“Well, then we’ll just have to find a job for you, won’t we?”
“I’d make a good librarian,” Wulfrith suggested.
“How sweet.” Artemisia’s laugh was brittle. “I’m afraid we have no use for a librarian in these sorry times. Take off the mask, dear. I can often tell which job a person is best suited for by examining his face.”
“But if I got the library into better shape, more people would use it and then…”
“Take it off!” the queen shrieked, as the suspense finally got the better of even her iron self-control. Poor Wulfie almost wrenched his wrist yanking the mask off so quickly.
Artemisia stared. There could be no doubt: Here was one of her long-lost babies come home again. It was a miracle. Her lips were parted, but it was an effort to breathe. She thought she was going to burst into tears and knew that she must not. Years of training and centuries of breeding came to her rescue. She took a deep breath and smiled.
“Oh, how charming!” she remarked lightly. “What a funny coincidence. You look ever so much like my own darling son, Prince Arbol. Such a surprise! Well, that certainly settles the matter.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Wulfrith replied, a little dubiously. “I’m glad it does. What matter?”
“Your job, dearest.” Try as she did, the queen could not help allowing a tinge of real feeling to seep into her words as she gazed hungrily at Wulfrith. “You shall be Prince Arbol’s official food taster. Oh, don’t fret—it’s purely a ceremonial appointment. Hardly anyone tries to poison the heir to the throne these days. But your real job will be to serve as the prince’s companion. If I know Arbol, the prince will be just as enchanted as I am by the truly amazing coincidence that has no other connection with reality which makes the two of you look so similar.”
“Oh,” said Wulfrith. He had heard of food tasters. He had also heard of Prince Arbol. “Yes, ma’am. Um, this job of mine—does it mean I get to live in the palace?”
“Certainly.”
“And I can go anywhere I want?”
“Within limits, you naughty boy. And only when you aren’t serving the prince.”
Wulfrith’s eyes shone.
“There’s only one thing,” said the queen. Wulfrith looked worried. “You have to wear the mask. It’s traditional for Royal Hydrangean Food Tasters. If their identity is hidden, traitors can’t seek them out with bribes and foul conspiracies. There is also the advantage that, should one food taster suffer an—ahem—occupational setback, he may be replaced without anyone being the wiser.”
“Occupational…setback?” Wulfrith echoed, a trifle shaky.
To his utter amazement, the queen threw her arms around his neck and exclaimed, “Oh, but that will never happen to you! It mustn’t! I won’t allow it! Oh, please say you’ll accept the job, dearest Wulfrith. Please, please, please!”
Wulfrith was thoroughly confused now. Nothing he had ever read prepared him for Artemisia’s outburst. Did queens always conduct job interviews like this? To use one of Clootie’s favorite sayings, she didn’t seem to have her cauldron on the fire.
Then he thought of the library.
He pulled the mask back over his head and announced, “What do I taste first?”
Chapter Fifteen
As Clootie watched Dunwin recede in the east, in hot pursuit of his vanished Bernice, it occurred to the wizard fairly quickly that perhaps, if he had himself mistaken Dunwin for Wulfrith, old Odo had mistaken Wulfrith for Dunwin, and had dragged the wrong boy home to do his chores.
In that case, Wulfrith might be in Odo’s cottage at this very moment. Accordingly, the sorcerer marched up the mountainside.
Odo’s cottage was chiefly distinguished from the surrounding mud by virtue of having windows; the rocks and mounds of earth around it were not equipped with shutters, and the holes in them were generally dark and lifeless, while the faint glow and rancid stench of a sheep-fat lamp emerged from the openings in the cottage wall.
Clootie stepped up, and, seeing nothing he immediately recognized as a door, called through one of these openings, “Hello in there! Odo!”
“Go ’way,” someone called back.
Thus encouraged, Clootie located a piece of wood that he assumed to be a door and knocked loudly thereupon. He continued to do so until at last the exasperated Odo flung the portal wide and stared out.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
“I’m looking for Wulfrith,” Clootie explained.
