I was fine as long as I stayed away from the supernatural battle between angels and demons. “So you think someone’s practicing renegade magic?”
“That seems the most likely explanation. Construction on the new cathedral goes well during the day, but something happens at night. The watchmen have seen lights, even what looks like a flame flickering on the new tower. In the morning, the workmen sometimes find material moved around, stones, scaffolding, things no one should be able to move unaided.”
“The Romneys,” I said. “It must have something to do with what the Romney children saw.”
He nodded slowly. “Several members of the cathedral chapter have thought it was the Romneys’ doing. You must have seen them as you came in-
“Not the Romneys themselves. But I talked briefly to some of the children-I even made them an illusory dragon-and they seemed disappointed in my illusions. They hinted they had recently seen someone else doing much more powerful magic.”
“This band has been camped outside the walls for about six weeks. The bishop, the city mayor, and the constable of the castle have all been unhappy about having them there, but they do not hurt anyone so there has been no reason to drive them away.”
“What is it,” I said, “maybe ten years since the Romneys first started to appear in the western kingdoms? I wonder where they were before then.”
“Probably in the eastern kingdoms,” said Joachim without interest. “Look. I shall be busy all afternoon, but I want to have dinner with you and we can talk more then. Do you think you could go up on the new tower to search for magical influences? Now is a good time, while the workmen take their noon break.”
Far above us, a bell began ringing. Joachim stood up and pulled a silk stole across his shoulders. “I must go; I’m performing the noon service at the high altar.” But he paused at the door to smile before he was gone. “It
Being the head of the cathedral chapter, I thought, had given him an attitude of command he had never had in Yurt. I didn’t mind him ordering me around, but I wondered if he even realized he was doing so. I watched his black-clad figure hurry down the nave toward the high altar, where an acolyte was lighting the candles.
As I went back out through the heavy cathedral doors I was immediately struck again by the sounds, the smells, and the brightness of noon. Workmen were starting down from the scaffolding. I would have liked some lunch myself, but I had been told to look for magical influences.
First I found the crew foreman. “The dean’s asked me to look over your construction site. I’m a wizard, and he told me you had been having some sort of problem.”
“All right,” said the foreman. His manner was not insolent, but it was certainly not respectful either. “If you’re a wizard I guess you can fly, so I’ll let you have a look. But I wouldn’t let anyone else!”
He was short, thin and wiry, with very long fingers. I glanced down at his bare feet; his toes too were unusually long. The workmen now assembling were all built similarly. I remembered hearing that there was a valley somewhere far to the north that produced men both strong enough to move great stones and agile enough to carry them up a precipice.
The lower part of what would become the main stairs of the southern tower was finished, so I started climbing. The recently-quarried stone was smooth and light-colored, still covered with a fine coating of dust. I didn’t want to fly, at least at first, because I hoped to tell better what was happening from close up.
By the time I reached the fifth landing my legs had begun to ache, but I kept on. The last workmen shot by, jumping down whole series of steps with little apparent regard for their safety. What would one day become highly complex stone sculptures on the wall were now just roughed in, and the many windows were still no more than openings in the walls, without their tracery or glass.
And then the stone stairs ended and I was out in the open. I could just detect a faint hint of magic, as though a spell had been cast nearby sometime earlier.
The tower continued above me, though in much less complete form. Rough wooden steps continued upwards, and after a brief pause to catch my breath I followed them. Wind whirled around me, tugging at my clothes and hair.
The wooden steps were succeeded in turn by a series of toe-holds. I glanced down and wished I hadn’t. The tower zoomed downward, narrowing dizzily at what seemed an impossible distance. The workmen, their sheds and fires, and all the piles of materials were reduced to indistinct lumps. I could hear voices but very faintly, like the voices of insects.
But the magical influence seemed stronger here. I breathed deeply for a moment and began climbing again.
With sheer force of will I made my hands, one after the other, leave the crevices they were gripping and feel upward for the next. My knees trembled so hard that it was difficult to make my toes follow my hands. I had climbed as high as the towers of the old cathedral, and was abruptly startled by the sound of the bells. I plastered myself against the vertical stone face of the half-finished tower. If I could I would have held on with my ears.
When the bells stopped ringing, I made myself continue to the final scaffolding where I sat quietly, careful to make no movement that would start the board swaying on its ropes, waiting for my heartbeat to return to normal.
This is ridiculous, I told myself. I was supposed to be a competent wizard. The workmen went up and down here all the time, and they couldn’t even fly! But knowing that I could save myself even if I suddenly hurtled toward the ground was not reassurance enough.
I tried to distract myself by probing again for magic. Although there was no other wizard on the tower at the moment, the faint trace of magic certainly suggested someone had been here earlier-probably someone who had had the sense to fly up, rather than letting his body discover, by climbing every step, just how high he had ascended.
But what would a wizard be doing here? Someone trained in the school would have received all the same warnings I had about getting involved with the Church. I tried to analyze the faint traces of magic; it was hard to be certain, but I did not think it was a school spell. It might have been cast by a very old wizard whose training predated the school.
There could also have been a magician here, I told myself, or even a witch. A magician would know a little magic, probably from a few abortive years of training at the school. But most of the young men who left without finishing the wizardry program also left without learning to fly.
Witches I knew less about. Women were not admitted to the school, although the possibility had sometimes been raised in recent years. But there were always rumors of women who had learned a little magic, doubtless dark and arcane. I had never actually seen a western witch, but the one witch I
I recalled again the Romney children and their disappointment over my spells. They had clearly seen someone working magic more powerful than the illusions a magician might use to make a living at the fairs, more complex than something a witch might be expected to know. But speculation was neither stopping whoever had been on the tower nor getting me down. I took a deep breath, deciding there was nothing more to be learned here, and forced myself to let go.
As I dropped into open air, I had half a second’s doubt whether vertigo might have made me forget how to fly. But I swooped downward easily as I had on a thousand other occasions and landed in the middle of the construction site, where the workmen had just finished the sausages.
“I’m through checking the tower for now,” I told the crew foreman. “I won’t be in your way any longer.”
He smiled at me almost impudently, wiping the grease from his mouth. I wondered if he guessed my terror up among the scaffolding. “And what did you find out?”
“Someone has certainly been practicing magic up there, probably another wizard, although not today.”
“The priests worry a lot,” he said, having apparently no more respect for them than he did for me. “We were concerned at first; after all, we don’t want anything stolen or our work set back. But then we realized it’s nothing serious. My men and I have been working construction in this part of the world for many years, but in the valley we came from, far up in the north, you learn not to worry too much about the Little People or fairy lights at night.”
Fairy lights, I thought. This was an a different interpretation than the flickering fire Joachim had mentioned. I wasn’t sure I believed in fairies. They were a popular feature in children’s stories, and hearing my grandmother’s stories about them when I was little was probably one of the reasons I had been attracted to magic in the first
