I laughed as hard as anybody, but I was very glad that the real Dominic was not there.
The queen announced lunch not long afterwards. Since it was only heated-up soup that the cook had made the day before, cheese, bread, and Christmas cookies, it was an excellent meal, even if prepared by women who normally never cooked. “Wizard!” bellowed Jon to the chaplain as we finished the cookies. “I want to see some magic and I want to see it now! None of your normal foolish magic. Let’s have something really spectacular!”
Joachim took a deep breath and stood up, with a look at me as though it were all my fault. At this point there was a pause as several people at the table noticed he was wearing his ordinary vestments; since I was still wearing the older priest’s robes, we had three chaplains at the table and no wizard.
“He’s got a have a costume.” “He’s got to look like the wizard.” “What shall we do?”
“Here,” I said and pulled off my belt, which I had been wearing around my trousers under the robes. “You can wear this. It’s the chief insignia of wizardry.”
While of course it was not, the moon and stars were impressive enough, once I set them glowing, that the rest of the table clapped and approved. Joachim buckled it around himself with the look of someone who just wanted this episode over.
But I was pleased to see that he had the sense not just to pull out the button and show everyone how ordinary it was. Instead he cupped it in his hands, looked down on it as though it were something exciting, and began to speak in a low tone. “Abracadabra,” he said, which he must have known as well as I did was not a word of the Hidden Language, only the way the Language was represented in children’s fairy stories. “Let the magic begin!”
He whirled around, holding the button over his head. I started putting the final pieces of the spell I wanted together, but he was not done yet.
“Magic is all powerful!” he cried. “The supernatural is superfluous! Wizards are the kings of the universe!”
There was a good deal of laughter at this. While I was delighted that he still might be able to develop a sense of humor, I wished he had not started at my expense. He threw the button in the air, and as it came down it stopped being a button.
Instead it was a pack horse, slightly smaller than lifesize, a defect for which it made up by being brilliantly violet. On its back was a giant sack, from which brightly wrapped Christmas presents protruded. As Joachim unbuckled my belt and sat down again, the presents tumbled from the sack, their ribbons untying themselves, the gifts inside shooting out. There were diamond necklaces, a golden sword, silk dresses, whole hams, a book bound in red leather, cascades of coins, highly lifelike bluebirds, and, in the final box, a rose bush that grew, opened violet blooms, and faded away as the whole illusion disappeared into sparks.
There was a brief moment of appreciative silence, with no sound but the sleet against the windows. “Very good, Wizard!” Jon then called. “It’s much better than our usual wizard’s productions!”
I was actually very pleased myself. It was certainly the most elaborate and most realistic illusion I had ever done; maybe I would have to try more often the old wizard’s method of starting an illusion ahead of time.
But my good humor was no more permanent than the illusion and faded again in the afternoon. I was now convinced that I would never hear anything about the old wizard’s apprentice. Although there was still over a week to run on the twelve days of Christmas, my time for deciding what to do about the stranger in the cellars was very limited. Since he had already called down a dragon on us, I hated to imagine what he would do for his next effort.
The rest of the party also seemed to grow tired of the game as the afternoon wore on. At one point Gwen took off her draperies and left the hall and did not come back. When, toward the end of the afternoon, someone from the village came to the door to announce that a boar had been spotted in the woods, conversation quickly shifted from a mockery of the royal castle’s ordinary life to the question of a boar hunt.
“If the weather’s clear by tomorrow,” said the duchess, “we can start first thing in the morning. What do you say, Wizard?” addressing me. “Do you know some weather spells to make sure it’s a good day for boar hunting?”
I had never seen a live boar and knew that I would normally have been very interested; now I just wished I had some ideas of how to proceed at home. How could I try to get the stranger and his evil out of Yurt when I did not know who he was, why he was in the castle, or who of the royal party was working with him?
“The Feast of Fools will be over at sunset!” announced the duchess. It seemed to be over in fact well before then. The young count, the unwounded knights, and the men servants were already checking the duchess’s armory to see what she might have for boar spears.
At the very end of the afternoon, when the icy rain was clearing up even without a weather spell, the duchess’s constable came into the hall and approached me. “A message just came into the pigeon loft,” he said. “I think it’s for you.”
I snatched the tiny rectangle from him and unfolded it carefully, my heart pounding. Would this be the answer to the question of why the stranger had settled himself and his black magic in Yurt?
I had to read the message twice to understand it. “I was delighted to hear from the new Wizard of Yurt. I still remember my years in the kingdom fondly, even though it’s been eighty-two years since I left. Let me wish you a happy New Year.”
The message was from the old wizard’s last apprentice. He had apparently spent his entire life in the count’s castle where he had taken up his first post. If he was a hundred and fifty miles away, sending me messages, he could not possibly also be sitting in the cellars of the empty royal castle.
I was back where I had started from. If the stranger was not an apprentice wizard gone evil, who was he, and who in Yurt had invited him in?
PART SEVEN — LADY MARIA
I
At supper that night, cooked again by the cook and served by the serving maids, the duchess stood up between courses and came to lean over the back of my chair. I was sitting next to the Lady Maria, eating glumly and scarcely tasting what I was eating.
“Could you come to my chambers after dinner for a glass of brandy?” she said in a low voice.
Maria, who overheard, pursed her lips and shot the duchess’s back a sharp look from narrowed eyes. This seemed to be the first time that I had made any woman in Yurt jealous on my behalf, and it was not the woman I would have selected for jealousy.
“I’d be glad to come, my lady,” I said, “but your brandy is perhaps a little strong for a wizard. Could I join you in a glass of wine instead?”
“Of course,” she said and returned to her seat. I just hoped she was not going to start teasing me again. I wasn’t sure I could manage to be polite if she did.
But as she poured me some wine and herself an inch of brandy, she showed no sign of making provocative suggestions. “There’s something wrong, Wizard,” she said, hooking her leg over the arm of the chair. “Even I know that dragons don’t normally leave the northern land of magic to come attack one of the smallest of the western kingdoms. What’s happening?”
“I wish I knew what was happening,” I said ruefully. “You’re probably glad I didn’t agree to become ducal wizard, since I didn’t even know what to do with a dragon. Does everybody here realize something’s wrong?”
“I think the rest have been too busy thinking about the Christmas festivities,” she said, “but that’s part of the reason I felt I had to get everyone out of the royal castle of Yurt and bring them here. And it’s clear to me, watching you, that you’re deeply worried.”