Daughter of Magic - Wizard of Yurt - 5 (13 page)

Murderous jealousy, I thought with a belated return of the good sense that had eluded me for hours, would have been more appropriate in a boy thirty years younger. Wizards are bound by iron oaths to help mankind, not to kil them, not even false friends who hide their philandering under a cloak of religion. But I had gone too far to back down now, I thought, clenching my jaw. Nothing the bishop could say or do would stop me now.

But then his eyes calmly met mine. He took a deep breath and turned empty hands palms up. “If you must, then you must. I forgive you and shal bless you as I die.” Dear God. My knees were suddenly so weak I could scarcely stand. I leaned back against the wal and put a hand over my eyes. If he had tried to run, I would have paralyzed him with a quick spel. If he had tried desperately to plead for mercy, I would have mocked him to his face. If he had screamed for his attendants, I would have blasted them with magic fire. But by doing none of these things, by surrendering at once, he had unmanned me completely.

He reached past me to turn the key in the door, locking us in together. “Before you kil me,” he asked mildly, “could you tel me why?” Even the wal would no longer support me. Exhaustion and failure hit me together. I found myself on my knees, my face resting on the polished wood of the bishop’s desk, unable to speak and scarcely to breathe for fear I would start sobbing. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do anything—not because I had finaly remembered the responsibilities that come with wizardry’s power, but because my wil to act was gone.

He had taken Theodora from me and I could not get revenge, could not demand her return, could not even threaten him. In a minute I felt a hand stroking my hair.

Murder victims are not supposed to reassure their murderers. I took a deep, shuddering breath, wiped my eyes with a sleeve, and sat back on my heels to look at him.

“Why do you need to kil me, Daimbert?” he asked again.

Any other man in the twin kingdoms he would have caled, “My son.” If he had, I might have worked up enough indignation to try again. But it was now too late.

“Don’t worry,” I said wearily, although he did not look worried. “I’m not going to kil you after al.” We looked at each other in silence for a minute. “I would have thought you’d be terrified,” I said then.

“Did you think I was joking?”

He shook his head, continuing to hold my eyes. “I’ve known you too long. I stil do not always understand your sense of humor, but at least I think I know when you’re not joking.” He paused, then continued thoughtfuly, “Maybe I should have been terrified. But as bishop, I need to keep life and death constantly in my thoughts.” I wondered briefly and irrelevantly how terrified another bishop would have been.

“I know my sins,” he continued, “and am filed with remorse and the knowledge that I do not deserve salvation. But I also know the mercy and loving kindness of God, Who may save even a sinner like me.” Fury slowly built in me again, but I was too weak to do anything about it, and, besides, I had already said I would not kil him. “Don’t be complacent,” I said in a low voice. “God may not forgive you quite as readily as you like to think. I should have realized how deeply you were sunk in sin when I heard a demon had boldly entered your cathedral. And this time you haven’t merely sinned against God. You’ve sinned against me.”

His dark eyes were genuinely puzzled. “Then I must beg your forgiveness, Daimbert. But you stil haven’t said why you have to kil me.” I started to speak and changed my mind. How could I have been so wrong?

A short time ago I had been absolutely certain. I had not just thought, not just decided, but known. Now that knowledge was gone so thoroughly it was hard to believe it had ever existed. And the bishop was stil waiting for me to say something.

I’ve noticed this before. The earth never opens and swalows you up when you need it. But someone who had just been threatened with murder deserved an answer, especialy someone who had been my best friend for twenty-five years.

I tried to say it and couldn’t. The silence became long and uncomfortable. At last I was able to force it out euphemisticaly: “You’ve made Theodora stop loving me.” He immediately knew exactly what I meant and was immediately furious. His dark eyes blazed, and he half rose from his chair.

This was a new experience. I could only ever remember Joachim truly angry with me once before in al the years I’d known him. He might take my threat to kil him very calmly, but not the suggestion that he had broken his vows of chastity—especialy with the woman his oldest friend loved.

“How do you dare—” He stopped and took a deep breath then, and I could see him fighting back his anger as though it were a physical presence. “No,” he said, quietly and icily.

