C. Dale Brittain_Wizard of Yurt 03 Page 2

  The queen came back into the hall. The smile that normally hovered on the edge of her lips was, surprisingly, not there.

  She was still worth looking at. With the emerald eyes she had passed on to Prince Paul and her midnight hair, she was the most beautiful woman I had ever met. Even though she was only half the age of King Haimeric, she was so obviously in love with her husband that my intermittent dreams, that she would decide to love me too, had never progressed beyond dreams.

  She sat down by the king. "That was my aunt in the City," she said. "She's worried about my uncle."

  I sat up straighter, abruptly paying attention.

  "It's been nearly a year since he left on pilgrimage, and months since she's heard anything from him. She's frightened, and she wanted someone to reassure her that he must really be all right. She even said that their wizard told her before they left to get in contact with us if she hadn't heard anything for a while. I'm afraid I couldn't give her much reassurance. She said she'd already talked to the wizards at the school about searching for her husband, but they said they couldn't help."

  I was watching the queen, not the king. Therefore I was startled when, after a brief pause, he suddenly spoke with decision.

  "If he's disappeared, and no one has heard from him, then the only solution is for someone to go after him. I myself shall go."

  The queen took a short, sharp breath, but she did not raise the objections which I myself had to bite back.

  "I told you earlier this winter about the blue rose," the king continued. "According to the rumors—and it was even mentioned in one of my rose catalogs—the rose has been successfully grown by an emir south of the Holy Land. I can try to find your uncle, try to find the rose, and make a pilgrimage myself. I've always wanted to go on a quest."

  They had forgotten all about me. The shadows of a winter afternoon darkened the great hall, but they did not bother to turn on the lights. The fire on the great hearth flickered yellow, but its light reached only a short way into the room. I sat in semi-darkness, feeling I should not listen to their conversation but shy to remind them of my presence by standing up and leaving.

  "I'm afraid it's no use trying to talk you into letting me come with you," said the queen. It was not quite a question.

  "No use at all, my dear. If I don't come back, you'll need to be here to act as regent, to make sure Paul grows up to be the excellent king we know he will be."

  "I'll miss you. I don't like to hear you talk about not coming back."

  "And I shall miss you." He chuckled quietly. "You visit your parents every summer, so I know what it's like to be left behind. But unless I'm dead, you know I'll be back."

  "I know, but . . ."

  "And I wouldn't go if it were only a quest for the blue rose. If your uncle is captured or lost, I may be the only one who can save him. Who else, after all, is there for your aunt to ask?"

  The queen caught her breath in what just escaped being a sob. But her voice was steady. "You're right, as always. If even the wizards can't help her, we're her best chance to find him."

  "Good," said the king. "I wouldn't have gone if you could not have borne it. But I shall tell the court this evening that I'm going."

  "I shall miss you, Haimeric," the queen said again. She slipped out of her own chair and slid in next to the king on the throne. "I know, I really know, that you'll be safe and will come back. But people are changed by travel—they gain new perspectives, new ideas. I don't want to be left behind when you think new thoughts. I love you just as you are."

  There was no chance now that either one would notice me. I rose and tiptoed quietly away.

  III

  Before the king could tell the court that evening that he was going on a quest, we heard a loud clatter of horses' hooves in the courtyard. The constable jumped up from the supper table and hurried out to see who could be arriving at this hour. When he returned a few minutes later, it was with the duchess and her tall husband.

  I should have known. Duchess Diana had a way of turning up unexpectedly. We hadn't seen her in months; she had in fact not even been in the kingdom over Christmas, being instead with her husband in his principality two hundred miles away. I had the odd feeling that she had somehow known the king was about to announce his quest.

  The duchess and Prince Ascelin pulled off their travel cloaks by the fire and stamped the snow from their boots. After they had bowed formally to the king and queen, the constable seated them at the main table; the rest of us moved our chairs to make them room, and the cook hurried in with extra plates.

