Wizard at Work (7 page)

The wizard didn't say, "Don't blame me for living three days away." He said, "You said you saw this happen."

"I'd put wax in my ears to block the noise of the moaning," Snell explained, "or I'd never have been able to sleep. But I woke up when that huge stained-glass panel came crashing down onto the floor. Stained glass is expensive, you know."

"I can imagine." Snell was the type, the wizard thought, who wasn't satisfied with surrounding himself with expensive things—he wanted
everyone to know he was surrounded by expensive things.

"I sat up in bed—and before you ask, no, I definitely wasn't dreaming. I was fully awake."

The wizard smiled innocently.

"And then I saw those things lift up from my nightstand, one by one, with no hand touching them. And then the nightstand tipped over. And then it burst apart, as though someone had smashed it with a gigantic hammer."

"A ghost hammer...," the wizard speculated doubtfully.

Snell sighed impatiently. "Or maybe the ghost just jumped on it with both feet."

"More likely," the wizard agreed. "Did your wife see all this, too?"

"Duchess Cordelia has returned to her parents' home for safety's sake," the duke said. "But this is not my imagination, if that's what you're hinting at."

"The thought never crossed my mind," the wizard lied. "Have you thought of returning to
your
parents' home?"

Duke Snell sniffed as though speaking of his parents reminded him of a bad odor. "My parents are woodcutters—simple people who live in a simple house."

The wizard guessed that meant no, Snell had
not
considered moving back in with them. He noticed that Snell said nothing about his in-laws inviting him to stay with them. "Still," he said, "if you left, then we could learn if the ghost would stay here or follow you."

"Why would it follow me?" Snell asked.

"Why would it ruin your things?" the wizard countered.

The duke made that bad-smell face again.

The wizard continued, "Either the ghost is haunting this castle, or it's haunting you. Ghosts usually remain near where they died, yet you said none of the castle inhabitants has died recently."

"Right so far," the duke said, sounding impatient. "As ... I ... said ... already."

"But sometimes ghosts haunt the person responsible for their death."

"I haven't killed anyone," Snell protested.

The wizard wanted to ask, "Are you sure you haven't bored anyone to death?" but instead asked, "What about the bandits you rescued your wife from?"

Snell shook his head. "I didn't kill any of them. They ran off into the woods."

"Lucky Cordelia," the wizard said. "Lucky you. Lucky bandits."

"And I didn't know any of them," Snell added, though it had never occurred to the wizard to ask. "They wore masks when they captured Cordelia, and they kept her blindfolded in their camp so she couldn't identify any of them."

"And you happened upon their woodland camp," the wizard said, "woodcutter's son that you are. But you never saw their faces, either."

"That is correct," Snell said.

The wizard suspected that a man of Snell's ambition would never have been satisfied with the life of a woodcutter. He might, in fact, have been one of the bandits himself, and might have convinced or paid his companions to run away so
that he could appear as a hero to the rescued young woman and her family. But the wizard had no proof of this, and—besides—that didn't explain the ghost.

"If you won't go to your parents or to your wife's parents," the wizard said, "is there somewhere else you can spend the night?"

"This is most irksome," the duke complained. He paused, looking at the room in ruins about him. "I suppose I could make arrangements to stay at my hunting lodge."

Despite his casual words, he was on the road within the hour.

The wizard had lost
the greater part of the day traveling, and it was already time for supper. He ate with the castle inhabitants in the Great Hall (for a silver penny) and spoke to the servants, whose stories matched Duke Snell's: They, too, had heard moans that grew louder with each passing night, and had found the hallways slick with wet.

"Which hallways?" he asked the servants as they cleaned up after the meal.

Mostly the ones between the entryway and Duke Snell's private rooms, they all agreed.

"Interesting," the wizard said. "What kind of moans?"

The servants looked from him to one another. One tried to imitate the sound—a loud, mournful warble at which some of the others nodded or said, "Yes," or, "More or less," or, "Not exactly."

