“I might be able to improvise a way to dissolve the monster if I knew the spell that created it,” I panted. “Quick, teach me the spell you used for the rabbits, and I’ll try to extrapolate.”
It took twenty minutes for Evrard to teach me the spell, not because it was terribly complicated for someone who already knew a fair amount of the old magic, but because we had to keep stopping to rebind the monster.
I kept listening as we worked, wondering if the others were coming and praying that they weren’t. Evrard and I, sitting high in the tree, were relatively safe, but if the monster broke loose from a spell that was becoming increasingly tattered it could kill half the knights of Yurt.
But though I now could have made horned rabbits-or a soldier of hair and bone, and without even using dragons’ teeth-I still couldn’t dissolve this monster. The spell Elerius had taught was shot full of gaps, bridged almost tentatively by a few words of magic, so that anything made from it could be readily destroyed. The late Royal Wizard of Yurt had found a way to fill those holes.
I frowned in concentration, sifting through phrases of the Hidden Language. “Maybe if I looked again at the old wizard’s spell,” I started to say, then looked up to realize the monster had managed to kick all the rocks off one leg and was starting on the other. I couldn’t take the time now to pore over the written spell, to find in it a way to dissolve the monster. I had to make do with what I already knew.
All I knew was the spell that had given the creature its facial features, and that I had heard only partially. But dissolving a spell might require only an understanding of its general lines, not all its details. Trying desperately to remember theoretic discussions of spell structure, from lectures through which I had dozed, I tried reversing the spell, hoping that this might generalize enough to affect the entire creature. If not, I was completely out of ideas.
It was almost too late to try repairing the binding spell. I clung to the branch of the oak with both hands as the heavy words of the Hidden Language rang through the clearing.
Much more quickly than they had formed, the monster’s ears, nose, and mouth disappeared. The roaring stopped, and for a moment it stopped kicking, but the eyes still glowed at us.
“Keep going, Daimbert!” yelled Evrard, renewing the binding spell. He piled on a few more rocks for good measure.
But I was temporarily halted. I looked toward Evrard. He was as exhausted as I was, and only sheer will was keeping him going. I had maybe a minute before our weakening magic and the monster’s strength freed it, either to climb the tree after us or go to meet the knights of Yurt.
I pulled together everything I knew, the spell to create facial features, the spell to make great horned rabbits, and the first few words of the spell I had seen in the old wizard’s register; put on the twist that reversed spell structure; and tried it all in combination with the words that would break a normal spell.
It probably shouldn’t have worked, and indeed I could see no immediate change, but there was a sharp swirling in the local field of magic that suggested that a spell much more powerful than anything of mine was beginning to break up.
I tore my attention away from the spells just long enough for a glance at Evrard. Consciously or unconsciously, he had left the tree to move closer to the monster, as though trying to hold it immobile with the force of his personality as well as the spell that he was now working nonstop-or maybe he was now so tired that he didn’t trust his ability to project a spell any distance.
“Now!” I shouted and threw what should have been the spell of final dissolution onto the monster.
And trembling, burning, spreading like a fire, it began to dissolve the spells that held the old wizard’s creature together. But first it destroyed the binding spell that had held it down.
The creature rose with a crash, stones and pieces of its body both flying from it. It flung out an arm toward me, started to take a step, and collapsed into a heap of bones-but not before the largest boulder that had lain across it had struck Evrard.
V
I had the boulder off him in a second, but he did not move, and his eyes were closed. Trembling all over, I dropped beside him and tried to listen for his breathing.
Two wizards gone in three days, and I couldn’t save either one of them. I had a sudden, vivid, and very painful vision of telephoning Zahlfast and telling him that Evrard was dead.
If I had been more systematic, if I had tried to instruct Evrard in a rational way instead of first assuming that he would be better at magic than I had been two years ago, and then scorning his quite real abilities when it became clear that he was not, he might have had a long and happy career.
But he was breathing, shallowly and rapidly. As I tried to brush back the hair from his face, darkened from red to brown by sweat, he moaned and opened his eyes.
“Daimbert,” he whispered, “I couldn’t hold it. What happened?”
“It’s gone. I’ve turned it back into bones.”
He closed his eyes again and weakly held out his arms. I was terrified that by shifting him I might kill him, if he was not killed already, but I could not hold out against that appeal. I pulled him toward me, trying to make reassuring sounds. I did not want to hold a dying wizard in my arms ever again in my life.
“It’s my leg,” he said faintly. “And I can’t fly. All my magic has been knocked out of me.”
“Your leg? Just your leg?” I said with dawning hope. Maybe I wouldn’t have to make that telephone call to Zahlfast after all.
“I was trying to hold it down with that spell, and suddenly it seemed to rise up and hurl a boulder at me. It hit me right below the knee.” He stopped as his teeth began to chatter in spite of the warmth of the day.
“You’re in shock,” I said calmly, as though I knew exactly what to do. I let go of him for a moment, peeled off my now ripped and filthy velvet jacket, and put it over him. “Lie here quietly and get warm. In a short while, when you’ve rested, I’ll figure out a way to get you up to the castle. Then we can send for a doctor to set your leg.”
In a moment, Evrard gave a breathy snort and either fainted or slept. I looked up then for the first time at the pile of white bones that had once been the monster.
If the old wizard’s magic had been a little more powerful, if he had found a way to hold the monster physically together and to transfer his mind into it at the same time, then those bones might have been the wizard’s body. The creature would never now be able to receive the human life it had spent its short existence seeking.
At the edge of my thoughts I became aware of voices. I glanced up to see a group of riders emerging from the trees, led by Prince Ascelin, Dominic, and Diana.
The duchess was still wearing her wedding dress, the skirt of which had become all bunched up by riding astride. She gave a cry of dismay as she saw Evrard and leaped from her horse.
“It’s all right, my lady,” I said, trying to smile. “He’s still alive, and we’ve destroyed the monster. It wounded him as we overcame it, but I could never have succeeded without him.”
After Gwen and the cook had worked feverishly to have the wedding feast finished on time, it turned out to be delayed over four hours. The old cook was furious, but Gwen, recovering from the shock of meeting the monster in the great hall, used her nervous energy and the extra time to make cinnamon cookies. She had made them for her own wedding and had sent every person off afterwards with three wrapped in gold foil, and she thought it would be a nice touch to do the same for the duchess.
In spite of the cook’s dire remarks that the dinner was spoiled, everyone seemed to enjoy it hugely. It turned into a combination wedding feast and triumphal dinner in honor of the monster’s destruction. Once Evrard’s leg was set, he talked the doctor into letting him be carried into the hall to be hailed as a hero.