Year of the Griffin Read online

  DEDICATION

  FOR SUSAN HIRSCHMAN

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Excerpt from Howl’s Moving Castle

  Chapter One: In which Sophie talks to hats

  Excerpt from The Merlin Conspiracy

  Chapter One

  Excerpt from Dark Lord of Derkholm

  Chapter One

  Excerpt from Archer’s Goon

  Chapter One

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  ONE

  NOTHING WAS GOING right with the Wizards’ University. When High Chancellor Querida decided that she could not change the world and run the University as well, she took herself and her three cats off to a cottage beside the Waste, leaving the older wizards in charge. The older wizards seized the opportunity to retire. Now, eight years after the tours ended, the University was run by a committee of rather younger wizards, and it was steadily losing money.

  For forty years before that, the University had been forced to provide for Mr. Chesney’s offworld Pilgrim Parties. Wizards had also been made to provide magical events for the tours. Tourists from the next universe had come in droves every year, expecting to have adventures with elves, dwarfs, dragons, and the powers of darkness, and most years this left the world laid waste. The wizards then had to put it straight for the next year. Mr. Chesney, whose orders were backed by a powerful demon, had been very strict in his requirements, and he had paid for this service in gold. When almost everyone in the world united to put a stop to the Pilgrim Parties, the payments naturally stopped, so it was small wonder that the University was short of funds.

  “We need to make the place pay somehow,” the Chairman, Wizard Corkoran, said anxiously at the beginning-of-term meeting. “We’ve raised the student fees again—”

  “And got fewer students than ever,” Wizard Finn pointed out, although to hear the shouts and the bang and scrape of luggage from the courtyard outside, you would have thought most of the world was currently arriving there.

  “Fewer, yes,” Corkoran said, looking at the list by his elbow, “but the ones we have got must all come from very rich families, or they couldn’t afford the fees. It stands to reason. I propose we ask these families for money; we could put up a plaque with their names on. People like that.”

  Wizard Finn shot a look at the lovely Wizard Myrna, who turned down the corners of her shapely mouth. The rest of the committee simply stared at Corkoran with different sorts of blankness. Corkoran was always having ideas, and none of them worked. The students thought Corkoran was wonderful. Many of them imitated his style of wearing an offworld necktie over an offworld T-shirt—both with pictures on—and did their hair like Corkoran in a wavy blond puff brushed back from the forehead. Quite a few of the girl students were in love with him. But then they were only taught by him, Finn thought gloomily. They didn’t have to wrestle with his ideas of how to run a university.

  “We can’t afford a plaque,” said Wizard Dench, the Bursar. “Even with all the fees paid, we can only just afford to pay the staff and buy food. We can’t afford to mend the roofs.”

  Wizard Corkoran was used to Dench saying they couldn’t afford things. He waved this away. “Then I’ll float a commemorating spell,” he said. “We can have it circling the Spellman Building or the Observatory tower—transparently, of course, so it won’t get in the way.” When nobody said anything to this, he added, “I can maintain it in my spare time.”

  Nobody said anything to this either. They all knew Corkoran never had any spare time. All the time he could spare from teaching—and much that he couldn’t spare, too—went to his research on how to get to the moon. The moon was his passion. He wanted to be the first man to walk on it.

  “That’s settled then,” said Corkoran. “Money’s bound to pour in. If you just take my first-year tutorial group, you can see the possibilities. Look.” He ran a finger down the list beside him. “There’s King Luther’s eldest son—he’s Crown Prince of Luteria, and he’ll own all sorts of land—Prince Lukin. And the next one’s the sister of Emperor Titus. At least I believe she’s his half sister, but I’m sure we can prevail on the Empire to make a large donation. Then there’s a dwarf. We’ve never had a dwarf before, but they all come from fastnesses stuffed with treasure. And there’s this girl Elda. She’s the daughter of Wizard Derk, who—”

  “Er—” began Finn, who knew Elda quite well.

  “Wizard Derk is a wealthy and important man,” Corkoran continued. “Did you say something, Finn?”

