“I understand, my lady,” I said gravely, glad Yurt had never had anything like this deadly political maneuvering. But then the wizards of the western kingdoms would never allow it to come to this. “But why did you come here?”
She had been playing with her rings while she talked, but now she turned to look at me over a half-bare shoulder with her dark almond-shaped eyes. “It is very far from Xantium. Or if I may speak boldly, from anywhere else.”
This was reasonably accurate; Yurt, one of the smallest of the western kingdoms, would not normally be a place of which anyone in the East had heard. But our quest fifteen years ago had alerted a number of powerful people, not just the mage Kaz-alrhun, to the existence of Yurt. I hoped that none of them would be people in contact with the Thieves’ Guild.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I thought the mage operated out of the Thieves’ Market himself. Why should your grandfather trust him?” I had no intention of being manipulated into being part of a devious double-edged plot against a lovely young woman.
“When one’s life is in most dire danger,” she said in a tone that sounded not young but very old and weary, “one trusts no one.” She nodded toward the automaton. “That is why I brought him with me.”
And the mage had doubtless made the automaton as well. I had been able to work with him in the East because our purposes coincided, and we had eaten his salt-I wondered how long the beneficial effects of that were supposed to last.
As I left the Lady Justinia’s chambers one of the castle servants met me. “You have a telephone call, sir,” he said, looking anxious. “I think-I think it’s from the bishop.”
“Tell him I’ll be right there!” I darted across the courtyard, delighting Antonia, who was riding on my shoulder again, and opened the door to my chambers. “Stay here,” I told her. “I’ll be back soon. Don’t leave for any reason.”
“All right, Wizard,” she said agreeably. “Or should I call you Daimbert, the way Mother does? Would you like that better?”
I closed the door without answering and hurried to the telephone. Whatever the bishop had to tell me, I did not think Antonia should hear it. But I immediately began to imagine the harm she could do to herself in my rooms, starting with pulling down a bookshelf on top of herself.
The bishop was actually smiling. “I must apologize, Daimbert, for bothering you yesterday. The man has returned, and I believe all my questions have been answered.”
“Well, that’s wonderful,” I said in amazement. “But- What happened?”
“He came up to me in the cathedral after the noon service,” said Joachim. “As you can imagine, I was quite surprised.” So was I, but I almost dared be encouraged. A demon would not, I thought, enter a consecrated cathedral to talk to a bishop. “He told me he wants to be a priest.”
“A priest?” First Celia and now the Dog-Man. I tried unsuccessfully to tell from the tiny image of Joachim’s face if he actually believed this or was only trying to persuade himself of it.
“He told me he has powers in himself he does not fully understand, but he feels God has called him and he wants to be trained to use those powers to help others.”
I myself didn’t believe a word of it. If what I had sensed down by the docks was accurate, this man had the highly unusual combination of magical abilities and contact with the supernatural. A holy man who could heal a wounded dog, maybe. A magic-worker who had the power to fix broken toys, just possibly. But this man had, if the stories were right, begun to kill just to restore life, and he did not dare talk to a wizard.
At least Antonia was safely in Yurt. “That’s good to hear, Joachim,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say without more information. “Let me know how it all works out.” As I returned to my chambers I thought that this man, whoever he was, seemed to have found the one certain way to defuse the bishop’s suspicions.
His questions might all be answered, but mine were just beginning. I found Antonia sitting in my best chair, legs straight out in front of her, poring over a book as though actually reading it. I smiled and reached for my copy of the Diplomatica Diabolica.
Leafing through it was not encouraging. I sneezed from dust; it had been a long time since I had had this volume off the shelf. It confirmed what I already knew, that a demon in human form would not be able to wander, unsummoned, into a cathedral. But a person who had sold his soul to the devil, who was using the black arts for supernatural effects, would still be able to do all the ordinary things, like enter churches, that the rest of us did, those of us who might well be damned but didn’t know it yet.
The book, being written by and for wizards, did not directly address the question the bishop might have asked, whether someone who had sold his soul could still save it by becoming a priest. But it was not encouraging. The book didn’t offer any way out at all for such a person-short perhaps (and only perhaps) of skilled negotiations by a demonology expert.
I reshelved the volume slowly, wondering if a demon would have too much sense of self-preservation to let the person who had summoned it spend time in close association with the saints who always clustered around churches. Saints, I told myself hopefully, should be perfectly capable of returning a demon to hell all by themselves, no matter what the book said.
“What’s this word, Wizard?” asked Antonia.
I realized with a start that she was not just pretending to read but was actually reading Elements of Transmogrification. “It’s the Hidden Language,” I said, scooping the book from her lap and returning it to the shelf. “Your mother and I will teach it to you when you’re older.”
She jumped down from the chair, indignant. “I was reading that! Give it back!”
“No, no. I’m sorry, Antonia, but it’s really not suitable for you.”
Tears started from her sapphire eyes, and she stamped a foot hard on my flagstone floor. “It’s not fair! You can’t just take my book away! Where’s my mother? I want my mother!”
I picked her up, trying to soothe her, but she wiggled free and began to cry in good earnest. “I was reading!”
“You’re just cranky because you didn’t have your nap,” I said encouragingly, feeling panic set in. “Maybe if you have your nap-”
“I am not cranky!” she shouted, tears pouring down her cheeks.
I gave up trying to calm a distraught little girl and lifted her from the floor with magic, startling her so much she stopped crying for a moment, and flew across the courtyard with her to the twins’ suite.
III
They were both there, Hildegarde wearing her leather tunic and sword belt but sitting disconsolately in the window seat, and Celia reading her Bible with an aggrieved angle to her chin as though finding things in it different from what the bishop had told her.
“You haven’t seen Paul, have you?” Hildegarde asked me but not as though she really cared. “The king really liked Justinia’s dress,” she added over her shoulder to her sister. “Maybe you should get one like it, Celia, if Father ever takes us to Xantium as he keeps saying he will,” but even this teasing sounded half-hearted. “Here,” to Antonia. “Stop crying and I’ll let you hold my knife.”
I was horror-struck, but Antonia gulped back her sobs and reached for the knife. Hildegarde closed the girl’s small fingers around the handle. “Hold it very carefully,” she said, “so nobody gets hurt.”
“The wizard wouldn’t let me read my book,” said Antonia, looking at me from under lowered eyebrows and holding the knife in a way I would have called threatening.