Justinia immediately looked much more sympathetic. “She is always getting herself into one difficulty or another, of a certainty! I give thee leave, then, to use my carpet to help in the search for her, on this condition: that I myself accompany thee.”
I didn’t have time to argue. All I said was, “In that case, please leave your automaton behind-last time it tried to kill me.” It already seemed as though hours rather than minutes must have passed since the pigeon-messages arrived at the nunnery. We dragged the carpet, with the automaton’s help, out into the courtyard. Gwennie and Paul, hearing the commotion, came running.
The king must have gotten the details from Gwennie. “I will help you, of course,” he said, very sober and very concerned. “Move over. Are there handles or anything on this thing?”
“You just sit on it and hope it doesn’t tip,” said Gwennie from experience.
I didn’t want them along but I really didn’t have time to argue. The automaton glided nervously around the courtyard, and Justinia’s elephant trumpeted from the stables, angry at being left behind. The flying carpet shot off toward Caelrhon carrying, besides the foreign princess to whom it actually belonged, the king, the constable, and the wizard of Yurt.
V
“When I couldn’t reach you,” said Theodora, fighting to keep her voice steady, “I telephoned Elerius. He seemed to know who I was without my having to tell him. I know you don’t trust him, Daimbert, but you’ve always said he’s the best wizard of your generation, and-” Her mouth quivered, making it impossible for her to go on.
I put an arm tight around her. “We’ll find her. Everything will be just fine.” I wished I believed it myself.
“And the mayor’s just phoned the royal wizard of Caelrhon,” she continued, trying to compose herself. “It turns out that the Princess Margareta is among the missing.”
“Poor kid,” said Paul, showing unexpected sympathy for the girl he mostly referred to in the context of not wanting to marry her. “She must be terrified. And she’s started developing a woman’s form-what will an evil magic-worker want with her?”
“Come on. We’ll find them,” I said with a desperate effort to sound assured. “Cyrus won’t be able to hide from three wizards.”
The carpet shot off into the air again and out over the city walls. I had probed for and not found any lingering trace of Cyrus’s magic by which we might have followed him. He’d covered his tracks, which meant we had to assume the children could be anywhere. There might once have been footprints, but any physical traces of their passage had been obscured by the feet of desperate parents. The fields near the city were thick with the citizens of Caelrhon, shouting their children’s’ names, thrashing their way through clumps of bushes, dragging every body of water. A few looked up and pointed as we sailed past.
It was a good thing, I thought, that the Romneys had been gone for two weeks. Otherwise the people who had already been suspected, at least by some, of setting fire to the high street and of bringing the rats to town would probably find themselves killed by hysterical parents.
“I hope the Thieves’ Guild in Xantium does not learn of this stratagem,” commented Justinia. “They could win an exceeding number of concessions from my grandfather the governor in return for the city’s children.”
“It’s all my fault, Daimbert,” said Theodora, breaking down completely. “I told her she could spend the day with Jen. I should never have let her out of my sight. Will you ever forgive me?”
“It’s not your fault,” I murmured, holding her close. “There’s nothing you could have done. The piping would have drawn her just as surely as it drew all the other children.”
We were now some two miles from the city, beyond where the parents were beating the underbrush. They probably assumed their children could not have gone far. I, on the other hand, realizing the force of a summoning spell, knew that they would have kept running, following the piper, even with their legs worn down to bloody stumps. “We’ll circle the city by air, and if we don’t see them on the first circuit we’ll go out a few more miles and try again.” My attempt to sound calm and rational was a failure in my own ears. “That many children can’t have disappeared without a trace.”
The flying carpet turned at Justinia’s command and briskly traced a wide circle around Caelrhon. All of us lay flat, our heads over the edge, desperately searching the land below with our eyes. Gwennie and Justinia, on either side of the king, kept giving each other surreptitious glances over his head, but I had no time for them.
I had never realized before how much forest covered the hilltops and river valleys of the kingdom of Caelrhon, dense stands of trees that could have hidden hordes of children and were impervious to my magic unless I probed each clump individually. In spite of a far-seeing spell my vision kept blurring-wind, I told myself.
We saw nothing on the first circuit and started on a second, larger circuit. How much time, I tried to calculate, since Cyrus’s piping had summoned the children? The sun was well down the western sky. They could be miles from home by now, or they could be concealed in some cave only a short distance from town. On this circuit we spotted the towers of the royal castle of Caelrhon-Evrard, I thought, was probably now somewhere looking for us. Well, let him and Elerius start their own hunt. I had no time to try to make contact with them. Maybe they’d have better luck than we were.
Gwennie nudged me. “Wizard,” she said in a whisper, “don’t you think it just a little suspicious that someone you say knows eastern magic should show up in Caelrhon at the same time as an eastern princess shows up in Yurt? Especially since she seemed to know Antonia was your daughter before anyone else did?”
“I don’t find it suspicious at all,” I whispered back. Justinia had done nothing I could see to make me suspect her of evil. She was just a woman in hiding from her enemies-who, assuming the undead warriors and the wolf had been aimed at me rather than her, had so far hidden successfully.
“Wizard,” said Paul briskly as the flying carpet approached our starting point again, “I know this is the most systematic way to search the whole area, but we’ll only be able to spot them if they’re out in the open. And it’s going to be dark before very long. It’s time to make a guess and go that way.”
“What do you suggest?” I asked bleakly.
“The river road heading upstream from the city. It’s a good road, so even children could travel fast on it, and it’s tree-shaded most of the way. Because it’s not a major trade route, Cyrus might hope he wouldn’t meet anyone to bring the tale to Caelrhon. If we fly low we may be able to pick up something.”
It was worth a try. We swooped down over the treetops and swung back near the city, then started following the road from just beyond where the parents were dragging the river. Justinia ordered the carpet to fly more slowly, and I probed magically as we flew, trying without success to pick up some indication that the children had come this way.
The direction we were following took us slowly and obliquely toward Yurt. After several miles the road emerged from the trees and ran a short distance in the open, among meadows where cows grazed unconcernedly. Justinia set the carpet down, and Paul and I leaped off.
The road was hard-surfaced, but the margins were damp from the proximity of the water meadows. “Lots of feet,” said Paul, “an enormous number of feet just today. And look. Most of them are very small.”
“Then you were right, sire,” I said, springing back onto the carpet, suddenly feeling enormously more hopeful. “We may still catch them by nightfall.”
The carpet moved faster now. If Cyrus kept to the road, we should be able to hear the children even if we did not see them, as long as we stayed close over the treetops. It was a good thing we had the carpet, I thought, or my own flying powers would have been exhausted hours ago.