“Won’t you sit down, Wizard Fenworth?” she asked.
“Thank you, my dear. I’ve always said you were tender-hearted, but I’m meditating, don’t you see?”
Tipper could see he looked more and more like a tall tree stump the longer he reflected.
The hotel room was muggy even with the windows open and nighttime breezes puffing the curtains inward. Her father lay in the next room with all four minor dragons fanning him with their wings. Tears sprang to her eyes. Could Fenworth and the dragons keep him stable? Would he die before all their efforts brought about a solution?
Hue’s soft song drifted through the crack in the ajar door. The melody soothed her fears. She knew the music had a healing quality as well. Her father was comfortable for the moment. She and the others would find an answer.
Bealomondore offered a suggestion. “King Yellat might make a royal decree to save his son-in-law’s life.”
Tipper tensed. Did the tumanhofer artist know of the rift between the king and her father?
Beccaroon shook his head. “I’ve made petitions in the past for the king to reclaim his daughter, and he has always refused. I don’t see how this circumstance would bring about a different decision.”
Tipper looked up at Bec. “You never told me.”
He avoided meeting her eye. “It would have distressed you.”
“Borrowing them would not suffice,” said Librettowit. “We would put the statues together, restore your father, and lose the benefit as soon as we returned the two that don’t belong to us.”
“Then we should sell Morning Glory to Mushand,” said Bealomondore. “He’s willing to pay a handsome sum.”
“It doesn’t matter what the sum is,” said Tipper. “The point is to unite the statues.”
Bec unfurled his wings and brought them back to his body. “Putting Morning Glory into Mushand’s collection seems to be the only answer to our plight.”
Tipper looked from one member of the quest to the next. The burden of what they were about to do weighed heavily on all of them. Except Wizard Fenworth, of course.
She studied the odd tree-man figure in the corner. She could still see his hair, but it was entwined with thin scraggly vines and sparse leaves. A heavier layer of vegetation draped over his wizard’s robes. His hat, which sat on a table near the door, had not sprouted so much as a thin green shoot. He looked neither happy nor sad, worried nor carefree. After all, how much attitude could someone in a tree-state emote?
Her eyes moved to Prince Jayrus, the only male in the room who didn’t seem to be staring at the floor. He sat with his elbows on his knees and his hands pressed together in front of him. He tapped his two pointer fingers against each other. Again she thought he had mentally deserted them. His look of contentment had to mean he was dreaming about mountains or flying or his perfect tower and garden so far away.
Prince Jayrus focused on her and winked. Maybe he wasn’t so far away.
He clapped his hands on his knees and stood. Everyone else in the room jumped at the sudden movement.
“We cannot sell Morning Glory to Mushand.”
“None of us want to, young man,” said Librettowit. “If you have a plan that does not involve chicanery, let’s hear it. Otherwise, we are bound to save Verrin Schope’s life in the only way we can, by uniting the statues in Mushand’s gallery.”
“I don’t have another plan, but I do know we cannot go against the principles of Wulder.”
Librettowit scowled. “What do you know of His principles? I don’t believe you have ever seen a Tome, let alone read it, let alone studied it.”
Prince Jayrus smiled as he gazed at the arboreal wizard. “I believe that Wizard Fenworth has been sending me messages while he sleeps.”
Beccaroon tsked. “Messages? What do you mean by messages?”
“Could be. Could be.” Librettowit pinched his lower lip. “He has been unusually somnolent.”
Bec cocked his head. “Somnolent?”
“Slumberous.”
The bird blinked and looked away. “So what did you mean by messages sent by this slumberous wizard?”
“Not messages exactly. More like thoughts being thrust into my memory. It’s very much like I’m recalling a book I’ve read. Probably these Tomes of Wulder our visitors from Amara talk about. Only, of course, I have not read them. But he has.”
“Who has?” asked Bealomondore.
“The wizard,” snapped Beccaroon. “Pay attention.”
“I am paying attention.” Bealomondore sat up straighter and addressed the prince. “So you are remembering passages from a book that Fenworth read, just as if you had been the one to read it?”
