C. Brittain - A Bad Spell in Yurt

“We knew then that his prayers had been answered,” she continued quietly after a moment, “and that you had been returned to life. All day yesterday, he sat with you and wouldn’t tell us anything, except that thanks to God you were alive. I think the duchess may have tried to speak to him briefly, but everyone else, even the king, stayed away from your room. But this morning, before service, the chaplain stopped at the kitchens to say you were better.”

Gwen suddenly jumped up. “I’m sorry to keep you talking, sir. I’ll get your food right away.”

“Maybe ask the cook for a cheese omelet this time, to go with the crullers,” I said. “And bring another pot of tea. By the way, are you ever going to tell me what Jon gave you for Christmas?”

She shook her head, blushing, and hurried out.

Joachim came in as she was leaving, taking the door from her. “There were a lot of people at chapel service this morning,” he commented.

“I’m not surprised,” I said. “I’ll go tomorrow myself if I can walk that far, or the next morning for sure.”

He sat down on the bed next to me and gave me a long look from under his eyebrows. “Whenever you can come to chapel, I’ll celebrate a special thanksgiving service for your return to life. You already look better.”

“I feel better. Could you hand me the wash basin and a comb?”

I scrubbed my face, getting the last of the aura of brimstone off, and looked critically at the roots of my beard and hair while I was combing them. Three days ago, at the duchess’s castle, I had seen chestnut colored roots starting to appear and had thought I would have to apply the grey dye again once I was home. But I had no dark roots now. My hair and beard were coming in white.

“But how about you?” I asked Joachim. “Haven’t you let anyone else sit with me?

He shook his head. “I’m responsible for you.”

“Have you even gotten any sleep in the last two days?” Several times, during the day and the night that I had slept, I had awakened, but always to see him sitting nearby, to hear his voice saying something, although I had always been asleep again before he had completed the sentence. Now his eyes looked as peaceful as I had ever seen them, but the skin was drawn tight over his cheekbones.

“A little. I dozed in your chair last night. But I didn’t want to leave you.”

“You should go get some rest now,” I said. “I’ll be all right by myself.”

He stood up, yawning. “Maybe I will.”

“But there’s one thing I want to ask you, before Gwen comes back. Since I’ve already died once, with a pure heart, does that count? When I die again, will they have to assess my soul again, or will the previous assessment still stand?”

He smiled, even though I had been perfectly serious. “Maybe some day I really will understand your sense of humor. To answer your question, I don’t think enough people have ever come back from the dead to make this point theologically clear. There are things that none of us will ever know on this earth. But if you’re asking for my opinion, not the theologians’ position, as long as you live you can do good and you can sin, and your soul will be judged accordingly.”

“Or will I maybe never die again? Doesn’t the Bible say that, after Lazarus was brought back to life, he became immortal?”

This time he laughed. “You’re not Lazarus. Besides, that story isn’t in the Bible, which only tells us that Christ raised him. It’s the kind of story young priests like to tell, but it’s not true. All of us are going to die, and you’re not an exception.”

He smiled cheerfully, as though he had just said something very comforting; and in a way he had. He went out as Gwen came in with my second breakfast.

She hurried away without a word, and when I heard a step outside a few minutes later, I assumed Joachim was returning, having forgotten something. “Come in!” I called, when the step seemed to hesitate.

My door swung open, but it was not the chaplain. It was two wizards, one in a tall red hat and the other with piercing blue eyes and an enormous white beard: Zahlfast and the Master of the wizards’ school. “May we indeed come in?”

“Yes, yes, come in,” I said, flabbergasted. I struggled to raise myself from the bed, to make the wizards the full bow, but fell back without success. “What are you two doing here?”

They entered in a stately manner, closed the door, and found chairs. “The supernatural influence is gone, I note,” said Zahlfast. “We saw the remains of the dragon’s carcass down by the edge of the forest as we flew in, and then your constable told us you’d overcome a demon! He took us for an escorted tour of the cellars, including the hole he said the demon made when it returned to hell.”

“The hole?” I had no idea what he was talking about.

“It’s at the very end of the cellars,” said Zahlfast soberly, “a black hole about two feet across, and it’s still smoking. When you look down, you can’t see anything, only darkness so black it’s almost solid, and when you drop something down, you can’t hear it hit. We put a triple pentagram around it. As you know, nothing should come back up unless summoned, but it seemed to make your constable feel better, and we wanted to save you the trouble. He plans to cover everything over.”

That sounded like an excellent plan to me.

“Now,” said the Master, “could you tell us exactly what’s been happening?”

I told them, although when I had left the City for Yurt and imagined some day telling the Master of my triumphs, I had not imagined doing so sitting up in bed in yellow pajamas. Besides, it wasn’t a triumph I was describing.

“So I guess it’s all right now,” I finished, “even though I’ll know, if it ever happens again, to get a demonology expert right away. Someone else, more expert, might have been able to negotiate a settlement with the demon without having to offer it his own life. But what are you doing here? Did the chaplain send you a message?”

“No,” said Zahlfast, “we got no message, unless that was you calling a month ago. The phone rang at the school, yet there was no one on the line. When I heard about it, at first I just thought someone had called us by mistake, or was doing so for a joke, but then I remembered you and your far-seeing but inaudible telephones.”

“That was me,” I said. “The demon had grown bold and was teasing us by running around the castle in daylight, while the chaplain was away. It was afraid of the chaplain.”

Zahlfast and the Master looked at each other, the same slightly skeptical look they had given each other when I told them Joachim had miraculously brought me back from the dead. “I want to show you these telephones, Master,” said Zahlfast. He reached one of them down from their shelf and spoke the name attached to the wizards’ school instrument.

This time it worked perfectly. The base lit up, as it always had, but when the tiny figure of a young wizard picked up the receiver, he could hear Zahlfast.

They spoke for several minutes. “Yes, that’s right,” said Zahlfast. “So we’ll probably be home tomorrow or maybe the day after. No, there’s no problem now.”

“Congratulations, young wizard,” said the Master, his frost blue eyes sparkling. “You’ve made an original contribution to wizardry and will probably have your name in the new edition of Ancient and Modern Necromancy. Not bad, for someone not yet thirty.”

“It works!” I gasped. “I’d told the constable an anti-telephonic demonic influence was affecting my phones, and I was actually right!”

“You’ll have to teach us that spell,” said Zahlfast.

I thought ruefully that they seemed more impressed by my telephones than my return to life. “But what are you two doing here?” I asked, returning to my original question, wondering if I could possibly reconstruct the sequence of spells I had tried on the telephones over the past few months. “Were you just so busy it took you a month to get here after my call?”