SEVENTEEN

AT THE UNIVERSITY there were now fourteen dead mice laid out under the council table and most of the teaching staff were gathered around Querida. There was as yet no sign of any new emergency. Querida, taking the very reasonable line that no one could do anything about the missed moonshot, was dealing with other matters instead. The wards were proving very hard to restore. They seemed to resist anything that Querida did. Consequently, she was in a very sharp temper as she leafed through piles of essays and exam papers.

“Why is it that nobody ever gives any mark higher than a B?” she demanded. “Why are they nearly all given a B, for that matter? Half of these deserve to fail, to my mind. Finn?”

Finn, who was having a miserable afternoon, replied as he had replied many times before, “Corkoran had this policy, you see, that we should turn out as many working wizards as—”

He broke off in some relief as Sabrina came trotting in with the fifteenth mouse. “Good cat!” said Querida. “By ‘working wizards,’ Corkoran meant half-trained magic users, I gather. He means to clutter the world with incompetent warlocks who can’t tell a spell from a shopping list, does he? I think it’s getting a little stuffy and mouseish in here. All of you come outside for a breath of fresh air.”

Flury followed the procession as it trooped out into the courtyard. Because he was by now feeling sorry for Finn, and for Myrna and Umberto, though not so much for Dench and some of the others, he said, “While we’re out here, ma’am, perhaps you’d like to take a look at Wizard Wermacht?”

“Oh, yes,” said Querida. “Thank you for the reminder, Flury. Myrna, run and fetch Wermacht—no, you’re pregnant, aren’t you? What a silly state to be in. Then Finn must—”

Flury galloped off before Finn was forced to take any more orders and returned on three legs, lugging the bar stool. He set it down in front of Querida with a clatter. She looked at it. Everyone else looked at it. It stood there.

“Wermacht!” Querida called sharply. “Come on out!” Nothing happened. Querida began to mutter and work on it. Finally she went so far as to lay her little, withered hands on the leather seat, saying as she did so, “Umberto, what are you staring at? Everyone, help me! This wizard was clearly an utter bungler, and I can’t do this alone.”

“Er—” said Umberto.

“Who is this Wermacht, anyway?” Querida demanded. “I never met him.”

“He graduated two years ago with top marks,” Finn explained. “Never fell below a B, and—”

“Don’t tell me!” Querida snapped. “Corkoran had this policy!”

“Er—” Umberto began again.

“Flury!” Querida said, exasperated. Bar stool or man, this Wermacht was going to have to be fired, along with Dench and six others almost equally incompetent. And Corkoran, before any of the others. It was a real nuisance having to find lecturers to take their places. Even if she called the old wizards out of retirement, she would still have to do some of the teaching herself, which was maddening when she wanted to be working on the Waste. “Flury, can you do anything about this Wermacht person?”

“I’m afraid not, ma’am,” Flury said glumly. “I’ve tried. I thought I ought to try because I encouraged him to get like this in the first place.”

“Will you stop apologizing!” Querida hissed.

“Er—Querida,” Umberto managed to say, while Querida was taking a breath before she told Flury just what she thought of griffins who made wizards turn themselves into bar stools and then crawled about it. Like Elda, she found Flury’s humility highly irritating. “Querida, I think we’re about to have an international crisis. King Luther and Emperor Titus—”

Querida spared an unbelieving look across the courtyard. There, sure enough, to the left stood Emperor Titus beside his unfurled banner of the golden griffin on the purple ground, surrounded by neat ranks of glistening soldiery. Titus had his arms folded and his legs astride in a thoroughly warlike posture. He was staring across at the rigid figure of King Luther on the right. King Luther only had six soldiers and Isodel to support him, but he had his arms folded, too, and the glare he was giving Titus more than made up for his lack of an army. It looked as though the only thing that was stopping an immediate small war was the crowd of interested students flocking into the courtyard to see what was going on.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Querida snarled at Umberto. Even she knew that this was unfair. But she always hated being taken by surprise. She picked up the bar stool and passed it to Dench. “Take him back to the buttery. If the man isn’t wizard enough to get himself out of it, he’ll just have to stay that way.” Then, well aware that King Luther and Emperor Titus had detested one another ever since the last battle of the last tour, she set off at a hasty but dignified walk to keep the two apart.

As she went, the man that each of the two angry rulers had sent to question the students came back and whispered to his monarch. Titus and Luther both spared an incredulous glance at the sky before they went back to glaring at one another. Evidently they had just been told that Claudia and Lukin had gone to the moon, and neither believed a word of it.

