when I found there was a Royal Wizard here; there was no wizard in my brother’s castle. And then, at most, he let me be there while he worked some spells! But I found out I had the ability to say spells myself, if I’d heard them even once, and then I started making requests of my own!”
“Requests?” This sounded dubious. “What were you requesting?”
“Don’t ask a girl all her secrets!” she said with a smile which was indeed positively girlish.
She seemed, I thought, to be one of the rare persons born with a flair for magic. This was why, weeks earlier, she had been able to hear my voice speaking within her mind.
“The old wizard wouldn’t teach me anything. Could you, might you, teach me wizardry?”
There was actually no reason why I shouldn’t. But I hesitated. Magic was a powerful tool, and the old wizard had been right in calling her flighty. But no one would have called me sober and stable either when I first came to the wizards’ school.
“You’d have to learn the Hidden Language first,” I said at last. “You can do a few spells by saying the words, but to create your own spells you need to understand them thoroughly.” I reached for the first-grammar from my shelf. It was heavy, and the cloth binding was starting to fray badly. “Take this if you want, but I will need it back again. Start studying, and if you’re still interested I can help you further.”
She took the volume eagerly, but her face fell as she leafed through it. “But it doesn’t tell how to do spells.”
“As I said, you can’t create your own spells unless you understand the Language first. But tell me,” as a thought struck me, “how you’ve been able to make magic ‘requests’ without knowing magic.”
There was no doubt now that she didn’t want to answer me. She stood up rapidly, clutching the first- grammar. “I’ll try to work through this,” she said. “I’d better go now. But wasn’t it fun that it was my telephone that worked?” She rushed across my room and was gone before I could answer.
I sat down again and leaned my face on my fists. I had imagined being a Royal Wizard was exciting, mysterious, and awe-inspiring. So far, I had actually promised to teach wizardry to a woman, one who was positively flirting with me; another woman, who came to ask my wizardly advice, left thinking of me as a rather dim-witted uncle; and I was in love with a third woman, this one married already.
PART THREE — CARNIVAL
I
I came up the hill toward the castle on the white mare, exhausted and exhilarated. It was mid-morning, and I had again spent the night at the old wizard’s house without intending to do so when I arrived. But this time I had known the night was passing (and it was only one night, not two) and had stayed because I decided to, not because the old wizard had used his magic herbal smoke to put me to sleep.
The harvest was over, now, although the turnips still lay in the ground, waiting the first real frost. For two weeks I had stood out in the fields with the harvesters, wearing a wide-brimmed hat against the sun and doubtless looking much more like a farmer than a wizard. I had kept my eye open for thunderstorms or the hailstorms that could destroy the ripe grain, but for the most part the weather had stayed clear, and the weather spells I had assiduously reviewed were only needed once. With my harvest responsibilities over, I had gone back to the old wizard’s house under the giant oak.
Yesterday he had begun to teach me herbal magic. I smiled ruefully at myself, arriving yesterday morning, doubtless very like the Lady Maria expecting the first-grammar of the Hidden Language to be a tidy list of useful spells. I had expected a quick listing of different herbs and their properties. Instead he had begun teaching me to know the herbs, as well as I already knew the Language, to recognize the possible properties in each and to determine how to combine them and how to find the words that would reveal their potency.
It was only twenty-four hours ago that I had naively said, “You mean that you have to do something with magic herbs? Anyone can’t just pick them and use them?” The old wizard had snorted and looked at me as though he were going to send me back to the castle at once, but he hadn’t.
The exhilaration had come just before I left, while the old wizard was slicing me some coarse bread and vegetables for breakfast. I stood next to the table where he had different herbs laid out, trying to picture what each might do, while the calico cat rubbed against my ankles.
“You didn’t tell me you had a stick-fast weed,” I said.
“I don’t,” he said from the other table without turning around.
“This one,” I said, holding it out until he did look back over his shoulder.
“That isn’t anything,” he said, returning to the vegetables. “It got into my basket with a lot of other herbs.”
This, I decided, was a test. “But look!” I said. I squeezed the sap from the stem onto my palm, said two words, and reached down to pat the cat. When I stood up, it was firmly attached to my hand.
The cat didn’t like being suspended from my open palm. It yowled and extended its claws. I said two more words, and it was free. It dropped the short distance to the floor, gave a short hiss, and disappeared under the old wizard’s chair.
Then I realized it hadn’t been a test. The old wizard stared at me, the knife forgotten in his hand, without speaking. After a long minute, as though he had finally won the struggle to avoid praising me, he said, “Stick-fast weed,” and grunted.
He put the bread and vegetables on a plate and handed it to me without another word. But I knew. I had discovered an herbal property he had not known. While I ate, I kept tossing little crumbs toward the cat until it emerged. Then I scooped it up and settled it on my lap, where in a minute it settled down to purr to show we were friends again.
“Maybe I’ll be able to teach you some real magic after all,” said the old wizard as I saddled my mare. “Even if you did get some fancy notions at that City school.” The excitement lasted all the ride back through the woods, even though the exhaustion of staying up all night hit me as soon as I left the wizard’s valley. I had even learned a simple spell that even someone not trained in magic could say, to detect magic potions in food. I couldn’t wait to tell Gwen.
I wondered again, as the castle came in sight, what had happened during the day last month I had passed in a trance in the wizard’s house. Yesterday, as I ducked under the volley of magic arrows to reach him, I had been wondering if he had used the time as an opportunity to come back up to the castle without my knowledge. But if so, no one had seen him, and he had said nothing about it, either then or now. If he had come to the castle, I now thought, he would have seen at once that his magic locks were gone from the north tower and would most certainly have held me to blame. That his manner now sometimes verged on friendly showed he did not yet know what had happened there. But sometime I was going to have to tell him.
As I started across the draw bridge over the moat, I almost collided with the queen coming out.
“I’m so pleased you’re back!” she cried with the smile that made my heart turn over. “The king told me to meet him in five minutes in the rose garden. I’m sure he’d like you to be there as well. He said it was a magic surprise! The five minutes are almost up.”
I dismounted to walk with her. She was wearing a long white dress with a standing crimson collar that framed her face, and her eyes flashed with delight at me from under an errant wave of hair.
We stopped at the garden gate. “I’m here!” the queen called. “And I’ve brought the Royal Wizard with me!”
“Come on in!” came a faint call, and we entered.
Coming toward us between the rose bushes, his toes just brushing the grass, was King Haimeric. His face was so tight with concentration that he seemed not to see us. I could tell he wasn’t even breathing. When he was within three feet of the queen, he lifted his eyes, took a sudden breath, and dropped to the ground. She steadied him with her strong young arms.
“You were flying!” she cried. “When did you learn to fly? I know you said it would be a magic surprise, but I hadn’t imagined it could be anything so wonderful!”
The king winked at me over her head, a wink of triumph.
