Theodora still sat disconsolately, but Paul and I stared eagerly ahead. Gwennie, who had taken Theodora’s hand reassuringly, looked up at me. “Is there any chance Antonia has turned Cyrus into a frog?”
“What?!”
“When she stayed in my chambers, she boasted she knew how to do transformations. Does she?”
I looked inquiringly at Theodora but she shook her head. “Not that I know of,” I said. “It would certainly make things easier if she did.” But even as I spoke I thought that if Cyrus knew she was my daughter, he might be especially careful around her and have counter-spells all arranged. I kept probing for his mind, but he must have his counter-spells all ready for me as well.
Justinia suddenly shivered. “I still am not accustomed to what ye of the West call summer weather. It is scarce this cold in Xantium in winter!”
She was right. Although I hadn’t been noticing, after being hot all day the air had rapidly grown cooler. Ahead of us, dark storm clouds loomed, trailing curtains of rain. “It’s going to be dark even sooner than we thought,” said Paul concernedly.
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” I replied grimly and started on weather spells. Did this mean, then, that Vlad had finally arrived? And if so, had Cyrus taken the children of Caelrhon straight to him?
The clouds began at once to lift, but in a moment they rolled together again, and lightning flashed directly in front of us.
“There’s a mind behind this weather,” I said through my teeth, “and he’s very close. Theodora, do you know any weather spells?”
She shook her head, still not speaking. But Gwennie asked her with interest, “Do you know magic too? I hadn’t realized that. Are there women wizards, then? Or are you a witch?”
All of Theodora’s and my secrets were now on display. It hardly seemed to matter.
I redoubled my spells, trying to force the storm clouds apart. But someone enormously powerful was trying just as hard to keep them together. This had better not be Vlad, I thought with the grim conviction that it was. I had overcome his weather spells twice, but the first time, in the eastern kingdoms, he had been badly wounded, and the other time, just before I met his wolf, he had still been a great many miles away.
The others huddled together in the middle of the carpet as the temperature continued to drop. The king had his arms and wide cloak around both Gwennie and Justinia, though looking only at the latter, a faint smile at the corners of his mouth.
Cold rain started falling, first a few drops, then a downpour. Rivulets of water ran down our hair and clothes and across the carpet to drip off the edge. “This was my finest silk dress,” announced Justinia, “but now it is ruined.” We flew on, slowly now, through heavy darkness as thunder rumbled around us. I wondered uneasily what a direct lightning strike would do to a flying carpet.
As near as I could tell through cloud and rain, we were approaching the headwaters of the river that flowed through the city of Caelrhon. The road veered away as the ground rose abruptly into rocky cliffs. Justinia, huddled in on herself and shivering in spite of Paul’s arm, muttered that I might as well fly the carpet myself. We circled once over the tops of the cliffs, then I directed the carpet to follow the road out across the plateau.
Theodora suddenly stirred. “Daimbert!” she cried excitedly. “I think I’ve found her! I’ve found Antonia! She’s alive!”
Paul and I let out identical triumphant whoops. I turned the carpet at once to head back toward the cliffs, where she said she had sensed our daughter’s mind.
But now she seemed confused. Probing myself, I found no hint of any humans in the vicinity. “But I know I sensed her,” Theodora said doggedly. “Unless it’s some kind of trick-”
“Wait a minute,” said the king, peering over the edge of the carpet at the nearly invisible naked rock below us. “There’s supposed to be a castle here.”
“What castle?” I cried.
“There’s always been a ruined castle right below us, on top of these cliffs,” said Paul patiently, trying unsuccessfully to wipe rainwater from his face. “Or at least I assume it hasn’t always been ruined-but it must have been since the Black Wars. We’re close to the border of the kingdom of Yurt here. This is the castle I told you about that I was exploring earlier in the summer.”
I did remember now that he mentioned it. “Well, you must be mistaken,” I said wearily, not even trying to wipe the streams of water from my face. “I know it’s hard to tell distances from the air.”
Suddenly I stopped and grinned. Maybe we had them after all.
“You’re absolutely right, sire. A ruined castle would be exactly the place to hide a large group of children. And all the easier if you’re a wizard with the powerful spells to make a whole castle invisible.” Vlad’s obsidian castle in the Eastern Kingdoms had been invisible unless he wanted someone to see it. If it weren’t for Theodora’s witch-magic breaking through his defenses for a brief moment, and for Paul’s knowledge of local geography, we would have gone right by these cliffs without a second look.
“Now I just have to find the way in,” I said fiercely. Antonia was still alive. “The castle’s stones are here though hidden, and we could rip the carpet landing on a jagged wall even if we can’t see it.” With the heavy darkness and the rain, we wouldn’t have been able to see much of the castle even without a spell of invisibility.
“Down at the bottom of the cliffs,” said Paul, “there’s a back entrance that was probably where they once brought up goods from the river.” I immediately directed the carpet slowly downward. Rain was now falling so hard it bounced from the carpet’s surface. “Do you think, Wizard,” the king added as we descended, “that they’ll know we’ve arrived?”
“They’ll have a pretty good idea,” I said shortly.
Would it just be Cyrus we had to face, I wondered as I gently landed the carpet amid jagged rocks that must have fallen from a ruined wall above, or did he have Vlad with him now? And had these two dark wizards brought a demon along?
“The rest of you had better stay outside,” I said quietly, setting my jaw determinedly. “I don’t know how long this may take. But if I’m not back by dawn, Justinia, take the carpet and-”
But none of them wanted to be left behind. Theodora cared as little about her personal safety as I cared about mine when it came to Antonia, and Paul flatly refused to wait patiently for the adventurers’ return. Justinia insisted she would freeze to death if forced to stay out in the driving rain for five more minutes, and Gwennie had no intention of being left alone on a night of magical darkness and hidden evil.
It was going to be hard enough to get myself out of this alive without worrying about all of them. I should have dumped them all off miles ago. But then I would never have located the castle. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s try to find the way in.”
PART SEVEN — THE RUINED CASTLE
I
“Here’s the door, Wizard,” called Paul, feeling his way along a cliff face streaming with water. “I can’t see it but I can touch it.” Standing next to him I could feel it as well, a half-open old door, falling from its hinges, with a musty passage beyond.
I had groped for and found pieces of driftwood that had come ashore here where cascades from the hills above flowed together to form the river: torches if we could discover a way inside out of the storm. “Hold hands,” I told the others over the rumbling of thunder, and led them straight into and straight through what looked, in what little light we had from lightning flashes, like unbroken rock. Theodora was right behind me, and I could feel the bite of her fingernails as we passed through the illusion of solid cliff face, but no one spoke until we were all inside and wringing out our hair.