The Witch, the Cathedral woy-4

by C. Dale Brittain

  I flew back up. The monster’s eyes glowed, but it threw no more stones. My balls of fire had lit the scaffolding timbers, which now blazed merrily, and the monster seemed afraid of fire. I eyed it warily as I approached.

  The scorched wing was extended at an awkward angle as though it might not be able to fly, but I feared a trick. I wrapped myself in the spell Theodora had taught me against fire and waded into the middle of the blaze, screaming insults and challenges at the monster.

  I had suspected it was trying to mislead me with its wing, but I was not suspicious enough. With a single leap it was beside me, careless of the blaze. I ducked barely in time to avoid being disemboweled by raking claws. But the monster’s other arm caught me. It sprang into the air with a great flap of its bat wings and began to squeeze.

  Desperately I raced through all my spells of attack, but I had never had very many of them, and none of them worked. The monster kept squeezing tighter. The only advantage I had was that I would already be unconscious when it began to eat me.

  My last hope was a transformations spell. Zahlfast had taught me something important about transformations spells, I vaguely recalled, something highly important, something I ought to know right now-he had even been talking about it the day I visited his class. I did not have time to remember.

  Because I could not wait to see if my spell would work, I coupled it with another spell, a spell I had never used in my life but which I, along with several of my friends at school, had looked up very late one night in the old Master’s library. It was the spell to summon a human mind. To summon another human against his will, we had been taught, was the greatest sin a wizard could commit. I found and summoned the monster’s mind and stuffed it into the middle of my transformations spell.

  The grip around me was released so suddenly that I collapsed, losing parts of my spell against fire. My hair was ablaze and both hands were tightly grasped around something. I readjusted my spell to put out the fire and looked down. I was holding onto a frog.

  I realized then I was not really flying but only floating, and not very well at that. Consciousness kept threatening to leave me, and the frog struggled in my hands. I set myself back down on the tower, away from the fire. There I found a piece of rope and, with the last of my concentration, attached the most powerful binding spell I knew to it and tied up the frog.

  The red lizards all seemed to have scurried away. Still hanging onto the frog, I stepped out into space, only to recall too late that if my magic was deserting me it might have been better not to try flying.

  But my spells stayed with me long enough for me to descend at only a moderate pace. I hit the ground, staggered and fell, the mass of rope and frog a hard lump under my stomach.

  “Get up!”

  I could not move.

  The toe of a boot kicked me. “Get up! Now!”

  The toe turned me over. Prince Lucas stood over me, a naked sword in his hand and his face dark with fury.

  III

  I felt gentle hands then and heard Paul’s voice. “Lucas! What are you doing? He conquered the monster, but he’s been burned badly!”

  I closed my eyes. It was quite clear that I would die before being able to get up.

  “Conquered the monster!” said Lucas in utter scorn. “Can’t you see it was a magical creature he summoned himself? He played with it for a while, then sent it away again. All of us came out of the bishop’s funeral in sorrow and awe, yet all he could do was perform a few flashy tricks to show wizardry’s utter lack of respect!”

  This last was said in a shout, for the benefit not just of Paul but of the others who had begun gathering around. At this I did manage to open one eye.

  Paul pulled back sharply. I could hardly blame him. The timing had been too good, too carefully planned to show disrespect for the old bishop. And it would be hard to explain that this tied-up frog, still very much alive and struggling in spite of being rolled on, was a monster.

  For a second I thought I saw someone black-bearded, someone I did not recognize but who seemed strangely familiar, step forward from the crowd. The sight of Lucas’s blade distracted me from a closer look.

  “I’ll kill him now to avenge the church!” bellowed Lucas. I ached so badly that death at the moment seemed rather appealing.

  But if he was trying to win Paul’s support, he had gone too far. I heard the metallic hiss of another sword being whipped from its scabbard. “Then you’ll have to kill me first,” calmly replied the royal heir to Yurt.

