The Witch, the Cathedral woy-4

by C. Dale Brittain

  Snuggled luxuriously amidst pillows and comforters, dreaming of Theodora, I heard a bird singing. For a few moments I was able to incorporate the sound into my dream, but at last, reluctantly, I opened my eyes. A brilliant scarlet bird hung on a branch two feet above my head, pouring out a golden song to greet the morning. It flew away as I rose on one elbow and looked around. It was already full daylight, but lumps in the other three beds showed that I was by no means the last awake.

  I lay down again, hoping to recapture my dream, but the realization that Theodora was three thousand miles away, and even if she was still alive and well did not want to marry me, brought me fully awake. It had been a remarkably vivid dream, in which she had had no reservations about marrying me or about anything else. The nixie, I thought, had been influencing our sleeping minds for her own purposes.

  The other three also stretched and sat up, not meeting each others’ eyes. “One problem with nixies,” said Vor, “is that they’re not very subtle.”

  We had fruit and wine for breakfast; the bottles and the baskets had been replenished while we slept. “Is your ankle any better?” I asked Lucas.

  “It doesn’t hurt with every breath the way it did last night,” he admitted, “but I certainly couldn’t walk on it.”

  “I’m going to try to break the spell that’s holding us in the grove,” I said. “Until I do, I’m afraid we’re going to have to stay here-unless of course we decide to take up the nixie’s offer.”

  “But Lucas is married,” said Paul puritanically. “If she wants us all before she’ll let any of us go, that means we’re trapped here.”

  Lucas gave him a sour look, and I almost expected the older prince to say that, married or not, he could and would do anything he wanted. But instead he turned away to finish the strawberries.

  “Come with me, Vor,” I said. “I want your help.”

  “What should we do if the nixie comes back?” asked Paul in some alarm.

  “Be polite,” said Vor. “Call her Lady. Nixies like that. And don’t even bother trying to explain that it’s hard to feel in the right mood to respond to her charms when you’ve been imprisoned against your will. That’s something nixies never have been able to understand.”

  The invisible wall at the edge of the grove once again met my outstretched hand. It was as impenetrable to Vor as to Paul and me. I tried several variations on dissolving spells, but none of them worked. Vor tried pushing other objects through the barrier and found they passed without difficulty. He was even able, by holding onto a leafy branch, to push most of his arm through. But as soon as he reached the rest of his body, not surrounded by leaves, the wall stopped him solidly.

  “How about turning us into birds?” Vor suggested half-seriously. “We could fly through. The real birds are coming and going without any problem.”

  “I’ve thought of it,” I said, entirely seriously. “The problem is, if I turned myself into anything non-human, I wouldn’t be able to say the spell to return us all to ourselves. I’d even been thinking that I could turn the three of you into some other creatures so that you could escape, and stay here myself, but that wouldn’t work either. Human magic doesn’t penetrate this wall, so you would all have to remain birds.”

  “Could you turn us into some creature that it would be nice to be for the rest of our lives?”

  I gave this suggestion more attention than it probably deserved. When I had been at the wizards’ school in the City by the sea, I had often gone down to the breakwater to watch the dolphins playing in the surf. But being a dolphin would be difficult in these dry borderlands of the land of magic.

  “I wish I had my books,” I said. “I’m not familiar with the kind of magic that formed this barrier, and it will take me a while to work it out from first principles.”

  “I know what we could do,” said Vor, almost playfully. I was quite sure I had never seen him being playful before. “We could all turn into nixies.”

  “We could what?”

  “If we were nixies, the nixie of this grove wouldn’t try to stop us from leaving, and we could pass right through this barrier. But we’d still be able to speak, so you could turn us back into ourselves once we were out in the plain.”

  “Transformations spells cannot be used frivolously,” I said firmly, inwardly appalled. “Besides, the princes would never agree.”

  “I’m not sure I would agree either,” Vor said lightly. “But at least it was an idea.”

  When we returned to the beds under the trees, Paul said, “The nixie came while you were gone. We called her Lady and managed to persuade her that we weren’t in the right mood. She went away again, but now I’m wondering if she’s poisoned the fruit.”

