PART FOUR - THE DUCHESS

I

The first snow had reached Yurt. It wasn't very much snow, a light dusting in the courtyard, but as evening came on it rose and whirled in the wind, and made all of us in the great hall linger around the fireplace after supper. Through the tall windows, I could see the moon, slightly orange and half obscured by whipping clouds, what Gwen told me they called in Yurt a witch's moon.

The Lady Maria had been talking about dragons at supper. The combination of Zahlfast's visit and the first volume of Ancient and Modern Necromancy, which I had given her to read when the first-grammar continued to prove frustrating, had given her enough information about the northern land of wild magic that she was talking as though she wanted to go there herself.

"But Maria, it's terribly cold even here!" said one of the other ladies with a laugh. "Think how much colder it would be so much further north."

"Then maybe I'll try to go there in the summer," she said, undeterred. "Or maybe a dragon would come here."

The other ladies, who clearly did not believe in dragons, or if they did certainly believed they had nothing to do with Yurt, all laughed thoroughly at this.

I at least knew dragons were real, and maybe it was to support the Lady Maria that I decided to make an illusory dragon. I had never tried to match my predecessor by producing illusions over dessert, but while most of the castle was lingering by the fire it seemed a good time to start.

Illusions are among the first things they teach at the wizards' school, and they are so much fun that wizardry students tend to stay up late challenging each other with different effects, which is why even carnival magicians are proficient at them. At any rate, even though I knew I could never equal my predecessor's skill at life-like creations, I started on a dragon.

It stayed rather flat-looking, and at certain angles one could see right through it, but that didn't deter me, as I set out to make a dragon that would fill our entire end of the hall. It certainly didn't hurt my efforts that the queen came over at once, eyes dancing, to watch the dragon being constructed.

First I did the tail, long and reptilian with a double row of spines down the center. When I had the tail lashing nicely, I started on the body, massive and scaled, with six legs and long, scaled wings. It was only coincidence, I told myself, that I made the iridescent scales emerald green. By now most of the castle was watching; even the servants who had taken the dishes down to the kitchen came back.

The head was the hardest part. I gave my dragon a gaping mouth with several hundred teeth, long fringed ears, and eyes of fire. It actually looked more like the dragon costume at the harvest carnival than like the rather small blue dragon in the basement of the wizards' school, the only real dragon I had actually seen. But since no else there had ever seen a dragon at all, this did not matter. They stood well back from its slowly lashing tail and watched with growing excitement.

And I decided to make it especially exciting. As soon as I had finished the last detail, the long forked yellow tongue, I gave the whole dragon the order to move and stood back to catch my breath. It was a dozen times larger than any illusion I had ever made before.

It moved spectacularly. Eyes burning and mouth opening and closing in frenzied snaps, it whirled away from me and started toward my audience.

It moved totally silently, but that was all right, because the screaming of ladies, servants, and even knights made plenty of noise. People raced for the walls or fell down flat. Dominic stood for ten seconds alone, deserted by the rest of the knights and apparently paralyzed, before he gave a shriek like an injured rabbit and dived under the table. My dragon kept on going. Its long tail and heavy body naturally passed through real human bodies without having the slightest effect, but they did not notice this, as they were too busy trying to avoid the head.

Even the king took refuge behind his throne. But the Lady Maria, sheltering in the doorway that led to the kitchen, with half the castle staff behind her, was watching in what I could only describe as avid delight.

Almost frightened by what I had done, I said the words to slow the dragon down, intending to make it curl up placidly before the fire before I broke the spell of illusion.

And then I saw two people advancing on the dragon from opposite directions. One was the chaplain, who held a crucifix at arm's length before him, and whose eyes glowed with almost the same intensity as my dragon's. The other, armed with a poker from the fireplace, was the queen.

This had gone far enough. I said the two words to break the illusion, and the dragon was gone, leaving nothing but a shower of sparks that lingered for five seconds and then were gone as well.

The hall was suddenly very silent, and I held my breath, wondering how I had managed to make my magic go so thoroughly astray. But then the silence was broken by the king clapping.

"Marvelous, Wizard, marvelous!" he cried. "I've never seen anything to match that!"

After only a second's hesitation, the queen dropped the poker and began to applaud as well. The knights and ladies came slowly back toward the center of the room and joined in. Dominic came out from under the table as though trying to convey the impression he had never been there.

Everyone started talking at once, most apparently trying to persuade each other, themselves, and me that they had not in fact been in fear for their lives. The king did it most convincingly.

"Our old wizard used to do illusions all the time," he told me, "and they were beautiful. I thought when he retired that I'd never see anything like that again. But his, well, they never moved like that!"

There was a general laugh, and people started gathering up their hats and cloaks for the short trip from the great hall back to their chambers.

I looked around for Joachim. Although we had remained cordial since the king's recovery, we had somehow never shared a bottle of wine in the evening again. If I had owed him something of an apology before, I was afraid I owed him one even more now. But he had already gone.

I glanced across the hall toward Dominic. He was standing next to the fire, talking to one of the knights with great laughs and many hand gestures, on a completely different topic. I had originally been hoping to talk to him this evening, but now I decided it would be better to wait until the next day.

The next morning, when the sun was melting the light layer of snow, I went to find Dominic. I had decided I had to be systematic, and even though I didn't like the thought of talking to him just now, he had what I needed.

It seemed fairly clear that a spell had been put on Yurt. It was the spell that had nearly killed the king, and while the chaplain had broken its hold on him in particular, the spell was still there. I could still not sense the evil touch except obliquely, when least expecting it, but I was now armed with Zahlfast's magic formula for detecting the supernatural.

So far, I had found high concentrations of supernatural influence in my own chambers, the chapel, and the chaplain's room. I didn't like this at all until I decided that the spell was just detecting a saintly presence from the chaplain, who had after all spent a number of evenings during the summer in my chambers.

But no wonder, I thought, Zahlfast had wanted to visit me. When he received a letter reeking of the supernatural, and knowing there was already something odd happening in Yurt, he must have wondered if I had plunged into black magic. I was irritated enough with him for this lack of trust that I had not written him again.

The two other places I had found the supernatural influence strongest were up in the north tower, in the old wizard's now empty and windswept chambers, and in the dank passage that led down to the rusty door of the cellars.

I found Dominic in the stables, checking on one of the geldings that had come back slightly lame from hunting. He was whistling as he and the stable boy lifted the animal's foot, which today seemed much better. But the whistling stopped as he saw me.

