Daughter of Magic

by C. Dale Brittain

  Faint in the distance I could hear the cathedral organ playing, bass notes vibrating on the lower edge of audibility. “That,” I said slowly, “does not sound like a holy man to me.”

  “Or to me,” said the bishop.

  V

  And that was why, when I would rather have been visiting Theodora, I was trying to find a miracle-worker. Sunlight still lingered in the long June evening as I walked down by the river. Theodora’s house was only a few blocks away, but I did not want to worry her before I knew if there was something to be worried about.

  The dockworkers had gone home, but children playing along the river’s edge were happy to talk to me. “I haven’t seen the Dog-Man today,” one boy told me, “but I saw him yesterday. He’s my friend. Are you his friend?”

  “I’ve never met him,” I said vaguely.

  “But everybody knows the Dog-Man!” the boy protested.

  Other children also happily talked to me because, I suspected, that way they could plausibly ignore the faint but clear calls of mothers wanting them to come home to bed. They said the man could sometimes be found in a little shack on the docks. But no one seemed to have seen him recently, and the shack—which didn’t even have four walls, much less an intact roof—was empty of all except a faint but definite trace of both magic and the supernatural.

  I shook my shoulders hard to try to dispel a feeling of unease. Magic and the supernatural were very rarely found together. Attempts to locate magically whoever lived in the shack told me there was no other wizard in the city—or, if there was, he was shielding his mind by very powerful spells. Scared off by my arrival now? I wondered. Or perhaps by my brief appearance in the city the day before? There was so much in the stories Joachim had told me that seemed contradictory that I felt I had to meet him before I could draw any conclusions.

  And suppose the bishop was right, and the magic he was working was not the result of an abortive training at the school but rather of something closer to Theodora’s witchcraft? But in that case, was the supernatural influence from the forces of good—or a demon?

  I wouldn’t know unless I found this man. When half an hour’s walking and further probing failed to produce him, I decided to check with the Romneys. This magic-worker without a home or a name must have some place to spend the night, and the Romneys had always been generous toward others living on the fringes of society.

  Their vividly-painted caravans were drawn into a circle, in the center of which were horses, goats, and several mothers nursing their babies. It was growing dark at last, and their campfires flared bright. Most of the children, laughing with a flash of white teeth in dark faces, were playing an elaborate game that seemed to involve a great deal of running, screaming, and ducking in and out between the caravans. One woman shouted at them futilely in the Romney language.

  I spun an illusory golden cord around the waist of a boy as he raced by. When he did not slow down the cord became a snake, ruby-eyed, winding its way up his arm and vibrating its tongue at him. He stopped at once, staring amazed and putting his other hand right through it as he tried to seize it. “Very good, Wizard!” he called then, spotting me.

  The children now ran to circle around me. I spoke quickly before the adults could tell me them to give me no information. “I’m looking for someone they call Dog-Man in the city,” I said as casually as I could. “He’s another magic worker, they say, and I wonder if he’s here in your encampment. I’d like to meet him.”

  “I heard about Dog-Man,” said one girl. “Someone said he smashed a pot and put it back together again.”

  This certainly didn’t sound like any magic they had taught us in school. “But where is he now?” The Romney woman was bearing down rapidly on us.

  The children looked at each other, shrugged, and laughed. “We don’t know! We haven’t seen him. Have you seen him?”

  They scattered then, laughing and squealing. The woman, scowling under her red scarf, looked after them and then at me as though wondering whether to strike me with a Romney curse or offer to tell my fortune.

  “I’m looking for someone,” I said ingratiatingly, “called Dog-Man. He’s just been here a couple of weeks but is already gaining a reputation as a miracle-worker.” When she continued to frown, I added, “I’m a friend of Theodora’s.”

  Theodora the Romneys all knew. The woman’s expression suddenly cleared. She smiled broadly, flashing gold teeth below a lip that sprouted a long bristle. “You’re her wizard friend!” But she shook her head. “I have never seen the Dog-Man myself. He has not visited our camp.”