  “Only that Derk doesn’t approve of the University,” Finn said. It was not what he had been going to say.

  “Obviously he changed his mind when he found his daughter had talent,” Corkoran said, “or he wouldn’t be paying for her to come here. All right. That’s agreed then. Myrna, you’re married to a bard. You know how to use Powers of Persuasion. You’re in charge of sending a letter to the parents of all students who—”

  “I, er, have another idea,” Wizard Umberto put in from the end of the conference table. Everyone turned to him hopefully. Umberto was quite young, rather fat, and almost never said anything. The general belief was that Umberto was a brilliant astrologer, except that he never said anything about his work. He went pink, seeing them all looking at him, and stammered, “Oh. Er. I think we should, well, you know, be able to set up a scheme to let people pay for magical information. You know, come from miles away to be told secrets.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly, Umberto,” said Wizard Wermacht. Wermacht was the youngest wizard there, and very proud of the fact. “You’re describing just what we do, anyway.”

  “But only for students, Wermacht,” Umberto stammered shyly. “I thought we could, er, sell everyone horoscopes and so forth.”

  “But then they wouldn’t be secrets!” Wermacht said scornfully. “Your usual muddled thinking. I suggest—”

  “Umberto and Wermacht,” Corkoran said, “you are interrupting the Chair.”

  At this Umberto went pinker still, and Wermacht said, “I’m so sorry, Corkoran. Please do go on.”

  “I’d nearly finished,” Corkoran said. “Myrna is going to send out a letter to the parents of all students, asking for the largest possible donation and telling them their names will go up in a spell with the ones who give most in big letters at the top. We’re bound to get a good response. That’s it. Now forgive me if I rush away. My latest moon studies are very delicate and need watching all the time.” He gathered up his lists and stormed out of the Council Hall, with his tie flapping over his shoulder.

  “I hate these meetings,” Finn said to Myrna as they walked out into the stone foyer together, where the shouts and rumbles from the arriving students echoed louder than ever.

  “So do I,” Myrna said dourly. “Why do I always end up doing the work for Corkoran?”

  Finn found Myrna the most ravishing woman he knew. She had brains and beauty. He was always hoping she might be persuaded to give up her bardic husband and turn to him instead. “It’s too bad,” he said. “Umberto just sits there like Humpty-Dumpty, and Wermacht throws his weight about and then crawls to Corkoran. Dench is useless. It’s no wonder Corkoran’s relying on you.”

  “Of course he does,” said Myrna. “
His head’s in the moon. And I didn’t notice you offering to do anything.”

  “Well,” said Finn. “My schedule—”

  “As if I hadn’t enough to do!” Myrna went on. “I’ve seen to all the students’ rooms, and the college staff, and the kitchens, and the bedding, and there’s probably going to be an outcry when someone realizes that I had to give Derk’s daughter the concert hall to sleep in. She’s too big for anywhere else. How is it, anyway, that Corkoran’s teaching her? Why does he always grab the most interesting students?”

  “That’s just what I was going to say!” Finn cried out, seeing his chance to be truly sympathetic to Myrna. “I’ve met most of those students. I knew them as kids when I was Wizard Guide on the tours, and I tell you it’s going to serve Corkoran right for hogging the ones he thinks are best, or richest, or whatever he thinks they are.”

  “They probably are best,” Myrna said, barely listening. “I did the admissions, too. The University secretaries nearly went mad over that, and they’ll go mad again now they have to get this letter out. And on top of it all, I’ve just discovered I’m pregnant!”

  “Oh,” said Finn. There, he thought, went his hopes of Myrna’s leaving her bard. All he could think of was to say lamely, “Well, anyway, Corkoran’s in for a shock when he sees one of his new students.”

  Finn was right. Next morning Corkoran hurried into the tall stone tutorial chamber and only just managed not to stand stock-still, gaping. He bit his teeth together. He knew better than anyone that his fine, fair good looks caused most students to hang adoringly on his words. He thought of his face as his best teaching aid and was well aware that letting his jaw hang spoiled the effect. So he plastered a smile across it. But he still stood rooted to the spot.