“Not exactly. I recall the words more precisely than if I had just read the book. Phrases and sentences come to me as if I’d memorized them.”
“Interesting.” Bealomondore glanced back and forth between the prince and the tree. “What kind of phrases?”
“ ‘A lit candle in a dark room means there is no darkness. An unlit candle in a dark room means there is no light.’ ”
Tipper knew her expression was as befuddled as Bealomondore’s, but Librettowit’s face reflected excitement.
“Here’s another one,” said the prince. “ ‘Darkness walks into Light and is no more. Light and Darkness cannot stand hand in hand.’”
Beccaroon stamped a foot on the cushioned armrest where he perched. “Awk! What does it mean?”
The prince paced across the room and back. “It means… it means we cannot deal with Mushand. He is darkness. We are light.”
A gasp came from the tree as Fenworth broke free from his wooden form and wobbled to the chair the prince had vacated. “You make me work too hard, boy.” He collapsed and leaned his head against the back cushion.
The prince came to his side. “Do you need a drink, sir? Are you well?”
Fenworth waved a hand at him. “I’m old, not ill. Thirsty? I believe I am.” He reached under his mantle and pulled out a goblet filled with a bubbling liquid. He sipped, drank more fully, then burped. He tapped his fingers on his lips. “Excuse me.” Then he tipped the goblet back and guzzled the rest. “Now what were we talking about?”
“The statues,” said Bealomondore.
Tipper spoke at the same time. “My father.”
“Awk!” said Beccaroon. “Tomes read and unread. Messages from your Wulder. Mixed memories, yours and the prince’s. Falderal. Flim-crackery Pickles and pudding. Nonsense.”
Fenworth sprang from his chair like a young man and embraced the prince. “Librettowit, are you not astounded?”
The librarian nodded. “Definitely astounded.”
Fenworth let go of Jayrus and pounded him on the back in a gesture of congratulations. “To think that I would meet you at your conception. Remarkable, isn’t it, Librettowit?”
He nodded again. “Remarkable, indeed.”
Fenworth swung his head around to look directly at his fellow Amaran. “Explains why we’re here. Why Wulder brought us through the gateway. Why we’ve been stuck here. All of this drama leads to this.” He pointed to Prince Jayrus.
Librettowit continued to nod with a controlled elation on his face.
“Awk! Leads to what?”
The librarian stood, walked over to Prince Jayrus, and extended his hand. The prince shook it.
Once he had his hand back, Librettowit bowed. “If I can be of service, I am yours to command.”
“What is going on?” demanded the grand parrot.
Fenworth raised his eyebrows. “Oh, I see how it is. Yes, dear fellow, it is awkward to be caught with tail feathers down, but you must understand that Paladin does not take such things into consideration.”
Bec’s neck did a rotation that almost twisted his head completely around. “Your Paladin? The one who comes from Amara?”
“No,” said Librettowit. “Your Paladin. The one who comes from the Mercigon Mountains.”
Tipper swung her feet to the floor and stood.
“Our Jayrus is a paladin.”
“Not a paladin, my dear,” said Fenworth. “The Paladin. The champion for the people. The educator, encourager, exhorter, spokesman for Wulder, interpreter of the principles, leader—”
“Awk!” Beccaroon screeched. “He’s just a callow youth.”
Librettowit shook his head. “You mustn’t despise him for being young. He will serve a thousand years or more. And you must not think him inexperienced, because his mentor trained him for this task. And Wulder will guide him.”
“Surprising,” said Fenworth. He moved to the chair and sat down. “After all these years, Wulder still flabbergasts me.” He laughed, a soft chortle. The chortle built itself into a more forceful noise and exploded into a guffaw. Fenworth held his side and wiped tears from his eyes. “Remember, Librettowit?”
“I do,” said the librarian. “You asked if these heathens could learn. You said you didn’t want to waste your time on an unprofitable cause.”
