A Bad Spell in Yurt woy-1

by C. Dale Brittain

  “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 go
ne, 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 b
usy?” 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.