A Princess of Landover

They slipped from her bedroom with Thom leading the way, their footfalls virtually noiseless in the deep silence. The hallway beyond was empty and dark, and they passed down it without seeing or hearing anything or anyone. When they reached the Stacks, Thom held up his hand for a moment while he studied the larger room carefully. She listened as well, but heard nothing. When both were satisfied that it was safe, they slipped from the shadows of the hallway into the cavernous silence of the Stacks.

In the dark upper reaches of the room, something scurried along the beams and was gone. Mistaya exchanged a hurried glance with Thom, but he shook his head. Whatever was up there wasn’t interested in them.

They crossed the open space to the beginning of the shelving aisles and started for the back of the room.

Somewhere behind them, a door opened and closed on squeaky hinges, the sound echoing in the deep silence.

They froze as one, halfway down the aisle at the first set of shelves, eyes peering back over their shoulders, waiting. Mistaya quit breathing for long moments, certain that someone was about to appear. But no one did, and the sound of the squeaking hinges did not come again. They continued to wait, not wanting to make a mistake, to take an unnecessary or foolish risk. If either one decided to call it off, they had agreed, the other would not argue. They would simply wait and try another time.

Finally, long moments later, they looked at each other and nodded wordlessly. The hunt would go on.

Back into the darkness they crept, moving carefully between shelving units that had the feel of confining walls. The small amount of moonlight let in by the high windows at the front of the room slowly faded behind them, leaving the darkness thicker and more impenetrable. At last they could see almost nothing, and they had to feel their way ahead by using the shelves as guide rails.

When the last of the light dimmed to nothing more than a distant glimmer, Thom brought them to a stop. They still hadn’t reached the back wall, and there was no indication that they would anytime soon.

“We have to use the glow sticks,” he whispered in her ear. “Remember. They only last for two hours, so we have to get back before time runs out.”

She nodded that she understood. Together they broke off the tips, and a soft, golden glow spread away in a pool of light that extended about six feet from each bearer. The way forward made clear, they started ahead once more.

By now, Mistaya thought, they must have covered several hundred yards. But that was impossible. The Stacks couldn’t be that deep. There had to be magic at work, and she wondered who had set it in place and why. She reached out for its source, but couldn’t find it. She also wondered at the blackness of the space. She seemed to remember from her work in the daytime that windows on both walls extended back for as far as she could see. Why weren’t those windows permitting any moonlight to enter the room? She knew the moon was full and the sky clear that night. Was the magic that made the room seem so much larger also blocking the light and cloaking the room in shadows?

Time slipped away, and still they didn’t find the back wall. Mistaya began to grow impatient—and more than a little uneasy.

Finally, Thom brought them to a halt once more. “We need to start back,” he whispered in her ear. His face was so close she could feel the heat of his body. “The glow sticks are half gone.”

“Why is it taking so long?” she hissed.

“I don’t know. It didn’t take this long before. It took much less time. Something is wrong.”

“I think it’s magic that’s making us think the room is much larger and the way much longer!” She hesitated. “I know a little about how it works.”

To his credit, he didn’t ask for an explanation. “You want to go on?”

“For a little longer. I think we can find our way back.”

They pushed on, their sense of urgency growing exponentially. Mistaya wasn’t certain how much longer they could search, but she didn’t want to give up until she absolutely had to. Thom, she sensed, wouldn’t quit before she did, no matter what. His pride wouldn’t let him. He was the older and stronger of the two; he would tough it out for as long as she did.

Then, all of a sudden, she heard the voice.

Help me! Help me!

From the way Thom drew up short, his body going rigid, she knew that he had heard it, too.

“Just ahead!” she whispered encouragingly, even though she wasn’t at all sure that this was so.

But then she felt the pressure from whatever it was that had gripped Thom two weeks earlier, a sucking at the air about her that gripped her and held her fast, pulling her forward. She saw Thom lurch and stumble, his arms flailing. They collapsed in a tangle of limbs, grasping first at each other and then at the shelving units, trying unsuccessfully to get hold of something as they skidded along the floor and down the aisle. Whatever was pulling them forward was more powerful than she had expected, an irresistible force she could not fight against. She tried to get into a kneeling position, yet the force not only pulled her relentlessly ahead but held her down. The glow stick flew from her hand and was lost. She almost lost her grip on Thom, but just barely managed to hang on to one of his strong legs.

Ahead, a huge blackness hove into view, a tunnel of such impenetrable darkness that it looked as if it would swallow them whole. In that moment, she thought they were lost. So much so that she began to summon her magic in a last-ditch attempt to save them.

But Thom, resourceful as always, finally managed to grab hold of a leg of one of the shelving units and pull them both over to huddle against the heavy structure, anchoring them in place against the sucking force. She heard a sound like breathing, deep and powerful, and the force increased. But Thom held them fast, refusing to give in to it. She pressed herself against him, tucking her head against his leg, her face flattened to the worn wooden floor of the room.

Which was when she felt the sudden flush of warmth against her face. She jerked away in surprise, but then pressed down again with her cheek to make sure. The floor was pulsing softly, a sensation that was unmistakable. There was a life force embedded in the wooden boards. She felt the beating of its heart, and the entire experience was suddenly so familiar that she could hardly believe it. She knew what this was! She had known since she was a child!

It was Sterling Silver, the castle that cared for and nurtured the Kings and Queens of Landover and their families. It sheltered and protected them against the elements and enemies alike. It warmed them when they were cold and cooled them when they were hot. It provided them with food and clothing. It could determine their physical needs and to a very large extent satisfy them.

It was her home!

But how could that be? Sterling Silver was a sentient being formed of magic-infused materials, and it was the only one of its kind. Was it really the castle’s life force she was feeling? If so, how had it found its way here when it was rooted in the bedrock of the island on which it had been built?

The glow stick that Thom held went out, and they were left in blackness. The sucking force continued to pull at them for a long time after that, but finally it eased into a soft breathing and then ceased altogether. Mistaya and Thom lay together, listening to the silence, waiting for something more. Mistaya kept her face pressed to the floor, but the warmth she had felt earlier was fading away.

Don’t go, she thought. Don’t leave me.

But there was nothing she could do to make it stay, and seconds later it was gone.

She sat up again cautiously, placing her back against the shelving unit that had served as an anchor, the darkness deep and unbroken all around. The warmth she had felt in the floor and the pulsing of the life that had created it had both disappeared.

Mistaya could not understand. What had just happened?

“I think we should quit for tonight,” Thom said softly, a disembodied voice in the black.

“I suppose so,” she agreed. She was silent a moment, and then she said, “Thom, did you feel anything in the floor?”

She could hear him sitting up next to her. “Like what?”

“A pulsing, a warmth?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I was busy trying to hold on to the shelving so we wouldn’t be sucked down into that tunnel. Did you feel all that? The pulsing and the warmth?”

She wasn’t sure what to say now. “I might have been mistaken,” she answered. “I was pretty scared.”

He laughed quietly. “So was I. It wasn’t any easier this time, even knowing what to expect. But I won’t give up if you won’t.”

She reached out and squeezed his arm. “You know I won’t give up. Thanks for sticking with me.”

They rose and began groping their way back down the aisle, using the edges of the shelves to guide them, careful to keep together in the deep gloom. They didn’t speak of what had happened, knowing it was better to wait until later. Mistaya wondered how much time had passed. If magic had obscured distance and light, it could have obscured time, as well. It could have obscured everything they had experienced. Nothing might have been what they thought it was.

Yet she couldn’t dismiss the strong feeling of recognition that had flooded through her. She wasn’t mistaken about that, but she didn’t know what it meant. Was she sensing the presence of her home? Had Sterling Silver reached out to her somehow? Was it a warning that something was wrong at home? Or perhaps it wasn’t the castle at all. Perhaps it was Libiris she was feeling. But if so, why did it feel like it was alive?

Those questions, in turn, made her wonder anew about the voice. Exactly who was it that was calling?

They had almost reached the front of the Stacks and Mistaya was thinking of how good it was going to feel to sleep when a hunched figure appeared abruptly in their path, and a familiar wizened face lifted into the pale wash of the moonlight.

“Out for a little nighttime walk, are we?” asked Rufus Pinch with a visible sneer.

“We were just …,” Mistaya began.

“Just looking for …,” Thom picked up.

Pinch held up both hands. “Doing what you were expressly forbidden to do. That’s what you were doing! Well, now you’re going to have to pay the price for your disobedience, aren’t you? His Eminence will know how to deal with you!”

Mistaya felt her heart sink. She had ruined everything.

“Off to your rooms!” Pinch ordered, making shooing motions with his hands. “Don’t even think of trying to do anything else. Lock yourselves in and remain there until sunrise. Then report to His Eminence first thing. Now go! Get!”

Obediently, Mistaya and Thom headed out of the Stacks. Mistaya was miserable. She would be sent home for certain. In all likelihood, Thom would be punished in some equally unpleasant way. And it was all because of her.

“Don’t worry,” Thom declared cheerfully as they parted for the night.

“I won’t,” she promised. But of course, she already was.

She reached her bedroom sunk in a miasma of gloom and dark thoughts, opened the door, and nearly jumped with fright when a tall, gangly figure seated on the edge of her bed abruptly stood.

“Hello, Mistaya,” said Questor Thews, and held out his hands in greeting.

Mistaya gave a small cry of mingled relief and joy and rushed over to her old friend, wrapping her arms about him with such ferocity that she could hear his shocked gasp. She crushed his body against hers, the feel of his bony frame, all the angles and knobs so wonderfully familiar and welcome. Her reaction surprised her, but it didn’t lessen the intensity of her enthusiasm. She had never been so glad to see anyone in her life.

“Mistaya, goodness!” he managed, his voice a bit strangled, but obviously pleased. “Did you miss me so much?”

“I did miss you,” she whispered into his shoulder. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here!”

The long, thin hands patted her hair comfortingly. “Well, I would have come sooner had I known you were in such distress. Of course, it would have helped if you had told me just where you were.”

“I know, I know. I’m sorry. But I just couldn’t …”

She gave a deep, long sigh, and then she backed away from him far enough that they were eye-to-eye. “How did you find me?”

“It was a guess,” he advised, rather sheepishly. “When we couldn’t find you any other way, Abernathy and I tried to think where the last place was that we would expect you to go. A kind of reverse psychology, I suppose. We put ourselves in your shoes—which isn’t all that easy to do, I might add—and we came up with Libiris. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but we were running out of options. So we decided to come here and see if we might possibly be right.”

“Abernathy is here, too?”

“Outside with the G’home Gnomes.” The blue eyes twinkled. “They gave you up, I am afraid. They couldn’t help themselves. They denied everything, but when G’home Gnomes deny everything, it is usually true. I left them in Abernathy’s care and came inside for a look.”

“But how did you manage that? This place is guarded like a fortress!”

“Oh, I know a few tricks about how to get in and out of places.” He took her hands in his own and squeezed them. “Come. Sit down on the bed while we talk. My bones do not allow for prolonged periods of standing in place anymore.”

They sat on the bed, the scarecrow wizard and the young girl to whom he had always been mentor and friend. She kept one arm around him, as if afraid she might lose him. It was uncharacteristic of her to be so clingy; she saw herself as independent and strong, not as a child in need of an adult’s protective presence. But just now, in this time and place, all that seemed unimportant.

“It wasn’t their fault, you know,” she told him. “Poggwydd went with me to grandfather because I made him. I threatened him. I told him that if he didn’t come with me, he’d be blamed for my disappearing because he was the last one to be seen with me.” She felt embarrassed by her admission, but didn’t back away from it. “The truth is, I was afraid to go alone. Shoopdiesel just happened along and stayed because he’s Poggwydd’s friend.”

Questor Thews nodded. “I thought it might be something like that. Their attempts at an explanation suggested as much. They kept insisting that they only did what was necessary to look after you. I guess that included bringing you here, too.”

“No, they didn’t have anything to do with that. That was all because of the cat.”

“Edgewood Dirk?”

She sighed, somehow unsurprised that the wizard knew. “He showed up at Elderew after Grandfather said I would have to go home. He was the one who suggested that nobody would think to look for me at Libiris. He said he’d come with me and hide me with his magic from any other magic that might uncover my presence.” She shrugged. “I don’t know what I was thinking, coming to the one place I said I wouldn’t go. But I came, anyway. It just seemed to be the only thing to do. He was pretty persuasive.”

“Edgewood Dirk can be like that. But you have to be careful of him.”

“I guess so. Once we got here, he disappeared, and I haven’t seen him since. I don’t know where he went.”

Questor grimaced. “If I know Dirk—and I do—he will not have gone very far away. You have to understand. A Prism Cat is a fairy creature, and his motives are his own. But he always does things for a reason, and bringing you here was not accidental. He brought you here for a purpose. You just don’t know what it is yet.”

He gave her a reassuring smile. “Now tell me everything else that happened.”

Well, she wasn’t about to do that, of course. And she didn’t. But she did tell him some of it: her arrival at Libiris and Rufus Pinch’s refusal to admit her; Thom’s intervention; His Eminence’s decision to let her remain and work with her “brother” in the Stacks; the terrible impossibility of the task to which she and Thom had been set; the ways in which they were spied upon and mistrusted by both His Eminence and Pinch. Finally, she worked her way around to the two questions that weighed most heavily on her mind and to which she was hoping he might provide the answers.

“A couple of very strange things happened during the last few days, Questor,” she began. “Yesterday, I heard a voice calling out to me. Or to someone, at any rate. I heard it clearly. Thom heard it too, both tonight and several weeks earlier, before I got here. We talked about it. We don’t think we were mistaken.”

She chose her words carefully. She had no intention of revealing too many details. If Questor thought she was in any real danger, he would take her away at once, and she wasn’t yet ready to go. For starters, things with Thom were just getting interesting. Besides, she didn’t think that she was in any real danger.

Questor nodded as if he understood. “You probably did hear something.”

“All right,” she continued, wanting to get the rest of it out before she heard what he had to say on the matter. “The other thing is that while I was lying on the floor, just resting for a moment”—she was making it up as she went—”I put my cheek against the wooden boards and felt a pulse and a warmth that reminded me instantly of Sterling Silver. But I don’t understand how that could be.”

She waited for his response, which wasn’t given immediately. Instead, the wizard pursed his lips, cocked first one and then the other eyebrow, narrowed his eyes, and then drew in and let out a long, sustained breath.

“Well,” he said, as if that pretty much covered it.

“Well, what?”

“If you had not gone off on your own, so determined that none of what has already happened would happen, if instead you had taken the time to learn about Libiris first, you might have avoided a good deal of the confusion in which you now find yourself mired.”

He held up one finger in warning as she was about to object. “I just think you need to hear how difficult you have made things for people who love you before I tell you what you want to know. You caused us all a great deal of worry, Mistaya. It isn’t as if you didn’t know we would wonder whether something had happened to you. We have all been thinking of little else since you disappeared. If your grandfather had not sent word that you came to see him, we might not even have known that much.”

“I know,” she said. She had left them dangling, running off like that. But what choice did she have? Still, an apology couldn’t hurt. “I’m sorry,” she added, only half meaning it.

He gave an emphatic nod. “Then we shall put this behind us. Let me tell you a few things about Libiris that you do not know. Things, I would point out again, that I would have told you much earlier had you agreed to come here voluntarily with me as your companion. But it is not too late to rectify that now.”

He paused. “I suppose I should start by telling you that you are not mistaken in believing that Libiris feels like Sterling Silver. It does, and there is a good reason for it. The buildings share a commonality that you know nothing about. Sterling Silver was constructed of materials and magic in equal parts in a time long since forgotten. She was created to be a sentient being, a caregiver for Landover’s Kings and Queens, a protector for their families. You know all this from your studies. Libiris shares something of those same characteristics, though to a lesser extent. When the old King had her built, back in the years before your father became ruler, he did so using materials taken from Sterling Silver. He did so in hopes that Libiris, like Sterling Silver, would take on a life of its own and become a living organism that would care for its books just as the King’s castle cared for its royal family.”

He gave her a knowing look. “Why could this be so? Because the Kings of Landover had discovered over the years that left to her own devices and occupied by a true king, Sterling Silver would take care of herself without human or fairy assistance. She could repair damage, brighten tarnish, clean off dirt and grime, and generally revitalize herself all on her own. It only became a problem for her to perform when no King sat upon the throne and the central purpose of her existence was undermined.

“The old King, then, instructed the court wizard to remove shelving throughout the castle to form the foundation for the Stacks and to take some stone from the battlements and ramparts to cap the walls of the library buildings. Just enough magically infused material to give Libiris a life of her own. Just enough so that she, too, would be able to function as an independent entity. Of course, this process was not an exact science, and the old King’s belief that you could graft pieces of one building onto another and get the same results was flawed. Nor did it help that his court wizard was my brother, who was already planning to take control when the old King was dead.”

He sighed. “So the effort failed, although not altogether. Libiris did become a sentient being, but on a much lower level of intelligence than Sterling Silver. There simply were not enough magically enhanced materials employed to achieve the desired result. The old King ended up with a building that was little more than a child. It could perform basic tasks, but it lacked the capacity for critical thought and problem solving. Its ability to care for itself and the books it housed was severely limited.”

“But was it Libiris that I heard calling out to me?” she pressed.

“Of course. The feeling of life in the flooring of the stacks and of a pulse that signaled a living presence was not something you imagined. Libiris is alive, and she obviously chose to call out to you and to make herself known. Perhaps she senses a kinship born of your connection with Sterling Silver. I don’t know. I can only guess.”

Mistaya thought about it a moment. Questor’s story explained most of what she had encountered, but not all. There was nothing that explained the black hole in the back of the Stacks or the fact that the Stacks themselves seemed to go on endlessly or that there was magic being employed to disguise time and place and to mute light. She didn’t think this could be the work of Libiris, given her limitations. This was someone or something else. Then there was the matter of the conversation she had overheard between His Eminence and Pinch. Clearly, it had something to do with what was happening at Libiris.

But she couldn’t tell him any of this or even talk about it in general terms without giving him too many reasons to spirit her back home.

“What do you think I should do about the meeting tomorrow morning with His Eminence?” she asked instead. “How do I explain what Thom and I did so that he won’t banish us?”

Questor Thews frowned reprovingly. “You are a Princess of Landover, Mistaya Holiday, and you do not answer to people like Craswell Crabbit or Rufus Pinch for anything. Once you have revealed yourself to them, we can dismiss this matter and return home.”

“What?” She jumped to her feet, her worst fear realized. “What are you saying? Go home? I can’t go home!”

Questor was suddenly flustered. “But why not? I can’t just leave you here, Mistaya! What do you expect me to do—go back and let your parents continue to wonder what has happened to you?”

Well, in point of fact, she did. But she also knew from the way he said it that she had better change her thinking. Besides, he was right. She couldn’t just leave her parents hanging with the possibility that she might be injured or in trouble. Still, she didn’t want them to interfere with what she was doing.

