THIRTEEN

WHILE THESE THINGS were going on in the University, pigeons from it were winging in several directions. One speeding eastward passed quite low above the string of ten dwarfs, riding ponies and celebrating as they rode. They laughed and raised their jeweled cups to it.

“That could be ours,” said Dobrey.

“Nonsense,” said Genno. “We sent ours before we left.”

“Well, anyway,” Dobrey said complacently, “the other forgemasters will have our news long before we get home. Fellow tribesmen, we are now the richest fastness in the world. People will come from all over the world and pay gold to learn the truth from this book.”

“We’ll drink to that!” shouted the rest.

Two pigeons meanwhile flew south. One was wounded, but still gained steadily on the pigeon sent by the senators. The largest number of pigeons, however, went west. The biggest group flew in a miserable gaggle and were followed by four others almost as miserable. Derk had told them all, before he hired them out, that if anyone hurt or mistreated them, they were to come straight home to Derkholm. So this was what they were doing. They passed underneath Callette, winging the other way, and shortly after that under five griffin strangers flying after her. A while later Kit came thundering over them. They found this dimly reassuring. Everything that flew respected Kit these days. They arrived in the Derkholm pigeon loft more or less at the same moment that Blade—having translocated in from the coast, saying he had just had a message for help from the University, which was what sent Kit thundering off there—kissed his distraught mother’s cheek, told her he had to go and help Kit but that they would both be back for supper, and translocated out there himself.

The other pigeons were horrified at the condition of the fugitives. They set up such a din that Old George, who was on his way to feed them, anyway, almost ran up the ladder. He ran down again almost at once and raced off to find Derk. Derk was on the terrace with his two winged youngest children, a vast terrace that had sometime ago been covered with a protective spell that kept out the weather but did not stop anyone from walking or flying through it, so that all the griffins could join in family life there.

“Those pigeons,” Old George panted. “That lot you sent to the University. About half of them’s come back in a terrible state! Bleeding. Feathers missing. One’s going to lose an eye if you don’t do something quick!”

Derk was quite glad of the distraction. Mara had just dashed indoors crying about Lydda, and he was not sure what to do about either of them. He was upset by Lydda’s sudden marriage himself, anyway. He felt quite as bad as he had on the day Shona took herself off to the East Coast with her Geoffrey. He did not feel he could help Mara at all.

“Go and kiss your mother better,” he said to Angelo and Florence, and pelted for the loft.

Here at least he could do something. Derk tutted to himself sadly as he stabilized the wounded eye, patched wounds, stopped bleeding, and set feathers growing again. What an awful way to treat harmless, valuable birds! He was puzzled as well as upset by the story they told him. What were these very small men directing fighting mice? Why had they disabled the pigeons and then shoved them out through the doors? It was probably no wonder that Elda had sent to Blade for help. At least, with Kit and Blade on their way there, he needn’t worry about Elda now. But something was very wrong. What were the senior wizards doing to let this sort of thing happen there?

He thought about this while he regenerated the eye and caused another pigeon to regrow a severed foot. When he was finished, he went down and saddled up Filbert. Then he went into the house to find Mara. She was upstairs in the main bedroom, surrounded by open suitcases and heaps of clothing and somewhat impeded by Florence, who was fluttering about her, “helping.” “Oh, good,” she said as Derk entered. “Find me as many of your shirts that are clean as you can.”

He could see she had taken refuge in packing. That was a relief. “Yes, when I get back,” he said. “I’m just off to see Querida.”

“But you don’t like her. Flo, put that down,” Mara said. “Why? Flo, if I have to tell you again, you’ll be sorry. Is it the University? I heard Old George saying—Flo, I warned you. Can’t Kit and Blade see about it? Right, Florence. That is it. Go and play with Angelo. Now.”

Florence, who knew when a parent really meant what she said, drifted to the door. She also knew that Angelo was in a bad mood. Angelo’s great hero was Blade, and he had got Blade back just that day only to have Blade disappear twice in quick succession. He did not want a mere sister. “I don’t want to play with Angelo. He’s making pies in the bath. He’s dirty.”

“Oh, don’t go and tell me tales, or I really shall run up the wall!” Mara said. “Out!” And as Florence reluctantly fluttered away, lower lip stuck out and trembling at the tyranny of mothers, Mara protested, “But, Derk, it’s nearly nightfall! Can’t you go tomorrow?”

“I thought you wanted us all to leave tomorrow,” Derk said.

