PART SEVEN - LADY MARIA

I

At supper that night, cooked again by the cook and served by the serving maids, the duchess stood up between courses and came to lean over the back of my chair. I was sitting next to the Lady Maria, eating glumly and scarcely tasting what I was eating.

"Could you come to my chambers after dinner for a glass of brandy?" she said in a low voice.

Maria, who overheard, pursed her lips and shot the duchess's back a sharp look from narrowed eyes. This seemed to be the first time that I had made any woman in Yurt jealous on my behalf, and it was not the woman I would have selected for jealousy.

"I'd be glad to come, my lady," I said, "but your brandy is perhaps a little strong for a wizard. Could I join you in a glass of wine instead?"

"Of course," she said and returned to her seat. I just hoped she was not going to start teasing me again. I wasn't sure I could manage to be polite if she did.

But as she poured me some wine and herself an inch of brandy, she showed no sign of making provocative suggestions. "There's something wrong, Wizard," she said, hooking her leg over the arm of the chair. "Even I know that dragons don't normally leave the northern land of magic to come attack one of the smallest of the western kingdoms. What's happening?"

"I wish I knew what was happening," I said ruefully. "You're probably glad I didn't agree to become ducal wizard, since I didn't even know what to do with a dragon. Does everybody here realize something's wrong?"

"I think the rest have been too busy thinking about the Christmas festivities," she said, "but that's part of the reason I felt I had to get everyone out of the royal castle of Yurt and bring them here. And it's clear to me, watching you, that you're deeply worried."

I looked at her face, serious and very attractive, even if after the dragonfire she had had to cut her hair as short as a boy's, and even if it was not the queen's face. I decided to confide in her. "I'm worried because the dragon was summoned. And the person who summoned it is involved in black magic."

"Black magic? You mean they're doing evil spells?"

"I mean they're working with a demon."

"A demon? You mean there's a demon in Yurt?" She looked at me incredulously and went to pour herself more brandy.

"The old wizard told me, but I'd already guessed. There's a demon in the castle, one who roamed the world freely for three years. The old wizard caught it and imprisoned it, but it's broken free, and now it's stronger than ever."

"How do you imprison a demon?"

"It's hard to do," I said slowly, feeling as pinned down by her rapid questions as I would have been by a boar spear. Everything she said brought home to me again what the old wizard had told me, that this was my kingdom now and my demon. "In this case, the old wizard held it down with magic spells while Dominic drew a pentagram around it."

"That may explain a lot," said the duchess. "I wouldn't trust Dominic to draw a good pentagram."

"Normally, neither would I," I said, trying to smile. "But I know my predecessor would have checked it over thoroughly."

"Pentagrams have to be drawn in chalk, don't they?" she said, putting down her glass. "I remember asking my father's old wizard about demons years and years ago, while I was still young enough to think they sounded exciting and mysterious."

"That's right."

"And chalk can dry up, blow away, wash away in the damp, be rubbed out by the bold foot of a demon who has already been free in the world for three years."

"It shouldn't be that simple." I looked down at my glass, realized I had not been drinking my wine, and took a sip. It seemed to have no flavor. "Even a partially worn-out pentagram should still keep a demon from moving--and it can't rub out the chalk itself."

"But could a demon who'd gathered strength from three years in the world still cast a magic spell if there was any flaw in the pentagram? Would it be able to call the person who had summoned it originally and ask him or her to free it?"

She was posing questions as though this were the oral exam at the end of the demonology course--and I hadn't known the answers then, either.

"Who did summon it, Wizard?"

Now she was sitting with her boots planted solidly on the floor, gripping the arms of her chair, ready to spring into action. But there was no one against whom I could tell her to spring. "I don't know, my lady. I wish to the saints that I did."

"But you'll have to imprison it again."

I didn't even try to smile. "Hard as it may be to capture a demon that has been happily loose in the world for three years, it will be a thousand times harder to catch one who has already once escaped from a pentagram."

"Does this have anything to do with the message you got by the pigeons this afternoon? You looked terribly eager to get it, and then very disappointed."

"It was a theory I'd had, which might have accounted for a lot. I had suspected that the last young wizard to serve an apprenticeship under the old wizard, over eighty years ago, might have returned to Yurt to practice black magic. But from the letter I just got, he's been wizard in a count's castle for eighty-two years, a hundred and fifty miles away, and can have no relationship with what's happening in Yurt."

"What evil is happening in Yurt, aside from the dragon?"

"The king was very ill and almost died before the chaplain miraculously healed him."

She nodded. "I hadn't seen Haimeric for over a year, before all of you came this fall, but he looked better then than I'd seen him in ages. One of Yurt's servants told my lady's maid that a miracle had cured him, but I wasn't sure if I should credit that."

"There can be no doubt that the chaplain saved his life."

"But what else has been happening in Yurt, besides the king's illness and the dragon? As though that weren't enough!"

"Well," I said slowly, "we saw a mysterious stranger in the castle, right after we got back from here last month. He had apparently put the whole castle staff to sleep before we came, and the next day he kept slipping around the castle, appearing and disappearing, knocking me backwards with evil whenever I tried to touch him with magic. I don't think he did any damage, but he disrupted the castle and terrified me."

"And has this 'stranger' been seen again?"

