“Of course not. Only God and those who serve Him have power against the devil,” I said generously. “But you aren’t facing the devil here. You’re facing a wizard working natural magic.”
The bishop closed his eyes for a moment. The blankets rose and fell slowly, and for a moment I wondered if he had even heard me. But when he looked at me again it was unexpectedly shrewdly, as though the real bishop’s mind and ideas had come close to this room again. “You wouldn’t be casting magic spells yourself as an excuse for the wizards to get a toehold here, would you? I hear the wizards’ school in the great City is trying to expand its placement.”
“I can assure you,” I said with dignity, “that I am not responsible for whatever is happening here.” So Lucas’s and Vincent’s accusations against wizardry had now even reached the cathedral. “I neither want to mock the church nor gain any ‘toeholds.’”
The bishop started to cough. A young doctor in white, who had been standing silently on the far side of the room, came forward and offered him a cup. He took a sip and closed his eyes again. But when he opened them he continued as though there had been no pause. “When will you have banished evil magic from our cathedral?”
“I hope soon. I’ve only been here twenty-four hours, and I didn’t see the monster myself. Until I have a better sense of who is working magic and what spells he is using, it may be difficult to counter him. I’ll do my best to be quick and discreet.”
Joachim rose to his feet, so I did as well. He knelt to kiss the bishop’s ring before leaving, but I felt once was enough. The bishop’s eyes closed again as we went out.
“It is an enormous responsibility he carries, and yet he seems able to do it still, in spite of his weakness,” said Joachim as we reached the street. “The doctors say he may only have a few weeks, but they have already said that many times.”
I considered asking Joachim if he would expect me to kiss
IV
I spent the morning irreverently practicing magic within twenty yards of the bishop’s palace. First I tried a number of spells from the collection I had brought, shaped to reveal a hidden magic-worker. I was disappointed that none of them worked, because it would have taken a master wizard to shielded his mind against all of them, but it was a further indication that whoever was working here was indeed a powerful wizard and not just a renegade magician with one good trick. I would certainly have been able to find the magician I had met the day before if he tried to sneak back into town, with his weak illusions and not enough flying ability to save his shoes. It was distracting that the face of the woman with the amethyst eyes kept appearing inexplicably in my mind in the middle of my spells.
When this search got me nowhere, I started again trying to work out the principles of the magic of fire. My books had only the faintest hints but I had a few ideas, extrapolating from the other sorts of magic that I knew. Herbal magic, I recalled from when I had first learned it, was set up with its spells quite separate from the magic of light and air, as though on a track that started parallel but quickly veered away in a different direction.
If the magic of fire worked similarly, I reasoned, I had to find the direction in which its magic veered. In the Hidden Language, one not only said specific spells but entered into the very fabric of magic’s four dimensions. The direction in which one entered that fabric exerted a very powerful flow, and one had to remember that other directions were always possible.
Knowing that I was deliberately avoiding thinking about a bat-winged monster five times the size of a man and doing so anyway, I worked on a candle in my room. I could with no trouble make the wick glow and even emit a plausible cloud of smoke, but it remained obstinately cool. Yet perhaps with a spell from another angle-
I emerged from a struggle with the forces of magic and gave a shout of delight. Joachim’s servant put his head in, alarmed and then puzzled. I sat by a sunlit window, triumphantly holding up a lit candle.
“It’s all right,” I said. “I was just excited because I lit the candle flame. Will your master be home for lunch?”
But the servant was gone, doubtless thinking that his master was harboring a madman.
I extinguished the candle and lit it again to be sure that I could. Once more, with two words and a snap of my fingers I caused a blue flame to blossom on the end of the wick. It was a real flame, too, no illusion; I nearly burned my fingers. So far I could only create fire, not protect myself against it.
I settled back, feeling a great reluctance to do anything else after my frantic efforts of the day before and then this morning’s unsuccessful attempts to find another wizard. Sitting in the dean’s house felt so safe and normal that I could almost imagine that nineteen years of romantic dreams were not shattered, that I had not resigned the only post I had ever had, and that an enormous monster with eye of fire had not landed a very short distance from here. If I didn’t think about any of this, maybe none of it would be true.
Again I wondered why Prince Lucas had come to the city just now, and why he seemed so furious with organized wizardry. He might have come here at his father’s direction, I thought, to protect the largest community in their kingdom from a magical attack. In that case he might well suspect
When I heard the noon bells ringing in the cathedral, I began waiting for Joachim’s return. But time passed, time enough for the noon service and enough more that I realized he was not coming.
Unless I merely waited for the monster to reappear, something neither the bishop nor Joachim would want me to do, I would have to search it out. By sheer will power I dragged myself to my feet. The cathedral tower might offer more clues if I looked again.
As I shouldered my way through the crowded streets, thinking of my best approach, I suddenly froze in the middle of a step. A light touch once brushed across my mind. This time it was not just a touch but a voice.
It spoke one word, “Wizard.” It might have been a statement, or it might have been someone addressing me. I looked around wildly but could find no clue. The mental touch was gone as quickly as it had come. But that single word inside my mind had sounded as though spoken with a woman’s voice.
No wonder, I thought grimly, that the town seemed full of magic. It would appear to have almost as high a density of magic-workers as the great City. Besides me, there was whoever had the power to make a monster do his bidding; plus the magician I had seen outside the gates; plus the wizard who had impressed the Romney children; and finally whatever witch had first touched my mind up on the scaffolding and had just done so again.
Then out of the corner of my eye I saw a head of nut-brown hair over a dark shawl.
In two steps I was beside her, the monster and Prince Lucas forgotten. “Excuse me,” I said and touched her on the shoulder.
She turned quickly toward me, but where I had expected a startled look I found a smile that put a dimple in her cheek.
“I am Daimbert, Royal Wizard of Yurt,” I said, flustered. “But I’m afraid I don’t know who you are.”
“My name is Theodora.” Her voice was almost musical in its lilt and deeper than I had expected.
“Theodora,” I said. “It is a very lovely and unusual name.”
“It was my mother’s and grandmother’s name, and I believe my grandmother’s mother’s and grandmother’s as well.”
“Were all of them witches as well?”
She burst into laughter. “I never thought of myself as a witch. Isn’t that something wicked?”
“Well,” I said uncertainly, because she certainly did not appear to be wicked, “witches are women with strange powers.”
“Sometimes I call on serpents from deep beneath the sea,” she said, looking at me with teasing amethyst eyes. “But they haven’t answered me yet. Does that make me a witch?”
“How about bat-winged monsters?” I said, finding it coming out much more harshly than I intended. “Do you
