A Bad Spell in Yurt Read online

  I threw down a few coins, and a hand emerged from beneath the dragon’s chest to scoop them up before the dragon continued down the street, roaring convincingly. I felt somehow inadequate. My great triumph at Yurt so far had been making lamps for the chapel stair, and yet a group of people in a dragon costume, who most probably had access to nothing as exalted as a Royal Wizard, were apparently able to make glowing dragon eyes without difficulty.

  My steps took me back to the square in front of the cathedral. Since I had been there an hour before, the scene had changed. With the coming of evening, the merchants selling leather and bolts of cloth and the farmers selling loads of vegetables were all gone. The musicians and dancers were thicker, however, and at least half the people in the square were wearing some land of costume. I saw no priests, even though we were next to the church; I guessed they stayed well inside during carnival.

  And then I saw the most startling thing I had seen all day. Floating toward me, just over the heads of the crowd, was a glowing red bubble. As it came closer, I could see into it, and there, looking right back at me, was a grinning demon.

  I was too struck with panic to think and therefore reacted out of instinct. I said the two words of the Hidden Language that would break an illusion, and the red bubble and the demon with it dissolved first into red dust and then into nothing.

  And then I saw the magician. He was, wearing a long, flowing robe, covered with every symbol imaginable, from the zodiac to a crucifix to a gleaming sun. On his head was a tall, pointed hat, and in his hand a heavy oak staff.

  “What did you do that for?” he demanded. “Those take a long time to make, you know!”

  I recognized him at once—not him personally, because I had never seen him before, but as a type. He was a magician, the sort of fellow who might have, in the youth of Yurt’s old wizard, picked up a little magic in an abortive apprenticeship. Nowadays he most likely had studied for a year or two at the wizards’ school. He was appreciably older than I; he would have left there before I arrived.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know they’re hard to make. But it was so convincing you scared me.”

  He smiled at that, a slightly gap-toothed grin over a scraggly beard in which the gray was real. “Not bad to be able to scare a real wizard,” he said with a chuckle.

  He would have known of course that I was a wizard. I had tried to explain once to the manager in the emporium how wizards can always recognize each other. He had thought it was some magic impress put on us at the same time we received our diplomas, but I had argued that that couldn’t be the case, as many young wizards appeared to be wizards long before the eight years were up, and old wizards who had never gone to the school were always recognizable.

  “Shall I help you make a replacement?” I said to the magician, then realized it was tactless as soon as I said it. I had been spending too much time with the chaplain.

  The grin disappeared. “This is my corner. If you want to do some illusions of your own, go somewhere else, but don’t interfere with my business.”

  I stepped back without saying anything, watching as he set to work on a new magic bubble. This one he made green, and instead of a demon he put a dragon inside. He was good, I had to admit. In a few moments he had it finished and launched it into the air. A crowd started to gather, and several people tossed him coins, which he snatched up while continuing to concentrate on the next bubble.

  “Did you make the eyes for those people in the dragon costume?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said with a quick glance in my direction, as though doubting my motives for asking.

  “I just wanted to say that they’re excellent dragon eyes.”

  “Well, thanks for your exalted opinion.”

  I wandered off through the crowd without saying anything more. I should have known better than to risk appearing to be condescending. Wizards fight all the time with one another anyway, and it’s even worse with magicians, who are constantly imagining an insult or a joke at their expense.

  I was walking more or less in the direction of the castle when I was surprised but highly pleased to see two familiar forms coming toward me: the king and queen. I was delighted not to be a carnival magician. There was nothing I could imagine better than being the Royal Wizard of Yurt. I would have to ask the chaplain to teach me a proper prayer of gratitude.

  The king seemed rested from the journey and was looking around with enjoyment, while the queen’s emerald eyes sparkled with excitement. “I’m sorry I haven’t been to the harvest carnival for a few years,” the king said as we met. “It’s even more fun than I remembered. The king of this kingdom never comes, preferring to go to the big carnival at the City by the sea, but I think he’s missing something. You must have seen them both—what do you think?”

  “I think this is a marvelous carnival,” I said. “But it’s getting late, and the crowd will be getting wild soon. Do you think it’s quite, well, safe to be out?”

  They both laughed. “No one will bother the King of Yurt,” he said. “Not knowing the swift retribution that would follow from both my nephew and my Royal Wizard! And besides,” to the queen, “you know a few tricks, don’t you, my dear?”

  She laughed in agreement. I was sure she did.

  “We’re going to see some of the costumes and maybe have something to eat,” she said. “Do you want to join us?”

  “I’ve already eaten quite a bit,” I said. “Go ahead— I may go back to the castle and rest a little myself.” I watched them as they proceeded down the street, arm in arm, both pointing and laughing as they went. When they disappeared around the corner, I continued to the castle.

  None of the knights was back, though I could hear the voices of several of the ladies down the hall from the chamber where I was staying. I was delighted to see the king so well. What I couldn’t decide was whether he was just improved by the pleasure of the queen’s company—something I had already seen happening—or whether he was further helped by leaving Yurt. I hoped it was not the latter. Yurt was his kingdom, and I didn’t see how I could tell him there was a malignant influence there that I couldn’t find, but that meant he would have to leave.

