In the moment the Duke finally let go completely, Prince Maggers leaned through an embrasure and grabbed Morven. She reached up to embrace him and for a moment it seemed the prince might be able to pull her up to safety.
Until Rikard pushed Maggers out.
Prince and princess fell together, locked in an embrace, their mouths meeting for one last kiss before they were dashed to death on the ground below.
Only they never made it to the ground. As they fell entwined, there was a flash of light. Suddenly two magpies spun out of their fall, spread their wings, and flew towards the forest, caroling their joy.
“True love,” said Ardent. “Never would have thought it of Morven.”
Anya watched the magpies go. She couldn’t believe it either. But it must have been so, for Maggers to be transformed back to his natural form, and their love so strong that Morven also became a bird.
“Now you’ll all just have to die instead!”
The thin, petulant scream from the tower drew Anya’s attention back to Rikard. He had climbed to the very spire of the tower and now stood balanced on the weather vane, his face white in the moonlight and his pale, scrawny arms extended up out of his robe, so he looked rather like a disembodied head and hands from a black velvet puppet show.
An arrow arced towards him, but suddenly flew off course as it got close. Another followed, only to circle back and narrowly miss the robber who’d shot it.
“Fools! No weapons can harm me!” screamed Rikard. “And now you will pay for your discourtesy to the great, the powerful, the one and only Master Sorcerer Rikard the Omnipotent!”
He looked down at Anya on the wall, his eyes glowing red.
“You! Anya! Frogkisser! I will transform you into a slug! A large and juicy slug for the frogs in the moat to eat! You troublesome brat!”
He gabbled out several horrendously strong words of power and thrust one bony finger straight at Anya. She dodged, knowing it was useless. The type of spell Rikard was casting would invariably find a target.
But as a blinding green spark shot from the Duke’s finger towards her, an orange shape leaped up and interposed himself!
The spark hit Shrub and disappeared, not even scorching his hide.
Rikard looked at his finger, scowled, and clenched both fists.
“Stupid newt! You may resist transformation, but you cannot resist The Blood and Bone Exploder!” screamed Rikard. He pointed again and shouted words of power that left his mouth like screaming winds.
A brilliant red spark shot from his finger, straight at the newt!
“Shrub!” screamed Anya, crouching and covering her head against the inevitable explosion and the bits and pieces of newt that would be showered everywhere.
But there was no explosion.
“Impossible!” snarled Rikard. He waved his hands around above his head, summoning his sorcery, and once more shouted out a spell, the words of this one so powerful they rattled every window in the castle with thunderous noise.
A whirlwind of swirling sparks materialized above Shrub and began to spin down, accompanied by the sound of a thousand fingernails being drawn across a thousand slates. Anya could feel the intense heat from it even a dozen paces away.
Surely, it would incinerate Shrub as soon as the whirling sparks got close enough.
But Shrub actually jumped up at the tornado with his mouth open. And then the tornado wasn’t there, as if Shrub had somehow eaten it.
“No! No! No!” screeched Rikard. He started hurling spells directly at the newt. Spells of rending and mangling and spells of discorporation and transformation. Spells to stop a heart and freeze blood and turn people inside out and just generally kill them on the spot.
None of the spells had any effect. Anya glanced away for a moment as the Duke paused, his arms hanging down and head bowed, his sorcery depleted.
The battle below was effectively over. The forces of good were rounding up the surrendering, totally demoralized weaselfolk, assassins, and bandits. The trolls were all broken into their component rocks, the dwarves collecting the pieces in sacks to be returned to the troll homeland where they might or might not be put back together. Only criminal trolls ever left their mountains.
“This cannot be!” wailed Rikard. He drew himself together and raised his right hand, fingers clenched into a claw. “I will, I will, I will destroy you.”
“No you won’t!” called out Anya. “Just give up!”
“Never!” shrieked Rikard. “It seems you are proof against my spells. But not if I destroy myself and all with me!”
He cackled then, a fatal error, for it took several precious seconds when he could have been casting his ultimate spell. Even as he began to form the first terrible word of power there was a “Kee!” above him.
