It never ceases to amaze me... the way people always manage to worry about the wrong things. -- Diana Wynne Jones, Witch Week

The next two days were as rainy and miserable as could be. Solvej spent the time in using the cape to turn into a swan. It was a strange sensation, turning into a swan when she put on the cape and becoming a ghost again when she took it off. She had spent a good part of the first day trying to work out if she really became a swan, or if the spell merely tricked her mind into believing she did. No satisfactory answer was forthcoming, so she decided to give up before wondering drove her mad.

Hjalmar was very poor company during this time.

"She's a holy terror!" he complained when Solvej asked where he had been. "She keeps nagging me about remembering all these ridiculous etiquette rules and speaking with an upper-class accent. You'd think that when her niece is cursed, she'd have better things to do than snap at me all day long!"

Solvej carefully did not smile. She suspected that the Grand Duchess had found a somewhat-productive outlet for her concern for Rigmor. She also suspected that Hjalmar would not appreciate her pointing this out.

"Could you time how long it takes me to fly around the tower?" she asked, changing the subject.

Hjalmar looked at her as if she'd grown a second head. "Fly?"

"With the cloak," she explained.

This still didn't seem to reassure him, for reasons she couldn't fathom. "But why do you want me to time you?"

"So I'll know how fast I can fly."

He still looked dubious about this idea. She couldn't understand why. But then, her ideas always seemed to provoke this sort of reaction from him. They made perfect sense to her, but other people's minds worked in different ways.

~~~~

"Ready... set... go!"

Solvej-in-swan-form took off from the windowsill. Hjalmar was too busy watching the clock to see her go.

"Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven..." He recited the numbers under his breath as the second hand moved around the clock. "One minute. One, two, three..."

Three minutes and forty-eight seconds had passed before Solvej landed on the windowsill. She removed the cape, turning from a swan to a ghost. She looked disappointed when he told her how long she'd been gone.

"I was hoping I'd be faster," she said with a sigh of discontent. "Oh, well. I'll just have to practice. Would you mind timing me again?"

Hjalmar had nothing better to do, and the Grand Duchess was unlikely to look for him in a sitting room at the bottom of the north tower, so he had no objections.

~~~~

By the time the bell rang for dinner, Solvej had managed to circle the tower in one minute and twenty seconds. She reluctantly accepted this as the best she was likely to get.

"What if I'm not fast enough?" she wondered aloud as they made their way down to dinner. "What if the Magician gets away before I'm anywhere near him?"

Hjalmar raised an eyebrow. "Are you afraid? I thought you were sure you could defeat him."

"I'm not afraid!" she denied, too quickly for sincerity. Hjalmar raised the other eyebrow. "...All right. I'm ever so slightly afraid."

"What are you afraid of?" he asked. His voice wavered despite his best attempts to keep it steady.

It hit Solvej like a tonne of bricks that if she lost her nerve, he would be dead and so would a good many other people. She could not panic. Not now. Not when so much was at stake.

"Nothing," she said, gritting her teeth and wishing the Magician had never inflicted his presence upon them. "Nothing important."

~~~~

There was a slight miscalculation in Solvej's plan. The Magician didn't come to the parasite. The parasite went to the Magician.

It was the fourth day since the parasite's challenge. Solvej was beginning to become very worried. Would the parasite not consult with the Magician after all?

Then, just as Solvej was wondering about the possibility of a spell that would allow a witch to make a general guess at someone's thoughts -- not to truly read them, but to get a vague impression of what they were thinking about -- she saw the parasite fly past the window.

At first she didn't believe her eyes. It was simply not possible that Rigmor, or rather her body under the parasite's control, had somehow sprouted wings. It was just as impossible that the parasite could have flown past the window and out of the palace grounds, in broad daylight, when goodness knew how many people were bound to see it.

Solvej leapt to her feet and ran over to the window. No, she wasn't imagining it. The parasite really was flying away.

It took a moment for the seriousness of this situation to dawn on her. The parasite was almost out of sight before Solvej's common sense woke up.

There was no time to write a note. The swan-cape was draped over the back of her chair. She snatched it up, opened the window, put the cape on, and flew out.

