by Mage Quest
Abruptly I caught a glimpse of a spell I understood. It was a very simple spell, so simple, in fact, that I had almost overlooked it while probing for something more complicated. I said a handful of words in the Hidden Language, and a seam suddenly appeared all around the box. The lid slowly opened. Inside was a parchment scroll, written on both sides in incomprehensible symbols and combinations of letters. But when I said a few more words they scurried across the page and shaped themselves into a clear message.
It was from Evrard after all.
"Beware, any wizard who reads this," it began.
I glanced quickly toward the great hall. Our party was still standing there, talking to King Warin and his chancellor.
"You are in danger of your life." Could this be one of Evrard's jokes? "King Warin, I think, is a sorcerer. Last night I saw unmistakable evidence that he is dabbling in the black arts."
I looked toward the hall again and met King Warin's eyes across a space of twenty yards. They were almost unbearably cold and seemed to bore straight through to my bones.
I tore my eyes back to the message. "We have also just heard some very strange rumors coming out of the East. King Warin, I think, knows more about them than he wishes to say. This is not a good place for a young wizard."
That was it, except for Evrard's signature. I said a few quick words in the Hidden Language, and the letters of the message rescrambled themselves, the lid of the box slammed shut, and even the seam that marked the opening disappeared.
I took two deep breaths and squared my shoulders, then walked back into the great hall.
"I'm afraid it really is an unreadable message," I said, handing the box to the chancellor. "No wonder none of the young wizards from the school had any luck with it. The wizard who created it seems to have gotten his spells wrong. The one thing I could determine from it, sire," turning to King Haimeric, "was it was left here by Sir Hugo's wizard."
"That's right," he said in high good humor. "We were just hearing how his party had stopped here."
"You all remember Evrard," I said, "from when he served as ducal wizard of Yurt that one summer. I think he's developed into a fairly good wizard, but he always used to like improvising new spells, and not all of them worked." I apologized silently to Evrard for impugning his abilities. He would understand.
Ascelin, who had spent our whole visit to Arnulf deeply suspicious, now laughed reminiscently. In this castle he appeared to find nothing to fear. "Well, his rather unorthodox magic gave me the excuse I needed to woo my lady the duchess," he said.
I looked at King Warin from the corner of my eye. Could he really be a sorcerer? He was certainly no wizard, and, as far as I could tell from a few delicate spells that I hoped he wouldn't notice, he didn't even have as much magical training as most carnival magicians. But there was something about him, a latent power, a suggestion that he might be appreciably older than his grizzled hair would indicate, that could mean that here was someone who knew just enough of the Hidden Language to take both him and those around him into deadly danger.
Although he was talking animately with Hugo about his father's visit, he seemed to feel my eyes on him, for he turned his head just enough to meet my glance. His smile reached nowhere near his eyes.
His chancellor slipped away to arrange accommodations for us. A whole maze of chambers, passages, and stairs led off the great hall. This castle, I thought, had been built and added to for centuries. We all ended up in a large chamber with more than a dozen beds, intended, I expected, to put up the knights of a visiting dignitary.
I was relieved to see that our saddle-bags had already been brought into the room, and that the corner of Claudia's foil-wrapped present was just visible under the flap of Joachim's bag. At this point, whatever it contained, I did not want to lose it.
In spite of the marble floor and the heavy, silk-worked tapestries on the walls, the wide room felt grim. The fire burning at one side seemed to cast no heat. King Warin was wealthier than Joachim's family could ever imagine being, but there was nothing here of the sybaritic feel of the Lady Claudia's guest chambers.
"I think Warin's as old as I am," said the king, "but he looks at least twenty years younger. The air must be healthy this close to the mountains!"
I had another explanation, but I didn't want to voice it here. And if King Warin was a sorcerer who dabbled in black magic, what did that say about the man who had been his Royal Wizard for twelve years?
We were served dinner in the middle of the great hall, with no other members of Warin's court present except his ever-present chancellor and the stony-faced knights ranged behind the king. The platters and even the bowls by our places for bits of rind and bone were made of heavily-worked silver. Not only did Warin not have a royal wizard, he didn't seem to have a royal chaplain either. King Haimeric talked as we ate about the blue rose, which I had been surprised to hear Warin knew about, as nothing about this castle suggested a rose fancier. Then the king moved on to the topic of the Black Pearl.
"King Solomon's Pearl?" said Warin, with that same good-humor and openness, floating on top of a bitter cold which only I seemed to feel. "I certainly haven't heard anything about it, although since the main trade routes all run west of here, rumors from the East wouldn't reach me quickly. After all, the mountains are full of bandits, so the luxury caravans stay well clear if they can."
Evrard, I thought, had heard here "very strange" rumors coming out of the East.
"In fact, I'm not sure I ever knew anything about the Pearl, beyond that old legend that the caliph had had it hidden in the sea, what would it be, a good millennium ago."
"Well, we've heard enough stories that it's been found again," I put in, "that I'd like to call the wizards' school to see if they have any more accurate information. Would it be possible, sir, to use your telephone this evening?"
