I ostentatiously opened my first box of books.

“He’s moved down to a little house at the edge of the forest. That’s why we had to hire a new wizard. I’m sure he’d be delighted to meet you if you ever had time to visit him.”

“Oh, good,” I thought with more relief than was easy to admit, even to myself. “Someone who may actually know some magic if I get into trouble.”

I took my books out one by one and arranged them on the shelves: the Ancient and Modern Necromancy, all five volumes of Thaumaturgy A to Z, the Index to Spell Key Words, and the rest, most barely thumbed. As I tried to decide whether to put the Elements of Transmogrification next to Basic Metamorphosis, which would make sense thematically but not aesthetically, since they were such different sizes, I thought I should have plenty of quiet evenings here, away from the distractions of the City, and might even get a chance to read them. If I had done more than skim those two volumes, I might have avoided all that embarrassment with the frogs in the practical exam.

“You’ll meet the king this evening, but he’s authorized me to tell you some of our hopes. We’ve never had a telephone system, but now that you’re here we’re sure we’ll be able to get one.”

I was flabbergasted. In the City telephones were so common that you tended to forget how complicated was the magic by which they ran. It was new magic, too, not more than forty years old, something that Yurt’s old wizard would never have learned but which was indeed taught at the wizards’ school. How was I going to explain I had managed to avoid that whole sequence of courses?

He saw my hesitation. “We realize we’re rather remote, and that the magic is not easy. No one is expecting anything for at least a few weeks. But everyone was so excited when you answered our ad! We’d been afraid we might have to settle for a magician, but instead we have a fully-trained and qualified wizard!”