The Queen and the Mage

by Wilma van Wyngaarden

  “Not yet. The dinner feast should arrive soon, and I expect the chancellor, Coltic, and Renold to show up. Jay has been out all day with his pony and the dogs, and… oh, here he is now.”

  Jay came in. “Hello, Princess! I saw you with the horses this afternoon.”

  “Do not expect to see improvement, Jay. I follow the captain’s instructions but as yet I feel none of the magic he says I should feel… What have you done with these dogs?”

  “Washed and brushed them, Princess. Aren’t they beautiful?” They stared up at him adoringly.

  “They look and smell much better,” Minda acknowledged. “I know the late queen kept them with her, but I am sure they will prefer their life with you, Jay. Did they go in the carriage with you when you exercised the pony?”

  “Yes, but Sparky barks too much and the pony objected.”

  “Make him behave,” said Scylla, giving the white dog a critical stare. “I think the queen let them do anything they wanted…” The dogs began a yapping frenzy and rushed the door. “Well, is this the chancellor now?”

  “Good Goddess! Do they not know us by now?” Mako complained as he came in.

  “No one can enter unnoticed,” said Minda. “However, that’s enough! Hush!”

  The dogs ran around sniffing ankles as Mako, Coltic and Renold sat down at the table with Sorrell.

  “There is no food!” said Renold in exaggerated surprise. “Are we early?”

  “It will be here soon enough. How did it go with the feral children tonight, chancellor?”

  “All went well—the lad Tag and his followers came in together and did not race away when they left. The wild one and the rat girl are very suspicious. Your little River came in chattering about riding the pony, friendly but with her knife in hand! She wanted the comb you promised, but I told her to come up here for it.”

  “Did I not give it back to you?” asked Scylla.

  “You did, but why not entice her in with it?” He took the comb out of an inner pocket and handed it to Minda. “Keep it here until she comes knocking. Did you note how well the two village boys have taken to the guest chambers?”

  “I hear you have snaffled a family for your project, Chancellor,” said Coltic.

  “The girls are not much more than babies—one less than a year old and one about two,” Minda said. “They will grow up in Zara’s village and not know anything else.”

  “I hope they will not remember their dead mother lying in the shack with them for a week.” Mako grimaced. “The lad Kenner did not know what to do. The younger boy had hysterics when we took them away. It may not be ideal to send them to that isolated village, but it is better than hiding behind a barricaded door with a corpse.”

  There was a commanding knock on the door and the kitchen lads arrived with their laden trays. “I will be back with cakes and pies!” promised one as he rushed out.

  “One of these days that table will collapse,” Sorrell observed. “Too many more pies and we could find ourselves eating off the floor.”

  “Fall in, captains… everyone! It’s your duty.” Mako placed several items on a plate and put it on Queen Scylla’s chair-side table. “It’s your duty too, Princess, to stay alive. You were outside almost all day again… please eat something!”

  “I am a little weak,” admitted Scylla. She looked at the plate suspiciously. “What is that?”

  Minda identified the samples.

  “Well, maybe I will try some of it in a few minutes,” she said. “Jay, have some dinner… and where is Axit and the prince?”

  “He is already in bed. Riding the pony has exhausted him. I will hear him if he wakes up. Axit has gone to the guest chambers to assist with the other children for a few hours,” Minda said.

  “It has exhausted me too. How soon do I begin to feel the magic and be able to quit?”

  “If you find the magic, you will not want to quit. You may find you want to ride out every day just for enjoyment,” Coltic warned her with a grin.

  “Oh, please!” Scylla rolled her eyes.

  Mako said, “There was an injured lad that came for food tonight. He is fourteen or fifteen with better clothing than the ferals’ rags. I have put out inquiries as to who he is and where he came from.”

  The soldier outside the door rapped and opened the door. “Cakes and pies!” The serving lad announced himself, placed the last tray on the table with a flourish, and left.

  “Dear Goddess,” muttered Scylla. “We should be grateful! Send some of that over to the guest chambers.”