  There was a brief pause. I could see a corner of Lucas’s face, and he looked as though realizing his miscalculation. The ugly murmuring against me which had started in the rapidly-gathering crowd changed its note.

  A firm set of steps advanced across the pavement. “In the name of Christ!” came Joachim’s voice. “The bishop has not yet been buried one hour, and the cathedral has just been successfully defended from the powers of evil incarnate, and all you princes can do is start fighting each other!”

  I closed my eyes and began to believe, for the first time since Lucas had pointed toward the sky, that I might actually live. Joachim had never properly understood the fundamental difference between wild, natural magic and supernatural evil, but I didn’t feel like trying to explain it now.

  He knelt beside me. “Can you hear me? Do you think we can move you?”

  I discovered I was still capable of speech. “Moving me couldn’t possibly make me feel any worse than I already do.”

  “Good,” said Joachim in a tone of authority. “Here, some of you, help me get him onto a board so we can carry him inside. He’s saved the church in its greatest need, and we can’t let him die a martyr.”

  I heard two swords being sheathed. People who a moment ago had been murmuring against me now came forward, volunteering to help. “He set the new cathedral tower on fire,” said Lucas almost plaintively.

  “Only in overcoming the monster,” Joachim replied, “and the workmen already have the fire mostly out.” I did my best to focus on the tower and could see several workmen scrambling around on it. To my surprise, being shifted onto a board actually did make me feel worse.

  Paul saw the frog. “Ugh, what’s this?” He reached for it, but I held on tight.

  “This is the monster. I’ve transformed it, and now I’ve got to take it somewhere I can destroy it. I must get to a telephone.”

  Paul clearly did not believe me, but he decided to humor me. I rather hoped the dean didn’t believe me, because he might not want even a transformed monster in his church.

  “We’ll take the wizard to the cathedral office,” said Joachim, lifting the head of the board. Paul had the foot, and several townspeople stood around in helpful attitudes. Lucas followed slowly.

  A seminary student was sent for the doctor, but even before he came I insisted on using the telephone. In a minute, I had reached the wizards’ school and was talking to Zahlfast.

  “I need the air cart,” I said in the husky voice that was the best I could manage.

  Without a far-seeing attachment I couldn’t see him, but he could see me. He drew in his breath in a sharp gasp. “Where are you? Aren’t you home in Yurt? What have you been doing to yourself?”

  “I’ve been fighting a monster in Caelrhon. I don’t know what it is, but it must be from the northern land of wild magic.”

  The foreman of the construction crew had slipped into the office with us. I wondered rather distantly if I should suspect him. “It was a fanged gorgos,” he said quietly.

  “It was a fanged gorgos,” I repeated for Zahlfast, wondering with mild curiosity if there was also a non-fanged variety; if so I doubted it would be a substantial improvement. “But it isn’t one any more. That’s why I need the air cart; I need to get it back north before it breaks out of the transformations spell.”

  “Out of the what?”

  “I turned it into a frog.”

  And then Zahlfast said something I had never heard him say before. “Dear God.�
� He paused for several seconds. I wished again I could see his face. “You realize, transformations spells don’t work against creatures of wild magic.”

  “Yes, I know. I remembered after I did it. I used a summoning spell at the same time as the transformations spell. Please don’t be angry; I know you never wanted us young wizards to know summoning, but I learned the spell years ago.”

  “Used the summoning spell,” said Zahlfast slowly.

  “And now I think I’ve destroyed all my own magic. I couldn’t say another spell to save my own life, which may not last long anyway.”

  “Nonsense,” said Zahlfast in something closer to his usual brisk tone. “You’re just worn out. I’ll send the air cart at once.” But he paused then and added, “Have you remembered my warning?”

  “Yes,” I said wearily. At this point I neither knew nor cared whether priests hated and feared wizardry, but I did know that if Joachim wanted to destroy me I would do nothing to stop him.