"Inhuman moans," another of them finally said, and that was something to which all nodded in agreement.

"Moans to make the hair on your head stand up and walk right off," added the servant who was sweeping the floor. He was bald, which might have meant he should be taken seriously. Or not.

The wizard asked, "Who was the last person to die here?"

The servants laid down dishes, platters, washrags, and brooms, put their heads together, and
tried to work this out. The mother of one of the baker's assistants, they finally came up with: an elderly woman who had died in her sleep during the week between Christmas and New Year's—months before Snell ever made his timely appearance in the bandits' camp.

An unlikely candidate, the wizard thought. Usually people who died of old age did not become night-roaming ghosts. Ghosts were most often the victims of sudden, violent death. And why would a spirit have lingered on earth almost eight months before making its presence known, and then take out its frustrations on Snell's possessions?

And what about the water?

"Do you know of any recent drownings?" the wizard asked.

The servants were getting fidgety and restless because he was keeping them from their work, and a few went back to the kitchen while he was busy with the others. No, the remaining servants told him. Maybe at one of the little towns that bordered the river, but no one from the castle.
They didn't travel up and down the river much, letting people come to them, instead. And no one swam in the area because of the moat monster.

The wizard hadn't realized there was a moat monster, or he'd have been nervous on the boat that afternoon. "Could the monster have eaten someone?" the wizard asked.

The servants' looks indicated they found this unlikely.

"No one's missing," one pointed out.

"You don't see too much of the creature," another said. "/ haven't seen him in weeks."

"He's shy," yet another put in. The rest of the servants nodded.

"We rarely see him."

"Just, once in a while, the top of his head as he peeks out of the water, or the hump of his back or tail."

"He's a faithful, gentle beast, and wouldn't eat anyone."

The wizard, who'd had encounters with dogs whose owners insisted they were friendly, kept his doubts to himself.

The evening got darker and quieter, and the wizard went to the bedroom the duke had vacated to spend the night there, to avoid the silver-penny lodging fee and to see if the ghost would turn up even with the duke away.

Either that, the wizard thought, or the ghost had followed Snell to the hunting lodge, which would prove something, though the wizard was not sure exactly what. If that had happened, the duke was certain to be mightily annoyed—which was a thought that cheered the wizard considerably as he settled down in the duke's large comfortable chair to wait.

The wizard had fallen asleep when he was awakened by a low, sad moaning—something close to, but not exactly like, what the servant had demonstrated for him. The sound seemed to come from outside, but when the wizard unshut-tered the window, all he saw was the moon reflected in the water of the still moat, and the surrounding woods on the far shore.

But even as the wizard saw there was nothing to see, the moaning moved—so that now it came
from beneath the castle, echoing hollowly off the cold stones.

The wizard stayed where he was, and sure enough the sound came toward him: working its way from the first-floor entry, through the Great Hall, up the stairs, coming closer and closer, down the far hallway till it came around the corner and down the final hall to the duke's personal rooms.

The wizard could hear the moaning, loud enough to vibrate his bones, just on the other side of the bedroom door.

He considered opening the door, but according to the duke, that shouldn't be necessary.

In another moment a damp spot appeared on the door, and on the floor in front of it—a big spot. A huge spot. A spot too massive to be made by a ghost that was the size of any man. Some unseen thing—something the size of a small house—was standing there, dripping: The wizard could see the drops of water once they were shed, starting from a height disconcertingly close to the fifteen-foot-high ceiling.

The moaning, which had been coming from high above the wizard's head, paused...

...then resumed, slightly softer, as though the ghost had turned its back on the wizard, as though it was heading back through the door.

Of course it's leaving,
the wizard thought.
It was looking for Snell.

"Wait!" the wizard called.

The moaning stopped entirely, but the dripping water did not.

"I'm here to help you," the wizard said.
Help get rid of you
was what he meant, but the way to get rid of a ghost is to settle whatever is bothering it.

