Mage Quest Read online

  I glanced around surreptitiously as we were introduced, wondering where his wizard might be. But when I asked, King Warin told me what I should have expected. “We don’t have a wizard right now, I’m afraid.”

  “What happened to Elerius?”

  “He left nearly a year ago,” King Warin said regretfully. “Another kingdom, closer to the City, needed a new Royal Wizard, and the teachers of your school recommended him. We were terribly sorry to lose him, but I don’t think my kingdom held many challenges for him any more. You knew him, I gather?”

  “I knew him when we were in school together,” I said, thinking that Yurt still seemed to have plenty of challenges for me.

  “He really was extremely good,” Warin continued reminiscently. “I think that’s why we haven’t been satisfied with any of the other young wizards the school has tried sending out. Did you know, Haimeric, he installed our telephone system within three days of taking up his post? And then,” with a laugh, “he apologized for taking so long, saying that if he had taken more courses in the technical division it would have taken only two!”

  It had taken me six months, not three days, to get the telephone system working in Yurt, and then we had ended up with telephones unlike anyone else’s. Fortunately King Haimeric did not mention this.

  “Maybe you can help us, Wizard,” added Warin thoughtfully.

  For a second I felt again the cold majesty I thought I had sensed when we first came in, but which his friendly manner had belied. As a wizard I was highly sensitive to mood and partially-concealed thoughts, but as me I was also highly sensitive to my own imagination.

  “Just after Elerius left, a group of pilgrims stopped here. They had a wizard with them. He left something he said was a ‘special message’ for another wizard. So far, none of the new wizards whom the school has tried sending us has been able to read it—part of the reason we decided not to keep any of them. Maybe you can; I’m sure Haimeric wouldn’t keep an incompetent wizard!”

  This was clearly meant to be a joke, but I took it seriously. “I’ll have a look,” I said as casually as I could.

  King Warin lifted one hand in a lazy gesture, and his dour chancellor, who had been hovering just at the edge of our circle, hurried away. I was immediately convinced that the group of pilgrims had been Sir Hugo’s party, and that the wizard who had left the magic message was Evrard.

  II

  The chancellor returned with a box so black it seemed to absorb the light from the magic lamps. “I’ll need a little privacy for my spells,” I said with what I hoped was calm dignity. If it actually was a message from Evrard, I wanted to read it before anyone else. And if it took a while to figure out the spells, no matter what wizard had left it, I didn’t want an attentive audience.

  The chancellor led me to a small parlor opening off the great hall. I probed carefully, trying to find what kind of spell permeated this box. No way to open it, not even a seam, was visible.

  I had, over the years, grown to distrust my sudden convictions, which tended to be wrong most of the time. Evrard, I told myself, still wasn’t a good enough wizard to have created a message that several highly-qualified graduates from the school couldn’t read. Of course, the alternative was that some truly incompetent wizard had tried to leave a message and had only made something unreadable.

  Abruptly I caught a glimpse of a spell I understood. It was a very simple spell, so simple, in fact, that I had almost overlooked it while probing for something more complicated. I said a handful of words in the Hidden Language, and a seam suddenly appeared all around the box. The lid slowly opened. Inside was a parchment scroll, written on both sides in incomprehensible symbols and combinations of letters. But when I said a few more words they scurried across the page and shaped themselves into a clear message.

  It was from Evrard after all.

  “Beware, any wizard who reads this,” it began.

  I glanced quickly toward the great hall. Our party was still standing there, talking to King Warin and his chancellor.

  “You are in danger of your life.” Could this be one of Evrard’s jokes? “King Warin, I think, is a sorcerer. Last night I saw unmistakable evidence that he is dabbling in the black arts.”

  I looked toward the hall again and met King Warin’s eyes across a space of twenty yards. They were almost unbearably cold and seemed to bore straight through to my bones.

