That was the problem with having a priest for my best friend in Yurt. He was always saying incomprehensible things. “Maybe,” I answered cautiously.

Then I added, “But it’s a good thing we’re going, because I’m afraid I was on the point of going stale. A lot of wizards these days change posts after eight or ten years, going back to the school to serve as assistants and guest lecturers or moving up to a bigger kingdom that wants an experienced wizard.”

“And are you going to move up then, Daimbert?”

The chaplain was the only person in Yurt who used my name rather than calling me Wizard; but then I was the only one who called him Joachim rather than Father.

“No, of course not. I like life here in Yurt, and, besides, I’m not nearly a skillful enough wizard that a bigger kingdom would want me. And the school is unlikely to consider me a good person to guide the student wizards.”

“I talked to the bishop on the telephone this afternoon,” the chaplain said in an apparent change of subject. “You’ll be pleased to hear that he finally agrees with you, that magic telephones use perfectly innocuous magic and involve no pacts with the devil.”

“And what else did you and the bishop talk about?” I asked, deciding not to comment that the bishop was certainly slow enough to grasp the obvious, especially since it was almost a year since his own provost had had a telephone installed in the cathedral. I wasn’t particularly interested in the bishop, but it was better to talk than to sit in silence, feeling the emptiness of the unknown voyage before us.

“It really has been easier communicating with the cathedral this last year, rather than having to rely on the carrier pigeons,” said Joachim, not answering my question. I wondered if he and the bishop had discussed some spiritual issue or other which they thought was unsuitable for a wizard’s ears.