“I did, I did! I do!” Mara said. “But I’m not sure we can get packed by then. What’s the matter? Is something really wrong at the University? I do wish I hadn’t let Querida persuade me to send Elda off there now. Elda could have come over the ocean with us then.”

“I wish you hadn’t packed her off there, too,” Derk said, frowning. “When a place sends half my pigeons back hacked to bits, you wonder about it, Mara, you really do. I’m going to ask Querida to take a good long look at it while we’re away. I’ll be back for supper, I promise.”

“That makes you and Blade and Kit and Callette, all making the same promise,” Mara said. “All right. We’ll be late eating, anyway. I won’t be able to start conjuring food until I’ve sorted out these clothes and sorted out whatever Angelo’s up to, I suppose.”

Derk kissed her and left before she made him sort Angelo out for her. Mara was much better at managing winged children than he was. “Make the most of this,” he told Filbert as Filbert’s strong chestnut wings carried him northward. “It could be your last proper flight before the voyage.”

“I know,” Filbert answered gloomily. “I’m not looking forward to over a week on a boat. There’s seasickness. You know horses can’t be sick, don’t you?”

“Teach your grandmother,” said Derk. “We’re stowing all you horses on deck. If you get seasick, just take a short flight—unless there’s a storm, of course.”

“I might get swept into the sea!” Filbert protested.

“So swim,” said Derk. “And wait for someone to throw you a rope. All horses can swim.”

“I could be the exception,” Filbert said nervously. “I’ve never tried.”

While Filbert flew northward, further north still, in the kingdom of Luteria, King Luther suddenly canceled the usual arrangements for supper in the Great Hall with the court and decreed a family meal in the Small Dining Chamber instead. It was the sight of Isodel slipping late and guiltily into the Great Hall for lunch that decided him.

She’s been seeing an unsuitable lover! King Luther found himself thinking. He was ashamed of this thought almost as soon as he had it. He knew very well that every man Isodel encountered instantly became her would-be lover, suitable or unsuitable, and he was fairly certain that Isodel had so far not responded to any of them. But he didn’t know she had not. There was always going to be a time when she did respond, and he gloomily expected it to be to someone quite wrong. He did not know his daughter any longer, that was the problem. He did not know any of his children these days. Lukin seemed to have been avoiding him for weeks. And the other four were big with some secret that made them giggle in corners or rush breathlessly away on hidden errands when he came anywhere near them.

To some extent King Luther blamed Mr. Chesney for this. Chesney’s tours had caused Luther’s wife, Queen Irida, to leave him and live in hiding with her children for safety. She had come back once the tours had stopped, saying—and he believed her—that it was only the tours that had made her do it and that she did in fact love him. Then he was able to get to know his children all over again. But there had been that gap. This gap maybe accounted for the way he felt that all six of his children were becoming total strangers to him now.

Consequently, he waited to be sure that all his children were actually in the castle and would not have time to duck out again. When he had glimpsed even the elusive Lukin turning a distant corner beside Isodel, he gave his orders and put up with the dismay of the cooks and servers in a good cause.

Twenty minutes later everyone gathered in the Small Dining Chamber around an expanse of slightly yellowed and darned white tablecloth and slightly chipped crystal. They were all warmly dressed, since the Small Dining Chamber breathed chilly dampness from each of its stone walls, despite a newly lit fire, and they had done their best to smarten themselves up. None of their clothes were new, and the result was still slightly shabby. King Luther sighed as he looked around at them, wishing the kingdom could afford to dress its royal family more suitably. Isodel, particularly, deserved better than plain blue wool and a threadbare silk shawl. And little Emana, who showed signs of growing up to rival Isodel, could do with dresses that had not gone through two older sisters before her. As for the boys …

Here he met his wife’s alarmed eyes and realized that they were, all of them, extremely nervous at this sudden family dinner. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’m not going to eat you.” He murmured the customary thanks to the gods and sat down. Everyone else but Lukin pulled out chairs and sat down, too. Lukin was unaccountably still standing beside his mother. “Sit down, Lukin,” his father said.

As the servers came forward with oatmeal soup—oatmeal figured a lot in the palace diet, partly from poverty, partly from tradition—Lukin sidled around the corner of the table in a rather curious way to the empty chair nearest the queen. The yellowish tablecloth billowed. Beside the empty chair Princess Erola made a sort of snatching movement and Lukin appeared to sit down. But King Luther could have sworn that just for an eyeblink, Lukin had vanished completely. A server leaning to place a bowl of soup got in the way at a crucial moment, however, and King Luther could not be sure.

