Free Black and Blue Magic by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

involved in a duel with an unscrupulous wizard. This wizard—who called himself Mog—took pleasure in playing unseemly tricks on whatever victims he could entice. As an official of the Comus Company, I should have had nothing whatever to do with such a personage. But I allowed myself to become annoyed at Mog’s interference in the affairs of one of my clients, and before I knew how it had happened, I was embroiled in a contest of magical strength. The contest itself would make a long story, spells and counter-spells, conjurations, invocations and incantations. Of course, I was duty bound to avoid anything but the most honorable in the world of magic. Alas, my opponent was not so bound, and in the end, by sheer trickery, I found myself caught in an evil enchantment.”
    “You mean you’re enchanted right now?” Harry asked.
    Slowly and sorrowfully Mr. Mazzeeck nodded his head.
    Harry’s mind raced over what he’d read about being enchanted, and suddenly he remembered the strange feeling he’d had once or twice that Mr. Mazzeeck was somehow in disguise. “You mean you used to be somebody else, and this Mog turned you into—uh—the way you are now?”
    “Not exactly. You are correct in guessing that the rather undignified and inconsequential form you see before you is not my true appearance. But that is not a part of the enchantment. No, my present shape is only the company’s idea of what a traveling salesman should look like. Properly ordinary and unimpressive, but—” he glanced down at himself and shook his head uncertainly, “perhaps a bit out of date, at this point. Don’t you think?”
    Harry ignored the question. He was most interested in the idea of being enchanted. “But what is the enchantment, then?” he asked.
    “Oh, it’s nothing tragic or dramatic,” Mr. Mazzeeck said. “That wouldn’t have been Mog’s style. The whole thing was so despicably handled that I didn’t even realize I’d been enchanted until after I began to make mistakes. Sorcerers are not given to error, so after several serious blunders, I investigated. Of course I soon turned up the reason, but it was far too late to fend off the curse then. As I recall, the incantation went something like this:
    He whom Mog has cause to hate
    Is doomed to botch and blunder.
    A dunderhead, an addlepate,
    He’ll bungle and miscalculate
    He’ll slip and miss—until the date
    This spell is burst asunder.”
    Mr. Mazzeeck shuddered with remembered horror. “It was a terrible shock,” he said. “Mog was captured and finally destroyed by the company, but nothing would destroy the spell. I continued to make mistakes and errors until at last the company was forced to demote me. I was stripped of my rank and forbidden the use of any kind of magic. Actually I was fortunate to be kept on as a simple salesman. The company was not to blame, you understand. One cannot allow incompetence when one deals with a powerful and dangerous product.”
    “But what happened about the flute?” Harry asked.
    “Ah, yes, the flute. That was the last straw. After the flute incident there was nothing my superiors could do but demote me. You see, I was filling an order for a magic flute for a fellow who said he intended to use it to exterminate rats in a little town in Germany. But I must have made a mistake in the formula, and the flute was given too wide a range. It was used not only on rats but also to commit a deed so horrible that it has become a legend. The public outcry was tremendous; and, of course, the scandal touched the Comus Company. And that is just the sort of thing they have always taken every precaution to avoid.”
    There was something vaguely familiar about the flute story, but Harry was too busy thinking about the enchantment to figure it out. “Did the enchantment keep on working? I mean, even now when you aren’t a sorcerer any more?”
    “Oh dear, yes. I’m afraid so. It’s just that my mistakes are of smaller consequence now. I