  “The maids and the children have their own dinner. But the soldiers will take the leftovers as usual, will they not, Chancellor?”

  “They will.” Mako hesitated for a moment. “I have another matter to bring up, Princess. It is disturbing. When I asked Morse—the secretary-treasurer, as you know—for the books of magic from the vault, he said I had already taken them.”

  “That is disturbing… if you had not. When?”

  “He has it written down—the morning Woliff’s boat arrived. He showed me the entry in his record book.”

  “That morning we were all at the hunting lodge. Except for Captain Renold who was visiting the outlying districts to inspect the troops,” said Coltic.

  “The entry is written in before his note about the arrival of the visitors. I returned from my visit to Zara’s village late the day before and received the message you had lost the queen in the forest,” he said to Coltic. “After a few hours’ sleep we rode out very early. I was not back at the castle until later that day.”

  “What did he say to that?” asked Coltic.

  “He wrote the entry in but upon questioning he admitted that Herron was the one who was present as he, Morse, was not in the office. When I asked Herron who asked for the magic books, he said I had. I said I hadn’t. Then he became testy and said I had sent a signed note requesting the books and he had recognized my signature.”

  “Does he still have the note?” Scylla said.

  “No. Morse would have kept it. But Herron, as we know, drinks too much and too often. He says he can not recall who came for the books.”

  “But he handed them over?”

  “Morse and I searched the vault. The trunk they were in is empty.”

  “Curses! I wanted to look at the books!”

  Coltic pointed out, “It is worse than that, Princess… Who has them now?”

  “Either Herron is drinking too much again and his judgment is impaired, or someone threatened him,” Sorrell suggested.

  “Perhaps both. The books are missing. Who else is missing?” Minda said.

  “The physician Greyel,” said Captain Renold promptly. “Do I not know it? We rode half the day on his trail and then lost track of him. He has gone east. The men I sent further have not all returned.”

  “Keep eating… you are not yet finished, gentlemen. Excuse me for a few moments while I go to speak with Herron.” Mako stood up, taking a piece of apple and cheese pie in hand.

  “I will come too,” Renold said, pushing his chair away from the table.

  Minda said, “If Herron cannot be trusted, he cannot remain as castle steward. I do not dislike him, but that was a serious error in judgment, and how can he not remember who brought the note? We must consider a replacement, particularly in these dangerous times.”

  “Good Goddess… the physician.” Scylla mulled over the idea. “Perhaps I should not have sent him away so rudely.”

  Sorrell sent her a cynical glance. “You are often rude, Princess. Why would that suddenly matter?”

  “He lost his position as a favorite of the queen… Queen Maris, that is,” said Minda. “Then he was banned from entry to these chambers, where before he had been welcome.”

  “That’s true. He was always here and Maris doted on him as she did the priests,” Sorrell conceded.

  “Sitting hand in hand with the priests! Queen Maris did so—perhaps Greyel was drawn in as well.”

  “Why did we not consi
der this before?”

  “We are certainly considering it now.” They exchanged glances.

  “This could be an unfortunate situation,” Coltic said after a few minutes’ silence. “I wish I had taken more interest in those books, but I was not there when the priests’ house was seized.”

  Jay, who was sitting on the floor feeding tidbits to his dogs, looked up in growing alarm. “I’m going to bed now. May I go home tomorrow, Minda?”

  “I believe you are safer here. Go to bed and do not worry, Jay! The Goddess is with us and she will be pleased to hear your prayers!” she answered kindly.

  “And we are pleased he is saying them,” Scylla muttered as he shooed the dogs into his small bedchamber and closed the door firmly. “I hope he is diligent in his prayers!”

  Coltic grinned ruefully. “Let us all send prayers to the Goddess! We may need them.”

  Mako came back. He was alone.

  Scylla eyed him. “You are pale, Chancellor.”

  “Herron is dead. He has hung himself in his rooms. Captain Renold and the soldiers are removing his body.” He sat down heavily.

