The Witch & the Cathedral

by C. Dale Brittain

  THE WITCH AND THE CATHEDRAL

  by

  C. Dale Brittain

  Copyright © 1995 by C. Dale Brittain

  Originally published by Baen Books

  DEDICATION

  For Bruce and Doug, who thought it would be mushy

  PART ONE - THE CATHEDRAL

  I

  That morning I thought my main problem was the three drunk newts. But that was before I got the telephone call from the chaplain. He was not in fact the chaplain any more, but then a minute ago the newts had been three drunk students.

  I had been sitting in on Zahlfast’s class at the wizards’ school. He paused in his description of the basic transformation spell to explain the dangers inherent in its use. Any magic spell, even illusions, can have repercussions far beyond the expected, and advanced spells if not done properly can lead to loss of identity or even life.

  The three drunk wizardry students, sitting together and laughing quietly in the back, had apparently decided to test for themselves what these dangers might be.

  We dived for the newts before they had a chance to disappear into cracks in the floor. “Hold onto those two, Daimbert,” said Zahlfast. “I’ll start on this one.”

  The newts wiggled in my hands as I tried to hold their smooth bodies gently. The loss of a tail or a leg as a newt would mean permanent damage to the student as a human, and if they escaped as newts we might never be able to return them to themselves. They were quite attractive, light green with bright red spots, but their tiny newt eyes looked up at me with human fear.

  The rest of the class had retreated to the back of the room. Zahlfast glared at them. “What are you waiting for? This is all the demonstration you’ll get today.” The students left in some confusion, and he returned to his spell.

  It is harder to undo someone else’s spell than one of your own. As I started on one of the newts I was holding, Zahlfast finished with his, and suddenly a student stood before him, or rather slumped. He was slightly green, but I think that was from feeling ill rather than the after-effects of being a newt.

  I finished with mine and handed the third to Zahlfast. “How can they be drunk so early in the day? I didn’t think the taverns down in the City were even open yet.”

  Zahlfast spoke the final words in the Hidden Language to break the spell. “Bottles in their rooms,” he said as the last dazed and frightened newt became a dazed and frightened wizardry student.

  “We never had bottles in our rooms when I was a student here,” I said self-righteously.

  Zahlfast looked at me sideways, a smile twitching the corner of his mouth. “As I recall, you had plenty of trouble at the transformations practical exam, even perfectly sober.”

  I preferred not to recall all my embarrassment with those frogs, even twenty years afterwards, so I loftily ignored this comment. I had, after all, become a perfectly competent wizard in the meantime—or at least had managed to persuade the wizards’ school of my abilities enough that they had invited me back for a few months as an outside lecturer.

  “Now,” said Zahlfast to the students. “Are you sober enough to listen to reason?”

  “Spill a spell, spoil a spell,” blurted one and collapsed on his face. I was interested to see that they still excused themselves for magical mixups with the same catch-phrase we had used years ago.

  At that moment one of the other young wizards came in. “Telephone call for you, sir,” he said to me. I excused myself and followed him out and down the hall.

  I felt as I always did a stir of pride in using a telephone with a magical far-seeing attachment, allowing one to see as well as hear the person at the other end. Although I had invented the attachment essentially by accident, as my first and only success in technical wizardry, it had over the years become widely adopted.

  The view-screen lit up, showing the face of the man waiting to talk to me: gaunt, with deep-set eyes over high cheekbones and a mouth that looked as though it rarely smiled. It was Joachim, dean of the cathedral of Caelrhon.

  His dark eyes looked at me unseeing. Without a far-seeing attachment on his own telephone, he could not tell I was there until I spoke. The bishop, always dubious about magic, had doubtless considered it enough of a concession to institutionalized wizardry to allow the installation of even an ordinary magic telephone.

  “Hello!” I said. “I haven’t heard from you in ages!” Although traditionally priests and wizards never get along, Joachim and I had been friends, at least most of the time, since I had first taken up the position of Royal Wizard of Yurt and found him Royal Chaplain there.

  “I’m glad I was able to reach you, Daimbert. I need your help.” Joachim had never been strong on social chit-chat. “As you may have heard, we’re just starting construction here in Caelrhon on a new cathedral. But now something very odd is happening—something which may involve magic.”

  I was flattered but surprised. Since Joachim had become dean of the cathedral, he had studiously acted as though wizardry had nothing to offer a priest. “What kind of problem is it?”

  He hesitated. “I would just as soon not explain over the telephone, especially as I haven’t talked to the bishop yet. Is there any way you could come here?”

  It must be serious, then. “I would, Joachim, but there’s one difficulty. Caelrhon’s not my kingdom. You need to talk to your own Royal Wizard. He would be furious to find another wizard interfering in his kingdom.”

