The Witch, the Cathedral

Instead it ended with the prince threatening to kill you. Even though it could just as easily have been him, rather than feeling gratitude for your fast action Sengrim became extremely bitter toward you. And I understand the two of you had had some sort of earlier misunderstanding?”

I did not deign to answer.

“He was already furious with the school,” Elerius continued, “which he thought had unfairly given you opportunities he deserved himself. I seemed to be the only school-trained wizard he trusted as he started imagining plots against him from the faculty and trying to create counter-plots. At any rate, at this point it became obvious that he was growing seriously deranged, so I thought it best to distance myself from him. The rest, including the dragons and the unfortunate attack on your king’s coming of age festivities, was entirely his own work. I was pleased to hear that you had once again triumphed.”

He fell silent but looked at me as though waiting for my reaction. “So this is your entire story?” I said at last. “The story you would have told the Master if I accused you of being involved with Sengrim?”

“Of course. Truth is always wisest.”

“What about the rumors of the school plotting to put wizards in every castle and manor to seize control from the aristocracy?”

Elerius shrugged. “Rumors are always flying on one topic or another.”

“How do you explain leaving to his own wild devices a wizard you thought had become deranged?”

“You know I have no authority over any other wizard.” Elerius shook his head regretfully. “I have sometimes tried to persuade the Master and Zahlfast that the school needs tighter discipline, but as long as they keep only a loose, almost informal organization, there is really nothing a wizard can do in a situation like this.” He set down his empty cup and rose briskly to his feet. “Well, did you plan to return to that little kingdom of yours tonight, Daimbert, or would you like to stay here? I’m sure a set of chambers could be arranged.”

I gave him my best wizardly glare from under my eyebrows and remained seated. I had suspected Theodora of manipulating me coldly, Lucas of bringing the gorgos to Caelrhon himself, and Vincent of plotting to murder Paul and the queen. All of them had managed to talk me out of my suspicions. But someone, if not the princes of Caelrhon, had been working with Sengrim. And I would not give up these suspicions so easily.

Elerius looked down at me quizzically. “I’m sorry, Daimbert. I should have realized when I saw you devouring the gingerbread that you had not had any dinner. Shall I order you a tray?”

I was not going to be talked out of valid suspicions and I was not going to be patronized. “Sit down,” I said as though this were my study rather than his.

Surprisingly, he sat down at once. Emboldened by this small triumph, I leaned forward, still glaring. “Let me point out a few things that your explanation doesn’t cover. You were not just trying to assist Sengrim in a plan to recover his position. You were using him for your own purposes.”

“And what might these purposes have been?” Elerius asked as though I had suggested something rather amusing.

“You want to establish a firmer organization at the school. Zahlfast told me that at the beginning of the summer, and you just said the same thing yourself. The best way you knew to make the school draw tighter together was to make it feel threatened: threatened by an embittered wizard turned renegade, by a church that hated wizardry, by aristocrats threatening to dismiss all their wizards, and by dragons coming over the border. This all started without any help from you, when Prince Lucas quarreled with his Royal Wizard because Sengrim stopped him from a fight in which he would have been bested at once. But you took advantage of the situation because it fit in well with your own long-term plans. Did you think I would not find out that you yourself had installed the far- seeing telephone on the mountain at the borderlands-the phone that wouldn’t work?”

“I heard about that,” said Elerius easily. “But the spells for the far-seeing attachment have always been a little haphazard. Didn’t you invent it yourself, Daimbert?”

I ignored this latest jab. Yurt’s own telephones had worked perfectly for years.

“And what better way,” I continued, “to make the school feel itself beleaguered by the church and the aristocracy than actually to make certain that it was? You showed up at Caelrhon’s royal court in disguise, telling the king you were a City nobleman who had learned of the school’s ‘plots’ against aristocrats, plots you invented in the hope-nearly realized-that threatened royal courts would turn against the school. I had been wondering for some time who this purported aristocratic friend of the Master’s might have been, and I only realized now, when you mentioned being in the cathedral city, that Lucas’s description matched you. I gather you play the nobleman well, Elerius. Haven’t I heard some strange rumors about your parentage? Perhaps a birth on the wrong side of the blanket in some royal castle …”

But he did not take the bait, only following me intently, his eyebrows slightly raised, almost as though- pleased?

I pushed on. “By having me, a wizard, in the city of Caelrhon all summer even if no other wizard was in evidence, and by having the gorgos appear at the old bishop’s funeral, you were certain the priests would blame the monster on institutionalized magic. Your only miscalculation was not taking Joachim into account-the dean of the cathedral, now bishop. He’s the most powerful churchman in two kingdoms, but he’s also my friend.”

“That is something about you I have found intriguing, Daimbert,” Elerius said as though in calculation.

“And which you mentioned to Zahlfast when urging him to hire me permanently at the school. This is the one aspect I haven’t worked out yet: why you want me on the faculty, when your ultimate purpose is to reorganize the wizards’ school-with yourself in charge!”

Elerius leaned back in his chair and laughed. “This is even better than I imagined, Daimbert! I enjoy watching your mind work. So now you suspect me of going renegade and hatching a plot to overthrow the school? You really should have your friend the bishop say a suitable prayer of gratitude that you didn’t take this story to the Master!”

“It’s more subtle than that,” I said, watching him without smiling. “You aren’t like Sengrim; you haven’t lost control of your mind and your magic. You haven’t even forgotten your oaths to help humanity. If you had, by now I’d probably either be dead or a frog-or both.

“This was all carefully planned,” I continued. “You meant no harm to anyone, or at least that’s what you tell yourself. But you have a vision of a drastically reorganized wizards’ school, one in which the students follow a highly structured, highly rigorous program-a program from which I would never have graduated-and where the school continues to maintain careful control even after the young wizards have taken up their posts. Through no coincidence, you would be at the head of this school.”

I paused to let him say something, but he only continued to listen, intent tawny eyes holding mine and an indulgent smile on his lips.

“Hints of danger from priests and aristocrats, you realized, would not be enough to give you the chance to remake the school in your own image. But again Sengrim gave you an opportunity. You knew I would work out eventually that he brought the gorgos to Caelrhon-and that even if he had overcome his bitterness toward me enough for rational conversation, he would have been too proud to mention your role in helping him. So you decided-and quite rightly-that if dragons attacked the school Sengrim would be blamed for that too.”

“Then I am supposed to be responsible for those dragons?” He was still giving his indulgent smile.

“Sengrim could never have called that many by himself. He was in Yurt, with the lizards he had learned to master several years ago, when someone else brought dragons over the border. You didn’t go to help the masters fight them even though your kingdom is so close to the City. You have spells of your own around this castle that would have warded off dragons. I’m sure you were able to persuade yourself that none of the faculty would actually be killed, that fighting dragons in the City streets would be messy but not actually fatal if everyone kept their heads and worked together. But a battered school with a badly-wounded faculty would need someone to step in and take charge, someone who would quickly assure that wizards, rather than being just one of the ‘three who rule the world,’ would be the only rulers.”

The late summer evening was growing cool in this tower high above the plain. Elerius snapped his fingers, said two words, and lit the kindling in the fireplace. The flames quickly caught the dry wood. When he looked toward me expectantly, I said a few words of my own in the Hidden Language to light a tiny cascade of flames in the air before us.

“Not bad, Daimbert,” he said appreciatively as they flickered back out of existence. “Did you come here then