streets toward the gates, I thought that I might send Zahlfast a letter.
III
The king was ill. He took to his bed the night we got back to Yurt, saying he was exhausted, and he did not get up again, not for chapel service, not for meals, not to work in his rose garden.
The queen seemed driven to new levels of energy. She was constantly in motion, and from the windows of my chambers I kept seeing her cross the courtyard, from the king’s room to the kitchen, where she herself tried to concoct a soup that would tempt him, back to his room again and then to the chapel to pray, to his room and then out to confer privately with the doctors she had sent for from the next kingdom. Although she did not say anything, I knew she was thinking that the doctors would have come more quickly if she had been able to telephone rather than relying on the pigeons. The pigeons were rapid, being able to carry a message to any of the nearby kingdoms in an afternoon, but not as fast as a telephone.
I mostly stayed out of the way. I did not know how serious the king’s condition was, but since I doubted the queen was someone who panicked easily, I feared the worst. The rest of the castle seemed gripped with a similar fear. No one came to my chambers, not even the Lady Maria for her lessons in the first-grammar, and meals tended to be hurried and silent. At this point, the dank autumn rains began.
With little to do, I set myself the goal of reviewing everything I had supposedly learned at the wizards’ school. Within a week, I had finished all the assignments from the first year. I was both pleased to see that I really had progressed in my eight years at the school, from an audacious but (in retrospect) shockingly ignorant young man from a merchant family in the City to someone recognizable as a real wizard, at least to an illusion-weaver at a carnival, and embarrassed to see what truly basic information I had managed not to learn. At the end of the week, I sat down to write Zahlfast a letter.
It was hard thinking what to write, out of all that had happened to me since leaving the City. It would in fact have been easier to write a twenty-page letter, but I was restricted by the size of message the pigeons could carry. Unless one was willing to wait to send one’s letter by someone from Yurt or someone stopping by Yurt who was traveling to the City, the only alternative was to write one’s letter on one of the tiny, light-weight pieces of paper the pigeons could carry. There were postal stations spread in a semicircle, fifty miles from the City, where carrier pigeons from all the western kingdoms brought messages and dropped them into the greater urban postal system. The postal system itself could handle almost any size letter, but only if mailed within fifty miles of the City.
“I am enjoying being Royal Wizard,” I finally wrote, “and at last I may be learning some of the magic you tried to teach me. So far I’ve made a series of magic lights. I am even learning some of the old herbal magic as well. My king is sick now, however, so I don’t know what will happen. If you were ever near Yurt, it would be nice to see you.”
The last line surprised me, as I had not intended to write it. Just getting lonely for company, I said to myself, but I let the sentence stay. I folded the tiny piece of paper I was allowed, wrote the address on the outside, rolled it up and slipped it into the cylinder that would be attached to the pigeon’s leg, and took it across the slick courtyard and up to the south tower. The pigeon keeper assured me my letter would be delivered in the City the next day-or certainly within two days.
Back in my chambers, I found the book in the front of which I had written the schedule of courses and readings at the beginning of my second year at the school. Some of the courses I had no recollection of, and I was quite sure I did not own all the books.
I was sitting, frowning at the list, when I heard running feet outside. My door swung open without even a knock, and Gwen burst in. “Sir, oh sir, excuse me, but you must come at once!”
The book fell from my hands unheeded as I leapt up. My heart fell with as heavy a thump, for I was sure the king was dead.
“Someone’s trying to poison the king with magic! You must find out who it is!”
At least it sounded as though the king was not dead yet. “But how do you know?”
“Please come!” she cried, tugging at my hand. “The others don’t believe me-they say I don’t know any magic.”
We hurried across the rainy courtyard to the kitchens. I was too confused and upset to even try a spell to stay dry.
In the warmth and steam of the kitchen, the cook was standing looking thoroughly angry, her ample fists on her aproned hips. The rest of the kitchen servants hovered in the background, looking worried.
“So, Wizard,” said the cook. “Now maybe we can have the real story! Gwen has been trying to tell us you’ve taught her magic, and now she’s accusing us of wanting the king dead!”
“I didn’t say that!” Gwen cried. “I never thought it! I’m not accusing any of you, but someone’s doing it!”
“Wait, wait,” I said. “I never taught Gwen magic.”
“Yes you did!” she countered. “That spell that turns food red! Only in this case it turned green.”
There was a babble of voices, but I tried to stay calm. “Let’s start at the beginning. What food are you talking about?”
“This, sir,” said Gwen. From the table she picked up what appeared to be a bowl of chicken soup, except that it was a brilliant green-almost the same color, in fact, as the queen’s eyes. “I was going to take it to the king; the queen thought a little soup would do him good. And then I remembered that you had taught me a spell to say to see if someone had slipped a potion in your food.”
Jon was standing next to her, but she looked determinedly straight ahead. “You’d said if someone had, the food would turn red. And then I wondered, suppose someone had tried to slip a potion to the king? So I decided to say the spell over his soup. But it didn’t turn red, it turned green. That’s probably just because it’s a different kind of potion, but I know someone wants to kill him!” At this she burst into tears. Jon tried to put his arms around her, but she pulled herself away.
I had no idea what it meant. All I knew was that the old wizard had told me this spell would detect a love potion. When I learned it and taught it to Gwen, it had never occurred to me that it might be a way to detect the spell which Dominic said someone had put on the king.
It still might not be the way, but I could not hesitate. “We’ve got to get the king out of the castle,” I said.
They all looked at me as though I had lost my mind. “But it’s cold and it’s raining! He can’t travel in this weather! Where would he go?”
“Not far,” I said, hoping what I was saying was true. “His rose garden should be far enough. Wrap him up well, and put hot irons in the wrappings to keep him warm. Pitch a tent in the garden, and set charcoal braziers in it. And you,” to the cook, “will have to make him some more soup, but don’t make it here. Make it outside the castle.”
“What? You expect me to leave my warm kitchen and make a campfire in this rain and-”
“It may be the only way to save the king’s life,” I said. The cold touch of evil I had been feeling since summer was stronger in the kitchen than ever before, though I still could not tell where it was coming from. It might be Gwen, the cook, or one of the other servants, but I thought I would have been able to tell if it had been. “Come on!” I said. “There isn’t enough time to waste any of it.”
Almost to my surprise, they obeyed me. Within a very short time, the king, heavily wrapped and shielded from the rain, was being carried out into his rose garden. The few last blooms dripped wet.
Joachim came up to me, made as though to grab me by the arm but stopped himself in time, and instead drew me out of hearing range of the others with a jerk of his chin.
“Are you trying to kill the king?” he demanded, his black eyes glowing fiercely at me.
“I am not,” I said back, just as fiercely. “I’m trying to save his life. I think there’s an evil spell in the castle that’s killing him, and I’m trying to see if he’ll improve if he’s outside.”
“So now he’ll die of pneumonia instead of magic? Is that your intention?”
“I hope he doesn’t die,” I said, fierce no longer. I had not seen the king in two weeks and had been shocked by his appearance. The shape of his skull was clear beneath the skin of his face, though he had tried to smile and