  I didn’t mention that long-ago incident, when I had been in Yurt only a year, when the king of Yurt had told the king of Caelrhon that if his wizard couldn’t install a magic telephone easily he could offer my services. I had innocently assumed that Sengrim, Caelrhon’s wizard, knew all about it, but he had come home to find me seated like an invader at his desk, his books scattered all over his study. When he burst through the door, I was so startled I dropped and smashed the glass telephone I was working on—the spells hadn’t been working right anyway—and gasped, “Spill a spell, spoil a spell,” which hadn’t helped. Neither had sending him as a peace-offering an inscribed copy of Zahlfast’s new edition of Transformations for Beginners when it came out the next year. He had returned it with a frosty note saying that he had no books for beginners in his library. Ever since then, Sengrim had done his best to suggest that I was incapable of even the simplest illusions.

  The dean lifted an eyebrow a fraction. “I would have asked for that wizard’s help,” he said dryly, “except for one thing. I officiated at his memorial service last week.”

  “He’s dead?” I demanded with a rather slow grasp of the obvious, and feeling instant remorse for all the times I had thought of Sengrim as a bitter old man who wasn’t nearly as good a wizard as he wanted to be considered. “Nobody here at the school has heard about it! Do you know what happened?”

  “He seems to have blown himself up in his study,” said the dean slowly, “taking half the tower with him. Apparently he had just had some sort of a quarrel with his crown prince, and most likely his anger made him careless with his chemicals and herbs. There was not enough left of him to bury …”

  I had to tell the masters of the school about this at once. They avoided checking up too often on all of us Royal Wizards of the western kingdoms, but they would certainly want to know that Sengrim was dead. And the royal court of Caelrhon would doubtless be asking soon for a new Royal Wizard.

  “So,” said Joachim, “can you come?”

  “The series of lectures I’m giving will finish this afternoon,” I said, dragging my attention back from the image of Sengrim blowing himself up in the royal court of Caelrhon to the question of magical problems in the cathedral city, ten miles down the road. “I’d been planning to return home s
hortly, but I can visit you first. Would tomorrow be all right?”

  He did smile then. “Tomorrow would be excellent.” He rang off, and I hurried away to find Zahlfast again.

  The rest of the day was very busy, as I gave my last lecture, talked afterwards to several of the more promising (or least discouraging) students, then packed up my clothes and books to have them shipped back to Yurt. Those who had known Sengrim were saddened, although the students’ reaction didn’t go much beyond commenting that they were just as glad that modern wizardry had essentially eliminated herbs and chemicals. At the end of the afternoon I went to talk to the Master of the school.

  There had been talk of my organizing some workshops after the lecture series was over, but I was just as happy to abandon this project. They had assigned me to the technical wizardry division although as a student I had managed to avoid any courses there. More than once I had felt like a fraud, lecturing away to a group of intensely serious and pale-faced young wizards who, in at least some areas, must know more magic than I did.

  I had only found enough to say to fill the lectures by trying to make them think about magic beyond their textbooks. What would they do, I challenged them, if they discovered themselves in a situation where the dry series of spells which modern wizardry does so well failed them and they had to improvise? They had given me puzzled looks and asked me to write out the improvised spells so they could memorize them. Some of the other teachers had started coming to my class, sitting quietly at the back of the room, and I was fairly sure they were collecting stories about my experiences.

  The Master was in his study. Years ago I had gotten over my old terror, but I still stood in awe of him. The story was that he had started the wizards’ school a hundred and fifty years ago as a retirement project, but his ice-blue eyes were as sharp as ever.

  He was (gratifyingly) sorry I was going, but not (disappointingly) because he wished he could enjoy my company longer. Rather, he was concerned that I was going to help the cathedral dean. “You know wizards try to stay aloof from the Church and their worries about sin—after all, we don’t want priests interfering in magic.”

  I had heard all this many times. It is best not to get involved in the Church because the priests think they have the right answers, whereas instead we wizards have the right answers all the time. “He’s not interfering in magic—as soon as he ran into a magical problem, he had the sense to send for a wizard.”

  He nodded slowly. “All right, but remember: our responsibility is to help mankind, and mankind would be helped more by technically-trained wizards who also knew how to improvise than by priests talking about the supernatural.”

  I thought he was through, but after a moment’s hesitation he spoke again. “While I don’t want to sound as though I’m accusing your friend, there have been rumors, stories, the last month or two, apparently centered in the twin kingdoms of Yurt and Caelrhon … Some members of the aristocracy are starting to talk as though they don’t need wizards, even as though they resent us. Something like this must have been behind the quarrel Sengrim had just before his death. Though I must say he had been acting erratic lately; he even became furious with me because none of us here were interested in some ideas he had about teaching different kinds of magic. But his behavior must have intensified local opposition to wizardry. When I telephoned the royal constable of Caelrhon a short time ago, he was very brusque and unhelpful and said his king had no intention of hiring a new wizard. Our first idea, of course, is that these rumors are being fueled by the priests. So while you’re at the cathedral, keep your eyes open.”

  In spite of going to bed late, I awoke before dawn. I rolled over with the feeling that I was being pulled away from something indescribably sweet and realized that I had been dreaming about Yurt. It was little more than a sensation, but I recognized in the dream the kingdom as it had been when I first arrived there, while everyone was still alive, before anyone started to grow old.

