Daughter of Magic

The oldest boy apparently decided that as long as the story was out anyway he might as well tell me what he knew and at least get the credit for it. “He always told us his name was Cyrus,” he broke in. “But he never told us he was a wizard.”

“Where did he join you?” I asked casually, not wanting to show how urgently I wanted to know.

“East of the mountains. We were heading this way for the summer, and he came up to our camp, asking if we’d ever heard of Yurt …”

I went cold. Vlad had lived in the Eastern Kingdoms, far beyond the mountains. Could he himself be Cyrus, here bent on vengeance against me?

“We told him we were going to Caelrhon, which was very close to Yurt,” said the boy, taking my attentive silence as an invitation to continue.

But nothing that I remembered of Vlad suggested he would decide to become a priest. Mentally I shook my head. I was letting my imagination get carried away. There could be plenty of explanations both for the attack on the castle and for this very strange miracle-worker without having to imagine it had something to do with long-ago events or even with me. Elerius had thought it might, but even Elerius, I told myself firmly, could be wrong.

“Did he say anything about wanting to enter the seminary?” I asked. The children were growing restless, finding the topic of Cyrus rather dull and clearly wondering if I was going to do anything with my coins besides jingle them.

“He asked us if we were Christian,” said the girl who had spoken before. “I told him we weren’t. By the way, are you wizards Christian? Some priest came out from the city last week and was trying to make us go to his church, and I told him to start on wizards before bothering us!”

“Wizards are Christian,” I said hastily, not wanting to go into detail on the millennia-old conflict between magic and religion, and pulled out a handful of coppers. I divided them between the girl and the oldest boy, and when I headed back toward town they were busily counting and assessing how they should be distributed.

So Cyrus had come west with the Romneys, I thought, strolling through the sun-warmed meadows. And he had been looking deliberately for Yurt. This need not have anything to do with Vlad to be distinctly ominous. The dark chill on the summer day had nothing to do with the weather.

But what could have possessed this strange half-wizard to enter Joachim’s seminary?

I sat down in the shade of a tree, thinking that I ought to demand that the bishop forbid this man to talk to Celia, or for that matter to anyone, and that he be expelled from seminary. But it was going to be hard to do so without any information more solid than what I had bought from a group of children not generally credited with high standards of honesty. It would be especially hard since I was still mortified enough by behavior I was now trying to pretend had never happened that I was unsure how I could ever face Joachim again.

V

I must have fallen asleep sitting under the tree, because the next thing I knew I found myself half-slumped at a very awkward angle, and the tree’s shadow stretched long across the meadow.

Rubbing a stiff neck, I sat up and looked toward the Romney encampment. The breeze that made silver tracks in the long grass was cooler now. The horse fair seemed over; the last steeds were being led away. Well, I thought, it seemed only appropriate that a day that had begun with nightmare-inspired madness should end without my accomplishing anything at all.

I rose and stretched. I had behaved idiotically with Theodora as well as with Joachim, but it was always so good to be with her that the attractions of spending the evening at her house far outweighed the embarrassment of facing her.

And then I saw a lone figure striding across the meadow. He was dressed in black, so that his person and his long shadow seemed to merge into one. He walked with his head down and hands behind his back, paying no attention to the Romneys’ camp or anything else.

Cyrus! I thought, heading rapidly toward him. Now was my chance to confront him.

But it was not the mysterious miracle-worker from the Eastern Kingdoms. It was the bishop.

Joachim glanced up as I approached. He gave a start as though surprised to see me still in Caelrhon, or perhaps to see anyone. But then he nodded gravely in my direction and kept walking.

At least he did not seem frightened of me-but then he hadn’t this morning either. I fell into step beside him. Something must be very wrong for the bishop to be out here alone, without any accompanying priests, without guards or servants.

We walked in silence for several minutes. “I had not expected to meet you, Daimbert,” he said at last, “but perhaps it is only appropriate that I do. For it is because of our conversation earlier that I have spent much of today searching my soul and have now come to a very difficult and terrible decision. For I know that God first summoned me to the office of bishop, and it is because of my own sins that I must now resign.”

I stared at him, stunned. What could my wild accusations have done to him? Or could he- But I dismissed this idea before it could even form.

“The devil is even more subtle than I had imagined,” Joachim continued, soberly and quietly. “I told you this morning that I knew well my own sins, but I was wrong. I have sinned, and sinned willingly, in ways that I kept hidden even from myself. It is only fitting that I tell you first, Daimbert, before announcing my decision to the cathedral chapter.”

“Uh, I thought bishops had chaplains of their own to whom they were supposed to confess their sins,” I mumbled. At this point, tired, humiliated, and deeply worried about Yurt, I didn’t think I was in much of a position to help a bishop through a spiritual crisis.

Joachim paid no attention to my mumblings if he even heard them. “For you were right. It is especially against you that I have sinned.” He had been avoiding my gaze, but he suddenly turned toward me, his enormous deep-set eyes darkly shadowed as the sun sank toward the horizon. “I began wondering why I should have become so wrathful at your accusations, when it should have been clear that these were only the product of the fears that lurk in midnight dreams. But in turning my thoughts over I realized that it was the wrath of a sin that fears exposure.”

We had stopped walking and stood facing each other. Joachim was taller than I, and I had to look up at him. The breeze fluttered his vestments around his ankles and stirred his hair.

“You distrusted Cyrus when I first told you about him,” he said. “And then today you said that it was my sins that had allowed a demon to enter the cathedral. Although I am still certain that Cyrus is no demon, you were right that a bishop’s sins can put his entire church in mortal peril. If I can no longer sift out evil from good, then I cannot in conscience lead my flock.

“As I told you, Daimbert,” he continued quietly, “I have never touched Theodora. And in eschewing sins of the flesh, I had managed to persuade myself of my own purity. Of course I spoke with her often about her duties as seamstress for the cathedral, and even, in quiet moments that each of us might take amidst our responsibilities, we would share a cup of tea and talk about you. I was happy, I told myself, that my oldest friend had won the love of such a woman, and that the two of you could prosper together in chaste friendship, the parents of a fine little girl. But today I have had to ask myself: did I counsel Theodora in physical purity only so that I did not have to think of her loving another man as she could never love me?”

I had to interrupt him, even if he was giving voice to ideas I had unwillingly had myself. I could see his eyes now within the shadows of their sockets, and they burned like dark coals. “Joachim, you’re getting yourself all upset for nothing. None of your cathedral priests will understand what you’re talking about. Theodora has always admired you, and you, quite naturally, appreciate her fine qualities. I can’t believe that a bishop immediately falls into sin if he thinks well of a woman.”

He took a deep breath and held my gaze with his as though determined to push through a reluctance to reveal something deeply disgraceful. “But I have not yet told you all. When you first went to the guest chamber to sleep, leaving me with my thoughts, I was almost amused, thinking that I could well understand your murderous intentions. After all, I told myself, for a woman like Theodora a man might well do anything to keep her from pain or harm, even gladly kill another in the full knowledge that he would damn himself for eternity, world without end. And