"That's good," Kazul said. Then her head turned to look at the castle and the sphere of gold light that surrounded it. "I think." She glanced at Cimorene and sighed. "It was the Society of Wizards."
"Of course it was the Society of Wizards," Cimorene said shortly, and Killer backed away from her, ears twitching nervously. "But what, exactly, did they do?"
"Well, when I got here late last night, they had the castle surrounded," Kazul said. "They must have been using their staffs a lot, because there was a good thirty yards of dead forest around the castle already. I thought it would be better to head back to the Mountains of Morning for reinforcements."
"I should think so!" said Amory. "Even a dragon can't take on the whole Society of Wizards single-handed. 'Scuse me, Your Majesty."
"We attacked at dawn," Kazul continued. "About fifteen minutes after the right started, that bubble went up around the castle and no one could get in. A couple of wizards came out, but I'm afraid they, ah, got eaten in all the excitement, and no one thought to ask them any questions first. So we don't know what happened inside."
"Isn't there some way of finding out?" Cimorene turned to Telemain.
"Can't you adjust your magic mirror spell to get through that bubble, now that you know it's there? If I could talk to somebody inside-" "There isn't anybody inside, Your Majesty," said a new voice, and everyone turned to see Willin, the castle steward, standing by the base of a nearby oak. The normally immaculate elf looked awful: his gold lace collar was torn and blackened; his crisp white shirt was wrinkled, dusty, and smeared with ashes; his velvet coat was ripped in several places and was missing most of its buttons; his white silk hose were torn and dirty; and his left shoe had lost its gold heel.
"Willin!" said Cimorene. "Sit down-you look exhausted. What happened? How do you know there's no one in the castle?"
"I should say, no one other than His Majesty," Willin said. "When he realized that the Society of Wizards intended to attack the castle, he sent the staff away. Including me. I wouldn't have left, Your Majesty, only he insisted…"
"You mean Mendanbar was all alone in there when the wizards got here?"
"An unusual strategy, but quite possibly an extremely effective one," Telemain said thoughtfully. "I doubt that anyone but Mendanbar really knows all the passages in that castle, and with everyone else gone, he could use his magic full force, without worrying about hurting someone on his own side."
"Well, it doesn't seem to have worked very well, does it?" Cimorene snapped.
"Kazul, did you manage to catch Head Wizard Zemenar?" Morwen asked.
"If anyone knows what the Society of Wizards did, he does."
Kazul shifted in evident embarrassment. "I'm afraid I ate Zemenar myself. I caught up with him coming out of the Caves of Chance just a little while ago, and by then I was so angry…"
"It's a good thing you did," Amory put in. "That was what set the rest of them running. Before then, we were barely holding our own."
"I'm confused," Killer said. "And this talk about eating is making me hungry. Somebody explain it all so we can have lunch."
"You can't have lunch," Trouble said. "You're insubstantial."
"So somebody can fix me, and then we can have lunch," Killer said.
"Then let us take things in a proper order," said Telemain, for all the world as if he were talking about laying out a new spell. "Willin, you are the reasonable person to begin. What happened at the castle after we left?"
Willin glanced at Cimorene to make sure it was all right to let this unofficial person take charge. When she nodded, he began to speak. At first, the others interrupted him frequently with questions, but Telemain insisted that answers wait until the whole tale had been told.
Once they realized that he meant it, everyone except the cats stopped interrupting.
The first wizards, Willin said, had turned up almost as soon as Cimorene and her party had left the Enchanted Forest. Mendanbar had melted them with Telemain's spell, but they had damaged several sections of the Enchanted Forest before he caught up with them.
Without the sword, he could not repair the harm they'd done, and he had been very concerned. To help minimize the problem, he'd called in several tribes of elves and asked them to keep watch.
"The elves could melt some of the wizards with soapy water and lemon juice," Willin said, "and if they couldn't get close enough, or if there were too many wizards, they could let the King know right away.
Then he'd come and take care of the wizards before they did too much damage." the entire Society Of Wizards had appeared outside the castle.
Before anyone had realized what was happening, they had destroyed a wide patch of the forest, leaving the elves no way of getting near them with buckets of soapy water.
"That was when King Mendanbar sent us away," Willin finished sadly. "I tried to make him let me stay, I really did, but-" "I understand," Cimorene said. "You did your best."
"Did you see what happened outside the castle after you left?"
Telemain asked.
"Some of it. The wizards cleared a twenty-foot ring around the castle and then spent most of the day working some spell; I wasn't close enough to see what. Around the middle of the afternoon, the circle they'd cleared started to expand. Fortunately, it didn't grow very fast, and those of us who were watching had plenty of time to move back. Then about ten of them walked across the main bridge into the castle. That's all I can tell you, I'm afraid. It got harder to see what was going on because I kept having to move back to stay out of sight."
"Was Head Wizard Zemenar one of the group that went into the castle?"
Morwen asked.
Willin nodded.
Turning to Kazul, Telemain said, "So when you got here that night, Zemenar was inside the castle and the rest of the Society of Wizards were camped in the burned-out area just outside."
"Right," said Kazul. "I called in the rest of my people, and we attacked in the morning. Four or five wizards came out of the castle, the shield spell went up-" "Wait a minute," said Brandel. "Shield spell?"
"That glow around the castle," said Telemain. "The Society of Wizards invented it, and it's really a remarkable piece of work. Nobody can get in or out while it's up, not even a dragon-remember, Morwen?-and they're the only people who can take it down."
"Not quite," Morwen said. "Mendanbar's sword got rid of the last one we fell into."
"Mnmm, yes. Cimorene, how well can you use that sword?"
"I can't use it at all really, the way you mean," Cimorene replied.
"From what Mendanbar said, the sword has to… to agree to work for you somehow before you can use it for magic, and it'll only do that for the Kings of the Enchanted Forest and their direct descendants. I'm a member of the family, so it will let me hold it as a sort of courtesy, but I'm not a direct descendant of any of the Kings of the Enchanted Forest, so I can't use its magic."
"Blast. It's probably got a selectivity module in the central linkage generator, and if it's braided to the spell core…" Telemain's voice trailed off into muttering.
Morwen frowned. The last time they had encountered the Society of Wizards' shield spell, the wizards had been using it to hold Kazul prisoner.
And if she remembered correctly… She caught Trouble's eye and motioned to him. Tilting his head, Trouble considered for a moment.
Then he jumped down from Kazul's back and sauntered over.
"What is it?"
"Do you think you could get inside the shield spell around the castle?"
Morwen asked in a low voice. If the answer was no, she didn't want Cimorene getting her hopes up.
"I don't see why not," Trouble said. 'Jasper did it last time, and I'm as good at that sort of thing as he is."