PART SIX - CHRISTMAS

I

Christmas morning dawned bright and clear. Since there were so many guests in the castle, rather than having the serving maids bring us our breakfasts individually we all assembled in the great hall. Here the cook had produced another masterpiece. Whole hams, platters of steaming sausages and eggs, donuts, crullers, and giant silver teapots were set out on the tables. Everyone was in a jolly Christmas mood; I even saw the chaplain smiling at a joke.

Once we had eaten, it was time for the presents. Packages wrapped in red and green paper, presents from the king and queen to everyone in the castle, were piled under the Christmas tree. The queen distributed these with smiles and laughter. Most of us received gifts of gold coins, or rings, or clothing. I received a new velvet suit, of midnight blue, which I wished I could try on at once. Even our guests received small presents, and the old wizard had to smile when he pulled out a gold ring shaped like an eagle in flight, holding a tiny diamond in its beak. The calico cat played in the scattered ribbon, chasing and biting it.

Then the husbands and wives and lovers gave each other gifts, some of them apparently jokes that they wouldn't let the rest of us see, although they giggled quite a bit. I tried unsuccessfully to spot what was in the box Jon gave Gwen, though it made her smile and blush a most becoming pink before she slammed the lid back on. Most of the ladies received such a present, though not the Lady Maria.

At this point on Christmas morning, it was usually time for Father Noel to come in with presents for the children, except that we had no children in the royal castle of Yurt. The serving girls and stable boys, even the boys being trained in knighthood, were all old enough that they would have been acutely embarrassed to receive a gift from Father Noel. But I knew someone who would love such a gift.

I slipped out while the knights and ladies were still teasing each other over their presents. In my room, I hastily put on my old red velvet pullover, stuffed the stomach round with socks, and draped a piece of rabbit fur I had gotten from the constable's wife around my neck. A little illusion made my eyebrows and beard bushy and white.

"Ho, ho, ho, boys and girls!" I cried as I reentered the hall. "And have you all been good little boys and girls this year?" They recognized me at once, in spite of the disguise, and everyone except one of the boys, who clearly thought he was about to be embarrassed publicly, laughed heartily.

"I've just got one present today, for an especially good little girl," I said, in my best jolly tone. "Let's see, there's a tag on this present, it will tell you who's the lucky girl!"

I made a major production of reaching into my sack and slowly pulling out a large box wrapped in red. "Let me see," reading the tag, "I think this says the present is for, let me be sure here, for someone named Maria. Is there a very good girl named Maria here today?"

She laughed with delight, as I knew she would, and came forward for the box. I let the white bushy beard fade back to my own beard as we watched her open it.

Inside the first box, which she opened with giggles of anticipation, was, not the present she was expecting, but another box, this one wrapped in green. Inside the second box was a much smaller one, this one golden. But inside the third box was the present.

She drew it out slowly, unfolding it to gasps of appreciation from the other ladies. It was a white silk shawl, printed with irises, which I had had packed up from the City earlier in the week. It was big enough to drape over her entire upper body, but delicate enough to be folded into a bundle smaller than her hand.

She put it over her shoulders at once. "Thank you, Father Noel! This is the nicest present this good little girl has ever gotten!"

With general laughter and more joking, people now stood up to go outside, to catch a little fresh air and try to find some sort of appetite for the noon dinner that the cook was already preparing. I hurried back to my chambers to take off the pullover and put on my new blue velvet suit. It fit perfectly. As I turned in front of the mirror, I thought that even if I didn't look mysterious in it, at least I looked dignified.

Back in the courtyard, several of the ladies had begun singing Christmas carols in three-part harmony. It would have been more effective if one of the knights hadn't been teasing them, which made them keep stopping, laughing, and losing their place, but the sound of their high, light voices in the frosty air was very pleasant. As I leaned on the parapet, high above the courtyard, looking out across the snowy hills of the western kingdoms, I thought this was a morning of perfect peace.

A gloved hand closed over mine on the railing, and I discovered the duchess beside me. I had not seen her come up. "Merry Christmas," she said. "I'd been thinking I ought to have a special present for you this morning, but after you gave that shawl to the Lady Maria I realized I'd be wasting my time."

She was teasing me, of course. "Oh, I can love any number of different ladies at the same time," I said airily, gesturing with my free hand. "After all--"

Her grip tightened, but I realized she was not listening to me. "Look, over there. What's that?" she said in an entirely different voice.

I looked. Beyond the forest, high above the hills, a dark cloud was coming rapidly toward us out of the north. But it was flying too low and moving too fast to be a cloud. For a moment I wondered if it might be the air cart, bringing someone to visit from the wizards' school, even though it was coming from the wrong direction. But as it approached, I realized it was much too big to be the air cart.

It was a dragon.

The duchess and I were not the only ones up walking on the parapet, and several other people had seen it too. One lady screamed, but several other people looked toward me questioningly, and one even laughed a little. They thought it might be another illusion.

This was, unfortunately, no illusion, but a real dragon. "Get down!" I yelled. "Get inside!" I grabbed the duchess in my arms and leaped off the edge of the walkway, flying us down and landing in the courtyard with hardly a bump. "Don't let it catch you outdoors!"

Although for a second I was afraid that blind panic would replace complacency, as all the ladies began screaming at once, I did manage to get them herded into the center of the hall. "Keep them calm," I told the duchess. "I've got to try to stop it."

I ran back to the high door out into the courtyard. The dragon had arrived.

It flew to the castle with extreme purposefulness, but now that it was here it seemed to be contemplating its next move with leisurely interest. It was perched on the top of the north tower, looking around with apparent curiosity. Then it looked down at me like a cat observing a mouse. It was too big to fit in the windows or even the door, but if it had wished it could easily reach in a clawed foot to grab us. I was almost gratified to see that it quite closely resembled the illusory dragon I had created last month, down to the emerald scales, even though mine had had six legs and this one four. But the red eyes did not glow with magic: rather, with active intelligence.

What was I going to do with a dragon? My mind seemed incapable of thought. For a moment the dragon and I locked glances, then it shot out a thin tongue of flame from its nostrils, and I had to jump back.

I found Joachim at my elbow. He had his crucifix before him and a grim expression on his face. "Don't go out," I said. "It's not evil; it's just a dragon."

"But it could kill us all!"

"Of course it could, and it probably will. It's doubtless very hungry after flying for thousands of miles, down from the northern land of magic. In a few minutes it may decide to start dismantling the castle with its claws. But it's still not evil incarnate, just the wild forces of natural magic, unchecked by any wizardry."

If Joachim was startled to hear this calm, academic statement he gave no sign. I was fairly startled myself to discover that my mind was compensating for a lack of good ideas by the repetition of a phrase from a half-forgotten lecture.