  I spun her an illusion of her own, a bracelet of scarlet blossoms, thanked her, and headed back through the darkening air toward the lights of the city. First I would go by the episcopal palace and leave a note for the bishop, telling him of my lack of success in finding the man but suggesting hopefully that he might have left Caelrhon as inexplicably as he had arrived. Then I would go talk to Theodora. I had wanted to keep her out of this, but she might be the only person who could help me find someone who very clearly did not want to be found.

  Simultaneously I knocked at Theodora’s door and called to her directly, mind to mind, so she would know who was outside her house at this hour of the evening. “It’s me.”

  She swung the door open hard, her amethyst eyes round. “Antonia’s fine,” I said rapidly, realizing too late how startling it must be to have someone at her door from whom she had just gotten a pigeon-message saying he was forty miles away. “Everyone’s fine. Antonia is safely in Yurt with the duchess’s twins. But the bishop needed to talk to me, and I couldn’t miss the opportunity to see you.” I took her face between my hands and kissed her. “Did you get those dresses done on time?”

  She smiled then and pulled me inside. “It’s wonderful to see you, Daimbert. I’m sorry that I was too busy to talk yesterday. Yes, I got the dresses done on time.” I had told her more than once that I had plenty of money from what they paid me in Yurt that she needn’t sew for a living, but she had always insisted that she wanted to support herself.

  Theodora cleared a space on the couch, wadding cloth scraps and loose threads into a bag, piling pattern pieces on the table, giving me quick, happy glances as she worked. I knew enough to stay out of the way. She lit the magic lamp that she had agreed to accept from me and smiled again as the room was flooded with warm light—showing more cloth scraps scattered across the floor and under the table. Also under the table was a worn toy dragon. “It’s a good thing,” Theodora commented, “that wizards aren’t any tidier than seamstresses, or you’d never want to visit me. So how is Antonia liking Yurt—and the duchess’s daughters?”

  We settled ourselves comfortably, my arm around Theodora and her head on my shoulder. She had always alternated between being affectionate and good-humored as she was now, and being—well, not lacking in affection, but somehow distant, as though wanting to keep some aspects of her life independent from me. I told her how Gwennie had insisted that it would be improper for Antonia to stay in my chambers, and how the twins seemed to enjoy her.

  “She seems happier with them than with me,” I finished, finding it coming out more plaintively than I intended.

  “She loves you, Daimbert,” Theodora said in reassurance. “She’s just more used to women. That’s why I’m so glad you’re having a chance to be together.”

  If we ever did. I realized Antonia, happy to sit on my lap but not laughing at my most amusing illusions, had the same inner private reserve as her mother.

  “And what did the bishop need?” Theodora continued. She kissed the corner of my cheek. “This is probably not what a wizard likes to hear, but one of the best side-benefits of knowing you has been the opportunity to become, at least a little bit, friends with a bishop.”

  She laughed as she spoke, but there was an emotional note to her voice when she mentioned Joachim that sounded as though she rated him more highly than any wizard. But I dismissed this thought. I was just being irritable because
I was worried about the purported miracle-worker.

  “There’s someone working magic—or something—here in Caelrhon,” I said abruptly. “The children call him the Dog-Man. Do you know him?”

  Theodora turned in the circle of my arm to look at me. It was full dark outside now, and the lamp made wavering points of light in her eyes. “It’s not any magic I know,” she said quietly.

  I pulled her closer. “Then you’ve met him? Is he really working miracles? Or—” and found I couldn’t say it.

  She shook her head, her hair moving against my beard. “I don’t know what he’s doing. I’ve not met him in person, only sensed his mind. There’s something about him that is, well—not right. I can’t say that he’s evil, but there is nothing about him like the force of good that flows from the bishop.”

  Joachim again. I kept silent.

