Free The Witch & the Cathedral - Wizard of Yurt - 4 by C. Dale Brittain Page A

that might protect against the action of any other spell. In an hour I determined that there actually was no such thing, but with enough effort I might be able to create one.
    I put the volumes back onto the shelf, hoping I would not have to try. Even the simplest spell can have unforeseen results, and a spell against magic would create enough tensions within the natural fabric of the cathedral city that I might end up with the whole church sinking into a giant hole in the earth.
    Instead I reached for another book. If I saw the Romney children again, I wanted to be ready with something to impress them.
    It had been years since I had tried to make myself invisible. When I first came to Yurt, I had become quite good at making my feet disappear, but I had never been able to become invisible above the waist. Now, after reviewing my books, flipping back and forth between several volumes with fingers and three pencils marking different places, I thought I finally understood the problem.
    I stood up, took a moment to review the spells in my mind, and began. As the heavy syllables of the Hidden Language rolled into the silent room, I slowly became invisible, starting at the feet and working up to my head. I looked into the mirror with delight. Nothing was there.
    There was a sharp rap on the door. "Come in!" I called without thinking.
    This time it was the kitchen maid. "I'm sorry, sir," she said, coming in. "But with the extra people staying, I'm afraid I lost track of your breakfast tray, and so—" She stopped, not seeing anyone. I smiled to myself and tried not to breathe. "Sir?" She looked directly through me to my bedroom beyond.
    She shrugged then and picked up the tray. For a moment I was tempted to break the spell and appear abruptly before her, preferably with a flash and a lot of smoke. I went as far as to tiptoe over to the doorway where she would pass directly by me.
    But I resisted. She was a very young kitchen maid, and it would not be fair to make her suffer for Vincent having surprised me. Besides, I didn't want to have to sweep a lot of broken crockery off my clean flagstone floor. I stepped silently aside and let her pass.
    As she swung my door back open, sunlight poured in from the courtyard. She didn't see it, but I did. My shadow stretching out from invisible feet. The door swung shut and the shadow was gone, but I was left considering. My spell of invisibility made me and my clothing invisible to the human eye, but apparently not to the sun, I snapped my fingers, said the two words to break the spell, and reappeared in the mirror. I doubted even the wizard or magician the Romney children had seen could have made his shadow disappear. Now all I had to do was to find a way to make a cloak of fire.
    Since the spring morning was so warm, I had not lit a fire. Now I knelt at my hearth and put a pile of kindling together. Some wizards, I had once heard, could create fire straight from the air, but that was something never taught at the school.
    The challenge with a cloak of fire would be to surround oneself with living flames yet emerge unscorched. Once I had a small fire burning, I pulled another book off the shelf and started putting a promising spell together. Sitting with one hand holding the volume, I tentativel reached the other hand toward the flame and then rapidly drew it back. This particular protective spell didn't seem to do anything against heat
    I tried a different spell, one that I knew was effective against arrows. But it worked no better against fire than the first. The third spell I tried seemed to have potential until I realized that I was able to put my hand closer to the flame only because the flame was dying.
    I stood up, sucking the burnt back of one knuckle. "If the Romney children aren't satisfied with illusions and invisibility, then it's no use even trying to satisfy them," I told myself and went out.
    Gwennie, daughter of the cook and the constable, was crossing the courtyard, staggering