Daughter of Magic - Wizard of Yurt - 5 (24 page)

“Did Celia tel the Dog-Man that Antonia is my daughter?” I interrupted, heaving up out of the chair and seizing Hildegarde by the arms. Several times during her visit Antonia had hinted that she had met him earlier, in spite of Theodora’s attempts to keep her away.

Hildegarde eased out of my grip, looking puzzled. “Celia hasn’t told Cyrus anything. Don’t you remember? My parents have forbidden her al contact with him, convinced that he’s the one who made her decide to be a nun.”

If someone had told me this, it must have been while I was delirious. I settled back slowly into my chair. But if Antonia went and played with Cyrus, maybe asking him to repair a broken toy—or, even worse, to take her to see a dragon—that strange, sharp-featured man would learn soon enough that she was my daughter. And what better way to get at me, now that his warriors of bone and hair and his fenris-wolf had failed, than through Antonia?

“Quick!” I cried. “Find Theodora and bring her here!”

“Wel,” said Hildegarde, bemused, “you mean my little suggestion has made you abruptly decide to propose marriage at last?”

“No! I mean, of course I want to marry her, but she won’t marry me. She has to get back to Caelrhon right away.”

“I’m not sure it’s a good plan either,” commented Hildegarde, “to send her away just because she has too much sense to want to tie herself to a wizard. She did take very good care of you while you were sick. I would never fal in love with a crotchety old wizard myself, but she gives every sign of it.”

“Just get her!” Hildegarde shook her head with a grin and went. I pushed myself out of the chair to find my shoes. I should be able to fly the air cart, even in my weakened condition, and it would get Theodora home faster than a horse. I hated for her to go, leaving everything between us more unresolved than ever, but we had to make sure Antonia did not come into further contact with Cyrus.

Now that he had been accepted into the seminary, rather than living on the docks, he might have no more time to play with the children, I tried to reassure myself as I tied my shoes. I even took the time to wonder if I realy had become a crotchety old wizard. Maybe I should have told Hildegarde that Justinia, for one, thought my face and figure youthful and my power highly attractive.

Antonia skipped down the street to meet us, braids bouncing on her back. “Guess what!” she caled. “Jen and I caught a baby rat and we’re going to raise him and teach him tricks. We’l make him a little house to live in and keep him in our bedroom at night. We named him Cyrus.”

Theodora caught the girl up and hugged her hard. “I’m afraid a rat won’t make a very good pet,” she said then. “Does Jen’s mother know about this?”

“Wel, if Jen’s mother won’t let us have the rat at her house,” said Antonia slowly, as though the girls had already thought this through, “can we have him in our house?” A rat named Cyrus? I thought. It seemed a good choice.

Antonia hugged me too. “I’m getting a new tooth,” she told me proudly. “Are you al better? Mother said you were sick. The bishop took me to church with him one day and we prayed for you. Did I make you better?”

“You might have,” I said, smiling just from the pleasure of seeing her.

Antonia paused in skipping down the street to look back. “I asked the bishop if he had any little girls or boys of his own,” she informed us, “and do you know what he said? He said he was the father of everybody in Yurt and Caelrhon, including the grown-ups. Doesn’t that sound strange? Is he realy?”

We went to see Jen and her mother and to get Theodora’s things. The two women presented a united front against the concept of a rat as a pet.

“So have you come back for the ceremony?” Jen’s mother asked. “You mean you didn’t hear? Cyrus is going to receive the key to the city. They’re holding the ceremony at the covered market this evening.”

“Is that the Dog-Man?” asked Jen.

“That’s right,” said her mother. “The same man who fixed your dol this spring.” It chiled me to hear her speak so matter-of-factly about a supernatural event.

“I knew that,” said Antonia. “That’s why I wanted to name our rat for him.”

It didn’t sound then as though the girls had seen him recendy That was a relief. I wondered if receiving the key to the city was like getting the Golden Yurt. “I’d better go to this ceremony,” I told Theodora as we walked back to her house. “I want to see what’s been happening here.”

