C. Dale Brittain_Wizard of Yurt 03 Read online

  MAGE QUEST

  by

  C. Dale Brittain

  Copyright Ó 1993 by C. Dale Brittain

  Originally published by Baen Books

  DEDICATION

  To Bob, with thanks for all the story conferences

  PART ONE - QUEST

  I

  Christmas was over, and everyone was grumpy—that is, everyone except the king.

  King Haimeric of Yurt came back inside the castle from the courtyard. He had been seeing off the king and queen of the neighboring kingdom, who with their family had spent Christmas with us. King Haimeric had a faint smile on his lips and a faraway look in his eyes, as though seeing well beyond the stone walls of the great hall. I noted irritably that many of the pine boughs hung on those walls had started losing their needles.

  "Wizard!" he called to me as he settled himself on his throne before the roaring fire and arranged his lap robe. "I've just heard something wonderful."

  I pulled up a chair to sit next to him. The royal castle of Yurt had once been a defensible castle, a center of wars, but for the last several generations the Christmas festivities were about as exciting as we got. Even the time we were all attacked by a dragon, just as we finished opening the presents, had been nine years ago. I really had eaten too much this last week or two, and the weather had been bad enough that none of us had gotten much exercise beyond walking to and from meals.

  "So what have you heard?" I asked the king, feeling dull but trying my best to sound interested.

  "The king of Caelrhon was just telling me very exciting news: someone has developed a blue rose!"

  It was going to be even harder to sound interested than I thought. "But I can create a blue rose for you with magic any time you like. I haven't practiced wizardry on your rose garden in the past because I assumed you liked doing the crosses yourself, but a new color shouldn't be hard."

  I hesitated inwardly even while I spoke. An illusory blue rose would certainly be easy enough, but the color would shortly fade. I didn't know offhand a spell to change something's color permanently, much less to pass that color on to the next generation of roses, but I might be able to improvise something.

  "Not a magical blue rose," said the king with a wave of his hand, "but a real one."

  I considered saying that, always assuming I could do the spells correctly, the color on my blue rose would be as "real" as the color on this rose he had heard about. But I hated to argue with my king. "I've never seen a blue rose," I said instead. It appeared I would be hearing quite a bit whether I wanted to or not, and I might as well be agreeable about it. "Some of your deep red varieties shade into violet, but that's not very close."

  "That's right," said King Haimeric, then fell silent, staring into the fire.

  I went into a reverie of my own. Maybe I wouldn't have to hear about this rose after all. At Christmas one was supposed to feel congeniality and love for one's fellow man, but I was instead having to fight against feeling dissatisfied with life in such a quiet little kingdom. I was just wondering if there were any Christmas cookies left, and if so if they had all become stale, when the king startled me so much that I forgot all about being grumpy.

  "I'm an old man, and I've never been on a quest," he said. "I think it's about time."

  I was not an old man, in spite of the white beard which I kept hoping, in spite of all evidence, gave me an air of wizardly wisdom. But I had never been on a quest either. Perversely, when I had just been thinking Yurt was too dull, leaving it suddenly seemed too adventurous. The thought of leaving the royal castle, where we were comfortable and safe from the sleet, and starting off on some unknown but doubtless highly dangerous journey filled me with horror.

  But the king said nothing more about a quest, and in the following weeks I decided it was just a momentary whim, brought on by the mention of the blue rose. But the idea kept nagging at the back of my mind. In the nearly ten years I had been Royal Wizard of Yurt, King Haimeric had never been gone from the kingdom for more than a month or so at a time, and, for that matter, neither had I.

  I loved Yurt, but sometimes, unexpectedly, when sitting down to dinner with the same people I had sat down to dinner with for ten years, or looking out across a snowy landscape, a vision came to me unbidden. Sometimes it was a complicated vision, of exciting experiences and adventures never met at home, but usually it was just a scene: riotous red flowers spreading their blooms beneath an intense sun; a bazaar where bright colors, foreign voices, and complex spicy odors competed for attention; and palm trees swaying by an azure summer sea.

  If the king was thinking of going on a quest, then the most horrifying thought was that he might go without me.

  King Haimeric spent January as he usually spent January. His eyeglasses perched on his nose, he went through the rose catalogs that were shipped up from the great City, studying all the sketches of newly-developed varieties and the extravagant descriptions of their colors and scent. Haimeric loved his rose garden second only to the queen and their son—and probably the kingdom of Yurt itself—and I suspected his own new varieties were superior to anything the City growers could produce. But that had never kept him from studying the catalogs assiduously all winter or from sending off orders for new rootstocks as soon as the cold weather began to break.

  "Now this horse," said Prince Paul.

  I had been thinking about the king and his roses while standing in the stables, but the boy's voice brought me back quickly from my thoughts.

  "All right," I said. "But remember not to kick or swing your feet. This gelding's bigger than the mares, and you don't want to startle it."

