The Witch & the Cathedral

by C. Dale Brittain

  She nodded without speaking.

  “Sengrim had hated me for years. He was a good wizard, really good, or he would never have been able to master a gorgos. And he knew it, and it ate into him that no one else knew it. I’ve always just considered it a sign that even intelligent wizards can have errors in judgment that they asked me to teach at the school, but for him it must have been the final blow to his self-esteem.”

  “It can only be a small proportion of the graduates who are ever invited back to teach, even just a short series of lectures.”

  “That’s just it. But Sengrim didn’t realize how inadequate I felt. All he knew is that I’ve had my name in every copy of Ancient and Modern Necromancy for years, because of accidentally inventing a telephone attachment, and that I’d been invited back to the City and he hadn’t. To plot against me without suspicion, he decided to fake his own death.

  “It started with me, but it didn’t end with me,” I continued. “At this point I’m guessing, but I think he turned his jealousy of me into hatred for all the wizards at the school. And the Church was a tempting target, since no wizard, other than me, would be very concerned about strange apparitions on the cathedral.”

  “What it comes down to, then,” said Theodora, “is that you and Paul have not only saved the people here but the church and your school.”

  “Not at all,” I said in surprise. “Well, maybe Paul has. But I can’t take any credit. All I did all summer, while Joachim thought I was trying to find a way to protect the cathedral from peril, was to fall in love with you.”

  She made a noise that was almost a snort.

  “All right,” I conceded, “I did get the gorgos back up north. And I found out that Lucas had gotten himself into a state where he wanted to discard both priests and wizards, and I talked him out of it. But I’m going to have to phrase it all rather delicately when I explain it to the Master of the school.”

  We kept on walking. “The bishop likes you,” I said after a minute.

  “I still find him a little intimidating,” she said, “but at the same time, strangely, I find him a good person to talk to. Though one thing is odd, Daimbert. Because I’d known he was your friend I’d expected him to be a lot like you, but he isn’t at all.”

  “The priesthood doesn’t allow people like me.”

  She smiled and squeezed my arm. “Probably just as well. But I wanted to ask you,” more seriously now, “how many people in Yurt know about our daughter. First you told the bishop, and now you told the queen! How about the teachers at the school?”

  “So far,” I said, smiling down at her, “we’re up to two people.”

  “And the school?”

  “I have no intention of telling them. They don’t want married wizards, but if you won’t marry me then the rest is none of their business. Even if I am at some level answerable to organized wizardry, I still, as a theoretically competent wizard, have to be able to make my own decisions. I’m not even going to tell them that I taught—or tried to teach—a witch to fly!”

  IV

  After watching the bishop’s party ride away, I did not go back inside the castle. Instead I went into the old king’s rose garden and sat on a bench for a while, then wandered up and down the rows of rosebushes, trying to distract myself by remembering what he had long ago told me about where he had obtained or how he had bred each one. The blue rose that he had brought back from the East was blooming: an enormous, brilliant sapphire flower. I could never forget how he obtained that one.

  After an hour I came out again and looked out across the fields of home. Whatever else had come out of this summer, I seemed cured of being homesick for the Yurt of years ago. If everything had stayed exactly the same, Paul would not now be my king, and I would never have met Theodora.

  Years of warding off thunderstorms during harvest time had made me aware of what crops looked like when they were ready to be gathered in. I smiled and estimated that the barley would be ripe in about a week. It was time to review my weather spells.

  Off in the western sky I saw a speck approaching. My heart gave a hard thump, but that was out of habit. I knew what was coming. Zahlfast had said he would send the air cart for the red lizards. I walked around the hill to where they still stood. I was actually rather pleased with my paralysis spell, which I had not expected to last this long. But it might be hard to fit them all into the cart

  I looked again toward the speck, which was close enough now that I could tell it was purple. But something was odd about it. I rubbed my eyes and looked again, and this time there was no doubt. It was not one air cart coming but two. So much, I thought, for getting my own air cart. Sengrim must have had one which, it now appeared, the Master had appropriated it for the school’s use.

  The two carts dipped, banked, and landed beside me. I loaded the lizards carefully, packing the heads, wings, and legs in as well as I could. There was just enough room left in the second cart for a man.

  I ducked back across the drawbridge and found Gwennie. “I was looking for the constable,” I told her, “but you’ll do fine. I have to go down to the City but I’ll be back tonight or tomorrow.” I did not trust Sengrim’s lizards not to come back to life if left to themselves. I had, perhaps unjustifiably, come out of this business quite credibly, and I didn’t want to ruin it now.

  Gwennie waved as the lizards and I took off. It took until early afternoon to reach the white spires of the City and the school perched on the highest central point. The lizards remained paralyzed the whole way. As the carts landed in the school courtyard, I thought that these creatures might prove useful after all for the students to practice their “anti-monster” spells.

  As I unloaded the stiff bodies, with the help of a teaching assistant and several students, the cheerful conversation and questions around me suddenly stopped and I looked up to see two senior wizards: Zahlfast and the white-bearded Master of the school.

