Matt looked up at the gruff, scaly snout above him, amazed. "I thought I was the magician, here! How did you find game where there was none?"
"It was good at hiding," Narlh snorted. "I'm better at finding. Eat."
Matt smiled, oddly touched. "Well, thank you, Narlh! But are you sure..."
"A dracogriff can't afford to be logy," Narlh snapped. " I heard your kind needs to scorch it before you eat it."
"Yes, it is nicer that way." Matt started skinning the haunch. "Thanks, Narlh—a lot."
A few minutes later, the venison was roasting on an improvised spit. As soon as the outside was brown, Matt started cutting off slivers. It tasted good, very good—it had been a long time since those breakfast apples.
When the edge was taken off his appetite, he remembered his manners and looked up at Narlh. "Want to try a slice?"
"Don't mind if I do," the dracogriff allowed. "Must be something to be said for it, the way you're wolfing it down."
Matt held out the chunk of meat, which took a fair amount of courage as the huge dragon's head reached down to take it from his fingers. Narlh chewed once, then turned to spit the meat out. "Yuck! Ugh! How can you stand the stuff!"
"Sorry," Matt said, feeling sheepish.
"I guess it smells better than it looks," Narlh growled.
"Must be." Matt kept on trimming until he was full. Then he kept the core of the haunch roasting until it was almost charred on the outside. Well done, it should keep for a day or two—and, though Narlh seemed to be able to find game where there was none, there was no guarantee. Waste not, want not.
While it roasted, Matt raked some charcoal from the fire, let it cool, then started drawing—long, straight lines. He still didn't trust the forest.
"It is certain, then?" The queen sat tight-lipped, fingers pressed deep into the plush covering the arms of her throne. "He has crossed into Ibile?"
"Not so much `crossed,' Majesty, as having appeared on the other side of the border." The messenger clenched his hat in his fists, worried about how the queen would react to her fiancé's defection. "The sentry on the topmost crag of Mount Damocles looked away, toward the other side of the range, then looked back—and saw him there. He says he will swear 'twas the Lord Wizard, an you wish him to, for he was in your army at Breden Plain, and stood near to his Lordship in the battle."
"He must have extraordinarily keen eyesight, to be sure of him at such a distance."
"Such clearness of sight he has, Majesty—'tis the cause of his being stationed at the mountain border." The messenger didn't mention the sentry's montagnard grandfather, who assured his descendent a warm welcome in the local villages, as well as keen eyesight.
He didn't have to; Alisande had chosen the mountain sentries herself, and for exactly those reasons. "There is no need to swear; I credit his report."
"He says also that he knew the Lord Wizard by his colors—his golden doublet and azure hose, and by the glinting symbols on his cape."
Symbols in a wizard's cloak, one might expect—though why Matthew had chosen to have a block-capital M embroidered in place of the usual stars and crescents mystified Alisande. Monograms she could understand, but Matthew did not strike her as swollen with his own self-importance in any other way.
It did, however, make him unmistakable. "I thank you, good courier." She sighed. "Now leave me, and take your refreshment in the kitchens."
The messenger stared in surprise, then bowed and backed away the proper distance before turning on his heel and nearly sprinting out of the throne room. He knew the propensity of royalty to take out their vexation with bad news on him who bore it, and was amazed and tenfold more loyal to the queen who showed such self-restraint as to thank him instead!
"He has done it," Alisande murmured to herself, wishing for the hundredth time for a chancellor with whom she could discuss such weighty matters—but that chancellor himself was now the subject of the discussion, and she would have to talk to herself in his absence. "You have done it, my love—you have stridden into the den of lions without care, and may shortly be without head." She shivered, feeling dread hollow her at the thought. "And what choice have I but to follow, and that with all my army, in some faint hope that I may bring you back alive." She shuddered and shook her head. "Ah, my Matthew! Wherefore could you not have thought before you swore?"
But she knew the answer—in fact, she was the answer. She rose to call up her heralds and set the war in train.
CHAPTER 7
Servant, Go Where I Send Thee
The night darkened around the camp fire, and the wind tore at its flames. Matt shivered as he sprinkled the white powder, closing the twenty-foot circle he'd drawn in the dust.
"And just what good is that going to do, I'd like to know?" Narlh humphed.
"A lot, if anything magical tries to get at us tonight." Matt stood up, dusting off his hands. "Or anything not-so-magical, for that matter."
"What's the powder? Lime? Chalk?"
"Talcum," Matt said, embarrassed "It's the only verse I could think of offhand."
"How's it go?"
"I'd like to tell you, but I hate singing commercials. Besides, I don't want another bottle of the stuff right now."
Narlh frowned. "Doesn't seem like much, to keep out a sorcerer."
"Remind me to tell you how to keep elephants away."
"What's an elephant?"
Matt started to answer, then thought better of it. "A mythical beast." He glanced up at the moon, then turned back to inscribing the pair of concentric circles, hurrying now.
"Whatcha scared of?" Narlh demanded. "Something I oughta know about?"
"I should think you would already. The closer we come to midnight, the greater the danger from sorcery."
"Oh, yeah?" Narlh lifted his head, glaring. "So that's why the bum could always sneak up on me! Why didn'tcha tell me this before?"
"Because I only met you today."
"Oh." Narlh frowned, looking away. "Yeah, there is that. Right now, though, I don't see anything to worry about." He lay down, his front legs walking around in a circle as he did, ending curled up with his head on his toes.
"Nothing dangerous because of claws and teeth out there?"
"Naw, and nothing dangerous because of sharp, pointy sticks and big ideas, neither. In fact, not a soul in sight."
Matt nodded. "It's the things without souls that worry me—and the ones who have sold them."
Narlh lifted his head, eyes narrowed, growling low in his throat. "They bother me, too." He eyed the double ring that now surrounded their camp fire, about twenty feet out. "So that's all you have to do to keep sorcerers away? Just sprinkle a powder?"
No, I have to chant a verse, too." Matt paced around the inside of the circle slowly, intoning,
Again, Matt could feel the magical forces thickening about him—and thickening, and thickening. It felt as if he were wading through molasses—but he kept at it, until the final rhyme.
"Sounds pretty," Narlh acknowledged.
"That was a spell, not a concert," Matt growled, not wanting to admit he'd adapted it from Coleridge. But he was feeling stretched taut—he should have seen something by now.
Suddenly, fire erupted all around them, between the two chalk lines.
Narlh stared, transfixed.
Matt relaxed with a smile of satisfaction and tried not to worry about what would happen if he needed a spell to act instantly. Whatever was wrong with magic here in Ibile, it slowed down the response time horribly.