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 speak normally.
“It will take a miracle to save him.”
“I thought you said, if you need a miracle, see a priest,” I retorted, and almost felt triumphant as he blinked and drew back.
When the king was settled in his tent, the queen sitting beside him, and when the cook, still grumbling but beneath her breath, had started a new batch of soup on a small fire started with coals from the kitchen, just outside the garden walls, I drew Gwen to one side.
“I have to go somewhere,” I told her. “Stay with the cook. Check the new batch of soup with the same spell. If it doesn’t change color, the king should have some.”
“But where are you going?”
“Not far. I’ll be back soon.”
Without giving her a chance to speak again, I rose from the ground and flew down the hill toward the forest, swifter than a horse could carry me.
I didn’t know why I was embarrassed to tell her I needed to ask the old wizard for help, except that I never had told anyone I had been visiting him.
I was thinking very bitter thoughts about my own abilities and responsibilities. Although Dominic had told me he thought there was an evil spell on the king, and although I nearly believed him, I had done nothing to discover the source of that spell. For two weeks, while the king grew weaker and weaker, I had been concerned only with my own education, as though it was going to be useful to know wizardry even though I never practiced it in the service of the king who had hired me as his Royal Wizard. I had originally visited the old wizard to find out if he knew anything about this spell, but instead I had allowed myself to become distracted into learning the magic of herbs. It wouldn’t be much good showing off my herbal magic to my friends in the City if I also had to tell them I had allowed my king to die of a magic spell when I hadn’t bothered to find out its source.
The concentration needed for rapid flying beneath low-hanging branches made it difficult to carry this line of thought much further. I burst into sunshine as I entered the old wizard’s valley. The lady and the unicorn were sitting by the little bridge, but today I saw no golden arrows.
I dropped to the ground outside the green door. The wizard was sitting in the doorway, the cat on his knee, enjoying the sunshine. He looked surprised to see me.
“Decided to skip the horse today, eh?” he said. “I just hope you weren’t trying to impress me. We wizards trained in the old way have always been able to fly better than you young whipper-snappers when we wanted to.”
I swallowed my irritation. “I’m not trying to impress you, Master,” I said. “I need your help.” Quickly I explained to him about the soup that turned green when subjected to the spell to detect a love potion.
His brows furrowed, and he tossed the cat roughly from his lap as he stood up. “That spell just detects herbal potions,” he said after a long pause, as though wondering what to tell me. “It turns food red if there’s an herbal potion in it. There’s no reason the spell should turn anything green. The girl probably got it wrong; maybe she said a spell of illusion by mistake.”
“I don’t think she got it wrong.”
“Then it’s detecting something else,” he said abruptly, as though he had made a decision. “It might also detect the presence of the supernatural.”