Even before we reached the city walls I could hear the roar of the flames. It was the bellow of a gigantic animal, a wordless, implacable voice, above which human shouts rose insubstantial and confused. Over all rang the unceasing note of the alarm bells.
Flying, I reached the city gates before the bishop but only by ten yards. The fire had taken hold in the shops and inns lining the high street, just within the gates. The street was jammed with onlookers who had to keep dodging sparks. Flames licked from windows in upper stories, and exploding bottles shot high. The bishop said something beside me, but I could not hear him. A roof went with a roar, the collapsing blackened timbers silhouetted against the lurid light.
Not the cathedral, I told myself desperately, not the artisans’ quarter where Theodora lived, not the castle where the twins were staying. Joachim was no longer beside me, but I had no time for him anyway. If I could somehow restrict the fire to this street-
The people who lived here must already have emptied the big barrels kept at every corner, for they had formed a human chain to bring more water up from the river in buckets. Ordinary school magic, the magic of light and air, was useless here. I braced myself against a gatepost and tried instead to find in the magic of fire something to slow this blaze.
Originally I had learned fire magic from Theodora. It was slippery and dangerous, bringing one into contact with vast and inhuman primordial forces. Lighting and controlling fires could usually be done by such simple, ordinary methods that wizards stayed away from these perilous spells. But I deliberately left the well-worn tracks cut through magic by generations of wizardry to venture where few successfully went, to skitter through magic’s four dimensions and try to find a way to rein in flames now rising twenty feet above a ruined roof.
And found another mind trying to do the same thing. Theodora! I touched her thoughts for a fraction of a second, unsure where her body was but more confident than I had any right to be with her magic joined to mine.
She was still better at fire magic than I was, even though most of her experience lay in lighting candles and cooking fires, not in trying to hold back flames which had now consumed a city block and were roaring in anticipation of the next one, flames that could have come straight from hell. Slowly, almost delicately, our minds worked together, darting carefully into the forces of magic, pulling back just before we had gone too far.
And then, suddenly, we turned a flame whose tip had leaned toward an untouched thatch roof. The men and women with buckets threw water at the flame’s base, and the water evaporated into hissing clouds of steam. But more water kept coming. The flame’s tip wavered again and moved backwards, shrinking, no longer threatening the next house across the street.
The dark evening sky had become orange above us. I took a breath of air that could have come from an oven and tried again. There, and there! Dancing through spells in the Hidden Language, twice almost being sucked so deeply into the forces of magic that I might never have found myself again, I sought a way to turn the next flame, then the next-
I came back to myself with a thump as my legs collapsed beneath me. Hard magic is physically exhausting. Rubbing a bruised hip, I looked up with no idea how much time had passed. But the townspeople had the fire in check. Clouds of white steam still rose with every bucket of water poured, but no more flames flickered in the windows or out the roofs, and the great roar of a lion the size of the cathedral was no more than a growl.
Then I looked around at those people not actively involved in fighting the fire, the groups watching disconsolately the destruction of what had once been their businesses or homes. Many were blanket-wrapped children, staring in horrified fascination. The city mayor was there, grubby and without his chains of office, but I heard him announcing that the covered market would be open for anyone who needed shelter.
I saw Joachim then, speaking to people and helping pass out the bread and ale that someone had brought from elsewhere in the city. The cathedral would doubtless buy much of the food for the families forced in the next weeks to live at the covered market. I wondered, too tired from hard magic to give the idea much consideration, if the bishop still intended to resign, and whether he might decide this fire was somehow punishment for his own sins.
Again I found Theodora’s mind. She was as tired as I. “I’ll be by later,” I told her. “Much later, I’m afraid. Get some sleep. Thank you.”
Pushing myself away from the gate, I started walking, finding back alleys to dodge around the area where the fire still lingered. The houses now appeared more black than orange, but it would be midnight or later, I knew, before the last coals were extinguished, and none of the structures was salvageable. People were talking now of how the fire might have started, several men saying confidently that they had heard the problem began with a chimney fire, others speculating whether a child left alone might have allowed a fire to spread beyond the hearth.
A voice stopped me. “I’ll bet you it was the Romneys.”
I made my legs start walking again, but this man, whoever he might be, was not alone. By the time I left the streets surrounding the area where the fire had raged, I had heard four more people speculating that it was not simply an accident but arson by the Romneys.
Why them? I asked myself, hurrying toward the little castle on the far side of town. They had done nothing to hurt the people of Caelrhon, except perhaps beat them in sharpness of horse trading.
But they came from the Eastern Kingdoms, spoke their own language, and were not Christian. Those were, it seemed, sufficient reasons to suspect them.