"He disappeared that afternoon, when the chaplain returned from a trip to the village. I think he's afraid of the chaplain, but he's probably enjoying the empty castle now. I think he lives in the cellars. Since he's already summoned a dragon, I don't want to think what he'll decide to do next."

The duchess picked up her empty glass as though to refill it, then set it down again, still empty. Watching her, I thought that she did not want another drink so much as an opportunity to act, and listening to me talk about the stranger provided no good opportunities for her to begin her attack.

"So," she said, "the problem is primarily that you have a demon living in the cellars, and he may be afraid of the chaplain. That means--"

"But, my lady, just because I think the stranger is afraid of the chaplain doesn't mean the demon is."

"Oh," she said with a quizzical look. "I'd assumed the 'stranger' was just a physical manifestation of the demon."

I had not thought of this and was furious at myself for not doing so. If I had actually read the Diplomatica Diabolica more carefully, it might well have told me that demons did not need to keep the small size, the red skin, and the horns of the one demon I had ever seen, the one in the pentagram in the school.

"It may be," I said thoughtfully, my mind trying to race through the implications of this to make up for its previous slowness. "It would certainly explain a lot. I had been thinking there were actually two people practicing black magic in the castle, the stranger and someone else, and it would be much simpler if there were only one person."

"But who is that person? Why do you think it's someone in the castle?"

She wasn't going to let me get away from that question, the one I could not answer. Even though I was confiding in her, I didn't want to mention the coincidence that the old wizard had first discovered the demon not long after the queen arrived in Yurt. "Demons don't normally appear by themselves," I said, "at least not in this part of the world. They have to be called."

"So you have to find out who called it and find a way to imprison it, even with its new strength?"

She had summarized my problem very nicely. I was thinking rapidly. If the stranger was, as the duchess suggested, the physical manifestation of the demon, then I should be able to find him in the cellars, and I should be able to negotiate with him--I had, after all, already spoken to him once, even if he had not answered.

"But how can you imprison it? How can I help you?"

"You've helped by getting everyone out of the castle," I said, smiling and answering the last half of her question first. "I'll have to check my books, but I don't think there's any way I can imprison it again. Instead I'll have to treat with it, negotiate with it, persuade it to return to hell."

"But isn't treating with a demon dangerous? Couldn't you endanger yourself?"

She asked as though this wasn't something I had already thought about, many, many times.

"If you negotiate, what will it demand?"

It crossed my mind that the duchess, with her rapid-fire questions, might be able to pin the demon down on a technicality and persuade it to leave empty-handed. But this was only an idle hope. "Their chief currency is human souls. When I thought that the old wizard's last apprentice might have become a renegade, I'd even hoped I could persuade the demon to take the soul it had already been given and be content to leave with that. But now I don't know what I will do."

She leaned her chin on her fist, faced I assumed, for one of the few times in her life, with a problem which her rapid mind and forceful nature could not readily solve. "Should you get some help from that school in the City?"

"No, I really can't. My old instructor visited me this fall to check on how I was doing and to remind me that, once we leave the school, we have to solve our own problems. My predecessor at Yurt told me it was my problem now, and he was right."

"How about the chaplain, if the demon is afraid of him?"

"That's part of the reason I couldn't ask for his help. We might be able to chase the demon around the castle forever, but at some point someone has to talk to it, someone trained in wizardry." I was amazed to hear the calm tone of my voice, as though I actually believed I was going to do it. "I don't think the demon is afraid of the chaplain personally, anyway, but only of the aura of the saints. If the chaplain was able to put off that aura long enough that the demon was willing to approach him, he would be destroyed--he doesn't know magic, and he wouldn't know the words to say."

"Are you sure, in that case, that another wizard couldn't help you?"

"When the chaplain saved the king's life, he didn't ask for help from the bishop. When I go against the demon, I have to be able to do it alone." I lowered my wineglass, which I had finally emptied, and stood up. "Thank you, my lady. I think, from talking to you, that my mind is clearer." Not that it could have been any more confused than it already was!

She rose as well. I put my hands on her shoulders, bent down, and kissed her gravely on the cheek.

As I went down the broad staircase from her chambers to the great hall, I noticed that almost everyone else had gone to bed. But Dominic and the young count were sitting in front of the fire, talking intently. As they heard my step, they looked up hurriedly, even guiltily.

But I had too much on my mind to worry about them. All I had to do, before the twelve days of Christmas ended and everyone decided it was time to go home and start repairs on the castle, was to read the Diplomatica Diabolica properly at last, learn to deal with a demon as I had boasted to the chaplain when I first came to Yurt that I had been trained to do, find out somehow who had summoned the demon in the first place, and discover if that summons had involved asking the demon for the special advantages in this world which will destroy one's soul in the next.

II

The sunrise brought a clear and cold day, perfect, several of the knights assured me, for a boar hunt. The morning also brought the departure of the old count and his wife.

"At our age, all this excitement and upheaval become a little wearying," the countess explained to the duchess as they pulled on their gloves in the great hall.

"But we're still willing to have everyone come after New Year's, if you want!" the count assured the king. "Just send us a message so we'll expect you."

No one in fact believed this, and it was not meant to be believed. I was fairly confident that the duchess would be able to keep the party here for another week, through Epiphany, but at that point the king and queen would insist on returning home. Considering that I had been wondering since summer who had been practicing magic with evil intent, a week did not seem very long to discover who had summoned the demon and how to send it back again.