~~~~

The parasite made no attempt to avoid notice. As Solvej-in-swan-form followed it over the city, and heard the startled exclamations and disbelieving remarks coming from the people on the streets, she wondered if the parasite was terminally stupid. What sort of creature outright tried to attract notice when doing something unusual? That sort of behaviour had triggered witch hunts in the past. And the victims of those witch hunts were rarely the people who caused the whole fuss.

Oblivious to the gawking bystanders below, the parasite flew on. It left the city behind and passed over fields and forests. Solvej followed, staying closer to the ground and at a safe distance. Only now did she realise that a swan was hardly an inconspicuous bird. If the parasite noticed her it would be sure to be curious.

They flew over forests, rivers, villages, and hills. Solvej cast her strongest concealment spell after an hour of flying. The parasite apparently hadn't noticed her yet, but if she stayed visible then it was just a matter of time before it did.

Even the most unobservant of parasites would become suspicious if a swan kept on following them.

Their flight continued for so long that Solvej grew tired. She knew on some level that she wasn't truly a swan, and so could not feel pain in the wings she did not have. That didn't stop phantom pain shooting through her shoulders, neck and back with each beat of her "wings".

At long, long last they neared their destination. It was hard to mistake it. A tall mountain loomed ahead, its sides stripped of all vegetation but a few stunted trees. A pervasive air of gloom hung over the whole place. It was, in short, exactly the sort of place where the Magician would feel right at home.

Solvej stopped at a safe distance from the mountain. The parasite flew on.

The ghost landed on a patch of bare ground under the shade of a leafless tree. She had a decision to make. Going closer would be dangerous. There was the possibility that the parasite wasn't oblivious to her presence as it seemed. If it knew she was there, it might be leading her into a trap. Even if it didn't know she was there, the Magician was sure to notice something if she got too close to him.

On the other hand, if she didn't go closer, Hjalmar would die and the Magician would win.

Only one thing for it, then.

Solvej took off again, and headed towards the mountain.

~~~~

Finding a way into the mountain was easier said than done. The parasite had had such a head start that following it was impossible. She didn't even know where it had gone. The best she could do was fly in the general direction the parasite had taken, and hope for the best.

Solvej flew over sheer cliffs, narrow ledges and rocky outcroppings without seeing any way in. There were crevices and caves dotted over the mountain's sides, but none of them disguised hidden entrances.

With each minute that went by, her chances of eavesdropping on the parasite and the Magician diminished rapidly. She had to get inside!

She was about half-way up the mountain-side when she spotted it. There was a flat ledge at the top of a sheer cliff, and at its back there was a narrow crack in the rock. She flew closer to get a better look.

At once she knew she'd found the entrance. Dark magic tainted the air like a disease. The thought of going in there set her teeth on edge. But she had no choice.

~~~~

The Magician's lair was as gloomy and depressing as she would have expected of anything associated with him. Mould grew on the walls. Dank pools of foul-smelling water were dotted over the steeply sloping path. A stench of decay and rotting flesh permeated the air.

Solvej proceeded carefully down the passage, keeping a wary eye open for traps or anything else that might be lurking around. It was unusually wide for the entrance to a magician's lair. On the one hand, this made it easy for Solvej to get down it without hitting her wings against the walls. On the other hand, this made her worry about what sort of creatures lurked in this mountain, if they needed such a wide entrance.

The passage abruptly ended. As was only to be expected of anything the Magician had a hand in, it ended in the most dangerous way possible. It opened onto a pit, and the floor dropped away. Solvej flew right past the edge before she noticed this. She let out an undignified -- and far too loud -- squawk upon finding herself about fifty feet above the ground.