Odo spat. “Not my name,” he said. “My uncle Wulfrith was hanged years ago.” He started to step back inside, but Clootie held up a restraining hand.
“I know that,” the sorcerer said. “Your name’s Odo, right?”
Odo glared suspiciously. “It might be,” he admitted.
“Yes, well, Odo, I was wondering if you’d seen Wulfrith.”
“My uncle Wulfrith was hanged years ago,” Odo repeated. “’Tole you that a’ready.”
“Not your uncle, the other Wulfrith.”
Odo considered this for a long moment. “What Wulfrith would that be?” he asked at last.
“Dunwin’s brother.”
“That was my uncle that…”
“No, the other Dunwin. The young one. I mean the Wulfrith that’s his brother.”
Odo puzzled at that for a moment, and finally worked it out. “Oh, that Wulfrith!”
“Yes, that Wulfrith.”
“I sold him,” Odo said. “Years ago.” He squinted at the wizard. “Come to that, war’n’t you the one that bought him?”
“Yes, I was,” Clootie said, “but I’ve lost him—mislaid him, anyway—and I was wondering if he’d come back here.”
Odo shrugged. “Not so I’ve noticed.”
“He looks almost exactly like Dunwin,” Clootie explained. “I wondered if maybe you’d thought he was Dunwin and brought him back here with you.”
Odo eyed him suspiciously. “Are you asking for your money back?” he asked. “Because you’ll not be gettin’ it. You bought Wulfrith fair and square, and you’re stuck with ’im, and besides, it’s spent long since.”
“No, no—I want Wulfrith back!”
“I ain’t got ’im.”
“Well, that’s what I wanted to ask—are you sure you don’t have him?”
“Of course I’m sure!”
“You don’t have someone here you think is Dunwin?”
Odo scratched his head, dislodging assorted arthropods. “If I did have someone here I thought was Dunwin, it’d bloody well be Dunwin!” he said. “Wouldn’t it?”
Clootie coughed. “Well, no, it wouldn’t, I’m afraid.”
“And why not?”
“Because Dunwin’s run off after Bernice.”
“That’s naught new,” Odo said. “He’s run after her plenty of times. He’ll catch her soon enough.”
Clootie explained, “But this time Bernice was turned into a dragon, and she flew over the fence and got away.”
Odo glowered wordlessly at him.
“Really,” Clootie said.
“Bernice what?”
“She turned into a dragon. Or rather, I turned her into a dragon.”
Odo spat a gob of something green off to the side. “You what?”
“I turned her into a dragon.”
“How’d you do that?”
“By magic—I’m a wizard, remember?”
“You’re no wizard,” Odo said. “You’re too short.”
Clootie sighed. “I’m in disguise,” he said.
“No, you’re on my mountain.”
Clootie was determined not to argue his wizardhood again, and furthermore, he had no idea what Odo was talking about. He attempted to drag the conversation back on course. “Look,” he said, “is there anyone here besides you? Dunwin, or Wulfrith, or anybody?”
“Not just at this minute,” Odo admitted. “I sent Dunwin into town, and he should be back any minute now.”
“Well, that’s what I was telling you,” Clootie explained. “He
was on his way up here when I turned Bernice into a dragon, and now he’s run off after her. So he won’t be home.”
“Then why’d you ask if he was here?”
“Because if he was here, he’d be Wulfrith.”
Odo stared silently at the wizard, and Clootie ran his last statement over again in his mind.
It didn’t really make much sense, did it?
“Oh, never mind,” Clootie said. “It’s been a pl…I’ve enjoyed…it’s been a challenge talking to you, Odo.”
“Same to you, I’m sure.” Odo turned and stamped back into his cottage, slamming the door behind him.
Clootie turned away in disgust. That was one place Wulfrith wasn’t.
Unfortunately, there were plenty of other places to look.
Over the next few days, the magician searched the environs of Stinkberry Village quite thoroughly, all without finding any trace of Wulfrith; toward the end, when word of what he was doing had leaked out, he endured the taunts of the villagers as they watched from a safe distance.
“Some wizard! Can’t find his own apprentice!”
