral. He told me the wizards' school was trying to find a good kind of monster so that the young wizards could practice their new anti-monster spells."
"And even when the gorgos, the wrong gorgos, showed up at the cathedral instead of at the wizards' school," I asked, "did you still hope these ‘new anti-monster spells’ were real?"
He did not meet my eyes, but a slow smile spread across his face. "I did admire your technique."
"But who was the wizard?" I insisted, not about to be flattered now. "Was it that old ragged magician who knows fire magic?"
Vor looked surprised. "Not him. He could never master a gorgos. It was one of you school-trained wizards, but I'd never seen him before. A relatively young one—no gray in his beard."
Lucas interrupted before I could press for details. "All right, Wizard," he said brusquely, "you've made your point that wizards may occasionally be useful against creatures of wild magic. But now you have to answer to me!" He tapped his fingers on the pommel of his sword. "You and your friend the dean—and I certainly hope the cathedral chapter has enough sense not to elect him bishop!—may have forced me to come with you, but now that you can't threaten me with your black box anymore, I think it's time to teach you your place!"
II
"I'd credited you with more intelligence than this, Prince," I replied sternly. "I don't have to answer to you, but you to me! You're three thousand miles from home, without a horse or a map. The only people here are half-fey themselves. If you try walking back south through the mountains, you will find very few people who have even heard of the kingdom of Caelrhon, and even fewer impressed by the crown prince of Caelrhon. It's no use trying to overpower me, because you'd be trapped here without my magic."
I took a deep breath. "Now! I'll give you a choice: between explaining why you contracted with a renegade wizard to bring a gorgos to the cathedral city, or staying in the borderlands of magic the rest of your life."
The hard curl of Lucas's lip was very pronounced. He must know I was bluffing and looked obstinate enough to dare me to leave him behind. I did not want to have to explain to the king and the royal princess of Caelrhon that he wasn't coming home. He had children, too, I remembered unhappily.
"You dare," he began, "you dare accuse me of summoning a monster—"
And then he did the last thing I expected. He jumped me.
I was so startled that he had me on my back on the bottom of the cart, his hands around my neck, before I could react. The cart tipped wildly. "I know how to fly this air cart," he grunted, digging a knee into my midsection, "and I—"
His eyes went wide and his grip slackened as the air went solid around his own neck. Gripped by a slightly tardy binding spell, he fell backwards as I pushed myself up, furious. "Suppose I turn you into a frog for the rest of the trip," I said between clenched teeth, "so you don't give me any more trouble."
But suddenly my attention was distracted. The air cart was beginning to wobble badly as it flew. I glanced downward and realized we were no longer heading back south toward Vor's valley. Instead we were heading east, much more rapidly than the cart normally flew. I gave the commands to correct the course, but the cart did not respond. Instead it picked up speed.
"This isn't the way back to the valley!" cried Vor.
"Someone else has control of the cart!" Closing my eyes against the others' alarmed faces, I slipped into the stream of magic, trying to find in the welter of influences around us the magic that made the cart ignore my commands. I found it in a few seconds, but finding it was no help. The wizards at the school had long ago worked out, by trial and error, commands the cart would obey, but someone here had specific knowledge of this kind of flying beast and had used that knowledge in the moment I had been distracted. Even a dead flying beast's skin could not resist spells shaped especially for it.
"Hold onto me, all of you!" I cried. "We've got to get out!"
Paul and Vor seized my arms at once, but Lucas clung to the cart's edge. "You mean you're going to start flying with all of us trying to hang onto you?"
That was exactly what I meant. "Yes, yes, hurry! I can't break the cart out of the attraction spell."
"And then you'll drop off those of us you don't like?"
"Come here!" I dragged him to me with magic and quickly started putting a lifting spell together. I had never tried to fly with three other people before.
But it was too late. As Lucas struggled in the grip of my magic, making it impossible for me to hold onto him and the other two at the same time, the cart began spiraling downward. Below us was a circular green plain rimmed with low dark hills, a dense grove of trees in the middle. We were heading for those trees.
The air cart swung low, tipping until all of us piled against one side, Lucas still struggling. With a twitch it tossed us out.
