Mama frowned. “I am not sure that I understand you, but let me see what I can achieve. Do I dare attempt a verse of my own making?”
“You do,” Friar Ignatius assured her, “as long as you are careful to say that you wish to see his true nature, not to have him change his appearance to all the world.”
“Ah!” Mama nodded. “Subjective, not objective. This I can do.”
“You see? You have words that I do not, and ideas that I have never heard to match them.” Friar Ignatius bowed her toward the window. “You, too, are trained in poetry, good dame. Let us see what verse you can render.”
“That? It is simple; I have only to remember one English sentence and craft another to match it.” Mama frowned down at the sentry.
Both men suddenly felt the tension in the room, the ferocious concentration she bent to the task. Then Mama intoned,
“Must she not say to whom she directs that?” Papa asked in an undertone.
“Not as intensely as she is concentrating on him,” Friar Ignatius told him. “You or I would, yes, but not she.”
Mama gasped, and there was no delight in the sound. In fact, there was horror.
Friar Ignatius was beside her in an instant. “What do you see?”
“A snake!” Mama said. “His head has turned into a snake’s head, and a forked tongue flickers between his lips!”
Friar Ignatius frowned down at the sentry. “You have seen his true nature, Dame Mantrell. In his heart, he is a traitor… perhaps a spy.”
The sentry suddenly looked up, darting quick glances around the courtyard.
“He senses that someone is studying him,” the friar said. “Withdraw!”
But before they could, thunder rocked the castle, overwhelming their ears so that they staggered. Then their hearing adjusted, and the booming became laughter, gargantuan laughter. Staring out the window, they saw three vast djinn looming above the castle, each swinging a huge boulder. They loosed, and the missiles shot toward the wall.
Mama recovered from her surprise and threw up her hands, chanting, but she was too late. One of the boulders smashed into the tower, and the room shook. The three people seized one another and managed to stay on their feet by bracing against each other. The shaking passed, and Friar Ignatius snapped, “That was no coincidence! Down to the battlements, quickly!”
Another crash sounded near them as they ran down the stairs, and the building shook, toppling both Mantrells… but below them, Friar Ignatius braced arms and legs against the sides of the stairwell. They struck against his back, jolting him, but he managed to hold firm. They scrambled to their feet, saying, “Thank you, Father.”
“My pleasure.” Friar Ignatius was already in motion again, running down to the battlements. “Let us go!”
They came out of the tower door, and the genie who had been targeting them saw and changed the direction of his swing at the last moment, hooking the stone to hurl at them.
But Mama was ready now. She threw up her hands, shouting a verse in Spanish, and the boulder suddenly dropped to bury itself in the hillside below the castle.
The genie bellowed in anger, swinging his hand in a circle, and as he did, another boulder materialized in his grasp.
Farther along the battlements, Saul and Matt, hands joined with two junior sorcerers, finally finished shouting a choral verse. The boulder, and the latest missiles from the other two djinn, suddenly slowed, stopped, then fell.
The djinn roared in rage and dove at the castle. They slowed suddenly and drastically, then rebounded.
They screamed imprecations in Arabic, pounding at the unseen barrier with their fists. One of them soared high, then dove down. He bounced back up as if he had hit a trampoline.
Mama stared, then ran to her son. “What is it?”
“Saul’s.” Matt pointed.
“It’s a Wall of Octroi,” Saul explained, “like the one the French Revolution accused Lavoisier of trying to erect around Paris. I got the idea from King Boncorro in Italy. Best border fence you ever saw… if you wanted to keep out things that flew.”
“Only ones that flew?” Papa frowned.
“It’s like the barrier dividing Maxwell’s demon-box,” Matt explained.
“I remember that the hypothetical demon had to decide whether or not to let individual molecules through.”
Matt nodded. “Maxwell was trying to get around the Laws of Thermodynamics. He imagined a box of lukewarm air with a wall down the middle, and a little door only wide enough to admit one molecule.
His doorkeeper was a hypothetical miniature demon, who would only open the door if a slow-moving molecule came by. After a long enough time, all the fast molecules would be on one side of the wall, and all the slow molecules on the other. Fast-moving molecules are hot, so he would be getting more energy out of the box than he put into it.”
“If he didn’t count the energy of the demon opening the door,” Papa qualified.
Matt nodded. “And didn’t mind the fact that as a whole, the box still averaged out to the same temperature. So he failed in trying to outsmart the Laws of Thermodynamics, but he did invent a supernatural being that’s stood me in good stead, one time and another.”
“Even if a neighboring king borrowed an idea from him?”
“Right. Boncorro’s Wall kept out flying monsters, such as dragons, but anyone moving at a walking pace could get through without even noticing there was a barrier.”
“I don’t think you should have said that out loud,” Saul said, pointing at the djinn.
One of them was sinking down to the ground of the talus slope. As he fell, he shrank, and by the time he hit the ground, he was no bigger than an ordinary mortal. He strode up toward the castle… and passed through the Wall of Octroi as though it didn’t exist.
With a whoop of glee, the other two djinn swooped down to the ground, dwindling.
As they did, the one who had crossed the Wall stepped up to the drawbridge, raised his arms, and chanted a spell. The drawbridge came crashing down, and the genie waved his hands.
“What is he doing?” Mama wondered.
She saw her answer quickly enough. Their tower stood far enough out from the wall so that they could see the portcullis begin to dissolve.
“How impertinent!” Mama said severely, and held up her hands as she began to chant in Spanish.
“She has remembered her talent,” Friar Ignatius told Matt in glee.
“Uh… which one did you have in mind?”
“She is a spellbinder!”
Mama snapped her arms down, speaking her last phrase as a command. The portcullis froze half-faded, then slowly gained more and more substance until it was solid again.
The djinni howled in rage as his spell was canceled.
Mama pointed at him, snapping out another short Spanish verse, and suddenly they could all understand the genie’s words. “Cursed be the sorcerer who has frustrated my spells! Cursed also be the sorcerer who has brought me here!”
“Brought him?” Matt stared. “Not sent?”
“Even so,” Mama said. “That sorcerer must be nearby, then.”
Chapter Eleven
Now it was Papa who held up his arms and spoke in tones of command.