A Bad Spell in Yurt woy-1

by C. Dale Brittain

  “No,” said Zahlfast, “we got no message, unless that was you calling a month ago. The phone rang at the school, yet there was no one on the line. When I heard about it, at first I just thought someone had called us by mistake, or was doing so for a joke, but then I remembered you and your far-seeing but inaudible telephones.”

  “That was me,” I said. “The demon had grown bold and was teasing us by running around the castle in daylight, while the chaplain was away. It was afraid of the chaplain.”

  Zahlfast and the Master looked at each other, the same slightly skeptical look they had given each other when I told them Joachim had miraculously brought me back from the dead. “I want to show you these telephones, Master,” said Zahlfast. He reached one of them down from their shelf and spoke the name attached to the wizards’ school instrument.

  This time it worked perfectly. The base lit up, as it always had, but when the tiny figure of a young wizard picked up the receiver, he could hear Zahlfast.

  They spoke for several minutes. “Yes, that’s right,” said Zahlfast. “So we’ll probably be home tomorrow or maybe the day after. No, there’s no problem now.”

  “Congratulations, young wizard,” said the Master, his frost blue eyes sparkling. “You’ve made an original contribution to wizardry and will probably have your name in the new edition of Ancient and Modern Necromancy. Not bad, for someone not yet thirty.”

  “It works!” I gasped. “I’d told the constable an anti-telephonic demonic influence was affecting my phones, and I was actually right!”

  “You’ll have to teach us that spell,” said Zahlfast.

  I thought ruefully that they seemed more impressed by my telephones than my return to life. “But what are you two doing here?” I asked, returning to my original question, wondering if I could possibly reconstruct the sequence of spells I had tried on the telephones over the past few months. “Were you just so busy it took you a month to get here after my call?”

  “Well,” said Zahlfast, looking surprisingly embarrassed, “at first I didn’t think anything of it, though I should have realized immediately it was you asking for help. It wasn’t until we heard about the dragon going over on Christmas day that I began to think there might be something seriously wrong in Yurt.

  “First we got telephone calls from the wizards in courts with telephones, and then the next day the messages started coming in from the pigeon relay station. When we plotted them on a map, it became clear that the dragon had been heading for Yurt, for no one south of Yurt had seen it.”

  “And even then,” said the Master with a chuckle, “we had an idea that you might be a competent enough wizard to handle a dragon, although we probably should have considered the likelihood of a demon as well.”

  “Didn’t you,” I said accusingly, “even for a minute, suspect that I was practicing black magic and might have brought the dragon down for my own purposes?”

  Zahlfast blushed, which I had never seen him do before.

  “Not at all,” said the Master. “At most, one or two people had momentary doubts. Besides, we knew there was another wizard here, the retired wizard of Yurt, who could help you.”

  “He did help me with the dragon. I never could have killed it without him. But what do you know about the old wizard?”

  “I’ve only met him once,” said the Master, “this summer. That’s when he came to the City to try to find out about you.”

  “He came to the City?” I cried in amazement. “You didn’t tell me this, Zahlfast.”

  “That’s because I only found out about it myself the other day.”

  The Master laughed. “He said when he arrived that he would talk to the head of the school or to no one, so he had to talk to me.”

  “But I always thought he didn’t want to have anything to do with the wizards’ school.”

  “I don’t think he ever does. But he wanted to know about you. He said he’d left you sleeping among his herbs for the whole day, while he flew down to the City. Said he’d never been to the school before, hoped he’d never come there again, but he thought this was the fastest way to find out about someone he called a ‘young whipper-snapper.’ Took me a few minutes to realize he meant you.”

  “So what did you tell him?” I asked, feeling highly inadequate. Once again, everyone else seemed to know my business much better than I did.

  “I told him you had flair and promise, if you ever applied yourself. And from the look of the telephones, it’s clear that you have. To say nothing of killing a dragon and defeating a demon, even if you nearly got yourself killed in the process.”

  “Did get myself killed,” I corrected, but they pretended not to notice.

  Zahlfast stood up. “You look tired. I think we should let you rest.”

  “Just don’t leave Yurt yet,” I said. “Most of the guest chambers are still sound, in spite of the dragon. And you’ll want to try our cook’s excellent holiday meals. I hear they had to leave the boar at the duchess’s castle, but I’m quite sure she wouldn’t have left the Christmas cookies.”

  “We’ll stay tonight at least,” said the Master. “Sleep now, and we’ll talk more later.”

  I still did not feel strong enough to climb the chapel stairs the next morning, but the following morning, leaning on the constable’s arm, I ascended by the light of my own magic lamps. The others respectfully stood aside for me and made sure I was comfortably seated in the front pew. Joachim led the thanksgiving service, and while I had good reason to be highly thankful myself, I was rather surprised to see that everyone else in the castle was also delighted to have me alive. Even Dominic smiled at me, and the queen gave me a radiant look that made my heart turn over.

  The winter sun burned red through the chapel’s stained glass. Listening to Joachim read from the Bible, I decided I was not worthy either of a miracle on my behalf or of the friendship of all these excellent people. When the congregation sang the final hymn, I did not trust my voice and stood silent.

