I stood back a safe distance. “I think the king went riding after lunch,” I said to Hildegarde. Paul tended to react to anything which he had to think over by taking his stallion out for a miles-long run. Even if he didn’t end up exploring some ruined castle or scenic waterfall, he might be gone for hours, occasionally even days. No one, not even the queen mother, had ever been able to persuade him that a king should have an escort when galloping around the countryside. Besides, no other horse in the kingdom could keep up with Bonfire.
“Earlier he’d said he was going to show me some exercises. But I guess,” Hildegarde added with a deep sigh, “that he was just humoring me. He doesn’t think I can be a knight any more than anybody else does.”
Either that, I thought but did not say, or Lady Justinia’s arrival had distracted him so much he had forgotten everything else.
“I was going to be a wizard,” said Antonia with a dark look for me, “but now I think I’ll be a knight too.”
“Knights need their naps,” said Hildegarde, unfolding herself from the window seat. “Don’t I remember tucking you in over an hour ago, you little scamp? And then,” with a laugh, “I looked up and saw you out in the courtyard with the wizard!”
“What’s a scamp?” asked Antonia.
“Scamps are mischievous people who have a mind of their own,” said Hildegarde. “I used to be a scamp myself.” I was surprised she put it in the past tense.
Antonia allowed herself to be taken off to bed in a much better mood than I could have anticipated a few minutes ago. Hildegarde casually slid the knife from the girl’s hand back into her own belt.
“Celia,” I said when the others had left the room, “I need you to do something for me.”
“Of course, Wizard. Do you need to leave the girl with us again while you go somewhere?”
“No,” I said slowly, “but I would like you to go somewhere for me. Down in Caelrhon there’s a man-someone whose name I don’t know but who has been nicknamed the Dog-Man-who wants to be a priest too. I wish you would talk to him.”
Celia put her Bible down very slowly. “Is this a joke, Wizard?” she asked as though not quite sure whether to be irritated. “I remember the tricks you used to play to amuse Hildegarde and me when we were little. Because if you think you can make me forget-”
“No, no,” I said before she could make this any messier than it already was. “I’m absolutely serious.” Some of the tricks I had played on the twins had been pretty good, I recalled; I should try them on Antonia if she was still speaking to me. There was the one where I pretended to snip off a girl’s nose with my fingertips, then presented a plausible illusory nose for her inspection, or the one where I tossed a butter knife in the air, went to catch it, gave a blood-curdling yell and presented my arm with the hand “cut off,” that is made magically invisible …
But I shouldn’t be distracted. “This man, Celia, has apparently persuaded the bishop that he has been touched by God, but I’m suspicious of him. He’s hiding from me-which is part of the reason I’m suspicious. So I need someone who has a pure religious vocation, but someone who doesn’t automatically agree with the bishop on everything, to find out more about him.”
“More about him?” said Celia, sounding bewildered.
“Find out why he’s suddenly appeared in Caelrhon, how he’s doing what look like miracles-but maybe aren’t-learn how deep are his religious convictions: all the things the bishop is unwilling to ask him.”
She gave me a level stare. “You’re asking me to do something behind His Holiness’s back?”
“Well, yes, I guess so. But I can see,” I added hastily, “that it was probably wrong to ask you, that-”
“I’ll do it, Wizard.”
“You will?” I said, startled.
“Women often understand people, both men and women, better than men do,” she said firmly. “This way I may be able to help the Church if your suspicions are accurate.” She suddenly grinned. “And if I can show the bishop my powers of spiritual discernment, he may realize he’s made a big mistake. Now, tell me more about this man.”
An hour later Celia rode away from the castle toward Caelrhon, telling me she hoped to be back in a few days and would send me a pigeon-message in the meantime if she discovered anything interesting. Hildegarde decided at the last moment to go with her, announcing that no future duchess should ride across two kingdoms without an armed warrior to accompany her and protect her. The twins had ridden up from the ducal castle unescorted, and Celia had dismissed my suggestion that a few of the castle’s knights ought to go with her to Caelrhon, and without Paul there to back me up there was no way I could change her mind.
As I watched the twins’ horses disappearing, I hoped that the bishop would not be too insulted at my sending a woman to prove him wrong.
Antonia, still partly asleep, came out with me to see them off, trailing her doll behind her. “Before I took my nap, Wizard,” she said, “you picked me up without touching me and lifted me high in the air. Is that magic? Can you do it again? And you have to teach me how to do it to Dolly.”
With the duchess’s daughters gone, Antonia ended up on my couch that night in spite of Gwennie’s concerns. I was sound asleep when the clang of sword on sword resounded in the courtyard.
Not Paul again! I thought, swinging my feet reluctantly out of bed. But it could not be the king returning to the castle late because he had been here for dinner, too absorbed in the Lady Justinia even to notice that the twins were not there until someone else asked about them.
There came now a hoarse shout and the high winding of a horn-the watchman’s alarm signal, which I had never actually heard used before. The horn’s note blew a second time, then abruptly was cut off. This wasn’t just someone playing a joke on the night watchman. He was in serious trouble.
“Stay here!” I cried to Antonia, who was sitting up, wide-eyed and clutching her doll. I slapped a magic lock on the door as I swung it shut behind me.
Justinia’s elephant trumpeted in the stables, and shouts and clangs came from elsewhere in the castle-I was not the only one to hear the watchman’s horn. But I was the first to the gate.
And saw row after row of warriors marching in across the drawbridge: shadowy, armored shapes, naked swords in their hands, and eyes that I could have sworn glowed in the darkness.
This couldn’t be real. It had to be a nightmare. But waking or dreaming I had to do the same thing: defend the castle of Yurt.
I shouted spells in the heavy syllables of the Hidden Language, and the first warriors stopped as though they had run into a wall-which indeed they had. But their feet kept on moving as though trying to push themselves through. Their eyes still glowed and their swords were ready if my spells weakened for even an instant.
Someone ran into the little room by the gate where the bridge mechanism was worked and cranked the wheel to raise the drawbridge. Beyond its end, I could see in the dim light more warriors advancing. The ones on the bridge slid off into the moat as it rose, but the ones behind them kept right on marching, straight into the water as though not even noticing the bridge’s absence.
The portcullis slammed down as I started looping binding spells around the warriors trapped between the gate and my magical barrier. One by one they stopped moving as my spells caught and held.
I paused to catch my breath. Magic is hard physical as well as mental work. It had been very close, I thought, but I had gotten out into the courtyard with my spells in time.
There was a shout from the wall. “They’re coming up!”
Swords and glowing eyes loomed against the starlit sky. Knights with lances swarmed to the battlements to thrust back into the moat men-or monsters-that seemed to have no individuality, no awareness of their surroundings, only a need to keep on coming.