A Bad Spell in Yurt - Wizard of Yurt - 1 (2 page)

He looked a little taken aback, which I thought of as a good sign; at least he was paying attention to me. But he only said gravely, "I hope so. I regret that I never enjoyed a particularly amiable friendship with your predecessor."

While I was being introduced, servants in blue and white livery had been setting up the two long tables. The king now rose from his throne, leaned on Dominic's arm, and led the rest of us to dinner. As he reached the table, a brass quartet, on a balcony above us, began to play. I thoroughly approved. Several of the other young wizards had left to take their posts at about the same time as I, and although al of them had bigger kingdoms, I was sure none were as charming.

The king's party, consisting of his relatives, the other knights and ladies, the chaplain, and me, sat at one table, with the king at our head, while the constable and his wife took the head and foot of the other table. The brass quartet changed to a different, even livelier, tune, and through the arch at the far end of the hal came more servants in procession, carrying huge steaming platters. They served the king a portion from each, placed the platters on the table, and stood back. He took a bite of the fowl, looked up, and nodded. The music came to a close with an abrupt flourish, the servants al rushed, smiling, to sit down at the constable's table, and in a moment the trumpeters joined us, laughing and wiping off their instruments. The platters were passed up and down. I took much bigger helpings than anyone else.

Conversation at our table tended to be rather refined, but at the other table, the constable and his wife, the servants, and the trumpeters were talking and joking. I tried to keep my attention both on my neighbors at table and on what the servants were saying. They were talking about the day's events, work done, fields almost ready for haying, news from the forest, gossip about someone they al knew who had been away but might be back soon. It was insider conversation, where each only had to make a passing reference to something before the others al knew what he or she meant. I wondered how soon it would be before I too knew without even thinking what they were talking about. This was, after al ,
my
kingdom.

At my own table, of course, everyone was wel -schooled in manners and was explaining things for the benefit of the outsider, me. "One becomes so aware of the agricultural cycle out here," the lady at my right was saying. I dragged my attention back to her from a pretty servant girl at the next table who had given me a saucy look over her shoulder, while chewing enthusiastical y on a drumstick. Wizards, like priests, never marry, but unlike priests we're al owed to look at girls.

"Al our food, or almost al , is produced right on the castle estates. At this time of year they're winnowing the cockerels out of the young fowl, so we'l have chicken very regularly. I hope you don't miss the greater choice of the City."

"Wel , this is delicious," I answered, wiping my lips and wondering if I could reach the platter or if I would have to interrupt Dominic in his conversation with the lady on his far side to get him to pass it.

"I spent three seasons in the City myself when I was younger,
much
younger."

"Then you must have been an infant," I said gal antly. I slid my hand nonchalantly to the left along the table, calculating the distance. I guessed her as perhaps half again my age, in spite of the big pink ribbons with which her braids were looped and the myriad flowers and flourishes of lace on her gown.

"On, no," she said with a tinkling laugh. "I'm
so
much older and wiser than you might think. I may have kept my youthful looks, but they conceal a
wealth
of experience. You may not realize it, but it can be a serious disadvantage to stil have golden curls when one has passed twenty summers. It's so hard to be taken seriously!"

Although my curls were not golden, I actual y realized it quite wel , having the same problem--except that I didn't have the wealth of experience either. Dominic's wine glass was unfortunately placed; I was afraid I'd catch it with my elbow. I wondered if I dared use a lifting spel on the platter.

"Go ahead, see if you can guess my age," she continued. I was tired of this topic, but she was just warming to it. "Come on, everybody, guess!"

"Twenty-five?" I said judiciously.

"My goodness, you're getting close, but you're stil too low." She laughed again. "Anyone else?" looking around the table.

Dominic looked toward us. "Pass the chicken, please," I said quickly.

The chaplain, sitting across the table from me, had been fol owing our conversation in silence. "Forty-eight," he said, just as everyone else had stopped talking.

