C. Brittain - A Bad Spell in Yurt

“That’s a servant in my brother’s castle,” she said. “We can tell them the queen got home safely. Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?”

As I expected, the servant could not hear us and replaced the receiver in a moment. “We don’t need to tell them,” I said. “The queen sent a message by the pigeons when she got home yesterday.”

“But why can’t they hear us?”

“I was trying to tell you,” I said, drawing my chair away from hers. “A telephone, if it’s working, is a communications instrument. Our telephones don’t communicate at all. I’ve taken the far-seeing spell and attached it to the instruments, but it’s not working right. Now it only means that someone using our telephones can see a distant telephone, not that he or she can talk to anyone far away.”

“But couldn’t you still use our phones for communication? You could send a message by the pigeons that you were going to telephone, and then when the phone rang and they couldn’t hear anyone, they could just say whatever they wanted to say, knowing you could hear them.”

This was too elaborate for me. “No; all it means is that I’m no closer to the telephone system they wanted. On the other hand,” feeling more cheerful, “I don’t think anyone’s ever attached the far-seeing spell to an object before. This means someone, even if if not trained in magic, could see far away, as long as he only wanted to see a distant telephone room.”

But this brought me back to an earlier concern. “Lady Maria, how do you happen to know magic? Usually women don’t know any. Have you been trained?”

“Of course not; all you male wizards refuse to teach women magic. Are there really no women wizards?”

“Not really.”

“But why not? I’ve heard of witches; aren’t they women wizards?”

This was going to be difficult to explain. “Of course there are witches in the world. They’re women who’ve learned magic on their own, for the most part, or from other witches. But there have never been women in the wizards’ school.”

“Is there a real reason, or just a silly tradition?”

“Tradition’s not silly,” I told her. “Anything that has functioned well for centuries must have some validity. But you’re right, it is a tradition, rather than a written law, such as that barring women from the priesthood.”

I didn’t want to be distracted from my original question of where she had learned magic, but she kept on pushing me about women wizards. “But what validity can a tradition have that keeps women from learning magic?”

“You’re not the first to ask this. It’s actually a question that’s being raised by some of the wizards of the City. The real reason, the original reason, is that women already have a creative power that men don’t have, the power to create life within their wombs.” If I hoped to embarrass her by my frankness, I should have known better; this was the same woman who had been whispering to me at dinner about the queen’s attempts to have a baby. “It would be too dangerous to link wizardry with that kind of creation. Witches are always teetering, about to go over into black magic, unless they know so little magic at all that their spells are useless. If you’ve heard of witches, you must have heard that some of them are said to create magic monsters in the womb.”

Maria paused for a moment; she clearly had heard something of the sort. “But that wouldn’t apply-” She broke off. That wouldn’t apply, she had been starting to say, to someone already forty-eight, but she wasn’t going to say it. Instead she said, “In that case, wouldn’t it be better to train the women properly, so they would know how magic should be used? Isn’t that training why the wizards’ school was started originally? That’s what we were told when we started looking for a new wizard.”

This argument too I had heard in the City. But instead of answering I changed the subject back to my question. “So how did you learn the Hidden Language?”

“Is that what it’s called? When I first came to Yurt, I was terribly excited at the opportunity to learn magic, when I found there was a Royal Wizard here; there was no wizard in my brother’s castle. And then, at most, he let me be there while he worked some spells! But I found out I had the ability to say spells myself, if I’d heard them even once, and then I started making requests of my own!”

“Requests?” This sounded dubious. “What were you requesting?”

“Don’t ask a girl all her secrets!” she said with a smile which was indeed positively girlish.

She seemed, I thought, to be one of the rare persons born with a flair for magic. This was why, weeks earlier, she had been able to hear my voice speaking within her mind.

“The old wizard wouldn’t teach me anything. Could you, might you, teach me wizardry?”

There was actually no reason why I shouldn’t. But I hesitated. Magic was a powerful tool, and the old wizard had been right in calling her flighty. But no one would have called me sober and stable either when I first came to the wizards’ school.

“You’d have to learn the Hidden Language first,” I said at last. “You can do a few spells by saying the words, but to create your own spells you need to understand them thoroughly.” I reached for the first-grammar from my shelf. It was heavy, and the cloth binding was starting to fray badly. “Take this if you want, but I will need it back again. Start studying, and if you’re still interested I can help you further.”

She took the volume eagerly, but her face fell as she leafed through it. “But it doesn’t tell how to do spells.”

“As I said, you can’t create your own spells unless you understand the Language first. But tell me,” as a thought struck me, “how you’ve been able to make magic ‘requests’ without knowing magic.”

There was no doubt now that she didn’t want to answer me. She stood up rapidly, clutching the first-grammar. “I’ll try to work through this,” she said. “I’d better go now. But wasn’t it fun that it was my telephone that worked?” She rushed across my room and was gone before I could answer.

I sat down again and leaned my face on my fists. I had imagined being a Royal Wizard was exciting, mysterious, and awe-inspiring. So far, I had actually promised to teach wizardry to a woman, one who was positively flirting with me; another woman, who came to ask my wizardly advice, left thinking of me as a rather dim-witted uncle; and I was in love with a third woman, this one married already.

I came up the hill toward the castle on the white mare, exhausted and exhilarated. It was mid-morning, and I had again spent the night at the old wizard’s house without intending to do so when I arrived. But this time I had known the night was passing (and it was only one night, not two) and had stayed because I decided to, not because the old wizard had used his magic herbal smoke to put me to sleep.

The harvest was over, now, although the turnips still lay in the ground, waiting the first real frost. For two weeks I had stood out in the fields with the harvesters, wearing a wide-brimmed hat against the sun and doubtless looking much more like a farmer than a wizard. I had kept my eye open for thunderstorms or the hailstorms that could destroy the ripe grain, but for the most part the weather had stayed clear, and the weather spells I had assiduously reviewed were only needed once. With my harvest responsibilities over, I had gone back to the old wizard’s house under the giant oak.

Yesterday he had begun to teach me herbal magic. I smiled ruefully at myself, arriving yesterday morning, doubtless very like the Lady Maria expecting the first-grammar of the Hidden Language to be a tidy list of useful spells. I had expected a quick listing of different herbs and their properties. Instead he had begun teaching me to know the herbs, as well as I already knew the Language, to recognize the possible properties in each and to determine how to combine them and how to find the words that would reveal their potency.