“Your Highness, I am sorry I am late. Your messenger could not find me at first, and had to visit two of the theurgia before he did.” Edaytor tsk-tsked. “I was caught in a conversation with that damned magister of the Theurgia of Stars. Most boring man alive, but very influential...”
Olio was staring in his direction, but Edaytor got the feeling he was looking right through him. He saw the prince was holding a goblet.
“You haven’t been ... ?” He could not finish the question.
Olio shook his head as if coming out of a deep trance. He blinked and looked at Edaytor as though he was seeing him for the first time. “Edaytor? When did you get here? And why are you so late?”
“What is in your goblet?” Edaytor asked, not to be put off.
Olio held up the goblet. “Water,” he said, nodding to a small cask on the table. “Just water. Did you want some?”
Edaytor sniffed the air. He certainly could not smell any wine. “I was just saying how sorry I was for being late ...” He stopped and sniffed again. There was something else in the air, something extraordinary, something he had smelled only once before in his life.
“Is the patient still alive?” he asked absently.
“Oh, yes,” Olio answered.
“Then maybe we should start. Where’s the priest?”
Olio shrugged. “He was here when I arrived. I don’t know where he is now.”
“I see.” Edaytor left the kitchen and went into the special room set aside for the patients he and Olio were to heal. There was a single man there, young, robust, and sleeping. Sleeping peacefully.
He returned to the kitchen. “That priest has put the wrong patient into the room.”
“Actually, he didn’t.”
“I don’t understand. The man in the room seems perfectly healthy to me.”
“He is,” Olio said levelly.
“I must be getting old or senile,” Edaytor said. “I don’t understand what is going on here.”
He left the kitchen for the special room again. He bent over the man in the bed. There certainly seemed to be nothing wrong with him. Edaytor took a deep breath to clear his mind. And was struck by that smell again, but this time it was much stronger. He quickly looked around him. Where could it be coming from? It was almost as if the whole room was charged with—
No. He couldn’t have.
He returned to the kitchen. Olio was looking at him almost sheepishly.
“You used the Key by yourself, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
Edaytor pulled out a seat and sat at the table next to Olio. “What happened?”
“I’m not quite sure. I was standing over the p-p-patient, waiting for you to turn up, when it just happened.”
“It can’t just happen, your Highness,” Edaytor said. “Magic doesn’t work like that.”
“M-m-maybe there’s more to the Key than just m-m-magic,” Olio said.
“Why didn’t you stop?” Edaytor asked, his tone abrupt. “Why didn’t you wait for me?”
“Why are you so concerned?”
“I’ve warned you about the Key’s power. You know what it can to do to you even if you use it with a magicker’s help. Why did you do it?”
“Because I could,” Olio said simply.
“Your Highness—”
“I’m tired of this interrogation, Edaytor.”
“I see,” Edaytor said slowly.
“Are you so angry because you were left out?” Olio asked.
Edaytor blushed with sudden anger. “I don’t deserve that.”
Olio, who realized how hurtful his words had been, blushed then as well. “I am sorry, m-m-my friend. I did not m-m-mean that. But p-p—please understand, I did not have that m-m-much control over m-m-my actions in that room. I knew I could stop it if I really concentrated, but I didn’t want to stop it. It seemed as if I was m-m-meant to be there at that p-p-precise time to carry out that p-p-precise task.”
The prelate did not know what to say. He was afraid for the prince, for he was not trained in magic and the Key of the Heart was a much more powerful item of magic than any even he had come across before. Perhaps it could influence the prince to such an extent he was no longer entirely responsible for his own actions.
There were footsteps outside, and a moment later the priest entered the kitchen.
“Ah, Father!” Olio stood up in greeting. “I was wondering—”
Someone else came in behind the priest.
“P-p-primate P-p-powl,” Olio said quietly. “Delightful.”
Edaytor stood up, too. “This is a surprise,” he managed to say.
Powl smiled humorlessly at them. “I have no doubt. Please, your Highness, Prelate Fanhow, sit down. You both look exhausted.”
The two men sat down. The priest mumbled an excuse and left the room. Powl remained standing, looking carefully at the two men. “I think I deserve an explanation at last,” he said.
Olio and Edaytor exchanged quick glances.
“We had always meant to come to you,” Edaytor started, “but the right opportunity never seemed to come up.”
“It has now,” Powl countered.
“So it seems. Your Grace, we—that is, the prince and I— or rather the prince by himself, now—we—him, I mean, now, but before with me or with someone like me—I mean a magicker, of course ... Where was I up to?”
“What he m-m-means to say,” Olio said, “is that we entered an arrangement with your p-p-predecessor that allowed m-m-me to heal the dying using in combination the p-p-power of the Key of the Heart and the ability of a m-m-magicker, usually the p-p-prelate.”
“I was not far wrong, then,” Powl said. “I assumed the Key had something to do with it, but assumed you, your Highness, merely provided it while the prelate here did all the real work.”
“What are you going to do now?” Olio asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Will you close down the hospice, or tell Areava about what we are doing?”
Powl’s surprise was obvious. “Close down the hospice? Why? And doesn’t Areava already know?”
“The hospice was started under the understanding that the prince’s involvement would be kept secret,” Edaytor explained. “My concern was that the prince would be mobbed if word got out that he could heal the sick.”
“It is indeed a wonderful miracle,” Powl admitted. “But surely some kind of official office could have been established to deal with that—”
“Olio cannot perform the healing too often, or he suffers for it”
Powl waited for more information, buy Edaytor would say no more.
“Suffers?” the primate prompted.
“It tires me,” Olio admitted.
Powl bowed his head and thought for a moment. “It does more than tire you, doesn’t it?” he asked eventually. “Two of my novitiates found you on the street once, remember?”
Olio sighed unhappily. “Ah, that was you in the room that time?”
“Indeed. Don’t worry, your secret was safe even from me: Primate Northam refused to tell me what you had been doing. Your drunkenness, however, was a secret from no one except your sister.”
“She learned of it, nonetheless,” Olio admitted.
“And now? How do you handle the strain now?”
“Well, I think,” the prince said a little too quickly. Powl saw Edaytor look down at the floor.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?”
“I cured a p-p-patient b-b-by m-m-myself tonight for the first time.”
“You used the Key’s magic without the prelate’s help?”
Olio nodded.
“This is astounding,” the primate said, more to himself than the others.
“What will you do?” Olio asked.
“Do? Nothing, I think. What can I do? I will not stop you carrying out your work at the hospice, as long as you guarantee me that you will never place your own life at risk here.”
“I do p-p-promise that,” Olio said.
“Well, then, we have come to an understanding. I hope both of you feel you can trust me more readily.”
“Yes, of course,” Edaytor said quickly.