The call of a hunting owl.
Rikard looked up as Gotfried, fully owl, plummeted into his face and stuck his claws through the sorcerer’s pale cheeks. The shock of the owl’s impact threw the Duke backwards, one of his slippered feet coming off the crossbar of the weather vane. He teetered there for a moment and then, with a despairing cry largely muffled by feathers, he fell.
Owl and sorcerer, locked together, bounced off the battlements of the tower and plummeted all the way to the ground.
“Gotfried!”
Anya raced to the steps and rushed down, Ardent at her heels. All around the castle there was a calm, like the sudden stillness that follows a violent storm. Then people began to converge upon the spot where sorcerer and owl had fallen. Bert ran down from the gatehouse, taking four steps at a time, bow in hand, with Dehlia flying above. The dwarves laid their sacks of troll bits aside and moved together, once again in a wedge. Martha, who had been helping Princess Saramin bring the hospital cart in, left her and came running, looking for Shrub, with Hedric close behind her.
Even Sir Malorak paused in giving a constant stream of orders, clapped her daughter on the back, and declaimed, “Take charge of the perimeter,” and strode through the surrendered weaselfolk, who moved aside like water parting before the prow of some great ship.
The tumbled body of Rikard was sprawled across the cobbles. He was on his back, and the owl was still stuck on his face.
“Gotfried!”
The sorcerer’s body twitched. Anya, who had just leaned over to try to see if Gotfried was alive, jumped back. Rikard got to his knees, peeled the now limp body of the owl from his face, and threw it aside.
“I am not so easily defeated,” he hissed. Though there were holes in his cheeks from the owl’s talons, no blood was coming out. His eyes pulsed red, and when he bared his teeth, his incisors were as long as knives.
He was a terrifying sight. But when he started to stand up, Anya put her foot behind his ankle and pushed him hard in the chest.
Rikard fell back, his expression very similar to that seen on a newly stunned fish. Instantly, Ardent leaped onto his middle and pressed him flat with the dog’s full weight. Smoothie clamped her jaws around the wrist of his right arm, preventing him from making any spell-casting gestures.
Finally, Shrub waddled over and draped himself over the sorcerer’s mouth so he couldn’t speak.
Worn out by all the spells he had cast, and shaken by the fall from the tower, Rikard only struggled once or twice, and then lay still. But his eyes blazed like dangerous coals, focused on Anya, who ignored him.
Everyone gathered in a ring around the trapped sorcerer, leaving Anya and her friends in the center with Duke Rikard. Robbers bearing torches rushed to light the scene, and Cook came with the huge kitchen lantern.
Anya picked up the small form of Gotfried. His head hung limp, and when she held her ear close, she could hear no heartbeat.
“Broken neck,” said a cat by her feet, who like everyone else had come to be certain Rikard was defeated. His sooty paws were bloodied, for the cats had fought the enemy too. Anya thought it was Robinson again, but she couldn’t be sure.
“Quick and painless,” added the cat.
“Very brave.”
“He always wanted to be brave,” said Anya. She wiped away the tears that had been falling unnoticed down her cheeks. “But how did he even get here?”
“I brought him,” said Merlin, stepping out of the circle around the fallen. “We came by carpet. It seemed to me he had something important to do.”
“He did,” said Anya sadly. “But I thought Good Wizards couldn’t interfere?”
“Ah, but I’m retired,” said Merlin. “Not wearing the beard, no longer Snow White. Not a Good Wizard at all. Just a concerned citizen, seeing to a few loose ends. What are you going to do with the Duke? Hard to kill him, but something could probably be worked out.”
“No,” said Anya. “We fought under the banner of the All-Encompassing Bill of Rights and Wrongs. He will get a fair trial.”
“Well said,” Dehlia and Bert replied together. “Very well said.”
“I mean, I think he should be tried,” Anya added. “But I suppose I’ll have to go and get Morven back, and when she’s queen she’ll decide.”
