They found Querida at the conference table again, with pigeon messages spread out all over it. There was a small stove on the table, too, and a kettle singing on the stove. The room was full of the scents of several herbal teas. Querida looked up from the elegant cup in her little dry hands.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said rather guiltily. Most of the time she felt no guilt at all for anything she did, but to see Derk standing there looking drained and unwell, and the boy—Blade, that was his name—in torn and grass-stained clothes, made her slightly ashamed of what she was doing. Well, it’s in a good cause, she told herself. On with the bullying. “I suppose you’ve come here wanting me to conjure you a demon,” she hissed.
“A demon has been conjured,” Derk said carefully, and Blade looked at him, wondering why he put it like that. “But I’d be very grateful if you could do something about a god or so. Some of the tours have got quite far by now. We’re running a little short of time.”
“You can see I’m up to my eyebrows in work here!” Querida took a hand from her teacup and fluttered her fingers across the mass of papers in front of her. “But I shall give it serious thought as I work. How do you fancy a snake god with feathers on its head?”
“I think there is one of those—on Tecahua Island,” Derk said.
Querida knew there was. He was her favorite god. “So there is,” she agreed. “Bother. It is so difficult to think of a god that someone hasn’t had somewhere. But I’ll keep thinking. I’ll let you know in a week or so. Meanwhile, as you’re here, I’d like to ask you about a couple of these messages.” She put down her cup and searched across the spread of papers, finally selecting two from opposite corners. It was like that memory game where you find pairs of cards, Blade thought. It was not a game he was fond of. The griffins always won. “Here we are.” Querida held up the first paper. “This is from a farmer in the central plains, complaining that his flocks are being attacked by small carnivorous sheep. Any comments?”
“I’ve no idea how that happened,” Derk said, with perfect honesty. Blade uncomfortably studied the flagstones in the floor.
“And this,” Querida said, waving the second paper, “states that a party of men in black armor attacked a monastery near Blendish, but were beaten off by magic. Fortunately the abbot is an ex-pupil of mine. Have you been losing people, Derk?”
“No, I have,” said Blade. “They try to escape all the time.”
“Scales is going to try to round them all up,” Derk said. “Is that all? We’ve got to get down to the Emirates today, too.”
“Well—” Querida’s hand hovered over the message slips again. This was something quite different and rather worrying, which had only come in this morning. She was in two minds whether to keep it secret or not. But probably because of that slight guilt she felt, she thought she would mention it to Derk, anyway. Her hand darted to a paper that she had set aside from the others. “There’s this. Do you know a wizard called Betula?”
Derk nodded. Blade said, “She’s a friend of Mum’s.”
“Then you’ll know that she is reliable,” said Querida, “and probably that her field of study is the nature of magic itself. She says she’s finding a steady decrease in the ambient magic over quite a large area north of Costamaret. What do you make of that?”
Derk looked perplexed. “I don’t see how she can. I always thought magic was part of the very earth itself.”
“So did I. But it appears to be leaving us,” Querida said. “If Betula is right, this is going to panic everyone, including Mr. Chesney, so I must ask you not to mention it. But just keep your magic senses peeled as you go about, will you? You might discover what’s going on. Now, if you’ll forgive me—”
They left Querida sitting in front of her papers and went out into
the deserted forecourt, where Blade said, “You want to go to the Emirates? I’ve never been there. I don’t—”
“It’ll be like going to the Oracle,” Derk explained. “I’ll show you on the map. But I thought we’d go to Bardic College first and see if we can do something to help poor Shona.”
Blade took them to Bardic College, where they drew a complete blank. Derk hammered on the great locked door repeatedly, but no one answered, not even to tell them to go away.
“They knew you’d be along, Dad,” Blade said.
“So they stuck their bone-filled heads into the sand,” Derk agreed angrily.
“Do something to them,” said Blade. “Make them forget the words of all the songs. Untune all their pianos. They deserve it.”
“Yes, but it wouldn’t help Shona. Let’s get to the Emirates,” Derk said.
Blade thoroughly enjoyed the Emirates. It was wonderfully hot and dry there, which was a treat in itself after camping in frost and rain, and he liked the Emir’s palace. It was one of the hugest and silliest buildings he had ever seen. Derk chuckled as Blade stared at its ninety-four twisted towers, its red dome, and its green and yellow checkered cupolas. “I wonder if Umru has ever seen this,” he said. “He’d be green with envy. Tear yourself away, Blade. We have to find the Grand Vizir.”
The Grand Vizir was a large man, with the look of someone who had suddenly gone thin—rather like Dad, Blade thought, looking from one to the other—and he was feverishly glad to see Derk. He led them at a trot through halls and passages, gasping out as he trotted, “It is terrible! You must see—see for yourselves. Here. Stand here. Watch that cross corridor. Here he comes now.”
A tall, thin man in a red hat crossed the end of the corridor where they were standing. He was walking very upright in a sort of stiff strut, holding both his arms bent rigidly at the elbows. “I am a pup-pet,” he was saying in a blank, toneless voice. “I have no mind.”
“There,” said the Grand Vizir as the Emir stalked out of sight. “Did drugs do this? A spell? Is it the red hat? The tourists all stare at him strangely. We try to keep them away from him. It will not do.”
“I’m afraid,” Derk said, panting rather from trotting in the heat, “that he’s pretending to be hypnotized. It’s my fault. I didn’t know he couldn’t act. I’ll try to sort him out, but it’s going to take a bit of time and tact. Have you got anywhere my lad here can wait while I try?”
“Certainly, certainly!” said the Grand Vizir.
Blade was slightly offended that Dad did not consider him tactful enough to help talk to the Emir, but he was entirely interested—though rather shy—when servants showed him to a room full of highly beautiful slave ladies, whose aim seemed to be to make Blade the center of their universe. They sat him on soft, sweet-smelling cushions, fanned him, brought him water to wash in with flower petals floating in it, combed his hair, and gave him a silk shirt because the one he had on was torn. Meanwhile six more ladies played music to him, almost as well as Shona might have played it, and another lady took his socks away to be washed. Instantly some of the others pounced on his dirty feet and washed those, too.