My companion blushed up to the roots of her hair (if she dyed her hair, she was careful; the roots were as golden as the rest). The chaplain resumed eating, and, after a brief embarrassed pause, so did everyone else. I reloaded my plate with more clattering of spoons than was strictly necessary.

"While you were in the City," I said, "did you ever go on the tour of the wizards' school? Did they show you the dragon in the basement?"

Conversation resumed around us. I glanced over again at the chaplain. I was afraid he didn't have a sense of humor, which could be a problem for him if he was going to be friends with me, but on the other hand he didn't seem to have any tact either, which could have advantages.

I don't know why I kept expecting Dominic to be my enemy, but the burly royal heir was trying to be friendly. "There's a story we've heard even out here," he said, "that if you go far enough north, thousands and thousands of miles, you come to a land that's nothing but dragons and other magic creatures. Is this true? A wizard came through once, to visit our old wizard, and he said he'd been there."

"Oh, it's real enough," I said. "The magic is wild up there." Other people were turning toward us, and I was enjoying the audience. "It's the same magic we use, because it too grows out of the power that shaped the earth." I caught the chaplain's eye across the table and winked. He made no response.

"But the magic there is more primitive," I continued, "not formed into the deep channels that generations of wizards have made for it down here. It's a land of dragons, of giants, of unspeakable monsters. The air cart you saw me arrive in today"--I knew some of them must have been peeping at me from the windows--"is the skin of a beast from the land of dragons.

Anything could happen there; it can be a highly dangerous place, even for those most experienced in wizardry."

"Have you been there yourself?"

I had been hoping Dominic wouldn't ask that. Of course I hadn't been there. There had been a field trip from the wizards' school, but only the best students were invited to go.

"I am not yet worthy of the voyage," I said in what I hoped would be a mysterious voice. Surprisingly, the chaplain sat up straighter and fixed me with his enormous eyes at that. Several ladies further down the table smiled as though they saw right through me. "Has your old wizard ever been?" I said disingenuously, knowing the answer from what Dominic had said but wanting to make it clear that I at any rate had company.

"Not that he ever told us," said the lady on my right, but much more uncertainly than I had expected. Several things several people had said about the old wizard made him seem like a more distant and more shadowy figure than someone should be who had lived in the court for years and even now, apparently, lived just outside the castle. I was both going to have to work on my own aura of shadowy mystery and visit him.

There was a clearing of a throat at the upper end of the table. Everyone felt silent at once. "Wizard!" said the king. "How are you finding Yurt? Do we have company to make up for the pleasures of the City?"

The chaplain might have said "No." I instead answered only the first but not the second question. "I like it very much!" I said with perfect honesty.

"But already you're worrying that the evenings wil be quiet," said the king with a smile. How had he known that? "This wil be an incentive to you to work on our telephone system, so you can talk to your friends again."

The disadvantage to studying wizardry, instead of religion, is that you don't learn good curses. Everything you learn is in the powerful language of magic and wil have an effect if you say it, even if the effect is not the intended one. I real y didn't want to propel King Haimeric and his talk of telephones across the hal and into the fire, so I couldn't even think it. "The constable's already mentioned that to me!" I said with cheerful noncommittal. If I already had a telephone, maybe I could cal up some of my teachers, the ones who stil liked me even at the end, and ask them how to put one in. But this line of thinking clearly was not going to get me anywhere. "Do the neighboring kingdoms already have their systems?"

"Ours wil be the first in the region," said the king proudly.

I I

Dessert came at that point, providing a welcome distraction. A few minutes later, the king rose, and everyone rose with him. He left the hal , again on Dominic's arm, presumably bound for bed. Some people stood talking, and others started to disperse. I touched the chaplain on the shoulder. "Would you like to go my chambers for a last glass of wine?"

He looked slightly surprised but nodded, and we walked together back out into the cobbled courtyard. The long summer evening was stil lingering, and the air was like a caress on the skin. My magic lock was glowing softly. I pressed with my palm to open the door, then threw the casements open to let in the air.