  King Haimeric seemed to have reached the same conclusion that I had, that their arrival was connected with his quest, but to him it seemed perfectly natural. "I'm glad you two are here," he said. "After you've had your supper, I'm going to make an announcement."

  But Duchess Diana and Prince Ascelin did not seem immediately interested in the king's announcement. They ate heartily, asked what had happened recently in the kingdom of Yurt, and told us stories of their stay in Ascelin's principality.

  It was impossible not to like the duchess. She was some ten years older than her cousin the queen, which made her five years older than me. She had probably the quickest mind in the kingdom, and she enjoyed a good laugh at pretension and folly even better than I did.

  "The twins are fine," she said in response to a question. "The weather was so bad today we left them in my castle when we decided to ride up to see you. They're growing so fast they may even catch up with you, Paul!" to the royal heir.

  The king took no part in the conversation—nor did I. I watched him surreptitiously as I finished dessert without tasting it. He looked both excited and oddly contented. The queen, on the other hand, sparkled with wit, keeping the conversation going constantly, pressing the duchess for details on every­ thing from the harvest carnival in Ascelin's principality to what Father Noel had brought the twins for Christmas. But I thought I saw a deep pain at the back of her emerald eyes and wondered if the king saw it too.

  At last the servants began clearing the tables, and the king gathered the knights and ladies around him before the great hearth. The members of the court, who had no idea what the king would announce, looked puzzled as he had them bring up chairs. I considered creating some magical illusions to help set the mood, perhaps palm trees by an azure sea, but decided to let King Haimeric make the announcement in his own way.

  The fire snapped and flared orange. A king could not go off to face unknown dangers without his Royal Wizard, and if he did not realize it then I certainly did. He would have to take some knights with him too, of course. I glanced at their faces, wondering which ones. Joachim, the royal chaplain, cocked a questioning eyebrow at me, but I just shook my head.

  "As I said," said the king when he had everyone's attention, "I want to tell you all something. I've mentioned to several of you at different times that I would like to go on a quest before I die. And now something has happened that indeed makes such a quest imperative. The queen's uncle, Sir Hugo, who left on pilgrimage a year ago, has disappeared, and with him his wizard and two knights."

  The court had not heard this, and there was a murmur of concern and surprise.

  "My quest, then," the king continued, "will be to find him if he is alive, to avenge him if he has been killed, to rescue him if he is in danger, and if possible to bring him home."

  Again there was a surprised murmur. "How are you going to find him?" asked the queen's aunt, the Lady Maria.

  "The only thing go do," said the king, "is to follow the route he took, through the western kingdoms, through the eastern kingdoms, to the Holy Land. He last sent a message to his wife from the pilgrimage sites."

  Most of the court were still trying to assimilate the news that their king, who rarely left Yurt, was actually planning a long journey. But two people reacted at once.

  One was Prince Paul, who had been sitting quietly beside his mother. He now leaped up with an eager shout. "Oh, please, Father, please, may
I come along?"

  The other person was the chaplain. At the mention of the Holy Land, Joachim's dark eyes caught fire, and he started to rise from his chair. He stopped himself then, but I could tell that the king was no more going on pilgrimage without his Royal Chaplain than without his Royal Wizard.

  Prince Paul's shout, even though he was immediately overcome with shyness when he found everyone looking at him, shook loose reactions from the rest.

  "Ascelin and I will come with you, of course," said the duchess. "After all, Sir Hugo's wizard was once my own ducal wizard."

  "And I'll come!" "And I'll come!" cried all the knights present.

  King Haimeric waited until the hubbub died down a bit, then turned first to his son. "I would love to have you with me, Paul," he said solemnly. "But this quest is too dangerous to risk both the king of Yurt and the royal heir to Yurt. If I don't come back, you'll need to be here to take care of your mother and to succeed to the throne."

  Paul nodded, as solemn as the king. "All right, Father," he said, swallowing disappointment with visible effort. "I'll try to be a king you can be proud of." He paused. "But when I grow up, I'm going on a quest, and no one will stop me then!"

