Theodora waited by the motionless lizards. I had grown to despise the sight of them. “Come on,” I said. “I’m going down to the tournament grounds to make an announcement. Thank God, the worst that I’d feared is not going to happen.”
“Daimbert, listen to me,” she said desperately.
“Tell me in a minute. The bishop and Paul and probably a lot of the others know I’ve been expecting an attack of dragons or worse, and I have to reassure them it won’t happen.”
The knights had now finished riding at the ring and had begun the jousts, the heart of the tournament. One joust had just ended; neither rider had been unhorsed, and they were waiting for the judges’ decision. The queen came up to me with a rather quizzical smile as we reached the lists. “Vincent’s been telling me about a very odd conversation the two of you had,” she began.
But I couldn’t take time to listen to her right now any more than I could listen to Theodora. “I have an announcement!” I called, then realized no one could hear me. There was a spell to amplify one’s voice; it took me a moment to find and apply it. “I have an announcement!” I tried again.
This time my voice boomed out gratifyingly loudly. The queen and Theodora, who had been standing on either side of me, both took a quick step back. The riders readying themselves for the next jousts had trouble reining in their startled horses.
“I’ve just been talking to the wizards’ school,” I said to a rapt audience, “and I wanted to tell you all that an attack on Yurt has just been averted!” It was in fact an attack on the school instead, but I didn’t have time to go into detail. “A hundred dragons were summoned from the land of magic by an evil wizard. But the masters of the school were able to overcome them all.”
There was a rapid buzz of conversation at this unexpected announcement. The bishop looked as though he had known all along that I was an excellent wizard. The riders, including Paul on his red stallion, had their mounts under control again. The young king settled his plumed helmet over his head.
“Daimbert, you must listen!” Theodora tried again. I turned toward her. “I’ve found the wizard. He’s right here. He’s been hiding from both of us.”
The pit of my stomach felt as though it had turned to ice. I grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her toward me. “Where? Where is he?”
“We should have known!” she cried in despair. “The old magician, the man we never worried about. He’s the wizard in disguise!”
He had been hiding right under my nose. And I had just told him, as well as everybody else, that his most elaborate plot had failed.
“But where-” I needn’t have asked. There was a crack and a flash like lightning, a burst of blue smoke, and he appeared directly before me.
The wizard’s disguise of ragged robes and heavy eyebrows were gone. His white beard whipped in the wind from his spell. And I recognized him now, the renegade who had eluded me for months. It was Sengrim, the wizard everyone had thought was dead.
Theodora and the queen retreated rapidly in opposite directions. Behind the wizard I could see several horses rearing straight up at the smoke and lightning. For a second even Sengrim was unimportant. Paul’s stallion had reared higher than any other horse and was going over backwards. But before I could seize him with a lifting spell, Prince Vincent had leaped forward to grab the dangling reins. With a sharp tug at the head, he steadied the stallion enough that Bonfire was able to find his balance and come back down safely. The king kicked his feet free of the stirrups and sprang off, and he and Vincent gave each other triumphant slaps on the back.
I swung my attention back to the wizard before me. “So you think you and your school are safe now, Daimbert,” said Sengrim in cold fury. “But my magic is much stronger than yours!”
Behind me, I heard a strange hissing and honking sound. My head jerked around, and I saw that the red lizards, which I had been busily watching for hours, were now free of the paralysis spell and had started toward us.
Everyone in the lists seemed as paralyzed as the lizards had been a second ago, and for one horrible moment I thought the spell had been transferred to them. But they were not held prisoner by a spell, only by shock. They stared in horror from the lizards to the commanding figure before them.
And one person was moving, Paul. He had his sword out, the only real sword in the tournament. He very slowly advanced toward the wizard from behind.
I didn’t dare motion toward him. All I could do was to give him a quick stare that I hoped was a warning-if he could even see it through his visor.
“You’re so sure of yourself that you even tried to patronize me when we met in Caelrhon,” the wizard said grimly.
“But I thought you were just an old magician!” I protested. If I could keep him talking for a few more minutes, I thought, desperately trying to put a spell together, I might have a chance.
“Can you cast a spell like this?” cried Sengrim. Where he had been standing there was suddenly not a wizard but a pillar of fire, twenty feet high. Enormous eyes glared down from the top, and an enormous laugh rang out from the flames. Paul had the sense to back up rapidly.
Sweet Jesus, he was good. I had never seen anything like this.
A tongue of flame licked toward the wooden stands where the spectators were sitting, and in two seconds they were ablaze. The paralysis broke as people screamed and struggled, trying to get out.
I abandoned the spell I had been working on and grabbed at what I could remember of Theodora’s fire magic. The only calm person in the crowd seemed to be Gwennie, directing people down the steps away from the fire. In a moment I was able to reduce the level of the flames enough that everyone was able to get out of the stands, beating at their burning clothes.
They tried to run, but they could not run far. Sengrim had set up an invisible barrier around the lists, as strong as the nixie’s, against which they shoved helplessly. The lizards were within that barrier and drawing dangerously close to the crowd. And then another tongue of flame came toward me and surrounded me. Protected from the blaze after two scorching seconds by Theodora’s magic, I advanced toward the pillar of fire, one arm held out.
“Stop!” I cried out, in a voice amplified by magic. “We both learned wizardry at the school, and we’re both sworn to help humanity!”
The pillar of fire seemed momentarily to contract, and I hoped for an instant that he was listening to me. But then I realized he was not reacting to what I had said. He was under attack by Theodora.
With another blinding flash of light, the pillar of fire was gone and the wizard was back. I realized that Theodora must have helped me put out the fire in the stands. In the five desperate seconds of breathing room which her magic gave me, I managed to cast a new paralysis spell toward the lizards. This time it held.
“So you think you’ve got a witch to help you,” the wizard said with bitter scorn, not even bothering to break my new spell. He waved out the last of the flames with one hand. Clearly fire magic had possibilities I had not yet explored. “No woman can know real magic. Just one more sign of your true debility, Daimbert!”
“But what are you talking about?” I demanded. “What can you have against me?” Again, I had to keep him talking while I tried to put a complicated spell together. Figuring out what had happened, why he was even alive, would have to wait.
Almost everyone had pressed themselves against the invisible barrier, as far from the wizard as they could go, except for the queen and Theodora, who stayed rooted where they had been when the wizard first appeared, and Paul, who again began a stealthy approach from the rear.
“Brute force is no more useful against me than magic!” cried the wizard. “I know you’re back there, knight!” He whirled and started firing knives toward Paul, real knives, no illusion, powered by magic. They clattered off his armor, sending him staggering back.