Daughter of Magic - Wizard of Yurt - 5 (8 page)

As I watched the twins’ horses disappearing, I hoped that the bishop would not be too insulted at my sending a woman to prove him wrong.

Antonia, stil partly asleep, came out with me to see them off, trailing her dol behind her. “Before I took my nap, Wizard,” she said, “you picked me up without touching me and lifted me high in the air. Is that magic? Can you do it again? And you have to teach me how to do it to Doly.”

With the duchess’s daughters gone, Antonia ended up on my couch that night in spite of Gwennie’s concerns. I was sound asleep when the clang of sword on sword resounded in the courtyard.

Not Paul again! I thought, swinging my feet reluctantly out of bed. But it could not be the king returning to the castle late because he had been here for dinner, too absorbed in the Lady Justinia even to notice that the twins were not there until someone else asked about them.

There came now a hoarse shout and the high winding of a horn—the watchman’s alarm signal, which I had never actualy heard used before. The horn’s note blew a second time, then abruptly was cut off.

This wasn’t just someone playing a joke on the night watchman. He was in serious trouble.

“Stay here!” I cried to Antonia, who was sitting up, wide-eyed and clutching her dol. I slapped a magic lock on the door as I swung it shut behind me.

Justinia’s elephant trumpeted in the stables, and shouts and clangs came from elsewhere in the castle—I was not the only one to hear the watchman’s horn. But I was the first to the gate.

And saw row after row of warriors marching in across the drawbridge: shadowy, armored shapes, naked swords in their hands, and eyes that I could have sworn glowed in the darkness.

This couldn’t be real. It had to be a nightmare. But waking or dreaming I had to do the same thing: defend the castle of Yurt.

I shouted spels in the heavy sylables of the Hidden Language, and the first warriors stopped as though they had run into a wal—which indeed they had. But their feet kept on moving as though trying to push themselves through. Their eyes stil glowed and their swords were ready if my spels weakened for even an instant.

Someone ran into the little room by the gate where the bridge mechanism was worked and cranked the wheel to raise the drawbridge. Beyond its end, I could see in the dim light more warriors advancing.

The ones on the bridge slid off into the moat as it rose, but the ones behind them kept right on marching, straight into the water as though not even noticing the bridge’s absence.

The portculis slammed down as I started looping binding spels around the warriors trapped between the gate and my magical barrier. One by one they stopped moving as my spels caught and held.

I paused to catch my breath. Magic is hard physical as wel as mental work. It had been very close, I thought, but I had gotten out into the courtyard with my spels in time.

There was a shout from the wal. “They’re coming up!”

Swords and glowing eyes loomed against the starlit sky. Knights with lances swarmed to the battlements to thrust back into the moat men—or monsters—that seemed to have no individuality, no awareness of their surroundings, only a need to keep on coming.

They appeared to have marched underwater across the floor of the moat and be coming straight up the wal by finding fingerholds among the stones. The knights’ lamps made crazy patterns of light and shadow among the castle’s defenders and whatever was clambering up toward them.

I would have to wait to catch my breath. The thought flitted through my mind that Hildegarde would be very sorry to have missed al this.

“By the saints!” someone shouted. “It’s as though they’re directed by the devil himself!”

King Paul was in the middle of it al. I threw spel after spel onto the advancing warriors, raw terror lurking just beyond my shoulder. “Shal we make a sortie, Wizard?” the king asked me quietly.

“Magics stopping them,” I gasped. “Don’t try fighting them with steel—they look like they’d keep on fighting even with their heads cut off. Where’s the watchman?”

“That dark shape on the ground just inside the gate,” said Paul. “He’s not moving.”

I paused for a second to wipe my forehead and cautiously lowered the magical barrier I had thrown up around the first warriors through the gate. They were now al secured by binding spels. Several people rushed to examine the watchman.

“He’s dead!” said a knight in amazement. I was not amazed. If the watchman had not blown his horn with his final breath, if I had been only a few seconds slower getting to the gate, there would have been a whole lot more people dead by now. Yurt had always been a very peaceful kingdom. It looked like it wasn’t anymore.