  Zahlfast walked around the lizards slowly. “Nice paralysis spell, Daimbert,” he said in his school-teacher voice.

  “I know you gave Zahlfast a quick overview on the telephone of what happened,” said the Master, “but I’d like to hear more. How about if you come to my study?”

  Leaving the assistants to finish dealing with the lizards, I followed the Master with a cold feeling in my chest. It seemed ominously significant that the two wizards had appeared together. Although there had never been any formal announcement, it had become clear over the last few years that Zahlfast had gone from being the head of the transformations faculty to being the de facto second in authority at the school.

  Inwardly I was in turmoil. While my own role in killing Sengrim, I was now ashamed to admit, had not bothered me in the slightest, it suddenly seemed highly likely to be a heavy black mark against me in the eyes of the school. No one expected wizards to get along well with each other, but killing each other was something else.

  In the Master’s study, I told them everything that had happened as honestly as I could, neither trying to justify or to boast, starting with the lizards on the new cathedral tower, and including the gorgos, the strangely out-of-order telephone at the watch-station, and my final spell against Sengrim. All I left out was Theodora. I ended with my guesses why he had been so jealous of me. “One thing you can tell me,” I concluded. “Was he just very good at magic, or was he working with a demon?”

  Zahlfast and the Master looked at each other. “There is nothing that makes us think,” said Zahlfast, “that he’d taken the step into black magic.”

  “Good,” I said. “We gave him a Christian burial.”

  “You may be correct,” said the Master, ignoring this comment, “that he was eaten up with jealousy. I must say I’d never known a student of mine to summon a hundred dragons to attack the school. If your king hadn’t killed him, I wonder what his next effort might have been—but thanks to you, we will never have to know!”

  Zahlfast said thoughtfully, “I wonder if we ought to keep somewhat closer
track of the wizards after they leave the school, to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again. We’d seen him this spring, only a short time before he faked his death, but we believed him when he said everything in Caelrhon was fine.”

  “Was that his air cart?” I asked abruptly.

  “Why, yes. He told us that he’d been able to obtain a purple flying beast up in the land of wild magic. I presume he got it at the same time as he was capturing the gorgos and disabling the telephone system. The cart will be very useful at the school now that he won’t be needing it.” Just as I had thought.

  The Master leaned toward me, his hands on his knees. “So. What it all comes down to, young wizard, is that you defended your kingdom successfully from someone who knew a lot more magic than you do.”

  “And in the process,” added Zahlfast, “you and your local bishop worked out an agreement that priests and wizards ought to stop working against each other.”

  I looked at him sharply. I hadn’t said anything about this, as not being directly relevant.

  “Yes, we’ve heard about it,” said Zahlfast with a smile. “You weren’t the only wizard in Caelrhon, you know.”

  “Since Sengrim was so good at magic,” I asked, changing the subject because I didn’t want to have to justify my friendship with Joachim, “why was he still wizard of Caelrhon? If Yurt’s the smallest of the western kingdoms, Caelrhon has to be the second smallest.”

  Zahlfast looked as though he was going to say something about how the school did not discuss one wizard’s career with another, but the Master answered me without hesitation.

  “There’s a lot more to being a good wizard than being good at spells. Some wizards stay at their first posts for their entire lives, some move to richer courts in just a few years, some stay at the school as assistants, some come back to work at the school after years away. It all depends on a number of factors, including the wishes of the wizard himself, how well he’s doing where he is, and what other opportunities may be available. In his case, he’d applied for other positions over the years, but none of them were quite right for him.”

  “Including Yurt,” I said. “I still don’t understand why you made sure that I became wizard there.”

  “We told you that years ago,” said Zahlfast. “You were the best qualified person for the position.”

  “Caelrhon will need a new royal wizard now, of course,” said the Master. “The king telephoned the school after the royal family realized that Sengrim really wasn’t a good representative of a school-trained wizard.. There is someone we had in mind for the position, and we would like your opinion. His name is Evrard, and I believe he was briefly ducal wizard of Yurt fifteen or twenty years ago.”

  I was surprised but pleased. “That’s a fine idea. He’ll be a good Royal Wizard of Caelrhon.”

  “And that brings us,” said the Master, “to the real issue.”

  This was it, I thought, the reprimand for which I had been waiting the last hour. My only hope was that even if they wanted to install someone else as wizard of Yurt, they couldn’t do so over the objections of Paul and the queen.

  “We want you to stay here and teach at the school.”

  This was both unexpected and anticlimactic. “But I was just here this spring,” I said. “I would have thought I did a poor enough job inspiring your technical division students that you wouldn’t want me to try again already.”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” said Zahlfast, “and in fact I think those students will get more long-term advantage out of your lectures than you realize. But you may well be right that the technical division isn’t the best place for you. You could teach in one of the other faculties this fall.”

  I shook my head. “I appreciate the offer, but I really can’t. I’ve been away from Yurt much too much this year anyway. Paul’s just become king, and he needs his Royal Wizard with him as he adjusts to his new responsibilities.”

  “Maybe you don’t understand what we’re saying,” said Zahlfast. “We’re not asking you to stay at the school for a series of lectures. We’re asking you to join the permanent faculty.”