Querida looked at the sky, too, rather hopelessly. It was overcast, covered with matte gray clouds, and likely to rain before long. Querida sighed. The roofs would leak again, and she would be forced to invite the Emperor and the King into the Council Chamber, where they would encounter a row of dead mice—Oh, no, it just wouldn’t do! “Can you hold the rain off?” she asked Flury, who was the only one daring enough to cross the court beside her.

“I’ll try,” Flury said in the humble way that so annoyed her. His head cocked sideways. His manner changed. His head, his bright brown crest, and his wings came up. His tail lashed, and his feet braced. Somehow he seemed twice the size. “Don’t move!” he said. “Don’t take another step!”

He was so commanding that Querida actually obeyed. She stood still, and because Flury was staring at the sky, she looked up again, too. Her ears caught the sound that Flury had heard a few seconds ago. It was a distant, whining roar, rapidly growing louder. As Querida searched for the source of it, the clouds above the gate tower boiled into whiteness and parted to let a great flaming object through. The roar rose to screaming thunder as the burning sphere hurtled apparently straight toward Querida, lighting the tower, the courtyard, and everyone standing in it a lurid yellow-white like a small sun. Querida had scarcely time to think, It’s going to hit me! before it was there, down on the courtyard in front of the statue of Wizard Policant, deafeningly but light as a feather. The blast of its coming made everyone stagger. Wizard Policant rocked on his pedestal, and Querida would have been thrown over backward if Flury had not hastily backed around behind her. Smoke belched up from the stones of the courtyard, covered the sphere so that it looked like the sun in a storm cloud, and then burned away, leaving a smell of hot lava.

In utter, deafening silence after that, Querida leaned into Flury’s warm, stiff feathers and watched the outer part of the sphere turn from fiery orange to yellow and then to an almost frozen white. The whiteness steamed and twined away from it in spirals as all the air elementals from the Red Planet who had not been boiled away above the clouds set off eagerly to explore the blue world. The misty blue inner lining of the sphere fell away outward like orange peel then, to reveal two dank and gasping griffins, one sweating dwarf, and six humans, one of these clutching a clod of earth and all of them except Corkoran white and strained from the frantic magic-working they had had to do in order to survive reentry.

Kit was quivering all over, but he spared a flicker of strength to revive Corkoran before he sank down beside Elda on the nice, cool stone, which had melted to a marble smoothness and then been frozen solid again by the departure of the air elementals.

Corkoran staggered upright, looking anguished. His face was yellow and baggy with horror, and his eyes rolled. His usually spruce yellow hair was in tangles. His tie was gray. Seeing Querida gathering herself together and marching toward him, he moaned. He had hoped that he had just been having a bad dream and had now woken up. Now he knew he was still in it, and it was a nightmare.

Flury advanced, too. “Are you all right?”

Kit was so tired that his voice came out as a small squawk. “I’ll live.”

Elda realized that Flury was really speaking to her. “Fine, now that I know we’re not all dead,” she replied. Flury, she saw, was not looking humble at all. She wondered why. She thought it suited him much better to be about Kit’s size, with his crest up and his eyes keenly open. This was much more how she had all along supposed—without knowing she supposed it—that Flury should really look. She so much approved of him this way that she added happily, “I’m so glad to be back! I love the whole world!”

“Isn’t the world a little much to take on all at once?” Flury said rather wistfully.

Behind them Querida seized on the best chance she would ever have to get rid of Corkoran privately and quickly, without having to take the blame for him. As she had appointed Corkoran Chairman herself, she knew very well that quite a lot of people were likely to say this showed she was getting too old to be High Chancellor. So she had to get in first, before they did. “Corkoran, you don’t look well,” she announced.

Corkoran was not surprised. He felt dreadful.

“I think you’ve been overworking,” Querida continued, much to his surprise. “Would you please me and translocate to Chell City for a long holiday? Tell Wizard Bettony that you’re replacing her there for the moment and ask her to come here and talk to me.” Bettony had taught at the University for years, during the tours. She was not the ideal replacement for Corkoran, and she would hate having to leave Chell, but she was the best person Querida could think of. Seeing Corkoran staring at her, she added, “You’ll like Chell. They make wine there. And the Duchess of Chell is very rich. If you talk to her nicely, she might set you up with a new moonlab there.”