The old count's departure caused some shuffling in rooms. The Lady Maria, as royal aunt, took the chamber the count and countess had shared for herself, while some of the ladies who had been squeezed in together took up the space that she vacated. The ladies insisted that they had to be along to see the boar captured, so the hunt did not actually leave until mid-morning.

"Don't expect pork for supper even if you do catch it," the cook said darkly. "Game's got to be hung at least a few days, as I hope you know, or it will be too chewy to eat."

"We'll have it for New Year's, then," said the young count.

I rode out with the hunt because almost everyone healthy enough to ride was going, and I had some vague hope that someone might reveal his or her evil nature in the excitement of the chase. The duchess was wearing a disreputable man's cloak, already stained with the blood of scores of hunts. The queen, as if in response, mounted her stallion wearing an extremely elegant scarlet riding habit that I knew she had ordered packed in from the City.

We were joined by several men from the village, both mounted and on foot. The duchess's hounds were loosed and raced off across the stubble and into the woods, sniffing intently. I wondered absently if it would be possible to breed a hound who would have a nose to sniff out black magic.

For half an hour almost nothing happened. Then I discovered I was riding next to the young count, who was wearing a beautifully-tailored riding jacket and whose very horse seemed to be looking at mine with scorn.

But he spoke without scorn. "Look, Wizard, we've been talking, and it's clear you need some help."

My first thought was that the duchess had betrayed me. "What kind of help?" I said as casually as I could. I certainly did not want the young count trying to meddle with the demon.

"Prince Dominic told me your problem," he continued. At least, I thought, I could retract my bitter thoughts about the duchess. "He said there's a renegade wizard back in the royal castle."

I had, I remembered, told the knights of Yurt that the stranger was some type of wizard, but I had hardly expected Dominic to start telling the young count about it.

"He told me you'd been having some trouble with it, and we guessed that it might even have summoned the dragon."

I didn't like the way his guesses were getting closer and closer to the mark, and I especially didn't like the slightly patronizing air in which he said it, an air calculated to stop far short of the insult that might bring on another transformation but present nonetheless. I tried to adopt an air of mysterious wisdom and nodded in silence.

"Well, do you want my help, or don't you?" he said. My silence was beginning to irritate him.

"Wizards can only be combatted by other wizards. Surely Prince Dominic understands the powers of magic even if you don't."

"Well, I hope you don't mind my saying this," in a tone that implied that he certainly hoped I did mind, "but Prince Dominic suggested that you were still a fairly inexperienced wizard, which was why you hadn't been able to make any progress against this other wizard. So my plan was to go to Yurt and catch him."

"Go to Yurt and catch him?" I repeated idiotically.

"Of course," he said, clearly thinking Dominic was right about me. "It was my idea. Even a wizard won't be able to stand up against an army of knights!"

"You'd be surprised at what a wizard can do. Did Dominic tell you that he and the other knights already spent most of one day chasing that 'wizard' without being able to catch him?"

He dismissed this with a wave of his elegant hand. "This time, I'll be leading. There's no need to thank me; as the king's loyal vassal, I'm always eager to assist." He kicked his horse and rode away, toward the baying of the hounds, before I could answer.

Last month, I thought, the demon had only showed itself to us because it wanted to taunt me. If a body of knights suddenly tried to roust it by force from the cellars, it would be furious, furious enough that I would never be able to negotiate with it, even assuming I knew what to say. And a noncooperative demon was going to be the least of my problems. If the count led a band of knights toward Yurt tomorrow morning, I was quite sure they would all be dead by night.

In desperation, I sought out the duchess. She was having an argument with her master of hounds, which argument she was apparently enjoying hugely, but when she saw my face she told him, "Then blow whenever you like," and pulled her horse over next to mine. The master blew his horn to summon the hounds, put them on their leashes, and led them over the next hill while we sat our horses, talking.

The horses stamped and snorted clouds of white breath. "The count is planning to lead a body of knights to attack the demon," I said.

"Does he know it's a demon?"

"No, but I don't think he'd care. He has no respect for magic and probably has none for the supernatural either. What am I going to do?"

"Stop him, I presume," she said thoughtfully. "You know, you shouldn't really be surprised. There have scarcely been any wars in the western kingdoms since there started to be school-trained wizards in all the chief political courts. If you wizards want to stop all fighting, you certainly have my support; too many people without any sense end up leading the battles. But you've got to realize that the knights are starting to seem almost superfluous, even to themselves. They're trained as warriors, and the most war-like activity they normally have is escorting someone like me to the king's castle for Christmas. No wonder they're excited at finding someone to attack!"

I thought briefly that the same might be said about her. "The demon will destroy them."

"Of course," she said. "That's why you have to stop them. The king would miss his knights, and I'd miss mine, even if the young count isn't a favorite of any of us." She chuckled, but I was unable to join in.

I had thought I had a week to decide what to do. Now I had less than a day.

"They won't want to leave for Yurt until the boar hunt is over," said the duchess, echoing my thought but much calmer about it. "I wonder if we ever are going to flush this boar!"

As if in answer, there was a far away blast of horns, and a much closer barking. We had been riding at the edge of the woods, and now there was a tremendous crashing in the blackberry thickets at the trees' margin. A hundred yards from us, a dark shape suddenly burst out into the fields, at least twice as big as I had expected. I had also not been counting on the vicious tusks.

