“Does she have a telephone?” I said quickly, hoping that she didn’t and wanting to forestall explaining that these were far from operational.

“No,” he said and frowned. “I hadn’t thought of that. You need two of them, don’t you, one for each person. I expect that’s why you made two. She lives in the next kingdom, about fifty miles from here; maybe I’ll send her a message by the pigeons.”

“You do wonderful glass blowing,” I said. “And I also very much like your playing at dinner.” I hurried back to my room with my prizes.

The telephones I set carefully on a high shelf, but I sat down with the oval of glass to try to make it glow. This piece, I thought, I could use for just inside the door from the great hall, where the ceiling was still high. Once I had been able to attach magic light permanently to it, I would talk to the armorer about getting some pieces of steel made in the same shape, for further up the stairs.

At first I was no more able to make my piece of glass shine permanently than I had been able to do with my belt buckle. I had been spending much of the day with my books of spells when, in the middle of the week, Joachim, the chaplain, invited me to his room after dinner.

I think I was the only person who called him Joachim. I had in fact known him for some time before even learning he had a name. Almost everyone else in Yurt called him Father, which I resisted doing, both because he wasn’t my father and because I was afraid that to do so would let down the dignity of wizardry. He didn’t seem to mind.

As I sipped the wine he poured me, I looked around his room. It was lit with candles, no magic globes here. He had only the one room, rather than the two I had, and his bed looked hard. The walls were unadorned, except for the crucifix over the bed, and all the books on his shelf seemed well-thumbed.

“Have you started feeling comfortable with your duties yet?” he asked, setting down the bottle and sitting on another hard chair opposite mine. The air from the window made the candle flames dance and his shadow move grotesquely behind him.