by Jeff Wheeler
The strenuous work was already beginning to give her a headache when she heard her grandfather enter the cottage. A moment later, he turned on the radio and turned it up loud enough that the newsreaders seemed to be shouting. She groaned and rested her head on the worktable. Then she continued working, trying to concentrate through an ear-pounding discussion of the king and queen’s visit to the United States. When the topic shifted toward German aggressions on the continent, she stormed out to turn off the radio and discovered that her grandfather had already returned to his tower, leaving the radio on behind him.
As she worked, Dwyn realized where she’d gone wrong when she’d made the wards the year before—her eavesdropping spell had interfered with some of the more delicate functions of her grandfather’s design. It took her most of the day, but she eventually adjusted the design to incorporate both spells without interfering with the functionality of either.
Immensely proud of herself, she waited until her grandfather left for the market and then took the focus up into the tower. Using Welsh words of power, she projected her magic through the focus, casting glowing replicas of the ward into the walls, windows, floor, and ceiling—she left no surface unprotected. The images would be visible only to other wizards who knew how to look for them, but her hidden spell wouldn’t be visible at all.
By the time she was finished, she was exhausted and beginning to feel jittery and stifled from the looming piles of junk. Her stomach rumbled as she climbed down the stairs; she needed some food and a nap before she finally picked up on her personal studies. When she entered her cottage, she was greeted with the scent of fresh bread and roasted lamb. A steaming pot of stew sat on her stove, a loaf of bread was keeping warm in her oven, and a note of encouragement from Mrs. Reilly sat on the table.
Her grandfather returned home about a half hour after dark. Unsurprisingly, his bag was stuffed with odds and ends—from a roll of natty twine to a horseshoe that looked as though it had been sitting in the mud when he found it. And six newspapers. She didn’t complain until he tried to stash his newfound treasures in one of her kitchen drawers. She led him to the storage room at the back of the cottage and helped him stash the things there.
“An old woman in the market asked me whether I thought there was going to be war with Germany,” he muttered as he sorted through a box of broken charms.
Dwyn froze for a moment and then forced herself to continue tidying the messy storage room. “Oh, really?”
Her grandfather nodded absently. “I felt bad for her—memory gone like that. She must have thought it was still before the Great War.”
Dwyn breathed out in relief. “Poor thing.”
Her grandfather put the box away and began sorting through the newspapers he’d bought. As he lifted the first one, Dwyn noticed the headline on the second: “Kaiser Seeking War?” She snatched the newspaper before he could read it and tossed it on top of a larger pile.
“That’s not where that goes—” her grandfather began, but she hustled him out of the room to the kitchen table.
“Mrs. Reilly made us some stew for supper,” she said. “I’ll dish some up for you.”
“Oh . . . Mrs. Reilly.” He shook his head, scooting his chair closer to the table. “That woman is after my apples.”
Dwyn paused in spooning out the stew, confused. “What?”
“Every time she comes by, she always asks about the apple tree on the edge of the garden. I know she’s planning on sneaking in and stealing them once they’re ripe—that’s what she did last year.”
“No,” Dwyn said, more firmly than she’d intended. She pointed the ladle at him. “Mrs. Reilly has been nothing but sweet to you, and she was a great support for mother during her last years. I don’t want to hear you badmouthing her.”
“Well, I’m sure she does lots of nice things,” her grandfather said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that she stole my apples. I caught her sneaking in!”
“You caught her? You saw her in your garden?”
“Well . . .” Her grandfather stuck his chin out stubbornly. “No, I didn’t, but Mr. James did. He told me she was in there.”
“Mr. James? The one you’ve been accusing of breaking into your house?” Her grandfather opened his mouth to reply, but she cut him off. “No. I’m not going to listen to this, Grandda.” She set his bowl of stew on the table with a thunk. “Just eat your dinner.”
After that, he didn’t speak to her for the rest of the evening; all her life, that had been his most common response when someone offended him. It had stopped bothering her years before.