  Blazing out of the decidedly motley set of young people in the room—like a sunburst, Corkoran thought dazedly—was a huge golden griffin. He was not sure he was safe. Not exactly a huge griffin, he told himself hastily. He had heard that some griffins were about twice the size of an elephant. This one was only as large as an extra-big plow horse. But she—he could somehow tell it was a she; there was an enormous, emphatic sheness to this griffin—she was so brightly golden in fur and crest and feathers, so sharply curved of beak, and so fiercely alert in her round orange eyes that at first sight she seemed to fill the room. He noticed a dwarf somewhere down by her great front talons—and noticed with irritation that the fellow was in full war gear—but that was all. He very nearly turned and ran away.

  Still, he had come to teach these students and also to find out, if possible, how wealthy their parents were, so he pasted the smile wider on his face and began his usual speech of welcome to the University.

  The students gazed at him with interest, particularly at his tie, which this morning had two intertwined pink and yellow dragons on it, and at the words on his T-shirt under the tie.

  “What’s MOON SOON mean?” rumbled the dwarf. Probably he thought he was whispering. It gave a peculiarly grating, surly boom to his voice.

  “Hush!” said the griffin, probably whispering, too. It sounded like a very small scream. “It may mean something magical.”

  The dwarf leaned forward with a rattle of mail and peered. “There’s another word under his tie,” he grated. “SHOT. It’s SHOT. Why should anyone shoot the moon?”

  “It must be a spell,” small-screamed the griffin.

  Corkoran realized that between the two of them he was being drowned out. “Well, that’s enough about the University,” he said. “Now I want to know about you. I suggest each of you speaks in turn. Tell the rest of us your name, who your parents are, and what made you want to come and study here, while the rest of you listen quietly. Why don’t you start?” he said, pointing at the large, shabby young man on the other side of the griffin. “No, no, you don’t have to stand up!” Corkoran added hastily as the young man’s morose-looking face reddened and the young man tried to scramble to his feet. “Just sit comfortably and tell us about yourself. Everyone can be quite relaxed about this.”

  The young man sank back, looking far from relaxed. He seemed worried. He pulled nervously at the frayed edges of his thick woolen jacket and then planted a large hand on each knee so that they covered the patches there. “My name is Lukin,” he said. “My father is King of Luteria—in the north, you know—and I’m, er, his eldest son. My father, well, how do I put this? My father isn’t paying my fees. I don’t think he could afford to, anyway. He doesn’t approve of my doing magic, and he, er, doesn’t want me here. He likes his family at home with him.”

  Corkoran’s heart sank at this, and sank further as Lukin went on, “Our kingdom’s very poor, you know, because it was always being devastated by Mr. Chesney’s tours. But my grandmother—my mother’s mother, that is—was a wizard—Melusine, you may have heard of her—and I’ve inherited her talent. Sort of. From the time I was ten I was always having magical accidents, and my grandmother said the only way to stop having them was to train properly as a wizard. So she left me her money for the fees when she died, but of course the fees have gone up since her day and I’ve had to save and economize in order to be here. But I do intend to learn, and I will stop having accidents. A king shouldn’t spend his time making holes in things.” He was almost crying with earnestness as he finished.

  Corkoran could have cried, too. He made a secret mark on his list to tell Myrna not to waste time asking King Luther for money and asked, “What kinds of accidents do you have?”

  Lukin sighed. “Most kinds. But I’m worst when there’s anything to do with pits and holes.”

  Corkoran had no notion how you put a stop to that kind of trouble. Perhaps Myrna did. He added another scribble to remind himself to ask Myrna. He said encouragingly, “Well, you’ve come to the right place, Lukin. Thank you. Now you.” He pointed to the large young woman sitting behind the dwarf. She was very elegantly dressed in dark suede, and the elegance extended to her long, fine, fair hair, which was drawn stylishly back inside an expensive-looking scarf to set off her decidedly beautiful hawklike face. From the look of command on that face and the hugely expensive fur cloak thrown casually over the chair behind her, Corkoran had no doubt that she was the Emperor’s sister.

