by Mage Quest
"Our wizard practices only white magic, and we wish no evil to anyone," said King Haimeric. "Are you going to let us proceed?"
"All right," said the leader in sudden decision. "But I warn you, Wizard, that you're going to get your group into trouble if you go through the eastern kingdoms attacking border guards without provocation. At least in this kingdom, we're not at war right now, and we don't intend to be." He wrote us out a pass which he said we should show to any patrols we met.
"I admired your dragon," King Haimeric said to me as we rode on. "And I know Dominic and Ascelin think it necessary to carry weapons. But shouldn't you have told the knights we were pilgrims right away, rather than threatening them?"
Given another chance, I would do exactly the same thing. I started attaching a new spell to a new pebble and thought complacently that if I had lived during the Black Wars, and the other wizards had needed me, I would not have embarrassed myself.
II
The church where Dominic's father was buried was in the center of a small town. Both Ascelin and I kept glancing suspiciously to either side as we rode through the noisy, twisting streets, but it was impossible to pick out potential enemies from so many people.
A final twist of the street led us to a covered passage and then to an open square, with the church in the center. Here, unlike the rest of town, it was quiet and peaceful. I had expected something sinister, but we found nothing of the kind. The church was built entirely of cobblestones, with alternating layers of darker and lighter stone. What should have been the main entrance, under the front porch, was bricked up, but Hugo found a small, unlocked door at the far end.
"The twin saints to which this church is dedicated," read Joachim from his guidebook, "were soldiers in their youth, until Christ appeared to them in a fiery vision in the middle of battle and they repented of their sinful ways. But soldiers in battle still call on their aid in time of peril, and many are buried in their church."
The Holy Twins, I thought, must not have listened to Dominic's father—or, for that matter, to a number of other soldiers either. It was an enormous though rather dusty church, and virtually all the stones with which the floor was paved and many of the lower blocks in the side walls were inscribed with the names of warriors buried over the centuries near their saintly patrons.
"The guidebook suggests this was a very busy pilgrimage church," said Joachim, "but it must have been written before the incident the border guards mentioned."
"This end is all old graves," said King Haimeric. "The inscriptions are almost worn away. Let's try the other end."
Hugo, who had gone ahead, suddenly called back to us, his voice echoing under the high stone roof. "I think I've found him!"
Set into the wall about halfway down was a stone with newer carving than most in the church. The king fumbled with his eyeglasses and bent closer. Even in the dim afternoon light, we could read the inscription easily. "Hic iacet Dominicus princeps Yurtiae," it said in the old imperial language: "Here lies Prince Dominic of Yurt."
King Haimeric stood with his hands folded, silently contemplating the grave of his younger brother.
"We should have come here years ago," said Dominic after a moment.
The king nodded. "But I always felt more responsible for the living than for the dead. If I had come when your father first died, your mother would have wanted to come too and brought you with her, even though you were a child. And then somehow the years passed, and I never made the voyage."
"What's this?" asked Hugo suddenly, bending closer. "It looks like the carving of a snake."
It certainly did. In the corner of the stone slab was cut a tiny picture of a coiled snake, with what looked like a jewel resting on its coils. The image was strangely familiar.
"Take off your gloves, Dominic," said the king. His nephew slowly pulled off his riding gloves. Gleaming on his second finger, his ruby ring had as its setting a gold snake that matched the carving. "I thought at the time," said King Haimeric, "that those bandits were too hasty. They took our horses and our luggage, but they missed the single most valuable object we had with us."
Excluding whatever Claudia might have given Joachim, I thought.
"This ring was among the jewels my father sent back to Yurt with a faithful servant when he died," said Dominic. "Why would its image be carved on his tomb?"
"Let me see it," I said.
Dominic gave me an odd look but started tugging at the ring. He had not had it off for years, during which time he had grown quite a bit heavier, and it took a minute.
As I took it in my hand, Hugo, who was still examining the stone behind which Dominic's father was buried, spoke again. "I think this stone is loose."
We all bent down again to look. As the sun moved, a stray beam found its way from the high windows down to near floor level. The stone was not completely flush with the wall around it but protruded ever so slightly on one side. Hugo wrapped his gloved fingers around it and began to tug.
"What are you doing?" demanded Dominic, pushing him away.
But the king put a hand on his arm. "If the stone is loose anyway, perhaps we are meant to open the tomb. I have felt badly all these years that it was impossible to bring my brother's body back to Yurt to be buried with our parents and ancestors. Perhaps we should take his bones with us now."
"Excuse me, sire," said Hugo, "but are you really planning to cross the eastern kingdoms, go to the Holy Land, and then travel all the way home again with bones in your luggage?" But he was again tugging at the stone.
It came loose all at once, and he fell back. The tombstone hit the paving with a bang that echoed through the church. I anticipated a waft of foul air, but there was nothing of the sort. All of us gave each other quick, uneasy looks, then went down on our knees to look in. Since I was holding Dominic's ring anyway, I lit it up with magic and held it out at arm's length, reaching into the tomb.
