he hopped and shouldered his way between the two of us, making for Vor.
But before he could test whether the sword was faster than the spell, Paul leaped up. “Stop it! All of you, stop accusing each other for one minute!” A stray ray of sunshine had worked its way down through the leaves and glinted on his hair. “We’ve all been working against each other,” he announced, “and we’ve all got to stop! No more accusations, no more lies, no more attempts to overpower each other. We need each other’s help, not just to get away from the nixie but to save your kingdom, Lucas.”
I watched him admiringly. I did hope we made it home to Yurt alive, because he would be a superb king.
“So you, Wizard,” Paul continued, turning on me, “have got to stop acting as though only you were wise and knowledgeable.” I opened my mouth and closed it again. “Vor, you’ve got to think less of your revenge and more of the welfare of the city where you now live and work. And Lucas, you have to admit that you’ve been deceived.”
It took Lucas about ten seconds to make up his mind. But then he took a deep breath and said, “All right. I agree we’re going to have to work together. But first I want some reassurance,
There was a tinkling laugh behind us. All of us froze, then turned slowly. The nixie stood surrounded by her glittering stars. She was even more alluring than I remembered.
“Come now,” she said with a smile. “You had tried to tell me that you had no energy, but for the last hour you have been quarreling with each other! That seems energetic to me!”
Paul threw himself on his bed, his back toward her. Lucas let himself down more gingerly. “You’re offering us something delicate and enticing, Lady,” said Vor. “We may need just a little more time to let the sour taste of the outer world pass away.”
“If you keep on putting me off,” she said with a coy smile, “I may have to take affairs into my own hands.”
I sat down, not looking at her. Trapped here in the borderlands I was powerless to find the wizard who must be behind it all: the magical attacks on Joachim’s cathedral, the vague warnings I had received against priests, Vincent’s abrupt wooing of the queen.
I lifted my head. Vor and the nixie were still exchanging light banter. He seemed to be enjoying their conversation hugely, but he also seemed to have put her off again. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow morning!” she said and slipped away. The dancing stars lingered for a few seconds behind her.
None of us felt like talking when she was gone. After a few minutes, Lucas reached for the apples.
When the silence threatened to last all day, I said, “I guess I’d better start on my spells to get us out of here. I’ll try to work fast.”
I went to the edge of the grove and sat down, my back against a tree, and started probing the magical structure of the invisible barrier. Paul followed me. He pressed his face against the barrier as against a window, looking for the horses. I had closed my eyes but opened them when I heard a sharp whistle. Paul was trying to attract the horses’ attention.
The herd was closer than it had been yesterday. They cocked their ears at the sound of the whistle. They were all different colors, bay, black, grey, and sorrel, none of them red roan. But they had the same light step, the same delicate noses and wide-spaced eyes as Bonfire. When Paul whistled again they turned as one and ran, manes and tails floating behind them.
V
A week passed. The second day the nixie became petulant, and I told her brusquely, “I’m sorry, Lady, but we aren’t interested.”
“Then you’ll have to stay here the rest of your lives,” she said, not smiling at all. I turned my back on her, and in a minute she went away and did not come back.
In the following days, the air seemed less sensuous, still soft and perfumed but without the overwhelming sweetness it had had when we first arrived. Languor seemed to have overtaken Lucas completely. If pressed, he would admit that his ankle was healing, but mostly he slept and ate fruit. Vor too lapsed into inactivity.
Paul and I however remained occupied. Every morning, he determinedly trotted around the grove twenty times. He also continued trying to attract the horses; by the fourth day they approached rather than ran at the sound of his whistle, but they still remained well back, snorting and flicking their tails nervously. And I wrestled with the nixie’s magic.
I felt a desperate urgency to be back home, to stop the renegade wizard from doing what he was planning-or at least to be there when he did it. If he had been at all checked by my presence in the city, he certainly had nothing to fear now. His gorgos had gotten me out of the way almost as surely as if it had killed me.
If Vincent was working with him-maybe having turned against his own brother-I didn’t want to imagine what he might be planning against the queen, though his plots against Paul seemed horribly clear. And I also did not want to imagine why and for what purpose he had captured Theodora, unless it was to silence the only person in the city who seemed able to detect his magic. The gorgos’s attack on the cathedral at the time of the old bishop’s funeral might only be a preparation for a much worse attack when the new bishop was elected. This wizard, apparently much more powerful than I could ever be, had in his control, directly or indirectly, the two women I loved, the dean, and the young man I hoped would become my king.
“Look at the stallion,” said Paul, interrupting my thoughts. I looked out obediently. Only ten yards beyond the invisible barrier, the bay stallion stood watching us, pawing the ground with one foot, shaking the fetlock from his eyes with a proud toss of his head.
I closed my eyes again. I almost thought I understood the structure of the magic barrier now, after a week of studying it. Several times I might have had it, and several times on closer examination I had been wrong. I was having to improvise everything, and I kept having Theodora’s feeling of being almost at the top and yet knowing that this time I would never make it. If I ever saw the school again I would have to relate my experiences to the technical division students as an example of improvised magic.
But this time- Quickly, delicately, I started putting a spell together, one designed specifically to overcome the spells that kept the air solid before us. I said the words of the Hidden Language and confidently reached out my hand.
It struck solidity so hard I bruised my knuckles. I probed again for the structure of the nixie’s magic. The spells had all been changed.
“What’s wrong?” Paul turned as I slumped down.
“She’s changing the magic structure of the barrier. I’d wondered why I wasn’t doing any better overcoming her magic, but now I know. As soon as I work out how to overcome one set of spells, she switches to another.”
“And then can you overcome the new set?”
“Yes, in time-just a few seconds slower than it takes her to change the spells again.”
There was a quick flutter of leaves, and the nixie burst into view. With a tinkling laugh, she planted kisses on Paul’s lips and my own and scampered away again.
“I have an idea,” said Paul with a half smile that made me hope he was not serious. “You and Lucas don’t want anything to do with the nixie, and I can’t say about Vor, but suppose just one of us were able to ‘fully satisfy’ her. Do you think she’d let us go?”
Out of several things I might have said, I chose, “When she was hoping for four men, I don’t think she’d settle for one.”
“Oh, I think I might be able to serve in the place of four men if I wanted to,” said Paul with that same half smile.
“I have a better idea,” I said. “Try to get some of your horses into the grove. They might be able to pass through the barrier the way the birds do, and maybe we could ride them out.”
“Of course,” said Paul in surprise. “What did you think I was doing?”
If the nixie was still nearby and listening to our conversation I had just given away what might have been our
