The Magician of Hoad by Margaret Mahy Page B

said at last. “Too many to tell about. I’m nothing but a secret man.” He saw the Hero’s tight expression alter and saw his hand, which had moved to hover over the hilt of a sword that hung at his side, move back just a little. “I climbed and fell,” Heriot said. “Broke a rib, maybe.”
    He barely understood what he was saying or why he was saying it. It was partly because he feared that, even in that grand company, the Hero might strike him down. Yet, even as he lied, he felt the secret he shared with Carlyon suddenly twist and turn into a sort of power within him, for he knew something about the Hero of Hoad that no one else knew, and the knowledge was not to be carelessly spilled and wasted.
    “I think perhaps I should take Heriot Tarbas to the doctors’ tent,” Lord Glass said. “After all, he’s from my country. His family are my people.”
    “And I’m coming with him,” said Prince Dysart quickly. “After all, I’m the one who found him. I rescued him.”
    “I’ve sat on his windowsill and looked in at him a thousand times,” Heriot told them once again, but he was telling himself, too.
    “Put him on my horse,” Lord Glass told Dysart, andDysart bent, cupping his hands so Heriot could put his foot on the small platform of locked fingers and hoist himself high into a saddle so grand that in a curious way it seemed to Heriot he had lifted himself into a safe room with invisible walls.
    “I’ll take him on,” Lord Glass said. “Prince Dysart, you’ve been a friend to him, so walk with us.”
    Heriot felt himself hunching forward, longing to lie along the horse’s neck. And as they left he heard Carlyon the Hero of Hoad saying, “Perhaps he is some sort of Magician, but did you see that smile he gave us? He’s a monster as well as a Magician.”
    By now Heriot thought he might be right.

ON BEING PROTECTED
    Linnet would remember forever the way Dysart behaved when he came upon Heriot being beaten and kicked by other boys. They had been walking together, arguing and joking, speculating about the possibilities of peace—a peace that would last. They had been arguing in a curious, lighthearted way, laughing at each other’s arguments, and it had seemed to Linnet that their voices were weaving a pattern of thought in the air around them as they danced along through a little forest of ideas.
    And then, within seconds it seemed, Dysart forgot her completely. He had leaped in to save the strange beggar boy as if the boy were a friend of his. And the beggar sat up, bleeding, bewildered, and staring, covering one of his eyes as if seeing Dysart with both eyes was too much for him. Afterward, though she followed them and even asked questions, it was as if she had ceased to exist. Linnet was taken aback to find how deeply this sudden exclusion hurt her feelings and how angry she was with Dysart, who wasapparently able to forget her so easily. When, later that night, back in her parents’ tent, Linnet was told that she and her mother were to go home to Hagen in three days’ time, she was delighted.
    “I’ve had enough of this place,” she said, but her mother, who was brushing her own hair, did not look up or smile an agreement.
    “Your father thinks it is too dangerous for us,” she said. “They say there’s an outbreak of sickness among the camp followers.” Her voice was calm… too calm for Linnet, who wanted her mother to rejoice. She wanted her mother to make their return even more real by flinging her arms wide and singing, “Home to Hagen!”
    So she flung out her own arms and spun around joyously, dancing on her mother’s behalf as well as her own. She saw her skirts spinning too—a wheel of colors.
    “Isn’t it wonderful?” she cried.
    “Of course,” her mother answered from behind her veiling hair, and Linnet came to a sudden stop.
    “Don’t you want to go home?” she persisted, made suddenly uneasy by her mother’s curious calm.
    “Of course,” repeated her mother,