  “Poisoned the fruit!”

  “Usually in the morning when I’m home I can’t wait to get outside, to ride, to run. We slept better on these beds last night than we’ve slept the whole trip, so I should be brimful of energy. But now I don’t feel like moving at all-and look at Lucas!”

  The older prince rolled over and opened his eyes at the sound of his name. “I’m not asleep.”

  But Paul was right. The nixie was affecting more than our dreams. Making us feel languorous, making us playful, in a few days she would have us forgetting the world outside her grove.

  “I don’t think it’s the fruit,” I said. “I think it’s in the air. I’d better work fast.”

  Lucas stretched and sat up. “Tell me, Wizard,” he said in much better humor than I expected, “what real harm would come to us if we did take up the nixie’s offer?”

  I shot Vor a quick glance. He shook his head and said, “Complete exhaustion, but it should wear off.” Paul glared at Lucas, indignant on behalf of the crown princess of Caelrhon, but the other prince ignored the look.

  I took a deep breath. “The three of you can do what you like. But Paul was right that the nixie won’t let us go until she’s been satisfied by all of us. And as a wizard, I am bound by iron oaths.” This was a prevarication, because the oaths I had taken had nothing to do with chastity. But I didn’t want to explain that, in love with both Theodora and the queen, I found the nixie’s advances repellant-though even that might change in a few days in this soft air.

  Instead I folded my arms. “While we’re all here,” I said, “I want to take the opportunity to finish the discussion we were having yesterday.” This at least took the rather listless half smile off Lucas’s face. “I’m getting very tired of having to drag this out of you. You keep talking, Prince, about aristocrats needing to break free of their wizards. Then how do you explain waiting in the city of Caelrhon until the old bishop died, to make sure that a renegade wizard you’d hired yourself insulted his memory by attacking the cathedral?”

  IV

  Lucas gave me a vicious look; I was actually rather pleased to see that languor had not yet taken him over. But he had the sense not to try to jump me again. “I stayed in the city all summer to defend it from you!”

  He seemed to mean it. “What threat could I possibly be?” I demanded indignantly.

  “Why else,” shifting his scowl from me to Paul, “would the wizard of Yurt spend so much time in Caelrhon unless planning an attack on my kingdom? Would you care to tell me, Prince, just what plot you have been concocting against me?”

  Lucas feared an attack from Paul? Everything had made sense for a moment, but now suddenly all my suppositions were disintegrating.

  I expected Paul to reply hotly but he only laughed, momentarily easing the tension. “Our wizard was in Caelrhon at the request of the cathedral, to defend the church against the monster some other wizard had already brought there-at Vor’s suggestion.”

  Vor was about to reply, but I interrupted him. “Wait,” I said. Try to sort it out one piece at a time. “You mean, Lucas, you weren’t anticipating the gorgos at the bishop’s funeral?”

  “My father got a telephone phone call from a dark-haired girl none of us knew,” Lucas growled, “saying that ‘something rath
er striking’ was about to happen in the cathedral city, and that if we considered that spectacular we should wait until the bishop died! I headed for the city at once, of course, but when I got there I found the gorgos had already been seen-and you had just arrived. And you wonder why I decided to wait you out?”

  So the renegade wizard I couldn’t find had actually sent the royal court of Caelrhon a warning two months ago, boasting obliquely of his gorgos? He must have persuaded one of the Romney girls to telephone for him; no wonder the band had left town in a hurry!

  “Sengrim wanting revenge on me I could have understood,” continued Lucas grimly, “for dismissing him after years as Caelrhon’s royal wizard. But when magical dangers persisted even after he blew himself up, I realized that more of you school wizards must be involved in a conspiracy of vengeance. But the gorgos on the cathedral and you, Wizard, in the city made it clear that I wasn’t the only target for wizardly revenge. The goal was the destruction of both the cathedral and the kingdom of Caelrhon.”

