The chaplain spoke before she could answer. “Think carefully before you give your response. Marriage is created by God, for the welfare of men and women. It is only valid if consent is freely given, and it cannot be entered into by intimidation or force.”
Dominic frowned again, but Diana shot Joachim a quick smile. “I have indeed thought carefully. You may be assured I have never yet been forced into anything.”
She turned to face the rest of the court. The faint blush was gone from her cheeks, and she appeared to be enjoying herself highly. “As all of you know, I have stayed single all my life, because I never yet found a man who pleased me. But now, by the pleasantest coincidence, at exactly the same time when certain events might recommend a speedy wedding, I have decided that a suitor whom I earlier refused to consider is indeed the man for me.”
Both Dominic and Nimrod stirred uneasily. Nimrod watched Diana intently, not daring to hope.
“Four days ago,” Diana continued, “two men threatened to kill each other over me, and then both tried to protect me when a monster unexpectedly appeared and attempted to carry me off. I, naturally, would have rescued myself, except that the monster had paralyzed me.” I never had told her the source of that paralysis spell and never would now. “One of these men is the one who has won my heart.”
She stretched it out for ten seconds more, looking back and forth between Dominic and Nimrod as though still trying to make up her mind. Both of them looked back at her white-faced.
Then suddenly she had pity on them. She turned to Nimrod with the assurance of doing exactly what she had always intended to do. “Prince Ascelin,” she said formally, holding out both her hands, “would you consent to be my husband?”
The tall prince smiled at last, a smile that transformed his face. He lifted her up and swung her far off the ground, so that her dress billowed out and she laughed breathlessly. He said loudly enough for everyone to hear, “Diana, I love you and always will, but you are the world’s worst tease!”
I looked quickly at Dominic. He was caught between relief and wounded dignity, but relief appeared to be winning.
The constable pushed forward through the suddenly laughing and talking crowd to make himself heard. “If you would all like to proceed to the chapel for the wedding, I can promise you a fine feast afterwards!”
With good-natured jostling, everyone made their way up the narrow stairs to the castle chapel. The kitchen staff were still desperately cooking and preparing, but the rest of the servants joined the knights and ladies.
There was a brief hesitation over who should escort the bride to the altar. For a moment I was afraid the duchess would ask Dominic, but she seemed to decide that that would push her luck too far, for to my surprise she asked me.
“So how did you finally decide to accept Prince Ascelin?” I asked in a low voice as we stood at the door of the chapel, waiting for everyone to settle down and for the music to begin.
She squeezed my arm and smiled. “I’d always intended to marry him. I know you realized that all along.”
If she thought I had guessed far more than I in fact had, I was not going to disabuse her.
“That’s why I had my wizard make the great horned rabbits, of course, so I could have an excuse to invite him into the kingdom. After refusing him five years ago, I couldn’t very well send him a message by the pigeons that I had changed my mind! I had to have a chance to see him, to hunt with him, to make sure his own heart hadn’t changed.
“When we’d known each other in the City, all I saw was someone extremely handsome, an extremely good dancer, who seemed to have a much too priggish moral sense for any young member of the aristocracy. He’d told me he was a renowned hunter, but I’d never even seen him hunt. I had to turn him down. But in the years since then … Of course, his seeking sanctuary, when Dominic wanted to kill him, I at first thought was cowardice. But then I realized it was both courage and good moral sense, and maybe I need more of the latter myself.”
She laughed up at me, then turned it into a frown. “There is one thing I still don’t know. I’d had my wizard make the horned rabbits so Ascelin and I could hunt them together, but why did he appear in Yurt even before I’d had a chance to send him a message?”
I smiled. “Once you’re married, I’m sure he’ll tell you.”
It was almost like a fairy tale, in which the handsome peasant boy woos and wins the lovely princess, except that Prince Ascelin had never been a peasant, and Diana had never imagined that he was.
The chapel’s brass choir began then to play, and I tucked her hand firmly under my arm and walked with her down the aisle. Joachim, looking sober, and Nimrod, looking overwhelmingly glad, waited for us by the altar.
III
The service was short but dignified. The duchess glowed, and Nimrod’s rough clothes became trivial compared with his happiness. Dominic sat impassively throughout, but at the end he did step forward to be the first of the spectators to kiss the bride.
In the talking and laughing that followed, I heard him say to young Hugo, “You know, I may indeed take you up on your offer to go back to the City with you.”
I slipped away from the knot of people around the altar with no attention to spare for Dominic. I had an idea.
In the great hall the kitchen staff was still setting up the tables for the wedding feast. I went quickly by them with a nod for Gwen and into the room where we kept the magic glass telephone.
It took me several tries, including a call to the wizards’ school, before I was able to get the magic coordinates for the kingdom far up in the eastern mountains where Elerius was Royal Wizard. Then it took several minutes for him to come to the phone. I realized my heart was beginning to pound, as though I might have only a few moments before the monster was on us, and the time was almost gone.
At first Elerius didn’t remember me, although he tried politely to act as though he did. When he finally realized that, in spite of the white beard, I was the Daimbert, three classes behind him, who had always seemed so unpromising to the masters, he surprised me by congratulating me with apparently complete sincerity on the invention of the far-seeing telephone. But he then had trouble under standing what I wanted.
“It’s been made with the old magic,” I repeated, willing the tiny figure in the telephone base to know the solution. His black eyebrows made triangles over his eyes, which were a light brown, almost tawny yellow, and which I had always found disturbing in spite of their inevitably helpful expression. “Something similar to the spells you taught in that course at the school this spring.”
“And you’ve already tried shooting it and paralyzing it?”
“That’s what I said. And nothing works.”
Elerius thought this over, looking troubled. He had always been very kind to the younger wizardry students and indeed seemed anxious, unlike most older wizards, to be friendly with everyone. If we hadn’t always been so jealous of him, we probably would have liked him.
“There isn’t a single spell to give sticks and bones the semblance of life,” he said at last. “Your predecessor’s magic certainly falls into a certain category of spells, the same category I learned from the old magician here, but at a certain point every renegade wizard who tries to create a living being must go about it differently.”
“And there isn’t a universal spell to dissolve such creatures?”
“I don’t think so, Daimbert, or if so I certainly don’t know it.”
“How about the teachers at the school?” I asked urgently. “I heard-” I considered trying to explain about Nimrod and gave it up. “I heard that, some years ago, a renegade wizard made a whole army of creatures out of hair and bone, and the school was able to catch them and destroy them.”