She took a deep, steadying breath. “I won’t give up on what I’m doing as if it didn’t matter,” she said to the wizard, emphasizing her words. “I have to see this through, and I don’t want to do it as a Princess of Landover. I want to do it as Thom’s sister, Ellice. I don’t expect you to understand this. But it’s something I’ve started that I intend to finish. I want to know more about that voice trying to communicate with me. I think there was a reason for it, Questor, and I have to stay long enough to find out what it is.”

The old man shook his head. “I don’t like it. I don’t trust Crabbit or Pinch. Especially Crabbit. You don’t know him as I do, Mistaya. For starters, he is a wizard and a very dangerous one at that. He was exiled to Libiris by the old King, well before your father’s time in Landover, for that very reason. It was necessary to put him somewhere that he wouldn’t cause trouble.”

“What sort of trouble had he caused earlier?” she asked, curious now.

Questor sighed. “This and that. He was an ambitious sort and lacked anything remotely connected to scruples. He was intent on advancing his position at court, and he didn’t care what it took to achieve that end. The position he coveted most was my own. Unfortunately for him, it was occupied at the time by my brother, the man who recruited your father to Landover and very nearly added him to a long list of failed rulers. But my brother was a more formidable adversary than Craswell Crabbit anticipated, and he was quick to recognize the other’s ambitions and was responsible for his exile. Crabbit’s magic made him a dangerous man, but my brother was more dangerous still.”

“But he didn’t try to come back to Sterling Silver when you became court wizard and my father King?”

Questor shook his head. “No, and that was something of a surprise. I had thought that after my brother was disposed of and your father made King, he would be one of the first to make his appearance and offer his services. That would be very like him. But he failed to do so, and after a while I simply stopped thinking about it.”

She frowned. “Yet you were prepared to send me here?”

“Not alone, I wasn’t. Only if I was in your company, your supervisor for this job of reopening the library and your protector against any threats. I wasn’t worried about Crabbit specifically. Frankly, it had been so long that I wasn’t even sure he was still here. I thought he might have moved on. I regret that I was wrong and regret even more that you had to encounter him on your own.”

“It hasn’t been such a problem,” she declared quickly, shrugging the matter off. She paused. “Let me make a suggestion,” she said impulsively. “A compromise. You leave me here and go back to my parents and tell them where I am. Let them know I’m fine, and I’m doing what Father sent me to do in the first place. Sort of, anyway. Ask him to give me a chance to work on this a little while longer before he hauls me home. Tell him all I want is a chance to prove myself. Besides, Thom risked a lot for me, and it wouldn’t be right if I just walked out on him.”

“I am not comfortable with the idea of leaving you here alone,” the old man declared, pulling at his whiskers. “If Craswell Crabbit were gone, as I had hoped he would be by now, I would feel better about your staying. As it is …”

“I’ll be careful,” she promised. “I have my magic to protect me, don’t I? Didn’t you train me yourself? Besides, I don’t think I’m in any real danger. His Eminence hasn’t threatened me or anything.”

“He won’t bother with threatening you if you get in his way. I know him. He is a snake. He never should have been appointed director of the library, but the old King was failing and didn’t see.” Questor shook his head. “Are you sure he doesn’t know who you are?”

“He hasn’t said or done anything that would suggest he thinks I’m anyone other than Thom’s sister, Ellice.”

But she wondered suddenly if she had missed something. Was it possible that His Eminence had recognized her and was keeping her here for reasons of his own? The possibility sent a sudden chill up her spine.

“This business with the voice bothers me, too. I just don’t like any of it, Mistaya. I think you should come with me.”

She shook her head stubbornly. “It was your idea for me to come here in the first place,” she pointed out, brushing aside her concerns about His Eminence. “Yours and Abernathy’s. Well, I did what you wanted. What my mother and father wanted, too. And now you want me to just walk away, to give up. Like I did at Carrington?”

She reached out and took the old man’s hands in her own. “Please, Questor. Let me stay. Let me see this through. This is as much for me as it is for Thom; I know that now. I need to do this. Please!”

Questor Thews cleared his throat. “If I agree to this—and I am not saying yet I will—I want your word that you will not do anything to place yourself in danger. I do not know what hearing that voice means, whether it is Libiris speaking or someone else, but before you go off investigating the source—no, no, Mistaya, let me finish—before you do anything that puts you at risk, you will call on one of us to help you. And I do not mean this boy, whoever he is. I mean myself or your father or someone else who can protect you. Otherwise, you can pack your clothes and prepare to leave right now. I want your word.”

“You have it,” Mistaya declared, prepared to say or do whatever it took to get him to agree to let her stay.

“Then I have something for you.” Questor reached into his pocket and withdrew a round stone not much bigger than a pebble. It was infused with striations of various colors that swam through its surface like the currents in a river. “Take this,” he ordered.

He handed it to her, and she held it in the palm of her hand, looking down at it. “This is a rainbow crush,” the wizard advised. “Should you need to call for help, this stone will allow you to do so. You give it a message and tell it who you want the message to reach—you say the words in your mind—then drop the stone to the ground and stamp on it. Whoever you summoned will hear your voice speaking the message and respond accordingly. If you feel you are in any danger at all, you are to use it at once. Understood?”

She nodded. “Understood.”

“You are not to rely on your own magic to protect you except as a last resort. You are well schooled in its use, but you are not well practiced. Too many things can go wrong. Use the crush instead and summon one of us.”

She was tempted to remind him that her magic had helped save his life five years earlier, but decided that was pushing things. “I’ve never heard of a rainbow crush,” she said instead.

“That is because there are only a few in existence. They are very precious and difficult to come by. So take care of yours and use it wisely.” He stood up. “Time for me to be going. Morning is almost here, and I do not want to be found inside these walls when it arrives.”

She put the rainbow crush in her pocket and hugged him to her. “Thank you, Questor, for trusting me. You won’t regret it.”

“I’d better not,” he declared. “Do not forget that when I leave here, I go back to the castle and your parents. I cannot speak for what they will choose to do; they may come here whether you like it or not. So whatever you need to do, do it quickly.”

“All right.” She stepped back from him. “But you can tell them you’ve seen me and I’m fine. Assuming His Eminence doesn’t throw me out after our meeting. After hearing from Rufus Pinch, he might do exactly that. Thom and me both. I might be home before you are.”

He gave a disapproving grunt. “That would not be the worst thing in the world. Think of the satisfaction you will feel if he does throw you out and you return as Princess of Landover and his new employer. Then you can throw him out!”

She grinned. “That does have a certain appeal.”

“Just remember one thing.” He was serious again, his frown back in place. “Craswell Crabbit is no one to fool with. He has skills and trickery of his own to call on if he needs them and an appalling lack of morals to back them up. If there is something to be gained, he will not hesitate to sacrifice anyone or anything that stands in his way. You keep on being the poor little peasant girl who doesn’t know anything and let him toss you through the door if that is what he wants. No heroics.”

“I promise to be careful.” She kissed him on the cheek. “Now you’d better go.”

“One thing more,” he added, turning back as he reached the door. “I am taking those G’home Gnomes with me. Keeping them here is just asking for trouble. All they are doing out there is plotting ways to steal the livestock. That does nothing to help you. They do nothing to help you, come to that. So back they go!”

She felt a momentary pang of regret for Poggwydd and Shoopdiesel, who had tried so hard to help her. But she also felt a huge relief. “Say good-bye for me.”

He smiled anew, nodded his approval of something or other, and disappeared through the door into the darkness of the hallway. She stared after him, smiling back. When he was gone, all that remained was the whisper of his robes and the warmth she felt on thinking how lucky she was to have him as her friend.

“It seems you have a problem understanding the difference between obedience and disobedience,” His Eminence declared, his over-large head cocking to one side as if somehow dislodged from his neck. He rocked back in his chair with his fingers steepled and gave them a stern look. His tall, angular, skeletal form seemed to fold over on itself as he leaned forward suddenly. “A rather serious problem, it appears.”

It was first light, and Mistaya stood beside Thom on the other side of the desk facing their judge and jury. Rufus Pinch lurked off to one side, hunched over and frowning, which was pretty much what he did the rest of the time, so there was nothing troubling there. His Eminence, on the other hand, was scowling in a way suggesting that the outcome of this trial was unlikely to be favorable to them no matter what their defense.

“The rules are quite clear about use of the Stacks,” he continued, looking thoughtful. “You are to be there only during working hours. You are to stay in your assigned area of work. You are to concentrate on the task you have been given and no other. You are not to go outside your area of work and never are you to go back into the Stacks unaccompanied and without permission. I believe I made that quite clear to you, Thom, on your arrival, did I not?”

“Yes, Your Eminence, but—”

One bony hand lifted quickly to cut him off. “Your time to speak will come later. Just answer my questions.” He turned to Mistaya. “Did Thom explain the rules to you, Ellice?”

“Yes, Your Eminence.”

“So when you went into the Stacks at midnight or whatever hour it was, you knew you were there in violation of the rules, didn’t you?”

“Yes, Your Eminence.”

Craswell Crabbit glanced over at Rufus Pinch, who managed a sour smile and a curt nod. “Mr. Pinch?”

“They were where they weren’t supposed to be and they were obviously doing something they weren’t supposed to do. The evidence is quite clear. Our course of action should be just as clear. This is a flagrant violation of the rules.”

“So it seems.” His Eminence gave a huge sigh, turning back to the accused. “Have you anything to say for yourselves?” he asked, looking from one to the other.

“Yes, Your Eminence, I do,” Mistaya said suddenly, stepping forward. She lifted her chin and met his judgmental gaze bravely. She deliberately did not look at Thom. “If you please.”

He nodded. “Say whatever it is you want to say, Ellice.”

“None of this is Thom’s fault. It is entirely mine, and whatever punishment you care to deliver I will accept it without complaint. But Thom was only trying to help me, the way big brothers do their little sisters when they discover that their hearts have been broken.”

“Is that so?” His Eminence sounded only marginally interested. “Please explain yourself.”

Mistaya never hesitated. “While working in the Stacks the other day, I lost a pendant, a family heirloom. A gift, actually, from my mother. I wear it everywhere, but somehow the chain broke and the pendant was lost. I didn’t realize it right away, and when I did, I looked for it and couldn’t find it. I was devastated. I searched for it two days straight, looking all around the areas in which we worked. I looked for it in the kitchen and all the common rooms and even my bedroom. But it was gone.”

She paused, taking time to look as if she were composing herself. “Then it occurred to me that one of the Throg Monkeys might have taken it. Maybe just to look at, but maybe to keep. So I begged Thom to go with me back into the Stacks while everyone was sleeping to see if it might have been carried back there somewhere. It was a foolish thing to do, but that pendant meant everything to me.”

She cried a little, real tears. “It was all I had left to remind me of my mother,” she whispered, sobbing softly. “We lost her not long ago …”

“It was my fault as much as hers, Your Eminence,” Thom cut in suddenly. “I knew how much she valued that pendant. I didn’t want her to lose it. So I said I would take her into the Stacks to look for it.”

“Knowing you were breaking the rules?” His Eminence pressed.

“Knowing I was,” Thom agreed. “I admit it. I hoped no one would find out, but Rufus was on watch, as usual.”

“Of course I was on watch!” the little man snapped. “I am always on watch against the likes of you and your sister!”

“Rufus, Rufus,” Craswell Crabbit soothed.

“Well, it’s true!” the other hissed.

“But we didn’t get very far,” Thom added quickly. “We were afraid to do something that bold. We only looked a little way before coming back. The Stacks are too huge for a search of the sort that was needed, and if the Throg Monkeys took the pendant—which they might have done, since they take things all the time—then I needed to confront them and find out what they had done with it.”

“Yes, yes, I’m sure that all this is true.” His Eminence looked and sounded bored. “But rules are rules.”

“Your Eminence,” Thom replied, straightening. “I will save you the trouble of making a decision on our punishment. A mistake has been made and a rule violated. There is no excuse. Ellice and I will pack our bags and leave immediately. After seeing my sister safely home, I will return and complete the remainder of my service working in the stables.”

Rufus Pinch looked pleased. But His Eminence held up both hands and shook his head slowly. “No, no, that won’t do at all. Your service here is not for mucking out stables, it is for cataloging and organizing books. You will stay and work as you have committed yourself to doing.”

He turned to Mistaya. “As for you, Ellice, I have a different plan in mind. Because I am by nature a generous and forgiving person, I am going to make an exception this one time and give you another chance. You may stay to help your brother. But as punishment for your disobedience, you will do service in the stables every third day for an entire month cleaning up after the animals. Mind you, young lady, should you violate the rules again—any rules—you will be dismissed immediately. There will be no discussion, no excuses, and no further leniencies. One misstep, and you are gone. Do we understand each other?”

Mistaya hung her head meekly. “Yes, Your Eminence.”

He ignored Rufus Pinch, who was looking at him with a mix of astonishment and rage, his face twisted, his fists balled, and his entire body arched like an angry cat’s.

“You will begin your month of stable service tomorrow morning,” he said to Mistaya.

“Yes, Your Eminence,” she repeated.

“Very well, the matter is closed. Now get back to work, both of you.”

Once the door had closed behind the so-called brother and sister, Rufus Pinch wheeled on His Eminence, so enraged that he was hopping up and down. “What are you doing? They were lying, Craswell! Lying from first word to last! Couldn’t you tell that, you idiot?”

“Watch your tongue, Mr. Pinch,” the other cautioned, holding up one finger and touching his long nose. “Or I shall have to remove it.”

But Rufus Pinch was too furious to take notice of what he perceived to be idle threats. “They were lying!” he screamed.

His Eminence smiled and nodded. “Yes, I know that.”

The other man stared at him. “You know that? Then why aren’t you doing something about it? Why don’t you throw them out?”

“Because I wish to keep them working in the Stacks, Mr. Pinch. I am keeping them here for a purpose, though I am quite sure you don’t have the faintest idea what it is. Besides, I want to see what they are up to. You don’t happen to know, do you?”

“Of course I don’t know!”

“Well, there you are then. You have your marching orders. Shadow them when they are together and find out what they are up to. They have gone to great pains to keep it from us, so it must be something important. We should know what it is before we decide what is to be done with them.”

Pinch shook his head in dismay. “You take too many chances! We would be better off getting rid of both of them right now!”

His Eminence shook his head and shifted his long body to a more comfortable position. “Oh, no, Mr. Pinch. We would be much worse off if we got rid of them. Trust me on this. They are valuable, those two. Not for who they seem, but for who and what they are.”

He winked at his companion. “You do know, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t know!” Pinch spit at him. “Why don’t you just tell me?”

His Eminence laughed. “And what fun would that be, Mr. Pinch? Tell me that. Why, no fun at all!”

His laughter increased until he was practically rolling on the floor. Rufus Pinch looked at him as if he had lost his mind, decided that perhaps he had, and stalked from the room.

Mistaya spent the remainder of the day working side by side with Thom in the Stacks, and although they talked about it at length—keeping their voices at a barely audible murmur to avoid any chance of being overheard—neither one attempted to go outside the assigned area. Rufus Pinch was lurking close by, sometimes visible and sometimes not, but always a discernible presence. He would be looking for them to do something like that, something that would allow him to insist that they be banished from Libiris for good. Or at least that she would, since it appeared that Thom was doomed to serve out his indenture no matter what crimes he committed. Whatever the case, she did not want to be the cause of either happening, and so for the moment she knew she must be content mulling over ideas for another nighttime foray.

The situation reminded her a little of her adventures at Carrington, where she was always in the forefront of one underground revolution or another. Except that here, she knew, the consequences of being caught out might be a bit more extreme than at a women’s prep school.

By now, she had told Thom of the conversation she had overheard between His Eminence and Pinch, and together they had puzzled over the identity of the unknown allies and the origins of the books taken from the Stacks and the nature of whatever magic was being used, but had been unable to come up with a reasonable explanation for what it was all about. Someone was using magic, someone was trying to get out, and somehow Crabbit and Pinch were involved. That was about all they could agree upon.

She had said nothing to him of the visit from Questor Thews. Nor could she think of a way to speak to him of what the wizard had confided about the origins of Libiris. Doing so would require an explanation of how she had come into possession of such knowledge, and she couldn’t think of one that didn’t necessitate her telling him who she really was.

She considered doing that, but quickly dismissed the idea. If he found out she was a Princess of Landover, it would change everything between them, and she didn’t want that.

“We have to give it a few days, at least, before we try to go back there again,” Thom was saying as time wound down toward the close of the day. By then the discussion had been ongoing for hours.

“I don’t think waiting is going to help,” she replied, sorting through the stack of books closest at hand. Another one was missing, she noticed. Another in an ever-increasing number. “Pinch won’t give up watching us no matter how long we wait.”

“He’s like that,” Thom agreed. He brushed his dark hair out of his eyes. “Maybe he’ll get sick.”

“Maybe we could make him sick.” She gave him a look.

“Maybe,” he agreed. “But he never eats anything he doesn’t prepare himself.”

“We could get around that.”

“We could.”

They were quiet for a moment, thinking through various scenarios that would allow them to poison Pinch’s food enough to render him temporarily unable to function. But poisoning was an uncertain science, and neither wanted to do anything worse than make him sick.

“This would all be much easier if we had a way to make ourselves invisible,” Thom said finally. “If they couldn’t see us, they wouldn’t know what we were doing.”

Mistaya nodded absently, thinking that her magic would allow her to make them invisible, at least for a short time. But using her magic might give her away. Then again, maybe that didn’t matter anymore. Her father and mother would know where she was by tomorrow at the latest, and they were the ones she had been worried about before. Still, she also found herself thinking suddenly of Craswell Crabbit, of whom Questor had told her to be especially careful. If he had the use of magic, he might be able to detect hers and determine its source. Not a pleasant prospect when you considered the consequences of being caught out.

She sighed. Questor had told her not to use her magic except in an emergency, and their hunt for the source of the voice probably didn’t qualify. At least, not yet.

They didn’t talk after that, concentrating on the sorting and cataloging of the books, their thoughts kept private until it was time to quit and they were walking toward the kitchen.

“We’re not going to give up on this, are we?” Thom asked her quietly, giving a quick glance over his shoulder for what might be lurking in the shadows.

“I’m not,” she declared firmly.

“Then I’m not, either. But we have to find a different way.”

“What if we don’t find a different way?”

Thom shook his head. “Sooner or later, we’ll have our chance. We just need to be patient.” He frowned. “You didn’t hear the voice again, did you? It didn’t call out to you or anything?”

She sighed. “Not since the last time. But I think it will. Soon.”

“I do, too.” Thom’s mouth tightened into a thin line. “There has to be a way.”

As it happened, he was right, but when opportunity knocks, it doesn’t always appear the way we expect. Thus, as Mistaya was walking back to her bedroom after finishing her dinner, already dreading tomorrow’s workday in the stables, she was surprised to find herself suddenly in the company of Edgewood Dirk. As usual, the Prism Cat appeared out of nowhere and with no warning. One moment he wasn’t there, the next he was. For a moment, Mistaya just stared, not quite believing what she was seeing.