"Of course, of course," said Warin, the perfect host. "Ask them too when that new wizard they promised me is likely to arrive!"
Several young wizards sent back as unsuitable—especially since one or all of them would have told the school about Evrard's message—would be good enough reason for the Master of the school not to send Warin any more. That is, I thought, unless Elerius had told them the king was not a sorcerer, just someone with very high standards for his employees.
I would very much have liked to ask the school about Elerius, but when the dour chancellor led me to the telephone room he showed no sign of leaving. He leaned against the wall, his arms folded and his eyes on me, as I waited for someone to answer. I could see the telephone in the wizard's school, a tiny image in the view screen. Elerius might have installed the phone here in three days, I reminded myself, but I had been the first wizard to invent a far-seeing attachment for telephones.
A young wizard answered, and in a few more minutes I was talking to the school's librarian. "I need all the information you have about King Solomon's Pearl," I told him. "How soon do you think I could get it?"
He seemed surprised. "Is that the Pearl that was hidden in the sea all those centuries ago? I'm not sure we have very much on it."
"I need whatever you have, especially information about its powers and attributes."
I had hoped the librarian could give me the information immediately, or at least by tomorrow morning, and my heart sank when he said he hoped to have something for me within twenty-four hours. "Oh, yes, that will be fine," I said as unconcernedly as I could. I should have realized that it would take a while to find references to an old story that had come to an end a thousand years ago. I didn't like spending another day in this castle, but once we crossed the mountains into the eastern kingdoms we might not have access to any more telephones at all. "Let me talk to Zahlfast."
"So you're in Elerius's former kingdom?" my old teacher asked me a minute later. "Evrard and his party got there too, we hear."
"That's right," I said, glancing at the chancellor. I hoped Zahlfast could see him in his own view screen. "He even tried to leave som
e sort of magical message here, but it's all garbled."
Zahlfast opened his mouth and closed it again. "I gather the king there has been spoiled by Elerius for any other young wizard," he said after a very short pause. "He still wants a Royal Wizard, so we'll have to see if there's an experienced wizard somewhere who'd jump at the chance of serving in such a wealthy kingdom, even if it is somewhat isolated."
There was no way to speak directly, mind to mind, over the telephone. I tried to read in Zahlfast's face whether he thought the king here might really be a sorcerer, or if it was all Evrard's imagination, but such information was too complicated to be conveyed by facial expressions.
"The librarian tells me you've been asking him about some of the old stories," Zahlfast continued. "If Evrard has disappeared due to old stories coming to life, we'll have to reconsider the efficacy of modern, organized magic."
As a joke, it was a fairly weak attempt. Zahlfast, I thought, must really be worried. I wondered if he had any information about the Pearl himself that he didn't dare tell me.
"Give my greetings to the Master," I said inanely and rang off.
The rest of our party had already gone to our wide, cold room. "Did the telephone work well, Wizard?" the king asked. "I'll ask Warin tomorrow if I can call the queen."
I nodded and drew Ascelin to one side. I had not yet told anyone my suspicions. "You knew the king here, years ago," I said quietly. "Tell me: do you trust him?"
"I don't trust very many people in this kingdom," said Ascelin with a glance toward the others, "and all of them are in this room."
I took a deep breath. So his ease in the great hall had been a façade for King Warin's benefit—it had certainly been good enough to fool me. "When you hunted here, you helped track down undead creatures made of hair and bone. Did you have any suspicion that King Warin helped make them?"
Ascelin's eyes narrowed, but he slowly shook his head. "Those were made by an old magician, and he got away. The king was just delighted to have the creatures out of his kingdom."
Ascelin's distrust was general, then, not tied to any specific knowledge of King Warin. "Just curious," I said and told him no more. Unfortunately, I knew Evrard was capable of making jokes in highly dubious taste.
King Haimeric was pleased to have an excuse to visit with his old friend Warin for another day, especially since we had been dodging rain ever since Arnulf's house. This time, Ascelin did not let the weapons out of our room, and he polished off the few rusty spots that had appeared in the last four days himself—but then King Warin's staff showed no sign of being as helpful as Arnulf's.
The phone call from the wizards' school came while we were at dinner. The king had been talking again about the Black Pearl, discussing our visit with Arnulf much more openly than I would have preferred, but I didn't dare leave the school waiting while I tried to shift the conversation. This time, the chancellor did not accompany me but stayed at the table.
"I don't have a lot," the librarian said apologetically. "It is a fascinating story, but there's very little to it." I listened as he told the story of King Solomon's Pearl, essentially as we had already heard it from Joachim's brother and as Hugo had found it in Arnulf's books. "The accounts stress that it would become enormously dangerous if used from base motives. I've asked around the school," he finished, "and no one here has heard that it's been found."
"Has anyone talked to the merchants down in the City to see if they've heard such rumors?"
"I haven't," he said in surprise. "Why would merchants have information on magical objects not known to the wizards' school?"
Though set in the middle of the great City, the white-spired wizards' school had always held itself somewhat aloof from the City's concerns. "All right," I said. "Thank you." So Arnulf was, as I had thought, trying to distract us from something else, and I couldn't even imagine what that might be.