  “I’ve never plotted against anybody in my entire life,” said Paul calmly. “And our wizard certainly wasn’t in Caelrhon at our orders; we’d been wondering all summer when he’d come home.”

  One piece at a time. The wind whispered through the branches of a tree behind me. I found myself reluctantly admiring Lucas’s courage. He had stayed in the city for weeks, convinced there was a wizard there seeking his own death but still determined to defend his kingdom and the church. Little wonder he had been so surly with me, both in Caelrhon and on this trip, if he thought I was that wizard! And his rapid looks around at the end of the bishop’s funeral, which I had found so suspicious at the time, came from the threat of ‘something spectacular’-a threat Lucas could not tell to either Paul or me since he thought we were behind it.

  “You’re right, Prince,” I said, “that there has been a renegade wizard in Caelrhon. The only flaw in your logic has been thinking it was me.” That and persuading himself that if wizards were eliminated, aristocrats could become glorious heroes out of legend, but I wasn’t about to tell Lucas that. “This wizard’s real goal is the destruction of the Church,” I continued. “The gorgos’s attack on the cathedral was intended as a direct insult to the memory of the old bishop.” Joachim, I thought, should hear me now-or, for that matter, Zahlfast.

  But I kept on coming back to the unanswered question of who this renegade might be. Any wizard could have asked Vor about a gorgos, but it would have taken enormously powerful magic to call one from this northern land to Caelrhon and then to imprison it somewhere for weeks, much less elude all my efforts to find him.

  I even wondered briefly if Elerius, who had graduated far ahead of good old Book-Leech with half the effort, might have been involved. Elerius’s magic would certainly be stronger than mine, and Zahlfast would respect his judgment. My old teacher’s sudden and irrational conviction that priests were working to destroy wizards made much more sense if he had been told this by someone he trusted, someone who, on the contrary, was seeking to destroy priests. But a wizard with a post at one of the most powerful western kingdoms would not become involved in the affairs of Yurt or Caelrhon. And, I reminded myself, a remarkable number of young wizards had graduated ahead of me.

  “There are plots within plots here,” said Vor to Lucas. Unlike me, he seemed full of theories. “Someone, probably even starting while your wizard was alive, arranged an elaborate masquerade to persuade you and your father to turn against wizardry.” His eyes gleamed in the forest shadows. “Who would most like to see you helpless, with no wizard to come to your defense? Isn’t it most likely to be Prince Vincent, your own younger brother?”

  Lucas gave a start but did not answer immediately-he had considered this explanation. But this was terrible! Had Vincent contracted a nefarious plot to ensure that he, and not his brother, became king of Caelrhon? And only one man stood between Vincent and the crown of Yurt, once he was married to the queen the very day after Paul’s coronation: Paul himself.

  “What are you implying about my brother?” roared Lucas to Vor, finding his voice at last and, I thought, roaring even louder to cover up his hesitation. He might have plenty of suspicions of his own about Vincent, but he was not going to let anyone else voice them.

  I ignored him, having for the moment an even more important concern. “Paul,” I said, “I want you to promise me not to ride your stallion anymore.”

  “Not ride Bonfire?!”

  “Vincent gave him to you. He’s a trap. He’s planning to use that horse somehow to kill you.”

  Paul regarded me stiffly. “I can decide for myself what horses to ride, Wizard.”

  I didn’t have a chance to answer. Lucas pushed himself up onto his one good foot. His hand on his sword hilt, he hopped and shouldered his way between the two of us, making for Vor.

  But before he could test whether the sword was faster than the spell, Paul leaped up. “Stop it! All of you, stop accusing each other for one minute!” A stray ray of sunshine had worked its way down through the leaves and glinted on his hair. “We’ve all been working against each other,” he announced, “and we’ve all got to stop! No more accusations, no more lies, no more attempts to overpower each other. We need each other’s help, not just to get away from the nixie but to save your kingdom, Lucas.”

  I watched him admiringly. I did hope we made it home to Yurt alive, because he would be a superb king.

