C. Dale Brittain_Wizard of Yurt 04

by The Witch;the Cathedral

  As I hoped, this brought an expression of disgust to Paul's face, and then he smiled. He glanced at my plate. "You didn't eat your lamb chop. Don't you want it? Do you mind if I take it?"

  II

  We arrived early at the cathedral, the two princes dressed soberly in black. I mingled with their knights, trying my best not to look like a wizard. The bishop's body still lay in front of the high altar, surrounded by candles. One of the flagstones to the side of the altar had been taken up and stood on its edge, next to a dark pit.

  The church filled with town dignitaries and wealthy merchants and many ordinary citizens, everyone dressed formally and somberly. Even the workmen from the cathedral construction wore shoes over their long toes for the first time since I had met them. I recognized the mayor, who arrived wearing all his chains and medallions of office. As people slid quietly into the pews, I kept looking for Theodora.

  When we had been there nearly an hour, and Paul was starting to swing his legs restlessly, the deepest bell began to toll in the tower above us. I started counting the strokes, lost track around forty, and realized they must be tolling a stroke for each year the bishop had lived. The bell went on for a long time, until the prolonged, deep strokes seemed to beat along with my heart.

  The bell was still at last. All of us took a deep breath, and then the organ began. It played deeply and slowly, all in the bass, as a young boy dressed in white proceeded down the aisle swinging a censer. Then the cathedral priests filed solemnly down the nave and took their positions around the altar. Joachim walked at their head, taller and gaunter than any of the rest. I got a close look at him as he went by, but I did not think he saw me. His face looked as though he had never smiled in his life.

  He led the service, his voice ringing clearly through the packed church, but I knew him well enough to recognize the enormous strain behind the calm voice. The bishop had been a father to him for over twenty years. As Joachim spoke of the bishop's goodness, humility, and spiritual guidance, I felt my own eyes stinging.

  The priests began to sing then, and the congregation rose to sing with them. We of the royal courts of Yurt and Caelrhon scrambled to our feet only a few seconds behind the rest.

  When the singing ended, while the last organ notes still lingered, there was a brief scramble at the door and four seminary students came in, carrying an enormous coffin between them. There was dead silence except for the sound of their footsteps. They brought the coffin up to the altar and set it down. A priest stepped forward with a candle snuffer and one by one put out all the candles.

  I understood at last what Joachim had meant when he said his cathedral was too dark. In spite of the high stained-glass windows, the church was extremely dim on this overcast day. The priests who lifted the bishop's body and placed it in the coffin were only dark shapes.

  Joachim's voice rose as though disembodied. "As for man, his days are as grass. As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more. . . . He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down; he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not."

  There was more rustling by the altar. Then came the clang of a lid closing, a creak of bolts being tightened, and the faint sound of heavy breathing, even a grunt or two, as the dark shapes lowered the coffin. Finally came the hard report of stone being dropped into place.

  After a long pause, the priests of the cathedral chapter began to sing. "Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison." For a moment their song filled the dark church, but then their voices died away. Again there was total silence.

  Then Joachim began to speak, and as he spoke lights sprang up on the altar. "I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. . . . I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered. I create Jerusalem rejoicing, and her people a joy. And the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her. . . . And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death."

  The black veils were gone from the altar, and the gold of the crucifix seemed to burn with its own light. The organ struck a new note, of utter seriousness yet great joy.

  The choir began to sing again, a hymn of glory and triumph. At the same time, the sun finally emerged and struck through the stained glass to cast a brilliant glow on the replaced flagstones around the altar. The priests kept singing as the congregation slowly filed out of the church.

  We emerged blinking into sunlight in the construction site in front of the cathedral. Lucas kept glancing around in a manner I considered highly suspicious. "Well, I thought they carried that off fairly well, everything considered," he said, as though wanting to make light of the whole matter and not quite daring to do so.

  Paul paid no attention to his tone. "It was good that we were here," he said, extremely seriously. "A man like that, who has guided the souls of our two kingdoms for forty years, deserves every gesture of respect we can pay him as he goes to his last rest."

  I found myself was thinking two quite different thoughts: that if Joachim became bishop I might be attending his funeral in forty more years; and that by the time I finally got used to Paul alternating between being a boy and being a man he would have stopped being a boy at all.

  "Yes, as representatives of royal rule, it certainly was good that we—" Lucas stopped speaking abruptly. "What's that?" he said in an entirely different voice.

  Paul and I swung around. And then I felt it, a surge of enormously powerful magic which could only come from the wizard Theodora and I had been unable to find. Townspeople started looking up too, following Lucas's arm. Most of the priests had come out of the cathedral. I heard one saying, "I wonder if it would be disrespectful to go get a drink," before he caught the mood of the little group of people gathered around us.

  "Look! Don't you see it? It's coming!" cried Lucas.

  Now I could see it. It could have been a bird, but it was far too big. It flew faster than any bird, across the fields and straight into town toward the cathedral. It was five times the size of a man, and it had the wings of a bat.

