"But I couldn't be sure of getting one like this one!" she said with a laugh. She was still holding both my hands, which was starting to make me feel uncomfortable. "Well, I don't think we'll have any more entertainment to top this tonight."
As though this were a signal, the lords and ladies of her party immediately started to leave. The king and queen glanced at each other. "If you don't mind," said the queen, "we'll retire now. We've had a long ride today."
"But you," said the duchess, looking at me, "you I'd like to take to my chambers for a final drink."
III
The queen turned sharply toward the duchess, as though about to say something, then changed her mind. "Good night, then," she said, leaving on the king's arm. For a moment I even hoped she was jealous.
The servants returned to clear the table as both parties dispersed. The chaplain was almost the last to go, and before he went he fixed me with a burning stare that might have been a warning.
The duchess had released my hands, but I seemed to have no choice but to follow her, up the wide staircase at the end of the hall to the great ducal chamber.
To my relief, she stopped here and motioned me to a seat. A small fire was in the grate; she added first some small sticks, then a log, and soon had it burning brightly. I felt I ought to help, but she seemed to want no help.
With the fire now burning, she went to a cabinet for two glasses and a bottle. She poured us each an inch of golden liquid and brought me mine, then sat down in the chair opposite me, one booted leg hooked over the arm.
I took a sip. "Excuse me, my lady, but this isn't wine. It's brandy."
"Yes," she said, as though wondering at my dimness.
"But brandy is a medicine."
"It's also an excellent after-dinner drink, as I discovered some time ago."
I took another sip. It was extremely powerful. "Very nice," I said.
She smiled, her face, which was close to being the queen's face, lit up by a smile that was not the queen's. "Enjoy it. There aren't many I invite to share a glass of brandy with me."
I started talking, in part to take control of the atmosphere, in part because that way I had an excuse for drinking more slowly. "This is the first time since I came to Yurt that I've accompanied the king on a visit to his subjects. It's hard to tell in the dark, of course, but as we came in it seemed that you had a beautiful little castle. I hear there are two counts in the kingdom as well. Are their castles as lovely?"
"The king's castle is of course considered the best in the kingdom of Yurt," she said, as though taking my inane comments seriously. "But the ducal castle, mine, is not rated far behind. Tomorrow I can show you all its features, inside and out. I don't have a rose garden like the king's, but if it were summer I could show you the flowers I do grow."
With any luck, I thought, we could talk about gardening until I could decently make my excuses and leave.
But she took control of the conversation back from me. "Wizard, I have a proposal to make to you."
I had been taking a sip from my glass and ended up swallowing suddenly much more than I meant to. "Indeed?" I said as blandly as I could, once I had stopped coughing. My eyes were drawn, against my will, to the door at the far end of the great chamber, that must lead to her bedroom.
"I know you wizards don't take oaths, but what I'm asking may still be hard for you." She was watching me, a look of amusement playing on her features.
"Indeed," I said with dignity. She seemed to be saying that we wizards did not take oaths of chastity, as did priests, which was true, but she also seemed to be insulting me.
"I know that, as short a time as you have lived in Yurt, your affections may already be fully engaged."
How did she know I was in love with the queen?
"Although," she said thoughtfully, "I would have thought a wizard with your flair wouldn't want to live his entire life ruled by someone with as soft a disposition as your queen."
Being too amazed to reply properly, I said nothing.
"Given a tempting opportunity, one's affections may change their focus," she continued with that same almost detached look of amusement.
"Possibly," I said, as noncommittally as I could.
"Therefore a woman may have to make her proposal as attractive as possible to woo a wizard," she continued, swinging her foot down and standing up.
I watched her approaching, almost in panic.
"That's why, Wizard, I need you to tell me what you like best."
She was standing directly in front of me, hands on her hips. I tried to buy time by seeming to drink my brandy, but it was gone.
"If I can offer you something the king does not offer you, then maybe I can woo you away from your affection for his castle and household and persuade you to give up being the royal wizard of Yurt and instead become my own ducal wizard."
In my relief at realizing that she was only offering me a position, not making an indecent proposal, at first I could only stammer. Then I caught her eye and realized she had been doing it deliberately.
"I am very happy as the royal wizard," I said, searching desperately for the remains of my dignity. Someone like the old wizard, someone who actually seemed to personify mystery and darkness, would not have been teased like this! "I'm not interested in alternate— proposals."
"But I'm quite serious, Wizard," she said, with a smile that was merely friendly. "I know it might seem like a step down to leave a king for a duchess, but I can offer you whatever you have now, and even more—your own tower, assistants to help gather herbs, freedom to come and go as you please."
For a brief moment I wondered what would happen if I left the king to become the duchess's wizard. Yurt would need a new royal wizard, of course, and this time they might be lucky and get someone competent. I would never have to deal with whatever evil force was lurking in the cellars.
Of course, they might get someone even less capable, and even a competent wizard wouldn't know about the empty north tower, about Dominic's veiled warning, or about the king's illness and recovery. The new wizard would resent anything that seemed like interference and certainly would not welcome hints from me.