  The carnival continued all the next day, but I surprised myself by becoming bored. Maybe it was because I was there for pleasure alone, and pleasure seemed to pall faster than I remembered. The lords and ladies were busy buying supplies, new saddles and harnesses, shoes and boots, bolts of cloth for winter outfits, decorative tapestries, jewelry and chests. The servants too were busy at the merchants’ tables. The constable had sent a purse and a long list with them, and they were comparing, pricing, and buying everything from fabric for new curtains, to tea and spices, to flagons, to bed linens, to pots and pans, to a new volleyball net. The pack horses, I thought, would be heavily laden when we started for home.

  I myself bought a new red velvet jacket. I had originally planned to wear my red pullover to the carnival, but after looking at it critically in the light of my predecessor’s magic lamps, I had decided it really did look like an old Father Noel outfit. I also searched for, but did not see, anyone selling books that would interest me.

  The king and queen didn’t seem at all bored, even though they made no purchases. But they had each other, and that seemed to keep them happily occupied.

  I didn’t see the magician again, though I was sure he was still at the carnival; one time I thought I saw a cascade of glistening stars rising from farther down the street, and turned and went another way. I kept thinking about him, however. If I had done only a little worse in my studies, if Zahlfast had not given me a passing grade on the transformation practical in spite of my problem with the frogs (and I still did not know why he had), then I too would be working the corner for coins at carnivals.

  The next morning, after the carnival was over, Joachim came to the castle very early, as the servants were packing the horses. I saw him from my window, walking down the narrow street with a much older priest, who paused, his h
and on the younger man’s shoulder, to give him what appeared to be last-minute advice, before turning back toward the cathedral. Joachim came in looking serious, as always, but did not look like I imagined someone would who had been accused of evil.

  I wanted to talk to him about the magician, but was not sure he would understand. He, for his part, seemed unwilling to say anything about the last two days. As we mounted and rode through the empty and littered city streets toward the gates, I thought that I might send Zahlfast a letter.

  III

  The king was ill. He took to his bed the night we got back to Yurt, saying he was exhausted, and he did not get up again, not for chapel service, not for meals, not to work in his rose garden.

  The queen seemed driven to new levels of energy. She was constantly in motion, and from the windows of my chambers I kept seeing her cross the courtyard, from the king’s room to the kitchen, where she herself tried to concoct a soup that would tempt him, back to his room again and then to the chapel to pray, to his room and then out to confer privately with the doctors she had sent for from the next kingdom. Although she did not say anything, I knew she was thinking that the doctors would have come more quickly if she had been able to telephone rather than relying on the pigeons. The pigeons were rapid, being able to carry a message to any of the nearby Kingdoms in an afternoon, but not as fast as a telephone.

  I mostly stayed out of the way. I did not know how serious the king’s condition was, but since I doubted the queen was someone who panicked easily, I feared the worst. The rest of the castle seemed gripped with a similar fear. No one came to my chambers, not even the Lady Maria for her lessons in the first-grammar, and meals tended to be hurried and silent. At this point, the dank autumn rains began.

  With little to do, I set myself the goal of reviewing everything I had supposedly learned: at the wizards school. Within a week, I had finished all the assignments from the first year. I was both pleased to see that I really had progressed in my eight years at the school, from an audacious but (in retrospect) shockingly ignorant young man from a merchant family in the City to someone recognizable as a real wizard, at least to an illusion-weaver at a carnival; and embarrassed to see what truly basic information I had managed not to learn. At the end of the week, I sat down to write Zahlfast a letter.

  It was hard thinking what to write, out of all that had happened to me since leaving the City. It would in fact nave been easier to write a twenty-page letter, but I was restricted by the size of message the pigeons could carry. Unless one was willing to wait to send one’s letter by someone from Yurt, or someone stopping by Yurt, who was traveling to the City, the only alternative was to write one’s letter on one of the tiny, lightweight pieces of paper the pigeons could carry. There were postal stations spread in a semicircle, fifty miles from the City, where carrier pigeons from all the western kingdoms brought messages and dropped them into the greater urban postal system. The postal system itself could handle almost any size letter, but only if mailed within fifty miles of the City.

  “I am enjoying being Royal Wizard,” I finally wrote, “and at last I may be learning some of the magic you tried to teach me. So far I’ve made a series of magic lights. I am even learning some of the old herbal magic as well. My king is sick now, however, so I don’t know what will happen. If you are ever near Yurt, it would be nice to see you.”

  The last line surprised me, as I had not intended to write it. Just getting lonely for company, I said to myself, but I let the sentence stay. I folded the tiny piece of paper I was allowed, wrote the address on the outside, rolled it up and slipped it into the cylinder that would be attached to the pigeon’s leg, and took it across the slick courtyard and up to the south tower. The pigeon keeper assured me my letter would be delivered in the City the next day—or certainly within two days.

