“I’ll look for him,” said Theodora. “If I put on my ring of invisibility, I should be able to see what is concealed.”
“And send that old magician out here too,” I said. “He probably trusts you, since you taught him fire magic. Just don’t mention that I’m going to take him apart if I find out he’s been spying on me for the wizard.”
As she hurried away, I decided that as long as I was effectively trapped here with the lizards, I ought to talk to Vincent. “Paul!” I called, seeing him standing with some of the knights, and motioned him toward me with a jerk of my head.
Then I remembered. All summer I had been trying to remind myself that he would shortly be king and that I should treat him accordingly. Now that he was king I was back to treating him like a boy.
He came over, not seeming to mind my inappropriate summons and flushed with high excitement. He still wore his blue and white velvet.
“Excuse me, sire,” I said, trying to speak formally to make up for my lapse. A very quick smile crossed his face; I had never called him “sire” before. “The wizard who attacked the cathedral sent these giant lizards. I’ve been able to paralyze them, but I don’t know how long I’ll be able to maintain the spell if he tries to free them.”
“We could use them as targets in the tournament,” Paul suggested.
It was an appealing idea, but I didn’t like the thought of the lizards coming suddenly back to life directly under a horse’s hooves-maybe the hooves of the king’s horse.
“I haven’t had a chance to talk to Prince Vincent,” I went on. “Do you know if Lucas has been able to find out anything from his brother?”
“Not that he’s told me.”
“Could you find Vincent and ask him to come here? If he is working with a renegade magic-worker, he may be planning far worse.”
“Vincent himself told us that wizards have ways to make someone reveal all their secrets!” said the king with a grin. “I’ll get him. And I have faith in you to stop whatever’s coming.”
I didn’t remind him that the gorgos had very nearly killed me, and I had only been able to overcome it with a spell that was not supposed to work.
Vincent came out of the castle a few minutes later, already dressed in the padded linen shirt and trousers he would wear under his armor. Even without his finery, he walked with the grace and assurance of a prince-or, I thought, of a man who planned very soon to be king.
He poked a finger into the side of a motionless lizard. “Monsters don’t stand much of a chance with you, do they, Wizard! I still remember how you knocked my sword out of my hand when I tried to tease you. I could have warned these creatures to stay away. Where did they come from, anyway?”
But I was not to be distracted. “I think you know more, Vincent,” I replied sternly, “than you’ve cared to say about them.”
He took a step backwards. “I? I know nothing about them!” He was so obviously staggered that it was hard not to believe him. However, I was successful in doing so.
“They were summoned by a wizard,” I said shortly, “with whom you have been plotting to overthrow both the Church and organized wizardry and, incidentally, to seize the kingdom of Yurt for yourself.”
Vincent stared at me with a complete lack of comprehension. Then he shook his head, as though not sure whether he should smile, and sat down, his arms resting on his knees and his hands hanging loose. I remained standing. It seemed I had spent much of the summer accusing people of sinister plots.
But I got a very different reaction from Vincent than I had from his brother. “Paul’s been trying to tell you that you stand in the way of his real development as a king, is that it, Wizard?” he asked sympathetically. “Believe me, I never intended to turn him against you personally.”
“Then what did you intend?” I demanded.
“Sit down,” he said, gesturing. “We can talk more easily. Lucas came back from your trip to the land of magic all full of accusations about how I was plotting against everybody-him especially-but I hadn’t expected you to believe it too.”
I hesitated, then sat down beside him. The midday sun was bright on our heads and made his copper hair gleam. The lizards, frozen in positions of attack with their clawed hands upraised, stood before us.
“Sometime this winter,” Vincent said, “our late wizard started playing on Lucas, telling him that there was no longer room for courage and character in the western kingdoms, because the wizards and priests between them had ended most wars and adventures. Lucas has always been worried, you see, that he was going to grow old, like Father, without ever having done anything. I myself was not so sure that the old wars were ever as glorious as they seem in the legends, but I knew better than to try to tell my brother that.”
He had been staring at the lizards as he spoke, but now he turned to look at me. “One thing did seem strange, that our wizard seemed to be trying to discredit the wizards’ school, pointing out such things as that there were now wizards in more and more courts, and talking about a plot to wrest control from the kings. It didn’t make any sense to me for someone I knew had graduated from the school.”
It didn’t make any sense to me either. I remained silent and let Vincent continue.
“I guess I just never took him seriously-or I felt that if princes should distrust wizards, I would start by distrusting him. Then he died, of course, which made it all moot. But it certainly made a good story, and I must admit I told it to your Prince Paul.”
I gave Vincent my wizardly glare, but he was looking away. As he sat here, talking in a half-amused, half-apologetic manner, I thought that, if he were not planning to marry the queen and murder Paul, I would find myself liking him quite a bit. “Paul believed you,” I said.
He smiled ruefully. “That’s your real problem, isn’t it, Wizard.” It wasn’t, but I did not answer. “I’d been trying all spring to win his friendship, and it occurred to me that to give him a share in a secret, something we princes could work against together, might make him a little less distant toward me.”
“You bought his friendship with the red roan stallion.”
Vincent chuckled. “Come on, Wizard. You and I don’t need to be rivals for Paul’s affection.” We had actually been rivals for the queen’s affection. This conversation was getting more confused by the moment. “And I wouldn’t say I ‘bought’ his friendship. I knew he wanted a red stallion, and when the Romneys had the horse for sale I thought I’d better buy it at once. There can’t be many others like it. They knew it too-they certainly charged enough! I’d also thought, of course, that Paul was a little timid and deferential for someone who was going to be king so soon, and that if I said a few things to make him rely on himself rather than others’ counsel it might help a bit. But from what Lucas told me, your trip up north did much more for him than my hints and suggestions ever could!”
Ever since Joachim first telephoned me at the wizards’ school, to tell me there were twinkling lights at night on his new tower, I had been creating and disposing of a long series of theories to account for the events in Caelrhon and Yurt. Long after I knew that the original problem had been Theodora practicing climbing and fire magic at the same time, new crises and diabolical plots kept appearing. The only two points on which I was now firm was that a renegade wizard, who hated the Church, had brought a gorgos to the cathedral city, and that Vincent was trying to seize Yurt for himself.
A quick glance at the sky still revealed no dragons. “I want to ask you about that stallion,” I said.
Vincent gave me a look of genuine amusement. “Lucas told me you thought the horse was a trap. It’s an intriguing theory, but it’s certainly not true.”
“Where did the Romneys get the stallion?”
He shrugged. “You don’t ask horse-traders where they get their horses. But the Romneys are right here if you want to try.”