The two carts dipped, banked, and landed beside me. I loaded the lizards carefully, packing the heads, wings, and legs in as well as I could. There was just enough room left in the second cart for a man.
I ducked back across the drawbridge and found Gwennie. “I was looking for the constable,” I told her, “but you’ll do fine. I have to go down to the City but I’ll be back tonight or tomorrow.” I did not trust Sengrim’s lizards not to come back to life if left to themselves. I had, perhaps unjustifiably, come out of this business quite credibly, and I didn’t want to ruin it now.
Gwennie waved as the lizards and I took off. It took until early afternoon to reach the white spires of the City and the school perched on the highest central point. The lizards remained paralyzed the whole way. As the carts landed in the school courtyard, I thought that these creatures might prove useful after all for the students to practice their “anti-monster” spells.
As I unloaded the stiff bodies, with the help of a teaching assistant and several students, the cheerful conversation and questions around me suddenly stopped and I looked up to see two senior wizards: Zahlfast and the white-bearded Master of the school.
Zahlfast walked around the lizards slowly. “Nice paralysis spell, Daimbert,” he said in his school-teacher voice.
“I know you gave Zahlfast a quick overview on the telephone of what happened,” said the Master, “but I’d like to hear more. How about if you come to my study?”
Leaving the assistants to finish dealing with the lizards, I followed the Master with a cold feeling in my chest. It seemed ominously significant that the two wizards had appeared together. Although there had never been any formal announcement, it had become clear over the last few years that Zahlfast had gone from being the head of the transformations faculty to being the de facto second in authority at the school.
Inwardly I was in turmoil. While my own role in killing Sengrim, I was now ashamed to admit, had not bothered me in the slightest, it suddenly seemed highly likely to be a heavy black mark against me in the eyes of the school. No one expected wizards to get along well with each other, but killing each other was something else.
In the Master’s study, I told them everything that had happened as honestly as I could, neither trying to justify or to boast, starting with the lizards on the new cathedral tower, and including the gorgos, the strangely out-of-order telephone at the watch-station, and my final spell against Sengrim. All I left out was Theodora. I ended with my guesses why he had been so jealous of me. “One thing you can tell me,” I concluded. “Was he just very good at magic, or was he working with a demon?”
Zahlfast and the Master looked at each other. “There is nothing that makes us think,” said Zahlfast, “that he’d taken the step into black magic.”
“Good,” I said. “We gave him a Christian burial.”
“You may be correct,” said the Master, ignoring this comment, “that he was eaten up with jealousy. I must say I’d never known a student of mine to summon a hundred dragons to attack the school. If your king hadn’t killed him, I wonder what his next effort might have been-but thanks to you, we will never have to know!”
Zahlfast said thoughtfully, “I wonder if we ought to keep somewhat closer track of the wizards after they leave the school, to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again. We’d seen him this spring, only a short time before he faked his death, but we believed him when he said everything in Caelrhon was fine.”
“Was that his air cart?” I asked abruptly.
“Why, yes. He told us that he’d been able to obtain a purple flying beast up in the land of wild magic. I presume he got it at the same time as he was capturing the gorgos and disabling the telephone system. The cart will be very useful at the school now that he won’t be needing it.” Just as I had thought.
The Master leaned toward me, his hands on his knees. “So. What it all comes down to, young wizard, is that you defended your kingdom successfully from someone who knew a lot more magic than you do.”
“And in the process,” added Zahlfast, “you and your local bishop worked out an agreement that priests and wizards ought to stop working against each other.”
I looked at him sharply. I hadn’t said anything about this, as not being directly relevant.
“Yes, we’ve heard about it,” said Zahlfast with a smile. “You weren’t the only wizard in Caelrhon, you know.”
“Since Sengrim was so good at magic,” I asked, changing the subject because I didn’t want to have to justify my friendship with Joachim, “why was he still wizard of Caelrhon? If Yurt’s the smallest of the western kingdoms, Caelrhon has to be the second smallest.”
Zahlfast looked as though he was going to say something about how the school did not discuss one wizard’s career with another, but the Master answered me without hesitation.
“There’s a lot more to being a good wizard than being good at spells. Some wizards stay at their first posts for their entire lives, some move to richer courts in just a few years, some stay at the school as assistants, some come back to work at the school after years away. It all depends on a number of factors, including the wishes of the wizard himself, how well he’s doing where he is, and what other opportunities may be available. In his case, he’d applied for other positions over the years, but none of them were quite right for him.”
“Including Yurt,” I said. “I still don’t understand why you made sure that I became wizard there.”
“We told you that years ago,” said Zahlfast. “You were the best qualified person for the position.”
“Caelrhon will need a new royal wizard now, of course,” said the Master. “The king telephoned the school after the royal family realized that Sengrim really wasn’t a good representative of a school-trained wizard.. There is someone we had in mind for the position, and we would like your opinion. His name is Evrard, and I believe he was briefly ducal wizard of Yurt fifteen or twenty years ago.”
I was surprised but pleased. “That’s a fine idea. He’ll be a good Royal Wizard of Caelrhon.”
“And that brings us,” said the Master, “to the real issue.”
This was it, I thought, the reprimand for which I had been waiting the last hour. My only hope was that even if they wanted to install someone else as wizard of Yurt, they couldn’t do so over the objections of Paul and the queen.
“We want you to stay here and teach at the school.”
This was both unexpected and anticlimactic. “But I was just here this spring,” I said. “I would have thought I did a poor enough job inspiring your technical division students that you wouldn’t want me to try again already.”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” said Zahlfast, “and in fact I think those students will get more long-term advantage out of your lectures than you realize. But you may well be right that the technical division isn’t the best place for you. You could teach in one of the other faculties this fall.”
I shook my head. “I appreciate the offer, but I really can’t. I’ve been away from Yurt much too much this year anyway. Paul’s just become king, and he needs his Royal Wizard with him as he adjusts to his new responsibilities.”
“Maybe you don’t understand what we’re saying,” said Zahlfast. “We’re not asking you to stay at the school for a series of lectures. We’re asking you to join the permanent faculty.”
This was certainly not what I expected. I looked from one to the other, my mouth doubtless gaping. “But-” Out of several things I might have said I chose, “But I thought the two of you were going to punish me for being implicated in the death of another wizard.”
Zahlfast started to chuckle. “So you told us the whole story, expecting at any moment that we would accuse you of being a traitor to organized wizardry?”
“And you’re not going to?” I said cautiously.