  Several of those around us began to scream. "Our swords!" Lucas yelled at Paul. "We must get our swords!" The two princes raced off while townspeople darted for cover. I saw the mayor upended in the rush, then he scrambled to his feet and ran, his gown hitched up to his knees. The priests flung them­ selves against the tide of people still coming out of the cathedral, fighting their way back inside.

  Only I stood still, while the creature settled on top of the half-completed tower, the tower that was not yet consecrated, and stared down at me with burning eyes. Though vaguely human in shape, it was covered with scaly hide, and its mouth and fangs were much bigger in proportion to its face than any human's could be. This was no illusion. This was real.

  And this was why I was in the cathedral city. I took a deep breath and, without the slightest idea what I would do, launched myself into the air.

  The creature watched my approach with interest. It had folded its wings and seemed content to sit where it was. As well as long fangs it had enormous, curved claws. As I flew closer it extended its claws as though in anticipation of sinking them into me.

  My immediate need was to get it away from Joachim's cathedral. I hovered thirty feet away and tried a lifting spell. It shifted a little but that was all. Either it was too heavy or its magic too strong against mine. The evil lips pulled back in a grin, and the bat wings rose slightly.

  I backed up warily. A hideous stench wafted toward me. I had defeated a dragon once, but I had had the old wizard of Yurt to help me, and I still had come remarkably close to a funeral of my own. I caught a brief glimpse of white faces far below me and wondered if they would mention in the eulogy that I had been trying to destroy the monster when it killed me.

  Abruptly and with a loud bang it was gone. But not gone, I told myself grimly, only invisible. I could still smell its stench, and somewhere in the ai
r, horribly near, I heard a hungry slobbering.

  There were faint, excited shouts from below, but I ignored them. I retreated rapidly toward the main body of the cathedral and braced myself on the slates of the roof, my feet in a rain gutter, hoping it would not follow me to a consecrated church. But it might still attack the people below, especially now that it was invisible.

  Desperately and without success I tried two school spells, and then the powerful spell inscribed inside Theodora's ring, to reveal all that was hidden. I shouted the words of the Hidden Language, my fingers grating on the slates and eyes staring.

  It appeared directly in front of me, its mouth wide open and one set of claws only a foot from my chest.

  I spun away and fell into space, expecting to feel its touch on my skin any second. But I did not hear the slobbering behind me, and in a quarter mile I looked back. It had resettled itself on the half-finished tower.

  It was not alone. Scampering around the tower were several red lizards the size of dogs. They must have been there all along and only been revealed by the spell.

  But I had no time for them. I approached cautiously, watching for the monster to leap toward me. For a second I thought I glimpsed in the square below a woman's face with amethyst eyes, framed by nut-brown hair, but I could not look. I remembered Theodora's spell to create a series of tiny flames and began saying it rapidly, over and over, until the very air around me began to burn, and I hurled balls of fire toward the monster.

  It sprang backwards, spreading its wings, one of which was already scorched. It gave a guttural cry as it staggered toward the pile of cut stones set ready for the masons. With clawed hands, it heaved up a piece of rock as big as I was and flung it toward me.

  I whirled out of the way, but the stone hurtled downward, toward the crowd below. I flew after it, madly seizing at it with spells until its fall was slowed. People had just enough time to see what was coming and scatter, screaming, before the stone crashed into an empty spot where seconds ago a dozen had stood.

  I found my feet and looked up. The monster had another enormous stone ready to hurl.

  "Into the church!" I shouted, though I wasn't sure anyone could hear me through the general cries of panic. "Get inside the church!" I flew up, dodging the stone and trying to slow it with magic at the same time. Barely, just barely, I was able to reduce the speed of its descent, even guide it a little sideways. By the time it reached the ground, the construction site was nearly empty.

  I could not take time to rest, but if I did not take at least a few seconds my lungs would burst. I leaned against the stone, which had shattered the paving where it landed, and took deep, sobbing breaths.

  There was still wild scrambling at the cathedral doors but almost everyone was inside. One figure, however, watched with attentive interest: the foreman of the construction workers.

  I flew back up. The monster's eyes glowed, but it threw no more stones. My balls of fire had lit the scaffolding timbers, which now blazed merrily, and the monster seemed afraid of fire. I eyed it warily as I approached.

  The scorched wing was extended at an awkward angle as though it might not be able to fly, but I feared a trick. I wrapped myself in the spell Theodora had taught me against fire and waded into the middle of the blaze, screaming insults and challenges at the monster.

  I had suspected it was trying to mislead me with its wing, but I was not suspicious enough. With a single leap it was beside me, careless of the blaze. I ducked barely in time to avoid being disemboweled by raking claws. But the monster's other arm caught me. It sprang into the air with a great flap of its bat wings and began to squeeze.

  Desperately I raced through all my spells of attack, but I had never had very many of them, and none of them worked. The monster kept squeezing tighter. The only advantage I had was that I would already be unconscious when it began to eat me.