I was not sure what I expected to see, but it was not an untidy pile of tumbled bones. "What have they done to him?" asked King Haimeric in distress. Dominic said nothing, but his color slowly darkened to brick red.
In the tiny glow of the ring, we could see bare bones lying among the scraps of what had once been clothing. A belt buckle and a brooch lay at one side. The skull was at the back, a thin gold circlet loose around it and turned to an incongruously jaunty angle. The empty eye sockets glared at us balefully.
"Someone's opened the tomb, looking for something," said Ascelin.
"This ring," I said in sudden conviction. "And they didn't find it."
"By the way," said Joachim, who had not spoken since Hugo started pulling at the stone, "I wonder where the priests of this church are."
Ascelin leaped to his feet and reached for his sword. "A trap. I should have known it. We'll have to fight our way out."
Joachim put his hand on the prince's hilt to push the sword back into its sheath. "Don't forget that this is a house of God and no place for weapons of violence."
"Stay back," I said. "There's only one way they can come in. I don't want any more of you held hostage before I can disarm them." I flew the length of the church, wishing for the calm courage to match my words and hoping Joachim would not call after me that God's house was also no place for violent magic.
I stopped short of the door and probed with magic, expecting to find a mass of armed knights on the far side. But I found nothing. Just to be sure, I pushed the door open a crack and peeked out. The square in which the church sat was empty except for our horses, swishing their tails peacefully.
"There's no one there, Ascelin," I said and flew back. "Your hunter's instincts have failed you this time, I'm afraid."
"Let's get out of here before I'm proven right."
"Just a moment," said King Haimeric. He crawled partially into the tomb; when he backed out a moment later his gray cloak was filthy, and he looked grim but satisfied. "You're right, Hugo, that it doesn't make sense to take his bones with us now. But at least I've straighten
ed them out."
"Come on," said Ascelin. He helped ease the tombstone back into place, pushing it in tight this time, then we all hurried toward the door. Realizing I was still holding Dominic's ring, I slid it onto my thumb, since it was too big for any of my fingers, and pulled my glove on over it.
I stopped the others short of the entrance, in case armed men had come up during the last minute, but my probing still found nothing. We hurried out, and I caught brief glimpses of faces in windows high up around the little square. The faces looked frightened rather than hostile and disappeared immediately.
In a moment we were onto our horses and riding recklessly fast through the city streets. But the worst danger we encountered was a cart of vegetables pushed out of a side street almost directly into our path, which Whirlwind vaulted and the rest of our horses scrambled around. Outside the city gates, we covered two miles as fast as Ascelin, who ran holding onto Dominic's stirrup leather, could go.
"All right," he said at last, throwing himself to the ground under a tree. "We got away safely this time. Now I'd like to know what's actually happening."
"So would I," I said, dismounting and carefully removing my gloves. "And I think it starts with this ring."
I had always coveted Dominic's ring. The coiled gold snake and the ruby made it just the thing to suggest wizardly wisdom and mystery. I had inherited a ring shaped like an eagle in flight from my predecessor as Royal Wizard of Yurt, but it wasn't the same.
Slowly I turned the ring in my hands, watching the ruby catch the light. "There might," I said, "just might, be a spell attached to this, something like the message spell Sir Hugo's wizard left for us in Warin's castle. I'll have to see if it's still working after fifty years. Sire, did your brother take a wizard with him?"
"No," said King Haimeric in surprise. "I only ever had the one Royal Wizard before you, and I don't believe my brother's household ever kept one."
"Then the spell, if there is a spell," I said, "was put together by a wizard of the eastern kingdoms, someone trained differently than I. This may take a while."
I said that in the hopes that it would not take very long at all, and that I could impress the others with my abilities, but this ring was not nearly as ready to yield its secrets as Evrard's black box.
"Then the carving of the snake on the tomb was a message," said Hugo to Dominic, "your father's way of telling you, and only you, that the ring he had sent back to Yurt was somehow special. He just didn't think it would take you this long to get here."
Dominic ignored the second half of this comment. "Do you know if my father acquired all his jewels together," he asked the king, "or a few at a time?"
"As I remember," said King Haimeric thoughtfully, "it was a hoard he discovered or picked up somewhere—or perhaps captured in battle. His servant who brought the jewels back to Yurt told me at the time, but I'm afraid I didn't pay very much attention to that part of his account."
And that servant was long dead. Any secrets from beyond the grave would be revealed through wizardry or not at all.
I sat down under the tree, my back to the rest, and murmured likely-seeming spells under my breath. Behind me, Ascelin asked the chaplain, "Did your bishop visit the church of the Holy Twins?"
"He never got into this part of the eastern kingdoms," said Joachim. "He took the main pilgrimage and trade route down along the rivers, west of the mountains."
"Ha!" I said suddenly and out loud. The ruby on Dominic's ring was held in place not just by the goldsmith's art but by magic, and by a spell I recognized. With a few quick words of the Hidden Language, I loosened the spell. In three twists, the stone came loose, and something tiny, scarcely bigger than a pin head, dropped into my hand.
I had an audience now. With no time to search carefully for the best spell, I improvised, trying a variation of a trans formations spell to transform whatever tiny object I held into something bigger, without, I hoped, changing any of its other properties.