“Where have you been?” she demanded, recovering herself sufficiently to demand an explanation.

The cat’s face was inscrutable as he glanced over at her. “Here and there,” he said, showing no inclination to offer anything further by way of explanation.

“Well, you certainly were quick enough to disappear once you’d brought me here!” She was steaming and not the least bit interested in keeping it to herself. “What about all those promises you made about keeping me safe and hiding me from discovery?”

The cat didn’t even glance at her. “If I remember correctly, I never said anything at all about keeping you safe. What I promised is that you wouldn’t be discovered through use of another magic. I didn’t promise that Questor Thews wouldn’t figure out on his own that you might be here and come looking for you.” He paused, reflecting. “Although such initiative is quite unlike him, I admit.”

“At least he offered to try to help me!” she snapped back. “He listened to what I had to say and then he tried to do something about it. At least he talked to me. What have you done lately? Disappeared and stayed disappeared, is what!”

“I wasn’t aware that I was under any obligation to do anything other than what I had promised.” The smooth, silky voice was infuriating. “I didn’t promise to help you or talk to you or do anything else. I’m a cat, in case you hadn’t noticed, and cats don’t do anything for people unless they choose to. I didn’t so choose. Or at least I didn’t before this and may not still if you don’t keep a civil tongue in your head.”

She forced down the retort she wanted to make and kept quiet a moment, considering her options. They were almost to her bedroom door now, and she glanced up and down the hallway to see if anyone was watching. Rufus Pinch came to mind.

“No one but you can see me,” Dirk advised, obviously reading her mind. “Spying is poor form, even for humans. I don’t allow that sort of thing.”

She sighed. “Of course you don’t.”

They reached the door, and she opened it. The cat walked inside, jumped up on her bed, and assumed a Sphinx-like pose, forelegs extended, head raised, rear haunches tucked against his lean body. His fur glistened in the dim candlelight, as if encrusted with diamond chips or dappled with morning dew.

“Shall we start over again?” the cat asked.

She nodded. “Please. Do you know what’s happened to me since I arrived? Do you know about the voice and the darkness in the back of the Stacks?”

Edgewood Dirk closed his eyes in contentment. “I am a cat. I know everything that happens. Did you think that because you couldn’t see me, I couldn’t see you?”

“I just didn’t know if you would bother.”

“Oh, Princess, you cut me to the quick! I bother with anything that engages my curious nature. You do know about cats being curious creatures, don’t you?”

“I believe we already established that in an earlier conversation.” She gave him a look. “What about the old saying that curiosity killed the cat?”

“Lesser cats, perhaps. Not Prism Cats. We are not the kind to let curiosity kill us. Which is not true of young girls like you, I might point out. Especially in situations like this one.”

“Are you saying I’m in danger?” she asked quickly. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Lots and lots,” he replied. “But most of it does not pertain to your present circumstances, so we can skip all that. Let’s start with something pertinent. For example, your efforts at exploring the darker regions of the Stacks have not met with much success to date, although they have placed you in a tenuous situation with the library’s present administration. Perhaps you would like to see that change?”

She brightened instantly. “Of course I would. Can you do something to help?”

“Perhaps. If you are serious about this.” Dirk rose, stretched, and yawned. “I’ll be back at midnight to see if you are awake.”

He hopped down off the bed and walked over to the door. “Be alone when I come. The boy may not go with you. Do you understand?”

She understood well enough, although she didn’t much like it. But what choice did she have if she wanted to learn something more about the voice? She could always tell Thom later what she had discovered.

“I understand,” she replied. “He’s not to know anything about you.”

The cat nodded, and the door opened of its own accord and then closed behind him as he strolled out. Mistaya sighed and decided she might consider coming back as a Prism Cat in her next life.

At exactly midnight, the bedroom door opened anew and there was Edgewood Dirk. She was sitting on the bed waiting for him, dressed in dark clothing and wearing soft boots to muffle her passage. The cat gave her a quick glance, then turned away without a word. Eyes forward, he started down the hallway toward the Stacks, not waiting to see if she would follow.

She caught up to him quickly but didn’t say anything, preferring the quiet. She kept glancing around for Pinch but didn’t see any sign of him. Even when they reached the Stacks, entering the cavernous room and crossing to the beginnings of the shelving, the odious little man had not appeared.

“Nor will he,” said Dirk, apparently reading her mind. “He fell asleep in his room a while back. I believe he wore himself out earlier in the day, keeping watch over things. Now he needs to sleep. Come with me.”

They worked their way down the aisles and deeper into the Stacks. While there were no lights lit on the shelving units and they carried no glow sticks, they had no trouble finding their way because Dirk’s fur radiated a pale silvery light that let them see where they were going. Mistaya kept glancing around, unable to shake the feeling that someone must be watching. The shadows surrounding them were impenetrable beyond their small light, and her imagination was working overtime as she tried to detect a presence that wasn’t there. Not only was Pinch absent, there was no sign of the Throg Monkeys, either. Apparently Dirk was as good as his word.

“What are we doing?” she whispered finally.

“Exploring,” he whispered back.

“Exploring for what?”

“Whatever we find that looks interesting. Keep your eyes open. That is what cats do; humans should learn to do it, too.”

That wasn’t much of an answer, but she decided to let it go for the moment. She concentrated instead on wending her way through the shadows, keeping close to the Stacks on her left as she progressed, wary of the sucking wind that sooner or later would try to draw her into the deepest part of the blackness waiting ahead. Although the Throg Monkeys were not in evidence, she kept looking for them, thinking they must be there, hiding and watching. She glanced repeatedly at Dirk for some sign that she should start worrying. But the cat seemed unconcerned, ambling down the center of the aisle, tail twitching and eyes shining like bright, tiny lamps.

After they had gone a long way back, although not as far as she had gone with Thom, and there was still no sign of the black tunnel or the sucking wind, her patience gave out.

“Why aren’t we encountering the tunnel or the wind that was here before?” she asked the cat. “What’s happened to them?”

“Nothing,” he said. “They are still here. But we don’t see or feel either because they are dormant.”

“How can that be?”

“The magic that sustains them is unaware of us.”

“Unaware of us?”

“I am shielding us. I told you I could hide us from other magic when I chose to do so.”

“Well, why didn’t you shield Thom and me when we came down here before? Wouldn’t that have saved us both a lot of trouble?”

The cat arched his back, and all his fur stood up on end. Mistaya backed away, afraid suddenly that she had stepped over an invisible line.

“That,” Dirk declared in a voice that brooked no argument, “would have put you in a good deal more trouble than you’ve gotten into so far. If you don’t know what you are doing—and you don’t—then it is best that you leave it to those of us who do. Shielding with magic is tricky business, and doing it for one is difficult enough without trying to crowd in two. Besides, if left on your own, you and that boy wouldn’t have found your way to what’s waiting.”

She compressed her lips into a tight line. “What is waiting, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I don’t mind your asking, but I think I’ll leave it to you to find that out for yourself.”

Stupid cat, she thought, furious all over again. “Some kind of monster, I suppose?”

“That would be monsters, plural,” said Edgewood Dirk.

She sighed. “Can I ask you something else? Are these monsters the ones causing the blackness and the wind?”

She didn’t really expect an answer, but he surprised her by providing one. “No, the monsters have nothing to do with either one.”

“Well, who does, then? Someone must!”

The cat stopped where he was, turned toward her, and sat. “It appears your impatience cannot be contained a moment longer, so perhaps it is best if we satisfy it here and now. This is just one more example of why cats are vastly superior to humans. Cats understand patience. You never see a cat unable to wait. Humans, on the other hand, cannot stand to be put off even for a moment. If the delay goes beyond their limited ability to cope, they implode. I will never understand.”

Nor would she ever understand cats, she supposed, especially this one. “We are fragile vessels in many ways,” she conceded wearily. “But you were about to say?”

The cat gave her a long, steady look. “You are quite bold, Princess. Even for a child of Ben Holiday.” Its strange eyes glittered. “Very well. Listen carefully.”

It lifted one paw and licked it, then set it down carefully again. “Libiris is a living creature, though of limited ability and intelligence. You already know this. But all creatures share a commonality, no matter their origins or talents. If they are injured, they will be in pain. And if they lose purpose, they lose heart. The former is self-explanatory, the latter less so. Purpose is individual to each creature. Purpose gives meaning to life. Take away that purpose, and the creature starts to wither inside.”

He gave her a moment to digest this, now licking the other forepaw. “Let me give you an example. Sterling Silver was created to serve the royal family. When there was no King, as when Ben Holiday came into Landover, the castle ceased to function as she should. She was both injured and bereft of purpose. Holiday found her tarnished and emotionally damaged. Yet when he entered her and became her new King, she came alive again and began to heal. So it is with Libiris. Do you understand?”

“So the wind and the blackness are symptoms of injury and loss of purpose? Symptoms generated by Libiris?”

“Just so. They are a reaction to both conditions. But can you guess what injury she has suffered and what purpose has been stolen from her?”

Mistaya had no clue. She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

The cat stood up and started walking. “Then we’d better hurry on so you can find out.”

They moved ahead once more, penetrating deeper into the Stacks, and for a long time Mistaya was convinced that they were simply going to slog ahead forever without finding anything. Nothing around them changed; nothing suggested it ever would. There was no wind and no tunnel of blackness into which it could suck you, but there was nothing else, either. There was a gloomy sameness to things that filled her with an unexpected sense of despair.

“Why is this taking so long!” she hissed at Dirk in exasperation.

“It isn’t all that long; it just seems that way.” The cat barely glanced at her. “The distance is an illusion; Libiris seeks to protect herself.”

“Protect herself from what?”

But the cat had apparently lost interest in the conversation and did not answer. Letting the matter drop, she trudged on.

Finally, she caught a glimmer of light from somewhere ahead. She felt an urge to run toward it, to escape the darkness. But Edgewood Dirk kept moving at the same maddeningly unchanging pace, as if it made no difference whether they reached the light in the next few seconds or the next few days.

Then, as the light grew nearer and brightened sufficiently, it took on a crimson hue. She could see that it marked an opening in the library’s rear wall that was ragged and cracked all around its edges. The light seemed to emanate from the breach itself rather than from whatever lay beyond; the air was thick and misty and concealing. More disturbing to her, the light’s crimson hue suggested a wound.

Edgewood Dirk stopped abruptly and sat down. “This is as far as I go. You have to go on alone from here.”

She looked at him doubtfully. “Why is that?”

“I cannot pass through that opening. It would be much too dangerous for me. I will wait here for you to return.”

“I can go somewhere you can’t?”

“Because I am a fairy creature, I am at much greater risk than you. Once you pass through, you will understand.” He gave her another expressionless cat look. “You need not worry. I shall still be shielding you. Just be careful. Don’t go too far in. Touch nothing. Just take note of everything you see. It will be interesting to discover how much you understand.”

Thanks ever so much, she wanted to tell him. But she didn’t. She just nodded. “Go straight ahead, through that opening?”

“I believe I have already made that clear. Is there a problem? Are you too afraid to go through? Was I wrong when I said you were a bold girl?”

She felt like spitting at him, but instead she simply looked ahead again, studying the ragged, red-tinged rent in the wall and the deep gloom beyond. Well, she was either going to do this thing or turn back. Turning back was not an option.

She took a deep breath to steady herself and started forward.

She entered the hole in the wall without incident, paused only momentarily for a quick look about to reassure herself that she wasn’t missing anything, and then continued through to the other side. She moved more cautiously after she did, taking slower, more careful steps, listening for sounds, searching for movement.

She found both much more quickly than she anticipated. The hazy gloom cleared and she found herself in what appeared to be a tunnel that quickly turned into a winding stairway descending into the earth. She kept going only because she hadn’t found anything yet and had made up her mind she wasn’t going back until she did. She went down the stairs, hugging the wall to one side, her steps more cautious still. Strange glowing rocks embedded in the walls at regular intervals illuminated the darkness enough that she could see to make her way. The mist followed her down, a clinging presence that felt damp and cold against her skin. She ignored it as best she could, concentrating on the task at hand, putting one foot in front of the other, reminding herself that she wasn’t completely helpless here, that she had magic of her own to protect herself even if Dirk should abandon her. Not that she had any reason to think he would, of course. Although he had abandoned her before for all intents and purposes after she was inside Libiris, so maybe she shouldn’t be so sure about what might happen here.

Stop being so paranoid, she scolded herself. There’s nothing to be frightened of!

But several hundred feet farther down the stairway, she changed her mind.

The stairs leveled out onto a sort of shelf before continuing on down, and the wall opened up at this point in a kind of window to reveal a cavernous chamber below. She crouched down, peered over the wall’s edge, and was instantly reminded of the Stacks in Libiris. Perhaps this was because she was suddenly looking at row upon row of shelving, most of it filled with books. For a moment, she had the sensation that somehow she had returned to Libiris, although a different Libiris than she had left, a rather surreal one. Throg Monkeys were everywhere, carrying books to and fro, arranging and stacking and organizing.

Amid the little monsters were black-cloaked figures carrying tablets on which they were writing, presumably making lists of those books. In one shadowy corner, tightly clustered and hunched over a massive red, leather-bound book, a trio of the black-cloaked figures chanted the same words over and over again. Even from as far away as she was, she could tell that neither the list makers nor the chanters were human. Their hands and wrists were blackened and withered and clawed and gnarled, and once or twice she caught a quick glimpse of their faces, which were of the same terrible aspect, with eyes that glittered like embers.

At the periphery of all this activity were creatures that resembled monstrous wolves, huge muscular beasts that prowled back and forth along the edges of the workers like guard dogs. Their muzzles were drawn back to reveal rows of sharpened teeth.

Overhead, circling through the misty gloom above the shelving and the workers, things that resembled huge raptors flew in great sweeps, an endless and unchanging patrol.

What in the world was going on?

She watched it all for long minutes, crouched down on the rock shelf, pressed close against one edge of the opening so that she would not be seen. Perhaps with Dirk warding her, she couldn’t be seen, but she wasn’t about to take that chance.

The intricacies of the scene below slowly began to take shape. Books were being cataloged and placed on shelves in some sort of order by the Throg Monkeys and the list makers. Here and there, some of the list makers were actually reading some of the books and writing things down. All the while, the wolves and the flying creatures—whatever they were—kept watch against intrusions.

Intrusions from whom?

While she was puzzling it through, she sensed movement behind her. She turned, but before she could find a place to conceal herself a Throg Monkey was coming down the stairs, descending from Libiris and the Stacks. Its arms were loaded with books, but even as burdened as it was there was no way it could miss seeing her. She pressed against the wall, prepared to fight, already planning her attack and flight back up the way she had come. But the creature passed right by her, not once glancing in her direction. She held her breath until it was out of sight, and then exhaled sharply. Dirk’s shielding magic was working!

She stayed where she was, waiting for another of the Throg Monkeys to pass. Eventually, one did. But this time instead of trying to conceal herself, she kept her attention focused on the books that the creature was carrying. There were three of them, and two of the titles were clearly legible on the spines.

Principles of Ancient Magic: A Court Wizard’s Critical Overview, read the first, and Fables and Fairy Tales Revisited, read the second.

Books of magic! They were stealing books of magic! That was what Crabbit and Pinch had been talking about when they had argued over hauling something back and forth!

She turned back to the opening in the rock wall to study with fresh eyes the scene unfolding below. Who was doing the stealing? Why bother when all you needed to do was to go into Libiris and read them?

She decided she needed to take a closer look at what lay below her. She eased her way across the open shelf, praying that no one could see her, gained the stairs on the far side, and started down. She crept forward around a bend until she could see that the stairs continued on down past the room below in a long winding spiral that eventually disappeared entirely into a mix of mist and blackness.

Her mind spun. What could be down there? What sort of creatures could live underground in such conditions?

It came to her all at once—not just the answer to that question, but the answers to all of the others, the whole convoluted truth, everything she had come to find out and everything that Edgewood Dirk had wanted her to realize.

She turned away and climbed back up the stairs as fast as she could manage. She needed to find Dirk and let him know. And then she needed to find Thom and figure out how to stop it!

Mistaya made her way back up the stairs to the opening in the library wall, twice encountering Throg Monkeys on their way down with more books. Each time she pressed herself against the rough stone of the passage wall, terrified of discovery, and each time they passed by without slowing. She kept thinking that sooner or later someone had to see her, as clearly visible as she appeared to herself. But Edgewood Dirk’s fairy magic was protecting her, and she remained undiscovered.

She found the Prism Cat sitting pretty much right where she had left him, not too far inside the Stacks. He was washing himself as she came up to him, and when she tried to tell him what she had discovered he quickly held up one paw to silence her while he finished his bath.

“Now then,” he said, once he was satisfied that he was clean. “What have you learned?”

She knelt down next to him, keeping her voice at a whisper, just in case. “Well, this is what I think is happening. The Throg Monkeys are stealing books of magic out of Libiris and taking them down through a tunnel to a cavern chamber. The chamber is a part of Abaddon, and the thieves are Abaddon’s demons. Some of the demons are counting and cataloging the stolen books, and some are reading from them and chanting, working some sort of spell to keep the wall leading into Libiris open. There are flying things and wolves keeping watch while the demons work so that no one interferes. I don’t know what their arrangement is with His Eminence and Pinch, but it has something to do with letting the demons out of the underground. I heard Craswell and Pinch talking about it earlier, although I didn’t know then what it meant.”

She took a deep breath. “I understand now what you were saying earlier. Taking those books from Libiris is just like leaving Sterling Silver without a King. Like you said—stealing her heart. She can’t function when the thing she has been given to do is taken away. She’s supposed to care for her books, but now many of them are being stolen and she can’t stop it, so she’s in pain and calling for help. Isn’t that right?”

Edgewood Dirk cocked an ear. “Be sensible. I’m a cat; what would I know?”

She frowned, ignoring him. “But why are they doing all this? Not the demons, but His Eminence and Pinch. What do they want?”

The cat yawned, bored. “Reason it through.”

“All right.” She glared at him. “Father locked the demons away years ago when he first came to Landover. The demons had united under the leadership of the Iron Mark and broken out of Abaddon. They were able to escape because the restraints that imprisoned them had weakened. Landover had been too long without a King for the wards to hold, and so the demons got out and were challenging Father for the throne.”

She hesitated. “So they’re trying to do the same thing now. Only this time they’re using the books of magic they’re stealing out of Libiris. The books are providing them with spells they can use to break free, and the chanters are calling up some of those spells so that …”

She stopped herself. “But why would His Eminence and Pinch help them? I don’t see what they have to gain by letting the demons get loose.”

The cat blinked. “I’m sure I don’t, either. But you can be certain there is something in it for them and it’s not anything Ben Holiday would be happy about. In any case, that isn’t your problem to solve. Your problem is staring you in the face. What are you going to do about the theft of the books?”

“What am I going to do? What about you? You’re the one who brought me here and showed me all this. You have to help!”

