I made my legs start walking again, but this man, whoever he might be, was not alone. By the time I left the streets surrounding the area where the fire had raged, I had heard four more people speculating that it was not simply an accident but arson by the Romneys.
Why them? I asked myself, hurrying toward the little castle on the far side of town. They had done nothing to hurt the people of Caelrhon, except perhaps beat them in sharpness of horse trading.
But they came from the Eastern Kingdoms, spoke their own language, and were not Christian. Those were, it seemed, sufficient reasons to suspect them.
No one appeared to have gone to bed in the city. The smoke had permeated all the streets, and rumors and reports of the progress of the fire ran up and down around me. Celia, who met me in the same hall of the castle where we had spoken earlier, seemed the only person not concerned about it. She set down her Bible and came forward to grip my hands with an excitement that had nothing to do with the fire. In dim candlelight her eyes were featureless smudges against her fair skin.
“This evening, Wizard,” Celia said with great solemnity, “Cyrus came as he promised and taught me what he had learned in seminary today. So my education as a priest has begun!”
I thought of asking what good it would do her to have the training if she still could not be a priest, but maybe it would be better to have her think of that herself. My immediate question was more urgent. “Where is Cyrus now?”
“Probably in the dormitory with the other seminary students, if he is not at prayer in the cathedral.”
“And Hildegarde?”
She shrugged. “I think she went to join the bucket brigade.” So at least word of the fire had reached here. I might have passed Hildegarde among all the shadowed, soot-darkened people and not even recognized her.
I excused myself and hurried away. She stood in the doorway to watch me go, her Bible in her hands again. Celia was here in Caelrhon in the first place because of me, which probably made me responsible for her, too, even though her acceptance of this miracle-worker and her eagerness to follow him made her useless as the spy I had intended her to be.
Carefully I picked my way through the construction site in front of the cathedral. The workmen’s huts were empty and dark. But through the stained glass windows of the church I thought I could see lights faintly burning- unless it was only the reflection of the last of the flames.
But when I pushed open the heavy doors I could still see the candles’ yellow glow before me, glinting on the inlaid mosaic of the tree of life on the floor of the nave. Slowly, listening for the sounds of someone else in the church, I walked toward the high altar. The pillars were dark, shadowy shapes on either hand, and a dozen people could have hidden behind them. The smell of smoke was faint here, overlaid by incense.
Candles clustered on the altar, glinting on the golden crucifix. In their light I saw a black-clad figure lying on the flagstones that surrounded the altar. I stopped, reluctant to disturb him, waiting for him to lift his head and see me. When I had waited for several minutes, I spoke at last. “Cyrus?”
He stirred then, rising slowly to his knees to look toward me. There was enough light to see him clearly: dark complexioned, with deep-set eyes and high cheekbones over gaunt cheeks, features that reminded me disconcertingly of a young Joachim. He did not look as though he knew how to smile.
I went down on my heels beside him. “I am Daimbert, the Royal Wizard of Yurt. I understand you don’t like wizards, but I need to talk to you.”
He stared at me unspeaking for a moment. I traced around a mosaic tile in the cathedral floor with a fingernail, making a sharp right angle at the corner, forcing myself to be patient. Cyrus’s eyes darted from side to side, but then whatever he saw in the shadowy cathedral seemed to reassure him. “I shall speak with you, Daimbert.”
As the bishop had said, his deep voice had a slight accent, though not quite the same as the Romneys’. He rose, dusting himself off, and walked a few yards to sit in the front pew. Everyone in the twin kingdoms called me Wizard, rather than by my name; the only exceptions were Joachim and Theodora. The one demon I had ever met had also called me Daimbert.
But now that I was sitting beside Cyrus he seemed only very intense and very sober. There was a faint aura of the supernatural about him, but he was certainly no demon incarnate. “I understand,” I said cautiously, “that you come originally from the Eastern Kingdoms.”
He shook his head. “My past is of no importance. I have determined to become a priest under the direction of a most holy bishop.”
A most holy bishop who was threatening to resign, I thought. But could Joachim’s reputation have possibly reached into the Eastern Kingdoms? Everyone here revered him-even including me when I wasn’t threatening to kill him-but it was hard to imagine that anyone would have heard of him many hundreds of miles away, far past the mountains.
I had the oddest feeling that Cyrus had known who I was, perhaps had even expected to meet me. “But you were trained in wizardry,” I said. Now that he was sitting beside me it was unmistakable. He was no more a fully- trained wizard than he was a demon, and he was not actively practicing magic at the moment, but it is virtually impossible to erase magic’s imprint.
He turned abruptly away, clenching his fists. “Once I thought that magic might impart the power to aid others,” he said in a low voice that hinted at experiences he did not want to recollect, “but I know now that wizardry leads only to darkness.”
I had no leisure to worry about his sensibilities, not with unliving creatures stalking Yurt and assassins from Xantium doubtless searching for Justinia. “You were not trained in the wizards’ school,” I persisted. “Did you perhaps serve an apprenticeship east of the mountains, where the school’s influence does not extend?”
He turned sharply back toward me, the candle flames glinting in his eyes. “I told you my past is of no importance. And I do not think I should say more to you, Daimbert, about the Eastern Kingdoms. If you have nothing else to discuss, I would prefer to return to my devotions.”
I had quite a bit else to say to him. “Then let us not talk of your past,” I said hastily, “but only of what has happened since you came to Caelrhon. So far I have heard that you have restored to life or wholeness several animals and a little girl’s doll.” I paused, waiting for some response, but he looked away from me in silence. My ears strained for other sounds in the shadowy church, but the faint taps and scurryings did not appear to be anything other than the normal sounds of any large building at night. “This is not any magic I know,” I continued, “and I would be interested in learning how you did it.”
He shot me a brief glance, then turned his eyes back toward the crucifix on the altar. His face was dark and sharp in profile. “I am in Caelrhon to learn the ways of God,” he said quietly, “not to teach magic to a wizard.”
Careful questioning didn’t seem to be doing any good. “Listen,” I said harshly, putting a hand on his shoulder. Under the vestments of an acolyte I could feel clearly the shape of his bones. Maybe not the personification of evil, I told myself, but there was evil in this man no matter what he had said to the bishop. “Since you first arrived here my royal castle has been attacked by warriors made by magic from hair and bone, and tonight the high street here in the city burned. Someone with the powerful magic to restore life, even if only the life of an animal, might well be thought to be behind undead warriors, and even more so be suspected of arson.”
Slowly he turned toward me again, and his gaunt, sober face was transformed by a smile. It built slowly, working its way from his lips up to his cheekbones. The effect was shattering. I had to dismiss at once my thoughts of him as evil, for there was a joy and a deep love in that smile that confounded me again with the similarity to Joachim.
“I have not prayed here in vain,” Cyrus said, putting his own hands on my shoulders. “Whatever ill may have befallen the city will be restored.”
I was so surprised that for a moment I could not answer. Then I heard a creak from the hinges of the small side door of the cathedral, and the smell of smoke became momentarily stronger. Someone else had entered the church.
Cyrus and I waited in silence, listening to the approaching footsteps. A tall figure stepped from the shadow of a pillar into the candlelight. It was the bishop.
Now that I saw them together, Joachim and Cyrus did not look anything alike. The bishop was taller, and his face was alive with the power of good. The same good had burned in the other’s expression when he smiled, but he again was sober and the effect was gone.
