Mage Quest - Wizard of Yurt 3

Mage Quest

Wizard of Yurt, Book 3

C. Dale Brittain

1993

ISBN: 0-671-72169-0

Part One. Quest

I

Christmas was over, and everyone was grumpy—that is, everyone except the king.

King Haimeric of Yurt came back inside the castle from the courtyard. He had been seeing off the king and queen of the neighboring kingdom who, with their family, had spent Christmas with us. King Haimeric had a faint smile on his lips and a faraway look in his eyes, as though seeing wel beyond the stone wals of the great hal. I noted irritably that many of the pine boughs hung on those wals had started losing their needles.

“Wizard!” he caled to me as he settled himself on his throne before the roaring fire and arranged his lap robe. “I’ve just heard something wonderful.” I puled up a chair to sit next to him. The royal castle of Yurt had once been a defensible castle, a center of wars, but for the last several generations the Christmas festivities were about as exciting as we got.

Even the time we were al attacked by a dragon, just as we finished opening the presents, had been nine years ago. I realy had eaten too much this last week or two, and the weather had been bad enough that none of us had gotten much exercise beyond walking to and from meals.

“So what have you heard?” I asked the king, feeling dul but trying my best to sound interested.

“The king of Caelrhon was just teling me very exciting news: someone has developed a blue rose!”

It was going to be even harder to sound interested than I thought. “But I can create a blue rose for you with magic any time you like. I haven’t practiced wizardry on your rose garden in the past because I assumed you liked doing the crosses yourself, but a new color shouldn’t be hard.”

I hesitated inwardly even while I spoke. An ilusory blue rose would certainly be easy enough, but the color would shortly fade. I didn’t know offhand a spel to change something’s color permanently, much less to pass that color on to the next generation of roses, but I might be able to improvise something.

“Not a magical blue rose,” said the king with a wave of his hand, “but a real one.”

I considered saying that, always assuming I could do the spels correctly, the color on my blue rose would be as “real” as the color on this rose he had heard about. But I hated to argue with my king. “I’ve never seen a blue rose,” I said instead. It appeared I would be hearing quite a bit whether I wanted to or not and I might as wel be agreeable about it. “Some of your deep red varieties shade into violet, but that’s not very close.”

“That’s right,” said King Haimeric, then fel silent, staring into the fire.

I went into a reverie of my own. Maybe I wouldn’t have to hear about this rose after al. At Christmas one was supposed to feel congeniality and love for one’s felow man, but I was instead having to fight against feeling dissatisfied with life in such a quiet little kingdom. I was just wondering if there were any Christmas cookies left and, if so, if they had al become stale, when the king startled me so much that I forgot aH about being grumpy.

“I’m an old man and I’ve never been on a quest,” he said. “I think it’s about time.”

I was not an old man, in spite of the white beard which I kept hoping, against al evidence, gave me an air of wizardly wisdom. But I had never been on a quest, either. Perversely, when I had just been thinking Yurt was too dul, going away from it suddenly seemed too adventurous. The thought of leaving the royal castle, where we were comfortable and safe from the sleet, and starting off on some unknown but doubtless highly dangerous journey filed me with horror.

But the king said nothing more about a quest, and in the folowing weeks I decided it was just a momentary whim brought on by the mention of the blue rose. But the idea kept nagging at the back of my mind. In the nearly ten years I had been Royal Wizard of Yurt, King Haimeric had never been gone from the kingdom for more than a month or so at a time and, for that matter, neither had I.

I loved Yurt, but sometimes, unexpectedly, when sitting down to dinner with the same people I had sat down to dinner with for ten years or looking out across a snowy landscape, a vision came to me unbidden. Sometimes it was a complicated vision of exciting experiences and adventures never met at home, but usualy it was just a scene: riotous red flowers spreading their blooms beneath an intense sun; a bazaar where bright colors, foreign voices, and complex spicy odors competed for attention; and palm trees swaying by an azure summer sea.

If the king was thinking of going on a quest, then the most horrifying thought was that he might go without me.

King Haimeric spent January as he usualy spent January. His eyeglasses perched on his nose, he went through the rose catalogs that were shipped from the great City, studying the sketches of newly developed varieties and the extravagant descriptions of their colors and scents. Haimeric loved his rose garden second only to the queen and their son—and probably the kingdom of Yurt itself—and I suspected his own new varieties were superior to anything the

City growers could produce. But that had never kept him from studying the catalogs assiduously al winter or from sending off orders for new rootstocks as soon as the cold weather began to break

“Now this horse,” said Prince Paul.

I had been thinking about the king and his roses while standing in the stables, but the boys voice brought me back quickly from my thoughts.

“Al right,” I said. “But remember not to kick or swing your feet. This gelding’s bigger than the mares, and you don’t want to startle it.” It was warm and dusty in the stables, and the snow faling outside seemed very far away. I lifted the royal heir slowly straight up with magic, then sideways over the wooden gate of the stal. He stretched out his legs, remembering not to kick, as I set him down on the geldings broad back. The horse turned its head in some surprise to stare at him, but Paul stroked its mane and spoke soothingly. At age eight, the boy was already better with horses than I had ever been.

