“Well, this will certainly be a Christmas we’ll always remember!” said the old count.
Since everyone had survived, and even the worst of the wounded looked as though they would mend without grave danger, the mood had become lighthearted. Several of the knights seem positively to have welcomed the rare chance to do something warlike, even though their swords and spears had been useless against the dragon. The terrors of the morning and the repair work of the weeks to come were primarily subjects for triumphant mirth.
While waiting for the courses, we sang Christmas carols. I did a few illusions, since the old wizard was no longer there with his much better ones. I made sure that all of mine were simple and pleasant, such as a shining golden egg that broke open to reveal an adult peacock. Even the young count managed to smile fairly amiably. I had never seen the Lady Maria so gay and lighthearted, even before the grey hairs had started to appear.
Only Dominic, heavily strapped around the body and needing help eating because his right wrist was broken, sat silent and glowering. He, at any rate, seemed unlikely to have summoned a dragon that had nearly killed him.
When the blazing plum pudding had been brought from the stove to the table, served and eaten with more cries of appreciation than normal, the duchess said, “Why don’t all of you come to my castle for the rest of the twelve days of Christmas?”
“But we couldn’t possibly leave the royal castle during the holidays!” protested the queen.
“You can’t possibly enjoy a happy holiday in your castle the way it is now,” said the duchess with a laugh. “Bring everybody along! I sent my whole staff home to their families for vacation, so there should be plenty of room in my castle if we double up in the chambers. It’s going to take a while to repair this castle, and you’re going to have trouble hiring any carpenters or masons for the next two weeks anyway. You don’t want to have to start work just when everyone wants to relax and enjoy the festivities.”
“But everything’s here!” continued the queen. “The food, the decorations, even the tree!”
“Bring them all along!”
“And if you like,” said the old count, “we can spend New Year’s with the duchess and go on to spend Epiphany at our castle!”
I was delighted with this suggestion. Even though I knew now what had been in the old wizard’s tower room, I still did not know who had summoned it. If we could get everybody, really everybody, out of the royal castle of Yurt while I tried to figure this out, we might all be much safer.
“What a wonderful offer, my lady!” I said, even though the decision was certainly not mine to make. “A week of relaxing is exactly what we all need!”
While the queen was turning to me in surprise, startled at the loss of someone she had expected to be her ally against the duchess, the king said, “The wizard’s right. Thank you for a most generous offer! We’ll go tomorrow!”
As it turned out, we did not leave until the second day. We all awoke late and irritable. Christmas was over, and the lighthearted mood of the night before was gone. The wounded complained about their cracks and bruises, and I was covered with blisters from the dragon’s blood. Clearly my predecessor knew nothing about dragons. The wounded knights, the doctor from the village told us, needed a day to rest and become at least a little less stiff before they could be loaded into horse litters.
The king directed the repairs that absolutely had to be done before we could leave: the boarding up of broken windows, the replacing of slates where the roof was only minimally damaged, the rigging of covers in those areas where it was clear that all the slates would have to be removed and some of the beams replaced.
I spent much of the day in the kitchen, my feet up before the main fireplace, while the cook and the kitchen maids packed up the two weeks’ worth of food they had stocked for the holidays. The cook got into a prolonged quarrel with the constable’s wife, insisting that she had to take along her own pans, not trusting the duchess’s kitchen to have what she needed. Most of the staff in the kitchen were too busy to pay any attention to me, but Gwen put poultices on my face and changed them assiduously every hour. By evening, the blisters were almost gone, even though my ribs were aching worse than ever.
The queen reconciled herself to the trip to the duchess’s castle by taking literally her suggestion to bring everything along. She and the Lady Maria spent much of the day on the stepladders, taking down all the ornaments they had put up just two days earlier, and packing them ready to go. Even the Christmas tree itself was gently lowered and strapped to a sledge with a tarpaulin over it.
Supper was a simple meal, except for the the fruitcake. Everyone was too tired to talk very much. The chief conversation was between the queen and the constable.
“But, my lady, someone has to stay here in Yurt.”
“No, I won’t allow it. You deserve a cheerful holiday as much as the rest of us-more, in fact.”
“If the castle stands empty, a thief might break in.”
“This is a castle,” she said with an exasperated laugh. “When we go, the last person out can raise the drawbridge and leave by the postern gate, and then not even an army will be able to break in. Even with the damage to some of the parapets, the walls are still sound. There used to be wars in the western kingdoms, after all, and castles were built to withstand concerted siege! Certainly this castle will be impenetrable to a common thief!”
“In the days of sieges, there were defenders in the castle to push back the scaling ladders from the walls.”
I stayed out of the discussion. There was no way I could pretend to have the authority to decide this, and, besides, I was fairly sure the queen would prevail.
She did in the end, but only because the constable’s wife finally said, “Please, dear, I’d like to have a few more days of merry holidays myself.”
I felt relieved as I crossed the dark courtyard to my chambers, carrying a candle, even though I was aching in every bone. My breath in the candlelight made a frosty cloud around me. Zahlfast had first noticed that the supernatural influence stopped at the castle’s moat, and the old wizard had told me he had put special binding spells at the castle’s periphery. At the duchess’s castle, we should at least be free of the direct influence of black magic, and maybe my mind would work better than it seemed to be doing today.
Beyond the castle walls, I could hear foxes barking over the dragon’s carcass. I still did not know what to make of the stranger. He had refused to let me find out anything about him by turning that sensation of evil against me like a weapon. But I was beginning to wonder if the old wizard knew something about the stranger that he was not telling me.
The old apprenticeship system for learning wizardry had never been actually ended. It had merely withered away over the course of the last hundred and fifty years, as it became obvious that it was quicker and easier for a young man to study with the wizards in the City, where all of modern wizardry was arranged in books and coursework, than to put up with the crotchets of a single teacher. When I had asked the old wizard about studying herbal magic with him, he had referred extremely vaguely to his last apprentice.
I had thought at the time that he must know exactly who that last apprentice had been, and now I had a suspicion why he had not wanted to talk about him. That apprentice may have taken the plunge into black magic, and the old wizard knew it.
He must have been living in the woods near Yurt for years, maybe with the old wizard’s knowledge, and maybe not. At any rate, I speculated, he had taken advantage of the few days between when the old wizard had retired from Yurt and I had arrived to move into the castle and establish himself in the cellars. When he realized I was a young, relatively incompetent wizard, he had become bold. He had broken the magic locks to get into the north tower, and had had to break my lock on the cellar door when I had inadvertently locked him out-or in.