The Magician of Hoad by Margaret Mahy

Author:Margaret Mahy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
Published: 2009-08-25T04:00:00+00:00

TRUE KINGDOMS

You’re all I ever really wanted. You’re my true kingdom,” Dysart said to Linnet. “The city was only a sign of you.” At the moment it seemed completely true. “Back there in the dream, I just cut the world out. I didn’t want to know anything, because there was nothing worth knowing anymore. I wasn’t even curious. I didn’t want to know what was going to happen next. I didn’t understand.”

“Understand what?” Linnet asked.

“You’re my true kingdom,” Dysart told her.

“It was always meant to be,” Linnet said. Her happy voice came to Dysart from his own shadow, which lay across her. “But we had to be tested.” He couldn’t tell that, as Linnet spoke, she was testing every part of her memory and awareness, fearful of detecting some secret contamination of her own will by the will of the Magician of Hoad. She couldn’t bear the thought that she and Dysart had achieved each other only because Heriot had somehow slipped desire under their skins. But there was nothing there that was not her own. Heriot might have hovered around her as she risked her life and climbed the wall by its disintegrating steps, but her declaration of love was hers alone.

Outside she could detect the first alteration of light. It was still dark, but it was a transparent darkness. Morning was on the way. “My father will be looking for me,” she said with a sigh. “There are terrible fights ahead of us. He wants to be the one who chooses my husband.”

“Let’s stroll out of here. Let’s walk like civilized sentries around the rim of the castle,” Dysart suggested. “Just once round the walls. Then you can go back and fight with your father, and I’ll go and argue with mine. Don’t straighten the bed! Don’t touch a thing. I’ll come back, see the mark of your head on my pillow, and I’ll know it was all true.”

Linnet stood up, feeling so light and free without her clothes, she was reluctant to dress again. But the night had become part of a time that was attainable only through memory. Day was bearing down on her. She slipped a linen chemise over a silk one. Dysart buttoned a crumpled shirt, and they dressed, putting on the world along with yesterday’s grubby clothes. “Your father… ,” began Dysart. “Linnet, you must think hard about what it really means… being in love with me.”

“I would always have fought for you if I’d known you were going to be fighting beside me,” Linnet declared.

She meant it. She meant it.

They walked down the winding stair toward a guttering torch, paling in that first morning light, and then out under an arched doorway onto the battlements. Far below them the Bramber flowed; far beyond them the three Rings of the city stretched toward the first rising hills of County Glass. Nothing in that outer world had changed, yet Linnet had never felt as consciously free as she felt now, as easy, as pure within herself.

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