“Do I have to go ride on the elephant too?” Antonia asked dubiously.
“Not if you don’t want to,” I said, relieved that she didn’t. An elephant’s back struck me as a treacherous place. But if she was not with me, who would look after her? When I had first talked to Theodora about having our daughter visit Yurt, I had not imagined how much attention would go simply into taking care of one energetic five-year-old.
Elerius looked up from his reading. From his manner our quarrel this morning might not have even taken place. He seemed to be planning an extended stay in Yurt, during which he would read through all of the big, hand-written volumes in which my predecessor as Royal Wizard had kept his notes. “I’ll watch her for you, Daimbert,” he said with a slight lift to his brows, as though understanding and amused by my predicament.
Although I didn’t trust him, at the moment he appeared to be interested in my friendship, and it really did seem unlikely that he would harm Antonia while I was gone. When I went out a few minutes later, he was again absorbed in my predecessor’s spidery hand, and Antonia, with a quick glance at me and a self-righteous lift of her chin, had pulled down Elements of Transmogrification.
The Lady Justinia’s luggage had included a sort of double saddle with a roof, almost a little house, that could be strapped onto her elephant’s shoulders. The stable boys, grim and determined, managed to get it on, shaking their heads behind Justinia’s back. The elephant appeared almost as nervous as they were.
The automaton watched without moving, then sprang up onto the elephant’s neck when it was ready at last to go. I lifted the lady and Gwennie with magic into the little house and perched myself behind them on the elephant’s back. The leathery skin was scattered with long, coarse hairs that pricked through my trousers. I gave the stable boys a companionable shake of my head. This was supposed to be a small elephant, but I felt disturbingly high above the ground.
It reached its trunk, as supple as a snake, up to Justinia, and she handed it an apple. The trunk’s end, I saw with fascination, was provided almost with fingers, or at least flexible protuberances. It thrust the apple in its mouth and ate it with evident enjoyment, made several rumbling noises that I hoped indicated a happy elephant, and then, at the light touch of a goad on its neck from the automaton, trotted briskly across the drawbridge and out into a lovely June day.
“The sun here is very faint and low in the sky,” commented the Lady Justinia.
Staying on an elephant’s back was even harder than I had expected. Remaining fairly stable and probing magically for potential enemies kept me fully occupied while the beast’s rolling gait took us down the hill and along the brick road that led eventually to Caelrhon. I left it to Gwennie to try to explain that this was a warm day of midsummer and that the sun here was never as high or as hot as the lady was accustomed to.
We entered the forest, and dappled shadows flitted across us. After a few minutes, I was able to work out a spell to keep myself more or less balanced on the elephant’s back, while allowing me the attention to keep a watch for bandits or anyone else who might try to attack. When the Lady Justinia, who had fallen silent after exhausting the possibilities of solar intensity, suddenly spoke again, I was so startled I almost fell off.
“Art thou,” she asked Gwennie, “the king’s concubine?”
Gwennie blushed a dark red from her hairline to the neck of her dress. “Excuse me, my lady,” she said faintly, “but I do not find that an appropriate question.”
Now she had me curious.
“Come,” said Justinia breezily, “a vizier may oft keep secrets, but not from a governor’s granddaughter-especially not one who wishes to aid her.”
Gwennie kept her eyes down. “No, my lady,” she said as though the words were dragged from her, “we are not lovers. And-” She took a deep breath. “-and I think it shows how immoral the East must be for you even to think so.”
“Nay, O Vizier,” said Justinia. It was hard for me simultaneously to stay on the elephant, to pretend to be looking around as though not hearing their conversation, and to follow it avidly. “Does not passion for him burn great within you?”
Gwennie’s mouth shaped the word No, but for a moment no sound came out. Then she took another breath and answered fairly firmly, “Such a feeling would not be appropriate. A king can love only a princess or high-born lady, his social equal, someone fit to become his queen.”
There was not even a hint in her voice that she thought Justinia would make a terrible queen of Yurt. It occurred to me that Gwennie, not in any position of real power, was much more concerned with maintaining social conventions than was someone like Paul whom those conventions were supposed to support.
“This attitude speaks well for thy training and awareness of thy position,” said Justinia thoughtfully. “But I have observed how thou watchest the king, how aware thou constantly art of his presence. I speak now as a woman, not a high-born lady. Many a king has found more solace with a slave girl than his own wife. Would not thy heart’s sorrow be eased by entering his bed?”
“I don’t have to listen to this,” Gwennie replied, in what was doubtless supposed to be a hot defense of morality and came out half-choked. “Turn the elephant back to the castle.”
“That may indeed be a difficulty,” said Justinia, as though Gwennie had said something quite different. “Thou hast always lived, I ween, here in the royal court-wert thou perhaps even once his playmate? But I have also verily observed him, how eager his youthful strength and restlessness is to turn to something deeper and stronger. If he awoke in the night to find thee beside him, it would be but a moment ere his friendship for thee turned to passion-especially when he realized how much thy love could guide him to find what he truly wishes to find.”
I wondered myself what she thought Paul was seeking.
“Thou carriest the castle’s keys at thy belt, I have noted,” Justinia continued. “It will be a simple act for thee to slip into his chamber when all are sleeping, so that none else need ever know. Thy delicacy and inexperience itself should prove an added attraction.”
“Turn the elephant back,” said Gwennie again, staring straight ahead.
Justinia laughed and said a word to the automaton, which touched the elephant’s neck with the goad. It turned obediently, pausing only to strip a trunkful of leaves from an overhanging branch before starting homeward. I remembered somewhat guiltily to probe for bandits.
And realized there was a group of riders approaching, less than a quarter mile behind us. I stiffened, summoning spells of protection. But there was something familiar about them …
“Wait a minute, my lady,” I called to Justinia, in a loud voice to indicate that I could not possibly have overheard a low-pitched conversation. “It’s the queen mother of Yurt, coming home.”
In a moment the riders came out of the trees and pulled up hard: a small group of knights with the queen and her ladies in the center. Several of the horses, eyes rolling white, reared as the elephant turned to look back at them.
Gwennie worked herself out of the housing on the elephant’s neck and would have jumped straight to the ground if I had not caught her magically to slow her fall. She sketched a curtsey, and although her cheeks were still blotched red she addressed the queen clearly and calmly. “Welcome home, my lady! This is the princess of which I told you.”
There were greetings and introductions all around. Gwennie must have telephoned the royal court of Caelrhon or sent a pigeon-message as soon as Justinia arrived, I realized. The queen and Prince Vincent, her husband, would have left for Yurt the very next day, cutting short what had been supposed to be a several-weeks visit at his family’s court. Although at first I thought that Gwennie had told them about the attack on the castle, and the queen had hurried home to assess the damage and the danger, no one in the party from Caelrhon seemed to have heard about it.