A Bad Spell in Yurt - Wizard of Yurt - 1 Read Online Free PDF Page B

silent and let me concentrate. When we reached the drawbridge I had a sudden panic, picturing myself dropping him into the moat, and with my wavering in concentration he started to slip. I found the words just in time to set him down as gently as he had been lifted up.
    We walked together across the bridge and under the portcul is. Dominic was waiting for us just inside. "That was extremely enjoyable," said the king. "Could you teach me to do that myself? Not today, but soon?"
    This earned him an odd look from Dominic, who had no idea what we were talking about. "I've never taught anyone," I said honestly, "but I could try."
    Back in my chambers, I spent the rest of the afternoon practicing lifting things.

    V
    After two days of loving my kingdom, I woke up the next morning hating it. Bel s awakened me again. When I lifted my head I could hear hard rain on the cobblestones outside. The windows were streaked with water. My door handle rattled and didn't open, since I had remembered to lock it last night, but there was immediately a loud and persistent knocking.
    When I opened the door, the servant maid stood there, trying without great success to shield both herself and a tray with an umbrel a. I took the tray and half pul ed her inside. "You're going to get soaked!" I said.
    Her umbrel a streamed water on my clean flagstone floor. My tea seemed to have been diluted with rain, and the napkin on the basket was damp. When I pul ed back the napkin, I found not crul ers but cake donuts, which I don't like nearly as wel . They weren't even warm.
    "I just wanted to make sure you were up in time for chapel," she said without a smile or any sign of friendliness. She put the umbrel a back up and started out again.
    "Thank you very much!" I said quickly, wondering if everyone went to chapel every single day. "You know, I don't even know your name."
    "Gwen, sir," she said and was gone. I wondered as I ate if she didn't want to associate with someone as foolish as I must have seemed after the incident with the string. The donuts tasted as though they had been made several days before.
    My mood was not improved when I banged my head on the dark stair going up to the chapel and then found, when I reached the top, that the king and the chaplain were the only other two people there. I rubbed my head surreptitiously al during service. At the end, I offered the king my arm, but he shook his head.
    "A prerogative of being king is that I don't have to use those stairs." A smal door which I should have noticed before opened half-way down the inner wal of the chapel, presumably into the royal chambers. He went through it and left me alone with the chaplain.
    The chaplain fixed me with his dark eyes. "Don't think I don't welcome you in the chapel," he said. "But don't come because you think you have to. I hold service every morning for anyone who needs spiritual refreshment, and the king usual y comes, but the rest of the castle mostly come on Sunday." He turned away without waiting for a response.
    "In that case," I thought, "maybe I can start sleeping later." I would have to tel Gwen, if she was stil speaking to me. I wished I could talk to some of my friends at the wizards' school. The chaplain stil seemed like the only person at the castle I could hold a conversation with, and at the moment he was to me profoundly strange and distant.
    "There's incentive for me," I thought bitterly, groping back down the stairs. "Al I need to do to talk to them is get the telephone working."
    Back in my room, I was looking glumly at the backs of my books, wondering which ones I should try next, when there was a knock. I hoped it was Gwen, come to apologize for the dry donuts, but to my surprise it was Dominic, the royal heir.
    He lowered his umbrel a and pul ed off his coat. He looked around my study for a moment in silence, paused for a longer look at my diploma, and closed the door behind him. "May I sit down?"
    "Please do," I said, wondering what he could