She said a quick word and it spun out of his grip. “No weapons here, or at least not weapons of steel!” she said coyly. “Come now, which of you would like to be the first?”
I shot Vor a despairing look. “It’s late in the day, Lady,” he said smoothly. “We’ve had an exhausting time, and, as you can see, one of us is injured. We wouldn’t be able to satisfy you very well this evening. Perhaps if we could eat and sleep first?”
“Very well,” said the nixie with the same coy smile. “Come with me!”
We followed her a short distance through the grove; Lucas, supported by Vor and Paul on either side, managed to hop. I came behind, trying to sort out magical influences. It was unexpectedly easy, and then I realized that this was because no magic now penetrated from outside the grove.
Under low-hanging branches were spread four beds, piled high with pillows. On tables next to each were bottles of wine and baskets of red and yellow fruit. She had clearly been expecting us.
“There!” said the nixie to Vor. “Is this what you wanted?”
“This will do most excellently, Lady.”
“Then I shall leave you to your dreams.” She kissed him quickly and slipped away through the trees.
Vor looked after her, rubbing his lips with his knuckles. “This will be a new experience. I’ve never been caught by a nixie before.”
“A new experience for all of us,” I said. I wondered briefly if the stories I had sometimes heard at the wizards’ school, of witches and their mad lusts, were in fact garbled stories of nixies.
The others sat down on the beds. Lucas looked fairly subdued now. I was still furious with him, but it would have to wait. “I’m going to find out how thoroughly the nixie has us imprisoned,” I said. “Paul, come with me. Vor, see if you can make Lucas’s ankle more comfortable.”
As we walked under the trees toward the edge of the grove, Paul asked with distaste, “So she expects us all to satisfy her before she’ll let us go?”
“That’s certainly what she says.”
After a short pause, he continued, “Is flying always like that?”
“It’s not usually that exciting. Generally I’m not trying to lift three other people at the same time.”
Paul nodded, seeming reassured. “I’d gotten used to the air cart this week-or as used to it as one can get. It’s like being in a boat; you know you’re suspended far above the bottom of the lake or ocean, but you still feel as though your feet are solidly planted. But coming down … I was amazed you’re willing to fly at all!” At least he didn’t say that flying make him think of ascension.
“Maybe we can see the horses again once we get out of the trees,” Paul added.
“What horses?” The prince seemed to think about horses at entirely inappropriate times.
“Didn’t you see them, out on the plain? I spotted them just before the air cart tipped us out.”
“I was too busy trying to save our lives to give anything else much attention,” I said sharply.
“There was a whole herd of them,” he continued, unabashed. “And they were running like the wind.”
Before I could answer, my nose was abruptly flattened by something invisible. I stopped, rubbed my nose delicately, and reached out a hand. The air had become solid before us.
III
Paul put out his hand too and rapped on the invisible wall. “I was afraid of this,” I said. “The air’s been turned to glass “We can’t get out of the grove, and no magic can pass in or out.”
“Let’s see if the barrier’s impervious to steel,” said Paul, drawing his sword. To my surprise, the blade went straight through up to the hilt, but his hand was stopped. “It’s as though it’s only a spell against humans,” he suggested.
This was a new kind of spell to me, but I admired its ingenuity. By being specific to humans, the spell could allow wind and rain-and presumably birds and insects-to reach the grove, but would keep us firmly inside.
We continued our circuit of the grove. At one point Paul spotted the herd of horses in the distance, and I somewhat reluctantly agreed that they did indeed appear to be beautiful animals.
I wondered if I ought to take this opportunity of being alone with Paul to warn him against the nixie. His mother, I was sure, would want me to. Naked women making open invitations could not have been a common part of his experience. But if we made it back to Yurt alive, he would very shortly be my king to whom I owed respect. Even as a prince, he was old enough to make his own decisions.
I stopped to pick some leaves growing under one of the trees. “Herbal magic,” I explained to Paul. “I’ve never seen this particular species before, but the old wizard of Yurt taught me enough of the magic of earth and growing things to be able to recognize a plant’s properties. I hope it will help Lucas’s ankle.”
He helped me gather a double handful of it, and we walked back toward the center of the grove. Just before we reached the others, he turned with a smile and said, “You know, when you asked me to accompany you, I was afraid for a minute you were going to preach at me about nixies and morality. I have to apologize for even imagining you would-that’s more something the chaplain would do!”
“Of course,” I said, not looking at him.
Lucas was eating strawberries, his shirt off and his foot up. His undershirt had been ripped into bandages and firmly wrapped around his ankle. “I don’t think he’s broken it,” said Vor, “but it’s badly strained.”
“I think it’s broken,” contradicted Lucas.
“I brought some herbs that may help,” I said. I soaked them in wine, because we had no water, and slipped them into the bandages as gently as I could. He grunted as I worked, as though to remind me that it was highly painful.
“If you’ve got such powerful magic,” he said, “why don’t you just heal the broken bone?”
“Magic has never been much good at altering the cycle of sickness and health,” I said, sitting on the bed across from him. “You would need supernatural power to do that. Even herbal magic isn’t practiced much anymore; generations ago the wizards let the doctors take over the herbs that worked reliably.”
Lucas clearly considered this a feeble excuse to mask my own inadequacies. “If you’re so good at transforming things into frogs, why don’t you just transform me into a prince who doesn’t have a broken ankle?”
“I could transform you into a number of different creatures,” I said as patiently as I could, “some of them rather nasty, but all of them would be wounded in some way if you were.” Lucas grunted without answering and lapsed into silence.
“So the nixie really is interested in us, as men?” Paul asked Vor. “Why would she use her magic to draw in four men she’d never seen before?”
Vor gave him a sideways look and handed him an apple. “I think this is all we’re getting for supper,” he said. “Where did you think baby nixies came from?”
Paul thought about this. “You mean that nixies and humans can breed? It wouldn’t be like trying to breed sheep and cattle to each other?”
“Of course not. Since all of them are women, they need human men. Didn’t your tutor ever teach you about nixies? I thought princes were supposed to be well educated.”
Vor counted himself as a human, I thought, and yet there remained something almost magical about him, as though his people were the result of generations of breeding between humans and something out of the wild land of magic. I found myself yawning hugely. In the morning, I would have to test to see if he were stopped by the invisible wall as Paul and I had been, but not now.
“Tomorrow,” I told the others, “before the nixie comes back, I’m going to try to get us out of this grove. But I can’t work magic when I’m this tired.” I looked rather groggily toward Lucas, but he had stretched out and was already beginning to snore. I was asleep even before my head reached the pillow.