“It’s related,” I said. “I can teach it to you too. But I didn’t realize you knew any of the magic of light and air.”
“You mean making myself invisible? Isn’t a witch entitled to a few secrets?”
She was enjoying teasing me, but I had been too worried about her to be teased right now. I still had an arm around her firm, muscular shoulders. “What is it, a ring of invisibility?”
She became serious and reached back into her pocket. “I hadn’t wanted to tell you at first, because I was afraid you would tell me it wasn’t something suitable for a witch and try to take it away from me.”
“What have I done to make you think that?” I protested.
“My mother had it before me,” she said, “and her mother and grandmother before her.” She had it in her palm, a heavy gold circle without any stone or ornament. I took it carefully and looked inside. It was engraved with very tiny letters, too small to see clearly without a magnifying glass, but they looked like the angular letters of the Hidden Language.
“What’s the inscription?” I asked, handing the ring back.
“I don’t know. It might be a spell of some sort.”
“I’ll read it for you if I can look at it with a glass,” I said. “Do you always carry the ring?”
“Always. But I don’t like to use it very often, especially since I started seeing those things.”
“What ‘things’?” I demanded.
But she was smiling at me. “Thank you for rescuing me. Even with my ring, I can’t hide my shadow.” She put her skirt back on and shook out her hair. Although I was fairly sure that, with her climbing ability and ring of invisibility, she would have been able to protect herself quite well, it was gratifying to be considered a rescuing hero.
“Rings of invisibility are rare,” I told her as we started to walk back toward the city. “But the spell to make things invisible is so difficult that wizards who can master it attach that spell to rings more than any other kind of spell.”
“Can you make yourself invisible with just your Hidden Language?” She gave me a challenging look from under long lashes.
“I can, but don’t ask me to do it now. I know you’ll make me laugh, and then it won’t work.”
“You’re just nervous about having to see those things.”
“What ‘things’ do you mean?” I asked again.
“I don’t know what wizards call them. Those little creatures-except some of them aren’t very little. I don’t see them every time; I didn’t see them this time.”
“Oh,” I said, wondering what she could possibly have seen. I would have to look at the inscription on the ring very soon.
“I’ve already taught you most of my fire magic,” said Theodora, “even though you still need to practice the spells against being burnt. Maybe in return for your magic I should teach you how to climb the real way, without flying.”
“But I don’t have your suppleness or your muscles.”
“That takes practice too, just as magic does,” she said in the tone of a reproving school teacher.
I laughed and put my arm across her shoulders. She was exactly the right height to fit under my arm. She put her own arm around my waist and we walked hips together, matching strides, back toward town.
On the walk out to the quarry, I had thought three miles long, in spite of the sunshine and flower-scented air. Now I would have been happy to walk twice as far. At some point without noticing I seemed to have fallen in love.
III
Joachim asked me somewhat stiffly the next morning if I would mind not joining him for dinner that night. “I have invited the other officers over,” he said, “so that we may discuss in perhaps a more relaxed setting than the cathedral office what we shall need to do as the bishop’s illness continues.”
“Of course,” I said, thinking that the dean was surely hoping to get some of the other cathedral officers to take up some of the double burden he was carrying, while the rest of them were doubtless intending to accuse him of introducing into the city the wizard responsible for all their problems-and maybe even the bishop’s illness itself. The cantor Norbert, whom I suspected from something Joachim had said of having long had aspirations of being elected bishop himself, would doubtless lead the accusations: from his point of view, the dean was assuring his own election by taking over the bishop’s duties now. “Are you sure you wouldn’t feel more comfortable if I moved out,” I asked, “maybe went to stay in an inn?”
The dean looked up. “I asked you to stay with me, Daimbert,” he said soberly and apologetically, “and am sorry if you are still uneasy here.”
I shook my head and went out, mumbling something unconvincing about still looking for traces of magical apparitions. But Theodora was busy finishing a new dress for the mayor’s wife, so I was back not much later, letting myself in quietly with the spare key Joachim had given me because I knew he would be at the cathedral and I didn’t want to disturb his servant.
But as I stepped inside I heard a voice from the study. It was Norbert. “Remember,” he was saying, low and fierce, “you never saw me here.”
Intensely interested, I went still and amplified the sound of voices with magic.
But I heard no one answer Norbert. He spoke again. “You seem to pride yourself on rarely speaking. Trust me: your silence now will be for the good of the Church. So just don’t speak this time.” There was another pause. “Do you want me to tell the dean about that time you stood shouting and cursing in the middle of the market square? It happened before he moved here from Yurt, and I doubt he’s ever heard the story. I’m sure he’d find it most interesting.”
There was another silence. “Good,” said Norbert with satisfaction. “Remember, I have not asked you to do anything to harm your master. Just don’t tell him I was here or touch this.”
Rapid steps were coming my way. I made myself invisible just in time. Norbert came within an inch of brushing against me as he opened the front door. Fortunately the entry was dim and I cast no shadow. His face, close to mine, did not look evil, but there was a desperation in his eyes that contrasted with the good-natured if somewhat self-righteous lines that the years had put around his mouth.
Could he have summoned a bat-winged monster to the cathedral? Not without a lot of help, I concluded, just barely getting in a quick magical probe before the door slammed behind him. There was not the slightest indication that he knew any wizardry.
But what had he left in the dean’s study? Still invisible, I went quietly into the room, in time to see Joachim’s silent servant, his expression anguished, hurrying out the far side.
It didn’t take long to find it. On the bottom shelf of a wide oak bookshelf, tucked almost entirely behind some heavy theological treatises so that no one would see it unless they were looking for it, was a book of magic.
I pulled it out carefully. To a wizard it almost shimmered with the residual spells of the magic-workers over the generations who had used it. And it had been used for generations. It was written on parchment sheets in a number of different hands, bound in calf made rough by long use. Half a dozen names had been written on the flyleaf, below five stars and a pentagram, but all the names were heavily crossed out. The parchment leaves were soft with much handling, but the book fell open to a place marked with a fresh red velvet ribbon. Above the words of the Hidden Language was a heading in the sharply-angled handwriting of a wizard or magician who might have been dead for centuries: “How to poison a rival with a slow-acting poison.”
I slammed the book shut and retreated to my room, so indignant and so furious that it was lucky for Norbert he was no longer in the house. Nobody was going plant false evidence, accusing Joachim of poisoning the bishop, while I was in Caelrhon.