Dwyn retreated to her workshop, looking forward to finally being able to study. Then she remembered the flasks and vials of potion that she’d confiscated from the young man that morning. They were still sitting by her sink, awaiting disposal; and it looked like one of the vials was beginning to melt. It took her several hours to safely negate the magic of the potions and dispose of them. By the time she finished, it was nearly midnight. She regretfully patted the spellbooks she’d been hoping to study; they’d have to wait until morning.
When she came out of her workshop, she found her grandfather asleep at the kitchen table with his head on his arms—he did that more and more often of late, falling asleep wherever he sat. It worried her. She was trying to decide whether or not she should wake him, when a knock came at the cottage door.
She frowned and made her way quietly to the door, where she peeked through the peephole. A thin man in an old-fashioned black suit stood on the porch, holding a bowler under his arm. She couldn’t make out his face, but she could see several cars on the street behind him. More men in suits stood beside them.
She placed a hand in her pouch of suspension powder, just in case—she doubted that someone with nefarious motives would have politely knocked, but it didn’t hurt to be cautious. Slowly, she opened the door.
The light from the cottage fell on the man; he was older, with dark hair and a bushy mustache that were streaked with wide lines of silver, and he looked very familiar.
“I’m sorry to bother you so late, miss,” the man said with a nod. “But I’m seeking High Wizard Arliss Bobydd on extremely pressing business. No one is answering at his tower—this is his daughter’s house, is it not?”
The moment she heard his voice, with its English accent and somewhat nasal tone, she recognized him. Neville Chamberlain, the royal minister himself. She realized that she was staring with her mouth open.
“Um, yes . . . yes, sir. I’m his granddaughter. I’ll, um . . . I’ll go get him.” She turned and began walking toward the kitchen, and then stopped in her tracks. Had she just left the royal minister standing on her doorstep? Red-faced, she hurried back to the door and pulled it open wide. “I’m sorry, sir. Please come inside and make yourself at home.”
The royal minister nodded with a polite smile, though it seemed to her that beneath the smile his face was tired and worried. He stepped inside and stood beside the door, making no move to sit. With a glance out at the cars and men along the street, Dwyn shut the door and hurried to the kitchen.
She was surprised to find her grandfather awake and nibbling at a sweet pasty. He didn’t hear her approaching, of course, but when he saw her out of the corner of his eye, he quickly stuffed the half-eaten pasty back into the bread box as though he’d been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to.
“I’m going to head up to my tower for the day, Mair,” he said, moving to the sink. “Let me know if any petitioners come looking for me.”
“For the day?” Dwyn repeated, caught off-guard. “Grandda, it’s midnight.”
Her grandfather looked at her with a mixture of confusion and fear that broke her heart. He glanced out the dark kitchen window. “Oh . . . I . . . all right,” was all he said. He lowered his head and turned away.
Dwyn wanted to give him a hug and comfort him—she suddenly realized that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d hugged her grandfather. Instead, she p
ointed toward the sitting room. “Grandda, there’s . . . the royal minister is here to see you.”
Her grandfather looked at her, his brow furrowed. For a moment, she thought he hadn’t heard her; and then he suddenly swept past her out of the kitchen, walking more quickly than she’d seen him move in a long time. She followed.
“Neville?” her grandfather said as he entered the room.
The minister stepped forward from the door with a smile, extending his hand. “Arliss, it’s good to see you.”
Her grandfather was grinning. He shook the minister’s hand enthusiastically. “Goodness, Neville, how long has it been? I haven’t seen you since you were made minister of health . . . the first time.”
“Yes,” the minister said, his smile fading. “That was ages ago.” He released the handshake and cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to bother you so suddenly, and so late, but it is urgent.”
“What is the matter?”
The minister glanced at Dwyn and licked his lips. “Would you mind if we headed up to your tower? These are matters best discussed alone, and behind wards.”
“Oh . . .” Her grandfather’s face fell. “Well, there’s . . . there’s not much room up there . . .”
