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

And I was just hoping, sire— That is, I was hoping that whatever you heard, you wouldn't be too quick to replace me. And by the way," I added in a rush, holding out the diamond ring, "I think you dropped this."
    Paul pushed it roughly into his pocket. Then he took a breath, stood up, and slapped me on the shoulder. "I can tell, Wizard, that this is more serious than you like to admit. But don't add to your worries by wondering about your position. You'll always be my Royal Wizard. After all, didn't I award you the Golden Yurt? And in the meantime," his voice dropping, "if you need any help, do not hesitate to ask. Especially," he hesitated, then hurried on, "especially if there's some way to help you that will get me out of this castle."
    "I'll let you know!" I promised quickly and mendaciously, then returned to my chambers and Naurag's book. I was certainly not going to take the king along on a doomed attempt to stop Elerius just because he wanted to avoid the embarrassment of daily encounters with Gwennie.
    Even in Naurag's rather laconic style, his encounters with dragons sounded terrifying. Only two things saved his life: the rapid flying speed of his 'purple companion,' and the fact that the spells he used to communicate with it had certain affinities to spells that would get the attention even of dragons.
    Late last night I had reached a much more powerful spell than anything I had seen so far in the book, page after page written small, a spell in the Hidden Language that would, Naurag claimed, force a dragon to obey. "I compose these words," he interjected at one point, "at the borders of the magical realm, in a homey setting I would ne'er have expected to discover so far from man's accustomed habitations. The people here are wont to climb very high, building their very dwellings in the faces of cliffs. Their toes and fingers are most marvelously long, and their children seem quite taken with my purple companion." I had fallen asleep without seeing the end of the spell.
    I looked at it again in daylight to see if it might still appear as feasible as it had last night: if, starting with an air cart spell, one could ultimately gain the mastery of ferocious creatures of wild magic. The letter the old Master had given me, choosing me as his successor, was still tucked into the volume—I had been using it as a bookmark. Not wanting to chance one of the maids coming across it, I stuffed it into the back of a drawer and pondered Naurag's magic.
    I recognized what he was doing, beginning with a known spell, making some improvisational leaps based on a sound understanding of basic spell structure, adding other steps that came to him out of sheer desperation, and when even that was not enough, working in entirely different spells that would move one along quite unexpected paths within magic's four dimensions, in the brazen hope that one would eventually arrive somewhere recognizable. I had invented the far-seeing attachment for magic telephones much the same way.
    At least he didn't leave to the imagination any steps of what he had finally worked out. He broke in again, just as I was trying to decide if the unknown herb he found so necessary for the steps on the fourteenth page was something I might in fact know under a different name, or something for which I could substitute. When I turned the page, looking ahead to see what effect this herb was supposed to produce, instead I found the comment, "But alas! This spell which served me so faithfully in the dragons' valley, when my peril was greatest, turns to ashes here in the mountains' foothills, so that my certainty fades also."
    I paused, noticing that my pencil was now chewed almost to splinters. It looked as if one needed not only an extremely powerful spell, but also to be fully into the land of wild magic itself. There was no way this spell could be tested; it would only work if one's magic had already been improved by traveling north until one stood virtually at the