A Bad Spell in Yurt Page 7

  “He seems to think even ordinary magic is black magic. I might have a glass of wine with him, but I certainly wouldn’t tell him anything I’d learned.”

  This seemed to irritate the old wizard, but I realized it was not something I had said but something I reminded him of. “His predecessor was just the same. Accusing honest wizards of pacts with the devil. As though I didn’t know better than to deal rashly in black magic!”

  In spite of what I had told the chaplain, wizards do in fact talk among themselves of “black magic.” There is no evil in magic itself, only in the intention of those who practice it, but in the few cases (very few, I hope) where a wizard has summoned a demon to add supernatural ability to his evil intentions, we refer to mm as practicing black magic.

  It is of course always difficult to draw the line. No one at the wizards’ school would call it black magic to summon a demon (and a very small one at that) to demonstrate to the class what to do if you meet one, but I hardly found it appropriate to discuss this with the old wizard any more than I had with the chaplain.

  “Interfering old busybody! Frustrated old maid!” The old wizard sank back in his chair with a snort. He was apparently referring to the old chaplain.

  I tried to think of something to say to change the subject and decided silence was best. Besides, my head was starting to ache fiercely. There are magic spells to minimize pain, and I decided to try one, very delicately and surreptitiously, hoping that he wouldn t notice.

  But I couldn’t help but wonder why the old chaplain had thought the wizard had been practicing black magic, and in what he had tried to interfere.

  The old wizard went back to rocking, the cat asleep in his lap. What seemed like several hours passed. The fire kept on burning steadily, though he added no more wood. If he noticed that the smoke from his hearth had given his guest a headache, and that the guest had had the poor taste to practice magic in his face, he didn’t deign to mention it.

  I roused from a reverie to notice the rain had stopped. My head felt fine. I stood up from next to the table where I had been sitting, stiff in all my joints. Horizontal rays from the sun came through the narrow window, lighting up the piles of herbs and making the swirls of light and illusion seem rather insignificant.

  Almost sunset, I thought, suddenly ravenously hungry. The old wizard was looking up at me, a half smile on his dry lips. The cat was no longer on his lap.

  Then I realized what was wrong. The sunlight was coming from the wrong direction. Even a city boy like me knows that the sun rises and sets on opposite sides of the sky. I wasn’t seeing the sunset but the sunrise. I had passed all night in the old wizard’s house without even realizing it.

  “I’d better get back to the castle,” I said, hoping I’d be able to make it back in time for breakfast. “I was very glad to be able to meet you, and I’m sorry if I overstayed my welcome.”

  “You think you passed the night here, don’t you?” said the old wizard with a chuckle. “In fact, you spent two. Maybe your friend the chaplain will be worried about you.”

  Two nights! Whatever magic powder he had put on his fire must be powerful indeed. “Good-bye, Master,” I said and rushed out the door. My mare, cropping grass contentedly, seemed no worse for having spent two nights under the wizard’s tree. I saddled her without looking back. As I led her out into the grassy clearing and mounted, the calico cat came bounding after us, dropped down to lurk behind a clump of grass, and lashed its tail. “Good-bye, cat,” I said gravely, and rode as quickly as the mare would go back up the valley.

  At first I was worried that I would have upset them at the castle by being gone for so long, but then I decided it was probably time anyway that I started seeming mysterious in my movements. I was more concerned about the old wizard’s motives, and what I might find when I got back. Was he just showing off his power to me again, or had he had some reason for keeping me away from the castle?

  IV

  The queen was coming home.

  I looked at myself critically in the mirror. In the month I had been at the castle, my beard had grown out enough that I didn’t think the clothing department manager at the emporium would laugh at it anymore, but it was no longer uniformly gray. The roots were definitely chestnut brown. I would have to touch it up before the queen arrived.

  Being gone for two days without explanation had, as I had hoped, actually made me seem rather powerful and mysterious. Even the chaplain had had the tact not to ask me directly where I had been, but he did raise his eyebrows at me most markedly at dinner.

  Now, two weeks after my visit to the old wizard, I wondered, as I got out my bottle of gray dye, if it was too soon to ask him to start teaching me his form of magic. In the last few days, I had started trying to teach the king how to fly, and I had new respect for the teaching process. So far, in spite of the king’s hopes to impress the queen with his new ability when she arrived, he had managed to lift himself from a chair about one inch for about one second. I, on the other hand, had become much better at flying than I had ever been. It hardly even bothered me anymore.

  As I rubbed the dye, which stung, into my beard, I absently wondered if the Lady Maria had to do this every day. In all the meals sitting next to her, I had yet to see a gray hair or root.

  There was a sharp knock on my door. “Just a minute!” I called, finished rubbing in the dye, rinsed it out, and went to answer the door with my chin in a towel.

  It was Dominic. He always seemed to be crouching to fit into my chambers, even though there was plenty of headroom. “Please have a seat,” I said brusquely and retreated into my inner chamber to finish drying my beard, trying to retain some of my dignity.

  When I emerged again a few minutes later, I was amazed to see that he had taken my copy of the Diplomatica Diabolica down from the shelf. It was still closed, but he was holding it in his huge hands and staring at it.

