The Witch & the Cathedral Read online

  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,” I 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 mayor’s wife, so I was back not much later, letting mysel
f 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 welfare 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.”