“Couldn’t find his own backside if it wasn’t attached.”
“Probably turned the boy into a newt while he was drunk, and forgot all about it!”
“I never saw a newt drunk.”
“No, when the wizard was drunk, numbwit! He got good and drunk, and the lad sassed him, and the wizard turned his own apprentice into a newt—that’s what I’ll wager happened!”
“I’ll take that wager if you give me three to two…”
Clootie tried very hard to pay no attention to any of this, but he couldn’t help hearing it, and it added considerably to his growing annoyance.
Even in the convoluted and refined arts of Old Hydrangean sorcery, Clootie thought, there was probably some relatively simple, easy spell for locating lost apprentices; it was, after all, a common enough occurance, an apprentice being mislaid, and such a spell would be private—there would be no public display of functionality, with the consequent loss of face.
Unfortunately, Clootie had no idea at all what the spell might be. He had never expected to need it. The boy had no call to disappear like this. If he’d gotten himself kidnapped…
Well, the boy was a wizard—if the truth be known, Clootie admitted to himself, the boy was probably a better wizard than his master. He could take care of himself.
He would have to take care of himself, since Clootie couldn’t find him.
It had been rather odd, running into Wulfrith’s brother Dunwin like that, the little wizard thought; how had they managed to avoid meeting, all these years? Clootie supposed the fact that he hardly ever left his cave might have had something to do with it.
Maybe Wulfrith had met Dunwin, and had gone off with him, and the whole encounter with Dunwin and Bernice, and the argument with Odo, had been an act. That didn’t really fit the facts or make very much sense, but as a theory it had a certain perverse appeal.
In that case, Wulfrith had left of his own free will, and to hell with him.
In fact, whatever had become of him, Clootie thought, the hell with him. The hell with everybody. He was a wizard, possibly the last surviving true Old Hydrangean wizard, and he didn’t need to put up with a lot of half-witted teasing from a bunch of smelly villagers. He didn’t need to spend hours climbing mountains to argue with imbecilic shepherds. He didn’t need an inconsiderate, oversized apprentice making his life difficult. He didn’t need anything from the outside world at all. He would just go home to his cave and be a hermit henceforth.
And Wulfrith could go live with Odo and Dunwin, if he wanted, if that was what he was doing.
Clootie rather hoped that was where the lad had gone. At least the boy would be out of harm’s way.
And he hoped that Wulfrith’s brother, that Dunwin, hadn’t gotten himself hurt chasing after the dragon. He supposed that the boy would have given up and gone home after a few hours.
* * * *
Odo, too, hoped Dunwin hadn’t gotten himself hurt. He didn’t know whether the boy had given up his hunt for Bernice; he did know, though, that he hadn’t come home.
Some days after Dunwin’s departure in pursuit of Bernice, Odo looked unhappily around his home and sighed loudly.
He had tried to clutter the cottage up, to make a nice, comfortable mess of the place, but he just couldn’t do it. He didn’t have that natural flair for untidiness and sloth that teenage boys have. Ever since Dunwin had left, no matter what he did, the place didn’t have that same familiar a-tornado-came-through-here-probably-several-times look to it that it had always had when Dunwin lived there.
It didn’t really make very much sense, Odo told himself. He had gotten along just fine for years, living by himself, before Ludmilla had come and died on him. He had been eager to get rid of one of the boys. Why should it bother him that the other one had left?
And it wasn’t as if Dunwin had simply disappeared; that funny little man who wasn’t really a wizard but who could do magic anyway had explained all that. The boy had gone off looking for Bernice, who had been turned into a dragon.
Right at the moment, Odo wasn’t really very clear on what a dragon was. He had forgotten, though he had known once—wasn’t a dragon a sort of soldier, or something like that? Of course, the funny little man had said something about Bernice learning to fly, and soldiers didn’t usually fly, except if you meant “run away,” which soldiers did a lot, and which some people called flying. But it wouldn’t get you over fences, would it?
Well, maybe if you were scared enough, it would.