  “A lot of the children in the neighborhood have made something of a pet of him. I’ve gotten to know the children well through Antonia, and they talk to me about him. He’d been living in a little shack on the docks, made from scrap lumber, and the children bring him food from home. I told Antonia I didn’t want her down there. I don’t think she’s disobeyed me yet… . That was part of the reason I wanted her in Yurt now. But I couldn’t tell you that yesterday, with her standing right there.”

  This sounded to me too like an excellent reason to have Antonia in Yurt. The castle had had a giant pentagram put around it by my predecessor as Royal Wizard. Unless someone had moved the stones over the years, no demon would want to enter the castle because he would be unable to leave again. “I tried without success to find the man. No one has seen him since yesterday.”

  Theodora went still a moment, slipping her mind away into her own magic. “I don’t find him either,” she said then. “Maybe he’s gone.”

  That was fine with me. Maybe he’d left Caelrhon for a kingdom where the Royal Wizard would spot him before the local bishop did, where no one would be too squeamish to call for a demonology expert. “Then I don’t have to worry about him anymore,” I said, finding Theodora’s lips. “Say! You know you’re always worried that Antonia will wake up—”

  She laughed, pushing me away with hands on my chest. “I’ll kiss you as much as you like, as loudly as you like—but wouldn’t that be disgusting, to make big smacking kisses just because no one is here to overhear them?—but that’s it. Remember our agreement.”

  I leaned back, exasperated. “I don’t remember making an agreement that would last this long.”

  “Yes, you do,” she said teasingly, though I was not about to be teased back into good humor over this. “I know the bishop explained it to you. We have sinned, been penitent, and been forgiven, but that means we must be even more careful. We are not married, and we cannot act as though we were.”

  “So we made one mistake,” I said in irritation, “one big mistake six years ago, and now it’s going to ruin the rest of our lives?”

  “We have Antonia,” she said mildly. “I would not call her the ruin of our lives. She is rather a reason for us to be supremely grateful.”

  “And do whatever the bishop tells us,” I grumbled. Maybe I should have been angry with Joachim, but this all seemed like Theodora’s fault. “Since when does a witch pay so much attention to a Church that considers all magic dangerous—especially women’s magic?”

  “Since when does a wizard come racing to town the instant a bishop telephones him?” she shot back.

  But then she looked at me, gave a smile that brought out the dimple in her cheek, and took me by the ears and kissed me on the eyelids. “Don’t be angry, Daimbert. I get so little chance to see you. I want to talk to you about what’s happening in Yurt. Let me make us some tea.”

  She was right, I thought, watching her light the fire for the water and forcing myself to stop frowning. I didn’t want to waste this time with her by arguing. The easiest answer, of course, would have been to get married, but I no longer dared ask her. She had always refused, always would refuse, saying it would be the ruin of my wizardry career. But sometimes, like now, I wondered if that was the real reason. As fond as she was of me, I apparently did not “excite her to the very core of her being,” or whatever it was King Paul was waiting for: she herself did not want to marry me.

  “Are you sure there isn’t somebody else?” I asked, trying to make it sound like a joke and not succeeding.

  “Of course not,” she said briskly, getting out cups. “I promised you years ago that you would be the only one.”

  When people got married, I thought gloomily, they promised to forsake all others and cleave only to each other. Theodora seemed happy with the first half of that promise but not the second. I was a wizard, with powers supposedly so great that the only reason I served a king rather than being a ruler of men myself was the service tradition of institutionalized magic. Yet here I was stymied by a witch and a five-year-old girl.

  PART TWO - LADY JUSTINIA

  I

  “A flying creature is coming,” Antonia told me calmly. She had tugged open the door of my chambers, looking in from the sunlit courtyard to where I was finishing a late breakfast back home in Yurt. “Do you think it’s a dragon?”

  I was past her and out into the courtyard in a second. Something small and dark, flying much too fast to be a cloud, approached from the south. I snatched her up as I tried to put a far-seeing spell together. “I always wanted to see a real dragon,” she said.

  But it was not a dragon. It was a flying carpet.