"Well, it's always interesting to be asked about something different for a change," said the librarian. He looked down at the heavy volume he held in his hands. "This is one of the books that used to belong to Melecherius, and I expect I'm the first person to have it off the shelf since he died . . ." He flipped to the sign-out slip tucked in the back and then said in surprise, "No, I'm wrong. It was checked out five years ago by Elerius."
I didn't have time to wonder, in the brief moments I might still have to speak without being overheard, why Elerius had been interested in the Black Pearl. "Is Zahlfast available?" I asked instead.
While waiting impatiently for him to come to the phone, I kept listening for a step in the corridor, for King Warin's chancellor to overhear my conversation.
"You should know by now that we don't like wizards calling us up all the time for advice," Zahlfast began irritably when I finally saw him in the view screen.
But I interrupted. "Quick. Do you know what was in the message that Evrard left here?"
"Of course I do," he said in surprise. I saw his eyes flick past my shoulder, and I looked back involuntarily myself, but there was no one else in the room. "Three extremely promising young wizards in a row have come back to the City in disgrace and told us about it. You'd think that someone would have had the sense to change the spells so that the message was something innocuous, rather than making the lame excuse that they couldn't read it and then getting themselves dismissed for incompetence."
I hadn't thought of changing the spells either, being too startled by the content of the message.
"We don't like to tell young wizards very much about their new posts," he continued, "because it's better if they can work everything out on their own, but this time it looks like we'd better. That kingdom is much too critically placed, just below the passes into the eastern kingdoms, not to have had a Royal Wizard for a year."
"Did you ask Elerius about it?" I hoped my end of the conversation was bland enough that, even if the chancellor was lurking just outside the door, he would find nothing in it to pass on to his master.
"Of course we did, the first time a young wizard returned to the school with a wild story of sorcerers." Zahlfast unexpectedly smiled. "So you're wondering yourself whether to believe it? Don't worry about it. Elerius told us it was a complete fabrication. I thought you knew Evrard well enough yourself to realize that he has a rather odd sense of humor sometimes."
Yesterday I had thought Zahlfast worried. Today he did not seem worried at all. I was also irritated with him for having sent me in search of Evrard and yet not telling me the one solid piece of information they had, that Evrard had felt his party was in danger long before they reached the Holy Land.
But they had reached the Holy Land safely. King Warin was a dead-end for the purposes of our quest.
"The librarian's told me about this Black Pearl," Zahlfast continued with another smile. "Keep your eyes open in the East. I must say it all sounds rather far-fetched, but if it is real and has been found, the school will need to acquire it. A highly-charged magical object like that would be very dangerous except in the hands of skilled and thoroughly trained wizards."
I heard at last the step I had been straining for. The dour-faced chancellor looked around the corner. "Excuse me, but the others are ready for dessert and wondered if you were going to eat any more of the main dish."
I quickly said good-bye to Zahlfast and returned to the great hall, wondering why I should believe in my bones a message which both Zahlfast and Elerius had dismissed. All I had, against the word of a wizard who had lived here twelve years, was the strange contrast I kept feeling between Warin's surface politeness and something underneath, and the fact that King Haimeric had thought he had aged rather slowly.
Well, King Haimeric had been sick for several years, a decade ago, so he might not be a good basis for comparison himself. And Warin had certainly put his youthful years behind him. If one were going to make a pact with the devil, I thought, it would be more sensible to ask for youth than for middle age.
Conversation at the table had shifted in my absence to
Dominic's father, who had apparently spent a few weeks in this kingdom fifty years ago, on his way east. King Warin looked up at me as I pulled out my chair.
"The school doesn't know much about the Black Pearl either," I said with my best attempt at cheerful normalcy. From what Warin had said earlier, Elerius did not seem to have passed along whatever he himself had learned about the Pearl to his employer. I therefore did not mention that he had read the school's books on the topic several years earlier. "Thanks for waiting dessert for me."
"Your father was a remarkable man," Warin said to Dominic, picking up the conversation where I had interrupted. "You look a little like him. Prince Dominic could outwrestle any man living, won the heart of every woman between the ages of twelve and eighty, and feared nothing, either in this world or the next."
"I didn't know your father was named Dominic too," said Hugo.
"You're named for your father," said Dominic. "Why shouldn't I be named for mine?"
Dessert was iced lemon pudding, not what I would have chosen for a chilly evening even if I had been hungry. As I ate slowly, taking no part in the conversation, I wondered again how Elerius could have lived here for years and never felt what I now sensed about his king. There had been, I remembered, rather strange and contradictory stories about Elerius's background and parentage. Could he perhaps have been a sorcerer's son, this particular sorcerer's son?
I licked my spoon and pushed the thought determinedly away. I was getting as bad as Ascelin.
III
We prepared to leave King Warin's castle the next morning, but just as we were saddling our horses the chancellor came into the courtyard to tell me I had another telephone call. As I followed him inside I wondered if the school had found some further information, but the face in the view-screen was that of Elerius.