spells Elerius taught her.”
“But he said-” Then I realized Theodora was quite right. When I returned to Yurt two days ago, my rooms had been thick with magic. Elerius would not just have shown off for Antonia. He had decided to win her affection by teaching her spells.
“Were
“I must have been twelve or so,” I said slowly, remembering back. It had been years since I’d thought about this. “An old magician who sometimes worked the street corner for pennies showed me how to make an illusory gold coin in return for quite a pile of real copper coins. As I recall, I’d been saving them for months.” I promptly made Theodora an illusory gold coin of her own to show I hadn’t lost the knack. “But remember that I grew up in the great City, nearly in sight of the wizards’ school, where it perched on a pinnacle at the center of town. I’d always dreamed about learning magic, of being one of the very wise masters we would occasionally see, or even one of the student wizards who were always getting into trouble with the city Guardians after spending too long in the taverns. After my parents died and it was clear that the choices were to help my grandmother run our wool import house or else go up to the school and beg the Master to take me on, the decision wasn’t difficult.”
“And what would the Master say,” asked Theodora, “if our daughter asked him to take
“Well, they’ve never had a woman there. I’ve told you they mention the possibility from time to time, but either no women have applied or else they haven’t been the right ones.”
“That is,” said Theodora, mostly to herself, “they haven’t been women who are in fact men.”
“That may change, though,” I continued thoughtfully. “They’ve always thought extremely well of Elerius, and I know he’s got plans of his own to start revitalizing the school once he has a position of power there-which he’s certain to have soon. Maybe he was teaching Antonia magic because he intends to have women in the school when he’s in charge.”
“Or maybe,” said Theodora, giving me a quick look, “he’s trying to get a hold over you through her. Didn’t you just suggest something of the sort yourself?” The rain tapped against the dark panes, and somewhere down the street a dog howled mournfully. I wondered irrelevantly if it was the dog Cyrus had brought back to life. “She is
“If I came and stayed here more often I could give you private tutoring in school magic,” I suggested with a smile.
“Maybe I’ve already learned just about all of your magic I particularly care to learn!” she replied saucily.
I pulled her to me, nuzzling her hair, but thinking about Elerius and Antonia. I could try to teach our daughter myself, but if she really had a flair for magic she deserved to be taught by a better wizard than I was. I had never trusted Elerius, but if he was planning to get women into the school he might be Antonia’s best chance for the education she deserved.
But then I chuckled. “Maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. She’s only five.”
“Yes,” said Theodora. “A five-year-old girl who already knows enough magic to steal a flying carpet.”
III
The clouds were even heavier the next morning although the rain had ceased. Theodora settled down to her sewing almost on top of the magic lamp. “Couldn’t you try some weather spells on this?” she asked. “Nobody’s going to be able to see anything all day.”
“Well, I don’t like to affect the weather unless it’s for something important like saving a crop,” I started. “After all, the spells can have unexpected results-”
But then I stopped. Suppose Cyrus was affecting the weather for his own purposes? I felt very reluctant to try to question him any more, especially since I was quite sure I would get no answers out of him, but the Romneys should be able to tell me if he had worked weather spells for them.
Antonia was still asleep, worn out from her adventures. I bent to kiss Theodora. “I’m heading back to Yurt.”
She turned around to kiss me properly. “I’m very glad Antonia visited you. We’ll have to do this again.” No mention of missing me but I would take what I could get. I thought as I went down the street that allowing oneself to love someone always gave that person the power, intentional or unintentional, to inflict pain. Maybe the wizards in renouncing marriage wanted to avoid any pain that would distract them from their spells.
But if so it was much too late for me. I stopped by the cathedral office and left a note for Joachim. An acolyte told me rather loftily that the bishop was much too busy to see me without an appointment, but I didn’t know if that meant that he had left orders to keep all wizards away or if he really was very busy-I tried to reassure myself that most of the times I had seen him the last five years had been in brief interludes he could snatch from his duties.
The Romney circle of caravans was still at the edge of town, smoke rising from their chimneys, but on this cold, raw day no one was outside, and the ponies looked at me disconsolately. I thought I saw a brown rat disappear into the grass ahead of me. But the bright blue door of one of the caravans swung open as I approached, and the Romney woman I had first spoken to a week before called to me.
“Come to have your fortune told?”
I laughed and mounted the wooden steps. “Wizards can manage much better fortunes than I expect you can.” I’d never get the Romney children by themselves today. “Isn’t this terrible weather!” She stepped back as I ducked my head to enter.
Inside her caravan was smoky from the stove but laid out very compactly and neatly, with copper pans gleaming on the wall and all the cupboards painted blue like the door.
“Not like summer at all,” the woman agreed, giving me a gold-toothed smile. “At this rate we’ll have frost! We haven’t seen weather like this since we left the Eastern Kingdoms this spring.”
“Did Cyrus help you with weather spells as you came over the mountains?” I asked casually.
Her expression changed at once and so did her tone, from friendliness to the resonant and artificial note of someone telling a mysterious fortune in which she herself did not believe. “I will look into the future for you, Wizard,” she said, “and see shadowed doings beyond even the knowledge of the wise, but you will have to pay me first.”
Puzzled, I reached into my pocket and pulled out some coins, substantially more than what I had paid the old magician to teach me my first illusion when I was twelve. Had Cyrus ordered her not to tell me anything about him, even threatened her with his dark magic if he did?
She dropped my money into her own pocket without counting it, then opened a cupboard to take out a crystal ball. In sunlight a crystal will make rainbows and weird reflections of everything around, but today it showed only dark blues and grays, with at the center a flash of light from the fire in the stove. She put the ball on the little table in the center of the caravan, and I obediently sat down across from her.
She stared into the crystal for a moment, playing with the long whisker on her upper lip, while I wondered if she was going to try to impart actual information through an alleged fortune or was just doing something that would plausibly explain my presence and also get rid of me.
The caravan was silent except for the crackling of the fire. The smoke in the room seemed to become denser. At last she spoke, so suddenly and loudly that I jumped. “Someone is coming. Someone from far away. Someone who travels by night.”
She spoke with such conviction that I stared into the crystal myself, seeing nothing. Irrational fear made the cold day even colder. “Is this anyone I know?” I asked after a minute when she seemed reluctant to add anything more. “Will he be here soon?”
“He comes slowly, and he comes by night,” she said again. Abruptly she rose and put the crystal ball back into the cupboard. “And that,” she said loudly, a poorly-concealed nervous tremor in her voice, “is all the fortune you will have from me.”
She swung open the caravan door in case her point wasn’t clear enough. I thanked her and left, glad to
