Mama turned to watch, frowning “Why does he not wear full armor?”
“He only does that for infighting,” Saul explained, “when he has to face other knights’ swords and lances. He can’t run around in it. All he’s worried about right now is arrows, so he makes do with a mail shirt and a light helmet.”
Sir Guy paced to and fro along the wall, waving at the towers, shooing archers into position. Flame blossomed on their bows, then leaped in blazing arcs toward the towers. Burning arrows fell on the thatched roofs, bit into the wooden sides… and promptly went out.
“Fireproofed!” Saul cried. “The sorcerers have found some way to make sure those towers won’t burn!”
“If it is a spell, I can stop it.” Mama raised her hands again, face grim, and began to recite. Spanish words ran from her tongue in a stream.
Sir Guy, obviously believing in occasional bad luck, sent another flight of flaming arrows into the siege engines. They struck, guttered… then blazed up again.
Mama lowered her hands, satisfied. “That should suffice.”
The flames suddenly guttered again.
Mama threw up her hands, speaking quite angrily as she commanded the fire to grow. The flames licked again, and the siege engines began to burn.
“I must stay on guard against their spells,” Mama snapped, “and even burning, those towers could do great damage to our wall. Stop them, Saul!”
Saul fought down irritation; he didn’t like anybody bossing him around. This wasn’t the time to make an issue out of it, though. “Anything you say, Lady Mantrell.” He thought a moment, then took a piece of rope from his pocket and tied a knot as he chanted,
One tower’s corner suddenly jolted to the ground, then another. Slowly, the burning towers tipped and fell. Moors leaped from them as they tumbled. Saul hoped they were empty when they crashed full-length on the ground, burning merrily.
“Well done,” Mama said, folding her arms with a satisfied smile. She nodded and said again, “Yes, very well done.” Saul felt an irritational rush of pleasure at her praise, and turned away, scolding himself. He should have been beyond such infantile responses.
Matt and Papa hiked a mile away from the Mahdi’s force, then rolled up in their blankets for a few hours. They woke at sunrise, blew their campfire aflame, and boiled water for herbal tea to wash down journeybread and cheese.
“It was good of that young man not to take away our packs,” Papa said.
“Yes, and I’ll bet his sorcerers are chewing him out for it right now,” Matt agreed. “They’re probably sure we escaped because we had some magical gadgets.”
Papa smiled. “Then they are as angry at losing our packs as they are at losing us.”
“Sure.” Matt poured the tea, passed a cup to Papa. “Maybe we should have left them. It would hold those sorcerers up for a year, trying to figure out what kind of spells we could work with blankets, wooden bowls, Brie, and crackers.”
“Well, if they have gained no knowledge, neither have we,” Papa sighed.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Matt mused. “We know there’s a hidden persuader behind the sorcerers, and that they’re the power behind the Mahdi.”
“We knew that before,” Papa pointed out.
“Yes, but it helps to have it verified. Besides, I like knowing I guessed right about the man behind the men behind the throne.”
“About Nirobus being a sorcerer and not a clergyman?” Papa asked. “But if he is not a holy man, he could be anything.”
“Yes, including a demon in disguise, or a genuine sold-his-soul necromancer.” Matt shuddered. “Met one once. Don’t want to do it again.”
“Which means we know nothing about this Nirobus,” Papa said. “He could be anything.”
“He could,” Matt said slowly, “but I think he’s human… that, or wearing an awfully good disguise.”
“What makes you think so?” Papa asked, frowning.
“Because when I met him, that first time I went back to New Jersey,” Matt explained, “he acted awfully sympathetic.”
“Acted,” Papa reminded. “Any good con man can seem very sincere.”
“True,” Matt admitted, “but he wasn’t just sincere, he seemed genuinely interested.”
“In discovering an enemy’s plans? Of course!”
“Not just that,” Matt protested. “He was interested in me as a person, in finding out how my mind worked, what I was feeling, what I needed, how to help me figure out how to get it… “
“Like a good teacher,” Papa said softly.
“Yeah.”
Papa stared into the campfire, lips pursed. “A man genuinely interested in people, who can bridge the universes?”
“Why not? We can. All he had to do was follow my backtrail.”
“Why bother?”
“Well, aside from the little factor of stranding me away from Merovence, where I couldn’t do him any harm,” Matt said, “there’s the little matter of a necromancer’s power source.”
“It comes from slaying people, does it not?”
“It can,” Matt said slowly, “and I think he may be killing a lot of New Jersey kids very slowly.”
“With the new drug, yes.”
Matt nodded. “Carefully structured to retain magic, to channel energy from New Jersey to this universe.
It bleeds away only a little more energy than its host is producing, so that the kid who takes it goes on providing life energy for sorcery for a few years instead of one blazing instant.” He shivered. “Talk about a designer drug!”
“You speak of it as though it were a living thing.”
“Why not?” Matt shrugged. “Years ago, before the Federal Drug Administration, swindlers used to sell diet pills that would make you skinny no matter how much you ate.”
“I remember reading of it… the ‘pills’ contained tapeworm eggs.” Papa shuddered. “It seems incredible that people really will do such things. Can magic manufacture some sort of parasite that will do what you have explained?”
“I don’t know why not. I’ve certainly seen enough magically produced monsters here… chimeras, manticores, trolls, even a few that seem very original, like Narlh the dracogriff.”
Papa shook his head, almost in despair. “So by not letting the neighborhood boys use my store to spread this drug, I marked myself as an enemy of this Nirobus?”
Matt nodded. “Unless he’d already pegged you because you were related to me.”
Papa looked up, staring. “I thought your description sounded familiar! It fits the man who talked me into going into business for myself!”
“So he did have you marked right from the beginning,” Matt said grimly. “Sorry, Papa. I didn’t mean to get you into trouble.”
“This is the sort of trouble I wish to be in,” Papa said grimly, “the defense of the innocent and young, even if I die in the fight. No, my son, I only regret my failure to protect them, not my defeat.” He bit his lip. “Except for the anxiety it has caused my Jimena.”