PART TWO - THE QUEEN

I

It took me a week to figure out how to do the lights. During that week, Gwen continued to bring me breakfast every morning, though not quite so early. I had told her that, in spite of my friendship for the chaplain (or maybe, I thought, in order to preserve that friendship), I would not be attending chapel every morning. Once or twice she brought me crullers, but usually it was cake donuts.

Although she was perfectly cordial, I got no more winks or saucy looks. I wondered if she had been warned against me, and if so by whom. The constable, who oversaw the castle staff, seemed the most likely person, except that I couldn't picture him doing it. I preferred to think that she had found out that wizards are not supposed to marry and was trying to rein in her affections before she developed a broken heart.

My initial problem with the lights for the stairs was finding something suitable to which to attach the magic. The headroom was so limited that I decided to use a flat surface rather than the more normal globes. My first thought was to do something with glass.

The constable introduced me to the young man who blew glass for the castle. I recognized him as one of the trumpeters who played at dinner. Once he had his livery off and his leather smock on, however, I would never have known him.

When he had his fire burning so hot that his glass was liquid and I had to stand back at the far side of the room, he dipped a long tube into the molten glass and began to blow. I was fascinated; I had never seen glass being made before.

He blew a large, thin bubble, brilliantly red, then laid it down and rolled it flat before it could cool. He stepped back, wiped his forehead with the back of his arm, and waited for comments from me.

It was exactly what I had asked for, an oval piece of glass a little thicker than a window pane. But I had had an awful thought. I had knocked my head on the ceiling going up the stairs to the chapel, and I was not the tallest person in the castle. I didn't want my magic lights shattered into shards of glowing glass the first time Dominic raised his head too quickly.

"I'd like to try something a little different," I said. "Maybe this time could you make something hollow, like a flat-bottomed bottle that tapers toward the top--" I waved my hands in the air, sketching the shape. I was describing the base of a telephone.

"These are going to be strange looking lights," he said with a grin when he had blown it. "How many do you want?"

"Just one more, I think," I said, looking at my telephone; it was still glowing hot. "And then I'll want some more parts in different shapes." For the next hour, he blew different shapes to my specification. The mouth piece was the trickiest part. At the end, I had a glass oval and two very lovely though very unusual glass telephone instruments.

"These actually aren't all going to be lights," I told the young man. "Have you ever seen a telephone?"

"Those are telephones?" he said with interest. "And I made them? Can I make a call and tell my mother?"

"Does she have a telephone?" I said quickly, hoping that she didn't and wanting to forestall explaining that these were far from operational.

"No," he said and frowned. "I hadn't thought of that. You need two of them, don't you, one for each person. I expect that's why you made two. She lives in the next kingdom, about fifty miles from here; maybe I'll send her a message by the pigeons."

"You do wonderful glass blowing," I said. "And I also very much like your playing at dinner." I hurried back to my room with my prizes.

The telephones I set carefully on a high shelf, but I sat down with the oval of glass to try to make it glow. This piece, I thought, I could use for just inside the door from the great hall, where the ceiling was still high. Once I had been able to attach magic light permanently to it, I would talk to the armorer about getting some pieces of steel made in the same shape, for further up the stairs.

At first I was no more able to make my piece of glass shine permanently than I had been able to do with my belt buckle. I had been spending much of the day with my books of spells when, in the middle of the week, Joachim, the chaplain, invited me to his room after dinner.

I think I was the only person who called him Joachim. I had in fact known him for some time before even learning he had a name. Almost everyone else in Yurt called him Father, which I resisted doing, both because he wasn't my father and because I was afraid that to do so would let down the dignity of wizardry. He didn't seem to mind.

As I sipped the wine he poured me, I looked around his room. It was lit with candles, no magic globes here. He had only the one room, rather than the two I had, and his bed looked hard. The walls were unadorned, except for the crucifix over the bed, and all the books on his shelf seemed well-thumbed.

"Have you started feeling comfortable with your duties yet?" he asked, setting down the bottle and sitting on another hard chair opposite mine. The air from the window made the candle flames dance and his shadow move grotesquely behind him.

"I keep on hoping I'll find out what my duties are," I said. I was wondering if I could trust him with my climb up the north tower and the sense of evil I had first felt there. "They hired me as Royal Wizard, and they've given me some tasks, but these aren't going to keep me busy forever--or I hope not. Do you know exactly what your duties are?"

"A chaplain's are a little clearer. I perform the service in the chapel every day, or oftener if needed, I encourage the sick, give solace to the dying, write treatises if treatises need writing, and am here whenever I'm wanted. But maybe a Royal Wizard's duties are not much different; I would think your principal responsibility is to be at hand whenever magic is needed."

"Is that what our predecessors did, perform useful tasks if called upon and spend the rest of the time waiting to be needed?" I had a vision of spending the next two hundred years of my life trying to make glass glow, and I didn't like the picture.

"I think that's what your predecessor did, at least part of the time, though he spent much of his time alone up in his tower. He sometimes wouldn't emerge for days. He always said he was trying to gain new knowledge. Certainly his illusions at supper were livelier when he'd been gone for a few days. As for my predecessor, I don't know; he was dead when I came."

"He was dead? I hadn't realized that."

"He's buried in the cemetery out beyond the gate. I think he was very old. But as I told you before, there had clearly been some sort of disagreement between him and the old wizard, and though it colored the wizard's attitude toward me, I never found out what it was."

I slowly drained my glass, giving myself time to think. I had a vague recollection of hearing that young priests were rarely sent out to their first positions alone. Usually they went where older priests could guide them for a few years before retiring themselves. Everyone knows that we wizards fight with each other all the time, which is why a new Royal Wizard only takes up his post when the old one is well out of the way, but priests are supposed to show each other Christian charity and support.

The shadows from the candle made my companion's eye sockets enormous and so dark that his eyes were invisible. I shivered involuntarily, not liking what I was thinking. Four years ago, the king had married, and, according to Dominic, had still been strong and vigorous. Three years ago, probably after their old chaplain had died unexpectedly, the kingdom had had to send for a new one. Not long afterwards, the king began to grow weaker.

It was a small kingdom. When they wanted a wizard, the best they could do was me. When they wanted a chaplain, they got a young man, who perhaps had a dark stain they had already suspected at the seminary, and who took up his duties without all the fatherly guidance and assistance that was normally considered necessary. I liked to give the impression that wizards were familiar with the powers of darkness; priests had to deal with them every day.

Joachim seemed content to let the silence stretch out. "The other day I came back to my chambers," I said suddenly, "and the magic lock on my door had been broken."

He didn't seem as shocked as I thought he should have, but then he wouldn't know how hard they are to break. He didn't look guilty either, but I found it hard to read his face. "It doesn't sound as though a magic lock has any advantage over cold iron, then."

This, I realized, was supposed to be another one of his jokes. "You don't understand. Someone would have to know a tremendous amount of magic to break it. It can't be done with brute force."

He leaned forward, and his eyes reemerged from darkness. "But I didn't think there was anyone else in the castle who knew magic."

I looked into my empty glass. "Neither did I."

He had no ideas about who might have known such a powerful spell, and I went back to my own chambers not much later. The bright glow of the magic lamp left by my predecessor was very reassuring. I sat up for several more hours, reading about such lamps, and by the time I went to bed I thought I had worked out the spells, though I was too exhausted to do them then.