“I have been helping, in case you haven’t noticed.” Dirk’s reply bordered on insolence. “What else have I been doing but helping. Given the fact that fairy creatures like myself are not able to go down into Abaddon, I have done a great deal. I brought you here, and I showed you the problem. I shielded you from discovery. Now that you know the situation, it is up to you to correct it.”

She stared in dismay. “How am I supposed to do that?”

“You might start by asking yourself what needs doing.”

“All right. That’s easy. The books need to be taken back so that the spells can’t be chanted and the damage to the library walls can be healed and the demons shut away again. Libiris is organic, like Sterling Silver. She can heal herself if her purpose is restored. You said so.”

“Then you had better get busy and return those books, hadn’t you?” The cat regarded her with luminous eyes. “How are you going to do that, by the way?”

It was a good question. She couldn’t very well carry all those books back again, even if she could find a way to do so without being discovered. It would take days, maybe weeks. She could ask Thom to help, but even the two of them wouldn’t be enough.

“I can use magic,” she announced after a moment.

“Can you?” asked the cat.

She ignored him. “Maybe I can shrink the books to the size of pebbles, put them in a sack, and carry them out all at once. Then I can enlarge them when they’re back in the Stacks and put them back where they belong.”

“An excellent idea,” Dirk announced. “Except for one small problem. You can’t use magic on those books because they are protected by magic of their own and will resist your efforts if you try to change them in any way.”

She gave him a look. “How do you know this?”

He didn’t exactly shrug, but almost. “Cats know these things because cats pay attention. Also, fairy creatures know that certain rules apply in all situations. That books of magic are unalterable is one of those rules. You’ll have to find another way.”

Of course, I will, she thought irritably. She thought about it some more. Maybe she needed to talk this over with Thom. But if she did that, she would have to tell him how she’d found all this out, and that would require telling him who and what she was. She couldn’t explain why, but this seemed like a bad idea. It would almost certainly change the nature of their relationship, and she didn’t want that to happen. Besides, what could Thom do that would make a difference in things?

Nevertheless.

“If I brought Thom down here to help me, could you … ?”

“Haven’t we had this discussion?” Dirk barely gave her a glance. “Shielding you is hard enough. I am not without my limits.”

She wasn’t sure that she believed that, but she didn’t care to challenge him on it. Anyway, the possibility of bringing Thom into the mix was gone. She would have to do this by herself. She thought about it anew. She couldn’t use magic to change the books. Could she use it in some way to move them?

“What if I made the books lighter?” she asked Dirk. “You know, took away all that weight so that I could …”

“You are not paying attention,” he interrupted rather irritably, enunciating each word carefully. “You cannot use magic. Not any kind of magic in any way. Not on these books. Am I being clear enough?”

She wanted to smack him. She forced herself to think of something else. Okay, she couldn’t use magic on the books—she got it. She paused suddenly in her thinking. But even if she couldn’t use magic on those books, maybe she could use it on some of the others.

And on the book thieves.

“Are the Throg Monkeys demons?” she asked Edgewood Dirk.

“They are not. They are a species of troll, brought down out of the Melchor Mountains. Why do you ask?”

She ignored him. “His Eminence brought them here?”

“He did.”

“Are there a lot of them?”

“Dozens.”

“And they answer strictly to him?”

“They do. What is it that you are thinking of doing?”

“Patience. Can I use magic on other books in the Stacks—ones that aren’t books of magic?”

“Yes, yes. What are you up to?”

“How long can you keep me from being seen while I’m down here? Can you do it all the rest of tonight?”

The cat was watching her closely now. “I can shield you for as long as you like, if it doesn’t involve you trying to carry out books for endless days. You’re not going to suggest that, are you?”

“I’m not,” she agreed. “I’m going to suggest something else.”

And she told him what that something was.

She positioned herself just back from the hole in the library wall in the shadow of the Stacks where she could work her magic without risking a direct encounter with the Throg Monkeys. They came by regularly, sometimes in twos and threes, but mostly alone, carrying one or two books toward the hole to take down into Abaddon. They seemed absorbed in their work, eyes fixed on the way forward and wicked little faces set in a permanent grimace. They all looked pretty much the same, so she couldn’t be sure at first which ones she had spoken to already and which ones she hadn’t. In the end, she just kept speaking to them all, not trying to make a distinction, but just trying to make sure she didn’t miss anyone.

They didn’t know she was there. All they saw was the looming figure of His Eminence deep in the shadows, his voice a dark, booming whisper in the silence.

“Stop where you are! What are you doing? You are going in the wrong direction! The books are supposed to come out of Abaddon and back into the Stacks! Turn around and take that book back where you found it. Then go down the steps and bring out the rest! Replace each one you remove with a book from the shelving section directly across the aisle from me—there, behind you. Look for the ones with the words magic and conjuring and sorcery in the titles. Spread the books you carry out of the tunnel all over the shelving units of the Stacks so that they aren’t all in one place. Hide them, if you can. Work day and night until the task is finished. Do not speak of this to anyone, especially the demons! Do not let the demons find out what you are doing! Distract them so that they do not see. Do what I say! Do it now!”

This pronouncement was accompanied by a small spell that induced a feeling of confusion and a desire to make up for it by doing exactly what was being asked. She allowed each recipient of her spell a glimpse of His Eminence’s face, wreathed in displeasure and impatience, a further inducement to act swiftly. Each Throg Monkey left hurriedly to carry out her instructions.

It was child’s play, really—one of the easiest spells she had learned in her time studying with Questor, a spell that was effective in part because those affected were almost always on the verge of confusion and uncertainty to start with and were quite prepared to believe that they were doing something wrong. She didn’t know anything about Throg Monkeys, but she had a feeling that His Eminence would value obedience over independent thought in a situation like this. Or, to put it another way, matter over mind.

The books she was sending down into the tunnel as replacements for the real books of magic were farming volumes with the titles altered. Unless a close inspection was conducted, no one would know they weren’t what they appeared to be. By the time the truth was discovered, she hoped to have all the real books of magic back on the shelves of Libiris. It was the old sleight-of-hand trick, and there was no reason to think it wouldn’t work here.

She stayed at it for most of the night. She quit finally when she no longer saw any of the Throg Monkeys emerging from Abaddon without carrying books. She had reversed the flow of traffic, which was the best she could do for now. It would all work out as long as the demons didn’t catch on. She would come again tomorrow night to see how matters were progressing.

Leaving Edgewood Dirk at her bedroom doorway, having extracted his rather indifferent promise to meet her again at midnight next, she tumbled into bed.

She woke late and unrested, having barely managed two hours of sleep. She stumbled down to breakfast, skipping her morning bath entirely since this was her first day of work in the stables anyway and she didn’t see the point. Rumpled and disgruntled, she sat down heavily across from Thom.

“I hope you won’t be offended,” he said after a few moments of complete silence, “but you look terrible. Are you all right?”

She nodded. “Fine. I just didn’t sleep much.”

He studied her doubtfully. “It looks to me like it might be something more than that.” He pushed back his stool and got to his feet. “I’m going to ask His Eminence to have you assigned back into the Stacks for today, at least. You can begin your punishment in the stables tomorrow.”

He was out of the room and down the hallway before she could object.

To his credit, Thom got the job done. His Eminence seemed unconcerned that the punishment was to be postponed, agreeing without argument to let Ellice work with her brother in the Stacks so that Thom could make certain she was all right. Mistaya was grateful for the reprieve and told him so. She even went so far as to give him a hug. Thom was a better friend than she deserved, she decided. After all, he wasn’t hiding things from her the way she was hiding them from him.

“Have you been thinking about the voice?” he asked her at one point as they toiled over the cataloging.

She was thinking of nothing else, of course, but not in the way he was. Mostly, she was wondering if her plan was working and the Throg Monkeys were still carrying the missing books of magic back out of Abaddon as she had ordered them to. There was no way she could check on this now; she would have to wait for tonight, when Dirk could go with her. But that didn’t stop her from worrying over the possibility that her efforts had failed.

“I’ve thought about it,” she admitted.

“Good. So have I. When do we do something? When do we go back into the Stacks?”

She shook her head. This was not a conversation she wanted to have just yet. “I don’t know. When I’m feeling better, I guess.”

“Pinch was sick all yesterday and again today. He can’t seem to get out of his bed. Maybe that’s what you’ve got.” Thom paused, glancing around. “If you feel well enough, we should try again tonight.”

That was the last thing she wanted, but she couldn’t tell him so. “Let’s talk about it later,” she suggested finally, and went back to work feeling inexplicably guilty.

When it was finally time to quit, Mistaya was so exhausted that she could only just manage to eat a little of her dinner before announcing to Thom that she was off to bed. Because of her obvious exhaustion he was quick to tell her that they would talk about their plans for returning to the forbidden regions of the Stacks later on. He offered to help her to her room, but she insisted she could get there on her own, a task that turned out to be just manageable.

She slept without waking or dreaming until something soft touched her face, and she woke with a start. Her bedside candle was still burning, if barely, or she wouldn’t have been able to make out Edgewood Dirk seated next to her, whiskers brushing her cheeks as he washed himself. She blinked and tried to sit up, but failed.

Dirk jumped down from the bed and walked to the door. “Coming, Princess? It is already after midnight.”

She didn’t know what time it was and she didn’t care. All she wanted to do at this point was go back to sleep. But at the same time she realized the importance of finding out what was happening in the Stacks and in the cavern down in Abaddon. She needed to know whether her magic was working on the Throg Monkeys.

So she climbed from the bed, still wearing the clothing she had fallen asleep in, pulled on her boots, and followed the Prism Cat out the door. They didn’t say a word to each other as they walked down the hallway to the library and entered the Stacks. Mistaya was too tired for conversation. Dirk, taciturn as usual, sauntered on with no apparent concern for whether she was keeping up or even following. She found herself thinking how bizarre it was that she was trailing after a talking cat in a library filled with something called Throg Monkeys in search of stolen books of magic, and she wondered how Rhonda Masterson, were she there, would feel about doing something like that. Some things, she guessed, were best left to the imagination.

She was suddenly, inexplicably homesick. She missed Sterling Silver and her mother and father and Questor Thews and Abernathy and all the other creatures that were so much a part of her life. If she could have made a wish that would have taken her home at that very moment, she would have seized it with both hands.

But she was stuck with things as they were, so she pushed the feeling aside and tried to concentrate on the task at hand. She couldn’t help thinking as she did so that all this was much tougher than she had imagined. She wished she could do more using her magic, but it was too dangerous. It was risky enough using magic to deceive the Throg Monkeys. Attempting anything more would almost certainly give her away.

Once they had gotten deeper into the Stacks, she began seeing her unsuspecting accomplices. They crept down the aisles and through the shadows like gnarled wraiths, their arms loaded with books. To her delight, they were carrying the books away from Abaddon. Apparently her plan was still working.

“I need to go back down to that cavern to see how far they’ve gotten,” she told Dirk.

The cat nodded wordlessly, and she left him at the entrance and passed through the breach in the wall. Was she imagining things or was the hole getting smaller? She stared at the rough edges, trying to remember how they had looked the day before. Larger and more jagged, she thought. She hadn’t heard the building’s voice for a while, either, an indication that it wasn’t as desperate for help as it had been. Perhaps because that help had been given? By her? She smiled to herself, liking the idea and feeling good about the possibility that she had helped it come to pass.

The passageway leading down to the cavern where the books were stored was empty as she descended. She was only yards from the opening in the wall before she passed the first of the Throg Monkeys she had seen since starting down, a group of three, all with arms laden. She caught a glimpse of titles on the spines, some containing the word magic in bold print, so she had her proof that things were going as intended. She was surprised at how easy this had been, how simple the solution to the problem.

At the opening in the wall, she crawled out onto the rock shelf, taking care to crouch as she did so, still not entirely convinced that she couldn’t be seen. Edgewood Dirk could promise to shield her, but there were counter spells that could undo his efforts. She knew that much from her time studying with Questor.

When she peered down, she was excited to discover that the shelves that had held all the stolen books were virtually unchanged. Wolves continued to patrol the perimeter and winged sentries still flew overhead while some of the black-cloaked figures walked among the books and others chanted spells from the book with the red leather cover. No one seemed to notice that anything was wrong. Perhaps they didn’t know the difference between magic and farming, she thought, muffling the urge to laugh. She could see the Throg Monkeys watching these wraiths, avoiding them whenever possible. Now and then, one of the little monsters would snatch a book furtively from the shelves, replace it with one it was carrying, and edge away from the tally takers until it was able to slip up the stairway unnoticed.

Her plan was working! She wanted to shout it aloud, but managed to restrain herself.

How much longer would it be until all of the books were replaced? How many more books were there? She couldn’t think of any way to find out that didn’t involve her going down into the cavern and having a closer look. That seemed too risky, even if she was supposed to be invisible. She could ask the Throg Monkeys, perhaps. Or she could wait until they were no longer bringing books back out of Abaddon. That way she would know they were all safely spirited away.

Would that be enough to close the hole in the library wall, or was something more needed?

She stayed where she was for a little longer, reading what she could into what she was seeing. Finally, unable to determine anything more, she turned away and crept up the steps to the hole and back into the Stacks.

Edgewood Dirk was waiting, sitting on his haunches and studying her. “Is your plan working?” he asked.

“I think so. But what should we do about the hole in the wall? Can we close it over?”

Dirk blinked. “Libiris is organic, like Sterling Silver. She will heal herself if the wound is not enlarged by further thefts and by the continued chanting of spells.”

“Then we need to make sure that it all stops, don’t we? We need to do something about His Eminence and Pinch.”

The cat hesitated. He arched his back in a long stretch, his fur shimmering with a strange, silvery glow. “Perhaps you should leave that to Ben Holiday and his companions. They seem more suited to that sort of work.”

“But I started this and I want to finish it!” she insisted. “I know how to be careful.”

The Prism Cat gave her a long, steady look that suggested he might be weighing the merits of this assertion. Then, his interest in the subject exhausted, he turned away and started back down the aisle toward the front of the room. “Time to go back to sleep,” he called over his shoulder. “We can discuss this further tomorrow.”

She thought it a reasonable suggestion, even though she was already certain that she wasn’t going to change her mind no matter what sort of arguments he mounted. This was her chance to make up for Carrington, her opportunity to prove herself to her parents. Once she had restored Libiris and exposed His Eminence and Pinch, they could no longer deny her request to remain in Landover and to take charge of her future. She would be allowed to continue her studies with Questor and Abernathy. She would be accepted as an equal and no longer treated as a child.

The trek back through the stacks was endless. Mistaya was bone-weary and muddle-headed from lack of sleep, and she could barely manage to put one foot ahead of the other. If Edgewood Dirk noticed or cared, he was not giving evidence of it. He minced along ahead of her, a cat on its way to someplace of its own choosing. She might have been wallpaper for all the difference she made to him.

Somewhere along the way, he simply disappeared. She barely noticed, her thoughts only on getting to bed and going to sleep. Shouldn’t be any problem tonight, she thought with a smile. Nothing would keep her awake after this.

Taking a quick look up and down the hallway before she did so, she opened the door to her room and stepped inside.

She knew immediately that something was wrong.

“Taking a nighttime stroll, Princess?” she heard His Eminence ask her from the darkness.

Then she caught a whiff of something bitter and raw, and she tumbled away into blackness.

When Mistaya came awake again, she was lying on a straw pallet in a dark, windowless room with only a single candle sitting on the floor beside her for light. She had a splitting headache, but otherwise she felt all right. She lay without moving for long moments while her eyes adjusted, trying to remember exactly what had happened to her. When she did remember, she wished she hadn’t.

A figure moved out of the darkness, coming over from another part of the room to sit on the bed beside her. She flinched involuntarily and hunched her shoulders, frightened that it was His Eminence or Rufus Pinch. But when she saw Thom’s worried face, she exhaled sharply in relief.

“Are you all right?” he asked her, leaning close, his voice a whisper.

She nodded. “Are we alone?”

He nodded back. “But they might be listening.”

“They brought you here, too?”

“Actually, they brought me here first, then you.”

She tried to lift one arm to rub her pounding head, but her hands were surprisingly heavy. When she glanced down to find out why, she saw that they were encased in what looked like clouds of swirling mist that completely hid them from view.

“What’s happened to me?” she gasped, shaking them wildly, struggling to free them. “Who did this?”

“His Eminence.” Thom put his hands on her arms to quiet her. “No, don’t. Not yet. Stay still. Your hands are bound with magic so that you can’t work spells. If you try to free them, you will only hurt yourself.”

She stopped thrashing and stared at him. “He knows everything, doesn’t he? He knows who I am. I heard him call me by name before I passed out. What did he use on me?”

Thom shook his head. “A spell. He had me frozen in place with another one so that I couldn’t do anything to help. He’s a much more accomplished wizard than we gave him credit for. And, yes, he knows who you are.”

She gave a long sigh and lay back. “So now you know, too.”

He smiled. “Oh, I knew who you were all along. Right from the moment I saw you standing in the doorway.” He laughed softly when he saw the look on her face. “I told you I saw you when I was at court all those years ago, when you were just a child. You looked different then, but you had the same eyes. No one could ever mistake those eyes.”

To her horror, she found herself blushing. Her face turned hot, and it was only the darkness that hid her reaction. “You must have gotten closer to me than I would have thought possible for a servant.”

He shrugged. “Other things gave you away, as well. Your hands are too soft for a village girl’s. Also, you are too well spoken, and you’ve had training in how to carry yourself.”

“You seem awfully well informed about Princesses.”

“Not really. I just pay attention to things.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you knew?”

He seemed to consider. “I’m not sure. Once I had you here, I didn’t want you to leave. I wasn’t making that up, you know. I was afraid that if I told you I knew you were Mistaya Holiday, it would change the nature of our relationship and you might decide you had to go. It just seemed easier to go on pretending I believed you to be who you said you were.” He paused. “I actually do have a sister named Ellice, but she’s much older than you.”

She grimaced. “I don’t know whether to be angry with you or not. I guess I’m not. It just feels funny, knowing I was pretending with you for nothing.”

“We were both pretending. It was a game. But there wasn’t any harm done. Except now that it’s out in the open that you’re a Princess, I’m afraid you might not want to have anything more to do with me.”

She laughed despite herself. “It doesn’t much matter what I want at this point, does it? I’m a prisoner of His Eminence, and so are you. We can’t pretend much of anything now. What do you think he plans to do with us?”

Thom shook his head. “I don’t know. He didn’t say. He brought me here and left me, and a little later he brought you here, too.”

“If he knows who I am, and he’s keeping me prisoner anyway, then we are in a lot of trouble. He can’t be planning anything good for either of us if he’s willing to risk all that.”

“No, I don’t suppose so.”

“This is all my fault,” she declared, sitting up next to him, resting her mist-encased hands in her lap. She was already trying to think of a spell that would free her from the bindings, running through the lessons she had studied under Questor’s tutelage. “If I’d stayed in my room instead of going back into the Stacks, none of this would have happened. I was so stupid it makes me want to scream.”

