A Bad Spell in Yurt Read online

  I came three-quarters of the way across the clearing and then did the full bow, ending with my head down and my arms widespread.

  “Welcome, Wizard,” said a rasping voice.

  “Greetings, Master,” I answered.

  I surprised myself by calling him Master. At the wizards school, the only wizard who had that title was the oldest wizard of all, the one in whose castle the school was held, who was reputed to have been in the City since the City was founded.

  He accepted the title. “So you weren’t taken in by the Lady and weren’t frightened by my Arrows,” he said. His voice was rough, as though he had not used it for weeks. “I know who you are. You’re the new Royal Wizard of Yurt, and probably think you’re pretty fancy.”

  I rose and came toward him. “I have come to seek the guidance of my predecessor.”

  “You aren’t going to find much help from me if you’re after what I think you are. I can tell from your clothes—and especially that ostentatious belt buckle—that you fancy yourself to have authority over the powers of darkness.” I guiltily turned off the glow of the moon and stars. “I may not have studied in the City, but I am a wizard of air and light.”

  I sat down at his feet, determined not to be insulted.

  “Or is that pullover supposed to be a Father Noel costume?”

  I was mortified. I had of course taken the tattered white fur off the collar as soon as I bought the pullover and had hoped all suggestions of someone fat and jolly were long gone. But I was going to have to be polite to this crotchety old wizard who clearly knew ten times as much magic as I did. I took a deep breath. “I’ve greatly admired your magic lamps in the castle.”

  “Of course you have. I’ll bet you couldn’t make anything that nice.”

  “I made some very nice magic lamps for the chapel stair!” I said, stung into a reply.

  “And the chaplain didn’t tell you to mind your own business?” he said, apparently surprised.

  “The chaplain and I are friends,” I said stiffly, then wondered why I was defending him when one of the reasons I had come was to find out if my predecessor had ever thought the chaplain was turning toward evil.

  “Young whippersnapper,” pronounced the old wizard, which was probably his opinion of me as well.

  There was a pause while I tried to find something diplomatic to say. “Do they miss me up at the castle? the old wizard said suddenly.

  “They always speak well of you,” I said with my best effort at Christian tact. “They’ve told me many times how much they admired your work and your illusions. The Lady down in the valley is certainly the finest example I’ve ever seen, even in the City.”

  I probably shouldn’t have mentioned the City, because it made him snort. “Illusions!” he said. “Things were different when King Haimeric’s grandfather was king. Then a Royal Wizard had real responsibilities. The harvest spells were just the start of it.”

  “Harvest spells!” I said in panic. I knew I didn’t know anything that could be considered a harvest spell. In an urban setting, we learned urban spells.

  “And now they don’t even want harvest spells anymore,” continued the old wizard, paying no attention to me. “They say that hybrid seed is more effective. The closest I’ve come for years is the weather spells when they’re cutting the wheat.”

  This was a relief. Weather spells I could probably manage. I had even gone to the lectures. I tried a different approach. “Have you ever taught anyone how to fly?”

  “Fly? You mean someone who isn’t a wizard? Who wants to learn magic now?”

  “The king mentioned it,” I said, but I was struck by the suggestion that someone else had apparently wanted to learn magic.

  “Well, he never mentioned it to me. And with good reason. He knew what I’d say. Haimeric’s not half the man his grandfather was, or his father either. Never marrying all those years, and then marrying late. If he expected an heir, he’s certainly disappointed. But I must say, I don’t think he married in the hope of having a baby. I think he married because he was just besotted.”

  I tried to return the topic to the question of who in the castle, besides me, might know magic. “So some of the others had asked you to teach them magic?”

  “Well, Dominic and Maria did,” he said shortly. After a somewhat long pause, he added, “Never got anywhere with it.”

  “Prince Dominic and the Lady Maria?” Somehow I would not have expected it.

  “There was talk of them making a match four years ago,” continued the old wizard, in a more pleasant tone. “Maria’s the queen’s aunt, you know.”

  I nodded, waiting for him to go on.

  “When the king got married four years ago, the queen brought her old maiden aunt to live with her—probably thought she needed a change. And then Dominic’s only a few years younger than she is. He’s been heir presumptive for years; the king’s younger brother, at least, had the sense to get married when he was young. But he’s gone now too, and Dominic’s not half the man his father was.”

  Apparently I had reached Yurt in a decadent time.

  “But she was too flighty for someone that phlegmatic. If the queen was waiting for a match, I think she gave up waiting some time ago.”

  While these insights into the people in the castle were extremely interesting, I could not help but notice that he had again deftly turned the topic away from the question of to whom he had taught magic.

  III

  While we had been talking, the brilliant blue of the sky was darkening. An abrupt clap of thunder, apparently coming from just behind the wizard’s house, startled me so much that I jumped to my feet. “It looks like rain,” said the old wizard complacently. “You’d better get your horse; it will stay dry enough under the oak here. And don’t worry about my Arrows!” he called after me as I hurried back up the valley. “You won’t be shot this time.”