Corkoran shuddered. Going to the moon meant floating in a nightmare of vertigo inside a tiny freezing bubble, with nothing but black emptiness outside pockmarked with huge, unmoving stars. He had gone off the moon. It had looked so small as they had hurtled past. You would have to stand with your feet close together, balanced on the very top of it, he knew now, or you would stick out sideways into emptiness. The idea made him want to scream again. On the other hand, he knew all about the wine they made in Chell. “You’re right,” he said. “I do need a rest.” He could only translocate two miles at the most, which meant he would arrive in Chell in the middle of the night, so he thought he had better go now, before Querida changed her mind and made him deal with all these soldiers. “I’ll give Bettony your message,” he said, and translocated in a mild draft of air. The sigh of relief that Querida gave then made more of a wind than Corkoran’s going.

Titus had left his soldiers and was hurrying toward Claudia. Claudia was leaning on Wizard Policant’s pedestal, thankful to have survived and even more thankful for the light, free feeling of being without her jinx. She saw Titus when he was halfway to her, exclaimed, and ran toward him. Brother and sister met with a clash of Titus’s armor and hurled their arms around one another.

Lukin meanwhile took Olga’s arm and nodded toward King Luther. Olga, seeing Isodel there, staring toward the other side of the courtyard, realized who this tall, gloomy man must be and squared her shoulders. She lodged the clod of earth carefully between Wizard Policant’s pointed shoes and went over to King Luther with Lukin, trying to feel brave. Ruskin followed them. Behind them, quite unnoticed by anyone, Wizard Policant bent down and picked the clod up. He stood up, holding it in both hands, in silent, wondering conversation with it.

“Father,” said Lukin, “I would like you to meet Olga Olafsdaughter. We’re going to be married when we’ve both qualified as wizards.” Olga looked at him with admiration. She had not thought Lukin would dare say this much.

King Luther gazed somewhere above Lukin’s head. “Someone on the roof,” he said. “Student stupidity, I suppose. No, Lukin. Out of the question. I’m here to fetch you home.”

“Your Majesty,” boomed Ruskin, “Olga Olafsdaughter is a very rich woman. She owns an island with a pirate’s hoard in it.”

“I suppose I do,” Olga said faintly.

King Luther bent his gloomy head to discover Ruskin’s face somewhere about level with Lukin’s waist. “Who,” he said, “are you?”

“Ruskin, Your Majesty, lately of Central Peaks fastness, now one of Your Majesty’s subjects.” Ruskin bowed. His sweat-soaked braids rattled. “Lukin owns me. I’m his slave. He bought me from the forgemasters a couple of weeks ago.”

King Luther did look properly at Lukin then. He discovered his son to be damp-haired and tired, but looking back at him in a very straight and serious way. He also noticed that Olga was an extremely beautiful girl. His first notion of denouncing Olga as on the catch for a prince dissolved almost instantly as he saw the way her dreadfully muddy hand twined in Lukin’s and the way she and Lukin looked at one another. So he simply ignored all that. “We don’t have slaves in Luteria,” he said.

“I was going to ask you about that,” Lukin said. “I believe it takes a Pronuncial from the Throne to free a slave, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, probably,” King Luther said coldly. “I brought a spare horse for you, Lukin—”

“I hope”—Ruskin interrupted in his most blaring voice—“that Your Majesty intends to keep me as a subject of Luteria. I must be one of the few people who knows where the gold deposits are there.”

“What gold deposits?” King Luther asked, distracted.

“Enormous ones,” Ruskin boomed airily, and then dropped his voice to the jarring whisper he had perfected for the library. “Majesty, when I was bringing the tribute from our fastness during the last tour, I met a dwarf at Derkholm called Dworkin, who was from that fastness just on the border of Luteria. Your Majesty may know him.” King Luther shook his head, resisting the need to block his ears as well. “Well, they aren’t truly Your Majesty’s subjects,” Ruskin conceded, still in the dreadful whisper. “Anyway, this Dworkin, who was a subchief and knew what he was talking about, said that Luteria was sitting on some of the biggest gold deposits in the world. It quite broke Dworkin’s heart,” he added, seeing King Luther’s six soldiers looking at him avidly, “because these deposits run very deep and very thick, and he couldn’t get in to mine them without Your Majesty’s getting to know—and he knew, of course, that these deposits really belong to the crown—and he couldn’t see himself keeping it secret, not in the hundred years of mining it’d take to get all the gold out. But if Your Majesty gives me, as one of your loyal subjects, permission, I can find that gold. As a dwarf and a wizard I’d have no problem. And Lukin—when’s he’s a wizard, too—can make the mine shafts.”

Lukin pinched his mouth together in order not to laugh.

“He’s certainly good at making holes in things,” King Luther agreed dourly.