  Silence fell again in the large room. The only sound was the rising wind outside.

  “Likely, it is as Sorrell suggested,” Minda said after some moments. “Herron drank too much, his judgment was impaired, and perhaps Greyel threatened him in some way… he must have hoped the incident would be overlooked, but could not truly have believed that…”

  Scylla ate some of the food that Mako had given her. The roast chicken was cold but tasty, and a bite or two of the apple and cheese pie went well with it. “Well, that is all very unpleasant, Chancellor. You have had to deal with two corpses in one day, or is it three?”

  “Three, if you add the prisoner in the cellar,” Mako admitted. “I accept full responsibility for the deaths of Herron and the prisoner! Herron should not have been left alone to brood. Also, I do not believe that the two younger priests had any involvement in the plot against our kingdom. I should have released them sooner.”

  “That is as may be, but today you rescued four children from a bad situation, perhaps even death,” Minda told him.

  “Also, as Minda has pointed out while you were gone, we must replace Herron with a new castle steward and he would not have found that to his liking at all.”

  Minda said, “He could not have remained in the position even if he confessed all. Unfortunately, he did not, and we can now only guess at what happened.”

  “We will presume the thief is Greyel until evidence says otherwise. Our priority is to find him. Captain, as a sorcerer… I cannot believe I am saying this to our Captain of the Queen’s Guard! ... as a sorcerer, do you have any suggestions?”

  “As a sorcerer… to find these magic books, or the physician?” Coltic gave him a rueful grin. He ran his hand through his hair, which had retained some gray streaks. “Firstly, can you describe the books, Chancellor?”

  “I did not yet have them burned as I was advised to do. Some books of magic will not burn, I’m told.”

  “Some are difficult to destroy,” Coltic agreed. “But not impossible.”

  “They should be destroyed or locked away. Woliff was very interested in the books and offered to take them to his own library in Gryor.”

  Coltic shook his head. “He cannot have them. He calls himself a mage—a student of sorcery. I doubt the secretary-sorcerer Mangus is master of his student, as Woliff is in fact his master in all else. I have seen ambitious magicians before… wisdom is not necessarily learned as quickly as the skill of sorcery. Power is all they want—and they want all the power they can summon.”

  “I told Woliff we had already destroyed the books. Now I wish we had.” Mako thought for a moment. “There were several. Some seemed to be historical or descriptive in nature. One was labeled Spell-Book, two held pages of notes—experiments, I believe—and there was an odd one filled with nothing I could decipher.”

  “Four books, then, that we must make inaccessible,” Coltic remarked. “Or destroy. The historical books are not as dangerous, but they may incite some readers to wander down the rabbit hole—speaking as someone who has seen wizardry taken to excess!”

  “I bow to your great age and wisdom! When… or if… we find the books, we will destroy them,” Mako promised. “As to Greyel’s whereabouts, Renold is still awaiting the return of his soldiers. I believe there are four not yet back.”

  “Where does the physician live?”

  Scylla and Sorrell exchanged glances. “Not in the castle, but he visited the queen’s chambers almost daily,” said Sorrell.

  “Somewhere in the village.” Coltic rose to his feet. “Chancellor, time’s a-wasting. Let us take some soldiers and sniff out the physician’s den. Perhaps I—as your sorcerer—can pick up a clue or two!”

  Some time later, Mako, Coltic, Morse, and several soldiers stood in front of a well-kept stone cottage around the corner from the village row of noblemen’s houses.

  “This is the physician Greyel’s house,” said Morse, who had led them to it after consulting his record books. “He bought it eight years ago when the previous owner died and has kept it in good repair. I do not have a key.”

  “What street is this?” asked Mako.

  “The streets do not have names,” Morse answered. “Everyone knows where they live.”

  “I have not paid enough attention, then, as I did not know the physician lived here. Perhaps these streets should be named, and the houses numbered, if we escape ruin by Gryor.” He inspected the front door, saying to the soldiers. “See first if you can get in without breaking down the doors. Take one of these torches around the back—it’s getting dark.”

