A Bad Spell in Yurt - Wizard of Yurt - 1 (11 page)

As I started across the draw bridge over the moat, I almost col ided with the queen coming out.

"I'm so pleased you're back!" she cried with the smile that made my heart turn over. "The king told me to meet him in five minutes in the rose garden. I'm sure he'd like you to be there as wel . He said it was a magic surprise! The five minutes are almost up."

I dismounted to walk with her. She was wearing a long white dress with a standing crimson col ar that framed her face, and her eyes flashed with delight at me from under an errant wave of hair.

We stopped at the garden gate. "I'm here!" the queen cal ed. "And I've brought the Royal Wizard with me!"

"Come on in!" came a faint cal , and we entered.

Coming toward us between the rose bushes, his toes just brushing the grass, was King Haimeric. His face was so tight with concentration that he seemed not to see us. I could tel he wasn't even breathing. When he was within three feet of the queen, he lifted his eyes, took a sudden breath, and dropped to the ground. She steadied him with her strong young arms.

"You were flying!" she cried. "When did you learn to fly? I know you said it would be a magic surprise, but I hadn't imagined it could be anything so wonderful!"

The king winked at me over her head, a wink of triumph.

He leaned on her arm as they walked toward the bench, and I fol owed behind.

"I've been having the wizard teach me," he said.

"And you've clearly been practicing on your own!" I added. "You've made much better progress than I would have expected. But you do have to remember to breathe."

"I noticed that," he said, sitting down and breathing hard now. "But it seems to interrupt my concentration."

"Al it needs is a little more practice."

"I'd had no idea you were learning to fly," said the queen in admiration, and for one bad moment I was afraid she was going to ask me to teach her too. "When did you start learning?"

"It was while you were at your parents'. Original y I was hoping to show you when you first got back, but I wasn't as quick a pupil as I'd hoped. Not that our wizard isn't a good teacher!"

They both turned wide smiles on me. "One of the many, many things I like about having you here is that it makes me less dependent on Dominic. As you know, since my legs started to get weak I haven't always been able to walk as wel as I'd like, and he'd baby me unmerciful y. I thought that if I learned to fly, I'd be able to move around as I liked without him always hovering. The boy means wel , but . . ."

He didn't finish the sentence. I was very pleased to see that I was not the only person in the castle referred to as a boy--especial y since Dominic was nearly twice my age.

I was also pleased to see how much more cheerful the king had seemed since the queen came home. When I first arrived, he was looking back over his years as king as though they would shortly be coming to an end. Now he acted as though he were only in the middle of them. I began to wonder if the mysterious ailment that Dominic thought someone had given the king was nothing more than some stiffness in the knees combined with loneliness. If she had been my queen,
I
would certainly have been lonely when she was gone.

We looked at the roses while the king finished catching his breath. Some of the bushes had already finished blooming for the season, though late roses stil bloomed defiantly on others.

"You know," said the king, "it's been several years since I've been to the harvest carnival. Would you like to go?"

"Oh, could we?" said the queen with that smile.

"I'd be delighted," I said, since the question seemed to include me as wel , and suddenly had to stifle a yawn.

"The carnival starts in two days," said the king. "We'l leave first thing in the morning." With the tact I was pleased to see even a sometimes incompetent wizard deserved, he added,

"You'l have plenty of time before then to recover your strength after your magic activities."

While I napped that afternoon with my curtains drawn, the rest of the castle must have buzzed with activity, for in the morning al was ready. The constable and his wife were staying behind with a few servants, but the rest of us rode out just after dawn: the knights first, led by Dominic, then the king and queen, surrounded by the ladies of the court, then the boys, the chaplain, and me, al fol owed by the servants, who led pack horses loaded with food, supplies, and the tents.

The queen rode her black stal ion, but the rest of us were on the white or bay mares and geldings of the royal stables. Bel s on our harnesses jingled as we waved goodbye to those staying behind and rode down the brick road toward the forest. The air was crisp, with a faint haze, and there were spots of orange leaves among the green before us.

