Below the Wizards' Tower (The Royal Wizard of Yurt Book 8) (2 page)

Wide oak tables, some scattered with
forgotten notes, were separated by stands holding still more books.
 
I wove my way between them, back toward
the section of the library on magical creatures.

The books on the lower shelves were
mostly on dragons.
 
Not a
surprise—as very large and unpredictable creatures, not to mention
deadly, they certainly attracted one’s attention.
 
As I scanned the shelves, I thought that
I probably should have paid more attention in school to the accumulated
wizardly wisdom on dragons.
 
I had only
ever met one once, a memorable occasion—one never forgets one’s first
dragon—and had been remarkably short on wizardly wisdom.

I pulled a few volumes off the shelf
and glanced inside, but they mostly seemed descriptive.
 
If generations of wizards had found a
way to master dragons, they were not sharing.

But I wasn’t looking for dragons anyway.
 
I rose slowly toward the upper shelves,
bringing a magic lamp with me.
 
It
looked like someone else was researching magical creatures, for there were
several gaps.
 
Lamp
light
flickered across books on giants, on wood nymphs, on nixies, on
purple flying beasts.
 
But nothing on Ifriti.

Well, this section focused on the
northern land of magic, not the East.
 
I floated back to the floor and considered.
 
I wasn’t even sure I wanted to learn any
more about Ifriti, having had more than enough up-close contact with one.
 
Instead, I wanted to learn more about
Eastern magic.

Here at the school, studies focused
on the spells that the wizards of the Western Kingdoms had developed and
refined over the centuries.
 
But our
trip had taken us through the Eastern Kingdoms, where the dark wizard-princes
practiced the magic of blood and bone, even before we reached the great cities
and empty deserts of the true East, where the mages worked from entirely
different principles.

Although, as I had told Titus, the
East didn’t have much in the way of different magical creatures—other of
course than Ifriti—the magic itself was inherently strange.
 
I had stumbled my way through it with
only the slightest idea of what was going on, but perhaps it was not too late
to find out.

Where in the library would I find
books on eastern magic?
 
I couldn’t
remember ever seeing such a section.
 
Once again I wove my way between tables and
book
stands
.
 
One of the corners
of the room seemed more brightly lit than the rest.
 
I came around a freestanding set of
shelves to see, sitting at a table surrounded by open books—Elerius.

II

He looked up without surprise.
 
Lamplight glittered in tawny eyes
beneath sharply peaked eyebrows.
 
“Good evening, Daimbert.
 
I
heard you were in town.”

“Elerius!
 
How good to see you!” I stammered,
trying to slow my suddenly racing heart.
 
“I just
—
 
I
just hadn’t realized there was anyone else in the library.”

He continued to look at me, seeing
and doubtless enjoying my confusion.
 
Elerius was the best wizard of our generation, or probably any
generation, having graduated a few years ahead of me.
 
He had always acted perfectly politely
toward me.
 
But he also always
adopted a faintly patronizing tone, as though wishing to remind me of my
inferior magical abilities—as if I were likely to forget.

And, beneath his polite exterior, he
always seemed slightly suspicious of me, as though wondering what plan I might
be hatching.

If I were hatching a plan, I would
have liked to know myself.

“I was just reading what the school
library has on eastern magic,” he said calmly, gesturing toward the books on
the table.
 
“I have my own library,
of course, but I hoped the school might have some volumes I was missing.”

He was Royal Wizard of one of the
largest and wealthiest of the Western Kingdoms, located quite near the City, so
it should not be odd if he dropped by frequently.

I briefly considered and dismissed
the idea that he had been the man I had seen down by the waterfront, the one
who looked vaguely familiar.
 
I
would have recognized Elerius at once.
 
“And have you found the books you needed?” I asked as casually as I
could.

He too had been in the East, not
long before our own trip.
 
Although
there was nothing I could prove against him, I was fairly sure he was at least
partially responsible for our meeting an Ifrit.

“Very little is here,” he said with
a shrug.
 
“The school has never paid
much attention to anything beyond modern western magic.
 
The Master must just prefer that the students
learn the magic he himself finds most congenial.
 
The curriculum ignores the old herbal
magic and pays even less attention to the magic practiced east of the
mountains.
 
At one point there was a
teacher here who specialized in the magic of the East, but when he retired he
was never replaced.”

“So are these the books he
collected?” I asked, trying to read titles.
 
Elerius might be dismissive of what the
library contained, but it must be much more than I knew.

“He tried to distill it all down
into a simple handbook,” Elerius commented.
 
“Don’t you have a copy?
 
It probably has all you need for
your
purposes.”

I had indeed taken a copy of
Melecherius
on Eastern Magic
with me to the East, but it had had extremely
little to offer, making me conclude that Melecherius had little idea what he
was talking about.

Elerius must realize that as well as
I did.
 
I ignored the patronizing
tone.
 
“Well, since we made it home,
I don’t have any ‘purposes’ right now,” I said, still trying to sound
casual.
 
“But I thought, as long as
I was in the City anyway, I would try to find out more, to make what we
experienced in the East make more sense.”

“Good idea, Daimbert,” he said, with
exaggerated enthusiasm.
 
But then he
gave me a sharp, sideways look and added, “The school really shouldn’t limit
itself.
 
