C. Dale Brittain_Wizard of Yurt 01

by A Bad Spell in Yurt

  "Wizard!" called the king when he saw me. "We've just been making plans. How would you like to go visit the duchess?"

  After a second in which I couldn't imagine what he was talking about, I remembered the lady Maria once telling me that Yurt had, besides the king's own castle, the castles of two counts and a duchess.

  "I ought to visit my liege vassals more often," said the king.

  "The king and I met at the duchess's castle," the queen told me, smiling at him.

  "I would be very interested in visiting the duchess," I said. If Zahlfast was right (and I hoped he was, rather than believed he was), the king should now be safe from whatever black magic was lurking in the cellars. But no one else was safe. Until a supposedly fully-qualified wizard, me, could find a way to overcome that spell, it might be better if we all went visiting.

  II

  The duchess's castle was closer than the city where we had gone to the harvest carnival, being only one long day's ride away. Therefore we didn't need the tents, and the pack horses were less burdened as we started out early on a frosty but sunny morning.

  The king's party was also much smaller, as most of the servants were not accompanying us.

  I had talked to the queen about this. "Don't you think it would be better if we brought everyone along?"

  But she laughed. "The duchess won't have nearly enough room for all of us. Her castle is smaller than the royal castle, and she has her own staff, of course. If I didn't know better, I'd say you were getting too attached to that saucy girl who brings you breakfast!"

  It was bad enough being hopelessly in love with the queen without having her tease me about Gwen. I tried the constable instead.

  "Don't you think it might be better, while the king is gone, to send the servants away?"

  He looked at me in amazement, as well he might, because the arrangement of the household staff was certainly not part of a royal wizard's duties. For a minute I could see that he was about to resent my interference, but then he remembered that it was, after all, me.

  "Usually when the royal household is away, I give most of the staff their vacation," he said. "Some go to visit their families, although some of course stay here."

  "But I don't want anyone to stay here."

  This was clearly going too far, even for a wizard who had already proved himself to have an odd sense of humor. "My principal responsibility," the constable said with great dignity, "is the wellbeing of the royal castle of Yurt, including its people. My wife and I at any rate will not leave, certainly not on a wizard's whim."

  It would have been hard to explain that I feared an evil influence was down in the cellars, especially as I had checked that morning and found my magic locks still in place. Since everyone in the castle, not just the king, seemed happy and well, I tried to tell myself that there was no danger. The night before we left, I spent hours with my books until I found what I hoped was a suitably strong protective spell. I put it on the castle and its inhabitants before we left.

  The Lady Maria rode next to me. I had noticed that, in the last few weeks, she had stopped wearing as much lace and ribbon. This morning she was wearing a conservatively-cut, dark green riding habit, and her golden hair, rather than tumbling in ringlets around her shoulders, was tied up into a bun on the back of her head.

  But her laugh and her conversation had not changed at all. "I think I explained to you once," she said, "that the queen's mother and the duchess's mother are cousins—or is it second cousins? When the old duke died in that terrible accident—I was just the tiniest girl then, but even so I remember it well—he left only a daughter to inherit. She grew into quite a beauty, I can tell you!"

  "Does she look like the queen?" I asked, that being my standard for beauty.

  "She does, a little," said Maria almost reluctantly, and I knew her well enough to realize that, while she loved to discuss charm and beauty in the abstract, she didn't like the implication that midnight hair could be more beautiful than golden.

  "I'll bet she had a number of suitors!" I said, knowing that was what she wanted me to say.

  "She certainly did!" she replied, her good humor restored. "But she wouldn't have any of them! She was too proud for any but the best, and maybe she hasn't met the best yet! She'll soon be getting old, however, so she may shortly have to lower her standards! Of course, she isn't as old as me."

  I was flabbergasted. I had never before heard Maria admit that she might be old. Together with the pulled-back hair, this made me start to wonder if she had been affected by some variation of the spell that had nearly killed the king.

  But her manner was unchanged. She continued all morning to tell me stories that I had already heard and to point out all the places in the landscape with any romantic associations.

  "See that spire?" she said at one point. A sharply-pointed spire rose from behind a snow-sprinkled hill, half a mile back from the road. The hill nearly obscured the low tiled roof of its church. "That's the Nunnery of Yurt. It's made up of widows who grieve for their dead husbands, and of young girls who have tragically renounced the world with broken hearts." I decided to try to ride with someone else that afternoon.

  After our lunch break, which we took standing up because the half-frozen ground was too cold for sitting, I managed to position my horse next to Joachim's, at the end of the procession. This, I thought, might be the best chance I had had to talk to him in weeks.

  "I owe you an apology," I said, starting there because this way he couldn't move away or change the subject before I'd had a chance to say it. "I was horribly rude to you when the king was ill."

  I also probably should apologize for terrifying him with my dragon, but I was afraid of insulting him more by reminding him that he had believed in an illusion—even if he and the queen were the only people prepared to do something about it.

