Joachim again. I kept silent.
“A lot of the children in the neighborhood have made something of a pet of him. I’ve gotten to know the children well through Antonia, and they talk to me about him. He’d been living in a little shack on the docks, made from scrap lumber, and the children bring him food from home. I told Antonia I didn’t want her down there. I don’t think she’s disobeyed me yet…. That was part of the reason I wanted her in Yurt now. But I couldn’t tell you that yesterday, with her standing right there.”
This sounded to me too like an excellent reason to have Antonia in Yurt. The castle had had a giant pentagram put around it by my predecessor as Royal Wizard. Unless someone had moved the stones over the years, no demon would want to enter the castle because he would be unable to leave again. “I tried without success to find the man. No one has seen him since yesterday.”
Theodora went still a moment, slipping her mind away into her own magic. “I don’t find him either,” she said then. “Maybe he’s gone.”
That was fine with me. Maybe he’d left Caelrhon for a kingdom where the Royal Wizard would spot him before the local bishop did, where no one would be too squeamish to call for a demonology expert. “Then I don’t have to worry about him anymore,” I said, finding Theodora’s lips. “Say! You know you’re always worried that Antonia will wake up-”
She laughed, pushing me away with hands on my chest. “I’ll kiss you as much as you like, as loudly as you like-but wouldn’t that be disgusting, to make big smacking kisses just because no one is here to overhear them? — but that’s it. Remember our agreement.”
I leaned back, exasperated. “I don’t remember making an agreement that would last this long.”
“Yes, you do,” she said teasingly, though I was not about to be teased back into good humor over this. “I know the bishop explained it to you. We have sinned, been penitent, and been forgiven, but that means we must be even more careful. We are not married, and we cannot act as though we were.”
“So we made one mistake,” I said in irritation, “one big mistake six years ago, and now it’s going to ruin the rest of our lives?”
“We have Antonia,” she said mildly. “I would not call her the ruin of our lives. She is rather a reason for us to be supremely grateful.”
“And do whatever the bishop tells us,” I grumbled. Maybe I should have been angry with Joachim, but this all seemed like Theodora’s fault. “Since when does a witch pay so much attention to a Church that considers all magic dangerous-especially women’s magic?”
“Since when does a wizard come racing to town the instant a bishop telephones him?” she shot back.
But then she looked at me, gave a smile that brought out the dimple in her cheek, and took me by the ears and kissed me on the eyelids. “Don’t be angry, Daimbert. I get so little chance to see you. I want to talk to you about what’s happening in Yurt. Let me make us some tea.”
She was right, I thought, watching her light the fire for the water and forcing myself to stop frowning. I didn’t want to waste this time with her by arguing. The easiest answer, of course, would have been to get married, but I no longer dared ask her. She had always refused, always would refuse, saying it would be the ruin of my wizardry career. But sometimes, like now, I wondered if that was the real reason. As fond as she was of me, I apparently did not “excite her to the very core of her being,” or whatever it was King Paul was waiting for: she herself did not want to marry me.
“Are you sure there isn’t somebody else?” I asked, trying to make it sound like a joke and not succeeding.
“Of course not,” she said briskly, getting out cups. “I promised you years ago that you would be the only one.”
When people got married, I thought gloomily, they promised to forsake all others and cleave only to each other. Theodora seemed happy with the first half of that promise but not the second. I was a wizard, with powers supposedly so great that the only reason I served a king rather than being a ruler of men myself was the service tradition of institutionalized magic. Yet here I was stymied by a witch and a five-year-old girl.
PART TWO — LADY JUSTINIA
I
“A flying creature is coming,” Antonia told me calmly. She had tugged open the door of my chambers, looking in from the sunlit courtyard to where I was finishing a late breakfast back home in Yurt. “Do you think it’s a dragon?”
I was past her and out into the courtyard in a second. Something small and dark, flying much too fast to be a cloud, approached from the south. I snatched her up as I tried to put a far-seeing spell together. “I always wanted to see a real dragon,” she said.
But it was not a dragon. It was a flying carpet.
Dark red with tasseled corners, it flew purposefully toward the castle, hesitated and rotated a moment overhead, then plunged down to land in the middle of the courtyard. On it, feet shackled together, stood a young elephant. As I watched in amazement it raised its trunk and trumpeted, the sound echoing from the cobblestones.
But the elephant was not all the carpet carried. A person was also seated on it, surrounded by boxes and parcels that tumbled off as the carpet came to a stop.
“In the name of all-merciful God,” came a high woman’s voice, “is this at last the kingdom of Yurt, or have I passed quite beyond the fringes of the civilized world?”
I stepped forward cautiously. I had only ever seen elephants once before, years ago on our quest to the East. The woman rose with a swirl of black hair that reached to her waist. “This is indeed the kingdom of Yurt,” I said, keeping an eye on the animal.
Antonia, who had been staring in as much astonishment as I, elbowed me as though to remind me of better manners. “Welcome to Yurt!” she called out. In a confidential undertone she added, “That’s an elephant, Wizard. Mother showed me a picture of one in a book. They aren’t dangerous unless they step on you.”
The woman smiled then, her curved lips crimson, black almond-shaped eyes taking in both me and the girl. Her eyelids were painted an iridescent blue and her red silk blouse was nearly transparent. I found myself tugging at my jacket and standing straighter. “I am Daimbert, the Royal Wizard.”
“At last,” she said, stepping from the carpet. “Thou art exactly the one I sought. By my faith, it seems an age since my feet have touched the earth. My elephant requires hay and water. And aid my servant in bringing the baggage to my chambers.”
Antonia saw the servant first. I had taken him for one more parcel until he unfolded himself to stand up and- My daughter gasped in my ear. He was not a parcel but not a man either. This lady’s servant was a shiny metallic automaton.
He started gathering up packages, one in each of his six arms, and waited, staring silently out of flat silvery eyes toward me for directions. The elephant wrinkled the leathery skin all along its back and looked around the courtyard. “I’m sorry, my lady,” I managed to say. “I don’t know who you are.”
“Justinia, granddaughter of the governor of Xantium,” she said as though surprised that anyone should not know. She reached with a jangle of bracelets into a leather bag. “But here. This message is for thee.”
The parchment was written all over in indecipherable characters. But I had seen something like this before. A few quick words in the Hidden Language, and the letters scurried across the page, changing their shapes and forming themselves into legible words.
It was from Kaz-alrhun, the greatest mage in the eastern city of Xantium. I had known him years ago; when our party from Yurt had been in the East he had saved all our lives. It seemed that he was now asking for the return of that favor.
“May God’s grace be on you, Daimbert,” the message ran. “This letter will introduce to you the Lady Justinia of Xantium. She is the governor’s granddaughter and my own distant niece. Certain political events in Xantium have put her in line for assassination, so it seemed safest to remove her far from the city. I learn that the king of Yurt I knew is dead, but I am certain the court of Yurt will welcome her for old friendship’s sake. Justinia is not a princess, as the governors rule only in the name of an Empire gone fifteen centuries, but she should be treated like a princess.”