I set to work on the spells in the morning. I had known how to make something shine before, but the attachment spells and especially the spells to make the magic respond to the voice were much harder than I had imagined. After one more glance at my books, I closed the windows, pulled the drapes, and put the volume away. It takes too much concentration for the complicated spells to be able to look at anything else, even a book of magic.

I started with my belt buckle, not daring to risk my oval of glass. First I started it shining, then slowly, in the heavy syllables of the Hidden Language, I pronounced the words to keep the spell attached. The moon and stars shone brilliantly, and I closed my eyes against them. I was alone in a deep tunnel where magic flowed, but as long as I kept on saying the words and saying them correctly the flow obeyed me. This was the most difficult part of all, to set up the translation between the Hidden Language and the language of men. "On. Out," I said aloud, and my words were so loud that they startled me into opening my eyes.

My chambers were dark, and the buckle in my hands was lifeless. "On," I said, and the full moonlight shone. "Out," and all was again night.

I jumped up and pulled open my curtains. I wanted to tell someone about my triumph. But when I looked out the only people I saw were the stable boys, currying the horses. I thought of telling them but didn't want to interrupt them. While putting my belt back on, I also decided against interrupting the chaplain just to show him my buckle; after all, since I had told him magic always worked, it would be silly to be this elated over having it work once.

I pulled the curtains shut and started on my oval of glass. I knew the spells now, and everything went smoothly. As I stood at the edge of the river of magic, I knew exactly what to say, to have my mind control the spells without ever endangering myself.

At the end I opened my eyes. "On. Out." The piece of glass obediently shone out with a brilliance far beyond what I had expected, then darkened again. This, I thought, would make a remarkable improvement in the chapel stairs. I hoped Joachim would be suitably grateful.

"On," I said again, reaching for the curtains. My belt buckle lit up, but the glass stayed dark. I tried again, changing the modulation of my voice, but nothing happened. I tried probing the spell attached to the glass with my mind, but there was no magic there at all.

I sat down. Somehow I must not have attached the spell properly, so that it had withered and returned to the deep channels of magic as most spells do. But I could not see where I had gone wrong. Magic really should work all the time if the wizard does it correctly.

I shook my head, then shook my shoulders as well, dispelling the chilling unease that suddenly gripped me. I would try again.

This time there was no problem at all. I threw open the windows and opened the door to my bedroom, where I had taken my predecessor's magic lights so they wouldn't come on and break my concentration.

The spells had taken all morning. I tucked the oval of glass under my arm, planning to show the constable at lunch. I would let him find a way to attach it to the ceiling in the staircase. My predecessor might have been able to make his lamps hang suspended in the air, but at this point I thought glue would work just as well.

As I pulled my door shut and attached the lock, I wondered again why my spell had not worked at first. Had I just said one of the many words wrong in setting up the spell, or had an outside magical force broken it for me?

The seating arrangement at dinner the first night was maintained, and I ate every noon and evening between Dominic and the Lady Maria. Occasionally Dominic would be away in the middle of the day, but she and her golden curls were always at my right. The Lady Maria seemed, if possible, to be growing younger. She liked to engage me in lively conversation, punctuated with girlish laughter. If I tired of her laughter, I had only to look across the table to meet the chaplain's completely sober eyes.

But in fact I started to like the Lady Maria. As long as I could keep her off the topic of how young and charming she still was, she had a lively mind that was hungry for new ideas and information. She repeatedly pressed me for details on the dragon in the wizards' school cellars. I decided to have her help me with the telephones.

During the two days that the armorer was making steel plates for my lights, I set to work trying to derive the right spells. I decided that the first step would be to make it possible for two telephones in the castle to talk to each other; if that worked, then maybe I could start on the much more complicated task of starting communication with telephones elsewhere.

The king seemed stiff and said nothing more about learning to fly, and Dominic asked no questions about malignant spells, so I devoted full time to the telephones. It occurred to me that I was becoming obsessed with them, but at least at every meal the others all asked me interested questions about how I was coming and seemed, I thought, to be drawing comparisons between the old wizard and myself with the comparison favorable to me. I tried not to think what they would say when I gave up the project in despair.

At first nothing worked at all. With one telephone in my study, I put the other out in the courtyard and had the Lady Maria listen while I tried to communicate. The knights and ladies, the boys who were being trained as knights, and the servants tended to flock from all over the castle to watch my latest attempt. At least they weren't laughing at me, yet.

"Did you hear anything?" I'd yell from the door of my chambers.

"Nothing that time," she would call back in what were meant to be encouraging tones.

Then my steel ovals were ready, and I had an excuse to put the glass telephones back up on the shelf while I worked the spells of light. Since I had to do each individually, it took all day, and it took another day for the servants to attach them inside to the ceiling of the stairway. But on Sunday, in time for service, they were ready.

I had Gwen wake me early and was at the bottom of the stairs before anyone else. "On," I said in my deepest voice, and all the lights blazed on. The glass light inside the door was the brightest of all, but the steel plates gave a rich and somber light that I thought most appropriate. I stood modestly outside the stairwell, letting everyone else precede me, smiling in spite of myself when I heard their admiring comments.

But the telephones continued to elude me. After two more days of studying my books, I thought I had found the spell, and again set the Lady Maria in the courtyard with one instrument while I talked into the other. "All powers of earth and air must obey the spells of wizardry," I said into my own telephone. Gwen had laughed at that until she could hardly stand up, but it seemed safe to say, since no one seemed able to hear me anyway.

I hurried out into the courtyard. "Could you hear that?"

The Lady Maria didn't answer at first. The people with her were smiling, either in amusement or encouragement, but she looked both puzzled and somewhat concerned. She came toward me, carrying the glass telephone.

"It's very strange," she said. "Nobody else could hear you, but I could."

"You could? You mean it worked? You know that, with a telephone, you have to hold the receiver to your ear, and other people don't hear what's being said." I almost laughed with excitement. At last, I thought, I was making real progress.

But she shook her head. "I didn't hear you through the receiver. I don't think I even heard you with my ears. It was as though you were talking inside my brain."

"Bring the telephone into my study," I said in despondency. I put both instruments back up on the top shelf. While I thought I was attaching communications spells to the instruments, I was instead discovering that, even though the Lady Maria was not trained in wizardry, it was still possible for me to communicate with her, mind to mind. While I had begun to like her, I didn't want to do it again. Anyone else's mind is always acutely strange if met directly.

She started to leave, then hesitated. "Is it true that all powers of earth and air must obey the spells of wizardry?"

At least she had heard what I'd said, rather than whatever random thoughts I may have been having. "Yes, if the wizardry is done right," I said.

"So a wizard can, if he knows his spells, exercise ultimate control over every being on earth?" It would have been more flattering if she had not still looked so puzzled.

"No," I said honestly, "not ultimate control. Wizardry is a natural power. Like anything else on earth, it can be overcome by the supernatural."

"You mean by the saints?"

"Or by demons."

"But who controls the saints and demons?"

I shook my head and tried to smile. When I was at school, I had known I wasn't a very good wizard, but at least I had believed in wizardry. Here in Yurt everyone seemed to want to remind me of wizardry's limitations. "You'll have to ask the chaplain about that. But no one really controls saints and demons. At best the priests learn how to ask them favors."

At dinner that night I told the constable that I was going to have to pause in my work on the telephone system for a while, until I had discovered the source of the anti-telephonic demonic influence.

II

I rode out of the castle on an old white mare. Although I had only been in Yurt a little over two weeks, my life in the City had begun to fade into the distant past. Life in the castle had settled into a comfortable pattern once I abandoned work on the telephones. The queen was spoken of every day, but she was still gone, and I found it hard to imagine what the castle would be like when she returned. To me, to whom two weeks seemed like a year, she had been gone forever, had indeed never been in Yurt, but to the others she was just a little over halfway through the month-long visit to her parents that she took every summer.