  King Haimeric smiled at his son and turned to the rest of us. Behind him, I could see the queen quietly and thoroughly ripping a lace-trimmed handkerchief to pieces.

  "I appreciate everyone's willingness to accompany me," said the king. "But I can't possibly take you all. We'll have a better chance of finding the queen's uncle if we can move quickly and unobtrusively. I'm not even going to travel as king of Yurt, but only as a simple pilgrim. I might take two or three of you, perhaps . . ."

  There was a new outbreak of voices as all the knights pleaded to be among the two or three. The servants had long since given up any pretense of clearing the tables and hovered at the edges of the group, listening. The king looked genuinely troubled to have to disappoint so many people.

  But he made his choices quickly. "You come with me, Dominic," he said. "We've been through a lot together over the years, and it seems right that we should share this quest."

  Prince Dominic was the king's nephew and had been heir apparent until Paul was born. He had come to the royal castle of Yurt as a young boy, almost fifty years ago, and had been there nearly ever since. Since I planned to be along on this quest as well, I would not have picked Dominic. Like his stallion, he tended to be surly, and I had never been one of his favorites.

  But he might be a good person to have along in a tight spot. There was still plenty of muscle on him, even if he now had to brush his sandy hair carefully to hide the thin spot.

  "Thank you, sire," he said gravely, twisting the ruby ring on his second finger. "I probably know Sir Hugo better than anyone else here, from that year I lived with him in the City. And I am delighted to serve my king."

  "And me?" said the duchess, irrepressible.

  "No," said the king regretfully. "Not you. I can't take the queen, because she needs to be here to bring up Prince Paul, and I can't take both you and your husband for the same reason. Someone has to bring up those twins of yours, and they're quite a handful from everything I hear. If I took the duchess of Yurt, then both my counts would hear about it and insist on coming, too. No, my lady, I'll take your husband if he's willing, but I can't take you."

  The duchess started to frown but stopped herself in time. There was a brief pause while everyone remembered that, while the rest of the knights present were the king's liege men, Prince Ascelin, the duchess's husband, was prince of his own principality as well as duke of Yurt by marriage. He would accompany the king as an equal.

  Ascelin rose to his feet. He was by far the tallest man in Yurt, being well over seven feet tall. Another man might have been overshadowed by the force of his wife's personality, but Ascelin had always been a formidable person in his own right. He bent into the formal bow, trying not to smile. "I shall follow you with pleasure, Haimeric," he said in his deep voice.

  Good, I thought. Between his height and Dominic's bulk, our group should present an imposing enough appearance that no cut-throat would try to sneak up on the slightly-built king.

  King Haimeric looked around the room. "Two knights," he said thoughtfully, "especially warriors like you two princes, should be enough."

  "You'll need servants with you, certainly," said the assistant constable quickly. "I'll gladly come with you, sire."

  But the king smiled again and shook his head. "Thank you for the offer, but this will be a pilgrimage as well as a quest, and we will travel very simply, without servants." The assistant constable nodded reluctantly, but the cook, to whom he was married, positively beamed.

  "I shall of course ask the Royal Wizard to accompany us," the king added.

  That was a relief. When he turned down servants, I was afraid for a moment he was going to turn down everyone in his pay. "And the Royal Chaplain," I said quickly.

  The king looked slightly surprised, then nodded. Years of my company had made him used to me speaking up without what the finicky might consider proper respect. "Since our trip will take us to the Holy Land, we should certainly have our chaplain with us."

  The chaplain's eyes were still ablaze, but he replied calmly. "Thank you. I shall ask the bishop to send another priest to serve the castle while I am gone."

  "If the chaplain's going," said Prince Paul, trying desperately to salvage something, "does that mean I won't have to have any lessons until all of you come back?"

  "No, you're old enough for a tutor now," said the queen, speaking for the first time since the end of dinner. She smiled as she spoke and seemed to have her voice well under control.