That wretched boy has been doing magic again! he thought. And in spite of all I said to him! But as this was supposed to be a friendly family supper, King Luther ate his soup and asked Isodel pleasantly how she had spent her day.

Isodel looked as if she wished he had asked her anything else. “Oh, I, er, took a nice long flight on Endymion. Right over the mountains, you know.”

“And this made you late for lunch?” asked her father.

Isodel colored heavily. “Yes,” she admitted. “Endymion misjudged the time.”

Since Isodel was obviously so uncomfortable, King Luther considerately turned to his two younger sons and asked them the same question. Lyrian replied that they had had lessons in the morning.

“But the afternoon was much more interes—” Logan said, and stopped with a yelp. It looked to King Luther as if Princess Emana had most uncharacteristically jabbed him with a fork. “I was only going to say,” Prince Logan said, glowering at his sister, “that we had a good game of hide-and-seek.”

“Big mouth,” muttered Emana.

“I conclude you were playing somewhere you shouldn’t have been,” King Luther said tolerantly, and he turned to Erola. Beyond Erola, Lukin was just sitting there in front of his untouched soup. “What’s the matter, Lukin? Aren’t you hungry?” King Luther asked.

The glances his children exchanged with one another and with their mother seemed almost panic-stricken, until Emana said, “He just doesn’t like oatmeal soup.”

“He told me that, too,” Lyrian said, with such a strong air of relief that King Luther was puzzled. “This morning,” Lyrian added earnestly.

“While you were in your lessons?” asked the king.

Lyrian went white. “No. At breakfast. Yes. Breakfast, it must have been breakfast.”

“Can’t you speak for yourself, Lukin?” King Luther asked.

Again there was the barely hidden panic. Queen Irida said, “I think Lukin has overtaxed his throat somehow, my love. I’m worried about him.”

“Do you mean he’s made a magical hole in his throat now?” the king demanded.

“Oh, no, no, no, nothing like that!” Irida said faintly.

A look of cleverness came over Prince Logan’s face. “He did do some magic, though. That may be it.” The cleverness died away, and panic replaced it as his father looked at him. “You know how you can drink magical potions,” he said wildly. “Accidentally. It was brown, and Lukin probably thought it was coffee.” As the king continued to stare at him, he added desperately, “Or gravy. Maybe it was only gravy. Strong gravy, of course.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” said King Luther.

“He’s just inventing things again,” said Emana, glaring warningly at Logan.

“I am not!” Logan retorted, near to tears. “I always tell the exact truth. Lukin made me promise to last year!”

This caused his father to look at the motionless, silent Lukin again.

“You know, Mother,” Erola said abruptly, “I think it would be best if I took Lukin to his room. And helped him lie down, you know. He doesn’t seem well.”

“Excellent idea!” Queen Irida said, with extraordinary heartiness.

“Just a moment,” King Luther said as Erola was pushing back her chair. He would have been a fool indeed not to have realized by now that his family was trying to keep something from him, and he was not a fool. “Lukin, come over here and let me have a look at you before you go.”

Looks of desperation were exchanged on the other side of the table. On Lukin’s side the tablecloth billowed again. Erola and Lyrian both acquired distant, concentrating looks, and Lukin first jumped from his chair and then came sideways in jerks behind Erola. When he reached Lyrian’s chair, he did another of those momentary blinks out of existence but swiftly reappeared and came on strongly sideways again, accompanied by more billowing from the tablecloth, to stand at last obediently beside the king’s chair.

“Hmm,” said King Luther, and put out his large blue-knuckled forefinger. Not wholly to his surprise, this finger went right through Lukin. “This is a simulacrum, isn’t it?” he said. “What’s going on? Where is Lukin?”

Nobody answered. Lyrian sighed slightly, and the false Lukin disappeared.

“Answer me!” barked King Luther. “I have a right to be told where Lukin is. I’m not an ogre, you know.”

“Or not more than half the time,” Lyrian murmured.

King Luther pretended not to hear Lyrian, but this did not improve his temper. He raised his hurt, gloomy face to look at his wife. She was staring at him from her end of the table as if he had an arrow trained on her heart. “Irida, you seem to be leading this conspiracy. Be so good as to tell me where Lukin really is.”

Irida licked her dry lips and pushed away her soup. “I—I’m sorry, my dear. He’s at the University. He—he had my mother’s money, you know.”