“Ah, but they’ve cured him of that here already, Your Majesty,” Ruskin said, in what passed for his normal voice now, much to the King’s relief. “Next he has to learn to sink pits to order. That’ll take him the next three years, but after that he and I are both at your service, Your Majesty.”

“On condition that I marry Olga first,” Lukin put in.

King Luther looked up at Lukin and down at Ruskin, grimly. “What if I refuse?”

“Then I inherit a needlessly poor kingdom, obviously,” Lukin said. “I’d hate that. But I’d hate even more not being friends with you.”

There was a pause while King Luther looked from his son to his soldiers, who were all staring before them so correctly that they looked like fish, and realized that Luteria was going to be riddled with amateur mine shafts unless he took some action. The only person who seemed genuinely uninterested was Isodel. She seemed to be in some kind of dream, with a strange, happy smile on her face.

It was during this pause that Kit put his head up to take in more air. He still felt as if he could never get enough of it. And his beak tasted singed. “Funny,” he croaked to Elda. “There’s a row of men in spiked helmets up on that roof.”

Everyone within hearing whirled to look up at the Spellman Building. Sure enough, the parapet there bristled with helmets and the ends of weapons. Querida felt depressed. Kit was obviously too tired to be much help, and she was not sure she could manage an army on her own. Blade seemed to have slithered out of sight, the way he often did.

Felim sprang up from beside Elda and spun around to look at the other roofs. They also bristled with spiked helmets and weapons. Felim dodged around the statue of Wizard Policant, so that he could see the main gates. They were just being thrown wide, and the Emir was storming through them, walking with that forward lunging stride that always means trouble, with more soldiers at his back.

“This is idiocy!” Felim exclaimed. He set off for the gates at a sprint.

“Oh, dear!” Elda groaned. She dragged herself up and crawled off to help.

Blade, meanwhile, was edging over to the Emperor and his sister. Titus and Claudia still had their arms clasped around one another, but more loosely now. Claudia’s laugh was ringing out delightedly. “Honestly, Titus? The lot of them?” she was saying. “It’ll do them such good to sit in prison. They sent so many people there themselves. But I still don’t know how you dared!”

As Blade edged up closer, Titus answered, a trifle guiltily, “Because I’d never been so angry in my life, I suppose.”

This is going to be impossible, Blade thought. He felt very tired, wholly apprehensive, and thoroughly determined. He remembered once, eight years ago, thinking that something must happen to soften people’s brains between the ages of fourteen and twenty, but he had never once, even when he met Isodel, discovered exactly what that something was. Now he had, eight years later, and it was awful.

Here Elda dragged herself past, with Felim sprinting ahead of her, and things became slightly less awful. Claudia said, “Stay here, Titus. I must go and look after Elda for a minute. I don’t think spaceflight agrees with griffins.” And she hurried after Elda.

Blade walked sideways up to the Emperor. He had always liked Titus, and he knew him quite well these days. But it was still hard to know what to say. Blade settled for the most official way he could manage, because Titus was, after all, an emperor, and blurted it out. “Er, Titus, er, Imperial Majesty, would you give me leave to pay my addresses to your sister, Claudia. Er, court her, you know?”

“Eh?” said Titus.

Gods! thought Blade. He’s gone all haughty, and who’s to blame him! This is hopeless! But when he looked at the Emperor, he saw that Titus had probably not been listening. The Emperor was staring across the courtyard. Blade looked where Titus was looking and saw Isodel. Evidently whatever Isodel did to men had infected Titus, too, except that for some extraordinary reason Isodel was staring back at Titus. The yearning, painful, happy unhappiness on both their faces made Blade’s chest twist. It was so exactly what he was feeling himself. “Did you hear what I said?” he asked Titus.

Titus jumped a little. “Perfectly,” he lied. Then, because he had been trained all his life to listen even when his attention was somewhere else, he somehow recalled exactly what Blade had said. He frowned. Blade watched the Emperor’s straight eyebrows meeting over his Imperial nose and felt his own heart sink. “Claudia? Really? My sister?” Titus said. This sounded very forbidding. But Titus went on, talking in jerks. Blade saw that the Emperor was thinking very slowly, with his mind almost entirely on Isodel and the fact that he and Isodel’s father had been at war for eight years, and waited, hardly daring to breathe. “She’s far above you in birth, Blade,” Titus began. Then he added, “But you were appointed by the gods, weren’t you? And you’re a wizard. You could keep Claudia safe. I have to let some of the senators out of prison sometime. But Claudia’s her own person. I don’t even know if she likes you.”