  Moments later a voice called out. “The back door lock is broken, Chancellor. We’re in!”

  “That was helpful,” Coltic observed cynically. “I wonder if Renold’s men were here earlier.”

  Muffled shouts came from within and thumps sounded on the other side of the front door. Then it was flung open. A soldier hauled a lad out by his collar. He cowered before them, shrinking from the light of the torches.

  “Put the torch near him!” said Mako. “Well, who have we here?… the new lad that came for food tonight, I believe.”

  “Looks pathetic, Chancellor. Someone’s beat him half to death.”

  “Stand up, lad. What’s your name?”

  “Sorry!”

  The soldier gave him a shake. “Tell the chancellor your name!”

  “Ow, ow! M’name’s Sorry…” whined the lad, cringing and favoring his left shoulder.

  “Sorry!” Morse exclaimed. “That’s the servant lad of yon physician, Chancellor. He’s called Sorry.”

  They stared at the youth with sharpened interest. Mako said, “What an unfortunate name. Still… I will have a chat with him. Go inside, Captain, and look around with that sharp eye of yours.”

  “Mm just sleeping in m’own bed!” Sorry wailed as Coltic disappeared through the front door.

  “Where’s your master Greyel? Is Greyel your master?”

  “I’m his apprentice… he went on a jaunt t’other day.”

  “Where to?”

  “The forest, he said. East… hunting something.”

  “Hunting something,” Mako repeated thoughtfully. “Hunting what?”

  “I dunno, somewhere.”

  “Hunting lodge?”

  “I dunno… m’pony went lame. Master beat me up—for why? He left me by the road. Can’t see out my eye no more…”

  “So you came back here?”

  “Nowhere else to go!”

  “What became of the pony?”

  “Turned loose—lame. Can I go back to bed, I’m dyin’…”

  “Did you kick the door in?”

  “No, I got the key,” Sorry said stubbornly. “Dunno who kicked the door in! Wasn’t me!”

  “Good Goddess… what next? Don’t let him go, soldier. I’ll be back.” He entered the small house. Candles now shone brigh
tly throughout the neat and well-furnished interior.

  “Doesn’t Master Greyel keep a fine abode?” Coltic returned along a short hallway from the back rooms, ducking his head to miss a low crossbeam.

  “A favorite of the late queen for years,” Mako said meaningfully.

  “Seems to have done well by it!”

  “Now, yon physician has beat his servant lad so badly he nearly killed him. What do you make of that?”

  Coltic shrugged. “Desperation? Frustration? Didn’t need him anymore?”

  “Have you found anything?”

  “A few things.” He held up two books. “Are these your historical books gone missing?”

  Mako took them, inspecting them with interest. “I believe they are.”

  “They were in the burn barrel out back, but they are just charred along the edges.” He added, “I don’t believe they will not burn, just that he did not make certain the flames caught. A few others are burned to ashes beneath them.”

  “Any maps, written reminders, or notes to whom it may concern?”

  “Not a thing. The house is orderly.”

  “We can search it more thoroughly in daylight tomorrow. Greyel went east to the forest. The lad says he went hunting something, or somewhere.”

  Coltic gave a sudden start and his eyes narrowed as his gaze roved around the room.

  Mako took a wary step back.

  “Yes… the hunting lodge,” Coltic muttered slowly, his head cocking to one side. “There is an echo of it here…”

  Mako eyed him distrustfully. “Is that one of your sorcerer things?”

  Coltic’s usual cheerful expression returned. He chuckled. “Yes, Chancellor, that is one of my sorcerer things. I believe we should ride to the hunting lodge. Greyel will already have gone on, though.”

  “If you say so! Well, have someone repair that back door so it can be barred, Captain. Sorry says he has the key. Perhaps I will engage him to guard the house here. He can sleep in his own bed and someone can check up on him in the morning.” He returned to the front door. Sorry slumped on the outside step, with the soldier standing over him.

  “Can I go back to bed?” he moaned when Mako came out.