“Not on purpose, Your Honor,” said Gotfried miserably. “As you heard, I couldn’t go through with it anyway. But better to be killed quickly than turned into a skeleton by the Duke and put on display in his white room.”
“You won’t be killed,” said Anya. She looked at everyone else. “What was it in the Bill of Rights and Wrongs? ‘No person shall be transformed, fined, deprived of liberty, executed, or otherwise punished save under the ancient laws as set within the Stone.’ ”
“You have remembered it well,” said Dehlia. “That is good.”
“The Bill of Rights and Wrongs?” asked Gotfried. “The old charter? And what’s this about a stone?”
“Dehlia and Bert can explain it to you.” Anya looked at the Good Wizard and said sadly, “Can you keep him here overnight? I can’t take him with me. He just can’t say no to the Duke.”
“Make it at my invitation,” said Snow White quickly to the Good Wizard. “So he won’t need an appointment, and nothing on the books.”
“Then as with any guest, he may stay a night and a day,” said the Good Wizard.
“I want to talk to young Gotfried anyway,” said Merlin, surprising everyone. “Come up to my shoulder, owl. I think I knew your great-grandfather. Did you know owls run in your family? And incompetent transformations?”
“Um, no,” said Gotfried. He turned his head almost completely around to face Anya, while keeping his body straight, which always gave the princess a sympathetic twinge in her own neck. Owls, of course, can do this all night without difficulty. “Princess, can you forgive me?”
Anya bent down and lifted him so he could step onto the ancient ex-wizard’s shoulder.
“Of course I forgive you. But do stay away from Duke Rikard. When you leave here, go and find the dogs. We’ll meet up sooner or later.”
Ardent growled something, but desisted when Anya gave him a stern look.
“I’m sure,” quavered Gotfried. “How … how goes your quest?”
“I can’t say,” said Anya. She hesitated, before reluctantly adding, “You might end up back with the Duke after all, and you couldn’t help but tell him. So it’s better you don’t know. Oh, by the way, the Good Wizard has a truly amazing library here.”
“We do,” said Merlin. “Let’s go and look at it.”
The old man went to the door, but just before he passed through, he turned back to offer Anya some parting advice.
“Good luck, Princess. Be wary of the witches. While you can trust their word, you need to listen very carefully to whatever they agree. Or don’t agree. What is unsaid is as important as what is said.”
“Thank you,” said Anya. She wondered what he meant by that. Surely what was unsaid was difficult to consider, since it hadn’t been said in the first place. But she filed his words away carefully in her mind, making sure they wouldn’t be smothered by the excitement that was building up in her.
For the first time since leaving Trallonia, she felt somewhat confident about her Quest. She was clean, rested, well fed, and wearing new, better clothes. And she had a plan, which was a lot more than she’d had when she’d started out.
Anya also had a flying carpet, even if it technically belonged to Ardent. It was being unrolled on the grass right at that moment. Considerably larger than Anya had expected, the carpet was at least eighteen feet long and ten feet wide. Though primarily red and blue it had some touches of black, all woven into a very attractive pattern of repeated, overlapping squares, with lines of different thicknesses. Right in the middle, there was a diamond of solid red bordered by a thick black line.
“Before you lie down, I’d better tell you the carpet’s name and the words of command,” said the Good Wizard, addressing both Anya and Ardent. “Make sure no one hears you using them, because otherwise they could steal the carpet by flying away with it. Of course it can be stolen simply by carrying it off, but if someone does do that, you can call it back with the correct phrase. It won’t matter where it is, it will hear you and come along. Eventually. As I said, they can be temperamental. But if you treat it courteously, brush it from time to time, and don’t mess it up with mud or spill coffee on it, it should be fine. Now, let me see.”
The Wizard settled her gold-rimmed glasses more firmly on her nose and peered down at the corner of the carpet. Anya couldn’t see anything there that was any different from any other corner, but the Wizard was clearly studying something.
“The carpet’s name is Pathadwanimithochozkal,” she said. “Got that?”
“No!” exclaimed Anya.
“Really?” asked the Wizard. “Thought you were training to be a sorcerer?”
She repeated the name a dozen times before Anya began to consistently get it right, though Ardent had it correct from the second time. All the royal dogs were very good at learning things by rote.
“Now, you lie down on the carpet at one end, like so,” said the Good Wizard, stretching herself out on the carpet. “Then you say the carpet’s name and ‘Prepare for flight,’ and it will roll you up—”
“Roll me up?” asked Anya. She made a rotating gesture with her finger. “You mean it’ll roll up with us inside? Why?”
“So you don’t fall off when it flies away,” said the Wizard. She got up and stretched. “They fly very, very fast, you know. Did you think you could just sit on it?”
“That’s what they do in the stories,” Anya protested. “There was even a picture in one of my books—”
“Stories,” grumbled the Wizard. “I don’t know how they get started. I mean, it’s simple common sense. There’s nothing to hold on to, and with all that air rushing past … a good carpet will wrap you nice and tight so you can’t even slip out the open ends if it has to do any fancy flying.”