  It certainly wouldn’t be hard for him to guess that I had been wondering if I could bring my mare safely past that shower of arrows. And I didn’t think it could nave been much harder for him to bring on a thunderstorm to demonstrate his power.

  My mare had her head up, waiting for me. Chill little breezes flicked her mane, and there was a steady low rumbling from the sky. I led her by the bridle back down the valley, past the place where the arrows had been shooting, and around the final twist to the clearing where the wizard’s house stood under the sheltering branches of its oak. The first drops pattered on the leaves above us as I led the mare under the branches. The old wizard was no longer sitting in front of his house, but the green door was open.

  I took off the saddle and bridle and rubbed the mare down. Being under the tree was like being under a tent. I could hear the drum of drops on the leaves, and the air became damp, but we were safe in a bubble made of branches. I finished with the horse, tapped at the door, and went into the house.

  I had been expecting shelves of books; after all, every wizard I had ever known had books on his shelves, books piled on his desk, even books in heaps on the floor. But there were very few books in the old wizard’s house.

  Instead there were cones of light, gently swirling masses of stars, forms that changed from tree to man to beast and back to tree as one watched. I ignored them all assiduously and concentrated on the old wizard, who had just lit a fire in the small fireplace. Bolts of lightning flashed outside the window, and thunder rumbled continuously. But inside all was peaceful. “Come sit by my fire,” said the old wizard in the friendliest tone he had used to me yet.

  I sat down on the hearth, thankful for the warmth; the summer’s day had grown cold. We sat in silence, except for the thunder, for several minutes while I tried to decide how to ask him what I had come to find out.

  “We heard a lot about the old magic at the wizards’ school,” I began. I had considered saying that we had been taught to respect the old magic, but decided it would sound as though I were being condescending to someone more than seven times my age. “And I grew mor
e and more convinced that there is magic that wizards all used to know that has never been put in our books.”

  “Well, you’re right,” he said almost reluctantly, as though not wanting to admit that I was right about anything.

  “And yet the old magic is the basis for all the new magic of the last hundred and fifty years,” I continued. “The wizards who learned by experimentation and apprenticeship channeled the power of magic, made it possible for magic to be organized, to be written down in books, made it less wild, made it something that could actually be taught in a classroom.”

  I had been going to go on from this brief history of modern wizardry—nearly everything I remembered from a whole course—to explain that I needed his special and ancient magic talents to help me find out what was happening in Yurt, but he interrupted me.

  “And look what’s happened!” he cried in his rasping voice. “With all you young wizards and magic workers, the channels of magic have been worn so deeply in some areas that any fool can work a simple spell. You say you’ve made magic less wild, but all you ve done is make it easier for the wild magic of the north to come in!”

  I was horrified. I would normally never have thought that the wizardry that tamed magic also invited wild magic into the land of men, but in the old wizard’s dimly lit room it seemed most probable.

  “Or didn’t you ever think of that?” he said with a sneer. I decided no answer was best. “You and your books! You think you’ve made magic easier for the simple-minded who shouldn’t be doing magic anyway, but by cutting deep ruts in the channels of human magic you’ve just made it easier for wild magic to come pouring in. How would you like to see a dragon in Yurt?”

  I considered and rejected the possibility that there was a dragon in the castle cellars already.

  “And now you can’t go anywhere without some fool claiming he or she knows magic.”

  “Does anyone in the castle know magic?” I said quickly, trying to get in at least one of the questions I had.

  “Of course not,” he said brusquely. “Unless you’d consider counting yourself!”

  I wondered if his brusqueness was concealing a lie, but between his manner and the insult it was impossible to ask him again. Instead I tried to be conciliatory. “I was just wondering because a strange thing happened when I first arrived. I’d put a magic lock on the door to my chambers, and when I came back it was gone.”

  Unlike the chaplain, the old wizard would surely know how hard it is to break a properly constituted magic lock. But he just snorted at me. “Did the spells wrong, I reckon,” he said. His insults scarcely even strung anymore.

  “But while you’re speaking of locks,” he added abruptly, “you haven’t tried to get through the locked door of the north tower, have you?”

  “The north tower?” I said ingenuously.

  “Don’t play the fool with me. I used to have my study in the north tower, as they must certainly have told you. The constable seemed to think you’d have your study there, too, but I straightened him out fast enough.”

  “They gave me a very nice set of chambers,” I said cheerfully.

  “When I left I locked the door and windows to the tower with both magic and iron.”

  I sat up straighter but managed to cover my surprise with a fit of coughing; tiny tendrils of smoke from the fire were whirling into the room, and I was sitting very close to the hearth. There had certainly been no magic lock on the tower door when I pulled back the bolt, and all the windows had also been unlocked.

  “That sounds pretty secure, then,” I said blandly, then fell to coughing again. The smoke really was getting in my nose, and it had an unusual, almost spicy quality.

  “No one shall go in that tower again while Yurt survives,” the old wizard said grimly. “Did you notice that I even ordered them not to whitewash it? I don’t want any young men on scaffolding peeping in the windows.”