Fenworth gasped, still overcome by amusement. “And now a whole country will know Wulder as Amara does. Such an old fool.” He slapped his chest. “Such an old fool am I. What a comfort to know that I am still a simpleton and Wulder is not. Ah, should I never make the mistake of thinking it’s the other way around.”
Tipper stepped forward, determined to bring this chaos back to the problem at hand. “Does this mean that now that Jayrus is a paladin—”
Fenworth held up his hand. “Not a, the.”
“Jayrus is the Paladin. Does that mean he can take the statues from Mushand? Or does it mean that he can heal Papa without the statues?”
Jayrus looked from Librettowit to Wizard Fenworth to Tipper. “No, I’m afraid it does not mean I can take the statues. But another plan will be revealed to us. Stealing is never Wulder’s way.”
A hiss came from behind Tipper. She whirled.
Four men dressed in black, faces covered with black silk, and wielding long swords entered the room through the open windows.
“But stealing is our way,” one of the men spoke in a breathy whisper. “Once we have the statue Mushand wants, we will find ourselves rich.”
“You can’t have the statue,” Tipper balled her fists and took a step forward.
With her eyes trained on the speaker, she barely saw the man to the side leap forward. He grabbed her and squeezed the air out of her lungs. She felt the sword’s tip prick her at the back of her neck. She dared not struggle.
The spokesman for the invaders chuckled. “Now I believe we have a bargaining chip.” His voice rasped, barely louder than before. “Will you trade the statue for the life of the lady?”
42
Fair Trade
Wizard Fenworth opened his mantle and started pulling out odds and ends. “That sounds equitable. The life of one beautiful emerlindian for one piece of rock. Yes, I think we can do that.”
An unusual amount of crawling creatures came out of the folds of his robes. Tipper couldn’t turn her head for a closer look, but one of the black-clad men who stood to the side exclaimed, “I hate snakes. There must be a hundred of them.”
“Nonsense,” said Fenworth. “Sixty-three at the most. Oh, I forgot the reticulated grossworm. That makes sixty-four. He’s really not a worm at all, you know. Misnomer.”
The unpleasant man with the husky whisper swished his sword in the air. “Hurry up.”
Something slid over Tipper’s stocking-covered foot. She squealed, picked up her foot, and shook it. Of course, whatever it was had departed, but now she endured being clamped to a villain’s chest with a sword point to the nape of her neck while poised on one foot. Tipper could not contemplate putting her foot back down and stepping on a snake.
She wished she could conjure up something like Fenworth often did. Perhaps lightning bolts or a sheriff’s squad. Better yet, she longed for her father to emerge hale and hearty from the bedroom. He could sweep down on this crew and, with the other valiant questers, vanquish the intruders.
The man holding her relaxed his grip a mite and swore under his breath. “I don’t like reptiles of any kind. Snakes are the worst.”
Tipper felt his leg twitch.
A snake coiled around the ankle of her one foot remaining on the ground. It slithered up her calf. When it tickled the back of her knee, Tipper let out a bloodcurdling scream and jerked away from her captor. She leaped to the settee and landed on the cushions, screeching, and holding her skirts up.
“Excitable,” said Fenworth, still pulling things out of his hollows.
Tipper froze. The players in the drama seemed suspended between actions for a moment. The only movement was the constant twisting and gliding of the snakes and Fenworth, who still emptied his pockets.
“Oh, there goes another batch.” A knot of larger snakes fell to the floor with a thud and immediately unwound. “Where have they been?”
Prince Jayrus jumped the man closest to him and soon had the man disarmed, knocked out, and stretched across the floor. He whirled through the air and, with a kick to the face, leveled another opponent. He flipped toward the man who had held Tipper captive and landed a fist across the side of the man’s face. Since the villain had been pulling a snake out of his pant leg, he hadn’t seen the punch coming. He fell with a thud.
Tipper squealed again and, with a glance at the wizard, clenched her teeth against any more excitable exclamations. Jayrus…Paladin stood before the last man, the one with the raspy voice. With his sword in his hand, Jay—Paladin presented an alarming picture. Tipper briefly wondered where the weapon had come from, but before she could puzzle it out, the intruder lunged. Paladin blocked the thrust, countered it, and left a hole in the man’s chest. The villain fell to the floor.
