The Witch & the Cathedral - Wizard of Yurt - 4 (16 page)

Although she did not have the long toes and fingers of the workmen on the cathedral, she moved with the same apparent disregard for height.

At first I watched her from the ground, then I flew up to a ledge and watched as she went by. She broke into a light sweat as she climbed, making her tunic stick to her back. She seemed to have an exquisite sense of balance and an absolute confidence that her body would obey her mind.

At the end of a half hour, Theodora had almost reached a deep crevice in the rock face. But the last few feet of cliff jutted outwards. She worked her hand into a narrow crack, made a fist so that the hand would not slip out again, and braced her weight against it as she scrambled for purchase with her toes. For a moment she became motionless, then her knees started to tremble and she began quietly swearing.

I reached with magic to catch her, but then she flung the other hand up, grabbed the lip of the crevice above her, kicked her way upward, and folded herself into it. I let out my breath all at once. "I'm going to rest here!" she called cheerfully. "I think there's enough room for you, too."

I flew up to join her. "Are you all right?"

"Of course. I apologize for the cursing. There's always a moment, usually just before you reach the top, when you think that this time you'll never make it and you have to yell at your body to keep it moving at all."

There was just room in the crevice for a second person. Although not nearly as supple as she, I managed to fit most of myself in. Our faces were very close together and our shoulders collided I was surrounded by the scent of her, a combination of sweat, lavender, and clean hair.

"I'm extremely impressed," I told her honestly. "Did your mother teach you climbing as well as magic?"

"It was my father, actually," she said. "He died in a fall when I was only ten, but he'd already taught me everything he knew."

"Oh, I'm sorry," I said inadequately.

"It's a long time ago now. Besides, I don't think of him as being dead. I think about what he used to say to me, how he used to encourage me when he first took me out to practice on little ten-foot boulders. Sometimes when I'm climbing I can still almost hear him."

I thought to myself that theirs must have been a very unusual family. But I was distracted by the realization that her lips were less than an inch from mine. It seemed perfectly natural to start kissing them. Even though I could not embrace her, as my arms were needed to hold me in the crevice, I kept on for some time. Theodora seemed to be enjoying this as much as I was.

I had almost decided I could spare one arm to put around her when the corner of my eye caught a glimpse of empty air. If I wasn't careful, both of us would be down at the bottom of the cliff.

Very delicately, I pulled my head back. Her eyes smiled into mine. "Is this what you're imagining the princess and the royal wizard doing?" she asked.

I wasn't at all sure she believed my theory about Sengrim—I wasn't sure I believed it myself. But being reminded of him calmed me down enough that I noticed how cramped I had become jammed into the crevice. "I'm going to slip out now," I told her. "Were you planning to climb any higher?"

"This is high enough for today," she said. "It always takes longer to go down than up. We'll have to come back here again."

I rolled out into the air and hovered, watching as she extended first one long leg and then the other. She found toeholds and started easing herself down.

As she descended I hovered to one side, trying to stay far enough away that I would not distract her and yet close enough that I could catch her with magic if she slipped. She would probably object if she knew what I was doing, but her father had fallen to his death.

Somehow and quite mistakenly I had assumed going down would be easier than ascending. Instead of looking above her for the next tiny ledge or crevice, Theodora had to feel below her with a toe. When she was twenty feet from the ground I went down and stood below her, thinking that if she did fall I could cushion the impact with my body. Suddenly I heard voices.

Coming around the corner were three men. They had the massive upper arms and chest muscles of men who spend their days swinging hammers against solid stone. "Hey, look!" said one of them. "It's a girl on the cliff!"

The other two laughed. "Let's get her down!" They ignored me, an ineffectual looking white-haired man. They brushed past and looked up the cliff as though about to start climbing.

A pebble rolled past my head as I heard Theodora shifting. I looked toward her and froze. She was gone.

The men were equally startled. "Hey, where's the girl?" The leader looked at me for the first time. "What did you do with her, old man? Are you a magician or something?"

"I am the Royal Wizard of Yurt," I said loudly, doing my best to give him a piercing look. Inside my head I was yelling, "Theodora! Where are you?"

"A wizard, huh? Did you make the girl disappear? What did you do that for?"

"To keep your unwanted attentions from her, of course," I said and extended a hand. With a small bang and a burst of pink smoke, the grass caught fire at his feet.

"Very good, pupil!" said Theodora's voice inside my mind. I stole a quick glimpse up the rock face. The sun was at an oblique angle, and the crevices and odd bits of plant growing out of the limestone made a jumble of shadows, but there was a larger shadow where I had last seen Theodora.

The men stepped back, temporarily startled. The leader regained his composure first. "You want to fight, is that it?” he cried and charged.

I would never have been able to hold him off if he had reached me, but fortunately I did not have to. I lifted him six feet off the ground and held him suspended. "All right," 1 said to the other two. "Would either of you like to take your turn?"

The man in the air kicked and bellowed, but magic held him firmly. I shifted my attention to the second man and started lifting him slowly. I did not have to lift him far. He tried to jerk away and cried out with fear as all but the tips of his toes left the ground. I let him go, and he dropped heavily. He caught his balance, spun around and began to run. The third man was already gone.

"Keep this in mind as a useful warning," I said to my remaining audience. "Never try to attack a wizard," But I went up into the air myself, above the reach of his powerful arms, before letting him down. He gave one snarl in my direction and followed his friends.

"Theodora!" I called, trying to find her shadow. But the shadow was moving. In a few minutes it had reached the bottom of the cliff and Theodora reappeared, taking one hand out of her pocket

I put my arms around her. "Thank God. Are you all right? How did you make yourself invisible?"

"How did you lift him off the ground?" She was smiling with delight "Is that a variation of the flying spell?"

"It's related," I said. "I can teach it to you too. But I didn't realize you knew any of the magic of light and air." "You mean making myself invisible? Isn't a witch entitled to a few secrets?"

She was enjoying teasing me, but I had been too worried about her to be teased right now. I still had an arm around her firm, muscular shoulders. "What is it, a ring of invisibility?"

She became serious and reached back into her pocket. "I hadn't wanted to tell you at first, because I was afraid you would tell me it wasn't something suitable for a witch and try to take it away from me."

"What have I done to make you think that?" I protested.

"My mother had it before me," she said, "and her mother and grandmother before her." She had it in her palm, a heavy gold circle without any stone or ornament. I took it carefully and looked inside. It was engraved with very tiny letters, too small to see clearly without a magnifying glass, but they looked like the angular letters of the Hidden Language.

"What's the inscription?" I asked, handing the ring back.

"I don't know. It might be a spell of some sort."

"I'll read it for you if I can look at it with a glass," I said. "Do you always carry the ring?"

"Always. But I don't like to use it very often, especially since I started seeing those things."

"What "things'?" I demanded.

But she was smiling at me. Thank you for rescuing me. Even with my ring, I can't hide my shadow." She put Her skirt back on and shook out her hair. Although I was fairly sure that, with her climbing ability and ring of invisibility, she would have been able to protect herself quite well, it was gratifying to be considered a rescuing hero.

"Rings of invisibility are rare," I told her as we started to walk back toward the city. "But the spell to make things invisible is so difficult that wizards who can master it attach that spell to rings more than any other kind of spell."

"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 mayors 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."