When he burst through the door, I was so startled I dropped and smashed the glass telephone I was working on-the spells hadn’t been working right anyway-and gasped, “Spill a spell, spoil a spell,” which hadn’t helped. Neither had sending him as a peace-offering an inscribed copy of Zahlfast’s new edition of Transformations for Beginners when it came out the next year. He had returned it with a frosty note saying that he had no books for beginners in his library. Ever since then, Sengrim had done his best to suggest that I was incapable of even the simplest illusions.

The dean lifted an eyebrow a fraction. “I would have asked for that wizard’s help,” he said dryly, “except for one thing. I officiated at his memorial service last week.”

“He’s dead?” I demanded with a rather slow grasp of the obvious, and feeling instant remorse for all the times I had thought of Sengrim as a bitter old man who wasn’t nearly as good a wizard as he wanted to be considered. “Nobody here at the school has heard about it! Do you know what happened?”

“He seems to have blown himself up in his study,” said the dean slowly, “taking half the tower with him. Apparently he had just had some sort of a quarrel with his crown prince, and most likely his anger made him careless with his chemicals and herbs. There was not enough left of him to bury …”

I had to tell the masters of the school about this at once. They avoided checking up too often on all of us Royal Wizards of the western kingdoms, but they would certainly want to know that Sengrim was dead. And the royal court of Caelrhon would doubtless be asking soon for a new Royal Wizard.

“So,” said Joachim, “can you come?”

“The series of lectures I’m giving will finish this afternoon,” I said, dragging my attention back from the image of Sengrim blowing himself up in the royal court of Caelrhon to the question of magical problems in the cathedral city, ten miles down the road. “I’d been planning to return home shortly, but I can visit you first. Would tomorrow be all right?”