“Or even someone in our party.”
I had been about to ask Joachim for his spiritual help against the constable, as the most likely of the people who had stayed in the castle, but now I was back to suspecting everyone in Yurt, perhaps everyone in the entire kingdom.
Then I remembered that the supernatural influence Zahlfast had first noted stopped at the moat. Someone in the castle itself must be casting the spells, as I had always assumed. This meant-
Joachim interrupted my thoughts. “Is it possible to cast a long-lasting spell, one that will continue to have effect when one is far away?” Apparently they taught them to ask sharp questions at the seminary.
“It depends on the spell,” I said. “Some of the elementary spells, like illusions, will fade fairly shortly unless constantly renewed. But some of the complicated spells, like lamps or magic locks, should last indefinitely.” I decided not to mention the broken locks on the cellar door.
“So someone who isn’t even here any more, such as your predecessor, could have put an evil spell on Yurt that is still having an effect.”
I shook my head. “It’s possible, but not very likely, even if the person is a master in wizardry.” It was going to be hard to explain that the long-lasting spells, although the most complicated, were when completed often the simplest and most static. A spell that could sicken the king and make the apparently ageless Lady Maria start to age seemed too involved to be maintained from any distance, in space or time.
“Let’s assume,” I said, “that the magic is being practiced by someone here in the castle, someone here now. I need your help because it isn’t just ordinary magic, which I could deal with myself. Someone is acting with evil intent, or the king would not have come so close to dying, and he or she may have involved the supernatural, for the Lady Maria told me she had seen time run backwards.”
“I didn’t think magic could make time run backwards.”
“It can’t. Only the truly supernatural can do that. That’s why I’m so terrified.” I hadn’t meant to tell him I was terrified, but he did not seem to mark the comment.
“Where had she seen this happen?” he asked.
“She won’t tell me.”
“Did you want me to try asking her?”
I contemplated the chaplain trying to pry the Lady Maria’s secrets out of her with what he would consider tact. “No,” I said, “it might frighten her to know that two of us realized she was involved in some sort of magic gone astray. It would be just as well for only me, the wizard, to ask her about it.”
“Are you suggesting that she is practicing magic with evil intent?”
“No, but somebody must be doing so.”
“We’ll have to think about this systematically,” said Joachim. I noticed he was not meeting my eyes and wondered if he was starting to suspect me of evil intent. “Of those who stayed in the castle while we were gone, certainly the constable is the strongest individual. I have never thought of him as other than good.”
“Neither had I,” I said, “but he stays so much in the background that I realize I don’t know him very well.”
“But what possible motive could he have for putting the others to sleep?”
I was about to explain my theory of the person involved in black magic needing to get back in the cellar when there was a sudden knock at the door. “Come in!” called Joachim.
I must have jumped six inches when the constable himself opened it and addressed the chaplain. “Excuse me,” he said, “but there’s someone to see you.”
II
Joachim stood up and followed the constable out at once. I sat for a moment, looking at the backs of his books on his shelf, then, feeling it was not polite to stay here while he was gone, wandered out into the hallway.
I had just had an idea about the constable. He had the keys to every room in the castle, yet he had told me that only Dominic, who had duplicate keys for most rooms, had the key to the cellar. Did this mean that he really did have the cellar key, but had wanted to deny it, knowing all too well what was down there?
The challenge of trying to figure out what was happening in Yurt would have been highly enjoyable if I had not kept being overwhelmed with terror. I was glad to think that Joachim and I were probably friends again, at least for the moment; he might have some good ideas. By the time he came back, I had a theory to account for the north tower.
The old wizard, I reasoned, liked to consider himself a wizard of light and air, but at some point he had dabbled in black magic. The old chaplain had suspected something of this, and so had the constable. The wizard had repented and gotten out with his soul intact, but when he retired he left all the paraphernalia of black magic behind him, locked up in his tower. The constable, however, who had somehow learned how to break magic locks, had gone in, taken everything down to his own den of evil in the cellar, and swept out the tower room to leave no traces.
This was quite an appealing theory, other than the gaps of where the constable might have learned how to break locks and what, exactly, the “paraphernalia of black magic” might be. Having tried to avoid such things, I actually had no idea, except perhaps some books of evil spells.
Joachim came swiftly back up the hallway and went into his room without speaking to me. But since he left the door open, I went in too after a minute. He had his saddlebag on the bed and was tossing a few things into it.
He looked up at me. “There’s a sick boy in the village. They want me to pray for him.”
I did not answer, feeling that “How nice,” the all-purpose comment, was highly inappropriate.
“Fortunately, I don’t think he’s very sick, and the doctor is already with him.” He threw his Bible in on top and strapped up the bag. “It’s the brother of the little girl who was bitten by the viper.”
“Dear God,” I startled myself by saying.
“If I were the father, I wouldn’t send for me,” said Joachim with what would have been grim humor in anyone else. “But he did.” He stood up, pulled on his jacket, and swung the saddlebag over his shoulder. I followed him as he strode down through the castle to the courtyard. The same man in brown that I had seen before was waiting on his horse. In a moment, the chaplain was mounted and the two rode away together.
I went out onto the drawbridge, although I was cold without a coat. The morning sun glittered on the icy snow. I watched until the two riders disappeared into the edge of the forest and felt very glad that I was not a priest.
I hurried back inside and went in search of the constable. I found him in the kitchen talking to the cook. “Is something wrong?” she said, seeing me over his shoulder. “I know Gwen says that you always like crullers, but I’d only made a few this morning. She should be back from her vacation this afternoon.”
“It’s not about the crullers,” I said, although another time it would have been. I didn’t even mention how stale the donut I had gotten had tasted. “I wanted to talk to the constable.”
“All right,” he said, turning to smile at me. “Well, we can order whatever we don’t have,” he said over his shoulder to the cook. “Just start making a list of what you’ll need. We can talk more later.” Turning back to me, he said, “Shall we go to my chambers?”
I had never actually been in the constable’s chambers, and I immediately agreed, although if I had expected to see the paraphernalia of evil I was sadly disappointed. His chambers, in fact, looked a lot like mine, without the rows of books on magic. Instead he had big leather-bound manuscript books that I guessed were the castle accounts and inventories. There were rows of plants inside on the windowsills, and the furniture was all painted blue and white.