"Have you been to this harvest carnival before?" I asked the chaplain. He was riding beside me, his horse the only one without bel s.

"Not since I came to Yurt," he said. "The carnival was already past the fal I arrived, and the king has not felt wel enough since then to go. But of course I know the city wel where it is held."

Clearly I was missing something. Since I didn't even know where we were going, I kept on with my questions. "Why do you know it wel ?"

Joachim looked at me in surprise, then nodded. "That's right, you wouldn't know. It's my cathedral city, the city of the bishop. Yurt isn't big enough for its own bishop, or for that matter its own harvest carnival, so for both the kingdom must rely on the nearest city of the next kingdom over. That's where we're going."

"Then you'l get to see your old friends at the bishop's school," I said, thinking I would like to see some of my friends from the wizards' school. But this smal city where we were going was stil a long, long way from the City by the sea where the wizards trained, and I knew that most of my best friends were by now off in various parts of the western kingdoms in their own posts as wizards.

Joachim looked at me a moment in silence, then smiled. "I stil don't always recognize it when you're making a joke," he said. As I hadn't been making a joke, this natural y surprised me.

"I'd been about to say, you must not know very much about the way the Church is organized to think that a priest would take up his first post in the same diocese as his seminary."

Since I had no idea what he was talking about, I decided to say nothing.

"But I
am
going to see the bishop. It would soon be time for my annual visit anyway, so it seemed easiest to come with the party from Yurt. I sent him a message by the pigeons yesterday so that he would expect me."

"That wil be nice to see him, if it's been a year," I said to keep the conversation going.

"'
Nice
,'" said Joachim, as though testing the word. "You know, I don't always understand you. Are you stil joking? Or is it real y 'nice' for you to explain to the old wizard of the wizards'

school your progress in the last year in combatting evil?"

"Oh," I said, understanding at last. "I'm sorry, I don't think I'd realized that you had to undergo an annual assessment."

"How else would the bishops of the western kingdoms be able to be sure that the priests under them had kept the pure faith?"

We reached the edge of the forest and passed into the cool shade. The early morning light was dim, but I could see Joachim's dark eyes glaring at me.

"Don't you wizards from the wizards' school have to do something similar?"

If so, no one had ever told
me,
or at least I hadn't heard. I missed my friends and I missed the City, but I certainly hoped I would never have to explain to the Master of the wizards that I had spent the past year adeptly aiding mankind with benign wizardry. "Maybe it's because wizards tend to fight al the time," I said, "but they leave us alone once we've left the school."

"Maybe it's because the worst you can do is endanger your own souls," said Joachim with a snort that would have done credit to my predecessor in Yurt.

We would soon be reaching the little pile of white stones that marked the turnoff for the old wizard's hidden val ey. I decided not to point it out.

We rode in silence for a few minutes. What he said seemed to dismiss the theory I had once had that a young, untried and unsupervised priest had somehow let evil loose in Yurt. I was happy to see the theory go. Although Joachim seemed short on tact, even for him, this morning, I could not be irritated. He was not only going to have to explain why everything he had done was good, but make it clear that he had done it with a pure heart. Whatever wizardry demanded, a pure heart didn't seem absolutely necessary.

Reflecting on the lack of purity in my own heart made me think of Gwen. I hadn't yet had a chance to tel her I had a spel against love potions. I excused myself, reined in my mare so that others could pass me, and dropped into line again as Gwen came even.

"Hel o, sir," she said in evident surprise.

"I'd like to talk to you a minute," I said. "Privately, if we could."

She had been riding next to Jon. Although the young trumpeter and glass blower had always been perfectly friendly to me, he now shot me a brief but unmistakable look of jealousy.

"Don't worry," I said with a grin. "We can't possibly get into trouble on horseback."

This did not improve his expression, but Gwen laughed and reined in her own horse, so that the two of us fel to the back of the procession.

