During the following weeks I saw Theodora every day. The first morning I strolled through the city for several hours, probing for wizards or magical creatures and seeing no one I knew except Prince Lucas, who turned deliberately away. Finally I spotted her coming out of a garment retailer’s. But after that I abandoned all pretense and we arranged our meetings.
I did not telephone the school again. Zahlfast thought I should be home in Yurt, and I was unsure how to tell him I had resigned. And, at least so far, my presence did seem to be keeping monsters away from Caelrhon. And it was easy to find excuses to stay in the city now that I had met Theodora.
We usually got together late in the afternoon, when the light was poorer for close hand-sewing. After a few hours every morning of searching in an increasingly desultory way for a powerful wizard I did not particularly want to find, or of going through my spells once again in a fruitless search for one that might work against monsters, I was gladder each day to see her. Strolling in the fresh air outside the city walls or sitting in the grass, thick with wildflowers, where the Romneys had camped, Theodora and I discussed magic. She explained fire magic to me, and I taught her some of the magic of light and air.
“You call it the Hidden Language?” she asked. “My mother simply called it the language of magic. She said it had no grammar, only words and phrases to be memorized, but I’ve long suspected it must have an internal logic of its own. Otherwise, you couldn’t create new spells.”
I felt vaguely uneasy teaching magic to a witch. The Master of the wizards’ school, I suspected, would disapprove. I rationalized that I was no longer Royal Wizard of Yurt, and that I would not want to return to the school either if they persisted in their belief that I would be good at teaching in the technical division, and thus I was not bound by the practices of institutionalized magic. Besides, this was not some witch in the abstract: this was Theodora.
The grass grew so tall around us that someone else would have spotted us and stepped on us at the same time. She sat with her legs tucked demurely under her while I sprawled back on my elbows, looking up at her. The breeze blew tendrils of hair across her face, half obscuring it. “And have you created any new spells of your own?” I asked.
“Just one that works reliably.” She snapped her fingers and said the two words to light a flame, but this one appeared not on the ground but in the air in front of her. It died out of course almost immediately, but another appeared just above it, then another, until a string of twenty tiny flames, each lasting only an instant, had climbed an arc up into the afternoon sky.
“So that’s what you were doing up on the cathedral scaffolding?” I asked casually.
Theodora’s dimple appeared. “I knew you were going to ask me about that sooner or later. The scaffolding presented a much better challenge than anything else in the city-and since my mother and I always embroidered for the cathedral, I felt secure there. I know the priests disapprove of magic, but as the tower wasn’t consecrated yet I thought they couldn’t object.”
“They did object.” Once again I sounded accusatory. At least so far she had not seemed offended.
She looked down at me and smiled. “That’s what the Romneys guessed. Isn’t that why the mayor sent for a wizard, even before the monster appeared, to find the source of the lights?”
“But the mayor didn’t send for me.” For reasons not entirely clear to me, I had not yet told either the dean nor Theodora about the other.
She plucked a long stalk of grass and tickled my nose with it. “The Romneys always worried about me,” she said. “They said I couldn’t be a wizard because I didn’t know how to fly. They never told me I couldn’t be a wizard because I was a woman. I still don’t understand why you don’t let women into your school.”
This topic had come up more than once. Since the more I knew her the less I agreed with the school’s policy, it was hard to be convincing in my answers. “I’ve already told you,” I attempted, “that some of the wizards have been contemplating for years whether and how the policy ought to be modified.”
“Then they ought to have been able to work it out by now.”
Theodora learned so quickly, and she had so much magic of her own to teach me, that I kept finding myself thinking of her as an equal. Even without what I would consider proper training, she learned faster than most of the wizardry students. I had only rarely in the last twenty years felt I was meeting someone else’s mind on an equal level in the area of magic. Joachim was my friend, but our areas of expertise were so different we were sometimes strangers to each other, and even the teachers at the wizards’ school had to work to remember I was no longer their pupil.
“Change can take a long time,” I said, shaking my head. “The old Master must be hundreds of years old by now, and he isn’t going to make innovations rapidly. But there’s something else, something I’ve felt uncomfortable telling you. The real objection raised to training women in wizardry is that women already have a creative power men don’t have. You can create life in your wombs.”