  Once Joachim had pronounced the final benediction, every person there, from King Haimeric down to the stable boys, came up to me. Most said a few words, of how glad and grateful they were to have me again with them, though a few just touched my arm hesitantly and turned away as though overcome with profound awe and wonder. Not daring to speak, I nodded at all of them and tried to smile.

  But my foray into sentimentality was cut short by talking to Zahlfast and the Master of the school. They had ended up staying two nights in Yurt, but this morning they were ready to go, waiting only until I returned from the chapel to say goodbye. We stood by the castle gate, talking for a minute, with me well wrapped up in two coats and a muffler. The two wizards were the only people in the castle who had not been at chapel service.

  “We’re delighted you’re feeling better,” said Zahlfast briskly. “Now that your telephones are working, I hope you realize you should call us if you run into any other problems this serious. I hadn’t realized you’d take my warning against calling the school for every little problem so literally!”

  I nodded glumly.

  “Though I must say I should have credited you with more courage than I did,” Zahlfast continued. “Most wizards wouldn’t have gone down alone to face a demon, even those who did a lot better on the demonology exam than I happen to know you did. I hope you aren’t going to turn into one of those rash young wizards who think of themselves of indestructible.”

  There didn’t seem to be much danger of that. I had never expected to have a second chance at life, and I knew I would never get a third.

  “Just remember you’re a wizard,” said the old Master. “Don’t start relying too much on the priests.”

  “This makes it all very symmetrical,” I said. “The bishop is worried about my possible evil influence on the chaplain.”

  The two glanced at each other. “Coming close to death doesn’t seem to have changed you very much,” said Zahlfast.

  I had noticed the same thing myself. One might ha
ve hoped that if I came back from the dead I’d come back better, but I was too happy to be back at all to care.

  The old Master looked at me with a twinkle in his eye. “I hope you realize we are very glad to have you still alive. In a few weeks, after all of you here have had a chance to repair some of the damage to the castle, we’ll send up some wizards from the technical division. They’ll take down the details of how you put the spells on your telephones so we can start putting far-seeing attachments on other instruments.”

  After watching them fly away, I sat on a bench in the courtyard for a few minutes to catch my breath, wondering how soon the new edition of Ancient and Modern Necromancy would come out and what it would say about me. I hoped it wouldn’t say that I had made a brilliant invention but that no one could ever duplicate it because I hadn’t kept good notes. The sunlight was almost warm here in the shelter of the castle wall, even though there was still a dusting of snow on the ground, left behind by the stable boys’ brooms. But in ten minutes, as soon as my strength returned enough to walk again, I went inside in search of Joachim.

  He was sitting in his room, finishing breakfast. “Thank you again for interceding with the saints for me,” I said, sitting down and breathing hard. “I’ve just been seeing off the wizards; they’re on their way back to the school. But I wanted to find out if you’d spoken to the Lady Maria.”

  “Yes, I spoke to her yesterday. I told you I would.”

  When he seemed unwilling to continue, I said with an exasperated laugh, “What is this, Joachim, the secrets of the human soul that a priest can never reveal? Since I realized she’d sold her soul to the devil long before either you or she did, and then got myself killed negotiating for her soul, I should at least be able to find out what she’s going to do now that her soul is safe again.”

  Joachim looked at me gravely a moment, then slowly started to smile. “You’re right this time; but I may have difficulty explaining this to the bishop.

  “She had worked much of it out for herself already,” he continued after a brief pause. “So when I sent her a message to come to my room, she had a good guess what I was going to say. She seemed to have the strangest idea, however, of how to act in such a situation. She came in as though she were a naughty schoolgirl caught in some mischief.”

  I could have told her this would never work with Joachim. It wouldn’t even work with me.

  “But it all seemed to be a facade, behind which she was genuinely terrified and repentant at what she had done. Even though she kept referring to the demon as a ‘little magic man,’ she realized how close she had come to damning her soul for eternity. She agreed at once when I explained to her that a few years of vain youth and beauty in this world could never be worth an eternity in hell. She had also had a chance to realize that asking to ‘see a dragon’ was not the innocuous request she had originally imagined.

  “In fact,” continued Joachim, looking somewhat uncomfortable, “once she stopped pretending she thought of it as a naughty joke gone wrong, she broke down and sobbed. I was trying to impress on her the need to beg God’s forgiveness, and she kept on asking if I thought you would ever forgive her.”

  “I hope you told her I would.”

  “I told her that you were not angry with her personally, that you had been willing to die to save both her and the kingdom because you were following the high purposes of God.”

  Joachim’s black eyes were completely sober, and I began to wonder uneasily if he was going to start treating me with the awe and reserve that everyone else in the castle seemed to be demonstrating. Of course, in his case it was harder to tell. But it was no use coming back from the dead if I then spent the next two hundred years being treated like some saint. In the next few days, I would have to think of something outrageous to do to remind everyone that it was, after all, only me.

  “I did warn her very sternly against further experiments with pentagrams.”

