The Witch, the Cathedral

When we returned to the beds under the trees, Paul said, “The nixie came while you were gone. We called her Lady and managed to persuade her that we weren’t in the right mood. She went away again, but now I’m wondering if she’s poisoned the fruit.”

“Poisoned the fruit!”

“Usually in the morning when I’m home I can’t wait to get outside, to ride, to run. We slept better on these beds last night than we’ve slept the whole trip, so I should be brimful of energy. But now I don’t feel like moving at all-and look at Lucas!”

The older prince rolled over and opened his eyes at the sound of his name. “I’m not asleep.”

But Paul was right. The nixie was affecting more than our dreams. Making us feel languorous, making us playful, in a few days she would have us forgetting the world outside her grove.

“I don’t think it’s the fruit,” I said. “I think it’s in the air. I’d better work fast.”

Lucas stretched and sat up. “Tell me, Wizard,” he said in much better humor than I expected, “what real harm would come to us if we did take up the nixie’s offer?”

I shot Vor a quick glance. He shook his head and said, “Complete exhaustion, but it should wear off.” Paul glared at Lucas, indignant on behalf of the crown princess of Caelrhon, but the other prince ignored the look.

I took a deep breath. “The three of you can do what you like. But Paul was right that the nixie won’t let us go until she’s been satisfied by all of us. And as a wizard, I am bound by iron oaths.” This was a prevarication, because the oaths I had taken had nothing to do with chastity. But I didn’t want to explain that, in love with both Theodora and the queen, I found the nixie’s advances repellant-though even that might change in a few days in this soft air.

Instead I folded my arms. “While we’re all here,” I said, “I want to take the opportunity to finish the discussion we were having yesterday.” This at least took the rather listless half smile off Lucas’s face. “I’m getting very tired of having to drag this out of you. You keep talking, Prince, about aristocrats needing to break free of their wizards. Then how do you explain waiting in the city of Caelrhon until the old bishop died, to make sure that a renegade wizard you’d hired yourself insulted his memory by attacking the cathedral?”

IV

Lucas gave me a vicious look; I was actually rather pleased to see that languor had not yet taken him over. But he had the sense not to try to jump me again. “I stayed in the city all summer to defend it from you!”

He seemed to mean it. “What threat could I possibly be?” I demanded indignantly.

“Why else,” shifting his scowl from me to Paul, “would the wizard of Yurt spend so much time in Caelrhon unless planning an attack on my kingdom? Would you care to tell me, Prince, just what plot you have been concocting against me?”

Lucas feared an attack from Paul? Everything had made sense for a moment, but now suddenly all my suppositions were disintegrating.

I expected Paul to reply hotly but he only laughed, momentarily easing the tension. “Our wizard was in Caelrhon at the request of the cathedral, to defend the church against the monster some other wizard had already brought there-at Vor’s suggestion.”

Vor was about to reply, but I interrupted him. “Wait,” I said. Try to sort it out one piece at a time. “You mean, Lucas, you weren’t anticipating the gorgos at the bishop’s funeral?”

“My father got a telephone phone call from a dark-haired girl none of us knew,” Lucas growled, “saying that ‘something rather striking’ was about to happen in the cathedral city, and that if we considered that spectacular we should wait until the bishop died! I headed for the city at once, of course, but when I got there I found the gorgos had already been seen-and you had just arrived. And you wonder why I decided to wait you out?”

So the renegade wizard I couldn’t find had actually sent the royal court of Caelrhon a warning two months ago, boasting obliquely of his gorgos? He must have persuaded one of the Romney girls to telephone for him; no wonder the band had left town in a hurry!

“Sengrim wanting revenge on me I could have understood,” continued Lucas grimly, “for dismissing him after years as Caelrhon’s royal wizard. But when magical dangers persisted even after he blew himself up, I realized that more of you school wizards must be involved in a conspiracy of vengeance. But the gorgos on the cathedral and you, Wizard, in the city made it clear that I wasn’t the only target for wizardly revenge. The goal was the destruction of both the cathedral and the kingdom of Caelrhon.”

“I’ve never plotted against anybody in my entire life,” said Paul calmly. “And our wizard certainly wasn’t in Caelrhon at our orders; we’d been wondering all summer when he’d come home.”

One piece at a time. The wind whispered through the branches of a tree behind me. I found myself reluctantly admiring Lucas’s courage. He had stayed in the city for weeks, convinced there was a wizard there seeking his own death but still determined to defend his kingdom and the church. Little wonder he had been so surly with me, both in Caelrhon and on this trip, if he thought I was that wizard! And his rapid looks around at the end of the bishop’s funeral, which I had found so suspicious at the time, came from the threat of ‘something spectacular’-a threat Lucas could not tell to either Paul or me since he thought we were behind it.

“You’re right, Prince,” I said, “that there has been a renegade wizard in Caelrhon. The only flaw in your logic has been thinking it was me.” That and persuading himself that if wizards were eliminated, aristocrats could become glorious heroes out of legend, but I wasn’t about to tell Lucas that. “This wizard’s real goal is the destruction of the Church,” I continued. “The gorgos’s attack on the cathedral was intended as a direct insult to the memory of the old bishop.” Joachim, I thought, should hear me now-or, for that matter, Zahlfast.

But I kept on coming back to the unanswered question of who this renegade might be. Any wizard could have asked Vor about a gorgos, but it would have taken enormously powerful magic to call one from this northern land to Caelrhon and then to imprison it somewhere for weeks, much less elude all my efforts to find him.

I even wondered briefly if Elerius, who had graduated far ahead of good old Book-Leech with half the effort, might have been involved. Elerius’s magic would certainly be stronger than mine, and Zahlfast would respect his judgment. My old teacher’s sudden and irrational conviction that priests were working to destroy wizards made much more sense if he had been told this by someone he trusted, someone who, on the contrary, was seeking to destroy priests. But a wizard with a post at one of the most powerful western kingdoms would not become involved in the affairs of Yurt or Caelrhon. And, I reminded myself, a remarkable number of young wizards had graduated ahead of me.

“There are plots within plots here,” said Vor to Lucas. Unlike me, he seemed full of theories. “Someone, probably even starting while your wizard was alive, arranged an elaborate masquerade to persuade you and your father to turn against wizardry.” His eyes gleamed in the forest shadows. “Who would most like to see you helpless, with no wizard to come to your defense? Isn’t it most likely to be Prince Vincent, your own younger brother?”

Lucas gave a start but did not answer immediately-he had considered this explanation. But this was terrible! Had Vincent contracted a nefarious plot to ensure that he, and not his brother, became king of Caelrhon? And only one man stood between Vincent and the crown of Yurt, once he was married to the queen the very day after Paul’s coronation: Paul himself.

“What are you implying about my brother?” roared Lucas to Vor, finding his voice at last and, I thought, roaring even louder to cover up his hesitation. He might have plenty of suspicions of his own about Vincent, but he was not going to let anyone else voice them.

I ignored him, having for the moment an even more important concern. “Paul,” I said, “I want you to promise me not to ride your stallion anymore.”

“Not ride Bonfire?!”

“Vincent gave him to you. He’s a trap. He’s planning to use that horse somehow to kill you.”

Paul regarded me stiffly. “I can decide for myself what horses to ride, Wizard.”

I didn’t have a chance to answer. Lucas pushed himself up onto his one good foot. His hand on his sword hilt,