“Neither do I,” Blade said sadly.

“You’re a wizard,” Titus repeated. He grabbed Blade’s arm crushingly. “She’s his daughter, isn’t she? King Luther. Get him to agree that I can marry her, and I’ll back you with Claudia in every way I can.”

“Done,” Blade said promptly. Now I’m going to have to perform a miracle! he thought as Titus started to drag him across the courtyard.

“I don’t even know her name!” Titus said, faltering a little.

“Isodel,” said Blade.

“How lovely!” Titus dragged Blade onward. “What a perfect name!”

As Blade and Titus went toward King Luther, Flury was scudding after Elda and Claudia. He arrived beside Felim and the Emir almost as they did, but no one but Elda noticed him. Elda spared him a glance while she and Claudia waited anxiously for Felim to become encased in the beehive of books again. Both were extremely dismayed when nothing of the kind occurred. Felim dashed up to the Emir and stopped. The Emir halted his troops with a gesture and stopped, too. And the two of them stood face to face yelling at one another.

“Perhaps the spell’s worn off,” Claudia suggested.

“And you had the nerve to send assassins!” Felim was screaming.

“Do you think we should try to put it on again?” Elda asked as the Emir screamed back.

“What do you take me for?” the Emir howled. “If I make a threat, my honor demands I keep it! You had the nerve to disobey me! I told you I had no objection to your sitting in your study all day. I told you you could learn to be a hundred wizards! But I told you to stay at home!”

“And I told you never to try to bully me!” Felim yelled. “Son of a she-camel!”

“I told you I wish you to be Emir after me!” bawled the Emir. “Son of a mangy nanny goat!”

“This shall never be!” Felim screamed. “The she-camel had mange, too!”

The two of them then embarked on a shouted description of the nature of one another’s grandmothers, all of whom seemed to have been several different animals, each with a number of startling diseases. Claudia and Elda stared. They had not realized that the polite and clever Felim could be like this. Claudia watched the two dark-browed faces, roaring insults at one another, and realized that they were surprisingly alike. The noses were the same, as well as the brows, although Felim’s nose was smooth and young.

“Is he perhaps the Emir’s son?” she said to Elda. The Emir, red-blotched and haggard, certainly looked old enough to be Felim’s father.

A slight, tired smile came to the ends of Elda’s beak. She knew this kind of scene rather well. Scenes like it happened at Derkholm whenever Kit and Shona happened to be at home together. “No,” she said. “Brothers.”

Here Felim returned to the thread of the discourse, just as Shona always did, and yelled, rather hoarsely, “Besides, you have twenty-two sons to become Emir after you! Choose among them!”

“Not I!” bawled the Emir. “I dislike every one of them! I have told you this a hundred times!”

At this Felim calmed down suddenly and stated, “It is not a question of liking but of suitability. I have told you this many hundred times.”

This seemed to end the argument. The Emir, equally suddenly, became calm, too. He reached out and gripped Felim by his upper arms. “Oh, my brother, I have missed you so badly,” he said. “No one shouts at me as you do. No one dares. Will you not come home?”

“No,” said Felim with utter finality.

The Emir accepted this. He nodded, and sighed, just as Kit always did when Shona had the last word. “In that case,” he said, “please step into the shelter of this gateway while my army slaughters everyone here. I do not wish you to be hurt.”

Flury leaned down and tapped the Emir on his shoulder. “Excuse me,” he said. “I can’t let you do that.”

Everyone except Elda jumped violently. Flury, at that moment, towered twelve feet above the Emir, who was a tall man, and no one but Elda had seen him before this. The Emir started backward, and his face became a strange leaden gray color. Felim said quickly, “Please abate your height and step back, Flury. My brother’s heart has been giving us concern for three years now.”

“But I can’t let him kill everyone!” Flury protested.

Simultaneously the Emir protested, “There is nothing wrong with my heart!”

“Nevertheless”—Felim smiled lovingly and took the Emir by one arm—“you will not give the signal to attack, my brother, until you have been with me to Healers Hall. It is only a step away. Come with me.”

“Why should I?” demanded the Emir.

“Because,” said Felim, beginning to lead him gently away, “I need you to live for another three years, until I am a qualified wizard. I do not wish to be snatched home because you have named me your heir. At the end of those three years I promise I will come to you with a spell of potent divination and choose which of my nephews is most suitable to be emir. Meanwhile there are here the best healers in the world. Come.”

Flury dropped to all fours and stared.

“Of twenty-two sons,” the Emir said sadly as he walked, “none is satisfactory.”

