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Chapter Text

INVISIBLE COLLEGE: The Rule here is that, if something magical could possibly go wrong, it will. Be prepared for the Universe to split and for coloured explosions, levitating towers, and tutors in Animal form.

-The Tough Guide to Fantasyland

Kit lay couchant in the meadow, enjoying the feeling of the sun on his back and the sound of the small stream trickling nearby. Blade perched on a flat rock next to Kit, waiting for their teacher to arrive. This was much more comfortable than their meetings in Deucalion’s cave over the winter, Kit thought. The vast hoard of gold had made for cold and lumpy seating, and they had been repeatedly interrupted whenever some freelance burglar had decided to try their hand at snatching a trinket. Deucalion had asked Reville and the Thieves’ Guild several times to crack down on this sort of thing, but new offenders kept popping up. Kit didn’t even think the gold itself was the main draw—it was more a competition for bragging rights, combined with pure nosiness. Thank goodness the weather had turned warmer so that they were able to have their lessons outdoors again.

A shadow blocked the sun for a moment, and they heard the flapping of giant wings as Deucalion came to rest, his vast bulk filling a considerable portion of the small valley. "Sorry I'm late," he rumbled in a voice that caused the leaves on the trees to quiver. “Another confounded burglar. No time to waste--let's begin with a review. Kit, what is the first of the fundamental laws we covered last time?”

By pretending he needed to scratch his foreleg, Kit sneaked a glance at his notes, which he had treated with an illusion spell that made them invisible to anyone but himself and Blade. “Energy can be neither created nor destroyed,” he recited. “It can be transported across the boundaries of a system by mechanical work, heat, or magical transfer. It can also be transformed within the system by internal interactions, including electrical, gravitational, magical…”

“Yes, yes, enough,” Deucalion said, flicking the edge of his wing impatiently. “Blade, the second law?”

Blade leaned forward and adjusted the position of his own notes, also disguised by Kit’s spell. Could you be any more obvious? Kit thought disgustedly. I should have kept this idea to myself.

Blade squinted at the page in front of him. In contrast to Kit’s neat penmanship, Blade’s paper looked as though a flock of chickens had skittered across it after dipping their feet in ink. “Ah, it is impossible to decrease the total amount of… misanthropy in the universe?”

Deucalion snorted, causing a puff of smoke to erupt from his nostrils. “What’s the good of having secret notes if you can’t even read your own handwriting?” He stabbed one claw into Blade’s paper and swiped it away, apparently undeterred by its invisibility. “The word is entropy.”

Kit snickered. “I don’t know why you should find this so amusing,” Deucalion snapped, snagging Kit’s notes on his claw as well. He lifted his forefoot in front of his mouth and breathed out a delicate tendril of flame, which immediately consumed both papers. Fine particles of ash drifted down into the stream.

“That’s not fair!” Kit complained. “You were reading our minds, weren’t you?"

“No need for any such thing,” Deucalion said, dusting off his claws. “That was the loudest invisibility spell I’ve ever detected—magic fairly screaming out of it in all directions. No subtlety at all.” He reared up on his hind legs and lifted his head on its long neck so that he towered over both of his students. “How many times have I told you: NO writing things down! Writing notes makes you lazy! Trying to replace your brain with a flimsy sheet of paper!”

Blade glowered at his feet, but Kit met Deucalion’s eyes, his crest raised. “Our parents always encouraged us to make notes when we were learning something new. Are you calling them lazy and paper-brained?”

“I have the utmost respect for both of your parents,” Deucalion said, easing back onto all fours. “Quite frankly, that’s the main reason I agreed to take you two on as pupils. Mara and Derk may do as they please—as may you, should you ever be so unfortunate as to have students of your own. But for the moment, my rules apply. I intend to teach you magic in the same way I would teach a hatchling dragon. Dragons became the greatest magic workers in the world by knowing things, at a level so profound it becomes effectively instinctual—not by looking things up in some instruction manual.”

“Dragons the greatest magic workers in the world—I like that!” Blade grumbled. He lifted his eyes to glare at Deucalion, seemingly taking his cue from Kit’s defiance. “What are humans, then, chopped parsley? I seem to recall learning that it was Wizard Policant who was the greatest wizard of all time. He founded the University. He wrote Philosophy of Magic. Which, by the way, is a book. He wrote things down in it. And people are still learning from it even now, five hundred years later.”

Blade looked over at Kit, probably expecting backup. Kit said nothing. He didn’t know of any famous griffin wizards. For most of his life, he hadn’t even known there were other griffins, apart from himself and his siblings.

“My father knew Policant,” Deucalion said. “Prometheus—you may have heard of him? He taught the human wizards everything they know about fire magic, from simple magefire on up. Spells to control iron, as well. To be fair, they had things to teach us, too. Translocation, for instance. I suppose it’s only natural that tiny wingless creatures should be strongly motivated to invent improved forms of transport… anyway, that’s a topic for another time. When you have important ideas to record for posterity, by all means write them down. But while you are learning, I’ll expect you to know everything off by heart.”

Deucalion pointed a claw at Kit. “Consider what happens when you fly. Do you sit down and consult a guidebook every time you take off?”

“But that’s different,” Kit protested. “That’s not magic!”

“Certainly it is. A griffin couldn’t get off the ground by the normal principles of aerodynamics—no more than a dragon could. You’ve been doing magic without even knowing it ever since you were very small.”

“And all the other griffins have too? Callette, even?” Kit stretched out one wing and examined it feather by feather, thinking of the way he intuitively curved it to catch the air or tilted to make a turn.

“And you, Blade,” Deucalion continued. “Let’s suppose you were to be confronted with a lava-spewing volcano, or you were beset by a werewolf army. Do you want to have to go back to your lecture notes to figure out what to do?”

“My father says that’s been a weakness of wizard training since Mr. Chesney’s tours began,” Blade said. “They focused on quick handling of werewolf armies and things, and didn’t spend the time to come up with anything new or different. Just going through the motions, he calls it.”

“Your father is absolutely correct.” More smoke emerged from Deucalion’s nostrils, along with a shower of sparks, but this time his anger seemed directed outward rather than at Blade or Kit. “That is exactly why the deep knowledge is so important. Effective creativity requires a proper foundation to build on. When you truly know the fundamentals—when they have become as much a part of you as your own breathing and heartbeat—it will become natural to apply them in new ways and see new connections.”

“But how can we do that by just memorizing a lot of fancy language we don’t understand?” Kit asked. “And all those equations! What’s that got to do with anything practical?”

“Perhaps you’re right,” Deucalion said, much to Kit’s surprise. “I haven’t made the practical applications as clear as I might. We don’t all have a dragon’s natural appreciation for abstract ideas.” Kit and Blade exchanged eyerolls. “Suppose we consider the two fundamental laws we just discussed in terms of their application to magic specifically. The first law tells us that any spell has an energy cost in proportion to its effect.”

“That seems clear enough,” Blade said. “That’s why I feel tired and hungry after doing a lot of translocation—and it’s worse if I travel farther, or if I’m carrying something heavy. But shouldn’t that mean the main requirement for doing magic is physical strength? How can I be any kind of magic worker next to someone like you, or even Kit?” Kit gave a quiet snort at the ‘even.’

“Excellent question! It’s good to see you thinking rather than reading off notes,” Deucalion said, with a grin. So far as Kit could make out, a dragon’s grin had the same meaning as a human’s, but was far more impressive. He envied those gleaming rows of teeth. A griffin’s beak was all very well—Mara was fond of saying the universe cracked every time Kit frowned—but nothing could command respect quite like a gaping maw lined with needle-sharp instruments of death.

“The energy you supply is nowhere near the total amount required to do the job,” Deucalion was saying. “Think of when you had to translocate Kit a few months back.” Kit squirmed with embarrassment at the memory. “By non-magical means, I doubt you could even lift him off the ground, let alone carry him ten miles or more—am I right?”

Blade nodded. “So where does the energy come from to do the spell? And why does it still make me tired, if I’m not powering it myself?”

“The key concept here is activation energy,” Deucalion said. “Allow me to demonstrate.” With his claws, he carved out a shallow, bowl-like depression in the muddy ground just above the stream, packing all the scooped-out dirt into a mound on the side of the bowl closest to the water. On the other side of this mud barrier, the bank plunged steeply down toward the water.

Deucalion reached into the stream and picked up a rounded stone. It wasn’t very big—about the size of a grape—and it looked even smaller clutched in the dragon’s enormous talons. Delicately, he placed the stone at the bottom of the shallow hole he had dug. “What strikes you about this stone’s behavior at the moment?” he asked.