  Joachim pulled up his horse slightly, so that we were soon riding fifty yards behind the rest of the party. Although he did not answer at once, he was clearly thinking over his response. Then he gave me a sideways glance from his enormous dark eyes that would in anyone else have been a look of amusement.

  "You weren't rude," he said. "I needed someone to remind me of my responsibilities." We rode for several minutes in silence, then he spoke again as though there had been no pause. "I think I had still been feeling inadequate from my meeting with the bishop."

  Since such a confession on his part seemed to call for something similar on mine, if I wanted to rebuild our friendship, I said, "Do you remember seeing the wizard in my chambers?"

  He clearly did not.

  "You might have seen him, just for a second, the day you stopped to tell me you were going down to the village to see the little girl."

  There was the slightest flicker of emotion across his face. "Yes. I remember seeing him now."

  "That was Zahlfast, one of my old teachers. He'd come to give me what he said was my first checkup."

  This time the chaplain actually did smile. "I thought you told me you wizards were left on your own, once you'd finished at the school."

  "Well, that's what I'd thought. I guess it shows how mistaken a wizard can be. I think he meant to be encouraging, but by the time he left all my inadequacies had been made clear to me."

  "And are you therefore feeling paralyzed, almost fearing to act because you don't want to turn to evil?" As he spoke, Joachim turned to face me so abruptly that he brought his horse's head around as well. We had to stop and disentangle the bells on my horse's harness from the harness on his. When we started again, the rest of the procession was far in front of us, and we pushed our mounts to start catching up.

  At first I thought Joachim was accusing me of being paralyzed in the face of a threat to Yurt, but then I realized he was only speaking from his own experience. Someone whose own inadequacies had been pointed out very recently might indeed feel unworthy to plead with the saints.

  "I told Zahlfast you'd saved the king's life," I said as we drew closer to the rest of
the party and slowed down again.

  "I myself didn't save him," he answered quickly, looking straight ahead. "My merits had nothing to do with it." I should have realized that he'd say this. Since the saints could not be manipulated, one's only hope was to have a pure and contrite heart, and a contrite heart wasn't proud of its merits.

  But then he said something else that surprised me. "What did Zahlfast say when you told him that?"

  I stammered, not sure how to answer, but almost immediately decided on the truth. "He reminded me that wizards don't talk very much about miracles, and that those who heal also have the power to sicken."

  It sounded even worse than I had expected it to sound. While I was trying to frame a new apology, he kicked his horse forward, not even looking at me again, and pulled into line next to the Lady Maria. Since he, like me, had not been at Yurt yet when the king and queen happened to meet for the first time at the duchess's castle, she started to give him all the details. I was sure he had heard it all before; he had, after all, gone to visit the duchess with the royal party the first year he was in Yurt, while the king was still traveling at least short distances. But he listened intently, even smiling at the right places, and did not once look back at me.

  The short early winter day had ended, and the sun was gone when we saw the lights blazing out from the duchess's castle in the valley before us. The knights had lit lanterns so that we could see the increasingly icy road, although I myself thought that the wildly flickering shadows from the swaying lamps made it even harder to guide one's way. We all kicked our horses and hurried down the last hill, bells ringing loudly. The bridge was down, and we surged across and into the courtyard.

  Servants hurried forward to help us dismount, and the duchess's constable took the bridle of the king's horse. But the king waved away the servant at his stirrup and instead, with a look of intense concentration, rose slowly straight into the air, until he could swing his foot easily over the horse's back, then just as slowly descended to stand on the cobblestones.

  Very few of the people from the royal castle of Yurt, and certainly no one from this castle, had seen the king flying before, so there was a stunned silence before the applause broke out. The queen laughed with delight as she dismounted in the more normal manner and took his arm. His back straight and a not-very-well concealed grin of pride on his face, the king walked toward the wide doorway leading into the great hall.

  I was about to follow him, extremely proud of my pupil, when I caught a baleful glare. It was Dominic, and he was glaring at me with eyes that were nearly red with fury. I didn't know why, but I certainly didn't need a second person furious at me today, so I turned my face from him and hurried after the king and queen.

  They stopped just inside the hall, and I, following closer than anyone else, nearly ran into them. Over their shoulders, I saw a woman advancing to meet them, the duchess.

  She did indeed look a lot like her cousin, the queen, although the duchess was at least ten years older. Her hair too was black and her features beautifully shaped, but she did not have the queen's smile, which always seemed to be hovering near her lips even when she was sober or thoughtful.

  The duchess did the full bow. "Welcome to my castle, which is your castle, my liege lord and king." And it was the full bow, not the curtsy that women normally performed. The duchess, in spite of her feminine features and the long hair braided into a graceful coif, was dressed like a man, in a man's tunic and boots.

  "Rise, my faithful subject," said the king. He drew her up, his hands on her shoulders, and kissed her on both cheeks. The queen kissed her as well, but, I noted, not nearly as enthusiastically.

  "And who is this?" the duchess said, peeking at me past their shoulders.

  The queen brought me forward with a hand on my elbow. I was glad I was wearing my new velvet jacket. "This is our new royal wizard! He joined us this summer from the wizards' school in the City."

