Paul jumped to his feet, looking as satisfied and resolute as though we had decided something, which as far as I could tell we had not. “Race you back to the castle,” he said, reaching for his horse’s reins.
II
At dinner that night the queen formally welcomed me home to Yurt. We ate as we always did in the great hall of the castle. A brass choir, seated on a little balcony, played as the serving platters were brought in. Suspended beneath the high ceiling were the magic globes made many years ago by my predecessor as Royal Wizard, casting a sparkling light on the crystal and silver. The tall windows stood wide open, but a blazing fire on the hearth took the chill out of the spring air.
As regent, the queen sat at the head of the main table where the king had once sat, and Paul sat at the opposite end. I wondered where Vincent would expect to be seated once he married the queen.
I dined as I always had with the Lady Maria on my right hand and the chaplain facing me across the table. Paul’s Great-aunt Maria now had hair as white as mine, but her manner had scarcely changed since she had worn her golden curls in girlish locks bedecked with bows.
“It was not the same here while you were gone,” she said, fixing me with wide blue eyes. “All that arcane wisdom you wizards acquire makes you uniquely capable of counseling a court on all sorts of worldly matters, not just those involving magic.” She paused for a bite. “But there are other matters,” she added, “where even a wizard’s wisdom does not reach: these are the affairs of the soul. And it is the inner soul, the inner heart, that drives women and men. I may seem to be an old woman leading a quiet life in a small kingdom, but within this heart are scores of adventures, of triumphs, of tragedies, of fears and hopes each day.”
I had forgotten in my months away how irritating the Lady Maria could sometimes be. This sounded like the result of what Paul had characterized as theological discussions with the young chaplain.
He smiled and bobbed his head at her. To me he seemed much too young to have the responsibility for the souls of the royal court-he was even younger than I had been when I first came to Yurt. He had a very wide, congenial smile, but somehow I had never felt it was sincere. If Joachim did become bishop, I thought, I would ask him for a different chaplain.
“We know what you wizards do down at that school,” continued the Lady Maria, jabbing me playfully with her elbow. “You plan to coordinate all your efforts, both against the western kings and against the Church!”
“We certainly try to coordinate our wizardly efforts for best effect,” I said, startled to find that I was considered one of the wizards down at the school. “It’s always hard, though. I’m sure you know that wizards are generally in competition with each other-and not always friendly competition. And if wizardry and the Church are rivals,” I added graciously but insincerely, “I think the Church may be winning.”
“But it really true,” the Lady Maria asked, “that your school now intends to put a wizard not just in every royal or ducal court, but in every castle and manor house?”
The young chaplain widened his eyes at me as though trying to signal that he was not responsible for her. I found this highly unlikely.
“I wouldn’t call it an intention,” I said uneasily. What had the young chaplain been telling them while I was gone? It was a good thing that Joachim’s call had taken me away from the school sooner than I had planned, or there might have been a full-fledged plot against institutionalized magic here by the time I finished making improvisation into an organized discipline. “It’s certainly true that more noble households have hired wizards during the last generation or so, but that’s only because the school has made more fully-qualified wizards available.”
I added to myself that it was a good thing I had graduated when I did. Without an honors certificate or even areas of distinction, I might not be able today to become Royal Wizard at even as small a kingdom as Yurt, and I could instead be casting spells in a ramshackle manor house in the foothills of the mountains.
We were interrupted at this point by the arrival of dessert, raspberry pudding, my favorite. I looked over to the side table where the servants were sitting and signaled my approval to the cook. She smiled back, highly pleased. The cook was now a full-bosomed matron and had a daughter almost as old as she had been when I first met her, but we had been friends ever since she was a saucy kitchen maid.
If it had not been for the Lady Maria and her questions, I would have assumed that the whole court was as happy to see me again as I was to be here. Now I was beginning to wonder.
“Wizard!” called the queen down the table. “We missed your illusions while you were gone. Could you entertain us over dessert as you used to?”
My entertainments went over very well. I made the same scarlet dragon I had tried on the Romney children, and this time it got the appreciation it deserved. I finished by creating a pair of golden crowns, glittering with enough jewels to be worth a small kingdom by themselves if they were real, and had them whirl through the air and settle on the queen’s and Paul’s heads.
“Thank you!” said Paul with a laugh. “Everybody else keeps trying to remind me that I still have three months to go!”
As the illusions faded away, people began to disperse. The young chaplain startled me by touching my elbow. “Would you care for a final glass of wine in my chambers?”
For a moment I was unable to answer. Even aside from my suspicions of him, coming back to Yurt had revived long-forgotten memories of the day I first arrived here. We had eaten in the same hall, its doors and windows open to the air; I had had the Lady Maria beside me; and after dinner I had asked Joachim to have a glass of wine in my chambers.
The young chaplain seemed to take my silence as a symptom of abstemiousness. “The Apostle tells us to take ‘a little wine for thy stomach’s sake,’” he said with a genial chuckle, patting the organ in question, “and we shouldn’t disobey the Apostle, now, should we?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was thinking of something else. I’d be very happy to join you.”
I turned toward the stairs that led up to the small room both Joachim and his immediate successor had had, but the young chaplain turned the other way. I hurried after him, recalling some problem which had made him ask for different chambers.
“So how are you settling into your new duties?” I asked as I caught up. “You’d been here a month with the previous chaplain, but you’d only been on your own for a few weeks when I left.” I wondered jealously if he now thought of Yurt as his kingdom.
“Very well, I hope. But maybe you shouldn’t be asking me,” he added with another chuckle, “but those I try to serve!”
He opened his door and motioned me to precede him. I observed at once that he had more space than I did. But I was also relieved to see that his chambers did not suggest an impure mind. The rooms were furnished sparsely, with nothing on the walls but his seminary diploma and the crucifix at the head of the narrow bed.
“You probably wondered why I asked you to join me,” the chaplain said, opening a bottle, “especially after the Lady Maria seemed to imply that you and I ought to be fierce competitors!” He gave a broad smile and handed me a glass. Even though it had always bothered me that Joachim had a rather limited sense of humor, I would at the moment have preferred his sober intensity.
“So she’s been taking her instruction in directions you hadn’t intended?” I asked, taking a sip. The first night I had met Joachim, we had put away several bottles of City vintage between us. I had been determined to show him that no priest could outdrink a wizard, and although I had never asked him about it, I had the impression he didn’t want to let a wizard think he could outdrink a priest.