A Bad Spell in Yurt

and the lighthearted mood of the night before was gone. The wounded complained about their cracks and bruises, and I was covered with blisters from the dragon’s blood. Clearly my predecessor knew nothing about dragons. The wounded knights, the doctor from the village told us, needed a day to rest and become at least a little less stiff before they could be loaded into horse litters.

The king directed the repairs that absolutely had to be done before we could leave: the boarding up of broken windows, the replacing of slates where the roof was only minimally damaged, the rigging of covers in those areas where it was clear that all the slates would have to be removed and some of the beams replaced.

I spent much of the day in the kitchen, my feet up before the main fireplace, while the cook and the kitchen maids packed up the two weeks’ worth of food they had stocked for the holidays. The cook got into a prolonged quarrel with the constable’s wife, insisting that she had to take along her own pans, not trusting the duchess’s kitchen to have what she needed. Most of the staff in the kitchen were too busy to pay any attention to me, but Gwen put poultices on my face and changed them assiduously every hour. By evening, the blisters were almost gone, even though my ribs were aching worse than ever.

The queen reconciled herself to the trip to the duchess’s castle by taking literally her suggestion to bring everything along. She and the Lady Maria spent much of the day on the stepladders, taking down all the ornaments they had put up just two days earlier, and packing them ready to go. Even the Christmas tree itself was gently lowered and strapped to a sledge with a tarpaulin over it.

Supper was a simple meal, except for the the fruitcake. Everyone was too tired to talk very much. The chief conversation was between the queen and the constable.

“But, my lady, someone has to stay here in Yurt.”

“No, I won’t allow it. You deserve a cheerful holiday as much as the rest of us-more, in fact.”

“If the castle stands empty, a thief might break in.”

“This is a castle,” she said with an exasperated laugh. “When we go, the last person out can raise the drawbridge and leave by the postern gate, and then not even an army will be able to break in. Even with the damage to some of the parapets, the walls are still sound. There used to be wars in the western kingdoms, after all, and castles were built to withstand concerted siege! Certainly this castle will be impenetrable to a common thief!”

“In the days of sieges, there were defenders in the castle to push back the scaling ladders from the walls.”

I stayed out of the discussion. There was no way I could pretend to have the authority to decide this, and, besides, I was fairly sure the queen would prevail.

She did in the end, but only because the constable’s wife finally said, “Please, dear, I’d like to have a few more days of merry holidays myself.”

I felt relieved as I crossed the dark courtyard to my chambers, carrying a candle, even though I was aching in every bone. My breath in the candlelight made a frosty cloud around me. Zahlfast had first noticed that the supernatural influence stopped at the castle’s moat, and the old wizard had told me he had put special binding spells at the castle’s periphery. At the duchess’s castle, we should at least be free of the direct influence of black magic, and maybe my mind would work better than it seemed to be doing today.

Beyond the castle walls, I could hear foxes barking over the dragon’s carcass. I still did not know what to make of the stranger. He had refused to let me find out anything about him by turning that sensation of evil against me like a weapon. But I was beginning to wonder if the old wizard knew something about the stranger that he was not telling me.

The old apprenticeship system for learning wizardry had never been actually ended. It had merely withered away over the course of the last hundred and fifty years, as it became obvious that it was quicker and easier for a young man to study with the wizards in the City, where all of modern wizardry was arranged in books and coursework, than to put up with the crotchets of a single teacher. When I had asked the old wizard about studying herbal magic with him, he had referred extremely vaguely to his last apprentice.

I had thought at the time that he must know exactly who that last apprentice had been, and now I had a suspicion why he had not wanted to talk about him. That apprentice may have taken the plunge into black magic, and the old wizard knew it.

He must have been living in the woods near Yurt for years, maybe with the old wizard’s knowledge, and maybe not. At any rate, I speculated, he had taken advantage of the few days between when the old wizard had retired from Yurt and I had arrived to move into the castle and establish himself in the cellars. When he realized I was a young, relatively incompetent wizard, he had become bold. He had broken the magic locks to get into the north tower, and had had to break my lock on the cellar door when I had inadvertently locked him out-or in.

I lit all the magic lamps from both of my rooms and arranged them near my shoulders. I did not like to think of a wizard who had given his soul to the devil standing there in the dark, waiting, perhaps avidly, as I had blundered down the wet cellar corridors.

But how had he squeezed in and out the small window in the iron door? In a moment, I realized this wouldn’t be a problem for a highly competent wizard. He could temporarily transform himself into something much smaller, if necessary-even I could probably do so, now, though I preferred not to try. In the first transformation class they always told the story of the young wizard who had turned himself into a purple bird who couldn’t form the words of the Hidden Language with its beak. It had therefore been unable to turn himself back, and it had flown away in panic before any other wizards could help.

Someone I knew, I thought, someone in the castle, must have become involved with the evil wizard. This was the point where my speculations became very difficult. This evil wizard, even if he had been living near the castle, could have no reason I could think of to put an evil spell on the king three years ago and summon the supernatural into the castle. Therefore, someone else must have wanted that spell, someone else must have asked for his help. I was brought back again, in spite of my best efforts, to the arrival of the queen in Yurt.

I stood up determinedly to start getting ready for bed. If the stranger had been a former apprentice of the old wizard, I was impressed with the power of his magic, stronger than anything I had seen, even at the school, in its imperviousness to my best spells. The old magic still had something to offer someone trained in the City.

With my red velvet jacket in my hands, I stopped to consider again. There ought to be some record of the old wizard’s apprentices, who would after all have had to live in the castle. I pulled my jacket back on and hurried out into the night.

The constable and his wife were not yet in bed, but they were naturally surprised when I banged on the door of their chambers. “A list of the old wizard’s apprentices? You need that tonight, sir?”

“Yes, I do. I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you why, other than that it has to do with the dragon.”

“It might take a while to find the information. He never had an apprentice in the time that I’ve been at Yurt. I’d have to go through my predecessor’s records.”

“I’m sorry, I know you’re very tired, but I really need that information now.”

“I’ll help you find the right ledgers if you want,” the constable’s wife said to him. “Can’t you see how worried the boy is?”

I was glad enough for her support not to mind being called a boy, although I did wonder if she would ever think of me as a man. The constable unlocked a cabinet, and he and his wife started taking out old ledger books.

Previous constables, it turned out, had kept very careful track of everyone who lived in the castle; the present constable, I assumed, had noted just as assiduously the day that I had first arrived. When my predecessor had first come to Yurt a hundred and eighty years earlier, he had quickly acquired apprentices. Usually he had only had one at a time, but there were periods in which he had three or even four. Some left after only a short period; one stayed for a dozen years.

Then, a hundred and thirty or a hundred and forty years ago, the supply of apprentice wizards had dwindled. This would have been, I thought, at the time when the reputation of the wizards’ school in the City had begun to spread. I bent close over the ledger, squinting to read the faded brown ink of the then constable’s tidy handwriting. For a long time the wizard of Yurt had had no apprentices at all.

And then he had a final one, one who had stayed in Yurt for nearly ten years. “That’s right,” said the constable. “He was the last. He left eighty-two years ago. The final indication we have was that he had taken up a post of his own.”

This was it, I thought. It would be impossible to give the stranger a precise age, but, even though he must