No one appeared to have gone to bed in the city. The smoke had permeated all the streets, and rumors and reports of the progress of the fire ran up and down around me. Celia, who met me in the same hall of the castle where we had spoken earlier, seemed the only person not concerned about it. She set down her Bible and came forward to grip my hands with an excitement that had nothing to do with the fire. In dim candlelight her eyes were featureless smudges against her fair skin.
“This evening, Wizard,” Celia said with great solemnity, “Cyrus came as he promised and taught me what he had learned in seminary today. So my education as a priest has begun!”
I thought of asking what good it would do her to have the training if she still could not be a priest, but maybe it would be better to have her think of that herself. My immediate question was more urgent. “Where is Cyrus now?”
“Probably in the dormitory with the other seminary students, if he is not at prayer in the cathedral.”
“And Hildegarde?”
She shrugged. “I think she went to join the bucket brigade.” So at least word of the fire had reached here. I might have passed Hildegarde among all the shadowed, soot-darkened people and not even recognized her.
I excused myself and hurried away. She stood in the doorway to watch me go, her Bible in her hands again. Celia was here in Caelrhon in the first place because of me, which probably made me responsible for her, too, even though her acceptance of this miracle-worker and her eagerness to follow him made her useless as the spy I had intended her to be.
Carefully I picked my way through the construction site in front of the cathedral. The workmen’s huts were empty and dark. But through the stained glass windows of the church I thought I could see lights faintly burning-unless it was only the reflection of the last of the flames.
But when I pushed open the heavy doors I could still see the candles’ yellow glow before me, glinting on the inlaid mosaic of the tree of life on the floor of the nave. Slowly, listening for the sounds of someone else in the church, I walked toward the high altar. The pillars were dark, shadowy shapes on either hand, and a dozen people could have hidden behind them. The smell of smoke was faint here, overlaid by incense.
Candles clustered on the altar, glinting on the golden crucifix. In their light I saw a black-clad figure lying on the flagstones that surrounded the altar. I stopped, reluctant to disturb him, waiting for him to lift his head and see me. When I had waited for several minutes, I spoke at last. “Cyrus?”
He stirred then, rising slowly to his knees to look toward me. There was enough light to see him clearly: dark complexioned, with deep-set eyes and high cheekbones over gaunt cheeks, features that reminded me disconcertingly of a young Joachim. He did not look as though he knew how to smile.
I went down on my heels beside him. “I am Daimbert, the Royal Wizard of Yurt. I understand you don’t like wizards, but I need to talk to you.”
He stared at me unspeaking for a moment. I traced around a mosaic tile in the cathedral floor with a fingernail, making a sharp right angle at the corner, forcing myself to be patient. Cyrus’s eyes darted from side to side, but then whatever he saw in the shadowy cathedral seemed to reassure him. “I shall speak with you, Daimbert.”
As the bishop had said, his deep voice had a slight accent, though not quite the same as the Romneys’. He rose, dusting himself off, and walked a few yards to sit in the front pew. Everyone in the twin kingdoms called me Wizard, rather than by my name; the only exceptions were Joachim and Theodora. The one demon I had ever met had also called me Daimbert.
But now that I was sitting beside Cyrus he seemed only very intense and very sober. There was a faint aura of the supernatural about him, but he was certainly no demon incarnate. “I understand,” I said cautiously, “that you come originally from the Eastern Kingdoms.”
He shook his head. “My past is of no importance. I have determined to become a priest under the direction of a most holy bishop.”
A most holy bishop who was threatening to resign, I thought. But could Joachim’s reputation have possibly reached into the Eastern Kingdoms? Everyone here revered him-even including me when I wasn’t threatening to kill him-but it was hard to imagine that anyone would have heard of him many hundreds of miles away, far past the mountains.
I had the oddest feeling that Cyrus had known who I was, perhaps had even expected to meet me. “But you were trained in wizardry,” I said. Now that he was sitting beside me it was unmistakable. He was no more a fully-trained wizard than he was a demon, and he was not actively practicing magic at the moment, but it is virtually impossible to erase magic’s imprint.
He turned abruptly away, clenching his fists. “Once I thought that magic might impart the power to aid others,” he said in a low voice that hinted at experiences he did not want to recollect, “but I know now that wizardry leads only to darkness.”
I had no leisure to worry about his sensibilities, not with unliving creatures stalking Yurt and assassins from Xantium doubtless searching for Justinia. “You were not trained in the wizards’ school,” I persisted. “Did you perhaps serve an apprenticeship east of the mountains, where the school’s influence does not extend?”
He turned sharply back toward me, the candle flames glinting in his eyes. “I told you my past is of no importance. And I do not think I should say more to you, Daimbert, about the Eastern Kingdoms. If you have nothing else to discuss, I would prefer to return to my devotions.”
