Below the Wizards' Tower (The Royal Wizard of Yurt Book 8) (6 page)

“Titus may not be free to accompany
you,” said the Master thoughtfully.
 
“But you do need another wizard, for protection.”

“
Not
Elerius,” I said quickly.

“We were not going to suggest him,”
he replied mildly, lifting a shaggy eyebrow.

In the end, it turned out that all
of the senior wizards had classes, appointments, and other responsibilities for
the afternoon.
 
So when I set out at
last, it was with a recent graduate, a young wizard who was staying on at the
school as an assistant.

“You’re Daimbert,” he said, with the
first sign of awe anyone had showed toward me in a very long time.
 
“We read in class about how you invented
the far-seeing telephone.”

“Just keep your eyes open,” I told
him, “but leave the spells to me.”
 
This was, I thought, deeply humiliating.
 
Who had kept his king safe all through
the East and managed to escape from an Ifrit?
 
Certainly not someone
who needed a callow young wizard to guard him.

V

We were only a block from the
school, starting down the steep hill toward the restaurant, when I spotted a
tall, dark-robed figure heading toward us.

“Joachim!”
 
I lifted from the cobblestones and flew
to meet him.
 
We took each other by
both hands, and his smile, one of the best smiles I had ever seen on him, would
have made me hug him if it wouldn’t have scandalized the young assistant wizard.

“Thank God you are safe,” he
said.
 
“I heard you were tied up to
drown in a cave?”

“Not quite, close enough,” I
answered, grinning myself.
 
“But as
you see, I didn’t drown.”

“I was hoping to see you before I
started back to Caelrhon.
 
I believe
I have gathered all the information I need for now on cathedral architects and
masons, but I did not want to leave town without assurance that you really were
all right.”

“Then let’s have that lunch we
didn’t have yesterday.
 
I’ll pay!”

It took the young wizard just one
glance at the prices posted on the menu outside to decide he wasn’t very
hungry.
 
“I can pay for you too,” I
offered without enthusiasm, but was happy to accept his offer to stay out in
the street and watch the door.

The restaurant was nearly as busy at
lunch as it had been for dinner the other day, but we managed a window table
where I could look out at the young wizard pacing up and down.
 
He looked both bored and irritated,
which would have been my reaction as well.

I looked for but did not see the
waitress with the curly red hair who had thought I was Marcus.
 
When another waitress, an older woman
who gave no sign of recognition, came to take our order, I asked after her.

“It’s her day off,” she said with
complete indifference.
 
“Now, did
you want to start with mussels or the chowder?
 
I always like the chowder myself.”

I could try to find out where she
lived—the place which Marcus should have remembered, even after a
year—but she thought Marcus had not been in the City recently, so it was,
I thought, unlikely that I could find him through her.
 
Instead I would enjoy spending some time
with Joachim.

While our bowls of chowder were
being brought and wine uncorked we kept the conversation light.
 
“
Alais
and Yan
are doing well,” he said, referring to a couple I knew who now lived in
Caelrhon.
 
“I baptized their third
child this spring.”

But when no one seemed in easy
earshot, I told Joachim about the mysterious Marcus, and how my efforts to find
him in a disreputable part of town had led to my being paralyzed and left all
day concealed in a sea-cave, though fortunately above the tideline.

“This is the danger of magic,” he
said gravely.
 
“You wizards have
enormous power but none of religion’s morality.”

I thought of several answers I might
have made and let them all pass.
 
The problem with having a priest for a friend was that we had had some
version of this discussion dozens of times, and I was never going to change his
mind.

“But I was also saved by a wizard,”
I replied.
 
“And the one who
paralyzed me could have killed me, but he didn’t.
 
We school-trained wizard
are
bound by powerful oaths not to harm.”

“As long as terrifying someone into
thinking he’s about to die is not seen as ‘harm,’” he commented.
 
It was probably meant as a joke.

“I just wish I could find this
Marcus,” I said, ignoring the joke.
 
“But if he was here, it may have been only very briefly.”

There was a short pause while the
waitress brought our sole,
then
Joachim said, “Do you
think there is a renegade wizard here in the City?
 
One who is not school-trained and
oath-bound?”

“Elerius was looking for such a
renegade.”

Joachim knew who Elerius was.
“Yesterday the chancellor told me that a wizard he did not recognize had come
to the cathedral office.
 
He was
asking for the bishop.
 
Apparently
the chancellor sent him away with a sharp word.
 
I am sorry, Daimbert, but the cathedral
here is barely able to tolerate the school wizards they have come to know, and
will not have dealings with strange wizards at all.
 
Could this have been the renegade who
captured you?”

“Elerius
said
he
couldn’t find him, that if a renegade had ever been in the City, then he was
gone again.
 
But in fact—”

I stopped, almost choking on a bite
of vegetable.
 
Outside the window
was Elerius himself.

He stood talking for a moment to the
young assistant wizard, who then turned and started back up the hill, quickly
vanishing into the crowd.
 
Elerius
swung open the restaurant door and came in with the assurance of coming into
his own chamber.
 
He spotted me at
once, snagged an empty chair from a nearby table, and sat down with us.

The waitress came hurrying over,
with a friendly smile
such
as she had not given
me.
 
“No, I don’t need a menu,” said Elerius
easily.
 
“I’ll just have a bowl of
your delicious chowder.”

He lifted his eyebrows at Joachim,
who gave him a long look, then said, “I believe we met once.
 
I am Father Joachim, a cathedral canon
in Caelrhon, but I used to be the Royal Chaplain of Yurt.”
 
