Wizard of the Pigeons (27 page)

And once he observed, ‘This has been the longest night of my life,' to which she replied, ‘The dawn is wise enough to wait some struggles out.'

The sea splashed and heaved beneath the public docks. Wizard stared down at the lacy tops of the waves. ‘Is it deep enough here?' Cassie worried.

‘I don't think it will stop at the bottom,' he assured her. Together they swung it, once, twice, three times and away.
There was no splash, no rising of bubbles. It was gone. The sea wind made streamers of their clothing.

Beside him, Cassie fussed with the silver tassels of the cloak. They came undone in her fingers and she slipped from its shelter. Bruises were shadows on her white skin, revealed by her own torn clothes. Wizard winced. She draped the cloak over his arm, but when he tried to put it again about her shoulders, she stepped away from him. ‘I've borrowed your strength long enough. Take it again, and give back to me what is mine.'

Puzzled, he slung the cloak around his shoulders. The warmth of her body clung to it still, and he had to smile sadly as he met her eyes. Then he felt the slow peeling away of something, like a tight garment being drawn off his body. For an instant he felt naked and chilled, and then his own power rose to protect him again.

‘I've been using your magic tonight,' he said, finally grasping it. She nodded, looking down at the rough wood of the dock.

‘I put it upon you when I held you, knowing it was forbidden, but too fond of you to let you go unsheltered. If I had known the strength of the greyness, I would not have had the courage to do so. But I did not. I thought I was wise. I set my own trap for it, never guessing how easily it could overpower me once I had lent my strength to you. I did not guess the hold it had on you.' She paused suddenly, shaking her head violently. ‘You had hidden your torment too well. You were right, you know. It was within you as well as without, just as real in both places. And when I saw it upon you, saw you transformed in it…I thought I would go mad with horror. I fled. Even now, when I think of how easily it
hunted me down using you…But it is done. You are free now.'

She was giving him the pieces faster than he could fit them together. ‘It was your power I used, then, when I faced it down?'

She shook her head, not looking at him. ‘You used mine upon the knife; did not you guess that ferocity was woman's magic? The soaring rush you felt afterward; that was seduction of the greyness. I saw you swept away from me. But when you cloaked me in your protection and sent me away, I took my magic with me as well. I needed it, to find and rouse your pigeons, and call them to you. Then, when I returned…I know you felt me join you.'

The spice scent. He nodded slowly, beginning to understand as Cassie fitted the pieces together for him. But Cassie never explained anything. Something was terribly wrong. He reached and turned her face up to his. Moonlight and streetlights touched her tears.

‘Why are you crying?' Her tears hurt him as nothing else had.

‘Because I am hurt!' She cried out. She pulled gently free of him, wrapping herself tightly in her arms. She stood so alone. ‘Why do you think the rules are given us, if not to keep us from hurting ourselves. But the decision was mine. I took it upon myself, to give you what you would not ask for. My magic. To call for you the allies you had prepared so well for this battle. I unbalanced my magic. But I could have done nothing else. Could I have watched you destroyed, knowing that for all the times and tomorrows that might ever come, never again would our paths cross? Shall I be sorry for what I did? But it hurts. Yes. All the old scars have come unhealed.
I had forgotten it could hurt this bad. All the old pains are new again.'

He nodded stiffly, knowing what she meant. The pains that came out of the past and haunted, hurting past toleration. A pain that made you explode at a touch. He could not reach after her as she walked to the edge of the dock. The full moon was over the sea, sending a wrinkling silver path across the waves to them. Cassie gave him one anguished look and then stepped down onto that path. He hurried to the edge of the dock and stood looking after her. She walked steadily away, her small feet leaving no impression on the ocean's salty face. Her silhouette grew small against the moon.

‘I'll see you later!' he cried after her.

She never answered.

‘Seen Cassie?' asked Rasputin.

Wizard shook his head slowly. It had become a ritual greeting among them. Always one asked, and one denied silently. Nothing more than this was ever said about her. Wizard had all the memories now, and he clung to them. He had given up trying not to hope.

‘So what you want me for, I-Don't-Know Wizard?'

It was June again, and Rasputin shone in the pleasant weather. Enamelled red hoops glittered in his earlobes, and his bare chest was decked in successions of bright red seed necklaces. They rattled when he danced, and even when he was still, they clicked softly against one another, maintaining the secret rhythm of his endless dance. A light wind rustled the leaves of the trees in Occidental Square.

‘See her?' Wizard nodded at a bench across the way from them. He flung another handful of popcorn from the withered bag on the seat beside him. Pigeons fluttered and scrabbled around their feet. Rasputin nudged them away from his bare toes and scowled.

‘See who?'

‘On the left end of the bench. Move your eyes just a little, to catch her at an angle. See her now?'

‘I don't see nothing but an empty bench. You getting snaky on us, Wizard?'

Wizard made an impatient motion of his head and caught up one of his pigeons. He whispered to it for an instant and then flung it aloft. It fluttered frantically, made altitude, then wheeled and came sliding down to light on the empty bench.

‘A chameleon!' Rasputin gasped.

Her startlement had betrayed her. When she moved, she was visible. But as soon as she was still again, she began to blend back into her surroundings. Subtle ripplings of colour crossed her. In a moment, she was invisible again.

‘I'll be damned!' Rasputin whistled low. ‘Looks like maybe you found one. You talked to her yet?'

Wizard shook his head. ‘I've been watching her for about a week. She's completely unaware of what she is doing. I thought I'd get your opinion before I approached her.'

Rasputin shrugged. ‘Ain't my department. You go talk to her, take her around a little. Run her past Euripides and see if she Knows him. The usual stuff. If she pans out, bring her by me. I'll give her the rules.'

Two wizards leaned back on their park bench. The blue robes of one fluttered against his bare feet. The other's fingers twitched in his endless dance. No one gave them a second glance. It was a fine June day in the Emerald City.

THE END

Voyager

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First published in Great Britain by Corgi Books, an imprint of Transworld Publishers Ltd 1987

Copyright © Megan Lindholm Ogden 1986

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