“Hassan,” Felim replied, “has qualities, and it is a pity that Assif and Abdul are twins, for one cannot choose between them. Sayeed is firm.”

“But cruel,” said the Emir. “And Imram is indolent.”

“Not where his racing camels are concerned,” said Felim. “And Hamid or Noureddin would proceed with justice. All my nephews have something to recommend them.”

This had the air of an absorbing discussion that the brothers had often had—so much so, that when cracking and creaking, followed by crashing and loud cries, proclaimed that the roof had given way under the Emir’s soldiery, just above Felim’s room, neither brother even glanced that way. The Emir said, “True, but they are always balanced by an undesirable trait.” And they walked on, discussing other names.

“Well, I’ll be …!” said Flury. He looked suspiciously at Elda and Claudia, who were leaning together, both in fits of laughter.

Claudia took her head out of Elda’s wing and looked around for Titus, to tell him about all this, and found him, much to her surprise, on the other side of the courtyard beside King Luther. Hoping that this did not mean more trouble, she hurried over to him.

As Claudia arrived, Lukin was saying, “I am not trying to make conditions, Father. I just want to learn enough wizardry to help—”

He broke off, and Claudia shut her mouth on what she had been going to say to Titus. Both of them felt the pressure of some kind of magic as Blade slid himself into the group beside Lukin. Blade spared a glance toward the Emir’s soldiers, floundering among the broken rafters of the roof opposite, and decided that what he had to say to King Luther was more important. Nobody up there seemed to be hurt. “Your Majesty,” he said, “do forgive the interruption. The emperor Titus begs to wonder if the princess Isodel would consent to be introduced to him.”

Before King Luther could speak, Isodel said, “Oh, yes!” and went toward Titus with both hands out. Then, realizing that she did not really know him, she took her hands down and said wonderingly, “Are you the Emperor of the South then?”

Titus seized her hands, anyway. “Yes,” he said. They stood face to face, staring at one another and marveling. “I hope you’re good at governing,” Titus said then. “I’ve just imprisoned most of the people who usually do it.”

“Quite good,” Isodel said, “and very economical. You sound as if you have an emergency. Do you want us to set out now or wait till tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow will do,” Titus said. “We’d have time to get married before we leave then.”

“Father can marry us,” Isodel told him. “The throne of Luteria has priestly functions. Lukin can give me away. Does your palace have room for a medium-small dragon?”

King Luther watched and listened with his teeth clenched to prevent his jaw from dropping. “I don’t,” he said to Ruskin, “I simply don’t know my children.”

“Ah, Your Majesty,” Ruskin rumbled, “you might want to consider stopping calling them your children and referring to them instead as your sons and daughters.”

King Luther stared down at Ruskin. The grim anger on his face froze and slowly melted to thoughtfulness and finally to understanding. “I should like,” he said stiffly to Ruskin, “to appoint you advisor to the throne when your education here is finished. At any rate my queen and I would be happy to welcome you at the castle during the holidays, along with Lukin and Olga.”

Lukin and Olga were just turning delightedly to one another when the griffins arrived. The empty gray sky was suddenly filled with winged shapes, the whistle of pinions, and the excited babble of many griffin voices. Something like the very largest rookery you could ever imagine, Claudia thought, staring upward in amazement, along with nearly everyone else. The noise quickly gave way to the muffled boom and blast of cupped wings as first Don, then Callette, then Cazak, then griffin after griffin came down to land in the courtyard, shouting greetings to Kit as they came. Elda screamed with excitement. In spite of what Callette had told her, she had never imagined there could be so many of her own kind in the world. Kit leaped up to meet them all, shouting like a trumpet. Everyone else hurriedly cleared off to the sides of the courtyard, except for Querida. Querida found herself stranded beside Wizard Policant’s statue and stuck there as the place filled with more and more griffins, each one folding wings with a clapping rustle and then galloping aside to let other griffins land: white griffins, yellow griffins, speckled and brown-barred ones, gray griffins, chestnut ones, and several who were almost blue. The courtyard was very shortly a mass of gleefully snapping beaks, great round eyes, switching tails, and tossing wing feathers.

Those of the Emir’s unfortunate soldiers who were not halfway through a roof hastily threw themselves flat. When, after a minute or so, they saw that the griffins were not attacking them, most of them climbed down the outside walls and streamed off indecisively to guard Healers Hall instead. This was a great relief to Titus’s small squad of unmounted cavalry. They had thought they were going to have to fight to protect their Emperor, knowing they would lose.

