Daughter of Magic - Wizard of Yurt - 5 (28 page)

This was so horrible I couldn’t let myself believe it. It had to be some mistake. The children had gone for a picnic and someone had started a foolish rumor. They would al be home, laughing to hear how frightened everyone had been, by the time I reached Caelrhon.

The pit of my stomach didn’t buy any of this.

A summoning spel like the one Cyrus had used on the rats, I thought as I flew madly back toward the castle, but a spel with a subtle change to summon children instead. Feeling aggrieved at the bishop for making him give up the prayer sessions where people essentialy came and worshipped him, at me for exposing his use of magic, and at the mayor and council for not coming to find him in the seminary with some even better reward than the key to the city, he—or the demon—had decided to take his revenge through the children. His piping would have drawn them al as surely as it had drawn the rats; Antonia, whose flair for magic made her particularly susceptible, wouldn’t have stood a chance.

Now I just had to try to find some clue to show where they had gone. Not taken downstream and dropped off like the rats, either to drown or wander away, I tried to persuade myself. According to Gwennie’s account, fuler than what Theodora had written the bishop, Cyrus had invited a number of his old friends, the children from the artisans’ quarter, for a country strol. Antonia’s friend Jen had apparendy been one of them, and Antonia had gone along. Adults had heard piping in the distance, but only Theodora had realized, when she felt a faint tug herself, what it meant, and by then other children were leaving their chores and their games to race through the city streets and out the gates. By the time the grown-ups went after them, every child under fourteen was gone.

But was there even more to this? Had Cyrus been especialy interested in my daughter? He had seemed to know who I was when we first met, and if he was, as I intermittendy suspected, part of Vlad’s planned revenge on me, then seizing Antonia would be doubly sweet, since he was already furious with me. Any of several people could have told him I was Antonia’s father—Theodora’s neighbors, even the Lady Maria, who had been so uncharacteristicaly closedmouthed since coming home. Was summoning the rest of the children both generalized revenge and also a chance to conceal his nefarious plans for one particular child?

I flew over the wals of the royal castle and went straight to the Lady Justinias chambers. “I need your flying carpet, my lady,” I said with minimal effort toward politeness. “And I need it now.” Her automaton leaned threateningly toward me. “This is passing abrupt, O Wizard,” Justinia said cooly. “The carpet is mine, given me by the mage Kaz-alrhun for my own transportation to safety, not for the convenience of western wizards and their daughters.”

I didn’t have time to explain properly or to respond to the sarcastic note in her voice. “Antonia’s been kidnapped by an evil wizard, and I have to go after her.” Justinia immediately looked much more sympathetic. “She is always getting herself into one difficulty or another, of a certainty! I give thee leave, then, to use my carpet to help in the search for her, on this condition: that I myself accompany thee.”

I didn’t have time to argue. Al I said was, “In that case, please leave your automaton behind—last time it tried to kil me.” It already seemed as though hours rather than minutes must have passed since the pigeon-messages arrived at the nunnery. We dragged the carpet, with the automaton’s help, out into the courtyard. Gwennie and Paul, hearing the commotion, came running.

The king must have gotten the details from Gwennie. “I wil help you, of course,” he said, very sober and. very concerned. “Move over. Are there handles or anything on this thing?”

“You just sit on it and hope it doesn’t tip,” said Gwennie from experience.

I didn’t want them along but I realy didn’t have time to argue. The automaton glided nervously around the courtyard, and Justinias elephant trumpeted from the stables, angry at being left behind. The flying carpet shot off toward Caelrhon carrying, besides the foreign princess to whom it actualy belonged, the king, the constable, and the wizard of Yurt.

V

“When I couldn’t reach you,” said Theodora, fighting to keep her voice steady, “I telephoned Elerius. He seemed to know who I was without my having to tel him. I know you don’t trust him, Daimbert, but you’ve always said he’s the best wizard of your generation, and—” Her mouth quivered, making it impossible for her to go on.

I put an arm tight around her. “We’l find her. Everything wil be just fine.” I wished I believed it myself.

“And the mayor’s just phoned the royal wizard of Caelrhon,” she continued, trying to compose herself. “It turns out fhat the Princess Margareta is among the missing.”

