“What will you give me if I tell you?”
“What could you want from me?”
This was why she had agreed to meet him. She drew a deep breath, and said, “To know if Sarima, Dowager Princess of the Arjikis, is still alive. And where I might find her, and how I might negotiate her freedom.”
The Wizard smiled. “How all things work together. Now isn’t it interesting that I could guess of your concern.” He waved a hand. Unseen attendants outside the open door ushered in a dwarf in clean white trousers and tunic.
No, it wasn’t a dwarf, she saw; it was a young woman crouching. Chains sewn into the collar of her tunic ran through her clothes to her ankles, keeping her bent over; the chains were only two or three feet long. The Witch had to peer to see for sure that it was Nor. She would be sixteen by now, or seventeen. The age that Elphie had been when she went up to Crage Hall at Shiz.
“Nor,” said the Witch, “Nor, are you there?”
Nor’s knees were filthy and her fingers curled around the links of her bondage. Her hair was cut short, and welts were visible beneath the patchy tresses. She tossed her head as if listening to music, but she would not shift her gaze toward Elphaba.
“Nor, it’s Auntie Witch. I’ve come to bargain for your release, at last,” said the Witch, improvising.
But the Wizard motioned the unseen attendants to usher Nor out of sight. “I’m afraid that is not possible,” he said. “She is my protection from you, you see.”
“The others?” said the Witch. “I must know.”
“Everything is undocumented,” said the Wizard, “but I believe Sarima and her sisters are all dead.”
The Witch’s breath caught in her chest. The last hopes of forgiveness gone! . . . but the Wizard was continuing. “Perhaps some underling who had no authority in the matter had an appetite for a bloodbath. It’s so hard to get reliable help in the armed forces.”
“Irji?” said the Witch, gripping her elbows.
“Now he had to die,” said the Wizard apologetically. “He was the next in line to be Prince, wasn’t he?”
“Tell me it was not brutal,” said the Witch. “Oh, tell me so!”
“The Paraffin Necklace,” admitted the Wizard. “Well, it was a public affair. A statement needed to be made. There now, against my better judgment, I have told you what you wanted to know. Now it is your turn. Where can I find the book that this page is from?” The Wizard took the paper out of his pocket and pressed it out onto his lap. His hands were trembling. He looked at the page. “A spell for the Administration of Dragons,” he said, wonderingly.
“Is that what it is?” she said, surprised. “I could not be sure.”
“Of course. You must have a hard time making this out,” he said. “You see, it does not come from this world. It comes from my world.”
He was mad, obsessed with other worlds. Like her father.
“You are not telling the truth,” said the Witch, hoping she was right.
“Oh, what care I for the truth,” he said, “but I am truthful, as it happens.”
“Why would you want that?” said the Witch, trying to buy some time, trying to figure out how she could barter for Nor’s life. “I don’t even know what it is. I don’t believe you do either.”
“I do,” he said. “This is an ancient manuscript of magic, generated in a world far away from this one. It was long thought to be merely legendary, or else destroyed in the dark onslaughts of the northern invaders. It had been removed from our world for safety by a wizard more capable than I. It is why I came to Oz in the first place,” he continued, almost talking to himself, as old men are prone to do. “Madame Blavatsky located it in a crystal ball, and I made the appropriate sacrifices and—arrangements—to travel here forty years ago. I was a young man, full of ardor and failure. I had not intended to rule a country here, but just to find this document and return it to its own world, and to study its secrets there.”
“What kind of sacrifices?” she said. “You do not stint from murder here.”
“Murder is a word used by the sanctimonious,” he said. “It is an expedient expression with which they condemn any courageous action beyond their ken. What I did, what I do, cannot be murder. For, coming from another world, I cannot be held accountable to the silly conventions of a naive civilization. I am beyond that lisping childish recital of wrongs and rights.” His eyes did not burn as he spoke; they were sunk behind veils of cold blue detachment.
“If I give the Grimmerie to you, will you go?” she said. “Give me Nor and take your brand of evil and leave us alone at last?”
“I am too old to travel now,” he said, “and why should I give up what I have worked for all these years?”
“Because I will use this book and destroy you with it if you don’t,” she said.
“You cannot read it,” he said. “You are of Oz and you cannot do such a thing.”
“I can read more of it than you suspect,” she said. “I do not know what it all means. I have seen pages about unleashing the hidden energies of matter. I have seen pages about tampering with the orderly flow of time. I have seen disquisitions about weapons too vile to use, about how to poison water, about how to breed a more docile population. There are diagrams of weapons of torture. Though the drawings and the words seem misty to my eyes, I can continue to learn. I am not too old.”