Besides, Zahlfast would think I was running away. "I'm sorry, my lady," I said, "but even though I haven't taken an oath of loyalty to the king, I still feel that I am his man."
She nodded a little ruefully. "I'd been afraid you'd say that. I've been thinking for some time my duchy needed a wizard—my father's old wizard, whom I barely remember, was not I believe very highly qualified, but he had not been trained in the wizards' school. I was therefore very eager to meet a young wizard from the school, but as soon as I met you I realized there can't be many like you. Are there?"
She had, to my relief, gone back to her own chair. "Probably not," I said, "although the teachers at the school would tell you that's just as well."
"Maybe I'll advertise and see who answers," she said thoughtfully. "But that was a wonderful giant! And was it deliberate that its second head looked just like Prince Dominic?"
I laughed and denied any such intention. After a few more minutes' conversation, I felt able to rise and tell her how tired I was after a long day.
She took my hands affectionately. "Thank you for sharing a glass of brandy with me. Think about my offer, if you grow tired of the royal court." Though not the queen, she certainly was an attractive woman. I wondered briefly what she would have done if I had taken what she seemed to be offering literally and had immediately begun to act on it.
"Thank you, and good evening, my lady," I said gravely, then left her great chamber to return to my own room. As I went, I wondered if the queen had, at least in part, decided to marry the king to keep him from marrying the duchess.
Since the duchess's castle really was smaller than the royal castle, and since it was already full of her own household, there had not been much room for the rest of us, after the king and queen and a handful of their closest companions had been lodged in a suite of rooms wh
ich apparently were always kept ready for them. As royal wizard, however, I had been given the dignity of a room of my own, the room the old ducal wizard had used thirty years earlier, which had apparently scarcely been used since then.
As I spiraled up the narrow tower stairs toward the room, ducking my head and wishing either for my predecessor's or my own magic lights, I thought I might look at the ducal wizard's old books for a minute before going to sleep. I had noticed a few books in the room before dinner and hoped that he might have written down some interesting spells that had never been known in the City.
As I came around the last turn, I was surprised to see the door of my room standing half open, and candle light flickering within. I pushed the door slowly open and faced the deep black eyes of the chaplain.
He put down the Bible he had been reading and stood up. "Close the door," he said, as though this were his room, not mine.
I closed the door. "Look," I said. "What I said this afternoon. I realize I didn't make it clear enough"—this was an understatement! —"that I didn't think you were responsible for the king's illness." Most of the time this was even true. "I wish you'd given me a chance to explain. I really am sorry that I sounded as though I was accusing you."
But he didn't seem to be listening. "I don't enjoy doing this," he said, "but I have to. I'm afraid you're forgetting your duties, and I have to remind you of them."
"My duties?" I said in surprise. It would have seemed like a joke except that there was not even the hint of a smile on his face.
"Sit down," he said. "I didn't want to tell you this when we spoke this afternoon, but the bishop was very unhappy about the possible influence on me from a wizard my own age."
I sat down obediently on my bed, as he had the chair.
"I told him what you had suggested to me in conversation, that the organization of the wizards' school is patterned on the organization of the church, and that, like the church, organized wizardry hopes ultimately for the salvation of mankind."
I knew I had never actually said this, but it was close enough to what I myself considered the goals of wizardry that I only nodded.
"That's why I have to speak to you now. I had to take responsibility with the bishop for your soul."
"I thought my soul was doing well," I said in a small voice, over-awed by those burning eyes. I could not break my own glance away from them.
"If it were only playing with magic, I might not have to speak," he continued, unhearing. "Even when you used magic not to help but to terrify, as you did both at the royal court and again here tonight, tact kept me from speaking. But now!" He leaned sharply forward, as though wanting to make sure he had my full attention, although he had had it since I came in the room.
"I will not accuse you of immorality. Only the saints and God can truly judge a man's soul. But when you began to behave as though you have a licentious freedom, using casuistic reasoning to argue with yourself that a tradition against wizards' marrying is not enough to stop a man who has never had to take an oath of chastity, then I realized that you were in danger of applying this casuistry to other areas, to—"
At this point I had to interrupt him. "Stop. Wait. You don't understand."
"I fear I understand all too well."
"You don't. The duchess and I had a small drink together."
"And that was all?" he demanded.
"She told me that she admired my illusions so much that she wanted me to leave the royal court of Yurt and come be her ducal wizard. I turned her down."
Joachim sat back in the chair as though deflated. "And that was all?"
"That was all." I myself found the situation quite amusing. He must have sat in my room for close to an hour, waiting for my return, preparing both the accusations and the spiritual counsel he would give to me, and then he found out that, at least at the moment, I didn't actually need any spiritual guidance. But a look at his face told me he didn't find any amusement in the situation.
"Then I will apologize for disturbing you," he said stiffly. "I hope you sleep well." He rose and left the room, taking the candle with him.