“So that’s where you were. I came looking for you earlier, but you weren’t in your room.”

“I didn’t want to tell you,” she admitted, giving him a rueful smile. “I’m sorry about that. I wish that I had.”

“It isn’t too late for you to do so now, is it?” he asked.

She smiled and proceeded to tell him everything she had been keeping from him. She even told him about Edgewood Dirk, despite her promise to the cat. It was necessary, she reasoned, given her present situation.

She had kept so much from him, she told Thom, because she was worried about involving him further.

“Also, I was worried about the same things you were,” she added. “I thought it would change how you felt about me, and I didn’t want you not to be my friend.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Funny that we were both so worried when there was no reason for it.”

“Funny peculiar,” she agreed, just managing to meet his gaze. Then she looked quickly away. “Anyway, I messed up.”

He looked away. “Maybe I was the one who messed up. Your getting caught might not have been your fault. It might have been mine. If I hadn’t come to your room looking for you and then gone prowling around out in the Stacks, His Eminence might not have caught me and found out about you.”

“Well, it doesn’t much matter now. It’s over and done with, and we can both take some share of the blame.” She swung her legs around to rest her feet on the floor. “Where are we, anyway?”

“One of the storerooms, down by the kitchen. There’s no way out; I’ve already searched. Even if there were somebody who might try to help us, the walls are two feet thick. We can yell all we want, but no one will hear.” He paused. “Any chance the Prism Cat might help us?”

She shrugged. “There’s always a chance. But Dirk thinks mostly of himself. I don’t think his attention span is all that long, either. If he knows we’re here and feels so inclined, he might choose to help us. But he might just as easily not.”

“Some friend.”

“I wouldn’t call Edgewood Dirk a friend. More on the order of a particularly nettlesome aunt or a nagging teacher.” She was thinking now of Harriet Appleton. But that wasn’t fair, she knew. She tossed the comparison aside. “Dirk is unpredictable,” she finished.

He shifted himself on the pallet so that he was sitting closer. “You told me how you happened to come to Libiris, but not why. You said you were escaping from your grandfather and hiding from your family so you wouldn’t have to come here. But why was your family making you come here in the first place?”

She told him. She started all the way back with her time at Carrington and her troubles with the school administration, culminating in her suspension and disgraced return to Landover. She related the events surrounding her flight from Sterling Silver, although it was unexpectedly hard to explain why she hadn’t wanted to come to Libiris but had ended up coming anyway and then staying. He listened without comment to all of it, and not once did she see even the flicker of a grimace or a look of disbelief cross his face.

“I guess I still don’t understand what happened,” she finished. “I mean, I still don’t know exactly how I ended up here.”

“Well, I think you just wanted it to be your idea,” he said, giving a shrug to emphasize that it wasn’t all that complicated for him. “I think you wanted to come here on your own terms, and that’s what you did. I also think you did the right thing.”

“You do?”

“Yes. Both for you and for Libiris. Maybe for your father and the Kingdom, too. After all, you’ve stopped the book theft and done something to heal the library so that the demons no longer have a way to escape Abaddon.”

“But His Eminence will already have found out what I’ve done! He’ll put everything back the way it was!” She felt suddenly disheartened. “A week ago, it wouldn’t have mattered. I didn’t even want to be here. Libiris was just an ugly building. But now I know the truth about her. She’s so much more—and she’s in such pain, Thom! I wanted to help her get better, and I thought that by tricking the Throg Monkeys into returning her books I had. But it will all have been for nothing.”

Thom shook his head quickly. “Don’t be too sure of that. He didn’t say much of anything when he caught up with me. He doesn’t necessarily know what you’ve done.”

“Maybe. But he’ll figure it out quickly enough, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know. Just don’t give anything away. He’ll try to get you to do that. Make him find it out for himself.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t do anything to help him.”

“Tell him he has to let you go. You are a Princess of Landover, and if your father finds out what’s happened, His Eminence won’t be able to run fast enough or far enough. That ought to make him sit up and take notice.” He paused. “Wait a minute! I’ve got a better idea. Tell him your father already knows you’re here!”

“Of course!” she exclaimed, remembering suddenly. “Questor told him! And Father’s on his way here to bring me home!”

“That’s right! He might even get here before sunset today!”

Mistaya looped her bound arms over his head and shoulders and hugged him as hard as she could. “Yes, yes, he might!”

Thom hugged her back instantly, and then as if realizing what they had done, they released each other at the same moment and looked in different directions, eyes lowered.

“Well, that deserved a hug,” she declared finally, looking him in the eye again.

“I thought so,” he agreed, and gave her one of his quirky grins.

They sat together in the small glow of the candle until the tiny flame went out, leaving them in darkness save for a faint wash of sunlight creeping with a thief’s hesitancy under their locked door from the hallway beyond. Time passed with agonizing slowness, and no one came. Mistaya was hungry and tired, but there was no food to eat and sleep was impossible. Instead, she talked with Thom about ways they might escape and things they might do to make His Eminence sorry for what he had done. The conversation helped keep her growing fears at bay—fears that seemed increasingly well founded. The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that His Eminence was not going to be intimidated by anything she said. If he was willing to lock them up in the first place, he couldn’t be all that worried about what her father might do.

She spent a goodly amount of time during the silences between exchanges thinking about how she could summon spells that would help them. The problem was that virtually everything she knew how to do required a combination of voice and hands. You had to speak the words and make the signs if the spells were to work. It was a safeguard against accidental summoning and unfortunate consequences. If all that was needed to conjure a spell was a word or two, you might act inadvertently. But if you also needed to gesture, it was less likely that you would make a mistake. Questor had taught her this, explaining that using magic always required measured consideration beforehand.

She wished suddenly that she hadn’t left all her possessions tucked away in her sleeping chamber. She might find something useful in Questor’s book of magic if she could get her hands on it. There were all kinds of spells, incantations, and conjuring in there—maybe even something that didn’t require the use of her hands.

Nor, she realized with a shock, did she have the rainbow crush on her. That, too, was back in her sleeping chamber. She had been so sure she wouldn’t need it, so sure of herself.

Well, maybe Edgewood Dirk would come to rescue her.

Sure, and maybe cows would fly.

She had no idea how long she had sat in the darkness with Thom when she finally heard footsteps outside the storeroom door and the sharp snick of the lock releasing. She sat up straight at once, readying herself for whatever was to come. Beside her, Thom whispered, “Remember. Don’t tell him anything. Don’t let him trick you.”

The door opened and a flood of light spilled through, momentarily blinding her. His Eminence appeared, tall and vaguely spectral, his strange head canted over to one side, as if it were too heavy for his neck. Rufus Pinch followed close on his heels, sour-faced and pale from his illness, apparently determined not to miss out on whatever punishment was to be dispensed to the prisoners.

“Good day, Princess,” His Eminence greeted, beaming down at her. “Good morning, Thom,” he added, nodding to the boy.

“You had better let us go, and right now,” Mistaya snapped, glaring at him as she came to her feet and stood facing him, ignoring the weight of the restraints on her hands.

“Had I?” asked the other, an astonished look crossing his face. “Oh, dear. What will happen if I don’t?”

“My father will find out, that’s what!”

“Well, I certainly hope so.”

“He already knows I’m here, you realize. Questor Thews visited me secretly two days ago, and when he left he …” She caught herself, realizing suddenly what he had said. “You hope so?” She repeated his words back to him, not quite believing she had heard right.

His Eminence held up his hands and patted at the air, glancing at Pinch to share a secret smile before turning back to her. “Let me save you the trouble of puzzling it through. I already know Questor Thews was here. You both thought he got into the building without my knowing, but that is quite impossible. You talked, and he departed. I don’t doubt that in doing so he made you aware of the fact that he would have to report your whereabouts to your father. Am I right?”

She nodded dumbly, not at all liking where this was headed. “He said Father would be coming to get me.” This was not so, but she thought she needed to suggest that there was an urgency to things. “He’s probably already on his way.”

His Eminence looked even happier. “Excellent! Exactly what I was counting on!”

Mistaya stared. “What are you talking about? You hold me prisoner, and you’re telling me you want my father to come here to do something about it?”

“That is not exactly right. I do want him to come, but I do not want him to think you are a prisoner.” He held up one finger, as if lecturing. “In point of fact, if you hadn’t gone into the Stacks against my express orders, there wouldn’t be a reason for you to be a prisoner. But you just couldn’t help yourself, could you? Whatever was it that you were doing back there, little Princess?”

She ignored the question. “Why do you want my father to come visit me at all?”

He sighed heavily. “Well, the answer to that question is complicated. Boiled down to its simplest form, it has to do with his position in Landover versus my own. I think his is slightly more elevated than necessary and mine is very much in need of improvement. If he comes to see you, he will of necessity have to see me, and I might be able to persuade him of the need for reassessment.”

“Reassessment?”

“Of our respective positions.”

She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“Princess, you had a falling-out with your parents and you ran away from home. Of that much, I am certain. Why you came here, I haven’t a clue. But I view it as a type of divine intervention. Higher powers than those to which I have access have sent you my way. I knew you at once for who you were; surely you realize that now, even if you didn’t before. You are too well known to pretend to be a village working girl. Nor was there any hope that Thom could pass you off as his sister. No, you were Princess Mistaya Holiday, and you were here to help me in my efforts to improve my fortunes and reinvent my future.”

Behind him, Rufus Pinch cleared his throat meaningfully. “Yes, yes, Mr. Pinch, and yours, as well,” Crabbit added wearily.

“I don’t see myself doing much to help you achieve that end,” she snapped at him. “You have made me a prisoner against my will. You have kept Thom in indentured servitude for years, an act that my father would never—”

“I did what?” His Eminence demanded, interrupting her. “Indentured servitude?” He looked sharply at Thom. “Is that what you told her? That I was holding you against your will?”

Mistaya was confused. She looked quickly at Thom, who was clearly uncomfortable with the attention. “I did,” the boy said simply.

“Goodness, no wonder the two of you got caught out! Co-conspirators, and you don’t even trust each other enough to reveal your true identities! Oh, this is really too much! Did she tell you who she is, Thom? She didn’t, did she? And you didn’t tell her who you are, either, did you? I will never understand young people. So, I ask you again, Princess. What was it you were doing back in the Stacks? And please don’t tell me you were looking for a lost piece of family jewelry.”

Mistaya tightened her lips. “I heard someone moaning. I was trying to find out who it was.”

His Eminence and Pinch exchanged another glance. “Someone moaning,” the former repeated. “Did you discover who that someone was?”

She shook her head. “It was too dark to see anything. And there was a wind of some sort that kept pulling at us. We were frightened and turned back.” She hesitated. “But then I went back into the Stacks again last night for another look. I thought I could find a way to get through the wind and the darkness. But I couldn’t.”

His Eminence smiled rather unpleasantly. “After standing toe-to-toe with the Witch of the Deep Fell five years ago and somehow besting her to the extent that she has not been seen since, you failed to find a way to get past some wind and darkness? Really, Princess?”

He came forward until he was standing right in front of her, looming over her like a big tree. “I don’t believe a word of it. I think you know exactly what we are doing here, and I think you have been trying to interfere with our efforts. I don’t know that you have succeeded, but I suspect you have worked some sort of mischief and I intend to find out what it is. Meanwhile, you will stay locked in this storeroom until your father comes to take you home. You and Andjen Thomlinson both. You are not going to be allowed to disrupt my plans further.”

He was grinning so hard that all his teeth were showing, and Mistaya stepped back despite herself.

“Now, I know something of magic, little girl,” the other continued softly. “In fact, I know a great deal more than you do. I have bound up your hands with a spell that you cannot undo without my help. That way, you won’t try something foolish. You and Thom will stay here as my guests for as long as I wish it. Thom owes me continued service under the terms of our bargain and you owe me some days in the stables. I intend to collect from both of you, on that and maybe more. I have a special use for you, Princess, one that requires you remain here awhile longer. Think on that and make of it what you will.”

He wheeled about. “Come along, Mr. Pinch. We are done here. Leave them fresh candles so that they can see each other’s faces while they confess the truths they keep trying to hide.”

Pinch grinned wolfishly at Mistaya and Thom. “You were warned, weren’t you? See what your disobedience has gotten you!”

He dumped a handful of candles on the pallet and followed His Eminence out of the room. The door slammed shut behind them with a bang, and its locks slid into place. The girl and the boy, standing next to each other, were left in blackness once more.

As soon as they were alone, Thom found and lit one of the candles. “What do you think he meant when he said he had a special use for you?”

Mistaya didn’t know, and right at the moment she didn’t particularly care. “Andjen Thomlinson?” she asked, giving him a stony look.

“My given names,” he admitted.

“You knew who I was all along, but after listening to His Eminence, I get the impression that maybe I don’t know everything about you. That doesn’t make me feel very good. It makes me feel a little foolish and a whole lot angry.”

“You have a right to be angry, but I was just protecting myself out of habit.” He sat down on the pallet, looking up at her. “I’ve been hiding my identity now for the entire three years I have been at Libiris. I don’t even think about it anymore. I’m always just Thom, the boy from the village. I’m Thom to everyone.”

She sat down next to him. “But it appears that you are actually someone else.”

Thom nodded. “I am. Thom was the name I took when I came to stay here. I was looking for a place to hide, and His Eminence offered me one. He said no one would ever think to look for me here. We agreed that I would be Thom, a boy from a distant village, come to work off an indenture. I wasn’t making something up on the spur of the moment when I told you that; I was just repeating what I told everyone. Actually, it’s not so far from the truth. I committed myself to serve His Eminence for five years for the privilege of hiding out here. He needed someone to take over the cataloging of the books, and I had the necessary skills.”

He paused. “At least, that’s what I thought when we made our bargain. Now I don’t know why he let me stay. It obviously doesn’t have anything to do with cleaning up the library.”

“You should have told me the truth,” she said quietly. “You should have trusted me.”

He shook his head slowly. “I think so, too, now. But when you first came, I was afraid that telling you the truth would be a very bad mistake. I was afraid it would make you hate me.”

“Why would you think that?” she demanded, suddenly angry all over again. “What did I do or say to make you think I wouldn’t like you if I knew who you were?”

“Nothing It isn’t you. It’s me. It’s the truth about who I am. I’m not some village boy. I came to Libiris to hide after my father died and one of my brothers murdered the other and banished my sisters to various places around the Greensward.”

He paused. “I came here to hide because Berwyn Laphroig is my brother.”

“I know you’ve explained it, but I still have a very hard time thinking of The Frog as your brother,” Mistaya said.

She was back to sitting next to him on the pallet, the clouded balls that bound her hands resting in her lap. Food had arrived, finally, and since she couldn’t feed herself, he was helping her by spooning into her mouth small portions of something that was just a notch above gruel on the nutritional meter. She was eating without tasting, her concentration elsewhere ever since His Eminence had departed, leaving behind his latest pronouncement on her fate.

“Well, it does take some getting used to,” he agreed.

“At least he isn’t your real brother. That would be even more difficult to accept.”

“We had different mothers. Really, we’re nothing alike. We share a common father and that’s the extent of it.”

“I wouldn’t ever think you were like him,” she said after a moment of chewing and swallowing. “No one would.”

Thom smiled. “He’s not like anyone, really. He was never interested in being friends with other people. He only wanted one thing from the time he could walk—to be Lord of Rhyndweir.” He paused. “Actually, I think he wants a great deal more than that. That might have something to do with his interest in you.”

She thought about it for a moment. It made sense. If he married her, he would be her spouse when she took the throne. Took the throne. That sounded so weird. She almost never thought about it. She couldn’t quite make herself believe it would ever be necessary. The idea of her father not being King of Landover was inconceivable. Laphroig wouldn’t think that way though; he would already be anticipating her father’s demise.

“He wouldn’t be satisfied with being married to me unless he could be King, would he?”

“He would want you to bear him a son he could raise as future King while he acted as regent during the child’s minority. That’s how he thinks. You would be a means to an end and not much more.”

“Then he would get rid of me,” she agreed. Thom didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. She accepted another spoonful of whatever it was he was feeding her. “Well, I hate to disappoint him, but none of this is going to happen. I’m not ever marrying The Frog or bearing his child—ugh—or having anything to do with him. Once we get out of here and tell my father what he’s done, we won’t either of us have to worry about him ever again!”

Thom had related the details of his story earlier, laying it all out for her once she had calmed down enough to listen. After his father’s death, he had lasted through the brief reign of his oldest brother, thinking that things at Rhyndweir might actually improve, since his brother was a decided improvement over his intractable and impetuous father. But when his brother had died under circumstances that were decidedly suspicious and his sisters had been shunted off to the farthest corners of the Greensward, he had recognized the writing on the wall. His other brother, who was now the new Lord of Rhyndweir and almost certainly responsible for everything, would soon get around to disposing of him. Telling no one, he departed his home in the dead of night. Once safely away, he resolved to wait things out until he knew which way the wind was blowing. When Berwyn’s wives began dying one after the other, he abandoned any thoughts of returning and resolved to stay away as long as necessary. Shortly after, he reached Libiris, a refuge he had been considering from the first, and convinced His Eminence to let him stay.

Thom finished feeding her and put her bowl and spoon aside to take up his own. He ate with studied disinterest, eyes downcast and his usually cheerful demeanor subdued.

“What’s wrong?” she asked him after a few minutes of silence.

“I was just thinking. After I fled Rhyndweir, my brother announced that I was dead. He did it in part, I think, to see if I would reappear to dispute it and in part to make everyone stop thinking about me. The first didn’t work, but the second did. All this time, ever since I left, everyone has believed it. My mother, my sisters, my friends—everyone. I don’t have a place in their lives anymore. I’m just a memory to them.”

She looked down at her bound hands. “Don’t be sad. All that will change once we’re out of this mess.” She gave him a tentative smile. “Think how happy they’ll be to have you back.”

He shrugged. “I just wish I knew how to make that happen. His Eminence isn’t going to let us go; he can’t afford to do that now that he’s made a prisoner of you. Not to mention that he clearly has something bad planned for your father.”

“I know,” she agreed. “It has something to do with using me as bait to lure him to Libiris. He made that clear enough. My so-called special use. I wonder what it is.”

“Whatever it is, he plans to improve his situation at our expense. Or maybe at your father’s. I don’t even trust him to keep his agreement to hide me, though he’s done so up until now. If he thinks it will gain him anything, he will give me up in a heartbeat. Laphroig has never stopped hunting for me. If he finds me, I know what will happen.”

Mistaya knew, too. Laphroig was ruthless and ambitious, and he had demonstrated on more than one occasion that he would eliminate anyone who got in his way.

“We’re going to get out of here, Thom,” she said suddenly, standing up as if ready to do so right that moment. “He can’t keep us locked up forever. Sooner or later, we will find a way to get out.”

He arched one eyebrow at her. “It had better be sooner. I don’t think we have all that much time. Whatever he’s got planned, it’s going to come about pretty quickly now.”

