C. Brittain - A Bad Spell in Yurt

“Have you been to this harvest carnival before?” I asked the chaplain. He was riding beside me, his horse the only one without bells.

“Not since I came to Yurt,” he said. “The carnival was already past the fall I arrived, and the king has not felt well enough since then to go. But of course I know the city well where it is held.”

Clearly I was missing something. Since I didn’t even know where we were going, I kept on with my questions. “Why do you know it well?”

Joachim looked at me in surprise, then nodded. “That’s right, you wouldn’t know. It’s my cathedral city, the city of the bishop. Yurt isn’t big enough for its own bishop, or for that matter its own harvest carnival, so for both the kingdom must rely on the nearest city of the next kingdom over. That’s where we’re going.”

“Then you’ll get to see your old friends at the bishop’s school,” I said, thinking I would like to see some of my friends from the wizards’ school. But this small city where we were going was still a long, long way from the City by the sea where the wizards trained, and I knew that most of my best friends were by now off in various parts of the western kingdoms in their own posts as wizards.

Joachim looked at me a moment in silence, then smiled. “I still don’t always recognize it when you’re making a joke,” he said. As I hadn’t been making a joke, this naturally surprised me. “I’d been about to say, you must not know very much about the way the Church is organized to think that a priest would take up his first post in the same diocese as his seminary.”

Since I had no idea what he was talking about, I decided to say nothing.

“But I am going to see the bishop. It would soon be time for my annual visit anyway, so it seemed easiest to come with the party from Yurt. I sent him a message by the pigeons yesterday so that he would expect me.”

“That will be nice to see him, if it’s been a year,” I said to keep the conversation going.

“‘Nice,’” said Joachim, as though testing the word. “You know, I don’t always understand you. Are you still joking? Or is it really ‘nice’ for you to explain to the old wizard of the wizards’ school your progress in the last year in combatting evil?”

“Oh,” I said, understanding at last. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I’d realized that you had to undergo an annual assessment.”

“How else would the bishops of the western kingdoms be able to be sure that the priests under them had kept the pure faith?”

We reached the edge of the forest and passed into the cool shade. The early morning light was dim, but I could see Joachim’s dark eyes glaring at me.

“Don’t you wizards from the wizards’ school have to do something similar?”

If so, no one had ever told me, or at least I hadn’t heard. I missed my friends and I missed the City, but I certainly hoped I would never have to explain to the Master of the wizards that I had spent the past year adeptly aiding mankind with benign wizardry. “Maybe it’s because wizards tend to fight all the time,” I said, “but they leave us alone once we’ve left the school.”

“Maybe it’s because the worst you can do is endanger your own souls,” said Joachim with a snort that would have done credit to my predecessor in Yurt.

We would soon be reaching the little pile of white stones that marked the turnoff for the old wizard’s hidden valley. I decided not to point it out.

We rode in silence for a few minutes. What he said seemed to dismiss the theory I had once had that a young, untried and unsupervised priest had somehow let evil loose in Yurt. I was happy to see the theory go. Although Joachim seemed short on tact, even for him, this morning, I could not be irritated. He was not only going to have to explain why everything he had done was good, but make it clear that he had done it with a pure heart. Whatever wizardry demanded, a pure heart didn’t seem absolutely necessary.

Reflecting on the lack of purity in my own heart made me think of Gwen. I hadn’t yet had a chance to tell her I had a spell against love potions. I excused myself, reined in my mare so that others could pass me, and dropped into line again as Gwen came even.

“Hello, sir,” she said in evident surprise.

“I’d like to talk to you a minute,” I said. “Privately, if we could.”

She had been riding next to Jon. Although the young trumpeter and glass blower had always been perfectly friendly to me, he now shot me a brief but unmistakable look of jealousy. “Don’t worry,” I said with a grin. “We can’t possibly get into trouble on horseback.”

This did not improve his expression, but Gwen laughed and reined in her own horse, so that the two of us fell to the back of the procession.

“You were asking me about love potions,” I said as soon as I thought no one else would hear us. Jon was riding a short distance ahead, but his back was turned toward us stiffly, as though to say that he would not deign to turn around. “I’ve learned a spell you can say to detect one.”

As I’d hoped, Gwen was delighted at this helpful advice from her elderly uncle. As we rode, I taught her the three simple words of the Hidden Language that would reveal such a potion and made her repeat them until I was sure she knew them. “Say them over any drink or dish you suspect,” I said, “and if there’s a love potion it will turn bright red.”

“That should make the danger clear, then,” she said with a smile.

“Very clear. And remember: I know the spell too, so don’t try slipping anything in my crullers!”

This attempt at flirtation was met with highly amused laughter. The elderly uncle was clearly cute and quaint. She kicked her horse and hurried forward to rejoin Jon.

We rode on all that day, stopping for lunch at the border where we left the kingdom of Yurt. In late afternoon, when the king was clearly exhausted, Dominic called a halt at a meadow next to a stream. The servants unloaded the horses and set up the tents with the knights’ assistance, then started fires to cook supper. The ride had made me ravenously hungry, and the smoked sausage they were grilling smelled delicious long before it was ready. The king and queen retired to their tent even before supper was ready, but the rest of us strolled around the meadow, glad to be on our own feet again after a day on horseback. Even the more reserved ladies of the court were talking and laughing about the events of the harvest carnival, which we would reach tomorrow, and the Lady Maria was positively giddy.

The first sight we had of the city was the spire of the cathedral, seeming to rise out of the golden stubble of the wheat fields. The forests of Yurt were far behind, and all afternoon we had been riding past wide fields. As we came closer, we could see that the cathedral spire was surrounded in turn by a small walled city, and that the city was surrounded with the colorful striped tents of other people who had come to the carnival. As we approached, I could see crenelated towers rising on the opposite side of the city from the cathedral, directly against the walls. The city gates stood wide open, and a crowd hurried in and out. Distant sounds of shouting, of laughter, and of song reached us on the wind.

We rode through the encampments, through the city gates, and were plunged into narrow streets bustling with humanity. We had to ride carefully to be sure our horses did not bump into anyone or knock over tables set out with everything from fresh vegetables to tooled harnesses to bales of fabric. I had expected that we would be camping again, but instead we proceeded through the streets toward the small castle whose towers I had seen from outside the walls.

“This castle belongs to Yurt,” explained the Lady Maria, riding beside me. “Our king’s grandfather, I think it was, bought the land outside the old city walls, built the castle, and rebuilt the walls to go around it. He wanted to have a place to stay when he came for one of the carnivals or to visit the cathedral. Now even the king of this kingdom has to ask our king’s permission if he wants to stay here!”