If the Master doesn’t understand
that now, I certainly hope that whoever eventually succeeds him does.
 
We wizards need to understand and teach
all
the different forms of magic.”

I myself had had enough trouble
mastering western magic, but it wasn’t worth saying, as he was probably
thinking the same thing.

“The Master just doesn’t seem to
realize how limiting the curriculum here is,” he continued.
 
“The youngest teacher, Titus, whom
they’ve put in charge of teaching magical creatures
—
 
He
probably knows everything in
the books, but I doubt he’s ever actually
seen
a magical creature, other
than on one or two field trips up to the northern land of magic, trips where he
saw exactly what he was prepared to see.
 
‘Oh, look, a giant, just like the picture in the book.’
 
Even
you,
Daimbert, with your
experience with Ifriti, probably have more appreciation of what real magical
creatures are like.”

“I’m sure when they hired Titus,
they thought him the best-qualified wizard for the position,” I said stiffly.

“There were other candidates,” Elerius
replied, lifting one peaked eyebrow.
 
“There was the Royal Wizard of that little kingdom, you know the one,
it’s right next to your tiny kingdom of Yurt, nearly as small—”

He must know perfectly well that the
name of the kingdom to which he referred was Caelrhon, but I wasn’t going to
give him the satisfaction of telling him.
 
I let pass the slur on any kingdom smaller
than his
own
.
 
I also refrained from
saying that I knew the Royal Wizard of Caelrhon all too well, and he would have
made a terrible teacher.

“Even though the number of
school-trained wizards is constantly growing,” he continued, shaking his head,
“the Master still runs it the way he must have when he first founded the
school, when it was scarcely distinguishable from apprenticeship training.
 
The organization of what we call
institutionalized wizardry is still
very
loose, and even as students,
young wizards are allowed to follow their own preferences, whereas it would
make much more sense to have them all follow a prescribed course of rigorous
study, exposing them to a great variety of magical systems.”

I thought but did not say that I
probably would not have graduated if such rigor had been in place.

“What the school does so well,” he
added, “is to make sure that magic is always carried out with the best motives,
to assure the well-being of mankind.
 
It would be best if
all
forms of wizardry were
practiced from that perspective.”

Here I actually agreed with him,
though I wasn’t about to say so.
 
I
had long had a suspicion that he sometimes confused what was best for mankind
with what was best for
him.

Elerius rose then and started
closing and stacking books.
 
“I
don’t know about you,” he commented, “but every time I come to the City it
seems there are more and more priests around.
 
Ever since they finished that new
cathedral, it seems that half the priests from the Western Kingdoms want to
come an admire it.
 
This was
supposed to be the
wizards’
city, but it won’t be
much longer at this rate.”

He smiled to show that he was
joking.
 
I kept silent.

He stretched, arms above his
head.
 
“Well, if you like, you can
look at these books tonight.
 
I’ve
been reading all day and am about ready to turn in.”

“Thank you,” I said with
dignity.
 
“I think I will look at
them at least briefly.”

As he turned away I thought of
something else.
 
“By the way,” I
said, with my best feigned nonchalance, “apparently someone has been visiting
the City in recent years who looks a lot like me.
 
Since you’re here more than I am, maybe
you can tell me who he is.”

For one second he froze, but when he
turned back he spoke without hesitation.
 
“A lot like you?
 
No, I’ve
never seen anyone like that.
 
Probably just as well!”
 
And
he gave a thin smile, to show he was still joking, and was gone.

I looked after him and shook my head.
 
No one else would have thought his
conversation insulting.
 
But I
had.
 
Was my attitude just colored
by jealousy?

Meeting Elerius unexpectedly had
certainly made me fully awake.
 
So
after he left the library I spent the next hour trying to find out more about
eastern magic.

Several of the books on the table
were the volumes on magical creatures that had been missing from the upper
shelves, but most were on the East.
 
There was little enough here.
 
I had to admit Elerius was right.
 
If this was what
Melecherius on Eastern Magic
was
based on, then it was not surprising that the handbook had proven so inadequate
when we were actually in the East.

For example, one book, that did
include a fairly accurate sketch of an Ifrit, enormous and green, made it sound
very easy to trick one into going into a bronze binding bottle.
 
I could have told the author that even
stupid Ifriti did not trick that easily, leaving aside the question of where
one was going to pick up such a bottle.

Elerius probably did have a point that
student wizards ought to be exposed to more magic than the clean, modern spells
of our textbooks.
 
To really
understand the magic of the East, someone would need to go and live for years
with the mages, though I was quite sure that person was not
me
.

I hated that Elerius was right all
the time.

But he had known
who
I meant when I mentioned Marcus, the man for whom the waitress had mistaken
me.
 
Now Titus could have eaten in
the same restaurant as Marcus many times and never given him a second glance.
 
A much bigger difference, to a wizard,
than whether someone’s beard was white or brown was whether
they
were a magic-worker.
 
Mere physical
similarity would not cross that divide.

But Elerius had seen the
similarity.
 
And he had not said,
“You must mean old Marcus.
 
He does
look a little like you, now that I think about it.”
 
For some reason he wanted to keep his
familiarity with Marcus hidden from me.

It looked as if tomorrow I was going
to have to find this man myself.
 
If
nothing else, I could tell him that the waitress was hoping he’d stop by.