“Er… it’s not doing anything,” Blade ventured.

“Just so. Now, observe.” Deucalion gave the stone a light tap, causing it to roll up the side of the bowl toward the barrier. It slowed as it approached the muddy peak, but retained just enough speed to carry it over the top. On the other side, it tumbled down the steep bank. Deucalion smoothly intercepted it just before it would have hit the water. “Notice that when I caught it, it was going much faster than when I gave it that first push. And not through any effort of mine.”

“Well, of course,” Kit said, puzzled. “That’s just gravity.”

Deucalion grinned even more widely than before, as though Kit had said something clever. “Precisely,” he said. “I’ve harnessed the power of the entire planet to do my work for me! Power that is there, all around us, all the time, just waiting to be called upon. But please note: that stone would never have moved without my doing two things first. One, I created a path for it to follow by building this marvel of civil engineering.” He patted the mud hill. “And two, I gave it that initial tap to start it on its way.

“So it is with magic. Magic is inherent in the Earth itself: in the soil, in the rocks, in the water, in the air. You can tap into it at any time. But you need to do those same two things I did with the stone. First, prepare the way so that you can channel it in the direction you want—that’s what a spell is. There’s almost no limit to the number of different spells that could be imagined, all drawing on the same fundamental source. You may need a physical setup to help focus it—pentagrams and candles and so on—but mostly the preparation occurs in your mind. Second, give it a shove to startle it out of its usual configuration. You make the spark that lights the fire.”

Deucalion was still clutching the rounded stone; now he dropped it back into the shallow hole and looked at Blade. “Your turn.”

“My turn for what?” Blade asked. “I thought this was just, you know, a metaphor.”

“It’s a metaphor and it’s literal,” Deucalion said. “More efficient that way. Push the rock up the hill—no, not with your hands, with magic.”

Blade’s expression suggested that he wanted to object, but politeness was holding him back. Kit had no such compunction. “I don’t see the point of spending time on that. You know either of us could lift that tiny pebble in our sleep. Look, if this is some sort of punishment for the notes, take it out on me, not Blade. It was my idea, my illusion spell—”

“Very noble of you, I’m sure,” Deucalion said. “And yes, I know the illusion was one of yours—it had your talon-prints all over it. This is not a punishment, it’s an exercise—one I was planning to assign in any case, notes or no notes. I’m not looking for power; I’m looking for control.” He turned back toward Blade. “Give it just enough of a push to climb the hill, and no more.”

Blade stared at the stone in concentration. At first, the stone had no reaction; then it wobbled back and forth a few times and suddenly leaped into the air. It flew wildly sideways and smacked into Kit’s beak, surprising him into an undignified high-pitched squawk. Blade laughed so hard he nearly toppled off his seat.

“Looks as though your aim is up to its usual standards,” Kit said, eyes narrowed.

“I’d like to see you do better,” Blade retorted.

“So would I,” said Deucalion, raising one scaly green eye-ridge at Kit.

Kit picked up the stone and placed it in the hole again. Closing his eyes, he reached out and felt for it with his mind, testing its weight and smoothness. He adjusted the strength of his contact in the way his body automatically responded during flight, the way he could tell how rapidly to flap his wings or how to adjust his angle for a tricky landing. With the lightest possible touch of magic, he gave the stone a gentle nudge. This turned out to be a bit too gentle; the stone remained stuck to the muddy bottom of the hole. He pushed just a bit harder, to no result… then a bit harder still. Abruptly, the stone came free of the mud with a squelching sound, bounced over the top of the hill—clearing it by about a foot—and hit the water with a plop.

“Hmph. Not the worst I’ve seen,” Deucalion said gruffly. Kit permitted himself a small moment of satisfaction—coming from Deucalion, this was high praise indeed—but didn’t allow it to show on his face. “Needs work, of course,” Deucalion continued. “Let’s have a dozen more tries from each of you.”

“So what about the second fundamental law—the one with, what’s it called, entropy?” Kit asked. “How does that fit into magic working?” He was partly stalling to avoid more practice with the stone, partly genuinely interested.

Deucalion’s shrewd glance suggested that he perfectly understood both motives. “That’s exactly the reason I’m making you work so hard for precision and fine control with that blasted rock. Here’s another example: think of all that magical pink embroidery your mother did to decorate her enchantress’s lair. Could you create anything like that?”

Blade shook his head vehemently. “Definitely not,” Kit said.

“But why not?” Deucalion asked. “It’s just moving a needle and thread—shouldn’t that be even easier than lifting a pebble?”

“It’s too…” Kit clenched and unclenched his talons irritably, searching for the right word. “Fussy.”

“Intricate,” Blade suggested.

“Yes, that. There are all sorts of fiddly little bits you’ve got to get exactly right, or the whole thing is ruined.”

“Quite,” Deucalion said. “There are nearly infinite ways to mess it up, but only one way to make it as it should be, which makes it fantastically difficult to hit upon that one special way. That’s what entropy is: messiness. The rule is that everything wants to be in a mess if it possibly can. With a great deal of effort, you can clean up one small part of it, but that inevitably leads to more mess somewhere else.”

“So, what does ‘mess’ mean for something like my refrigeration spell?” Blade asked.

“That’s a perfect example of both laws working together,” Deucalion said. “First, if you’re cooling something, you’re taking heat out of it—that’s energy. And you put in more energy to make the spell run in the first place. Where does that energy go? It’s got to be letting off waste heat somewhere external to the spell area.”

“I never thought about that,” Blade said. “Let’s test it!” He applied a focused blast of refrigeration to a small area of the stream near its bank. A scrim of ice quickly formed on the water’s surface, then thickened. Just above the frozen spot, the air began to waver and distort the images seen through it, as though there were scorching desert sands below. Kit held his forefoot in the rippling air, and felt a toasty warmth. Seeing Kit’s reaction, Blade moved his hand in as well, and laughed delightedly when he felt the heat. In his excitement, Blade evidently let the spell lapse—the ice cracked and began to melt, while the warm air dissipated.

“Now, that’s a local decrease of entropy,” Deucalion said. “A cold place getting colder while the warm place touching it gets warmer—not the way things generally want to go. Cold molecules are slow; warm molecules are fast; you’re sorting out the slow from the fast, not letting them mix. There are different ways you can do that. Some have tried using a very small demon—”

“No thank you,” said Blade with a shudder.

“Very wise,” said Deucalion. “I’d be quite interested to work out exactly what you are doing at the molecular level with that spell… but that can be a project for later. However it happens, that sorting is cleaning up a bit of the mess in the universe. But you pay for it. Entropy can’t go down overall; it must be going up somewhere else in the universe—probably in your body, as it gets just a bit more tired and worn down.”

“You said we can’t decrease entropy… does that mean it’s like energy?” Kit asked. “You can just move it around, not create or destroy it?”

Deucalion gave a brief rumble of laughter. “We should be so lucky. I said we can’t decrease it; I said nothing about not increasing. The stuff will spread like wildfire if you let it.”

There was a sudden miniature thunderclap of displaced air, heralding an incoming translocation. After a moment, Kit recognized the newcomer as one of the wizards who had led tours for Mr. Chesney—Corkoran, was that his name? The blond puff of hair was the same as it had been on his last tour, but his wizardly robes had been replaced by an offworld T-shirt and a necktie adorned with fluorescent pink flamingos. He looked irritated and out of breath.

“Bother!” Corkoran panted. “This isn’t Derkholm, is it?”

“It’s close by,” Blade said. “Do you need help?”

“Querida sent me... get Derk and Mara,” Corkoran puffed. “More tourists… coming through from other world… at University. And a demon.”

Chapter Text

CLOAKS are the universal outer garb… It is hard to see why. They are constantly 'swirling' and 'dripping' and 'becoming heavy with water'… 'entangling' with trees or swords, or 'needing to be pulled close around his/her shivering body'… It is thought that the real reason for the popularity of Cloaks is that the inhabitants like the look of themselves from the back.

-The Tough Guide to Fantasyland

The door did not look at all as though it might be a portal to another world. They had opened it already, to reveal the cobwebby interior of a disused storage shed on the edge of the University campus. Nothing more sinister than a disgruntled spider or so had emerged. It was now closed again, looking extremely ordinary under a layer of peeling paint.

“You’re sure this is where the Oracles meant?” Derk asked.

“Of course I’m sure!” Querida snapped. “I went myself to consult them—an incursion signal from the University wards is no laughing matter. They said invaders from two other worlds, including a demon, and they were quite specific as to the location.”

“I almost suspected them of having us on,” Corkoran put in. He was looking much more relaxed, having accepted Blade’s offer to translocate him back to the University in lieu of further taxing his own limited translocation skills. “It’s unlike them to be so clear—normally it’s all gnomic utterances that could be twisted to mean anything you want.”

