The Witch, the Cathedral woy-4

by C. Dale Brittain

  “It’s really very easy,” she had said. “Make yourself a net of anything that will burn quickly-dry grass works very well. Then ignite it while simultaneously saying the spell against being burnt.” We practiced while sitting almost all the way into the fireplace. She had moved her piles of cloth well away to keep them from sparks.

  “My hands do all right,” I said. “You know you used to scold me about drawing them back, but I hope you notice how much better I’ve become. But my head still worries; my hair and beard know they’re going to catch fire at any second.”

  This she found hilarious, and by the time she recovered her breath I decided I had had enough for today of trying to establish the same sort of authority over my body that she seemed to have without the slightest effort over hers. These recent weeks felt to me like something flaring and flashing just barely within my control, but so far-I hoped-I had avoided being scorched.

  Even though Theodora’s magic and mine were so different, I felt a companionship with her that I had never felt with anyone else. Now that I had admitted to myself that I was in love with her, I kept wondering what would happen next. I found it difficult to imagine being back either in Yurt or at the wizards’ school with Theodora at my side. But it was equally difficult to imagine being anywhere without her.

  Although I had told the queen I would give up wizardry for her, I knew I could not. It had become such a part of me that it would be like trying to give up breathing. I loved Theodora and wanted her, but it would still be impossible never to practice magic again. On the other hand, I told myself, just because I gave up all recognized posts for wizards did not mean I would have to give up practicing magic. I could be another itinerant spell-caster, just one who happened to have a degree from the school.

  Maybe, I thought, Theodora and I could take off in a caravan with a pony. But I had promised Joachim he could come in my caravan, and he might not like her company. Or maybe I could settle down here in the cathedral city and do tricks in the market place, even if the old magician did become furious at me. I had thought when I met him that doing simple magic tricks for pennies would be a degrading way to spend one’s life, but if Theodora were with me it might have unexpected benefits.

  I wondered briefly if she had been falling in love with me as I fell in love with her, or if she had picked me out even before we met face-to-face. If so, was it with the intention from the beginning that we fall in love? But I didn’t like this line of thinking and tried to dismiss it. “Maybe I can make your ring glow itself with a spell of my own,” I suggested.

  The spell worked even better than I had hoped; the gold blazed into light while the letters remained black and finally intelligible, spelling out words in the Hidden Language that I recognized.

  Carefully I put the magnifying glass down, feeling stabbed with cold. “Theodora, this is a spell to reveal what is hidden. When you put on the ring, you not only make yourself invisible, you make yourself able to see other invisible creatures. You’ve got to tell me about these ‘things’ you see. Are they here in the city now?”

  “I don’t know,” she said slowly, completely serious for once. “I try not to use my ring very often and, as I already told you, I don’t see them every time.”

  “When was the last time you saw them?”

  She closed her eyes. “I don’t like thinking about them. It must have been two months or so ago.”

  I put a hand on her arm. “Where were they?”

  She opened her eyes and put her hand over mine. “On the new cathedral tower. I had been climbing up there at night. When I was near the top, where the workmen had some cut stone piled ready for use, I noticed it was all in disarray as though the piles had been pushed over. And then as I was coming down I almost ran into the watchman. I put on my ring just in time.”

  I could feel her trembling and realized that she had been deeply frightened. “And then?”

  “I saw two of them, almost like big lizards. I just caught a glimpse of them out of the corner of my eye. But they had wings and-and what looked like hands.”

  The winged red lizard the guard had spotted down on the docks. It had disappeared into the air-made itself invisible. Though I had assumed there was only one, and that whatever wizard had brought it had taken it away again, maybe there had been several of them in the city the whole time. The dean wasn’t going to like this at all.

  Neither one of us said anything for several minutes. This then explained the tumbled building material that had originally appeared on the new tower at the same time as Theodora’s magic lights. But I still did not know what relation it might have to the bat-winged monster. The room was silent except for occasional tap-tap of steps going by outside. The cat made me jump by suddenly meowing. Theodora picked it up and stroked it until it began to purr.

  “Somebody’s working magic here besides you and me,” I said at last. “Whoever it is must be bringing creatures from the northern land of magic and making them invisible.” Might the Royal Wizard of Caelrhon have been dismissed just before his death for summoning enormous lizards?

  The cat was going to sleep in Theodora’s lap. “Do you mean it’s something to do with this city, and not with my ring?”

  “Unless the world is fuller of invisible creatures than I had thought,” I said grimly.

  “You do know,” said Theodora, “that there’s another wizard in the city right now.”

  I took her by the shoulders so sharply that I jostled a highly indignant cat off her lap. “Another wizard? Here? Now? No, I didn’t know!”

  But I should have known it perfectly well. After all, Norbert had gotten that book from somebody. I had grabbed a quick breakfast while Joachim was still at morning service and gone out before he returned, preferring to postpone a discussion of books falling from the ceiling. Thinking about Theodora had distracted me from what I knew I should have been doing.

  She pulled back as though almost frightened of me. In the uncertain candlelight her eyes looked gray instead of amethyst. I made myself loosen my fingers from her shoulders. “He’s been in town all week,” she said.. “Haven’t you felt his presence?”