"Greetings, sir," I said with enough good humor for both of us. "I have a favor to ask you, about my mission here in Yurt."

He pulled his mouth into a tight line, then nodded. "We can talk in the courtyard," he said curtly and walked out, leaving me to follow behind. Neither one of us said anything about dragons.

"I thought the chaplain accomplished your mission for you," said Dominic, when we were standing in the center of the courtyard, well away from any windows. "The evil spell on the king's been broken." The implication seemed strong that now that my single mission had been taken care of, especially as it was done by someone else, it was almost superfluous for Yurt to have a wizard.

"But it's not gone," I said.

He had been glancing around, not meeting my eyes, but at this he turned toward me with a look that could either have been hatred or fear. "What do you mean, it's not gone?"

"Whoever or whatever put the spell on the king," I said, "made the spell strong enough that it remained in Yurt even when the king was miraculously freed from its influence. I haven't been able to determine yet who might have cast it, but I think I may be able to tell, if I can determine where it's strongest."

"And how are you going to do that?" he demanded.

"We wizards can detect the presence of the supernatural," I said with dignity. "Any evil spell will have been cast with evil intent, and possibly even demonic influence. We wizards can tell where demons have been."

"And where do you think they might have been?" His tone was enough to make the straightforward question an insult.

"I was wondering if they had been down in the cellars."

This clearly surprised him. The sour expression disappeared for a minute. "Why the cellars?"

"I have no idea. It's the only part of the castle I haven't been able to get into. The constable told me the cellars are damp and haven't been used for many years. I'd asked him for a key, but he said you had the only one."

"That's true," said Dominic in a puzzled voice. Although I didn't tell him, I had already tried to open the locked door using the same spell I had used on the bolt on the north tower, but a complicated lock had proved impervious to my magic, as a simple bolt had not.

Dominic took the heavy bunch of keys from his belt and flipped through them until he came to one stained with rust. "Here's the key. You'd better take a can of oil, as I doubt it's been opened in years." He paused then and glared at me again. "I hope you weren't planning to ask me for the key to the north tower, because I don't have it. When your predecessor retired, he bolted the doors and put magic locks on that he said even another wizard couldn't break."

It was my turn to be surprised. "But I don't need to go up in the north tower," I said blandly, neglecting to mention that I had already been there twice.

Dominic said something under his breath. When I asked him to repeat it, he denied having said anything, but it had sounded to me like, "Maybe you should."

With the key and a can of oil, I went down the narrow stairs behind the kitchen to the cellar door. It was iron and blotched with damp and rust. There was a small opening at eye level, too small for anything much larger than a cat to have climbed through, and a dank odor came out into the stairwell. Even with the oil and energetic turning, it took me almost five minutes to get the lock to open. Clearly no one had been in the cellars in years.

The door swung open with a protesting screech. I had tied a magic globe to my wrist with a piece of string. Its light bobbed eerily along the walls as I stepped inside.

It seemed to be nothing but abandoned storage cellars, damp because they had been dug too close to the castle well. The small rooms opening off the hall were littered with the unidentifiable remains of what might once have been stored there. Several of the rooms smelled as though used by cats or rats or both.

But permeating these innocuous dark stone rooms was an almost overwhelming sense of evil. I stopped and listened. I heard a very faint pattering noise, which could have been dripping water, could have been rats, and could have been nothing.

I tried to think clearly and calmly to combat the irrational fear that threatened to overwhelm me. Dominic had known there was an evil spell on the king, I told myself, forcing my feet to proceed down the passage. He didn't just think the king was sick, but thought magic must be implicated. Therefore, he knew more than he had told me about how that spell was cast.

I paused and listened again. There was no sound other than my own breathing. Even though Dominic knew something about the spell, I continued my reasoning, he still wanted it overcome. Therefore, he himself had not been responsible. I returned to a thought I had had long ago, that he was sheltering someone, most likely the queen. Could she have tried to put an evil spell on the king, which Dominic then wanted to overcome, even though he loved her too much to accuse her?

But Dominic might not know as much as he thought. He clearly believed, with the old wizard, that the north tower was still locked, and had had no inkling of the evil now settled in the cellars.

I forced my feet to start moving again, although at this point I was starting to feel what could only be a terminal illness, caused by black magic, sweeping through my body. This of course is the weakness of being a wizard; we are much more accessible to magic influences than ordinary people. Water splashed onto my socks with the next step; I had been following the passage slightly downhill, and the floor had gone from being damp to being flooded.

I murmured the spell that should have lifted me six inches above the water, to continue down the passage suspended in air. Nothing happened at all.

At this point, rationality lost. I turned and ran back toward daylight, the magic globe bouncing madly at the end of the string. At the door, I hesitated. I could not hear anything behind me, but I didn't want whatever was in there coming out. I made myself gather up some of the debris from the first storeroom and stuffed it into the small opening in the iron door. I held it in place with the best magic lock I could manage.

With the sight of daylight before me, I was able to control my heartbeat enough to wait one more minute. I called, "Kitty, kitty, kitty," not wanting to leave any cat trapped in the cellars. But when no cat appeared, I slammed the door, turned the iron key, and put an additional magic lock on the latch as well.

Back out in the narrow staircase, leaning against the stone wall, I slowly stopped feeling as though I were about to die. But in a minute even the staircase seemed oppressive, so I hurried back up the stairs. The smell of bread baking came to me from the kitchen like a benediction.

I didn't want to return to my chambers right away but instead went to the great hall, telling myself I needed to return the key to Dominic but really in search of human company. The king and queen, along with several of the ladies, were seated around the fire, talking animately.

"Wizard!" called the king when he saw me. "We've just been making plans. How would you like to go visit the duchess?"

After a second in which I couldn't imagine what he was talking about, I remembered the lady Maria once telling me that Yurt had, besides the king's own castle, the castles of two counts and a duchess.

"I ought to visit my liege vassals more often," said the king.

"The king and I met at the duchess's castle," the queen told me, smiling at him.

"I would be very interested in visiting the duchess," I said. If Zahlfast was right (and I hoped he was, rather than believed he was), the king should now be safe from whatever black magic was lurking in the cellars. But no one else was safe. Until a supposedly fully-qualified wizard, me, could find a way to overcome that spell, it might be better if we all went visiting.