  It was warm and dusty in the stables, and the snow falling outside seemed very far away. I lifted the royal heir slowly straight up with magic, then sideways over the wooden gate of the stall. He stretched out his legs, remembering not to kick, as I set him down on the gelding's broad back. The horse turned its head in some surprise to stare at him, but Paul stroked its mane and spoke soothingly. At age eight, the boy was already better with horses than I had ever been.

  "Ready?" I said, then lifted him slowly up again, over the gate, and back beside me.

  Paul grinned at me, and I grinned back, with the schoolboy feeling of getting away with something naughty. Paul was perfectly safe, I knew, and would not fall off even the biggest horse as long as my magic held him, but I was still fairly sure that, if asked, the queen would not have approved.

  "Now this horse," said Paul.

  "Wait a minute," I said. "We're not going to proceed through the entire stable, putting you on the back of every horse in Yurt."

  "Well, you did agree, Wizard," he said, looking at me with calculating green eyes, "that riding my pony wasn't going to prepare me for bigger horses."

  "That still doesn't mean I'm going to lift you onto every horse here. Choose one more, then we'd better stop."

  Paul walked down the row of stalls, considering. Gwennie, who had observed him silently so far, went after him.

  They came back together. "The chestnut stallion at the far end," said Paul. "Then I promise not to ask any more."

  "But that's your cousin Dominic's stallion. It's the biggest horse we have."

  "I know," said Paul. "That's why I chose him. You promised!" he added when I hesitated.

  Prince Dominic, I was quite sure, would not approve of his young cousin sitting, even for a minute and even if very quietly, on his favorite stallion. But if I was willing to go along with Paul's game in spite of what the queen might think, I was certainly not going to worry about Dominic.

  "All right," I said. "But this really is the last one."

  Paul, Gwennie, and I went down to the far end of th
e stables. Several cats came to rub against our ankles, and Gwennie picked up and stroked a kitten. Dominic's stallion gave us what I would have called a surly look, but when I lifted Paul up onto his back he made no movement, though the skin twitched all along his neck and side. The stables were very quiet, with the only sound that of tearing hay as the horse in the adjoining stall pulled off a mouthful.

  "Now me," said Gwennie.

  "You want to get on the stallion too?" I asked in surprise. Gwennie, the castle cook's daughter, was almost exactly the same age as Paul and would tag after him all day if her mother let her, but she had always seemed nervous around horses.

  "Put her up behind me," said Paul. "We can pretend we're galloping across the high plains, trying to get there in time to win the treasure."

  I hadn't heard the story of the treasure of the high plains before, but Paul was always coming up with something new. "Just be sure you sit very still while pretending," I said.

  For a moment, I left Paul to stay on the stallion's back by himself and turned my magic to the girl. She was white-faced and sober, but when I hesitated, she said, "Come on!" as imperiously as the royal heir. I lifted her slowly and gradually, using the words of the Hidden Language to guide her over the stall gate and onto the stallion's broad back. I set her down with her legs sticking straight out and her face whiter than ever.

  The horse shifted uneasily, feeling the sudden increase in weight. Paul kept his balance without even thinking about it. Gwennie took a firm grip around his waist.

  "Don't be so frightened," said Paul, not unkindly. "Now, we have to make it to the fortress by sunset, or it will be too late. The sun is setting fast! Come on, Whirlwind!"

  This was not in fact the stallion's name. I wasn't even sure Prince Dominic had given it a name. Paul, riding across the high plains on Whirlwind, at least had the sense not to dig in his heels.

  But Gwennie, wanting to show Paul she was not frightened, suddenly kicked the stallion in both flanks and let out a high whoop.

  Dominic's stallion jerked hard against his head rope, trying to rear. When the rope held him down, he lashed out with his heels against the wall. The wall gave a hollow boom, and the stallion kicked again.

  Even Paul looked frightened. I held the children tight with magic and lifted them together, as rapidly as I dared without further startling the stallion. In a few seconds, they were out of the stall and back beside me.

  I started to say something, to warn Gwennie that it was not a good idea to kick a high-strung stallion, bred to carry someone who weighed well over two hundred pounds. But I looked at her face and realized any warning of my own would be superfluous.

  "We can continue the story of the treasure of the high plains up in the nursery," Paul told her. His own color had come back almost immediately, but I was pleased that he showed no signs of wanting to continue the story on a horse's back—at least, not yet.

  The children were starting toward the stable door hand-in-hand, and I was trying to decide if the stallion, who had stopped kicking and merely gave me another surly look, was indeed all right, when the outer door opened, letting in daylight, a whirl of snowy air, and the constable.

  Paul and Gwennie darted out, Paul giving me a conspiratorial grin over his shoulder.

  "There you are, Wizard," said the constable. "The queen said you were with Prince Paul, and I should have known you'd all be in here with his pony."

  We had in fact barely looked at Paul's shaggy little pony while in the stables. "What is it?"

  "You have a telephone call."

  II

  A wizard looked at me from the base of the magic glass telephone. The call was from Zahlfast, the head of the transformations faculty at the wizards' school in the great City. Even the tiny image of his face looked both irritated and worried.

  "Have you heard from Evrard?" he asked without preamble.

  "Evrard?" I said in surprise. "I haven't talked to him in, what would it be, a year now. He was leaving on a trip."