“Poor kid,” said Paul, showing unexpected sympathy for the girl he mostly referred to in the context of not wanting to marry her. “She must be terrified. And she’s started developing a woman’s form—what wil an evil magic-worker want with her?”

“Come on. We’l find them,” I said with a desperate effort to sound assured. “Cyrus won’t be able to hide from three wizards.” The carpet shot off into the air again and out over the city wals. I had probed for and not found any lingering trace of Cyrus’s magic by which we might have folowed him. He’d covered his tracks, which meant we had to assume the children could be anywhere. There might once have been footprints, but any physical traces of their passage had been obscured by the feet of desperate parents. The fields near the city were thick with the citizens of Caelrhon, shouting their children’s names, thrashing their way through clumps of bushes, dragging every body of water. A few looked up and pointed as we sailed past.

It was a good thing, I thought, that the Romneys had been gone for two weeks. Otherwise the people who had already been suspected, at least by some, of setting fire to the high street and of bringing the rats to town would probably find themselves kiled by hysterical parents.

“I hope the Thieves’ Guild in Xantium does not learn of this stratagem,” commented Justinia. “They could win an exceeding number of concessions from my grandfather the governor in return for the city’s children.”

“It’s al my fault, Daimbert,” said Theodora, breaking down completely. “I told her she could spend the day with Jen. I should never have let her out of my sight. Wil you ever forgive me?”

“It’s not your fault,” I murmured, holding her close. “There’s nothing you could have done. The piping would have drawn her just as surely as it drew al the other children. *

We were now some two miles from the city, beyond where the parents were beating the underbrush. They probably assumed their children could not have gone far. I, on the other hand, realizing the force of a summoning spel, knew that they would have kept running, folowing the piper, even with their legs worn down to bloody stumps. “We’l circle the city by air, and if we don’t see them on the first circuit we’l go out a few more miles and try again.” My attempt to sound calm and rational was a failure in my own ears. “That many children can’t have disappeared without a trace.” The flying carpet turned at Justinia’s command and briskly traced a wide circle around Caelrhon. Al of us lay flat, our heads over the edge, desperately searching the land below with our eyes. Gwennie and Justinia, on either side of the king, kept giving each other surreptitious glances over his head, but I had no time for them. .

I had never realized before how much forest covered the hiltops and river valeys of the kingdom of Caelrhon, dense stands of trees that could have hidden hordes of children and were impervious to my magic unless I probed each clump individualy. In spite of a far-seeing spel my vision kept blurring—wind, I told myself.

We saw nothing on the first circuit and started on a second, larger circuit. How much time, I tried to calculate, since Cyrus’s piping had summoned the children? The sun was wel down the western sky. They could be miles from home by now, or they could be concealed in some cave only a short distance from town. On this circuit we spotted the towers of the royal castle of Caelrhon—Evrard, I thought, was probably now somewhere looking for us. Wel, let him and Elerius start their own hunt. I had no time to try to make contact with them. Maybe they’d have better luck than we were having.

Gwennie nudged me. “Wizard,” she said in a whisper, “don’t you think it just a little suspicious that someone you say knows eastern magic should show up in Caelrhon at the same time as an eastern princess shows up in Yurt? Especialy since she seemed to know Antonia was your daughter before anyone else did?”

“I don’t find it suspicious at al,” I whispered back. Justinia had done nothing I could see to make me suspect her of evil. She was just a woman in hiding from her enemies—who, assuming the undead warriors and the wolf had been aimed at me rather than her, had so far hidden successfuly.

“Wizard,” said Paul briskly as the flying carpet approached our starting point again, “I know this is the most systematic way to search the whole area, but we’l only be able to spot them if they’re out in the open. And it’s going to be dark before very long. It’s time to make a guess and go that way.”

“What do you suggest?” I asked bleakly.

“The river road heading upstream from the city. It’s a good road, so even children could travel fast on it, and it’s tree-shaded most of the way. Because it’s not a major trade route, Cyrus might hope he wouldn’t meet anyone to bring the tale to Caelrhon. If we fly low we may be able to pick up something.”