“They were clear enough last time,” Querida said. “And their advice did lead to a solution, if you’ll recall. You proved surprisingly helpful then, Derk, which is why I’ve called you in again. And you too, Mara—I’ve never had any doubt about your abilities. I trust you’ll both find a way to handle this.”

Corkoran didn’t look at all put out at being left off the list of people Querida could trust. He had the cheerful air of one who has handed off a problem to someone more competent and absolved himself of any responsibility. By contrast, Blade thought, his parents looked grim and worried. Derk didn’t even bother taking offense at Querida’s backhanded compliment; he was probably designing some horrifying new beast in his head.

A sudden creaking sound made them all turn to look toward the door again. It had clearly swung inward, but no part of the shed was visible through the doorframe, not even the door itself. There was only a rectangle of complete nothingness. Then something began to appear out of the nothingness: a disembodied hand gripping what appeared to be a wizard’s staff. The hand extended forward to reveal an attached arm dressed in a fancy green and gold sleeve. A foot, in a green boot with a pointed toe, stepped out onto the ground. The hand and foot were quickly joined by their opposite numbers, and all at once the whole Wizard was through and pulling the door closed behind him.

There was absolutely no doubt that that was what he was. Blade thought he had never seen anyone who was so obviously a capital-W Wizard—with the possible exception of Deucalion, but then dragons probably ought to be graded on a different curve altogether. It wasn’t only that this man had all the trappings: the ornately carved wooden staff, the flowing green cloak embroidered with golden stars and comets. Some of the local wizards, and even a few of the wealthier and more committed tourists, had sported equally elaborate garb on the tours. But the tourists had unmistakably looked as if they were in costume, while the locals, including Blade himself, had constantly tripped over the long robes. This fellow, whoever he was, moved and stood with a fluid grace that made the cloak seem almost a part of him. He had no beard, which would have been against the rules on the tours, but served to highlight his piercing green eyes and the aristocratic planes of his face. His hair tumbled to his shoulders in gleaming flaxen curls that caused Corkoran to put a hand to his own blond pompadour and sigh.

“Greetings,” said the Wizard, with a bow. The cloak sweepingly outlined his movements in the most elegant way possible. “My name is Howl Pendragon, Royal Wizard to the King of Ingary. I had not expected such a welcoming committee on my entry to this world. Whom do I have the honor of addressing?”

Querida, unsurprisingly, was the first to respond. “I am High Chancellor Querida of this University. I’ve never heard of this King of Ingary, but if you’re planning to pick up where Mr. Chesney left off, you can turn around and march right back through that shed door—where, incidentally, you are illegally trespassing. And take your demon with you.”

“Demon?” Howl Pendragon looked around in an anxious way that nevertheless managed to give his cloak a debonair twirl. “Do you mean Calcifer? I told him to wait… I do hope there hasn’t been a time slip. This is important: has any of you seen a fire demon? He looks like a ball of blue fire with a face.”

At the juxtaposition of the words blue and demon, Blade felt a caustic sensation like bleach washing over the back of his brain. He could tell by Derk’s expression that his father felt the same. “Is he… very sarcastic?” Derk asked.

“Blisteringly so, at times,” Howl said. “You’ve met him, then?”

Mara put a comforting arm around Derk’s shoulders. “Has he got three eyes? And three legs?”

“No, just the two eyes, normally. And no legs to speak of. As I said, he’s a fire demon; he’s made of living flame. He floats along in a sort of teardrop shape.”

“This must be a different demon,” Querida said decidedly. “The Oracles said there would be a demon coming through today. Mr. Chesney had a demon to run things for him; naturally you’ve got another, to help you take over our world. Well, we won’t have it! Be off with you!”

“I assure you, High Chancellor, nothing could be further from my intentions than following in the footsteps of the odious Mr. Chesney. I am here not to exploit your world, but to protect it. If you’ll hear me out, I can explain everything.” He looked beseechingly at Mara, whom he seemed to have pegged as the person with the most authority next to Querida.

“We’ll listen, if you’ll make it quick and to the point,” Mara said briskly, with a quelling glance at Querida. “I’m Wizard Mara, by the way, and this is my husband Wizard Derk and our son Blade.”

“And I’m Wizard Corkoran,” Corkoran piped up eagerly. “I specialize in astromagy, with a particular focus on lunar transport. My research…” He trailed off as he realized that both Mara and Querida were glaring at him.

“A pleasure,” Howl Pendragon said. “I appreciate the opportunity to work directly with the head of the University.” Here he nodded politely at Querida, who scowled. “Er… if possible, it might be expeditious for us to bring in a representative of the local government as well?” Everyone looked blank. “Have you got a President? Prime Minister? King? Queen? Emperor? Sultan? Emir? Archduke?”

“Well, there’s King Luther,” Derk said. “And Titus—I mean, the Emperor of the South. But we’re not in Luteria here, and we’re outside the borders of the Empire as well. A good thing too—there’s another war brewing between them.”

“We’re not in the Emirates either,” Mara added. “And the Duchess of Chell only rules Chell. What about the mayor in the village? I believe he’s presiding over the Flower Festival at the moment. He always presents the award for Best Pet Costume.”

“One of our invisible cats won it last year,” Derk said. “There was a bit of a kerfuffle—Fran argued that you couldn’t count it as a costume if it was just your everyday appearance, or rather, non-appearance. But of course it wasn’t the invisibility part that was meant to be the costume; it was the daisy crown that Elda made…”

“Quite charming, those invisible cats of yours,” Querida remarked unexpectedly–Blade would have thought she’d shut this down with another of her snakelike glares, but instead she actually produced a smile. “I meant to thank you—I’d given up all hope of your ever paying your wizard dues, so I was most pleasantly surprised when he arrived at my doorstep. Really a much better choice than a griffin; he gets on so well with my other cats.”

Derk looked baffled. Behind Querida’s back, he shot a questioning look at Mara, who shook her head and shrugged. “I’ve named him Ghost,” Querida continued obliviously.

Howl Pendragon tapped his wizardly staff impatiently. “If there’s no one with any more authority than the mayor—” he began at last.

“Deucalion’s king of the dragons,” Blade blurted out.

A look of complete horror flickered across Howl’s face. He almost immediately plastered it over with an insincere smile. “The High Chancellor’s quite enough to be getting on with, now that I think of it,” he said. “I just want to make sure there’s no issue with competing jurisdictions. I myself have a foot in two worlds, as it were, but I have much less experience with your world. Wouldn’t want to step on any toes. The fact of the matter is—look at that!” Howl pointed up into the sky. Blade looked up to see the silhouettes of Kit and Deucalion far above, rapidly increasing in size as they came in for a landing. They’d set off straight from the valley when Blade had translocated to Derkholm to pick up his parents, so it made sense for them to be arriving about now. “Could that be… but why two?” Howl muttered to himself. “Hasruel!” he called upward. “Hasruel, I conjure you to—oh, my apologies,” he stammered, as Kit and Deucalion alit on the lawn in front of them. “I mistook you for a different winged monstrosity.”

“I beg your pardon,” Deucalion said frostily. He bent his neck to place his enormous scaly snout a few inches from Howl’s face. “Oh, it’s you! So we meet again, burglar.”

Next to Deucalion, Howl lost much of his Wizardly panache. He was now merely a handsome but terrified-looking man in a gaudy outfit. “I prefer the term Expert Treasure-hunter,” he choked out.

Kit looked incredulous. “He was never one of the thieves trying to steal from your hoard! I’d have remembered seeing him.”

“It was just this morning, before our lesson,” Deucalion said. “And he was magically disguised, as a sort of beardless dwarf or something. But I’d recognize that smell anywhere: flowery perfume on top of something oleaginous.” He turned his head to focus one of his huge green-gold eyes directly on Howl, who seemed to be trying to hide inside his voluminous cloak. “You needn’t cower like that; I’m not going to eat you. I’ve never liked the taste of human. What have you to say for yourself?”

Howl looked back toward the shed door for an instant as though he might try to make a run for it, but he stood his ground, gripping his staff so hard his knuckles turned white. “I’m not a common thief,” he said. “There was a specific reason I needed gold from a dragon’s hoard. You see, I’m in pursuit of a dangerous creature that would have arrived in this world from mine about a year ago. A djinn.”

“A year ago! Why are we only hearing about it now?” Querida demanded, at the same time Kit was asking, “What’s a djinn?” Howl elected to ignore Querida’s question in favor of Kit’s, in what Blade was fairly sure was a deliberate evasion.

