The implied insult to my predecessor, I realized, was actually supposed to be a compliment to me. “I can claim no credit, my lady; the settlement today was all the king’s idea.” It was interesting to hear that my predecessor had not stood, as I had, through long afternoons of complicated quarrels. I could appreciate his point of view. Listening to dull court cases was not the challenge to my magical powers I had anticipated when becoming a royal wizard.

The old wizard, who had been Royal Wizard of Yurt for a hundred and eighty years before me, through five generations of kings, was still alive. He lived by himself with his magical roots and herbs in a little green house down in the woods. Although I had when I first came to Yurt negotiated a truce with him, which is about the best one can hope for between young and old wizards, and he had taught me some of his herbal magic, there were still a large number of things about him I did not know.

But the Lady Maria moved on to other topics. As dinner ended, people rose and stood talking around the fireplace. The evening air, coming through the hall doors laden with the scent of roses, was just cool enough to make the fire’s warmth welcome.

The king said to me, “How about some of your illusions to round out the evening, Wizard? I may not get a chance to see many more of them for a while.”

So he really did mean to go. As I put together the words of the Hidden Language to shape my spells and produced a few simple but effective illusions-a golden egg that pulsated with fire and hatched into a phoenix, and then a twenty-foot giant who strode the length of the hall while waving its club and roaring silently-I wondered how he could bear to leave. I couldn’t imagine wanting to go anywhere else.

II

And yet I also surprised myself by envying him. Wherever the king was going, he would see new people, new sights. Yurt was a wonderful place, but sometimes I had to admit, very quietly to myself, that it could be a little dull.