Chapter 21

Determined to find Hubley before Reiffen did, Ferris hurried downstairs the moment he left her workroom. She didn’t think she could last another day without holding her daughter in her arms, even if Fornoch was the one who had taken her.

She had spent years searching for a way to rescue Hubley, even after she guessed why Avender had disappeared. Only when Plum also died helping her had she stopped. After that she had allowed no one else to take the risk, though there were many who thought rescuing the magicians’ daughter a gallant quest. Instead she had permitted herself only dream visits, and even those had grown less frequent once she realized Reiffen was stealing Hubley’s memories of her each morning when the child woke. It was just too painful to relive over and over her daughter’s joy at seeing her mother for the first time in months, when the last visit had been the night before.

Arriving in the mirror room, she decided Ham was the magician most likely to get her closest to her child. Of all her former apprentices, or her apprentices’ apprentices, Ham was the only one who had much to do with the Great Forest. Sweeping her hand across his mirror, she called into it several times. Receiving no response, she went on to the next most likely candidate. There was, of course, the possibility Ham had been turned by Fornoch since the last time she had seen him. The Gray Wizard visited every magician from time to time, but Ahne’s example, and that of a few others Ferris and Redburr had caught taking advantage of their position, was usually enough for any of them to summon her immediately whenever the Wizard dropped by.

One by one, she made the calls. Those she spoke with agreed to come to Tower Dale at once, but none of them had ever been any closer to the place Hubley had been taken than Ferris herself. Those she didn’t reach on the first try called her back as soon as they heard she wanted to speak with them. Only Ham was enough of a hermit to have no one ready to take a message when he couldn’t answer himself.

“Is this about what’s happening at the palace?” asked Trier when she returned Ferris’s call.

“Reiffen has been here, or at least we think it was Reiffen. He was chasing someone, but we are not sure who that was either.”

Ferris stiffened at the idea that Reiffen had gone to Malmoret after Tower Dale. Had he been telling her the truth, or was he trying to distract her from his real purpose? Perhaps he had found something in the New Palace that would help him get to Hubley first.

“I’m asking the other magicians to join me here,” she said, “in case we have to fight the Wizard. But maybe you should stay in Malmoret. Let me know what Reiffen’s up to as soon as you learn anything more.”

“Prince Merannon and Findle have already gone after him. I shall let you know what they learn the moment they return.”

It was dawn before Ferris finally got hold of Ham. “Looks like the place is close to Grays Pond,” he said when she showed him the spot Reiffen had pointed out to her on the map. “I’ve been there a few times. Was there about a year ago, in fact, to look into reports of a witch.”

“Yep. Just an old woman brewing love charms and wart potions. No real magic at all.”

The other magician pulled thoughtfully at his chin. “I might have to rest a bit in Tower Dale, but I remember the place well enough. I’ve been up casting all night and probably don’t have more than a spell or two left in me. Even then I might not be able to carry more’n two or three.”

She could only take one or two people, but the decision of who to bring was easy. Grabbing her current senior apprentice, she went looking for Redburr in the kitchen.

She found him with his snout in a bucket of porridge. Giserre whacked his backside with an oversized baking peel to attract his attention. Gruel covered his mouth and chin as the bear looked up and growled.

“Would it not be preferable to take one of the more experienced magicians with you instead of an apprentice?” Giserre asked as she handed round a platter of bacon and eggs to the magicians who were breakfasting as well. Though she had grown old and gray, Giserre still insisted on doing her full share of the housework in Tower Dale.

Ferris shook her head. “Not yet. Ham can’t bring that many. Jodes can bring them with her on the second trip. At this point all we need is someone who can travel.”

With Ferris casting the traveling spell, they met Ham in his workshop. His smudges were already burning. Ferris and Jodes took the man’s right hand while Redburr seized the other softly between his jaws. A hermit thrush fluted sorrowfully beyond the window as forests flashed through Ferris’s mind, brown and bare except for the dark green firs. Lakes shone between the trees like raindrops beading on a nokken’s fur.