She was about to reassure him that it didn’t matter what His Eminence had planned for them, that they would find a way to escape, when the cell door opened and in strolled Edgewood Dirk. The Prism Cat looked sleek and relaxed, his brilliant fur shining in the near darkness, his eyes agleam and his tail aloft and twitching left to right, right to left. He glanced at Thom, but mostly he kept his eyes on Mistaya as he came up to her, sat down so that they were facing each other, and began cleaning himself.

She watched him with ill-concealed frustration, but kept silent while he performed his ablutions.

“Good day,” he greeted when finished, sounding as if he believed it actually was.

“I see that you’ve abandoned your insistence on never talking in front of anyone but me,” she responded with as much irony as she could muster.

“I’ve abandoned it because you’ve compromised me by telling your friend everything you know about me,” the cat replied. “There’s not much point in pretending to be ordinary when you’ve already let the cat out of the bag, so to speak.”

She sighed heavily. “Of course, I should have realized. But about that cheerful greeting you just offered?” She purposefully placed her hands where he could not miss seeing them as anything but balls of swirling, misty smoke. “It might be a good day for some, but not necessarily for me.”

The cat cocked his head. “I see what you mean.”

She waited a beat. “Well, then, perhaps you can do something about it? I would like to have the use of my hands back.”

Edgewood Dirk seemed to consider. “I am afraid I cannot help you.”

“You can’t help me,” she repeated flatly, exasperation flooding through her like a riptide beneath the water’s surface.

“I’m a cat, you see.”

“I do see. But you are so much more than an ordinary cat. You are a Prism Cat, in case you have forgotten. A fairy creature, possessed of special magic, if I am not mistaken.”

“You are not mistaken. I am possessed of special magic, although I might choose a different word than possessed to describe my gifts. But while I have the use of special magic, I do not have the use of either fingers or opposable thumbs.” He held up one paw to reinforce his point. “In case you have forgotten.”

She shook her head. “What has that got to do with anything? All I want you to do is employ enough magic to rid me of my shackles!”

The cat cocked his head the other way. “I understand that. But it isn’t easy for me to undo other spells. True, I have formidable skills with which to protect myself and sometimes others. I also have the ability to shield those I think might need it, such as you. But there are many things I cannot do because I lack the ability to weave spells in conjunction with speaking words. I believe that is your current problem, in point of fact, isn’t it?”

“You have to use your hands to get rid of this spell?” she demanded in disbelief. She gave a quick glance over at Thom, who was eyeing the cat with some suspicion but clearly not interested in getting involved in this argument. “You can’t set me free?”

“Lacking fingers and thumbs, I cannot make the necessary signs, even though I can speak the words. So, no, I cannot set you free.”

Mistaya wanted to scream aloud her frustration. What was she supposed to do now? Dirk was her last real hope for getting out of there.

“Can you open the door and let us out?” Thom asked cautiously.

The cat lifted one paw and licked it, and then set it down again. “I can open the door for you. I can even shield you from discovery. I can do this, Andjen Thomlinson, and I will, even though the Princess broke her word and told you about me. But I can only help you, not her. So long as she wears her shackles, she can be tracked easily. For her, escape is impossible. She wouldn’t get a dozen feet from the doorway before her captors were after her.”

He paused. “So, then. Do you want me to help you escape? You alone?”

Thom shook his head reluctantly. “No, I won’t leave Mistaya.”

“So here we sit, awaiting our fate, helpless victims of your lack of thumbs and fingers,” Mistaya declared with a flourish that was somewhere between theatrical, disgusted, and clumsy.

“Well, not entirely helpless,” the cat advised. “You do have family and friends who might try to help you. And you do have your own considerable intelligence on which you might rely, just as you did with the problem of returning the books to the Stacks.”

She stared at him. Had he just paid her a compliment? “His Eminence is already seeking to undo what I have done, so it may all have been for nothing. My family and friends have been told to let me be, so I don’t look for them to come to my rescue.” She paused. “And my considerable intelligence is drained of ideas.”

“Perhaps you need to have a little more faith both in yourself and in others. You like being mistress of your own fate, but when you’ve needed help, hasn’t it always been there?”

She thought back to her adventures with Nightshade. She considered her term of imprisonment at the Carrington Women’s Preparatory School. “I suppose so. But that might not be the case this time.”

“Faith, Princess,” the Prism Cat repeated. “It is a highly underrated weapon against the dark things in this world.”

He stood up, stretched and yawned, and turned for the door. “I have to be going now. I have other things to do and other places to be. But we will see each other again. Be patient with yourself. Cats are enormously patient, and as a result we almost always get what we want. I advise you to try it out for yourself.”

“Wait!” she exclaimed, leaping up. “You can’t just leave us!”

The cat was at the door. He stopped and turned. “Cats can do whatever they want, whenever they want, without regard to what anyone says or does. Rather like Princesses.”

The door opened of its own accord. He sauntered out, and the door closed behind him, the locks refastening.

Mistaya looked at Thom. “That cat has a rotten attitude,” she said.

In the somewhat subdued and somber chambers of Sterling Silver, a different attitude was in evidence. Ever since Questor Thews had returned from Libiris with news of Mistaya’s whereabouts, the members of the inner circle of Landover’s high court had been mulling over the King’s decision to honor his daughter’s choice to remain where she was. There were mixed feelings about this, and no one was resting easy. Knowing that Mistaya was with someone as notoriously unpredictable as Craswell Crabbit took a good deal of getting used to. No one was comfortable with the idea that the Princess was alone with such a man, yet no one was willing to press the point with her parents. After all, no one was more aware of the risks than they were, and they did not need reminding.

This did not mean, however, that their friends and retainers were able to stop worrying about it.

Abernathy in particular was distressed. He had been thinking it through from a somewhat different perspective than the others, being both man and dog and, thus, subject to the genetic breeding and emotional makeup of both, and he was beginning to see things that they might have missed.

First, he didn’t much care for the idea of a fifteen-year-old being mistress of her own fate. A child unlike others, but a child still, Mistaya should be held accountable for her actions, and he did not think she should be telling her parents what to do. There was no reason for her to remain at Libiris and in such close proximity to Craswell Crabbit, a man Abernathy had been worried about from the beginning. She should come home and face Ben and Willow and then, after having aired her grievances, she might petition them to go back in the company of either Questor or himself. But she shouldn’t be there alone.

Second, he was beginning to have a strong suspicion about Thom. At first, he had dismissed the boy as someone of no importance. But the more he thought about it, the more he wondered why Crabbit, who never did anything unless there was a strong chance for personal gain, had allowed the boy to stay on. Because he was court scribe, he knew Landover’s history and everyone connected with it intimately, and he had come to suspect that the mysterious Thom might be Andjen Thomlinson, the younger brother of Laphroig, who supposedly had been dead for three years. Abernathy had always been suspicious of that story; there had never been any proof that Kallendbor’s youngest had indeed died. They would be about the same age now, the Princess and the boy, and what Mistaya had related of Thom to Questor suggested he might be less a village boy and more an equal. Which made Abernathy wonder if Crabbit, who was no fool, might have recognized this, too.

Because, third, he was almost certain that Crabbit knew who Mistaya was. How could he not? Everyone who had even the smallest link to the royal court knew of the King’s only daughter. Her physical features were striking and hard to mistake. Her history was common knowledge. They knew what she looked like and they knew her history. Crabbit should have figured it out by now. If so, then why was he keeping it a secret from everyone, especially from Mistaya? This bothered Abernathy because he knew it meant that Crabbit was up to something.

Finally, he was troubled that Questor had managed to sneak in and out of Libiris without being caught. This was a terrible thing to admit, but he knew that the odds against the frequently inept wizard successfully bypassing the wardings and locks that the overlord of the library would have set in place were huge. Crabbit was too smart. Abernathy suspected that he had deliberately allowed Questor to come and go, and that meant, once again, that he was up to something.

So went the soft-coated wheaten terrier’s thinking.

He mulled matters over for an entire day before he finally came to the conclusion that he had to say something to someone.

The question was, To whom should he speak?

He did not want to alarm Ben and Willow; he needed his listener to have a clear head about what he was going to say. The depth of his concern for Mistaya’s safety suggested he should bypass the King and Queen. The kobolds, Bunion and Parsnip, were good choices, but their judgment in these matters was suspect. Bunion, in particular, would favor a full-fledged frontal assault on Libiris and her caregiver.

That left Questor Thews, but speaking to him openly might prove awkward—especially if Abernathy questioned his wizarding abilities.

But he decided to take his chances, and following breakfast on the second day after coming to his decision to speak up, he sought the other out. He found him in his workshop, cataloging chemicals and compounds in his logbook and humming absently to himself. Abernathy stood in the open doorway for several long minutes, waiting to be noticed. When it became obvious he might stand there the rest of the day, he knocked loudly to announce his presence and stepped through.

Questor looked up, clearly annoyed. “I am quite busy at present, so if you don’t mind …”

“But I do mind,” Abernathy interrupted quickly, “and unless you are on the verge of making a breakthrough in your efforts to find a way to turn me back into a man, perhaps you ought to listen to what I have to say. It concerns Mistaya.”

He sat himself down on a stool next to the wizard and proceeded to tell him everything. Well, almost everything. He chose to leave out the part about the suspicious ease of Questor’s entry and exit from Libiris and focus on the rest. Irritating the wizard probably wouldn’t do much to help his cause, whether what he had to say was valid or not.

“What are you suggesting we do?” the wizard asked when the other was finished. He pulled on his ragged white beard as if to free up an answer on his own. “Are we to try to persuade the High Lord that he should change his mind and go fetch Mistaya back?”

Abernathy shook his head, vaguely annoyed that the action caused his ears to flop about. “You promised the Princess that you would do the exact opposite. I think you should keep that promise. Sending the High Lord would only cause trouble for everyone. I think we should go instead, just you and me.”

“To have a closer look at things?”

“Without attempting to bring the Princess back home unless we encounter problems with Craswell Crabbit. Which I am almost certain we will. Call it intuition, but there’s something going on there that we don’t know about. Once we determine what it is, then we can decide whether or not to tell her she has to come home.”

Questor sighed. “I don’t fancy a trip back to that dreary place, but I see the wisdom in your thinking. Sometimes you quite amaze me, Abernathy. You really do.”

“For a dog, you mean.”

“For a court scribe, I mean.” Questor Thews stood up. “Let’s make something up to explain our absence and pack our things. We can leave right away.”

At about the same time that Abernathy and Questor Thews were deciding on a course of action, two ragged figures were trudging north along the western edges of the Greensward, bound for a home they didn’t particularly care to reach. Poggwydd and Shoopdiesel had been walking since early the previous day, when High Lord Ben Holiday had satisfied himself that they had told him everything they knew about the Princess and had released them with a stern warning to go home and not come back again anytime soon. The G’home Gnomes, used to much worse punishments, had considered themselves lucky to be let off so lightly. Shouldering the food and the extra clothing they had been given for the journey, they had set out with an air of mingled happiness and relief.

But the good feelings didn’t last out the day. By nightfall, they were already pondering the dubious nature of their future. Poggwydd had left home under something of a cloud, and Shoopdiesel had chosen to throw in with him, so neither could expect to be welcomed back with open arms. In truth, neither cared anyway, since neither liked his home or wanted to return to it, even had things been different. What they really wanted was to stay at Sterling Silver, close to the Princess, whom they both adored. Add into the mix their ongoing concerns for her safety, which they did not feel certain about at all, and you had a pair of decidedly unhappy travelers.

Unfortunately, things were about to get worse.

The Gnomes were engaged in a heated argument about which form of gopher made the best eating or they might have caught sight of the rider before he was right on top of them. He seemed to appear out of nowhere, although in fact he had been tracking them for some distance, watching and waiting for his chance. He reined to a stop right in front of them and gingerly climbed down from his mount, looking decidedly grateful to be doing so. He was an innocuous-looking fellow, nothing of an apparent threat about him, rather smallish and thin with a huge shock of bushy hair, so the Gnomes didn’t bolt at once, although they remained poised to do so.

“Gentlemen,” the man greeted, giving them a deep bow. “It is an honor. I have been searching for you ever since you left the Princess behind at Libiris. Is she safe?”

Poggwydd, who was the smarter of the two friends, was immediately suspicious and held his tongue. But poor Shoopdiesel was already nodding eagerly, and the damage was done in an instant.

“Good, good!” exclaimed the stranger, who was now suddenly looking decidedly less innocuous and more predatory. “We must act swiftly, then. You do wish her safety assured, I assume? You would go back with me to help her, wouldn’t you?”

Again, Shoopdiesel was nodding before Poggwydd could stop him. He glared at the other G’home Gnome and gave him a punch in the arm to make him aware that he was doing something wrong. Shoop stopped nodding instantly and looked at him in wide-eyed bafflement.

“What my friend means—” Poggwydd began, intending to undo as much of the damage as possible.

“Tut, tut,” the stranger interrupted, holding up his hands to silence him. “No explanations are necessary. We all have the same goal in mind—to keep the Princess from harm. Now then. I need you both to come with me.”

Poggwydd frowned. “Come with you to where? We are on our way home.”

“Well, going home will have to wait a little longer,” the stranger advised. He brushed at his mop of red hair in a futile endeavor to straighten it. “A little detour is required before your journey can continue.”

“Who are you?” Poggwydd demanded, his query ending in a high-pitched squeak as other, more formidable horsemen rode out from behind trees and boulders, armed knights aboard chargers.

Cordstick smiled. The information supplied him through his network of spies had been accurate. These fools had been at Libiris and now they had revealed that the Princess was there, too. He could already envision his rapid advancement at court, the newly created position of Minister of State eagerly bestowed on him by a grateful Laphroig.

“Come with me, gentlemen, and I will take you to someone who will explain everything.”

His Eminence, Craswell Crabbit, sat at his oversized desk in his overblown office contemplating a list of the secret books he never let anyone see, not even Rufus Pinch. Some time back, when his grand scheme was first taking shape, he had decided there was no reason to share such information with someone who might one day outlive his usefulness. The Throg Monkeys had seen the books, but they were dull and incurious creatures and no threat to his plans. They knew to find the books, to bring them to him for cataloging, and then to take them down into Abaddon. They had no real idea of their purpose or their worth.

Only he understood that.

Only he knew that these were books of old magic and ancient conjuring with power enough to alter entire worlds.

The list in his hands contained the names of those books, but not their locations. Over the years, the books had been scattered throughout the Stacks by those who had owned them previously and brought them here to store. Some had been placed haphazardly, some given false titles, and some deliberately hidden in more creative ways. Finding them anew and collecting them was the trick. It was, although young Thom didn’t realize it, the task to which Crabbit had set himself when he had put the boy to work cataloging inventory. While seemingly organizing the library, he was secretly searching out the missing books of magic and transporting them down into Abaddon.

At first blush, that might have seemed self-defeating What was the point of finding all these books only to turn them over to the demons? Wouldn’t he have been better off keeping them for himself? The answers were not immediately obvious. Keeping the books in his personal possession would have been the ideal choice. But he needed the demons to achieve the goal he had set himself, which meant letting them have access to the books and their spells. It was a clear quid pro quo. The demons wanted a way out of Abaddon, and there were spells in the books of magic that could give them that. He wanted Landover’s throne, and the demons could give it to him.

Well, to a large degree. They could give him the army he needed to take control of the Kingdom once Ben Holiday was out of the way. They could give him power over the Lords of the Greensward and the River Master and his once-fairy and all the rest.

And then he would rid himself of the demons by sending them outside of Landover into the myriad worlds to which she was linked.

This last was the tricky part, of course, but he believed he had worked it out. Demons, by nature, were never satisfied, and if they could be freed from Abaddon’s prison they would migrate willingly to other places.

He allowed himself a satisfied smile. A fair-minded man would have blanched at what he was planning, but he was not a fair-minded man by any stretch of the imagination. Such men littered the pages of history books under the category heading “Losers, Failures, and Weaklings.” He had no intention of being remembered as one of these. He would be remembered as a great and powerful man, a leader, a ruler, and a conqueror.

He was contemplating his place in history, visualizing lesser men reading of his prowess as they pined over their own inescapable shortcomings, when Rufus Pinch appeared in the doorway, wild-eyed.

“Craswell, we have a serious problem!” he exclaimed breathlessly and collapsed into an overstuffed chair to one side, mopping a bright sheen of perspiration from his wrinkled brow. “A very serious problem,” he added.

His Eminence, who did not like serious problems unless they belonged to someone else, looked stern and unforgiving. “Get to it, Mr. Pinch. And what did I tell you about the proper form by which to address me?”

Rufus Pinch glared at him. “You have much bigger problems than what I choose to call you, Mr. Craswell Crabbit, Your Esteemed Eminence!” He spit out the names with such vitriol that Crabbit was taken aback. “Now do you want to hear what I have to say or not?”

His Eminence exhaled wearily and gave an assenting gesture. “Proceed.”

“Berwyn Laphroig, Lord of Rhyndweir, is standing at the front door and demanding to be admitted. He wants you to come out to speak with him.”

“Did you tell him that no one … ?”

“… is to be admitted, yes, of course, I told him! But he didn’t care for that answer, and he has threatened to gain entry by force if denied it by acquiescence. He has fifty armed knights and a battering ram to back up his threat, I might add.”

His Eminence stared. “Did he say what he wants?”

“Yes, Your Eminence. He wants you. Downstairs. Speaking with him. Right away. If you refuse, he will break down the doors, seek you out, and do things to you that I don’t care to repeat!”

The other man frowned anew, not at all pleased with this bit of information. He thought momentarily of summoning magic enough to melt the entire attack force into lead dumplings, but discarded the idea as too radical. Better to talk to Laphroig first and see what it was he wanted. He could always fry him up for dinner later.

“Come with me,” he said, getting to his feet and coming around the desk. He got as far as the door before he changed his mind. “No, wait. Stay here. Keep an eye on our little friends in the storage room, just in case. Whatever happens, we don’t want them getting out and stirring up additional trouble. Not that I think they will, but it doesn’t hurt to be cautious, Mr. Pinch.”

Grumbling about everything in general and nothing in particular, his associate trundled away in a huff. His Eminence watched him go, thinking anew that perhaps the value of their friendship was diminished sufficiently that it was time to sever it. Relationships gone sour should be ended swiftly and completely. It was a harsh, but necessary, rule of life for great men.

It occurred to Craswell Crabbit, as he crossed from his office to the entryway of the building, that the reason for Berwyn Laphroig’s visit could have to do with the fact that he had discovered his younger brother was alive and hiding at Libiris. How he had found that out was anyone’s guess, but it would certainly explain his insistence on being allowed entry. If that were the case, His Eminence reasoned, he might well be forced to give up young Thom just to avoid the unpleasantness that would almost certainly follow otherwise. He had hoped that Thom might one day prove valuable as a bargaining chip, a way to gain leverage over Rhyndweir’s Lord should that prove necessary. But the boy’s presence couldn’t be allowed to interfere with his current plans, so if push came to shove young Thom would have to go under the ax. Literally.

