“Don’t you wizards from the wizards’ school have to do something similar?”
If so, no one had ever told me, or at least I hadn’t heard. I missed my friends and I missed the City, but I certainly hoped I would never have to explain to the Master of the wizards that I had spent the past year adeptly aiding mankind with benign wizardry. “Maybe it’s because wizards tend to fight all the time,” I said, “but they leave us alone once we’ve left the school.”
“Maybe it’s because the worst you can do is endanger your own souls,” said Joachim with a snort that would have done credit to my predecessor in Yurt.
We would soon be reaching the little pile of white stones that marked the turnoff for the old wizard’s hidden valley. I decided not to point it out.
We rode in silence for a few minutes. What he said seemed to dismiss the theory I had once had that a young, untried and unsupervised priest had somehow let evil loose in Yurt. I was happy to see the theory go. Although Joachim seemed short on tact, even for him, this morning, I could not be irritated. He was not only going to have to explain why everything he had done was good, but make it clear that he had done it with a pure heart. Whatever wizardry demanded, a pure heart didn’t seem absolutely necessary.
Reflecting on the lack of purity in my own heart made me think of Gwen. I hadn’t yet had a chance to tell her I had a spell against love potions. I excused myself, reined in my mare so that others could pass me, and dropped into line again as Gwen came even.
“Hello, sir,” she said in evident surprise.
“I’d like to talk to you a minute,” I said. “Privately, if we could.”
She had been riding next to Jon. Although the young trumpeter and glass blower had always been perfectly friendly to me, he now shot me a brief but unmistakable look of jealousy. “Don’t worry,” I said with a grin. “We can’t possibly get into trouble on horseback.”
This did not improve his expression, but Gwen laughed and reined in her own horse, so that the two of us fell to the back of the procession.
“You were asking me about love potions,” I said as soon as I thought no one else would hear us. Jon was riding a short distance ahead, but his back was turned toward us stiffly, as though to say that he would not deign to turn around. “I’ve learned a spell you can say to detect one.”
As I’d hoped, Gwen was delighted at this helpful advice from her elderly uncle. As we rode, I taught her the three simple words of the Hidden Language that would reveal such a potion and made her repeat them until I was sure she knew them. “Say them over any drink or dish you suspect,” I said, “and if there’s a love potion it will turn bright red.”
“That should make the danger clear, then,” she said with a smile.
“Very clear. And remember: I know the spell too, so don’t try slipping anything in my crullers!”
This attempt at flirtation was met with highly amused laughter. The elderly uncle was clearly cute and quaint. She kicked her horse and hurried forward to rejoin Jon.
We rode on all that day, stopping for lunch at the border where we left the kingdom of Yurt. In late afternoon, when the king was clearly exhausted, Dominic called a halt at a meadow next to a stream. The servants unloaded the horses and set up the tents with the knights’ assistance, then started fires to cook supper. The ride had made me ravenously hungry, and the smoked sausage they were grilling smelled delicious long before it was ready. The king and queen retired to their tent even before supper was ready, but the rest of us strolled around the meadow, glad to be on our own feet again after a day on horseback. Even the more reserved ladies of the court were talking and laughing about the events of the harvest carnival, which we would reach tomorrow, and the Lady Maria was positively giddy.
II
The first sight we had of the city was the spire of the cathedral, seeming to rise out of the golden stubble of the wheat fields. The forests of Yurt were far behind, and all afternoon we had been riding past wide fields. As we came closer, we could see that the cathedral spire was surrounded in turn by a small walled city, and that the city was surrounded with the colorful striped tents of other people who had come to the carnival. As we approached, I could see crenelated towers rising on the opposite side of the city from the cathedral, directly against the walls. The city gates stood wide open, and a crowd hurried in and out. Distant sounds of shouting, of laughter, and of song reached us on the wind.
We rode through the encampments, through the city gates, and were plunged into narrow streets bustling with humanity. We had to ride carefully to be sure our horses did not bump into anyone or knock over tables set out with everything from fresh vegetables to tooled harnesses to bales of fabric. I had expected that we would be camping again, but instead we proceeded through the streets toward the small castle whose towers I had seen from outside the walls.
“This castle belongs to Yurt,” explained the Lady Maria, riding beside me. “Our king’s grandfather, I think it was, bought the land outside the old city walls, built the castle, and rebuilt the walls to go around it. He wanted to have a place to stay when he came for one of the carnivals or to visit the cathedral. Now even the king of this kingdom has to ask our king’s permission if he wants to stay here!”
Before reaching the castle, we had to pass the wide open square in front of the cathedral. Here, in the long shadow of the spire, the market tables were thickest, and the music was the loudest. Ahead of us, I saw the chaplain speak for a moment to the king, then pull his horse out of line.
“I’m leaving you now,” he said as I came even. “But I’ll be with you when you go.” He dismounted before I could say anything and led his horse through the tangle of tables to the cathedral steps, where I saw him talking to a boy and handing him both the reins and a coin. I looked over my shoulder before we left the square to see him going, straight-backed, up the cathedral stairs and in the tall door.
“The king and queen were married in the cathedral,” said the Lady Maria. “It was the sweetest ceremony, with roses brought from the king’s own garden, and the queen just radiant. I always like to visit the cathedral when we come here.”
In a few more twists of the street, we had reached the gateway which led into the courtyard of the king’s little castle. The constable of this castle and his wife were at the gate waiting for us, wearing the same blue and white livery as the constable back home in Yurt. There were only a few chambers besides the royal chambers, so my little bundle of clean clothes ended up in the same room with Dominic and the knights. But none of us wanted to stay in the castle’s narrow rooms when the sounds of carnival were right outside the windows. Within a few minutes, everyone but the king and queen was out in the city streets.
Most of them went in groups of three or four, but I went alone. At a booth just down the street from the castle I discovered something I had not expected to see but which I had to buy at once: a newspaper. I had not seen a newspaper since arriving in Yurt.
“This is dated five days ago,” I said, leafing through it excitedly. In fact it didn’t matter when it was dated, because I hadn’t heard any news for two months anyway.
“That’s when it left the City,” said the man at the booth. “It came up here on a pack train, and they hurried, too, to get it here so quickly. You don’t expect the pigeons to be able to carry a newspaper!”
“Of course not,” I said absently, moving away, avidly turning the pages. But in a moment I paused, thinking something was wrong. When I had been at the wizards’ school, I had always read at least the Sunday paper, and often the paper during the week as well. It had always been full of interesting news, ads, and information, whereas this paper was all full of the doings of some rather uninteresting people far away. Then I realized what the problem was. There was nothing in the paper about Yurt.