When the smell of wood mold and leaves replaced the slightly stale odor of Ham’s workroom, Ferris let go his hand. Standing at the edge of the trees, she found herself looking at a small farm. Honking geese rushed them from across the yard, wings flapping; a pair of dogs scrambled around the corner of the house at breakneck speed. Still irritated that his breakfast had been interrupted, Redburr sent the creatures running with a growl.

Ham pointed into the forest behind them. “There’s a path over there that leads north out of town. The old woman lives on a small pond about twenty minutes’ walk away.”

Ferris turned to Jodes. “Memorize this place, take Ham back to the Tower with your thimble, then return with as many magicians as you can. Redburr and I will be at the pond.”

Walking fast, they arrived sooner than Ham had said. A dusty yard led from the water’s edge to a cottage tucked back among the trees. Masked by a row of cedars between them and the house, Ferris and the Shaper watched an old woman hang washing on a line.

Ferris agreed. Unless Ham had guided them to the wrong spot, her suspicion that Reiffen had sent her on a wild goose chase was nearly confirmed. But why? Was there some reason he wanted her out of Valing?

“Maybe someone in the village can give us a better lead,” the bear went on. “If there’s anything around here, they’ll know. We can search the area thoroughly once the rest of the mages arrive.”

The woman hanging laundry turned around as if she’d heard them, though Ferris was sure they’d been whispering much too softly.

“Ferris,” she called. “I can’t see you or Redburr, but I know you’re there. Hubley’s gone, but you still ought to come up anyway, so we can talk. There’s no need to be afraid. Reiffen sent you to the right place.”

Afraid was the last thing Ferris was feeling, but she was still cautious. How had the woman known they were there, or that it was Reiffen who had sent them? Or was she simply lying, and Hubley was still in the house? Ferris certainly wasn’t going to leave this place until she had learned everything the old woman could tell her about her daughter.

The woman waved an insistent hand. “Really, there’s no reason to hide. You can search the whole cottage. I won’t get in your way.”

“Of course it’s a trap. But what choice do we have? She already knows we’re here. Either we do as she asks, or we go back to the village for reinforcements.”

Firebolts ready on her fingertips and tongue, she walked toward the cottage. She was almost at the door before the woman, who was hanging the last of her sheets, noticed her.

“Have you had breakfast? I was going to make pancakes for Hubley, but she left too early to eat.”

Ferris pointed all ten fingers at the woman. “If you don’t tell me where Hubley is right now, I’m going to make you very unhappy.”

The woman looked as if Ferris had hurt her feelings. She was older than Ferris, or, more correctly, older than Ferris looked, with gray hair and a sturdy frame. In truth, she was probably close to Ferris’s real age.

“Of course I’ll tell you where she is. She’s in Malmoret. Or, more precisely, below Malmoret by now.”

“That’s right. Trier told you about the disturbance at the New Palace, didn’t she? That was Hubley, trying to get away. She’s almost reached the Lamp by now. I’d tell you to travel there to meet her, only I don’t think you’ve ever been.”

“No, no. Don’t do that. It would take you hours, and they’ll be gone by the time you get there. Besides, Merranon and Findle are already after them. It’ll be much easier if we wait for Hubley and Avender to make their way back on their own.”

“It’s a long story. Come inside, have some breakfast, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

Cupping her hands to her mouth, the woman called back to where the Shaper was still lurking behind the trees. “Redburr! You’re being silly. I’ve a cask of that Upper Nutting you like so much. Brought it here myself a week ago when I knew you were coming, and it’s just going to go to waste if you don’t drink it. I’ll leave the door open, in case you change your mind.”

Knew they were coming? The strangeness of the remark, combined with the woman’s earlier mention of Avender and the fact she knew Reiffen had sent them, made Ferris nearly forget why she was there.

