Daughter of Magic - Wizard of Yurt - 5 (4 page)

I introduced her. “Forgive me, Celia, for not recognizing you at once,” said the bishop politely. “I am always happy to see any of my spiritual sons and daughters, but I fear I have not spoken with you properly since you were quite a bit younger.”

She knelt, overcome, to kiss his episcopal ring, something I myself had always been able to justify not doing. “Please, Holy Father,” she said in a low voice, “don’t send me away before hearing me. Don’t leave, Wizard!” as I stepped toward the door, as though frightened of being left alone with the bishop. “I know you have business of your own here, and this—this should only take a minute.” Joachim blessed her, his hand resting lightly on her hair. “Rise, my daughter. Sit beside me and tel me what troubles your soul.” Celia gave me a quick glance as though for moral support, looked next at the crucifix on the wal as though hoping it would provide the support I clearly would not, gulped twice, and began. “Holy Father, I want to be a priest.”

This was the same surprise to Joachim it was to me. Fortunately Celia kept her eyes on her folded hands. “When did you make this decision, my daughter?” the bishop asked kindly.

“I’ve always known it,” she murmured bitterly, as though already hearing rejection in what sounded to me only like friendly interest. “Or, at least I’ve known it for several years. I was meant to serve God. I want to devote my life to bringing the absolute light of good and love to those around me. My parents expect me to get married and become a duchess, but I cannot.”

“It would be hard for you to be a priest,” said Joachim thoughtfuly. “Since the time of Moses and Aaron, the priesthood has been entirely male. There has certainly always been a place in the Church for pious widows and virgins, though they can usualy best serve God as cloistered nuns.”

Celia was no widow, but she was most likely a virgin— though that was not realy for me to know.

“There is,” the bishop continued, “as I am sure you know, a nunnery in the kingdom of Yurt wel known for its rigor and purity.”

“I am not going to be a nun,” said Celia, quietly and distinctly. “I intend to bring God’s message to laymen and women, especialy women. They’l listen to me when they would never listen to some male priest.”

Joachim looked toward me, eyebrows raised, over her lowered head. I shrugged my shoulders with no idea what to say to her—especialy since I thought she had a point.

“You’re the bishop,” Celia went on when he did not answer at once, determined to get in everything she had come to say. “You’re the supreme religious leader in the area. You can accept whomever you want into the seminary without having to answer to anyone.”

“It is true that I have no direct superior,” said Joachim, “but that does not mean that I answer to no one. Above al, of course, I answer to God and to the church structure He has ordained, then to my own conscience, and then to al the other bishops in this region of the western kingdoms.”

“And in none of this—”

“In none of this,” said the bishop, “do I see women priests.”

He spoke quietly, gently, but with a firmness that would have kept even me from disagreeing. Celia blinked hard, but no tear escaped her eye. She was, after al, the duchess’s daughter.

“Then I guess I’l go see if I can hire a horse to return to Yurt,” she said expressionlessly. “Thanks for the ride, Wizard.” But Joachim put a hand on her arm as she started to rise. “Do not leave spiritualy dissatisfied. I need to speak now with the wizard, but you and I can talk more later. You were planning on staying in Caelrhon this evening anyway, weren’t you, Daimbert?” He knew al about me and Theodora, the only person besides the queen of Yurt who did. “If you would like to stay tonight in the cathedral guest house, I am sure it can be arranged,” he added to Celia. “A way should certainly be found for someone who feels herself caled by God.” She nodded without looking up and let herself be led away by an acolyte.

“A true daughter of the duchess,” I commented when the door closed. Duchess Diana of Yurt had always done exactly what she liked and had never been comfortable herself with the life of the noble lady.

She seemed to have passed on several key personality traits to her daughters.

IV

“Now, Joachim,” I said, “tel me about this problem you’re having. Somebody is working miracles, you say?”

He turned quickly from frowning at the door where Celia had just gone. “Yes,” he said, shifting his attention to me. “And if they are truly miraculous, the man may be a saint. But somehow, something about him does not seem true.”

I sat down opposite him. “How long has he been here?”

