C. Dale Brittain_Wizard of Yurt 01

by A Bad Spell in Yurt

  I interrupted before he could make his statement any more involved. "Actually, I have visited him two or three times. We've probably become as good friends as old and young wizards ever do."

  The constable was positively beaming now. "Well! That's very good news. I hadn't wanted to pry into what you'd done, knowing that a wizard needs his privacy, but I'm delighted to hear that! Now, if you'll excuse me." He was whistling as he took down an account book while I went back out.

  I paused in the center of the courtyard, trying to think whom I should suspect next of having a den of evil magic in the cellar, since it was so difficult to suspect the constable. The constable's wife, the cook, the stable boy, and the kitchen maid, the only other people who had been in the castle when we arrived to find it dark, seemed even less viable alternatives. I briefly considered but rejected the possibility that Dominic had put everyone to sleep from far away. I didn't know of any spell that would do such a thing from a distance, and could think of no reason why he would want to do so. Besides, I always kept coming back to the fact that Dominic was the one who had first warned me against the evil spell on the castle.

  I shivered and was starting back toward my chambers when I was startled by seeing a tall, thin form standing motionless just inside the castle gates. "Joachim's back already," I thought in surprise. Then the man turned to look at me and I saw it was not the chaplain. It was someone I had never seen before.

  He did not in fact look like Joachim at all, except that he too had enormous black eyes, in a face that was almost inhuman in its pallor and expressionlessness. He stared at me without blinking.

  "Excuse me," I said, "can I help you? Have you just arrived?" For a moment I thought it might be a new member of the castle staff, signed on by the constable while the royal party was away, and arriving to take up his duties this morning.

  But the stranger turned away again without speaking and, with long strides, started toward the south tower.

  I went after him, but he had a large lead, and he disappeared around the tower's base. When I came up, there was no sign of him.

  This, I thought, was very odd. There were several doors he could have gone into, so his disappearance was not very mysterious, but no stranger coming to a castle should flee before the royal wizard.

  III

  I went back to the constable's chambers and knocked. He was working on the accounts as his wife finished her mopping. Both looked surprised to see me again so soon.

  "Did you hire a new member of the staff while we were gone?" I asked. "There's a stranger here, someone I've never seen before, and when I tried to talk to him he went across the courtyard and into a doorway."

  "I certainly haven't hired anyone new," said the constable. "It must be a visitor. But I don't know why he wouldn't talk to you."

  I had been concentrating so much on fears of black magic that I realized I had been overlooking something obvious: a thief sneaking into the castle. "Do you think it could be someone trying to steal something?"

  "Let's hope not," said the constable, putting his account book back and jumping up. "We'd better find him."

  We checked the doors leading off the corner of the courtyard behind the south tower. These were rooms that were rarely used, and only one of the doors was unlocked. The constable opened the others with his bunch of keys, to make sure the thief had not gone in and looked the door behind him, but all the rooms were empty.

  "I'll get Dominic," I said. "He should be able to help us."

  While the constable headed toward the main store rooms to see if they had been disturbed, I located Dominic in the great hall, talking to the king and queen. "Can you help the constable and me?" I asked. "I've just seen a stranger in the courtyard, and we're worried it might be a thief. He ran away when I spoke to him."

  There were advantages of having someone large and burly beside you when looking for someone who might be dangerous. Dominic came at once, but I felt uneasy as I saw the queen putting on her shawl with a smile of excitement. I knew she loved hunting, but I didn't think she should be hunting this person.

  Nevertheless, she came with us. We met the constable in the middle of the courtyard. "I haven't seen any sign of break-in or tampering with the locks," said the constable. "Maybe the wizard frightened him off."

  "There he is!" I said. At the far end of the courtyard, near the kitchens, the tall thin form appeared for a moment and then disappeared again into a doorway. We all ran that direction, but when we arrived he again was gone.

  "He can't have gone far," said Dominic. "We'll have him in a minute."

