up waiting some time ago.”
While these insights into the people in the castle were extremely interesting, I could not help but notice that he had again deftly turned the topic away from the question of to whom he had taught magic.
III
While we had been talking, the brilliant blue of the sky was darkening. An abrupt clap of thunder, apparently coming from just behind the wizard’s house, startled me so much that I jumped to my feet. “It looks like rain,” said the old wizard complacently. “You’d better get your horse; it will stay dry enough under the oak here. And don’t worry about my Arrows!” he called after me as I hurried back up the valley. “You won’t be shot this time.”
It certainly wouldn’t be hard for him to guess that I had been wondering if I could bring my mare safely past that shower of arrows. And I didn’t think it could have been much harder for him to bring on a thunderstorm to demonstrate his power.
My mare had her head up, waiting for me. Chill little breezes flicked her mane, and there was a steady low rumbling from the sky. I led her by the bridle back down the valley, past the place where the arrows had been shooting, and around the final twist to the clearing where the wizard’s house stood under the sheltering branches of its oak. The first drops pattered on the leaves above us as I led the mare under the branches. The old wizard was no longer sitting in front of his house, but the green door was open.
I took off the saddle and bridle and rubbed the mare down. Being under the tree was like being under a tent. I could hear the drum of drops on the leaves, and the air became damp, but we were safe in a bubble made of branches. I finished with the horse, tapped at the door, and went into the house.
I had been expecting shelves of books; after all, every wizard I had ever known had books on his shelves, books piled on his desk, even books in heaps on the floor. But there were very few books in the old wizard’s house.
Instead there were cones of light, gently swirling masses of stars, forms that changed from tree to man to beast and back to tree as one watched. I ignored them all assiduously and concentrated on the old wizard, who had just lit a fire in the small fireplace. Bolts of lightning flashed outside the window, and thunder rumbled continuously. But inside all was peaceful. “Come sit by my fire,” said the old wizard in the friendliest tone he had used to me yet.
I sat down on the hearth, thankful for the warmth; the summer’s day had grown cold. We sat in silence, except for the thunder, for several minutes while I tried to decide how to ask him what I had come to find out.
“We heard a lot about the old magic at the wizards’ school,” I began. I had considered saying that we had been taught to respect the old magic, but decided it would sound as though I were being condescending to someone seven times my age. “And I grew more and more convinced that there is magic that wizards all used to know that has never been put in our books.”
“Well, you’re right,” he said almost reluctantly, as though not wanting to admit that I was right about anything.
“And yet the old magic is the basis for all the new magic of the last hundred and fifty years,” I continued. “The wizards who learned by experimentation and apprenticeship channeled the power of magic, made it possible for magic to be organized, to be written down in books, made it less wild, made it something that could actually be taught in a classroom.”
I had been going to go on from this brief history of modern wizardry-nearly everything I remembered from a whole course! — to explain that I needed his special and ancient magic talents to help me find out what was happening in Yurt, but he interrupted me.
“And look what’s happened!” he cried in his rasping voice. “With all you young wizards and magic workers, the channels of magic have been worn so deeply in some areas that any fool can work a simple spell. You say you’ve made magic less wild, but all you’ve done is make easier for the wild magic of the north to come in!”
I was horrified. I would normally never have thought that the wizardry that tamed magic also invited wild magic into the land of men, but in the old wizard’s dimly-lit room it seemed most probable.
“Or didn’t you ever think of that?” he said with a sneer. I decided no answer was best. “You and your books! You think you’ve made magic easier for the simple-minded who shouldn’t be doing magic anyway, but by cutting deep ruts in the channels of human magic you’ve just made it easier for wild magic to come pouring in. How would you like to see a dragon in Yurt?”
I considered and rejected the possibility that there was a dragon in the castle cellars already.
“And now you can’t go anywhere without some fool claiming he or she knows magic.”
“Does anyone in the castle know magic?” I said quickly, trying to get in at least one of the questions I had.
“Of course not,” he said brusquely. “Unless you’d consider counting yourself!”
I wondered if his brusqueness was concealing a lie, but between his manner and the insult it was impossible to ask him again. Instead I tried to be conciliatory. “I was just wondering because a strange thing happened when I first arrived. I’d put a magic lock on the door to my chambers, and when I came back it was gone.”
Unlike the chaplain, the old wizard would surely know how hard it is to break a properly-constituted magic lock. But he just snorted at me. “Did the spells wrong, I reckon,” he said. His insults scarcely even stung any more.
“But while you’re speaking of locks,” he added abruptly, “you haven’t tried to get through the locked door of the north tower, have you?”
“The north tower?” I said ingenuously.
“Don’t play the fool with me. I used to have my study in the north tower, as they must certainly have told you. The constable seemed to think you’d have your study there, too, but I straightened him out fast enough.”
“They gave me a very nice set of chambers,” I said cheerfully.
“When I left I locked the door and windows to the tower with both magic and iron.”
I sat up straighter but managed to cover my surprise with a fit of coughing; tiny tendrils of smoke from the fire were whirling into the room, and I was sitting very close to the hearth. There had certainly been no magic lock on the tower door when I pulled back the bolt, and all the windows had been unlocked.
“That sounds pretty secure, then,” I said blandly, then fell to coughing again. The smoke really was getting in my nose, and it had an unusual, almost spicy quality.
“
“I noticed that the tower walls are dead black while the rest of the castle is white,” I responded, wild with curiosity in spite of the headache the smoke was beginning to bring on. “But Master,” I continued tentatively, “as long as I’m living in the castle, don’t you think it might be better if I knew why you locked up your old study? That way, in case any-”
“NO!” he interrupted, leaving it quite impossible for me to ask again what he thought he had locked up. “I’ve taken care that
After a moment I caught my breath and looked at the table next to me. As well as a constant cascade of ice-blue stars, it contained piles of leaves and roots, some in earthenware bowls, some loose on the table. There were also mortars and pestles, fire-blackened pots, and bits of stone rubbed into dust. In spite of his boast about being a wizard of light and air, I thought, the old wizard was not too proud to be a wizard of earth as well.
Modern wizardry uses very few herbs and roots. We keep our magic technical, straightforward, capable of being attached to such simple substances as steel and glass and of being reduced to written spells. But all wizards know, even those, like me, who tended to skip the lectures on the history of wizardry, that there is a natural affinity to magic in some growing things. In the days when books were few and apprenticeships long, young wizards learned how to recognize and gather plants with magical properties, even discover new ones. It occurred to me that, since I hadn’t exactly been a huge success as a wizard taught from books, maybe I should give apprenticeship