Some of the knights and the boys were riding out at the same time. Their horses were much livelier than mine, but as I had not ridden in a long time I was happy with my mount. She walked steadily and placidly down the brick road that led from the castle gates. While the knights turned off to the field where they were teaching the boys jousting, my mare and I continued past the little cemetery, dotted with crosses, where the chaplain's predecessor and presumably all former kings and queens and chaplains and servants were buried, and down the hill toward the woods. I was going to visit the old wizard.

Although the "anti-telephonic demonic influences" I had used as an excuse to the constable had been my own invention, I didn't like the cold touch that was never there when I looked but might surface, unexpectedly and fleetingly, while I was thinking of something entirely different. My predecessor should have some ideas.

The green of the leaves in the forest below me had gone dusty in the heat of late summer, and the breeze across the hill made silver ripples in the grass. I was enjoying being out near fields and forest, and real forest, too, not the manicured parks I was used to near the City. I hadn't told anyone where I was going, only that I was out for a ride. As my horse and I reached the edge of the woods, I was wondering again how I should address the old wizard.

Casual conversation with the constable's wife had informed me where his house was, but protocol was still a problem. I, now, was Royal Wizard, and he was only an old retired spell-caster. But he was two hundred years older than me and certainly knew a lot more about Yurt than I did. I had dressed formally in my red and black velvet but decided to address him with deference and respect.

In the cool shade of the woods, birds sang in the treetops far above us and insects hummed closer to hand. The mare shook her head, making all the bells on her bridle jingle. I whistled as I rode, a little tune in minor that the trumpeters had played at dinner the night before. We were going parallel to the edge of the forest, and occasionally I could see the fields through a gap in the trees. The long summer's day stretched before me, leisurely and lingering, with no thought of the night.

After half an hour's easy riding, I found the trail mark I had been looking for, a little pile of white stones. Just beyond, a narrow grassy track wandered away from the road, off between the beeches, and disappeared over a rise. I would never have spotted it except for the stones.

The branches here were low enough that I dismounted and led the mare. We should be almost there. I stopped at the top of the rise, looking down into a valley with a stream at the bottom. Even the sound of the water on stones was sparkling. The grass was richly green on either hand, and the trees that surrounded the little valley cast dancing shadows.

My horse snorted and made for the grass. I pulled her nose up and continued toward a little bridge. We passed a branch that had half-shielded my view of the bridge, and sitting on the far side was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life.

She had thick golden hair that made the Lady Maria's seem thin and lifeless, and it rolled in rich waves down her back and ten feet out behind her. She was wearing a dress of brilliant sky blue, and when she lifted her head and looked toward me, her eyes were the same color. And most marvelous of all, an alabaster-white unicorn was kneeling beside her, with his muzzle in her lap.

I dropped the reins and approached slowly, not daring to take my eyes from her. She lowered her gaze again but did not speak. "Um, hello," I said. Gently she lifted the unicorn's muzzle from her lap, rose to her feet, and began to walk away, her arm around the creature's neck. Her hair floated in a weightless cloud behind her.

"Wait," I told myself sharply, resisting the initial impulse to run after her. I put my hand over my eyes, said two magic words, and looked again. She was gone.

I recovered my horse and started forward again. As we crossed the bridge, I told the mare, "If that's a typical sample of his illusions, the old wizard must really have impressed the castle over dessert." The mare seemed uninterested, but I took a deep breath and wondered how abjectly it would be appropriate to address the wizard.

The grassy valley continued to follow the stream. Within a hundred yards it turned and descended a steep hill, where the water foamed white. I was easing the mare's steps down the hillside when I heard a twanging noise. The sound was repeated, and then again.

I looked forward. Flying across the width of the valley in front of us, one after the other, was a series of golden arrows. I finished getting the mare off the hill, dropped the reins to let her graze, and walked a little closer. I probed them gently with my mind. Unlike the lady with the unicorn, these arrows were real.

No one was shooting them, however. They were being propelled by magic. Our scrambling on the hillside must have triggered a magic trap.

I thought about this for several minutes, waiting to see if the supply of arrows would become exhausted. When the steady twanging of an invisible bow and the whirr of each arrow continued, I decided that the arrows must be circling around somehow and coming back. The mare grazed unconcernedly.

I carefully put in place what I hoped was a protective spell against arrows, a variation of the spell that had kept me dry in the rain but needing twice as much concentration. Leaving the mare behind, I went slowly forward, going down on my hands and knees to crawl under the flight of the arrows. Ten yards further down the valley, I heard the twanging cease.

I stood up, brushing the grass off my velvet trousers, and looked back. The valley was quiet and peaceful. For a moment I hesitated, wondering if I should go back for my mare, and then decided she would be fine where she was; she was unlikely to go retreat back up the steep hill, and if she came forward she would be following me. If I went back, I was afraid I would set off the arrows again.

The valley took another twist and suddenly widened into a clearing. On the far side, half tucked under the drooping branches of an enormous oak, was a small green house, and sitting in front of the door was an old man with a white beard down to his knees.

I came three-quarters of the way across the clearing and then did the full bow, ending with my head down and my arms widespread.

"Welcome, Wizard," said a rasping voice.

"Greetings, Master," I answered.

I surprised myself by calling him Master. At the wizards' school, the only wizard who had that title was the oldest wizard of all, the one in whose castle the school was held, who was reputed to have been in the City since the City was founded.

He accepted the title. "So you weren't taken in by the Lady and weren't frightened by my Arrows," he said. His voice was rough, as though he had not used it for weeks. "I know who you are. You're the new Royal Wizard of Yurt, and probably think you're pretty fancy."

I rose and came toward him. "I have come to seek the guidance of my predecessor."

"You aren't going to find much help from me if you're after what I think you are. I can tell from your clothes--and especially that ostentatious belt buckle--that you fancy yourself to have authority over the powers of darkness." I guiltily turned off the glow of the moon and stars. "I may not have studied in the City, but I am a wizard of air and light."

I sat down at his feet, determined not to be insulted.

"Or is that pullover supposed to be a Father Noel costume?"

I was mortified. I had of course taken the tattered white fur off the collar as soon as I bought the pullover and had hoped all suggestions of someone fat and jolly were long gone. But I was going to have to be polite to this crotchety old wizard who clearly knew ten times as much magic as I did. I took a deep breath. "I've greatly admired your magic lamps in the castle."

"Of course you have. I'll bet you couldn't make anything that nice."

"I made some very nice magic lamps for the chapel stair!" I said, stung into a reply.

"And the chaplain didn't tell you to mind your own business?" he said, apparently surprised.

"The chaplain and I are friends," I said stiffly, then wondered why I was defending him when one of the reasons I had come was to find out if my predecessor had ever thought the chaplain was turning toward evil.

"Young whippersnapper," pronounced the old wizard, which was probably his opinion of me as well.

There was a pause while I tried to find something diplomatic to say. "Do they miss me up at the castle?" the old wizard said suddenly.

"They always speak well of you," I said with my best effort at Christian tact. "They've told me many times how much they admired your work and your illusions. The Lady down in the valley is certainly the finest example I've ever seen, even in the City."

I probably shouldn't have mentioned the City, because it made him snort. "Illusions!" he said. "Things were different when King Haimeric's grandfather was king. Then a Royal Wizard had real responsibilities. The harvest spells were just the start of it."