  My last hope was a transformations spell. Zahlfast had taught me something important about transformations spells, I vaguely recalled, something highly important, something I ought to know right now—he had even been talking about it the day I visited his class. I did not have time to remember.

  Because I could not wait to see if my spell would work, I coupled it with another spell, a spell I had never used in my life but which I, along with several of my friends at school, had looked up very late one night in the old Master's library. It was the spell to summon a human mind. To summon another human against his will, we had been taught, was the greatest sin a wizard could commit. I found and summoned the monster's mind and stuffed it into the middle of my transformations spell.

  The grip around me was released so suddenly that I collapsed, losing parts of my spell against fire. My hair was ablaze and both hands were tightly grasped around something. I readjusted my spell to put out the fire and looked down. I was holding onto a frog.

  I realized then I was not really flying but only floating, and not very well at that. Consciousness kept threatening to leave me, and the frog struggled in my hands. I set myself back down on the tower, away from the fire. There I found a piece of rope and, with the last of my concentration, attached the most powerful binding spell I knew to it and tied up the frog.

  The red lizards all seemed to have scurried away. Still hanging onto the frog, I stepped out into space, only to recall too late that if my magic was deserting me it might have been better not to try flying.

  But my spells stayed with me long enough for me to descend at only a moderate pace. I hit the ground, staggered and fell, the mass of rope and frog a hard lump under my stomach.

  "Get up!"

  I could not move.

  The toe of a boot kicked me. "Get up! Now!"

  The toe turned me over. Prince Lucas stood over me, a naked sword in his hand and his face dark with fury.

  III

  I felt gentle hands then and heard Paul's voice. "Lucas! What are you doing? He conquered the monster, but he's been burned badly!"

  I closed my eyes. It was quite clear that I would die before being able to get up.

  "Conquered the monster!" said Lucas in utter scorn. "Can't you see it was a magical creature he summoned himself? He played with it for a while, then sent it away again. All of us came out of the bishop's funeral in sorrow and awe, yet all he could do was perform a few flashy tricks to show wizardry's utter lack of respect!"

  This last was said in a shout, for the benefit not just of Paul but of the others who had begun gathering around. At this I did manage to open one eye.

  Paul pulled back sharply. I could hardly blame him. The timing had been too good, too carefully planned to show disrespect for the old bishop. And it would be hard to explain that this tied-up frog, still very much alive and struggling in spite of being rolled on, was a monster.

  For a second I thought I saw someone black-bearded, someone I did not recognize but who seemed strangely familiar, step forward from the crowd. The sight of Lucas's blade distracted me from a closer look.

  "I'll kill him now to avenge the church!" bellowed Lucas. I ached so badly that death at the moment seemed rather appealing.

  But if he was trying to win Paul's support, he had gone too far. I heard the metallic hiss of another sword being whipped from its scabbard. "Then you'll have to kill me first," calmly replied the royal heir to Yurt.

  There was a brief pause. I could see a corner of Lucas's face, and he looked as though realizing his miscalculation. The ugly murmuring against me which had started in the rapidly-gathering crowd changed its note.

  A firm set of steps advanced across the pavement. "In the name of Christ!" came Joachim's voice. "The bishop has not yet been buried one hour, and the cathedral has just been successfully defended from the powers of evil incarnate, and all you princes can do is start fighting each other!"

  I closed my eyes and began to believe, for the first time since Lucas had pointed toward the sky, that I might actually live. Joachim had never properly understood the fundamental difference between wild, natural mag
ic and supernatural evil, but I didn't feel like trying to explain it now.

  He knelt beside me. "Can you hear me? Do you think we can move you?"

  I discovered I was still capable of speech. "Moving me couldn't possibly make me feel any worse than I already do."

  "Good," said Joachim in a tone of authority. "Here, some of you, help me get him onto a board so we can carry him inside. He's saved the church in its greatest need, and we can't let him die a martyr."

  I heard two swords being sheathed. People who a moment ago had been murmuring against me now came forward, volunteering to help. "He set the new cathedral tower on fire," said Lucas almost plaintively.

  "Only in overcoming the monster," Joachim replied, "and the workmen already have the fire mostly out." I did my best to focus on the tower and could see several workmen scrambling around on it. To my surprise, being shifted onto a board actually did make me feel worse.

  Paul saw the frog. "Ugh, what's this?" He reached for it, but I held on tight.

  "This is the monster. I've transformed it, and now I've got to take it somewhere I can destroy it. I must get to a telephone."

  Paul clearly did not believe me, but he decided to humor me. I rather hoped the dean didn't believe me, because he might not want even a transformed monster in his church.

  "We'll take the wizard to the cathedral office," said Joachim, lifting the head of the board. Paul had the foot, and several townspeople stood around in helpful attitudes. Lucas followed slowly.

  A seminary student was sent for the doctor, but even before he came I insisted on using the telephone. In a minute, I had reached the wizards' school and was talking to Zahlfast.