“Old meddler.” The prince himself rode forward, curvetted his black horseunder the window. “Old fraud. Come down and live. Give us the tower intact — to use… and live. Tomorrow morning — we come with fire and iron. And thestones fall — old man.”

The old man said nothing. The men rode away.

The old man climbed the stairs, the teasel clattering in his palsied hands. Hisheart hurt. When he looked out on the land, his heart hurt him terribly. Theelves no longer came. The birds and the beasts had all fled the burning. Therewas only the mouse and the hedgehog and the few doves who had lived all theirlives in the loft. And the few sparrows who came. Only them now.

He set the tray down, absent-mindedly took the hedgehog from his pocket and setit by the dormouse on the tray, took a cake and crumbled it on the window-ledgefor the birds. A tear ran down into his beard.

Old fraud. He was. He had only little magics, forest magics. But they’d burnedall his forest and scattered the elves, and he failed even these last fewcreatures. They would overthrow the tower. They would spread over all the land,and there would be no more magic in the world. He should have done somethinglong ago — but he had never done a great magic. He should have raisedwhirlwinds and elementals — but he could not so much as summon the leggedteapot up the stairs. And his heart hurt, and his courage failed. The birdsfailed to come — foreknowing, perhaps. The hedgehog and the dormouse looked athim with eyes small and solemn in the firelight, last of all.

No. He stirred himself, hastened to the musty books — his master’s books,dusty and a thousand times failed. You’ve not the heart, his master wouldsay. You’ve not the desire for the great magics. You’ll call nothing — because you want nothing.