"Harvest spells!" I said in panic. I knew I didn't know anything that could be considered a harvest spell. In an urban setting, we learned urban spells.

"And now they don't even want harvest spells any more," continued the old wizard, paying no attention to me. "They say that hybrid seed is more effective. The closest I've come for years is the weather spells when they're cutting the wheat."

This was a relief. Weather spells I could probably manage. I had even gone to the lectures. I tried a different approach. "Have you ever taught anyone how to fly?"

"Fly? You mean someone who isn't a wizard? Who wants to learn magic now?"

"The king mentioned it," I said, but I was struck by the suggestion that someone else had apparently wanted to learn magic.

"Well, he never mentioned it to me. And with good reason. He knew what I'd say. Haimeric's not half the man his grandfather was, or his father either. Never marrying all those years, and then marrying late. If he expected an heir, he's certainly disappointed. But I must say, I don't think he married in the hope of having a baby. I think he married because he was just besotted."

I tried to return the topic to the question of who in the castle, besides me, might know magic. "So some of the others had asked you to teach them magic?"

"Well, Dominic and Maria did," he said shortly. After a somewhat long pause, he added, "Never got anywhere with it."

"Prince Dominic and the Lady Maria?" Somehow I would not have expected it.

"There was talk of them making a match four years ago," continued the old wizard, in a more pleasant tone. "Maria's the queen's aunt, you know."

I nodded, waiting for him to go on.

"When the king got married four years ago, the queen brought her old maiden aunt to live with her--probably thought she needed a change. And then Dominic's only a few years younger than she is. He's been heir presumptive for years; the king's younger brother, at least, had the sense to get married when he was young. But he's gone now too, and Dominic's not half the man his father was."

Apparently I had reached Yurt in a decadent time.

"But she was too flighty for someone that phlegmatic. If the queen was waiting for a match, I think she gave up waiting some time ago."

While these insights into the people in the castle were extremely interesting, I could not help but notice that he had again deftly turned the topic away from the question of to whom he had taught magic.

III

While we had been talking, the brilliant blue of the sky was darkening. An abrupt clap of thunder, apparently coming from just behind the wizard's house, startled me so much that I jumped to my feet. "It looks like rain," said the old wizard complacently. "You'd better get your horse; it will stay dry enough under the oak here. And don't worry about my Arrows!" he called after me as I hurried back up the valley. "You won't be shot this time."

It certainly wouldn't be hard for him to guess that I had been wondering if I could bring my mare safely past that shower of arrows. And I didn't think it could have been much harder for him to bring on a thunderstorm to demonstrate his power.

My mare had her head up, waiting for me. Chill little breezes flicked her mane, and there was a steady low rumbling from the sky. I led her by the bridle back down the valley, past the place where the arrows had been shooting, and around the final twist to the clearing where the wizard's house stood under the sheltering branches of its oak. The first drops pattered on the leaves above us as I led the mare under the branches. The old wizard was no longer sitting in front of his house, but the green door was open.

I took off the saddle and bridle and rubbed the mare down. Being under the tree was like being under a tent. I could hear the drum of drops on the leaves, and the air became damp, but we were safe in a bubble made of branches. I finished with the horse, tapped at the door, and went into the house.

I had been expecting shelves of books; after all, every wizard I had ever known had books on his shelves, books piled on his desk, even books in heaps on the floor. But there were very few books in the old wizard's house.

Instead there were cones of light, gently swirling masses of stars, forms that changed from tree to man to beast and back to tree as one watched. I ignored them all assiduously and concentrated on the old wizard, who had just lit a fire in the small fireplace. Bolts of lightning flashed outside the window, and thunder rumbled continuously. But inside all was peaceful. "Come sit by my fire," said the old wizard in the friendliest tone he had used to me yet.

I sat down on the hearth, thankful for the warmth; the summer's day had grown cold. We sat in silence, except for the thunder, for several minutes while I tried to decide how to ask him what I had come to find out.

"We heard a lot about the old magic at the wizards' school," I began. I had considered saying that we had been taught to respect the old magic, but decided it would sound as though I were being condescending to someone seven times my age. "And I grew more and more convinced that there is magic that wizards all used to know that has never been put in our books."

"Well, you're right," he said almost reluctantly, as though not wanting to admit that I was right about anything.

"And yet the old magic is the basis for all the new magic of the last hundred and fifty years," I continued. "The wizards who learned by experimentation and apprenticeship channeled the power of magic, made it possible for magic to be organized, to be written down in books, made it less wild, made it something that could actually be taught in a classroom."

I had been going to go on from this brief history of modern wizardry--nearly everything I remembered from a whole course!--to explain that I needed his special and ancient magic talents to help me find out what was happening in Yurt, but he interrupted me.

"And look what's happened!" he cried in his rasping voice. "With all you young wizards and magic workers, the channels of magic have been worn so deeply in some areas that any fool can work a simple spell. You say you've made magic less wild, but all you've done is make easier for the wild magic of the north to come in!"

I was horrified. I would normally never have thought that the wizardry that tamed magic also invited wild magic into the land of men, but in the old wizard's dimly-lit room it seemed most probable.

"Or didn't you ever think of that?" he said with a sneer. I decided no answer was best. "You and your books! You think you've made magic easier for the simple-minded who shouldn't be doing magic anyway, but by cutting deep ruts in the channels of human magic you've just made it easier for wild magic to come pouring in. How would you like to see a dragon in Yurt?"

I considered and rejected the possibility that there was a dragon in the castle cellars already.

"And now you can't go anywhere without some fool claiming he or she knows magic."

"Does anyone in the castle know magic?" I said quickly, trying to get in at least one of the questions I had.

"Of course not," he said brusquely. "Unless you'd consider counting yourself!"

I wondered if his brusqueness was concealing a lie, but between his manner and the insult it was impossible to ask him again. Instead I tried to be conciliatory. "I was just wondering because a strange thing happened when I first arrived. I'd put a magic lock on the door to my chambers, and when I came back it was gone."

Unlike the chaplain, the old wizard would surely know how hard it is to break a properly-constituted magic lock. But he just snorted at me. "Did the spells wrong, I reckon," he said. His insults scarcely even stung any more.

"But while you're speaking of locks," he added abruptly, "you haven't tried to get through the locked door of the north tower, have you?"

"The north tower?" I said ingenuously.

"Don't play the fool with me. I used to have my study in the north tower, as they must certainly have told you. The constable seemed to think you'd have your study there, too, but I straightened him out fast enough."

"They gave me a very nice set of chambers," I said cheerfully.

"When I left I locked the door and windows to the tower with both magic and iron."

I sat up straighter but managed to cover my surprise with a fit of coughing; tiny tendrils of smoke from the fire were whirling into the room, and I was sitting very close to the hearth. There had certainly been no magic lock on the tower door when I pulled back the bolt, and all the windows had been unlocked.

"That sounds pretty secure, then," I said blandly, then fell to coughing again. The smoke really was getting in my nose, and it had an unusual, almost spicy quality.

"No one shall go in that tower again while Yurt survives," the old wizard said grimly. "Did you notice that I even ordered them not to whitewash it? I don't want any young men on scaffolding peeping in the windows."

