Free Mage Quest - Wizard of Yurt 3 by C. Dale Brittain

involved the kingdom of Yurt ....”
    Before I could respond to this startling information, there were brisk steps in the hal outside and another knock. “My lords?” It was Arnulf s constable, come to tel us that lunch was ready. A few minutes ago, I would have gone to the dining room with pleasant anticipation. Now, as we walked down the wide carpeted stairs, I felt instead a stir of misgiving.
    But nothing about lunch seemed ominous. The dining room was carpeted and curtained in green; the view from the window was of bright flowerbeds with the river beyond. The table glistened with silver and crystal. Arnulf and Joachim were already there when we came in.
    “Claudia said she and the children would be right down,” said Arnulf. “Ah, here they are.” In the hal we heard children shouting excitedly, and the door swung open with a bang. But there was immediately an abashed silence as they spotted us. For a second I saw our group as the children must see us, six strange men standing looking toward the door, three of them rather formidable warriors. Even clean and wel-dressed, we felt like a wild and woodsy group in this delicate and gracious setting.
    “Go on in, it’s al right, don’t you want to meet your Uncle Joachim and his friends?” came a laughing woman’s voice. Claudia, the lady of the manor, came through the doorway herding two boys and a girl before her.
    Claudia was another shock. She was the only woman I had ever met who came close to being as beautiful as the queen.
    She did not look at al like the queen, having curly russet hair, already escaping from the coiffure into which I was sure she had just combed it, and a skin so fair it was almost transluscent. She had a merry sweetness of expression and yet an air of tender concern in her eyes that made someone who saw her—or at least me—feel she must be protected at al costs from anything troublesome or sad.
    She came immediately across to Joachim, wearing the tiniest firm line around her mouth as though determined not to be as shy as her children. She took his hands, looked into his eyes, and gave an almost tentative smile. I would have felt her expression, both sweet and vulnerable, was devastating if it had been turned on me. “You haven’t changed at al,” she said softly.
    “Nor have you,” said Joachim. “It’s been too long. So, these are my nephews and my niece.”
    Claudia brought the children forward to meet their uncle, then al of us were introduced to her and she invited us to sit down at the table. Servants came in with steaming platters.
    She was the perfect hostess, serving the king first, making sure each of us had what he wanted, asking about our trip and listening attentively to our answers and, at the same time, somehow keeping her children quiet and orderly and their meat cut up in bite-size pieces.
    But twice, as her husband sat beaming genialy at the other end of the table, I thought I saw her shoot a worried look toward him.

    Ill
    “I understand your family is also in commercial imports?” said the Lady Claudia to me.
    “Was. My parents died when I was little and my grandmother kept the warehouse going, but she died while I was stil in the wizards’ school. We imported wool from the Far Islands and wholesaled it to the cloth manufacturers.”
    “How interesting,” said Claudia with a bright smile. In fact it wasn’t interesting at al, which was part of the reason I had become a wizard instead of a merchant. I would probably have done an even worse job of running a wool wholesale business than my grandmother had; there hadn’t been much left over when she died and I had to sel the warehouse to pay the firm’s debts.
    “And now you’re a wizard,” said Arnulf genialy. “I gather the wizards’ school keeps a fairly close eye on al of you—even tries to establish your routes when you travel.”
    “Not realy,” I said in surprise. “Of course the school tries to coordinate the practice of wizardry throughout