  I put my forehead on my fists, feeling like a fool. A wizard who had resisted my best spells to find him seemed to be transparently obvious to a witch. I stopped myself from asking Theodora why she had not told me about him. I had not asked her.

  I forced myself to look up. “Where is he right now?” I judged how devastated I must look by Theodora’s expression.

  She put out a hand and touched my face. “I don’t know where he is, but I can help you look for him.”

  Might it be the old magician I thought I had warned away? Someone that destitute might have been forced by hunger to sell even his tattered old book of spells if Norbert had offered him enough. Maybe, and I clenched my jaw at the thought, just as he had persuaded Theodora to teach him a little fire magic he had persuaded some wizard to teach him how to summon invisible and even demonic creatures.

  “Not demonic,” I said. “They’re not demons.”

  “How do you know?” I didn’t realize until she spoke that I had said it aloud.

  I pulled her toward me. “I don’t.”

  She started kissing my face, my cheeks, my eyes. In a moment I thought that she was doing a remarkably good job of making me forget my fears. “I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely frank with you,” I said, pulling back. “You already know that I came here to find the source of the magical apparitions here in the city. The mayor didn’t send for me, however; the dean of the cathedral did.”

  This did not seem to strike her as a particularly startling revelation. “Maybe you haven’t been able to find the other wizard because he’s afraid of your powers and is deliberately hiding from you,” she said, “whereas it never occurred to him he had to shield his mind from a woman.”

  “Well, then,” I said, trying to regain my good humor, “if you can help me find him, maybe I can make sure he doesn’t summon any more invisible crea
tures to bother you.”

  “Come on,” she said, jumping to her feet. “We’ll look for him now.”

  But Theodora and I were unable to locate the wizard or magician. She could find his mind quite easily but not actually touch it, so she had no information on his exact location. I could not find him at all.

  “You don’t sense him?” she said in frustration. “You don’t find him right-there? Are you sure you’re using the right words of your Hidden Language?”

  “Maybe witches are just better at finding other people than wizards are,” I said, equally frustrated. “You found me long before I found you.” I was using discovery spells powerful enough that I doubted I could have shielded against them myself, school spells that should have sliced straight through the old magic of earth and herbs, without the slightest result.

  “Let’s not stand here being irritated any longer,” Theodora said with a sudden smile, taking my arm. Market day was finishing, and we had been pushing through the jammed streets on our unsuccessful search. “Let’s walk outside the walls and think about something completely different. Then if he thinks he’s safe and lets his guard down, we’ll have him.”

  In the weeks I had known Theodora, the season had passed from spring to summer. The early wildflowers were over, but the flowers that bloomed in the high grasses of summer were crowding toward the sky. While we normally had the Romneys’ old campground to ourselves, today because of all the people in town for market the area was scattered with carts and tents. Even market stalls had spilled out from the crowded streets.

  She settled herself among the sun-baked blades and I flopped beside her, pulling her down so that her head was pillowed on my shoulder. It was very easy like this not to think about the wizard. The late afternoon sun cast shadows across Theodora’s face. She had unfastened the neck of her bodice, and with my free hand I stroked the side of her neck, then the line of her collar bone.

  She smiled up at me through a veil of nut-brown hair. I wondered what she would do if my hand kept going. While wondering I started to kiss her and she kissed back, pressing herself close against me. Her fingers caressed my face, then slipped lightly across my chest and down my side and hip. Once again, it seemed, events were happening faster than I could plan or control them, and once again I seemed about to have a remarkably interesting series of experiences.

  I drew back to catch my breath and look into the amethyst eyes so close to mine. There was no hesitation there, only affection. “You know,” I said, “nothing like this has happened to me since- Well, not for longer than I can really say.” Yurt was much too small a kingdom for private romantic interludes, and, besides, for close to twenty years I had been in love with the queen. I started kissing Theodora again.

  This time she drew back, a smile flickering on her lips. “This isn’t exactly the most private place in the kingdom.”

  I sat up abruptly, distracted and pulling bits of grass out of my beard. She was quite right. Although lying down we were hidden from view, several groups of people were walking or standing within twenty yards of us.

  “Come on,” I said, standing up and holding out a hand for her. I didn’t know where we were going, but I did know I had never been so excited in my life.

  Theodora straightened her skirt and rose. She took my hand and led me purposefully. Having trouble focusing on anything but her, I staggered along as well as I could.

  She took a short-cut between two large silken tents. Although there were voices all around us, the narrow space between the tents was sheltered from view. I clasped Theodora to me and kissed her face, her neck, her shoulders, murmuring endearments I had not realized I knew. My blood was rushing through my head so fast I felt half blind.

  Then I could feel her shoulders shaking, and I pulled myself away in alarm, incoherent pleadings frozen on my lips. But she was laughing. “Do you just not like privacy?”

  “This is private!”

  “Until someone else decides to take the same short-cut. Come with me; I told you I knew where to go.”

  Once again she led me by the hand, away from the market stalls, the tents, and the people. I passed my free hand over my brow. It felt fevered, in spite of the breeze dancing around us.