“Who are you?” she demanded as she followed the woman inside the cottage. The scent of the same sort of smudges Ham had used lingered in the air. “And why are you acting as if this is all some sort of picnic?”

Leaving Ferris openmouthed in the center of the room, the older woman called into the woods one more time. “Redburr, I’m only going to explain myself once. If you want to know what’s going on, you’d better come in now.”

“Don’t wait for him,” said Ferris. “Too much is at stake. I want you to start explaining everything now. You can start by telling me who you are.”

Taking a large wooden bowl from the table in the middle of the room, the older woman filled it with beer from a small cask behind the door. Redburr poked his massive head in as she set it on the floor. Sniffing the bowl suspiciously, he glanced at Ferris.

“That’s right, I was.” Chair legs scratched the dirt as the woman sat down at the other side of the table. “I told Hubley to call me Mims. A lot of people think that’s my name, but the ones who know me best call me Hubley.”

Hands on hips, Ferris glared at the other woman. “Is this some kind of joke? You and my daughter share the same name?”

“No you aren’t. I’ve seen Hubley enough over the last thirty years to know she’s still only ten years old. Reiffen’s been keeping her that way all this time.”

As surprised as Ferris, Redburr actually stopped sniffing at his beer. “She is about the right age,” he said. “Maybe the Hubley you’ve been seeing is a fake, to throw you off the scent. That would explain why she never remembers your visits.”

The old woman smiled firmly. “No, that’s the real Hubley, and I am, too. I’m older than I look, a lot older than the Hubley I sent Avender to rescue last night. I have a Living Stone, Mother.”

“You know that’s not true. Grandmother Giserre made you take hers out years ago. I’ve removed mine more than once, and not just so I could grow up, either. There have been a few occasions when I couldn’t afford to be caught with it. Would you like to see the scars?”

A little overwhelmed by what the woman was telling her, even if she didn’t believe it, Ferris sat down. The woman had to be some trick of Fornoch’s. Or Reiffen’s. But, for the life of her, Ferris couldn’t imagine what advantage either of them thought they could gain from having someone pretend to be a fifty-year-old Hubley.

The woman held out her arm. Reluctantly, Ferris took the offered wrist. The lump was there, but proved nothing. A good magician could fake broken bones as easily as mend them.

Mims met Ferris’s skeptical gaze. “Plum and I were floating back and forth across the top of the Magicians’ Tower when it happened. Trier was supposed to be teaching us about the stars, remember? Only Trier got mad because Plum and I weren’t paying attention, and I fell into the rose bushes when she cut off our magic. You weren’t so good at setting bones then, so my wrist is a little crooked. It convinced Avender.”

“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned Avender,” growled Redburr, still unable to make up his mind about his bowl of beer. “What’s he got to do with this?”

“I had to rescue him first, before I could rescue myself. Father’s had him buried alive in the castle all these years, which is why he’s the only one who could get in without setting off the alarms. I couldn’t take the risk of doing it myself. He might have recognized me.”

“Father’s seen me this way before, Mother, though I didn’t tell him who I was. You don’t think he survived all those years in Ussene on his own, do you? He’d unravel the mystery soon enough if he saw me again. The person I was then couldn’t possibly still be alive.”

Ferris raised her hands. “Hold on. Are you trying to tell us that, not only are you Hubley, but you’re a Hubley who can go back and forth through time?”

“I am.” Mims beamed. “Aren’t you proud of me, Mother? Even Father never figured out the Timespell.”

Unable to restrain himself any further, the Shaper took a cautious lick at his beer. Ferris didn’t really expect it to be poisoned, but she waited to see what happened anyway. After another slurp, the bear looked up.

“She smells like Hubley,” he offered. “I’d be surprised if the Wizard thought of giving her the same scent if she’s a fake.”

“I’m more worried that she’s part of some plot of Reiffen’s than I am of the Wizard being involved.”