But why was there a dragon in Yurt? The dragons never, or almost never, left the northernmost land of wild magic. I caught a glimpse of the old wizard from the corner of my eye and remembered him saying that he thought that too many wizards practicing magic had worn the channels of magic so smooth that anything might come slipping in.

But surely my own magic was rough enough not to invite a dragon! The wizard at any rate did not say, "I told you so." He stood next to the chaplain and me, while we looked out at the dragon and it looked at us, and both sides tried to think what to do next. Until such time as it decided to start ripping the walls down, we were fairly safe, because I did not think it could reach all the way to the center of the great hall, in spite of its size.

The dragon was truly enormous. Its feet were planted on top of the north tower, its long scaly neck stretched far across the courtyard, and its spiny tail hung nearly to the ground. Its red eyes darted to and fro, and its wide mouth lolled open, revealing hundreds of teeth and a long forked tongue. It seemed to be wondering which ones of us to eat first.

The old wizard attacked. Suddenly, zipping around the dragon's head, there were a cloud of red bubbles, which darted, touched him, and sprang away again. But if this was intended to distract the dragon or even drive him away, it was ineffective. Clinging to the doorpost, thinking this had to be a bad dream and that Gwen would wake me soon, I watched as the dragon batted the bubbles of illusion away with one clawed foot and looked down at us with growing irritation.

There was a commotion behind us, and then Dominic and the duchess pushed past us, leading a group of knights. They were all armed with swords, spears, and shields, and several carried bows. Dominic may have bolted in terror from my illusory dragon, but he seemed to have no hesitation in facing a real one. I was ashamed that he, at least, seemed to have an excellent idea what to do.

With a roar from Dominic, the small war party charged. They ran up the stairs toward the parapet, trying to get closer, and the first archers set off a flurry of arrows.

But these bounced harmlessly from the emerald scales. The dragon turned sharply around, and as its tail swung it ripped roof slates loose. The knights and the duchess had their shields up just in time to protect themselves from a roaring burst of flame. As the dragon readied itself for another breath, they lowered the shields for a second and threw their spears.

Most of the spears bounced off as harmlessly as the arrows had done, but one lodged for a second in the dragon's throat. It reared back, clawing at the spear until it fell, but where it had pierced the skin was a tiny drop of black blood.

"The dragon's throat," said the old wizard in my ear. "It's the one vulnerable point on its body."

But the knights did not have a chance to try throwing their spears again. The dragon leaped at them, beating its scaled wings, and with a swipe of a claw had knocked several into the courtyard, where they landed with metallic crashes. Then the dragon sprang upwards and circled over the castle, its head back, roaring in pain. In the few seconds before it returned, we ran out into the courtyard, helped the knights gather up their companions, and dragged them into the relative safety of the hall.

All of them were scorched, and several were badly wounded. Dominic, who had been knocked off the wall, seemed to have several broken ribs. He was the worst, but all had suffered in one way or another. The duchess was not directly wounded, but all her hair, where it protruded from her helmet, had been burned off.

The dragon returned to the top of the north tower, where it lashed its tail and looked down at us with real fury. I glanced over my shoulder. The chaplain was helping deal with the wounded. Most of the women in the castle were clinging together in the center of the hall, all with white faces and many sobbing uncontrollably. The king and queen, their hands linked, were embracing as many as they could reach, ladies and servants alike, and trying to talk soothingly.

I was shocked to see a dancing pair of blue eyes among the stricken faces. The Lady Maria, with rapt attention, was thoroughly enjoying the dragon.

The duchess was exchanging her shield for another, less scorched, and picking up a spear as though planning to go out again. "Stay here," I told her. "You can't stop it with force." My slow mind had at last given me an idea.

I started to make myself invisible. I started with the feet, pronouncing the heavy syllables of the Hidden Language as quickly as I could. The feet disappeared, then the knees, then the thighs, and I was further than I had ever before gone with this spell. But at the waist I became stuck. The top half of my body remained obstinately visible.

"Cover me with illusion," I told the old wizard. "I've got to get close enough to the dragon's throat to try to pierce it." The duchess, realizing what I was doing, handed me her spear. Fortunately, I was able to make the spear itself invisible without difficulty, while still maintaining the invisibility spell on my lower body.

"All right," said the old wizard. "Go!" I stepped on invisible legs into the courtyard and launched myself into the air.

I looked down at my upper torso. The old wizard had made me into a particularly ugly bird, clearly too small to be a person, and, I hoped, too unappetizing for the dragon to eat at once.

The dragon was scratching with whimpers of pain at its throat. When it saw me, it lowered its claw and opened its mouth. I darted upwards as a tongue of fire shot under me. But, uninterested, the dragon returned at once to scratching. I considered chirping to give my birdlike form an air of verisimilitude but decided not to stretch my luck.

I circled delicately, trying to find a good angle for a spear thrust. I couldn't see the spear but I could feel it, gripped tight in my sweaty palms, and I hoped I had the point forward. Twice the dragon reached up to bat me away, and twice I had to duck as deadly razor-sharp claws passed within an inch of my invisible legs.

And then my chance came. Its head back, the dragon was roaring again, and I flew as fast as I could straight toward it, and thrust the spear with all my strength toward the base of the throat.

But just as I thought I had it, the dragon twisted its neck, and the spear, clanging uselessly against the heavy scales, was jerked from my hands.

I dropped to the ground outside the wall, waiting for the dragon to come after me. Maybe at least I could lure it away from the castle. But I knew it could fly far faster than I could.

But it did not pursue me. It sounded instead as though it had decided to start taking the roof off the great hall.

I flew back up in time to see the chimney topple. The screams from within seemed to excite the dragon. But as it saw me its scarlet nostrils flared, and again I was nearly burnt to cinders.

Then all around the dragon was a new cloud of red balls, bigger than before, swirling, popping, ducking and weaving. I dropped into the courtyard to pick up an abandoned spear and realized that I too had become an illusory red ball.

With my new spear newly invisible, I rose into the cloud of balls. Furiously angry, the dragon clawed at the balls and roasted them with fire, but both his talons and his breath passed harmlessly through them. Camouflaged among them, ready to dart up or down, I waited for my opportunity.

When it came I almost missed it. Half obscured by the red balls, the dragon's throat appeared before me, the tiny wound in the center and all the scratches around it oozing black blood. Too close for a rapid approach and not daring to back up, I swung my feet up against the beast's neck and plunged the spear with all the force in my body into the space between them.

And the spear went home. A geyser of burning dragon blood covered me, blinded me, so that I was barely able to keep on flying. The roar of the dragon above me could have been my own scream. The tail in its writhing caught me, whirled me far out beyond the castle walls, so that my invisibility spell was knocked completely from my mind, and if I hadn't been able to free one eye in time to see the ground coming up toward me, the flying spell might have failed me as well.