“Morven’s not coming back, except to visit, or perhaps later to show off her brood,” said Tanitha, slowly puffing up to Anya’s side. “Why would she? She has found true love, a permanently beautiful outfit, and Maggers will sing to her always and bring her all manner of shiny jewelry, even if most of it is tinsel or broken glass. Morven will not be queen of Trallonia. Which leads us to the question: Who will be?”
Anya sat down, cradling the dead owl librarian in her lap.
“I never wanted to be queen,” she said. “I think I want to be a wizard now. You can’t make me be the queen.”
“Who says we want to?” asked Tanitha. “Maybe someone else would be better.”
Anya stared at her, shocked. The idea that someone else could be queen of Trallonia was both startling and, she was surprised to discover, rather disturbing. Perhaps she was not being entirely honest with herself about not wanting to rule the kingdom …
“What do you mean you might get someone else?” Anya asked. She was unable to keep a note of indignation out of her voice. “I mean, if Morven’s out of the running, I’m next, aren’t I?”
“That depends,” said Tanitha. “Ardent! What is the result of your Quest?”
Ardent looked at Anya a little sheepishly.
“Success,” he barked. “I found a princess suitable in all respects to be queen of Trallonia!”
“What?” gasped Anya. “Who? Where?”
“You, silly!” said Ardent. He started to get up to give her a lick, before remembering he was helping to subdue Duke Rikard.
“Me?”
“You did not know it,” explained Tanitha. “But it is the royal dogs who decide who will rule Trallonia. We look first to the line of King Norbert, but should no one prove suitable, we may choose elsewhere. Morven clearly wouldn’t do, even before she became a magpie, and with you there were some doubts. Your interest in sorcery was worrisome, and some feared you might end up like Duke Rikard. But if Ardent has found you suitable, then you will suffice. We’ll have the coronation tomorrow.”
“Maybe the day after,” said Anya, accepting that she did want to be queen after all, though some small niggling thoughts were lurking in her mind about the possibility of doing other things as well. “We have to have the trial first.”
She looked down at Rikard. He twitched, wriggled, and bent his baleful stare upon her. But Shrub dug in with his claws, pressing his tough and probably poisonous belly farther into Rikard’s mouth, so there was no chance he could speak a spell.
That reminded Anya. Shrub’s curious silence and surprising anti-sorcery properties needed to be resolved.
“I think I know why I couldn’t transform you back,” said Anya sternly to the newt. “And why the Duke’s spells failed. You’ve got it, haven’t you?”
“Got what?” asked Ardent.
The newt nodded, still not speaking.
“Time you handed it over, boy,” said Merlin.
Shrub gave the retired wizard a what-business-is-it-of-yours look.
“I made it in the first place,” said Merlin.
Anya looked at the ex-wizard. “You did? The Good Wizard said it was her predecessor’s predecessor’s predecessor.”
“I’ve retired before,” said Merlin. “And then came back. So that was me. Some of us take it in turns to be the Good Wizard.”
He looked sternly at the newt.
“So come on. Cough up!”
Shrub tapped his forefoot against Rikard’s head a couple of times.
“Oh yes, he needs to be silenced,” said Anya.
Bert came forward and cut a strip off the sorcerer’s robe. When the newt moved off, she quickly gagged the Duke with it.
Everyone watched in fascination and Cook raised her lantern high as Shrub waddled a few steps away, opened his mouth wide, and slowly regurgitated a cube of white stone the size of Anya’s fist. It was covered in newt saliva, but even so the thousands of tiny silver letters etched in every surface could easily be seen. It also had a hole bored through its middle, for a leather strap to be put through, so it could be worn as an unruly, oversize medallion.
“So that’s what it looks like!” Anya’s eyes were goggling out in amazement, almost as much as the newt’s did normally.
“Yep,” said Shrub unhappily. “The Only Stone.”
There was a collective gasp from everyone as he said the name.
“You told me to forget about it … but I saw it planted back in the path under that gloating chair again, and I couldn’t help meself, but I was going to give it to Bert like I always planned, honest I was.”
“I’m sure you were,” said Anya. “Come here.”
