Daughter of Magic - Wizard of Yurt - 5 (14 page)

“But his prayers have always restored the creatures,” she said in what was probably meant to be a hopeful tone.

I didn’t like at al the idea of the duchess’s daughter spending time alone with someone with “terrible urges.” I started to forbid her, with a sharp rebuke for her lack of sense, ever to see him again.

But too many people had been teling her what she could and could not do. On the other hand, to be kiled by someone I persisted in thinking of as demonic would probably be a mild, even pleasant experience compared to what the duchess would do to me if she thought I had alowed one of her daughters to be hurt. Why, if a young woman decided to find her own vocation and her own way in life, must it be by putting that life in peril?

I looked toward Hildegarde, the one sure defense Celia might have. She nodded her blond head slowly and wordlessly, meeting my eyes. She understood the situation even better than I did.

“Oh,” I said, remembering what had been happening in Yurt while the twins were gone, “you missed some excitement, Hildegarde.” I told her briefly about the warriors’ attack.

She cheered up at once. “It sounds like we’d better get back to Yurt right away,” she said to Celia. “Paul wil want me there in case anything further happens. And don’t you think, Wizard, that this might be an attack on the Lady Justinia? After al, she’d just arrived when this happened. So the king may want to post a guard in her bedchamber, and it had better be another woman!”

“Do what you like,” said Celia quietly. “I shal remain here.”

“But you can’t stay here by yourself!” Hildegarde protested.

“Why not? We need not always do everything together. And if I went back to Yurt, Cyrus would not be able to teach me what he learns in seminary.” Hildegarde fidgeted, eager to show what a woman’s strong arm could do against creatures of darkness, yet unwiling to leave her sister to the Dog-Man. “And we stil haven’t showed the wizard’s niece how to deal off the bottom of the deck,” she said to her sister as an added inducement to return to Yurt. “You know you’re much better at it than I am.”

“Uh, Hildegarde, maybe the two of you can stay here just a little longer,” I said. “I’m going to find this Cyrus and talk to him myself.”

“But he won’t want to talk to a wizard,” said Celia, rising abruptly from her chair. “He has had evil experiences with wizardry. In becoming a priest, he intends to break al ties with magic.” So had this man been at the wizards’ school along with everything else? I realy did need to talk to him soon, no matter what Celia might think.

I left the little castle a few minutes later to head out of the city. Although the Romneys had denied categoricaly any knowledge of someone caled Dog-Man, they might have information about someone named Cyrus. Both Yurt and Caelrhon were tiny kingdoms, probably unknown to most of the people in the west, much less anywhere else. If this would-be priest had come here intentionaly, rather than just wandering into town by accident, he would have needed directions from someone who traveled here fairly frequently, which would mean either the merchants who brought up goods from the great City or else the Romneys.

Although we in the Western Kingdoms tended to consider the kingdoms east of the mountains as “eastern,” in fact there was a very long distance past them stil to go into the East The multitude of smal kingdoms and principalities where the Romneys were believed to have originated formed a barrier between our Western Kingdoms and the true East. Far beyond that region, in the old imperial city of Xantium, they must consider our Western and Eastern Kingdoms an undifferentiated western mass.

The streets of Caelrhon were packed, as they always were these days, and I had to thread my way carefuly toward the city gates. The square in front of the cathedral, once the main market square of Caelrhon, had for several years been ful of construction equipment, and now rising from the center was what would someday be the great doors and flanking towers of the new cathedral. So far the doors opened not into a cathedral nave but only onto more piled timbers, stones, and vats of mortar, but every time I was in town I could see that the crew had brought the new church one smal step closer.

Beyond the city gates the dense crowds thinned out rapidly, though a number of people besides me seemed to be heading toward the Romney encampment. Today the brightly painted caravans were surrounded by horses. Afternoon sun shone on glistening coats, black, bay, and dapple, and summer breezes ruffled manes and tales. The Romneys themselves in their black and red ducked and dodged their way between the animals, talking confidently to the other people there.

The Romneys, it seemed, were holding a horse-fair. Knights and merchants and a few farmers miled around the encampment, both buying and seling. Horses stamped, kicked, and bared their teeth at each other. Some of these were riding horses, some plow horses, and a few unbroken colts. On every side I heard extravagant claims by would-be selers of the virtues of horses that looked no different to me than those that were being harshly criticized by would-be buyers.