  I tore my eyes back to the message. “We have also just heard some very strange rumors coming out of the East. King Warin, I think, knows more about them than he wishes to say. This is not a good place for a young wizard.”

  That was it, except for Evrard’s signature. I said a few quick words in the Hidden Language, and the letters of the message rescrambled themselves, the lid of the box slammed shut, and even the seam that marked the opening disappeared.

  I took two deep breaths and squared my shoulders, then walked back into the great hall.

  “I’m afraid it really is an unreadable message,” I said, handing the box to the chancellor. “No wonder none of the young wizards from the school had any luck with it. The wizard who created it seems to have gotten his spells wrong. The one thing I could determine from it, sire,” turning to King Haimeric, “was it was left here by Sir Hugo’s wizard.”

  “That’s right,” he said in high good humor. “We were just hearing how his party had stopped here.”

  “You all remember Evrard,” I said, “from when he served as ducal wizard of Yurt that one summer. I think he’s developed into a fairly good wizard, but he always used to like improvising new spells, and not all of them worked.” I apologized silently to Evrard for impugning his abilities. He would understand.

  Ascelin, who had spent our whole visit to Arnulf deeply suspicious, now laughed reminiscently. In this castle he appeared to find nothing to fear. “Well, his rather unorthodox magic gave me the excuse I needed to woo my lady the duchess,” he said.

  I looked at King Warin from the corner of my eye. Could he really be a sorcerer? He was certainly no wizard, and, as far as I could tell from a few delicate spells that I hoped he wouldn’t notice, he didn’t even have as much magical training as most carnival magicians. But there was something about him, a latent power, a suggestion that he might be appreciably older than his grizzled hair would indicate, that could mean that here was someone who knew just enough of the Hidden Language to take both him and those around him into deadly danger.

  Although he was talking animately with Hugo about his father’s visit, he seemed to feel my eyes on him, for he turned his head just enough to meet my glance. His smile reached nowhere near his eyes.

  His chancellor slipped away to arrange accommodations for us. A whole maze of chambers, passages, and stairs led off the great hall. This castle, I thought, had been built and added to for centuries. We all ended up in a large chamber with more than a dozen beds, intended, I expected, to put up the knights of a visiting dignitary.

  I was relieved to see that our saddle-bags had already been brought into the room, and that the corner of Claudia’s foil-wrapped present was just visible under the flap of Joachim’s bag. At this point, whatever it contained, I did not want to lose it.

  In spite of the marble floor and the heavy, silk-worked tapestries on the walls, the wide room felt grim. The fire burning at one side seemed to cast no heat. King Warin was wealthier than Joachim’s family could ever imagine being, but there was nothing here of the sybaritic feel of the Lady Claudia’s guest chambers.

  “I think Warin’s as old as I am,” said the king, “but he looks at least twenty years younger. The air must be healthy this close to the mountains!”

  I had another explanation, but I didn’t want to voice it here. And if King Warin was a sorcerer who dabbled in black magic, what did that say about the man who had been his Royal Wizard for twelve years?

  We were served dinner in the middle of the great hall, with no other members of Warin’s court present except his ever-present chancellor and
the stony-faced knights ranged behind the king. The platters and even the bowls by our places for bits of rind and bone were made of heavily-worked silver. Not only did Warin not have a royal wizard, he didn’t seem to have a royal chaplain either. King Haimeric talked as we ate about the blue rose, which I had been surprised to hear Warin knew about, as nothing about this castle suggested a rose fancier. Then the king moved on to the topic of the Black Pearl.

  “King Solomon’s Pearl?” said Warin, with that same good-humor and openness, floating on top of a bitter cold which only I seemed to feel. “I certainly haven’t heard anything about it, although since the main trade routes all run west of here, rumors from the East wouldn’t reach me quickly. After all, the mountains are full of bandits, so the luxury caravans stay well clear if they can.”

  Evrard, I thought, had heard here “very strange” rumors coming out of the East.