“A djinn is an extremely intelligent, powerfully magical being. In his own shape, this one—Hasruel is his name--resembles a gigantic humanoid figure with claws, fangs, pointed ears, and great leathery wings. But he’s a skilled shapeshifter; he can make himself look nearly any way he wants.”

“And how did this Hasruel come to enter our world?” Deucalion asked.

Howl coughed. “It’s a bit of a long story. Hasruel is a Good Djinn, but through trickery he fell under the influence of his evil brother, and consequently stole my house and kidnapped a large number of princesses, among other things—I won’t bore you with all the details. In the end the brother was defeated and exiled, everything turned out all right, but what with one thing and another, we didn’t feel comfortable keeping Hasruel around. So, I opened a portal and sent him into the next world. This one.”

“Our world’s a dumping ground for your undesirables, is it?” Querida hissed. “Another Mr. Chesney! I knew it!”

“It isn’t like that,” Howl said in an injured tone. “I told you: he’s a Good Djinn! He’s taken the Seven Vows! And there are no other djinns in this world to tempt him into evil. I knew this would be a safe place for him.”

“In that case,” said Mara, “why have you come here in pursuit of him?”

“Well. That’s where your Mr. Chesney comes in,” Howl said. “As I mentioned, I have a foot in two worlds. I live and work in the land of Ingary, where magic is woven into the fabric of the universe, just as it is here. But I was born in a different world, where magic is unknown except in myths and fairy tales.”

“Mr. Chesney’s world?” Derk asked.

“It’s not his world,” said Howl indignantly. “Until recently, I’d never even heard of him, or of his business. It was only a few months ago that the scandal broke, and it seemed to come from all directions at once. Chesney himself was nowhere to be found, but his company was facing accusations of tax evasion, insurance fraud, even murder. A lot of high-level executives went down on insider-trading charges involving one of the big oil corporations—it seems they were promoting some alleged new energy source, which, I presume, was based on stolen magic from this world. There were some additional indictments based on false claims of new environmentally responsible technology. It made enough of a stir that even I was vaguely aware of it, though I try not to follow the news from that world if I can help it. I was briefly worried that they were talking about my world—that is, the one where Ingary is. But the details were wrong—we don’t have dragons or werewolves, for instance. When I learned more about it, from—hmm, well, that’s another long story. At any rate, I had enough information to work out that Chesney had actually crossed over to another world—not mine, but one that I did know slightly. The one where I’d sent Hasruel.”

Howl twisted his staff in his hands. “I realized I’d got the geometry of it all wrong. I was thinking of the worlds all lined up neatly along some axis, from less-magical to more-magical. I’d purposely sent Hasruel in what I thought was the other direction from Wales—that is, the world where I grew up. But it’s not like that at all. Now I think it’s more like… foam. Bubbles touching many other bubbles on all sides, in a chaotic cluster with no obvious pattern. And the wall must have grown thin between Chesney’s universe and this one, enough to have allowed him to blunder through all those years ago.”

“It’s been speculated that fooling around with time—speeding it up, slowing it down, stretching it, twisting it back on itself—weakens the walls between worlds,” Mara said. “And yet we keep doing it, er, all the time—there are so many useful applications.”

“The University wards extend a few hours into the future,” Querida said. “That’s how we’re able to receive early warning of incursions like yours.”

Howl nodded. “So you must see how this unsettled me. Now I knew there was a possibility of Hasruel popping through into Wales at any time—where there is no magical protection of any kind. My niece and nephew live there! And my sister—we’ve had our differences, but I already feel guilty enough for exposing her to one magical attack. I don’t want her being terrorized by a rogue djinn.”

“No, you’d rather have the djinn here, terrorizing people you don’t know,” Mara said tartly.

“That’s not—” Howl broke off. “Well, yes, it’s entirely fair. I deserved that. But all the more reason for you to help me resolve this. The question is, how can a djinn be controlled?”

“I remember a little djinn lore from my study of creatures from other worlds, years ago,” Derk said. “Isn’t it possible to bind a djinn with iron?”

“Well, now, it’s interesting that you bring that up,” Howl said. “I’ve seen the same folklore, along with a lot of suggestions that iron inhibits magic in general. That certainly seems to have been true at one time, if legend is any guide. But is it true today? My wife Sophie, when she was first coming into her powers, used an iron-trimmed stick as a very effective magic wand. Our fire demon Calcifer doesn’t seem to have any problem cooking food on a cast-iron skillet. As part of last year’s adventure, our friend Abdullah was temporarily bound in iron chains, and Hasruel came quite close to him without any apparent ill effects.”

“Iron still works to stop magic in this world,” Blade said bitterly.

“That’s only because you hadn’t yet learned the proper techniques,” Deucalion said. “If you humans hadn’t forgotten everything you once learned from dragons… I believe my father Prometheus once traveled to your world,” he said to Howl, “and passed along his knowledge of the spells that master iron.”

“Oh, it’s his fault, then?” Howl said. “Strangely fitting. It so happens that after a great deal of research, and consultation with the most learned wizards in my realm, I’ve discovered an alternative spell to bind a djinn. The crucial ingredient is gold from a dragon’s hoard.”

Deucalion’s eyes widened. “Thus, the attempted burglary.”

“Yes.” Howl drew himself up as though he were giving a lecture on stage. “As I’m sure you know, dragons require gold because they absorb vital nutrients from it. As they leach out of the metal, these vitamins leave behind gaps in the crystal structure of the gold. Those gaps are then filled in by another substance that precipitates from the dragon’s fiery breath. You might call it `Essence of Dragon.’”

“Or you might not,” Deucalion sniffed. “That sounds like a scented candle.”

“Call it whatever you like, but it creates an entirely new alloy with the gold—something much stronger, with a higher melting point, and far more resistant to magic.”

At this point, the shed door gave another soft creak. Kit, with his keen griffin hearing, was the first to turn in the direction of the sound. “That shed’s on fire!” he roared.

Blue flames were in fact flickering in the middle of the doorway. However, closer inspection revealed that the flames were not touching or consuming any portion of the shed, but were centered in a rectangle of perfect nothingness, much as Howl’s hand had been on his arrival. “Calcifer!” Howl called out cheerfully. “So glad to see you’re all right!”

More blue flames extended through the doorway, until a blazing blue teardrop of fire was visible, floating several feet above the ground. The shape reminded Blade of the magefire he had now learned to call up and cradle in his hands, but much larger. On one side of the teardrop, different colors of flames formed a face, with orange eyes, green hair, and a toothy purple mouth. As Calcifer approached, Blade felt a gust of pleasant warmth completely unlike the caustic burn of the demon Tripos.

Corkoran and Derk both backed away as far as possible from Calcifer. “Is that demon… safe?” Corkoran asked nervously. “How do you keep control of him when you’re in separate universes?”

“I don’t keep control of him,” Howl said. “It isn’t like that—not anymore. Calcifer and I are… business partners. Friends, you might even say.”

“Oh, might you?” Calcifer grinned widely at this.

“Calcifer, this is High Chancellor Querida…” Howl rushed through the introductions, pausing at the end to allow Deucalion and Kit to speak for themselves. If he or Calcifer were surprised to learn that a griffin was the child of two humans, they had the good manners not to show it. In return, Calcifer made a surprisingly elegant bow for a legless ball of flame, bending his head low and sweeping out a fiery arm that he then absorbed back into his body.

“They’re getting impatient,” Calcifer said, turning to Howl. “Is it safe to bring them through now?”

“Bring whom through?” Querida demanded. “More tourists?”

“No, no, perish the thought,” Howl said. “Insurance adjusters.”

“And what are those, when they’re at home?”

“The same thing they are here, I sincerely hope,” Howl said. “Let me explain. I said before that I obtained enough evidence to determine where Chesney’s tours actually took place. That information came to me through my sister’s husband, because of his work.”

“Your brother-in-law worked for Mr. Chesney?” Querida asked suspiciously.

“No, for all his faults, Gareth is innocent of that,” Howl said. “I suppose he’s really not a bad sort, in his way; it’s just that we’ve nothing in common. But I was making a special effort to try to get along with him, for my niece Mari’s sake. So I went down to the pub with him one night, and after a few pints, he ended up pouring out the whole sordid tale. You see, Gareth works for what’s known as a reinsurer. Their job is to provide insurance for insurance companies. The insurance company takes out a policy with the reinsurer in case they suddenly need to pay out a lot of claims and haven’t enough capital on hand.”

