Below the Wizards' Tower (The Royal Wizard of Yurt Book 8) (10 page)

“You do realize,” I managed, “that I
am the Royal Wizard of Yurt.”

His mouth fell open.
 
“Daimbert!
 
You mean
you
usually call the priests hypocrites and sinners?
 
But no!
 
I can see that you wouldn’t!
 
And Yurt is real?”

“Maybe the smallest of the Western
Kingdoms, but definitely real.”

“It must all be some terrible
prank!
 
I must apologize to the
priests at once.
 
Do you think
they’ll be in bed yet?
 
And I have
to find the man who hired me and give him his money back—though I don’t
have it all anymore, I spent the first half of it already….”

“The priests are all in bed by now,”
I said firmly, with a vision of going down the street where the cathedral
officers lived, being brusquely turned away from door after door and dragged
off—and probably beaten—by the municipal guard.
 
“We can go together tomorrow.
 
Right now we have to take care of the
‘horrible monster’ you promised them.”

“But that was just part of the
prank, wasn’t it?” he asked in dismay.

“Part of the prank or not, it’s as
real as Yurt,” I said grimly.
 
I
tried another mental probe.
 
“Whatever it is, it’s loose and roaming the streets of Caelrhon.”

IX

Titus would know how to deal with a
magical creature.
 
He probably had
all sorts of spells that would capture one.
 
I of course didn’t have any.
 
Ordinary paralysis and binding spells
will not work on a creature of wild magic, I knew with depressing certainty.

Equally depressing and certain was
that Titus was two hundred miles away, and I didn’t have access to any
telephone in Caelrhon.
 
Why—other than my perpetual unease with technical magic—had
I never considered installing one in the little castle here?

Followed closely by Marcus, I
hurried down the dark streets toward the cathedral.
 
Whoever had hired him wanted the church
to think it was under attack from institutionalized wizardry, which meant that
he hoped for a quite real retaliatory attack by the priests against all magic-workers.
 
Sermons preached against us from the
high altar would just be the beginning.

I didn’t like to think what might
happen if organized groups of priests started some sort of perpetual prayer
against organized magic.
 
They
always distrusted us, but this might push them to extreme measures—like
calling in the supernatural.
 
The
saints listened to priests, at least some of the time, and I really didn’t want
to see the wizards’ school blasted with fire from heaven.

What wizard could possibly want
that?
 
If this was subtle plot, it
was too subtle for me.

In the meantime I had to find and
somehow stop whatever creature I could now sense all too clearly.
 
Even if I couldn’t bind it, maybe I
could improvise something until reinforcements arrived.

A squawk and the click of claws on
cobblestone alerted me.
 
I pulled
Marcus back against a building,
then
peered cautiously
around the corner.

A griffin.
 
I had never seen one before, but it was
unmistakable:
 
the head and wings of
an eagle on the body of a lion.
 
The
wings were folded, but the eagle’s head was up and alert, yellow eyes seeming
to glow in the dusk.
 
But it
appeared surprisingly placid as it looked around, not yet spotting us, and gave
another squawk.

Marcus drew his breath in
sharply.
 
“Is that the horrible
monster?” he whispered.
 
“Did I do
something to bring it here?”

I didn’t even bother answering.

We were in a residential street, and
my only hope was to lure it out of town before it started investigating some of
the houses more closely.
 
That beak
and those claws could do deadly damage.
 
I devoutly hoped that whoever had brought it here to galvanize the
priests against wizardry did not have some way to urge it to attack.

But something did not seem quite
right.
 
The feathers on the
griffin’s head appeared soft and fluffy in the moonlight.
 
Its lion paws seemed unusually large for
the size of its
body which
, now that I thought about
it, was not nearly as big as I would have expected a lion to be.

It was a young griffin, a juvenile,
probably only recently out of the nest.
 
(Nest?
 
Did griffins have
nests?
 
Den?)

Which meant that its mother might be
very close by.

I had to get it out of town,
preferably without it ripping me to shreds, though that was certainly a
possibility.
 
I could not sense
another griffin nearby, but the mother would surely follow her cub.
 
(Cub?)

“Stay here,” I murmured to Marcus
and put a quick spell of illusion together.

It was only an approximation, but
when I stepped out into the street I looked more or less like the young
griffin, only twice as big.
 
A lion
would have been able to tell in an instant by my scent that I was human, but
eagles hunt by sight, not smell.
 
I
could only hope that griffins were the same.

This one lifted its wings slightly
as soon as it saw me and gave a louder squawk.
 
Anger and annoyance?
 
Or joyous recognition?
 
I had to hope the latter.
 
A window opened above us, as someone
looked out to see what was making the noise.
 
It immediately slammed shut again.

I gave a squawk of my own, intended
to suggest that the cub should follow me.
 
It can’t have been as convincing as I intended, because the young
griffin just gave me what I interpreted as a puzzled look, its eagle head
cocked sideways.
 
But when I lifted
from the ground and started flying away, it spread its wings, somewhat
awkwardly, and started after me.

Good.
 
In a moment I’d have it out of the
city.
 
Maybe by then I’d have
thought of a way to
keep
it out of the city.

We flew high over rooftops, detoured
around the cathedral towers, and sailed past the city walls.
 
Beyond was a field where tents were
erected for market days and great feasts, but this evening it was empty.
 
I descended into it, renewing my spell
of illusion, and the griffin,
who
had been flapping
hard to keep up, dropped down beside me.

