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Authors: Vivian Vande Velde

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BOOK: Wizard at Work
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The man looked down at his feet. If he noticed that he was ankle deep in a baby lettuce, he didn't
say so. He said, "My master, Duke Snell, has sent me to fetch you to his castle in Northrup."

"I don't know Duke Snell," the wizard said, though he knew where Northrup was, in the furthermost reach of the realm. He already wasn't impressed—neither with the manner of the invitation, nor with the messenger, who was still looking at his feet, evidently taking the wizard's comment to watch his feet as a continuing order. Either Duke Snell employed people who were not strong on thinking ability, or he gave capricious orders that he expected to be followed exactly. Neither instance spoke well of the man.

The duke's messenger assured the wizard, "But the duke knows you. Or of you, at any rate. There's a problem at the castle, and he needs you to fix it."

"Really?" The wizard was beginning to lose patience. "And what makes him think I will?"

Still staring at his feet, perhaps concerned that a spell was about to affect them and apparently unaware of the wizard's growing indignation, the
messenger explained, "The king is coming for a visit next week, and Duke Snell wants to make sure the castle is safe."

This wasn't exactly an answer to the wizard's question, but the wizard
did
know the king, who was not the kind of man to give frivolous orders or surround himself with people who didn't know how to think. The wizard didn't want anything bad to happen to him. So he asked, "What kind of problem does Duke Snell have?"

"The castle is being haunted."

The wizard hadn't had much experience with hauntings, for there are many more
reports
of ghosts than actual ghosts. In fact, he suspected there was probably some more ordinary explanation for whatever the duke thought was happening. Still, he found his curiosity prickled, and he asked, "Who's the castle being haunted by?"

"A ghost."

The wizard sighed. "Who has died recently?"

"That's just the problem," the man said. "Or one of them: Nobody has. Well, I mean, I suppose
some
body
some
where in the whole wide world has died in recent weeks, but none of the people from the castle. Will you come?"

The wizard sighed again. It probably wasn't a real ghost—ghosts are actually quite rare. And there were things he needed to do around here before his students returned from their summer holiday, but he was intrigued. That, and he wanted to keep the king safe. "All right," he said.

"Good," the man told him. "Can I stop watching my feet now?"

The wizard resisted the temptation to see how long this could last and said, "Yes."

Though the wizard
had been to the region of Northrup, he hadn't ever been to Duke Snell's castle, so he couldn't transport himself directly there. He had the duke's messenger name off nearby landmarks and recognized Standish Wood as a place he
had
visited. So he saved himself three days of traveling on Farmer Seymour's ill-natured horse by using his transportation spell to get to the town of Frisbane, which sat between
where Standish Wood ended and the great northern plains started. He also saved himself the company of the duke's man, claiming—though it wasn't true—that his spell only worked on himself.

In Frisbane he cast the spell to make himself look more wizardly, then he hired a boat. This took half a day to get him east a fraction of the distance he had traveled instantly by spell. It was late afternoon before the boatman announced, "The duke's castle."

The castle sat on an island in the river. The wizard saw the way was blocked by two water gates, one before and one beyond the castle, and there was a guard at each gate, and a mechanism to raise and lower the gates.

The nearer guard approached and motioned them to come in toward the shore. He was bearing a tally sheet and a bored expression. As though he'd proclaimed this a thousand times a day, the guard called to them: "One-silver-penny toll for traveling through the moat area." A silver penny was enough to buy a good sanding and painting for this boat, which it could probably use, and
some nice soft seat cushions—which it definitely needed.

"I'm not traveling
through
the moat area," the boatman said. "I simply need to row up to the castle mooring area to drop off this gentleman here."

The guard made a check mark on his tally sheet. "Two-silver-penny toll for lingering in the moat area," he said.

The wizard leaned forward and explained, "Duke Snell asked me to come."

The guard waited a few seconds before saying, "And your point is?..."

Surely this shouldn't be so complicated, the wizard thought. "The point is: If I'm the duke's guest, we shouldn't have to pay a toll."

