thin, form.
“Well, I’m glad you don’t hold it against me,” said Jon with a grin. “I told my mother all about our glass telephones. I told her I’d let her know as soon as we had them working!”
“Yes, indeed,” I said, standing up. I thought I saw a flicker of motion and wanted to investigate.
“We won’t keep you, sir,” said Gwen. “And I’ll still be bringing you your breakfast in the morning.”
“In that case,” I said in my gravest voice, “I want you to know that the girl who brought me breakfast this morning brought me a stale donut. And the tea was cold.”
This sent both Gwen and Jon into gales of laughter, and they went off, still holding hands, while I started walking as quietly as possible down the courtyard.
Here there were outside staircases leading up to some of the ladies’ chambers. The angle of the sun was such that I was dazzled, looking up toward the chamber windows, shading my eyes and blinking. But between two blinks, I thought I saw the door of the Lady Maria’s chamber opening and closing.
I ran up the stairs two at a time, rapped on the door, and opened it without waiting for an answer.
She was sitting by the window, sewing something lacy and pink. It appeared to be something a man shouldn’t see, so I carefully kept my eyes from it.
She was, quite naturally, very startled. “What is it? What’s happening?”
“Did someone just come in here?”
“No! Of course not,” she said, staring at me with wide blue eyes.
I did not believe her. But I saw no one there now, and I couldn’t call her a liar to her face. “Excuse me, then,” I said and backed out the door.
I scanned the courtyard from the landing but saw nothing. I refused to believe that the Lady Maria was acting from evil intent. I had touched her mind when we were experimenting with the telephones, even if very briefly, and I thought I should be able to tell if she had embraced the powers of darkness. But how did she know the stranger, and why was she lying?
I went slowly down the outside stairs, shivering again; I never had gotten my coat. Maria might perhaps be trying to shield somebody. She had told me she had “requested” certain magic favors, and I presumed she had requested them from someone in the castle. It would be that person, then, who had enlisted the stranger’s help in practicing black magic. I still had no idea who the stranger was, but I was suddenly convinced I knew who had wanted to cast the evil spell on the castle.
It had to be the queen. Ever since I had met her and had fallen in love with her, I had refused to harbor any suspicions against her, but there was no rational reason why I shouldn’t. The Lady Maria, even if she guessed that her beloved niece was mixing dark supernatural powers with her magic spells, would never allow anyone else to suspect her. There still seemed to be no easy explanation why the queen had married the king, unless she hoped in a few years to be a widowed queen, able to rule Yurt as she wished, never again having to fear being married off to someone she detested.
There was a cry of, “There he is!” from the far side of the castle, and the group of pursuers shot into view. The queen was in the lead, her skirts and shawl billowing. Her long black hair had come unpinned and was flying out behind her. Dominic, the constable, and a group of knights ran close beside her. In another context, I would have found it hilarious.
I didn’t see the stranger, although they had. He must have gotten by me, if indeed I had seen him here by the Lady Maria’s door, and had not imagined it while dazzled by the sun. He clearly was able to make himself invisible if he wished, and he did not have my problem of invisibility stopping at the knees. He was certainly finding the chase hilarious.
It was well past time for it to stop. I saw him then, walking quickly but unconcernedly along the parapets. I set my teeth and began preparing a paralysis spell.
A paralysis spell is complicated, and I had only ever cast one successfully once, over a year ago, when I had frozen another young wizard in the middle of the classroom. Then it had worked spectacularly well, even though the instructor had spoken to me very firmly after class. I put the words of the Hidden Language together as rapidly as I could and cast it toward the stranger’s retreating back.
This time the spell did not work at all. The stranger kept on walking, just as unconcernedly, and then either slipped into a doorway or made himself invisible again. I ran down into the courtyard to intercept the others.
They were all panting, even the queen, and quite willing to stop. “This person is a wizard,” I said, even though I did not think of him as a wizard in the sense that I was one, or Zahlfast was, or the old Master in the city or my predecessor down in the forest. But it was too complicated at the moment to explain that this was someone able to walk through my best spells-and probably responsible for breaking my magic locks. “He’s deliberately making us chase him, to tease us, because he knows he can always disappear when we get close.”
“But can’t you stop him with magic?” said the constable.
“His magic is nearly as strong as mine,” I said. This was a wild understatement, but Dominic was glowering at me as though it were all my fault. “I’m trying to stop him, but it may take me a while. At the moment, I don’t think he’s doing any damage to the castle. But we don’t want him to escape before I’ve had a chance to capture him and find out who he is and why he’s come here.”
I turned to Dominic. “Let me have the cellar key. If I catch him, I’ll lock him down there. Meanwhile, rather than amusing him by running around the courtyard any longer, let’s stop until I’ve found a way to break down his magic defenses. But put a guard on the gate, to be sure he doesn’t sneak back out.”
Privately, I was rather hoping he would sneak back out. If he made himself invisible, he would have no trouble slipping past guards at the gate, unless they put the drawbridge up, which I didn’t think they would do. I had never seen the bridge raised since coming to Yurt, and the rest of the castle servants weren’t all back yet. And even then, this stranger who was impervious to a paralysis spell, which had taken the instructor five minutes to break the last time I used it, would have no trouble flying over the walls.
The pursuers all agreed readily. Dominic handed me the rusty cellar key without comment. Even the queen had had enough of this fruitless chase. But as she stood next to me, her bosom rising and falling with her rapid breaths, I again found it impossible to suspect her. If she had married the king in the hopes of being a widow soon, why had she nursed him so tenderly when he was ill and been so grateful when he was healed?
The others went in search of lunch, but I got a coat from my chambers and sat down on a bench in the courtyard, where I could watch the gate. Dominic put two knights there to guard as well. I wished the chaplain would come back soon.
Several times during the afternoon I caught a glimpse of the stranger. New attempts at casting a paralysis spell on him had no more effect than had the first attempt. I did however miss with one of my efforts and catch one of the stable boys. He froze, as unmoving as wood, in the middle of the courtyard, and it took me ten minutes and a quick trip to my books to break the spell and free him. Fortunately, we were around the corner from the guards at the gate, and when motion suddenly returned to him he just shook his head, looked at me as though embarrassed to have gone into a sudden revery in my presence, and hurried back to the stables.
At one point in the afternoon I became so desperate that I decided to try to telephone Zahlfast. I got down one of my glass telephones, added a few spells that I hoped might make it work this time, and spoke the number of the school telephone. But it worked no better than it had for Maria and me. I could see a young wizard answering it, but he could neither hear nor see me, and a moment he hung up with a gesture of irritation.
All right, I thought. Zahlfast had told me that they didn’t want the young wizards asking for help with every little problem anyway. I would have to solve this one myself.
I realized that, by refusing to chase the stranger, I was giving him the opportunity to talk at leisure to the Lady Maria or anyone else he wished, but I was fairly sure he would able to do whatever he wanted anyway, even with me close at his heels.
Several times, when he had not shown himself for twenty minutes or more, I hoped that he had gone, slipped back to wherever he had come from. But when, with trepidation, I tried probing for him, he was always there, a mind so evil that I was always shaken even when expecting it. He seemed deliberately to be mocking me. My spells did not have any effect on him, but his very presence nearly paralyzed me.
And then, very suddenly, he was gone. I did not see him, and I did not feel him. I probed delicately, then boldly, and found only the same oblique evil touch that I had long felt in the castle. Not knowing whether to be jubilant or wary at this abrupt departure, I looked up and saw Joachim crossing the bridge into the castle.
I ran to meet him, looking with some apprehension up into his face.