"You were asking me about love potions," I said as soon as I thought no one else would hear us. Jon was riding a short distance ahead, but his back was turned toward us stiffly, as though to say that he would not deign to turn around. "I've learned a spel you can say to detect one."

As I'd hoped, Gwen was delighted at this helpful advice from her elderly uncle. As we rode, I taught her the three simple words of the Hidden Language that would reveal such a potion and made her repeat them until I was sure she knew them. "Say them over any drink or dish you suspect," I said, "and if there's a love potion it wil turn bright red."

"That should make the danger clear, then," she said with a smile.

"Very clear. And remember: I know the spel too, so don't try slipping anything in my crul ers!"

This attempt at flirtation was met with highly amused laughter. The elderly uncle was clearly cute and quaint. She kicked her horse and hurried forward to rejoin Jon.

We rode on al that day, stopping for lunch at the border where we left the kingdom of Yurt. In late afternoon, when the king was clearly exhausted, Dominic cal ed a halt at a meadow next to a stream. The servants unloaded the horses and set up the tents with the knights' assistance, then started fires to cook supper. The ride had made me ravenously hungry, and the smoked sausage they were gril ing smel ed delicious long before it was ready. The king and queen retired to their tent even before supper was ready, but the rest of us strol ed around the meadow, glad to be on our own feet again after a day on horseback. Even the more reserved ladies of the court were talking and laughing about the events of the harvest carnival, which we would reach tomorrow, and the Lady Maria was positively giddy.

I

The first sight we had of the city was the spire of the cathedral, seeming to rise out of the golden stubble of the wheat fields. The forests of Yurt were far behind, and al afternoon we had been riding past wide fields. As we came closer, we could see that the cathedral spire was surrounded in turn by a smal wal ed city, and that the city was surrounded with the colorful striped tents of other people who had come to the carnival. As we approached, I could see crenelated towers rising on the opposite side of the city from the cathedral, directly against the wal s. The city gates stood wide open, and a crowd hurried in and out. Distant sounds of shouting, of laughter, and of song reached us on the wind.

We rode through the encampments, through the city gates, and were plunged into narrow streets bustling with humanity. We had to ride careful y to be sure our horses did not bump into anyone or knock over tables set out with everything from fresh vegetables to tooled harnesses to bales of fabric. I had expected that we would be camping again, but instead we proceeded through the streets toward the smal castle whose towers I had seen from outside the wal s.

"This castle belongs to Yurt," explained the Lady Maria, riding beside me. "Our king's grandfather, I think it was, bought the land outside the old city wal s, built the castle, and rebuilt the wal s to go around it. He wanted to have a place to stay when he came for one of the carnivals or to visit the cathedral. Now even the king of this kingdom has to ask our king's permission if he wants to stay here!"

Before reaching the castle, we had to pass the wide open square in front of the cathedral. Here, in the long shadow of the spire, the market tables were thickest, and the music was the loudest. Ahead of us, I saw the chaplain speak for a moment to the king, then pul his horse out of line.

"I'm leaving you now," he said as I came even. "But I'l be with you when you go." He dismounted before I could say anything and led his horse through the tangle of tables to the cathedral steps, where I saw him talking to a boy and handing him both the reins and a coin. I looked over my shoulder before we left the square to see him going, straight-backed, up the cathedral stairs and in the tal door.

"The king and queen were married in the cathedral," said the Lady Maria. "It was the sweetest ceremony, with roses brought from the king's own garden, and the queen just radiant. I always like to visit the cathedral when we come here."

In a few more twists of the street, we had reached the gateway which led into the courtyard of the king's little castle. The constable of this castle and his wife were at the gate waiting for us, wearing the same blue and white livery as the constable back home in Yurt. There were only a few chambers besides the royal chambers, so my little bundle of clean clothes ended up in the same room with Dominic and the knights. But none of us wanted to stay in the castle's narrow rooms when the sounds of carnival were right outside the windows. Within a few minutes, everyone but the king and queen was out in the city streets.