“He is an animal,” Abernathy muttered. “Stupid Gnome.”
“Stupid or not, we have to help him,” Elizabeth said at once.
“What we have to do,” Questor announced quickly, “is to go back to the house, where I can study this book and find out if it is what we are looking for.”
“It better be,” Abernathy grumbled. “I have seen all I care to see of Graum Wythe!”
“Where do you think they will take him?” Elizabeth asked, her brow creased with worry.
“Wherever they think he came from, I suppose,” Questor replied absently. He was peering down into the carry bag at the book.
“I just don’t want us to forget about him a second time,” Elizabeth insisted. They started for the entry. “He looks so helpless.”
“Believe me, he is anything but,” Abernathy sniffed. He was thinking about the G’home Gnomes’ penchant for eating stray pets. “He does not deserve an ounce of your sympathy. He is a nuisance, plain and simple.”
Elizabeth took his hand and squeezed it. “You are being difficult, Abernathy. It’s not his fault he’s here.”
“It is not our fault, either. Nor our responsibility.”
“She’s right, you know,” Questor Thews offered.
Abernathy gave his friend a scathing look. “I know she’s right. You don’t have to tell me that.”
“I was just trying to point out—“
“Confound it, Questor Thews, why do you insist on belaboring—“
Still arguing between themselves while Elizabeth tried in vain to reestablish some semblance of peace, the wizard and the scribe passed down the corridor to the front door of the castle and out into the fading light.
In front of them, a King County police car was just pulling away.
* * *
After their return to Elizabeth’s house, Questor Thews stayed up all night reading the purloined book. He sat curled up in an easy chair in the far corner of his bedroom with a single light illuminating the pages as he turned them one by one. He was certain early on that this book was what they had been looking for and that hidden within its text lay the answer to the riddle behind their improbable escape from Nightshade. Theories of Magic and Its Uses. They were right there, all the discoveries of all the wizards since the dawn of Landover, set out as postulates and axioms, theories proved and suspected, absent only the recipe and ingredients for each specific stew. They were theories, not formulas, but were quite enough to get at the essence of things. Questor even knew what to look for. He hated himself for this, but the obviousness of the truth facing him was inescapable once he accepted its possibility. He worked his way through the book tirelessly, ignoring his exhaustion, suppressing his growing fear, reading on determinedly.
Across the room from him Abernathy slept with his face turned away from the light. It was just as well. His friend didn’t want to have to look at him just now.
Sometime during the long, slow hours after midnight Questor Thews discovered what he was looking for. Even so, he kept reading, not wanting to take anything for granted, not wanting to give up his search for a better answer, although he knew already that there wasn’t going to be one. He read all the way through the book and back again. He studied individual passages and considered alternative possibilities until his head hurt. Then he went back to the passage he had discovered earlier and read it again slowly, carefully. There was no mistake. It was what he was looking for. It was the answer he had been seeking.
He sighed and put the book down in his lap. He looked over at Abernathy again, and tears came to his eyes. His face crumpled, and his chest ached with need. Life was just so unfair sometimes. He wished things could be different. He wished this could be happening to someone else. His sticklike frame twisted into a clutter of old bones and wrinkled skin, and his heart knotted in his chest.
Finally, exhausted of feeling, he reached up, turned out the light, and sat motionless in the dark, waiting for morning.
Specter