II

The duchess's castle was closer than the city where we had gone to the harvest carnival, being only one long day's ride away. Therefore we didn't need the tents, and the pack horses were less burdened as we started out early on a frosty but sunny morning.

The king's party was also much smaller, as most of the servants were not accompanying us.

I had talked to the queen about this. "Don't you think it would be better if we brought everyone along?"

But she laughed. "The duchess won't have nearly enough room for all of us. Her castle is smaller than the royal castle, and she has her own staff, of course. If I didn't know better, I'd say you were getting too attached to that saucy girl who brings you breakfast!"

It was bad enough being hopelessly in love with the queen without having her tease me about Gwen. I tried the constable instead.

"Don't you think it might be better, while the king is gone, to send the servants away?"

He looked at me in amazement, as well he might, because the arrangement of the household staff was certainly not part of a royal wizard's duties. For a minute I could see that he was about to resent my interference, but then he remembered that it was, after all, me.

"Usually when the royal household is away, I give most of the staff their vacation," he said. "Some go to visit their families, although some of course stay here."

"But I don't want anyone to stay here."

This was clearly going too far, even for a wizard who had already proved himself to have an odd sense of humor. "My principal responsibility," the constable said with great dignity, "is the well-being of the royal castle of Yurt, including its people. My wife and I at any rate will not leave, certainly not on a wizard's whim."

It would have been hard to explain that I feared an evil influence was down in the cellars, especially as I had checked that morning and found my magic locks still in place. Since everyone in the castle, not just the king, seemed happy and well, I tried to tell myself that there was no danger. The night before we left, I spent hours with my books until I found what I hoped was a suitably strong protective spell. I put it on the castle and its inhabitants before we left.

The Lady Maria rode next to me. I had noticed that, in the last few weeks, she had stopped wearing as much lace and ribbon. This morning she was wearing a conservatively-cut, dark green riding habit, and her golden hair, rather than tumbling in ringlets around her shoulders, was tied up into a bun on the back of her head.

But her laugh and her conversation had not changed at all. "I think I explained to you once," she said, "that the queen's mother and the duchess's mother are cousins--or is it second cousins? When the old duke died in that terrible accident--I was just the tiniest girl then, but even so I remember it well--he left only a daughter to inherit. She grew into quite a beauty, I can tell you!"

"Does she look like the queen?" I asked, that being my standard for beauty.

"She does, a little," said Maria almost reluctantly, and I knew her well enough to realize that, while she loved to discuss charm and beauty in the abstract, she didn't like the implication that midnight hair could be more beautiful than golden.

"I'll bet she had a number of suitors!" I said, knowing that was what she wanted me to say.

"She certainly did!" she replied, her good humor restored. "But she wouldn't have any of them! She was too proud for any but the best, and maybe she hasn't met the best yet! She'll soon be getting old, however, so she may shortly have to lower her standards! Of course, she isn't as old as me."

I was flabbergasted. I had never before heard Maria admit that she might be old. Together with the pulled-back hair, this made me start to wonder if she had been affected by some variation of the spell that had nearly killed the king.

But her manner was unchanged. She continued all morning to tell me stories that I had already heard and to point out all the places in the landscape with any romantic associations.

"See that spire?" she said at one point. A sharply-pointed spire rose from behind a snow-sprinkled hill, half a mile back from the road. The hill nearly obscured the low tiled roof of its church. "That's the Nunnery of Yurt. It's made up of widows who grieve for their dead husbands, and of young girls who have tragically renounced the world with broken hearts." I decided to try to ride with someone else that afternoon.

After our lunch break, which we took standing up because the half-frozen ground was too cold for sitting, I managed to position my horse next to Joachim's, at the end of the procession. This, I thought, might be the best chance I had had to talk to him in weeks.

"I owe you an apology," I said, starting there because this way he couldn't move away or change the subject before I'd had a chance to say it. "I was horribly rude to you when the king was ill."

I also probably should apologize for terrifying him with my dragon, but I was afraid of insulting him more by reminding him that he had believed in an illusion--even if he and the queen were the only people prepared to do something about it.

Joachim pulled up his horse slightly, so that we were soon riding fifty yards behind the rest of the party. Although he did not answer at once, he was clearly thinking over his response. Then he gave me a sideways glance from his enormous dark eyes that would in anyone else have been a look of amusement.

"You weren't rude," he said. "I needed someone to remind me of my responsibilities." We rode for several minutes in silence, then he spoke again as though there had been no pause. "I think I had still been feeling inadequate from my meeting with the bishop."

Since such a confession on his part seemed to call for something similar on mine, if I wanted to rebuild our friendship, I said, "Do you remember seeing the wizard in my chambers?"

He clearly did not.

"You might have seen him, just for a second, the day you stopped to tell me you were going down to the village to see the little girl."

There was the slightest flicker of emotion across his face. "Yes. I remember seeing him now."

"That was Zahlfast, one of my old teachers. He'd come to give me what he said was my first checkup."

This time the chaplain actually did smile. "I thought you told me you wizards were left on your own, once you'd finished at the school."

"Well, that's what I'd thought. I guess it shows how mistaken a wizard can be. I think he meant to be encouraging, but by the time he left all my inadequacies had been made clear to me."

"And are you therefore feeling paralyzed, almost fearing to act because you don't want to turn to evil?" As he spoke, Joachim turned to face me so abruptly that he brought his horse's head around as well. We had to stop and disentangle the bells on my horse's harness from the harness on his. When we started again, the rest of the procession was far in front of us, and we pushed our mounts to start catching up.

At first I thought Joachim was accusing me of being paralyzed in the face of a threat to Yurt, but then I realized he was only speaking from his own experience. Someone whose own inadequacies had been pointed out very recently might indeed feel unworthy to plead with the saints.

"I told Zahlfast you'd saved the king's life," I said as we drew closer to the rest of the party and slowed down again.

"I myself didn't save him," he answered quickly, looking straight ahead. "My merits had nothing to do with it." I should have realized that he'd say this. Since the saints could not be manipulated, one's only hope was to have a pure and contrite heart, and a contrite heart wasn't proud of its merits.

But then he said something else that surprised me. "What did Zahlfast say when you told him that?"

I stammered, not sure how to answer, but almost immediately decided on the truth. "He reminded me that wizards don't talk very much about miracles, and that those who heal also have the power to sicken."