“This,” said Wizard Policant to Querida, “is where I step in, I think. Roofs are easy to mend, but it is very much harder to stop a battle. I am so glad we were not called upon to do that.”

Querida, rather hoping she was dreaming, looked up and found that the stone of the statue was splitting into irregular shapes, like dry mud cracking. The same thing seemed to be happening to the plinth she was clutching, revealing a yellow, buttery shine under her fingers. Upon the statue, like dry mud, each piece of stone shrank, curled up at the corners and fell away. Inside it there seemed to be a live person in wizard’s robes, as elderly as she was but very much a living one.

Wizard Policant shook himself, and the last dry piece fell off him into powder. “The enchantment was tied to the wards of the University,” he explained. “When they go down, I return to take up my post as Head here. There was a prophecy made that this was only to happen in the Year of the Griffin. Unkind persons held that this meant never, griffins in my time being thought to be mythical creatures, but I see that the prophecy was quite correct. I do hope you yourself will not mind stepping aside to work with me as Chancellor?”

“Not at all,” Querida said a trifle faintly. “It’ll be a great relief.” Of all the enchantments she had seen in her long life, this one astounded her most. But she was recovering rapidly. “You do realize,” she said, in quite her usual manner, “that two-thirds of the teaching staff here will have to be fired?”

“Of course,” said Policant. “I have been here on the spot for years after all. Will you be so kind as to summon every wizard on this continent here tomorrow? Except Corkoran, of course. We shall choose new staff from among them.”

“They may not want to come,” Querida warned him.

“No, but they will come. That is part of the enchantment, too,” Policant told her. “Now I wish to say a word to everyone present here.”

There was a sharp rapping noise, rather like a stick rapping a lectern, only much louder. Everyone, human and griffin, turned to where Wizard Policant stood on his pedestal, high above them. Everyone could somehow see him, even those who happened to have a griffin in the way.

“May I have your attention, please?” Wizard Policant’s amplified voice said. “I am Policant, once Head of this University, now Head of it again. We shall of course in future run this place both as a means of educating wizards of true power and as the center for magical research it was designed to be. Meanwhile the power vested in me gives me the right to perform all ceremonies, civil, magical, and religious. It is therefore my pleasure to officiate at the marriage of Isodel, Princess of Luteria, and Titus Antoninus, Emperor of the South. If these young people will step forward, I shall be happy to pronounce them man and wife.”

Everyone cheered. They had all expected a long and pompous speech. During the noise Wizard Policant asked, much more quietly, “Will somebody fetch me something to step down upon, please?” He bent down and passed Querida a clod of red earth. ‘Take great care of this. It is a person from another planet who wishes to see this one. I judge that she, he, or it will see more of the world with you than by staying here with me.”

As a student dashed into the buttery bar and seized the nearest stool, which happened to be Wermacht, for Policant to step on, and the griffins crowded aside to let Isodel and Titus walk toward the pedestal of the statue, the barkeeper looked up to find Flury looming over him.

“Set up every barrel you’ve got,” Flury said, “and I’ll conjure you more wine. There’s going to be rather a big party. Griffins drink a great deal.”

“Oh?” said the barkeeper, out of long knowledge of students. “And who’s going to pay?”

“The University,” said Flury. “The pedestal of that statue is solid gold.”

At about this time the forgemasters on their ponies were riding into the ravine that led to the Central Peaks fastness. All of them, ponies included, were relieved to see they would be there before nightfall.

“Am I glad to be home!” said Genno. “Feet up by a nice fire and an artisan girl bringing me supper!”

“And rich. Rich beyond the dreams of average!” Dobrey answered. He flourished the Book of Truth, which had never left his hand for the entire journey.

Arrows ripped down around them from the heights. One of the ponies reared.

“Stop right there!” shouted a female voice from the left-hand cliffs.

Dobrey looked around to see that they were inside a small hedge of arrows, each one sticking upright in the ground. “Nice shooting,” he remarked to Genno. “Who is that up there?”

“Rooska, by the voice. That’s Ruskin’s cousin—or sister, I forget,” Genno said. “She’s got half her clan up there with her. The other half’s up on the other side.”

“Come down off there, Rooska!” Dobrey shouted upward. “What are you playing at?”

“Not playing at all, forgemaster.” Rooska’s voice rang back. “We artisans have taken over the fastness. We’re all equals here now. The ones who wouldn’t be equal are dead. Where’s Ruskin?”

“Sold him for the biggest treasure on earth,” Dobrey boomed, waving the book again. “Come on, Rooska. Stop this nonsense. We’re all tired.”