  “I noticed that the tower walls are dead black while the rest of the castle is white,” I responded, wild with curiosity in spite of the headache the smoke was beginning to bring on. “But Master,” I continued tentatively, as long as I’m living in the castle, don’t you think it might be better if I knew why you locked up your old study? That way, in case any—“

  “NO!” he interrupted, leaving it quite impossible for me to ask again what he thought he had locked up. “I’ve taken care that no problems shall ever arise, for reasons of my own, and by methods of my own. Why should anyone else ask me about it?” He glared at me so fiercely that I retreated to the far side of the room, where I finished coughing as quietly as I could. The air was better farther from the fire.

  After a moment I caught my breath and looked at the table next to me. As well as a constant cascade of ice-blue stars, it contained piles of leaves and roots, some in earthenware bowls, some loose on the table. There were also mortars and pestles, fire-blackened pots, and bits of stone rubbed into dust. In spite of his boast about being a wizard of light and air, I thought, the old wizard was not too proud to be a wizard of earth as well.

  Modern wizardry uses very few herbs and roots. We keep our magic technical, straightforward, capable of being attached to such simple substances as steel and glass and of being reduced to written spells. But all wizards know, even those, like me, who tended to skip the lectures on the history of wizardry, that there is a natural affinity to magic in some growing things. In the days when books were few and apprenticeships long, young wizards learned how to recognize and gather plants with magical properties, even discover new ones. It occurred to me that, since I hadn’t exactly been a huge success as a wizard taught from books, maybe I should give apprenticeship a try.

  That is, of course, if the old wizard would be willing to teach me. So far everything I had said seemed to infuriate him. I looked across the room to where he sat rocking by his hearth. The room had darkened, but the fire’s glow reddened his face. The rain’s beat fell steadily on the oak leaves above the roof.

  “Master,” I began, and he whirled toward me abruptly, as though, deep in thought, he had almost forgotten my presence. “Master, I was glad to see that you had brought at least some of your apparatus from the castle to be able to continue your research into magic properties.”

  “ What do you mean, at least some? I brought everything I had and swept out my study when I was done. If you’re trying to find out by hints and insinuations what might be in my study, you must not have been listening to what I said. There is nothing left in my study, but for reasons of my own I want it locked while the kingdom remains! Can I make it any clearer than that?”

  He stirred the fire vigorously, and the smoke found me again. The old wizard coughed a few times as well. I realized I had almost been hoping he had left something in his study that it had escaped, but now I just felt disappointed. It was likely only an old man’s pride that had made him not want any other wizard ever to use the room where he had studied and done his research for so many years. If he had put a magic lock on the door, well, even City-trained wizards like me didn’t always get the spells just right.

  We sat and listened to the rain for several more minutes. Time seemed to stretch out endlessly in the dark room. I wasn’t even hungry, even though it must have been long past dinner time. A small calico cat appeared suddenly from behind a chair, startling me for a second into thinking it was a large rat, rubbed against me, then crossed the room to hop up on the old wizard’s lap. He stroked it absently, staring into the fire.

  I tried again. “Master, in spite of my degree from the wizards school, which seemed to impress them up at the castle, I’m really not a very good wizard.”

  “You didn’t need to tell me that.”

  “But I want to learn! If I came here regularly, could you teach me about the magic of air and herbs?”

  He glared at me so fixedly that I was sure he would refuse. The cat in his lap, unconcerned, gave a wide pink yawn and settled itself more comfortably. But then the old wizard’s shoulders seemed to r
elax a little. He rocked in silence for a moment while I held my breath, then answered at last. “Maybe. Just maybe. After the last time, I’d determined I’d never teach anyone again.”

  This must be the time that Dominic and the Lady Maria had tried to learn magic, I thought, but did not dare speak.

  “But I don’t think you’re as stupid as you seem at first.” This was apparently a compliment. “I’ll have to consider it. I haven’t had an apprentice for many years, maybe for a century.”

  If he was trying to pretend an old man’s forgetfulness, he wasn’t fooling me; I was sure he knew exactly who his last apprentice had been and when he had taught him.

  “ No one wanted to be an apprentice anymore after that wizards’ school started.” This thought roused him into a new glare. “But the old magic cannot be forgotten. You young whippersnappers are going to need it when your modern magic gets into trouble. I’ll think about it for a while.”

  I was delighted but dared not show it. This was virtually a promise. During his “while,” as he thought about it, I could teach myself a lot of the magic I was supposed to know already if I spent every evening with my books. Then if I started coming down here regularly, maybe I could actually become a competent wizard. I imagined myself going back to the City for a visit and showing off all my new skills.

  He interrupted my imaginings with almost a shout. “But would you then go back and tell everything I taught you to that chaplain friend of yours?”

  This had never occurred to me as a possibility. “No, of course not! Why should I do that? He doesn’t even really approve of magic.”

  “But you said he was your friend,” said the wizard with a grunt.

  “Just because he’s the most intelligent person my age in the castle. It’s nice to have someone to talk to over wine in the evening.”

  “And you like your wine, don’t you?” If I wasn’t careful, he was going to rescind his offer to think for a while about teaching me the old herbal magic.