“Perhaps if I gave you some proofs of my ability to travel through time.” Mims held up a small silver coin. “Mindrell gave me this thirty-one years ago. Well, thirty-one years in his time, but only a couple of days ago in mine. Ask him about it the next time you see him. It’s how Avender was able to travel to Grangore without me.”

“The only demonstration I’d believe is if you actually took me somewhere I’d already been.”

Before Ferris could react, Mims reached across the table to touch her hand. The world shifted, just as it did for a regular traveling spell. Ferris recognized where they had gone at once, Hubley’s old bedroom in the apartment Ferris still used in the New Palace. It looked no different from the last time she had visited Malmoret, a few weeks before.

She jerked her arm away. “This proves nothing. A traveling spell to the New Palace? I don’t have time for this. You’re some trick of Reiffen’s to keep me from finding Hubley so he can find her on his own.”

“You have all the time you want,” said Mims. “I’m the chronothurge, remember?”

Turning away from Ferris, the mistress of the Timespell poked her head into the next room. “You can never be too careful going back and forth in time,” she said. “For one thing, it makes people extremely uncomfortable to see two versions of the same person at once. And for another, the more people who know about the spell, the more likely Fornoch will hear about it.”

“Since you’ve yet to prove to me we’ve actually gone anywhere in time, that’s not really much of a concern.”

“Patience, Mother. You’ll see I’m telling the truth in a minute. Maybe you should cast the invisibility spell, so you won’t have to worry if I’m just making a few illusions.”

Ferris’s temper rose. She was the second most powerful magician in the world, and didn’t like being condescended to one bit. Recovering her composure, she chanted:

“Sunlight, moonlight, or the stars,

Lights in gemstones or in jars,

Magefire, woodfire, cold or hot.

Show the world where we are not.”

The women disappeared. Ferris had cast a very formidable version of the spell. Nothing, not even more magic, would make them visible again until she released it.

Fingers wrapped around her wrist. Mims’s voice came out of the clear air. “We have to stay together, Mother. And don’t be surprised when you see yourself.”

They went out into the corridor. The halls were full of servants, all of whom moved silently with their eyes on the floor. Not the typical mood in Brizen’s palace, where everyone was used to kindness and plenty. Ferris remembered the last time she had seen the New Palace so somber, which, exactly as Mims had said, had been a little less than two years before.

“Sssh.” Mims voice whispered close beside her. “We have to be quiet. If someone hears us, I may not be able to get us out before we’re caught. Trier is a very good magician.”

They made their way carefully to the royal apartment. The higher they went, the fewer people they saw. If Mims really had mastered the Timespell, it seemed she had brought them to a point in the past Ferris remembered well. The queen had died not two weeks after the onset of her illness, and Ferris had been with her almost the entire time.

Following a pair of servants carrying tea and broth into the royal bedchamber, they slipped into a corner of the room where no one was likely to bump into them. Ferris recognized the scene at once; they had arrived very close to the end. Her younger self was there, standing close to the queen’s sickbed, along with the king and the prince and Trier. Quietly the servants set their trays on a table and left, closing the door behind them.

Ferris was stunned. Mims really did know the Timespell. Which meant she really could be her daughter, an older version of Hubley who had probably seen many things that would prove very useful to know. For a moment Ferris thought about using the travel spell to take them both away, but stopped when it occurred to her she didn’t know whether her spell would take her back to the Valing of her own time, or this.

The king spoke to the Ferris near the bed. “Are you certain there is nothing you can do? Could you not give her a Living Stone?”

The younger Ferris shook her head. Her older self hoped the scene that was about to play out wouldn’t be as difficult to live through the second time as it had been the first.

“Even if I had one, Brizen,” she heard her younger self answering, “a Living Stone would do nothing. In order to work, the Stone must be inside the subject before the illness strikes. To give Wellin one now would only leave her like this forever.”

The Ferris beside the bed looked Brizen full in the face. “Yes, but they have costs. Would you be willing to pay them?”

“You see,” the younger Ferris told them, “you can no more manage it than I. Wellin is too old to fight her sickness. You have to let her go.”