I dropped gently to earth, looking back toward the castle. The dragon was in its death throes, still spurting blood. It managed to pull out the spear, but too late, for it had penetrated its heart. Pieces of the castle went flying as it rolled in agony. Then, with a final roar, it slumped lifeless over the wall.

I took a deep breath and gathered up some snow to scrub my face. My hands were rubbed raw, all my ribs ached, and I had some lacerations and bruises, but other than that I thought I was unwounded. But my new Christmas suit was completely ruined by dragon's blood.

II

I walked back slowly toward the castle. It was incredible to me that only the evening before, after turning the young count into a frog, I had imagined myself a competent wizard. This was my worst failure ever. I had never before managed to destroy half a castle.

One would have expected, I thought, that a royal wizard would be able to deal with a product of wild magic without coming as close to getting himself and everyone else killed as I had done. For all I knew, there was a simple spell against dragons, taught in one of the lectures I had missed. I would certainly have to apologize abjectly to the king and queen. As I reached the castle and crossed the drawbridge, I wondered if I would have to resign as well.

I was highly startled when, as I stepped into the courtyard, the queen threw herself into my arms, heedless of the dragon's blood, and began showering me with kisses. I would have been able to respond more enthusiastically if I had not been so surprised.

In a few seconds she pulled herself away. "Oh, excuse me, I don't want to seem forward, but I'm so grateful! You're our hero! You saved Yurt!" Maybe, I thought, I would not have to resign after all.

The rest of the people in the castle who could still walk were mobbed around me, laughing and jumping to get a better look at me. "Our hero! The savior of Yurt! He killed the dragon!"

"Well, yes, but it took me an awful long time to do it!" I protested. "Don't thank someone who almost let the castle be destroyed! The old wizard is the real hero."

They pulled the old wizard forward. "What are you talking about?" he said irritably. "Don't go putting your blame on me!"

"But you're the hero," I said. "You're the one who distracted the dragon long enough so that I could spear him! I never could have gotten close enough without your illusions."

"Took you long enough to do the business, too," he grunted, which was actually my assessment as well.

The king was checking the outer walls, but most of us went into the hall, where several of the wounded were already bandaged. Dominic was groaning steadily. "I wonder if the pigeons are still alive and flying, so that we could send for the doctor," said the constable, and hurried off to the south tower to see.

The hall had escaped much better than I had feared. The chimney had collapsed into the fireplace, and several of the windows were broken, but I was pleased to see that the Christmas tree was untouched.

"Well, I guess we'll just all have to squeeze into the kitchens for Christmas dinner!" said the queen.

"It's going to be hours late," said the cook.

"I must say," said the young count, who had not said anything since the dragon first appeared, "that I think this affair was all handled very sloppily. Castles should have established procedures to deal with emergencies." But no one paid him any attention--though I thought I heard one of the stable boys make a sound like a bullfrog just before he dissolved into hysterical giggles.

The queen stayed by my side. I was beginning to wish I had paid more attention while she was kissing me, but she showed no signs of starting again. "I'm afraid you've gotten dragon's blood on your dress," I said, as a hint that I had noticed how close she had been, only moments before. "And I feel terrible about my velvet suit, just after you and the king gave it to me."

She smiled. "I don't mind about my dress." I wondered if this was because it was the dress that was the same color as the duchess's dress. "We'll order you a new suit at once. I can see we'll have to order quite a few things in the next few days. Do you want midnight blue again, or would you prefer a different color?'

"One just like this would be exactly right."

I lowered myself into a chair, feeling more bruised than I had originally thought. The king was back and talking to the constable about arranging for repairs.

"Come here, Master," I called to the old wizard, and he came toward me, frowning. He had the calico cat in his arms, but all the cat's fur was standing on end and its eyes were wild. "I want to thank you for saving my life. I can't thank you for saving the castle, but only because it's not my castle."

"At least you took advantage of what little magic you knew," he said grumpily.

"Also I wanted to ask you something," I said, starting to feel more cheerful. If the king did not think Yurt was irredeemably destroyed, maybe it had not been. After all, he had already been out to make sure his rose garden had not suffered. "I've heard that being bathed in dragon's blood makes one's skin harder than steel. Is this true?'

The queen excused herself to talk to the cook, who was showing no signs of starting dinner.

The wizard snorted. "I don't know what kind of old witch's story they tell you at that school, but all dragon blood does is make you stink. You'd better take a bath. And that reminds me. You there!" to the constable. "You'd better get the dragon's body cut up and dragged away from the castle right away. It will start rotting in a few hours, and the castle will become unbearable."

The constable sent out some of the young men with saws. I decided I was enough of a wounded hero not to have to join in.

"I'm going to take a bath right away, Master," I said. "But before I do, I want to talk to you about that dragon."

"I'd warned you what all this loose wizardry would come to."

The hubbub of the hall was all down at the far end, and no one was near us. "That dragon didn't just come by itself. That dragon was summoned."

He thought about this for a moment in silence. "So who do you think summoned it? You're not accusing me, are you?"

"No. But I think you know far more about what's happened in Yurt in the last three years than you've told me, and I think the dragon's coming is part of that. Did you know that your magic locks were gone from the north tower?"

"I found out this morning. Went out to inspect them while you were flirting with the duchess after breakfast."

So much for my efforts to keep an eye on the wizard!

"Why didn't you tell me, young whippersnapper? Were they just broken today?"

"They've been gone since I first arrived. I didn't dare tell you because I was afraid you'd blame me, and you'd said there was nothing up in the tower anyway. Master, you've got to tell me. What's escaped from the tower?"

For a minute I was afraid he would say nothing. He kept patting the cat, which was gradually calming down, although it clearly did not like the smell of blood on me. At last he said, "Well, you're Royal Wizard of Yurt now, and I'm retired, so it's your problem." And he told me.

Even though I had been expecting this, my veins turned to ice. I would have to get into a hot bath before I died, but I knew I would never have another chance to talk like this to the old wizard. "How long has it been here?"

"I first found it three years ago."

I decided it would be undiplomatic to remind the old wizard that he had categorically denied any supernatural presence in the castle while he was Royal Wizard.

"I don't know who summoned it to Yurt in the first place," he continued, "but finding it wasn't very difficult, once it arrived. The old chaplain, this one's predecessor, found it too. He blamed me for it, even though I'd never imagined to myself that the powers of darkness were romantic--not like you!"

I nodded, not daring to protest.

"Interfering old busy-body! He tried to catch it himself, with his bell and candle. Pretty ineffective, I thought. No wonder it killed him."

