C. Dale Brittain_Wizard of Yurt 04

by The Witch;the Cathedral

  "Can you make yourself invisible with just your Hidden Language?" She gave me a challenging look from under long lashes.

  "I can, but don't ask me to do it now. I know you'll make me laugh, and then it won't work."

  "You're just nervous about having to see those things."

  "What ‘things’ do you mean?" I asked again.

  "I don't know what wizards call them. Those little creatures—except some of them aren't very little. I don't see them every time; I didn't see them this time."

  "Oh," I said, wondering what she could possibly have seen. I would have to look at the inscription on the ring very soon.

  "I've already taught you most of my fire magic," said Theodora, "even though you still need to practice the spells against being burnt. Maybe in return for your magic I should teach you how to climb the real way, without flying."

  "But I don't have your suppleness or your muscles."

  "That takes practice too, just as magic does," she said in the tone of a reproving school teacher.

  I laughed and put my arm across her shoulders. She was exactly the right height to fit under my arm. She put her own arm around my waist and we walked hips together, matching strides, back toward town.

  On the walk out to the quarry, I had thought three miles long, in spite of the sunshine and flower-scented air. Now I would have been happy to walk twice as far. At some point without noticing I seemed to have fallen in love.

  III

  Joachim asked me somewhat stiffly the next morning if I would mind not joining him for dinner that night. "I have invited the other officers over," he said, "so that we may discuss in perhaps a more relaxed setting than the cathedral office what we shall need to do as the bishop's illness continues."

  "Of course," I said, thinking that the dean was surely hoping to get some of the other cathedral officers to take up some of the double burden he was carrying, while the rest of them were doubtless intending to accuse him of introducing into the city the wizard responsible for all their problems—and maybe even the bishop's illness itself. The cantor Norbert, whom I suspected from something Joachim had said of having long had aspirations of being elected bishop himself, would doubtless lead the accusations: from his point of view, the dean was assuring his own election by taking over the bishop's duties now. "Are you sure you wouldn't feel more comfortable if I moved out," I asked, "maybe went to stay in an inn?"

  The dean looked up. "I asked you to stay with me, Daimbert," he said soberly and apologetically, "and am sorry if you are still uneasy here."

  I shook my head and went out, mumbling something unconvincing about still looking for traces of magical apparitions. But Theodora was busy finishing a new dress for the mayor's wife, so I was back not much later, letting myself in quietly with the spare key Joachim had given me because I knew he would be at the cathedral and I didn't want to disturb his servant.

  But as I stepped inside I heard a voice from the study. It was Norbert. "Remember," he was saying, low and fierce, "you never saw me here."

  Intensely interested, I went still and amplified the sound of voices with magic.

  But I heard no one answer Norbert. He spoke again. "You seem to pride yourself on rarely speaking. Trust me: your silence now will be for the good of the Church. So just don't speak this time." There was another pause. "Do you want me to tell the dean about that time you stood shouting and cursing in the middle of the market square? It happened before he moved here from Yurt, and I doubt he's ever heard the story. I'm sure he'd find it most interesting."

  There was another silence. "Good," said Norbert with satisfaction. "Remember, I have not asked you to do anything to harm your master. Just don't tell him I was here or touch this."

  Rapid steps were coming my way. I made myself invisible just in time. Norbert came within an inch of brushing against me as he opened the front door. Fortunately the entry was dim and I cast no shadow. His face, close to mine, did not look evil, but there was a desperation in his eyes that contrasted with the good-natured if somewhat self-righteous lines that the years had put around his mouth.

  Could he have summoned a bat-winged monster to the cathedral? Not without a lot of help, I concluded, just barely getting in a quick magical probe before the door slammed behind him. There was not the slightest indication that he knew any wizardry.

  But what had he left in the dean's study? Still invisible, I went quietly into the room, in time to see Joachim's silent servant, his expression anguished, hurrying out the far side.

  It didn't take long to find it. On the bottom shelf of a wide oak bookshelf, tucked almost entirely behind some heavy theological treatises so that no one would see it unless they were looking for it, was a book of magic.

  I pulled it out carefully. To a wizard it almost shimmered with the residual spells of the magic-workers over the generations who had used it. And it had been used for generations. It was written on parchment sheets in a number of different hands, bound in calf made rough by long use. Half a dozen names had been written on the flyleaf, below five stars and a pentagram, but all the names were heavily crossed out. The parchment leaves were soft with much handling, but the book fell open to a place marked with a fresh red velvet ribbon. Above the words of the Hidden Language was a heading in the sharply-angled handwriting of a wizard or magician who might have been dead for centuries: "How to poison a rival with a slow-acting poison."

  I slammed the book shut and retreated to my room, so indignant and so furious that it was lucky for Norbert he was no longer in the house. Nobody was going plant false evidence, accusing Joachim of poisoning the bishop, while I was in Caelrhon.

  But once I calmed down a little I realized that transporting Norbert up to the top of the new tower and dropping him off would not help the dean. Joachim, I was afraid, would be sorrowful but forgiving when I told him about this. I somehow had to find a way to reveal Norbert's plot in a way that would discredit him so thoroughly that he would not try something similar again, but I would have to do so without warning Joachim ahead of time.

