A wizard looked at me from the base of the magic glass telephone. The call was from Zahlfast, the head of the transformations faculty at the wizards’ school in the great City. Even the tiny image of his face looked both irritated and worried.
“Have you heard from Evrard?” he asked without preamble.
“Evrard?” I said in surprise. “I haven’t talked to him in, what would it be, a year now. He was leaving on a trip.”
“Well,” said Zahlfast, “he hasn’t been in touch with the wizards’ school since he left, so I’d hoped you might know where he was.”
Now that I thought about it, it was somewhat strange that I hadn’t heard from Evrard in so long. Nearly eight years ago, he had briefly served as wizard to the duchess of Yurt, and although he had soon returned to the City we had always stayed in at least intermittent contact. “I would have thought he’d be back months ago,” I said.
“So would I,” said Zahlfast. “A wizard can normally take care of himself, but on a long trip to distant lands anything can happen.”
I had always been closer to Zahlfast than to any of my other former teachers at the wizards’ school, in spite of all that embarrassment with the frogs in his transformations practical exam. If he was worried, it was with good reason.
“Evrard told us at the school before he left that he’d try to keep in touch with Yurt. He’s been serving as wizard for, what is it, your king’s cousin?”
“My queen’s uncle,” I corrected. “Sir Hugo.” I paused then, trying to remember if the City nobleman in whose elegant household Evrard had been employed for the last few years was indeed her uncle, or perhaps a cousin once removed.
But Zahlfast did not give me time to try to work out the connection. “Well, your queen’s uncle’s wife-” He gave up and started over. “The lady whom Evrard served has just contacted us. She said that her husband, with a small retinue that included his wizard, have now been gone long enough that she’s become very worried. He sent her messages fairly frequently when they first left, but for some months now she’s heard nothing. And when she finally got a message from the East today, it wasn’t from him but from the governor’s office in Xantium. They said he’d signed in with them when he came through on his way east, but he’s never gotten back.”
I knew what he was about to say and thus why Zahlfast was irritated as well as worried. Everyone in the City knew that the school trained its wizards to serve mankind, and many people therefore felt that any favor they asked was a fair request.
“She asked us if we could find her husband. The governor’s office in Xantium had made it clear that they considered their duty done once they notified her he was missing, so she immediately thought of the school. Of course I told her we couldn’t search for a person hundreds or even thousands of miles away, past all the western kingdoms and even the eastern kingdoms. The school doesn’t even maintain contact with the wizards and mages east of the mountains. But we are worried about Evrard.”
I was touched. Evrard had never been a particularly good wizard-not even as good as me, a comparison from which most wizards would have flinched-but it was nice to see that the school was concerned about all its graduates.
“So I’d hoped you might have heard something, that they were fine but had decided to stay in a warmer climate until winter was over or something of the sort,” said Zahlfast. “But if you haven’t heard-and I think you’re the only person outside the household to whom any of them might have written-we may have to start trying to trace their movements from the Holy City, the last place from which they sent a message home.” He snorted. “School-trained wizards usually stay in the western kingdoms, and I certainly would have hoped any wizard had enough sense not to go on a pilgrimage.”
I had forgotten that until he mentioned it. It wasn’t just an ordinary trip on which the queen’s uncle had gone. It had been a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
“A wizard has to go along wherever his employer needs him,” I said.
“I know, I know,” said Zahlfast. “Of course he had to go, but I still don’t like it. Well, if by some chance you do get a message from Evrard, let us know immediately.” And he rang off.
I stood by the silent phone for several minutes, tapping my fingers slowly. If Zahlfast had thought it worth calling me, he must be more concerned than he had wanted to suggest. I wondered if there was something specific he hoped I would do, and then began thinking that, regardless of the school’s plans, I should initiate my own search. Neither Evrard nor I had ever had much respect for each other’s magic, but I was still better friends with him than with any other wizard of my generation.
I could see him before me in my mind’s eye. He had fox-colored hair, belied by guileless blue eyes and a large number of freckles, an excellent sense of humor, and a truly charming smile, especially when he had just gotten a spell wrong. I had the impression that the queen’s uncle was very pleased to have him. I did hope he wasn’t dead.
The phone abruptly rang, and I jumped. The constable put his head around the corner, but I had already snatched up the receiver.