It's a good thing I'm a bird, or that could have been nasty, she thought.

She descended warily, watching for any signs of life. The strange, sunken courtyard-like area beneath her remained deserted. Was it a trick? Did the Magician know she was here?

A draft whistled around the room. Clearly, the Magician couldn't be bothered to properly insulate the place. Why did his minions keep working for him? Did they simply grin and bear it? A ridiculous image appeared in Solvej's head, of goblin mothers telling their children to put on their hats, scarves and gloves, because the Magician had forgotten to pay the heating bill again. She suppressed the urge to giggle.

Now, where was that damned Magician?

~~~~

Finding the Magician was surprisingly easy. All she had to do was follow the shouting.

It was distant and muted at first, more an exclamation than a shout. Soon it became louder and more insistent. Solvej followed the sound through a maze of increasingly narrow hallways.

The people who live here must need a map to find their way around, she thought, stopping to take the cloak off while keeping the spell intact.

The shouting continued. Indeed, it only increased in volume and ferocity. The walls seemed to tremble with the force of it. Solvej picked up a few words that sounded like "idiot", "hare-brained", and "shoes". She suspected she had misheard that last one.

She rounded a corner and found herself nearly walking into the parasite. With a hastily-silenced yelp, she retreated and hid round the corner. Concealing spell or not, she wasn't about to walk into the same room as the Magician.

Solvej peeped around the corner.  The passageway opened onto a circular room that might under other circumstances have been a sitting room. Directly in front of the passage, the parasite stood with her head down, apparently not daring to look up. The Magician stalked back and forth around the room, his movements as abrupt and jerky as ever.

"You dolt, out of all the challenges you could have set him, you had to tell him to guess your thoughts. As if any reasonably-powerful witch couldn't do that!"

A reasonably-powerful witch couldn't do that, Solvej thought with a frown. Was the Magician overestimating her powers? Did he think that every witch had the same powers he did? And if so, was that a good thing or a bad thing?

The Magician stopped his pacing and took a deep breath. Solvej dived back in case he saw her.

"You couldn't have told him to find some impossible object, I suppose."

"I didn't think of that!" the parasite complained.

The Magician growled. His temper had clearly not improved over the years. Solvej peeked back around the corner. He had resumed his pacing. If he kept that up, he'd wear a hole in the floor.

After a moment's pause, the parasite spoke up. "What should I think of, when he tries to answer the riddle?"

The Magician growled again. Really, did he sometimes lose the ability to speak? Did he think he was a dog? Whatever the reason, it was annoying.

"Think of something obvious. Something every-day. Something so mundane that he would never think of it in a million years."

Aha! Now they were getting somewhere! Solvej pressed against the wall of the passage and strained her ears for fear of missing something.

The parasite muttered under its breath. Solvej bit back a groan. If it didn't speak up, she'd never be able to hear it.

"What was that?"

Apparently the Magician had the same problem. Thank goodness for small mercies.

"I said, what about a shoe?"

Silence. Solvej risked glancing around the corner. The Magician was standing frozen in place just in front of the parasite. His mouth was slightly open and his brow was furrowed, as if he knew what confusion looked like and was trying to imitate it without knowing how.

"A shoe?"

The parasite nodded eagerly. "It's something obvious, normal and mundane, and no one would ever think it was the answer to a riddle."

It was disconcerting to realise that the parasite was right. Who would ever expect someone to think of a shoe? Solvej certainly wouldn't have, prior to overhearing this conversation.

"Very well then," the Magician said. "The answer to your riddle is... a shoe."

Solvej calmly and quietly tiptoed back down the passageway. As soon as she reached a place where it widened enough for a swan to fly without hitting its wings against the walls, she put on the cape.

She didn't make a sound while she was still in the mountain. But as soon as she was a safe distance from it and on her way back to Therlund, she gave a triumphant shout.

If the Magician thought he could beat them, he could think again.