He reached the entry, passed through, and, taking a moment to compose himself, opened the doors to Libiris.

Bright sunshine spilled out of a nearly cloudless blue sky, momentarily blinding him. He squinted through the glare at the dozens of armored knights sitting their horses in tight formation not two dozen yards from where he stood. At their forefront, rather incongruously, two hapless-looking G’home Gnomes sat trussed and bound atop a single charger. Craning his neck in order to make himself even taller, His Eminence searched for Laphroig. Instead, he found a stick-thin fellow standing just off to one side of him looking exceedingly distressed, rather as if he needed help with loosening pants that were too tight. His frantic movements, constrained and half formed, were puzzling.

“Crabbit!” barked a voice directly in front of him.

He jumped back, startled, and discovered that Berwyn Laphroig, a man barely taller than Crabbit’s belt buckle, was staring up at him. “Good day to you, Lord Laphroig,” he offered, recovering his equanimity. “I understand you wish to speak with me?”

“You took your time getting here!” the other snapped. “We must talk, just the two of us, alone. It concerns your guest.”

So there it is, His Eminence concluded. He’s found out about his brother and come to take him away. Shrugging his reluctant agreement, he led Rhyndweir’s diminutive lord inside the entry way, closing the door behind him. He stopped him there, blocking his way forward.

“So, then?” he asked, testing the waters. “Of whom do you speak?”

Laphroig was incensed. His face colored and his neck tendons strained. “You know perfectly well who, Craswell Crabbit! Mistaya Holiday, Princess of Landover! You are hiding her here, presumably so that her father cannot find her. But I have found her, and I intend to take her back to Rhyndweir with me.”

His Eminence stared at him in surprise. This put a different twist on things. Apparently, Berwyn Laphroig still knew nothing of young Thom, only of the Princess. “You wish to return her to the High Lord?” he pressed, trying to navigate murky waters.

“What I wish is my business and none of yours!” the other snapped.

“Well, she is here for safekeeping and under my protection,” His Eminence advised. “I don’t intend to turn her over to you or anyone without a very good reason for doing so.”

The Frog glared. “This isn’t a request, Crabbit. It is a demand. From a Lord of the Greensward with fifty armed knights looking for an excuse to break down your front door. You will give me the girl or I will simply take her.”

“By force of arms? From me, a trained wizard?”

“I don’t care what it takes or what you are, the girl will be mine. I am determined on it. She is to be my wife.”

Ah, thought His Eminence, the light begins to dawn. He wants the Princess of Landover for his bride.

“You are already married, are you not?” he asked, using his most solicitous tone of voice.

“News travels slowly in this part of Landover, I see,” the other snapped. “My wife and son are dead, more than several weeks now, and thus I am left with neither spouse nor heir to my throne. Mistaya Holiday will provide me with both.”

And so much more, His Eminence added silently. “But why would she choose to marry you, if you don’t mind my asking? Not that any girl in her right mind would pass on such an opportunity, but I have discovered that this particular girl can be most obstreperous.”

Laphroig squared his shoulders, sweeping his black cloak behind him dramatically. “I will tame her. She will come to see that I am the right husband for her. It is an excellent match, Crabbit. I will give her freedom from her parents, which she obviously desires, and she will give me sons to rule!”

She will give you a foot in your backside, His Eminence thought but did not say. “Time is an issue here, is it not?” he said instead. “Her father will learn of her presence at Rhyndweir and come to take her home. Likely, she will agree. What to you plan to do about that?”

Laphroig looked momentarily nonplussed. “He won’t find out about her right away. I will have my chances to win her over.”

“But winning over a girl of fifteen might take some doing, especially if she is a Princess of Landover. If you force her in any way, she will go straight to her father and your head will be on the block.” His Eminence saw his chance now and determined to take it. “Suppose I was able to persuade her to accept you as her husband and to enter into marriage with you immediately? You cannot force a girl of fifteen to marry you, but if she signs a valid consent the marriage is binding. What if I were able to produce such a consent? Even a King would be bound by such a document.”

The Frog frowned and shook his head. “How could you manage this, Crabbit? What sort of hold do you have over her?”

His Eminence shrugged. “She came to me for shelter and I provided it. She has come to trust me. I am persuasive when I need to be.”

“You are a purveyor of horse pucky, is what you are. Come to trust you, has she? Persuasive when you need to be, are you? Nonsense! You must know a spell that will bind her to your command. You must have a way to trick her using magic.”

His Eminence glared. “Do you want my help or not? Because if you don’t, then let’s put an end to this. You risk everything by insisting on taking her by force, but that is certainly your choice.”

The Frog considered. “What do you get out of all this? You wouldn’t expect me to believe that you are helping me out of the kindness of your heart, would you?”

His Eminence smiled. “Let us be perfectly open with each other, Lord Laphroig. Your intentions go well beyond the obvious. You hunger for Landover’s throne, and by marrying Mistaya Holiday you put yourself in a position to claim it. If the royal line should diminish sufficiently, rule of Landover could fall to you.”

He held up his hands in warning as the other started to object. “Wait, wait, I am not being in any way critical of your ambitions. I, too, would like to see Ben Holiday removed as King. Having his daughter here furthers that goal. But I think it might be in our best interests to work together on this. Essentially, we both want the same thing. You want access to Landover’s throne, and I want Ben Holiday off it. What if there was a quick and easy way to make that happen?”

Berwyn Laphroig pulled his black cloak closer about him and glanced around uneasily. “You are speaking treason, Crabbit.”

His Eminence had endured being called “Crabbit” just about as long as he could, but he forced himself to stay focused on the matter at hand. “Yes or no? Where do you stand?”

“How would you make this happen?” the other whispered, leaning close enough that His Eminence was forced to take a step back to avoid his rather noxious breath.

“Mistaya Holiday will acquiesce to your marriage and sign a consent in the bargain. I will perform the ceremony myself; I am authorized to do so. You shall remain with her at Libiris when the nuptials are concluded; your conjugal rights shall be concluded and an heir assured. Her father will come to rescue her, but when he does he will find a rather unpleasant surprise awaiting him—a rather long drop down a deep hole. It will be over before he realizes what is happening. A trap has been set and remains in place. His demise will be swift, and your path of ascension to the throne of Landover will be cleared.”

He paused, doing his best to look humble. “All I ask is that I be given free rein to continue my work here as royal librarian.”

“I become King and you become royal librarian?” Laphroig did not look convinced.

His Eminence shrugged. “With certain guarantees. I would also be granted immunity from prosecution for my continued experimentation with magic. There are certain … ah, conjurings I would like to attempt that could have rather unpleasant side effects for the people involved. Of course, I would only use peasants and the like, creatures of no value.” He paused. “You would be welcome to attend at your convenience. You might enjoy it.”

He could see that Laphroig was already envisioning himself as King of Landover and that none of the rest of it mattered. He would wed Mistaya Holiday, engender an heir, and then rid himself of the girl. Ben Holiday and his Queen would be dead and gone by then, the royal family wiped out save for his newborn son. As husband of the Princess and father of the only surviving heir to the throne, he would have an indisputable claim. No one would be able to challenge his right of rule once the boy died, too.

What he didn’t know, however—what he would never know until it was too late—was that he would be dead, as well. Craswell Crabbit did not much care for partnerships, especially with creatures like Laphroig.

Moreover, he would do much better as King of Landover than Rhyndweir’s unstable and unpopular Lord.

“Do we have an agreement?” he asked brightly, beaming down at the smaller man.

Berwyn Laphroig nodded slowly. “We do. If, Crabbit, you can persuade the Princess to marry me right now and without argument.”

“Please wait right here,” His Eminence said, thinking as he turned away that this was the last time Berwyn Laphroig would get what he wanted in this life.

Neither caught sight of the black-and-silver cat sitting quietly and unobtrusively in the shadows, licking its paws.

Mistaya and Thom were sitting side by side on the pallet in the candlelit storeroom, lost in silent contemplation of their predicament and puzzling through methods of escape, when they heard the rasp of the lock bar being drawn back. They rose as the heavy wooden door opened and His Eminence stepped into view. He glanced from one to the other and back again, smiling.

“Well, you both seem to be holding up well enough. How would you like to get out of here?”

The girl and the boy exchanged a suspicious glance. “You know the answer to that question already,” Mistaya replied. “What do you want from us now?”

His Eminence rubbed his hands eagerly. “To begin with, I would like to have a private conversation with you. Thom, would you mind stepping outside and waiting in the storeroom next door? All I ask is that you make no attempt to escape while you are there. It would be a huge mistake for you to try. Mr. Pinch will be there to reinforce the point.”

Thom looked at Mistaya questioningly. “I’ll be all right,” she told him. “Won’t I, Your Eminence?” she added, giving Crabbit a meaningful glance.

“Perfectly all right. This won’t take but a few minutes.”

A reluctant Thom went out the door, closing it behind him. His Eminence waited a few moments more, cocking his elongated head to one side, giving it a Humpty-Dumpty-sat-on-the-wall look. Then he moved closer to Mistaya and stood staring at her. She could tell from the look alone that whatever was coming was going to be bad.

“I will make this brief and to the point,” His Eminence declared. “You deserve that much, at least. Berwyn Laphroig has discovered you are here and has come to take you to Rhyndweir. He intends to make you his wife and the mother of his children. Of his sons, if all goes well. I have argued with him, but to no avail. The matter is complicated by the fact that he also knows about Thom. The one concession I have been able to wring from him is that if you marry him voluntarily, executing a viable written consent to the match, he will leave Thom in my safekeeping. Otherwise, he intends to dispatch Thom immediately. Am I being perfectly clear on all this?”

Mistaya nodded wordlessly. If she didn’t marry The Frog, Thom would be killed. If she did marry The Frog, she would have to kill herself. Figuratively, anyway.

She gave him a chilly smile. “No one has the right to tell a Princess of Landover whom she may wed. Not even my parents. Certainly not you. I will wed when I am good and ready and not before, and I will wed a man of my own choosing. I refuse to be married to The Frog. What’s more, if any harm comes to Thom, I will see to it that your head is posted on your own gate until there is nothing left of it but bone. Am I being perfectly clear on all this?”

His Eminence stared at her silently, shaking his head. “You do live in a fairy-tale world, don’t you, Princess? All you see is what you want to see. If you don’t want to think about something or face up to something, it simply doesn’t exist for you. Goodness. But this is the real world, not some make-believe story in which you are the heroine. So perhaps you ought to rethink your situation before you start making threats.”

He snatched the front of her tunic and pulled her close enough that she could feel his breath on her face. He towered over her, and she could see the anger in his eyes.

“You are my possession, Princess!” he hissed softly. “You belong to me. I can do with you what I want. Do you understand me?”

She nodded without speaking, her eyes riveted on his. For the first time since she had come to Libiris, she was genuinely scared. She was terrified.

“Well, then,” he continued, his voice still a whisper, “it ought to be simple for you. I don’t choose to make you do anything you don’t want to do, even though I can. But this is the reality—you hold a boy’s life in your hands. So you need to consider your choices carefully and spare me your idle threats. You need to consider the consequences of those choices. Listen now—here they are again. If you fail to walk out of here and tell Berwyn Laphroig that you will marry him and bear his children, I shall be forced to turn young Thom over to him and you will have the unfortunate experience of watching him die right in front of your eyes, knowing it was all your fault! Is any of this not clear?”

When she failed to answer, he sighed wearily. “I shall take it from your silence that you understand. Now let’s try it again. Think carefully before you speak. Will you agree to this arrangement or not? Will you marry Berwyn Laphroig or shall I send young Thomlinson out for a short reunion? Give me your answer.”

She compressed her lips into a tight line. “My father will never countenance this! He will not let me be used in this way! You had better release me right now!”

His Eminence pulled a face, released her tunic front, and stepped back. “Very well. I shall deliver your answer—and the boy—to his brother. Good luck to you, Princess.”

Without waiting for any further response, he turned for the door. He had reached it and was pulling it open when she called to him. “Wait, no. Don’t do that. Don’t tell him that. Tell him I accept his proposal. But I want something in writing signed by him, something in the marriage contract that says he will not harm Thom now or ever.”

His Eminence turned back and gave her a long, searching look. “Done,” he said finally, and went out the door.

Alone again, she collapsed onto the pallet and stared into space. Tears she was unable to hold back trickled down her cheeks. She wanted to bury her face in her hands and shut out everything, but she couldn’t do so while the magic held them bound. The room was dark and empty, and Thom did not return. She wished she were back in school or home or anywhere but here. She wished she had listened to a whole lot of advice that she had chosen to ignore.

What was she going to do?

She knew she couldn’t let anything happen to Thom, no matter what. If she were responsible for his death, she could never live with herself. The trade-off was horrendous, but she kept thinking that even if she went through with this, her father would find a way to undo it. But what if he couldn’t? What if no one could? She kept thinking that something would happen to stop all this, but she couldn’t think what that something would be.

She stopped crying finally and tried to think clearly about how things stood. She didn’t have the use of her magic and wouldn’t have while her hands were bound. She had to find a way to free them, if only for a minute. She didn’t have the rainbow crush, so she couldn’t summon help. But even if she had it, whom would she summon? Not her father—that was what His Eminence wanted. Questor? No, he had been duped once already, and Crabbit was probably the superior wizard. Her grandfather? No, no! She brushed it all aside as wishful thinking. There wasn’t much chance that she would be allowed back into her room unaccompanied, and that was the only way she could get her hands on the crush anyway. Thom could retrieve it if he knew it was there and was free to go get it. But he didn’t and he wasn’t, so that was that.

She got to her feet and crossed to the door and stopped, placing her hands against the rough wood, her mind racing. How could she stop this from happening? There had to be a way!

From beyond the locked door, she heard footsteps in the hallway.

She thought suddenly of Haltwhistle, whom she might still have been able to count on if she had remembered to speak his name and hadn’t gotten so caught up in her own concerns that she had forgotten him. Edgewood Dirk might have sent the mud puppy away, but she was the one who had made that possible. Was it too late to call him back? Was he gone from her forever?

“Haltwhistle,” she whispered, and it was almost a prayer. “Haltwhistle,” she said again, louder this time.

She jumped in shock as the latch on the door released. She wiped her tear-streaked face on her shoulder. She shouldn’t be crying, she told herself. She was tougher than this. She was better than what she was showing.

“Haltwhistle!” she said a final time, bold and determined.

But as the door opened it wasn’t the mud puppy who appeared but His Eminence, Craswell Crabbit. “Time to go, Princess,” he announced. “Your future husband awaits.”

And with a dramatic sweep of his arm he beckoned her through the open doorway.

As she trudged from her storeroom prison into the hallway, dutifully trailing a clearly elated Craswell Crabbit, a strange thing happened to Mistaya Holiday. One moment she was subdued and submissive, riddled with self-doubt and fear, her future a bleak certainty from which she could find no escape, and the next she was so angry that the rest of what she had been feeling was swept away in a tidal wave of rage. It happened all at once and for no discernible reason that she could identify, a shift of such monumental proportions that it shook her to the core.

It also focused her in a way that nothing else had.

Her posture changed, her mind cleared, and her confidence hardened. She was not going to let this happen. It might seem to those who sought to use her so badly that it would, but they were in for a big surprise. Whatever it took, whatever she had to do, she was going to put a stop to all of it.

And to them.

In that instant, she was once more the child of three worlds and three distinct cultures, the little girl born of Landover, fairy, and Earth all grown up and ready and willing to fight. She had stood against Nightshade, the Witch of the Deep Fell, and defeated her when it seemed impossible. She would do the same with His Eminence and The Frog and all their minions. She would not stand by and let them ruin her life and betray her country and her parents for their own personal gain. She would not let them disfigure Libiris or subvert and misuse her books. She would find a way to prevail.

As they passed Rufus Pinch, standing watch before the door of the storeroom in which Thom was held prisoner, the little man called out, “Have a good life, Princess!”

She stopped at once and turned on him. The look on her face sent Pinch stumbling back against the door, hands raised defensively, face terror-stricken. “What I meant, Your Majesty …,” he tried to say as the words dried to dust in his mouth.

“Thank you for your good wishes,” she replied sweetly. Then, turning to Crabbit, who was waiting for her, she said, “I want Thom to witness this.”

His Eminence frowned. “That is a terrible idea. He might do something foolish to try to stop it. Worse, he might further antagonize his brother. He is better off where he is.”

“He won’t interfere. Let me speak with him, and I will make certain of it. If he disobeys, the fault will be mine and the penalty will be his to bear. But I want him there. I have to be certain he accepts that this marriage is real.”

His Eminence looked as if he might deny this out of hand, but then abruptly he shrugged. “You may speak with him. If he promises to behave, he can come out. But Mr. Pinch will be watching him closely.”

Pinch appeared to be on the verge of a heart attack. “Crabbit, you fool, you can’t trust … !”

“Mr. Pinch!” the other snapped, his voice as hard and cold as ice. “You forget yourself! Remember your place! You serve me at my pleasure and not the other way around. You are here at my sufferance. Remember that, as well. And do not ever again call me by name!”

Pinch had shrunk to the approximate size of a walnut, which given his general appearance wasn’t as difficult to do as it might seem. Reluctantly, he unlocked the door to the storeroom and stepped aside. Mistaya, giving him her sweetest smile, walked in.

“The door will remain open, Princess,” His Eminence called after her.

Thom stood up from the bench on which he had been sitting and came to her immediately, the relief in his face obvious. “I thought something bad had happened to you!” he whispered excitedly.

“Something bad has happened to me,” she said, feeling his strong hands on her arms. “Now back up, away from the door.”

He did as she asked, guiding her into the deeper shadows, never taking his hands from her. “What is it?” he demanded.

“I’m to marry your brother,” she told him. “No, don’t say anything!” she continued as he started to object. “Just listen to me! I don’t intend for the marriage to happen, but it has to look as if I do. His Eminence has agreed to let you watch, but you have to agree in turn not to do anything to disrupt the ceremony or cause trouble. Will you do that?”

He looked horrified. “No, I won’t do that! I can’t just sit by while my brother …” He broke off, unable to finish. “Why would you agree to this in the first place? You’re a Princess of Landover; you don’t have to marry someone like him!”

“If I don’t agree to it, they will give you over to be killed.”

“Then let them do so!”

She took a deep, steadying breath. “No, Thom, I won’t. But I won’t let them marry me off, either. You have to trust me on this.”

“But what can you do to stop it?”

In truth, she didn’t know. She just knew she would do something. “I’ll find a way,” she assured him. “Just wait for a sign to break free of Pinch. He’ll be watching you closely.”

Thom shook his head. “I should just stay with you—”

“You should just keep quiet,” she said, cutting him short.

He stopped talking and stood there, looking at her.

“Kiss me,” she told him impulsively. “Right now. Like you mean it. Like you might not get another chance.”

He did so, on the mouth, a long kiss that caused Pinch, standing in the doorway, to gasp and mutter in dismay. She closed her eyes and leaned into the kiss. So sweet, so exciting.