The chaplain took a seat by the window, eyeing my diploma and books. I opened one of the bottles of wine I had brought with me. Tomorrow I would have to ask the constable about getting some of the local wine for my chambers; it was better than what I had been able to afford in the City on a student stipend.

"You seemed surprised that I asked you in," I said as I handed him a glass. "Why was that? Were you and the old wizard enemies?" I knew at least that he would give me a direct answer.

"No, not enemies," and he held the glass up to the light. "I trust this isn't
magic
wine," he said and smiled for the first time since I'd met him. He took a sip without waiting for the answer to what was obviously meant to be a joke. "But your predecessor resented religion. I don't know whether he thought there shouldn't be a court chaplain at al , or whether he thought that the fact that religion demands a higher standard of human behavior than does magic put him at a disadvantage. I have only been here three years myself, and clearly something happened between the old wizard and my own predecessor. I have never heard what it was; I had too much Christian tact to ask."

"You didn't have too much Christian tact to guess the lady's age tonight!" I said with a laugh. If he could make a joke, so could I.

"The Lady Maria?" He considered for a moment. "Maybe it wasn't tactful at that." I began to wonder if he would be as good a person to talk to as I had hoped.

"Did the old wizard have these same chambers?" I said to change the subject.

"These chambers? No. In fact, I was rather surprised when I heard the constable was putting you here. The queen's old nurse had lived here until she died last year; the rooms were then shut up until last week. The old wizard had his chambers in the north tower."

I knew it. They weren't taking me seriously. I could be ten times more powerful and mysterious in the north tower than in the old nurse's chambers!

As though reading my thoughts and wanting to contradict them, the chaplain said, "Everyone was enormously impressed when a wizard trained in the great school answered the constable's ad. The queen started talking at once about a telephone system."

"Why a telephone, in the name of the saints?" I cried, using an exclamation I trusted he would understand.

He lifted his eyebrows at me. "The queen has found telephones extremely convenient the times she has been in the City. She thought that if we had a system here, she could phone here and talk to the king wherever she is, in the City or visiting her parents, rather than having to rely on carrier pigeons."

The queen was clearly an important presence here in Yurt. I wondered if she could possibly be as old and bent as the king, since she seemed to take frequent trips, and when she would be returning.

The chaplain hesitated for a moment before speaking again, taking unnecessarily long over a sip of wine. It was probably Christian tact failing again to control his words. "I don't like this talk of telephones," he said brusquely.

"Neither do I," I said cheerful y, but he didn't hear me.

"The queen herself tried to persuade me that it's only white magic, that it involves no dealings with the devil, but I can't be sure. There must be black magic in being able to hear someone's else's voice over hundreds of miles."

Since it could have been pink or purple magic for al I knew about telephones, I responded to a different aspect of his comment. "If you had been more friendly with my predecessor, surely he would have persuaded you there's no such thing as either white magic or black magic. That's only a popular perception. Didn't they teach you that at seminary? Magic is neither good or evil in itself, only natural, part of the same forces as the world and mankind. The only good or evil is in the people who practice it."

"And you don't practice magic with evil intent?"

"Of course not," I said self-righteously. A few student pranks hardly counted.

"Then why do you have a wel -thumbed copy of the
Diplomatica Diabolica
if you don't converse with demons?"

He was looked at my shelf. The volume's spine was cracked; it did look wel -thumbed. But that was from the time I had been reading it late at night, the night before the demonstration, and had become so terrified I had slammed it shut and it had fal en on the floor. That book gave me the wil ies.

"One prefers not to talk with demons," I said. It didn't seem appropriate somehow to tel him about that demonstration, about how two other wizards were there to help our instructor if they had to, and how when a very tiny demon, maybe a foot tal , had appeared in the pentagram, the room had gone total y dark and some of the students (not me!) had fainted in fear.