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.
“
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.”