  “In fact, I’m not sure I ever knew anything about the Pearl, beyond that old legend that the caliph had had it hidden in the sea, what would it be, a good millennium ago.”

  “Well, we’ve heard enough stories that it’s been found again,” I put in, “that I’d like to call the wizards’ school to see if they have any more accurate information. Would it be possible, sir, to use your telephone this evening?”

  “Of course, of course,” said Warin, the perfect host. “Ask them too when that new wizard they promised me is likely to arrive!”

  Several young wizards sent back as unsuitable—especially since one or all of them would have told the school about Evrard’s message—would be good enough reason for the Master of the school not to send Warin any more. That is, I thought, unless Elerius had told them the king was not a sorcerer, just someone with very high standards for his employees.

  I would very much have liked to ask the school about Elerius, but when the dour chancellor led me to the telephone room he showed no sign of leaving. He leaned against the wall, his arms folded and his eyes on me, as I waited for someone to answer. I could see the telephone in the wizard’s school, a tiny image in the view screen. Elerius might have installed the phone here in three days, I reminded myself, but I had been the first wizard to invent a far-seeing attachment for telephones.

  A young wizard answered, and in a few more minutes I was talking to the school’s librarian. “I need all the information you have about King Solomon’s Pearl,” I told him. “How soon do you think I could get it?”

  He seemed surprised. “Is that the Pearl that was hidden in the sea all those centuries ago? I’m not sure we have very much on it.”

  “I need whatever you have, especially information about its powers and attributes.”

  I had hoped the librarian could give me the information immediately, or at least by tomorrow morning, and my heart sank when he said he hoped to have something for me within twenty-four hours. “Oh, yes, that will be fine,” I said as unconcernedly as I could. I should have realized that it would take a while to find references to an old story that had come to an end a thousand years ago. I didn’t like spending another day in this castle, but once we crossed the mountains into the eastern kingdoms we might not have access to any more telephones at all. “Let me talk to Zahlfast.”

  “So you’re in Elerius’s former kingdom?” my old teacher asked me a minute later. “Evrard and his party got there too, we hear.”

  “That’s right,” I said, glancing at the chancellor. I hoped Zahlfast could see him in his own view screen. “He even tried to leave some sort of magical message here, but it’s all garbled.”

  Zahlfast opened his mouth and closed it again. “I gather the king there has been spoiled by Elerius for any other young wizard,” he said after a very short pause. “He still wants a Royal Wizard, so we’ll have to see if there’s an experienced wizard somewhere who’d jump at the chance of serving in such a wealthy kingdom, even if it is somewhat isolated.”

  There was no way to speak directly, mind to mind, over the telephone. I tried to read in Zahlfast’s face whether he thought the king here might really be a sorcerer, or if it was all Evrard’s imagination, but such information was too complicated to be conveyed by facial expressions.

  “The librarian tells me you’ve been asking him about some of the old stories,” Zahlfast continued. “If Evrard has disappeared due to old stories coming to life, we’ll have to reconsider the efficacy of modern, organized magic.”

  As a joke, it was a fairly weak attempt. Zahlfast, I thought, must really be worried. I wondered if he had any information about the Pearl himself that he didn’t dare tell me.

  “Give my greetings to the Master,” I said inanely and rang off.

  The rest of our party had already gone to our wide, cold room. “Did the telephone work well, Wizard?” the king asked. “I’ll ask Warin tomorrow if I can call the queen.”

  I nodded and drew Ascelin to one side. I had not yet told anyone my suspicions. “You knew the king here, years ago,” I said quietly. “Tell me: do you trust him?”

  “I don’t trust very many people in this kingdom,” said Ascelin with a glance toward the others, “and all of them are in this room.”

  I took a deep breath. So his ease in the great hall had been a façade for King Warin’s benefit—it had certainly been good enough to fool me. “When you hunted here, you helped track down undead creatures made of hair and bone. Did you have any suspicion that King Warin helped make them?”

