"But you did agree to my paying the rest when and only when you succeeded. I'll not pay for a bungled job!"
"You were as responsible for the bungle as anyone, and you had better pay. I can take you to law; and I also have other means of causing you trouble."
'Try it!" said Jorian. "Come on, Karadur. An I ever resort to sorcery again, I'll try to find a sorcerer who is at least both competent and honest."
"What of me?" cried Margalit. "Am I expected to walk back to Xylar? By Zevatas's whiskers, my Lord Jorian, were we both in Xylar, I'd sue you within a digit of your life."
"I beg your pardon, my lady. Come to our hostelry, and we'll discuss your future."
Back at the Silver Dragon, Jorian engaged a private room for Margalit, whose initial anger had cooled. He told her:
"Certes, I am obligated to get you back to Xylar. But you cannot travel thither alone, especially at this time of year, when packs of wolves and bands of robbers are desperate for food. I cannot afford to hire a proper escort and procure animals to carry you. And I cannot accompany you into Xylar myself if I wish to keep my head attached to the rest of me."
"I cannot blame you for that," she said. "Like my Queen, I have turned against this custom, venerable though it be."
Jorian continued: "So I will pay your keep here as long as my money holds out. When spring comes, some means of conveying you, such as a diligencia or a merchants' caravan, will surely turn up. Now you'd better get some sleep."
"What next, Your Majesty?" said Margalit.
"I pray, do not call me that, even in sarcasm! I never wanted to be king of your preposterous country, and ever since my escape I've been trying to divest myself of the honor. But to answer your question: I must away to my job at the mill. Tonight at dinner, we'll consider what to do. I'll summon the wizardess Goania, who has more sense than most."
Margalit looked down at her gown. "I am no glass of fashion, but I shall really need at least one change of clothing. Without washing, this garment will become as odorous as your demon, and I cannot run about naked whilst it is being cleansed."
"In winter, anyway," said Jorian. "I suppose your abductor gave you no time to snatch up a purse?"
"You suppose rightly, Your M—Master Jorian."
Jorian signed and took two pieces of gold from his purse. "I know nought of the cost of ladies' garments, but see what you can do with this. Get Karadur to go with you."
That evening, as they sat at table waiting for Goania, Margalit said: "You certainly seem determined, Master Jorian. You've vainly tried a direct attack, and then sorcery, in your efforts to obtain my Queen; but you still have not given up."
"That's true love," said Jorian. "I'm not ashamed of it. She's the one I chose for myself, not picked for me by the Council to give the leading magnates a stake in my rule. And she's the one I want."
"When and if you recover her, what then?"
"Why, we'll find some safe place, whence the Xylarians cannot snatch me, and settle down as a proper tradesman and wife to earn a living."
"You may find her changed."
Jorian dismissed the idea with a wave. "Were she old, wrinkled, and gray, she would still be my true love."
Karadur chuckled. "My boy is a sentimental romanticist," he said, wagging his vast, white beard. "Do not try to change him, Lady Margalit; for it is one of his attractive qualities. Ah, here comes my eminent colleague!" .
The wizardess Goania, followed by her bodyguard Boso, entered. Jorian, relieved to see that Vanora was not with them, made introductions. Goania said:
"Welcome, Lady Margalit. When I saw you, I wondered what magic could have changed you from a short blonde, as Jorian has described his Estrildis, into a tall brunette. What befell?"
When Jorian and Margalit had told their stories, Goania said: "Never underestimate the stupidity of demons. Those from most of the other planes have powers that on this plane appear preternatural. Are you familiar with the theory that every life form is descended from others, all going back to some little blob of primordial slime?"
"Aye," said Jorian. "When I studied here under Gwiderius, a professor was dismissed from the Academy for such ungodly speculations."
"Well, this theory explains the stupidity of most demons. Having these powers, the stress of competition on their own respective planes has not forced them to develop their mental powers to the degree that we, who can neither fly, nor make ourselves invisible, nor demateriauze, have been forced to do.
"I can give an example from my own experience. When I was a mere girl—stare not, Master Jorian; I was once young and quite as pretty as your Estrildis."
"Very well, Aunt Goania. I believe you."
"When I was, as I say, a maiden, I had a suitor named Uriano, who dabbled, unbeknownst to me, in sorcery. This was ere I myself decided to make occult pursuits my life's work. I expected to wed, keep house, and bear brats like most women; and I was sore assorted with Uriano, for he was a handsome devil.
"My father, a building contractor, had no use for Uriano, terming him a lecher, a wastrel, a dabbler, and generally worthless. Anon I learned that Uriano was all those things; but then my eyes, blinded by love, were closed to them. My sire barred my sweet swain from the house and forbade me to have aught to do with him.
"I wept, carried on, and made a great to-do; for I deemed myself the victim of a monstrous injustice, inflicted by one grown so old as to have forgotten the joys of youthful love and filled with blind prejudice against the newer and more enlightened views of the younger generation. But relent my father would not.
"Uriano, howsomever, discovered that, by skulking through some shrubbery that grew nigh our house, he could approach within twenty paces of the edifice unseen, on the side of my bedchamber. So we presently began communicating by his shooting headless arrows from a child's toy bow, with messages wrapped around them, through my open window. I wrote replies, tied them to the arrows, and threw them back.
"Then Uriano proposed that we elope. I, foolish girl, assumed he meant to hale me to the Temple of Therms and make me his lawful wife. From what I heard later, I'm sure he meant only to enjoy my body until he tired of me and cast me adrift.
"On a certain night, he said, he would appear with a ladder, down which I should descend into his arms, and away we should fly. What he did not tell me was that, in his sorcerous experiments, he had evoked a demon from the Seventh Plane to help him. Seventh Plane demons are fiery beings, particularly dangerous for a tyronic, unskilled sorcerer to handle.
"On the appointed night, Uriano came with his ladder, accompanied by his demon. He placed the ladder against the wall and charged the demon to cover our retreat when, as he thought, we should flee from the house together. He posted the demon at the back door, with orders to incinerate with his fiery breath anyone who came through that door ere we were out of sight of the house. Then the demon should rejoin his master.
"All might have gone as planned but for two things. Imprimus, so crazed with lust was Uriano from thinking of his future leman that he could not wait until we left the house to slake it. Instead of signaling and waiting for me to descend the ladder, which I could easily have done, he climbed the ladder himself to enter my bedchamber through the window, hoping to take me featly then and there before departure.
"Secundus, in emplacing the ladder, he did not set the base far enough from the wall. So as he climbed from the topmost rung through the window, he unwittingly kicked the ladder over.
"When he heard the ladder strike the ground, all thought of carnal congress fled his mind, unhoused by fears for his own safety. He whispered: 'Be quiet, dear one, and I'll soon set this picklement to rights.' Then he leaned out the window and softly called: 'Vrix! O Vrix!'