He must have seen the horror on my face, even though his eyes were directed toward the cat, for he snorted. "I'm sure the old priest died with his soul 'intact,' if that's what you and your friend the young chaplain are worried about. He was chasing it around the parapets, and he fell off. Nobody knew how he'd fallen, except for me, and I didn't see any reason to say. Terrible accident, they all agreed. You can imagine I didn't tell that young priest anything about it!"

"But you caught it?" I said in a low voice, as he stopped and did not start again.

"It took me close to three years. It took all the magic I knew, and then some. But I finally cornered it in my study and put the binding spells on it. It had been out far too long for me to send it back, but at least I could bind it so it couldn't move."

Except that it had moved.

"I locked the tower so the person who had summoned it couldn't get in to free it, and, just in case it did break loose, I put separate spells around the outside of the castle, so it couldn't cross the moat."

"Did Dominic know about this?"

The old wizard glanced at me sideways. "How did you guess that? He did. I needed his help, near the end. He's not the person I would have chosen, but he'd somehow already found out about it. He was the one who did the drawing while I held it down with my spells."

The cat was almost asleep on the wizard's lap now. "We caught it just in time, too. I was afraid black magic was starting to kill the king, so I was pleased to see him so much better when I arrived yesterday. Maybe he's hoping for that baby boy again!"

The wizard stood up abruptly, scooped up the startled cat, and settled it on his shoulder. "Well, young wizard, it's your castle and your problem now. Capturing it once wore me out so thoroughly I decided to retire at once. Catching it again is the job for a youngster with fancy magic from the City."

He started stumping toward the door.

"Where are you going?" said the king. "You can't be leaving already! We haven't even had Christmas dinner!"

"I'd rather eat my vegetables at peace in the woods than eat a fancy dinner to the smell of dragon's blood!"

I turned toward my own chambers, in search of a bath, without waiting to see the end of the argument, for I already knew how it would end. At least I was pleased that the old wizard's hand, with which he was gesturing, wore the king's Christmas ring.

Lying in the bathtub, completely submerged except for my face, I could feel my bruised muscles starting to relax, but I did not dare relax too much. The old wizard had clearly guessed more than he had told me. But even he might not know why the dragon had appeared today.

As long as I stayed in the tub, I imagined, I would not have to deal with this. After all, evil had been loose in the castle for three years, without permanent damage to Yurt, so maybe another three years wouldn't matter much either.

But I could not persuade myself of this, because I knew it was not true. The old wizard had known that too, and that was why he had returned abruptly to the forest, before I could enlist his aid.

The bath water was cold. I surged up and out of the tub, reaching for a towel. This was my kingdom and my problem.

III

The hall, with its fireplace destroyed, was unusable for dinner, but the kitchen was just about big enough to squeeze in the tables, and it was certainly warm enough. Pushed companionably close together, so that the smell of singed hair was all around us, we ate oyster stew, roast beef, and plum pudding.

Several of the kitchen maids had broken down completely and were unable to help, and the cook's own stability had lapses, so dinner was served in a leisurely manner, with pauses between courses while the next course was prepared. The queen, the Lady Maria, and several of the other ladies helped, all of them considering it quite a joke.

"Well, this will certainly be a Christmas we'll always remember!" said the old count.

Since everyone had survived, and even the worst of the wounded looked as though they would mend without grave danger, the mood had become lighthearted. Several of the knights seem positively to have welcomed the rare chance to do something warlike, even though their swords and spears had been useless against the dragon. The terrors of the morning and the repair work of the weeks to come were primarily subjects for triumphant mirth.

While waiting for the courses, we sang Christmas carols. I did a few illusions, since the old wizard was no longer there with his much better ones. I made sure that all of mine were simple and pleasant, such as a shining golden egg that broke open to reveal an adult peacock. Even the young count managed to smile fairly amiably. I had never seen the Lady Maria so gay and lighthearted, even before the grey hairs had started to appear.

Only Dominic, heavily strapped around the body and needing help eating because his right wrist was broken, sat silent and glowering. He, at any rate, seemed unlikely to have summoned a dragon that had nearly killed him.

When the blazing plum pudding had been brought from the stove to the table, served and eaten with more cries of appreciation than normal, the duchess said, "Why don't all of you come to my castle for the rest of the twelve days of Christmas?"

"But we couldn't possibly leave the royal castle during the holidays!" protested the queen.

"You can't possibly enjoy a happy holiday in your castle the way it is now," said the duchess with a laugh. "Bring everybody along! I sent my whole staff home to their families for vacation, so there should be plenty of room in my castle if we double up in the chambers. It's going to take a while to repair this castle, and you're going to have trouble hiring any carpenters or masons for the next two weeks anyway. You don't want to have to start work just when everyone wants to relax and enjoy the festivities."

"But everything's here!" continued the queen. "The food, the decorations, even the tree!"

"Bring them all along!"

"And if you like," said the old count, "we can spend New Year's with the duchess and go on to spend Epiphany at our castle!"

I was delighted with this suggestion. Even though I knew now what had been in the old wizard's tower room, I still did not know who had summoned it. If we could get everybody, really everybody, out of the royal castle of Yurt while I tried to figure this out, we might all be much safer.

"What a wonderful offer, my lady!" I said, even though the decision was certainly not mine to make. "A week of relaxing is exactly what we all need!"

While the queen was turning to me in surprise, startled at the loss of someone she had expected to be her ally against the duchess, the king said, "The wizard's right. Thank you for a most generous offer! We'll go tomorrow!"

As it turned out, we did not leave until the second day. We all awoke late and irritable. Christmas was over, and the lighthearted mood of the night before was gone. The wounded complained about their cracks and bruises, and I was covered with blisters from the dragon's blood. Clearly my predecessor had no first-hand experience with dragons. The wounded knights, the doctor from the village told us, needed a day to rest and become at least a little less stiff before they could be loaded into horse litters.

The king directed the repairs that absolutely had to be done before we could leave: the boarding up of broken windows, the replacing of slates where the roof was only minimally damaged, the rigging of covers in those areas where it was clear that all the slates would have to be removed and some of the beams replaced.

I spent much of the day in the kitchen, my feet up before the main fireplace, while the cook and the kitchen maids packed up the two weeks' worth of food they had stocked for the holidays. The cook got into a prolonged quarrel with the constable's wife, insisting that she had to take along her own pans, not trusting the duchess's kitchen to have what she needed. Most of the staff in the kitchen were too busy to pay any attention to me, but Gwen put poultices on my face and changed them assiduously every hour. By evening, the blisters were almost gone, even though my ribs were aching worse than ever.

The queen reconciled herself to the trip to the duchess's castle by taking literally her suggestion to bring everything along. She and the Lady Maria spent much of the day on the stepladders, taking down all the ornaments they had put up just two days earlier, and packing them ready to go. Even the Christmas tree itself was gently lowered and strapped to a sledge with a tarpaulin over it.

