made plenty of noise. People raced for the walls or fell down flat. Dominic stood for ten seconds alone, deserted by the rest of the knights and apparently paralyzed, before he gave a shriek like an injured rabbit and dived under the table. My dragon kept on going. Its long tail and heavy body naturally passed through real human bodies without having the slightest effect, but they did not notice this, as they were too busy trying to avoid the head.
Even the king took refuge behind his throne. But the Lady Maria, sheltering in the doorway that led to the kitchen, with half the castle staff behind her, was watching in what I could only describe as avid delight.
Almost frightened by what I had done, I said the words to slow the dragon down, intending to make it curl up placidly before the fire before I broke the spell of illusion.
And then I saw two people advancing on the dragon from opposite directions. One was the chaplain, who held a crucifix at arm’s length before him, and whose eyes glowed with almost the same intensity as my dragon’s. The other, armed with a poker from the fireplace, was the queen.
This had gone far enough. I said the two words to break the illusion, and the dragon was gone, leaving nothing but a shower of sparks that lingered for five seconds and then were gone as well.
The hall was suddenly very silent, and I held my breath, wondering how I had managed to make my magic go so thoroughly astray. But then the silence was broken by the king clapping.
“Marvelous, Wizard, marvelous!” he cried. “I’ve never seen anything to match that!”
After only a second’s hesitation, the queen dropped the poker and began to applaud as well. The knights and ladies came slowly back toward the center of the room and joined in. Dominic came out from under the table as though trying to convey the impression he had never been there.
Everyone started talking at once, most apparently trying to persuade each other, themselves, and me that they had not in fact been in fear for their lives. The king did it most convincingly.
“Our old wizard used to do illusions all the time,” he told me, “and they were beautiful. I thought when he retired that I’d never see anything like that again. But his, well, they never
There was a general laugh, and people started gathering up their hats and cloaks for the short trip from the great hall back to their chambers.
I looked around for Joachim. Although we had remained cordial since the king’s recovery, we had somehow never shared a bottle of wine in the evening again. If I had owed him something of an apology before, I was afraid I owed him one even more now. But he had already gone.
I glanced across the hall toward Dominic. He was standing next to the fire, talking to one of the knights with great laughs and many hand gestures, on a completely different topic. I had originally been hoping to talk to him this evening, but now I decided it would be better to wait until the next day.
The next morning, when the sun was melting the light layer of snow, I went to find Dominic. I had decided I had to be systematic, and even though I didn’t like the thought of talking to him just now, he had what I needed.
It seemed fairly clear that a spell had been put on Yurt. It was the spell that had nearly killed the king, and while the chaplain had broken its hold on him in particular, the spell was still there. I could still not sense the evil touch except obliquely, when least expecting it, but I was now armed with Zahlfast’s magic formula for detecting the supernatural.
So far, I had found high concentrations of supernatural influence in my own chambers, the chapel, and the chaplain’s room. I didn’t like this at all until I decided that the spell was just detecting a saintly presence from the chaplain, who had after all spent a number of evenings during the summer in my chambers.
But no wonder, I thought, Zahlfast had wanted to visit me. When he received a letter reeking of the supernatural, and knowing there was already something odd happening in Yurt, he must have wondered if I had plunged into black magic. I was irritated enough with him for this lack of trust that I had not written him again.
The two other places I had found the supernatural influence strongest were up in the north tower, in the old wizard’s now empty and windswept chambers, and in the dank passage that led down to the rusty door of the cellars.
I found Dominic in the stables, checking on one of the geldings that had come back slightly lame from hunting. He was whistling as he and the stable boy lifted the animal’s foot, which today seemed much better. But the whistling stopped as he saw me.
“Greetings, sire,” I said with enough good humor for both of us. “I have a favor to ask you, about my mission here in Yurt.”
He pulled his mouth into a tight line, then nodded. “We can talk in the courtyard,” he said curtly and walked out, leaving me to follow behind. Neither one of us said anything about dragons.
“I thought the chaplain accomplished your mission for you,” said Dominic, when we were standing in the center of the courtyard, well away from any windows. “The evil spell on the king’s been broken.” The implication seemed strong that now that my single mission had been taken care of, especially as it was done by someone else, it was almost superfluous for Yurt to have a wizard.
“But it’s not gone,” I said.
He had been glancing around, not meeting my eyes, but at this he turned toward me with a look that could either have been hatred or fear. “What do you mean, it’s not gone?”
“Whoever or whatever put the spell on the king,” I said, “made the spell strong enough that it remained in Yurt even when the king was miraculously freed from its influence. I haven’t been able to determine yet who might have cast it, but I think I may be able to tell, if I can determine where it’s strongest.”
“And how are you going to do that?” he demanded.
“We wizards can detect the presence of the supernatural,” I said with dignity. “Any evil spell will have been cast with evil intent, and possibly even demonic influence. We wizards can tell where demons have been.”
“And where do you think they might have been?” His tone was enough to make the straightforward question an insult.
“I was wondering if they had been down in the cellars.”
This clearly surprised him. The sour expression disappeared for a minute. “Why the cellars?”
“I have no idea. It’s the only part of the castle I haven’t been able to get into. The constable told me the cellars are damp and haven’t been used for many years. I’d asked him for a key, but he said you had the only one.”
“That’s true,” said Dominic in a puzzled voice. Although I didn’t tell him, I had already tried to open the locked door using the same spell I had used on the bolt on the north tower, but a complicated lock had proved impervious to my magic, as a simple bolt had not.
Dominic took the heavy bunch of keys from his belt and flipped through them until he came to one stained with rust. “Here’s the key. You’d better take a can of oil, as I doubt it’s been opened in years.” He paused then and glared at me again. “I hope you weren’t planning to ask me for the key to the north tower, because I don’t have it. When your predecessor retired, he bolted the doors and put magic locks on that he said even another wizard couldn’t break.”
It was my turn to be surprised. “But I don’t need to go up in the north tower,” I said blandly, neglecting to mention that I had already been there twice.
Dominic said something under his breath. When I asked him to repeat it, he denied having said anything, but it had sounded to me like, “Maybe you should.”
With the key and a can of oil, I went down the narrow stairs behind the kitchen to the cellar door. It was iron and blotched with damp and rust. There was a small opening at eye level, too small for anything much larger than a cat to have climbed through, and a dank odor came out into the stairwell. Even with the oil and energetic turning, it took me almost five minutes to get the lock to open. Clearly no one had been in the cellars in years.
The door swung open with a protesting screech. I had tied a magic globe to my wrist with a piece of string. Its light bobbed eerily along the walls as I stepped inside.
It seemed to be nothing but abandoned storage cellars, damp because they had been dug too close to the castle well. The small rooms opening off the hall were littered with the unidentifiable remains of what might once have been stored there. Several of the rooms smelled as though used by cats or rats or both.
But permeating these innocuous dark stone rooms was an almost overwhelming sense of evil. I stopped and
