The back door was reached by a very long tunnel. It seemed like a normal passage at first, paneled with the same warm reddish timber as the hall, but after a while the paneling stopped, revealing bare gray rock. Except it wasn’t rock, but the petrified flesh of the dragon, and the white vertical supports and overhead beams were bones, bones that became thinner and more curved as they went along, the tunnel also narrowing.
“Dragon’s tail,” said the Wizard when Anya asked about the bones. “Very long, handy for a secret back exit. Quarter of a league from the front, and comes out in a little dell, hidden from view.”
Eventually, the tunnel became so narrow they had to walk in single file, with the Wizard leading. There was no obvious source of light, and though it had grown darker as they walked, it didn’t actually get dark. It took Anya a while to realize that the bones around them were faintly luminous.
There was a door at the end of the tunnel. The Wizard took a key out of her sleeve, but after a moment looking at the door, put it away again.
“Hmm,” she said. “Unlocked already.”
She pushed on the heavy oak and the door swung open, admitting a shaft of bright sunlight that washed out the pale light of the dragon bones.
“Should it be unlocked?” asked Anya.
“No,” said the Wizard, though she didn’t seem particularly perturbed. She walked out, with the princess close behind, looking over her shoulder. “He’s just forgotten to lock it after him, that’s all.”
“Who?” asked Anya.
“Me,” said someone as the Wizard and Anya emerged blinking into the sunlight.
Anya jumped several feet, almost dropping Denholm’s cage. Her heart beat superfast as she looked wildly around for whoever had spoken.
The back door led out into a small dell, a narrow valley with a gentle slope that ran down to a marsh that was probably connected in some way with the river out the front of the Wizard’s demesne. Behind them, the slope was steeper, rising up above the door to the top of the low ridge that marked the dragon’s back.
Next to the door, there was a stone bench, and sitting on the bench was a very old man. He was completely bald, his yellowed skin was stretched and thin, and his eyes were very deep set and half-closed. He had a heavy woolen cloak with a fur collar wrapped tight around himself, even though now that it had stopped raining and the wind had died down, it was quite warm outside.
“My predecessor,” said the Wizard. “Known to many as Snow White.”
“No great snowy beard now,” said the old man, fingering his smooth chin.
“You could wear the detachable one if you wanted,” said the Good Wizard.
“Too hard to get off,” answered the old man with a sly cackle. “Isn’t it?”
“You should know—you made it that way. What are you doing out here?”
“Came to see the girl, didn’t I?” said the old man. He opened his eyes wide. They were surprising. Bright green with a strong hint of mischief in them. They did not look like old, tired eyes.
“You mean me?” asked Anya.
“Of course,” said the old man. He pulled a walking stick out from under his cloak, a short staff of rough bog oak, complete with the seven silver bands of a wizard, and used it to help himself up. “Not every day I get to meet the Frogkisser!”
“That’s just something a Gerald the Herald thought up,” said Anya with considerable embarrassment.
“How do you think I got called Snow White in the first place?” asked the old man. “Some long-nosed herald suggests a catchy name, and before you know it, everyone’s using it.”
“But your real name is Merlin, isn’t it?” asked Ardent, who had come out and was sniffing the air. “I remember it now.”
The old man smiled, and slowly bent to scratch Ardent’s head.
“Yes, I was Merlin for a long time,” he said. “But I have had other names. Once, even longer ago, I was known as—”
“There’s something in the grass,” interrupted Bert, raising her bow and nocking an arrow. “Over there.”
There was a disturbance in the tall grass on the southern slope, something moving through it in a stop-start way. Whatever it was, it was small and almost completely concealed by the grass, which was generally knee-high, with taller tufts here and there.
“Don’t shoot,” said Merlin. “It is just a bird of some kind. I have been waiting for him to come closer. He is injured, I think, and cannot fly.”
“The Duke has raven spies,” Anya pointed out.
“True,” said the old ex-wizard. “But this is not a raven. I have not seen him yet, but I heard him earlier, and came out to see what was going on.”
“You heard a bird from inside?” asked Ardent, evidently impressed by this feat of listening, as impressive to him as the Dog with the Wonderful Nose’s feats of smelling.
“Not with my ears,” said Merlin. “Lower your bow, Roberta. Let him approach. It is the Frogkisser he wants, if I’m not mistaken.”
“You have been mistaken on several occasions,” said the Good Wizard. She smiled. “Though not this time, I suspect. Ah, here is your carpet, Ardent.”
A rolled-up carpet, showing a bright red-and-blue pattern, appeared out the door, undulating through the air without visible support. It sagged in the middle, indicating that it was being carried by only two invisible servants, who were finding it a bit heavy.
“It does not move entirely like a natural bird,” said Dehlia, who was standing on Bert’s shoulder, watching the tops of the grass shifting as whatever it was hopped in a curious zigzag way towards them. “Are you sure you should let it approach?”