Fenworth ceased dumping the contents of his pockets. He sighed. “I suppose now I have to clean this mess up.” He looked at the fallen rogues, the inert tumanhofers, and Paladin. “I’m only cleaning up my mess. You’ll have to clean up your own.”
With tears in her eyes, Tipper collapsed on the settee, laughing and crying, sniffing, hiccuping, and wiping her eyes and nose with her handkerchief.
“Tut, tut, oh dear. Don’t expect any help from her. Excitable. No good in a crisis.” Fenworth lifted an eyebrow as he gazed at Paladin. “Glad you know what to do, boy. Somebody trained you well.”
Bealomondore went down to the front desk to report an attempted theft, three injured men, and one dead man. It seemed the Ohidae Grand Hotel did not often deal with thugs, snakes, and swordplay The night clerk sent for the manager and the authorities. The manager sent for the owner and the mayor, who happened to be the same person. The underlings of the Ohidae police force kept sending for whatever officers held the positions directly above them until the room was filled with medics rendering aid, officials taking statements over and over from the participants, and bellhops collecting snakes. Fenworth soon grew tired of it all and went to sleep.
The chief of police arrived and cleared the room of every superfluous person. By this time, the snakes had been caught and returned to the snoring wizard. They slithered into his robes as if grateful to be out from underfoot. The villains had been carted off. Only the mayor remained. He had not felt he was superfluous.
“So,” said the chief of police, “the men in your group overpowered the thieves who came in through those windows?”
Tipper sat prim and proper on the settee, with her shoes on her feet and her hands folded in her lap. “They did come through the windows, but Paladin dispatched them all.”
The sheriff’s hard face twisted in disbelief
Tipper continued. “First, Wizard Fenworth let his creatures loose. There were mice, rats, insects, bats, and the snakes. There were more snakes than anything else.”
Bealomondore smiled. “There were sixty-four snakes to begin with, all rather small. Nasty but harmless, I suppose. Too small to eat anything but the bugs, and they definitely went after them. Then the wizard found a clump of tangled snakes.” The young tumanhofer held out h
is arms as if he held a huge ball. “They dropped to the floor and uncoiled from one another, and that was a disturbing sight. They weren’t interested in people but slithered hither and yon, chasing the rodents. Not the bats. The bats went out the window.”
“The thieves became nervous,” explained Tipper.
“Understandably,” said the chief of police.
“Unheard of,” said the mayor.
Paladin shook his head. “Not a wise statement around here.”
The mayor cast him an indignant look, but Fenworth roused and glared at the town official and owner of the hotel. “I am not a citizen of this land, sir, but in my own country, it is not ‘unheard of’ for a thief to develop a case of nerves.”
The mayor bristled. “I am not referring to the thieves being nervous as unheard of, but to have four ruffians invade the Ohidae Grand Hotel, for snakes of any size to be found in our rooms, for our patrons to have to defend themselves in their own rooms—that is unheard of.”
Fenworth shook his shaggy head. Tipper watched for leaves or bugs to fall and was amazed when they did not.
“Need to have your hearing checked, Mayor,” said Fenworth, yawning. “I’ve heard of such things. Recently too. By stars and centipedes, I’ve heard of all that happening just since midnight. But then, I might have better ears than yours.” He closed his eyes.
The mayor sputtered, but Paladin came to his side and put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “It won’t do a bit of good to answer. The dialogue will just go on and get worse and become completely convoluted and frustrating. Best to just drop it and watch what you say in the future.”
The chief stepped in. “Now, the thieves got nervous, and then what happened?”
Tipper cleared her throat, drawing the official’s attention. “A snake, a small one, wrapped around my ankle and started to climb my leg.”
The raised eyebrows and widened eyes on the man’s face satisfied her need for a little recognition of the drama.
“I screamed.”