  Paul sat beside me, offering me drinks of water and brandy and ineffectually straightening the blanket while we waited for the doctor. He felt guilty, I guessed, for having believed, even momentarily, that I might have called the gorgos myself. “You know,” he said, “I’m not sure I’d ever seen you really using your magical powers before. I’ve heard of course about your fight with the dragon, but that was before I was even born.”

  If I was going to serve Paul when he was king of Yurt, I thought, maybe it was just as well he realized that a Royal Wizard could do more than just after-dinner illusions.

  “Thank you for standing up to Lucas,” I told him. “Usually a wizard can defend himself, but I certainly couldn’t now.”

  “I’m almost sorry Father Joachim stopped us,” he said with a grin and a quick look across the room to make sure we were not over heard. “It would have been my first real fight.” But then he became more sober. “Can that frog really be a transformed monster?”

  I had continued to cling to the frog. It stared at me with vicious eyes. “It is indeed. I don’t know if you heard what I said on the telephone, but I’m going to take it back to the land of wild magic.”

  “Then I’ll go with you!” said Paul in a joyous shout. “What better way to finish my minority than helping our Royal Wizard destroy a monster? I’ve wanted to go on a quest since I was eight years old, and this time no one will stop me!”

  Lucas came and stood over me, fists on his hips. “What makes you think this wizard really does plan to destroy his gorgos,” he demanded of Paul, “if he hasn’t just hidden it somewhere and substituted a frog to deceive us? Don’t you think it more likely that he is planning to call up even more monsters?”

  I squinted at him suspiciously from under half-closed eyelids. Lucas had seen the monster before any of us. Even if this was merely due to excellent eyesight, he had certainly moved rapidly to take advantage of the opportunity to discredit me.

  The dean looked across at him. “Then go with him, Prince,” he suggested.

  Startled, I pushed myself up on an elbow. Although I had certainly not planned to take Lucas with me, if I did I could keep an eye on him. And it might be good for him to see how useful and indeed necessary wizards were for the western kingdoms. “Go pack some clean socks,” I told him quickly, “and blankets and enough food for all of us for two weeks.”

  Lucas hesitated, a hard curl to his lip. But he was rapidly losing the momentum that would allow him to refuse. “Do you not think it your duty?” the dean asked him sternly. “Do you not, as royal heir, need to witness the destruction of a monster that almost destroyed the major city of your kingdom?”

  “Of course, Father,” Lucas said, flustered and scowling.

  The two princes started to leave together, then Paul stopped. “Wizard! Is there going to be room for Bonfire?”

  “Of course there isn’t going to be room for a horse,” I said in exasperation. “Tell the knights from Yurt to exercise your stallion every day, and he’ll be fine. And send a message to your mother to tell her where we’re going. Give her everyone’s love.”

  The doctor arrived as the princes clattered out. He clucked over me, putting ointment on the burns and pronouncing none of my ribs cracked, after an examination that I was convinced cracked several.

  As he left again and the dean prepared to follow, I put a hand on the latter’s arm. At least the bishop’s death and the monster’s attack seemed to have made Joachim lose track of whatever embarrassing questions he might once have been going to ask me about how the cathedral cantor came to be struck in the rear by a book of spells. “What do you expect me to do with Prince Lucas?” I demanded.

  He cocked an eyebrow at me. “I have no idea. But if he did not go he would be here, worrying the cathedral chapter about the election of the new bishop, becoming increasingly irritable because he did not leap as Paul did at the kind of adventure he thinks is the function of the aristocracy. His younger brother would have needed no such prodding. And I have noticed this about you, Daimbert. You are at your best when everyone has been caught off balance, because you improvise better than anyone.” At the moment I felt at my worst, but I did not interrupt. “You need to talk to Prince Lucas, to find out why he is accusing you of a wizardly conspiracy, and now will be your chance.”

  “But suppose he had refused to go?”