The queen raised a weak hand as she spoke, her voice hardly more than a whisper. But the older Ferris had heard it all before and remembered exactly what was said. Brizen caught his wife’s wrist before it fell back to the coverlet. The Ferris by the bed, sensing the queen wanted to talk to the king alone, started to rise.

“No,” Wellin croaked, her voice as close to the end as the rest of her. “Please stay. Brizen, Meran, you will allow Ferris and me a moment alone, will you not? We shall not be long.”

Husband and son bowed, then left with Trier. None of them noticed the invisible women in the corner.

“You’ve proved your point,” whispered the older Ferris as the door closed. “I don’t need to see any more.”

Just like her father, the older Ferris told herself. Too curious for her own good. Maybe the woman really was Hubley. Bothered that her daughter would stoop to spying, yet proud of her power all the same, Ferris said nothing more.

The younger Ferris sat on the bed and held the queen’s wrinkled hand in her own smooth one. At least I stayed young and pretty, thought Ferris, knowing that was what her younger self was thinking at the same time. Then, just as her younger self had, she felt ashamed for thinking such a horrible thing for the second time as well.

“I said, I am not sorry.” Wellin’s voice grew firmer. “Brizen forgave me, as you know well enough, so I have never needed to forgive myself. We both wanted a child so much. I do thank you, however, and love you all the more for your reticence. A lesser woman would have whispered my secrets to the world.”

The younger Ferris stiffened. For the first time in her life, the older recognized the gesture as one she had learned from Giserre. “I would never do such a thing.”

As if the apparent difference between their ages were real, Wellin patted her companion’s hand. “That is why I have always trusted you.”

“We’ve been friends a long time, Wellin. Now is not the time to start saying things you might regret.”

“I am not trying to be rude,” said the queen crossly. “But I did want to tell you how unfair it has all been, how terribly one-sided. I should have been the one whose husband left her, not you.”

The younger Ferris softened. Across the room, Mims squeezed her mother’s hand. The older Ferris found she appreciated the queen’s admission just as much the second time. And it helped to be comforted by her daughter, too.

“Don’t say such things,” said the Ferris on the bed. “We’ve both done our share of good and bad.”

“Yes, but our happiness has been unfairly portioned, all the same. My husband had every reason to leave me, and did not. Yours had no reason at all.”

“That is true.” The sick woman coughed lightly. The younger Ferris wiped her friend’s mouth with the handkerchief she held in her lap for just that purpose. “Through no fault of my own,” the queen went on, “I seem to have landed the better choice. Greedy though I was.”

This time the younger Ferris didn’t contradict the queen. The older knew why. Wellin’s words had the same effect on her the second time, even when they were expected. She had been greedy herself. Thinking she could have it all, the man she had loved for so long and the power and knowledge he brought with him, she had paid no attention to the signs that he might have changed. Reiffen had turned out not to be what she thought, and their life together had ended.

The older Ferris heard the bitterness in her younger self’s voice, though she knew she had tried hard to hide it. Had her disappointment and shame been so obvious all these years?

Wellin’s loving laugh thickened to a heavy cough. The younger Ferris wiped the queen’s mouth again.

“You used to have to tell Hubley that all the time,” said Wellin when her fit had passed. “Not that she ever believed you. Meran was always much more agreeable, like his father. Speaking as a mother, I am very happy he did not turn out much like me.”

“Looks like, yes. Unlike his father, he has broken several dozen hearts already.” There was no mistaking the pride in the queen’s voice, or whom she meant by Merannon’s father. “Unintentionally, of course, for on the inside he is the image of Brizen. Vain though I may be, I am much prouder of the way he takes after His Majesty. Not that I fail to appreciate his ability to enchant every woman he meets, mind you.”

The younger Ferris made no reply. Her daughter squeezed the older’s hand a second time.

“It is hard,” the queen continued. “But I feel certain you will see your own dear child again. Reiffen cannot keep her forever. He may not know that, but something will happen. Please, do not give up hope. I never did, and everything came out perfectly for me in the end.”

