“Don’t worry the boy with his duties so soon,” the constable’s wife said to him, but smiling as she scolded. “He’ll have plenty of time to get started tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow! A few weeks!” I thought but had the sense not to say anything. I didn’t even have the right books. If I did nothing else, I might be able to derive the proper magic from basic principles in four or five years. I was too upset even to resent being called “the boy”-so much for the grey beard!
“We’ll leave you alone now,” said the constable. “But dinner’s in an hour, and then you can meet some of the rest.”
I had seen faces peeping out of windows as we went back and forth with the luggage, but no one else had come to meet me. While I unpacked my clothes, I tried gloomily to think of plausible excuses why Yurt could not possibly have a telephone system. Nearby antitelephonic demonic influences and the importance of maintaining a rustic, unspoiled lifestyle seemed the most promising.
II
Dinner was formal. Freshly washed and brushed but still wearing my red and black velvet, I was led by the constable out across the courtyard and to the castle’s great hall. On the way out, I stopped to put a magic lock on the door to my chambers, a lock that would recognize only my own palm print. It took me only a second, even though it’s fairly complex magic; I had needed it on more than one occasion in the City, living among an unruly group of other wizardry students. The constable was impressed, as I knew he would be; that’s why I had waited to do it until he came back.
We walked under a tall archway, through studded doors that looked as though they stood permanently open in the summer, into a hall whose high roof was four stories above us. The walls were hung with brightly-colored pennants, and a cheerful fire burned in the great fireplace at the opposite end, in spite of the warmth of a summer evening. The room was well-lit by a series of suspended globes. I peeked at them surreptitiously as we advanced across the flagstones, and my opinion of my predecessor went up; I didn’t think I could make magic lamps that burned so well.