“Is he?” King Luther said with the sarcastic calm of extreme fury. “Is he now? Against my express orders and with the connivance of the rest of you. And I suppose you were late for lunch, Isodel, because you’d sneaked off to see him.” Isodel simply nodded. “No wonder”—King Luther continued—“that I haven’t set eyes on the boy for the best part of a month! Well, well. I shall just have to set out myself tomorrow and fetch him back. In chains if necessary.”

“Oh, no!” gasped Irida.

“Oh, yes, madam,” said King Luther. “You may handle the kingdom while I’m away. Though it may be that I’m a fool to trust you even with that.”

“Luther!” Irida exclaimed.

The king ignored her and rang for the servers. When they hastened in, he gave orders for a squad of guards to be ready to ride with him at dawn. “And I want a watch kept on the pigeon loft,” he said. “No one—no one—except myself is to be allowed into it.” At this the glances Isodel and Lyrian had been exchanging fell glumly to the tablecloth. King Luther saw this. “And I shall need to speak to the Chancellor,” he added. “None of my sons or my daughters is to receive any money while I’m away, and my queen only precisely what is needed for running the country. Now please bring on the second course.”

He then savagely ate the rest of his supper, while his family picked at theirs. All of them had the sense not to pretend to be ill in order to dash to the pigeon loft, he was glad to see. He smiled grimly into his oatmeal dessert. Perhaps he did know his family after all. He knew exactly what was going to happen next. He ate cheese and then some fruit, vengefully, in order to spin out their suffering. Finally, he pushed back his chair and strode from the Dining Chamber without another word. Sure enough, behind him Isodel and Irida broke into frantic whispering.

“But, Mother, it’s worse than that! Olga—” he heard as the door was swinging shut.

King Luther hastened then, with long strides, but not quite running, through stone corridors and down the dank spiral stairs that led to the garden court where Endymion had chosen to take up residence. The young dragon was there as he expected, coiled up by the stone seat, finishing the sheep he had had for supper. The last of the daylight shot gold and copper gleams from Endymion’s baby scales as he moved aside politely so that the king could sit on the seat and get his breath back.

A mere half second later, so that King Luther barely had time to lounge back in the seat breathing normally as if he had been there for quite a while, Isodel pelted into the garden with her skirts hauled up around her knees and her shabby shawl flying. The light was so bright on the dragon that she did not notice her father at all.

“Oh, Endymion, finish your sheep quickly!” she panted. “We have to go to the University again at once!”

“Do you indeed?” asked King Luther, and Isodel jumped nearly a yard sideways. “You can come with me, on horseback, tomorrow morning, if you really want to go.”

Isodel glared at him. She opened her mouth angrily, then shut it again and arranged her shawl. “No, thank you. I’d prefer to stay here and support Mother.”

“Then you must certainly come with me,” said her father, “or the gods know what fresh plots you’ll be hatching.”

“You intend,” asked Isodel, “for everyone to be as miserable as you can possibly make them?”

“How well you understand me,” said King Luther. “You accompany me; the rest stay here without money for exactly that reason. Isodel, you know I’m not normally a tyrant, but you’ve all forfeited my trust this evening, you and Lukin most of all.”

Isodel stood very straight. Her hands, arranging her shawl, pulled it downward so fiercely that it jolted her head forward. “Not a tyrant!” she said. “What trust?”

Her father stared at her gloomily, wondering what had gone wrong. It was as if he and the rest of his family had somehow missed one another in the dark. Nevertheless, he did not intend to let them get away with this evening’s capers. He turned to the dragon. “You’ll have to leave Luteria, Endymion,” he said. “Now.”

Endymion, who had been studiously bolting his sheep and keeping out of this trouble, turned a large green eye toward him in surprise. “Why is that?”

“Because I, the King, command it,” said King Luther. “Because I know you’ll help Isodel on the sly if you’re here.”

“But,” Endymion said smugly, “I am sworn to Isodel, not to you, sire.”

“You’re not old enough, as dragons go, to swear to anyone,” King Luther told him. “I know dragonlore, and I know you count as a hatchling still—and a runaway hatchling at that. I’m quite well acquainted with your king, as it happens, and I’m about to send off a pigeon to him, telling him where you are.”

A roll of immature smoky flame came from Endymion’s mouth, causing the sheep’s wool to sizzle and stink. “You wouldn’t!”

“I would and I will,” said King Luther. “The next place I go is the pigeon loft. If you go now, you can arrive ahead of the pigeon and pretend you came back voluntarily.”