  The duchess gave me a look of frank and highly interested appraisal, which startled me more than I wanted to admit; no woman had looked at me like that since— well, at all that I could remember. Fortunately, she appeared to like what she saw.

  "I haven't had a wizard in my duchy in years," she said. "My father, the old duke, used to keep a wizard, but he had retired even before I inherited, and the old royal wizard of Yurt never deigned to visit me."

  "That's why I wanted to bring him along," said the king. "Wait until you see his illusions!"

  Although I was naturally crushed to discover that I had been brought along as an exhibit rather than as a necessary member of the king's personal retinue, I was too intrigued by the duchess to give this much thought. Back before I had entered the wizards' school, the women I had met in the City who dressed like men had for the most part, and ironically I always thought, not liked men. But the way this woman had looked at me suggested otherwise.

  "Your rooms are all prepared, my lord and lady," she said. "My constable will show you and your companions. Dinner will be served as soon as you've had a chance to rest from your trip." As we all followed the constable out of the great hall, I glanced back to see her looking after us with a wide grin.

  There were a number of different courses at dinner, all elaborate, but none, I thought, as good as those produced by the cook at Yurt. I also missed the brass choir before dinner. The chaplain sat across from me, as at home, next to the duchess's chaplain. But he did not meet my eye. I myself was surreptitiously watching the queen. I had wondered more than once why she, a woman of fire and air who should have been able to marry anyone in the western kingdoms, had married the king of Yurt.

  Now that he was no longer ill, he did seem much younger than he had when I first met him, but he was still undeniably more than twice her age, and no taller than she. Here in the duchess's castle, as the lady Maria had been reminding the chaplain this afternoon, was where the king and queen had first met, and I wondered if I might find some clue here.

  We finished up with spicy cakes frosted in vivid colors, and while I was trying to decide if I liked them or not, the duchess called to me down the table. "Wizard! I hear you do excellent illusions. Would you care to entertain us?"

  "He's tired, as we all are," said the queen quickly. "Maybe ask him another day."

  I was surprised to find her suddenly so protective of me, and when I looked toward her I saw that she was not smiling. But the duchess's eyes met mine in an amused challenge.

  "All right," I said, putting down the half-eaten cake which I had decided I did not like at all. "But I warn you, my illusions may be frightening."

  "I don't frighten easily, Wizard."

  But the lords and ladies from Yurt were nudging and smiling at each other, clearly hoping that the party here, who had not seen my dragon, would be as frightened of it as they now pretended not to have been. Several of the duchess's attendants, seeing the winks, did indeed begin to look uneasy.

  I went to stand by the fireplace, thinking quickly. I didn't want to become repetitive by doing another dragon, and although the magician at the carnival had not hesitated to make an illusory demon, I didn't want to terrify myself with my own magic. Besides, I only wanted to titillate the duchess and her lords and ladies, not send them screaming from the hall as I had almost done at Yurt.

  I decided on a giant, one about twenty feet tall, which would leave his head (or heads—I rather liked the idea of a two-headed giant) only a short distance below the ceiling. I worked quickly, sketching in the different parts but not yet giving them substance, so that a ghostly pair of legs, a nearly invisible club, and a suggestion of massive arms took shape between me and the fire.

  I glanced at my audience. The queen's eyes were dancing, and the duchess continued to look amused. The last detail was the double head, one smiling horribly, and one suffused in fury. The second head, even while half invisible, looked I realized a little like Dominic, but it was too late to try to change it. With a few quick words in the Hidden Language, I gave my giant visual
solidity and put it into motion.

  The giant spun around from the fire to face the table and raised its enormous club. The mouth of the furious face opened in a silent roar. The club swung downwards, and the king, showing an agility I had not realized he had, sprang from his chair just before the club passed down through the chair and the table.

  There was a cacophony of noise, chairs scraping and falling backwards and the duchess's people shouting. The party from Yurt was doing fairly well, in that none of them were screaming, but they still sprang from the table as they giant started down it. The enormous hairy legs were buried almost knee-deep in the table, through which it seemed to wade like a man wading through water. The club descended again and again, passing without effect through glass, china, and wood, as one head roared and the other laughed. The only person who did not move was Dominic, who sat stone-faced, his arms folded, as one of the giant's thighs passed directly through him.

  I stopped the giant just short of the duchess. She, like the others, had jumped up, but she was watching its approach with a broad smile. I had the giant stop roaring and grinning, drop its club, and go into the full bow before her. The effect was a little spoiled by the fact that, as it went down on its knees, much of it disappeared under the table, but the duchess still began applauding wildly as soon as the double head was lowered. I said the words to end the illusion.

  The duchess ran to grab me by the hands. "Well, Wizard, I can see that, with you there, Yurt must be a much livelier place than it ever was before!"

  People were straightening their hair and clothing and coming toward the fire with as casual an air as possible. The castle servants, who had been watching open-mouthed from the passage to the kitchen, disappeared again.

  "I told you we had a fine wizard!" said the king. "Maybe you ought to send to the City for one yourself!"