But it was not Zahlfast again. Instead it was a servant in a livery I did not recognize, asking for the queen.
I found her in the great hall with the king, told her she had a call, and sat down to wonder what could have happened to Evrard and his employer. They could have been knifed for their purses, or been left alive but had everything stolen so that they had no way to pay for their passage home. They could have been overtaken by an avalanche while crossing the high mountain passes, or slipped from an icy track into a cleft hundreds of feet below. They could have been shipwrecked and drowned. They could have been killed by a lion in the desert. They could have died of thirst and heat while wandering lost. Or they could have been captured by anyone ranging from a bandit, greedy for ransom, to a bizarre magical creature.
By the time one reached the Holy Land, one was far beyond the western kingdoms, where generations of wizards had channeled magic into reasonably orderly and predictable pathways. Since magic is a natural force, part of the same forces that had shaped the earth, it should work wherever one was, but away from the western kingdoms it might be hard to control or might be channeled in unexpected ways. Pilgrims at the holy sites should probably be safe from dragons and nixies, but those sites were surrounded by cities, deserts, and seas unlike anything in the west. I wasn’t sure I trusted Evrard to react well to unexpected new spells or magical creatures.
The queen came back into the hall. The smile that normally hovered on the edge of her lips was, surprisingly, not there.
She was still worth looking at. With the emerald eyes she had passed on to Prince Paul and her midnight hair, she was the most beautiful woman I had ever met. Even though she was only half the age of King Haimeric, she was so obviously in love with her husband that my intermittent dreams, that she would decide to love me too, had never progressed beyond dreams.
She sat down by the king. “That was my aunt in the City,” she said. “She’s worried about my uncle.”
I sat up straighter, abruptly paying attention.
“It’s been nearly a year since he left on pilgrimage, and months since she’s heard anything from him. She’s frightened, and she wanted someone to reassure her that he must really be all right. She even said that their wizard told her before they left to get in contact with us if she hadn’t heard anything for a while. I’m afraid I couldn’t give her much reassurance. She said she’d already talked to the wizards at the school about searching for her husband, but they said they couldn’t help.”
I was watching the queen, not the king. Therefore I was startled when, after a brief pause, he suddenly spoke with decision.
“If he’s disappeared, and no one has heard from him, then the only solution is for someone to go after him. I myself shall go.”
The queen took a short, sharp breath, but she did not raise the objections which I myself had to bite back.
“I told you earlier this winter about the blue rose,” the king continued. “According to the rumors-and it was even mentioned in one of my rose catalogs-the rose has been successfully grown by an emir south of the Holy Land. I can try to find your uncle, try to find the rose, and make a pilgrimage myself. I’ve always wanted to go on a quest.”
They had forgotten all about me. The shadows of a winter afternoon darkened the great hall, but they did not bother to turn on the lights. The fire on the great hearth flickered yellow, but its light reached only a short way into the room. I sat in semi-darkness, feeling I should not listen to their conversation but shy to remind them of my presence by standing up and leaving.
“I’m afraid it’s no use trying to talk you into letting me come with you,” said the queen. It was not quite a question.
“No use at all, my dear. If I don’t come back, you’ll need to be here to act as regent, to make sure Paul grows up to be the excellent king we know he will be.”
“I’ll miss you. I don’t like to hear you talk about not coming back.”
“And I shall miss you.” He chuckled quietly. “You visit your parents every summer, so I know what it’s like to be left behind. But unless I’m dead, you know I’ll be back.”
“I know, but …”
“And I wouldn’t go if it were only a quest for the blue rose. If your uncle is captured or lost, I may be the only one who can save him. Who else, after all, is there for your aunt to ask?”
The queen caught her breath in what just escaped being a sob. But her voice was steady. “You’re right, as always. If even the wizards can’t help her, we’re her best chance to find him.”
“Good,” said the king. “I wouldn’t have gone if you could not have borne it. But I shall tell the court this evening that I’m going.”
“I shall miss you, Haimeric,” the queen said again. She slipped out of her own chair and slid in next to the king on the throne. “I know, I really know, that you’ll be safe and will come back. But people are changed by travel-they gain new perspectives, new ideas. I don’t want to be left behind when you think new thoughts. I love you just as you are.”
There was no chance now that either one would notice me. I rose and tiptoed quietly away.