It sounded even worse than I had expected it to sound. While I was trying to frame a new apology, he kicked his horse forward, not even looking at me again, and pulled into line next to the Lady Maria. Since he, like me, had not been at Yurt yet when the king and queen happened to meet for the first time at the duchess's castle, she started to give him all the details. I was sure he had heard it all before; he had, after all, gone to visit the duchess with the royal party the first year he was in Yurt, while the king was still traveling at least short distances. But he listened intently, even smiling at the right places, and did not once look back at me.

The short early winter day had ended, and the sun was gone when we saw the lights blazing out from the duchess's castle in the valley before us. The knights had lit lanterns so that we could see the increasingly icy road, although I myself thought that the wildly flickering shadows from the swaying lamps made it even harder to guide one's way. We all kicked our horses and hurried down the last hill, bells ringing loudly. The bridge was down, and we surged across and into the courtyard.

Servants hurried forward to help us dismount, and the duchess's constable took the bridle of the king's horse. But the king waved away the servant at his stirrup and instead, with a look of intense concentration, rose slowly straight into the air, until he could swing his foot easily over the horse's back, then just as slowly descended to stand on the cobblestones.

Very few of the people from the royal castle of Yurt, and certainly no one from this castle, had seen the king flying before, so there was a stunned silence before the applause broke out. The queen laughed with delight as she dismounted in the more normal manner and took his arm. His back straight and a not-very-well concealed grin of pride on his face, the king walked toward the wide doorway leading into the great hall.

I was about to follow him, extremely proud of my pupil, when I caught a baleful glare. It was Dominic, and he was glaring at me with eyes that were nearly red with fury. I didn't know why, but I certainly didn't need a second person furious at me today, so I turned my face from him and hurried after the king and queen.

They stopped just inside the hall, and I, following closer than anyone else, nearly ran into them. Over their shoulders, I saw a woman advancing to meet them, the duchess.

She did indeed look a lot like her cousin, the queen, although the duchess was at least ten years older. Her hair too was black and her features beautifully shaped, but she did not have the queen's smile, which always seemed to be hovering near her lips even when she was sober or thoughtful.

The duchess did the full bow. "Welcome to my castle, which is your castle, my liege lord and king." And it was the full bow, not the curtsy that women normally performed. The duchess, in spite of her feminine features and the long hair braided into a graceful coif, was dressed like a man, in a man's tunic and boots.

"Rise, my faithful subject," said the king. He drew her up, his hands on her shoulders, and kissed her on both cheeks. The queen kissed her as well, but, I noted, not nearly as enthusiastically.

"And who is this?" the duchess said, peeking at me past their shoulders.

The queen brought me forward with a hand on my elbow. I was glad I was wearing my new velvet jacket. "This is our new royal wizard! He joined us this summer from the wizards' school in the City."

The duchess gave me a look of frank and highly interested appraisal, which startled me more than I wanted to admit; no woman had looked at me like that since-- well, at all that I could remember. Fortunately, she appeared to like what she saw.

"I haven't had a wizard in my duchy in years," she said. "My father, the old duke, used to keep a wizard, but he had retired even before I inherited, and the old royal wizard of Yurt never deigned to visit me."

"That's why I wanted to bring him along," said the king. "Wait until you see his illusions!"

Although I was naturally crushed to discover that I had been brought along as an exhibit rather than as a necessary member of the king's personal retinue, I was too intrigued by the duchess to give this much thought. Back before I had entered the wizards' school, the women I had met in the City who dressed like men had for the most part, and ironically I always thought, not liked men. But the way this woman had looked at me suggested otherwise.

"Your rooms are all prepared, my lord and lady," she said. "My constable will show you and your companions. Dinner will be served as soon as you've had a chance to rest from your trip." As we all followed the constable out of the great hall, I glanced back to see her looking after us with a wide grin.

There were a number of different courses at dinner, all elaborate, but none, I thought, as good as those produced by the cook at Yurt. I also missed the brass choir before dinner. The chaplain sat across from me, as at home, next to the duchess's chaplain. But he did not meet my eye. I myself was surreptitiously watching the queen. I had wondered more than once why she, a woman of fire and air who should have been able to marry anyone in the western kingdoms, had married the king of Yurt.

Now that he was no longer ill, he did seem much younger than he had when I first met him, but he was still undeniably more than twice her age, and no taller than she. Here in the duchess's castle, as the lady Maria had been reminding the chaplain this afternoon, was where the king and queen had first met, and I wondered if I might find some clue here.

We finished up with spicy cakes frosted in vivid colors, and while I was trying to decide if I liked them or not, the duchess called to me down the table. "Wizard! I hear you do excellent illusions. Would you care to entertain us?"

"He's tired, as we all are," said the queen quickly. "Maybe ask him another day."

I was surprised to find her suddenly so protective of me, and when I looked toward her I saw that she was not smiling. But the duchess's eyes met mine in an amused challenge.

"All right," I said, putting down the half-eaten cake which I had decided I did not like at all. "But I warn you, my illusions may be frightening."

"I don't frighten easily, Wizard."

But the lords and ladies from Yurt were nudging and smiling at each other, clearly hoping that the party here, who had not seen my dragon, would be as frightened of it as they now pretended not to have been. Several of the duchess's attendants, seeing the winks, did indeed begin to look uneasy.

I went to stand by the fireplace, thinking quickly. I didn't want to become repetitive by doing another dragon, and although the magician at the carnival had not hesitated to make an illusory demon, I didn't want to terrify myself with my own magic. Besides, I only wanted to titillate the duchess and her lords and ladies, not send them screaming from the hall as I had almost done at Yurt.

I decided on a giant, one about twenty feet tall, which would leave his head (or heads--I rather liked the idea of a two-headed giant) only a short distance below the ceiling. I worked quickly, sketching in the different parts but not yet giving them substance, so that a ghostly pair of legs, a nearly invisible club, and a suggestion of massive arms took shape between me and the fire.

I glanced at my audience. The queen's eyes were dancing, and the duchess continued to look amused. The last detail was the double head, one smiling horribly, and one suffused in fury. The second head, even while half invisible, looked I realized a little like Dominic, but it was too late to try to change it. With a few quick words in the Hidden Language, I gave my giant visual solidity and put it into motion.

The giant spun around from the fire to face the table and raised its enormous club. The mouth of the furious face opened in a silent roar. The club swung downwards, and the king, showing an agility I had not realized he had, sprang from his chair just before the club passed down through the chair and the table.