“Enough, children,” His Eminence called over the other’s shoulder. “Do we have a bargain or not?”

“We do,” Mistaya said, breaking off the kiss reluctantly but not looking away from Thom. “Don’t we?” she asked him softly.

“We do,” he whispered reluctantly.

His Eminence beckoned Mistaya from the room and shoved Pinch in to replace her. “Take young Thom aside and wrap him up in a cloak. Bring him out only after the ceremony has started. Do you understand me, Mr. Pinch?”

Pinch glared at him and hustled Thom away. His Eminence watched them go, shaking his head. “So hard to find good help,” he mused. “Come, Princess.”

She followed silently, eyes downcast as if she’d become entirely submissive, while her mind worked furiously. If she was to do anything to help herself, she had to free her hands. Everything depended on being able to invoke her magic, and her magic was needed if she was to free herself from the spell that bound them. But how could she persuade His Eminence to release her long enough for her to invoke a spell that would help? And what sort of spell would it take for her to gain freedom? Not just for herself, but for Thom, as well. It would do no good for her to escape without him. She thought of the many forms of magic she had learned from Nightshade. She thought of all the spells that Questor had taught her to cast. Which among them would work to help her here? A battle fought with killing magic would be risky for everyone involved, but what sort of magic could she call upon that would effectively put a stop to the plans of His Eminence and Laphroig?

Then suddenly she knew exactly what she must do. It was so simple, she was surprised she hadn’t thought of it earlier. She almost smiled, but managed to keep from doing so by remembering that her plan might still fall flat.

Just at that moment she caught sight of something moving along the wall far ahead, nearly lost in the shadows. It was there and gone in the blink of an eye, and she had not seen enough to be certain, but she thought it might be Edgewood Dirk.

Or not. She grimaced.

They reached the door to His Eminence’s office. Crabbit glanced back at her as if to reassure himself that she was prepared for what waited on the other side, his oblong head cocked as he fixed his gaze on her young face. “It is surely a pity you have to be given to him,” he commiserated. “You would have been better served with another husband, but such matters are not for either of us to decide. We only do what we must, don’t we, Princess?”

She wanted to wring his neck and promised herself that when she got the chance, she would. “Yes, Your Eminence,” she agreed docilely.

He opened the door, and there stood Berwyn Laphroig. All in black, his pale frog face radiating expectation and a few other unmentionable things, he charged forward to greet her. “Princess Mistaya!” he purred. “How lovely to see you again. I trust our last encounter hasn’t left any bitter feelings? There mustn’t be any of those. But you are here! Dare I hope that you have reconsidered my proposal to wed?”

He certainly didn’t waste time with small talk, she thought in dismay. “I have reconsidered,” she agreed. “His Eminence has been very persuasive.”

“A well-considered decision, Princess!” He was practically jumping up and down, his froggy eyes bulging, his tongue licking out. “And Crabbit! Excellent work, Crabbit!” He gave His Eminence a short bow of acknowledgment. “We must proceed immediately with the wedding, then!”

His Eminence ushered her all the way into the office and closed the door behind them. “Yes, well, there are a few legal matters to be settled first. Paperwork to be filled out, agreements to be signed, that sort of thing. A consent to the marriage agreed upon and signed by both parties is requisite.”

Laphroig flushed. “Well, get about preparing it then! Don’t keep the Princess waiting!”

His Eminence sat down to work while Laphroig crowded close to Mistaya, looking her up and down in the way a buyer might a new horse, smiling as if all were right with the world. Or maybe just as if all were right with him. She tried not to shrink from him, did her best not to show her loathing, and held herself firmly in check.

“Would it be possible for you to free my hands?” she asked suddenly, looking not at His Eminence, but at Laphroig. “A bride on her wedding day shouldn’t appear in shackles.”

Laphroig glanced down and seemed to see for the first time the swirling ball of darkness that bound her hands. “What’s this, Crabbit?” he snapped. “What have you done to her?”

His Eminence glanced up, sighing. “It is for her own good. And yours.”

“Well, I don’t like it. How can it appear that consent is given voluntarily if she weds me looking as if she is shackled in some mysterious way? Even the appearance of coercion is unacceptable. Signing the consent is sufficient, I should think. Set her free!”

Craswell Crabbit shook his head firmly. “That would be immensely foolish, my Lord.”

“I promise not to try to escape,” Mistaya said quickly. “I won’t run from you. You have my word as a Princess of Landover. I have made my decision, and I will see the wedding through to its conclusion. But don’t make me marry you like this.”

She tried to sound pathetic and put upon instead of desperate, casting a pleading glance at The Frog.

“Crabbit seems rather convinced that it would better if you did.” Laphroig was experiencing doubts, as well. “The word of a Princess of Landover ought to count for something, I realize, but you are known for your troublesome nature, Princess.”

“But I promise! What more can I do?”

Laphroig smiled. “I am sure I could think of something.” He leered. Then he shrugged, refocusing on the matter at hand. “I can’t see that it would do any harm. Not if you give us your promise.”

His Eminence looked at him as if he had lost his mind. “You are seriously contemplating setting free a young woman with magic enough at her command to burn us all to ash? Have you lost your mind, Laphroig?”

“Watch your tongue, Crabbit! Unlike you, I am not afraid of a fifteen-year-old girl. I have fifty knights waiting just outside the door, and should she prove too troublesome, I might give her over to them for a bit of sport.” He gave Mistaya a look. “So I don’t think we need be concerned.”

“Your Eminence,” Mistaya said quickly, ignoring the threat. “My word is good. I will not break it. I have more than one reason not to do so, as you well know.” She flicked her eyes toward the office door, reaffirming her commitment to Thom. “Besides,” she added, “won’t I need my hands free to sign the documents of marriage? Won’t I need them in order to don my wedding dress? You do have a wedding dress for me, don’t you?”

His Eminence stared at her for a long moment. “Naturally, I shall provide you with a wedding dress, Princess. And since Lord Laphroig seems set on this, I shall set you free. But I warn you, disobedience at this juncture would be a big mistake. The matter is in your hands. Be careful.”

He made a few quick gestures, spoke a few short words, and the swirling ball that held her hands imprisoned faded away. She rubbed her wrists experimentally as His Eminence watched her like a hawk and then allowed them to drop harmlessly to her sides. “There, you see?” she said.

His Eminence went back to preparing the documents of marriage while Laphroig launched into a long, rhapsodic dissertation on the joys that awaited her once she was married to him. She nodded along agreeably, thinking through her plan as she did so. It was a risky gamble, but it was all she could do. If it failed, she was in deep trouble.

She found herself wishing momentarily that she could use her newfound freedom to break from the room, race to her bedroom, produce the rainbow crush, and stamp on it while calling for her father. But her father might be as much at risk as she was—perhaps more so, if what she had heard His Eminence say earlier was to be believed—so she would die before she summoned help from that quarter.

In any case, there was no time left for second-guessing and nothing to be gained by wishing for what might have been. She had made her choice, and she was going to have to live with it. If she were given half a chance, things would work out.

His Eminence straightened at his desk. “All done. Please sign on the lines here and here,” he advised Mistaya and Laphroig, indicating the required spaces.

Laphroig signed without reading, impatient to get on with things. Mistaya took her time, skimming quickly but thoroughly, and found the promise not to harm Thom embedded deep in the document in language that was clear and concise. Whatever happened to her, she would have protected Thom to the extent that she was able to do so. She took a deep breath and signed, knowing that if the marriage went through now, it would be binding on her and on her parents under Landover’s laws.

She sat back, thinking that if all else failed, perhaps she could leave Landover behind and go back to school at Carrington for the rest of her life. As if.

“Now, about my dress?” she queried His Eminence.

Crabbit moved her back a few steps, worked a quick conjuring with words and gestures, and she was suddenly clothed in a stunningly beautiful white gown that left Laphroig with his eyes wide, his mouth open, and his tongue hanging out.

“Princess, I have never seen anything—”

“Thank you, my Lord.” She cut him short with a perfunctory wave of her hand. “Shall we go outside into the open for the ceremony?”

Again, His Eminence didn’t look pleased with this suggestion, but Laphroig leaped on it like a starving dog on a bone and proclaimed that, indeed, the wedding must take place outdoors before his assembled knights, who would act as witnesses.

So out the office door they went, then down the hall to the front of the building and out into the sunlight. The knights still sat their horses, and the G’home Gnomes were still bound and gagged atop their mule. Cordstick had gone from looking distressed to looking euphoric. Mistaya ignored them all, resisted the urge to look back for Thom, and kept her eyes fixed straight ahead as His Eminence marched her out to a small grove of rather wintry trees and placed her side by side with the Lord of Rhyndweir.

Craswell Crabbit cleared his throat. “Be it known, one and all, from the nearest to the farthest corners of the realm, that this man and this woman have consented …”

He droned on, but Mistaya wasn’t paying attention. She was thinking through her plan, knowing that she must put it into play quickly. If the wedding got too far along, there might not be enough time for things to come together as she needed them to.

Mistaya gazed out at the assembled knights, who had removed their helmets out of respect for the ceremony, whatever it was, and the girl, whoever she was, most of them obviously having no clear idea of what they were all doing there. The G’home Gnomes were moaning softly through their gags, and every so often the two guards bracketing them would lean over and cuff one or the other or both.

“Mistaya Holiday, Princess of Landover, do you take this man, Berwyn Laphroig, Lord of Rhyndweir to be—”

“What?” she asked, snapped back into the moment by the question. She looked blankly at His Eminence and then at Laphroig.

“Of course she does!” The Frog snapped. “Get on with it, Crabbit!”

Craswell Crabbit looked flummoxed. “Well, we need rings, then. One from each of you.”

Laphroig began pulling at the rings on his fingers, of which there were plenty, trying to loosen one to give to her. Mistaya glanced at her own fingers. She wore only two rings, both given to her by her parents as presents when she left home for Carrington. She grimaced at the thought of giving either up.

She made a show of trying to remove the rings, but in effect began the process of casting her spell, weaving her fingers and whispering the words of power. His Eminence was preoccupied with watching Laphroig, who was thrashing wildly now in his efforts to loosen one of the rings he wore.

As he finally succeeded, turning back to Mistaya, reaching for her hand to slip the ring in place, she said abruptly, “My Lord, I lack a ring to seal our bargain, but I give you this gift instead!”

She wove her hands rapidly, completing the spell. His Eminence tried to stop her, but he was too slow and too late.

Crimson fire blossomed across the sky above them, an explosion of flames that dropped the wedding party to its knees and caused the mounts of the knights to rear and buck and finally bolt in terror.

“I warned you, Princess!” His Eminence shouted at her, covering his head with his hands as he did so. “I warned you!”

Laphroig had dropped flat against the ground, his eyes darting every which way at once, trying to discover what was going to happen to him. “You promised!” he screamed at Mistaya. “You gave your word!”

Overhead, the flames parted like the curtains on a stage, and the dragon Strabo appeared.

Strabo was the perfect incarnation of anyone’s worst nightmare, a huge black monster with spikes running up and down his back in a double row, a fearsome horn-encrusted head, claws and teeth the size of gate spikes, and armor plating that could withstand attacks from even the most powerful spear or longbow. He was impervious to heat and cold, no matter how extreme; he was able to fly high enough and far enough to transverse entire worlds whenever he chose. He was contemptuous of humans and fairy creatures alike, and he regarded their presence as an affront that he did not suffer gladly.

The dragon burst through the flames and swooped down toward the wedding party. Rhyndweir’s knights and their mounts scattered for a second time, taking the unfortunate G’home Gnomes with them. Cordstick dove for cover under the trees. Mistaya stood her ground, watching the dragon approach. Laphroig had flattened himself against the earth at her feet, screaming in a mix of fear and rage, and His Eminence was crouched to defend himself, apparently the only one prepared to do so.

For just an instant, Strabo loomed over Libiris and the surrounding woods like a huge dark cloud that threatened to engulf them all. Then he turned to smoke, vaporized in an instant without warning, and was gone.

There was a stunned silence as everyone but Mistaya waited for his return. Then, quite slowly and deliberately, Laphroig climbed back to his feet, brushed himself off, turned to Mistaya with a smile, and struck her as hard as he could across the face. She managed to partially deflect the blow, but went down anyway, her head ringing.

“You witch!” he hissed at her.

His Eminence stepped in front of Rhyndweir’s Lord, blocking his way. “Enough of that, Lord Laphroig. Remember our purpose here. Time enough for retribution later, after the wedding.”

Mistaya heard him and took his meaning, but pretended not to. She hung her head for a moment, waiting for the ringing to stop and her vision to clear, her eyes filled with tears.

Then she climbed back to her feet. “It was only pretend,” she said to Laphroig, brushing at her eyes. “It wasn’t meant to hurt anyone. I kept my word; I did not try to escape. I thought that a demonstration of what my magic can do might make your knights respect you even more. If you have a wife who can—”

“Spare us your bogus explanations,” Craswell Crabbit interrupted. “Your intention was to distract us and escape. The only reason you are still here is that your magic was insufficient to allow for it.”

He made a quick series of gestures, spoke a few brief words, and Mistaya’s hands were again bound, encased in the swirling mist. She stared at them in dismay, even though she had known that this would happen, that her momentary freedom would be taken away. But escape would have put Thom at risk, and she wasn’t about to do anything that would allow for that. Her plan was to see them both freed, and anything less was unacceptable.

Laphroig moved over to stand so close to her she could smell his mix of fear and rage. “When this is over, Princess,” he whispered, “I shall take whatever time it requires to teach you the manners you so badly need. And I shall enjoy doing it, although I doubt that you will.”

He stalked away, calling back his knights, some of whom still remained close enough to hear his voice. Those who responded he dispatched to gather up the others. The wedding would proceed with all present, including those who had fled. Even Cordstick had managed to put himself back in the picture, standing by uneasily, trying to look as if nothing much had happened.

It took awhile—quite a while, in fact—but eventually all were gathered together once more, and His Eminence rearranged the bride and groom and began to speak anew.

“Be it known, one and all, from the nearest to the farthest corners of the land, that this man and woman have consented to be joined …”

“You’ve already said that!” Laphroig roared. “Get to the part where you left off and start from there, and be quick about it!”

His Eminence looked at Laphroig as he might have looked at a bothersome insect, but he held his tongue. Mistaya had hoped that he would say he had to start over in order for the ceremony to be valid, but apparently that wasn’t the case. She shifted her feet worriedly, gazing down anew at her shackled hands. She could feel time slipping away and her chances with it.

His Eminence took a deep breath and began anew. “Having spoken their vows and pledged their love, having exchanged rings—ah, rings and other gifts—to demonstrate their commitment, I find no reason that they should not be man and wife. Therefore, by the power invested in me, as a certified and fully authorized delegate of the crown, I …”

“Run!” someone screamed from behind him, someone who seconds later went tearing away from the wedding party and across the hills, waving and shouting and pointing.

“Isn’t that your man Cordstick?” His Eminence asked.

“Yes, Cordstick.” Laphroig spit out the name distastefully. “Whatever is the matter with him?”

As the words left his mouth, a huge shadow fell over the assemblage, sweeping out of the skies like a thundercloud falling from the heavens, thick with dark rain. It was winged and horned and spike-encrusted and black as the mud pits of the lower Melchor, and when Mistaya saw who it was, she felt her heart leap with impossible gratitude.

“Strabo!” she exclaimed.

His Eminence and Laphroig were caught between emotions, not knowing whether to run or to stand their ground, looking from the dragon to Mistaya and back again as they tried to figure out how she had made this latest apparition appear. What sort of magic was she using now that her hands were shackled anew? But there were no answers to be found, and by the time they had determined that this dragon was not an apparition, but the real thing, and that headlong flight might be a good idea, it was too late. Cordstick was gone, the knights had scattered once more, taking the G’home Gnomes with them, and the wedding party of three found itself abandoned to its fate.

Strabo settled earthward with a flapping of wings that knocked Mistaya and her captors to their knees and then landed with such force that the earth shook in protest. The dragon glared as it folded its massive wings against its sides and showed all of its considerable teeth in row after blackened row.

“I thought I made myself perfectly clear, Princess!” he snarled. “Was my warning too vague for you to understand?”

“It was perfectly clear,” she replied. “You said if I used magic to create an image of you again, especially if it was to frighten someone, you would pay me a visit much quicker than I would like.”

“Yet you did so anyway?” The dragon swung his triangular head from side to side in dismay. “What do I have to do to convince you that I am serious? Eat you?”

She held up her hands, encased in the swirling ball of mist. “I took a chance that you were as good as your word. I needed someone to help me, and I couldn’t think of anyone more capable. So I deliberately made an image of you so that you would come, and here you are!”

She said it with great satisfaction. She couldn’t help herself. Her plan had worked exactly as she had hoped, and now she had a chance to get free from His Eminence and Laphroig for good.

The dragon looked at her magically shackled hands and hissed. “What is this?” he demanded, looking now at her captors, his great brow darkening. “Have you done this?”

Well, there was no good answer to that particular question, and neither His Eminence nor Laphroig tried to offer one. They just stood there, staring in horror at all those teeth.

“They are holding me prisoner and trying to marry me off against my will,” she declared. “To Berwyn Laphroig!”

The dragon hissed at the accused. “You are forcing her to marry you, Lord of Rhyndweir?”

“No! Not at all! She’s doing so voluntarily!” Laphroig was grasping at straws. “She loves me!”

Strabo breathed on him, and the combination of stench and heat knocked him from a guarded crouch to his hands and knees, gasping for fresh air. “It doesn’t sound like it to me. Set her free at once.”

“I can’t!” sobbed Laphroig. “He did it!” His trembling hand pointed toward His Eminence. “It’s his magic that binds her!”

The dragon shifted his gaze to Crabbit, who held up his hands defensively. “All right, all right, I’ll release her. She’s more trouble than she’s worth, in any case.”

He made a few gestures, spoke a few words, and the swirling mist dissipated. Mistaya was free once more.

Strabo bent close to Laphroig and His Eminence. “I’ve a good mind to eat you both. A snack would do me good after flying all this way to straighten you out. What do you think of that?”

“I think I would be most grateful if you only ate him,” His Eminence replied, gesturing at Laphroig. “This was all his idea.”

“Liar!” screamed Laphroig. “You were the one who—”

“You both agreed to this marriage idea,” Mistaya pointed out. “I don’t think either of you should try to blame the other.”

“It isn’t a good idea to force young girls to marry,” Strabo lectured, looking from one man to the other. “Marriage, in general, isn’t a particularly desirable institution. It causes all sorts of trouble, from what I have observed over the centuries. In any case, a Princess shouldn’t marry this young, the issue of the advisability of marriage aside. She should be free to grow up and spend time with more interesting creatures than prospective husbands. Dragons, for instance. We’re much more interesting than you, Laphroig. Or you, Craswell. So be warned. If I hear of any further attempts at forcing this girl to marry either one of you or anyone you know or even anyone I think you know, I will not be so lenient.”