The Lady Maria had returned to the city from Yurt last week, once again bringing the Princess Margareta with her. I wasn’t sure of the details, but my guess was that the royal court of Caelrhon had decided that the chance that Paul would marry some foreign lady was preferable to the chance that their crown princess would be eaten by a wolf. I met the two at the castle and we went together to the covered market, me leaning on my old predecessor’s staff. On the way, I saw a woman chasing three rats out her front door with a broom, using words that I hadn’t even realized respectable Caelrhon housewives knew.

“Cyrus is so spiritual!” Maria told me enthusiasticaly. “Even though he worked such a striking miracle, it hasn’t made him at al puffed up and proud. When al of us come to revere and honor him each day, he just sits quietly or else speaks of God and the Last Judgment.” Princess Margareta looked bored, trailing along behind.

The streets around the covered market were packed. Townspeople in their finery moved through the warm evening air and between the pilars into the market, where clear-burning torches provided the light.

Straw and bits of falen vegetable lay underfoot. Something seemed unusual about the crowd, but I could not immediately place it. I managed to find a place at the back to lean against the wal, supporting myself on the silver-topped staff. The crowd spoke in quiet voices, but their words stil bounced, magnified and jumbled, from the ceiling.

“I have to tel you, Wizard,” said the Lady Maria with a coy smile, speaking low so that Margareta could not hear us over the general din, “that I was the tiniest bit shocked when I learned you had had a daughter out of wedlock!” Her wide blue eyes glinted at me in the dimness. “That realy was naughty of you, especialy to take advantage of such a nice young lady. I’ve kept it from littie Margareta because I think she may be a bit too young to understand. Now, I’ve seen and heard enough in my day that very little shocks me, but you know sometimes one imagines one knows someone very wel, yet they stil have secrets! That’s why Cyrus is so remarkable. I think he understands everything.”

I rather hoped Cyrus didn’t understand me. I saw him now, dressed al in black, his face sober and intent. He did not spot us in the crowd. But I felt a sudden chil on the back of my neck, as though a breeze were stirring on this stil evening. “You haven’t told him about Antonia, have you?”

“I don’t tel secrets,” said Maria placidly. “I may have hinted that there was a certain wizard, not very far away, with sins that even a holy man might find hard to forgive, but as you can imagine I said nothing else!”

Before I had a chance to ask more, the mayor stepped up to a rostrum, flanked by candles, which had been erected at the far end of the market. He had been mayor for years, a solidly built and honest man who always sought a way to keep his city’s life and commerce functioning separate from the cathedral, although literaly in the cathedral’s shadow, and with the goodwil or at least tolerance of the priests. The light glittered on his chains of office. He waited a minute until conversation died down, then began, simply and informaly.

“I don’t think I need to remind al of you what we owe to Cyrus,” he said. With wizardry I could hear him clearly, but the Lady Maria beside me strained to listen. Margareta, examining the cracked finish on one nail, seemed to be suggesting rather pointedly that she would rather be somewhere else. I thought I could detect a faint nervous tone in the mayor’s voice, which seemed rather surprising in someone who must have to give hundreds of public speeches.

“Cyrus has proven himself a true friend of the city of Caelrhon,” he continued. “We could make him a citizen, for al he’s foreign-born, but many men are born or made citizens. So the council has decided to offer him something we haven’t offered anyone in years— not even our own king!”

There was an appreciative chuckle from the crowd. King Lucas of Caelrhon had been known to grumble when visiting us in Yurt that the city seemed remarkably adept at evading his tols and taxes, and apparently it looked much more amusing from their side than his.

“Cyrus, we want to give you the key to our city.”

Cyrus stepped forward then, a gratified look in the angle of his shoulders even though he did not smile. A gust of wind stirred the candles at the rostrum, and the torches flared. This was it? I asked myself as the mayor handed him an enormous ceremonial key, glittering with rhinestones. This was worth someone seling his soul to the devil, so he could have the mayor of a smal city make him a presentation?

With my magicaly enhanced hearing, I was able to catch the mayor’s next words, although they did not seem intended for anyone but Cyrus. “Next time you’re talking to the saints,” he said, not quite as though he were making a joke, “how about if you mention our problems with the rats?”

But then the crowd began to murmur appreciatively, yet in a low note, as though too deeply in awe to shout as they had shouted last month in front of the cathedral. Cyrus turned from one side to the other, holding up his hands as though in benediction, smiling but without the shattering goodness I was now able to convince myself I had never actualy seen.