“You men are just jealous,” said Theodora.
“But it causes very serious problems,” I persisted. “A woman with the full knowledge of wizardry could create and give birth to a monster.”
“And school-trained wizards can transform ordinary creatures into monsters,” she replied. “I thought your training was supposed to make sure that wizards knew the responsibilities of magic as well as its uses. Why not train the witches too as long as you’re so worried?”
“I have been training you in the magic of light and air,” I said. “I just don’t care to start on women in general. For one thing, most women wouldn’t have all that you have to teach me.”
“And you wouldn’t be interested in a witch if I didn’t have fire magic to teach you?” she asked, giving me a sideways glance from her amethyst eyes, a glance that might have been teasing and might have been accusation
“I wouldn’t be interested in you if you weren’t Theodora.”
“Fear of monstrous babies has nothing to do with your school’s attitude,” she said. “The real reason is that men already feel threatened by women. You’re desperately trying to keep mastery in at least one area.”
I sat up and frowned, wondering if she was serious. “Theodora, what are you talking about?”
“You’re smart. You’ll figure it out.”
I didn’t answer. She started braiding stalks of grass together, not quite looking at me. I felt my irritation drain away as I watched her hands, the way she moved her head, the slow movement of her chest from her breathing.
Theodora spoke several words of the Hidden Language hesitantly, so slowly that the spell she was creating trembled on the edge of dissolving, but then the grass braid she held was suddenly diffused with light.
She laughed with excitement and looped it around her arm. “It will fade in a moment,” I said. “Do you want me to put on a spell to make the light permanent?”
“No,” she said, as the glow slowly dimmed. “If I put a permanent light on something, I want it to be something better than stems of grass. However,” starting to rise to her feet, “the day is also dimming; I need to get home.”
Without even realizing what I was doing, I took her hand, pulled her back down beside me, and kissed her lightly. “Let’s go, then,” I said. “What time will I see you tomorrow?”
My dinners with Joachim became almost silent as the days passed. The dean may have feared my brief visit was going to stretch on forever. I could see burning in his eyes the constant question, the constant concern for his cathedral, but he did not want to ask me again. Since I did not feel I could discuss with him any of the topics I wanted to talk about, I found that I too had little to say.
Once Joachim became bishop, I knew, he would no longer feel comfortable with our late night talks. By not arguing theology and human nature with him now, as we had done for years, or even discussing my own difficulties in tracking the monster, I was wasting what might be my last chance for such conversations.
He handed me a letter that evening at dinner. “It came via the pigeons from the City,” he said, eating as though not tasting his food.
I took it in surprise, wondering who in the City even knew I was here. Then I saw it was from Elerius and had been sent from his kingdom and relayed through the City’s postal system.
“Just a friendly word of advice, Daimbert,” read the letter from the school’s best graduate. “I hear you’ve gotten yourself maneuvered into trying to help the Church. The Master, I’m sure, will not be happy to hear this, especially now that the priests are conspiring against wizardry. Keep your distance, or at least keep your eyes open.”
I crumbled the letter in my hand. Anyone, much less Elerius, should have known that such a patronizing “word of advice” was enough to make a wizard do just the opposite. I turned to Joachim and tried talking to him.
“I’m starting to feel as though I’ve lost control of my own life,” I told him. “Events keep happening faster than I expect, and I do things that surprise myself.”
“If you wish to go back to Yurt,” he said slowly, “I shall not keep you. I understand if you feel you cannot oppose another wizard’s magic.”
“That’s not what I meant at all!” I said in exasperation. “I intend to stay here until I find out what’s happening to your cathedral. I’m just sorry I haven’t made progress as fast as you hoped.”
“We’re grateful for whatever assistance you can offer,” he said stiffly and rose to gather up the dishes.
I would have moved out, gone to the little castle across town, except that Prince Lucas was still there. I thought that he, too, might be waiting.
“Do you know why Prince Lucas is here?” I asked Theodora the next afternoon.
Rain hissed on the street outside as we sat in her house, drinking tea on a cleared spot in the middle of a table scattered with spools of thread and scraps of colored cloth. Her cat, who had become used to me, purred by the fire, its paws tucked tidily together. Some of Theodora’s completed work, stacked on a nearby chest, was worked with simple designs, but some was embroidered elaborately with flowers or with geometric patterns. On all of it, whatever design she was following, Theodora used a distinctive stitch: across three threads, skip one, then across two more.
