“Who’s tricking you?” asked Anya carefully. She had edged away as the Wizard stamped, fearful that this sudden anger might be directed elsewhere than the beard.
“Oh, my predecessor!” said the Wizard. She gave the beard another tug, and suddenly laughed, all traces of anger gone. “It’s traditional you know, to play games with things you leave for later wizards. This was his beard, naturally I mean, before he enchanted it for his heir, who turned out to be me. He was very fond of it, not least because it gave him his nickname for many decades. You would have heard of him, I expect?”
Anya shook her head.
“The long, flowing white beard,” hinted the Wizard, running her hands through it to show off its properties. “Snowy, ridiculously white … ”
Ardent’s ears suddenly sprang up.
“Snow White!” he barked excitedly. “Tanitha told us. But he was the Good Wizard of all Yarrow, long, long ago. He vanished in the Deluge, drowned.”
“He didn’t drown!” said the Wizard. “Good gracious! Only a very incompetent wizard would let themselves drown. He just got—well, involved in a personal matter, and was caught up with things for a century or so. In a cave. And then he was tired of wizarding, so he handed over the beard and the trappings to me. You might see him later, if he’s up. He does come to dinner once in a while.”
“Dinner!” barked Ardent reflexively.
“Dinner,” sighed Anya. She hesitated, then asked, “And is there … could there be … might I have a bath?”
The Wizard looked the muddy, bedraggled princess up and down, then across at the numerous dark streaks that gave Ardent a somewhat tigerish aspect, and the mud caked on Shrub’s head.
“Baths for all of you, I think!” she pronounced. Ardent’s ears and tail drooped as she went on. “Save your otter-maid, who perhaps would like a swim in the reflecting pool instead.”
“A pool?” asked Smoothie, who had been watching the muddy, flooded river with her sharp eyes, noting the currents and hoping for signs of fish. “Of clean, fresh water?”
“Oh yes,” said the Wizard. “Got to have a crystal-clean pool or you can’t get the visions sharp enough to work out what’s going on. It’s fed by an underground spring. Come to think of it, you can probably get your own dinner there. Plenty of eels infest the place.”
“Eels,” said Smoothie, her sharp-toothed smile spreading wide across her half-human, half-otter face.
“Lots of eels,” confirmed the Wizard. She smiled too, but the smile vanished as a raven cawed somewhere off in the distance and was answered by another. She looked up at the sky, her eyes narrowing, and stroked her beard. Anya looked too, and caught just a glimpse of a black shape, disappearing into the low clouds.
“I like a raven with a message to come straight to the recipient,” said the Wizard. “I would rather not see skulking ravens, like those two. Spies, without a doubt. Come! No point standing around here.”
Anya agreed. Ravens were used as messengers by many people, but Duke Rikard had a whole bunch of particularly unsavory ravens he employed as his agents. And where the ravens were, she suspected weaselfolk would soon follow. Or assassins. Or both. Or worse.
Anya shuddered at the thought of something worse than weaselfolk, remembering those snapping jaws so close to her throat. But she forced the memory aside, and tried to think of nice things …
Like the prospect of a hot bath, which was now firmly fixed in her immediate future.
The Good Wizard led them up at a fast pace towards the tower but, almost within its shadow, turned sharply to the right. There was a path there, of well-rolled gravel, bordered with white-painted stones. She crunched along the graveled way with the others following, towards a huge arched gate set into the hillside.
The gate was enormous, thirty feet high and twenty feet wide, of ancient timber faced with bronze plates, tarnished dark with age. It looked as if it would take a dozen strong people to push it open, a team of oxen, or even a giant porter. But the Wizard knocked on it with her ringed hand, and the lines of a lesser door set within the gate became visible, traced in fire.
“Flashy, I know,” said the Wizard, pushing this regular-size door open. “Some long-ago Good Wizard had a taste for this sort of show. When the full gate opens, there are gouts of flame and brazen trumpets, the whole works. Quite fun if you like that kind of thing, but it takes too long. Please, do come in.”
There was an antechamber beyond the gate, well lit with colored lanterns that burned without smoke or visible flame. A long, highly polished mahogany bench ran down the middle of the room. There was a boot rack against one wall, on which rested two or three dozen shoes and boots of different makes and sizes, nearly all as beautifully made as the Wizard’s own red boots. A line of bronze coat hooks adorned the opposite wall, most of them taken up by cloaks, overcoats, surcoats, wraps, and other outerwear, again all beautifully made with style and precision.
The majority of the coats were strangely small in length, Anya noted, though very broad in the shoulder. And many of the boots and shoes were similarly wide but short. Very few would fit the Wizard, therefore most of these items were not her own, but for some other members of the household.
The Wizard sat down on the bench and unbuttoned her boots, swapping them for a pair of elegant slippers with curled-up toes that had small bells at the very tips, so she tinkled as she stood up. She shrugged off her cloak and hung that up too, revealing an elegant robe underneath, of highly calendared dark blue wool with a silver brocade trim.
“Leave your shoes here,” she said. “They will be cleaned. Take slippers from the box. I don’t like muddy footprints on the carpets. They don’t fly so well when they’re dirty, and you never know when they might be needed with no time for cleaning.”
Ardent looked down at his paws, which were undeniably muddy.