Judging by the dripping water, the unseen creature, whatever it was, remained where it was.

"Can you speak?" the wizard asked.

The moaning resumed.

The wizard, realizing the moaning was the creature's speech, cast a spell so that he could understand the speech of animals. "There. Now can you tell me who you are?"

"I am Guardian," the deep but quiet voice said. "It is my duty to protect this den."

"Den?" the wizard echoed. Had the castle been built on top of a dragon's lair? But usually dragons preferred caves in high places. And the castle was not new enough to have recently disturbed a dragon's nest.

The ghostly voice repeated, "This den. And all those of your kind who dwell within."

It meant the castle. It was calling the castle the closest word it had to "home" or "dwelling."

The moat monster,
the wizard realized. It hadn't killed anyone—
it
was the one who had died. Everyone had been trying to think of
people
who had died. And all the while this poor dead thing was unable to stop its attempts to continue the task that had been set for it.

The wizard said, "It is good that you take your duty so seriously, but now it is time for you to rest."

"I cannot," the ghost of the moat monster said.

"Did another wizard bespell you?"

The moat monster said, "There were words spoken in silver light, with the scent of jasmine and the feel of sun-warmed pebbles—the way you spoke just now to allow yourself to understand my speech. Those words said I was to be Guardian, and I was to protect this den and all who dwell within for the rest of my natural life."

The wizard hadn't been aware that magic words had scent or texture. "Well," he said, "it is difficult to be the bearer of bad news, but I have to tell you..." He sighed, never before having had to tell anyone,
You died.

But he didn't have to say it now, either. Apparently the creature already knew it was dead. "'My natural life,'" it repeated. "My kind normally lives through a thousand revolutions of this earth around the sun: time of rain and new growth, time of heat, time of leaves turning bright colors, and time of snow. But I lived only a hundred cycles."

That was the trouble with spells: Sometimes they just went on and on.

The wizard said, "Others' spells can be very tricky to overcome, but I can try to unravel the spell that ties you here."

Silence.

Not that the wizard was used to thunderous applause at his proclamations, but he had expected the moat monster to say
some
thing. Had it left the room after all? Half suspecting there would be no answer to this, either, the wizard asked, "Don't you want to move on to the next stage of being?"

The moat monster's voice came soft as a sigh, but still from the same spot. It said, "A hundred cycles out of a thousand is not very long at all."

"I realize that," the wizard said. Then he thought to ask, "What did you die of?"

"Bad meat," the monster said.

The wizard decided it might be rude to mention that this was a risk taken by those who ate their meat raw. But then he remembered how the servants had insisted the monster was a gentle creature, and he realized the monster had said
"meat," not "fish," and he thought to wonder where a moat-bound, gentle-natured monster would get its meat. He asked, "Bad as in spoiled?"

"Bad as in poisoned." The monster sighed. "I didn't eat it, of course. My nose and my eyes could tell there was something wrong. But the poison spread from the pieces of meat into the water itself. I avoided the tainted area, but then more pieces were thrown in, here and there, all about the water that surrounds the den, and the fish either swam away or sickened and died. I am not permitted to swim away."

"Duke Snell," the wizard surmised. "He wanted to set up the gates in the water so that he could charge tolls and make money to buy himself fine things and make himself impressive in the eyes of others." For a moment he thought he was explaining things to the monster, but then, looking about the room with all its broken things, he realized the monster knew.

"I cannot give you back the life that was taken from you," the wizard said, "but I can make Duke Snell pay for it."

"How?" the monster said.

"Wait and see," the wizard said, for he knew that the monster would not be pleased with his solution.

The next morning,
as soon as Duke Snell returned, the wizard told him to order all the inhabitants—servants and hangers-on alike—to leave the castle.

"Why?" Snell demanded.

"I'm going to rid the castle of its ghost," the wizard explained.

"I thought you were supposed to do that last night," Snell complained.