“Come on,” I muttered toward the dawn. If this creature was made with the same magic of blood and bone that had held the warriors together only as long as darkness lasted, I should be safe in another few minutes.
The creature, ignoring my change in direction, continued toward the castle. I dropped to the ground, yelled to get its attention, and very slowly backed away on foot: slowly enough, I hoped, to focus it on me again.
My foot caught on an uneven tussock just as it made a spring at me. I ducked and rolled, suppressing a scream of terror, and shot up into the air an inch ahead of its grabbing hands. The yellow eyes seemed to be considering me in thoughtful assessment.
Twenty feet above it, I tried taking deep breaths. Showing no more signs of starting toward the castle, the creature watched me patiently. The mouth, a slit in the face, opened in what might have been a smile. Inside were quite real teeth.
I tried probing the spells that propelled it, hoping that if I could discover their structure I might find some way to reverse them. Slipping into the stream of magic, I probed there, and there-and came back to myself to find that my flying spell was disintegrating, and that I had descended almost within reach of the creature’s outreached hands.
Again I dodged away just in time. Sweat poured down my face, both at the closeness of my escape and at what I had found. My quick magical probe had shown me no way that this creature could be dissolved, but it had revealed the sorts of spells that held it together, a mix of spells I had never seen together before: the old western magic of earth and herbs that long predated the school; the eastern magic of blood and bone; and, quite unmistakable, a twist of school magic.
The rising sun lifted itself over the horizon at last, flooding the creature with pale light. It showed no sign whatsoever of dissolving.
“So some school-trained wizard has gone renegade,” I said to myself, “and has trained with Vlad-and may be here as his agent.” I would have to telephone the school at once-if I could only stop this creature first.
It had been reaching for me, but now it lowered its arms. Keeping its round yellow eyes on me, it opened its mouth and spoke. “This is a hard spell to keep going from a distance, Daimbert,” it said conversationally. “But I am very pleased to see it works.”
And with that the creature collapsed. Limbs fell off, the head tipped over, lost all the intelligence in the eyes, then dropped and rolled away, and last of all the torso subsided to the earth.
My heart pounding harder than ever, I cautiously approached. The body parts were no longer those of a ten-foot creature. Most were bits of wood and leaf, but lying among them, inanimate and clearly recognizable, was the dead body of the night watchman.
And I had recognized the creature’s voice. It was the voice of Elerius.
Back at the castle half an hour later, I dragged him out of my chambers and up on top of the tall northern tower, where I could curse him in privacy.
“Damnation, Elerius,” I said, low and furious, “what could you have been thinking in digging up the watchman’s body?! I’ve just had to rebury him, fast before anyone noticed.”
“I needed a body for my experiment,” he said mildly. “Your predecessor used old bones back when he made an unliving creature, as I recall, but it didn’t work as well as it should have. I found his ledgers at the back of your shelves last night, and in reading over his notes, and putting together what I found with what we discovered yesterday from the remains of the warriors, and what I once learned myself from an old renegade magician up in the mountains, I decided that the fresher the body, the better. It isn’t as though I was hurting the watchman in any way; after all, he was already dead.”
I fumed in silence until he paused, apparently feeling he had answered my objections. “I hope you’re pleased that you terrified me with your creature as well as disgusted me with your methods,” I said angrily. “This does not seem like something the school’s best graduate should do-or would want widely known.”
He shrugged. “I feel confident you will not tell the school about this. After all, if you did I could mention to them the curious fact that a man without brothers or sisters has somehow produced a niece…. And I see no reason why a wizard should let conventional squeamishness influence him. Since it was becoming clear last night that we would not get any answers at once as to who attacked the castle, I thought I might use the time profitably to see if I could make an animate creature and, at least temporarily, put my mind into it. That eastern magic has a great deal of potential, but it was a real challenge to find a way to overcome its susceptibility to sunlight!”
Still furious but without any good answers to what he clearly thought were convincing arguments, I said, “You always have felt the ends justify the means, haven’t you. I don’t want a grave-robber in my kingdom. Get out.”
He smiled indulgently. “I must apologize, Daimbert, for apparently frightening you even more than I intended! I couldn’t tell you what I was doing, of course, because I wanted to observe what my creature’s effect would be on the unsuspecting, but I counted on a wizard being hard to frighten. And of course I was interested to see what sort of response you might improvise. You know you can’t be serious in wanting to send me away, not before we finish finding out all we can about those undead warriors, not while your kingdom may still be in danger. By the way, while I was probing again those warriors’ bones you saved from the bonfire, I thought I sensed some kind of latent spell in them, something we hadn’t picked up before, so we should try to discover that as well. Since it bothers you, I’ll promise not to disturb any more graves while I’m here.”
“And stay away from Antonia,” I growled, no longer ordering him out of Yurt, not sure how I had lost the initiative but quite surely having lost it. He was right: I did need his help.
He smiled again. “Do not be concerned, Daimbert. I would never take a delightful little girl apart for an experiment, or whatever you’re imagining. My goal, like that of organized wizardry, is always the good of mankind. And knowledge of magic in all its forms is one of the principal foundations of wizardry.”
He turned without waiting for a reply and stepped off the parapet, floating majestically back down to the courtyard. I followed slowly, not sure how to enunciate what was wrong with his approach to magic, yet feeling that, at least for now, I would have to continue to work with him. But I also felt an implacable conviction that his ways were not mine.
PART THREE — THE BISHOP
I
That morning Justinia announced she intended to take her elephant for a ride. “She’s ordered me to accompany her,” Gwennie told me, standing in the doorway of my chambers and trying to decide whether to laugh or be irritated. “And you too, Wizard.”
Back in my chambers, I had been drinking tea and eating cinnamon crullers. As I ate I picked up one of the warrior’s bones I had saved and fingered it, wondering absently what spell Elerius might have spotted in it and whether he might already have a very good idea and be using this as a test for me. But I had no time to worry about him. Resignedly I pushed myself to my feet. Gwennie and an elephant would not be much protection for Justinia if whoever had sent the unliving warriors returned.