Instead he seemed to be soaking in the praise—and, I was almost afraid to say, worship—of the crowd like a lizard soaking in the sun’s rays. What had the Lady Maria said about people coming to honor and revere him? But this simple reverence did not now seem enough for him.

“Give God the glory!” he caled, and the crowd repeated it. “Prepare for Judgment!” and his words were repeated again. “Hunt out sin!” The evening breeze continued to rise, and in the torches’ glare his face was shaded red. The candles on the rostrum cast shadows from below that made his eyebrows enormous. Demonic, I would have caled the effect, except that everything he said could have been said by Joachim—the words, but not his way of saying them.

“Overcome evil!” he shouted, and I clutched the silver-topped staff tighter. “Root out al sin! Destroy the works of the devil! Seize paradise as God has promised us!” The crowd seemed almost choreographed, now starting to sway together, no longer repeating his phrases but steadily chanting, “Cyrus, Cyrus.” Their chant had the steady hard beat of a heart. The mayor, looking somewhat uneasy, slipped away into the night. The shouts from the crowd went higher as Cyrus lifted his hands, lower as he lowered them. The Lady Maria beside me joined in enthusiasticaly.

This, I thought, adulation lice this might al be worth it

And then I realized what was so odd about a crowd this size in the city of Caelrhon. It included no priests.

PART SIX. Rats I

“I have spoken to him, of course,” said the bishop gravely, “and spoken more than once. But he always says his only interest is to bring himself closer to God by carrying the divine message of judgment and salvation to His flock.”

“You should stop him, Joachim. A bishop can certainly forbid Christians from listening to a charlatan who preaches false religion.” We sat in the bishop’s study, where candlelight reflected on the dark windowpanes and made the wood paneling ruddy. There was a faint sound of scurrying in the wals that might have been rats, though I had certainly never heard any in the bishop’s palace before.

Joachim answered me quietly, light and shadow flickering across his face. “But is he preaching false religion, Daimbert? I wish that I could say. It is true that I have told the cathedral priests not to attend his prayer meetings. But is a bishop who lacks the wil to resign fit to judge a man who after al only teaches God’s message? Can there be sin in Christian preaching, even if done more spectacularly than by most and without the license of a sinful bishop?”

Joachim could sometimes be even more exasperating than Antonia. “Don’t tel me you’re stil thinking of resigning! Didn’t I explain it to you? You and I were both infected by some spel of madness left in the bones of those undead warriors by whatever renegade wizard made them. I hope you realize I wouldn’t normaly try to kil you any more than you would harbor lustful thoughts.”

“I was under a spel?” The bishop looked slighdy il at the idea.

“So was Celia—that’s why she suddenly decided to become a nun after insisting that she would never retreat from the world to the cloister, but instead become an active priest. And I think Cyrus is behind it.

You know I’ve suspected him al along of working with a demon. Wait!” as Joachim seemed about to interrupt. “What I’m trying to ask you is, if he repented of his evil ways, including his attacks on Yurt, would he be able to save his soul after al by becoming a preacher?”

“It is very difficult for someone who has sold his soul to reclaim it,” said the bishop dubiously. “But I would not be so quick to condemn or to assume—”

“And I also had another question,” I said hastily, not wanting any lectures about forgiveness of one’s brother, since I had no intention of being Cyrus’s brother. “If someone sold his soul from pure motives, to save another’s life, would he regain it?”

I had told Joachim briefly about Antonia’s flying carpet ride when he asked after her. He looked at me a moment from his enormous dark eyes, then slowly started to smile. Whatever he had that passed for a sense of humor appeared at the strangest times. “If one were acting from completely pure motives, the devil might not accept the bargain. Do you know why, Daimbert,” he added in apparent inconsequentiality, “priests do not marry?”

“To avoid sins of the flesh, I presume,” I said in surprise, hoping he was not about to start confessing yearnings for Theodora again.

“There is certainly an element of that,” he said, stil with a faint smile, “a belief that only those who are purified as much as any son of Adam can be should assume spiritual leadership. But that is not the only or even principal reason: after al, married couples sin less than a celibate priest with a perverted imagination. But priests must never alow attachment to a single person or persons to obscure their duties to al Christians.”