Mage Quest - Wizard of Yurt 3 (17 page)

I stopped short of the door and probed with magic, expecting to find a mass of armed knights on the far side. But I found nothing. Just to be sure, I pushed the door open a crack and peeked out. The square in which the church sat was empty except for our horses, swishing their tails peacefuly.

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“There’s no one there, Ascelin,” I said and flew back. “Your hunters instincts have failed you this time, I’m afraid.”

“Let’s get out of here before I’m proven right.”

“Just a moment,” said King Haimeric. He crawled partialy into the tomb; when he backed out a moment later his gray cloak was filthy, and he looked grim but satisfied. “You’re right, Hugo, that it doesn’t make sense to take his bones with us now. But at least I’ve straightened them out.”

“Come on” said Ascelin. He helped ease the tombstone back into place, pushing it in tight this time, then we al hurried toward the door. Realizing I was stil holding Dominic’s ring, I slid it onto my thumb, since it was too big for any of my ringers, and puled my glove on over it

I stopped the others short of the entrance, in case armed men had come up during the last minute, but my probing stil found nothing. We hurried out and I caught brief glimpses of faces in windows high up around the little square. The faces looked frightened rather than hostile and disappeared immediately.

In a moment we were onto our horses and riding recklessly fast through the city streets. But the worst danger we encountered was a cart of vegetables pushed out of a side street almost directly into our path, which Whirlwind vaulted and the rest of our horses scrambled around. Outside the city gates, we covered two miles as fast as Ascelin, who ran holding onto Dominic’s stirrup leather, could go.

“Al right,” he said at last, throwing himself to the ground under a tree. “We got away safely this time. Now I’d like to know what’s actualy happening.”

“So would I,” I said, dismounting and carefuly removing my gloves. “And I think it starts with this ring.”

I had always coveted Dominic’s ring. The coiled gold snake and the ruby made it just the thing to suggest wizardly wisdom and mystery. I had inherited a ring shaped like an eagle in flight from my predecessor as Royal Wizard of Yurt, but it wasn’t the same.

Slowly I turned the ring in my hands, watching the ruby catch the light. “There might,” I said, “just might, be a spel attached to this, something like the message spel Sir Hugo’s wizard left for us in Warm’s castle. I’l have to see if it’s stil working after fifty years. Sire, did your brother take a wizard with him?”

“No,” said King Haimeric in surprise. “I only ever had the one Royal Wizard before you. I don’t believe my brothers household ever kept one.”

“Then the spel, if there is a spel,” I said, “was put together by a wizard of the eastern kingdoms, someone trained differently than I. This may take a while.” I said that in the hopes that it would not take very long at al and that I could impress the others with my abilities, but this ring was not nearly as ready to yield its secrets as Evrard’s black box.

Then the carving of the snake on the tomb was a message,” said Hugo to Dominic, “your father’s way of teling you, only you, that the ring he had sent back to Yurt was somehow special. He just didn’t think it would take you this long to get here.”

Dominic ignored the second half of this comment. “Do you know if my father acquired al his jewels together,” he asked the king, “or a few at a time?”

“As I remember,” said King Haimeric thoughtfuly, “it was a hoard he discovered or picked up somewhere—or perhaps captured in battle. His servant who brought the jewels back to Yurt told me at the time, but I’m afraid I didn’t pay very much attention to that part of his account.”

And mat servant was long dead. Any secrets from beyond the grave would be revealed through wizardry or not at al.

I sat down under the tree, my back to the rest, and murmured likely seeming spels under my breath. Behind me, Ascelin asked the chaplain, “Did your bishop visit the Church of the Holy Twins?”

“He never got into this part of the eastern kingdoms,” said Joachim. “He took the main pilgrimage and trade route down along the rivers, west of the mountains.”

“Ha!” I said aloud suddenly. The ruby on Dominic’s ring was held in place not just by the goldsmith’s art, but by magic and by a spel I recognized. With a few quick words of the Hidden Language, I loosened the spel. In three twists, the stone came loose; something tiny, scarcely bigger than a pin head, dropped into my hand.