“Then who sells insurance to them?” Derk asked. “Wouldn’t there be an infinite regress?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Howl said. “I’d never paid the slightest attention before; I thought it was even more boring than ordinary insurance. But it turns out Gareth’s employer had gotten itself entangled with the whole Chesney debacle through its clients. To begin with, Chesney himself was selling travel insurance to his own customers, which seems dodgy enough in itself—particularly when you consider that in some cases, he was taking money with his other hand to ensure that certain of those customers never came home. Then, of course, some of the tourists went looking for a better deal elsewhere, and a whole shady ecosystem of dubious travel insurance offers sprang up. Some of the providers were out-and-out scams, but some were established companies, hoping to make a quick profit. Apparently it was very lucrative for a while. But now it’s come back to bite them. Now that the scandal’s broken, everyone wants a piece of it. People who pre-booked tours before the whole thing shut down are demanding refunds. There are hundreds of injury claims alleging unsafe conditions on the tours, and dozens of life insurance claims as well. It’s obvious some of those are people who paid to have their relatives put on the ‘expendable’ list—but which? Chesney’s people aren’t talking, and the companies have no way to investigate independently—or they had no way, until now.”

Querida was nodding thoughtfully. “So these adjusters…”

“Exactly,” Howl said. “Now they can figure out which claims are legitimate, their companies avoid making excessive reinsurance claims, so Gareth’s employer saves money, and everyone escapes embarrassing publicity.”

“And what do we get out of it?” Querida asked.

“The satisfaction of helping justice to be done?” Howl suggested. Querida scowled. “And after this, I can’t imagine anyone being tempted to organize more tours of your world, at any price. You can be sure to emphasize the extreme peril of the undertaking, when you talk to them.”

“We did compile an extensive dossier on all the abuses of the tours,” Querida said. “It would be cathartic to share it with someone.”

The entrance of the insurance adjusters was somewhat anticlimactic. They filed through the rectangle of nothingness in an orderly fashion, dressed in the type of dark suits Blade associated with Mr. Chesney and his entourage. Once they had been dispatched to the Council Chamber to go over the tour records with Querida and Corkoran, the problem of the djinn remained.

“If I understand you correctly, you know that you sent Hasruel to this world, but nothing more specific,” Mara said. “And he’s a shapeshifter. So, for all you know, he could be disguised as a toadstool on another continent?”

“Not a toadstool—that’s not his style at all,” Howl said. “I could see a giant Venus flytrap, maybe, or a rhinoceros thundering majestically across the landscape. But you’re right—there are many possibilities. As for the location, though, that part I’m sure of. They don’t call me the best in the world at divination for nothing. I’d stake my professional reputation on his being within a mile of this spot. The question is, how will we recognize him when we find him?”

“Suppose we ask the Oracles?” Blade suggested. He was a bit unnerved to find everyone’s eyes turning to him, but managed to continue, “They’ve given good advice before, at least twice now. And I know the way. I could translocate there.”

“I’ll go with you,” Calcifer said, turning a deep indigo with excitement. “I might be able to help with the phrasing. These things are all about asking the right question, as I understand it.”

“I’ll go too, then,” Derk said. “I’m not sending you off alone with a strange demon. Er, no offense intended.”

“None taken,” said Calcifer. “I know enough not to trust a strange wizard, if it comes to that.”

“And I can bring back some gold from my cave for the binding spell,” Deucalion said. “You might have just asked, you know.”

There was a whoosh of air as Blade translocated away with Derk and Calcifer, and a second whoosh of wings as Deucalion took flight. Mara and Kit were left alone with Howl.

“Now, those of us remaining can systematically divide and search the local area,” Howl said briskly. “Having a winged searcher will be a significant advantage, because—”

The shed door gave off a violent creak. They all turned to see a woman with red-gold hair step out of the now-familiar rectangle of nothingness, slam the door behind her, and march toward Howl with a grim look on her face. She reminded Kit a little of his mother—not so much in looks, but in her general air of not taking nonsense from anyone.

“Sophie, my dear!” Howl said with an unconvincing smile. “I thought you’d be at your stepmother’s! Weren’t you all planning a big family reunion for today?”

“Yes, which is clearly why you chose today to slither off to another universe without telling me! Luckily Calcifer told me where you’d gone—at least there’s someone in this family I can trust.”

“Where’s Morgan?” Howl asked. “You haven’t brought him along, have you?”

“Of course not—what do you take me for? He’s at Fanny’s; he’s perfectly happy playing with his cousins. Now, let’s talk about where you are! Is it too much to ask that you consult me before skipping off through a portal to another world, chasing after dragons and djinns and—"

“I was trying to protect you!” Howl held up his hands in front of him like a shield. “Why don’t you take a deep breath, calm down, and listen for two seconds to what I have to say?”

“Why don’t you go jump in a lake!” Sophie yelled.

Instantly, some unseen force plucked Howl off his feet and whisked him into the air. He went rocketing away past the rooftops and spires of the University.

Sophie clapped her hands to her mouth in horror. “Where’s the nearest lake?”

Mara pointed, in a direction that seemed to match the way Howl had gone. “Most likely the one they use for rowing practice. May I translocate you?” She held out her arm, Sophie took it, and they vanished with a gust of inrushing wind. Kit leaped into the air and took off in pursuit.

Flying wasn’t as quick as translocation, but the advantage of height gave Kit a clear view of the lake long before he was able to reach it. He saw Mara and Sophie appearing on the lake shore, with a sound like a distant whip crack. Shortly thereafter, Howl sailed past them and plummeted into the middle of the lake, disappearing below the surface with a splash. Sophie immediately ran toward the place where he had last been visible, not pausing or even slowing when her feet touched the water. She seemed to be using a spell of some kind to allow her to run on the surface of the lake, but not a very efficient one. At each step, her feet sank some way into the water, as though it were deep snow. The hem of her dress was clearly impeding her as it became sodden and heavy. Suddenly, she stumbled and fell. The spell apparently gave way altogether, leaving her flailing in deep water.

Kit reached the lake and circled low above it, looking for a recognizable piece of Howl or Sophie he could grasp with his talons. He couldn’t allow himself to think about what it felt like to be trapped underwater, injured, unable to reach the surface… He thought he saw one of Sophie’s hands below him and made a grab for it, but missed. He felt dizzy. I’ve got to land… no, I need to help them… He hit the ground awkwardly on a muddy patch of the shoreline and stood there, slumped, guilt washing over him. Then Mara was there beside him, not saying anything, but leaning against his shoulder in a way that was comfortingly solid. Kit felt a tingling sensation that told him Mara was shaping a spell of some kind, but he never found out what it would have been.

All at once, a thing like a huge green and gold beach ball burst out of the lake, popping up several inches into the air before splashing back to the surface. The beach ball peeled apart from the top down and resolved itself into Howl and his cloak, with the hood covering his head, and the rest shaped into a small boat keeping him afloat. He lifted his staff, and the end broadened and flattened until it resembled a paddle, which he used to propel the cloak-boat over to the churning, splashing area that signaled Sophie’s presence. He leaned over and pulled her aboard; the cloak-boat tipped alarmingly, but somehow righted itself enough that Howl was able to paddle to shore. At the water’s edge, he stood up, with Sophie in his arms. The cloak swung smoothly back to a proper cloak shape. Water and mud slid off it in sheets, so that it shortly appeared completely dry and clean, with its colors gleaming as brightly as ever. Sophie’s dress, in contrast, was considerably the worse for its adventure, and both her shoes were missing.

“Sophie,” Howl said. He was still holding her in his arms, as though he were carrying her across the threshold on their honeymoon. She kicked him until he released her legs and let her feet slide to the ground. “You made this cloak for me. You can’t possibly have forgotten that it’s completely waterproof and can serve as a flotation device.”

“Not to mention being impervious to edged weapons of any kind,” Sophie said. She reached up to push the hood back from his head. “Your hair’s not even mussed,” she added accusingly. “I’m sure I never included a spell for that.”

“Naturally,” Howl said. He gently brushed a dripping, bedraggled strand of her hair aside so that he could kiss her forehead. “That was one of mine.”

Kit shuffled his feet uncomfortably. He wondered if he ought to make a break for it before they embarked on some even more embarrassing display of affection. Then he heard Howl saying sharply, “Sophie, your lips are turning blue! We’ve got to get some heat, now! Where’s Calcifer when you need him?” He took off the magic cloak and wrapped it around Sophie’s shoulders. She was visibly shivering.

“Let me find something to make a fire,” Mara said, stepping away from Kit’s side and looking around. There was nothing obvious to hand; the past few days had been rainy, and everything in sight was damp and soggy. “I’ll try drying out some of these sticks—it’s not really my specialty, but I should be able to manage something.”

“No, wait—I have an idea,” Kit said. “Blade’s refrigeration spell.”

