A Bad Spell in Yurt - Wizard of Yurt - 1 (6 page)

It was a smal kingdom. When they wanted a wizard, the best they could do was me. When they wanted a chaplain, they got a young man, who perhaps had a dark stain they had already suspected at the seminary, and who took up his duties without al the fatherly guidance and assistance that was normal y considered necessary. I liked to give the impression that wizards were familiar with the powers of darkness; priests had to deal with them every day.

Joachim seemed content to let the silence stretch out. "The other day I came back to my chambers," I said suddenly, "and the magic lock on my door had been broken."

He didn't seem as shocked as I thought he should have, but then he wouldn't know how hard they are to break. He didn't look guilty either, but I found it hard to read his face. "It doesn't sound as though a magic lock has any advantage over cold iron, then."

This, I realized, was supposed to be another one of his jokes. "You don't understand. Someone would have to know a tremendous amount of magic to break it. It can't be done with brute force."

He leaned forward, and his eyes reemerged from darkness. "But I didn't think there was anyone else in the castle who knew magic."

I looked into my empty glass. "Neither did I."

He had no ideas about who might have known such a powerful spel , and I went back to my own chambers not much later. The bright glow of the magic lamp left by my predecessor was very reassuring. I sat up for several more hours, reading about such lamps, and by the time I went to bed I thought I had worked out the spel s, though I was too exhausted to do them then.

I set to work on the spel s in the morning. I had known how to make something shine before, but the attachment spel s and especial y the spel s to make the magic respond to the voice were much harder than I had imagined. After one more glance at my books, I closed the windows, pul ed the drapes, and put the volume away. It takes too much concentration for the complicated spel s to be able to look at anything else, even a book of magic.

I started with my belt buckle, not daring to risk my oval of glass. First I started it shining, then slowly, in the heavy syl ables of the Hidden Language, I pronounced the words to keep the spel attached. The moon and stars shone bril iantly, and I closed my eyes against them. I was alone in a deep tunnel where magic flowed, but as long as I kept on saying the words and saying them correctly the flow obeyed me. This was the most difficult part of al , to set up the translation between the Hidden Language and the language of men. "On. Out," I said aloud, and my words were so loud that they startled me into opening my eyes.

My chambers were dark, and the buckle in my hands was lifeless. "On," I said, and the ful moonlight shone. "Out," and al was again night.

I jumped up and pul ed open my curtains. I wanted to tel someone about my triumph. But when I looked out the only people I saw were the stable boys, currying the horses. I thought of tel ing them but didn't want to interrupt them. While putting my belt back on, I also decided against interrupting the chaplain just to show him my buckle; after al , since I had told him magic always worked, it would be sil y to be this elated over having it work once.

I pul ed the curtains shut and started on my oval of glass. I knew the spel s now, and everything went smoothly. As I stood at the edge of the river of magic, I knew exactly what to say, to have my mind control the spel s without ever endangering myself.

At the end I opened my eyes. "On. Out." The piece of glass obediently shone out with a bril iance far beyond what I had expected, then darkened again. This, I thought, would make a remarkable improvement in the chapel stairs. I hoped Joachim would be suitably grateful.

"On," I said again, reaching for the curtains. My belt buckle lit up, but the glass stayed dark. I tried again, changing the modulation of my voice, but nothing happened. I tried probing the spel attached to the glass with my mind, but there was no magic there at al .

I sat down. Somehow I must not have attached the spel properly, so that it had withered and returned to the deep channels of magic as most spel s do. But I could not see where I had gone wrong. Magic real y should work al the time if the wizard does it correctly.

I shook my head, then shook my shoulders as wel , dispel ing the chil ing unease that suddenly gripped me. I would try again.

This time there was no problem at al . I threw open the windows and opened the door to my bedroom, where I had taken my predecessor's magic lights so they wouldn't come on and break my concentration.