"I noticed that the tower walls are dead black while the rest of the castle is white," I responded, wild with curiosity in spite of the headache the smoke was beginning to bring on. "But Master," I continued tentatively, "as long as I'm living in the castle, don't you think it might be better if I knew why you locked up your old study? That way, in case any--"

"NO!" he interrupted, leaving it quite impossible for me to ask again what he thought he had locked up. "I've taken care that no problems shall ever arise, for reasons of my own, and by methods of my own. Why should anyone else ask me about it?" He glared at me so fiercely that I retreated to the far side of the room, where I finished coughing as quietly as I could. The air was better further from the fire.

After a moment I caught my breath and looked at the table next to me. As well as a constant cascade of ice-blue stars, it contained piles of leaves and roots, some in earthenware bowls, some loose on the table. There were also mortars and pestles, fire-blackened pots, and bits of stone rubbed into dust. In spite of his boast about being a wizard of light and air, I thought, the old wizard was not too proud to be a wizard of earth as well.

Modern wizardry uses very few herbs and roots. We keep our magic technical, straightforward, capable of being attached to such simple substances as steel and glass and of being reduced to written spells. But all wizards know, even those, like me, who tended to skip the lectures on the history of wizardry, that there is a natural affinity to magic in some growing things. In the days when books were few and apprenticeships long, young wizards learned how to recognize and gather plants with magical properties, even discover new ones. It occurred to me that, since I hadn't exactly been a huge success as a wizard taught from books, maybe I should give apprenticeship a try.

That is, of course, if the old wizard would be willing to teach me. So far everything I had said seemed to infuriate him. I looked across the room to where he sat rocking by his hearth. The room had darkened, but the fire's glow reddened his face. The rain's beat fell steadily on the oak leaves above the roof.

"Master," I began, and he whirled toward me abruptly, as though, deep in thought, he had almost forgotten my presence. "Master, I was glad to see that you had brought at least some of your apparatus from the castle to be able to continue your research into magic properties."

"What do you mean, at least some? I brought everything I had and swept out my study when I was done. If you're trying to find out by hints and insinuations what might be in my study, you must not have been listening to what I said. There is nothing left in my study, but for reasons of my own I want it locked while the kingdom remains! Can I make it any clearer than that?"

He stirred the fire vigorously, and the smoke found me again. The old wizard coughed a few times as well. I realized I had almost been hoping he had left something in his study that had escaped, but now I just felt disappointed. It was likely only an old man's pride that had made him not want any other wizard to ever use the room where he had studied and done his research for so many years. If he had put a magic lock on the door, well, even City-trained wizards like me didn't always get the spells just right.

We sat and listened to the rain for several more minutes. Time seemed to stretch out endlessly in the dark room. I wasn't even hungry, even though it must have been long past dinner time. A small calico cat appeared suddenly from behind a chair, startling me for a second into thinking it was a large rat, rubbed against me, then crossed the room to hop up on the old wizard's lap. He stroked it absently, staring into the fire.

I tried again. "Master, in spite of my degree from the wizards' school, which seemed to impress them up at the castle, I'm really not a very good wizard."

"You didn't need to tell me that."

"But I want to learn! If I came here regularly, could you teach me about the magic of air and herbs?"

He glared at me so fixedly that I was sure he would refuse. The cat in his lap, unconcerned, gave a wide pink yawn and settled itself more comfortably. But then the old wizard's shoulders seemed to relax a little. He rocked in silence for a moment while I held my breath, then answered at last. "Maybe. Just maybe. After the last time, I'd determined I'd never teach anyone again."

This must be the time that Dominic and the Lady Maria had tried to learn magic, I thought, but did not dare speak.

"But I don't think you're as stupid as you seem at first." This was apparently a compliment. "I'll have to consider it. I haven't had an apprentice for many years, maybe for a century."

If he was trying to pretend an old man's forgetfulness, he wasn't fooling me; I was sure he knew exactly who his last apprentice had been and when he had taught him.

"No one wanted to be an apprentice anymore after that wizards' school started." This thought roused him into a new glare. "But the old magic cannot be forgotten. You young whippersnappers are going to need it when your 'modern' magic gets into trouble. I'll think about it for a while."

I was delighted but dared not show it. This was virtually a promise. During his "while," as he thought about it, I could teach myself a lot of the magic I was supposed to know already if I spent every evening with my books. Then if I started coming down here regularly, maybe I could actually become a competent wizard. I imagined myself going back to the City for a visit and showing off all my new skills.

He interrupted my imaginings with almost a shout. "But would you then go back and tell everything I taught you to that chaplain friend of yours?"

This had never occurred to me as a possibility. "No, of course not! Why should I do that? He doesn't even really approve of magic."

"But you said he was your friend," said the wizard with a grunt.

"Just because he's the most intelligent person my age in the castle. It's nice to have someone to talk to over wine in the evening."

"And you like your wine, don't you?" If I wasn't careful, he was going to rescind his offer to think for a while about teaching me the old herbal magic.

"He seems to think even ordinary magic is black magic. I might have a glass of wine with him, but I certainly wouldn't tell him anything I'd learned."

This seemed to irritate the old wizard, but I realized it was not something I had said but something I reminded him of. "His predecessor was just the same. Accusing honest wizards of pacts with the devil. As though I didn't know better than to deal rashly in black magic!"

In spite of what I had told the chaplain, wizards do in fact talk among themselves of "black magic." There is no evil in magic itself, only in the intention of those who practice it, but in the few cases (very few, I hope) where a wizard has summoned a demon to add supernatural ability to his evil intentions, we refer to him as practicing black magic.

It is of course always difficult to draw the line. No one at the wizards' school would call it black magic to summon a demon (and a very small one at that) to demonstrate to the class what to do if you meet one, but I hardly found it appropriate to discuss this with the old wizard any more than I had with the chaplain.

"Interfering old busy-body! Frustrated old maid!" The old wizard sank back in his chair with a snort. He was apparently referring to the old chaplain.

I tried to think of something to say to change the subject and decided silence was best. Besides, my head was starting to ache fiercely. There are magic spells to minimize pain, and I decided to try one, very delicately and surreptitiously, hoping that he wouldn't notice.

But I couldn't help wonder why the old chaplain had thought the wizard had been practicing black magic, and in what he had tried to interfere.

The old wizard went back to rocking, the cat asleep in his lap. What seemed like several hours passed. The fire kept on burning steadily, though he added no more wood. If he noticed that the smoke from his hearth had given his guest a headache, and that the guest had had the poor taste to practice magic in his face, he didn't deign to mention it.

I roused from a reverie to notice the rain had stopped. My head felt fine. I stood up from next to the table where I had been sitting, stiff in all my joints. Horizontal rays from the sun came through the narrow window, lighting up the piles of herbs and making the swirls of light and illusion seem rather insignificant.

Almost sunset, I thought, suddenly ravenously hungry. The old wizard was looking up at me, a half smile on his dry lips. The cat was no longer on his lap.

Then I realized what was wrong. The sunlight was coming from the wrong direction. Even a city boy like me knows that the sun rises and sets on opposite sides of the sky. I wasn't seeing the sunset but the sunrise. I had passed all night in the old wizard's house without even realizing it.

"I'd better get back to the castle," I said, hoping I'd be able to make it back in time for breakfast. "I was very glad to be able to meet you, and I'm sorry if I overstayed my welcome."

"You think you passed the night here, don't you," said the old wizard with a chuckle. "In fact, you spent two. Maybe your friend the chaplain will be worried about you."

Two nights! Whatever magic powder he had put on his fire must be powerful indeed. "Goodbye, Master," I said and rushed out the door. My mare, cropping grass contentedly, seemed no worse for having spent two nights under the wizard's tree. I saddled her without looking back. As I led her out into the grassy clearing and mounted, the calico cat came bounding after us, dropped down to lurk behind a clump of grass, and lashed its tail. "Goodbye, cat," I said gravely and rode as quickly as the mare would go back up the valley.