Howl glared at him. “You do realize we’re looking for the opposite of refrigeration?”

“Yes, but if you sort of turn it inside out…” It was too much effort to explain, so Kit just did it. If he tried to refrigerate all the air contained in a wide sphere extending outward, and then dumped the “waste heat” inward, into a small area around Sophie…

They could all see it working. The air developed that mirage-like shimmer, and steam began to rise from Sophie’s wet clothing and hair. “Kit, that was really clever!” Mara said. She stood on tiptoe to wrap her arms around as much of his feathered neck as she could—something that rarely happened since he had grown to his present size. Some part of Kit’s brain, formed in earliest childhood, still unconsciously expected his parents to be bigger than he was, and always registered a minor jolt of surprise when the reverse turned out to be the case.

“Much better,” said Sophie after a time. “Where did you get that ridiculous staff?” she asked Howl.

He picked up the staff, which was still in the shape of a paddle, and smoothed the end back into a cylindrical form. “It’s an old mop handle. I found it in the broom cupboard.”

“I’m sorry I… overreacted a bit,” Sophie said quietly.

“And I’m sorry I went off without telling you,” Howl said. “It’s just that, now we have Morgan, if something were to happen to one of us… well, we couldn’t have it happen to both of us. Do you see?”

“I see,” Sophie said. “Just promise me: next time some magical quest presents itself, I’ll go, and you’ll stay home with the baby.”

“It’s a promise,” Howl said, but his eyes looked shifty.

“Kit, are you all right?” Mara murmured in his ear.

He nodded. “It was just the lake. I’m better now,” he replied, in a beak-directed whisper for her ears alone.

Sophie stepped away from Howl and shrugged off the magic cloak. Thanks to Kit’s spell, her dress was nearly dry, but was very muddy and creased. A strand of pondweed was wrapped around her bare ankle. “Thank you—both of you,” she said to Mara and Kit. “I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced. I’m Sophie.”

“So I gathered,” Mara said. “I’m Mara, and this is my son Kit.” Sophie’s eyes widened slightly, but she gave a polite nod. “Would you like to borrow some clothes, and perhaps have a hot bath?” Mara continued. “I could easily translocate you over to Derkholm—that’s my family’s home.”

Sophie smiled. “If it’s not too much trouble.” She handed the cloak back to Howl. “I expect you’ll be wanting this.”

Chapter Text

BREEDING PROGRAMMES: Wizards… never seem to be able to refrain from tinkering with genes… Somehow a Good Wizard can cross an eagle, a bear, a lion, and a lizard without the creature being anything but well proportioned, fragrant, and comely.

-The Tough Guide to Fantasyland

“Ah, there you are,” Mara said as Sophie came into the kitchen. “I’ve made some tea, and there are some of Lydda’s godlike snacks.”

“Thank you,” said Sophie, accepting a plate and a cup. “That bath was just what I needed. I still feel an utter fool for putting everyone through all that. I’m not used to working with the magic in your world—it’s different from what we have in ours. Not stronger, exactly, but more… literal-minded, I suppose. The magic at home would have known jumping in the lake was just a figure of speech. Oh, dear—it sounds so silly to put it that way.”

“It makes perfect sense to me,” Mara said. “Is that what happened with your walking-on-water spell as well? I could tell it was terrifically powerful magic, just somehow… not the right fit.”

“Exactly,” Sophie said. “Like trying to walk in shoes that are too big. It reminds me of when I first used Howl’s seven-league boots.” She sipped her tea. “It’s so peaceful here. When you told me you and Derk had six other children besides Kit, I pictured it being a nonstop hive of activity.”

“Well, much of the time it is,” Mara said. “It’s just that everyone’s away at the moment. You know where Blade is, of course, and Shona and Geoffrey have gone to the East Coast to scout locations for the new Bardic College they’re planning. I believe Callette’s out in her shed tinkering with some gizmo or other, and the others have gone down to the village for the Flower Festival.” She stood up to bring another platter of snacks to the table. “I must admit, it makes me a bit nervous to leave the house empty for too long these days, even though it’s perfectly safe. You see, Derk and I are expecting another addition to our family soon.”

“Oh! Congratulations,” Sophie said, a bit nonplussed. She sneaked a look at Mara’s waistline.

Mara laughed. “It’s not quite what you’re thinking. Finish your tea, and then I’ll show you.”

Mara led the way upstairs to a small room that had been decorated as a nursery, with a crib in one corner. The walls were covered with pictures of Derk’s animals. The areas nearest the ceiling featured flying pigs and winged horses, while the rest was taken up with Friendly Cows, Big Hens, sarcastic geese, carnivorous sheep, and others that Sophie couldn’t immediately identify. “Callette’s work,” Mara said, gesturing at the paintings. “But here’s what we came to see.” She rested one hand on a sort of box on legs standing near the crib.

There was a window in one side of the box. Sophie peered in and saw an egg nestled in folds of soft fabric. It looked like an ordinary hen’s egg, except for its size: about two feet long, and correspondingly large in circumference. “It’s another griffin, then?” she asked.

“Well, no,” Mara said. “We thought we’d try something different.” She bent to retrieve a notebook from the small bookshelf opposite the crib, opened it to a specific place marked with a ribbon, and handed it to Sophie. The left-hand page was filled with notes and calculations in Derk’s terrible handwriting—nearly as bad as Howl’s, she thought—but the facing page held a surprisingly well-done drawing. It showed a boy with huge feathered wings like a bird’s, laughing as he soared through a cloudless sky. Sophie thought she could see something of Mara in the boy’s face.

“That’s how we think he’ll look about ten years from now,” Mara said. “We’re going to call him Angelo.”

“Are there other winged humans in your world?” Sophie asked.

“Not that we know of,” Mara said. “He’ll be the first. But we’ll be able to apply a lot of what we’ve learned from working with the griffins, and the winged horses—even the flying pigs. They’re all on the same six-limbed body plan, so we’ve been able to figure out how the skeleton should fit together, and how the wing muscles can attach without getting in the way of the arms. Originally Derk got a lot of ideas from studying dragon anatomy—it’s the same basic structure, although they’re part of an entirely different class biologically. I suppose your djinn is the same as well, come to think of it. Convergent evolution.” She patted the incubator. “Only not exactly evolution, in this case.”

Sophie looked again at the egg, and back to Mara, who smiled. “I had Shona and Blade in the usual way, you know, and I thought, I’m not doing that again, thank you very much. It was so much easier with the griffins. There’s enough bird in him that I was able to convince Derk an egg would work with Angelo, too.”

“Er, what kind of bird…?” Sophie asked.

“It’s a mixture. Eagle genes, of course, from the same cell line we used for the griffins. And goose genes, from our sarcastic geese. Yes, I know, not what you’d have guessed. It’s a bit of a long story, but some of those geese saved Kit’s life last year. Under the direction of the god Anscher—they helped pull him out of a lake when he’d been shot and left for dead. We’ve never really been a religious family, but when a god speaks directly to you, you listen, geese or no geese.”

“A lake… oh, no,” Sophie said. “My stupid mistake brought him to the worst possible place.”

“Not your fault,” Mara said. “He doesn’t talk much about it, but I get the feeling the lake wasn’t even the worst part for him—it was what happened after. The arena in Costamaret… well, not my story to tell. But he came to me one night, after it was all over. He was very upset; he said he thought Derk might have made a mistake, making him—Kit was the first of our griffin children. Kit said maybe he used too much lion and eagle, not enough human, and that’s why he, Kit, was the only one of the family to enjoy being part of the Dark Lord’s army and not feel conflicted about the battles.”

“Well, that’s silly,” Sophie said. “You don’t have to be human to be good. Or vice versa, for that matter.”

“That’s exactly what I told him,” Mara said. “I said, think about what it means to call someone brave. Does being brave mean never being afraid of anything? And he said, of course not; bravery means being afraid but doing what you need to do anyway. Like when Derk summoned the demon. And I said, well, the same logic applies here. It’s not your inclinations that matter; it’s the decisions you make in spite of them.”

A sudden meow sounded from somewhere in the vicinity of Sophie’s borrowed slippers. She looked down and saw nothing, but she felt something warm and furry rubbing against her shin. Looking closely at the rug, she could see that its fibers were being compressed slightly in four distinct spots, shaped like pawprints, that periodically disappeared and then reappeared in new places as some unseen creature twined around her ankles. “Oh, one of the invisible cats got in again!” said Mara. “I swear they can walk through walls.” Another, more plaintive meow issued from below. “You’ve already been fed today—don’t pretend you haven’t! Nothing else for you until dinnertime. Back outside with you! Shoo!” Driving the invisible cat before them, they left the room and closed the door behind them.