And that turned out, almost to my surprise, to be the right spell. I was suddenly holding a piece of parchment in my hand with a message written out clearly. I looked first at the formal signature, "Dominicus princeps Yurtiae," and then at the heading, "To my dearest wife and son."
I handed it to Dominic. "I think this is for you."
III
He read it out loud. "By the time you read this I will be dead." Dominic stopped, looked at the king, cleared his throat, and continued reading. "The servant by whom you will have received this ring will also have given you a more open letter of farewell. I hope the Royal Wizard will quickly discover this ring's secret, but if not, the snake I asked to have carved on my tombstone will be a clue for you."
"I was right," said Hugo. Dominic ignored him.
"The wizard I have taken into my employ, who will hide this message magically in the ring for me, is one I trust thoroughly, totally, and explicitly."
"That means he didn't trust him at all," interrupted the king.
"What?" said Dominic and I together.
"Didn't I ever teach you that code, Dominic?" asked King Haimeric. "Your father and I worked it out when we were boys. Because normally you say that you trust someone implicitly, trust them completely without having to say anything, to say that you trust them explicitly is to say just the opposite, that you express your trust only with your lips."
I tried to remember any occasions when the king might have said he trusted me explicitly. Fortunately I couldn't think of any.
"Is it possible," asked Ascelin, "if Prince Dominic employed a wizard after all, that he might have been the 'magnificent warrior' of the border guards' story?"
King Haimeric shook his head. "I don't think so. He was certainly a magnificent knight, but there was nothing about him that should inspire frightening stories."
Dominic read another sentence. "My wizard and I are both gravely wounded and ill from the same fever." He stopped again and looked up. "I thought my father was killed in battle."
"Wounded in battle," said the king soberly, "so badly he might not have recovered anyway, but his servant said it was the fever that finished him."
I glanced at Joachim out of the corner of my eye and said nothing.
"But we have learned of something wonderful," Dominic continued, "something marvelous, so special that I dare not mention it even in this secret letter."
"So we're still not getting any answers," said Ascelin, half under his breath.
"It is hidden far to the south of the Holy Land, in the Wadi Harhammi. I can't even tell you how we found out, but you will know it when you find it."
Dominic lifted his eyes. "That's the entire message." He handed me the parchment. "Does it make any sense?"
"What's a wadi?" asked the king.
"It's a dry watercourse," answered Ascelin.
"The Wadi Harhammi," said Hugo, "south of the Holy Land. This message is fifty years old. Other people must have learned about it by now. I'm sure it's what my father was looking for when he disappeared."
"We have to go there," said Dominic. He spoke slowly, with dignity and determination. "Wherever this Wadi Harhammi may be, whether or not the marvelous object is still there, we must go in search of it. I cannot ask the rest of you to accompany me against your wills, but I myself have no choice. My father wished me to go."
We all looked toward King Haimeric. This was still his quest, no matter what messages from the dead we might receive. The king nodded thoughtfully. "After fifty years, whatever he'd found or heard of is unlikely still to be there. But you're quite right: we have to look. Besides, the stories of the blue rose say it's being cultivated south of the Holy Land."
Dominic handed me the parchment. "Since this is a magical message, Wizard, you should carry it."
Ascelin stood up. "Whatever your brother had heard of, Haimeric, someone thought it important enough to break into the tomb to try to find the secret. If they're looking for the snake ring, and they know we have it, we could be in constant dange
r."
King Haimeric smiled. "I appreciate your concern, Ascelin, but this enemy of which you speak must already know the secret's not in the tomb, and will think we don't have it either or we wouldn't have come here to look for it."
"Could I have my ring back?" Dominic asked me.
I had almost forgotten I was holding it. Even if all of us still seemed more willing to follow the king in search of his brother than Dominic in search of his father, the burly prince certainly had a right to his own ring. I reattached the ruby and reapplied the binding spell to keep it in place, and handed him the ring, but the piece of parchment I slipped inside my jacket.
We traveled southeast through the eastern kingdoms while summer advanced rapidly around us. The king had been right, back in the mountains, that we soon wouldn't need our heavy clothes. Ascelin kept us to back roads and away from the cities. If we were being followed, neither his hunter's instincts nor my magic could find anyone behind us. But we became lost ourselves on the narrow roads at least once a day, so someone else might have had even more trouble.
Although the border guards of the first kingdom beneath the mountains had said their kingdom was not at war, the other countries apparently all were. We became lost most commonly when trying to dodge the lines of soldiers we saw approaching in the distance, or to get away from the main road when a long line of carts, carrying heavily-guarded supplies, appeared before us.
"I wouldn't have wanted to miss the eastern kingdoms for anything," said Hugo in my ear, as he and I lay in the underbrush near the main road, watching horses pass by, waiting until the road was clear so we could get the others and follow it ourselves. Harnesses jingled, and dust rose from hundreds of shod feet. Spear points glinted in the sun, but the faces of the riders were hidden by their helmets. "It's like the hiding games I used to play when I was little, but it's deadly earnest," he added cheerfully.