  She gave him a piercing blue-eyed look. “I am Olga,” she said.

  “And?” invited Corkoran.

  “I do not wish to say,” she replied. “Here I wish to be accepted as I am, purely for magical ability. I have been raising winds and monsters since I was quite a small child.” She sat back, clearly intending to say no more.

  So the Emperor’s sister wishes to remain incognita, Corkoran thought. Fair enough. It could be awkward with the other students. He nodded knowingly and pointed to the tall, narrow, brown-faced fellow half hidden behind Olga and the griffin’s left wing. “And you?”

  “Felim ben Felim,” the young man replied, bowing in the manner of the eastern countries. “I, too, wish to say little about myself. If the Emir were to discover I am here studying, he would very likely dispatch assassins to terminate me. He has promised that he would, at least.”

  “Oh,” said Corkoran. “Er, is the Emir likely to discover you?”

  “I trust not,” Felim replied calmly. “My tutor, the wizard Fatima, has cast many spells to prevent the Emir from noticing my absence, and she furthermore assures me that the wards of the University will be considerable protection to me also. But our lives are in the laps of the gods.”

  “True,” Corkoran said, making a particularly black and emphatic scribble beside Felim’s name. He did not know Wizard Fatima and certainly did not share the woman’s faith that the University could protect anyone from assassins. Myrna must definitely not send a letter to Felim’s parents. If the answer came in assassins, they could all be in trouble. A pity. People were rich in the Emirates. He sighed and pointed with his pen at the other young woman in the group, sitting quietly behind Lukin. Corkoran had her placed in his mind, almost from the start, as the daughter of Wizard Der
k. He had met Derk more than once and had been struck by his unassuming look. Quite extraordinary, Corkoran always thought, for the man whom the gods had trusted with the job of setting the world to rights after what Mr. Chesney had done to it to look so modest. The young woman had a similar humble, almost harassed look. She was rather brown and very skinny and sat huddled in a shawl of some kind, over which her hair fell in dark, wet-looking coils on her shoulders. She twisted her long fingers in the shawl as she spoke. Corkoran could have sworn her dark ringlets of hair twisted about, too. She gave him a worried stare from huge greenish eyes.

  “I’m Claudia,” she said huskily, “and the Emperor of the South is my half brother. Titus is in a very difficult position over me, because my mother is a Marshwoman, and the Senate doesn’t want to acknowledge me as a citizen of the Empire. My mother was so unhappy there in the Empire, you see, that she went back to the Marshes. The Senate thinks I should renounce my citizenship as Mother did, but Titus doesn’t want me to do that at all. And the trouble over me got worse when it turned out that the gift for magic that all Marshpeople have didn’t mix at all with Empire magic. I’m afraid I have a jinx. In the end Titus sent me here secretly, for safety, hoping I could learn enough to cure the jinx.”

  Corkoran tried not to look as amazed as he felt. His eyes shot to Olga. Was she Derk’s daughter then? He switched his eyes back to Claudia with an effort. He could see she had Marsh blood now. That olive skin and the thinness, which always made him think of frogs. His sympathy was with the Senate there. Perhaps they would pay the University to keep the girl. “What kind of jinx?” he said.

  A slightly greenish blush swept over Claudia’s thin face. “It goes through everything.” She sighed. “It made it rather difficult to get here.”

  This was exasperating, Corkoran thought. Something that serious was almost certainly incurable. It was frustrating. So far he had a king’s son with no money, an obviously wealthy girl who would not say who she was, a young man threatened with assassins if the University admitted he was here, and now the Emperor’s jinxed sister, whom the Empire didn’t want. He turned with some relief to the dwarf. Dwarfs always had treasure—and tribes, too, who were prepared to back them up. “You now,” he said.