A Bad Spell in Yurt woy-1

by C. Dale Brittain

  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 hear
t 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 — LADY MARIA

  I

  At supper that night, cooked again by the cook and served by the serving maids, the duchess stood up between courses and came to lean over the back of my chair. I was sitting next to the Lady Maria, eating glumly and scarcely tasting what I was eating.

  “Could you come to my chambers after dinner for a glass of brandy?” she said in a low voice.

  Maria, who overheard, pursed her lips and shot the duchess’s back a sharp look from narrowed eyes. This seemed to be the first time that I had made any woman in Yurt jealous on my behalf, and it was not the woman I would have selected for jealousy.

  “I’d be glad to come, my lady,” I said, “but your brandy is perhaps a little strong for a wizard. Could I join you in a glass of wine instead?”

  “Of course,” she said and returned to her seat. I just hoped she was not going to start teasing me again. I wasn’t sure I could manage to be polite if she did.

  But as she poured me some wine and herself an inch of brandy, she showed no sign of making provocative suggestions. “There’s something wrong, Wizard,” she said, hooking her leg over the arm of the chair. “Even I know that dragons don’t normally leave the northern land of magic to come attack one of the smallest of the western kingdoms. What’s happening?”

  “I wish I knew what was happening,” I said ruefully. “You’re probably glad I didn’t agree to become ducal wizard, since I didn’t even know what to do with a dragon. Does everybody here realize something’s wrong?”

  “I think the rest have been too busy thinking about the Christmas festivities,” she said, “but that’s part of the reason I felt I had to get everyone out of the royal castle of Yurt and bring them here. And it’s clear to me, watching you, that you’re deeply worried.”

  I looked at her face, serious and very attractive, even if after the dragonfire she had had to cut her hair as short as a boy’s, and even if it was not the queen’s face. I decided to confide in her. “I’m worried because the dragon was summoned. And the person who summoned it is involved in black magic.”

  “Black magic? You mean they’re doing evil spells?”

  “I mean they’re working with a demon.”

  “A demon? You mean there’s a demon in Yurt?” She looked at me incredulously and went to pour herself more brandy.

  “The old wizard told me, but I’d already guessed. There’s a demon in the castle, one who roamed the world freely for three years. The old wizard caught it and imprisoned it, but it’s broken free, and now it’s stronger than ever.”

  “How do you imprison a demon?”

  “It’s hard to do,” I said slowly, feeling as pinned down by her rapid questions as I would have been by a boar spear. Everything she said brought home to me again what the old wizard had told me, that this was my kingdom now and my demon. “In this case, the old wizard held it down with magic spells while Dominic drew a pentagram around it.”

  “That may explain a lot,” said the duchess. “I wouldn’t trust Dominic to draw a good pentagram.

  “Normally, neither would I,” I said, trying to smile. “But I know my predecessor would have checked it over thoroughly.”

  “Pentagrams have to be drawn in chalk, don’t they?” she said, putting down her glass. “I remember asking my father’s old wizard about demons years and years ago, while I was still young enough to think they sounded exciting and mysterious.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And chalk can dry up, blow away, wash away in the damp, be rubbed out by the bold foot of a demon who has already been free in the world for three years.”

  “It shouldn’t be that simple.” I looked down at my glass, realized I had not been drinking my wine, and took a sip. It seemed to have no flavor. “Even a partially worn-out pentagram should still keep a demon from moving-and it can’t rub out the chalk itself.”

  “But could a demon who’d gathered strength from three years in the world still cast a magic spell if there was any flaw in the pentagram? Would it be able to call the person who had summoned it originally and ask him or her to free it?”

  She was posing questions as though this were the oral exam at the end of the demonology course-and I hadn’t known the answers then, either.

  “Who did summon it, Wizard?”

  Now she was sitting with her boots planted solidly on the floor, gripping the arms of her chair, ready to spring into action. But there was no one against whom I could tell her to spring. “I don’t know, my lady. I wish to the saints that I did.”

