One of the counts was fairly old, about the king’s age, and his wife was a round and smiling middle-aged woman who looked as I had originally expected the queen to look. Their sons, they told me, were off adventuring in the eastern kingdoms and had not been able to come home for Christmas.
The other count was young, probably my age, and had come into his inheritance just last winter. He had beautiful alabaster skin, wavy chestnut hair (about the color mine would be if I hadn’t dyed it gray), and gold rings on every long finger. Looking at me imperiously from wide-spaced brown eyes, he had the look of mystery and authority I had always hoped I projected but knew I did not.
I did the full bow to him as I had already done to the old count and his wife and to the duchess. The latter had actually put on a dress in honor of Christmas Eve. It was a lovely dark wine color that suited her well, but it was also exactly the same shade as what the queen was wearing, even though the two dresses were styled very differently. I noticed the cousins looking at each other sideways with little flarings of the nostrils. The duchess looked at me, however, with a small and somewhat ironical smile, as though interested in seeing my reaction to the counts.
“So you have a new wizard,” said the young count to the king in what I was pleased to note was a high and rather nasal voice. “I myself would never have one. I’d been hoping that when your old one retired you’d have the sense not to get another.”
Since I had just finished bowing to him, and my predecessor was standing only ten feet away, this struck me as unusually rude, even for a member of the aristocracy, but he kept on talking about us as though we weren’t there. “My father kept a wizard-or he said he was a wizard, someone I think my father had picked up at a carnival somewhere-but as soon as I inherited, I sent him packing right away, you can be sure.”
“We’ve always been very happy with our wizards,” said the king stiffly.
“Is there anything in particular you object to about wizards?” asked my predecessor with a calmness that he was having trouble maintaining.
“Everything about them is so, well, on the surface!” said the young count, waving his beautiful white hands. “Once you’ve seen an illusion or two, you have nothing left but vague talk about the powers of darkness and light, which someone like me sees through at once.”
“I think you’re underestimating real wizardry,” continued my predecessor, with an evenness of tone I admired.
“You’re the wizard who used to be here, aren’t you? My father told me about your illusions over dessert, back when he used to visit the king. But really, when you go beyond illusions, what do you have?”
I turned him into a frog.
There was total, horrified silence in the great hall as everyone stopped breathing. The only sound was the crackling of the great logs in the fireplace. Where the young count had stood a minute ago, a large green bullfrog squatted on the flagstones, looking up at us with human eyes. The eyes seemed confused and rather alarmed.
The frog’s wide, pale throat pumped with its breathing. It took one hop toward me, then paused to look around again.
The old wizard’s cat broke the silence with a hiss. Immediately there was a babble of voices. The wizard took the cat firmly in his arms. “Hold on,” I said cheerfully. “I’ll have him turned back into a count in just a minute. I’ve been working on transformations all day, so this shouldn’t give me any trouble. I chose a frog because frogs, who metamorphose naturally during their lifetimes, are very easy subjects for the magic of transformation.”
No one seemed particularly interested in this insight into wizardry. They had all stepped backwards and were looking at me in trepidation.
But it did indeed take only a few seconds for me to return him to himself, once I had decided he had been a frog long enough to respect wizards more in the future. But as I said the words to restore him, I also added a few words to create an illusion of pale green color on his alabaster skin. It would fade shortly, but I thought it would be a healthy reminder of the powers of wizardry. If I had done this well in the transformation practical, there never would have been a question about Zahlfast passing me.
The count, restored, stared at me with eyes that seemed much more appropriate in a human’s face than they had in a frog’s, but he said nothing.
“Well,” said the king in in his best jolly voice. “I can see the after-dinner entertainment has already begun, but shall we eat before we have any more? I know the cook has been busy today!”
The brass players had stopped playing to stare down from their greenery-hung balcony, but they quickly resumed as we all went toward the tables. Several extra tables had had to be set up, all glittering with the best silver and crystal.
As we jostled and found our places, I discovered the chaplain at my elbow. “Are you sure this wanton meddling with God’s creation does not endanger your soul?” he said into my ear.
I laughed and shook my head. I personally thought the young count’s soul might be improved by a wholesome lesson in humility, but decided not to mention this. I was suddenly very hungry.
V
I noticed at dinner that no one talked to me as freely as they normally did, not even the Lady Maria, who was, as usual, seated at my right hand, though one advantage of having guests was that Dominic had been positioned at a different table. Being freed from having to provide entertaining conversation gave me more attention to pay to one of the cook’s finest efforts. By the time the mince pie was brought in, I was so full that I found I could only take two pieces.
When everyone was down to about half a piece of pie, from which they periodically extracted a raisin or a flaky piece of crust to munch with a sip of tea, the king said, “Well, Wizard! ” to my predecessor. “Are you going to provide us some entertainments like you used to?” I noticed that the servants who had been taking empty dishes down to the kitchen had all returned to the seats at their table.
The wizard nodded, giving a rather smug smile. “I think I might be able to provide something to while away a few minutes.”
He rose, leaving the calico cat sitting on his chair with its tail wrapped tidily around its paws. From his pocket the wizard took a dozen gold rings and arranged them carefully in front of the fire.
I realized what he was doing. Complicated illusions might take up to an hour or more to create, but it was possible to perform most of the spell, stopping short of the end, and then tie that spell to an object, where it would last a day or so. An unfinished spell would start to fade after that time, but if one did one’s illusions fairly soon, one would have the advantage of being able to perform something highly spectacular with only a few words of the Hidden Language. The object to which the unfinished spell was attached could be almost anything, but the wizard’s rings certainly added a nice touch. I never did illusions that way myself, except for once for a class exercise, always being too impatient.
The old wizard picked up the first ring, held it toward the company, and said a few quick words. Immediately a light green sapling sprang up from the flagstone floor. It grew and grew, reaching branches now covered with pale pink blossoms toward the ceiling. For a second there was even a whiff of rose petals. I determined to ask him to teach me how to do that at the next possible opportunity; they had never taught us how to do illusory scents in the City.
Now the blossoms were changing, becoming long green leaves, as the tree was gently buffeted by a summer breeze, and for a second the hall was filled not with the smell of evergreen but with the scent of new-mown hay. Then the leaves darkened, became crimson and blood-red, and fell in silent showers, accompanied by a dark, woodsy smell of wood and earth. But the branches were not bare, for now white stars glistened in their branches. As the smell of the Christmas tree again returned, the stars cascaded to the earth, and the whole tree quietly dissolved.