The wolf ran right along with me. This was a beast, I reminded myself, able to match paces with the fastest stallion in a dozen kingdoms. Taking long bounds, it snarled again, baring vicious yellow teeth. I tried to fly faster, but it still had no trouble keeping up.
Once all the way around the castle. I was almost back to the knights. Should I go around again and try to tire it out? I could hear faint distant cheers from the battlements. But this wolf might not tire in twenty circuits of the castle, while I myself would long before then. This was no spectacle or race where the viewers cheered for me-or the wolf? I stopped fleeing and stood my ground.
One last bound and it was on me, trying to evade the spear point and going for my face. The two quick words of the Hidden Language that should have knocked it backwards had no effect, and it was a struggle to keep clear in my mind the words to speed my own movements. Whoever had sent this wolf had spelled it against western school magic.
My magically-aided reflexes were nearly as fast as the wolf’s, but it was appreciably heavier. It ran straight up the spear, not even seeming to feel the point driving into its chest, and knocked me flat. Protection spells seemed to have no effect. Dropping the spear I threw both arms across my face and throat, feeling the wolf’s hot breath and the slash of fangs cutting into my flesh. For a second there was no pain at all, then the wounds began burning like fire.
What an ignominious way for a wizard to go, I thought, feeling a rush of hot blood pouring past my ears. An enormous weight landed on my chest, and as consciousness left me I realized that I could no longer hear the wolf’s growls. Maybe I’d killed it after all. My last thought was that at least now I might deserve the Golden Yurt.
III
I did not get better.
I regained consciousness while being carried into the castle, just enough to realize that the wolf was dead. In the evening, after the village doctor had salved and bound up the slashes on my forearms, the king came and sat beside me on the bed, long booted legs stretched out before him. He told me how the knights had struck the wolf from behind with sword and spear while it was trying to kill me; the blood I had thought came from my own throat was in fact the beast’s.
“Damnation, Wizard,” finished Paul, sounding relieved and irritated at the same time, “aren’t you ever going to let me do
Groggy but comfortable, I fell asleep, resigned to general stiffness for a few days and bandages for a little while longer. I had really worn myself out the last week or two, I thought, and being heroically wounded was a good excuse to catch up on my rest.
But in the morning the fire was back in the wounds and my head ached so badly I could barely think. The doctor, returning, pronounced that there might be “some infection.” When I tried to explain to him in a voice that didn’t sound anything like my own that there was a certain blue-flowered plant he had to find, one good for healing infection through herbal magic, he shook his head, told me to try to stay calm, and went to talk to Gwennie at the doorway without even listening to the plant’s description.
All that day I kept sliding in and out of evil dreams in which the wolf leaped at me again and again, causing me to jerk convulsively, throwing off the blankets and almost falling out of bed. Behind the wolf I could now clearly see Vlad’s face, dead white and with eyes of stone.
“The Romney woman told me he’s coming,” I told Gwennie when she put cool cloths on my brow. “You have to keep watch for him. Tell the wizards’ school he’s coming.”
“Of course we’ll tell them,” she said in the voice of someone humoring a child.
“And stop putting cold water on me,” I said irritably, stirring a bandaged arm enough to throw the cloth away. It felt like the scab had ripped free under the bandage. Just as well. I didn’t trust the doctor and whatever he had been putting on me, and I would tell him so. “This room is freezing already!”
“This room is very warm,” said Gwennie. “But you have a fever.”
Unconsciousness washed over me again. When I again felt cold water dripping into my ears-maybe later that day, maybe the next day-I tried to tell Gwennie that Vlad and the doctor had conspired to kill me. But it wasn’t Gwennie bending over me. This time it was Celia.
Nuns, I thought vaguely, nursed the dying. If I died from my wounds, would that count as having been killed by the wolf? But there was something wrong with Celia being at my bedside in Yurt.
“You’re not here,” I told her. “You’re a nun.”
“Not according to my mother and father,” she said with a sad smile. “Do you feel any better?”
“No.” And I passed out again.
Later I was never sure how long I wandered through fever and nightmare. I couldn’t keep my eyes open, but when I closed them demons leered at me while my body, especially the arms, seemed to grow distorted and enormous. Elerius kept slipping through my dreams, always one step ahead of me, looking back from under his peaked eyebrows and giving an ironic smile. Various people nursed me and tried to feed me soup as I slumped, only slightly conscious. At one point I became convinced that Theodora sat beside me, holding my hand, but when at last I was able to open my eyes all my fist clutched was the edge of the pillow.
“I’m sorry,” I came to myself to hear my own voice mumbling. “Won’t you forgive me? I thought priests were supposed to forgive people. I just wanted information, and I know he’s evil. You can tell because he tried to kill me.”
Whom was I addressing? It sounded as though I thought I was talking to the bishop. I got my eyes open and saw not Joachim but a man over seven feet tall, whose blond beard was streaked with white.
“Good,” I told him confidently. I knew who this was. No more nightmare illusions for me, I thought with assurance. “You can go hunt the wolf.” It was Prince Ascelin, Hildegarde’s and Celia’s father and a noted hunter. He bent over the bed, paying more attention to what I was saying than anyone else seemed to have lately, his blue eyes dark with concern. “The wolf poisoned me when it tried to bite me, but if you kill it I’ll recover. Just don’t let the doctor in. He doesn’t know anything about infection.”
I sank back beneath the surface of consciousness, but not as far or as long this time. They seemed to be doing something with my arms. Probably cutting them off, I concluded. The wounds must have become so infected that the doctor had decided to amputate before gangrene spread to the rest of my body. Little did anyone realize that this was all part of Vlad’s plot against me.
Well, I wasn’t going to let them do it. With a roar of anger, I forced myself to sit up and awake, jerking my arms back.
But it wasn’t the doctor who had taken hold of me. It was Prince Ascelin, and, this time, truly and not in a dream, Theodora.
“That sounded like a fairly healthy yell,” said Ascelin. “And it looks as if the wounds are healing at last.”
“His forehead doesn’t feel as feverish,” said Theodora, putting a cool palm against my head.
“Don’t talk about me as though I’m not there,” I said pettishly. “Who said you could cut off my arms?”
“I already tried to tell you,” said Ascelin patiently. “I have no intention of cutting off your arms. But nothing the doctor had seemed to be working, so I’ve been attempting a little of your own herbal magic. Don’t you remember that blue-flowered plant you found on our trip to the East? It’s
“I tried to tell the doctor,” I said, sinking back against the pillows, “but he wouldn’t listen.”
“Either that,” said Ascelin with a quick smile, “or you weren’t making a lot of sense. You haven’t the last few weeks, you realize.”
“Few
Theodora pushed me back into bed again with a hand on my shoulder. “Lie still and I’ll try you on the soup.”
I let her spoon chicken soup into my mouth, trying to sort out what was reality and what nightmare. My head felt strangely light, which I decided was the absence of headache. The wolf, it seemed quite clear, really was dead, and Ascelin and Theodora assured me that nothing else had attacked the castle.