  I whisked it away from him and returned it to its place. “Don’t you know how dangerous it is for those not trained in wizardry to look at magic’s spells?” I said, trying to hide my fear behind anger.

  He dropped his head in almost comical embarrassment at being found out. The old wizard, I thought, must have caught him doing something similar, and that was why he had been so reluctant to want to teach his form of magic to anyone else.

  “Have you still not learned your lesson, Prince Dominic?” I said very gravely. “You first tried to interfere with the forces of magic four years ago, and in spite of the warning you received then you have begun again.”

  This speech had a much better effect than I had hoped. Dominic, who was shorter than I when sitting down, looked up with what seemed genuine terror in his eyes.

  “If you value the kingdom of Yurt,” I continued, seizing the advantage while I had it, even though I wasn’t sure why I did, “or even your own life, you won’t try to interfere in magic processes again.”

  “All right,” he said, almost grudgingly. He shot me a look that was part fear and part resentment of my authority over him. I decided to leave the topic.

  “So what can I do for you?” I said in a more normal voice.

  He leaned back, as though casually. “Since the queen is coming home today, I wanted to find out what progress you’ve made in your duties, finding out who’s put a spell on the king. Or haven’t you gotten anywhere yet?”

  This last, though said in the same light, conversational tone as the rest, was clearly meant to be a jab.

  “Actually I have made significant progress,” I said, wondering how much I dared say to him; I still hadn’t ruled out an illicit love-pact between him and the queen. I hurried on because he looked dubious. “There is definitely an evil influence here in the castle, but it’s not tied to any one person. I’m going to need a complete list of all visitors to the castle in the last four years. It’s possible a spell was put in place by someone who’s now gone.”

  For a moment he looked as though he were going to object. But then he nodded slowly
. “That’s a very good idea. You should ask the constable; I’m sure he can provide it for you. Since it’s clear that no one in the castle wishes to harm the king, it must be someone from outside. Although,” and here he paused for a look at me, “if you found it too difficult to examine four years of guests, maybe it would be easier just to get rid of the evil spell, without worrying where it came from.” He lurched to his feet. “Well, I won’t keep you any longer from your special preparations to meet the queen.‘

  With this last jab, he opened my door and was gone. I stared thoughtfully for several minutes at the inside of the door. I hoped I would not in fact have to go through a long list of visitors to the castle; I had suggested it primarily to see how Dominic would react. He clearly believed that this evil influence, which I was quite willing to accept as real, came from those now at the castle—if one included the queen. If he believed it, so did I.

  But in the meantime, the fact that I had been able to frighten him, even momentarily, made him resent me. I had felt all along that he would not be comfortable to have as an enemy, and I feared that now I was going to find out just how uncomfortable that could be.

  Later that morning, I stood outside the castle gate with everyone else. A chair had been brought for the king, but the rest of us stood on tiptoe, walked around, peered into the distance, and tried to listen through the sounds of conversation and the whisper of the wind for the sound of distant hooves.

  One of the boys who was training for knighthood had the sharpest eyes. “There she comes!” he snouted. There was a surge forward, and several of the younger servants made as though to run down the brick road, but the constable motioned them back. In a moment all of us could see the little procession, emerging from the woods and starting up the hill toward the castle.

  There was a crowd of white horses, with one black horse in the middle. White pennants, emblazoned with a bright pink rose, fluttered above them. As the horses ascended, a trumpeter with a long silver trumpet came to the fore and blew a swirl of notes. The riders kicked their horses into a run for the last hundred yards, and then they had arrived.

  They were all around us, knights and ladies on horseback, servants leading the pack animals, everyone swinging down from their mounts and laughing and shouting at the people from the castle, who were laughing and shouting back at them.

  I spotted the one I thought was the queen, a delicate, pale blonde, with a beatific smile. But as she pulled up her white mare, one of the knights from the castle took the bridle with a smile of delight all over his face, and she slid from the saddle and into his welcoming arms.

  And then I did see the queen, and wondered how I could have been so mistaken.

  Based on the features of the Lady Maria, her aunt, and on the white rosebush which the king had planted on their wedding day, I had expected someone blushing and fragile. But she looked no more like the Lady Maria than she looked like the old woman I had thought her to be when I first arrived in Yurt.

  She was riding a black stallion, and her hair was the same midnight black. Her eyes were a brilliant and startling emerald beneath dark lashes. A crimson cloak swirled around her as she tossed the reins to one of the servants and leaped off. She and the king met with outstretched hands, much too dignified to kiss in front of all their subjects, but looked into each other’s eyes with joy.

  I had been wrong in the old wizard’s valley. This was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She made the illusory unicorn lady seem rather insipid in comparison. As she leaped from her stallion, I had for a moment thought her a hard woman, but her face when smiling was the sweetest thing I had ever experienced.

  She turned that smile toward me. “The new wizard!” she cried in what seemed genuine delight. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here to greet you when you arrived! My parents had been counting on my coming ever since last summer, and the old wizard retired so abruptly that it was too late to change my plans. Has everyone been treating you well? If I know them, and I do, I’m sure they have! Are you happy in Yurt?”