  “So you, Wizard,” Paul continued, turning on me, “have got to stop acting as though only you were wise and knowledgeable.” I opened my mouth and closed it again. “Vor, you’ve got to think less of your revenge and more of the welfare of the city where you now live and work. And Lucas, you have to admit that you’ve been deceived.”

  It took Lucas about ten seconds to make up his mind. But then he took a deep breath and said, “All right. I agree we’re going to have to work together. But first I want some reassurance, real reassurance, that you are not plotting to reunite Yurt and Caelrhon with yourself as king.”

  There was a tinkling laugh behind us. All of us froze, then turned slowly. The nixie stood surrounded by her glittering stars. She was even more alluring than I remembered.

  “Come now,” she said with a smile. “You had tried to tell me that you had no energy, but for the last hour you have been quarreling with each other! That seems energetic to me!”

  Paul threw himself on his bed, his back toward her. Lucas let himself down more gingerly. “You’re offering us something delicate and enticing, Lady,” said Vor. “We may need just a little more time to let the sour taste of the outer world pass away.”

  “If you keep on putting me off,” she said with a coy smile, “I may have to take affairs into my own hands.”

  I sat down, not looking at her. Trapped here in the borderlands I was powerless to find the wizard who must be behind it all: the magical attacks on Joachim’s cathedral, the vague warnings I had received against priests, Vincent’s abrupt wooing of the queen.

  I lifted my head. Vor and the nixie were still exchanging light banter. He seemed to be enjoying their conversation hugely, but he also seemed to have put her off again. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow morning!” she said and slipped away. The dancing stars lingered for a few seconds behind her.

  None of us felt like talking when she was gone. After a few minutes, Lucas reached for the apples.

  When the silence threatened to last all day, I said, “I guess I’d better start on my spells to get us out of here. I’ll try to work fast.”

  I went to the edge of the grove and sat down, my back against a tree, and started probing the magical structure of the invisible barrier. Paul followed me. He pressed his face against the barrier as against a window, looking for the horses. I had closed my eyes but opened them when I heard a sharp whistle. Paul was trying to attract the horses’ attention.

  The herd was closer than it had been yesterday. They cocked their ears at the sound of the whistle. They were all different color
s, bay, black, grey, and sorrel, none of them red roan. But they had the same light step, the same delicate noses and wide-spaced eyes as Bonfire. When Paul whistled again they turned as one and ran, manes and tails floating behind them.

  V

  A week passed. The second day the nixie became petulant, and I told her brusquely, “I’m sorry, Lady, but we aren’t interested.”

  “Then you’ll have to stay here the rest of your lives,” she said, not smiling at all. I turned my back on her, and in a minute she went away and did not come back.

  In the following days, the air seemed less sensuous, still soft and perfumed but without the overwhelming sweetness it had had when we first arrived. Languor seemed to have overtaken Lucas completely. If pressed, he would admit that his ankle was healing, but mostly he slept and ate fruit. Vor too lapsed into inactivity.

  Paul and I however remained occupied. Every morning, he determinedly trotted around the grove twenty times. He also continued trying to attract the horses; by the fourth day they approached rather than ran at the sound of his whistle, but they still remained well back, snorting and flicking their tails nervously. And I wrestled with the nixie’s magic.

  I felt a desperate urgency to be back home, to stop the renegade wizard from doing what he was planning-or at least to be there when he did it. If he had been at all checked by my presence in the city, he certainly had nothing to fear now. His gorgos had gotten me out of the way almost as surely as if it had killed me.

  If Vincent was working with him-maybe having turned against his own brother-I didn’t want to imagine what he might be planning against the queen, though his plots against Paul seemed horribly clear. And I also did not want to imagine why and for what purpose he had captured Theodora, unless it was to silence the only person in the city who seemed able to detect his magic. The gorgos’s attack on the cathedral at the time of the old bishop’s funeral might only be a preparation for a much worse attack when the new bishop was elected. This wizard, apparently much more powerful than I could ever be, had in his control, directly or indirectly, the two women I loved, the dean, and the young man I hoped would become my king.