"Yeah," the guard agreed in a mocking tone. "And dogs shouldn't get fleas, apples shouldn't have worms, and new shoes shouldn't pinch."

The wizard considered transforming himself into a bird that could fly over the water to the castle, but he didn't want to cause a scene because he didn't know if the duke wanted people knowing he had hired a wizard. Sometimes, when one works for royalty, one needs to be discreet. Besides, there was probably a three-silver-penny toll for using airspace.

The boatman was obviously waiting for the wizard to pay the toll, for which the wizard couldn't blame him; otherwise the man would lose half the fare he'd just earned.

The wizard took two coins from what the duke's messenger had paid for him to come, and handed them over to the guard.

The guard checked off something else on his sheet, then turned the cogwheel that raised the gate.

The gate rose, creaking and dripping.

Once they were through, the guard drew yet another mark on his sheet. "Proceed directly to the mooring area," he warned sternly. "There's a fine for loitering."

"Why is that not a surprise?" the boatman muttered as he pulled on the oars.

"Careful," the wizard whispered. "There's probably a sarcasm tax."

The boatman grunted but said no more as he rowed the few short strokes to the mooring.

The wizard climbed out of the boat—without getting any assistance from the castle guard who stood about three feet away and looked as though his entire job was to pretend to be a statue.

I'm not having a good feeling about this whole business,
the wizard told himself.
I should probably just turn around and go home right now
—which would be considerably easier than getting here, because he could use his transporting spell. But he was still curious about the haunting, and he
had
been paid already.
I'll give it a little longer,
he told himself.

"State your business," said the castle guard who was impersonating a statue.

Since Snell's messenger had never referred to him by name, the wizard suspected Snell didn't know what his name was, so he simply said, "I am the wizard"—calculating there was no use being so discreet that the guard wouldn't let him in.

This guard had a list, too, and one of the entries must have read "The Wizard," for he made a
check mark and said, "You may proceed inside. Someone will show you to Duke Snell's audience hall. Tips, by the way, are gratefully accepted."

"That's good to know," the wizard said.

As the wizard started up the stairs to the castle, he heard the water gate guard tell the boatman, "One-silver-penny toll for leaving the moat area." The wizard shook his head and entered the castle, suspecting that he and Snell were very unlikely to hit it off.

The wizard waited
and waited and waited in the audience hall until he very seriously considered transporting himself out of there, ghost or not. He suspected he wouldn't get in to see the duke unless he bribed one of the guards, and he was determined not to do that. On his way home he could always drop in on the king, he thought, with the warning that Snell's castle might not be safe. He was distracted by wondering whether the gate guards would charge the king for passage, and while he was thinking about that, Snell finally sent for him.

The duke was a tall, good-looking man, with a quick smile. His sandy-colored hair tended to fall forward so that he had to repeatedly toss his head back to fling the hair out of his eyes. The wizard supposed that young women might find this charming. He found himself immediately annoyed with the man.

"Ah, Wizard!" Snell said. "Thank you for coming so quickly. I trust you found the trip easy."

The wizard smiled back at him. "Well, yes, until your castle guards started extorting money from me."

Snell gave a concerned frown. "The tolls?" he asked. "A necessary evil, I'm afraid. I have just inherited this duchy and need to raise money to support public works, such as schools and road improvement, which were sadly neglected by my predecessor."

The last time the wizard had visited the region of Northrup, he had not noticed anything wrong with the roads. And judging by what he saw of fine tapestries and gold and silver ornaments
about the castle, the wizard suspected that the duke's philosophy might well be that improvement starts at home.

The duke was saying, "But
you
should not have been charged since I invited you. You must demand your fee back from the guards."

I?
the wizard thought, suspecting how far that would get him—suspecting
Snell
knew how far that would get him. But he didn't say that; he asked, "So you are just recently made duke?"

Snell nodded.

"And now you are troubled by a ghost."

Again Snell nodded. "Despite the fact," the duke added, "that no one from the castle has died recently."