  But he was wrong. All morning we pursued the stranger, and all morning he eluded us. Sometimes we thought he was gone and sat down to rest, only to see him again, striding across the far end of the courtyard, or standing on the parapet far above us, or looking out a window with his enormous black eyes. Dominic recruited the rest of the knights, and as the servants came back to the castle some of them as well joined in the pursuit.

  I was glad the others saw him too, or I would have begun to worry that I was losing my mind.

  "Are you sure you aren't playing one of your tricks on us, Wizard?" a knight asked in one of the pauses in which we thought we had lost him. We were sitting in a row on a bench in the courtyard, panting in spite of the cold air. The queen was the only one who still looked eager for the chase.

  "I'm certainly not responsible," I said. "And I don't think there are any other wizards near here who might try something like this." But I did consider the possibility that this person might only be an illusion.

  A few minutes later, the queen spotted a dark head peering down at us from the parapet. I probed quickly with my mind to see if this person was indeed real, furious at whoever might have pulled such a trick.

  A wizard can normally only meet directly the mind and thoughts of another wizard, one who is willing for such contact, even though the Lady Maria had once been able to hear my thoughts. But one should still be able to find and recognize another mind, to tell at least if it is the mind of a man or a woman, reality or illusion.

  I found the stranger's mind and almost fell over backwards with the impact. This was no illusion. The man's mind was looking for my own, ready to meet it, and his was totally evil. The distant, oblique touch of evil I had been feeling for months was no longer distant; it was here.

  The rest ran after him, but I broke my mind away from that contact and sank back on the bench. Where had he come from? Why had he appeared in the castle now? What did he want with us?

  I heard a step immediately next to me and whirled around. But it was not the stranger, only Gwen and Jon, coming toward me hand-in-hand.

  "We wanted to tell you first, sir," said Gwen. "We've gotten engaged!"

  It took me several moments to recover my composure enough to be able to say, "Congratulations!" without fearing it would sound like the gaspings of a fish. I decided it would be tasteless to ask if Jon had resorted to the long-threatened love potion or if he had won her with his own unaided charms; I assumed the latter.

  "I know you may be a little surprised, after a few things I'd said," said Gwen with a smile up at Jon. "But when all of you left for the duchess's castle, Jon asked if I wanted to spend my vacation with him, visiting his mother, and I said I would. We worked everything out pretty quickly, then! Now, we'll have to tell the constable and get his permission to stay on once we're married. We'll want the chaplain to marry us in the castle chapel, of course."

  "Of course," I said inanely.

  "I just wanted to say something," Jon interjected. "A couple of times, sir, I was jealous of your attentions toward Gwen. I know it sounds silly, and I'm really embarrassed about it now, so I just wanted to apologize."

  "That's quite all right," I said, feeling even more inane and watching the courtyard beyond them for a tall thin, form.

  "Well, I'm glad you don't hold it against me," said Jon with a grin. "I told my mother all about our glass telephones. I told her I'd let her know
as soon as we had them working!"

  "Yes, indeed," I said, standing up. I thought I saw a flicker of motion and wanted to investigate.

  "We won't keep you, sir," said Gwen. "And I'll still be bringing you your breakfast in the morning."

  "In that case," I said in my gravest voice, "I want you to know that the girl who brought me breakfast this morning brought me a stale donut. And the tea was cold."

  This sent both Gwen and Jon into gales of laughter, and they went off, still holding hands, while I started walking as quietly as possible down the courtyard.

  Here there were outside staircases leading up to some of the ladies' chambers. The angle of the sun was such that I was dazzled, looking up toward the chamber windows, shading my eyes and blinking. But between two blinks, I thought I saw the door of the Lady Maria's chamber opening and closing.

  I ran up the stairs two at a time, rapped on the door, and opened it without waiting for an answer.

  She was sitting by the window, sewing something lacy and pink. It appeared to be something a man shouldn't see, so I carefully kept my eyes from it.