We spun out into the air, Paul and Vor nearly pulling my arms from the sockets. I applied enough lift to them to ease my arms and almost reluctantly looked for Lucas.
I caught him barely before he hit the first tree, just soon enough that he did not crash into it at full speed. But he disappeared from sight with a gratifying yell and a rapid breaking of twigs.
The air cart hesitated above us, abruptly freed from the attraction spell. I yelled commands at it in the Hidden Language and followed Lucas downward. The air cart shot off to the south, and we descended through a canopy of leaves to the thin grass below.
I came down prepared to face an unimaginable enemy but found only Lucas, green shadows, and an uneasy silence. Lucas, I was glad to see after all, seemed essentially intact. Paul and Vor collapsed without a word. The air that had been cool and brisk in Vor's valley was here sensuously warm. I closed my eyes for a second, concluding that there really must be a saint who looked after wizards.
Paul raised himself on his elbow after a moment. "What happened?"
"Someone or something wanted us down here and didn't particularly care how we got here."
"Who is it?" He scrambled to his feet.
"I don't know. I'm trying to locate him, but now that he's no longer drawing us with magic, I'm having trouble."
Paul had his sword out and looked around intently, but he had no more success with his eyes than I was having with magic. "How are we going to get back?"
"Walk to Vor's valley. I sent the air cart there as soon as it was freed from the attraction spell."
"Or we could ride," Paul suggested, which made no sense at all.
"I can't walk!" groaned Lucas. "You've broken my ankle!"
"You're lucky I saved your life instead of killing you," I said grimly. Dropping out of the sky had diverted my attention, but I had plenty of fury left. "It's entirely your fault we're here. If you hadn't attacked me, I could have kept someone else from taking control of the air cart. If it weren't for the oaths the school makes us swear to serve mankind, you'd not only be a frog but a very dead frog."
Lucas looked quickly toward Paul and Vor, but it was clear he would get no reinforcements there. "So are you just going to stand there and threaten me?" he said, attempting a sardonic smile. It was not improved by a grimace of pain.
"No. But I am going to demand to know why you believe that wizards are conspiring against the nobility, and why you summoned a fanged gorgos to the bishop's funeral."
He reached for his sword, but I froze it in his sheath. "I thought you'd discovered that violence against a wizard won't work, Lucas," I said fiercely, standing in front of him with my arms crossed. "And I already know most of it. It starts with your plan
to use a gorgos to discredit both the Church and organized magic!
"You and your brother," I continued sternly, "have developed the foolish idea that the power of the aristocracy, even that of the kings of the western kingdoms, is being diminished. And you blame the priests and the wizards for this. Because you imagine that the kings could do better without their spiritual and magical advisers, you—"
"I know nothing of the gorgos," interrupted Lucas. "I'm not going to dignify such accusations with a response. But the power of kings is being daily diminished by wizardly scorn!" Sometime soon I really would have to find out what purported failings had led to Sengrim's final argument. Should I start suspecting Lucas of having murdered him, then deliberately replacing him with a renegade who paid no attention to the school and its oaths to help humanity?
Lucas looked as much toward Paul as me as he spoke. "Did you hear that wizard up on top of the mountain? ‘Young fellows,’ he called us. And it's not just scorn for our position. It's a determined effort to weaken us collectively! Even the feeblest and silliest kings are allowed to survive and flourish. Before the wizards' school, when wizards owed their allegiance to their kings rather than the school in the City, bandits and ruffians were found in great numbers, and princes could earn their spurs in combat. Then a few short wars by the strongest took care of the weak and foolish, and kings could stand proudly in their castle halls, rather than amusing themselves with illusions and fairy-stories."
Paul looked toward me with a forced smile, as though trying to persuade me he had never believed such things.
"Did you consider the gorgos a fairy-story?" I demanded of Lucas.
He ignored me. "Not very long ago, all my worst fears were confirmed. A nobleman from the City stopped by our castle on a journey. And this man, as it turns out, is a close friend of the Master of the wizards' school. He confirmed that the school is plotting very soon to break all purported obedience to the aristocracy!"
"The Master has no close friends among the aristocracy," I said, surprised. "Just who did this man claim to be?"
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