To emphasize the point, he produced a wicked looking dagger from beneath his robes and held it in a way to suggest that he was ready to use it on any one of them should they give him reason.
His Eminence looked taken aback. “Who do you think you are, issuing orders to me, Laphroig? I am not one of your lackeys.”
He shifted away slightly, putting himself at the same distance from Laphroig as he was from Mistaya. “I’ve had enough of you, Lord of Rhyndweir. I think perhaps it is time for you to take your leave. You can do so voluntarily or I will help you on your way. Mr. Pinch? Do you have the crossbow pointed at his back?”
“I do, Mr. Crabbit,” the other replied from just behind Laphroig. “As you instructed me to do earlier when I warned you that he was a snake in the grass and not to be trusted.”
Laphroig smiled. “A crossbow won’t do the job, Crabbit. I am armored against such weapons. And before you can work a spell, I will have this dagger through your throat. Now do as I say and stop playing games.”
Mistaya was at a loss as to how to proceed. The standoff had pitted them against one another. If one attacked, the others would retaliate. She took two steps back and bumped into Thom.
“Get behind me, Mistaya,” he whispered in her ear.
She shook her head. “Stay out of this.”
“I won’t. I can help.”
“Not with this.” She didn’t dare take her eyes off His Eminence and Laphroig to look at him. “Please, Thom.”
“Princess,” His Eminence called out suddenly, “what of your promise not to try to escape? Does that mean nothing to you? Have you abandoned your word and your honor, as well?”
“I kept my word,” she replied. “I said I wouldn’t do anything during the wedding. The wedding is off, so I am released from my promise.”
“Some of us might argue with you.”
“I think we are beyond arguing, Your Eminence.”
Although she was pretty sure by now that talking was the only thing keeping her would-be captors at bay. She had to find a way to break this off without provoking an attack, and then she had to find a way for both Thom and herself to leave.
She wondered suddenly what had happened to Edgewood Dirk. She had thought the Prism Cat would be there to help her at this point. But it appeared he had abandoned her in the same way as Strabo. She regretted anew that she hadn’t done a better job of keeping loyal Haltwhistle at her side. He would never have left her.
“Haltwhistle,” she whispered to herself in a voice so low that even Thom, standing right next to her, couldn’t hear.
“Lord Laphroig,” His Eminence called. “Let’s put our differences aside long enough to deal with the Princess. She remains our common enemy and the lure by which we might still trap her father. You and I can settle up later, once she is incapacitated.”
Laphroig seemed to be thinking it over, and now Rufus Pinch was turned toward her, too, crossbow pointed. Mistaya saw her window of opportunity slipping away. She had to do something, and she had to do it right now.
Suddenly she saw Haltwhistle standing just at the edge of the trees behind His Eminence and Laphroig, hackles raised. She took a long moment to register his presence, to make certain she wasn’t mistaken. But there he was, good old Haltwhistle, not an apparition but the real thing.
She took a deep breath. “Haltwhistle,” she whispered a second time, and the sound of his name almost made her cry.
“Mr. Pinch?” His Eminence called softly.
In the next instant, everyone moved at once. Pinch released the trigger on the crossbow, Laphroig flung the dagger, and His Eminence leveled a dark charge of magic with lightning quickness. Mistaya retaliated with her own magic, already waiting at her fingertips, to protect both Thom and herself, and as she did so she felt Thom slam into her, knocking her aside. As all of this was happening, she saw Haltwhistle’s hackles turn to frost and his magic lance out in a sudden rush.
Dagger, crossbow bolt, and magic seemed to arrive at the same moment, exploding in front of her in a cloud of smoke. The force of the explosion sent her sprawling, so she didn’t see clearly what happened next, except that the confluence of magic and dagger and crossbow bolt seemed to rebound from her own defenses and carom away, sharp flashes indicating results she could not make out. She found herself sprawled on the ground, the stench of His Eminence’s powerful magic raw and pungent in her nostrils, the heat of it layered against her skin. She lay stunned for a moment, entangled with Thom, who had also been upended by the attack. Struggling to disengage, she tried to peer through the clouds of smoke and the mix of random flashes to see what had happened, but everything was obscured.
As she scrambled to her feet, she took a deep breath of air that was suddenly sharp and bitter and assailed her mouth and nostrils with suffocating power. She tried to fight it off, failed, and lost consciousness.
She came awake with a blinding headache. Everything seemed hazy and a bit vague, as if she were viewing it through gauzy curtains.
“Mistaya!” Thom whispered from somewhere far away. She felt his hand squeeze her arm. “Are you all right?”
She wasn’t entirely sure, but at least she could breathe again. She opened her eyes and looked into his. “Are you?”
“The dagger missed me,” he replied.
She wasn’t so sure how that could be. Right at the last, he had tried to save her and put himself in the path of the blade. It hadn’t looked to her, in the split second she’d had to witness the attack by his brother, that it could have missed him. But maybe her magic had deflected it.
Haltwhistle nudged into view through the haze, his hackles lowered again, his coat smooth. Things must be all right after all, she thought. She sat up slowly and smiled. “Good old Haltwhistle. I’m so sorry for not taking better care of you. I won’t do that ever again.”
The mud puppy’s beaver tail wagged eagerly as he sat down close by, but safely out of reach. If he didn’t think there was any danger, there probably wasn’t. With Thom helping, Mistaya climbed back to her feet, searching for her adversaries, the last wisps of smoke wafting away on the breeze.
Then she saw Laphroig. He was standing approximately where she had last seen him, one arm raised in the follow-through of a throwing motion, his face twisted with anger. He wasn’t moving.
Chances are he wouldn’t ever move again.
He had been turned to stone.
She looked farther around the clearing. But there was no sign of Craswell Crabbit and Rufus Pinch.
“What happened here?” Thom asked quietly.
Mistaya didn’t know. It was entirely possible, she decided, that she never would.
DEMONS AT THE GATES
Mistaya and Thom conducted a hurried search of the grounds but failed to find any trace of Crabbit and Pinch. Their complete disappearance suggested that the pair might have been vaporized or spirited away to some other corner of the Kingdom. After all, a collision of magic as powerful as those commanded by herself, His Eminence, and Haltwhistle could result in almost anything.
Nor was there much she could do about The Frog. She was not particularly adept at reversing magic spells, and the one that had turned him to stone was no exception. She decided it was best to leave him as he was and see if Questor could do anything to help.
She was about to suggest to Thom that they search within Libiris itself just to make certain Crabbit and Pinch hadn’t somehow gotten past them when a huge squalling sound from inside the building signaled that whatever the fate of those two villains, something else was clearly amiss. With Thom at her side, she charged back through the front doors toward the entry into the Stacks, tracing the cacophonous noise to its source.