Supper was a simple meal, except for the the fruitcake. Everyone was too tired to talk very much. The chief conversation was between the queen and the constable.

"But, my lady, someone has to stay here in Yurt."

"No, I won't allow it. You deserve a cheerful holiday as much as the rest of us--more, in fact."

"If the castle stands empty, a thief might break in."

"This is a castle," she said with an exasperated laugh. "When we go, the last person out can raise the drawbridge and leave by the postern gate, and then not even an army will be able to break in. Even with the damage to some of the parapets, the walls are still sound. There used to be wars in the western kingdoms, after all, and castles were built to withstand concerted siege! Certainly this castle will be impenetrable to a common thief!"

"In the days of sieges, there were defenders in the castle to push back the scaling ladders from the walls."

I stayed out of the discussion. There was no way I could pretend to have the authority to decide this, and, besides, I was fairly sure the queen would prevail.

She did in the end, but only because the constable's wife finally said, "Please, dear, I'd like to have a few more days of merry holidays myself."

I felt relieved as I crossed the dark courtyard to my chambers, carrying a candle, even though I was aching in every bone. My breath in the candlelight made a frosty cloud around me. Zahlfast had first noticed that the supernatural influence stopped at the castle's moat, and the old wizard had told me he had put special binding spells at the castle's periphery. At the duchess's castle, we should at least be free of the direct influence of black magic, and maybe my mind would work better than it seemed to be doing today.

Beyond the castle walls, I could hear foxes barking over the dragon's carcass. I still did not know what to make of the stranger. He had refused to let me find out anything about him by turning that sensation of evil against me like a weapon. But I was beginning to wonder if the old wizard knew something about the stranger that he was not telling me.

The old apprenticeship system for learning wizardry had never been actually ended. It had merely withered away over the course of the last hundred and fifty years, as it became obvious that it was quicker and easier for a young man to study with the wizards in the City, where all of modern wizardry was arranged in books and coursework, than to put up with the crotchets of a single teacher. When I had asked the old wizard about studying herbal magic with him, he had referred extremely vaguely to his last apprentice.

I had thought at the time that he must know exactly who that last apprentice had been, and now I had a suspicion why he had not wanted to talk about him. That apprentice may have taken the plunge into black magic, and the old wizard knew it.

He must have been living in the woods near Yurt for years, maybe with the old wizard's knowledge, and maybe not. At any rate, I speculated, he had taken advantage of the few days between when the old wizard had retired from Yurt and I had arrived to move into the castle and establish himself in the cellars. When he realized I was a young, relatively incompetent wizard, he had become bold. He had broken the magic locks to get into the north tower, and had had to break my lock on the cellar door when I had inadvertently locked him out--or in.

I lit all the magic lamps from both of my rooms and arranged them near my shoulders. I did not like to think of a wizard who had given his soul to the devil standing there in the dark, waiting, perhaps avidly, as I had blundered down the wet cellar corridors.

But how had he squeezed in and out the small window in the iron door? In a moment, I realized this wouldn't be a problem for a highly competent wizard. He could temporarily transform himself into something much smaller, if necessary--even I could probably do so, now, though I preferred not to try. In the first transformation class they always told the story of the young wizard who had turned himself into a purple bird who couldn't form the words of the Hidden Language with its beak. It had therefore been unable to turn himself back, and it had flown away in panic before any other wizards could help.

Someone I knew, I thought, someone in the castle, must have become involved with the evil wizard. This was the point where my speculations became very difficult. This evil wizard, even if he had been living near the castle, could have no reason I could think of to put an evil spell on the king three years ago and summon the supernatural into the castle. Therefore, someone else must have wanted that spell, someone else must have asked for his help. I was brought back again, in spite of my best efforts, to the arrival of the queen in Yurt.

I stood up determinedly to start getting ready for bed. If the stranger had been a former apprentice of the old wizard, I was impressed with the power of his magic, stronger than anything I had seen, even at the school, in its imperviousness to my best spells. The old magic still had something to offer someone trained in the City.

With my red velvet jacket in my hands, I stopped to consider again. There ought to be some record of the old wizard's apprentices, who would after all have had to live in the castle. I pulled my jacket back on and hurried out into the night.

The constable and his wife were not yet in bed, but they were naturally surprised when I banged on the door of their chambers. "A list of the old wizard's apprentices? You need that tonight, sir?"

"Yes, I do. I'm sorry, but I can't tell you why, other than that it has to do with the dragon."

"It might take a while to find the information. He never had an apprentice in the time that I've been at Yurt. I'd have to go through my predecessor's records."

"I'm sorry, I know you're very tired, but I really need that information now."

"I'll help you find the right ledgers if you want," the constable's wife said to him. "Can't you see how worried the boy is?"

I was glad enough for her support not to mind being called a boy, although I did wonder if she would ever think of me as a man. The constable unlocked a cabinet, and he and his wife started taking out old ledger books.

Previous constables, it turned out, had kept very careful track of everyone who lived in the castle; the present constable, I assumed, had noted just as assiduously the day that I had first arrived. When my predecessor had first come to Yurt a hundred and eighty years earlier, he had quickly acquired apprentices. Usually he had only had one at a time, but there were periods in which he had three or even four. Some left after only a short period; one stayed for a dozen years.

Then, a hundred and thirty or a hundred and forty years ago, the supply of apprentice wizards had dwindled. This would have been, I thought, at the time when the reputation of the wizards' school in the City had begun to spread. I bent close over the ledger, squinting to read the faded brown ink of the then constable's tidy handwriting. For a long time the wizard of Yurt had had no apprentices at all.

And then he had a final one, one who had stayed in Yurt for nearly ten years. "That's right," said the constable. "He was the last. He left eighty-two years ago. The final indication we have was that he had taken up a post of his own."

This was it, I thought. It would be impossible to give the stranger a precise age, but, even though he must certainly have slowed down his own aging with powerful magic, I doubted he could be older than a hundred and twenty. "Where did he go?"

The wizard's last apprentice, according to the ledgers, had left Yurt to become the wizard in a count's castle in one of the larger of the western kingdoms, located a hundred and fifty miles away. Even that long ago, I thought, someone without a diploma from the school would have had to be satisfied with less than being a royal wizard.

I thanked the constable and his wife profusely and went back to my own chambers. My bones, I noticed, seemed less stiff. As soon as it was light enough for the pigeons to fly, I would send a message to that kingdom and begin to track down what had happened to the old wizard's last apprentice.

