Antonia came out of the bedroom at this point, wearing her blue dress, her shoes neatly laced and tied but her hair thoroughly tangled. “Who’s going to braid my hair, Wizard?” she asked me accusingly.
Elerius smiled and held out a hand. “I’ll do it. There’s a little princess in my kingdom who’s about your age. Would you like your hair styled like a princess’s?”
Antonia stayed put, looking at him in silent suspicion. Undaunted, Elerius said a few quick words in the Hidden Language. “Here, catch.”
An illusory golden ball arched through the air. Startled, Antonia reached up to catch it. But just before reaching her, the ball changed into a golden bird and flew, flapping wildly, up toward the ceiling where it disappeared with a pop. A single golden feather drifted down and dissolved back into air.
Antonia laughed and trotted over to climb on Elerius’s knee. “My wizard does illusions too,” she said. I thought it nice of her not to mention that I, the winner of an undeserved award, couldn’t do anything that complicated anywhere near as easily. “His name is Daimbert,” she added in explanation, as though Elerius might be unsure who I was. “I’m Antonia.”
“My name is Elerius,” he said, taking her brush. He was good at everything else; why should I be surprised that Elerius was also good with children? “Hmm, it looks like you’ve been trying to do some braiding yourself, Antonia, without being able to see what you were doing.”
“That’s because my friend Celia left yesterday,” said Antonia.
Celia! With everything else I had forgotten all about sending her to find out about the Dog-Man. It was too early to expect a message from her yet, but I might soon. And might that man, who performed very strange magic tinged with the supernatural, who had persuaded the bishop he wanted to be a priest, be behind the attack on Yurt?
Elerius finished brushing out the tangles and started braiding Antonia’s hair. A few magic words helped keep the strands in place until he could work them in. While he braided she took hold of a handful of his black beard and, humming, started brushing it.
“This may not have anything to do with the Lady Justinia, Daimbert,” said Elerius casually. Antonia, having exhausted the immediate possibilities of his beard, was now braiding her doll’s yarn hair. “Consider this: it may rather be directed toward you.”
“Me?”
“Forget Xantium for the moment,” he continued, still speaking in a casual voice Antonia happily ignored as she started singing to her doll. “Think about your trip years ago through the area where this sort of magic is widespread. I believe the others who were with you then are either now dead or at any rate not here in Yurt. Did you make any foes among the wizards of the Eastern Kingdoms?”
“I might have,” I said reluctantly. But all the hair on my arms and the back of my neck stood on end to hear someone else voice my worst suspicions.
It had been fifteen years ago on our way to the East, when we had met the dark, half-living wizard Vlad. Mostly by luck, I had been able to get us away and out of his snares without giving him what he wanted. Although I had not actually intended to hurt him, when we fled, that eastern wizard’s body had been partially destroyed, dissolved by sunlight …
So if Vlad, who had screamed curses after me, had found me at last, what would he try next, now that I had been able to withstand his warriors just long enough for the dawn to come?
VI
There was no message from Celia all day. In early evening I left the castle ostentatiously, standing on the drawbridge talking to Paul for several minutes before flying away. The story Elerius and I put out in the royal court was that I was searching by night for whatever practitioner of black magic had unsuccessfully attacked us, while he stayed on guard in the castle. We were doing more, however: testing to see whether the castle-including Justinia-was the target, or whether I was.
They raised the drawbridge and lowered the portcullis behind me; a lot more than one watchman would be on guard tonight. Elerius also stood ready to put spells, far more powerful than anything I could have managed alone, all around the castle, to stop any further magical creatures in their tracks before they reached the walls. Antonia, perched on his shoulder, waved as I flew away.
I did not go far, only a few miles, before settling myself with my back against a tree. After last night I was exhausted, but there were spells to hold off sleep as long as I was willing to put up with a bad headache. I built a fire and began to work illusions: large, brightly lit illusions, ones designed to proclaim to anyone within miles that there was a wizard here.
If Vlad-or whoever had attacked the castle last night-was after me, then I might not have long to wait. As long as I did not go to sleep, and as long as none of my friends or my daughter was in immediate danger, I should be able to fight back or escape. I hoped.
Unless Justinia, or perhaps some other member of the royal court for reasons I could not even imagine, really was the target. After a few hours in which nothing happened except that I perfected a few details of my illusions technique, I made a particularly large golden phoenix burning with realistic flames, donned a spell of invisibility, and darted through the night toward the castle.
It was quiet except for the knights in the courtyard, patrolling slowly, exchanging comments, lifting their lanterns at the faint thump I made landing on the battlements. Justinia’s automaton hovered at her door. I flew silently and invisibly across the courtyard to my own chamber windows. A magic lamp made a point of light within. Elerius sat reading, and beyond him I could just see a rounded shape on the couch that must be Antonia, asleep. Elerius lifted his head a moment, but I was fairly sure that even he, with all his abilities, could not see me. I flew upwards again and back to my slowly disintegrating phoenix.
The hours of the short midsummer night seemed to drag on forever. From being keyed up with anticipation of a magical attack, I went to being tired and bored. I replaced the phoenix with a pair of dragons who placed their claws on each other’s shoulders and did a tango, but my heart wasn’t in it. As a test, this seemed a dismal failure. I stared vacantly and gloomily out into the darkness beyond my fire. Whether aimed at the Lady Justinia or aimed at me, it looked like the next attack would not come for a while-just long enough to give us a false sense of security.
I had fallen into a doze shortly before dawn when I was abruptly brought back to full consciousness by the crack of a broken stick. My fire had burned down to cold ashes, and all my illusions were long gone. I spun toward the sound to see a huge, dark shape coming over the hill, silhouetted against the eastern sky.
It was in the form of a man, a man who walked heavily and awkwardly with his arms straight in front of him, a man ten feet tall.
I shot away, my heart hammering. The creature followed me, with a drag in its step like something dead that had forgotten how to walk, watching me with yellow eyes the size of saucers. There was an intelligence behind those eyes I did not recall seeing in the warriors. The creature’s heavy foot-falls seemed to shake the earth.
All right, I thought. We know then that I’m the target. The test is a success. We can stop now!
The creature showed no sign of stopping. I kept ahead of it, but it moved surprisingly quickly for something so awkward. Elerius might have been able to help me against it, but I didn’t dare head back to the castle, trailing a creature of nightmare, to get him.
Hovering just ahead of it, I madly tried both binding and dissolution spells, but all were ineffective. Years ago I had been pursued by a creature something like this and had found a way to improvise; desperately I tried to remember the words of the Hidden Language that had worked then. But nothing seemed to work now, and it kept on advancing. When I glanced over my shoulder to see that it was indeed maneuvering me toward the castle, I darted off in a different direction