The leader shrugged again. "What the boy has learned matters little.
The power of the sword passes to the ruler of the castle, and there is nothing he can do about it. He will be easy enough to take care of then."
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flicker of movement. Shiara was edging toward me. I had to force myself not to turn my head. The wizards seemed to have forgotten both of us, and I didn't want to remind them. I hoped they wouldn't remember until after Shiara had done whatever she was planning to do. I also hoped Shiara was planning to do something. I certainly couldn't, and I didn't think Nightwitch would be much help against all those wizards.
"Stop talking and let's get on with it," one of the wizards in the back said.
"An excellent suggestion. That is, if you are quite satisfied, Antorell?" said the leader.
Antorell glared and stalked over to the rest of the wizards. The leader looked around and nodded. "Begin."
Under other circumstances, the spell casting would have been very interesting to watch. The wizards spent quite a bit of time arguing about where each of them should stand, and exactly what the correct angle was for each staff, and in what order the spells should be said.
The leader seemed particularly concerned that things be done right.
Evidently there was something about the castle that would cause problems if everything wasn't perfect.
Finally, they agreed on what they were going to do, and they got started.
As the wizards started chanting, something touched my arm. If I could have moved, I'd have jumped. It was Shiara. "Do something before they finish!" I whispered.
"I've been trying!" Shiara whispered back. "But it isn't working."
"Oh no." I was so upset that I spoke the words in a normal tone of voice. Fortunately, the wizards were too busy chanting to notice.
"You haven't been polite to anyone since you apologized to Telemain, and you used that up on the last bunch of wizards."
Shiara looked stricken. "Daystar, I'm sorry!"
"There isn't anything we can do about it now," I said. "If you-" I stopped because the wizards had stopped chanting. Shiara and I both looked at them, but the wizards didn't seem to be finished with what they were doing. They looked more like they'd been interrupted in the middle of things. The leader bent over the man on the floor, who was still sleeping. A moment later the wizard straightened with an exclamation and stretched his staff out over the man's body.
The figure dissolved into sparkles, leaving a little blob of mud on the floor, and the other wizards stirred in surprise. "A simulacrum!" said someone.
I let out my breath in relief. Simulacra are very hard to make. You have to mix earth, air, fire, and water in exactly the right proportions in order to get a good one, and that's fairly tricky. A really good magician can make a simulacrum that looks exactly like someone but doesn't have any connection to the actual person at all.
As a result, a simulacrum can't be used against someone the way other types of magic can. What they're mainly good for is confusing people.
This one seemed to have done an excellent job. The wizards were glaring at each other accusingly. "If that was a simulacrum," one of them said finally, "where's the King? Who put it there, anyway?"
"Old Zemenar, probably," an older-looking wizard said. "The simulacrum looked like him, and setting up a decoy is just the sort of thing he would do."
"That doesn't make sense! He started this whole affair in the first place. Why would he put a false king in the castle to distract us?"
"Zemenar never trusted anybody. He probably wanted to do this himself, so he made it as hard as he could for anyone else to finish the job.
Or maybe he was just being ornery." The older wizard shrugged.
"Either way, I doubt that he expected to get eaten by a dragon."
"We have wasted enough time here," the leader of the wizards said with sudden decision. "Silvarex, take three others and begin searching for the King at once. We cannot allow him to escape again."
He went on giving instructions, but I stopped paying attention. He wasn't talking to me, and I had other things to worry about. I was still holding the key in my left hand, and as soon as the simulacrum disappeared, the key had stopped tugging me and started getting warm.
My other arm, the one with the sword, was tingling under the jangling of the wizards, and my head felt very light. I had a sudden, strong feeling that there was something important I ought to remember, but the jangling of the wizards' magic kept distracting me before I could figure out what it was.
"Daystar!" Shiara hissed, practically in my ear.
I jumped a little and realized that the wizard's spell holding me was beginning to weaken.
I couldn't move very much or very fast, though, and if the wizards noticed, they'd just throw the spell at me again. I decided not to move at all until I was sure I could move the sword fast enough to block another spell, then whispered to Shiara, "Don't do that. They might notice."
Shiara snorted. "If you don't want them to notice, you'd better try to notice sooner. That was the third time I called you."
"I'm sorry," I said.
"So am I. What are we going to do?"
"If you could-Nightwitch? I broke off in mid-sentence as a small black streak darted toward the group of wizards. One of them raised his staff; Shiara cried out and Nightwitch dodged. The spell hit the marble floor in a ball of light, and a moment later the kitten was among the wizards' feet.
I couldn't see what was happening, but I could hear the wizards shouting.
"There it goes!"
"Stop it!"
"It got away."
"Find it," the leader of the wizards commanded. "You, Grineran, go after it. It may lead you to the one we seek."
One of the wizards nodded and left, and I blinked. There were only three wizards left now: a short, round one, the one who was giving orders, and Antorell.
Antorell was staring at Shiara and me. "What about them?" he said suddenly. "They may know something."
The leader of the wizards looked thoughtful. "For once, Antorell, you may have made a useful suggestion. Persuading them to explain what they know may be difficult, however."
Antorell grinned nastily. "I think I can manage it."
"Really." The leader sounded skeptical. "The girl is a fire-witch, and the boy has the sword, remember."
"Sword or no, he cannot be immune to spells or Silvarex would never have been able to bind him," Antorell said.
"What did you have in mind?"
"Something like this."
Antorell waved his staff casually in my direction as he spoke. Even if I'd been able to move, I wouldn't have been able to twist the sword into a position to block the spell before it hit me, especially since I didn't realize what he was doing until the pain struck. It felt as if I were fighting the fire-witch again, only this time the pain was all through my body instead of just in my arms. It was worse than anything I'd ever felt. I think I screamed, but I'm not sure.