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 any more, but it was no longer uniformly grey. 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 grey 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 into my beard, which stung, 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 grey 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, Sir 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 became 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 shouted. 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 rose bush 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.