“And why should a great prince tell an embroideress why he comes and goes?” She seemed, as always, to find me highly entertaining.
“Well, you live here in the city, and I understand he comes here often.” I paused for a moment, thinking. “Why, when Caelrhon is so much larger a kingdom than Yurt, does the king of Caelrhon not even have his own castle in his own cathedral city?”
“I’m sure you don’t want me to tell you,” said Theodora, trying to suppress a smile, “that great princes don’t explain these things to embroideresses.”
“Paul will know,” I said. Theodora knew about Paul. I had told her a little about Yurt, hoping that in return she would tell me more about herself. But from my account she would have gathered that after the old king had died the royal heir brought himself up with the aid of his great-aunt and the castle staff, for I never mentioned the queen.
I thought, as I already had several times, that I was caught between finding Theodora highly elusive and knowing her better than I had ever known anyone. She had quickly learned everything — or almost everything-important there was to know about me, and yet I often felt there were whole aspects of her life that were still hidden. But then she would casually tell me something in a way that suggested she had never meant to keep any secrets.
“I’d like to meet Paul,” she said thoughtfully.
Reason reasserted itself after two jealous seconds. Paul must be ten years younger than she was and would probably consider her a contemporary of his Aunt Maria.
On the other hand, I reminded myself, she was twenty years younger than I. For the first time since I had become a wizard, I wished that I looked less old and venerable rather than more so. “Has it ever bothered you that I have white hair?”
“No,” she said, with a teasing smile that brought out her dimple. “I assumed that that was just an emblem of your wisdom.”
“You still haven’t told me,” I said. “Why, when the Romneys left town to avoid telling me about you, did you seek me out yourself?”
“I had to see whether I approved, of course, of the man who was supposed to use his magic to protect the cathedral. And did you ever think you aren’t like most wizards?”
I wasn’t sure what this meant and thought it safest to leave it while it might still be a compliment. “Did you ever meet Sengrim, the late Royal Wizard of Caelrhon?”
“He was here in the city a number of times over the years,” she said slowly. “I wouldn’t say I ever actually met him.” Her tone suggested that he was one of the wizards I was not like.
“Prince Lucas dismissed him, and I wish I knew why.”
“A secret quarrel, clearly not suitable for witches to hear,” she said with another smile. “Shall I make more tea?”
I nodded but refused to be distracted.. “I have an idea about that wizard,” I said. “I notice Prince Lucas’s wife isn’t with him.”
“I remember his wedding,” Theodora said reminiscently, refilling the pot with boiling water from the hearth. “It was one of the most exciting events in the city in years. They were married in the cathedral on one of the hottest summer days I’ve ever seen. The princess had her own gown made in the great City by the sea, but I helped make some of the bridesmaids’ gowns. The princess paid better than anyone around here; I lived on the money for three months. I hope she hasn’t found life in a small inland kingdom too dull-though she does have her children now.”
“But she found a way to liven up her life!” I interrupted. “I think she had a torrid romance with their Royal Wizard! That’s why Prince Lucas dismissed him and became so furious when I even mentioned him. You don’t think-you don’t think Lucas deliberately arranged for the ‘accident’ that killed him?”
Theodora poured out the tea, looking at me from under long lashes. “Why would a wizard have a romance with a princess? I’d always heard they were as chaste as priests.”
I knew she was teasing me again but answered seriously. “It is traditional that wizards never marry, but it’s very different from the situation in the priesthood. A wizard is not considered to have sinned against wizardry and blackened his soul by being with a woman. Most wizards just prefer to keep their own counsel.”
“I see,” she said, her back to me while she set the teapot down. When she turned around she was smiling. “I like your idea, it’s very dramatic and romantic, but you still need to explain one thing: why would a princess possibly be interested in a wizard?”
When I left a little later, I kissed her, tipping up her face with a finger under her chin. For a moment I felt the pressure of her forearms against the sides of my neck.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, stepping back. “Keep practicing your fire magic until then; you seem to be a very promising pupil!”