“Only about two weeks,” said the bishop as though in careful consideration. “Some say he arrived with the Romneys, though no one has seen him with them.” The Romneys wandered from place to place throughout the western kingdoms; I had noticed their caravans and horses outside the city wals as we flew in. “But already he—”

“Give me an example,” I prompted when he paused.

“What they are already caling his first miracle,” said the bishop, drawing back so that his eyes were shadowed, “was saving the life of a little dog.”

“A dog?”

“It belonged to a boy who lives down in the artisans’ quarter, near the river—that is where this man seems to make his headquarters.” That was where Theodora and Antonia lived. Faint unease prickled the hairs on the back of my neck.

“It had slipped its leash and run right under the wheel of a cart. The carter was very sorry, of course, but there was nothing he could have done. The boy picked up the dog’s body—some say its ribs were crushed, some that it was already dead. But as the boy, sobbing, was carrying his dog home, this man stopped him, very kindly. He took the dog from him, cradled it in his own arms a minute—scores of people claim to have been eyewitnesses—and returned it to the boy alive, unharmed and barking.”

I shook my head hard. “That’s not magic. Magic’s never had any control over the earth’s natural cycle of life and death. We can prolong life but not restore it when it’s gone.”

“Yes,” said the bishop quietly. “For that you need the supernatural, the power of the saints—or of a demon.”

I took a breath and released it slowly. This had suddenly become much more serious. I had imagined someone who had picked up a few scraps of the Hidden Language somewhere, trying to make a living by producing rather pathetic ilusions and passing them off on the credulous as miracles. But this person had better be working real miracles. The other possibility was black magic, which meant he had sold his soul to the devil.

“Listen, Joachim,” I said. “There are a couple of very good demonology experts at the wizards’ school. I’l telephone them—one wil certainly want to come if this man is working with a demon. And that way—”

“No,” said the bishop, low and firm. “I told you, this man may be a saint. I don’t want him accused of black magic if he is, certainly not by one of the masters of your school, someone with no respect either for religion or the Church. That is why I sent for you.” I had never had a whole lot of respect for the Church either, but I declined to mention this now. “I must find out where he draws his power, but I would not want him falsely accused—even martyred. The truly holy man,” and he paused for a second, looking past me out the window, “must always seem profoundly strange to those caught up in the petty affairs of the world.”

I considered for a moment, tapping my fingers on the bishop’s desk and making myself stop when I realized what I was doing. I had the spels, of course, to detect the supernatural, but those spels would not by themselves indicate if a supernatural power was demonic or divine. “You must have made inquiries,” I said. “What else have you found out?”

“I did more than make inquiries. I went down to the artisans’ quarter to see him.”

“And did you meet him? How old a man is he?”

“It was hard to tel his age,” said the bishop, his dark eyes distant. “He was tal and gaunt, with a face that looked as though he did not know how to smile.” I didn’t like this at al. I had once met a demon taking human form, and this is just what he had looked like.

‘That is,” the bishop continued, “until he did smile and his whole face was transformed by joy and beauty.”

Not a demon, then, I said as persuasively as I could to the cold sensation at the pit of my stomach. A demon would not smile joyously at meeting a bishop. That is, unless the bishop himself was sunk in sin—

a possibility I thought I could safely disregard.

“I spoke with him for close to an hour,” Joachim went on. “He has something of an accent; at first I thought he might be a Romney but he’s not. He told me he was highly honored that I had come in person to see him, denied any particular merit of his own, and tried to dismiss the whole story of the little dog by saving that he expected the saints had heard the boy’s prayers.” This sounded like what a genuine saint would do. I tried to be reassured.

“So I was reassured,” said Joachim. “He wouldn’t tel me his name, saying it was of no importance, and I did not press him. Instead we spoke of the love of God for al His sons and daughters, even falen and sunken in sin as we are. He seemed to have thought very little before about religious precepts, considering he told me he had been brought up as a Christian, but he told me he would start attending services at the artisans’ church. In the days since I have heard he has become something of a favorite of the children of the quarter.” Including Antonia? I wondered in panic. “But something else happened or you wouldn’t have telephoned me.”