  Ascelin’s eyes narrowed, but he slowly shook his head. “Those were made by an old magician, and he got away. The king was just delighted to have the creatures out of his kingdom.”

  Ascelin’s distrust was general, then, not tied to any specific knowledge of King Warin. “Just curious,” I said and told him no more. Unfortunately, I knew Evrard was capable of making jokes in highly dubious taste.

  King Haimeric was pleased to have an excuse to visit with his old friend Warin for another day, especially since we had been dodging rain ever since Arnulf’s house. This time, Ascelin did not let the weapons out of our room, and he polished off the few rusty spots that had appeared in the last four days himself—but then King Warin’s staff showed no sign of being as helpful as Arnulf’s.

  The phone call from the wizards’ school came while we were at dinner. The king had been talking again about the Black Pearl, discussing our visit with Arnulf much more openly than I would have preferred, but I didn’t dare leave the school waiting while I tried to shift the conversation. This time, the chancellor did not accompany me but stayed at the table.

  “I don’t have a lot,” the librarian said apologetically. “It is a fascinating story, but there’s very little to it.” I listened as he told the story of King Solomon’s Pearl, essentially as we had already heard it from Joachim’s brother and as Hugo had found it in Arnulf’s books. “The accounts stress that it would become enormously dangerous if used from base motives. I’ve asked around the school,” he finished, “and no one here has heard that it’s been found.”

  “Has anyone talked to the merchants down in the City to see if they’ve heard such rumors?”

  “I haven’t,” he said in surprise. “Why would merchants have information on magical objects not known to the wizards’ school?”

  Though set in the middle of the great City, the white-spired wizards’ school had always held itself somewhat aloof from the City’s concerns. “All right,” I said. “Thank you.” So Arnulf was, as I had thought, trying to distract us from something else, and I couldn’t even imagine what that might be.

  “Well, it’s always interesting to be asked about something different for a change,” said the librarian. He looked down at the heavy volume he held in his hands. “This is one of the books that used to belong to Melecherius, and I expect I’m the first person to have it off the shelf since he died …” He flipped to the sign-out slip tucked in the back and then said in surprise, “No, I’m wrong. It was checked out five years ago by Elerius.”

  I didn’t have time to wonder, in the b
rief moments I might still have to speak without being overheard, why Elerius had been interested in the Black Pearl. “Is Zahlfast available?” I asked instead.

  While waiting impatiently for him to come to the phone, I kept listening for a step in the corridor, for King Warin’s chancellor to overhear my conversation.

  “You should know by now that we don’t like wizards calling us up all the time for advice,” Zahlfast began irritably when I finally saw him in the view screen.

  But I interrupted. “Quick. Do you know what was in the message that Evrard left here?”

  “Of course I do,” he said in surprise. I saw his eyes flick past my shoulder, and I looked back involuntarily myself, but there was no one else in the room. “Three extremely promising young wizards in a row have come back to the City in disgrace and told us about it. You’d think that someone would have had the sense to change the spells so that the message was something innocuous, rather than making the lame excuse that they couldn’t read it and then getting themselves dismissed for incompetence.”

  I hadn’t thought of changing the spells either, being too startled by the content of the message.

  “We don’t like to tell young wizards very much about their new posts,” he continued, “because it’s better if they can work everything out on their own, but this time it looks like we’d better. That kingdom is much too critically placed, just below the passes into the eastern kingdoms, not to have had a Royal Wizard for a year.”

  “Did you ask Elerius about it?” I hoped my end of the conversation was bland enough that, even if the chancellor was lurking just outside the door, he would find nothing in it to pass on to his master.

  “Of course we did, the first time a young wizard returned to the school with a wild story of sorcerers.” Zahlfast unexpectedly smiled. “So you’re wondering yourself whether to believe it? Don’t worry about it. Elerius told us it was a complete fabrication. I thought you knew Evrard well enough yourself to realize that he has a rather odd sense of humor sometimes.”