  She was, quite naturally, very startled. "What is it? What's happening?"

  "Did someone just come in here?"

  "No! Of course not," she said, staring at me with wide blue eyes.

  I did not believe her. But I saw no one there now, and I couldn't call her a liar to her face. "Excuse me, then," I said and backed out the door.

  I scanned the courtyard from the landing but saw nothing. I refused to believe that the Lady Maria was acting from evil intent. I had touched her mind when we were experimenting with the telephones, even if very briefly, and I thought I should be able to tell if she had embraced the powers of darkness. But how did she know the stranger, and why was she lying?

  I went slowly down the outside stairs, shivering again; I never had gotten my coat. Maria might perhaps be trying to shield somebody. She had told me she had "requested" certain magic favors, and I presumed she had requested them from someone in the castle. It would be that person, then, who had enlisted the stranger's help in practicing black magic. I still had no idea who the stranger was, but I was suddenly convinced I knew who had wanted to cast the evil spell on the castle.

  It had to be the queen. Ever since I had met her and had fallen in love with her, I had refused to harbor any suspicions against her, but there was no rational reason why I shouldn't. The Lady Maria, even if she guessed that her beloved niece was mixing dark supernatural powers with her magic spells, would never allow anyone else to suspect her. There still seemed to be no easy explanation why the queen had married the king, unless she hoped in a few years to be a widowed queen, able to rule Yurt as she wished, never again having to fear being married off to someone she detested.

  There was a cry of, "There he is!" from the far side of the castle, and the group of pursuers shot into view. The queen was in the lead, her skirts and shawl billowing. Her long black hair had come unpinned and was flying out behind her. Dominic, the constable, and a group of knights ran close beside her. In another context, I would have found it hilarious.

  I didn't see the stranger, although they had. He must have gotten by me, if indeed I had seen him here by the Lady Maria's door, and had not imagined it while dazzled by the sun. He clearly was able to make himself invisible if he wished, and he did not have my problem of invisibility stopping at the knees. He was certainly finding the chase hilarious.

  It was well past time for it to stop. I saw him then, walking quickly but unconcernedly along the parapets. I set my teeth and began preparing a paralysis spell.

  A paralysis spell is complicated, and I had only ever cast one successfully once, over a year ago, when I had frozen another young wizard in the middle of the classroom. Then it had worked spectacularly well, even though the instructor had spoken to me very firmly after class. I put the words of the Hidden Language together as rapidly as I could and cast it toward the stranger's retreating back.

  This time the spell did not work at all. The stranger kept on walking, just as unconcernedly, and then either slipped into a doorway or made himself invisible again. I ran down into the courtyard to intercept the others.

  They were all panting, even the queen, and quite willing to stop. "This person is a wizard," I said, even though I did not think of him as a wizard in the sense that I was one, or Zahlfast was, or the old Master in the city or my predecessor down in the forest. But it was too complicated at the moment to explain that this was someone able to walk through my best spells—and probably responsible for breaking my magic locks. "He's deliberately making us chase him, to tease us, because he knows he can always disappear when we get close."

  "But can't you stop him with magic?" said the constable.

  "His magic is nearly as strong as mine," I said. This was a wild understatement, but Dominic was glowering at me as though it were all my fault. "I'm trying to stop him, but it may take me a while. At the moment, I don't think he's doing any damage to the castle. But we don't want him to escape before I've had a chance to capture him and find out who he is and why he's come here."

  I turned to Dominic. "Let me have the cellar key. If I catch him, I'll lock him down there. Meanwhile, rather than amusing him by running around the courtyard any longer, let's stop until I've found a way to break down his magic defenses. But put a guard on the gate, to be sure he doesn't sneak back out."