IV

We prepared to leave early in the morning. The sky was grey and the wind damp and chill. I sent my message by the pigeons, asking that an answer be sent to the duchess's castle. Since my message would have to be relayed through the City's postal system, I could not expect an answer for several days.

When we had all ridden out, the drawbridge was raised, the first time I had seen it done since coming to Yurt. The gears turned with a rusty screech. The two men who had raised the bridge then came out of the tiny postern gate, and last of all the constable came after them. He locked the postern carefully and balanced on the stepping stones across the moat to join us. The castle looked dark and forbidding under the dark sky; I doubted very much that any thief would try to cross the moat and scale those high walls.

If the old wizard's last apprentice was in the cellars, I thought, let him enjoy the empty castle. He'd certainly be able to break into the main storerooms if he needed food, but at least he wouldn't be able to enjoy any of the cook's fruitcake or Christmas candy, all of which was coming with us. I hadn't wanted to tell anyone else that someone who had sold his soul to the devil might be rummaging through their rooms while they were gone. But I myself, as well as putting magic locks on my door and all my windows as carefully as I knew how, had brought along several of my most important books, including the Diplomatica Diabolica. The stable boy who helped me load a pack horse had not commented; let him think that wizards needed mysterious heavy objects wherever they went.

We rode as quickly as we could go with the horse litters; no one wanted to linger in the bitter wind. I rode next to Joachim, but we barely exchanged a word. He, I suspected, was wondering if I had had anything to do with the dragon's appearance. I didn't know how to reassure him that I hadn't without also confessing that I had only a guess as to who had. At least, I thought, what the wizard had told me about the old chaplain's death made it clear that the beginnings of evil in Yurt must have preceded, rather than coincided with, Joachim's arrival.

Considering that I had been hired as the chief magic-worker in Yurt, I thought, there seemed to have been a very large number of people in the castle already who had become involved in magic. There was the stranger, who I was starting to assume was identical with the old wizard's last apprentice; there was whoever had first put the spell on the king, who I kept fearing might turn out to be the queen, in spite of what she had told me on Christmas Eve; and there was the Lady Maria, who had certainly seen or been involved in black magic at some point.

The Lady Maria managed to position her horse next to mine after the brief lunch break. "I haven't had a chance to talk to you for two days," she said. "But I've been wanting to tell you how exciting and romantic it was to see you defeat the dragon."

Since there didn't seem to be any good answer to this, I merely nodded gravely.

"If the dragon had killed you," she said in great seriousness, "I would have always treated the shawl you gave me, such a short time earlier, as a sacred object."

If the dragon had killed me, I thought, it probably would have gone on to kill everybody else, unless one of the knights had been able to get in a lucky spear thrust. In this case Maria, being dead, would not have been able to treat the silk shawl or anything else as a special object. But all I said was, "Don't let the chaplain hear you referring to a simple shawl as sacred."

She laughed as though this were a highly witty remark and went on to tell me how excited and how terrified she had been by the dragon. Since I had seen her then, I thought excitement rather than terror had been the dominant emotion on her part, but I was not at all unwilling to confess how terrified I had been myself.

By riding rapidly and taking the shortest rests possible, we were able to reach the duchess's castle just before the early sunset of midwinter. Her constable and chaplain, the only members of her staff to stay at the castle over Christmas, had been warned we were coming and met us at the gate.

Our cook with her kitchen maids put together a quick supper, slowed down somewhat by her insistence that all the pans she found in the kitchen be packed up and the pans from Yurt unpacked and put in their places, before she could begin. Although every effort had been made to position the injured knights carefully in their litters, several were bleeding from wounds that had reopened during the ride, and Dominic was telling anyone who would listen that he was sure there were several fresh cracks in his ribs from the jostling.

But it was still a relief to be warm and snug in a castle without any damage done to it at all, and the next morning we all awoke more cheerful, in spite of a steady fall of sleet outside. Several of the younger ladies announced that they had been looking forward for months to a Christmas dance, and they intended to have one.

The morning was spent setting up the Christmas tree, rehanging it with all the ornaments, including my predecessor's miniature magic lights, and putting up the rest of the decorations. The brass players had brought their instruments and could be heard practicing snatches of dance carols.

In the middle of the afternoon, the dancing began. The ladies had unpacked their brightest dresses, curled their hair, and perfumed their shoulders. The unwounded knights were dressed more uniformly, in the formal blue and white livery of Yurt, and all seemed to be enjoying themselves hugely. I sat in a little balcony above the great hall, watching and wondering when I might expect to receive an answer to my message.

In spite of the liveliness of the music, which had the other watchers tapping their toes and swaying their shoulders, I scarcely paid attention to the brightly-lit scene below. The best I could expect, I thought, was an answer from whoever was now count in the castle where the old wizard's last apprentice had gone, and perhaps some indication of when that apprentice had left. But the records in another castle might not be as good as the records of the royal castle of Yurt, and, besides, the count might see no reason to pull out dusty ledgers to answer the letter of a wizard of whom he'd never heard.

Even if I received a detailed answer, I was not sure what it would tell me, other than that the apprentice had left there, which I thought I already knew. Two nights ago, finding him in the constable's ledgers, I had thought I was well on the way to tracking down the mysterious stranger, but now I wasn't sure what good it could do me to follow his movements before he became established in Yurt's cellars.

In the first break in the dancing, while the dancers caught their breaths and the brass players shook the moisture from their instruments, the cook brought out punch and Christmas cookies. In the second break, however, they called for me.

"Come on down, Wizard!" called the young count, who had been leading the last set. "Show us some Christmas-time entertainments!"

Since this was asked almost politely, and he had suppressed any comments about entertainments being all wizards were suited for, I decided to oblige. For the most part, I made cascades of colored stars and a selection of red and green furry animals that scampered and played for a minute in the middle of the hall before disappearing with a pop. I also did a trick with two red balls, one real and one illusory, in which I mixed them up and made members of my audience guess which was which. Since they guessed wrong more than half the time, reaching out for what they thought was the real ball only to find that their hand passed right through it, this trick was considered a great success. To complete my entertainments, I made an illusory golden basket, piled high with colored fruit that shone like rubies and emeralds, and presented it to the Lady Maria.

She had been sitting by herself, not taking part in the dancing. Instead she smiled and nodded in an almost matronly manner, as though she were an old woman remembering the dances of her youth. Even when the old count tried to lead her out on the dance floor, she laughed and refused. When the dancing started again, I sat with her.

"Why don't you ask one of the young ladies to dance?" she inquired.

"I'm still too bruised from the dragon," I said, loud enough that the young ladies could hear me too. Since there was a shortage of men, I was worried about being pressed into service. "Besides, I'm just enjoying sitting here with you."