There was a cacophony of noise, chairs scraping and falling backwards and the duchess's people shouting. The party from Yurt was doing fairly well, in that none of them were screaming, but they still sprang from the table as they giant started down it. The enormous hairy legs were buried almost knee-deep in the table, through which it seemed to wade like a man wading through water. The club descended again and again, passing without effect through glass, china, and wood, as one head roared and the other laughed. The only person who did not move was Dominic, who sat stone-faced, his arms folded, as one of the giant's thighs passed directly through him.

I stopped the giant just short of the duchess. She, like the others, had jumped up, but she was watching its approach with a broad smile. I had the giant stop roaring and grinning, drop its club, and go into the full bow before her. The effect was a little spoiled by the fact that, as it went down on its knees, much of it disappeared under the table, but the duchess still began applauding wildly as soon as the double head was lowered. I said the words to end the illusion.

The duchess ran to grab me by the hands. "Well, Wizard, I can see that, with you there, Yurt must be a much livelier place than it ever was before!"

People were straightening their hair and clothing and coming toward the fire with as casual an air as possible. The castle servants, who had been watching open-mouthed from the passage to the kitchen, disappeared again.

"I told you we had a fine wizard!" said the king. "Maybe you ought to send to the City for one yourself!"

"But I couldn't be sure of getting one like this one!" she said with a laugh. She was still holding both my hands, which was starting to make me feel uncomfortable. "Well, I don't think we'll have any more entertainment to top this tonight."

As though this were a signal, the lords and ladies of her party immediately started to leave. The king and queen glanced at each other. "If you don't mind," said the queen, "we'll retire now. We've had a long ride today."

"But you," said the duchess, looking at me, "you I'd like to take to my chambers for a final drink."

III

The queen turned sharply toward the duchess, as though about to say something, then changed her mind. "Good night, then," she said, leaving on the king's arm. For a moment I even hoped she was jealous.

The servants returned to clear the table as both parties dispersed. The chaplain was almost the last to go, and before he went he fixed me with a burning stare that might have been a warning.

The duchess had released my hands, but I seemed to have no choice but to follow her, up the wide staircase at the end of the hall to the great ducal chamber.

To my relief, she stopped here and motioned me to a seat. A small fire was in the grate; she added first some small sticks, then a log, and soon had it burning brightly. I felt I ought to help, but she seemed to want no help.

With the fire now burning, she went to a cabinet for two glasses and a bottle. She poured us each an inch of golden liquid and brought me mine, then sat down in the chair opposite me, one booted leg hooked over the arm.

I took a sip. "Excuse me, my lady, but this isn't wine. It's brandy."

"Yes," she said, as though wondering at my dimness.

"But brandy is a medicine."

"It's also an excellent after-dinner drink, as I discovered some time ago."

I took another sip. It was extremely powerful. "Very nice," I said.

She smiled, her face, which was close to being the queen's face, lit up by a smile that was not the queen's. "Enjoy it. There aren't many I invite to share a glass of brandy with me."

I started talking, in part to take control of the atmosphere, in part because that way I had an excuse for drinking more slowly. "This is the first time since I came to Yurt that I've accompanied the king on a visit to his subjects. It's hard to tell in the dark, of course, but as we came in it seemed that you had a beautiful little castle. I hear there are two counts in the kingdom as well. Are their castles as lovely?"

"The king's castle is of course considered the best in the kingdom of Yurt," she said, as though taking my inane comments seriously. "But the ducal castle, mine, is not rated far behind. Tomorrow I can show you all its features, inside and out. I don't have a rose garden like the king's, but if it were summer I could show you the flowers I do grow."

With any luck, I thought, we could talk about gardening until I could decently make my excuses and leave.

But she took control of the conversation back from me. "Wizard, I have a proposal to make to you."

I had been taking a sip from my glass and ended up swallowing suddenly much more than I meant to. "Indeed?" I said as blandly as I could, once I had stopped coughing. My eyes were drawn, against my will, to the door at the far end of the great chamber, that must lead to her bedroom.

"I know you wizards don't take oaths, but what I'm asking may still be hard for you." She was watching me, a look of amusement playing on her features.

"Indeed," I said with dignity. She seemed to be saying that we wizards did not take oaths of chastity, as did priests, which was true, but she also seemed to be insulting me.

"I know that, as short a time as you have lived in Yurt, your affections may already be fully engaged."

How did she know I was in love with the queen?

"Although," she said thoughtfully, "I would have thought a wizard with your flair wouldn't want to live his entire life ruled by someone with as soft a disposition as your queen."

Being too amazed to reply properly, I said nothing.

"Given a tempting opportunity, one's affections may change their focus," she continued with that same almost detached look of amusement.

"Possibly," I said, as noncommittally as I could.

"Therefore a woman may have to make her proposal as attractive as possible to woo a wizard," she continued, swinging her foot down and standing up.

I watched her approaching, almost in panic.

"That's why, Wizard, I need you to tell me what you like best."

She was standing directly in front of me, hands on her hips. I tried to buy time by seeming to drink my brandy, but it was gone.

"If I can offer you something the king does not offer you, then maybe I can woo you away from your affection for his castle and household and persuade you to give up being the Royal Wizard of Yurt and instead become my own ducal wizard."

In my relief at realizing that she was only offering me a position, not making an indecent proposal, at first I could only stammer. Then I caught her eye and realized she had been doing it deliberately.

"I am very happy as the Royal Wizard," I said, searching desperately for the remains of my dignity. Someone like the old wizard, someone who actually seemed to personify mystery and darkness, would not have been teased like this! "I'm not interested in alternate--proposals."

"But I'm quite serious, Wizard," she said, with a smile that was merely friendly. "I know it might seem like a step down to leave a king for a duchess, but I can offer you whatever you have now, and even more--your own tower, assistants to help gather herbs, freedom to come and go as you please."

For a brief moment I wondered what would happen if I left the king to become the duchess's wizard. Yurt would need a new royal wizard, of course, and this time they might be lucky and get someone competent. I would never have to deal with whatever evil force was lurking in the cellars.

Of course, they might get someone even less capable, and even a competent wizard wouldn't know about the empty north tower, about Dominic's veiled warning, or about the king's illness and recovery. The new wizard would resent anything that seemed like interference and certainly would not welcome hints from me.

Besides, Zahlfast would think I was running away. "I'm sorry, my lady," I said, "but even though I haven't taken an oath of loyalty to the king, I still feel that I am his man."