IV

It took me half an hour to get al the warriors, both inside and outside the wals, immobilized with magic. We lowered the drawbridge again, and knights carried the ones who had made it into the courtyard back outside. They used grappling hooks to retrieve the rest from the moat; being underwater had not taken the light from the creatures’ eyes. The swans from the moat had al retreated to dry land, hissing and flapping their wings menacingly if anyone came near.

Though the knights tried to pry the swords from the warriors’ grips, they held on far too tightly, even encased in my binding spels. I didn’t count, but there must have been at least a hundred of them.

Whatever they were, I thought, studying them by lamplight with fists on my hips, they weren’t human. Human in shape, holding swords in human hands, they had no minds inside their heads or souls behind their eyes. The sweat on me was cold now that I had finished my spels, but it was more than that that made me shiver.

“Demons incarnate!” gasped the chaplain, clutching his crucifix. He took a quick look and then retreated The whole castle was roused and miling around the courtyard—everyone, that is, except the Lady Justinia whom no one had seen.

“Not demons,” I said slowly. Several lay on the ground by my feet, no longer struggling against my spels but watching me with glowing eyes. “Demons would no! have been stopped by my spels. But they’re not alive either. They look like they’re made from hair and bone.’

“Can magic do that?” asked the chaplain, hovering a short distance behind me as though not wanting to approach but not wanting to appear to retreat any further either. “Can it make life?”

“Not life. But there are spels in the old magic o\ earth and stone that can give the semblance of life They don’t teach those spels at the wizards’ school but back in the old days of apprenticeships wizards used to learn them, and I think they stil use them over in the Eastern Kingdoms, beyond the mountains.”

“How would you make such creatures?” asked the chaplain, coming one step closer and sounding interested in spite of himself.

“The traditional way,” I said, then paused for a second to renew a binding spel that seemed tattered, “was to use dragons’ teeth.” There was a long silence. “You didn’t make them, did you?” asked the chaplain as though trying to make a joke. When I turned to glare at him, in no mood for a joke, he added hastily, “Wel, I trust you did not, my son, but in that case who did?”

“I have absolutely no idea.” It must be linked with the Lady Justinia’s arrival, I thought, but I was not about to say so until I had better evidence—no use having everyone in the castle treating with suspicion someone whom the mage had entrusted to me.

Then I remembered who else had been entrusted to me. Antonia! Where was she in al this? Yeling at one of the knights to cal me the second any of these unliving warriors showed signs of breaking out of my spels, I raced back into the castle and to my chambers.

She had lit the magic lamp and was sitting in my best chair with a blanket wrapped around her. “What happened?” she asked, round-eyed. “And why,” with a wrinkling of her chin as though trying to keep back tears of terror, “did you leave me al alone?”

I snatched her up and held her close. “I’m so sorry, Antonia,” I murmured, stroking her hair. She was shaking and clung to me—no cool self-possession now. “But right here was the safest place for you.

Some warriors tried to invade the castle, and I had to stop them.”

Slowly she stopped shaking as I held her. “I could have helped you,” she said then, pushing herself back to look me in the face. “I can do al sorts of spels. While I was waiting for you I turned Doly into a frog.”

A quick glance at her dol showed it unchanged: a rag dol, embroidered with a smiling face I found almost aggressively adorable, wearing a silk dress doubtless made from the scraps of something Theodora had sewn for a fine lady of Caelrhon. “Soon you’l be a witch like your mother,” I said encouragingly.

For some reason I didn’t like the way that sounded, but we were interrupted by a shout from the courtyard. “Wizard!” I bounced Antonia back into bed. “Go to sleep,” I said, trying not to sound too rough. “I may be busy the rest of the night.” And I darted out across the drawbridge to find one of the armored warriors pushing itself to a sitting position and raising its sword.

A few quick words of the Hidden Language restored the binding spel, but I thought, looking at the twitching colection of creatures before me, that there was a limit to how long I could keep them imprisoned. I had worked my spels fast, using shortcuts wherever I could, and the spels that made unliving hair and bones—and maybe dragons’ teeth manlike shapes were a lot stronger than mine. It would only be a matter of time until they al broke free again unless I found a way to dismantle them.