  Privately, I was rather hoping he would sneak back out. If he made himself invisible, he would have no trouble slipping past guards at the gate, unless they put the drawbridge up, which I didn't think they would do. I had never seen the bridge raised since coming to Yurt, and the rest of the castle servants weren't all back yet. And even then, this stranger who was impervious to a paralysis spell, which had taken the instructor five minutes to break the last time I used it, would have no trouble flying over the walls.

  The pursuers all agreed readily. Dominic handed me the rusty cellar key without comment. Even the queen had had enough of this fruitless chase. But as she stood next to me, her bosom rising and falling with her rapid breaths, I again found it impossible to suspect her. If she had married the king in the hopes of being a widow soon, why had she nursed him so tenderly when he was ill and been so grateful when he was healed?

  The others went in search of lunch, but I got a coat from my chambers and sat down on a bench in the courtyard, where I could watch the gate. Dominic put two knights there to guard as well. I wished the chaplain would come back soon.

  Several times during the afternoon I caught a glimpse of the stranger. New attempts at casting a paralysis spell on him had no more effect than had the first attempt. I did however miss with one of my efforts and catch one of the stable boys. He froze, as unmoving as wood, in the middle of the courtyard, and it took me ten minutes and a quick trip to my books to break the spell and free him. Fortunately, we were around the corner from the guards at the gate, and when motion suddenly returned to him he just shook his head, looked at me as though embarrassed to have gone into a sudden revery in my presence, and hurried back to the stables.

  At one point in the afternoon I became so desperate that I decided to try to telephone Zahlfast. I got down one of my glass telephones, added a few spells that I hoped might make it work this time, and spoke the number of the school telephone. But it worked no better than it had for Maria and me. I could see a young wizard answering it, but he could neither hear nor see me, and a moment he hung up with a gesture of irritation.

  All right, I thought. Zahlfast had told me that they didn't want the young wizards asking for help with every little problem anyway. I would have to solve this one myself.

  I realized that, by refusing to chase the stranger, I was giving him the opportunity to talk at leisure to the Lady Maria or anyone else he wished, but I was fairly sure he would able to do whatever he wanted anyway, even with me close at his heels.

  Several times, when he had not shown himself for twenty minutes or more, I hoped that he
had gone, slipped back to wherever he had come from. But when, with trepidation, I tried probing for him, he was always there, a mind so evil that I was always shaken even when expecting it. He seemed deliberately to be mocking me. My spells did not have any effect on him, but his very presence nearly paralyzed me.

  And then, very suddenly, he was gone. I did not see him, and I did not feel him. I probed delicately, then boldly, and found only the same oblique evil touch that I had long felt in the castle. Not knowing whether to be jubilant or wary at this abrupt departure, I looked up and saw Joachim crossing the bridge into the castle.

  I ran to meet him, looking with some apprehension up into his face.

  He was actually smiling. "The little boy is fine," he said as I helped him dismount. "I do not think he was ever dangerously ill. The doctor's draught had, I believe, already put him well toward recovery, and the village priest's prayers had assisted him long before I even arrived."

  "That's wonderful," I said. It sounded inadequate, even in my own ears, but at least it was better than, "How nice," or, "Congratulations!"

  "It looks like I'm even in time for supper," said Joachim, still smiling. "I don't know about you, but I'm in the mood for one of our cook's excellent dinners after the overspiced food we were served at the duchess's castle."

  I carried his saddlebag up to his room for him, then left him to change and wash for supper while I returned to my chambers to do the same. At first I only felt an intense relief that he was back and the stranger gone. But while I was drying my face, I began to wonder how the two events were related. Perhaps his saintly presence was enough to drive away someone embroiled with evil, in which case I never wanted him to leave the castle again, no matter who might be sick in the village.

  But perhaps in some way he was the stranger. This was such a terrifying thought that I froze with my face in the towel. I had never known of such a thing directly, but one heard stories and rumors. When he left, as the good, pious chaplain, perhaps he left behind his twin, evil, self, who then was able to run wild through the castle until the good self returned and the two were again united.