I expected her to smile, as she normally did at all my gallant and meaningless sallies, but she was looking at the illusory basket I had given her, which was perched on the table beside her and was gradually fading. "Perhaps that's what I'm like," she said, but so softly I was fairly sure I was not supposed to overhear. As irritated as I had sometimes been at her fecklessness, I liked this even less.

Supper was announced after the next set of dances. As we were finishing eating, there was a clatter in the courtyard, and a group of people in disguises raced into the hall. "Good," said the duchess. "It's the mummers from the village. They must have heard I was back."

There were about a dozen of them, all wearing ordinary working clothes that had been transformed by the application of beads and sequins, or by combining different items of clothes in unusual ways. Their faces were painted, and they wore foil crowns, unusual hats, and, in one case, goat's horns.

They ran around the hall twice, gabbling and waving their arms. One of the girls was wearing a man's tunic and was apparently intended to represent the duchess herself. At first she stepped out boldly, but then on the second pass around the hall she became shy and tried to conceal herself behind her companions. The duchess seemed to find it hilarious.

Then the men in foil crowns and enough beads and sequins to suggest kings came forward, challenged each other, blew shrill blasts on tin horns, and began giving each other great blows with wooden swords. Racing around them, prodding them into even fiercer action, was the man in the goat's horns. He was dressed entirely in red, and I had trouble laughing and applauding after I realized he was supposed to represent a demon.

The wounded "kings" fell back from the fight and collapsed into the arms of the sequined women who were supposed to be the queens. The girl who had been wearing the man's tunic now pulled on a white shift and a foil halo to come forward as an angel, whose touch caused the kings to jump up with a clapping of hands and race once again around the hall. All of us applauded and dropped a few coins in the chief king's hat as he circled the tables.

"Now we're starting to have a properly Merry Christmas," said the duchess after the mummers had raced out. "Tomorrow, let's celebrate the Feast of Fools!"

Good, I thought. A festival just for wizards like me.

V

I had of course heard of the Feast of Fools, even though we had had nothing similar in the City when I was young. At some big country houses, on a day between Christmas and New Year's, for the whole day the ordinary social structures were reversed, and a boy became the lord and the lord a stable boy.

But while I knew what happened in a general way on the Feast, I was still startled to wake and find the queen in my bedroom, as a dark, sleeting morning began outside the window. I pulled the blankets up to my chin.

"Here's your breakfast, Chaplain," she said with a laugh, presenting me with a breakfast tray.

I reached for it hesitantly. It contained a donut, rather stale, but also a hot cup of tea. "Why are you calling me the chaplain?"

"We're all backwards today," she said with a smile. "I'm the kitchen maid; Gwen and Jon are the queen and king; and you and the chaplain are taking each other's positions. When you're ready to get dressed, get some of his vestments and give him some of your clothes to wear."

Neither of the chaplains, the duchess's nor Joachim, liked this plan at all. "Chaplains never take part in the Feast of Fools," said the duchess's chaplain loftily.

"But this is an unusual Christmas!" the queen insisted. She seemed to be taking direction of the Feast, perhaps, I thought, to wrest control from the duchess. "You won't have to do anything evil."

I ended up having to go into the chapel for morning service in the chaplains' place, wearing an old set of robes from the duchess's chaplain. If the members of the staff who came to the chapel, dressed in finery, had expected me to give a satirical version of the service, however, they were disappointed, for I merely laid the Bible on the altar, lit the candles, and went out again. Until I had decided what to do about Yurt, I did not dare risk offending the powers of the supernatural.

In the great hall, Gwen and Jon, wearing very fancy and very old draperies that I assumed had come from chests in the duchess's attic, sat on tall chairs next to the fireplace. Both held rods that apparently represented scepters, something I had never seen the real king and queen use, and both were shouting orders.

"Go weed my roses!" yelled Jon in a high, cracked voice that did not sound at all like the king's voice. "And do it right, this time! Don't start breaking off the branches like you did last time!" Since the king did almost all his own weeding, I was surprised at this, but the assembled staff seemed to find it hilarious.

"Why aren't you feeding my stallion?" cried Gwen in a voice that actually did sound a lot like the queen's. "Why aren't you exercising him? Cook!" to one of the ladies. "We're going to have a hundred and fifty extra people for supper. I'm sorry I didn't tell you earlier, but you'd better get started. We have to eat in twenty minutes!"

I stood at the edge of the hall, leaning against the wall and watching. I found this disturbing, and was even more disturbed when one of the stable boys started shouting back at the "royal pair." "Why don't you let the cook alone? Why don't you and the hundred and fifty guests go dig in the fields for a while and work up an appetite?"

Gwen, as the queen, replied, "Don't bother me with your complaints! Can't you see the king and I are busy?" and threw herself into Jon's arms, to his evident approval.

The staff laughed uproariously. The real queen came to stand next to me. "Are you sure allowing this is wise, my lady?"

She smiled. "We did it every year when I was growing up, and I started the practice when I came to Yurt. The staff are somewhat limited, being away from home, but some years they have elaborate props and even whole episodes they act out."

"But aren't you encouraging them to think badly of you?"

"Not at all. That's why it's called the Feast of Fools; you have to remember not to take anything seriously."

"They're saying insulting things to you!"

"If they say insulting things to the false king and queen, they won't need to say those things to us. And sometimes we can pick up an indication of a real problem, something with which we had started burdening the staff without even realizing it. King Haimeric and I like to think that we treat our staff as well as anyone in the western kingdoms, but as long as they're in our pay they're always going to be a little inhibited about speaking up about their problems."

I nodded, somewhat dubiously. She seemed quite calm about the proceedings, even complacent, but if the queen thought this was all fun and harmless, maybe it was. I was still quite shocked when one of the trumpeters came running into the hall, wearing a ripped red velvet tunic. "The powers of darkness must obey me!" he shouted. "I am stronger than trees and rocks!"

There was a great deal of shouting. "No! You can't be the wizard!" "The chaplain has to be the wizard!" "But he said he doesn't want to be!" "Let him be the wizard if he wants to be!" I was especially mortified to see the queen herself struggling with only minimal success to keep from bursting into laughter.

"Maria and I are making lunch today," she said abruptly, straightening her face. "We'd better get started." I could tell from the back of her shoulders as she hurried away that she was laughing again.

The cook, who had found a blond wig and apparently represented the Lady Maria, came over to talk to me. "We want to have the 'wizard' do magic tricks at lunch. That boy is useless; we're going to have to have the chaplain do it. Can you teach him a good trick between now and lunch?"

"All right," I said. Maybe concentrating on the reckless activity of the Feast of Fools would keep me from worrying when, if ever, I would hear what had happened to the old wizard's last apprentice, much less how I was going to deal with him.

Both chaplains were sitting in their room, reading their Bibles as though determined not to hear the laughter and running feet in the castle all around them.

