Free Below the Wizards' Tower (The Royal Wizard of Yurt Book 8) by C. Dale Brittain

just enough light for me to see his grin.
    “Let’s find out if there’s anything
here to eat,” I said repressively.   “Magic is a natural power, not supernatural.   We can’t conjure non-existent things
into existence.”
    With my belt buckle lit up again, I
found our way down three flights to the kitchens.   There we found an unopened jar of
strawberry jam, a dusty bottle of wine, a box of stale crackers, and a very
hard piece of cheese that the rats had either overlooked or rejected.   It would do.
    Food, any food, is restorative.   After half an hour I felt my brain might
be functioning properly again.   I
had been thinking over all the possible meanings of Marcus’s comment that he
had “overplayed his role” with the cathedral priests.   But I was afraid of frightening him into
stubborn silence with accusatory demands from someone to whom he had barely
been introduced.   We had, I hoped,
until morning.   So instead I started
with family tree comparisons.
    We were, we determined, probable
second cousins.   Grandfathers who we
each remembered only dimly had most likely been brothers.
    “I think we’ve followed opposite
paths in our lives,” I said.   “I
grew up in the City and went to the wizards’ school there as a young man, but
for the last dozen years I’ve been very happy living far out in the countryside.”
    “My beard was light brown until I
bleached it,” he said.   “How about
yours?”
    “Chestnut colored,” I said.   But his mention of bleaching gave me an
opening.   “What made you decide to
go white?”
    “It was the man who hired me.”   Elerius, I thought.   “My role was to play a wizard.”   He gestured toward the tall star-studded
hat, now sitting beside him on the table.   “Aren’t wise old wizards are supposed to have white beards ?— like yours, though yours looks much more natural,”
he added generously.
    “I may know the man who hired you,”
I commented as if casually.   “What’s
his name?   What does he look
like?”   But I thought I already
knew—black-bearded, with tawny, calculating eyes.
    “It’s hard to say what he looks
like,” said Marcus, as if surprised.   “And if he told me his name, I don’t remember it.   Nothing memorable
about his appearance.   No
beard, so I guess he wasn’t a wizard, although he must know some wizards.   He was wearing a cap and a dark red
jacket.”
    Either Elerius,
his identity concealed, or some renegade magician—at any rate almost
certainly the man who had left me paralyzed in the sea-cave.
    “He gave my disguise what he called
a test,” Marcus continued.   “I went
to the cathedral office in the great City and asked for the bishop.   The priest I talked to said the bishop
had no time for a wizard, so I guess the white beard was disguise enough to
make me look like one.”
    “So he then brought you here to
Caelrhon?” I asked cautiously.
    Marcus grinned.   He had a very nice grin.   “ That was an experience.   I rode in what he called an air
cart.   At first I thought it was a
dragon—a small one.   It was
obviously dead, its body hollowed out, but it flew.   That would have been worth it even
without what he paid me.”
    He smiled again.   “So, you say this is Caelrhon?   I’ve never been here before.   Do they have a lot of pretty girls?”
    “So what were you being paid to do?”
I asked, ignoring the question about pretty girls.   If a wizard had brought him, Elerius or
an unknown renegade, then he might still be here in town.
    Marcus scraped the last of the
strawberry jam out of the jar.   “He
paid me well, too,” he said, not meeting my eyes.   “Just like he promised, half when we
made our agreement, half when I had played my part….”
    But then he looked up and shook his
head.   “Sorry, I’m being evasive,
because it’s a little embarrassing.   I would normally never have said things like that to a priest.   But he persuaded me that it’s