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

BELOW THE WIZARDS’
TOWER

C. Dale Brittain

Copyright © 2014 C.
Dale Brittain

Enjoy the complete
Royal Wizard of Yurt series, available in print, as
ebooks
,
and as audiobooks.

A
Bad Spell in Yurt

The
Wood Nymph and the Cranky Saint

The
Lost Girls and the Kobold

Mage
Quest

Below
the Wizards’ Tower

The
Witch and the Cathedral

Daughter
of Magic

Is
This Apocalypse Necessary?

www.Daimbert.com

I

He was backlit against the ocean,
the spray flashing in the late afternoon sun and the salt wind tugging at his
clothes.
 
From a distance, and
without detail, there was no way that I could identify him.

And yet he looked oddly familiar.

He gazed out to sea as though deep
in thought.
 
Gulls soared high
against the sky, and several heavy-laden ships were heading out with the
tide.
 
Heading for the Far Islands,
I thought, with a twinge of nostalgia I did not want.
 
Once I would have known what was on
those ships, but that was before I gave up being a merchant to become a wizard.

After only a moment’s hesitation I
hurried on.
 
It had been a long time
since I was last in the great City by the sea, and the man at the shore was
doubtless someone I used to know.
 
It would be embarrassing if he remembered
me.

Besides, I was meeting Titus for
dinner and I didn’t want to be late—especially as he had said he was
buying.

The seafood restaurant was packed,
full of conversation and the clink of forks and glasses and the smell of clam
chowder.
 
Titus spotted me and waved
me to a tiny table in the corner.

“This place is new since I was last
in the City,” I said with a smile, slipping into a chair and shaking out my
napkin.
 
“It seems very popular.”

The master of magical creatures for
the wizards’ school smiled back.
 
“They always make a table available for me.
 
Good thing—I’m not as elegant as
most of the people in here, but I really do get tired of the school cafeteria.”

The elegant townspeople, dressed in
bright colors, laughed and gestured with their forks as they ate.
 
Business must be booming here in the
City, I thought.
 
Back when I was
growing up, before I entered the wizards’ school, our wholesale wool business
had never produced enough income to afford regular dinners in a place like
this.

“Their lobster is very fresh,” said
Titus, studying the menu.
 
“I’ve
never tried the crab-stuffed mushrooms, though I hear they’re good.
 
Did you want to start with oysters?”

It was going to be hard to
choose.
 
I had grown up eating fish
most days even if it was usually cod, but the kingdom where I was now Royal
Wizard was too far from the coast for seafood.

My contemplation was
interrupted.
 
“Well, hello,
stranger!
 
What’s it been, a year?”

I looked up, startled.
 
A waitress in a starched black uniform
stood by our table, grinning.
 
Red
curls tumbled out from under a little white cap.
 
“You should have warned me you were back
in town!”

“No, excuse me, miss,” I
stammered.
 
“You must have confused
me with somebody else.”

She made a sound between a laugh and
a snort, green eyes dancing.
 
“Somebody else, indeed.
 
Are
you on a secret mission, and I’ve just ruined your disguise?
 
The white beard looks very authentic by
the way, though I like you with a brown beard better.”

“My white beard
is
authentic,” I said, striving for dignity.
 
It had turned white overnight some years ago, resulting from certain
hellish experiences, but I wasn’t going to go into detail.

She turned to Titus.
 
“If he’s on a secret mission with you,
forget I said anything!
 
I’ll be
right back to take your order.”
 
And
she hurried off, still laughing.

“So,” said Titus with interest, “you
say you’ve never been here, but you’re already good friends with the prettiest
waitress in the place!”

“No!” I protested.
 
“She really has confused me with someone
else.
 
She must see dozens of people
every day—it would be easy to get them mixed up, especially in dim
light.”

“That’s right, Daimbert,” he said
indulgently and returned to the menu.
 
“I’m going to start with half a dozen oysters.
 
How about you?
 
And I really do want to hear from about
those magical creatures of the East.”

The waitress kept a straight face
while she took our orders, but as she was leaving she whispered, “Meet me after
my shift.
 
You remember where.”

Titus heard her.
 
“You don’t want to disappoint a pretty
girl like that,” he said, one eyebrow raised.

“It would help,” I said coldly, “if
I had ever met her before.”
 
But
then I shook my head and smiled.
 
“If I tell her I really have no idea what she means, she’ll realize her
mistake, and then she’ll be mortified.
 
Best to say nothing.”

The oysters came, and we drizzled on
vinegar.
 
I couldn’t remember the
last time I had had oysters.

But I certainly would have
remembered a pretty girl like the waitress.

And why was she so convinced that I
was someone she knew?

Titus and I talked while we
ate.
 
Ever since graduation, a good
decade ago, I had been quietly irritated that the school masters never seemed
able to make up their minds, whether we school-trained wizards were on our own
or whether they should keep a close oversight over us.
 
Most of the time we were on our own—especially,
it seemed, when we could have used some help.
 
But at other times they wanted all the
details.
 
The spires and great tower
of the wizards’ school cast their shadow even when I was nowhere near the City.

I had taken a very long trip with my
king to the fabled East, during which time the school had not worried about me
at all.
 
But now, six months later,
I was summoned down to give an account of all I’d seen, as though the masters
had been interested the whole time.

(Well, not really summoned.
 
Summoning involves tremendously powerful
and explicitly forbidden spells.
 
But called.)

“So you saw an Ifrit,” said Titus
with enthusiasm, easing the backbone out of his fish with practiced ease.
 