  The king looked around slowly at the assembled court. "There are five of us, then," he said, "a good number for a dangerous mission. We'll start preparations at once, and I shall write to other royal courts in the western kingdoms to tell them to expect us. We'll leave right after Easter."

  But we ended up with six people in our party, not five. Two weeks later, while the constable and assistant constable were still making lists of what we needed and pulling boxes out of the storeroom, a lone horseman rode up to the castle at sunset.

  I had been out walking, trying to harden my body enough to be ready for a trip of hundreds, indeed thousands of miles. Even the best magic can only do a limited amount to compensate for physical weakness. As I walked I ran through spells in my mind, deciding what magic I should review because it might be useful in a strange land.

  It was so cold that the snow squeaked underfoot. I came back to the castle as shadows became deep blue and the sun tinted the western sky crimson.

  I paused before the drawbridge, breathing hard and enjoying the view, then noticed a figure emerging from the woods below the castle hill. He had a long sword slung from the saddle, and his horse was lathered in spite of the cold day.

  Yurt was so peaceful that normally I would have assumed that it was a friend coming to visit. But thinking about people captured by bandits had made me uneasy enough that I started putting a paralysis spell together, just in case.

  Halfway up the hill, the horseman noticed me. He was silhouetted against the sunset so he was only a shape, not a face, but he looked like a young man. He swept off his hat and waved with it. "Hello, Wizard!" he called as though he had known me all his life.

  Even when he reached the top of the hill and pulled up next to me, I did not at once recognize him. He had jet-black hair, was dressed in black leather, and had a gold hoop in one ear in the latest fashion for young aristocrats. Were it not for the friendly smile, he would have appeared intimidating as well as strange. And yet there was something oddly familiar about him.

  "Hugo!" I cried suddenly as recognition came.

  "Glad you remember me," he said with another smile, swinging down from his horse and wringing my hand. "You didn't think you'd be able to leave on this trip without me, did you?"

  Hugo had been a tall and rather gangly youth, learning knighthood in the ro
yal court, when I first came to Yurt ten years earlier. He had returned home to his family a year or two later, but other than his beard, the earring, and increased musculature he looked very much as I remembered. He was related to the king or the queen in some way, I recalled. He was— He was the queen's cousin, the son of the man who had disappeared.

  "I expect the Old Man is sitting on a warm beach somewhere," said Hugo, grinning, "surrounded by scantily-clad dancing girls. He said he wanted to go on pilgrimage to contemplate the state of his soul, but I hear the East can be distracting! I can't approve of course—I'm much too fond of Mother. It's high time he came home. But in case he's not all right—" and for a second his cheerful mask cracked a fraction "—I'd better do my best to find him."

  I accompanied him into the castle, thinking that he would make a good addition to our company. As a youth, I remembered, Hugo had had an excellent sense of humor. The chaplain still didn't, in spite of years of my trying to teach him, and the king had a sweetness of temper that precluded many of my best jokes. I had never know Ascelin well enough to joke with him, and Dominic was out of the question.

  These cheerful thoughts reminded me of something much less cheerful. Evrard, lost on the same expedition as Hugo's father, had also had an excellent sense of humor. And somewhere along the miles of road between here and the Holy Land his bones might be lying, bleached white by the same sun that shone on the azure sea.

  IV

  Easter came early that year. Patches of snow still lingered in the woods, although buds on the trees gave their branches a slightly fuzzy look against the pale sky. On Easter Monday the last preparations were finally made for our expedition to find the elder Sir Hugo, his wizard Evrard, and the knights who had accompanied them.

  All of us had new gray cloaks with scarlet crosses embroidered on the shoulder. Tents, blankets, rope, clothing, food, pots, weapons, armor, maps, shovels, boots, water bottles, and the king's spare eyeglasses were all organized and packed, so systematically that I wondered if we would dare actually use anything. In the morning, all we would need to do would be to strap the packs onto our horses. The night before leaving, I asked the chaplain to my chambers after dinner for a last glass of wine.