Free Is This Apocalypse Necessary? - Wizard of Yurt - 6 by C. Dale Brittain

miles north, beyond the high frost mountains, to the realm of dragons and wild magic.
    I had once reached the borders of this land, and that had been plenty wild enough for me, but Naurag had traveled further and further north.
    Reading between the lines of his account, I saw a growing intoxication with the power and ease of his magic. Spells worked far better in the land of dragons than in the lands of men, as they had taught us at school; some of the best students (never of course including me) had even been taken on field trips to experience it themselves. Naurag had discovered that everything he wanted to do came easier and easier the further he traveled—until he had arrived one day in a valley full of dragons.
    I crossed the castle courtyard to the great hall. As always in the summer, the tall doors stood open to the air. Inside King Paul sat on his throne, scowling, listening to two men who each claimed the other had cheated him disgracefully in a business transaction. I went to stand beside my king.
    Back in the days of Paul's father, I had spent many days standing stiff and majestic beside the royal throne, lending I hoped an air of mysterious awe, while Joachim, who in those days before he became bishop was still royal chaplain of Yurt, had stood on the other side, lending a quite real air of spiritual authority. But Paul's law-giving tended to be more informal. In this case, he looked as if he didn't understand what either man was talking about and could use all the help he could get.
    I didn't have to stand long. Paul suddenly slapped his knee with one hand. "That's enough!" he roared.
    The two plaintiffs stopped short. "Excuse me, sire—" one started to say.
    "You're both in the wrong! Both of you cheated the other. I don't want to hear another word of your whining! Instead you're each going to pay the royal treasury one hundred silver pennies as a penalty for wasting our time like this. Pay it to the constable on the way out—yes, that's right, the same young woman who showed you in. You're going to have to settle for yourselves whatever sordid quarrel brought you here. Well, what are you waiting for? Is it going to take the edge of the sword to teach you to listen to your king?"
    King Paul was not wearing a sword, but the two plaintiffs did not wait to see if he would summon a knight to back up his threat. They fled out the tall doors, while I wondered if back before the Black Wars scenes like this had been more common, except that then the kings and their knights would have followed through with immediate action against those who displeased them.
    Paul whirled on me. "What do you want, Wizard?"
    At least he didn't bother telling me that I had never overheard a conversation he had invited me to overhear. "Um, excuse me, sire, I had a question about my position here."
    This wasn't exactly the best time to raise this, but I had begun worrying during the night that Elerius might try to get me out of Yurt. Finding a way to persuade Paul to fire me as Royal Wizard might, he would think, make me more likely to listen to his blandishments.
    "I hope you're not about to tell me," the king growled, "that I've been shamelessly cheating a wizard of your caliber by not paying you enough."
    So did Paul expect me to ask for a bribe in return for silence on his romantic affairs? "Oh no, sire," I said hastily. "Rather—" It was going to be hard to put this delicately. "If something happened, if you heard, for example, something about me from the wizards' school, would you be in a hurry to hire a new wizard?"
    The king was surprised enough to stop frowning. "Are you in trouble, Wizard? Is your school trying to drive you out of Yurt? It isn't that— They aren't going to hold it against you after all this time that you have a wife?"
    He winced a little on the last word but kept his concern for me, not himself. "No, well, I might indeed be in some sort of difficulty," I said vaguely. "Nothing serious yet, but it's hard to tell.