I pulled my horse up so sharply it reared, but the duchess kicked hers forward. "Head it off!" she yelled. "Try to corner it down in the streambed!" At the moment, the demon was much less interesting to her than the boar.

I couldn't expect her to help me, I thought. Turning to her was only a last-ditch effort to find someone else to share the weight of the problem, when it was mine all along. I turned my horse to follow the hunt, turning over for the thousandth time in my mind the list of the people in Yurt. I kept coming up with the same answer as I had all the other times, that I could not imagine any of them deliberately bringing evil into the kingdom and putting a curse on the king.

Although the duchess tried to corner the boar in the streambed, it broke through the other side, rushing up the bank with the force of a winter storm and killing two hounds in the process.

Normally I would have been very interested in the hunt. Now I followed it because I did not know what else to do. I noted without much interest that the boar's bristles were soon streaked with blood, and that its sheer strength made it able to break away several times when someone thought he had a spear in it.

The king and queen stayed out of the center of the action, for which I was glad; it would be no use, I thought, having had the king miraculously cured if he was then attacked by an enraged beast.

The Lady Maria also stayed in the background, her eyes excited, but more timid of the boar than she had been of the dragon.

"I can't remember the last time we had boar meat for dinner in Yurt," she told me. "I'm quite sure it was before you came, maybe even before the chaplain arrived. I do know I thought it very exotic the first time I tasted it--my brother's castle is too close to the City for such wild animals!"

Since I had absolutely no interest in boar meat, in exotic flavors, or her brother's castle, I grunted, doubtless very rudely.

She noticed my lack of interest and apparently decided to draw me out. "You were born in the City, weren't you? This country life must all seem foreign to you."

I was touched enough by her interest to manage a smile. "I always thought of myself as city boy until I came to Yurt, but I'm starting to think that I'm not one anymore."

"The queen herself isn't really a city girl now," said Maria agreeably.

"I at least grew up in the City," I said, "but I don't have any family there anymore."

"I knew you were an orphan," she said, turning wide blue eyes dramatically on me. "We orphans must keep together."

Even the hunt itself, the long spells of watchful inactivity, the sudden yelps and shouts, and the massive form of the boar shooting out of sight again, seemed appealing in comparison to listening to her chatter. "Let's try to catch up with the others," I said. "They're sure to corner it soon, and we want to be there when they do."

We trotted along a streambed overhung by leafless branches, passing several men on foot from the village who were leaning on massive spears and looking disgruntled.

"Is the boar up ahead?" Maria asked them.

They shrugged. "Could be anywhere, my lady. It's the devil's own boar, that one."

Although I knew this was only a figure of speech, I didn't like it and kicked my horse. "Come on," I said. "The others should be just over this hill."

And then, with a roar, the boar burst out directly in front of me. With riding skills I did not know I had, I pulled my horse aside, managed to stay in the saddle, and used my hands and weight to help the horse keep its feet on the slippery stones.

The Lady Maria was not so lucky. As my horse came down, hers reared up, and the boar shot under its hooves. She gave a despairing scream and scrabbled uselessly at the reins. Her sidesaddle perch gave her no chance to save herself. She flew twenty feet and crashed into the blackberry bushes.

The boar was gone. I was off my horse and beside her in a moment. My heart was pounding so hard it seemed its sound ought to summon the others.

She was lying absolutely still. Her face was dead white, except for the drops of startlingly red blood beginning to ooze from the scratches where the thorns had caught her on the way down. Her arms and legs were spread out as limply as a doll's.

Furiously I unbuttoned her jacket and felt for her heartbeat. Blue eyes flipped open. "Fresh," she said.

The Lady Maria insisted on riding back to the castle. Although her horse had fallen after it threw her, it had leaped up again immediately, and it did not seem to be favoring any of its legs. The villagers helped me calm the horse, readjust the saddle, and scoop her back up and into it.

"Are you sure you wouldn't want to wait for a litter, my lady?" I tried to urge her.

"No," she said obstinately. "My father always said that if you're thrown you should get right back up, and he was right."

Since she seemed to have no broken bones, it was hard to argue with her. But she showed no interest in rejoining the hunt, and I was able to lead her back toward the castle.

By the time we got there, she was ready to admit that maybe she was slightly bruised, even though she insisted that she did not need a doctor. The duchess's lady's maid went up to help her get ready for a nap, while I sat down in front of the fireplace in the empty great hall. For much of the afternoon I sat there, doing nothing more useful than keeping the fire burning.

Just before sunset, I heard the sounds of the returning hunting party. Even before I could hear the words, I could tell from the sound of their voices that it had been a success. With the boar dead, I feared, there would be nothing to prevent the young count from starting for the royal castle first thing in the morning.

The duchess came in, fresh blood stains on her cloak. "I heard the Lady Maria was thrown. Is she all right?"

"She says she is. She's been resting this afternoon."

"I'll go up to see her." I accompanied the duchess as she strode toward the stairs; I wanted to be sure myself. "You missed a great hunt, Wizard!"

The Lady Maria was awake, sitting up in bed and wearing what I was fairly sure was the frilly pink item I had seen her sewing last month. She blushed when I came in.