The spel s had taken al morning. I tucked the oval of glass under my arm, planning to show the constable at lunch. I would let him find a way to attach it to the ceiling in the staircase. My predecessor might have been able to make his lamps hang suspended in the air, but at this point I thought glue would work just as wel .

As I pul ed my door shut and attached the lock, I wondered again why my spel had not worked at first. Had I just said one of the many words wrong in setting up the spel , or had an outside magical force broken it for me?

The seating arrangement at dinner the first night was maintained, and I ate every noon and evening between Dominic and the Lady Maria. Occasional y Dominic would be away in the middle of the day, but she and her golden curls were always at my right. The Lady Maria seemed, if possible, to be growing younger. She liked to engage me in lively conversation, punctuated with girlish laughter. If I tired of her laughter, I had only to look across the table to meet the chaplain's completely sober eyes.

But in fact I started to like the Lady Maria. As long as I could keep her off the topic of how young and charming she stil was, she had a lively mind that was hungry for new ideas and information. She repeatedly pressed me for details on the dragon in the wizards' school cel ars. I decided to have her help me with the telephones.

During the two days that the armorer was making steel plates for my lights, I set to work trying to derive the right spel s. I decided that the first step would be to make it possible for two telephones in the castle to talk to each other; if that worked, then maybe I could start on the much more complicated task of starting communication with telephones elsewhere.

The king seemed stiff and said nothing more about learning to fly, and Dominic asked no questions about malignant spel s, so I devoted ful time to the telephones. It occurred to me that I was becoming obsessed with them, but at least at every meal the others al asked me interested questions about how I was coming and seemed, I thought, to be drawing comparisons between the old wizard and myself with the comparison favorable to me. I tried not to think what they would say when I gave up the project in despair.

At first nothing worked at al . With one telephone in my study, I put the other out in the courtyard and had the Lady Maria listen while I tried to communicate. The knights and ladies, the boys who were being trained as knights, and the servants tended to flock from al over the castle to watch my latest attempt. At least they weren't laughing at me, yet.

"Did you hear anything?" I'd yel from the door of my chambers.

"Nothing that time," she would cal back in what were meant to be encouraging tones.

Then my steel ovals were ready, and I had an excuse to put the glass telephones back up on the shelf while I worked the spel s of light. Since I had to do each individual y, it took al day, and it took another day for the servants to attach them inside to the ceiling of the stairway. But on Sunday, in time for service, they were ready.

I had Gwen wake me early and was at the bottom of the stairs before anyone else. "On," I said in my deepest voice, and al the lights blazed on. The glass light inside the door was the brightest of al , but the steel plates gave a rich and somber light that I thought most appropriate. I stood modestly outside the stairwel , letting everyone else precede me, smiling in spite of myself when I heard their admiring comments.

But the telephones continued to elude me. After two more days of studying my books, I thought I had found the spel , and again set the Lady Maria in the courtyard with one instrument while I talked into the other. "Al powers of earth and air must obey the spel s of wizardry," I said into my own telephone. Gwen had laughed at that until she could hardly stand up, but it seemed safe to say, since no one seemed able to hear me anyway.

I hurried out into the courtyard. "Could you hear that?"

The Lady Maria didn't answer at first. The people with her were smiling, either in amusement or encouragement, but she looked both puzzled and somewhat concerned. She came toward me, carrying the glass telephone.

"It's very strange," she said. "Nobody else could hear you, but I could."

"You could? You mean it worked? You know that, with a telephone, you have to hold the receiver to your ear, and other people don't hear what's being said." I almost laughed with excitement. At last, I thought, I was making real progress.

But she shook her head. "I didn't hear you through the receiver. I don't think I even heard you with my ears. It was as though you were talking inside my brain."

"Bring the telephone into my study," I said in despondency. I put both instruments back up on the top shelf. While I thought I was attaching communications spel s to the instruments, I was instead discovering that, even though the Lady Maria was not trained in wizardry, it was stil possible for me to communicate with her, mind to mind. While I had begun to like her, I didn't want to do it again. Anyone else's mind is always acutely strange if met directly.

