Daughter of Magic

predecessor’s staff. On the way, I saw a woman chasing three rats out her front door with a broom, using words that I hadn’t even realized respectable Caelrhon housewives knew.

“Cyrus is so spiritual!” Maria told me enthusiastically. “Even though he worked such a striking miracle, it hasn’t made him at all puffed up and proud. When all of us come to revere and honor him each day, he just sits quietly or else speaks of God and the Last Judgment.” Princess Margareta looked bored, trailing along behind.

The streets around the covered market were packed. Townspeople in their finery moved through the warm evening air and between the pillars into the market, where clear-burning torches provided the light. Straw and bits of fallen vegetable lay underfoot. Something seemed unusual about the crowd, but I could not immediately place it. I managed to find a place at the back to lean against the wall, supporting myself on the silver-topped staff. The crowd spoke in quiet voices, but their words still bounced, magnified and jumbled, from the ceiling.

“I have to tell you, Wizard,” said the Lady Maria with a coy smile, speaking low so that Margareta could not hear us over the general din, “that I was the tiniest bit shocked when I learned you had had a daughter out of wedlock!” Her wide blue eyes glinted at me in the dimness. “That really was naughty of you, especially to take advantage of such a nice young lady. I’ve kept it from little Margareta because I think she may be a bit too young to understand. Now, I’ve seen and heard enough in my day that very little shocks me, but you know sometimes one imagines one knows someone very well, yet they still have secrets! That’s why Cyrus is so remarkable. I think he understands everything.”

I rather hoped Cyrus didn’t understand me. I saw him now, dressed all in black, his face sober and intent. He did not spot us in the crowd. But I felt a sudden chill on the back of my neck, as though a breeze were stirring on this still evening. “You haven’t told him about Antonia, have you?”

“I don’t tell secrets,” said Maria placidly. “I may have hinted that there was a certain wizard, not very far away, with sins that even a holy man might find hard to forgive, but as you can imagine I said nothing else!”

Before I had a chance to ask more, the mayor stepped up to a rostrum, flanked by candles, which had been erected at the far end of the market. He had been mayor for years, a solidly-built and honest man who always sought a way to keep his city’s life and commerce functioning separate from the cathedral, although literally in the cathedral’s shadow, and with the goodwill or at least tolerance of the priests. The light glittered on his chains of office. He waited a minute until conversation died down, then began, simply and informally.

“I don’t think I need to remind all of you what we owe to Cyrus,” he said. With wizardry I could hear him clearly, but the Lady Maria beside me strained to listen. Margareta, examining the cracked finish on one nail, seemed to be suggesting rather pointedly that she would rather be somewhere else. I thought I could detect a faint nervous tone in the mayor’s voice, which seemed rather surprising in someone who must have to give hundreds of public speeches.

“Cyrus has proven himself a true friend of the city of Caelrhon,” he continued. “We could make him a citizen, for all he’s foreign-born, but many men are born or made citizens. So the council has decided to offer him something we haven’t offered anyone in years-not even our own king!”

There was an appreciative chuckled from the crowd. King Lucas of Caelrhon had been known to grumble when visiting us in Yurt that the city seemed remarkably adept at evading his tolls and taxes, and apparently it looked much more amusing from their side than his.

“Cyrus, we want to give you the key to our city.”

Cyrus stepped forward then, a gratified look in the angle of his shoulders even though he did not smile. A gust of wind stirred the candles at the rostrum, and the torches flared. This was it? I asked myself as the mayor handed him an enormous ceremonial key, glittering with rhinestones. This was worth someone selling his soul to the devil, so he could have the mayor of a small city make him a presentation?

With my magically-enhanced hearing, I was able to catch the mayor’s next words, although they did not seem intended for anyone but Cyrus. “Next time you’re talking to the saints,” he said, not quite as though he were making a joke, “how about if you mention our problems with the rats?”

But then the crowd began to murmur appreciatively, yet in a low note, as though too deeply in awe to shout as they had shouted last month in front of the cathedral. Cyrus turned from one side to the other, holding up his hands as though in benediction, smiling but without the shattering goodness I was now able to convince myself I had never actually seen.

Instead he seemed to be soaking in the praise-and, I was almost afraid to say, worship-of the crowd like a lizard soaking in the sun’s rays. What had the Lady Maria said about people coming to honor and revere him? But this simple reverence did not now seem enough for him.

“Give God the glory!” he called, and the crowd repeated it. “Prepare for Judgment!” and his words were repeated again. “Hunt out sin!”

The evening breeze continued to rise, and in the torches’ glare his face was shaded red. The candles on the rostrum cast shadows from below that made his eyebrows enormous. Demonic, I would have called the effect, except that everything he said could have been said by Joachim-the words, but not his way of saying them.

“Overcome evil!” he shouted, and I clutched the silver-topped staff tighter. “Root out all sin! Destroy the works of the devil! Seize paradise as God has promised us!”

The crowd seemed almost choreographed, now starting to sway together, no longer repeating his phrases but steadily chanting, “Cyrus, Cyrus.” Their chant had the steady hard beat of a heart. The mayor, looking somewhat uneasy, slipped away into the night. The shouts from the crowd went higher as Cyrus lifted his hands, lower as he lowered them. The Lady Maria beside me joined in enthusiastically.

This, I thought, adulation like this might all be worth it.

And then I realized what was so odd about a crowd this size in the city of Caelrhon. It included no priests.

PART SIX — RATS I

“I have spoken to him, of course,” said the bishop gravely, “and spoken more than once. But he always says his only interest is to bring himself closer to God by carrying the divine message of judgment and salvation to His flock.”

“You should stop him, Joachim. A bishop can certainly forbid Christians from listening to a charlatan who preaches false religion.”

We sat in the bishop’s study, where candlelight reflected on the dark window panes and made the wood paneling ruddy. There was a faint sound of scurrying in the walls that might have been rats, though I had certainly never heard any in the bishop’s palace before.

Joachim answered me quietly, light and shadow flickering across his face. “But is he preaching false religion, Daimbert? I wish that I could say. It is true that I have told the cathedral priests not to attend his prayer meetings. But is a bishop who lacks the will to resign fit to judge a man who after all only teaches God’s message? Can there be sin in Christian preaching, even if done more spectacularly than by most and without the license of a sinful bishop?”

Joachim could sometimes be even more exasperating than Antonia. “Don’t tell me you’re still thinking of resigning! Didn’t I explain it to you? You and I were both infected by some spell of madness left in the bones of those undead warriors by whatever renegade wizard made them. I hope you realize I wouldn’t normally try to kill you any more than you would harbor lusty thoughts.”

“I was under a spell?” The bishop looked slightly ill at the idea.

“So was Celia-that’s why she suddenly decided to become a nun after insisting that she would never retreat from the world to the cloister, but instead become an active priest. And I think Cyrus is behind it. You know I’ve suspected him all along of working with a demon. Wait!” as Joachim seemed about to interrupt. “What I’m trying to ask you is, if he repented of his evil ways, including his attacks on Yurt, would he be able to save his soul after all by becoming a preacher?”