Although we in the Western Kingdoms tended to consider the kingdoms east of the mountains as “eastern,” in fact there was a very long distance past them still to go into the East. The multitude of small kingdoms and principalities where the Romneys were believed to have originated formed a barrier between our Western Kingdoms and the true East. Far beyond that region, in the old imperial city of Xantium, they must consider our Western and Eastern Kingdoms an undifferentiated western mass.
The streets of Caelrhon were packed, as they always were these days, and I had to thread my way carefully toward the city gates. The square in front of the cathedral, once the main market square of Caelrhon, had for several years been full of construction equipment, and now rising from the center was what would someday be the great doors and flanking towers of the new cathedral. So far the doors opened not into a cathedral nave but only onto more piled timbers, stones, and vats of mortar, but every time I was in town I could see that the crew had brought the new church one small step closer.
Beyond the city gates the dense crowds thinned out rapidly, though a number of people besides me seemed to be heading toward the Romney encampment. Today the brightly-painted caravans were surrounded by horses. Afternoon sun shown on glistening coats, black, bay, and dapple, and summer breezes ruffled manes and tales. The Romneys themselves in their black and red ducked and dodged their way between the animals, talking confidently to the other people there.
The Romneys, it seemed, were holding a horse-fair. Knights and merchants and a few farmers milled around the encampment, both buying and selling. Horses stamped, kicked, and bared their teeth at each other. Some of these were riding horses, some plow horses, and a few unbroken colts. On every side I heard extravagant claims by would-be sellers of the virtues of horses that looked no different to me than those that were being harshly criticized by would-be buyers.
But it did look as though all the adult Romneys were involved. The children were half a mile away, playing by themselves. I wandered toward them, trying not to draw attention to myself from the adults. High white clouds sat on the horizon, but the sky above was clear.
“There’s the wizard!” one of the boys called, breaking away from the rest to run toward me. “Make me another snake!”
It was the same boy, peering at me with shiny black eyes from under shaggy hair, to whom I had first spoken a few days ago. The other children raced to gather around us. Again I made an illusory ruby-eyed snake that curled up his arm and quivered its tongue at him. “Now make it real!” he said.
I shook my head, smiling. “That’s beyond the reach of natural magic,” I said.
“How about the Dog-Man?” a girl suggested. “I’m sure he could do it!” One of the other children elbowed her hard, and there was suddenly a bashful silence.
My illusory snake was fading fast. “When I was here before,” I said, looking at the children with a wizardly scowl, “you told me none of you had ever met the Dog-Man. But I think now you really had, even though you might not have realized it at the time.” The children shuffled their feet, and I knew I was right. “He’s the same man who traveled to Caelrhon with you a few weeks ago, isn’t he. He’s calling himself Cyrus now; what name did he give you?”
The children, laughed, embarrassed. “When did you find out that the man the children in the city were talking about was one you already knew well?” I pressed them.
“You can’t blame us for not knowing who he was,” the oldest boy piped up. “He never did things like bring dogs back to life when traveling with us! Maybe,” he added thoughtfully and unconvincingly, “he knew we’d see straight through his illusions.”
I myself had long since given up any hope that what this man was doing was mere illusion. “Tell me more about him,” I suggested, jingling coins ostentatiously in my pockets.
“Well, I decided to go into town and see him,” announced one of the girls, tossing her hair. “We’d heard such strange things about him-and you had asked us about him, Wizard-that I went down by the river to find him. And it was Cyrus!”
The oldest boy apparently decided that as long as the story was out anyway he might as well tell me what he knew and at least get the credit for it. “He always told us his name was Cyrus,” he broke in. “But he never told us he was a wizard.”
“Where did he join you?” I asked casually, not wanting to show how urgently I wanted to know.
“East of the mountains. We were heading this way for the summer, and he came up to our camp, asking if we’d ever heard of Yurt …”
I went cold. Vlad had lived in the Eastern Kingdoms, far beyond the mountains. Could he himself be Cyrus, here bent on vengeance against me?
“We told him we were going to Caelrhon, which was very close to Yurt,” said the boy, taking my attentive silence as an invitation to continue.
But nothing that I remembered of Vlad suggested he would decide to become a priest. Mentally I shook my head. I was letting my imagination get carried away. There could be plenty of explanations both for the attack on the castle and for this very strange miracle-worker without having to imagine it had something to do with long-ago events or even with me. Elerius had thought it might, but even Elerius, I told myself firmly, could be wrong.
“Did he say anything about wanting to enter the seminary?” I asked. The children were growing restless, finding the topic of Cyrus rather dull and clearly wondering if I was going to do anything with my coins besides jingle them.
“He asked us if we were Christian,” said the girl who had spoken before. “I told him we weren’t. By the way, are you wizards Christian? Some priest came out from the city last week and was trying to make us go to his church, and I told him to start on wizards before bothering us!”
“Wizards are Christian,” I said hastily, not wanting to go into detail on the millennia-old conflict between magic and religion, and pulled out a handful of coppers. I divided them between the girl and the oldest boy, and when I headed back toward town they were busily counting and assessing how they should be distributed.
So Cyrus had come west with the Romneys, I thought, strolling through the sun-warmed meadows. And he had been looking deliberately for Yurt. This need not have anything to do with Vlad to be distinctly ominous. The dark chill on the summer day had nothing to do with the weather.
But what could have possessed this strange half-wizard to enter Joachim’s seminary?
I sat down in the shade of a tree, thinking that I ought to demand that the bishop forbid this man to talk to Celia, or for that matter to anyone, and that he be expelled from seminary. But it was going to be hard to do so without any information more solid than what I had bought from a group of children not generally credited with high standards of honesty. It would be especially hard since I was still mortified enough by behavior I was now trying to pretend had never happened that I was unsure how I could ever face Joachim again.
V
I must have fallen asleep sitting under the tree, because the next thing I knew I found myself half-slumped at a very awkward angle, and the tree’s shadow stretched long across the meadow.
Rubbing a stiff neck, I sat up and looked toward the Romney encampment. The breeze that made silver tracks in the long grass was cooler now. The horse fair seemed over; the last steeds were being led away. Well, I thought, it seemed only appropriate that a day that had begun with nightmare-inspired madness should end without my accomplishing anything at all.