"This wizard worries too much," she told the duchess with a pretty laugh. "It was just the merest fall, as both you and I have had many times."

"I hear the boar almost smashed into you."

"I know," she said. "I've especially noticed these last few months, maybe you'll laugh at me but it's true, I just seem unluckier away from home. Nothing bad like this ever seems to happen to me in the castle of Yurt."

"Probably because there are very few wild boars in the castle," said the duchess.

But this went beyond joking. For a moment I was unable to move or even breathe. I had been incredibly foolish, but I thought at last I understood it all.

"Are you going to want to come to dinner," said the duchess, "or will you want a tray sent up?"

"Oh, I'll come to dinner, of course!" She glanced in my direction. "In a minute, when you're gone, I'll get dressed and come down. I certainly will want to hear all the details of the hunt. The stratagems, the beast's last stand, who finally thrust the spear home, the heroism of the villagers-- I'm sure it will all be terribly exciting."

"I have to wash and change myself," said the duchess gaily. I guessed that she might have thrust in the final spear herself, but at this point I scarcely cared. "Come on, Wizard."

As I carefully dressed in the red and black velvet suit that had been my best suit until a short period on Christmas morning, I realized that I was looking forward to dinner in the assumption it was the last meal I would ever eat on earth.

III

There were indeed tales of the hunt at dinner, which I scarcely heard. At the servants' table, two of the kitchen maids were giggling and one was almost in tears because the cook, faced with five hundred pounds of pork to deal with, had discovered that her own best butcher knives had not come from Yurt, and she was not at all sure that the duchess's would do.

The Lady Maria had come down with a slight limp and had a small bandage placed artfully on one cheek. She told the story of her fall several times, with embellishments, including the despair of "her knight," who was apparently me, when he had thought she might have been killed. When the fruitcake had been served, I whispered in her ear, "Could I come see you in your chambers, my lady?"

She laughed and even blushed, though after all this time I would have expected her to realize that my intentions were strictly honorable. As the dessert tray went around a second time, she and I slipped away. I helped nurse the fire in her room back to life, and we were soon cozily settled in soft chairs.

"I don't want you to go riding again," I told her.

She smiled. "You're a dear man, but you really do worry too much. Everyone who rides gets thrown sooner or later."

"But I think you're in special danger."

"You're thinking of what I told the duchess? Well, we'll be back in the royal castle soon, and then I'll be lucky again."

I was afraid I knew where her "luck" came from. Since I was also fairly sure she would not answer a straightforward question, I started telling her my best guesses, in the hope that she would confirm them. "You told me once, my lady, that you'd seen time run backwards. Was that when you had recently come to Yurt, and you and Prince Dominic tried to get the old wizard to teach you some magic?"

"How did you know?" she said with a laugh.

"Oh, I just guessed," I said cheerfully. "You know I told you time can't run backwards, normally, so it must have been pretty powerful magic, so I'd like to hear how it worked."

She looked at my face, to see if I was going to accuse her of anything or scold her, but she saw only an interested smile. I did not say that I had at last realized, long after I should have, that the key event that touched off the situation in Yurt four years ago was not the arrival of the queen so much as the arrival of the Lady Maria with her.

"Well, the old wizard told us to come up to his room in the tower," she said. "It was very exciting and mysterious, because normally he would never let anyone in his chambers. He wasn't like you that way at all."

I decided to let this pass. It was far too late for me to become exciting and mysterious.

"And then he said a spell, a really long spell--and I knew it must be important to get every word right, because he had it written out on a piece of parchment that he looked at just before he said it."

The wizard might want to be sure such a critical spell was said correctly, I thought, but the Lady Maria, with her ear for the Hidden Language and her total ignorance of the dangers, would have needed no such prompting.

"And you'll never guess what appeared!"

"A demon."

"No, silly!" She slapped at me playfully with a cushion. "First everything grew very dark, and then a man appeared, but a very tiny man, maybe only six inches tall. And you'll never guess! His skin was bright red."

A demon, I thought, but said nothing.

"The old wizard had drawn a complicated star on the floor, and the little man appeared right in the middle of the star."

No wonder, I thought, that the old wizard had at first denied that the supernatural had ever been active in the castle. He would not have wanted to admit, even to me, that he had been showing off for Dominic and the Lady Maria. After all those years without an apprentice, and with nothing other than dessert illusions to occupy him. . . .

"And then the little man asked if we wanted anything! The old wizard said we wanted a demonstration of time running backwards."

"And did you get it?"

"Well, I thought his was a pretty silly demonstration, but he did it! We each drank a glass of water, and then, it was the strangest thing, the water was coming back up our throats and into our glasses, and then we had to drink it again. And even when we poured the water on the floor, the little man made it run back up into the glass!"

A demon, firmly within the pentagram, will, if asked correctly, perform a few very basic tricks. I personally thought even the trick with the glass of water might have been skirting the danger-line; at school they had sent the demon back as soon as it appeared, without asking anything at all. A demon may be willing to make a brief demonstration of its power for free, but very soon it will be demanding payment in human souls.

"And what happened next?"

"That was actually it. I'd been hoping that maybe I could ask it for something, and I was certainly planning to ask for something better than a trick with glasses! But the old wizard said some words, really quickly, and it was gone, and he rubbed out the star."

"And what happened next?"

"Nothing at all," she said complacently.