She started to leave, then hesitated. "Is it true that al powers of earth and air must obey the spel s of wizardry?"

At least she had heard what I'd said, rather than whatever random thoughts I may have been having. "Yes, if the wizardry is done right," I said.

"So a wizard can, if he knows his spel s, exercise ultimate control over every being on earth?" It would have been more flattering if she had not stil looked so puzzled.

"No," I said honestly, "not ultimate control. Wizardry is a natural power. Like anything else on earth, it can be overcome by the supernatural."

"You mean by the saints?"

"Or by demons."

"But who controls the saints and demons?"

I shook my head and tried to smile. When I was at school, I had known I wasn't a very good wizard, but at least I had believed in wizardry. Here in Yurt everyone seemed to want to remind me of wizardry's limitations. "You'l have to ask the chaplain about that. But no one real y controls saints and demons. At best the priests learn how to ask them favors."

At dinner that night I told the constable that I was going to have to pause in my work on the telephone system for a while, until I had discovered the source of the anti-telephonic demonic influence.

I

I rode out of the castle on an old white mare. Although I had only been in Yurt a little over two weeks, my life in the City had begun to fade into the distant past. Life in the castle had settled into a comfortable pattern once I abandoned work on the telephones. The queen was spoken of every day, but she was stil gone, and I found it hard to imagine what the castle would be like when she returned. To me, to whom two weeks seemed like a year, she had been gone forever, had indeed never been in Yurt, but to the others she was just a little over halfway through the month-long visit to her parents that she took every summer.

Some of the knights and the boys were riding out at the same time. Their horses were much livelier than mine, but as I had not ridden in a long time I was happy with my mount. She walked steadily and placidly down the brick road that led from the castle gates. While the knights turned off to the field where they were teaching the boys jousting, my mare and I continued past the little cemetery, dotted with crosses, where the chaplain's predecessor and presumably al former kings and queens and chaplains and servants were buried, and down the hil toward the woods. I was going to visit the old wizard.

Although the "anti-telephonic demonic influences" I had used as an excuse to the constable had been my own invention, I didn't like the cold touch that was never there when I looked but might surface, unexpectedly and fleetingly, while I was thinking of something entirely different. My predecessor should have some ideas.

The green of the leaves in the forest below me had gone dusty in the heat of late summer, and the breeze across the hil made silver ripples in the grass. I was enjoying being out near fields and forest, and real forest, too, not the manicured parks I was used to near the City. I hadn't told anyone where I was going, only that I was out for a ride. As my horse and I reached the edge of the woods, I was wondering again how I should address the old wizard.

Casual conversation with the constable's wife had informed me where his house was, but protocol was stil a problem. I, now, was Royal Wizard, and he was only an old retired spel -

caster. But he was two hundred years older than me and certainly knew a lot more about Yurt than I did. I had dressed formal y in my red and black velvet but decided to address him with deference and respect.

In the cool shade of the woods, birds sang in the treetops far above us and insects hummed closer to hand. The mare shook her head, making al the bel s on her bridle jingle. I whistled as I rode, a little tune in minor that the trumpeters had played at dinner the night before. We were going paral el to the edge of the forest, and occasional y I could see the fields through a gap in the trees. The long summer's day stretched before me, leisurely and lingering, with no thought of the night.

After half an hour's easy riding, I found the trail mark I had been looking for, a little pile of white stones. Just beyond, a narrow grassy track wandered away from the road, off between the beeches, and disappeared over a rise. I would never have spotted it except for the stones.

The branches here were low enough that I dismounted and led the mare. We should be almost there. I stopped at the top of the rise, looking down into a val ey with a stream at the bottom. Even the sound of the water on stones was sparkling. The grass was richly green on either hand, and the trees that surrounded the little val ey cast dancing shadows.