“It’s very strange,” she said. “Nobody else could hear you, but I could.”

“You could? You mean it worked? You know that, with a telephone, you have to hold the receiver to your ear, and other people don’t hear what’s being said.” I almost laughed with excitement. At last, I thought, I was making real progress.

But she shook her head. “I didn’t hear you through the receiver. I don’t think I even heard you with my ears. It was as though you were talking inside my brain.”

“Bring the telephone into my study,” I said in despondency. I put both instruments back up on the top shelf. While I thought I was attaching communications spells to the instruments, I was instead discovering that, even though the Lady Maria was not trained in wizardry, it was still possible for me to communicate with her, mind to mind. While I had begun to like her, I didn’t want to do it again. Anyone else’s mind is always acutely strange if met directly.

She started to leave, then hesitated. “Is it true that all powers of earth and air must obey the spells of wizardry?”

At least she had heard what I’d said, rather than whatever random thoughts I may have been having. “Yes, if the wizardry is done right,” I said.

“So a wizard can, if he knows his spells, exercise ultimate control over every being on earth?” It would have been more flattering if she had not still looked so puzzled.

“No,” I said honestly, “not ultimate control. Wizardry is a natural power. Like anything else on earth, it can be overcome by the supernatural.”

“You mean by the saints?”

“Or by demons.”

“But who controls the saints and demons?”

I shook my head and tried to smile. When I was at school, I had known I wasn’t a very good wizard, but at least I had believed in wizardry. Here in Yurt everyone seemed to want to remind me of wizardry’s limitations. “You’ll have to ask the chaplain about that. But no one really controls saints and demons. At best the priests learn how to ask them favors.”