chance I had had to talk to him in weeks.
“I owe you an apology,” I said, starting there because this way he couldn’t move away or change the subject before I’d had a chance to say it. “I was horribly rude to you when the king was ill.”
I also probably should apologize for terrifying him with my dragon, but I was afraid of insulting him more by reminding him that he had believed in an illusion-even if he and the queen were the only people prepared to do something about it.
Joachim pulled up his horse slightly, so that we were soon riding fifty yards behind the rest of the party. Although he did not answer at once, he was clearly thinking over his response. Then he gave me a sideways glance from his enormous dark eyes that would in anyone else have been a look of amusement.
“You weren’t rude,” he said. “I needed someone to remind me of my responsibilities.” We rode for several minutes in silence, then he spoke again as though there had been no pause. “I think I had still been feeling inadequate from my meeting with the bishop.”
Since such a confession on his part seemed to call for something similar on mine, if I wanted to rebuild our friendship, I said, “Do you remember seeing the wizard in my chambers?”
He clearly did not.
“You might have seen him, just for a second, the day you stopped to tell me you were going down to the village to see the little girl.”
There was the slightest flicker of emotion across his face. “Yes. I remember seeing him now.”
“That was Zahlfast, one of my old teachers. He’d come to give me what he said was my first checkup.”
This time the chaplain actually did smile. “I thought you told me you wizards were left on your own, once you’d finished at the school.”
“Well, that’s what I’d thought. I guess it shows how mistaken a wizard can be. I think he meant to be encouraging, but by the time he left all my inadequacies had been made clear to me.”
“And are you therefore feeling paralyzed, almost fearing to act because you don’t want to turn to evil?” As he spoke, Joachim turned to face me so abruptly that he brought his horse’s head around as well. We had to stop and disentangle the bells on my horse’s harness from the harness on his. When we started again, the rest of the procession was far in front of us, and we pushed our mounts to start catching up.
At first I thought Joachim was accusing me of being paralyzed in the face of a threat to Yurt, but then I realized he was only speaking from his own experience. Someone whose own inadequacies had been pointed out very recently might indeed feel unworthy to plead with the saints.
“I told Zahlfast you’d saved the king’s life,” I said as we drew closer to the rest of the party and slowed down again.
“I myself didn’t save him,” he answered quickly, looking straight ahead. “My merits had nothing to do with it.” I should have realized that he’d say this. Since the saints could not be manipulated, one’s only hope was to have a pure and contrite heart, and a contrite heart wasn’t proud of its merits.
But then he said something else that surprised me. “What did Zahlfast say when you told him that?”
I stammered, not sure how to answer, but almost immediately decided on the truth. “He reminded me that wizards don’t talk very much about miracles, and that those who heal also have the power to sicken.”
It sounded even worse than I had expected it to sound. While I was trying to frame a new apology, he kicked his horse forward, not even looking at me again, and pulled into line next to the Lady Maria. Since he, like me, had not been at Yurt yet when the king and queen happened to meet for the first time at the duchess’s castle, she started to give him all the details. I was sure he had heard it all before; he had, after all, gone to visit the duchess with the royal party the first year he was in Yurt, while the king was still traveling at least short distances. But he listened intently, even smiling at the right places, and did not once look back at me.
The short early winter day had ended, and the sun was gone when we saw the lights blazing out from the duchess’s castle in the valley before us. The knights had lit lanterns so that we could see the increasingly icy road, although I myself thought that the wildly flickering shadows from the swaying lamps made it even harder to guide one’s way. We all kicked our horses and hurried down the last hill, bells ringing loudly. The bridge was down, and we surged across and into the courtyard.
Servants hurried forward to help us dismount, and the duchess’s constable took the bridle of the king’s horse. But the king waved away the servant at his stirrup and instead, with a look of intense concentration, rose slowly straight into the air, until he could swing his foot easily over the horse’s back, then just as slowly descended to stand on the cobblestones.
Very few of the people from the royal castle of Yurt, and certainly no one from this castle, had seen the king flying before, so there was a stunned silence before the applause broke out. The queen laughed with delight as she dismounted in the more normal manner and took his arm. His back straight and a not-very-well concealed grin of pride on his face, the king walked toward the wide doorway leading into the great hall.
I was about to follow him, extremely proud of my pupil, when I caught a baleful glare. It was Dominic, and he was glaring at me with eyes that were nearly red with fury. I didn’t know why, but I certainly didn’t need a second person furious at me today, so I turned my face from him and hurried after the king and queen.
They stopped just inside the hall, and I, following closer than anyone else, nearly ran into them. Over their shoulders, I saw a woman advancing to meet them, the duchess.
She did indeed look a lot like her cousin, the queen, although the duchess was at least ten years older. Her hair too was black and her features beautifully shaped, but she did not have the queen’s smile, which always seemed to be hovering near her lips even when she was sober or thoughtful.
The duchess did the full bow. “Welcome to my castle, which is your castle, my liege lord and king.” And it was the full bow, not the curtsy that women normally performed. The duchess, in spite of her feminine features and the long hair braided into a graceful coif, was dressed like a man, in a man’s tunic and boots.
“Rise, my faithful subject,” said the king. He drew her up, his hands on her shoulders, and kissed her on both cheeks. The queen kissed her as well, but, I noted, not nearly as enthusiastically.
“And who is this?” the duchess said, peeking at me past their shoulders.
The queen brought me forward with a hand on my elbow. I was glad I was wearing my new velvet jacket. “This is our new royal wizard! He joined us this summer from the wizards’ school in the City.”
The duchess gave me a look of frank and highly interested appraisal, which startled me more than I wanted to admit; no woman had looked at me like that since- well, at all that I could remember. Fortunately, she appeared to like what she saw.
“I haven’t had a wizard in my duchy in years,” she said. “My father, the old duke, used to keep a wizard, but he had retired even before I inherited, and the old royal wizard of Yurt never deigned to visit me.”
“That’s why I wanted to bring him along,” said the king. “Wait until you see his illusions!”
Although I was naturally crushed to discover that I had been brought along as an exhibit rather than as a necessary member of the king’s personal retinue, I was too intrigued by the duchess to give this much thought. Back before I had entered the wizards’ school, the women I had met in the City who dressed like men had for the most part, and ironically I always thought, not liked men. But the way this woman had looked at me suggested otherwise.
“Your rooms are all prepared, my lord and lady,” she said. “My constable will show you and your companions. Dinner will be served as soon as you’ve had a chance to rest from your trip.” As we all followed the constable out of the great hall, I glanced back to see her looking after us with a wide grin.
There were a number of different courses at dinner, all elaborate, but none, I thought, as good as those produced by the cook at Yurt. I also missed the brass choir before dinner. The chaplain sat across from me, as at home, next to the duchess’s chaplain. But he did not meet my eye. I myself was surreptitiously watching the queen. I had wondered more than once why she, a woman of fire and air who should have been able to marry anyone in the western kingdoms, had married the king of Yurt.
Now that he was no longer ill, he did seem much younger than he had when I first met him, but he was still undeniably more than twice her age, and no taller than she. Here in the duchess’s castle, as the lady Maria had been reminding the chaplain this afternoon, was where the king and queen had first met, and I wondered if I might find some clue here.
We finished up with spicy cakes frosted in vivid colors, and while I was trying to decide if I liked them or not,