“Ready?” I said, then lifted him slowly up again, over the gate, and back beside me.

Paul grinned at me and I grinned back, with the schoolboy feeling of getting away with something naughty. Paul was perfectly safe, I knew, and would not fal off even the biggest horse as long as my magic held him, but I was stil fairly sure that, if asked, the queen would not have approved.

“Now this horse,” said Paul.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “We’re not going to proceed through the entire stable, putting you on the back of every horse in Yurt.”

“Wel, you did agree, Wizard,” he said, looking at me with calculating green eyes, “that riding my pony wasn’t going to prepare me for bigger horses.”

“That stil doesn’t mean I’m going to lift you onto every horse here. Choose one more, then we’d better stop.”

Paul walked down the row of stals, considering. Gwennie, who had observed him silently so far, went after him.

They came back together. The chestnut stalion at the far end,” said PauL “Then I promise not to ask any more.”

“But that’s your cousin Dominic’s stalion. It’s the biggest horse we have.”

“I know,” said Paul. “That’s why I chose him. You promised!” he added when I hesitated.

Prince Dominic, I was quite sure, would not approve of his young cousin sitting, even for a minute and even if very quietly, on his favorite stalion. But if I was wiling to go along with Paul’s game in spite of what the queen might think, I was certainly not going to worry about Dominic.

“Al right,” I said. “But this realy is the last one.”

Paul, Gwennie, and I went down to the far end of the stables. Several cats came to rub against our ankles, and Gwennie picked up and stroked a kitten. Dominic’s stalion gave us what I would have caled a surly look, but when I lifted Paul up onto his back he made no movement, though the skin twitched al along his neck and side. The stables were very quiet with the only sound that of tearing hay as the norse in the adjoining stal puled off a mouthful.

“Now me,” said Gwennie.

“You want to get on the stalion, too?” I asked in surprise. Gwennie, the castle cook’s daughter, was almost exactly the same age as Paul and would tag after him al day if her mother let her, but she had always seemed nervous around horses.

“Put her up behind me,” said Paul. “We can pretend we’re galoping across the high plains, trying to get there in time to win the treasure.” I hadn’t heard the story of the treasure of the high plains before, but Paul was always coming up with something new. “Just be sure you sit very stil while pretending,” I said.

For a moment, I left Paul to stay on the stalion’s back by himself and turned my magic to the girl. She was white-faced and sober, but when I hesitated, she said, “Come on!” as imperiously as the royal heir.

I lifted her slowly and gradualy, using the words of the Hidden Language to guide her over the stal gate and onto the stalion’s broad back. I set her down with her legs sticking straight out and her face whiter than ever.

The horse shifted uneasily, feeling the sudden increase in weight. Paul kept his balance without even thinking about it. Gwennie took a firm grip around his waist.

“Don’t be so frightened,” said Paul, not unkindly. “Now, we have to make it to the fortress by sunset or it wil be too late. The sun is setting fast! Come on, Whirlwind!” This was not in fact the stalion’s name. I wasn’t even sure Prince Dominic had given it a name. Paul, riding across the high plains on Whirlwind, at least had the sense not to dig in his heels.

But Gwennie, wanting to show Paul she was not frightened, suddenly kicked the stalion in both flanks and let out a high whoop.

Dominic’s stalion jerked hard against his headrope, trying to rear. When the rope held him down, he lashed out with his heels against the wal. The wal gave a holow boom, and the stalion kicked again.

Even Paul looked frightened. I held the children tight with magic and lifted them together as rapidly as I dared without further startling the stalion. In a few seconds, they were out of the stal and back beside me.

I started to say something, to warn Gwennie that it was not a good idea to kick a high-strung stalion bred to carry someone who weighed wel over two hundred pounds. But I looked at her face and realized any warning of my own would be superfluous.

“We can continue the story of the treasure of the high plains up in the nursery,” Paul told her. His own color had come back almost immediately, but I was pleased that he showed no signs of wanting to continue the story on a horse’s back—at least, not yet.

The children were starting toward the stable door hand in hand, and I was trying to decide if the stalion, who had stopped kicking and merely gave me another surly look, was indeed al right, when the outer door opened, letting in daylight, a whirl of snowy air, and the constable.

Paul and Gwennie darted out, Paul giving me a conspiratorial grin over his shoulder.

“There you are, Wizard,” said the constable. “The queen said you were with Prince Paul. I should have known you’d al be in here with his pony.” We had, in fact, barely looked at Paul’s shaggy little pony while in the stables. “What is it?”

“You have a telephone cal.”

II

A wizard looked at me from the base of the magic glass telephone. The cal was from Zahlfast, the head of the transformations faculty at the wizards’ school in the great City. Even the tiny image of his face looked both irritated and worried.