Below the Wizards' Tower (The Royal Wizard of Yurt Book 8) (5 page)

And finally someone answered, faint,
distant, just on the edge of mental communication.
 
“Daimbert!
 
Where are you?”

Relief poured through me, as strong
as the tide.
 
“In the caves!
 
I’ve been put under a paralysis spell!”

I had time to suspect it might be
Elerius come to gloat and then to reject the idea while the person came
closer.
 
At last I was able to sense
someone right outside the cave.
 
It
was Titus, the master for instruction in magical creatures.

He called to me in his normal
voice.
 
Touching another person’s
mind is always very hard and profoundly strange, not something even the best
wizard would want to do unless he had to.
 
“I’m going to try to free you from the spell from out here.”

Didn’t want to get his feet muddy? I
thought in irritation,
then
realized, of course, it’s
Titus, he hates caves, even shallow caves like this one.

His shadow fell across the cave
mouth.
 
It looked like he was
suspended in the air over the water, using a flying spell at the same time as
he worked to break the spell on me.
 
He really was a good wizard, I thought, between jealousy and
irritation.
 
If I had tried two
difficult spells at the same time like that, I would have ended up wet, with
the paralysis spell pulled tighter than ever.

IV

The paralysis spell trembled for a
moment, then collapsed.
 
So did
I.
 
All my
muscles stiff from hours of rigidity, I slid off the rock, right into cold salt
water.

So I ended up wet even without
trying to work magic at all.
 
“Daimbert?” came a worried call at the splash.

“I’m all right!”
 
I rose, dripping, and waded through
knee-deep water out of the cave.
 
At
last I found enough magic then to lift myself into the air, where I tried to wring
some of the water out of my clothes and beard.

Titus hovered a foot above the waves,
looking concerned.
 
“You’re sure
you’re all right?
 
You don’t look
it.
 
What
happened
to you?”

“Thank you for finding me,” I said,
trying to sound properly grateful in spite of feeling dull and extremely
weary.
 
“Some magic-worker captured
me, and I have no idea why.”

“Let’s get you back to dry land,”
said Titus and flew off, away from the cliffs and back toward where the beach
had emerged from the tide.
 
I
followed slowly after.
 
“That was a
school spell I just broke,” he called back over his shoulder.
 
“There must be a renegade magician here
in the City.
 
I just hope it wasn’t
one of the students—and I think I know which one I
especially
hope it wasn’t.”

I was almost too tired to care.
 
But when Titus dropped to the ground and
I landed, a bit unsteadily, next to him, I asked, “How did you know where to
find me?”

“The Master asked me late this
morning if I’d seen you since last night—he said you’d missed your
appointment with him.
 
And then a
priest came around to the school, which was certainly something we don’t see
every day, a priest seeking out a wizard.
 
This one knows you, and I believe I’ve met him once myself, Father
Joachim.
 
He wanted to know if you
were free for lunch.
 
So it quickly
became clear that you’d gone down to the harbor this morning and not come
back.”

“But how did you know where I’d
gone?”

The twist to Titus’s lips was half a
smirk.
 
“Well, I wasn’t going to say
this either to the Master or to that priest, but it occurred to me you might
have decided to meet that pretty waitress after all.
 
But when I went to the restaurant, she
was there busy waiting table, and when I asked after ‘Marcus’ she said she
didn’t know where he was, but she gave me some places where he sometimes
stays—one of which was out by the ship-breakers.
 
It occurred to me that you might have
been curious enough about him to try to meet him.
 
I didn’t find you at the ship-breakers,
but I
did
sense the trace of some powerful magic spell being
worked nearby.
 
So I immediately
thought of the sea-caves.”

“Why?” I said with only distant
curiosity.
 
We were walking along
the beach now, and my damp clothes and the salt drying on my skin made me itchy
all over.
 
My teeth were also
starting to chatter.
 
And now that I
thought about it I was extremely hungry.

“Well, I wondered if you’d found
this Marcus and decided to go somewhere secret with him.
 
I must say I liked that idea, mistaken
though it was, better than the idea that there’s some renegade loose, attacking
wizards.
 
Come on, let me carry you,
we’ve got to get you back to the school and warmed up.”

“But why the sea-caves?” I asked
again as he lifted me with magic for a flight back to the school.
 
He really was a better wizard than I
was—I wouldn’t have tried flying and carrying another person with magic
at the same time for fear of dropping him.

The west over the sea was growing
pink with the setting sun.
 
“Remember,” said Titus, who apparently could talk at the same time as
flying and lifting someone, “I too grew up in the City.
 
Back before I fell into the sinkhole,
back before I developed my
entirely
sensible dislike for
caves, we used to go out there and play pirates.”

A meal of leftover roast beef and
beans from the school cafeteria and a long night’s sleep left me feeling much
better, but also more concerned when I woke up:
 
who could be out there attacking
wizards, and why had they targeted me?
 
My best guess was that someone wanted to make very sure that I did not
meet Marcus, which made me even more determined to find him.

Titus came in while I was washing my
beard for the second time, to get the last of the salt out.
 
As a boy I had often come home all salty
and sandy from a day at the beach and never worried about it.

“We’ve organized a search for the
renegade magician,” Titus told me.
 
“Fortunately it really doesn’t seem to have been any of the
students.
 
I doubt they could have
overcome an experienced wizard like you anyway.”

I nodded, gratified at the inherent
compliment, and continued combing my beard and checking for barnacles.

