Zahlfast waved away this objection with a hand.
"I have to warn you," I went on, "I'm as interested in establishing cordial relations with the bishop of the twin kingdoms of Yurt and Caelrhon as he is with wizardry."
"That is in fact part of it," said Zahlfast. "Maybe we've been too dismissive in the past. Even though religion is inferior to magic, priests are still part of the humanity we serve. I can't abide the bishop of the City myself, but he won't be bishop there indefinitely. We'll be in the City far longer than he is, and when his successor takes over it might be a good time to start establishing better relations. You'd be the perfect person to do it."
"So, what do you say, Daimbert?" said the Master cheerfully. "We want you to join us permanently at the school, not because you're good at certain spells, but because you're a good wizard. You're not like most wizards, but more and more we've come to realize that that can be an advantage. We'll even let you have a hand in choosing an appropriate young wizard to succeed you in Yurt. Will you do it?"
"No."
Not an explanation, not an excuse, just a straight negative. The monosyllable hung in the air, out before I even had a chance to consider. But I had no intention of calling it back.
Zahlfast looked both startled and disturbed. "Maybe we haven't explained it clearly enough."
"You've made yourself very clear," I said. "But I wouldn't be a good teacher." This wasn't the only reason, but it would do for a start. "If I were going to train young wizards, I'd have to know five times the magic I do. The only way I got through the lectures this spring was by emphasizing ways of thinking rather than content. Even after close to twenty years past my own graduation, there are probably major areas where the average new graduate knows more than I do—and I don't just mean in the technical division."
Zahlfast looked at me thoughtfully. "Encyclopedic knowledge of spells isn't what makes someone a good teacher of magic. If that was all that was required, we wouldn't even bother teaching—we'd just make the students memorize Thaumaturgy A to Z. It's only the bad teachers who think they know everything. Every good teacher has stood in front of a class one time or another and felt like a fraud trying to explain something."
This did not at all accord with my memories of the enormously knowledgeable teachers at the school. It slowly sank in that I really was being asked, and by people who recognized a major proportion of my shortcomings, to come back and be their colleague.
"We can start you off easily," said the Master, "just give you classes where you feel comfortable already. You will, after all, be the most junior wizard on the faculty by a considerable margin, and we don't want to overburden you. What do you say?"
"It's still no."
I wondered if I had looked as distressed to Theodora when she kept refusing my proposals as the two older wizards now did. "I recognize the honor," I said. "In fact, I'm almost overwhelmed by the honor. And I recognize that every wizard has a duty to institutionalized wizardry to serve it as best he can. But I can't leave Yurt."
"Why not?"
"I love the people there."
They looked at each other as though hoping the other would understand. "Maybe there's something you haven't thought about," said Zahlfast slowly. "Wizards live far longer than ordinary humans. If you become too close to the people there, you'll just be hurt when you have to leave them behind."
"Fine," I said. "Invite me to the school in fifty years." In fifty years, Joachim and the queen would be dead, and Theodora and Paul, assuming they were still alive, would be happily watching their grandchildren grow up and would no longer need me. In Theodora's case, I reminded myself, they would also be my grandchildren. I had a sudden doubt whether fifty years would be long enough.
Zahlfast thought the same thing. "If you decide to stay in Yurt became of the people, Daimbert, you do have to realize that new people are going to appear, and they may engage your affections as well. Now you say you want to stay in part because of your king—King Paul, isn't that right?—and yet I don't think he was even born when you first went to Yurt."
"We're asking you," said the Master slowly, "because we think you have unique abilities that ought to be put to the use of wider wizardry."
I shook my head. "It wouldn't work. You're hoping that I'd be able to open communications with the bishop of the City. But I have no inherent ability to make priests give up their suspicions of wizards. All I have is my friendship with Joachim, the new bishop of Caelrhon. If the church and wizardry are going to start working together, you'll have to start with him and me, not with the bishop of the City and a representative of the school."
