"What's the difference?" Shiara demanded.
"Magicians deal with many ways of magic," Telemain said. "Wizards with only one. Now, will you come in and sit down?"
Shiara was still looking at him doubtfully. Telemain smiled. "Will an oath content you? If you mean no harm, I am not your enemy, and I will o you no harm while you are my guests, save in self-defense. I swear by the sword," I felt a kind of popping at my side, even though I wasn't touching the sword, and a tipple ran through the clearing, like a shimmer of light in the air. I thought it kept on going out into the forest, but I couldn't be certain.
Shiara started and dropped Nightwitch, who landed on her feet with a yowl.
The dragon stretched its neck, looking almost as if it were trying to purr.
Telemain suddenly looked very intense.
"That is the way of it, then?" he said when the tipple passed. "I don't think I blame you for your caution." He looked pointedly at my sword.
Shiara scowled again, but I thought she looked a little more doubtful than the last time. "If you're so smart…" she began, and stopped.
Nightwitch was rubbing against Telemain's leg and purring.
"Nightwitch?" said Shiara.
"An intriguing name for a cat," Telemain said, bending over to pick up Nightwitch. "Even more interesting for a kitten. Where did you come by her?"
"She was a present," Shiara said grudgingly. "From a witch named-" "Morwen?" said Telemain. Nightwitch purred louder. "I suspected as much. Now, will you come in? Or do you wish to continue this discussion where anyone may hear?"
We went in. The door of Telemain's home looked like an ordinary, normal-sized door, but it couldn't have been, because the dragon fit through it without any trouble. The room inside was made of stone and very bare.
In the center of the floor, two iron staircases twisted around each other in a spiral and disappeared into the ceiling. The whole place seemed much taller from the inside. If i hadn't seen it before we came in, I would have been sure we were in a tower.
As the door closed behind the dragon, Telemain waved his hand. A table and three chairs materialized beside the stairs. "Sit down and tell me more about yourselves."
We sat down, except for the dragon, who sort of curled itself around the edges of the room. I started explaining about Mother and Antorell and everything that had happened in the Enchanted Forest. I even told him about the Sword of the Sleeping King, because I was pretty sure from the way he looked at it that he already knew something about it.
The questions he asked made it pretty clear that I was right, although sometimes he got so technical that I had to ask him to repeat something. He sounded as if he knew exactly what answers he expected, too. When I told him about the voice that had said, "All hail the Bearer of the Sword," he nodded in satisfaction.
Then I explained how Shiara and I had met, and why the wizards were after her, and about the one who'd tried to get us at the stream.
Shiara frowned at me, but she didn't interrupt. When I told him about meeting Morwen, Telemain seemed very interested.
"I haven't seen Morwen in a long time," he said. "How is she?"
"You know Morwen?" Shiara said.
"We grew up together," Telemain said. "Now, exactly what did she have you do to repair the damage to your hand?"
Telemain asked a lot of questions about the things the Sword of the Sleeping King had done, but he didn't seem particularly interested in the wizards. He wasn't interested in the Princess at all. Then I told him about the invisible castle and the fire-witch.
"So that's how you knew about it," Telemain said. "I wondered."
"That's how we knew," Shiara said. "How did you know?"
"The castle landed in my clearing sometime around noon," Telemain said dryly. "I was understandably curious as to why someone would go to all the trouble of making a castle invisible and then drop it on top of a magician who can't help noticing it."
"It's not there now," Shiara said.
"Of course not! What would I want with an invisible castle? When I found no one home, I cleaned the place up a bit and got rid of it."
"Cleaned it up?" I said, puzzled.
"The most recent owner had a number of unattractive habits," Telemain said even more dryly than before. "In addition to casual petrification of passersby, she indulged in seven varieties of involuntary metamorphosis, as well as necromancy and demonology. I don't believe you would be at all interested in the technical details."
"Oh." He was right; I didn't really want to know about it.
Telemain looked at Shiara again. "I owe you an apology," he said.
"I knew that the castle was the property of a fire-witch, and I'm afraid that when you showed up, I thought you had some connection with it."
"Well, I don't, but I suppose I can see why you might have gotten mad."
Shiara sounded a lot friendlier than she had before. I think she would have been friendly to anyone who didn't like that other fire-witch.
Then she frowned. "How did the castle get into your clearing, anyway?"
Telemain shrugged. "As far as I can tell, the unit transportation spell operated on a set of totally random parameters, both in terms of time and location."
"What does that mean?" said the dragon.
"The castle was designed to move around the Enchanted Forest more or less randomly. It's a rather unusual spell to put on a building, particularly an invisible one, because if you happen to be outside when it moves, you get left behind."
"Then why on earth would anyone put a stupid spell like that on a castle?"
"Presumably this fire-witch didn't expect to have any problems finding the castle again. I don't believe it occurred to her that someone else might find it first." He smiled. "I left a few surprises for her. I doubt that she'll be pleased."
"Oh, that's all right," the dragon said. "Daystar got rid of her."
Telemain looked at me. "Really. How did you manage that?"
"She threw some sort of spell at me, but Nightwitch scratched her, so she missed," I said. "And after that, I had the sword out."
"You used the Sword of the Sleeping King on a fire-witch?"Telemain said. He sounded somewhere between shocked and horrified.
"I couldn't think of anything else that might work," I said apologetically.
"And it did work, sort of. I mean, it got rid of the fire-witch."
"She went up in smoke," the dragon said with considerable satisfaction.
"I watched."
"She went up in smoke," Telemain repeated in tones of fascination.
"And what were you doing while this was going on?"
"I was trying to hang on to the sword," I said. "It was glowing red, and my hands felt like they were burning or something, so it was sort of hard to do. But as soon as the fire-witch was gone, it stopped."
"You are extremely fortunate," Telemain said. "You might have gotten yourself killed and ruined everything. I don't recommend that you try that again. Stick to wizards. That's what the sword was meant for."
"It was?" said Shiara. "How do you know? What else does it do?"
Telemain looked at her. "Magicians know many kinds of magic." He turned back to me. "Please, continue."
I was curious about what the sword did, too, but Telemain obviously didn't want to talk about it, so I didn't ask. Instead, I explained about fixing Shiara and not finding the castle and meeting the second elf. Telemain listened carefully, then shook his head.