Though she had kept from crying then only with great difficulty, the older Ferris found her current mood was much different. Everything had changed; Hubley had escaped from Castle Grangore. Now Reiffen was the one who was at his wits’ end trying to recover Hubley, while Ferris stood with her full-grown and very powerful daughter at her side. More powerful than Wellin’s son would ever be, even when he became king.

A thought struck her. If the mage beside her was Hubley, then that meant there was no need to be concerned about what might happen to the younger version of her daughter still wandering through Bryddlough. Avender really would protect her, otherwise this older Hubley wouldn’t be standing here beside her.

Before she had time to think this new idea through, Hubley—or should she be called Hubley Mims?—pulled her mother back to the corner of the room. Ferris’s younger self had gone to the door to let Brizen and the others back in.

Quick as a Wizard, they were back at the cottage, though this time there was no cask by the door, and no Redburr. “I can do time or space easily and without preparation,” Hubley Mims explained, “but not both. The only reason we traveled to Wellin’s bedside so quickly was because I’d arranged the spell in advance.”

“You knew Redburr and I were coming, didn’t you.” Ferris sat in the same place at the table she was going to occupy nearly two years in the future. “Just as you knew Redburr was going to follow me through the door.”

“That’s right.” Pushing aside the ladder that led to the sleeping loft, her daughter began removing smudges and other magical items from the drawers behind it.

“Does that mean you already know what happens? To Hubley? To Reiffen and me?”

“Believe me, Mother, there’s nothing worse than knowing what’s going to happen. Much worse than spying on your friends. You can get yourself in a lot of trouble if you know too much. Some day I’ll tell you the story about how I tried to change things once and made everything much worse. Better to not know the future at all, than be forced to follow it.”

Ferris arranged herself more comfortably in the chair. “As long as I know everything’s going to work out for you. When you’re younger, that is.”

Hubley Mims stopped what she was doing long enough to look at her mother. “So, you figured that out, have you?”

“Yes. The fact that you’re standing there, more powerful than even Reiffen ever imagined, proves you’re going to get through everything that’s happening now.”

Ferris’s daughter pulled the last of what she needed from the cabinet and shut the drawers. “Don’t think that makes it any easier, Mother. And we still have to worry about Father. But I’m glad you’ve accepted who I am.”

“If you aren’t who you say you are, Fornoch has given far too much away in revealing the Timespell. Which isn’t to say that’s not what he’s doing anyway, knowing how mixed up the Wizard’s purpose can be sometimes. And if it’s your father who’s done this, well, I can think of a lot more things he’d rather do with this sort of magic than try and trick me. He’d be back trying to stop the death of his father. Either way, it’s a lot easier to just take your word.”

Though Ferris had accepted that Mims was her daughter, she still didn’t feel any special love for the woman. The Hubley standing before her was someone she didn’t know at all. The Hubley she missed remained far away, no closer to a hug and a kiss than when Ferris had set off to find her that morning.

She watched as the daughter who was probably older than she was prepared the Timespell, surprised at how similar it was to the magic of regular traveling. The same smudge pots on the table, the same restful concentration in the caster’s face. But the memories that hurried through Ferris’s mind as her daughter held her hand weren’t the regular memories of a travel spell. Instead her awareness surged forward, day and night scrambling across the cottage in a rapid run of light and shadow. Like deer flickering through closely set trees, time darted across her mind.

“Well?” rumbled Redburr. “Are you going to do something? Or are you two going to just sit there all day holding hands?”

“She’s Hubley. If Fornoch knows the Timespell, there’s no reason he’d be giving it to us now. Not to mention she’s a lot like her father.”

The bear took another lick at his empty bowl. “Well then. What do we do next?”

“Go back to Tower Dale,” said Hubley Mims. “The younger version of me will show up soon enough.”

Chapter 21

The Queen’s Bedchamber