And I couldn’t do that and keep my binding spels going at the same time. I needed help.

“Do we have enough chains to chain them up?” I asked King Paul. Brute force might supplement magic in the short term. He took some of the knights to look while I hurried up and down the rows between the creatures, renewing spels and blinking in the lamplight as exhaustion pricked the backs of my eyes. But I could not let up my concentration for even a second. Warriors with swords in their unliving hands could have slashed me in two before I even realized my spels were weakening.

The king managed to persuade everyone but the knights to go back inside once they realized the immediate excitement was over. The chaplain, showing a calm authority I had not expected in him, took away the body of the watchman for last rites. By the time we had the warriors al chained together, twice a knight of Yurt just missed being badly wounded while he tried to fasten links around a creature that had almost managed to wiggle free of my binding spel—dawn had streaked the eastern sky pink. Not too early, I thought, to make a phone cal.

There was only one person worth caling. I gave the glass telephone the magical coordinates of Elerius’s castle

It took several minutes before the wizards’ school’s best graduate appeared in the phone’s glass base. While I waited for him I tried to think how to frame my request for help so it wouldn’t sound as desperate as I felt. Elerius, though school-trained, had years ago also learned enough of the old magic from a renegade magician who had been hiding out high in the eastern mountains that he himself could give dead bones the semblance of life. I probably could have too, given enough time, but Elerius’s skils were so unusual that he had even been invited to give a series of lectures on the topic at the school.

He came to the phone at last and looked at me quizzicaly, his eyebrows making triangular peaks over tawny hazel eyes. His look always made me feel disconcerted but his tone was friendly. “What is it, Daimbert? It is good to hear from you after, what has it been, several years at least, but I assume you must have a serious problem to cal me at such a time!”

“Wel,” I said with assumed joviality, “sorry to awaken you at this hour and al, but we do have a little problem—” I gave it up; after al, I was desperate. “Please, Elerius,” I said, not caring how patheticaly I begged. “You’ve got to come to Yurt. We’ve been invaded by scores of warriors who move without life. I’ve got them in binding spels for the moment, but I can’t dismantle them by myself. Please!” He did not hesitate. “Of course,” he said soberly, with an expression that was probably supposed to convey reassurance. It was going to take more than an expression to reassure me. “I shal leave within minutes and be there in two hours—maybe less.”

“Wizard!” I heard a shout from outside. I slammed down the receiver and darted back out, nerving myself to face the entire horde come back to life and motion.

But none of the creatures were moving. Instead, as the dawn light touched them . . .

At first I did not dare believe it, but it was real. For a few seconds the sunlight showed them clearly, human in no more than shape, faces unfeatured except for then-eyes, and then they began to disintegrate.

As though melting in the sun, their hands shriveled away from their hilts, their eyes lost their glow and fel back into their sockets, and their struggles against my spels ceased abruptly. Their armor and swords rusted away as I watched until they were no more than fragments, like something dug up from an ancient burial mound. Their limbs colapsed, with a rattle of chain, into piles of scrap.

I closed and opened my eyes, saying a prayer of thanks to whatever saint might listen to wizards. Where a few minutes ago the grass had been spread with warriors who had very nearly kiled us al in our sleep, it was now scattered with acrid heaps of bone and hair.

The knights of Yurt sent up a triumphant whoop. King and knights were haggard with exhaustion, and I was trembling al over, hardly able to stand in the weakness of relief. I stil wore what had once been my best yelow pajamas, now ripped and filthy rags. High up in the courtyard wal I could see a light burning in the window of the chapel where they had laid out the body of the watchman. “That,” I said to myself, “was too easy.”

Elerius had already left for Yurt by the time I telephoned his castle again. Wel, maybe he could help me determine where these warriors had come from, I thought, putting one set of bones aside for later magical analysis. The knights threw the rest onto a bonfire they built in front of the castle. The smoke roled into the dawn sky, dense and black.