“I know that now,” I said quickly.

He gave me a long, burning look. “I swear to you, by the blood Christ shed for us, that I have never touched her.” I dropped my eyes, deeply shamed. I was fairly sure bishops were not supposed to utter oaths like that. When I finaly dared look up again, Joachim was examining his hands as though he had never seen them before.

But he suddenly looked up at me and did the last thing I expected: he smiled. He was certainly ful of surprises today

“No wonder you wanted to kil me,” he said. “Wel, I am grateful you did not. You were right to cal me complacent.” He shook his head ruefuly. “Sin always awaits us, no matter how carefuly we think we guard against it. I had not realized that wrath could overcome Christian charity so easily”

He put a hand on my shoulder. “Forgive my anger if you can, and tel me why you think someone has taken Theodora's love from you.” He smiled again. “We talk about you frequently, and I know she loves you dearly.”

Theodora and I sat on opposite sides of the gold-ceilinged room. I myself would have preferred to have her next to me, my arms around her, but she seemed to prefer it this way.

After several hours’ unconsciousness here in the bishop’s best guest chamber, the one where visiting church dignitaries stayed, I felt both rational again and deeply humiliated by my own actions. I had been guilty of some very strange behavior at times in the past, but this had gone beyond al bounds, even for me. In retrospect I could not imagine what madness could have impeled me to do something so eminently likely to lose me both my best friend—even if I hadn’t kiled him—and the woman I loved. The wizards’ school would doubtless have agreed— not even raising a perfunctory request for mercy such as the cathedral would have forced itself to make—when the city authorities condemned me to hang. Theodora’s unwilingness to sit any closer seemed only appropriate.

“Theodora, you know I’d do anything for you. I’d die for you.”

She smiled and shook her head. “I realize you think you mean it, but that’s what the boys always tel the girls in al the songs.”

“I’d give up wizardry for you.”

“We’ve already been through that many times. You couldn’t give up magic, no matter how much you wanted to, no matter how hard you tried.” I was rapidly running low on sacrifices I could make for her. “Then what can I do?”

She gave the worst possible answer. “I don’t want you to do anything.”

We sat in silence for a minute. “Can I stil visit you and Antonia?” I asked then, trying not to sound abject and not succeeding.

“Of course,” she said in surprise. “It would take more than a nightmare to change that. You’re sure she’s al right alone in the castle?”

“I told you I telephoned Gwennie this morning,” I said wearily. I had talked to Elerius as wel, making sure no more magical attacks had taken place while I was gone, but I did not want to bother Theodora now with undead warriors.

Silence stretched out again between us. “Wel,” I said then, putting hands on my knees preparatory to rising, “if there’s nothing I can do to make you love me, then maybe I should get back to Yurt.” I waited to see if she would say anything but she didn’t. “At least Antonia seemed happy when I told her I was her father.” Theodora abruptly smiled, with the lift of her brows and the dimple that I loved. “I’m so glad you told her! She had been asking about you the last few weeks, but I thought you would enjoy teling her yourself.”

It was as though the cool, reserved tone our conversation had taken had suddenly broken. I did not dare move but waited to see what Theodora would say next. She came across the room, took me by the ears and kissed me. “Maybe even in the bishop’s palace it won’t be too sinful to kiss the man I love.”

I wrapped my arms around her so she couldn’t get away again. “I don’t understand you, Theodora,” I said into her hair, feeling happiness breaking over me in spite of myself. “Why do you have to be so conventional sometimes? Why can’t you just tel me what you feel?”

She pushed herself back to look at me, though I kept a grip tight enough to forestal any attempts to escape. “Considering that you cal me a witch,” she said, a smile twitching the corner of her lips, “I’m surprised to hear myself suddenly accused of conventionality.”

“You were just sitting there coldly, listening to me say I would do anything to make you love me, saying you didn’t want me to do anything!”