Since I knew this wasn't true, I took a teasing tone. "Well, I know something else happened. You decided to try the spell yourself, didn't you! You can't hide your secrets from wizards!"

Making jokes and coy statements was the last thing I felt like at the moment, but it worked. She laughed. "I should have known you'd guess it sooner or later. After all, you saw me repeat your spell with the telephones! By the way--did you ever get them working?"

"No," I said, refusing to let her distract me. "Go on about how you summoned the little man yourself."

She giggled. "Do I really have to tell you? Well, since you've already guessed most of it, maybe I do, though it's actually rather silly. I'd asked Dominic, of course, if he wanted to help me, but he seems to have turned against magic for some foolish reason, and he didn't want anything more to do with it."

Dominic, I thought, had had the good sense to be terrified of a demon. It was at last finally clear to me why the hoped-for match between Dominic and the Lady Maria had never come about. Aside from the differences in their personalities, he would never have allied himself with someone he feared might at any time foolishly summon a demon.

"So I had to do it myself. I made the star, just like the wizard had, and I repeated the spell."

"And the little man appeared," I said through frozen lips.

"And I told him I wanted to see time run backwards, but not just as a silly trick. That is, I--"

"You asked to become younger," I said, because she seemed to be having trouble saying it herself.

She nodded, grateful for my understanding. "And the man explained that I didn't really want time to run backwards, as that would just make everything exactly as it had been years ago, but that instead I wanted to get some extra youth."

"And he said he could do it."

"First, though, he said I had to rub out the star, so he could move about more easily. When I did it, he grew so that he was the size of a normal man, and his skin wasn't red anymore. He said he had to find the extra years for me."

"And he found them."

When the old wizard had discovered the demon, I thought, Dominic had offered to help him catch it. He had managed to keep secret the Lady Maria's responsibility for summoning it, but he had had more trouble with me, since I was too obtuse even to realize what was happening in Yurt. The old wizard had retired, convinced that the demon was locked safely away, and Dominic had no reason to think it had escaped, but he could tell that the king was continuing to grow weaker. He would have had to admit his own original involvement to tell me openly that there was a demon in the castle, but he certainly hoped I would be able to overcome its evil magic, prompted by his hints.

The Lady Maria looked at me with eyes that were suddenly brimming with tears. "He found some extra youth for me for a few years. But when I talked to him most recently, he said that it was too late for that--"

I had been a fool since the day I arrived at Yurt. It should have been obvious at once where the demon had gotten the extra years he had given the Lady Maria. He had taken them from the king.

When the saints had intervened and saved the king from death, her years had been reclaimed from her, and the demon couldn't get them back again. This was when she had decided to ask for something entirely different. This was when she had told the demon she wanted to see a dragon.

"You fibbed to me," I said, shaking my finger at her until she giggled. "You told me no one had been in your chambers that day, when actually you were requesting things from your magic man."

Did she realize that her "request" had nearly destroyed the castle? Since the dragon's presence had been extremely exciting, even romantic, and since, as it turned out, no one had been killed and the damage to the castle all seemed reparable, she was just delighted to have been able to see a real dragon.

"Maybe he couldn't make me younger anymore after he had been back in that star," she said thoughtfully.

"Was that just before I arrived?"

"It was, actually," she said, surprised. "The old wizard had left two days earlier, and the constable told us you were coming at the end of the week. It was a very strange experience. I hope you won't think I imagined it."

"Wizards are used to strange experiences," I said encouragingly.

"It was late at night, and I'd been in bed, so at first I thought it must be a dream, except that my bathrobe was all damp from the rain, so I knew it couldn't be a dream."

"Go on," I urged her when she seemed to be stopping.

"As I say, I was lying in bed. And then I heard his voice, almost inside my brain. He was calling me. You reminded me of it, that time you spoke inside my brain with the telephones. He told me to come stand at the base of the north tower, and so I put on my bathrobe and I did."

"But the door was locked," I provided.

"That's when the second strange thing happened," she said. "I started rising into the air. At first I was terribly frightened, but then I decided it was only a dream and that I should enjoy it. When I got up to the top, I was able to look in the window and see my man in there. He'd been shrunk back down, and he was caught in the star."

"So what did you do?"

"I kicked out the glass in the window--I'd put on my riding boots when I left my room, because of the rain."

So much, I thought, for the magic locks on the casement latches.

"And I went inside and talked to him. There was one little flow of rain water that had cut across the chalk lines, but he said he needed me to rub it all out so he could help me again. So I did, and then, maybe he put me to sleep, but the next thing I remember it was morning and I was back in my own bed. That's why I thought it was a dream at first."

"You've only had the one magic man here in the castle, haven't you?" I said as casually as I could.

"Well, yes." There was something in the way she said it that made me break out all over in a cold sweat.

"You didn't send for any others who might be able to find some extra years for you?"

"Well, I tried, early this fall," she said, looking at me accusingly. "At first when I freed him from the star everything seemed fine, but then it seemed he couldn't make me young anymore. You'd promised to teach me magic spells, so I'd hoped I wouldn't have to rely on that man--and, frankly, sometimes he made me feel a little, well, funny. But then you just gave me all that grammar. That's why I decided I would have to call on a different magic man."

"And did you?" I managed to croak, even though my tongue felt paralyzed. If there were two--or even more--demons in Yurt, we were all moving to the City and never going back.

