“No, I don’t think it’s fun to be nun,” I said, deciding to ignore the question about the relative values of wizard and witch-and even more so the issue of frogs. “But I’m afraid the twins were just down in Caelrhon, and they got the same answers there they got in Yurt.”
“Then I’ll have to find a better place for them to go,” said Antonia in determination.
We walked for a moment in silence. “Do you like my hair like this?” she asked then, turning sapphire eyes on me.
“Well, the bows are very nice,” I said cautiously, “but I like you in simple braids too.”
She nodded emphatically. “That’s what I decided. But I don’t want to hurt Margareta’s feelings. She broke her doll by accident, and now she has no one to play with but me. And this makes four different rooms in the castle I’ve slept in! I can’t wait to tell my friend Jen. Margareta’s unhappy because she doesn’t think the king loves her.”
I wondered whether Princess Margareta had told her this, or whether Antonia, with her mother’s quick insight, had worked it out for herself.
“I know what I can do, Wizard!” she said with a sudden skip. “I can take them all to see a dragon!”
“Well, since school-trained wizards are considered wedded to magic, it seemed best …” said the voice in the back of my mind with forced casualness. I pushed the voice away again and smiled at my daughter. Everything, the pain of being separated from Theodora, the deception, the embarrassment now that that deception seemed about to be found out, was worth it because of her. “Where will you find a dragon? I don’t think your mother has any around.”
“I’ll find one someplace,” she said confidently and enthusiastically. “Then Hildegarde can be a knight and kill it, but first the dragon will hurt Margareta so that she’ll be sick in bed and the king will realize he always loved her, and Celia will give the last rites so that she can be a priest.”
“It’s a complicated scenario,” I said, trying to keep from laughing.
“What’s a complicated scenario?”
“Your plan. While you’re at it, why not take Gwennie along too? I must say I’d never really considered, Antonia, that all that these women need is a trip someplace to see a dragon.”
“That’s right,” said Antonia. “Gwennie is sad too. How about Justinia?”
I thought about the lady’s self-possession. “She’s in fear for her life-reasonably well concealed-but I wouldn’t call her sad. But while you’re trying to find ways to help people trapped by their circumstances and other people’s expectations, how about King Paul?”
Antonia appeared to be turning over my bigger words in her mouth for a moment, but rather than asking about them she said, “I don’t think Paul needs to go see dragons. He could see them anytime he wants all by himself. After all, he’s king!”
I found myself wondering if Cyrus, in whom the bishop saw no evil and who had, at least for a moment, turned on me a smile brimming with goodness, had somehow found himself trapped by circumstances. But I didn’t want to think of him sympathetically.
Antonia plopped herself down in the grass by the path. “I’m getting tired of walking. Could you carry me-maybe carry me with magic? Or could you teach me to fly?”
Princess Margareta took Antonia off with her after lunch while I settled down for some serious magic. I could find traces of no one else’s spells anywhere in the vicinity, but just at the edge of my attention I could occasionally catch hints of something in the distance, in the direction of Caelrhon. A demon, of course, with access to supernatural forces, would have no trouble hiding from me. I circled the outside of the castle, making sure that the big white lumps of chalk, surrounding us with a giant pentagram, were still in place. It was ironic, I thought, that the pentagram had originally been set up to confine a demon, but could now be just as effective in keeping one out.
Back in the courtyard, I spotted the Lady Justinia talking animatedly to Princess Margareta while Antonia watched and listened with interest. Margareta made only a few awkward comments of her own but seemed to be observing Justinia with even more thorough attention than my daughter. The princess, I thought, couldn’t seem to decide whether the eastern lady was someone glamorous to model herself after or a dangerous rival for the king’s affections.
Antonia waved to me but I just waved back and kept walking toward my chambers, feeling reluctant to speak to Justinia again just yet.
Sitting by my window, leafing through the Diplomatica Diabolica in an unsuccessful attempt to find something more useful to do, I saw Antonia dart away across the courtyard, but as I reached my chamber door, wondering what was happening, she returned to the others, pulling Hildegarde by the hand. Celia trailed behind her sister. The whole group disappeared into Justinia’s chambers.
I smiled as I went back to my books. They could use the distraction. In a day or so Hildegarde’s message would reach the duchess, relayed through several sets of pigeons, and then there would be no more time for the twins to play with Antonia. I ought to telephone Evrard, the Royal Wizard of Caelrhon, I thought, to tell him there was a demon loose in his kingdom-unless of course there wasn’t. But at least I would be able to tell him my doubts and uncertainties more easily than I could tell the wizards’ school, though he would be just as displeased when I told him the demon seemed involved with the cathedral.
There were shouts of laughter from the courtyard. I glanced up to see Hildegarde dragging something out through Justinia’s door at Antonia’s direction, while the automaton watched uneasily. It looked like a carpet. Margareta and Celia clustered around. Gwennie, crossing the courtyard with her arms full of clean linen, stopped to watch.
So Antonia was going to pretend to take her friends far away from here on a flying carpet, I thought affectionately, somewhere they could leave all their problems behind and maybe even meet a dragon. Sometimes it was hard to believe someone so imaginative and good-natured was really my daughter. She stood with one small fist on her hip, using the other hand to point, ordering them into their places. They laughed as they moved to obey; even Celia had shed her serious look to join in Antonia’s game.
I had been reading for several more minutes and had just gotten to a part discussing how someone who had summoned a demon from hell might be able to make that demon do his bidding even from a considerable distance, when there was a loud whoosh from the courtyard.
Jumping up, I ran to the door. The courtyard was empty except for Justinia and some clean towels, drifting slowly out of the sky.
The lady’s normal self-possession had been driven out by fury. “What manner of thing is this, O Wizard?” she cried. “Thy daughter hath stolen my flying carpet!”
PART FIVE — THE WOLF
I
“How canst thou expect me to carry myself home from this benighted little kingdom without my flying carpet?” Justinia shrieked at me, but I was gone, shooting upward into the sky after a rapidly-dwindling speck of color.
Theodora was going to kill me. That is, unless the duchess got to me first. Both Paul and the cook would cheerfully join in stripping the flesh from my bones when they learned Gwennie was gone. The Lady Justinia probably planned to work over whatever of me was left. And I hadn’t even allowed yet for the royal court of Caelrhon.
The carpet was heading in the general direction of the city of Caelrhon, far faster than I could fly, but that didn’t keep me from trying. Eyes streaming from the wind, I tore across the sky with every ounce of magic I had. But I realized in a few minutes that desperate, exhausting flight was not going to catch a flying carpet fueled by spells far more powerful than anything of mine.