But it did look as though al the adult Romneys were involved. The children were half a mile away, playing by themselves. I wandered toward them, trying not to draw attention to myself from the adults. High white clouds sat on the horizon, but the sky above was clear.

“There’s the wizard!” one of the boys caled, breaking away from the rest to run toward me. “Make me another snake!” It was the same boy, peering at me with shiny black eyes from under shaggy hair, to whom I had first spoken a few days ago. The other children raced to gather around us. Again I made an ilusory ruby-eyed snake that curled up his arm and quivered its tongue at him. “Now make it real!” he said.

I shook my head, smiling. “That’s beyond the reach of natural magic,” I said.

“How about the Dog-Man?” a girl suggested. “I’m sure he could do it!” One of the other children elbowed her hard, and there was suddenly a bashful silence.

My ilusory snake was fading fast. “When I was here before,” I said, looking at the children with a wizardry scowl, “you told me none of you had ever met the Dog-Man. But I think now you realy had, even though you might not have realized it at the time.” The children shuffled their feet, and I knew I was right. “He’s the same man who traveled to Caelrhon with you a few weeks ago, isn’t he. He’s caling himself Cyrus now; what name did he give you?”

The children, laughed, embarrassed. “When did you find out that the man the children in the city were talking about was one you already knew wel?” I pressed them.

“You can’t blame us for not knowing who he was,” the oldest boy piped up. “He never did things like bring dogs back to life when traveling with us\ Maybe,” he added thoughtfuly and unconvincingly, “he knew we’d see straight through his ilusions.”

I myself had long since given up any hope that what this man was doing was mere ilusion. “Tel me more about him,” I suggested, jingling coins ostentatiously in my pockets.

“Wel, I decided to go into town and see him,” announced one of the girls, tossing her hair. “We’d heard such strange things about him—and you had asked us about him, Wizard—that I went down by the river to find him. And it was Cyrus!”

The oldest boy apparently decided that as long as the story was out anyway he might as wel tel me what he knew and at least get the credit for it. “He always told us his name was Cyrus,” he broke in. “But he never told us he was a wizard.”

“Where did he join you?” I asked casualy, not wanting to show how urgently I wanted to know.

“East of the mountains. We were heading this way for the summer, and he came up to our camp, asking if we’d ever heard of Yurt. . . .” I went cold. Vlad had lived in the Eastern Kingdoms, far beyond the mountains. Could he himself be Cyrus, here bent on vengeance against me?

“We told him we were going to Caelrhon, which was very close to Yurt,” said the boy, taking my attentive silence as an invitation to continue.

But nothing that I remembered of Vlad suggested he would decide to become a priest. Mentaly I shook my head. I was letting my imagination get carried away. There could be plenty of explanations both for the attack on the castle and for this very strange miracle-worker without having to imagine it had something to do with long-ago events or even with me. Elerius had thought it might, but even Elerius, I told myself firmly, could be wrong.

“Did he say anything about wanting to enter the seminary?” I asked. The children were growing restless, finding the topic of Cyrus rather dul and clearly wondering if I was going to do anything with my coins besides jingle them.

“He asked us if we were Christian,” said the girl who had spoken before. “I told him we weren’t. By the way, are you wizards Christian? Some priest came out from the city last week and was trying to make us go to his church, and I told him to start on wizards before bothering us!”

“Wizards are Christian,” I said hastily, not wanting to go into detail on the milennia-old conflict between magic and religion, and puled out a handful of coppers. I divided them between the girl and the oldest boy, and when I headed back toward town they were busily counting and assessing how they should be distributed.

So Cyrus had come west with the Romneys, I thought, stroling through the sun-warmed meadows. And he had been looking deliberately for Yurt. This need not have anything to do with Vlad to be distinctly ominous. The dark chil on the summer day had nothing to do with the weather.

But what could have possessed this strange half-wizard to enter Joachim’s seminary?