  Back in my chambers, I found the book in the front of which I had written the schedule of courses and readings at the beginning of my second year at the school. Some of the courses I had no recollection of, and I was quite sure I did not own all the books.

  I was sitting, frowning at the list, when I heard running feet outside. My door swung open without even a knock, and Gwen burst in. “Sir, oh sir, excuse me, but you must come at once!”

  The book fell from my hands unheeded as I leapt up. My heart fell with as heavy a thump, for I was sure the king was dead.

  “Someone s trying to poison the king with magic! You must find out who it is!”

  At least it sounded as though the king was not dead yet. “But how do you know?”

  “Please come!” she cried, tugging at my hand. “The others don’t believe me—they say I don’t know any magic.”

  We hurried across the rainy courtyard to the kitchens. I was too confused and upset even to try a spell to stay dry.

  In the warmth and steam of the kitchen, the cook was standing looking thoroughly angry, her ample fists on her aproned hips. The rest of the kitchen servants hovered in the background, looking worried.

  “So, Wizard,” said the cook. “Now maybe we can have the real story! Gwen has been trying to tell us you’ve taught her magic, and now she’s accusing us of wanting the king dead!”

  “I didn’t say that!” Gwen cried. “I never thought it! I’m not accusing any of you, but someone’s doing it!”

  “Wait, wait,” I said. “I never taught Gwen magic.”

  “Yes you did!” she countered. “That spell that turns food red! Only in this case it turned green.”

  There was a babble of voices, but I tried to stay calm. “Let’s start at the beginning. What food are you talking about?”

  “This, sir,” said Gwen. From the table she picked up what appeared to be a bowl of chicken soup, except that it was a brilliant green—almost the same color, in fact, as the queen’s eyes. “I was going to take it to the king; the queen thought a little soup would do him good. And then I remembered that you had taught me a spell to say to see if someone had slipped a potion in your food.”

  Jon was standing next to her, but she looked determinedly straight ahead. “You said if someone had, the food would turn red. And then I wondered, suppose someone had tried to slip a potion to the king? So I decided to say the spell over his soup. But it didn’t turn red, it turned green. That’s probably just because it’s a different kind of potion, but I know someone wants to kill him!” At this she burst into tears. Jon tried to put his arms around her, but she pulled herself away.

  I had no idea what it meant. All I knew was that the old wizard had told me this spell would detect a love potion. When I learned it and taught it to Gwen, it had never occurred to me that it might be a way to detect the spell that Dominic said someone had put on the king.

  It still might not be the way, but I could not hesitate. “We’ve got to get the king out of the castle,” I said. They all looked at me as though I had lost my mind.

  “But it’s cold and it’s raining! He can’t travel in this weather! Where would he go?”

  “Not far,” I said, hoping what I was saying was true. “His rose garden should be far enough. Wrap him up well, and put hot irons in the wrappings to keep him warm. Pitch a tent in the garden, and set charcoal braziers in it. And you,” to the cook, “will have to make him some more soup, but don’t make it here. Make it outside the castle.”

  “What? You expect me to leave my warm kitchen and make a campfire in this rain and—”

  “It may be the only way to save the king’s life,” I said. The cold touch of evil I had been feeling since summer was stronger in the kitchen than ever before, though I still could not tell where it was coming from. It might be Gwen, the cook, or one of the other servants, but I thought I would have been able to tell if it had been. “Come on!” I said. “There isn’t enough time to waste any of it.”

  Almost to my surprise, they obeyed me. Within a very short time, the king, heavily wrapped and shielded from the rain, was being carried out into his rose garden. The few last blooms dripped wet.
/>
  Joachim came up to me, made as though to grab me by the arm but stopped himself in time, and instead drew me out of hearing range of the others with a jerk of his chin.

  “Are you trying to kill the king?” he demanded, his black eyes glowing fiercely at me.

  “I am not,” I said back, just as fiercely. “I’m trying to save his life. I think there’s an evil spell in the castle that’s killing him, and I’m trying to see if he’ll improve if he’s outside.”

  “So now he’ll die of pneumonia instead of magic? Is that your intention?”

  “I hope he doesn’t die,” I said, fierce no longer. I had not seen the king in two weeks and had been shocked by his appearance. The shape of his skull was clear beneath the skin of his face, though he had tried to smile and speak normally.

  “It will take a miracle to save him.”

  “I thought you said, if you need a miracle, see a priest,” I retorted, and almost felt triumphant as he blinked and drew back.

  When the king was settled in his tent, the queen sitting beside him, and when the cook, still grumbling but beneath her breath, had started a new batch of soup on a small fire lit with coals from the kitchen, just outside the garden walls, I drew Gwen to one side.

  “I have to go somewhere,” I told her. “Stay with the cook. Check the new batch of soup with the same spell. If it doesn’t change color, the king should have some.”

  “But where are you going?”

  “Not far. I’ll be back soon.”

  Without giving her a chance to speak again, I rose from the ground and flew down the hill toward the forest, swifter than a horse could carry me.

  I didn’t know why I was embarrassed to tell her I needed to ask the old wizard for help, except that I never had told anyone I had been visiting him.