I had quite a bit else to say to him. “Then let us not talk of your past,” I said hastily, “but only of what has happened since you came to Caelrhon. So far I have heard that you have restored to life or wholeness several animals and a little girl’s doll.” I paused, waiting for some response, but he looked away from me in silence. My ears strained for other sounds in the shadowy church, but the faint taps and scurryings did not appear to be anything other than the normal sounds of any large building at night. “This is not any magic I know,” I continued, “and I would be interested in learning how you did it.”
He shot me a brief glance, then turned his eyes back toward the crucifix on the altar. His face was dark and sharp in profile. “I am in Caelrhon to learn the ways of God,” he said quietly, “not to teach magic to a wizard.”
Careful questioning didn’t seem to be doing any good. “Listen,” I said harshly, putting a hand on his shoulder. Under the vestments of an acolyte I could feel clearly the shape of his bones. Maybe not the personification of evil, I told myself, but there was evil in this man no matter what he had said to the bishop. “Since you first arrived here my royal castle has been attacked by warriors made by magic from hair and bone, and tonight the high street here in the city burned. Someone with the powerful magic to restore life, even if only the life of an animal, might well be thought to be behind undead warriors, and even more so be suspected of arson.”
Slowly he turned toward me again, and his gaunt, sober face was transformed by a smile. It built slowly, working its way from his lips up to his cheekbones. The effect was shattering. I had to dismiss at once my thoughts of him as evil, for there was a joy and a deep love in that smile that confounded me again with the similarity to Joachim.
“I have not prayed here in vain,” Cyrus said, putting his own hands on my shoulders. “Whatever ill may have befallen the city will be restored.”
I was so surprised that for a moment I could not answer. Then I heard a creak from the hinges of the small side door of the cathedral, and the smell of smoke became momentarily stronger. Someone else had entered the church.
Cyrus and I waited in silence, listening to the approaching footsteps. A tall figure stepped from the shadow of a pillar into the candlelight. It was the bishop.
Now that I saw them together, Joachim and Cyrus did not look anything alike. The bishop was taller, and his face was alive with the power of good. The same good had burned in the other’s expression when he smiled, but he again was sober and the effect was gone.
Joachim lifted his eyebrows when he saw us. It must seem to him that I had been showing up all day at the most inappropriate moments. I wondered what to answer when he asked why I was questioning his new seminary student after he had told me not to, especially if Cyrus complained that I had been quizzing him about his experiences with wizardry.
But the bishop did not ask why I was here. “Forgive me for disturbing your conversation,” he said instead. “I came to offer thanks to God for the safe deliverance from fire of the city’s people, even before the thanksgiving service I shall lead tomorrow. I had not known there was anyone else in the church.”
“My devotions kept me overlong, Father,” murmured Cyrus, the perfect humble seminary student. He dipped a knee toward the altar and retreated hastily, the side door closing hollowly behind him. It looked like any further conversation with him would have to wait.
“I’m leaving too, Joachim,” I said. I thought of trying to say again that he shouldn’t do anything rash without giving it more thought, but the outbreak of the fire had put such an effective end to our discussion on that topic that I was not sure how to bring it up again. “I’ll be heading back to Yurt first thing in the morning.”
“Before you go,” he said, not nearly as embarrassed as I was, “I want to ask you something. The fire died out much more rapidly than anyone had dared hope-was that due in part to your magic?”
“Mine and Theodora’s,” I said, and was immediately sorry I had mentioned her when the bishop dropped his eyes.
“Then I am glad I found you to thank you,” he said gravely, not looking at me. “Convey my thanks to her as well when you next see her. More priests should recognize how often God works through human agents, even wizards.” There was an awkward silence for a moment, then he asked quietly, “Are you going to Theodora’s house now?”
“Yes.” It seemed as though I ought to add more, but I was not sure what. One of the candles on the altar guttered out with a strong scent of hot wax.
“When you see her,” said Joachim, now in a flustered tone that did not sound anything like him, “I would be grateful if- That is, unless you think there is a need to say-”
“I did not plan to tell her what you have told me.”
There was another silence. Confessors are supposed to maintain the secrets of the confessional, but both of us knew that someone who takes his secret sins to a wizard does so at his own risk.
Joachim raised his enormous dark eyes then to meet mine. “This has been a strange day, Daimbert,” he said at last, which seemed an understatement. “Before you return to Yurt tomorrow, come to the episcopal palace and talk with me.”
When I walked the length of the nave to the main doors and glanced back, it was to see him kneeling before the altar on the flagstones where Cyrus had lain.