“Also fortunately, Elerius is in town,
and he’s leading the search.
 
So
far, he says, he hasn’t found any trace of the magician and thinks he must have
fled.”

Elerius.
 
I almost dropped my comb.
 
“Have you found Marcus?” I managed to
ask.

“Remember, the waitress said she
hadn’t seen him for over a year,” Titus replied without concern.
 
“I doubt this has anything to do with
him.”
 
I had not mentioned the
tavern down by the warehouses.
 
“Oh,
that priest came by again early this morning.
 
We’d sent word over to the cathedral
last night that we’d found you, and he wanted to be sure you were all
right.
 
But he wouldn’t actually
enter the school.”

“Priests have always felt uneasy
about magic-working,” I said.
 
“Even
Joachim, who’s been my friend for years.”

“And we wizards feel uneasy about
organized religion,” said Titus easily.
 
“None of us in the school have been in a church for years, and the
doorkeeper clearly didn’t want to let a priest in.
 
If you’re ready, the Master would like
to see you.”

Although I had graduated a dozen
years ago, no longer a student wondering if I were going to fail, I still found
the Master intimidating.
 
He had an
enormous white beard below sharp, frost-blue eyes that seemed to look right
into my thoughts.
 
My one
contribution to modern technical magic, the far-seeing attachment for magical
telephones, always seemed to shrink to insignificance when those eyes looked at
me—especially since that spell’s invention had been essentially an
accident.
 
Perhaps he realized how
incompetent I felt around him, for he always sought to be friendly.

With him in his office was Zahlfast,
the head of the Transformations faculty, who had been willing to overlook a
number of my shortcomings in magic.
 
I would always be grateful that he had allowed me to graduate in spite
of all that embarrassment with the frogs in his practical exam.
 
“Glad to see you safely back, Daimbert,”
he said with a smile.

The leaders of organized wizardry
would help me, I thought.
 
Quick,
before they started asking about last year’s trip.
 
“There’s someone here in the City,” I
said, “someone named Marcus.
 
He
apparently looks a lot like me.
 
And
I think I was captured because someone wants to be very sure I don’t meet him.”

“Titus mentioned this Marcus,” said
the Master, “although he said he’s not in town now.
 
Do you think he’s a wizard?”

“Elerius assures us there are no
unaccounted for magic-workers in the City,” put in Zahlfast.
 
“The renegade must have fled—we’re
just glad you were found!
 
Drowning
while paralyzed would be a terrible way to die.”
 
I had to agree with him there.

“Elerius was very concerned to hear
you were missing,” Zahlfast continued.
 
“He was distressed when he thought he might have been the last person to
see you alive.
 
You know he always
speaks well of you, especially of your improvisational abilities.”

If Elerius had actually said that, I
was sure he meant it as an insult—good old Daimbert doesn’t understand
magic very well, but he can usually improvise his way out of the scrapes he
gets himself into, bless his heart.

Except that Elerius would not bless
my heart.

And if Elerius
had
been the wizard who captured me, then claiming to be concerned
about me and searching for the “true perpetrator”
would be
an excellent way to divert suspicion.

“Marcus isn’t a wizard,” I tried
again.
 
“But
someone
with powerful magical abilities wants to make sure I don’t meet him and is
willing to do a great deal to be sure that doesn’t happen.
 
So I do need to find him, right away.”

“I think it would be best,
Daimbert,” said the Master, “if you stayed close to the school for a
while.
 
Let others look for whoever
captured you and, if you like, for this Marcus.
 
If that priest comes back again, you
could always go to lunch somewhere close by with him—of course we
couldn’t have him
here
—but you’ll want
another wizard to accompany you.
 
Isn’t he the priest who was in your party on the trip to the East?
 
Now, I’ve been waiting to hear all about
that trip!”

So I ended up talking for the next
two hours about the East and about what I had learned of Ifriti.
 
“The spells the mages use there aren’t
our school spells,” I concluded, “but they’re related.
 
I think here we’ve made magic into a
science,” the Master smiled and nodded, as he, after all, had been the founder
of the school and its methods, “but for the mages, magic is more of an art.”

“Elerius has been saying we may need
to broaden the curriculum to include other branches of magic,” commented
Zahlfast.

It really didn’t look as though I
was going to get away from Elerius.

“We’re fairly close to having all
the Royal Wizards in the West school-trained,” said the Master, with a touch of
justifiable pride.
 
“Once that
happens, we may want to start inviting some of those eastern mages to come here
too, both to learn a more organized and rational method and to offer any
insights of their own they may have.”

My own magic had never been
especially organized and rational, but maybe that was just
me
.

The Master rose.
 
“It was very interesting and worthwhile
to learn about your adventures in the East,” he said.
 
“I may have some more questions for you
over the next few days.”

“But I’d thought I’d be going home
to Yurt tomorrow,” I said, remembering my shopping list and wondering what had
happened to the package of lace.

“We think you’re safer here,” said
Zahlfast.
 
“You’d be all alone in
that little kingdom of yours.”

I appreciated their concern, but I
personally thought I would be safer away from the City—and from Elerius.

But if I was going to have to stay
here, then I was going to spend the time trying to find Marcus.
 
He must be the key to the problem.
 
“Well,” I said brightly, “then I might
as well take advantage of being in the City with a few more good restaurant
meals.
 
I’d like to go back to where
Titus took me the other night.”