The Witch, the Cathedral

Vor say something, but he seemed willing to listen in silence. “You had struck up a friendship with a certain wizard,” I continued, “and he knew you’d come from the borderlands. He asked you, very casually, what would be a good type of creature to call to the city. And this is where things began to go wrong. Not letting yourself think about why a wizard would want to call a monster, you suggested, equally casually, that a gorgos would be just right. If the gorgos who had killed your father left the borderlands for Caelrhon, you thought, you could go home again without shame-especially if, as you let yourself imagine, the wizard planned to destroy it. But he called the wrong gorgos!”

Vor answered at last. “It wasn’t like that! I would never have had anything to do with him if I’d known he was planning an attack on the cathedral. He told me the wizards’ school was trying to find a good kind of monster so that the young wizards could practice their new anti-monster spells.”

“And even when the gorgos, the wrong gorgos, showed up at the cathedral instead of at the wizards’ school,” I asked, “did you still hope these ‘new anti-monster spells’ were real?”

He did not meet my eyes, but a slow smile spread across his face. “I did admire your technique.”

“But who was the wizard?” I insisted, not about to be flattered now. “Was it that old ragged magician who knows fire magic?”

Vor looked surprised. “Not him. He could never master a gorgos. It was one of you school-trained wizards, but I’d never seen him before. A relatively young one-no gray in his beard.”

Lucas interrupted before I could press for details. “All right, Wizard,” he said brusquely, “you’ve made your point that wizards may occasionally be useful against creatures of wild magic. But now you have to answer to me!” He tapped his fingers on the pommel of his sword. “You and your friend the dean-and I certainly hope the cathedral chapter has enough sense not to elect him bishop! — may have forced me to come with you, but now that you can’t threaten me with your black box anymore, I think it’s time to teach you your place!”

II

“I’d credited you with more intelligence than this, Prince,” I replied sternly. “I don’t have to answer to you, but you to me! You’re three thousand miles from home, without a horse or a map. The only people here are half-fey themselves. If you try walking back south through the mountains, you will find very few people who have even heard of the kingdom of Caelrhon, and even fewer impressed by the crown prince of Caelrhon. It’s no use trying to overpower me, because you’d be trapped here without my magic.”

I took a deep breath. “Now! I’ll give you a choice: between explaining why you contracted with a renegade wizard to bring a gorgos to the cathedral city, or staying in the borderlands of magic the rest of your life.”

The hard curl of Lucas’s lip was very pronounced. He must know I was bluffing and looked obstinate enough to dare me to leave him behind. I did not want to have to explain to the king and the royal princess of Caelrhon that he wasn’t coming home. He had children, too, I remembered unhappily.

“You dare,” he began, “you dare accuse me of summoning a monster-”

And then he did the last thing I expected. He jumped me.

I was so startled that he had me on my back on the bottom of the cart, his hands around my neck, before I could react. The cart tipped wildly. “I know how to fly this air cart,” he grunted, digging a knee into my midsection, “and I-”

His eyes went wide and his grip slackened as the air went solid around his own neck. Gripped by a slightly tardy binding spell, he fell backwards as I pushed myself up, furious. “Suppose I turn you into a frog for the rest of the trip,” I said between clenched teeth, “so you don’t give me any more trouble.”

But suddenly my attention was distracted. The air cart was beginning to wobble badly as it flew. I glanced downward and realized we were no longer heading back south toward Vor’s valley. Instead we were heading east, much more rapidly than the cart normally flew. I gave the commands to correct the course, but the cart did not respond. Instead it picked up speed.

“This isn’t the way back to the valley!” cried Vor.

“Someone else has control of the cart!” Closing my eyes against the others’ alarmed faces, I slipped into the stream of magic, trying to find in the welter of influences around us the magic that made the cart ignore my commands. I found it in a few seconds, but finding it was no help. The wizards at the school had long ago worked out, by trial and error, commands the cart would obey, but someone here had specific knowledge of this kind of flying beast and had used that knowledge in the moment I had been distracted. Even a dead flying beast’s skin could not resist spells shaped especially for it.

“Hold onto me, all of you!” I cried. “We’ve got to get out!”

Paul and Vor seized my arms at once, but Lucas clung to the cart’s edge. “You mean you’re going to start flying with all of us trying to hang onto you?”

That was exactly what I meant. “Yes, yes, hurry! I can’t break the cart out of the attraction spell.”

“And then you’ll drop off those of us you don’t like?”

“Come here!” I dragged him to me with magic and quickly started putting a lifting spell together. I had never tried to fly with three other people before.

But it was too late. As Lucas struggled in the grip of my magic, making it impossible for me to hold onto him and the other two at the same time, the cart began spiraling downward. Below us was a circular green plain rimmed with low dark hills, a dense grove of trees in the middle. We were heading for those trees.

The air cart swung low, tipping until all of us piled against one side, Lucas still struggling. With a twitch it tossed us out.

We spun out into the air, Paul and Vor nearly pulling my arms from the sockets. I applied enough lift to them to ease my arms and almost reluctantly looked for Lucas.

I caught him barely before he hit the first tree, just soon enough that he did not crash into it at full speed. But he disappeared from sight with a gratifying yell and a rapid breaking of twigs.

The air cart hesitated above us, abruptly freed from the attraction spell. I yelled commands at it in the Hidden Language and followed Lucas downward. The air cart shot off to the south, and we descended through a canopy of leaves to the thin grass below.

I came down prepared to face an unimaginable enemy but found only Lucas, green shadows, and an uneasy silence. Lucas, I was glad to see after all, seemed essentially intact. Paul and Vor collapsed without a word. The air that had been cool and brisk in Vor’s valley was here sensuously warm. I closed my eyes for a second, concluding that there really must be a saint who looked after wizards.

Paul raised himself on his elbow after a moment. “What happened?”

“Someone or something wanted us down here and didn’t particularly care how we got here.”

“Who is it?” He scrambled to his feet.

“I don’t know. I’m trying to locate him, but now that he’s no longer drawing us with magic, I’m having trouble.”

Paul had his sword out and looked around intently, but he had no more success with his eyes than I was having with magic. “How are we going to get back?”

“Walk to Vor’s valley. I sent the air cart there as soon as it was freed from the attraction spell.”

“Or we could ride,” Paul suggested, which made no sense at all.

“I can’t walk!” groaned Lucas. “You’ve broken my ankle!”

“You’re lucky I saved your life instead of killing you,” I said grimly. Dropping out of the sky had diverted my attention, but I had plenty of fury left. “It’s entirely your fault we’re here. If you hadn’t attacked me, I could have kept someone else from taking control of the air cart. If it weren’t for the oaths the school makes us swear to serve mankind, you’d not only be a frog but a very dead frog.”

Lucas looked quickly toward Paul and Vor, but it was clear he would get no reinforcements there. “So are you just going to stand there and threaten me?” he said, attempting a sardonic smile. It was not improved by a grimace of pain.

“No. But I am going to demand to know why you believe that wizards are conspiring against the nobility, and why you summoned a fanged gorgos to the bishop’s funeral.”