He held out a hand, and Elerius shook it
almost automatically.
 
For a second even
he seemed overawed by the intensity of Joachim’s deep-set eyes.

I found my voice.
 
“So, have you come to tell me of your
progress finding the renegade wizard?”
 
Although I was fairly sure there was no such “renegade,” I was not going
to give him the satisfaction of insisting there was.

“Here’s your chowder, sir,” said the
waitress, again with a very friendly smile.
 
Elerius seemed able to charm people
effortlessly, I thought to myself as the waitress bustled away again, a skill I
only managed if they imagined I was somebody else.

“I think the renegade must have
realized I was after him and fled,” said Elerius, regaining his composure.
 
He tucked into his soup with evident
enjoyment.
 
“Oh, by the way,”
looking at me with calculating tawny eyes, “I think I found the man you
referred to as ‘Marcus,’ the one who looks like you.”

I was getting too many shocks to
enjoy my lunch properly.
 
I forced
myself to put more sole on my fork.
 
“Oh?” I said, determinedly looking at my plate.

“As soon as you’re done, I’ll take
you to him,” said Elerius.
 
“I sent
that young wizard back to the school—no use
two
of us
following you around, especially as I know you could protect yourself now that
you’re on guard, using your
special talents.
”

“Where is this Marcus?” I asked, trying
to keep my voice steady and unconcerned, still not looking up.
 
Only Elerius could make a sentence whose
words
were a compliment sound
like such an insult.

“You’ll see when we get there.”
 
He dropped his voice and glanced from
side to side as though in apprehension.
 
I was not fooled.
 
“No
telling who might be listening in a place like this.”

“I hope it is not far,” said Joachim
mildly.
 
He appeared to be enjoying
his sole.
 
“I cannot fly the way you
wizards can, and I will be accompanying Daimbert.”

Elerius was momentarily thrown
off-stride, but he covered it well.
 
“Oh, that won’t be necessary.
 
I doubt that
prayers
would do much to protect
Daimbert from renegade magic.
 
You
can trust me to make sure no harm comes to him.”

“I am afraid I cannot give you that
trust,” said Joachim, sounding regretful.
 
“You see, I am a priest, and we are taught in seminary to distrust all
magic-workers.
 
Daimbert and I have
become friends over the years, but it would be too much to expect me to trust
two
wizards.
 
And I have been hearing
from Daimbert about Marcus.
 
I wish
to meet him as well.”

“Oh, well, in that case….” Elerius
muttered, momentarily without a good answer.
 
Probably planning to drop Joachim off
somewhere, I thought.
 
Like in the
sea-caves.

“Thank you,” I murmured to Joachim,
then, “We can’t leave here without dessert,” I added brightly.
 
“I was too full the other night, but I
hear the blueberry tart is excellent.”

My mind raced while the waitress
brought three servings of blueberry tart.
 
Unfortunately my mind did not come up with any good ideas for all its
racing.
 
About its best insight was
that, given how much dessert cost, it was too bad that I found I could not
taste it at all.

When we had finished—Joachim
appeared to find the tart delicious, though it was harder to tell with
Elerius—the friendly waitress handed Elerius the bill for all three of
us.

“Why, thank you!” I said with my
best smile.
 
“You didn’t have to
treat us, Elerius!
 
But we do
appreciate it.”

He shot me a dark look but said
nothing as he took out his money.
 
I
felt inordinately pleased with this small triumph—which was not going to
help at all if he planned to immobilize me somewhere again.

But he was fully in control when we
went out into the street.
 
“We’re
just going back to the school,” he said.
 
“I trust even a
priest
can walk that far.”

Change of plans?
I wondered.
 
Working his nefarious
plots right under the noses of the masters would be too bold, even for him.

Unless I was
completely mistaken about him.
 
After all, I had been mistaken before about a remarkable number of
things.

We went in a side door of the school
and down a corridor that seemed unfamiliar.
 
Whatever Joachim’s earlier qualms about
entering the West’s center for institutionalized magic, he gave no sign of
concern.
 
Elerius paused at a
narrow, unmarked door and took out a key.

“Marcus, it turns out, is from the
northern borderlands, near the land of wild magic,” he said, just a tiny bit
too loudly.
 
Covering a lie, I
thought.
 
“He said he would be happy
to help the school identify some of the magical creatures that have been
collected over the years and kept in the cellars, without anyone knowing
exactly what they were.
 
He’s down
there now.”
 
He unlocked the door,
revealing a flight of stairs lit dimly by a lamp part way down.

“Since when, ” I asked slowly, “have
you
become the master of magical creatures?”

“Oh, he’ll be working with Titus,”
said Elerius briskly.
 
“I was just
happy, when you mentioned seeing this man, that finding him for you turned out
to be more than satisfying my curiosity.
 
He’ll be a real help to the school.
 
Why don’t you head on down?”

Joachim turned his enormous dark
eyes on Elerius.
 
“I regret as much
as anyone the distrust between wizardry and the church which has grown up over
the centuries.
 
But I must insist
that you go down first.”

Good!
 
I gave Joachim a quick grin, but I
wasn’t sure he caught it.
 
Elerius,
appearing unconcerned, immediately started down the dark stairs.
 
After only the briefest hesitation, I
followed, Joachim at my shoulder.

The cellars under the school were
always disconcerting, long, white-painted corridors, giving the impression of
stretching out much further than the size of the school itself above them.
 
Cross-corridors came at regular
intervals, lit by magic lamps, all looking exactly the same.