  We walked a mile toward a small grove of trees, at the edge of which black berry bushes created a nearly impenetrable tangle. Theodora had started to pull long, thorned stalks back to make a path when I remembered that I was a wizard and flew both of us up and over the brambles.

  Beyond the briars enormous trees stood tall and still. Very little underbrush flourished in their shade. Theodora kept on walking. The grove felt permeated with magic, the same wild mix of unfocused magic that could have concealed any number of spells as in the valley of the Cranky Saint back home in Yurt. But I had no attention to give to spells.

  “No one comes here,” Theodora said. The trees opened out suddenly, and a spring bubbled out of the ground in the center of an emerald stretch of grass. I saw that someone had built a little springhouse, but the stonework looked ancient. Beyond the spring, looking out of place, was a jagged boulder twenty feet high. “My father knew these woods,” she continued, “and he used to bring me here to practice climbing when I was very small.”

  I was not interested in her youthful climbing experiences. I turned her toward me. “Is this then finally private enough for you?”

  She gave me a long look from beneath her lashes. “I should certainly think so,” she said with a smile, and I took her in my arms at last.

  V

  Afterwards we lay on the soft grass and watched the sun turn red beyond the trees. I felt happier than I ever had in my life. “Will you marry me?”

  Theodora had been lying with her head on my chest. Now she sat up and scrambled around to face me. For a second she seemed almost alarmed, then she smiled, although somewhat tentatively. “This seems an odd time to ask!”

  “I mean it. I’m just sorry I didn’t ask you before.”

  She lay down beside me again, one arm across me and her lips grazing mine as we talked. “But everyone knows wizards don’t marry.”

  I was getting tired of hearing this. “Don’t you know I love you, Theodora? This isn’t just a pleasant interlude during an extended visit to town. I don’t want to go on unless you’re beside me.”

  Her amethyst eyes again looked troubled, but then she smiled. “Aren’t you going to have trouble explaining this in Yurt? No king wants to have a Royal Witch alongside his Royal Wizard.”

  “It won’t be a problem. I should have told you this long ago. When I left Yurt, I resigned as Royal Wizard.”

  “But what will you do?” she asked in what sounded like genuine distress.

  “I thought we could have a caravan like the Romneys. If an old magician can make a living doing magic tricks at fairs, we should certainly be able to as well-after all, our magic is a lot better!”

  She was silent for a moment, and I could sense a tension in her that I had not expected at what seemed to me a delightful proposal. But in a few seconds she relaxed and smiled.

  “Let me give you my eagle ring, then,” I said, encouraged, and started tugging at it.

  She forestalled me with a hand on mine. “I can’t wear a wizard’s ring that’s too big for me!” she said with her usual amused look. “Besides, I already have a magic ring of my own. What I have from you is much more valuable than any ring. Come on! We’d better get back to the city soon, and it won’t be fun scrambling through the briars once it gets dark.”

  With clothes neatly arranged and hair smoothed, we walked through the silent trees like a decorous couple coming home from an innocent ramble. Once again I flew us over the briars. Outside the woods the breeze found us, cool now that the sun was setting. A mile away, the last of the sunlight glittered on the cathedral towers. I put my arms around Theodora and kissed her thoroughly. Her firm, slim body in my arms seemed like a gift: not mine by right, but given to me.

  “You still haven’t said you’d m
arry me,” I said, smiling down at her.

  “Isn’t a woman supposed to have a little time to consider a proposal?” she said with a teasing look. “After all, it seems that if I accept you I’ll be accepting a caravan and a pony.”

  “We can work something out,” I said comfortably as we strolled back toward the city. “We could have a donkey or a horse instead of a pony.”

  It was nearly dark by the time we reached Theodora’s house. She paused with her key in the lock. “Well, good-night.”

  “What do you mean, good-night? I can’t leave you now!”

  She stretched up to kiss me. “Your friend the dean will be horrified if you spend the night with a witch.”

  I hated to leave her, but she had a point. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” I said and turned away quickly before the desire to go inside with her became overwhelming.

  Whistling, hands in my pockets, I walked back toward the cathedral. It was only as I reached Joachim’s door that I realized that, for the first time in weeks, we had not arranged where and when to meet the next day.

  A loud knocking woke me in the middle of the night. I had been happily dreaming of Theodora, and it took me a few seconds to realize where I was. The knocking was at the outside door, and in a moment I heard it open, letting in the sound of rain. There was rapid conversation, too low for me to understand, although I could recognize one of the voices as Joachim’s.

  There was a confused sound of further voices, the banging of box lids, rapid steps, and then the slamming of the door. The house was now totally silent. I lay tense for a moment, wondering if the monster had returned to the cathedral tower. But Joachim was highly unlikely to go face a magical apparition without the wizard he had brought in especially to deal with it. I rolled over and went back to sleep.

  When I awoke several hours later the house was still silent, although I could hear or rather feel the heavy booming of the organ from the cathedral. Thinking it was a little late for early service and that I had never heard the bells, I dressed quickly and uneasily. When I went into the kitchen, the fire was cold. I found the tinder to boil some water and looked around for the bread. While I was rummaging through the cupboards, Joachim’s silent servant came in.