Below the Wizards' Tower (The Royal Wizard of Yurt Book 8) (11 page)

Something winged, with a long head….

The words “dragon” and “mother
griffin” flashed through my mind.
 
But with a quick far-seeing spell I was able to realize that it was
neither—it was the school’s air cart.

Finding energy I thought long gone,
I flew up to meet it, not wanting it to alight and waken the young
griffin.
 
I had to stifle a cry of
delight when I recognized Zahlfast and Joachim.

No telling why such an unlikely pair
had flown to Caelrhon together, but a lot hadn’t made sense lately.
 
Joachim, his eyes tight shut, looked
determined, whereas the head of the school’s transformations faculty just
looked irritated.
 
I dropped into
the air cart beside them, doubtless distracting Joachim from his prayers.

“A young griffin showed up in the
streets of Caelrhon,” I told Zahlfast, pointing as the air cart hovered.
 
Marcus waved up at us.
 
“I was able to lure it out here, but
we’ve got to bind it somehow and get it home.
 
I’m worried the mother may show up any
time.”

Joachim, opening his eyes, appeared
enormously relieved to see me.
 
“So
you knew all along that there was a magical danger here, Daimbert,” he said,
with a completely misplaced faith in my abilities.
 
“No wonder you left the City in such a
hurry!”

“Normal binding won’t work,” said
Zahlfast.
 
“But we can make sure it
stays well asleep for a while longer….
”
 
He murmured a spell, and Marcus
slowly toppled over to lie beside the griffin in the grass.

“Before you ask,” said Zahlfast
crisply,
“I did not ‘miss’ the griffin with my spell.
 
It should now sleep soundly all
night.
 
The man down there just got
caught in it too.”

“I appreciate that you did not want
to endanger anyone else,” Joachim continued to me, paying little if any
attention to spells and
their
effect, “but I could not
let you go alone to defend the city that is now mine.
 
It can only have been the novelty of a
priest asking for assistance from your school that made this agreeable wizard
consent to fly out here at once, once I explained the situation to him, and
once the air cart reappeared in the school courtyard.
 
He told me the most remarkable
story,
Daimbert, about you and some frogs while you were
still a student.
 
I wonder that you
never told me about it.”

“I’d have brought Titus along if I’d
realized there was a griffin here,” said Zahlfast thoughtfully, ignoring
Joachim in turn.
 
“But the Royal
Wizard here in Caelrhon prides himself on his knowledge of magical
creatures.
 
What’s his name?
 
I’ve almost got it
—
 
I
remember, Sengrim.”

“Is that the wizard who brought the
creature here?” Joachim asked, looking down at Marcus’s sleeping form.

It was going to take too long to
explain.
 
“No, that’s Marcus, the
man who looks like me,” I said shortly.
 
“If we’re going to go get Sengrim, let’s at least take Marcus along.”

In a few minutes we had Marcus
bundled into the air cart and headed off toward the royal castle of
Caelrhon.
 
None of us liked leaving
the young griffin asleep in the grass, but we were not going to try to take it
with us in the cart, and it did seem thoroughly asleep.

As we flew the few miles, I quickly
filled Joachim in on what had transpired with the cathedral chapter.
 
“I will explain to the dean that it was
not you but as impostor trying to sow ill-will,” he said confidently.
 
“I’m sure he’ll understand.”

At first the night watchman at the
royal castle insisted we wait quietly outside the walls until morning.
 
Not until Zahlfast threatened to turn
him into a cockroach—doing a brief demonstration with the dog
who
had been growling at us from behind the watchman’s legs,
who appeared very surprised to find himself momentarily an insect—did the
watchman reluctantly rouse someone to get Sengrim.

He sailed out into the courtyard
dressed in an enormous, flapping dressing gown.
 
“Two supposedly competent wizards, one
no less than a master at the school, but you’ve got a problem you can’t solve,”
he said, with a sneer.
 
“How much
did it hurt to admit that?
 
Or to
admit that the wizard you usually ignore, me, is the only one who can solve your
problem for you?”

Zahlfast kept his temper better than
I would have.
 
“We don’t usually get
creatures of wild magic in the Western Kingdoms,” he said, “but now that we
have one, of course we determined at once that we needed your knowledge and
experience.”

“And when did you
determine
that it was worth getting me out of bed in the middle of the night?
 
An old man needs his sleep, you know!”

“As soon as we
determined,
”
said Zahlfast dryly, “that a lot of people would be killed if a griffin decided
that humans might be tasty, or if the people of Caelrhon tried unwisely to
attack it first.”

That was hard for Sengrim to answer;
the chief responsibility of Royal Wizards, of course, is to protect the people
of their kingdoms.
 
After only a
little more grumbling and complaining, he went off, to return in a few minutes
dressed and with a very large box.

“Binding box,” he told me
patronizingly.
 
“I’m sure you’ve
never seen one before.
 
You may be
Royal Wizard of a kingdom senior to Caelrhon, but
I
am your
senior in magic.
 
The creature is
not directly bound, of course, but it cannot get out of the box if the spells
are done correctly.
 
I would
not
recommend that you try the spells yourself.”

“Is there any way to tell how a
griffin can have gotten to Caelrhon?” I tried asking him as we flew back toward
the city.
 
Sengrim and his box took
up most of the cart, squeezing the rest of us together at one end, where we
tried not to step on the sleeping Marcus.
 
Personally, I would not have put it past Sengrim to summon a griffin
himself, but I knew better than to say so.
 
“Or to find out if its mother is nearby?”

