The Witch & the Cathedral - Wizard of Yurt - 4 (12 page)

"And why should we trust a school we've never seen, whose methods and purposes are hidden to us?"

This would have been easier with less astute questions. "Then don't trust the school," I said, seeking to be genial myself. Trust the dean. He's known me for twenty years."

Unexpectedly the mayor smiled. It looked as though he had missed all day being able to smile. "You've chosen the best man in the city to be your guarantor. We would of course prefer not to have to rely on arcane spells. But if religion and magic can work together, perhaps we may still hope."

When I left the arched porch of the municipal building a few minutes later, the streets were still full of people, shopping, offering goods for sale, carrying water from the fountain, hurrying somewhere. Most were too absorbed in their own concerns even to notice me.

But as I passed one young woman she looked directly at me. She had amethyst eyes and a mole high on one cheek. For a second she smiled. Then she was past me and I was left looking after her, at a swirl of loose nut-brown hair over a dark shawl

In spite of people pushing me from behind I stopped dead in the middle of the street. For reasons I did not understand her glance brought back all my shame and sense of loss with the force of ripping the top from a wound. Only a short while earlier, I had begun to hope that time had already begun to heal; now I knew that I had only been numb.

I was in exile from the royal castle of Yurt, probably permanently. I had lost any chance to see and talk freely with the queen, as I had done for close to twenty years, and with it I had lost my home, all because I had been a complete fool.

After a moment I forced myself to keep walking, trying to decide what it was about the young woman that brought this knowledge so vividly to me. It was not her appearance.

As I tried to picture her face, I decided it was probably attractive, but it was nothing like the queen's. I had passed dozens of other women in the street without any such reaction.

But those women had all looked past me without even noticing. This woman had looked at me as though she were my friend.

"I saw a magician today," I told Joachim that evening. We again ate at the table by his eastern window, watching the sky darken.

"Did he summon the bat-winged monster?" "I doubt it," I said, wishing I had a more productive answer. "At first I thought I sensed some strange power in him, but then I realized that was only because he knows fire magic, of a very different sort from the magic they teach us at the school." I decided not to mention my fleeting impression of two different sets of spells lingering about him, not wanting to bother the dean with my highly unlikely speculations about Sengrim's dead spirit returning bodiless to possess a carnival magician. "He probably didn't have anything to do with the monster or the giant lizard, but I still warned him away. If I'm going to find who in this city is working renegade magic, I don't want to be distracted by some half-competent magic-worker. Do you have magicians here often?"

"There is sometimes a magician in town for market day, and always for the big festivals," said Joachim. They do magic tricks on the corners for a few coins. But tell me: When will you find out why there was a monster on the tower and make sure there never is again?"

I looked into his intent dark eyes and felt embarrassed. Both of us looked away. "I can't tell you," I said. The whole city feels full of magic, but it's very unfocused." For some reason I was reminded of the woman with the nut-brown hair, but there was no way I could mention her or the effect she had had on me.

We were both silent for a moment. "I called the wizards' school from your office in the cathedral late this afternoon," I added then. "I hope you don't mind." The dean shook his head without looking up. I thought about that conversation, about Zahlfasts' surprise that I was back in Caelrhon again. It had been disconcerting, after years of using telephones with far-seeing attachments, not to see him as I spoke to him.

"I already warned you about the priests," he had said, uncomfortably loudly and clearly considering that I was talking to him on the priests' telephone. "And Elerius tells me that Sengrim had long had disagreements with the crown prince of Caelrhon." I didn't like the suggestion that Elerius knew more than I did about the kingdom adjoining Yurt, but I did not interrupt. "You knew, didn't you, that Sengrim only received the final year or two of his training here at the school, but it's no use yet trying to persuade the royal family that a completely school-trained wizard would be less irritating to them. Let the prince's resentment die down before we introduce a new wizard into the kingdom."