  I looked out my window toward the eastern sky, where a faint yellow glow presaged the sunrise. In many ways my life as Royal Wizard had grown better and better over the years, as I became more sure of my abilities, as I was able to work out plans and programs and see them take effect. But six years ago, during the terrible winter of bitter cold and raging fever throughout the western kingdoms, the old king of Yurt had died. Starting then, I had begun to feel nostalgic, sometimes even melancholic, as though the best part of my life had already passed by.

  It was also that winter that several members of the cathedral chapter of Caelrhon had died, including the dean. Joachim, who a few years earlier had finally yielded to pressure to leave the royal court and join the cathedral, had immediately been elected to replace him. With his new responsibilities as the chapter’s senior officer, I doubted that he had any time to look back nostalgically to what once had been.

  I swung my feet out of bed, too awake to go back to sleep. I was much too young to start living in the past—I probably had a good two hundred years to go, barring run-ins with demons or dragons. During these last months at the school there had been hints that I would be welcome if I decided to stay on. I would not of course join the small group of permanent faculty members, all far older than me and much better at magic, but there was plenty of other occupation available here, assisting in advanced courses or aiding in administration, as well as giving the occasional series of lectures.

  I had always brushed aside such hints. Being back in the great City with money to spend had somehow not turned out to be as exciting as I had imagined when an impoverished student. But now I found myself considering whether I ought to take the opportunity once I had solved the cathedral’s problems for them. Leaving Yurt for the school would be better than allowing myself to be permanently homesick for a life that no longer existed.

  II

  Zahlfast came to see me off. We stood on the little plaza in front of the wizards’ school, on the highest point of the City. Clouds whipped miles above us across a pale blue sky.

  “I’m glad you were able to give your lecture series,” Zahlfast said. “I’m sure the students benefited.”

  “How are the newts today?”

  He laughed. “Once they’d sobered up, I think they were thoroughly frightened—now I just hope that none of the other students try something similar.”

  “Is it my imagination,” I asked, “or are some of the students even more irresponsible now than they were when I was here?”

  Zahlfast shook his head ruefully. “If you’re imagining it, then so am I. You know we used to warn students against summoning, and normally wouldn’t even teach them the spell? Well, now we don’t even mention it exists for fear that the warning would only incite them.”

  I had a secret about the summoning spell, but as the secret was now twenty years old it would keep a while longer.

  “Elerius has been saying we need to tighten down on the students,” Zahlfast commented, “give them real discipline from the beginning rather than allow them as much room to find their own way.”

  “Elerius?” I asked in surprise. Elerius, three years ahead of me, was rumored to have been the best student the school ever produced. He was now Royal Wizard of one of the largest and wealthiest of the western kingdoms. I had always viewed him with a certain suspicion, but I had never been sure how much of that was merely jealousy of his abilities. “I hadn’t realized you were putting him on the faculty.”

  “No,” said Zahlfast with a smile. “I doubt we’ll add anyone to the permanent faculty for years, though it’s always worthwhile to hear the thoughts of our former students. The Master and I haven’t felt that wizardry needed a more rigid structure—but if there’s a recurrence of newts I may change my mind. Elerius always has ideas; not long ago he even tried to persuade us to teach the magic of fire here on top of everything else.”

  Zahlfast and I chatted for a few more minutes, the slightly awkward conversation of two people when it is time for one of them to go, and yet their fri
endship makes them want to delay the parting.

  And then Zahlfast startled me much more than I wanted to admit, by speaking to me directly, mind to mind. “Beware of the Church. The priests hate and fear wizardry, and they seek to destroy you.”

  His eyes held mine steadily. I shook my head without responding. Although all young wizards learn in their final years of training to communicate with each other without speaking, telepathic communication is extremely rare at the school. In speaking mind to mind one’s own mental fences are down, and in an atmosphere of unruly students it is usually safest to keep one’s thoughts sealed up securely. All I could think was that Zahlfast wanted to impress his warning on me with special emphasis.

  The alternative was that someone was watching us from hiding, and Zahlfast wanted to warn me without him overhearing, but this seemed highly unlikely. Whatever odd stories there might be about priests and the aristocracy resenting wizardry, I doubted it had progressed to spies infiltrating the school.

  “Good-bye,” I said, shaking Zahlfast’s hand. “Thank you again for having me here.” I took off flying, soaring high over the City’s spires and then inland, where the dense urban area quickly gave way to the fields, woods, and isolated villages of the western kingdoms.

  It was a beautiful day of late spring, and the earth below me was spread with a hundred shades of green, but I thought less of the scenery than of Zahlfast’s warning. It was tantalizingly unspecific. Several times I had wondered if the older wizards deliberately withheld information from us, perhaps as self-sufficiency training or even as a test, and they might be doing it again. I didn’t like it, especially since I hadn’t been their student for close to twenty years.

  The magic required for flying is hard mental and physical work, so it was with relief several hours later that I saw the sharp cathedral spires of the little city that served as commercial and religious center of the twin kingdoms of Yurt and Caelrhon. To preserve the sensibilities of cathedral priests who might not know their dean had sent for a wizard—and who apparently hated and feared me—I dropped to the ground half a mile from the city and walked in.