Shrub tentatively approached. Anya took out the small pot of lip balm and applied some to her lips, then very carefully kissed the newt on the driest patch of hide she could see.
There was a flash of greenish light and the newt exploded. In his place was a red-haired, sharp-featured boy who was rather undersized if he really was ten. He grinned and flexed his lock-picking fingers, the grin immediately displaced as Martha emerged from the watching crowd and took him by the ear.
“Stealing again when you’ve been told not to!” scolded the witch. “You’re going to write on your slate a hundred times ‘I must only steal what I’m supposed to steal’!”
“Martha, please don’t punish him,” said Anya. “He’s done something very important. We need the Only Stone to protect us against the other four sorcerers.”
She looked up. The silver moon almost sped across the sky, the blue moon high above. It was probably only two or three hours until dawn, when the four sorcerers would arrive, and undoubtedly attack.
Merlin gingerly picked up the Only Stone and wiped it on Rikard’s robe, which was coming in handy for all kinds of things. The sorcerer cringed away from the Stone—as much as he was able to with Ardent sitting on him—and made small whimpering noises.
“Oh, I doubt they’ll turn up now,” said Merlin. “Rikard has used up almost all his sorcery, you see. Including what was needed to keep the bone ship flying.”
“So it will just fall out of the sky?”
“Perhaps,” said Merlin. “More likely the magic is fading, feathers falling, bones coming unstuck. The sorcerers aboard will survive in any case. Like Rikard they surround themselves with many spells of protection. So I doubt they’ll attack tomorrow. The members of the League of Right-Minded Sorcerers do not like taking real risks, and they will fear—quite rightly—that whatever or whoever defeated Rikard could do the same to them. That is not to say that they won’t attack later, if they can fix the odds more in their favor.”
“What will you do with the Stone, then?” asked Anya.
“That is for others to decide,” said Merlin. “You among them. I am retired, after all.”
He took a slim gold chain out of an inside pocket of his fur-lined robe and threaded it through the hole in the Stone. Then he fastened the cha
in around Anya’s neck. The Stone sat on her breastbone and, despite its size, didn’t feel as heavy as she’d thought it would.
“And this has all the old laws written on it?” asked Anya, turning the stone and peering at the tiny silver letters. “But they’re too small to read … ”
“You need a special prism and the sun,” said Merlin. “You hold the Stone and the prism properly between the light and a whitewashed wall, and a phantasm of the writing will appear, writ large. There were quite a number of prisms about in the old days. Every warden had one. I expect you’ll be able to find one in due course.”
“Let’s get this foul sorcerer tied up properly,” said Sir Malorak. “And there’s still a lot of cleaning up to be done. With your permission, Frogkisser?”
“Yes,” said Anya. “Please do.”
She looked down at Gotfried’s quiet body.
“Were there … have many of our people been killed?” she asked quietly.
“A dozen at least,” Sir Malorak reported solemnly. “And another score badly wounded. But we are fortunate that Princess Saramin is a true healer, and Prince Denholm has proved surprisingly useful as a nurse. It could have been many more, Anya. It would have been many, many more, save for your owl there. He will be remembered.”
“Yes,” said Anya. She slowly stood up. “I’ll put him in the library, in his secret place that everyone knew. We can bury him with the others in the morning.”
“I will take him,” said Merlin. “We talked about his library, and I would like to see it.”
He took Gotfried the owl from Anya’s unresisting hands. She stood looking blankly across the courtyard at everyone working to clear up the horrible mess of battle, fortunately dim in the flickering torchlight.
“Come,” said Tanitha. “Come to the Great Hall, and we will lie down with the puppies, and I will tell you a story.”
“One about the Dog with the Wonderful Nose?” asked Anya. She tried to smile, but found herself crying instead. “But those are for puppies and children.”
“You can never be too old for stories about the Dog with the Wonderful Nose,” said Tanitha. She and Ardent closed up to Anya’s legs and nudged her towards the hall. The princess let her hands rest lightly on their backs, taking comfort from the warm dogskin.