She nodded a little ruefully. "I'd been afraid you'd say that. I've been thinking for some time my duchy needed a wizard--my father's old wizard, whom I barely remember, was not I believe very highly qualified, but he had not been trained in the wizards' school. I was therefore very eager to meet a young wizard from the school, but as soon as I met you I realized there can't be many like you. Are there?"

She had, to my relief, gone back to her own chair. "Probably not," I said, "although the teachers at the school would tell you that's just as well."

"Maybe I'll advertise and see who answers," she said thoughtfully. "But that was a wonderful giant! And was it deliberate that its second head looked just like Prince Dominic?"

I laughed and denied any such intention. After a few more minutes' conversation, I felt able to rise and tell her how tired I was after a long day.

She took my hands affectionately. "Thank you for sharing a glass of brandy with me. Think about my offer, if you grow tired of the royal court." Though not the queen, she certainly was an attractive woman. I wondered briefly what she would have done if I had taken what she seemed to be offering literally and had immediately begun to act on it.

"Thank you, and good evening, my lady," I said gravely, then left her great chamber to return to my own room. As I went, I wondered if the queen had, at least in part, decided to marry the king to keep him from marrying the duchess.

Since the duchess's castle really was smaller than the royal castle, and since it was already full of her own household, there had not been much room for the rest of us, after the king and queen and a handful of their closest companions had been lodged in a suite of rooms which apparently were always kept ready for them. As Royal Wizard, however, I had been given the dignity of a room of my own, the room the old ducal wizard had used thirty years earlier, which had apparently scarcely been used since then.

As I spiraled up the narrow tower stairs toward the room, ducking my head and wishing either for my predecessor's or my own magic lights, I thought I might look at the ducal wizard's old books for a minute before going to sleep. I had noticed a few books in the room before dinner and hoped that he might have written down some interesting spells that had never been known in the City.

As I came around the last turn, I was surprised to see the door of my room standing half open, and candle light flickering within. I pushed the door slowly open and faced the deep black eyes of the chaplain.

He put down the Bible he had been reading and stood up. "Close the door," he said, as though this were his room, not mine.

I closed the door. "Look," I said. "What I said this afternoon. I realize I didn't make it clear enough"--this was an understatement!--"that I didn't think you were responsible for the king's illness." Most of the time this was even true. "I wish you'd given me a chance to explain. I really am sorry that I sounded as though I was accusing you."

But he didn't seem to be listening. "I don't enjoy doing this," he said, "but I have to. I'm afraid you're forgetting your duties, and I have to remind you of them."

"My duties?" I said in surprise. It would have seemed like a joke except that there was not even the hint of a smile on his face.

"Sit down," he said. "I didn't want to tell you this when we spoke this afternoon, but the bishop was very unhappy about the possible influence on me from a wizard my own age."

I sat down obediently on my bed, as he had the chair.

"I told him what you had suggested to me in conversation, that the organization of the wizards' school is patterned on the organization of the church, and that, like the church, organized wizardry hopes ultimately for the salvation of mankind."

I knew I had never actually said this, but it was close enough to what I myself considered the goals of wizardry that I only nodded.

"That's why I have to speak to you now. I had to take responsibility with the bishop for your soul."

"I thought my soul was doing well," I said in a small voice, over-awed by those burning eyes. I could not break my own glance away from them.

"If it were only playing with magic, I might not have to speak," he continued, unhearing. "Even when you used magic not to help but to terrify, as you did both at the royal court and again here tonight, tact kept me from speaking. But now!" He leaned sharply forward, as though wanting to make sure he had my full attention, although he had had it since I came in the room.

"I will not accuse you of immorality. Only the saints and God can truly judge a man's soul. But when you began to behave as though you have a licentious freedom, using casuistic reasoning to argue with yourself that a tradition against wizards' marrying is not enough to stop a man who has never had to take an oath of chastity, then I realized that you were in danger of applying this casuistry to other areas, to--"

At this point I had to interrupt him. "Stop. Wait. You don't understand."

"I fear I understand all too well."

"You don't. The duchess and I had a small drink together."

"And that was all?" he demanded.

"She told me that she admired my illusions so much that she wanted me to leave the royal court of Yurt and come be her ducal wizard. I turned her down."

Joachim sat back in the chair as though deflated. "And that was all?"

"That was all." I myself found the situation quite amusing. He must have sat in my room for close to an hour, waiting for my return, preparing both the accusations and the spiritual counsel he would give to me, and then he found out that, at least at the moment, I didn't actually need any spiritual guidance. But a look at his face told me he didn't find any amusement in the situation.

"Then I will apologize for disturbing you," he said stiffly. "I hope you sleep well." He rose and left the room, taking the candle with him.

I started to protest, then realized it was undoubtedly his candle, brought from his own room. I turned on my belt buckle to get enough light to find a candle of my own. I stared gloomily at the flame, once I had it lit, wondering how I was going to become friends again with the only person in Yurt who seemed to have the potential to be my close friend. At this rate, he'd soon be suspecting me of having poisoned the king.

But I still had to chuckle, thinking of him sitting here, imagining me embracing licentious freedom, at the exact same time as the duchess's teasing was almost driving me in panic from her chamber.

The next morning was Sunday, and I was in the ducal chapel early, sitting down in the front row while the duchess's chaplain and the royal chaplain conducted services together. Neither one of them seemed to notice my presence.

IV

We stayed at the duchess's castle for a week. Both because I feared being teased again and because I didn't want the chaplain worrying about my soul, I tried to avoid the duchess. Instead I devoted myself to the Lady Maria, always speaking to her at dinner, positioning my horse next to hers when we went out riding, standing as an attendant at her shoulder in the evening in the great hall. She was, I realized, the only person in Yurt to whom I spoke regularly with whom I did not always feel myself sparring.

But she could turn the conversation to her own purposes as deftly as anyone else if she wanted--something I had already known, and of which I was reminded when I tried to find out more about her previous experience with magic.

The king, the queen, and the duchess had all decided to go hunting--that is, the duchess asked the king if he would accompany her, and when he agreed the queen said that she wanted to hunt as well. They rode across the stubble of the duchess's fields and along the margins of the woods, hawks on their fists, hoping for a goose. Some of the rest of us, including the Lady Maria and I, went out with them primarily for fresh air.