  “It is his duty. And after he announced himself as protector of the Church, he could not very well refuse a suggestion from the man who is now the most powerful religious leader in the twin kingdoms.”

  I lay back down again. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry the bishop died, and I’m sorry I set your tower on fire.”

  He looked at me a moment and nodded gravely without speaking.

  “Thank you for saving me from Lucas and from a riot.”

  Joachim gave me another long look. He did not smile, but at least his face looked as though he might once before have smiled in his life. “Thank you for saving us all from the monster. If Prince Lucas wants to incite a riot, he will have to do better than that.” Then he was gone.

  When at last, toward dusk, the air cart landed in front of the cathedral, I hobbled out to it with Paul’s support. Several hours’ sleep had made me feel, if not exactly better, at least as though living might be worthwhile. The art cart was the winged skin of a purple flying beast that had originally come, long ago, from the northernmost land of magic. Even after the beast had died its skin kept on flying if governed by magic commands.

  Paul looked at the frog to which I continued to cling. “Why don’t you just kill it here?”

  “You’re welcome to try. But don’t cut the rope.”

  Paul set the frog on the paving stones and hesitated, his sword in his hand. I could tell he did not like killing a helpless creature. But he trusted me, and in a moment he lifted his blade and drove it down against the kicking green form.

  His sword sprang back so abruptly it was jerked from his grip. Paul recovered it with a startled look. “What have you done to this frog? Its skin is made of iron!”

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” I said. “You can’t really transform creatures of wild magic. Spells are the orderly channeling of magical forces, but creatures like this cut right across order. The gorgos is now no bigger than a frog and looks like a frog, but I’m afraid it’s still a gorgos.”

  “But is it going to start looking and acting like a monster again?”

  “I hope not-or at least not right away. That’s why I need to get it back to the land of magic before it can recover its powers.” I wondered sourly just how powerful the hidden wizard here might be, whether his magic might even be strong enough to bind two separate monsters at the same time. In that case, he might bring out the second while I was off taking care of the first. But I forced myself to dismiss the thought. If my opponent was that good, there was nothing I could do about it.

  In the bottom of the air cart was a small box, absolutely black. I tried a gentle probing spell, the first spell of
any sort I had tried for hours. It was a binding box, set about with spells to secure whatever was in it. Zahlfast must have decided to include it. I pushed the frog inside and slammed the lid.

  Paul boosted me over the edge of the cart, and Lucas climbed in without a word. While I was searching for the words of the Hidden Language to guide the cart, a short, wiry figure came toward us from the huts. It was the foreman of the construction crew.

  He leaned casually against the side of the cart, not quite looking at me. A pack was slung over his back. “So you’re going up to the land of magic,” he said at last. “Have you ever been there?”

  “No.” Normally I would have tried to justify or explain, but now the monosyllable sufficed.

  There was another pause. “Would you like a guide?”

  There was more here, I thought, than helpful concern for a confused wizard, but I was too tired to work it out. “Have you been there?”

  “Not right up in the wild magic. But I come from the borderlands.”

  “Borderlands?” asked Paul.

  “Of course, lad. You don’t think the western kingdoms stop at a line on the map and the land of magic starts right there, do you? There’s a stretch of territory several hundred miles wide in which the lands of men and the land of magic penetrate each other. Some places you can go just a few miles from an ordinary village to the castle of a will-o’-the-wisp.”

  Paul’s face lit up. “It would be like stepping into fairyland!”

  I kept a dignified silence. “Well,” said the foreman, “do you want a guide or not?”

  “Of course,” I said. The foreman could prove useful, and I wanted to know how he had recognized a fanged gorgos. “But aren’t you needed here?”

  “I’ve been talking to the provost, and he seems to feel there’s no use trying to get much work done in the next few weeks, before the new bishop is elected. My lads can repair on their own the damage the gorgos did to the tower.”

  “Then climb in,” I said. “It’s time to start.”