At first I was worried that I would have upset them at the castle by being gone for so long, but then I decided it was probably time anyway that I started seeming mysterious in my movements. I was more concerned about the old wizard's motives, and what I might find when I got back. Was he just showing off his power to me again, or had he had some reason for keeping me away from the castle?

IV

The queen was coming home.

I looked at myself critically in the mirror. In the month I had been at the castle, my beard had grown out enough that I didn't think the clothing department manager at the emporium would laugh at it any more, but it was no longer uniformly grey. The roots were definitely chestnut brown. I would have to touch it up before the queen arrived.

Being gone for two days without explanation had, as I had hoped, actually made me seem rather powerful and mysterious. Even the chaplain had had the tact not to ask me directly where I had been, but he did raise his eyebrows at me most markedly at dinner.

Now, two weeks after my visit to the old wizard, I wondered as I got out my bottle of grey dye if it was too soon to ask him to start teaching me his form of magic. In the last few days, I had started trying to teach the king how to fly, and I had new respect for the teaching process. So far, in spite of the king's hopes to impress the queen with his new ability when she arrived, he had managed to lift himself from a chair about one inch for about one second. I, on the other hand, had become much better at flying than I had ever been. It hardly even bothered me anymore.

As I rubbed the dye into my beard, which stung, I absently wondered if the Lady Maria had to do this every day. In all the meals sitting next to her, I had yet to see a grey hair or root.

There was a sharp knock on my door. "Just a minute!" I called, finished rubbing in the dye, rinsed it out, and went to answer the door with my chin in a towel.

It was Dominic. He always seemed to be crouching to fit into my chambers, even though there was plenty of headroom. "Please have a seat," I said brusquely and retreated into my inner chamber to finish drying my beard, trying to retain some of my dignity.

When I emerged again a few minutes later, I was amazed to see that he had taken my copy of the Diplomatica Diabolica down from the shelf. It was still closed, but he was holding it in his huge hands and staring at it.

I whisked it away from him and returned it to its place. "Don't you know how dangerous it is for those not trained in wizardry to look at magic's spells?" I said, trying to hide my fear behind anger.

He dropped his head in almost comical embarrassment at being found out. The old wizard, I thought, must have caught him doing something similar, and that was why he had been so reluctant to want to teach his form of magic to anyone else.

"Have you still not learned your lesson, Prince Dominic?" I said very gravely. "You first tried to interfere with the forces of magic four years ago, and in spite of the warning you received then you have begun again."

This speech had a much better effect than I had hoped. Dominic, who was shorter than I when sitting down, looked up with what seemed genuine terror in his eyes.

"If you value the kingdom of Yurt," I continued, seizing the advantage while I had it, even though I wasn't sure why I did, "or even your own life, you won't try to interfere in magic processes again."

"All right," he said, almost grudgingly. He shot me a look that was part fear and part resentment of my authority over him. I decided to leave the topic.

"So what can I do for you?" I said in a more normal voice.

He leaned back, as though casually. "Since the queen is coming home today, I wanted to find out what progress you've made in your duties, finding out who's put a spell on the king. Or haven't you gotten anywhere yet?"

This last, though said in the same light, conversational tone as the rest, was clearly meant to be a jab.

"Actually I have made significant progress," I said, wondering how much I dared say to him; I still hadn't ruled out an illicit love-pact between him and the queen. I hurried on became he looked dubious. "There is definitely an evil influence here in the castle, but it's not tied to any one person. I'm going to need a complete list of all visitors to the castle in the last four years. It's possible a spell was put in place by someone who's now gone."

For a moment he looked as though he were going to object. But then he nodded slowly. "That's a very good idea. You should ask the constable; I'm sure he can provide it for you. Since it's clear that no one in the castle wishes to harm the king, it must be someone from outside. Although," and here he paused for a look at me, "if you found it too difficult to examine four years of guests, maybe it would be easier just to get rid of the evil spell, without worrying where it came from." He lurched to his feet. "Well, I won't keep you any longer from your special preparations to meet the queen."

With this last jab, he opened my door and was gone. I stared thoughtfully for several minutes at the inside of the door. I hoped I would not in fact have to go through a long list of visitors to the castle; I had suggested it primarily to see how Dominic would react. He clearly believed that this evil influence, which I was quite willing to accept as real, came from those now at the castle--if one included the queen. If he believed it, so did I.

But in the meantime, the fact that I had been able to frighten him, even momentarily, made him resent me. I had felt all along that he would not be comfortable to have as an enemy, and I feared that now I was going to find out just how uncomfortable that could be.

Later that morning, I stood outside the castle gate with everyone else. A chair had been brought for the king, but the rest of us stood on tiptoe, walked around, peered into the distance, and tried to listen through the sounds of conversation and the whisper of the wind for the sound of distant hooves.

One of the boys who was training for knighthood had the sharpest eyes. "There she comes!" he shouted. There was a surge forward, and several of the younger servants made as though to run down the brick road, but the constable motioned them back. In a moment all of us could see the little procession, emerging from the woods and starting up the hill toward the castle.

There was a crowd of white horses, with one black horse in the middle. White pennants, emblazoned with a bright pink rose, fluttered above them. As the horses ascended, a trumpeter with a long silver trumpet came to the fore and blew a swirl of notes. The riders kicked their horses into a run for the last hundred yards, and then they had arrived.

They were all around us, knights and ladies on horseback, servants leading the pack animals, everyone swinging down from their mounts and laughing and shouting at the people from the castle, who were laughing and shouting back at them.

I spotted the one I thought was the queen, a delicate, pale blonde, with a beatific smile. But as she pulled up her white mare, one of the knights from the castle took the bridle with a smile of delight all over his face, and she slid from the saddle and into his welcoming arms.

And then I did see the queen, and wondered how I could have been so mistaken.

Based on the features of the Lady Maria, her aunt, and on the white rose bush which the king had planted on their wedding day, I had expected someone blushing and fragile. But she looked no more like the Lady Maria than she looked like the old woman I had thought her to be when I first arrived in Yurt.

She was riding a black stallion, and her hair was the same midnight black. Her eyes were a brilliant and startling emerald beneath dark lashes. A crimson cloak swirled around her as she tossed the reins to one of the servants and leaped off. She and the king met with outstretched hands, much too dignified to kiss in front of all their subjects, but looked into each other's eyes with joy.

I had been wrong in the old wizard's valley. This was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She made the illusory unicorn lady seem rather insipid in comparison. As she leaped from her stallion, I had for a moment thought her a hard woman, but her face when smiling was the sweetest thing I had ever experienced.

She turned that smile toward me. "The new wizard!" she cried in what seemed genuine delight. "I'm so sorry I wasn't here to greet you when you arrived! My parents had been counting on my coming ever since last summer, and the old wizard retired so abruptly that it was too late to change my plans. Has everyone been treating you well? If I know them, and I do, I'm sure they have! Are you happy in Yurt?"

I stammered that I was very happy in Yurt. I was in love at once.

While I stood staring at her--besotted, the old wizard would have said--I thought that here truly was a creature of fire and air, finer than anything illusion or imagination could create. She was beautiful, energetic, and loving-hearted. She took the king's arm; I was relieved to see that he showed no intention of trying to fly for her benefit, being too happy to see her to think about anything else.