“If you’re asking if you missed a
lecture on how to track a griffin’s previous movements,” he told me
dismissively, “no, there was no such lecture.
 
There are supposed to be wizardly
watchers to keep creatures of wild magic from coming south into the lands of
men, but I doubt those supposed watchers know half as much about magical
creatures as I do.
 
And yet the
school—” with a glower for Zahlfast rather than me for a change
“—has never recognized my abilities properly.
 
You
I could see spending his career
at a tiny kingdom like Yurt, but even after all the years I have been in exile
here in Caelrhon, it never has felt like the right place for me.”

I decided silence was the only
possible response.
 
The air cart,
obeying
Zahlfast’s
commands, swooped down over the
meadow where we had left the griffin.

And the griffin was gone.

Zahlfast and I looked at each other
in dismay.
 
Could it be a trick of
the moonlight?
 
But the large area
of flattened grass, not to mention a few bits of rabbit fur, showed where it had
lain.

Zahlfast and I immediately started
on spells to try to find it.
 
Could
its mother have come for it and awakened it?

But we could not immediately locate
it.
 
“How far can it have gone?” I
demanded, hoping
Zahlfast’s
spells were more
effective than mine.
 
Eagle wings, I
thought.
 
Eagles can fly very far
and very fast.

“Are you
sure
you
saw a griffin?” Sengrim asked with deliberate sarcasm.
 
“And not just a sheep or goat?”

Joachim, who had been silent for the
last half hour, turned to him.
 
“My
son, I recognize that wizards usually try to avoid men of the church.
 
But one of my colleagues in the
cathedral might be helpful to you, if you could discuss with him what has given
you such bitterness of spirit.
 
We
priests are called by God to offer comfort as well as guidance.”

“It’s headed that way!” said
Zahlfast, pointing and interrupting whatever Sengrim had been about to reply.

That way.
 
That was the way toward Yurt.

X

Zahlfast gave the air cart a quick
command, and it started flying, faster than I had ever seen it go.
 
Trees, fields, and a meandering river
flashed by below us.

I leaned against the edge of the
cart, straining as if through will alone I could drive it even faster.
 
Images of the griffin descending on the
little whitewashed castle of Yurt appeared horribly before me:
 
the beautiful queen and the
sweet-tempered king coming out to see what had just arrived in their courtyard,
the young prince rushing up armed with bravado and a toy sword, all of them
being bloodily torn to pieces.

“It’s still just one creature,” said
Zahlfast, holding onto his hat as the wind whipped past.
 
The moonlight cast deep shadows on all
of us.
 
“Its mother hasn’t come for
it yet.
 
And I think it’s stopped
moving….”

We came over a rise, and there,
curled up under a tree, was the young griffin.
 
It was asleep.

Zahlfast brought the air cart down
fast and hard, but the griffin never stirred.
 
“
How
did it break my spell?
 
And why is it sleeping again?”
 
He sprang out,
then
stopped.
 
“It’s not asleep
again.
 
It’s just asleep.
 
My spell is still intact.”

“Well,” said Sengrim in patronizing
tones, “now that you’ve finally remembered where you left the creature, let’s
see if you can get it into the binding box without any more
mixups
.
 
Spill a spell
,
spoil a spell
!
as
the student
wizards used to say.”

Zahlfast glared at him but did not
respond.
 
He and I, with no help
from Sengrim, lifted the young griffin carefully with magic and lowered it into
the binding box.
 
It just fit.

“Well,” said Zahlfast when we had
closed the lid and added the spells to keep it closed, “I had better get this
back to the City right away.
 
Titus
can deal with it—or get it back to where it came from, his choice.
 
You’d better come with me,
Daimbert.
 
If someone is bringing
dangerous creatures here,” with a glower at Sengrim from under his eyebrows,
not quite an accusation, “then you are still not safe.”

“I shall stay in Caelrhon,” Joachim
said quietly.
 
He took a deep breath
and let it out.
 
“You should be fine
with Zahlfast, Daimbert.
 
From our
ride up here together, I know that he has your best interests at heart.
 
It has been very, well, interesting,
associating with wizards and magical creatures today.
 
But I need to explain to the cathedral
that the ‘wizard’ they thought had insulted them was just someone’s idea of a
joke, and in remarkably poor taste.”

He gave me what was probably
supposed to be an encouraging smile.
 
“I am sure they will understand when I explain it.
 
If anyone was hoping to create enmity
between organized magic and the church, he will be very disappointed.”

Sengrim stirred uneasily, which I
thought was a sign of a guilty conscience, but then
it
became clear that he was just worried about his binding box.
 
“Send it back to me right away,” he
grumbled.
 
“Don’t just ‘forget’ to
return it.
 
I use it all the time.”

“I’m sure Titus has binding boxes of
his own,” said Zahlfast coldly.

“How long will the sleeping spell
hold Marcus?” I asked, looking down at his
softly-snoring
form in the back corner of the cart.

“Until morning.”
 
Zahlfast shrugged,
then
added, “I guess we should take him back to the great City with us.
 
If he’s been stirring up the cathedral
of Caelrhon against wizardry, it’s best to get him out of here.”

The air cart proceeded at its normal
speed back toward the little city.
 
In the dim light I looked at Marcus’s face, that almost could have been
my face, and considered lying down next to him.
 
I was so tired, now that all the
excitement seemed over, that it was hard to remain upright.

“You
will
drop
me off at the royal castle, not at the cathedral with the priest,” said
Sengrim, although no one had suggested doing otherwise.
 
“I hope that I will be able to sleep for
at least a few more hours before duty claims me, to make up for the rude
midnight awakening.”