I
At supper that night, cooked again by the cook and served by the serving maids, the duchess stood up between courses and came to lean over the back of my chair. I was sitting next to the Lady Maria, eating glumly and scarcely tasting what I was eating.
“Could you come to my chambers after dinner for a glass of brandy?” she said in a low voice.
Maria, who overheard, pursed her lips and shot the duchess’s back a sharp look from narrowed eyes. This seemed to be the first time that I had made any woman in Yurt jealous on my behalf, and it was not the woman I would have selected for jealousy.
“I’d be glad to come, my lady,” I said, “but your brandy is perhaps a little strong for a wizard. Could I join you in a glass of wine instead?”
“Of course,” she said and returned to her seat. I just hoped she was not going to start teasing me again. I wasn’t sure I could manage to be polite if she did.
But as she poured me some wine and herself an inch of brandy, she showed no sign of making provocative suggestions. “There’s something wrong, Wizard,” she said, hooking her leg over the arm of the chair. “Even
“I wish I knew what was happening,” I said ruefully. “You’re probably glad I didn’t agree to become ducal wizard, since I didn’t even know what to do with a dragon. Does everybody here realize something’s wrong?”
“I think the rest have been too busy thinking about the Christmas festivities,” she said, “but that’s part of the reason I felt I had to get everyone out of the royal castle of Yurt and bring them here. And it’s clear to me, watching you, that you’re deeply worried.”
I looked at her face, serious and very attractive, even if after the dragonfire she had had to cut her hair as short as a boy’s, and even if it was not the queen’s face. I decided to confide in her. “I’m worried because the dragon was summoned. And the person who summoned it is involved in black magic.”
“Black magic? You mean they’re doing evil spells?”
“I mean they’re working with a demon.”
“A demon? You mean there’s a demon in Yurt?” She looked at me incredulously and went to pour herself more brandy.
“The old wizard told me, but I’d already guessed. There’s a demon in the castle, one who roamed the world freely for three years. The old wizard caught it and imprisoned it, but it’s broken free, and now it’s stronger than ever.”
“How do you imprison a demon?”
“It’s hard to do,” I said slowly, feeling as pinned down by her rapid questions as I would have been by a boar spear. Everything she said brought home to me again what the old wizard had told me, that this was my kingdom now and my demon. “In this case, the old wizard held it down with magic spells while Dominic drew a pentagram around it.”
“That may explain a lot,” said the duchess. “I wouldn’t trust Dominic to draw a good pentagram.
“Normally, neither would I,” I said, trying to smile. “But I know my predecessor would have checked it over thoroughly.”
“Pentagrams have to be drawn in chalk, don’t they?” she said, putting down her glass. “I remember asking my father’s old wizard about demons years and years ago, while I was still young enough to think they sounded exciting and mysterious.”
“That’s right.”
“And chalk can dry up, blow away, wash away in the damp, be rubbed out by the bold foot of a demon who has already been free in the world for three years.”
“It shouldn’t be that simple.” I looked down at my glass, realized I had not been drinking my wine, and took a sip. It seemed to have no flavor. “Even a partially worn-out pentagram should still keep a demon from moving-and it can’t rub out the chalk itself.”
“But could a demon who’d gathered strength from three years in the world still cast a magic spell if there was any flaw in the pentagram? Would it be able to call the person who had summoned it originally and ask him or her to free it?”
She was posing questions as though this were the oral exam at the end of the demonology course-and I hadn’t known the answers then, either.
“Who
Now she was sitting with her boots planted solidly on the floor, gripping the arms of her chair, ready to spring into action. But there was no one against whom I could tell her to spring. “I don’t know, my lady. I wish to the saints that I did.”
“But you’ll have to imprison it again.”
I didn’t even try to smile. “Hard as it may be to capture a demon that has been happily loose in the world for three years, it will be a thousand times harder to catch one who has already once escaped from a pentagram.”
“Does this have anything to do with the message you got by the pigeons this afternoon? You looked terribly eager to get it, and then very disappointed.”
“It was a theory I’d had, which might have accounted for a lot. I had suspected that the last young wizard to serve an apprenticeship under the old wizard, over eighty years ago, might have returned to Yurt to practice black magic. But from the letter I just got, he’s been wizard in a count’s castle for eighty-two years, a hundred and fifty miles away, and can have no relationship with what’s happening in Yurt.”
“What evil
“The king was very ill and almost died before the chaplain miraculously healed him.”
She nodded. “I hadn’t seen Haimeric for over a year, before all of you came this fall, but he looked better then than I’d seen him in ages. One of Yurt’s servants told my lady’s maid that a miracle had cured him, but I wasn’t sure if I should credit that.”
“There can be no doubt that the chaplain saved his life.”
“But what else has been happening in Yurt, besides the king’s illness and the dragon? As though that weren’t enough!”
“Well,” I said slowly, “we saw a mysterious stranger in the castle, right after we got back from here last month. He had apparently put the whole castle staff to sleep before we came, and the next day he kept slipping around the castle, appearing and disappearing, knocking me backwards with evil whenever I tried to touch him with magic. I don’t think he did any damage, but he disrupted the castle and terrified me.”
“And has this ‘stranger’ been seen again?”
“He disappeared that afternoon, when the chaplain returned from a trip to the village. I think he’s afraid of the chaplain, but he’s probably enjoying the empty castle now. I think he lives in the cellars. Since he’s already summoned a dragon, I don’t want to think what he’ll decide to do next.”
The duchess picked up her empty glass as though to refill it, then set it down again, still empty. Watching her, I thought that she did not want another drink so much as an opportunity to act, and listening to me talk about the stranger provided no good opportunities for her to begin her attack.
“So,” she said, “the problem is primarily that you have a demon living in the cellars, and he may be afraid of the chaplain. That means-”
“But, my lady, just because I think the stranger is afraid of the chaplain doesn’t mean the demon is.”
“Oh,” she said with a quizzical look. “I’d assumed the ‘stranger’ was just a physical manifestation of the demon.”
I had not thought of this and was furious at myself for not doing so. If I had actually read the Diplomatica Diabolica more carefully, it might well have told me that demons did not need to keep the small size, the red skin, and the horns of the one demon I had ever seen, the one in the pentagram in the school.
“It may be,” I said thoughtfully, my mind trying to race through the implications of this to make up for its previous slowness. “It would certainly explain a lot. I had been thinking there were actually two people practicing black magic in the castle, the stranger and someone else, and it would be much simpler if there were only one person.”