I could have added that the reason I had, even if highly reluctantly, let Theodora refuse to marry me was because she thought I would be more happy and comfortable as royal wizard of Yurt. I had not given up life with her and our daughter to go live in the City.
"You sound quite definite," said the Master.
"I am quite definite. You seem to think I'd be good for the school because I'm different from most wizards. Maybe I'm also different in that I don't consider a post here the most desirable thing in the world."
"I'm afraid this isn't what we expected," said the Master.
"That's all right," I said, forcing a smile. "It wasn't what I expected either."
"You seem fairly firm about this," said Zahlfast, "but give it some thought. It will be fine if you want to change your mind."
"I will indeed give it some thought," I answered. This was an understatement. "Don't forget to ask me again in fifty years."
"Then let me ask you something else in the meantime," said the Master. "Is there something we could do for you or give you? You may not appreciate this properly, but you did save the school from tremendous peril by your warning."
I thought for a moment. Everything I had hoped for this summer had reached a dead end. Even though Joachim and I might still be friends now that he was bishop, I would see him even less than I had before. The queen was lost to me forever, and Theodora did not want to marry me. There was just one thing left I had wanted.
"Yes," I said slowly and smiled. "You can give me one of the air carts."
EPILOGUE
I took off in my air cart in late afternoon, but instead of heading toward Yurt I flew southeast from the City. With Sengrim's death, everything seemed wrapped up to everyone else's satisfaction, but not to mine. After half an hour I saw a castle's towers rising before me in the darkening air. More than twice the size of the royal castle of Yurt, it perched on a high pinnacle above a fertile river valley. As I approached magic lamps winked on in all the windows.
The air cart stopped abruptly, jerking me forward. The wings continued to flap, but we made no progress. I probed for spells and discovered that the air had been made solid: impermeable, as far as I could tell, to any sort of magical flying creature, but not, I discovered as I thrust an experimental hand through, to me. It looked as if someone had been taking lessons from the nixie.
I set the air cart down at the base of the rocky pinnacle and ascended the steps, my heart beating fast. Guards with halberds barred my way at the top. "I would like to speak to Elerius, your Royal Wizard," I said, but already I could see a black-bearded figure coming up behind them. He must have been warned by the triggering of the protective spells he had set up to guard his castle from creatures from the land of wild magic.
"How delightful to see you, Daimbert," he said, as hearty and welcoming as good old Book-Leech on the mountaintop in the borderlands. I just wished I could believe him equally sincere "Come to my study. And I understand that congratulations are in order!"
Then I had reached him before the news that I had refused the position at the school. "I turned the Master down," I said casually. "How much role did you play in setting up the offer?"
This startled him. He stopped dead in the middle of asking a deferentially hovering servant to bring us tea, then whisked me up the stairs into his study and slammed the door. I had never seen so many books
in one place in my life. In a moment Elerius had regained his cheerful composure, but I could tell it was not the same.
"Zahlfast and the Master must have been quite surprised!" he said, smiling while his hazel eyes looked me over intently. "How could you refuse an offer to join the permanent faculty—something they have offered no one in thirty years? Is Yurt so charming, or do you have your eye on a bigger kingdom somewhere else? Or," and he paused for a few seconds, "is that witch in Caelrhon more appealing than the City?"
That was the final evidence I needed. That he would threaten—even obliquely threaten—to blackmail me meant I must have information about him that he wanted kept secret.
"Don't smirk, Elerius," I said quietly. "You can guess and insinuate all you like. But if you push me too far I'll just tell the Master I'm leaving organized wizardry to spend the rest of my life doing illusions at fairs—after I tell him that you were behind Sengrim every step of the way."
We were interrupted before he could answer by the entry of servants with tea. It was quite a production: four servants in livery, one to open the door, one to carry the teapot, one to carry the tray with cups and spoons, and one to carry a plate of gingerbread puffs baked in brightly-colored foils. I bit into one when it became clear that the servants would not go until everything had been found satisfactory. Not bad, although Yurt's cook's were better.