The bishop nodded and his enormous eyes found mine. “The children started bringing him, so the story goes, their broken toys, and he fixed them by passing his hand over them. One girl’s dol had falen in the fire, and he restored the charred remains to new, and better than new.”

Could this possibly have been Antonia and her dol?

“This was not, of course, in the same category as restoring life, even the life of a dog. So I next began to wonder if perhaps he had told me truly, that the dog’s recovery was due to the boy’s prayers and not to this man’s own merits. He could be working magical ilusions out of good if mistaken intentions, I thought, restoring the appearance alone of wholeness, knowing the children would be too confused or frightened to accuse him of fraud when their toys became broken again in then-hands as the ilusion faded. I even thought it might be some kind of magic different from your school magic— the Romneys’ spels, perhaps, or even witchcraft.”

“The Romneys don’t know any magic,” I objected. “And witchcraft— Have you been talking to Theodora?”

I must have sounded irritated, because the bishop gave a smal smile. “I speak with her often, of course— she is, after al, one of the best seamstresses working for the cathedral—but I would not say anything to her about magic that would sound accusatory without speaking to you first.”

“So that’s why you caled me? To ask me about witchcraft?”

“No. I caled you, Daimbert, to keep me from possibly making a very serious mistake.”

Dusrmotes danced in the horizontal light from the window. The sounds of the city were very far away as I waited for him to continue.

“Priests—and bishops—deal with good and evil every day,” he said after a long pause. “But rarely do we see absolute good or absolute evil. Instead we see gradations of gray, virtuous paths folowed only because they are not very demanding at the moment, sins falen into because of laziness or a desire for some temporary advantage rather than because of a soul turned to darkness. Young Celia imagines herself a priest moving in a halo of white light In fact, priests move daily through petty and rather sordid sins: lust, selfishness, lies half-believed by the person who tels them, much of it caused by greed and boredom among the wealthy and by ignorance and misery among the poor. It has come to this, Daimbert,” leaning toward me, “that when I find myself meeting a man who is either very holy or else working with a demon, who represents true good or real evil rather than a gray somewhere between, I no longer trust myself to tel the difference. That is why I caled you—you are one of the very few whose judgment I trust.” So far I had a king and a bishop trusting my judgment—now al I needed was to do so myself. “I had almost persuaded myself,” Joachim went on,

“that we were just very blessed in having a holy man here in Caelrhon, when the incident with the frog occurred.”

It had been over twenty-five years since that transformations practical exam. Most of the time now I was able to discuss frogs without any self-consciousness. But the bishop’s use of the term “incident with the frog” brought back al the embarrassment of that long-ago disaster. Even after al this time, I had never worked myself up to teling him about it.

“It may not be true,” he continued. “There seem to have been only a few witnesses, and the stories that filtered up to the cathedral do not agree on al points. But in essence— A boy brought a frog, a live frog, to the miracle-worker and asked if he could kil it and then bring it back to life. And the man did so.”

Faint in the distance I could hear the cathedral organ playing, bass notes vibrating on the lower edge of audibility. “That,” I said slowly, “does not sound like a holy man to me.”

“Or to me,” said the bishop.

V

And that was why, when I would rather have been visiting Theodora, I was trying to find a miracle-worker. Sunlight stil lingered in the long June evening as I walked down by the river. Theodora’s house was only a few blocks away, but I did not want to worry her before I knew if there was something to be worried about.

The dockworkers had gone home, but children playing along the river’s edge were happy to talk to me. “I haven’t seen the Dog-Man today,” one boy told me, “but I saw him yesterday. He’s my friend. Are you his friend?”

“I’ve never met him,” I said vaguely.

“But everybody knows the Dog-Man!” the boy protested.

Other children also happily talked to me because, I suspected, that way they could plausibly ignore the faint but clear cals of mothers wanting diem to come home to bed. They said the man could sometimes be found in a little shack on the docks. But no one seemed to have seen him recently, and the shack—which didn’t even have four wals, much less an intact roof—was empty of al except a faint but definite trace of both magic and the supernatural.