I had an audience now. With no time to search carefuly for the best spel, I improvised, trying a variation of a transformations spel to transform whatever tiny object I held into something bigger without, I hoped, changing any of its other properties.

And that turned out, almost to my surprise, to be the right spel. I was suddenly holding a piece of parchment in my hand with a message written out clearly. I looked first at the formal signature, “Dominicus prin-ceps Yurtiae,” and then at the heading, To my dearest wife and son.”

I handed it to Dominic. “I think this is for you.”

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He read it out loud “By the time you read this I wil be dead.” Dominic stopped, looked at the king, cleared his throat, and continued reading. “The servant by whom you wil have received this ring wil also have given you a more open letter of farewel. I hope the Royal Wizard wil quickly discover this ring’s secret, but if not, the snake I asked to have carved on my tombstone wil be a clue for you.”

“I was right,” said Hugo. Dominic ignored him.

The wizard I have taken into my employ, who wil hide this message magicaly in the ring for me, is one I trust thoroughly, totaly, and explicitly.”

“That means he didn’t trust him at al,” interrupted the king.

“What?” said Dominic and I together.

“Didn’t I ever teach you that code, Dominic?” asked King Haimeric. “Tour father and I worked it out when we were boys. Because normaly you say that you trust someone implicitly, trust them completely without having to say anything, to say that you trust them explicitly is to say just the opposite, that you express your trust only with your lips.” I tried to remember any occasions when the king might have said he trusted me explicitly. Fortunately I couldn’t think of any.

“Is it possible,” asked Ascelin, “if Prince Dominic employed a wizard after al, that he might have been the ‘magnificent warrior’ of the border guards’ story?” King Haimeric shook his head. “I don’t think so. He was certainly a magnificent knight, but there was nothing about him that should inspire frightening stories.” Dominic read another sentence. “My wizard and I are both gravely wounded and il from the same fever.” He stopped again and looked up. “I thought my father was kiled in battle.”

“Wounded in battle,” said the king soberly, “so badly he might not have recovered anyway, but his servant said it was the fever that finished him.” I glanced at Joachim out of the corner of my eye and said nothing.

“But we have learned of something wonderful,” Dominic continued, “something marvelous, so special that I dare not mention it even in this secret letter.”

“So we’re stil not getting any answers,” said Ascelin, half under his breath.

“It is hidden far to the south of the Holy Land, in the Wadi Harhammi. I can’t even tel you how we found out, but you wil know it when you find it.” Dominic lifted his eyes. That’s the entire message. Does it make any sense?”

“What’s a wadi?” asked the king.

“It’s a dry watercourse,” answered Ascelin.

The Wadi Harhammi,” said Hugo, “south of the Holy Land. This message is fifty years old. Other people must have learned about it by now. I’m sure it’s what my father was looking for when he disappeared.”

“We have to go there,” said Dominic. He spoke slowly, with dignity and determination. “Wherever this Wadi Harhammi may be, whether or not the marvelous object is stil there, we must go in search of it I cannot ask the rest of you to accompany me against your wils, but I have no choice. My father wished me to go.”

We al looked toward King Haimeric. This was stil his quest, no matter what messages from the dead we might receive. The king nodded thoughtfuly. “After fifty years, whatever he’d found or heard of is unlikely stil to be there. But you’re quite right: we have to look. Besides, the stories of the blue rose say it’s being cultivated south of the Holy Land.” Dominic handed me the parchment. “Since this is a magical message, Wizard, you should carry it.”

Ascelin stood up. “Whatever your brother had heard of, Haimeric, someone thought it important enough to break into the tomb to try to find the secret. If they’re looking for the snake ring, and they know we have it, we could be in constant danger.”

King Haimeric smiled. “I appreciate your concern, Ascelin, but this enemy of which you speak must already know the secret’s not in the tomb and wil think we don’t have it either or we wouldn’t have come here to look for it.”

“Could I have my ring back?” Dominic asked me.