Still, how a ewe could be a soldier he wasn’t sure; he didn’t see how she could hold a sword, and besides, girls weren’t supposed to be soldiers.
So maybe a dragon was something else besides a soldier, and his memory was playing tricks on him again; he wasn’t as young as he once was.
Or maybe they’d changed the rules.
“Changing everything these days,” he muttered, looking at a malodorous heap of dirty clothing that sprawled in the center of the cottage floor.
The boy hadn’t wanted to let Bernice get away and leave him alone, so he had gone after her. That stirred a faint spark of admiration somewhere in Odo.
The boy hadn’t wanted to be left alone.
Well, demme, Odo thought, I don’t want to be left alone, either! With sudden determination he stood up and began rummaging through the debris in search of his boots.
“You find Bernice, boy,” he muttered, “and then I’ll find you!”
Half an hour later, he stood atop the mountain, three of his most trusted sheep at his side, and gazed out over the broad landscape. Off to the east were the hills, where the Black Weasel and his Bold Bush-dwellers still fought against the Gorgorians; to the west lay the plain, and the capital city that was now the Gorgorian stronghold.
If Bernice was a soldier now, he knew where to find her—probably better than that fool boy of his did. Fighting and glory in the east, or a rich, peaceful city in the west, full of cheap wine and cheaper women—it was obvious where all the soldiers would be.
He turned west, and marched down the mountain toward the city.
Chapter Sixteen
“I need a food taster?” Prince Arbol asked doubtfully.
Queen Artemisia nodded emphatically. “Yes,” she said, “you do. You need this food taster.”
Arbol eyed the hooded figure. “Dad doesn’t have a food taster any more,” the prince pointed out. “He threw the last one out the window because he didn’t hand over the pasties fast enough. Why do I need one?”
“Because you,” the prince’s royal mother informed her, “are a Hydrangean prince, not just a Gorgorian usurper.”
“I am, too, a Gorgorian!” Arbol shouted, offended.
“Yes, you are,” the queen agreed hastily, “worse luck. But you are also my child, and therefore a true scion of the Royal House of Old Hydrangea. And you will have to learn to behave accordingly. Really
, dear, must we have this argument every time I see you?”
The prince did not answer that; instead, she said, “I’ll throw him down the stairs if he annoys me.”
Wulfrith, who had listened thus far in silent befuddlement, snorted. If this gawky idiot tried to throw him anywhere, Wulfrith might just forget about the ban on sorcery and turn him into a newt, or a carp, or something.
Or maybe he wouldn’t; he didn’t have his staff with him, or any of the other trappings of a wizard, and if he tried using Clootie’s new spell he might wind up with a rhinoceros, or some other inconvenient creature.
But the prince didn’t look any bigger than he was himself, so maybe, Wulfrith thought, he just wouldn’t let himself be thrown down any stairs.
The queen had mentioned that Wulfrith bore a resemblance to the prince, and Arbol did have a certain odd familiarity, Wulfrith had to admit. There was a resemblance to the queen, his mother, of course, but it was more than that.
“Can I see him with that silly mask off, so I know who I’m talking to?” Arbol asked.
Queen Artemisia hesitated.
This was an awkward moment. Sooner or later, her daughter would have to find out what was going on, but surely, she didn’t need to know yet…
“I mean, for all I know, Mom, you could have a girl under there!” Arbol said.
Artemisia, who had been drawing a deep breath in preparation for making a speech, choked suddenly and bent over, coughing. Prince Arbol and Wulfrith watched her nervously, not knowing what they should do, but the fit passed quickly, and with it, some of her caution.
“All right,” she said, “you can see him without his mask. Arbol, my child, this is your new food taster. He says his name is Wulfrith.”
Wulfrith was unsure whether to bow first, or to take off the mask, so he attempted to do both simultaneously and managed to tangle the mask in his hair and poke himself in the eye with a thumb, but a moment later he had the silly thing off and was able to stand upright and look the prince in the eye.
Those eyes did look familiar, and quite a bit like the ones he saw in the mirror.
“Mom,” Prince Arbol said, startled, “he looks like you!”
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