  "Well," said Zahlfast, "he hasn't been in touch with the wizards' school since he left, so I'd hoped you might know where he was."

  Now that I thought about it, it was somewhat strange that I hadn't heard from Evrard in so long. Nearly eight years ago, he had briefly served as wizard to the duchess of Yurt, and although he had soon returned to the City we had always stayed in at least intermittent contact. "I would have thought he'd be back months ago," I said.

  "So would I," said Zahlfast. "A wizard can normally take care of himself, but on a long trip to distant lands anything can happen."

  I had always been closer to Zahlfast than to any of my other former teachers at the wizards' school, in spite of all that embarrassment with the frogs in his transformations practical exam. If he was worried, it was with good reason.

  "Evrard told us at the school before he left that he'd try to keep in touch with Yurt. He's been serving as wizard for, what is it, your king's cousin?"

  "My queen's uncle," I corrected. "Sir Hugo." I paused then, trying to remember if the City nobleman in whose elegant household Evrard had been employed for the last few years was indeed her uncle, or perhaps a cousin once removed.

  But Zahlfast did not give me time to try to work out the connection. "Well, your queen's uncle's wife—" He gave up and started over. "The lady whom Evrard served has just contacted us. She said that her husband, with a small retinue that included his wizard, have now been gone long enough that she's become very worried. He sent her messages fairly frequently when they first left, but for some months now she's heard nothing. And when she finally got a message from the East today, it wasn't from him but from the governor's office in Xantium. They said he'd signed in with them when he came through on his way east, but he's never gotten back."

  I knew what he was about to say and thus why Zahlfast was irritated as well as worried. Everyone in the City knew that the school trained its wizards to serve mankind, and many people therefore felt that any favor they asked was a fair request.

  "She asked us if we could find her husband. The governor's office in Xantium had made it clear that they considered their duty done once they notified her he was missing, so she immediately thought of the school. Of course I told her we couldn't search for a person hundreds or even thousands of miles away, past all the western kingdoms and even the eastern kingdoms. The school doesn't even maintain contact with the wizards and mages east of the mountains. But we are worried about Evrard."

  I was touched. Evrard had never been a particularly good wizard—not even as good as me, a comparison from which most wizards would have flinched—but it was nice to see that the school was concerned about all its graduates.

  "So I'd hoped you might have heard something, that they were fine but had decided to stay in a warmer climate until winter was over or something of the sort," said Zahlfast. "But if you haven't heard—and I think you're the only person outside the household to whom any of them might have written—we may have to start trying to trace their movements from the Holy City, the last place from which they sent a message home." He snorted. "School-trained wizards usually stay in the western kingdoms, and I certainly would have hoped any wizard had enough sense not to go on a pilgrimage."

  I had forgotten that until he mentioned it. It wasn't just an ordinary trip on which the queen's uncle had gone. It had been a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

  "A wizard has to go along wherever his employer needs him," I said.

  "I know, I know," said Zahlfast. "Of course he had to go, but I still don't like it. Well, if by some chance you do get a message from Evrard, let us know immediately." And he rang off.

  I stood by the silent phone for several minutes, tapping my fingers slowly. If Zahlfast had thought it worth calling me, he must be more concerned than he had wanted to suggest. I wondered if there was something specific he hoped I would do, and then began thinking that, regardless of the school's plans, I should initiate my own search. Neither Evrard nor I had ever had much respect f
or each other's magic, but I was still better friends with him than with any other wizard of my generation.

  I could see him before me in my mind's eye. He had fox-colored hair, belied by guileless blue eyes and a large number of freckles, an excellent sense of humor, and a truly charming smile, especially when he had just gotten a spell wrong. I had the impression that the queen's uncle was very pleased to have him. I did hope he wasn't dead.

  The phone abruptly rang, and I jumped. The constable put his head around the corner, but I had already snatched up the receiver.

  But it was not Zahlfast again. Instead it was a servant in a livery I did not recognize, asking for the queen.

  I found her in the great hall with the king, told her she had a call, and sat down to wonder what could have happened to Evrard and his employer. They could have been knifed for their purses, or been left alive but had everything stolen so that they had no way to pay for their passage home. They could have been overtaken by an avalanche while crossing the high mountain passes, or slipped from an icy track into a cleft hundreds of feet below. They could have been shipwrecked and drowned. They could have been killed by a lion in the desert. They could have died of thirst and heat while wandering lost. Or they could have been captured by anyone ranging from a bandit, greedy for ransom, to a bizarre magical creature.

  By the time one reached the Holy Land, one was far beyond the western kingdoms, where generations of wizards had channeled magic into reasonably orderly and predictable pathways. Since magic is a natural force, part of the same forces that had shaped the earth, it should work wherever one was, but away from the western kingdoms it might be hard to control or might be channeled in unexpected ways. Pilgrims at the holy sites should probably be safe from dragons and nixies, but those sites were surrounded by cities, deserts, and seas unlike anything in the west. I wasn't sure I trusted Evrard to react well to unexpected new spells or magical creatures.