It was worth a try. We swooped down over the treetops and swung back near the city, then started folowing the road from just beyond where the parents were dragging the river. Justinia ordered the carpet to fly more slowly, and I probed magicaly as we flew, trying without success to pick up some indication that the children had come this way.

The direction we were folowing took us slowly and obliquely toward Yurt. After several miles the road emerged from the trees and ran a short distance in the open, among meadows where cows grazed unconcernedly. Justinia set the carpet down, and Paul and I leaped off.

The road was hard-surfaced, but the margins were damp from the proximity of the water meadows. “Lots of feet,” said Paul, “an enormous number of feet just today. And look. Most of them are very smal.”

“Then you were right, sire,” I said, springing back onto the carpet, suddenly feeling enormously more hopeful. “We may stil catch them by nightfal.” The carpet moved faster now. If Cyrus kept to the road, we should be able to hear the children even if we did not see them, as long as we stayed close over the treetops. It was a good thing we had the carpet, I thought, or my own flying powers would have been exhausted hours ago.

Theodora stil sat disconsolately, but Paul only stared eagerly ahead. Gwennie, who had taken Theodora’s hand reassuringly, looked up at me. “Is there any chance Antonia has turned Cyrus into a frog?”

“What?!”

“When she stayed in my chambers, she boasted she knew how to do transformations. Does she?”

I looked inquiringly at Theodora but she shook her head. “Not that I know of,” I said. “It would certainly make things easier if she did.” But even as I spoke I thought that if Cyrus knew she was my daughter, he might be especialy careful around her and have counter-spels al arranged. I kept probing for his mind, but he must have his counter-spels al ready for me as wel.

Justinia suddenly shivered. “I stil am not accustomed to what ye of the West cal summer weather. It is scarce this cold in Xantium in winter!” She was right. Although I hadn’t been noticing, after being hot al day the air had rapidly grown cooler. Ahead of us, dark storm clouds loomed, trailing curtains of rain. “It’s going to be dark even sooner than we thought,” said Paul concernedly.

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” I replied grimly and started on weather spels. Did this mean, then, that Vlad had finaly arrived? And if so, had Cyrus taken the children of Caelrhon straight to him?

The clouds began at once to lift, but in a moment they roled together again, and lightning flashed directly in front of us.

“There’s a mind behind this weather,” I said through my teeth, “and he’s very close. Theodora, do you know any weather spels?” She shook her head, stil not speaking. But Gwennie asked her with interest, “Do you know magic too? I hadn’t realized that. Are there women wizards, then? Or are you a witch?” Al of Theodora’s and my secrets were now on display. It hardly seemed to matter.

I redoubled my spels, trying to force the storm clouds apart. But someone enormously powerful was trying just as hard to keep them together. This had better not be Vlad, I thought with the grim conviction that it was. I had overcome his weather spels twice, but the first time, in the eastern kingdoms, he had been badly wounded, and the other time, just before I met his wolf, he had stil been a great many miles away.

The others huddled together in the middle of the carpet as tie temperature continued to drop. The king had his arms and wide cloak around both Gwennie and Justinia, though looking only at the latter, a faint smile at the corners of his mouth.

Cold rain started faling, first a few drops, then a downpour. Rivulets of water ran down our hair and clothes and across the carpet to drip off the edge. “This was my finest silk dress,” announced Justinia,

“but now it is ruined.” We flew on, slowly now, through heavy darkness as thunder rumbled around us. I wondered uneasily what a direct lightning strike would do to a flying carpet.

As near as I could tel through cloud and rain, we were approaching the headwaters of the river that flowed through the city of Caelrhon. The road veered away as the ground rose abruptly into rocky cliffs.

Justinia, huddled in on herself and shivering in spite of Paul’s arm, muttered that I might as wel fly the carpet myself. We circled once over tlie tops of the cliffs, tben I directed the carpet to folow the road out across the plateau.

Theodora suddenly stirred. “Daimbert!” she cried excitedly. “I think I’ve found her! I’ve found Antonia! She’s alive!” Paul and I let out identical triumphant whoops. I turned the carpet at once to head back toward the cliffs, where she said she had sensed our daughter’s mind.