  Dark red with tasseled corners, it flew purposefully toward the castle, hesitated and rotated a moment overhead, then plunged down to land in the middle of the courtyard. On it, feet shackled together, stood a young elephant. As I watched in amazement it raised its trunk and trumpeted, the sound echoing from the cobblestones.

  But the elephant was not all the carpet carried. A person was also seated on it, surrounded by boxes and parcels that tumbled off as the carpet came to a stop.

  “In the name of all-merciful God,” came a high woman’s voice, “is this at last the kingdom of Yurt, or have I passed quite beyond the fringes of the civilized world?”

  I stepped forward cautiously. I had only ever seen elephants once before, years ago on our quest to the East. The woman rose with a swirl of black hair that reached to her waist. “This is indeed the kingdom of Yurt,” I said, keeping an eye on the animal.

  Antonia, who had been staring in as much astonishment as I, elbowed me as though to remind me of better manners. “Welcome to Yurt!” she called out. In a confidential undertone she added, “That’s an elephant, Wizard. Mother showed me a picture of one in a book. They aren’t dangerous unless they step on you.”

  The woman smiled then, her curved lips crimson, black almond-shaped eyes taking in both me and the girl. Her eyelids were painted an iridescent blue and her red silk blouse was nearly transparent. I found myself tugging at my jacket and standing straighter. “I am Daimbert, the Royal Wizard.”

  “At last,” she said, stepping from the carpet. “Thou art exactly the one I sought. By my faith, it seems an age since my feet have touched the earth. My elephant requires hay and water. And aid my servant in bringing the baggage to my chambers.”

  Antonia saw the servant first. I had taken him for one more parcel until he unfolded himself to stand up and— My daughter gasped in my ear. He was not a parcel but not a man either. This lady’s servant was a shiny metallic automaton.

  He started gathering up packages, one in each of his six arms, and waited, staring silently out of flat silvery eyes toward me for directions. The elephant wrinkled the leathery skin all along its back and looked around the courtyard. “I’m sorry, my lady,” I managed to say. “I don’t know who you are.”

  “Justinia, granddaughter of the governor of Xantium,” she said as though surprised that anyone should not know. She reached with a jangle of bracelets into a leather bag. “But here. This message is for thee.”

  The parchment wa
s written all over in indecipherable characters. But I had seen something like this before. A few quick words in the Hidden Language, and the letters scurried across the page, changing their shapes and forming themselves into legible words.

  It was from Kaz-alrhun, the greatest mage in the eastern city of Xantium. I had known him years ago; when our party from Yurt had been in the East he had saved all our lives. It seemed that he was now asking for the return of that favor.

  “May God’s grace be on you, Daimbert,” the message ran. “This letter will introduce to you the Lady Justinia of Xantium. She is the governor’s granddaughter and my own distant niece. Certain political events in Xantium have put her in line for assassination, so it seemed safest to remove her far from the city. I learn that the king of Yurt I knew is dead, but I am certain the court of Yurt will welcome her for old friendship’s sake. Justinia is not a princess, as the governors rule only in the name of an Empire gone fifteen centuries, but she should be treated like a princess.”

  I looked up from the parchment. Justinia was gazing around her. “This castle is most fair!” she exclaimed. “It is like unto a child’s toy!”

  The arrival of a flying carpet in the courtyard, laden with an elephant, an eastern governor’s granddaughter, an automaton, and all their luggage, had naturally attracted attention. The chaplain, short and fussy, scurried up beside me. “Do you think she can possibly be a Christian, looking like that?” he asked in a loud whisper, both shocked and intrigued.

  Justinia overheard him. “Of a certainty I am a Christian,” she said haughtily. “All of Xantium’s governors have always followed the true faith.”

  King Paul and Hildegarde came in across the drawbridge, practice swords in their hands. Paul stopped dead as Justinia turned with a swirl of her skirt. I wasn’t sure he even noticed the elephant. “Welcome, Lady,” he stammered as she favored him with a devastating smile. “I am the king of Yurt.”