Read The Witch & the Cathedral - Wizard of Yurt - 4 for Free Online Page A

spiritual commitment as religion, but maybe I can explain it to you. I know my own weaknesses. My fears of being unworthy are not a meaningless or automatic response. Do you remember the very first day I met you, when you had just become Royal Wizard of Yurt? You were talking about the land of wild magic and said that you had never been there because you were 'not yet worthy of the voyage.' Do you remember?"
    "Yes, I might well have said that."
    "Have you been there yet?"
    "Well, no. They used to have field trips from the wizards' school, but I was never invited to go. I guess I could have gone myself any time in the last nineteen years, but somehow I haven't." Wild magic had been to meet me once too often; I had no desire to go meet it.
    Then even you, with the audacity wizardry gives a man, know what it is like to feel unworthy."
    Actually I had always had an excellent idea of what it feels like to be unworthy, or at least incompetent, but I had never let it bother me.
    He sat back as though he had just explained something important. I still thought he would be an excellent bishop. "If they do elect you," I said, "I'll go to the land of wild magic.
    Maybe I can find the Queen of the Fairies and make her stop sending her fairies to your cathedral."
    Joachim said nothing but just looked at me.
    "Or," I added, warming to the topic, "you and I could try to arrange better relations between wizardry and the Church, so that bishops aren't always warning young priests and old wizards warning young wizards against each other."
    I was pleased to see that this idea distracted him. He played with his empty wineglass, thinking about it.
    There are three who rule the world," I quoted, "the Church, the wizards, and the aristocracy."
    "And the greatest of these is the Church," he said absently.
    "Hey! They never added that when learned the proverb!"
    This actually made him smile. "Did they tell you that the greatest were the wizards? It is a good saying. The Church is concerned with the souls of men and women in this world and their salvation in the next, and wizards with keeping the peace and keeping dragons away."
    "And the aristocracy with law-giving and administering justice, with wars—when we let them—and with the extremely vital mission of providing the income for priests and wizards. We don't actually say that wizards are the greatest, you know, even if we are; after all, we've always served the kings."

    "That leaves the peasants and the artisans and the merchants."
    "Of course they don't have time for anything as foolish as ruling the world," I said. "They're too busy producing what everybody else needs."
    Joachim smiled again and worked the cork out of another bottle. I was delighted to see him feeling less bitter. Maybe sometime he'd even want to go flying again. "But we are not discussing social theory," he said. "You're trying to cheer me up, and it may be the sin of despondency to resist such cheering, even from a wizard." He filled our glasses; he had switched from white wine to red, and it glowed the color of rubies in the candlelight "I still often feel like a callow priest fresh out of the seminary, but maybe even the most powerful men feel that way sometimes."
    I remembered him having an air of mature gravity from the day I met him and very much doubted he had ever been callow and shallow—unlike the young priest who was now chaplain of Yurt But I did not mention this, and also did not mention that he seemed to have done a very good job of overcoming the same fears of unworthiness when he was first invited to join the cathedral chapter.
    "Lately I've found myself wishing," I told him instead, "that we could go back to Yurt the way it was when we first arrived here."
    "Of course you have to remember," he said thoughtfully, "that Yurt as it first was' is different for me than for you. I had already been royal chaplain for several years when you arrived. I remember the queen's old nurse living in the chambers they later