"They want you to do a magic trick at lunch," I said to Joachim, deciding that the older man who served the duchess was hopeless. "I'll make one you can do very easily."

"Don't you think the dangers of black magic are close enough to us already?"

"There's certainly nothing wicked in the spell I'll work for you. It would only become black magic if you approached it with evil intent." As soon as I said this I wished I had not, because it sounded like an accusation, but he just looked at me from his enormous eyes in silence.

I sat down next to him, to show that nothing I was doing was hidden or even morally questionable, and started preparing an illusion ahead of time, as the old wizard had done. I murmured the words of the Hidden Language just under my breath, while the two chaplains kept looking at me surreptitiously and tried to keep on reading.

"Do you have anything I can attach this spell to?" I asked brightly when I had it almost completed.

The duchess's chaplain snorted but found and handed me a button. I would have preferred something more inherently interesting than an old black button from a priest's vestments, but it would certainly do. I finished the spell and handed the button to Joachim.

"There. You won't actually have to do anything magical. Just wave this mysteriously, say a few things that sound arcane and deeply wise, and I can say the magic words to finish the spell. All you'll have to do then is drop the button and step back."

He took the button reluctantly, as though afraid it might come alive in his hand, and delicately slipped it into his pocket. This would have been much easier, I thought, with someone who had a sense of humor. "I'll see you at lunch," I said with a smile as I went out.

In the hall, one of the servants had heavily padded the stomach and arms of his tunic and was clearly meant to represent Dominic. "I'm the bravest man in the kingdom!" he announced in a roar. "Nothing can hurt me! Wait! What's that?" with a trembling of terror. "Oh, no! It's an illusion! It's got me!" He fell to the floor, fought off an imaginary attacker, rolled to the feet of the "king and queen," and stood up stiffly. "Oh, no! It's pain! I've been hurt a scratch! I can't bear a second of pain!"

I laughed as hard as anybody, but I was very glad that the real Dominic was not there.

The queen announced lunch not long afterwards. Since it was only heated-up soup that the cook had made the day before, cheese, bread, and Christmas cookies, it was an excellent meal, even if prepared by women who normally never cooked. "Wizard!" bellowed Jon to the chaplain as we finished the cookies. "I want to see some magic and I want to see it now! None of your normal foolish magic. Let's have something really spectacular!"

Joachim took a deep breath and stood up, with a look at me as though it were all my fault. At this point there was a pause as several people at the table noticed he was wearing his ordinary vestments; since I was still wearing the older priest's robes, we had three chaplains at the table and no wizard.

"He's got a have a costume." "He's got to look like the wizard." "What shall we do?"

"Here," I said and pulled off my belt, which I had been wearing around my trousers under the robes. "You can wear this. It's the chief insignia of wizardry."

While of course it was not, the moon and stars were impressive enough, once I set them glowing, that the rest of the table clapped and approved. Joachim buckled it around himself with the look of someone who just wanted this episode over.

But I was pleased to see that he had the sense not just to pull out the button and show everyone how ordinary it was. Instead he cupped it in his hands, looked down on it as though it were something exciting, and began to speak in a low tone. "Abracadabra," he said, which he must have known as well as I did was not a word of the Hidden Language, only the way the Language was represented in children's fairy stories. "Let the magic begin!"

He whirled around, holding the button over his head. I started putting the final pieces of the spell I wanted together, but he was not done yet.

"Magic is all powerful!" he cried. "The supernatural is superfluous! Wizards are the kings of the universe!"

There was a good deal of laughter at this. While I was delighted that he still might be able to develop a sense of humor, I wished he had not started at my expense. He threw the button in the air, and as it came down it stopped being a button.

Instead it was a pack horse, slightly smaller than lifesize, a defect for which it made up by being brilliantly violet. On its back was a giant sack, from which brightly wrapped Christmas presents protruded. As Joachim unbuckled my belt and sat down again, the presents tumbled from the sack, their ribbons untying themselves, the gifts inside shooting out. There were diamond necklaces, a golden sword, silk dresses, whole hams, a book bound in red leather, cascades of coins, highly lifelike bluebirds, and, in the final box, a rose bush that grew, opened violet blooms, and faded away as the whole illusion disappeared into sparks.

There was a brief moment of appreciative silence, with no sound but the sleet against the windows. "Very good, Wizard!" Jon then called. "It's much better than our usual wizard's productions!"

I was actually very pleased myself. It was certainly the most elaborate and most realistic illusion I had ever done; maybe I would have to try more often the old wizard's method of starting an illusion ahead of time.

But my good humor was no more permanent than the illusion and faded again in the afternoon. I was now convinced that I would never hear anything about the old wizard's apprentice. Although there was still over a week to run on the twelve days of Christmas, my time for deciding what to do about the stranger in the cellars was very limited. Since he had already called down a dragon on us, I hated to imagine what he would do for his next effort.

The rest of the party also seemed to grow tired of the game as the afternoon wore on. At one point Gwen took off her draperies and left the hall and did not come back. When, toward the end of the afternoon, someone from the village came to the door to announce that a boar had been spotted in the woods, conversation quickly shifted from a mockery of the royal castle's ordinary life to the question of a boar hunt.

"If the weather's clear by tomorrow," said the duchess, "we can start first thing in the morning. What do you say, Wizard?" addressing me. "Do you know some weather spells to make sure it's a good day for boar hunting?"

I had never seen a live boar and knew that I would normally have been very interested; now I just wished I had some ideas of how to proceed at home. How could I try to get the stranger and his evil out of Yurt when I did not know who he was, why he was in the castle, or who of the royal party was working with him?

"The Feast of Fools will be over at sunset!" announced the duchess. It seemed to be over in fact well before then. The young count, the unwounded knights, and the men servants were already checking the duchess's armory to see what she might have for boar spears.

At the very end of the afternoon, when the icy rain was clearing up even without a weather spell, the duchess's constable came into the hall and approached me. "A message just came into the pigeon loft," he said. "I think it's for you."

I snatched the tiny rectangle from him and unfolded it carefully, my heart pounding. Would this be the answer to the question of why the stranger had settled himself and his black magic in Yurt?

I had to read the message twice to understand it. "I was delighted to hear from the new Wizard of Yurt. I still remember my years in the kingdom fondly, even though it's been eighty-two years since I left. Let me wish you a happy New Year."

The message was from the old wizard's last apprentice. He had apparently spent his entire life in the count's castle where he had taken up his first post. If he was a hundred and fifty miles away, sending me messages, he could not possibly also be sitting in the cellars of the empty royal castle.

I was back where I had started from. If the stranger was not an apprentice wizard gone evil, who was he, and who in Yurt had invited him in?

Part Seven

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