The air was cold and slightly damp, although the grey sky did not immediately threaten rain. The Lady Maria seemed to enjoy my attentions and always raised her chin a little when the duchess glanced at the two of us together. Now, as we rode, I was amusing her by telling her again about the dragon in the cellar of the wizards' school.

"So, my predecessor agreed to teach you magic?" I asked suddenly, with no reference to what I had just been saying, hoping to catch her off-guard.

Her big blue eyes held mine for an instant, more intently than they ever had before. Then she looked away with a small laugh. "I already told you; he refused to teach me anything because I'm a woman."

"Come now, you can reveal your little secrets to me!" I continued in a tone I hoped she would like. "You certainly learned to make magic requests somewhere!" When she did not answer, I added, "And have you requested the perpetual youth and beauty that adorn you, or was that given you at birth?"

She surprised me by seeming to take my fatuous comments entirely seriously. At any rate, her shoulders first stiffened, then sagged, and she looked straight ahead without any of the amusement I had expected.

"I asked for a while," she said in a very low voice. I could barely hear her, but I did not dare tell her to speak more loudly for fear she would say nothing at all. "But now all that I asked for has gone."

"My lady," I said in almost as soft a voice, "who did you ask?"

She suddenly became very involved with her horse's mane. We had reined in and were standing under a leafless tree, but a dead oak leaf had been carried on the wind and caught behind her horse's ears. She glanced at me once, a glance I was apparently not supposed to notice.

"You said you'd teach me magic," she said at last. "I don't need all that grammar. All I need is a simple spell, a spell to make me young."

"I'm afraid there isn't a simple spell like that," I said gravely, trying not to reveal how surprised I was at her admission that she needed a spell of youth--or apparently had once had one. "There's a difficult spell, that the young wizards don't even learn until we've been at the school for several years, that will slow down aging, but it won't make one any younger than one already is."

"Even if it's difficult, I know I could learn it," she said with the trace of a smile. "After all, I learned your telephone spell after hearing it once!"

"It's a different kind of spell, and much more difficult," I said, which was partly true, but in part I felt a sense of panic that I had introduced her to magic at all. Our duty as wizards is to help mankind, but every spell, however small, has consequences far beyond the spell itself. It was for this reason that all the teachers at the school agreed, and impressed on us strongly, that part of our responsibility as wizards was not to freely extend the lives of everyone we met.

"You're teasing me because I'm a woman," said the Lady Maria, facing me squarely. "I know I could learn your spell, and I know that magic can make time run backwards."

"Time can't run backwards. It's the most powerful force in nature, and magic can never ultimately change anything natural."

Tears of frustration appeared at the corners of her eyes. "But it can! I've seen it work! Why won't you tell me the truth?"

I was swept with a terror so sharp and sudden that my lips were almost too paralyzed to speak. "My lady, have you been dealing in black magic?"

"No! There's nothing evil in wanting to be young! And all you do is laugh at me!"

She really was crying now. She kicked her horse savagely and galloped away. My own mare turned her head to look at me in inquiry, then, when I continued to sit with the reins slack, started nosing again among the half-frozen grass.

After a minute, I managed to gather up both the reins and my mental strength enough to start back toward the castle. I could see neither the Lady Maria nor the rest of the hunting party, but I wanted to be inside near a fire.

I wondered how it could have taken me so long to realize that the Lady Maria had become involved with black magic. First her extreme youthfulness, then the abrupt loss of that youthfulness, should have made me realize that she had found a magic that mixed truly supernatural power with magic's own natural power.

What I found difficult was to imagine her involved in evil herself. Could the supernatural which gave her magic the power to turn time backwards have been the supernatural power of the saints?

The difficulty here, I told myself, was that the saints seem to have little interest in magic. I wished I had paid more attention in my course on the supernatural to the part about the saints. There had been wizards in the past, as I dimly remembered hearing, who had tried to develop a "white magic" which would be as powerful as black magic, but those wizards must not have had sufficiently pure hearts and motives, for the saints had never listened to them.

Demons, on the other hand, love wicked hearts and perverted motives, and are, at least sometimes, even tractable if one knows precisely what to say. That was why black magic is not only possible but the single biggest danger, as they repeatedly warned us, for overly-ambitious young wizards.

The answer must be that Maria had become involved in someone else's black magic, undoubtedly the same spell that had blighted the king and still suffused the cellars with a sense of evil. This put me back where I had been before, wondering who of the people of Yurt, all of whom I liked, could have been willing to give themselves to the devil.

"Let's be calm and rational," I told my horse, who had responded to a lack of commands from me to slow first to walk and then a complete stop. Maria came to Yurt four years ago with the queen. She and Dominic, who some people thought might make a match, amused themselves during their courting by asking the old wizard to show them some magic tricks. Had he introduced them to black magic?

I didn't feel I knew my predecessor well, but I thought I had spent enough time with him to be able to say, fairly confidently, that he himself had not succumbed to evil. In some ways it was easier to tell with a wizard--I had spent eight years surrounded by nothing but wizards, and even someone trained in the old magic was not as strange to me as the duchess or the Lady Maria.

But who else could it be, if not the stray visitor to the castle that Dominic would have had me believe? I kept on coming back to the chaplain, who had come to the castle a year after the Lady Maria, just about the time that the black magic first had its effect, if I assumed the king's illness was indeed part of that effect.

"No," I said out loud. "Zahlfast is wrong." Maybe theoretically someone who healed could also sicken, but I refused to believe it here. I had paid very close attention in the part of the course that dealt with demons, and I knew that demons would not listen to a request to do good to someone else. A demon would happily do evil to others, but would only be helpful to the person whose soul he claimed.

Therefore, as I had thought all along, the supernatural power that had healed the king had been the power of the saints. Would the saints have listened to Joachim if his heart had been full of evil?

"Unless he'd since repented of that evil," I answered myself, "and his heart was truly contrite." I startled my mare by suddenly digging in my heels. I was not going to allow myself to take this reasoning any further. But then I was suddenly struck by the thought of the old chaplain, the one who had died unexpectedly. Could he have turned to evil, worshipping the devil in his heart while his lips addressed God?

This was a truly terrible thought, and I felt myself go cold and stiff again. If a castle's chaplain had invited in the powers of darkness, had died with his immortal soul in the devil's grasp, would a castle ever be able to recover?

I reassured myself with the thought that a chapel where a man could pray to the saints for a miracle was not a chapel where imps and demons frolicked unchecked. This left me Dominic as my final suspect. I wished I did not feel so much righteous pleasure in suspecting him.

