I was in exile from the royal castle of Yurt, probably permanently. I had lost any chance to see and talk freely with the queen, as I had done for close to twenty years, and with it I had lost my home, all because I had been a complete fool.
After a moment I forced myself to keep walking, trying to decide what it was about the young woman that brought this knowledge so vividly to me. It was not her appearance. As I tried to picture her face, I decided it was probably attractive, but it was nothing like the queen’s. I had passed dozens of other women in the street without any such reaction.
But those women had all looked past me without even noticing. This woman had looked at me as though she were my friend.
III
“I saw a magician today,” I told Joachim that evening. We again ate at the table by his eastern window, watching the sky darken.
“Did he summon the bat-winged monster?”
“I doubt it,” I said, wishing I had a more productive answer. “At first I thought I sensed some strange power in him, but then I realized that was only because he knows fire magic, of a very different sort from the magic they teach us at the school.” I decided not to mention my fleeting impression of two different sets of spells lingering about him, not wanting to bother the dean with my highly unlikely speculations about Sengrim’s dead spirit returning bodiless to possess a carnival magician. “He probably didn’t have anything to do with the monster or the giant lizard, but I still warned him away. If I’m going to find who in this city is working renegade magic, I don’t want to be distracted by some half-competent magic worker. Do you have magicians here often?”
“There is sometimes a magician in town for market day, and always for the big festivals,” said Joachim. “They do magic tricks on the corners for a few coins. But tell me: When will you find out why there was a monster on the tower and make sure there never is again?”
I looked into his intent dark eyes and felt embarrassed. Both of us looked away. “I can’t tell you,” I said. “The whole city feels full of magic, but it’s very unfocused.” For some reason I was reminded of the woman with the nut-brown hair, but there was no way I could mention her or the effect she had had on me.
We were both silent for a moment. “I called the wizards’ school from your office in the cathedral late this afternoon,” I added then. “I hope you don’t mind.” The dean shook his head without looking up. I thought about that conversation, about Zahlfast’s surprise that I was back in Caelrhon again. It had been disconcerting, after years of using telephones with far-seeing attachments, not to see him as I spoke to him.
“I already warned you about the priests,” he had said, uncomfortably loudly and clearly considering that I was talking to him on the priests’ telephone. “And Elerius tells me that Sengrim had long had disagreements with the crown prince of Caelrhon.” I didn’t like the suggestion that Elerius knew more than I did about the kingdom adjoining Yurt, but I did not interrupt. “You knew, didn’t you, that Sengrim only received the final year or two of his training here at the school, but it’s no use yet trying to persuade the royal family that a completely school-trained wizard would be less irritating to them. Let the prince’s resentment die down before we introduce a new wizard into the kingdom.”
“The Master was telling me there was some concern that aristocrats might be turning against their wizards,” I said. “You can reassure him that there’s nothing more to it than Prince Lucas.”
Zahlfast had not sounded as reassured as I expected. Instead he said slowly, “We’ve had indications that more is involved …”
Joachim poured himself another half-glass of wine but did not drink it. Instead he stared at the bottle. “The bishop wants to see you in the morning,” he said at last.
“The bishop? But I thought he understood that the cathedral needs a wizard here. Has Prince Lucas been talking to him?”
“I don’t think he’s going to order you away,” said Joachim, slowly enough that I began to fear that was exactly what he would do. Since no one wanted me here, not Prince Lucas, not the city council, and not the school, it would be entirely appropriate if the bishop didn’t either. “But anyone who serves the interests of the cathedral is to some extent under his authority, and he wants to meet you.”
I was not going to leave here without doing what I had come for, no matter who wanted me to go. The school, I told myself, was wrong, and I actively wanted to irritate the princes of Caelrhon. Besides, Joachim needed me. “Do you think I should entertain the bishop with some magic tricks?” I suggested.
He smiled, although rather faintly. “I thought you were a fully-qualified and competent wizard, not a magician,” he said, which was apparently meant as a joke. “You won’t need to do any flashy tricks; I think he mostly wants reassurance that you are not acting with any disrespect for religion.”
“That depends,” I thought but had the sense not to say, “on whether you’re defining religion as Christianity or the organized church.” Instead I changed the subject. “I was starting to tell you about this magician. His illusions are very poor; they wouldn’t fool anybody. But he knows the magic of fire!”
“The magic of fire?” Joachim asked politely.
“Even you priests know there are several different kinds of magic, corresponding to the different natural elements,” I said. “Most of the magic they teach in the school, including the whole technical magic division, is the magic of light and air. But there are other sorts of magic as well. There’s the magic of earth, herbal magic for the most part, which has never been incorporated into the school texts but which I learned from my predecessor at Yurt.”
“Indeed.” Joachim attempted to look interested.
“And there’s the magic of fire.” We had finished eating and were sitting back in our chairs, our legs stretched out under the table. “It’s a different branch of magic, with different rules and different spells. It doesn’t have very many applications unless you want to be able to start a blaze without flint and steel or to walk through fire without being burned.”
“So could this be what the Romney children had seen, a magician practicing fire-magic? Might this be related to the lights the watchmen have seen on the tower?”
If he thought I was trying to distract him from his concerns about the cathedral, he must feel I was doing a very poor job. “It’s possible,” I said, making one more attempt, “but the children also suggested they’d seen someone make himself invisible. That’s the magic of air, and hard magic-that ragged magician couldn’t possibly have done it, that is unless he’d somehow gotten hold of a ring of invisibility. You can attach a spell to a physical object, you know, and then the spell will work for anyone.”
“We have to find out who is summoning monsters and make him stop,” said Joachim, abandoning any pretense of interest in different kinds of magic and their uses. “What will happen if enormous lizards start appearing all over the city? Half the cathedral priests are already terrified, thinking that we saw the devil last night and he’ll be back for them tonight. The other half are outraged that anyone dare mock us like this. We are trying to act for the glory of God, and we are either being threatened or laughed at by a beast from hell.”
It did sound serious when he put it like that. I had been waiting to see if he would open a second bottle of wine, but instead he rose abruptly and started gathering the plates.
“We should make it an early night,” he said. “The bishop will want to see you first thing in the morning.”
I had expected the bishop to be tiny and frail. Instead there seemed to be a lot of him, or at least a lot of unexplained lumps under the blankets on the bed. Only his head protruded, propped up by pillows against a dark carved headboard. His skin was pale and he had no hair left.