even its tiny crevices free of dust. I held the ring carefully on my palm and looked across it to Maffi.
“So did I do well, my masters? Will you reward me handsomely?”
“Tell me where you got this,” I said evenly. All my previous assumptions were crumbling. It had seemed unlikely all along that the bandits who had stolen Claudia’s package from us would sell it to someone who would bring it to the Thieves’ Market in Xantium. It now seemed more unlikely than ever.
“I stole it from Kaz-alrhun last night,” said Maffi with a grin.
“Kaz-alrhun told me he wanted a ring which in fact he already had,” I replied, “and which, completely by coincidence, he had acquired through the thieves’ network. And you stole it, after leading me to him so he could ship me out of the city. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
Dominic came galloping back at this point, his stallion damp with sweat but not breathing particularly hard. He started to speak but stopped when he saw the boy. “Good,” said Maffi, glancing up at him. “I was afraid you’d decided to leave one of your party behind in Xantium. That would not have been a good idea. Nice horse, by the way.”
“You haven’t answered my question,” I persisted.
“You’re from Yurt, aren’t you? That’s why I thought you’d want this ring. Give me something to drink, and I’ll tell you the whole story.”
While Ascelin gave him a waterskin, I probed the ring again. Because magic is a natural force, a spell is often hard to recognize unless it is actually in action. But the onyx seemed imbued, unexpectedly, with school magic. It was powerful magic, too, the work of a master wizard.
“If you stole this ring from Kaz-alrhun,” I tried again, “do you know when he acquired it?”
Maffi gave me a mischievous look. He was enjoying this. But for a change he gave me a straight answer. “He acquired it yesterday morning, about an hour before I met you at the church of the Holy Wisdom.”
I wondered if this could possibly be true. “Yet when you took me to buy the ring, you didn’t tell me that I’d be buying it from Kaz-alrhun …” But I didn’t have time to pursue the issue of how thoroughly Maffi had deceived me. Apparently I was not alone. “Who did he acquire the ring from?”
“I don’t know his name,” said the boy, taking another pull of water and looking troubled for the first time. “I’d never seen him before. He was richly dressed in the western style, even though he wore a dark cloak that he probably thought would mislead thieves. He had iron gray hair and a look about him that somehow, well, suggested a mage. Not like you, my master!” he added brightly.
I didn’t have time to wonder if this last comment was meant as an insult. “King Warin,” I said.
“You can’t mean that!” said King Haimeric unhappily. “That would mean he really did set those bandits on us.”
But this was not news to any of the rest of us, even if Warin did feel more comfortable preserving some of his prestige among his fellow kings by hiring out his dirty work. “So Arnulf did send a ring with us to buy the magic horse,” said Ascelin, “and King Warin, wanting the horse himself and knowing the price was the ring, stole it from us. This seems to be a ring destined to be stolen, if this boy stole it from Kaz-alrhun after Warin gave it to the mage.”
“Then if the mage was still in Xantium when he lost the ring last night,” I said, “it could not have been him, leaving Xantium on a flying horse, that I thought I saw yesterday afternoon in the sandstorm. It must have been Warin.”
“But how would Warin have heard about the flying horse?” asked Dominic.
“That wouldn’t be difficult,” said Hugo. “If Arnulf’s agents here heard about it, then King Warin’s agents must have as well.”
“Why would Warin have agents in Xantium?” protested the king, but no one was listening.
“Did Arnulf’s agents tell Warin’s agents to steal the ring from us?” suggested Dominic darkly.
“So Warin followed us east,” said Ascelin, “and arrived just after we did.
“Kaz-alrhun does not have it any more,” said Maffi cryptically and gave another grin. “How about some food? When I realized Kaz-alrhun wasn’t going to take the loss of his ring with his usual good humor, I had to come to your inn so quickly I didn’t have time for dinner-or for breakfast!”
Dominic gave him bread and dried fruit. “Does King Warin have the ebony horse?” Ascelin demanded again.
“I already told you he did,” said Maffi ingenuously.
I hoped briefly but improbably that Kaz-alrhun had not told Warin the secret of the different pins and that the king had been unable to work it out for himself. Instead I tried to concentrate on the question of how King Warin had learned there was a flying horse for sale, and that the price was a magic ring from Yurt-or, at least, a ring carved with the kingdom’s name. The onyx ring was heavy in my hand.
“I think I understand,” said Dominic suddenly. “Arnulf had somehow heard about my ruby snake ring, and because he knew he had no way of getting it, he had this ring made by a goldsmith and hoped to pass it off to the mage instead of mine.”
“But the onyx ring can’t have the same magic properties yours does,” objected Hugo.
“Perhaps you all are right,” the chaplain said slowly, “and my brother did send that ring with me, by way of his wife, because he was ashamed to tell me openly what he wanted. I shall forgive him the deception, but I now find myself less eager to stop and visit him again on the journey home.”
“Wait,” said Ascelin, flicking his eyes sideways toward Maffi, who was peacefully finishing off his dried fruit. “Are you sure we should be discussing this, when …”
But Dominic shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what the boy hears or what he guesses, because he’s going with us. He won’t dare go back to Xantium after his latest theft, and we need to keep him under our eyes ourselves.”
Ascelin immediately objected, but I did not listen. I was rather thinking about the chaplain’s brother Arnulf.
Someone-the mage, King Warin, perhaps Arnulf himself-had started the search for a magic ring from Yurt by looking among the disordered bones in Dominic’s father’s tomb. But when it became clear that the real magic- imbued ring was not readily available, Arnulf had had the nearest wizard cast the spells for a substitute magic ring.
He and his family had never kept a wizard. Therefore, when Arnulf heard that an ebony flying horse was for sale, one that would allow him to fly to wherever the Black Pearl was concealed and get away again, and that the price was a magic ring, he had had to go in search of a wizard-perhaps the same wizard he had already hired a decade earlier to install his magical telephone system.
The wizard he found was the royal wizard of a kingdom not very far away, a kingdom located in the foothills of the eastern mountains. Arnulf had had the onyx ring made for him by Elerius.
I stared at the ring in my hand, not liking this at all. There was nothing unusual in a royal wizard performing such a task for someone without a wizard in his service, as long as it did not interfere with his own responsibilities. It had been a piece of luck for Arnulf that the nearest wizard just happened to be the one who was probably the finest graduate the school had ever produced. Arnulf must have offered him something quite extraordinary in return. I wondered uneasily what.
And Elerius would certainly have told his master, King Warin, what he had done. At the time, the king might not have found it significant. By the time he realized he wanted a magic ring himself, Elerius had moved on. So Warin had waited, knowing that sooner or later the onyx ring would make its way toward the east. He had, I remembered, written to King Haimeric about the blue rose and urged the king to stop and visit him on his trip. He had known there was something special about Yurt, and that it had something to do with the ring Arnulf had requested from his wizard. It must have seemed an answer to a prayer when we stopped by directly from Arnulf’s house.
Or perhaps not a prayer, I said to myself, remembering Evrard’s veiled warning that he had seen the king engaged in the black arts, but something much more ominous.
I mentally shook off this thought. Elerius had taken the same oaths to help mankind as did all wizards, and the best pupil the school had ever had was not going to dabble with demons or assist his master in crime. After all, I reminded myself, he had been off to a new post many kingdoms away by the time Warin set his bandits on us. I did not feel as reassured by this as I would have liked.