I sat down in the shade of a tree, thinking that I ought to demand that the bishop forbid this man to talk to Celia, or for that matter to anyone, and that he be expeled from the seminary. But it was going to be hard to do so without any information more solid than what I had bought from a group of children not generaly credited with high standards of honesty. It would be especialy hard since I was stil mortified enough by behavior I was now trying to pretend had never happened that I was unsure how I could ever face Joachim again.

V

I must have falen asleep sitting under the tree, because the next thing I knew I found myself half-slumped at a very awkward angle, and the tree’s shadow stretched long across the meadow.

Rubbing a stiff neck, I sat up and looked toward the Romney encampment. The breeze that made silver tracks in the long grass was cooler now. The horse-fair seemed over; the last steeds were being led away. Wel, I thought, it seemed only appropriate that a day that had begun with nightmare-inspired madness should end without my accomplishing anything at al.

I rose and stretched. I had behaved idioticaly with Theodora as wel as with Joachim, but it was always so good to be with her that the attractions of spending the evening at her house far outweighed the embarrassment of facing her.

And then I saw a lone figure striding across the meadow. He was dressed in black, so that his person and his long shadow seemed to merge into one. He walked with his head down and hands behind his back, paying no attention to the Romneys’ camp or anything else.

Cyrus! I thought, heading rapidly toward him. Now was my chance to confront him.

But it was not the mysterious miracle-worker from the Eastern Kingdoms. It was the bishop.

Joachim glanced up as I approached. He gave a start as though surprised to see me stil in Caelrhon, or perhaps to see anyone. But then he nodded gravely in my direction and kept walking.

At least he did not seem frightened of me—but then he hadn’t this morning either. I fel into step beside him. Something must be very wrong for the bishop to be out here alone, without any accompanying priests, without guards or servants.

We walked in silence for several minutes. “I had not expected to meet you, Daimbert,” he said at last, “but perhaps it is only appropriate that I do. For it is because of our conversation earlier that I have spent much of today searching my soul and have now come to a very difficult and terrible decision. For I know that God first summoned me to the office of bishop, and it is because of my own sins that I must now resign.”

I stared at him, stunned. What could my wild accusations have done to him? Or could he— But I dismissed this idea before it could even form.

“The devil is even more subtle than I had imagined,” Joachim continued, soberly and quietly. “I told you this morning that I knew wel my own sins, but I was wrong. I have sinned, and sinned wilingly, in ways that I kept hidden even from myself. It is only fitting that I tel you first, Daimbert, before announcing my decision to the cathedral chapter.”

“Uh, I thought bishops had chaplains of their own to whom they were supposed to confess their sins,” I mumbled. At this point, tired, humiliated, and deeply worried about Yurt, I didn’t think I was in much of a position to help a bishop through a spiritual crisis.

Joachim paid no attention to my mumblings if he even heard them. “For you were right. It is especialy against you that I have sinned.” He had been avoiding my gaze, but he suddenly turned toward me, his enormous deep-set eyes darkly shadowed as the sun sank toward the horizon. “I began wondering why I should have become so wrathful at your accusations, when it should have been clear that these were only the product of the fears that lurk in midnight dreams. But in turning my thoughts over I realized that it was the wrath of a sin that fears exposure.” We had stopped walking and stood facing each other. Joachim was taler than I, and I had to look up at him. The breeze fluttered his vestments around his ankles and stirred his hair.

“You distrusted Cyrus when I first told you about him,” he said. “And then today you said that it was my sins that had alowed a demon to enter the cathedral. Although I am stil certain that Cyrus is no demon, you were right that a bishop’s sins can put his entire church in mortal peril. If I can no longer sift out evil from good, then I cannot in conscience lead my flock.

“As I told you, Daimbert,” he continued quietly, “I have never touched Theodora. And in eschewing sins of the flesh, I had managed to persuade myself of my own purity. Of course I spoke with her often about her duties as seamstress for the cathedral, and even, in quiet moments that each of us might take amidst our responsibilities, we would share a cup of tea and talk about you. I was happy, I told myself, that my oldest friend had won the love of such a woman, and that the two of you could prosper together in chaste friendship, the parents of a fine little girl. But today I have had to ask myself: did I counsel Theodora in physical purity only so that I did not have to think of her loving another man as she could never love me?”