In spite of the highly intermittent nature of my riding, I had at last arrived at the castle gates. I crossed the bridge into the courtyard, with more questions than I had had before but fewer answers. I needed to ask Dominic about his and Maria's attempts to learn magic from the old wizard, and I had no idea how I was going to ask him.

I was nearly as startled as I would have been to meet a demon to find Dominic's slightly red face looking at me as I entered the stables with my mare.

"Prince Dominic!" I stammered. "I thought you were out hunting!"

He frowned, clearly wondering what I could have been doing to make me react so guiltily to his presence. "I'm still worried about my horse's leg," he answered, "so I came in from the hunt."

The thought passed wildly through my mind that the horse's leg might recover more quickly with a lighter rider, but fortunately I was able to suppress any such comment. "I'm glad to see you here, as I'd wanted to ask you some questions," I managed to say instead, wondering what I would ask him.

"But first I have some questions for you," he said, standing up. He always seemed when I was close to him much larger than I remembered. "A royal wizard is supposed to use his powers to serve his king and kingdom, and I'd like to know what you think you're doing with yours."

"Serving the king and kingdom," I said promptly, with as much of a smile as I could manage.

He seemed to find neither humor nor reassurance in this. "All you've done," he said, scowling down at me and speaking slowly and distinctly as though I were slightly demented, "ever since you've come to Yurt, is to produce illusions that terrify the women--"

Fortunately I managed to keep a perfectly expressionless face.

"--and, I discover now, recklessly try to teach the king to fly."

"Didn't you know that?" I said inanely. "He asked me to months ago, back during the summer while the queen was visiting her parents. He wanted to surprise her when she came home."

"I most certainly did not know it," he said, his face growing darker red. This explained, then, the look of fury he had turned on me when we first arrived here and the king had used his rather limited flying powers to dismount. Thinking quickly, I realized that Dominic had never been there before on any of the very few occasions when the king had showed off his ability.

"But what's the harm in it?"

"The harm," he said, still in that careful voice in which rage seemed to boil barely suppressed, "is that any interference in magic processes, as you tried to tell me once yourself, can lead to terrible consequences, and the king's too much of-- too trusting to recognize the dangers. I shouldn't have to remind you of this, Wizard."

I was quite sure he had been going to say that the king was too much of a fool to realize magic's dangers. I wondered if some of Dominic's resentment of the king's flying was that it freed the king from the dependency on his nephew he had had when the queen was away. But now that the king was well--and Dominic had seemed as delighted as anyone else--this dependency would not be at issue anyway. Maybe Dominic himself had already experienced some of the terrible experiences of misused magic.

"And I shouldn't have to remind you," I said, making myself as tall as I could, "that you yourself once interfered in magic processes, and have refused to tell me about what happened then. It's my duty as royal wizard to know all the magic being done in the kingdom."

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Dominic, taking half a step backwards.

I hesitated. My immediate reaction was to push my advantage, to call him a liar to his face, but if he openly denied having ever been involved in magic I knew he never would tell me about it. "Then I'll bid you good day," I said calmly and left the stables.

So far, I thought, crossing the wet cobblestones of the courtyard, I knew no more than I had known that summer. The only advance I seemed to have made was in somehow leading the duchess to believe that I was a well-qualified wizard.

The Lady Maria was at dinner that night, which almost surprised me, but she seemed very cheerful. Since we had been sitting next to each other all week, it would have looked very odd if either of us sat elsewhere, and I also felt it necessary to reestablish our light banter.

"You know everyone's romantic secrets, my lady," I said in a low voice to her during the soup. The soup was made of fish and herbs, actually one of the better productions of the duchess's kitchens, but I could tell that it was ocean fish, not local river fish, and therefore must have been packed up from the City on ice at a remarkable cost.

"But I still don't think I know all your secrets," she replied with a smile, in the same tone, clearly eager to pretend that our afternoon's conversation had never taken place.

"There's one person's secret I hope you might tell me," I said coyly while the soup dishes were being cleared, taking advantage of the rattle of china to mask our conversation. "When the king and his party met you and the present queen's party for the first time, here at the duchess's castle, had there been a rumor that the king might be about to marry the duchess?'

"Oh, no," she said with a little tinkling laugh. "It wasn't like that at all." A servant leaned between us at that point to place the silverware for the next course, and I had a sudden fear that the rumor had in fact been that the king would marry the Lady Maria, and that I had just deeply insulted her by never before having considered this possibility.

But she bent toward me as soon as the servant stepped back and whispered in my ear. "The rumor had been that Dominic was going to marry the duchess."

I came within half a breath of saying, "Dominic?" out loud but stopped myself in time. He was sitting only four places down the table and would certainly have reacted to the sound of his own name.

"Yes," she continued in my ear, clearly enjoying the fact that everyone else at the table noticed we were whispering. "The duchess's servants told our servants that the king wanted to insure the inheritance of Yurt past his own death, so he felt his nephew and heir had to marry. They had come here expressly to arrange a marriage, when our party fortuitously happened to arrive at the same time, and the king met the queen! I don't need to tell you what happened after that!"

"Wizard!" called the duchess from the end of the table. "Does a woman have to be blond for you to let her whisper sweet nothings in your ear?"

"As long as she's as lovely as all the ladies here present," I said gallantly, ignoring what I could tell was a warning stare from the chaplain, "I don't care what color is her hair."

This remark seemed to amuse most of the ladies, and the Lady Maria and I went back to eating. This meant, therefore, that the queen had not married the king to keep him from the duchess, my original and only half-serious thought, even though there was clearly no deep affection between the cousins.

From something that the Lady Maria had told me that summer, I could guess that Dominic had hoped, once he met her, that he and the queen would make a match, and that even the queen's father, Maria's brother, had made some plans in that direction. I didn't know for certain why the original plan for a marriage between Dominic and the duchess didn't go through, but I could guess: he had never been extremely enthusiastic about the plan in the first place, and then when he met the queen he had decided not to take the one cousin when he could not get the other. The king, hoping for a little son of his own, would have stopped worrying about finding a wife for his nephew.

So was that the answer to why the queen had married the king, that she wanted to get away from her father's plans to marry her to someone suitable, when some of these suitable persons might have been even worse than Dominic? It seemed a plausible answer, but it did not answer the real one: who in Yurt had been practicing black magic?

Part Five

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