“Ruskin’s alive then?” someone else shouted from the opposite cliff. “Swear?”

“Swear it!” all the forgemasters chorused.

Genno added a further shout. “Sold to the Crown Prince of Luteria, if you must know. Now come on down and open the fastness for us!”

“You don’t understand!” Rooska bawled. “There’s been a revolution. You’re not in charge any longer. Because Ruskin’s alive, we’ll let you live, but you’ve got to leave. Go on. Go away!”

The forgemasters exchanged looks of true dismay. It began to dawn on them that the home comforts they had been looking forward to might not be available.

“We can settle this quietly!” Dobrey yelled. “You need us! You need the spells against the demons of the deep!”

“No one’s seen a demon in six hundred years!” someone yelled back. “It’s all a big fraud!”

That voice was followed by massed yells from both sides of the ravine. “Frauds! Get out!” and this merged into a chant, “GET OUT NOW, GET OUT NOW, GET OUT NOW!” The chanting was backed up by more arrows, all of which fell inside the first ones, uncomfortably close to the forgemasters. And Rooska screamed a descant to the chant: “We’ll kill you if you’re still here tomorrow!”

Dobrey looked drearily from the other forgemasters to the book in his hand. “They don’t care. They didn’t listen when I waved the greatest treasure on earth at them. If there were any demons, they deserve to be infested with them.” He sighed deeply. “Come, fellow forgemasters. If we hurry, we can get to Deeping fastness by midnight. They’ll take us in there if we give them the Book of Truth.” He sighed even more deeply. “The most expensive lodgings in the world.”

Followed by the chant and by yells and hoots and catcalls, the forgemasters turned their ponies around and plodded off again.

Sometime later, when the party in the University was in full swing, Blade fetched Flury another glass tankard of wine with a fresh straw in it, and sat down on the refectory steps, level with Flury’s head, to drink his own.

“Flury, if you don’t mind my asking, what are you doing here?”

Flury rested his feathered elbow on Wermacht, who was still a bar stool, and sipped at the wine. “I thought you knew my government sent me with Jessak,” he said. “He was the prime minister’s son, you know. I’m sorry I had to send to you for help.”

“Oh, it was you, was it? I thought it was Elda. But I know that innocent tone, too,” said Blade. “I mean, why did you stay here, at the University?”

“I quite like teaching—and everyone was being so badly taught,” Flury replied, and put his head on one side to gaze across the courtyard.

Blade followed his gaze, across crowds of laughing human heads, some in helmets and some bare, over bottles and tankards being passed among bobbing griffin beaks and swaying wings, across dancing griffins and singing humans, all under a few flecks of rain, bright in the lights of the courtyard, which even Wizard Policant seemed unable to hold back, and found that Flury’s gaze ended at Wizard Policant’s golden pedestal. Olga and Claudia were sitting on the pedestal, back to back, with Elda pressed against them on one side and Lukin crowded in on the other. Ruskin and Felim were sitting leaning on the pedestal at their feet. All six of them were singing, five of them very badly. Blade could hear Claudia’s sweet, strong notes coming out over the din. For a moment he lost himself in thoughts of her thin, greenish face with its smile that creased into a dimple, her bright, intelligent eyes, her strangely coiling hair, and the way she laughed at things in spite of having had the sort of life that should make her severe and solemn. She was laughing now as she sang. Then a particularly discordant squawk from Elda made him wince. Elda never could hold a tune, Blade thought. And at this he understood Flury. Elda, of course.

“She’s pretty young still,” he told Flury.

“She can always see me,” Flury said. “I tell myself that’s a good sign until I realize how much she despises me.”

“She doesn’t like you being humble. She told me,” Blade said.

“Oh.” Flury was surprised. “I thought that was proper courting behavior. But she’s used to Kit, I suppose. Blade, she’s so beautiful that I ache.”

“I know the feeling,” Blade said.

Flury shot him a bright-eyed look. “I believe,” he said slowly, “that both our ladies have some growing and adjusting to do. Yours, if that terrifying Querida is any guide, has breeding that leads to some fairly powerful magic. That takes growing into.”

Blade stared fuzzily at Flury. In all the years he had known Querida and that green skin color of hers, he had never realized that Querida had Marshfolk blood. Well, well. That accounted for a lot. “And Elda’s young for her age,” he said. “We shall just have to keep visiting and hoping. Do you want me to find you work over here that your government will agree to, so that you can stay here and wait?”

Flury’s eyes twinkled, almost luminously. “Yes, please.”

They solemnly clinked glasses.