“This is not nice of you,” Endymion said. “Very well.” He rose limberly to his feet and settled his wings with a rattle. Very gently he nosed at Isodel’s stiff face. “I shall come back later, my princess,” he said. Then he raised his wings, which, like sails, caught the wind off the mountains and lifted him at once. With a mere tilting of them, he was up and circling and ghosting away as a darkness against the darkening sky.

Tears were pouring down Isodel’s face. “I shall do my best to make the journey as miserable for you as it will be for me!” she promised.

King Luther nodded, seeing that she meant it. He supposed he would survive it. He was used to being rather unhappy.

The pigeon flying east reached its destination around then. Since Ampersand was a long way south of Luteria, night had already fallen over the many painted spires, domes, and spiked cupolas of the Emir’s palace. The Emir himself had wandered into one of his gardens after dinner to gaze up at the waxing moon and enjoy the slight, sad fragrance of autumn. The pigeon was brought to him there, nestled bright-eyed in the hands of a servitor. Other servitors followed with lights, so that the Emir could see to read the message it carried, and his vizier personally accompanied them, to extract the tiny slip of paper from the tube on the bird’s leg and hand it, bowing, to the Emir.

The Emir accepted the message, unfolded it, and peered. Lights were instantly and anxiously brought closer. “This writing is quite unacceptably small,” the Emir complained.

The vizier snapped his fingers. A servitor handed the Emir a pair of spectacles. The Emir put them on and once more raised the slip of paper. This time he seemed able to read it. Everyone relaxed.

Prematurely. The Emir’s face became suffused so darkly with blood as he read that the vizier secretly signed to a servitor to run for a healer. This was regardless of the fact that the Emir always categorically refused to see a healer. For the last couple of months the Emir’s heart had been giving cause for concern, and the vizier had taken the precaution of having a healer always within call, just in case. As the servitor streaked off, the Emir uttered such a shriek of rage that the man stopped as if he had been shot.

“Villainous swine!” howled the Emir. “Order me my guard, my camels, and my weapons! I must go at once to raze that infamous University to the ground!”

“In person, gracious lord?” the vizier ventured to inquire.

“In person, of course!” snarled the Emir. “Those wizards have stained my honor twice now. This time those sons of dubious ancestry have also dishonored seven of my best assassins. I shall not let this pass!”

“But would it not be better, gracious lord,” pleaded the vizier, thinking of heart attacks, chaos, and crisis and, most of all, of twenty-two sons of the Emir, none of whom had yet been designated as heir to Ampersand and who were all increasingly annoyed about it, “would it not be more convenient to set off at dawn tomorrow? Your guard would be better prepared and your gracious self much fresher.” You might even have thought better of it, he thought, but did not of course dare say.

The Emir pulled his lower lip, scowling, and considered. The vizier made sense. In a hasty departure, someone always forgot something, and he was determined that his vengeance on the University should be meticulously complete. He intended to take the University apart, stone by stone, and its wizards limb from limb. “You are right,” he conceded. “We will start an hour before dawn tomorrow.” But he wanted to take something apart now. He looked around and saw valued servitors staring at him earnestly under lights that trembled slightly. Taking them apart would be a waste. New ones would have to be trained. Then his eye fell on the pigeon. “Take that bird out of my sight and wring its neck!” he commanded before he turned on his heel and strode back indoors. The peace of the garden was ruined now.

The servitor obediently carried the pigeon away through the garden. One did not wring the necks of birds in the Emir’s private quarters. The pigeon had the sense not to show that it had understood everything that had been said. It was, after all, one of Derk’s clever pigeons, and most of its round body was brain. It continued to nestle trustingly in the man’s hands, until they reached the stable yard, where the servitor shifted his grip, preparing to take hold of the pigeon’s neck and twist it. As soon as it felt the man’s hands move, the pigeon clapped its wings mightily, struggled, pecked, clawed with its feet, and finally burst upward from between the servitor’s palms, to swoop—in the greatest relief—to the very top of the stable minaret. The man watched it go philosophically. Perhaps he had in mind the fact that the pigeon was the hired-out property of a very famous wizard. Perhaps he felt that the Emir had been unjust. At any rate he made no attempt to recapture the bird. It was able to roost undisturbed on the minaret all night, and when dawn was only a suggestion at the bottom of the sky and the stable yard began to bustle with men running and shouting orders, clashing weapons, protesting camels, and bundles of supplies, the pigeon took to its wings and flapped briskly westward toward Derkholm.