“You know, I’ve been up to the northern
land of wild magic multiple times, and I’ve seen all sorts of creatures
there—even dragons—but I’ve never seen an Ifrit.
 
Are they as big and powerful as they
say?”

“Bigger,” I said, cracking a lobster
claw.
 
“More powerful.
 
More terrifying.”

Vaguely human in shape, capable of
changing reality with a single word, they were creatures
who
I fervently hoped stayed very far from the Western Kingdoms.

“I’ve read that they’re essentially
immortal,” Titus continued, “that they may even have helped shape the earth
originally.”

“This one claimed to remember
Solomon.
 
I didn’t quiz him on what
else he might remember.
 
I was too
busy trying to stay alive.
 
The most
dangerous part is that they’re really very stupid and don’t like to be reminded
of it.”

“Maybe a few of us should organize an
expedition to the East,” said Titus thoughtfully, “get a better sense of what
Ifriti are really like.
 
And I’m
sure there are other creatures there too that never make it to the West.
 
We tend to focus on field trips to the
north.”

“Ever since I got home to the
kingdom of Yurt,” I replied, starting work on the lobster tail, “I’ve been
very
happy
to stay right here in the West.
 
You can tell me all about your
expedition if—I mean when—you get back.”

“I expect it would be too much to
hope to be able to
capture
an Ifrit,” he continued,
paying no attention.

“And do what with it?” I said
irritably.
 
“Put it down in the
cellars under the school with the other magical creatures and hope it stays
captured?”

At this he did pay attention.
 
“No,” sharp and
serious.
 
“I’m not putting
anything
more down in the cellars.
 
And I’m
going to try to arrange to move out some of the creatures already
there—or at least the less dangerous ones.
 
How can we teach the students if the
creatures are inaccessible?”

I remembered then.
 
Titus hated tunnels and enclosed
spaces.
 
If he ever managed to
capture an Ifrit it would not be down in the cellars with their centuries-old
protective spells, but right up in the school.

Fortunately, I tried to persuade
myself, he was never going to capture one.
 
“Well,” I said in mollifying tones, “the spells used by the mages in the
East are different from ours, but the creatures there are almost the same.
 
Desert foxes have very long ears
compared to foxes around here, but I wouldn’t call them
magical.
”

In spite of having unpleasant
memories revived, dinner was very enjoyable.
 
I untied the lobster bib at last with a
happy sigh.
 
The red-haired waitress
took Titus’s money without any of the suspicion City merchants always showed to
student wizards and their (potentially) illusory coins.
 
Being a master and a regular must have
advantages I had not appreciated in the days of subsisting on a slim student
stipend.

“So, shall I see you later?” she
asked me quietly, smiling.

I shook my head, ignoring Titus and
what was probably supposed to be an encouraging expression.
 
“I’m sorry, but I think it would be
better not.”

“Not even for old time’s sake?”

“Not even for old time’s sake.”

“Still, Marcus, it’s been good to
see you.”

Marcus?

Since that was not my name, at least
I could dismiss the half-formed thought that I really had known her and yet had
somehow, inexplicably, forgotten.
 
“Good to see you too,” I mumbled.

I watched her as she crossed the
crowded room, moving gracefully between the tables, giving other diners
friendly nods.
 
She did not look
like the kind of girl one would forget.

“You know, Daimbert,” Titus said
dryly as we walked out into the evening, “even though we wizards never marry,
we
are
allowed to look at pretty girls.”

“Of course I know that,” I said
crossly.
 
Evening bells were ringing
from the cathedral tower, their note not quite concordant with the bells on the
harbor buoys.
 
The lamplighters had
been out, so the streets were mottled with light and shadow, but the wizards’
school was a dark shape looming against the darkening sky.
 
“But it doesn’t seem fair to her when
she thinks I’m someone else.”

And I wasn’t going to mention it,
but I was already in love with a woman much more beautiful than the
waitress:
 
the queen of my kingdom
of Yurt.
 
Not that she had ever
given me a second thought, having eyes only for her
her
husband the king.
 
But hopeless as
my love was, it did reduce any interest in other romantic encounters.

As a former student of the school, I
had been given a room closer to the masters’ rooms than the pupils’.
 
From my window I could look out at the
harbor far below.
 
The long evening
of late spring was drawing to a close at last.
 
Lights glowed from windows along the
wharf, and the waves flashed phosphorescent.

Who, I wondered, could the waitress
have imagined me to be?
 
I had grown
up a City boy, but since entering the wizards’ school twenty years ago, I had
mostly associated with magic-workers.
 
They would never have mistaken me for someone who was not a wizard, so
for all I knew this Marcus could have been in town quite a bit without anyone
at the school commenting, “That man looks just like Daimbert!”

And because I had visited the City
only rarely since becoming Royal Wizard of Yurt, this Marcus, whoever he was,
could have won the hearts of a dozen waitresses without any of them confusing
me with him.

I tried to dismiss him from my
thoughts but felt too restless for bed.
 
Titus had gone back to his chambers, pleading the need to prepare for
tomorrow’s classes.
 
I went out into
the hall and wandered toward the library.
 
As a student, I had probably not spent nearly as much time there as I
should have, but my feet still knew the way.

The library was dim and quiet, lit
during the day by tall windows filling one whole wall, but now just by a few
magic lamps.
 
It smelled of paper
and old leather.
 
No one appeared to
be studying late.

On three sides of the long room
books were shelved from floor to thirty-foot ceiling.
 
Once student wizards learned to fly,
well along in the program, they could fly up to the shelves and find the books
they wanted.
 
Until then, they had
to use the tall, creaky ladders.
 
I
had never liked those ladders.