It gave a rather imperious
squawk—clearly I was supposed to do something.
 
Probably feed it.
 
What
was I supposed to feed a
griffin?
 
Some mother birds, I knew,
would eat something and then regurgitate it for their young.
 
I had no intention of doing anything
similar.
 
Or was the griffin’s
mother in the process of teaching it to hunt, in which case I was neglecting my
responsibilities?

There was a rustle in the grass, and
with a single beat of its wings the griffin pounced.
 
The tail lashed, lion’s paws dug into
the rabbit, and an eagle’s beak struck true, killing it probably even before it
realized what was happening.

All right.
 
I wouldn’t have to teach the griffin to
hunt, at least.
 
I looked the other
way while it devoured the rabbit, accompanying
itself
with satisfied squawks.

Having polished off its dinner, it
shot out a tongue and licked its paws clean.
 
Then, wings folded, it turned around
three times and settled itself comfortably into the grass.
 
Its head drooped, yellow eyes closed,
and it slept.

Did I dare leave it here?
 
There
had
to be a telephone somewhere I
could use.
 
But if I left, suppose
it woke up and returned to the city?
 
Or suppose its real mother appeared?
 
And the wizard who had brought it here
was most likely nearby, just waiting for his chance.

Reluctantly I settled myself next to
the griffin, keeping my illusory appearance in place, to be ready whenever it
woke up.
 
I had seen young puppies
and foxes playfully biting each other and their mothers, and I just had to hope
the griffin did not wake up feeling frisky.

Since it seemed happy to follow what
looked (at least in dim light) like its mother, maybe I could keep it from
doing to anyone what it had just done to the rabbit.
 
I briefly considered and rejected making
it follow me all the way back to the northern land of wild magic.
 
There was no way I could fly that
far.
 
Maybe in the morning someone
would come out to investigate, and I could send a message to the school.
 
Maybe I would spend the rest of my
doubtless short life leading a young griffin around nearer but less inhabited
parts of the Western Kingdoms.

Something caught my eye.
 
A flicker of motion in the moonlight
meant that someone was approaching.
 
I rose carefully to my feet, not wanting to disturb the griffin.
 
A quick probe showed that it was Marcus.

He was carrying a club, a tree
branch he must have found.
 
From the
determined hunch of his shoulders, he was planning to beat the griffin
senseless.

I broke the illusion covering me
with a snap of my fingers and was beside him in an instant.
 
A tiny paralysis spells on his hands
stopped him before, startled, he could swing the club at me.
 
“No,” I whispered.
 
“You’ll just get yourself killed.”

He caught his breath, recognizing me
as myself.
 
I freed him from my
spell, and he picked up the club he’d dropped.
 
“But I’m responsible for its being
here,” he whispered back.
 
“Was that
illusion you put on?
 
It seemed to
fool the monster, at least for the moment.”
 
He looked over at the sleeping
griffin.
 
“You know, Daimbert, I
think it’s just a baby.
 
It’s going
to be hard to kill a baby.”

Our whispers may have disturbed it,
for it stirred and shifted position, but in a moment its head drooped
again.
 
This was
not
what I needed, sentimentality over a griffin.

“Well, you’re not going to be able
to kill it with a tree branch,” I told him quietly, when the creature seemed
settled down again.
 
“Look at it,
it’s part lion.
 
You couldn’t kill
even a young lion like that.”

“I’ve never tried,” he replied
thoughtfully.

“Take it from me, creatures of wild
magic are hard to kill.”

We sat down because there didn’t
seem anything else to do.
 
Now that,
at least momentarily, nothing was happening, exhaustion and the wine caught up
with me.
 
It was going to be
impossible to keep an illusion going, and I was hard put to keep from snuggling
down in the grass next to the griffin.
 
Its furry body looked as though it would be soft and warm.

But there was nothing soft about his
eagle beak, I reminded myself firmly.
 
Or his claws.

“So where do you live?” I asked
Marcus quietly, hoping that I could keep myself awake with conversation.

“Not really anywhere, not since I
left home a dozen years ago,” he said with a shrug.
 
“I work with the wholesalers in ports up
and down the coast, arranging for shipments, determining prices, making sure
contracts are fulfilled.
 
I always
like it when business brings me back to the great City.
 
There are pretty girls everywhere, but
the City has the most!
 
But I
wouldn’t be able to stay even there for very long.
 
Growing up on a farm destroyed whatever
roots I might have had—nothing left to put down!”

“You and I have traveled even more
divergent paths than I realized,” I said slowly.
 
“My own family wholesaled wool from the
Far Islands, and I could hardly wait to leave the business.
 
In the past decade I’ve put down deep roots
in the kingdom of Yurt.
 
And I don’t
rate cities based on their pretty girls.”

“More interested in pretty boys?”

I shook my head, though I wasn’t
sure how well he could see me.
 
After a moment I said, “There’s a woman with whom I’m in love, the most
beautiful woman in my kingdom or any kingdom.
 
It’s hopeless, she has no idea of my
feelings, but she’s spoiled me for anyone else.”

“That’s too bad,” he said
sympathetically.
 
“You ought to try
at least talking to more girls, even if you don’t want to kiss them.
 
I’ve always found that the most
beautiful one is the one I’m with right now!”

This did not seem quite right to me,
but before I could answer
my attention was distracted by
something large flying against the moon
.