The Master was telling me there was some concern that aristocrats might be turning against their wizards," I said. "You can reassure him that there's nothing more to it than Prince Lucas."

Zahlfast had not sounded as reassured as I expected. Instead he said slowly, "We've had indications that more is involved. . . ."

Joachim poured himself another half-glass of wine but did not drink it. Instead he stared at the bottle. "The bishop wants to see you in the morning," he said at last.

The bishop? But I thought he understood that the cathedral needs a wizard here. Has Prince Lucas been talking to him?"

"I don't think he's going to order you away," said Joachim, slowly enough that I began to fear that was exactly what he would do. Since no one wanted me here, not Prince Lucas, not the city council, and not the school, it would be entirely appropriate if the bishop didn't either. "But anyone who serves the interests of the cathedral is to some extent under his authority, and he wants to meet you."

I was not going to leave here without doing what I had come for, no matter who wanted me to go. The school, I told myself, was wrong, and I actively wanted to irritate the princes of Caelrhon. Besides, Joachim needed me. "Do you think I should entertain the bishop with some magic tricks?" I suggested.

He smiled, although rather faintly. "I thought you were a fully-qualified and competent wizard, not a magician," he said, which was apparently meant as a joke. "You won't need to do any flashy tricks; I think he mostly wants reassurance that you are not acting with any disrespect for religion."

That depends," I thought but had the sense not to say, "on whether you're defining religion as Christianity or the organized church." Instead I changed the subject. "I was starting to tell you about this magician. His illusions are very poor; they wouldn't fool anybody. But he knows the magic of fire!"

The magic of fire?" Joachim asked politely.

"Even you priests know there are several different lands of magic, corresponding to the different natural elements," I said. "Most of the magic they teach in the school, including the whole technical magic division, is the magic of light and air. But there are other sorts of magic as well. There's the magic of earth, herbal magic for the most part, which has never been incorporated into the school texts but which I learned from my predecessor at Yurt."

"Indeed." Joachim attempted to look interested.

"And there's the magic of fire." We had finished eating and were sitting back in our chairs, our legs stretched out under the table. "It's a different branch of magic, with different rules and different spells. It doesn't have very many applications unless you want to be able to start a blaze without flint and steel or to walk through fire without being burned."

"So could this be what the Romney children had seen, a magician practicing fire-magic? Might this be related to the lights the watchmen have seen on the tower?"

If he thought I was trying to distract him from his concerns about the cathedral, he must feel I was doing a very poor job. "It's possible," I said, making one more attempt, "but the children also suggested they'd seen someone make himself invisible. That's the magic of air, and hard magic—that ragged magician couldn't possibly have done it, that is unless he'd somehow gotten hold of a ring of invisibility. You can attach a spell to a physical object, you know, and then the spell will work for anyone."

"We have to find out who is summoning monsters and make him stop," said Joachim, abandoning any pretense of interest in different kinds of magic and their uses. "What will happen if enormous lizards start appearing all over the city? Half the cathedral priests are already terrified, thinking that we saw the devil last night and he'll be back for them tonight. The other half are outraged that anyone dare mock us like this.

We are trying to act for the glory of God, and we are either being threatened or laughed at by a beast from hell-It did sound serious when he put it like that. I had been waiting to see if he would open a second bottle of wine, but instead he rose abruptly and started gathering the plates. "We should make it an early night," he said. "The bishop will want to see you first thing in the morning."

I had expected the bishop to be tiny and frail. Instead there seemed to be a lot of him, or at least a lot of unexplained lumps under the blankets on the bed. Only his head protruded, propped up by pillows against a dark carved headboard. His skin was pale and he had no hair left.

"Come here, my son," he said in a voice that would have been appropriate for someone tiny and frail. I advanced slowly toward the bed, Joachim one step behind me. There was a faint movement under the blankets and a white hand emerged, beckoning. On the hand was a ring, an enormous ruby with a cross cut in its surface.