Though he suspected there was a more ordinary explanation than haunting for whatever was troubling the castle, the wizard asked, "Could the spirit be that of the previous duke?"

"It could," Snell agreed, "but I seriously doubt it because the man is not dead." Snell smiled at the wizard, and the wizard smiled back to indicate he found this clever, though in reality
he thought the duke pompous and full of himself. "I did not inherit this castle," Snell clarified, "but was given it by Duke Lawrence as a reward for good service. He has other lands."

"How lucky for everyone." The wizard made a point of not asking what good deed or bravery the duke had done, which, he guessed, the duke expected him to be dying to hear about. "So who do you suspect the ghost is, and what might be its business?"

"No idea," Snell said. "That's why I hired you."

"What does this ghost do?"

"Oh, it moans a lot, and drips water in the passageways."

"Moans," the wizard repeated. "Water." The duke wasn't being very helpful. "Old houses make noises. And are you sure you don't simply have a leak?"

"Fairly sure," the duke said. "Come take a look at my former quarters."

He led the wizard into another room, a bedroom. The bed curtains had been yanked off their
rings, the wall hangings had been slashed to shreds, and all the items that had previously sat on top of the chests and dressers had been hurled to the floor.

"Someone doesn't like you," the wizard observed. Of course,
he
didn't like the duke, either, but this looked like a situation that might be dangerous. "No idea who?" the wizard prompted.

"No idea," the duke echoed. "That's the second time you've asked. Do you want to hear the rest of it?"

"Oh, why not?" the wizard said, irritated at the way the duke seemed in love with his own voice. "Now that I've traveled all this way."

Snell didn't note or at least didn't comment on the wizard's surliness. "The rest of it," he said, "is that the window was barred and the door locked when this happened."

"Someone with a key, then," the wizard speculated, still looking for a reasonable explanation.

"And a tendency to be invisible," Snell said. "I was in the room at the time."

That
got the wizard's attention. "Maybe you'd better start at the beginning."

With the look of a man who is vastly impressed with himself, Duke Snell said, "After I rescued Duke Lawrence's daughter Cordelia from a band of bandits in Standish Wood, the duke rewarded me with this land and gave me his daughter in marriage."

The wizard was not surprised that the duke had found a way to bring the conversation back to his own accomplishments.

"Soon after we were wed and moved into this castle, we began to hear moaning noises, at first very faint. But every night the sounds grew louder and they started earlier and lasted longer. Then we began finding water in the castle hallways and some of the rooms, at first just a small puddle here and there. But those grew, too, till there were huge wet tracks—most often, I must say, directly outside my bedroom door."

There were several questions that plagued the wizard. The one he settled on was, "Tracks? As in a man's footprints? Or a woman's? Could you
tell if they were made by boots, or shoes, or bare feet?"

The duke was shaking his head. "Not footprints. More like a trail of water. As though the ghost is dragging something behind him, like a wide, sopping-wet blanket."

"Why would the ghost be dragging a blanket?" the wizard asked.

"I didn't say he
is,
" the duke complained. "You're not listening properly. How can you solve this problem if you repeat questions and don't listen properly? I didn't say the ghost is dragging a wet blanket behind him—I said he's leaving a track
like
a dragged wet blanket. You need to improve your listening skills." Then he added, "Sometimes the walls are wet, too."

To prove he was listening, the wizard asked, "As though the ghost is slinging the wet blanket against the walls?"

"I don't think you're taking this very seriously," Snell said, a hint of whine coming into his voice. "What am I paying you all this money for if you're not going to take me seriously?"

The wizard was tempted to answer that you can't pay someone to take you seriously, and that—besides—the duke wasn't paying him all that much. Instead, he said, "Moans and then water. Go on."

Snell said, "Then things started breaking.
My
things. I mean, everything in the castle is
mine
—Duke Lawrence declared it so. But my personal things. Then that got worse and worse, too, until I sent for you. You see where it ended last night"—the duke waved his arm dramatically about the ruined room—"while I was waiting for you."

BOOK: Wizard at Work
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