I had almost forgotten I was holding it. Even if al of us stil seemed more wiling to folow the king in search of his brother than Dominic in search of his father, the burly prince certainly had a right to his own ring. I reattached the ruby, reapplied the binding spel to keep it in place, and handed him the ring, but the piece of parchment I slipped inside my jacket We traveled southeast through the eastern kingdoms while summer advanced rapidly around us. The king had been right, back in the mountains, that we soon wouldn’t need our heavy clothes. Ascelin kept us to back roads and away from the cities. If we were being folowed, neither his hunter’s instincts nor my magic could find anyone behind us. But we became lost ourselves on the narrow roads at least once a day, so someone else might have had even more trouble.

Although the border guards of the first kingdom beneath the mountains had said their kingdom was not at war, the other countries apparently al were. We became lost most commonly when trying to dodge the lines of soldiers we saw approaching in the distance, or to get away from the main road when a long line of carts, carrying heavily guarded supplies, appeared before us.

“I wouldn’t have wanted to miss the eastern kingdoms for anything,” said Hugo in my ear, as he and I lay in the underbrush near the main road, watching horses pass by, waiting until the road was clear so we could get the others and folow it ourselves. Harnesses jingled and dust rose from hundreds of shod feet. Spear points glinted in the sun, but the faces of the riders were hidden by their helmets. “It’s like the hiding games I used to play when I was little, but it’s deadly earnest,” he added cheerfuly.

Hugo might think it an exciting game and Joachim might think there would be great merit in dying on this pilgrimage. But if we ended up as six fresh heads on poles, like the ones we had seen last night, I doubted we would appreciate it.

I felt a new respect for the wizards of the eastern kingdoms, who I kept hoping to meet at some point, although about the only people we had met so far were frightened fanners from whom we bought food.

Ending war in the western kingdoms, it appeared, had not made the western aristocracy any less interested in fighting, only more likely to go help the wars continue east of the mountains.

“That’s the end of the troops,” I said, rising cautiously to my feet. “Let’s get the others.”

We folowed the main road a short distance, back in the direction from which the troops had come, and were just looking for a good place to leave the road again when Hugo, in tine lead, reined in abruptly.

“Look at this! They aren’t—they’re not real, are they?”

Tm afraid they are,” said Ascelin grimly.

Before us rose a pyramid made entirely of human skuls. An inscription carved in stone at the base told us proudly that these were the enemies that the local king had had kiled within a single year. Amazed, I tried to calculate how many skuls might be in the pyramid and gave up. It towered at least twenty feet above the road. The skuls, al clean of flesh and hair or any identifying mark, were very neatly arranged to stare at us.

Hugo made no more comments about games; indeed, he said nothing more for the rest of the day. For that matter, the rest of us scarcely spoke, either. We hurried on, but the shadow of that pyramid seemed stil to fal between us and the sun.

“I have to apologize, Haimeric,” said Ascelin as we sat around our fire that evening. We had taken lately to making very smal fires. “I had no idea the eastern kingdoms would be this dangerous. Even though the main pilgrimage route is at least half again as long, we should have stayed with it. Although I’d never been east of the mountains myself, I know a number of men who have. They’ve spoken of battles, of course, but nothing this widespread. I don’t know if it’s the season of the year—I realize that they’ve mostly been here in the fal and winter—or if whatever ‘strange’ stories are coming out of the East are stirring up trouble here.”

The Bible tels us,” commented the chaplain, “that in spring kings ride to war.”

“Sir Hugo and his party came this way in the spring a year ago,” said Ascelin, “and I’m sure they didn’t have anyone with them as good as I am in finding the way and hiding tracks. And yet, from everything we know, they had no problems until they left the Holy Land. If I didn’t know better, I’d think something we ourselves had done was responsible for al this.” In the next few days, however, we saw fewer troops; slowly we began to hope that we had put the worst of the wars behind us. Ascelin stil spoke darkly of how everything from the bandits to these wars seemed to be managed for our maximum peril, but he couldn’t decide if Arnulf was behind it, King Warin, or perhaps someone else we did not even know.

One afternoon, tired from weeks of travel and from a long day’s ride under a sun which had grown more and more intense, we came around a corner and found our path barred by a wal of flame.

Whirlwind reared up, but the rest of our horses, as tired as we, only stopped. I dismounted and approached cautiously. This was magic, but I wasn’t yet sure what kind.