“Of course I don’t want you to do anything,” she said with a hint of a laugh. “I already love you! But it’s not respect for ‘convention’ that makes me feel that I should try to rise above concerns of the flesh here, as the bishop would surely want us to do. It’s respect for him, as the representative of God. He is so far above al of us— knowing him as wel as you do, you must surely feel it too.” It might be nothing like my nightmare, but in some areas she stil felt more strongly about Joachim than me. I puled her tighter to avoid meeting her eyes and maybe seeing something which—I managed to persuade myself—I would not see anyway.

“But I think he might understand now,” she said, kissing the side of my face. “When he sent for me he said you were very upset and had had a nightmare that I didn’t love you.” Her voice took on a teasing note. “Since you came to him yourself for comfort and guidance, why be surprised that I respect him as much as you do?” It was more than I deserved that Joachim had not told her that I had threatened to kil him.

“But I don’t folow your reasoning, Daimbert,” she said more seriously. “Somehow I think you’re saying that because I have tried to be a mother on my own, acting strong for Antonia’s sake no matter how hard it is to be separated from you, rejecting the easy path of tying you down with marriage, I’m being conventional?”

“It’s because you want me to behave like an ordinary, unmarried wizard, while you try to act like a virtuous, self-supporting seamstress,” I said lamely.

“It is deliberate, Daimbert,” she said quietly. “If I want Antonia to have any sort of normal childhood, I have to be above suspicion of being just one more woman who threw away her virtue—I hope you are not equating convention with morality! And I realy don’t care what ‘ordinary, unmarried’ wizards do. Al I want is what wil make you happiest, and that is not being driven out of Yurt by your king and snubbed by your school.”

It was clearly no use to argue with her or to point out that she was not giving me the chance to make decisions for myself. And if she worried more about morality than I did— Wel, wizards had never had much use for religion anyway.

Something in her comment teased out a thought about Elerius. Would he hold over me threats of revealing al to the school in order to bind me to him for purposes of his own?

But I didn’t have the time or energy to worry about him. I looked into Theodora’s amethyst eyes and managed to smile. “I guess I’d better make it up to the bishop for breaking in on him this morning by trying again to find out more about the strange magic-worker here in the city.”

IV

Theodora had not seen the Dog-Man, but I hoped to learn more from Celia. Escaping from the bishop s palace, I crossed town to the little castle belonging to the kings of Yurt, where the royal family stayed when visiting Caelrhon. As I hoped, the duchess’s daughters were there.

Hildegarde looked irritated and bored, but Celia appeared to be experiencing intense joy. “Thank you for sending me here, Wizard,” she said, taking both my hands. ‘This is the chance I have long waited for, that I feared might not exist, and I would not have it but for you.”

“The chance for what?” I said, too startled to appreciate her gratitude.

“To study for the priesthood, of course,” said Celia. “I’ve been so happy that I’ve been sending pigeon-messages to al the people who have encouraged me over the years in a religious vocation.” And these, I felt fairly certain, did not include her parents.

“She met that Dog-Man al right,” said Hildegarde, leaning against the doorjamb and cleaning her nails with a knife. “And now that the bishop has accepted him into the seminary he’s promised to come teach her in the evenings everything he learns during the day.”

Celia shot a sharp glance at her sister but said only, “I told you not to cal him Dog-Man anymore. The children cal him that, of course, as a sign of affection, but his real name is Cyrus.” Cyrus. So at least now I had a name to go with the fragmentary and contradictory things about him I had learned from Theodora and the bishop.

“His religious vocation is so strong,” Celia went on eagerly, “that he spends most nights in prayer, lying before the high altar in the cathedral.” This, I thought grudgingly, might explain why I had not been able to find him when I was here before. He wouldn’t have had to be hiding from me deliberately. In prayer, he would enter the supernatural realm of the saints and be beyond the reach of my magic. “Any particular sins he’s trying to atone for with al this penitent prayer?” I asked, half as a joke.

But Celia did not take it as a joke. “He feels terrible urges within himself,” she said in a low voice. “That— that is why he has kiled innocent creatures. That is what he hopes he wil overcome through penitence and through immersion in the sanctity of the seminary.”

“Does the bishop know this?” I asked in amazement.

“He—” She hesitated, then pushed on. “Cyrus may not have told His Holiness everything.”

And she already had my own authorization to act behind the bishop’s back, I thought grimly.