  “But you’ll have to imprison it again.”

  I didn’t even try to smile. “Hard as it may be to capture a demon that has been happily loose in the world for three years, it will be a thousand times harder to catch one who has already once escaped from a pentagram.”

  “Does this have anything to do with the message you got by the pigeons this afternoon? You looked terribly eager to get it, and then very disappointed.”

  “It was a theory I’d had, which might have accounted for a lot. I had suspected that the last young wizard to serve an apprenticeship under the old wizard, over eighty years ago, might have returned to Yurt to practice black magic. But from the letter I just got, he’s been wizard in a count’s castle for eighty-two years, a hundred and fifty miles away, and can have no relationship with what’s happening in Yurt.”

  “What evil is happening in Yurt, aside from the dragon?”

  “The king was very ill and almost died before the chaplain miraculously healed him.”

  She nodded. “I hadn’t seen Haimeric for over a year, before all of you came this fall, but he looked better then than I’d seen him in ages. One of Yurt’s servants told my lady’s maid that a miracle had cured him, but I wasn’t sure if I should credit that.”

  “There can be no doubt that the chaplain saved his life.”

  “But what else has been happening in Yurt, besides the king’s illness and the dragon? As though that weren’t enough!”

  “Well,” I said slowly, “we saw a mysterious stranger in the castle, right after we got back from here last month. He had apparently put the whole castle staff to sleep before we came, and the next day he kept slipping around the castle, appearing and disappearing, knocking me backwards with evil whenever I tried to touch him with magic. I don’t think he did any damage, but he disrupted the castle and terrified me.”

  “And has this ‘stranger’ been seen again?”

  “He disappeared that afternoon, when the chaplain returned from a trip to the village. I think he’s afraid of the chaplain, but he’s probably enjoying the empty castle now. I think he lives in the cellars. Since he’s already summoned a dragon, I don’t want to think what he’ll decide to do next.”

  The duchess picked up her empty glass as though to refill it, then set it down again, still empty. Watching her, I thought that she did not want another drink so much as an opportunity to act, and listening to me talk about the stranger provided no good opportunities for her to begin her attack.

  “So,” she said, “the problem is primarily that you have a demon living in the cellars, and he may be afraid of the chaplain. That means-”

  “But, my lady, just bec
ause I think the stranger is afraid of the chaplain doesn’t mean the demon is.”

  “Oh,” she said with a quizzical look. “I’d assumed the ‘stranger’ was just a physical manifestation of the demon.”

  I had not thought of this and was furious at myself for not doing so. If I had actually read the Diplomatica Diabolica more carefully, it might well have told me that demons did not need to keep the small size, the red skin, and the horns of the one demon I had ever seen, the one in the pentagram in the school.

  “It may be,” I said thoughtfully, my mind trying to race through the implications of this to make up for its previous slowness. “It would certainly explain a lot. I had been thinking there were actually two people practicing black magic in the castle, the stranger and someone else, and it would be much simpler if there were only one person.”

  “But who is that person? Why do you think it’s someone in the castle?”

  She wasn’t going to let me get away from that question, the one I could not answer. Even though I was confiding in her, I didn’t want to mention the coincidence that the old wizard had first discovered the demon not long after the queen arrived in Yurt. “Demons don’t normally appear by themselves,” I said, “at least not in this part of the world. They have to be called.”

  “So you have to find out who called it and find a way to imprison it, even with its new strength?”

  She had summarized my problem very nicely. I was thinking rapidly. If the stranger was, as the duchess suggested, the physical manifestation of the demon, then I should be able to find him in the cellars, and I should be able to negotiate with him-I had, after all, already spoken to him once, even if he had not answered.

  “But how can you imprison it? How can I help you?”

  “You’ve helped by getting everyone out of the castle,” I said, smiling and answering the last half of her question first. “I’ll have to check my books, but I don’t think there’s any way I can imprison it again. Instead I’ll have to treat with it, negotiate with it, persuade it to return to hell.”