I started, then probed magically, just one tiny respectful spell. But this ruby ring, unlike the last one I had been acquainted with, had nothing magical about it. I went down on one knee as Joachim had told me I had to do, murmured, "Your Holiness," and kissed the ring. I just hoped the Master of the wizards' school never heard about this.

Then I took the chair toward which the bishop waved me and looked at his face properly for the first time. His wide eyes brimmed with love and intelligence but seemed to do so from a considerable distance, as though the real bishop were not lying here slowly dying.

"My son the dean has told me he asked you to help us," said the bishop. He spoke so softly that I had to lean forward to hear him. "I am afraid he called you without consulting me, but prompt action in the service of God is always commendable."

I nodded without speaking.

"But he has put us in a delicate position” the bishop continued. "If we are being threatened by magic, some of my priests feel the last person we should ask for help is another magic-worker."

Doubtless starting with the cantor Norbert, I thought. Joachim stirred beside me but I spoke first. "You aren't being threatened by wizardry in the abstract” I said. "You're being threatened by someone working spells against the cathedral, and the dean knows that the quickest way to overcome magic spells is to find someone with powerful magic to break them."

"And do your spells have power against the devil?"

"Of course not. Only God and those who serve Him have power against the devil” I said generously. "But you aren't facing the devil here. You're facing a wizard working natural magic."

The bishop closed his eyes for a moment. The blankets rose and fell slowly, and for a moment I wondered if he had even heard me. But when he looked at me again it was unexpectedly shrewdly, as though the real bishop’s mind and ideas had come close to this room again. "You wouldn't be casting magic spells yourself as an excuse for the wizards to get a toehold here, would you? I hear the wizards' school in the great City is trying to expand its placement."

"I can assure you," I said with dignity, "that I am not responsible for whatever is happening here." So Lucas's and Vincent's accusations against wizardry had now even reached the cathedral. "I neither want to mock the church nor gain any 'toeholds. "

The bishop started to cough. A young doctor in white, who had been standing silently on the far side of the room, came forward and offered him a cup. He took a sip and closed his eyes again. But when he opened them he continued as though there had been no pause. "When will you have banished evil magic from our cathedral?"

"I hope soon. I've only been here twenty-four hours, and I didn't see the monster myself. Until I have a better sense of who is working magic and what spells he is using, it may be difficult to counter him. I'll do my best to be quick and discreet."

Joachim rose to his feet, so I did as well. He knelt to kiss the bishop's ring before leaving, but I felt once was enough. The bishop's eyes closed again as we went out

"It is an enormous responsibility he carries, and yet he seems able to do it still, in spite of his weakness," said Joachim as we reached the street. "The doctors say he may only have a few weeks, but they have already said that many times."

I considered asking Joachim if he would expect me to kiss his ring once he became bishop but was able to resist doing so. I realized we were entering the side door of the cathedral, on our way to early service. No hope for breakfast then until service was over. But it was a good chance for some of the other cathedral priests to see me and realize how reverent and discreet a wizard could be.

I spent the morning irreverently practicing magic within twenty yards of the bishop's palace. First I tried a number of spells from the collection I had brought, shaped to reveal a hidden magic-worker. I was disappointed that none of them worked, because it would have taken a master wizard to shield his mind against all of them, but it was a further indication that whoever was working here was indeed a powerful wizard and not just a renegade magician with one good trick. I would certainly have been able to find the magician I had met the day before if he tried to sneak back into town, with his weak illusions and not enough flying ability to save his shoes. It was distracting that the face of the woman with the amethyst eyes kept appearing inexplicably in my mind in the middle of my spells.

When this search got me nowhere, I started again trying to work out the principles of the magic of fire. My books had only the faintest hints but I had a few ideas, extrapolating from the other sorts of magic that I knew. Herbal magic, I recalled from when I had first learned it, was set up with its spells quite separate from the magic of light and air, as though on a track that started parallel but quickly veered away in a different direction.