“Oh, really, Wilkie,” she said, “do please try to control yourself. What’s the matter?” The janitor, being a werewolf, was always liable to change shape in moments of stress. “Assume your proper form!” Querida snapped at him. “I can’t talk to a wolf.”
The wolf stood humbly on its hind legs and became a man, a hairy man who did not look very bright. Wilkie hitched his trousers—a wolf’s waist being lower than a man’s—and said indignantly, “I told it you were sick, ma’am, I told it you were busy, I told it to go away, and it won’t take no for an answer!”
“What won’t?” Querida snapped.
Wilkie pointed to the doorway. A huge brown bird head ducked itself down there, under the lintel, and a large, round, shiny brown eye rolled to look at Querida. Well, I never! Querida thought. One of Wizard Derk’s griffins. My griffin. The big female.
“Let it come in,” she said. “Then you may leave us, Wilkie.”
As the griffin lowered its body and squeezed its wings inward to get through the doorway, Querida scarcely noticed the janitor shuffle warily around it and depart. She had eyes only for this huge, beautiful creature. It had caught her fancy utterly the day that Mr. Chesney came. She loved the soft browns of the head feathers and the creamy white bars on the great wings. Now she saw there was gray in
the bars, too, greenish gray, and that the same gray-green mixed with the brown in the massed feathers of the neck and outlined the alert brown eyes. The most beautiful thing about it, though, was the way the eagle part phased so gracefully into the pale brown lion part—a most elegant deep-chested lion part with a slim and muscular rear—so that you did not think of the creature as a mixture but as a whole. She had to admit Wizard Derk had made a fabulous beast here. This one was even more superb than the little winged colt. Querida lusted to own this creature, to bury her hands in those soft-colored feathers, even maybe to ride on its back through the air.
“I’m not an it. I’m a she,” said the griffin. “My name’s Callette.”
“Oh,” said Querida. “I was not aware you could speak.”
“Of course I can,” said Callette. “How did you think I was going to give you the message from Mum if I couldn’t?”
She ducked her head and removed a leather pouch that was hanging around her neck. Even in her surprise, Querida was glad to see the pouch removed. It spoiled the griffin’s beautiful lines. “I—er—remember your going to considerable lengths to suggest you were dumb,” she retorted. “And I assumed the message was in that pouch.”
Callette wrapped her talons in the thongs of the pouch and kept it between her front feet. “This is the miniature universe you wanted,” she said. “Not talking was an idea of Kit’s. He often has silly ideas. It served him right when he fell through the roof. But I’ve got a message from Mum as well. Do you want to hear it or not?”
Querida looked at her, sitting like a great tall cat with her tufted tail wrapped across the pouch between her shapely, taloned feet and her barred wings neatly folded. And Querida longed, yearned, lusted for ownership of Callette. “Yes, I do very much want to hear it.”
Callette looked at Querida in turn, carefully, turning her head to focus on Querida first with one eye, then with the other. It was not something griffins needed to do, but Callette had the habit from her bird ancestry and tended to do it to double-check on things she felt cautious about. “Mum said I wasn’t to tell you straightaway,” she said.
“I take it we’re talking of Mara,” Querida said irritably. “Why not straightaway?”
Callette nodded. “Dad told me to take Elda to Mum’s Lair, but he was in a hurry and he told me to think about the message, because Mum was sure to want me to tell you. So I thought, and I asked Mum. And she told me to tell you that if you try to own me or keep me here, by either a spell or any other way, Mum won’t do any of the things you asked her to do. And the universe in this pouch will just dissolve.”
Disappointment made Querida cross. Mara had her over a barrel. She needed Mara. What a nuisance! Now she would have to waste time being very cunning and placating Mara. “I see,” she said dryly. “What a very prudent person you are, Callette. But it beats me why you call two human wizards your mother and father. How can they be really?”
“They can be because they both put cells from themselves into all of us,” Callette said. “It was the way to make us people, Dad says.”
Yes, Derk had taken care to explain that, Querida remembered. Pity Callette knew. All right. Try a little wizardly pressure next. Pushing hard at Callette’s mind, Querida snapped, “Very well. What was this message then?”
Callette’s tail lifted from her feet and rapped once, gently, on the floor. “You haven’t promised to let me go yet.”
“I promise,” Querida said readily. “The message?”
Callette’s tail did another gentle dab at the flagstones. “That’s only promising to let me go. You have to promise not to own me or keep me either, in any way.”
Curses! Querida thought. That really was checkmate. This creature was no fool. “Oh, very well, bother you! I promise not to try to own you or keep you, either by magic or in any other way. Now please can I have the universe at least, if not the message?”
Callette tilted her head for a second, checking Querida’s words through. “That will do. The message is that the dwarfs from the Mossy Mountains are paying a tribute of six bushels of wrought gold items to Mr. Chesney every year. Dad has witnesses to confirm this. Mum says you ought to know.”
Breakthrough! This has to be unlawful! Querida thought. It did something to make up for not owning Callette, at least. But what was Derk doing, making this discovery? “Did these dwarfs have a contract to supply this treasure?” she asked, at her sharpest and snakiest.
“No,” said Callette. “I went out there with Dad, and I heard him asking them. They said Mr. Chesney just ordered them to pay tribute forty years ago because he was Dark Lord of the world. And when the dwarfs argued, Mr. Chesney told them it was to stop the dragons from getting too greedy. The chieftain said he thought Mr. Chesney might have been making a joke.”
Ah! Got him! Querida’s snaky smile wrapped itself halfway around her face. “I do not think,” she said, “that Mr. Chesney makes jokes. This was probably his true and actual reason. Did the dwarfs say anything else?”
“Yes. They said all the other tribes of dwarfs pay the tribute, too,” Callette answered.
Of course they would do. Mr. Chesney was always thorough. Querida continued beaming, while her thoughts raced. So this was the way Mr. Chesney worked, by taking care to get a hold on all the most powerful beings in the world! Neat. She wondered how he had got a hold on the demons or if he had any bargain with the gods. That was something she must set the female wizards looking for quickly. She also wondered if Derk had the least idea of the meaning of this discovery. Mara certainly had, or she would not have sent Callette here. “And what was Derk going to do with the dwarfs after he had questioned them?” she asked.
Callette shrugged her wings up slightly. “I don’t know. Nothing probably. He got in his hurry after he talked to them and told me to fly home and take Elda to Mum.”