helped make some of the bridesmaids’ gowns. The princess paid better than anyone around here; I lived on the money for three months. I hope she hasn’t found life in a small inland kingdom too dull-though she does have her children now.”
“But she found a way to liven up her life!” I interrupted. “I think she had a torrid romance with their Royal Wizard! That’s why Prince Lucas dismissed him and became so furious when I even mentioned him. You don’t think-you don’t think Lucas deliberately arranged for the ‘accident’ that killed him?”
Theodora poured out the tea, looking at me from under long lashes. “Why would a wizard have a romance with a princess? I’d always heard they were as chaste as priests.”
I knew she was teasing me again but answered seriously. “It
“I see,” she said, her back to me while she set the teapot down. When she turned around she was smiling. “I like your idea, it’s very dramatic and romantic, but you still need to explain one thing: why would a princess possibly be interested in a wizard?”
When I left a little later, I kissed her, tipping up her face with a finger under her chin. For a moment I felt the pressure of her forearms against the sides of my neck.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, stepping back. “Keep practicing your fire magic until then; you seem to be a very promising pupil!”
II
We arranged to go on Sunday to the stone quarry three miles from town. Theodora said she had always wanted to climb the steep limestone outcropping from which they were cutting the blocks for the cathedral, but she couldn’t go during the week while they were quarrying and said she felt uncomfortable going alone on Sundays.
“There are some rough men who camp there,” she said. “It’s far enough away that the municipal guard doesn’t pay attention to them.”
“But isn’t that a problem for the men working in the quarry?”
“I think a lot of them
She was so good at some aspects of magic that I kept forgetting how big were the gaps in her knowledge. Without knowing how to fly, she was limited to running from danger. Climbing around the cathedral tower at night must have seemed less threatening than facing strange men in daylight.
First thing Sunday morning, however, I went to service in the cathedral. I sat with the servants of the cathedral priests, doing my best to look serious and not at all like a wizard. The cantor Norbert, however, standing in front of the choir, seemed to have no doubts about me.
Joachim led the service, and, watching him, I realized something that I should have realized much earlier. The reason he was always so busy was that he was already effectively the bishop. It should have been the bishop standing at the high altar on Sunday morning, the dean taking the noon service, but Joachim was doing both. In his care for the diocese, for the cathedral edifice, for the rest of the priests, for the seminary itself and all the young would-be priests, he must also be doing double duty.
The congregation came out of the cathedral into brilliant sunshine, rolled on a wave of organ music. Joachim caught up to me at the door. “We just have time for breakfast,” he said, “and then I have to ride out to a village five miles from here for a baptism. The baby was born too soon, and they’re afraid that bringing her into the city might kill her, but they want her baptized as soon as possible. I’ll have to hurry back, because after the noon service a castle chaplain is coming for his annual spiritual examination.”
After that I certainly couldn’t tell him I was going to spend the day with an attractive witch. “I hope it goes well,” I said gravely.
But as Theodora and I walked out the city gates an hour later, I was not thinking of the heavy responsibilities of cathedral priests. “I really should teach you how to fly,” I told her. “Then you’d be able to get to
“Could you really? Could a witch learn to fly?”
By the time we had walked the three miles to the quarry, Theodora was able to lift herself about six inches off the ground, although she kept laughing, which broke her concentration.
The quarry itself was silent, and there seemed no one around but ourselves. The sun beat warm on our heads, and larks soared and sang around us. The actual quarry was a great gash in one side of the limestone outcropping, but the other side was untouched. “I’ll try climbing here,” said Theodora.
She unbuttoned and stepped out of her skirt-I was intrigued, but underneath she wore men’s leggings-and braided up her hair. Then she rubbed a little dirt into her palms and, her head back, considered the steep surface. It was pocked with cracks and fissures; even a few flowers grew in tiny pockets of soil. Then she began to climb.
“Remember those words of the Hidden Language,” I said quickly. “If you start to fall, you might be able to slow your descent with the flying spell.”
Theodora finished shifting her weight from a lower to a higher toehold and paused. “Maybe I shouldn’t let you teach me to fly after all,” she said. “This wouldn’t be as challenging if I knew I was always perfectly safe.”
She went back to climbing, moving slowly but steadily, finding crevices in the rock which I would never have found, trusting herself to them when I would have been paralyzed. 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