“Does Derk ever make a mistake with his designs?” Sophie asked as they walked down the stairs. “I don’t mean the way Kit was saying. But does he ever try to make something that just doesn’t work?” She clapped her hands to her mouth. “That was a very rude question, wasn’t it?”

“Not at all,” Mara said. “Of course he makes mistakes—science is built on a foundation of mistakes. The invisible cats are a good example: Derk was trying to make them different colors, red and blue and so on. They didn’t take to that at all.”

“I see,” Sophie said. “But what about… worse mistakes? What if a creature ended up in terrible pain, or, or couldn’t survive at all, because the design was flawed? Do you ever worry about that when you’re making…something that’s never been done before?” Involuntarily, she glanced back toward the nursery door.

“It’s a fair question,” Mara said. “And I think the answer is… there are protections against that sort of thing, if you’re paying attention. There was an incident many years ago, when Derk and I were students at the University. In those days, Derk was doing his first experiments on combining bits and pieces of different creatures to make new ones. He started on single-celled organisms and gradually worked his way up. His first success was a half-paramecium, half-amoeba. We still keep some around the place just for nostalgia’s sake.”

“I’ve no idea what either of those halves might look like,” Sophie admitted.

“Oh, then I’ll have to show you! Come with me out into the garden,” Mara said.

In a pair of Shona’s old boots—only a little too large—Sophie followed Mara out the front door to a marble birdbath, which was filled with slightly mucky water. “This should do nicely,” Mara said. “All sorts of tiny little beasts will be living in water like this—they’re just too small for us to see without some help.” With a gesture, she extracted a single drop of the water, which floated in the air in a tiny, perfect sphere. “Now, of course, you can enlarge that by about a factor of twenty with a basic magnification spell.”

“I don’t think I’ve heard of that before, but let me try it,” Sophie said. “I think I’m getting a better feel for this world’s magic.” She turned to address the water droplet. “Would you mind looking larger for us, please? Light, can you focus yourself to help us see all the details of this drop of water?” A much bigger image of the glistening sphere suddenly floated before them.

“That’s amazing!” Mara said. “It took me days to get that spell right when I first learned it. I love the way your magic is so intuitive—I always overthink things. Now, we’ll need a second step to magnify it even more, so that we can see down to the level of single cells.” She shaped her hands into a circle in the air above the expanded water drop. “Adjust the index of refraction… a bit more curvature… there!” The circle of air inside Mara’s fingers acquired a crystalline look, with a definite boundary setting it apart from the surrounding air, although it remained fully transparent. She moved her hands slowly forward and backward to find the location where the focus was sharpest. “Take a look through here.”

“I’d never have thought of doing this,” Sophie said admiringly. “I wish my spells could be so systematic.” Seen through the air lens, the water drop became an ocean alive with strange moving shapes.

“This is how Derk and I met, back in our student days,” Mara said. “He wanted to fiddle around with these little creatures and needed a way to see them. I was working on optomagic at the time, so I set up a microscope like this for him, and the rest—look, there! That’s a descendant of one of Derk’s first creations.” The organism’s front end—at least, Sophie assumed it was the front, because it was moving in that direction—was an elongated oval outlined with tiny waving hairs. The back was an amorphous blob that kept extending and retracting long tentacle-like pieces of itself.

“He had another idea for his next project,” Mara went on. “It involved some variety of anaerobic bacteria—oxygen is poison to them, you know. Derk wanted to combine them with blue-green algae, and of course those live off photosynthesis, so they’re putting out oxygen all the time. I asked him how he thought that was going to work, and he had some complicated scheme in mind. But when he tried it, he said he felt an enormous resistance to the spell, as though the whole universe were dragging its feet. And so he stopped. That’s happened a few other times since then. It gives us a sort of early warning signal, when something is about to go very wrong. That’s what I meant when I said there’s a protection against the worst mistakes.”

Sophie watched the paramecium-amoeba propel itself through the water. “I suppose this creature never knew or cared that it was the only one of its kind.”

“Well, it very quickly had a whole flock of identical friends, given the way they reproduce,” Mara said. “But yes, I take your point. I think it used to bother the griffins, before they learned there’s a whole griffin society on the other continent. We’ll have to go there someday…”

“And what about Angelo?” Sophie asked. “Do you think he may become unhappy when he gets older, to be—” She stopped short, realizing this was probably even ruder than her earlier question.

“I suppose he may,” Mara said quietly. “But then, it sometimes happens that human beings may dislike the bodies they are born into, does it not?”

“That’s true,” Sophie said. “I doubt this is what you had in mind, but something like that happened with my son Morgan—or rather, the opposite. He was born as a kitten, you see, and he was absolutely furious to be restored to human form.”

“As a kitten? This I must hear,” Mara said.

“Just before Morgan was born, Howl found out through a divination spell that a djinn was planning to make off with our house—well, it’s a castle, really, but that makes it sound much grander than it is. He wanted to send me away for protection, and we had a tremendous argument about it, as you can imagine. In the end he turned me into a cat, and of course Morgan came along for the ride.”

“That must have been a fantastically difficult transformation to pull off, during pregnancy,” Mara said. “To change both of you at the same time, without breaking the connection… I think the only way it would work is for your magic to be supporting Howl’s at every step.”

“We managed all right,” Sophie said. “From what my sisters tell me, I think I was lucky to be able to give birth in cat form. And as I said, Morgan loved being a kitten. The worst part was that it took us so long to find Howl again. Hasruel had transformed him as well, you see, and part of the spell was that I couldn’t recognize him, or even notice he was there…”

Mara clapped her hands together suddenly. The microscope spell dissipated, and the drop of water plopped back into the birdbath. “I know where Hasruel is. We need to get back to the University.”

—-------------------

Kit’s wings were growing tired as he made his fourth pass over the main University courtyard. “What about this time?” Howl called up to him. “Any concentration of magic that feels unusually strong and unfamiliar?”

Kit landed heavily on the grass and folded his wings. “It’s hard to tell with all the residual magic hovering around the academic buildings. I thought there might have been a sort of strange fizzing over where the residential area meets the campus, but there was no good place for me to land—all those streets are too narrow and winding.”

Howl sighed. “We’ll have to investigate that neighborhood on foot, then. Which way—”

Twin thunderclaps announced the incoming translocations of Mara and Sophie, on one side of the courtyard, and Derk, Blade, and Calcifer on the other. “Where’s Querida?” Mara and Derk asked at the same time.

“She’s still in the Council Chamber with those insurance adjusters,” Howl said. “Did the Oracles tell you how to find Hasruel?”

“Well, they said…” Derk withdrew a small piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. “’A cat may look at a queen, but can the queen return the favor?’” he read.

“That does rather give it away,” Mara said, nodding.

“But Querida’s not a queen,” Blade objected.

“I don’t know about that,” Howl put in. “Kit and I have been having some very interesting discussions. It seems to me the University’s the closest thing you have to a central government here. Think about it. You pay taxes to them—”

“Wizard dues,” Derk said. “Not the same thing.”

Howl snorted. “Who negotiated terms with Chesney when the tours first began? What location—unlike any other on this continent—was agreed to be immune from attack by the forces of Good or Evil? Who had the power to assign duties to every available magic worker? And more recently, where did everyone turn for help in stopping the tours? Who received stacks of desperate letters from kings, nuns, werewolves, elves, dragons…?”

The door to the Council Chamber swung open, and Querida strode out. “Are you all still here?” she asked. “Those insurance adjusters are still hanging about, too. Inefficient, the lot of you. I’m off to feed my cats.” Without pausing, she marched off toward the University gates.

“Would you mind if we joined you?” Mara asked. “There’s something we need to take care of.”

Kit struggled to keep up with the little procession as they left the University grounds and made their way through cramped streets lined with small houses. In a few cases, they passed through alleyways so narrow that he lost feathers squeezing through. He badly wanted to ask someone what was going on, but couldn’t spare the breath for it. When they reached Querida’s house, he realized he couldn’t fit through the front door and had to content himself with looking in from outside. Leaving the door open for Kit, the others made themselves as comfortable as they could in Querida’s small living room, just inside. Calcifer dived for the fireplace with a sigh of contentment.

Querida made straight for the kitchen—which was easily visible to Kit from across the living room–and filled four bowls with cat food. The sound of her spoon tapping against the bowls promptly summoned three large tabby cats, who briefly eyed the visitors with disdain before settling down to their meal. The fourth bowl, labeled Ghost, sat in a corner by itself. The floor near this bowl appeared empty, but some delicate slurping and crunching sounds could be heard as the food inside began to disappear, bite by bite.