I started to protest, then realized it was undoubtedly his candle, brought from his own room. I turned on my belt buckle to get enough light to find a candle of my own. I stared gloomily at the flame, once I had it lit, wondering how I was going to become friends again with the only person in Yurt who seemed to have the potential to be my close friend. At this rate, he'd soon be suspecting me of having poisoned the king.
But I still had to chuckle, thinking of him sitting here, imagining me embracing licentious freedom, at the exact same time as the duchess's teasing was almost driving me in panic from her chamber.
The next morning was Sunday, and I was in the ducal chapel early, sitting down in the front row while the duchess's chaplain and the royal chaplain conducted services together. Neither one of them seemed to notice my presence.
IV
We stayed at the duchess's castle for a week. Both because I feared being teased again and because I didn't want the chaplain worrying about my soul, I tried to avoid the duchess. Instead I devoted myself to the Lady Maria, always speaking to her at dinner, positioning my horse next to hers when we went out riding, standing as an attendant at her shoulder in the evening in the great hall. She was, I realized, the only person in Yurt to whom I spoke regularly with whom I did not always feel myself sparring.
But she could turn the conversation to her own purposes as deftly as anyone else if she wanted—something I had already known, and of which I was reminded when I tried to find out more about her previous experience with magic.
The king, the queen, and the duchess had all decided to go hunting—that is, the duchess asked the king if he would accompany her, and when he agreed the queen said that she wanted to hunt as well. They rode across the stubble of the duchess's fields and along the margins of the woods, hawks on their fists, hoping for a goose. Some of the rest of us, including the Lady Maria and I, went out with them primarily for fresh air.
The air was cold and slightly damp, although the grey sky did not immediately threaten rain. The Lady Maria seemed to enjoy my attentions and always raised her chin a little when the duchess glanced at the two of us together. Now, as we rode, I was amusing her by telling her again about the dragon in the cellar of the wizards' school.
"So, my predecessor agreed to teach you magic?" I asked suddenly, with no reference to what I had just been saying, hoping to catch her off-guard.
Her big blue eyes held mine for an instant, more intently than they ever had before. Then she looked away with a small laugh. "I already told you; he refused to teach me anything because I'm a woman."
"Come now, you can reveal your little secrets to me!" I continued in a tone I hoped she would like. "You certainly learned to make magic requests somewhere!" When she did not answer, I added, "And have you requested the perpetual youth and beauty that adorn you, or was that given you at birth?"
She surprised me by seeming to take my fatuous comments entirely seriously. At any rate, her shoulders first stiffened, then sagged, and she looked straight ahead without any of the amusement I had expected.
"I asked for a while," she said in a very low voice. I could barely hear her, but I did not dare tell her to speak more loudly for fear she would say nothing at all. "But now all that I asked for has gone."
"My lady," I said in almost as soft a voice, "who did you ask?"
She suddenly became very involved with her horse's mane. We had reined in and were standing under a leafless tree, but a dead oak leaf had been carried on the wind and caught behind her horse's ears. She glanced at me once, a glance I was apparently not supposed to notice.
"You said you'd teach me magic," she said at last. "I don't need all that grammar. All I need is a simple spell, a spell to make me young."
"I'm afraid there isn't a simple spell like that," I said gravely, trying not to reveal how surprised I was at her admission that she needed a spell of youth—or
apparently had once had one. "There's a difficult spell, that the young wizards don't even learn until we've been at the school for several years, that will slow down aging, but it won't make one any younger than one already is."
"Even if it's difficult, I know I could learn it," she said with the trace of a smile. "After all, I learned your telephone spell after hearing it once!"
"It's a different kind of spell, and much more difficult," I said, which was partly true, but in part I felt a sense of panic that I had introduced her to magic at all. Our duty as wizards is to help mankind, but every spell, however small, has consequences far beyond the spell itself. It was for this reason that all the teachers at the school agreed, and impressed on us strongly, that part of our responsibility as wizards was not to freely extend the lives of everyone we met.
"You're teasing me because I'm a woman," said the Lady Maria, facing me squarely. "I know I could learn your spell, and I know that magic can make time run backwards."
"Time can't run backwards. It's the most powerful force in nature, and magic can never ultimately change anything natural."
Tears of frustration appeared at the corners of her eyes. "But it can! I've seen it work! Why won't you tell me the truth?"
I was swept with a terror so sharp and sudden that my lips were almost too paralyzed to speak. "My lady, have you been dealing in black magic?"
"No! There's nothing evil in wanting to be young! And all you do is laugh at me!"
She really was crying now. She kicked her horse savagely and galloped away. My own mare turned her head to look at me in inquiry, then, when I continued to sit with the reins slack, started nosing again among the half-frozen grass.
After a minute, I managed to gather up both the reins and my mental strength enough to start back toward the castle. I could see neither the Lady Maria nor the rest of the hunting party, but I wanted to be inside near a fire.
I wondered how it could have taken me so long to realize that the Lady Maria had become involved with black magic. First her extreme youthfulness, then the abrupt loss of that youthfulness, should have made me realize that she had found a magic that mixed truly supernatural power with magic's own natural power.
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