“I’ll step out, Minister,” Dwyn interjected quickly. “You won’t have to climb all those stairs, and the whole cottage is protected against eavesdropping by my grandfather’s wards, just as the tower is.” In a way, that was true. She’d placed the wards, of course, but they were her grandfather’s design.
“Thank you, miss,” the minister said with a nod. Dwyn curtsied and then hurried away to her room, a looming feeling of dread enveloping her. There were no pleasant reasons why the royal minister would be visiting her grandfather in the middle of the night.
As soon as her bedroom door was shut, she ran to the mirror on her dressing table. She spoke a few words of Old Welsh, and the mirror lit up, showing her the sitting room. She’d put the same eavesdropping spells in the cottage wards as in the tower, just in case. Suddenly, she was glad that she had.
The minister had opened the front door again. After a moment, a man in a double-breasted blue suit stepped into the room, thin and slightly taller than the minister. Dwyn touched the edge of the mirror, swinging the view around so that she could see the man better. It was the king. He nodded to her grandfather.
“Your Majesty,” her grandfather said, bowing. “You’ve gotten much taller, Albert.”
“High Wizard,” the king replied, nodding. He smiled slightly. “It’s George, now, actually. Thank you for receiving us at such a late hour.” He stepped aside to let in another man, one decidedly wider than he was. “Have you met Lord Wizard Churchill?”
“I have not,” her grandfather replied, bowing again. “It is an honor.”
“The honor is mine, High Wizard,” the lord wizard replied in a gruff voice. He shook her grandfather’s hand. Unlike the others, he wore a set of midnight-blue robes. “I am sorry that I’ve never had the opportunity to come and meet you before.”
Dwyn stared as the men seated themselves. Some part of her had always known, of course, what kind of people her grandfather had once worked with. Everyone knew. But seeing the royal minister, the first lord of wizardry, and the king himself sitting in her cottage was quite another matter. She winced—her rumpled grandfather looked so out of place.
“I’m not going to waste time, Arliss,” Minister Chamberlain said. “Early yesterday morning, the German Empire invaded Poland.”
Dwyn gasped, then covered her mouth before remembering that the men couldn’t hear her. It wasn’t really a surprise—rumors had been spreading for months. But still, hearing it so suddenly was a shock. Her grandfather simply frowned.
“They attacked without a formal declaration of war,” the minister continued, “and, as far as we know, they’ve completely overwhelmed Poland’s defenses. Information is still scarce.”
Her grandfather was silent for a moment longer. “What will you do?” he finally asked.
“We will go to war, this time, if we must,” Lord Wizard Churchill replied. “The Germans have pushed too far—we can’t allow this to continue.”
The minister sighed and nodded. “Tomorrow, we will issue an ultimatum for the Germans to withdraw from Poland or face war, as will France.”
“But . . . will they listen?”
The lord wizard scoffed. “It’s obvious they will not—they mean to have all of Europe, perhaps even more.”
Her grandfather shook his head. “What is Wilhelm thinking? He swore to us that he wouldn’t follow in his father’s footsteps.”
“Wilhelm might be kaiser,” Churchill replied, “but I do not believe he still runs the empire. That chancellor of his is disturbingly ambitious, and he’s somehow obtained the favor of the imperial hexmasters.”
King George sat forward suddenly. “Whoever is b-behind the invasion, it is of n-n-no . . .” He trailed off with a sigh, and the lord wizard quickly handed him a small vial. Dwyn squinted at the potion as the king gulped it down—the king used smoothspeak?
The king coughed and then continued, handing the empty vial back to the lord wizard with a grateful nod. “The fact is, war is upon us—and this time, if we allow it to progress, it will be worse than before.”
The room went silent. Dwyn stared at her mirror. Worse than the Great War, the war to end all wars? How could that even be possible?
“Worse?” her grandfather whispered.