"No," she said, with the tears of frustration at the edge of her eyes. "I tried, but it's been three years since I said the spell, and I could only get part way through it."

I said the best prayer of thanksgiving that I knew.

But there was something else, even more important, that she probably did not know and which I myself had only just admitted. Sweet, silly, pretty Lady Maria, sitting comfortably in her chair by the fire, wearing the white silk shawl I had given her for Christmas, had sold her soul to the devil.

It felt like the middle of the night, though I knew it was much earlier, as I staggered from the Lady Maria's chambers toward my own. If she had died in her fall this afternoon, if we all had died in the dragon's attack, she would have gone straight to hell. If the dragon had destroyed Yurt, probably some of the rest of us would have joined her in hell, including me for all I knew, but for her there could be no doubt.

In my room, with the fire blazing, I pulled out the Diplomatica Diabolica with nerveless fingers. As I read, the duchess's castle grew silent around me. The only sounds were the crackling of the fire and my own heartbeat, which grew louder and louder in my ears as night wore on. As the first morning light came in the window, I closed the book and tried to stretch the knots from my shoulders. I knew what I had to do and just hoped I knew how to do it.

IV

I swung the door of the chaplains' room open with a bang. The duchess's chaplain, whose room this actually was, had been on the point of opening it from the inside, and he jumped back, startled.

"Excuse me," I said, as calmly as I could. He went past me with a concerned look and hurried down the corridor.

The royal chaplain, Joachim, reached down to pick up his Bible, which he had dropped at my abrupt entry. The remains of the priests' breakfasts were on the table, and he had been reading after service.

"There's a demon in the cellars of Yurt," I said.

"Dear God," he said without any expression at all.

"I'm going back to negotiate with it, to persuade it to return to hell. But in return it's going to demand a human life. Now you and I have to decide who we'd be happiest to sacrifice. The young count? One of the ladies? Would anyone ever miss Dominic?"

He rose, shaking his head. "You really frightened me there for a minute. I think you'd joke if your immortal soul was in danger."

"I think it is."

At this point reaction set in, and I collapsed on his bed, trembling so hard from fear and exhaustion that I was nearly blind.

Joachim kicked the door shut and knelt beside me. "You mean it, don't you," he said quietly. "There really is a demon in the cellars of Yurt."

"And it's got the Lady Maria's soul." I heard his sharply indrawn breath and with difficulty opened one eye to look up into his own blazing black eyes. I told him the story in a few halting sentences.

"I think I'll be able to negotiate for her soul, because she never intended to sell it. She has in fact done so, in return for a few years of youth and a chance to see a dragon, but because her intention was never evil I have a bargaining loophole. But somebody will have to die."

Joachim rose purposefully. "Don't go away!" I called weakly. "Hold my hands."

He returned at once. Though it would have been far better to have the queen holding my hands, I was very glad for the human contact.

"So when will this person have to die?" he asked quietly.

"Right away. Immediately. As soon as I've completed the negotiations."

"It should take me no more than a few minutes to prepare to go."

I managed to struggle to a sitting position. "Not you! It's going to have to be me. You can pray for my soul, but the saints would never listen if I tried to pray for yours."

"But I can't let you do it."

"Please don't argue," I said, blinking and feeling ashamed of my fear when he was so calm. "If you give up your life, who will minister to the people of Yurt? Since you've taken responsibility for my soul, you have to be alive to pray for it."

He said nothing, which I hoped meant he agreed. "I read the whole Diplomatica Diabolica," I said, "and I think I know how to do all the negotiations. But just in case I can't, and the demon kills me but refuses to go back to hell, you'll have to be here to stop it. The demon's already afraid of you. Beg the old wizard for his help. He caught the demon once, even though it was much weaker then. Send a message to the wizards' school in the City. They might be willing to assist you, since with me dead you'd have no qualified wizard here trained in the modern methods."

"This all sounds as though it would be better to have a live wizard and a dead priest."

"Please, don't think I'm insulting your abilities. Call for the bishop instead of the Master of the wizards' school if you want. But my life will be the life it will want."

Neither of us said anything for several minutes. "It seems so silly, in a way," I said. "When I was young, back before I became a wizard, I always thought it would be romantic to die for the woman I loved. Now I'm going to have to die for the Lady Maria."

"Christ died for all of us, most of whom have much worse sins than folly and vanity."

"Yes, but I'm not Christ."

"I'd already noticed that." Maybe, I thought, my dying would at last give the chaplain a sense of humor.

"There's something I have to ask you. I must go soon, very soon, because the Lady Maria has insisted she's going to go riding again, and the young count is going to lead the knights back to Yurt, and all of them will be in horrible danger. But you have to tell me. I shall offer the demon a life for Maria's soul, not another soul. But when it kills me, will it take my soul as well?"

"I don't think so," said Joachim slowly, and much more hesitantly than I would have wished. "Usually, if a person disinterestedly gives his life to save another, his soul is saved. But in this particular case, I would have to ask the bishop. I could send him a message by the pigeons."

"There's not enough time. I'll just have to risk it."

We sat in silence for several minutes more. I kept hoping that if I waited I would either start feeling brave or think of an alternate plan. "It's probably too late for proper spiritual instruction now," I said with an attempt at a smile. "I just wish I wasn't so scared."