  This was certainly not what I expected. I looked from one to the other, my mouth doubtless gaping. “But—” Out of several things I might have said I chose, “But I thought the two of you were going to punish me for being implicated in the death of another wizard.”

  Zahlfast started to chuckle. “So you told us the whole story, expecting at any moment that we would accuse you of being a traitor to organized wizardry?”

  “And you’re not going to?” I said cautiously.

  “Haven’t you been listening?” asked the Master, the twinkle in his frost-blue eyes pronounced. “The school certainly doesn’t want its graduates killing each other, but the first oath you all take is to serve humanity. Very few wizards are ever asked to join the permanent faculty. We very much want you.”

  I had again the feeling that I had irretrievably lost my way, but now it was worse. Not only had I become lost wandering in a wood, but the forest floor itself had been whipped out from under me. “But I had just been talking to the queen about my position,” I said. This point at least was firm. “She and King Paul very much want me to continue as Royal Wizard of Yurt.”

  Zahlfast waved away this objection with a hand.

  “I have to warn you,” I went on, “I’m as interested in establishing cordial relations with the bishop of the twin kingdoms of Yurt and Caelrhon as he is with wizardry.”

  “That is in fact part of it,” said Zahlfast. “Maybe we’ve been too dismissive in the past. Even though religion is inferior to magic, priests are still part of the humanity we serve. I can’t abide the bishop of the City myself, but he won’t be bishop there indefinitely. We’ll be in the City far longer than he is, and when his successor takes over it might be a good time to start establishing better relations. You’d be the perfect person to do it.”

  “So, what do you say, Daimbert?” said the Master cheerfully. “We want you to join us permanently at the school, not because you’re good at certain spells, but because you’re a good wizard. You’re not like most wizards, but more and more we’ve come to realize that that can be an advantage. We’ll even let you have a hand in choosing an appropriate young wizard to succeed you in Yurt. Will you do it?”

  “No.”

  Not an explanation, not an excuse, just a straight negative. The monosyllable hung in the air, out before I even had a chance to consider. But I had no intention of calling it back.

  Zahlfast looked both startled and disturbed. “Maybe we haven’t explained it clearly enough.”

  “You’ve made yourself very clear,” I said. “But I wouldn’t be a good teacher.” This wasn’t the only reason, but it would do for a start. “If I were going to train young wizards, I’d have to know five times the magic I do. The only way I got through the lectures this spring was by emphasizing ways of thinking rather than content. Even after close to twenty years past my own graduation, there are probably major areas where the average new graduate knows more than I do—and I don’t just mean in the technical division.”

  Zahlfast looked at me thoughtfully. “Encyclopedic knowledge of spells isn’t what makes someone a good teacher of magic. If that was all that was required, we wouldn’t even bother teaching—we’d just make the students memorize Thaumaturgy A to Z. It’s only the bad teachers who think they know everything. Every good teacher has stood in front of a class one time or another and felt like a fraud trying to explain something.”

  This did not at all accord with my memories of the enormously knowledgeable teachers at the school. It slowly sank in that I really was being asked, and by people who recognized a major proportion of my shortcomings, to come back and be their colleague.

  “We can start you off easily,” said the Master, “just give you classes where you feel comfortable already. You will, after all, be the most junior wizard on the faculty by a considerable margin, and we don’t wa
nt to overburden you. What do you say?”

  “It’s still no.”

  I wondered if I had looked as distressed to Theodora when she kept refusing my proposals as the two older wizards now did. “I recognize the honor,” I said. “In fact, I’m almost overwhelmed by the honor. And I recognize that every wizard has a duty to institutionalized wizardry to serve it as best he can. But I can’t leave Yurt.”

  “Why not?”

  “I love the people there.”

  They looked at each other as though hoping the other would understand. “Maybe there’s something you haven’t thought about,” said Zahlfast slowly. “Wizards live far longer than ordinary humans. If you become too close to the people there, you’ll just be hurt when you have to leave them behind.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Invite me to the school in fifty years.” In fifty years, Joachim and the queen would be dead, and Theodora and Paul, assuming they were still alive, would be happily watching their grandchildren grow up and would no longer need me. In Theodora’s case, I reminded myself, they would also be my grandchildren. I had a sudden doubt whether fifty years would be long enough.

  Zahlfast thought the same thing. “If you decide to stay in Yurt became of the people, Daimbert, you do have to realize that new people are going to appear, and they may engage your affections as well. Now you say you want to stay in part because of your king—King Paul, isn’t that right?—and yet I don’t think he was even born when you first went to Yurt.”

  “We’re asking you,” said the Master slowly, “because we think you have unique abilities that ought to be put to the use of wider wizardry.”

  I shook my head. “It wouldn’t work. You’re hoping that I’d be able to open communications with the bishop of the City. But I have no inherent ability to make priests give up their suspicions of wizards. All I have is my friendship with Joachim, the new bishop of Caelrhon. If the church and wizardry are going to start working together, you’ll have to start with him and me, not with the bishop of the City and a representative of the school.”