C. Brittain - The Witch, the Cathedral

“Sengrim, as I mentioned,” Elerius said at last, “first came to my attention several years ago when he was trying to persuade the school that they ought to offer at least a series of lectures on fire magic-with him teaching it, of course. The Master wasn’t interested; there’s that one course I occasionally teach myself on the old magic, and he seemed to feel that was enough. Besides, I believe he wasn’t sure Sengrim would be an appropriate mentor for the young wizards-he was acting rather strangely even then. He wouldn’t even say how he’d learned fire magic …”

“I know how he did,” I said shortly. “Go on.”

Elerius lifted sharply-peaked eyebrows at me but continued. “I was interested myself, however, both for my own course and because I believe wizards shouldn’t reject anything that might prove useful. And that’s why Sengrim came to consider me his friend, and why he turned to me this spring when he quarreled with his prince, pretended in a fit of pique to blow himself up, and then decided rather belatedly to try to reestablish himself at Caelrhon. I agreed, somewhat reluctantly I must say, to Sengrim’s plan to prove to his king and prince what a good wizard he really was. I have to admit I originally thought his plan as nonsensical as you do: first to bring a monster from the land of magic and then to overcome it in a very public setting to show his competence, amazing everyone by his extremely timely return from the dead. But when it became clear that he would do it with or without me, I decided it would be better to help.”

“So he decided after talking to the construction foreman,” I said slowly, “that a gorgos would serve his purposes nicely, and you helped him go up to the borderlands and capture one-as well as a horse for the Romneys, who he was afraid might reveal that the ragged old magician in the area was in fact the supposedly deceased Royal Wizard in disguise. You helped with that disguise too, didn’t you-something thorough enough to fool even another wizard. Just out of curiosity, exactly where near Caelrhon did you manage to imprison Sengrim’s gorgos?”

“There’s a little grove a mile outside of town, a grove thick with unchanneled magic. It wasn’t difficult to channel it, to make a chamber in the ground under the spring where the gorgos could be bound until it was wanted.”

I closed my eyes for a second. I had been heedless of a number of things the day I went there with Theodora.

Elerius poured out the last of the tea. “I’m afraid, Daimbert,” he continued, “that you rather spoiled Sengrim’s plan for him. It was supposed to end with him triumphantly telling Prince Lucas that even the bravest and most able kings needed wizards to protect their kingdoms from wild magic, and being welcomed again into the royal court. Instead it ended with the prince threatening to kill you. Even though it could just as easily have been him, rather than feeling gratitude for your fast action Sengrim became extremely bitter toward you. And I understand the two of you had had some sort of earlier misunderstanding?”

I did not deign to answer.

“He was already furious with the school,” Elerius continued, “which he thought had unfairly given you opportunities he deserved himself. I seemed to be the only school-trained wizard he trusted as he started imagining plots against him from the faculty and trying to create counter-plots. At any rate, at this point it became obvious that he was growing seriously deranged, so I thought it best to distance myself from him. The rest, including the dragons and the unfortunate attack on your king’s coming of age festivities, was entirely his own work. I was pleased to hear that you had once again triumphed.”

He fell silent but looked at me as though waiting for my reaction. “So this is your entire story?” I said at last. “The story you would have told the Master if I accused you of being involved with Sengrim?”

“Of course. Truth is always wisest.”

“What about the rumors of the school plotting to put wizards in every castle and manor to seize control from the aristocracy?”

Elerius shrugged. “Rumors are always flying on one topic or another.”

“How do you explain leaving to his own wild devices a wizard you thought had become deranged?”

“You know I have no authority over any other wizard.” Elerius shook his head regretfully. “I have sometimes tried to persuade the Master and Zahlfast that the school needs tighter discipline, but as long as they keep only a loose, almost informal organization, there is really nothing a wizard can do in a situation like this.” He set down his empty cup and rose briskly to his feet. “Well, did you plan to return to that little kingdom of yours tonight, Daimbert, or would you like to stay here? I’m sure a set of chambers could be arranged.”

I gave him my best wizardly glare from under my eyebrows and remained seated. I had suspected Theodora of manipulating me coldly, Lucas of bringing the gorgos to Caelrhon himself, and Vincent of plotting to murder Paul and the queen. All of them had managed to talk me out of my suspicions. But someone, if not the princes of Caelrhon, had been working with Sengrim. And I would not give up these suspicions so easily.

Elerius looked down at me quizzically. “I’m sorry, Daimbert. I should have realized when I saw you devouring the gingerbread that you had not had any dinner. Shall I order you a tray?”

I was not going to be talked out of valid suspicions and I was not going to be patronized. “Sit down,” I said as though this were my study rather than his.

Surprisingly, he sat down at once. Emboldened by this small triumph, I leaned forward, still glaring. “Let me point out a few things that your explanation doesn’t cover. You were not just trying to assist Sengrim in a plan to recover his position. You were using him for your own purposes.”

“And what might these purposes have been?” Elerius asked as though I had suggested something rather amusing.

“You want to establish a firmer organization at the school. Zahlfast told me that at the beginning of the summer, and you just said the same thing yourself. The best way you knew to make the school draw tighter together was to make it feel threatened: threatened by an embittered wizard turned renegade, by a church that hated wizardry, by aristocrats threatening to dismiss all their wizards, and by dragons coming over the border. This all started without any help from you, when Prince Lucas quarreled with his Royal Wizard because Sengrim stopped him from a fight in which he would have been bested at once. But you took advantage of the situation because it fit in well with your own long-term plans. Did you think I would not find out that you yourself had installed the far-seeing telephone on the mountain at the borderlands-the phone that wouldn’t work?”

“I heard about that,” said Elerius easily. “But the spells for the far-seeing attachment have always been a little haphazard. Didn’t you invent it yourself, Daimbert?”

I ignored this latest jab. Yurt’s own telephones had worked perfectly for years.

“And what better way,” I continued, “to make the school feel itself beleaguered by the church and the aristocracy than actually to make certain that it was? You showed up at Caelrhon’s royal court in disguise, telling the king you were a City nobleman who had learned of the school’s ‘plots’ against aristocrats, plots you invented in the hope-nearly realized-that threatened royal courts would turn against the school. I had been wondering for some time who this purported aristocratic friend of the Master’s might have been, and I only realized now, when you mentioned being in the cathedral city, that Lucas’s description matched you. I gather you play the nobleman well, Elerius. Haven’t I heard some strange rumors about your parentage? Perhaps a birth on the wrong side of the blanket in some royal castle …”