We all started up the last slope to the moat and the castle gates. The king and queen, arm and arm, were beside me. "The king has been telling me in his letters that you're developing a telephone system for us!" she said, the perfect hostess, complimenting her guest on his accomplishments.

This brought me back somewhat to reality. "I've been working, but it's proving more difficult than I expected," I said, realizing it had been some time since I had had my glass telephones down from the shelf and resolving to start with them again tomorrow, or even today.

The royal pair kept moving, as she spoke a few words to first one person, than another. I found myself near the back of the group, walking with Joachim, as we entered the castle courtyard.

"Why didn't you warn me?" I said.

"Warn you against what?"

"The queen!"

"But there is no evil in her."

I gave him up. "It's a good thing you're a priest," I said, left him wondering what I meant, and went into my chambers.

I pulled down one of the books I had not tried yet, because it was all advanced spells that assumed you already understood the basics without having to think about it. This seemed like the best place to start anew on the problems of the telephones.

But I had trouble concentrating on the pages. I kept thinking about those emerald eyes. Since I wasn't a very good wizard anyway, maybe I could give up magic altogether when the king died, and then she and I--

This was clearly an unprofitable line of thought. I wished I had had the sense to watch Dominic, to try to judge his reaction to her homecoming. But I had been too busy staring at her, doubtless open-mouthed, to pay attention to anyone else.

Neither the king nor queen was present at the table at noon or again in the evening. The queen, we were told, was resting from the fatigues of her journey, although she had appeared to me to have too much energy ever to be fatigued. I didn't want to think what the king might be resting from.

Instead I talked animately to the Lady Maria. Everyone at both tables was delighted to have the queen home, so she was the chief topic of conversation, except for the couple further down my table who were just delighted to see each other again.

Lady Maria was happy to discuss her niece. "That's right, she and I came to Yurt together when she was a bride, a mere child really. Her mother is a cousin to the duchess, or maybe they're second cousins. Haven't you met the duchess? You will, I'm sure. Yurt has two counts and the duchess. Anyway, the king was visiting his subjects, and he came to the duchess's castle at the same time as the queen's family was visiting, including me. Of course she wasn't the queen then. But as soon as the king met her he started making his plans, you can be sure!"

There was a sort of grunt from behind me where Dominic was sitting. He had not spoken to me again all day.

"Dominic remembers," the Lady Maria said in a teasing voice. "I think my brother, that's the queen's father, of course, had some hope of marrying his daughter to the royal heir, when he first heard the royal party would be visiting the duchess's castle at the same time we were. Did the royal heir have some plans that way himself, Dominic?"

She laughed, a light, tinkling laugh. I turned my head just in time to catch an extremely surly look from Dominic. I felt much more affectionate toward the Lady Maria than I ever had before.

"But imagine our surprise," she continued, "when it turned out the king's plans were quite different! Everything worked out so beautifully. Except," she paused, looked around, and dropped her voice. "Except," so low that only I could hear her, and I thought for a moment that she was going to say, except that she had never been able to make the hoped-for match with Dominic herself, "except that the queen has so hoped to provide the king a little prince, and she hasn't been able to."

"What are you two whispering about?" one of the ladies called to us from down the table. I realized that we had our heads bent together as though engaged in intimate secrets, certainly more secret than what everyone else must have long have guessed about the king and queen. I sat up almost guiltily and caught the chaplain's dark, sober eyes on me.

"We're talking about the telephones!" I said gaily. "Now that the queen's back, I'm sure she's eager to be able to telephone her parents, and I have some ideas for the next step to try. The Lady Maria has graciously agreed to assist me again." If anyone giggled, they were polite enough to turn it into a cough.

V

I stayed up late that night with my books and was up again after only a few hours sleep, and was almost too engrossed in the spells to hear Gwen's knock. But I heard it the second time and went to answer. This morning the breakfast tray held hot cinnamon crullers as well as my tea.

"Sir, could I speak with you?" she said somewhat timidly.

"Of course!" I said, motioning her to a chair. Gwen hadn't seemed to want to talk to me since the first days I had been in Yurt. She now seemed subdued, not at all inclined to laugh at me. Maybe seeing me gaping at the queen had had the salutary effect of making her jealous.

Her first words destroyed any hope I might have had in that direction. "Sir, do wizards make love potions?"

"Love potions! My dear, why would anyone so charming as yourself need a love potion?" I realized I sounded as though I were her uncle and about forty years older than she was, but I couldn't think of what else to say.

She ignored the compliment if she even noticed it. "No, I don't need a love potion myself. But I'm afraid Jon is going to use one on me."

"Jon?"

"You know him. He's one of the trumpeters, and he also does the glass-blowing. He made you your glass telephones."

"He does very good work, too," I said, wondering why she would need a love potion used on her. "He seems a very nice young man." Now I was sounding like an uncle again, trying to persuade the coy niece to accept her gallant suitor.

"I like him, sir, I really like him a lot. But he wants to get married, and I'm not sure I'm ready. Maybe not ready to marry anybody, and certainly not to marry him. He gets so jealous! Can you imagine, when you first came he even was jealous of you? He made me promise not to speak more to you than absolutely necessary."

This, of course, was devastating. At first I had thought someone had warned her against me, and had speculated whether this might have something to do with the strangely distant yet evil touch I felt in the castle. Then I had decided she had had to restrain her affections before her heart broke. And now it seemed it was all due to a jealous glass-blower, who she thought should have known better than possibly to be jealous of me!

"I guess I'm breaking my promise talking to you now, but I really do feel I have to."

"If you're worried he'll use a love potion to make you marry him," I said with as much dignity as I could, "where do you think he'll get it?"

"At first, of course, I was worried he'd get it from you, that he might even have asked you for it the day he blew that glass for you. But a month has gone by, and I know he hasn't tried to slip me a potion yet, and I haven't seen him talking to you again, except a few words in front of a lot of other people."

"I don't make love potions," I said honestly. "That's not something they teach us in the wizards' school. That's more something for magic-workers at carnivals than real wizards."

"I think the old wizard, your predecessor, might have made love potions."

This was entirely possible, but I didn't say so. "I don't, at any rate, so you need fear nothing from me."

"But he might get it somewhere else, then, at a carnival, or even from the old wizard. How can I tell if he's put it in my food?"

A good question, and the same question I was wondering about the king. A wizard can recognize another wizard at once, but since magic is a natural force, someone simply carrying a magic potion is not particularly obvious. If someone could poison the king, then Jon could try to make Gwen love him.

"Don't ever eat or drink alone with him," I said, which was not a particularly useful answer, but was all I could think of. "He wouldn't mind taking the love potion himself, since he's already in love with you, but I don't think he'd dare have anyone else fall in love with him." Gwen looked at me skeptically, as though disappointed that such obvious advice was all I could give. "And smell your food," I said. "Love potions are made of herbs and roots and usually smell rather nasty."

"Thank you, sir," she said, rising and taking my now-empty tray.

"Thank you for the crullers!" I called after her. "They were delicious."

A little later that morning, I sat with the Lady Maria in my outer chamber, the curtains drawn, and the telephone instruments before us. I didn't really need her for what I was trying, but after what I had said at dinner I felt I ought to include her. Besides, she had been talking to Dominic in the great hall when I went to find her, and he had given me an almost furious look when I interrupted and asked her to join me. If Dominic had turned against me, I wanted him as uncomfortable as possible.

"Now keep perfectly silent while I work this spell," I said. "I'm trying something different this time. It's a far-seeing spell, and extremely difficult. They never even taught it to us at the wizards' school." They might have taught some of the other students, but they most certainly had never taught me. "I'm going to try to attach it to the telephone."

