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 whipper-snapper? 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 o
f 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 knew nothing about 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 c
ompetent 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.”
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