Elerius had had time to prepare his response by the time the servants finally left. "I did befriend Sengrim a few years ago," he said good-naturedly, pouring tea, "back when he was trying to persuade the school that we needed to do more with fire magic and no one else would listen to him. Everyone at the school knows about that. But that hardly means I was ‘behind him every step of the way’!"
"It means you brought a fanged gorgos to Caelrhon which nearly killed me," I said, looking at him levelly over my teacup. "Sengrim would never have managed that on his own. He had to be working with a demon—and Zahlfast said he wasn't—or else an extremely good wizard. Theodora—the witch you seem to know about—touched a wizard's mind in the cathedral city, but this wizard was not anyone she recognized. And that means it wasn't Sengrim, not even in his disguise as the old magician. Both the cathedral cantor and the construction foreman mentioned dealing with a wizard, but somebody young, not old like Sengrim."
Elerius' teacup gave a sudden rattle in its saucer. I looked at him sharply but he only smiled, waiting for me to continue.
"And then Zahlfast and the Master seemed well informed about the bishop's inaugural sermon, saying there was another wizard there. They didn't say who, but it must have been someone they trusted. You knew all along I was in Caelrhon, because you sent me a letter urging me to leave, realizing full well it would have exactly the opposite effect; I should have been suspicious at the time that you even knew I was there. The Master forgave me for being indirectly responsible for Sengrim's death. Did you think he would forgive you for being directly responsible for mine?"
"You were never in serious danger, Daimbert," said Elerius, passing the gingerbread puffs. This wasn't how I remembered it. "I was of course interested to see how you would do against a gorgos with your particular style of magic, but I was there, disguised, among the townspeople." The image of a face I had seen in the crowd, past Lucas's shoulder, as I lay on the paving in front of the cathedral suddenly clicked into place. "Another minute in your fight with the gorgos, or another move by Caelrhon's crown prince, and I would have had to intervene." I didn't like his timing; there hadn't been any minutes or moves to spare. "And you would never have been in any danger at all if you hadn't been so precipitate. Sengrim was intending to defeat the gorgos himself—with my help, of course."
"You say Sengrim intended to overcome a gorgos he had himself brought from the land of wild magic," I said slowly, peeling foil with fingers that I kept from trembling by sheer will. "You realize, Elerius, that this makes no sense whatsoever. So far you've helped a renegade wizard turn on his own employer, attack a cathedral, summon a hundred dragons from the land of magic, and nearly kill scores of people at the coronation of the king of Yurt. This is scarcely suitable in the school's best graduate! I came to talk to you before telling the Master any of this, but if you don't have an adequate explanation I'm heading straight back to the City tonight."
Unless you imprison me, I thought, keeping my thoughts well shielded, or unless you instructed the servants to poison the gingerbread puffs.
"A good idea, talking to me first," said Elerius with a remarkably genuine smile. "I know there have been a few occasions in the past, Daimbert, where you ended up looking like a fool. It's this habit of acting on instinct, you know. It may serve you well in your personal sort of improvisational magic, but it's a poor guide in ordinary affairs. No sense letting the school think they had a narrow escape when you turned down their position!"
I waited silently, knowing he would have to say more. Outside it was fully dark, and the magic lights were reflected in the windows. On the wall hung Elerius's diploma from the school, nearly six feet long, with his name written in letters of fire at the top and the lower half dense with mentions of honors, distinctions, and areas of special merit. Stars twinkled all around the edge. Mine in my chambers in Yurt had my name and the twinkling stars and nothing else.
"Sengrim, as I mentioned," Elerius said at last, "first came to my attention several years ago when he was trying to persuade the school that they ought to offer at least a series of lectures on fire magic—with him teaching it, of course. The Master wasn't interested; there's that one course I occasionally teach myself on the old magic, and he seemed to feel that was enough. Besides, I believe he wasn't sure Sengrim would be an appropriate mentor for the young wizards—he was acting rather strangely even then. He wouldn't even say how he'd learned fire magic . . ."