The Lady Maria did as she was bid, even breathing virtually without a sound, as I checked the spell one last time in the book, put it away, and closed my eyes to begin. The heavy syllables of the Hidden Language rolled from my tongue. It was a long spell.

I opened my eyes and looked at my glass telephone in the dim light of the room. It looked exactly the same. I was about to try speaking a name to it, to see if it might respond, when I was almost knocked from my chair by the surprise of another voice speaking the Hidden Language.

It was the Lady Maria. Her eyes closed, she was resting her hands on the telephone instrument in front of her and repeating the long spell I had just given, word for word.

In ten minutes, at the last syllable, she opened her eyes and gave me a saucy look that Gwen could not have equalled. "There! You probably didn't think I could work magic."

"But can you?" I cried, flaggergasted. I hadn't thought anyone could say a spell, except one of the very simple ones, without actually learning the Hidden Language, knowing what the words meant as well as how they were pronounced. And I was quite sure there was no way to learn the Language other than a lengthy apprenticeship or years in the wizards' school.

"If your spell works, mine should too," she said complacently. "I just said everything you'd said, the same way you said it."

"Let's try yours, then," I said and pulled the curtain open. I picked up the receiver and spoke the name attached to the telephone at the wizards' school in the City.

Very faintly, from the receiver, I could hear a distant ringing. Triumph at last! I thought, but dared say nothing. I held the receiver so Maria could hear as well. She leaned close to me, her hair brushing my cheek.

"Look!" she said with indrawn breath. The glass base of the telephone had lit up. Inside was a miniature but very real scene, a room at the wizards' school, a telephone sitting on a table, and one of the young wizards, one I knew but not well, picking up the receiver.

"Hello?"

"Hello!" I cried. "Can you hear me?"

"Hello?" somewhat more dubiously. "Is anyone there?"

The tiny figure inside the telephone base turned his head, as though talking to someone else. "No, I can't hear anyone. It's just silent."

"We're here! We're here! Hello?" I shouted.

"Maybe someone's idea of a joke." We watched his hand move to replace the receiver, and then our telephone went blank.

"We did it!" said Maria, giving me a hard hug that startled me so much that I couldn't answer at once. "We made the telephones work!"

"In fact, we didn't," I said, trying to catch my breath.

"Let me try this time." Before I could say anything she had picked up the receiver and spoken another name. Again I could hear the faint sound of ringing. Then, once again, the telephone base lit up with a miniature scene within it. This time, it was a liveried servant picking up the receiver.

"That's a servant in my brother's castle," she said. "We can tell them the queen got home safely. Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?"

As I expected, the servant could not hear us and replaced the receiver in a moment. "We don't need to tell them," I said. "The queen sent a message by the pigeons when she got home yesterday."

"But why can't they hear us?"

"I was trying to tell you," I said, drawing my chair away from hers. "A telephone, if it's working, is a communications instrument. Our telephones don't communicate at all. I've taken the far-seeing spell and attached it to the instruments, but it's not working right. Now it only means that someone using our telephones can see a distant telephone, not that he or she can talk to anyone far away."

"But couldn't you still use our phones for communication? You could send a message by the pigeons that you were going to telephone, and then when the phone rang and they couldn't hear anyone, they could just say whatever they wanted to say, knowing you could hear them."

This was too elaborate for me. "No; all it means is that I'm no closer to the telephone system they wanted. On the other hand," feeling more cheerful, "I don't think anyone's ever attached the far-seeing spell to an object before. This means someone, even if if not trained in magic, could see far away, as long as he only wanted to see a distant telephone room."

But this brought me back to an earlier concern. "Lady Maria, how do you happen to know magic? Usually women don't know any. Have you been trained?"

"Of course not; all you male wizards refuse to teach women magic. Are there really no women wizards?"

"Not really."

"But why not? I've heard of witches; aren't they women wizards?"

This was going to be difficult to explain. "Of course there are witches in the world. They're women who've learned magic on their own, for the most part, or from other witches. But there have never been women in the wizards' school."

"Is there a real reason, or just a silly tradition?"

"Tradition's not silly," I told her. "Anything that has functioned well for centuries must have some validity. But you're right, it is a tradition, rather than a written law, such as that barring women from the priesthood."

I didn't want to be distracted from my original question of where she had learned magic, but she kept on pushing me about women wizards. "But what validity can a tradition have that keeps women from learning magic?"

"You're not the first to ask this. It's actually a question that's being raised by some of the wizards of the City. The real reason, the original reason, is that women already have a creative power that men don't have, the power to create life within their wombs." If I hoped to embarrass her by my frankness, I should have known better; this was the same woman who had been whispering to me at dinner about the queen's attempts to have a baby. "It would be too dangerous to link wizardry with that kind of creation. Witches are always teetering, about to go over into black magic, unless they know so little magic at all that their spells are useless. If you've heard of witches, you must have heard that some of them are said to create magic monsters in the womb."

Maria paused for a moment; she clearly had heard something of the sort. "But that wouldn't apply--" She broke off. That wouldn't apply, she had been starting to say, to someone already forty-eight, but she wasn't going to say it. Instead she said, "In that case, wouldn't it be better to train the women properly, so they would know how magic should be used? Isn't that training why the wizards' school was started originally? That's what we were told when we started looking for a new wizard."

This argument too I had heard in the City. But instead of answering I changed the subject back to my question. "So how did you learn the Hidden Language?"

"Is that what it's called? When I first came to Yurt, I was terribly excited at the opportunity to learn magic, when I found there was a Royal Wizard here; there was no wizard in my brother's castle. And then, at most, he let me be there while he worked some spells! But I found out I had the ability to say spells myself, if I'd heard them even once, and then I started making requests of my own!"

"Requests?" This sounded dubious. "What were you requesting?"

"Don't ask a girl all her secrets!" she said with a smile which was indeed positively girlish.

She seemed, I thought, to be one of the rare persons born with a flair for magic. This was why, weeks earlier, she had been able to hear my voice speaking within her mind.

"The old wizard wouldn't teach me anything. Could you, might you, teach me wizardry?"

There was actually no reason why I shouldn't. But I hesitated. Magic was a powerful tool, and the old wizard had been right in calling her flighty. But no one would have called me sober and stable either when I first came to the wizards' school.

"You'd have to learn the Hidden Language first," I said at last. "You can do a few spells by saying the words, but to create your own spells you need to understand them thoroughly." I reached for the first-grammar from my shelf. It was heavy, and the cloth binding was starting to fray badly. "Take this if you want, but I will need it back again. Start studying, and if you're still interested I can help you further."

She took the volume eagerly, but her face fell as she leafed through it. "But it doesn't tell how to do spells."

"As I said, you can't create your own spells unless you understand the Language first. But tell me," as a thought struck me, "how you've been able to make magic 'requests' without knowing magic."

There was no doubt now that she didn't want to answer me. She stood up rapidly, clutching the first-grammar. "I'll try to work through this," she said. "I'd better go now. But wasn't it fun that it was my telephone that worked?" She rushed across my room and was gone before I could answer.

I sat down again and leaned my face on my fists. I had imagined being a Royal Wizard was exciting, mysterious, and awe-inspiring. So far, I had actually promised to teach wizardry to a woman, one who was positively flirting with me; another woman, who came to ask my wizardly advice, left thinking of me as a rather dim-witted uncle; and I was in love with a third woman, this one married already.

Part Three

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