Minister Chamberlain nodded. “It seems likely. The Germans and Italy are allied—Mussolini will join with Wilhelm, or whoever is running the empire. He’ll likely make another grab for Ethiopia, and perhaps more of Africa.”
“Japan has already invaded China—they’ll take advantage of the chaos to push further.” Churchill sighed and rubbed his face. “And we all know that Stalin fellow can’t be trusted one whit either. The Soviets will move west while the Germans move east. I doubt we can count on them to wipe one another out.”
Dwyn pulled her feet up onto her chair, hugging her knees as they continued to outline the precarious position the world was in. Another Great War. She closed her eyes, trembling, recalling the few memories she had of the war. Waving to her father as he walked away from the cottage, wearing green-and-black magical forces fatigues. Her mother enchanting fighter planes down at the factory. A late-night phone call, and falling asleep in her mother’s arms as both of them wept.
She opened her eyes, blinking back tears, and shook her head. Why were they even discussing it? The German Empire had been acting increasingly belligerent for months. Surely the Ministry of Wizards had long since prepared a new peace ward. Why had they come to her grandfather?
Her grandfather was shaking his head. “But . . . the Peace Ward. You just need to get into Poland and make another peace ward, and things will calm down.”
There was a brief silence, and then Chamberlain sighed. “That is why we’ve come to you, Arliss. The Ministry of Wizards, they . . . well . . .” he trailed off and glanced at the lord wizard.
“We cannot create a peace ward,” Churchill said.
Dwyn stared. The expression on her grandfather’s face was the same as what hers must have been.
“Why not?” he asked.
The lord wizard sighed and seemed to deflate and droop. “You may not have noticed, High Wizard, but . . . magic is on its way out, these days. Fewer and fewer new wizards come to the academies each year, and each of them is a bit weaker than the one before. I’m one of the most powerful magic-workers in the ministry, and I can barely manage to perform the simplest of the spells you left with us.”
He shook his head and ran a hand over his balding scalp. “There are several theories as to why it’s happening, but it doesn’t really matter why right now. The fact is, you’re the only man in Europe—possibly in the world—who can make a peace ward.”
“High Wizard Arliss Bobydd,” King George said, leaning forward with a grim expression, “you once saved the
world from the greatest destruction that it had ever faced. Now, as your king, I must ask you to do it again.”
Dwyn felt herself begin to tremble. They couldn’t really be asking her grandfather to do that. Not at his age.
Her grandfather seemed thunderstruck, staring at the king slack-jawed. Then, after a moment, he pushed himself to his feet, his joints creaking and popping. He straightened his back, adjusted his robes, and then nodded. “Well, all right. I mean . . . of course. I’ll do it.”
* * *
“You can’t do it,” Dwyn said, trying to keep her voice level.
Her grandfather dug through a pile of books and newspapers. “You had no right to eavesdrop on that conversation,” he said, his voice muffled by papers and years of dust. “What did you do to my wards? They should have kept you from prying.”
“You don’t have any wards, Grandda. I’ve told you a dozen times that I replaced them all after you let them decay.”
They were in the top room of his tower, which was illuminated by a single lantern that Dwyn had enchanted months before to float over her grandfather’s shoulder when it was lit. He, of course, thought that it was the lantern he’d enchanted himself over a decade ago. Outside, it was still night—the king and his retinue had returned to London, where her grandfather was to join them in another day.
“I know that book is in here somewhere,” he muttered. “Mair, did you move it?”
“No, I didn’t.” Dwyn pulled him away from the pile and turned him to face her, trying to be patient. If she got mad, he would just become stubborn and ignore her all the more determinedly. “Grandda, you can’t do this. When you made the Peace Ward, it left you bedridden for over half a year. Even if you could somehow get into Poland right now . . . if you try to make a peace ward in your current health, it could kill you.”
“It will be fine, Mair,” he grumbled, pushing her hands off his shoulders and turning back to the pile. “It will be easier to cast early in the war, before the fighting begins in earnest. I can handle it.”