The Magician of Hoad by Margaret Mahy Page A

rider… a white face looking out of the shadows of a black hood. As he met the eyes staring out of this white face, they blinked rapidly, and the face seemed to shrink away from him, deeper in under the hood, as if it were trying to hide in shadows.
    And now, in spite of his pain and his tiredness, something ferocious happened to Heriot. He’d never met the hooded man, yet he knew him at once. He recognized thequality of the power this man gave off, and knew—beyond all doubt—that since he had been a small child, perhaps from his very birth, this man, this creature, had been aware of him, had somehow hovered over him, had somehow fed on him, feasting on the power that now seemed to be so much a part of him, and throwing him into huge disorder. At last he was confronting in a tangible form the consuming essence that had torn into him over and over again in his nightmares, triggering agonizing headaches and the violent, twisting fits that had so disfigured his early childhood. He was face-to-face with the predator who had torn him in two and who had forced some part of himself to hide behind a black window in a lost part of his head. But up on the hillside, with Cassio’s Island on his right hand and his home on the left, that protecting division, that black glass, had dissolved. He might be confused. He might be troubled and exhausted, but standing there in the city of tents, he was almost a single man once more.
    “Dysart! Who is your friend?” asked the crowned rider in a grave and formal voice.
    “He’s just—oh, someone I saved,” the boy who had volunteered to be Heriot’s crutch answered, with something almost impudent in his voice. “As you would know, Lord King, the edge of a battlefield is a great place for saving people.”
    “Those others tried to kick me to death,” Heriot mumbled, “but this one saved me. Maybe that’s why I’ve sat on his windowsill all those years—maybe I needed him to know me when the time came.” The men on horseback stared down at them in silence. Their expressions didn’tchange, yet Heriot felt an odd startlement thrilling through them, as if he’d just answered a riddle they’d been asking themselves for years—a riddle they had all largely derided. “I knew him straight off,” Heriot said, then paused. “But I only know one of you,” he added, lying quickly, somehow knowing that lying was the safest thing to do just then. “I know Lord Glass.”
    Now Lord Glass opened his mouth, but the boy called Dysart raced in to speak first, glancing sideways at Heriot.
    “You’re in grand company,” he said. “This is my father, the King of Hoad. And that’s Carlyon the Hero of Hoad, and Izachel, the Magician of Hoad.” He spoke the formal titles as if he were making fun of them.
    There was no way of truly taking in everything he’d been told. For all that, Heriot felt himself straightening, and then, incredibly, he felt his battered face twisting into that ominous smile—that smile he had smiled only once before. He felt that smile fly out from him… and felt the riders receive it… each one in a different way, though momentarily, they all seemed to shrink from him.
    “Some Hero!” Heriot said, directing his smile at Carlyon.
    “Just for a moment my breath was quite taken away from me, but I can clarify things,” Lord Glass said quickly. “Lord King, this is none other than Heriot Tarbas, the boy who—”
    The crowned King turned sharply, interrupting him.
    “What? The one who…”
    “That very one, Lord King. Right at this moment he might look like a scrap left over from the battle, but Ipromise you, he has the power. Dr. Feo will confirm it. Heriot Tarbas, it seems you have had some adventures since I saw you last.”
    Still partly supported by Prince Dysart, Heriot continued to stare at Carlyon, Hero of Hoad. He dared not look at the Magician—that shadow of a creature—just a little beyond the King and the Hero.
    “Too many adventures,” he