  I stammered that I was very happy in Yurt. I was in love at once.

  While I stood staring at her—besotted, the old wizard would have said—I thought that here truly was a creature of fire and air, finer than anything illusion or imagination could create. She was beautiful, energetic, and loving-hearted. She took the king’s arm; I was relieved to see that he showed no intention of trying to fly for her benefit, being too happy to see her to think about anything else.

  We all started up the last slope to the moat and the castle gates. The king and queen, arm and arm, were beside me. “The king has been telling me in his letters that you’re developing a telephone system for us!” she said, the perfect hostess, complimenting her guest on his accomplishments.

  This brought me back somewhat to reality. “I’ve been working, but it’s proving more difficult than I expected,” I said, realizing it had been some time since I had had my glass telephones down from the shelf, and resolving to start with them again tomorrow, or even today.

  The royal pair kept moving, as she spoke a few words to first one person, than another. I found myself near the back of the group, walking with Joachim, as we entered the castle courtyard.

  “Why didn’t you warn me?” I said.

  “Warn you against what?”

  “The queen!”

  “But there is no evil in her.”

  I gave him up. “It’s a good thing you’re a priest,” I said, left him wondering what I meant, and went into my chambers.

  I pulled down one of the books I had not tried yet, because it was all advanced spells that assumed you already understood the basics without having to think about them. This seemed like the best place to start anew on the problem of the telephones.

  But I had trouble concentrating on the pages. I kept thinking about those emerald eyes. Since I wasn’t such a wonderful wizard anyway, maybe I could give up magic altogether when the king died, and then she and I—

  This was clearly an unprofitable line of thought. I wished I had had the sense to watch Dominic, to try to judge his reaction to her homecoming. But I had been too busy staring at her, doubtless open-mouthed, to pay attention to anyone else.

  Neither the king nor queen was present at the table at noon nor again in the evening. The queen, we were told, was resting from the fatigues of her journey, although she had appeared to me to have too much energy ever to be fatigued. I didn’t want to think what the king might be resting from.

  Instead I talked animatedly to the Lady Maria. Everyone at both tables was delighted to have the queen home, so she was the chief topic of conversation, except for the couple farther down my table who were just delighted to see each other again.

  Lady Maria was happy to discuss her niece. “That’s right, she and I came to Yurt together when she was a bride, a mere child really. Her mother is a cousin to the duchess, or maybe they’re second cousins. Haven’t you met the duchess? You will, I’m sure. Yurt has two counts and the duchess. Anyway, the king was visiting his subjects, and he came to the duchess’s castle at the same time as the queen’s family was visiting, including me. Of course she wasn’t the queen then. But as soon as the king met her he started making his plans, you can be sure!”

  There was a sort of grunt from behind me where Dominic was sitting. He had not spoken to me again all day.

  “Dominic remembers,” the Lady Maria said in a teasing voice. “I think my brother, that’s the queen’s father, of course, had some hope of marrying his daughter to the royal heir, when he first heard the royal party would be visiting the duchess’s castle at the same time we were. Did the royal heir have some plans that way himself, Dominic?”

  She laughed, a light, tinkling laugh. I turned my head just in time to catch an extremely surly look from Dominic. I felt much more affectionate toward the Lady Maria than I ever had before.

  “But imagine our surprise,” she continued, “when it turned out the king’s plans were quite different! Everythin
g worked out so beautifully. Except,” she paused, looked around, and dropped her voice. “Except,” so low that only I could hear her, and I thought for a moment that she was going to say, except that she had never been able to make the hoped-for match with Dominic herself, “except that the queen has so hoped to provide the king a little prince, and she hasn’t been able to.”

  “What are you two whispering about?” one of the ladies called to us from down the table. I realized that we had our heads bent together as though engaged in intimate secrets, certainly more secret than what everyone else must long have guessed about the king and queen. I sat up almost guiltily and caught the chaplain’s dark, sober eyes on me.

  “We’re talking about the telephones!” I said gaily. “Now that the queen’s back, I’m sure she’s eager to be able to telephone her parents, and I have some ideas for the next step to try. The Lady Maria has graciously agreed to assist me again.” If anyone giggled, they were polite enough to turn it into a cough.

  V

  I stayed up late that night with my books and was up again after only a few hours’ sleep, and was almost too engrossed in the spells to hear Gwen’s knock. But I heard it the second time and went to answer. This morning the breakfast tray held hot cinnamon crullers as well as my tea.

  “Sir, could I speak with you?” she said somewhat timidly.

  “Of course!” I said, motioning her to a chair. Gwen hadn’t seemed to want to talk to me since the first days I had been in Yurt. She now seemed subdued, not at all inclined to laugh at me. Maybe seeing me gaping at the queen had had the salutary effect of making her jealous.

  Her first words destroyed any hope I might have had in that direction. “Sir, do wizards make love potions?”

  “Love potions! My dear, why would anyone so charming as yourself need a love potion?” I realized I sounded as though I were her uncle and about forty years older than she was, but I couldn’t think of what else to say.