  “I’m sure you did,” I said, “and I’m sure you imposed some suitable penance on her. You don’t need to tell me about that-that really should be a matter kept secret between a sinner and her priest.” I changed the subject abruptly because I did not want to talk about the Lady Maria anymore; I was just glad that he had spoken with her, so I didn’t have to. “But tell me, Joachim, how do you do it?”

  He lifted his eyebrows at me.

  “First you saved the king’s life and then you saved mine. I want to know how you do it. It can’t be a very common ability. Everybody seems in awe of me for being alive, whereas they really ought to be in awe of you for having worked a miracle.”

  “Prayer is available to anyone,” he said, more soberly than ever, “who calls on God with a contrite heart. I already told you that the saints had pity and mercy on you for your sacrifice. It had nothing to do with me.”

  I considered suggesting that in that case maybe I had been sent back to this world because neither heaven nor hell wanted me in the next, but decided not to. Joachim had limits.

  He was still looking at me, as though in assessment. “You yourself don’t seem to be taking spiritual issues as seriously as one might expect.”

  I was glad I had not spoken. “But I am serious,” I assured him, which was true. “It’s just that I’m joyful as well. Isn’t someone who’s come back from the dead allowed to be joyful?”

  Joachim took a slow, deep breath. He had leaned his chin on his hand, so I couldn’t see his mouth, but I could swear from his eyes that he was smiling.

  VI

  Gwen came in at that point to get Joachim’s breakfast tray, and she gave a little jump, as though remembering the last time she had found us together like this.

  “It’s all right, Gwen,” I reassured her. “Neither of us is going anywhere.” She rushed back out, clutching the tray, without a word.

  Since we had been interrupted anyway, I stood up to thank Joachim again and to go back to my chambers. I was still weak, and my head was beginning to ache badly. But I wanted to go to lunch with everyone else today-the cook had been sending very small meals to my room, apparently not realizing that someone who has been miraculously restored to life needs to eat a lot, and she hadn’t even given me any Christmas cookies. A little nap before lunch, I thought, was just what I needed.

  But as I reached for the handle to my chambers, I felt a hand on my arm and turned around to face the duchess. “Can I come in for a moment?”

  “Well, my lady, I was just going to lie down-”

  “I won’t keep you a minute,” she said, stepping inside before I could protest further. I wondered what had become of awe and respect just when I needed them. “But I’m about to go home, and I couldn’t leave without finding out what really happened.”

  I noticed then that she was dressed for travel, in tall boots and a heavy cloak, and as she shut the door behind her I could see the stable boys starting to bring out the horses.

  “If I leave now, I can celebrate Epiphany comfortably at home,” she said. “The household here doesn’t need any more people underfoot, now that the holidays are almost over and you’re going to start repairs to the castle. Besides, my own staff will be returning from vacation, and I need to be there to explain to my cook why she can’t find anything in her own kitchen and why she has five hundred pounds of boar that need immediate processing.”

  I stretched out on my bed and she sat beside me. “I gather you suggested to the others,” I said, “that the demon had decided on its own to come live in our cellars. Thank you for doing so; I wouldn’t want everybody to start suspecting each other of black magic.”

  “But that’s why I had to talk to you,” she said. “You told me that someone here had summoned a demon, and I’ve been wild with curiosity the last three days trying to work out who it could be.”

  I hesitated. Having decided that I would have to do my best from this point on to keep my soul pure, I didn’t want to start lying. On the other hand, I did not want to give away the fact that the Lady Maria had heedl
essly sold her soul without even realizing she was doing so. Repenting of her actions would be painful enough to her, without feeling that everyone in the castle knew her for a sinner and a fool. I was glad again that Joachim had spoken to her, instead of I.

  “I talked to your chaplain right away, of course,” she continued, “just after he’d brought you back from the cellars. I wanted to be sure that he knew someone here had been working with a demon. He gave me the strangest look-he’s so dour, you can’t tell half the time what he’s thinking.”

  I let this slur on Joachim pass without comment.

  “All he’d say was that the person who had summoned the demon had done so unintentionally, without evil purpose, and that that person’s soul was now safe. So I’ve had to work it out for myself. I remembered that King Haimeric first became ill within a year of his marriage, about the same time his old chaplain died. So my first thought was that the new royal chaplain must have been responsible. But then I realized that since he’d been able first to heal the king and then bring you back to life, he couldn’t possibly be in league with the devil.”

  I was interested to see how the duchess’s reasoning had paralleled my own. It had taken her much less time than it had taken me, but then she had had the advantage of knowing from the beginning that there was a demon involved.

  “So I started thinking who else it might be, and it didn’t take me long to realize that it had to be the queen!”

  “No!” I said involuntarily.

  The duchess looked at me appraisingly. “Not my cousin, eh? You’re certainly quick enough to defend her.” I wondered how much she guessed of my feelings for the queen. “But the problems all started not long after she moved to Yurt. And it occurred to me that the demon might not have summoned the dragon all by itself, but rather that someone here might have been silly enough to think that a dragon would be fun. She’s become more level-headed since becoming queen, I’ll give her that, but she always did do just what she wanted to do.”