“Excuse me,” Sophie said to Howl. “I’m just going to borrow your cloak for a moment.”

“Does the food become invisible when he swallows it, or does the invisible skin somehow block our view of what’s inside?” Howl asked curiously as Sophie undid the cloak’s fastenings.

“All I know is, when I clean out the litter box--” Querida began, when she was interrupted by a loud thump from above. “What was that?”

Kit looked up. “I believe there’s a dragon on your roof,” he called through the door.

Deucalion looked down at Kit, a smallish gold goblet dangling from one of his front claws. “Would you mind holding this for me?” He studied the ground for a moment and shook his head. “I’m not even going to try fitting into that yard.” He lowered his head and snaked his neck around until he was looking in through Querida’s open kitchen window. Nosing the lace curtains out of the way, he slipped his head inside.

A tremendous yowling emanated from the house as three tabby streaks shot out of the kitchen and into the living room, coming to rest under various pieces of furniture. Howl, who was sitting on Querida’s frilly couch, suddenly yelled, “Ow!” and clapped a hand to his thigh. Sophie immediately flung the cloak over the cushion beside Howl and held it down at the edges. The cloak twisted, writhed, and made spitting sounds, but whatever was trapped beneath it could not break free. “Impervious to edged weapons,” Howl commented, rubbing his leg.

“Hasruel, by the Seven Great Seals, I conjure you to cease your efforts to escape!” Sophie shouted.

The cloak stopped its sideways oscillations and started to expand as though a balloon were inflating underneath it. Sophie hastily let go of the cloak’s edges, and Howl leaped off the couch. “You may want to stand back,” he said.

All of them ended up huddled just outside the front door—except for Calcifer, who was still in the fireplace; Deucalion, whose head still hovered just above the kitchen sink; and the three tabby cats, who were nowhere to be seen. The cloak slid off the edge of the couch, looking very small next to the immense taloned foot of the djinn. Hasruel was hunched over in a tight ball, with his wings wrapped around his body, in an effort to keep himself from bursting through the walls. His head was bent nearly to the level of his knees; nevertheless, the tips of his pointed ears brushed the ceiling.

“I might have known it would be too much to expect for you to actually pay your wizard dues,” Querida said to Derk. “I’ll be sorry to lose Ghost; I was getting quite fond of him.”

“Likewise,” Hasruel said politely. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

“Yes, yes, very touching,” Howl said. “But I’m afraid we can’t have you running around loose in this world anymore, Hasruel.”

“Why not? I’ve been keeping all seven of the Vows very strictly. For instance, Vow 6, section (ii), subparagraph b: `Avoid destruction of public or private property.’” Hasruel gave a slight tilt of his head to indicate the furniture and knickknacks that filled Querida’s living room. “If I were to stand up, or stretch out my arms, all of this would be smashed to smithereens.”

“How is he going to get out of here, in this shape?” Querida asked.

Howl pointed his wizard’s staff at Hasruel. “Shrink yourself down to a reasonable size. No tricks, now.”

Keeping his djinn shape, Hasruel diminished himself to about Querida’s height, uncurled, and perched on the edge of the couch.

“The walls between universes are too thin here,” Howl said. “Remember how much you enjoyed being wicked when your brother gave you the excuse? We can’t take the chance that you’ll be tempted to wreak havoc in another world. Querida, we’ll need some candles, and chalk for a pentagram. Deucalion, have you brought the gold for the binding spell?”

“Kit’s got it,” Deucalion said through the kitchen window.

“Good,” said Howl, reaching his hand out the front door. “Kit, could you just pass that to me, please?”

Memories flashed through Kit’s mind: the guards clipping his wings in Costamaret. Blade in iron chains. “No,” he said.

There was a silence, during which everyone looked at Kit as he tightened his grip on the goblet.

“Er, sorry, what was that?” Howl said at last. “We’ve got to get the binding done quickly; the conjuration only lasts for a limited time.”

“No,” Kit repeated, more loudly. “I won’t be a party to binding anyone.” He caught Blade’s eye and thought he saw a glimmer of understanding there. Then he met Calcifer’s glowing orange eyes looking out of the fireplace. “Calcifer, you know what I mean, don’t you? You’re the first demon I’ve heard of who works with a wizard by free choice. Would you want to go back to being controlled by a spell?”

“He’s right, you know,” Calcifer said to Howl.

Howl folded his arms and looked down at Hasruel, whose much-smaller talons were now dangling several inches off the floor. “How do I know you won’t cross over into Wales and make life difficult for my family?”

“How do you know I won’t?” Kit asked impatiently. “Or Blade? Or one of the real invisible cats?”

“Well, they probably would,” Derk pointed out. “They can already walk through ordinary walls. It wouldn’t greatly surprise me if they figured out how to get through the walls between worlds.”

“I rather enjoyed being an invisible cat,” Hasruel put in. “When I saw how fearsome Sophie could be as a cat, I knew that was the next shape I wanted to take. The invisibility just added a whole extra layer of possibilities for mischief. You see, Howl’s right to worry. I never had anything like so much fun among the Good Djinns as I did in my career as a villain.”

“I know the feeling,” Kit said. “But… suppose you could have your fun in the service of good?” Hasruel looked intrigued. “Mr. Chesney may be gone, but our world is still in an awful mess in many ways. There are still places where they force gladiators to fight. Would you like to help us change that?” Blade smiled widely at this, and the djinn showed his fangs.

“Your magic isn’t up to that yet,” Deucalion said sternly from the roof.

“But it will be,” Kit said. Deucalion did not deny it.

“Sorry to interrupt—am I late to the party?” Corkoran suddenly said from behind Kit. His flamingo tie was askew, but he appeared to be in a cheerful mood.

“In a manner of speaking,” Querida said.

“Those insurance adjusters have finished,” Corkoran continued. “They’d like to go home now, if it’s not too much trouble.” He looked at Howl, who nodded. Calcifer floated out of the fireplace to join them.

“I wonder if we might come back and visit sometime?” Sophie said to Mara. “I imagine Morgan would enjoy having a winged playmate.”

“I’d like that very much,” Mara said.

“This has been a very trying day,” Querida announced, apparently to herself. “I’ve a good mind to retire soon and hand the University off to someone else. Almost anyone could do it, now that we haven’t got the tours to worry about. You, for instance.” She pointed at Corkoran.

“Me?” He looked as if he didn’t know whether to be delighted or terrified. “Er… would I have to be on committees?”

“Loads of them,” Querida said with relish.

“But just think—you’d get to set the priorities. No one could tell you not to work on your moon project,” Mara pointed out.

A plaintive meow sounded from somewhere inside the house. “Speaking of priorities,” Querida said, “I believe my cats were having a meal, before we were so rudely interrupted.” She stepped into the living room and closed the door firmly behind her.

Kit looked down at the gold goblet still clutched in his talons. Awkwardly, he held it up to Deucalion. “I expect you’d like this back?”

“I’ve had that for over three hundred years; I imagine it’s given up most of its vitamins by now,” Deucalion said. “Perhaps our Expert Treasure-hunter might like to keep it, as a memento.”

Howl accepted the goblet with a deep bow to Deucalion. “That’s very generous of you. Although I can’t imagine I’ll need a souvenir to remember this day.”

“Expert Treasure-hunter!” Sophie exclaimed. “Does that mean you—”

“I’ll tell you later,” Howl said. “We must be on our way.”

“I wonder if we might come back and visit sometime?” Sophie said to Mara. “I imagine Morgan would enjoy having a winged playmate.”

“I’d like that very much,” Mara said.

Hasruel took a step toward Querida’s front door and then stopped abruptly, apparently remembering that he was no longer an invisible cat. In his diminished shape, Kit thought he looked rather forlorn. The tips of his ears drooped slightly.

“We’ve got lots of room at Derkholm,” Kit blurted out. “Most things are griffin-sized there.” Belatedly, he looked over at his parents. “Er… if it would be all right?”

“Why not?” said Derk. “Perhaps you might even consider giving us a genetic sample for my files?”

“You’ll have to watch out for the carnivorous sheep, mind,” Kit said. “And the sarcastic geese—be careful not to underestimate them.”

“I think I’ll manage,” Hasruel said with a slow smile. “I’ve visited already, though you may not have realized. Where do you think I learned how to be an invisible cat?” He stretched his arms upward, growing back to his full height. With a single flap of his great wings, he was airborne. They watched as his silhouette rapidly shrank into the distance.

“Now you’ve done it,” said Deucalion, but Kit thought he looked pleased. In the next moment, two more winged monsters were on their way home.