"Courage is doing what you have to do, no matter how frightened you are."

"Even I know that. But I still wish I wasn't so scared."

Outside the chaplains' window, we could hear voices and clattering as the castle began to go about the day's business. I waited for but did not yet hear the sound of a mounted party preparing to head out.

"I suspected you of evil once," I said. "Will you forgive me?"

"Yes, of course. I suspected you of evil more than once. Please forgive me as well."

I stood up at last. "I have to go now. I'll leave it to your judgment what to tell the others. Just please don't let the Lady Maria know I had to die because of her; it would upset her too much. But do try to warn her against future experiments with pentagrams. Let Zahlfast, he's the teacher at the wizards' school I told you about, let him hear the whole story, whatever happens. And tell the queen I love her."

"I'm going with you," said Joachim, suddenly and intensely.

"You can't. It's thirty miles, and it would take you most of the day on horseback. I can make it flying in half an hour."

"But I could--"

There was a sharp rap on the door, causing us both to jump. It swung open, and Gwen came in for the chaplains' breakfast tray.

"I'm so sorry," she said, "but with everything so different in this castle, I lost track. I should have gotten it an hour ago."

"It's all right," Joachim said gently. She hurried away, closing the door behind her.

The interruption made me realize that the precious moments were draining away. I tried taking deep breaths. "Goodbye," I said. "I have no right to imperil anyone except myself. Pray for me."

Joachim was about to say something else, but he did not have a chance. I leaped out the window and was gone, flying back home.

I dropped from a grey sky in front of the castle. A cold rain was starting to fall. After leaving the duchess's castle with burning determination half an hour earlier, I now felt reluctant to go inside. The cracked parapets where the dragon had writhed in death looked like a row of broken teeth.

I wandered toward the king's rose garden, arguing unsuccessfully with myself that I needed to go inside at once. The individual rose bushes were all mulched and carefully covered, but the lawn was dead and sodden. I donned a protective spell against the rain.

My eye caught a glimpse of something just beyond the garden. I went around to investigate and found a pile of white stones, rounded pieces of chalk, emerging from the last of the snow. The stones were positioned half under a shrub, where they would never be noticed in the summer.

I continued on around the castle. There were four more of the piles of white stones. This, then, was the giant pentagram the old wizard had erected around the castle. The demon had escaped from the tower room, but it had been unable to escape from the castle.

The thought passed wildly through my mind for the second time in twelve hours that perhaps I could leave the demon in the castle and find some reason to persuade the king and queen never to return home again, but to start a new life with their household somewhere else.

I shook my head hard to dismiss this thought. Besides the unlikelihood that I could persuade them of any such thing, I knew that the piles of stones could be disturbed some day, whether anyone was living here or not, releasing the demon from its temporary prison. And the Lady Maria's soul was in jeopardy no matter where she was. I shivered, set my jaw, and rose to fly over the castle walls.

I dropped into the courtyard and stood still for a moment, listening. There was no sound but the dripping of water. But the cobblestones in the courtyard seemed unnaturally warm, like the surface of a stove. Something whizzed silently by my face. I jumped back, throwing up my arms, and realized it was a bat. More bats wheeled around the castle towers. What were bats doing out in the middle of the day?

For several minutes I walked through the empty castle. Giant grey toads squatted in several of the rooms, and heavy flies buzzed against the windows. Small dark shapes that I recognized as rats scattered as I opened doors. The door to my own chambers was closed, but the magic lock was gone.

I opened the door and stepped inside. Nothing looked disturbed, although the supernatural influence was very strong. I had worried about a stranger reading my books of magic, but a demon, whose own power could cut right through the natural powers of magic, would have no need to do so.

It occurred to me that perhaps what I needed to do was to light a fire in my fireplace, sit down and get warm for an hour or two, and make sure I actually knew what I was going to say to the demon. Almost by force I dragged myself from the fireplace, where I was already reaching for the kindling.

I knew perfectly well what I was going to say to the demon. The negotiations were straightforward. If what the world's demonology experts had to say in the Diplomatica Diabolica was correct, at the end the demon would agree to release the Lady Maria's soul, would agree to return to hell, and would look around for the life it had been promised. And the life would be there.

I went back out into the courtyard, closing my door and putting on a magic lock. They would remember me in future years by the rooms that no one could enter.

I started walking toward the great hall, thinking vaguely that I might meet the demon there, but stopped myself. I knew perfectly well where I would find it.

But I wanted to do one final thing. I went to the little room by the main gate and worked the winch to lower the drawbridge. Even if the royal party did not return until the end of the twelve days of Christmas, someone from the village would see the bridge down and come in to investigate. The constable might be worried about the store rooms, in spite of the heavy locks on the doors, but I was more worried about my body. I hoped someone would find it before it was too badly nibbled by the rats.

The bridge went down with a clang that vibrated through the whole castle. I opened the main gate wide enough to admit a man and forced my feet to cross the courtyard.

Thin swirls of foul smoke were wafting up the cellar stairs. More bats flew up as I reached the top of the stairs and flew back and forth, blind and disoriented. I took a final breath of clean air and went slowly down.

The key I had taken from Dominic a month ago, when we had been chasing the stranger, turned with a rusty screech in the lock. I propped the door open and started down the long, black corridor.

Part Eight

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