“An evil presence,” said Zahlfast, as though this answered a question. “We’ve known in the City for several years that there was a supernatural focus here in Yurt, or at least nearby, but it was impossible to localize it precisely or even to say whether it was for good or evil. Several of the wizards at the school thought it might be a witch living in the forest who had taken the step into black magic.”
“It’s not in the forest,” I said positively. “It’s here in the castle. It was coming home to his kingdom that nearly killed the king.”
“I knew it was here in the castle when I got your letter.”
“But how could you know that? I didn’t say anything about it.”
“The very paper your letter was written on was permeated with the supernatural. Didn’t you know that? That’s why, when I arrived and discovered that the supernatural influence stopped at the moat, I asked you to meet me outside.”
“But how could you tell anything from the paper?” I demanded, intensely frustrated, thinking the wizards of the school had been deliberately withholding information from me. But then I saw Zahlfast smiling and said in a lower voice, “Was that maybe in one of the lectures I missed?”
It turned out that it was. There was a rather simple spell to recognize the presence of a supernatural influence, a modern, more universal spell than the one the old wizard had taught me for detecting magic potions. I glanced over the garden walls at the turrets of the castle and felt my heart sink. I didn’t want to try the spell. Yurt was my kingdom, and I loved it, and if I confirmed my fears I might never feel the same about it again.
“Do you think the king will become sick again?” I said.
“You think he was made ill by supernatural forces?”
“Dominic thought an evil spell had been put on him,” I said, “even though I didn’t believe him at first.” I gave Zahlfast a quick summary of the king’s three-year illness and miraculous recovery.
“If he really was healed miraculously,” said Zahlfast somewhat dubiously, “he should be safe from black magic, or at least from the effects of the particular evil spell that was put on the castle.”
“But will the spell now turn against someone else?” I said, “such as the queen?” This was not a possibility I had contemplated until I said it, but it suddenly seemed fearfully likely. “Or do you think it’s not merely a spell, but a demon loose in the castle?”
Zahlfast did not answer for a minute. “I’m not the person to ask,” he said at last. “I specialize in transformations, not demonology.” I remembered then a conversation I had had with him in the City several years ago, during which it had become clear that he was just as terrified of demons as I was. But he stood up. “I’ll come into the castle with you and see what I can tell.”
But the first thing he said, as we entered the courtyard with its whitewashed walls and green shutters, was, “What a lovely little castle! None of the other young wizards can have as charming a kingdom.”
In my chambers, however, he looked around quickly, then said, “The supernatural influence is quite strong here.”
I was about to demand whether he could think I was practicing black magic myself, but then I looked at his face and decided it was safer not to ask.
Instead I said, “Let me show you my glass telephones. They don’t work, but they’re very attractive.”
At this he actually laughed. “Somehow, when you left the school, I never imagined that you were the type of wizard who becomes a telephone technician.”
“Neither did I,” I said cheerfully. “That’s why they don’t work. But the queen wanted me to try.” I thought guiltily that it had been some time since I had tried anything new.
“I’ll show you something, though,” I said, reaching one of the telephones down from the shelf. “Watch the base.” I set the instrument down, lifted the receiver, and spoke the name attached to the wizards’ school.
“Pretty amusing, isn’t it,” I said as the faint ringing came through the receiver and the base lit up to show the school’s telephone on its table, with someone reaching to answer it. “Wait; it gets even funnier. Try to talk.” I handed him the receiver.
Just as the Lady Maria and I had done, he shouted, “Hello? Can you hear me?” to an unhearing wizard at the other end, even though that wizard’s voice came through faint but clear.
But when the other wizard hung up and the telephone base went dark, Zahlfast was not laughing. “You realize, of course,” he said with what I might even have imagined was awe, “that no one’s ever been able to do this before: attach a far-seeing spell to an object.”
“But it doesn’t work as a telephone. Sometimes I’ve even thought that whatever evil spell was put on the castle was hindering my magic.”
“I think you’ll be able to make it work,” he said in his school teacher voice. “Keep working at it.”
At that moment we were interrupted by a knock. I opened it, expecting the Lady Maria ready to resume her lesson, and was surprised to see Joachim.
I tried to draw him inside, to introduce him to Zahlfast, but he wouldn’t let me.
“I’m going,” he said, “and I wanted to let someone know I probably won’t be back for morning service. The king and queen aren’t here.”
“I think they went hunting. But where are you going?”
He paused as though unwilling to say, but his enormous black eyes steadily met mine. “A girl down in the village, five miles from here, was bitten by a viper last week,” he said at last, as though there had been no pause. “The doctors have tried all their draughts and potions, but nothing has availed. She’s near death. They want me to pray for her.”
He turned and was gone before I could answer, striding across the courtyard to where one of the stableboys had a horse saddled and ready. A man in a brown tunic was mounted and waiting by the gate.
“Is that your friend the chaplain?” said Zahlfast behind me.
I nodded, watching the two ride through the gate and away. I knew, without the chaplain telling me, that the news of the king’s miraculous recovery must have spread at once throughout the kingdom, and that anyone now who needed a miracle would not be satisfied with their local priest but would want the castle chaplain.
“So tell me more about herbal magic,” said Zahlfast.
Although I had had some success teaching a little magic to the king and the Lady Maria, it was extremely odd to be suddenly explaining something to my former teacher. It was also difficult to do with no herbs at hand; the sense that the old wizard had taught me, of how to determine a plant’s properties just by handling it, was difficult to put into words.
But I had been able to explain at least some of the basic principles when I heard voices, the sound of hoofs, and the queen’s laugh in the courtyard and realized the hunting party had returned. “You’ll have to stay for dinner,” I said, “and I’d be delighted to have you stay with me if you were willing to spend the night. Even for you, a two-hundred mile flight can’t be easy.”
To my surprise, he agreed. At dinner, he took the chaplain’s chair across the table from me, which kept on startling me, as I would look up from my plate to see a face I had stopped being accustomed to see in the context in which I had recently become accustomed to seeing another’s. He kept our table highly entertained, with gossip from the City and stories about the northern land of dragons, which he had visited. I saw even the servants at the next table leaning to catch his words.
“I’ll have to tell you something I tell all the young wizards after the first checkup,” he said as he prepared to leave the next morning. We were standing outside the castle gate, looking down at the red and golden foliage of the forest. “I doubt this would be a problem for you anyway, but some of the young wizards, when they find that the school is still interested in what they’re doing, feel they can ask for help for every little problem. We certainly want to make sure that magic is being practiced well throughout the western kingdoms, but we just don’t have the time to keep helping out fully-qualified wizards who should know how to do magic on their own.”