"I know how he did," I said shortly. "Go on."
Elerius lifted sharply-peaked eyebrows at me but continued. "I was interested myself, however, both for my own course and because I believe wizards shouldn't reject anything that might prove useful. And that's why Sengrim came to consider me his friend, and why he turned to me this spring when he quarreled with his prince, pretended in a fit of pique to blow himself up, and then decided rather belatedly to try to reestablish himself at Caelrhon. I agreed, somewhat reluctantly I must say, to Sengrim's plan to prove to his king and prince what a good wizard he really was. I have to admit I originally thought his plan as nonsensical as you do: first to bring a monster from the land of magic and then to overcome it in a very public setting to show his competence, amazing everyone by his extremely timely return from the dead. But when it became clear that he would do it with or without me, I decided it would be better to help."
"So he decided after talking to the construction foreman," I said slowly, "that a gorgos would serve his purposes nicely, and you helped him go up to the borderlands and capture one—as well as a horse for the Romneys, who he was afraid might reveal that the ragged old magician in the area was in fact the supposedly deceased Royal Wizard in disguise. You helped with that disguise too, didn't you—something thorough enough to fool even another wizard. Just out of curiosity, exactly where near Caelrhon did you manage to imprison Sengrim's gorgos?"
"There's a little grove a mile outside of town, a grove thick with unchanneled magic. It wasn't difficult to channel it, to make a chamber in the ground under the spring where the gorgos could be bound until it was wanted."
I closed my eyes for a second. I had been heedless of a number of things the day I went there with Theodora.
Elerius poured out the last of the tea. "I'm afraid, Daimbert," he continued, "that you rather spoiled Sengrim's plan for him. It was supposed to end with him triumphantly telling Prince Lucas that even the bravest and most able kings needed wizards to protect their kingdoms from wild magic, and being welcomed again into the royal court. Instead it ended with the prince threatening to kill you. Even though it could just as easily have been him, rather than feeling gratitude for you
r fast action Sengrim became extremely bitter toward you. And I understand the two of you had had some sort of earlier misunderstanding?"
I did not deign to answer.
"He was already furious with the school," Elerius continued, "which he thought had unfairly given you opportunities he deserved himself. I seemed to be the only school-trained wizard he trusted as he started imagining plots against him from the faculty and trying to create counter-plots. At any rate, at this point it became obvious that he was growing seriously deranged, so I thought it best to distance myself from him. The rest, including the dragons and the unfortunate attack on your king's coming of age festivities, was entirely his own work. I was pleased to hear that you had once again triumphed."
He fell silent but looked at me as though waiting for my reaction. "So this is your entire story?" I said at last. "The story you would have told the Master if I accused you of being involved with Sengrim?"
"Of course. Truth is always wisest."
"What about the rumors of the school plotting to put wizards in every castle and manor to seize control from the aristocracy?"
Elerius shrugged. "Rumors are always flying on one topic or another."
"How do you explain leaving to his own wild devices a wizard you thought had become deranged?"
"You know I have no authority over any other wizard." Elerius shook his head regretfully. "I have sometimes tried to persuade the Master and Zahlfast that the school needs tighter discipline, but as long as they keep only a loose, almost informal organization, there is really nothing a wizard can do in a situation like this." He set down his empty cup and rose briskly to his feet. "Well, did you plan to return to that little kingdom of yours tonight, Daimbert, or would you like to stay here? I'm sure a set of chambers could be arranged."
I gave him my best wizardly glare from under my eyebrows and remained seated. I had suspected Theodora of manipulating me coldly, Lucas of bringing the gorgos to Caelrhon himself, and Vincent of plotting to murder Paul and the queen. All of them had managed to talk me out of my suspicions. But someone, if not the princes of Caelrhon, had been working with Sengrim. And I would not give up these suspicions so easily.
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