  Norbert's plan was fairly clear. He had brought the book here, with the marker carefully in place, and threatened Joachim's servant with revelation of his old shame if he even mentioned the cantor's visit. He intended to "accidentally" discover it that evening, in the presence of all the cathedral officers, thus casting the dean under so much suspicion regarding the old bishop's illness that he would no longer be a viable candidate for bishop himself. Even if Joachim convincingly denied all knowledge of the book, the suspicion would fall on me, and hence reflect very poorly on the dean who should have known better than to harbor a wizard who had probably already brought a bat-winged monster to attack the new cathedral.

  Should I, I wondered, weighing the worn magic volume in my hand, suspect Norbert himself of calling the monster? But it was hard to imagine someone who had resorted to a rather petty if despicable trick like this of being behind something so spectacular as having a creature five times the size of a man land on the tower.

  On the other hand, where had he gotten the magic book?

  I examined it again. Nothing about it gave any clue. It must long predate the school and its cleanly-printed books on magic. Unless I was going to assume that Norbert himself, a cathedral priest for decades, kept a collection of arcane tomes, he must have gotten it somewhere on purpose to discredit Joachim. Perhaps he had been able to overcome his aversion to wizardry enough to find and deal with a wizard—but who? And could it be the same one who had been behind the monster, the one I still couldn't find?

  Suddenly I smiled. Joachim, if I told him about it, would have called it totally inappropriate, but I had a plan.

  I lurked, invisible, while the cathedral officers assembled that evening. I had started to think that Joachim was growing old, but compared to the rest of them he was positively youthful. Most had white hair and faces that had started to sag around the jawbones, but they all seemed conscientious, polite, and genuinely concerned about the welfar
e of the diocese. They did not go into the study as I expected but instead passed into the dining room, with a rustle of vestments and a faint scent of incense and talcum.

  While they ate dinner I retreated into my own room to take a break from invisibility—always a difficult spell to maintain. Besides, I really didn't want to hear all the details of diocese management. An hour passed. Listening to the distant clinking of plates and silver, I started growing hungry enough to wonder if I could slip out to an inn for a bite and be back before anything happened.

  But then I heard the scraping of chairs and the sound of feet moving toward the study. I quickly wrapped myself in a spell of invisibility and took the old magic book out of the bottom of the box where I had hidden it under my own books. Silently I slipped out into the hall, sliding the book above me along the high ceiling.

  "You certainly have a good theology collection, Joachim," I heard Norbert's voice. "I might like to borrow some of your books sometime."

  I stopped outside the study door, afraid of having one of the cathedral officers bump into me, but peeked around the edge as I continued the book's progress into the room. No one looked up to see it.

  Norbert bent toward the bottom shelf of the wide bookcase. "Now this work, for example—I haven't seen it since seminary!" His voice was just a little too loud and his manner nervous; he was clearly unused to plotting and deception. For a second I even allowed myself to feel sorry for someone so desperate as to resort to plots he would have denounced if presented to him in the abstract. This went far beyond jealousy of the dean—he must be genuinely worried about the church's welfare. "Let me see," he continued, pulling out a large theological volume. "But wait! Joachim! What's this I see behind it?"

  Joachim politely bent to look. "There is nothing behind it."

  "Of course there— Don't tell me he—" Norbert dropped to his knees to look for himself. The other priests glanced at each other in surprise.

  The cantor, bent over with his face thrust into Joachim's innocuous theology collection, presented much too tempting a target for me to resist. I dropped his magic book from the ceiling and hit him square on the fundament.

  He jerked, banging his head on the shelf, and spun around. "Here it is!" he cried, picking it up. "Joachim! I am deeply shocked!"

  The priests all looked at each other again. "Where did that book come from?" several asked in surprise, and "The dean didn't do it," added several others.

  "But look what he has on his shelves!" Norbert cried, vicious and triumphant, pushing himself to his feet and opening the volume. "Joachim, you know I don't shock easily, but I am deeply disappointed! It's— Why, look!" holding up the title page to show the others. "It's a book of magic!" He leafed through. "And here, marked with his own marker—" He stopped, unable to find the poison spell because I had taken the marker out.

  There was a short silence. Norbert seemed to realize that this wasn't coming out quite the way he intended. One of the priests, the one I thought was the chancellor, asked quietly, "Why did you think the dean had such a book in his study, Norbert? And how did you know even before you opened it that it was a book of magic?"

  The cantor looked around desperately. "That servant of yours—" he tried.

  "I hope," said Joachim mildly, "that you did not bring this book in here earlier and threaten my servant with exposure of what he still believes is a secret, to keep him from informing me of your visit."

  In the subsequent uproar everyone seemed to forget the magic book's abrupt arrival on the scene, except for Joachim, who looked thoughtfully at the ceiling. I slipped back to my room as Norbert, apparently deciding that at this point full confession would work better than denial, threw himself at the dean's feet, quite real tears running down his cheeks.

  This I didn't need to see. I quietly opened my casement window, stepped out into the air, and flew off, still invisible, in search of supper.

  IV

  Even with a magnifying glass, it was hard to read the inscription in Theodora's ring by candle light. I tipped the ring back and forth and wished for one of the excellent magic lamps from Yurt.

  "It's a spell, certainly," I told Theodora. We sat by her hearth, where she had been trying to teach me the spell for a cloak of fire.

  "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."<
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  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.