Daughter of Magic

by C. Dale Brittain

  “To avoid sins of the flesh, I presume,” I said in surprise, hoping he was not about to start confessing yearnings for Theodora again.

  “There is certainly an element of that,” he said, still with a faint smile, “a belief that only those who are purified as much as any son of Adam can be should assume spiritual leadership. But that is not the only or even principal reason: after all, married couples sin less than a celibate priest with a perverted imagination. But priests must never allow attachment to a single person or persons to obscure their duties to all Christians.”

  “Oh,” I said, suddenly realizing what he was talking about. “And you think that wizards traditionally don’t marry either because we could be distracted from our oaths to help mankind by personal affection?”

  “Someone who would cheerfully sell his soul to save his daughter,” said the bishop dryly, “would break wizardry’s oaths just as cheerfully.” I hadn’t told him that part, but Joachim knew me too well. “Priests give up the love and companionship of families of their own to lead all of God’s children to salvation. A wizard gives up a family for knowledge and power. Tell me, Daimbert: is it worth it?”

  I studied the surface of the bishop’s desk. So far I had a modicum of wizardry’s knowledge and power—far less than Elerius, but far more than the twelve-year-old boy who had used his pennies to learn a few illusions. Was magic worth Theodora refusing to marry me and my king looking at me askance? I had not before thought of it in these terms, but I did know that at one level Theodora was right: magic was as much a part of me as breathing. But Antonia was even more important than my own breath.

  It was no use asking either Joachim or the school how to resolve this. They would both tell me that as long as I was a wizard I could not also have a family, and this was an answer I had no intention of accepting.

  But I was distracted from these thoughts by another, by a sudden realization that something I had pushed to the back of my mind as part of my delirious dreams was actually real: the old Romney woman’s “fortune.” “He’s coming by night,” I told the bishop, leaning abruptly toward him. “Vlad, the dark wizard from the Eastern Kingdoms.”

  Joachim had been on that trip to the East and certainly remembered Vlad. “When will he arrive?” he asked soberly, the faint spark of humor gone from his face. It was doubtless a tribute to the abilities he thought I had that he did not ask how I knew.

  “The Romneys told me,” I said excitedly, not wanting to take credit for extra powers, “but fighting that wolf knocked the memory out of me. But it all comes back now and it all makes sense. Vlad probably hoped that if he could make our days as dark as night he could travel more easily—light destroys whatever holds his half-dead body together. And that was one of his wolves he sent ahead. But when I dispersed his clouds he realized it would be too dangerous to try to travel by day, because I or any other wizard could bathe him in sunlight with a few weather spells.”

  “And this has something to do with Cyrus?” asked the bishop with an air of trying to understand what I was suggesting.

  “Of course.” But even as I spoke all the certainty went out of me. “That is, I don’t know. The undead warriors did appear to be made with Vlad’s form of eastern magic, and the wolf seemed specifically spelled against a western wizard …” I paused and looked at Joachim uneasily. “Vlad has had reason to hate me for years, and he may finally have decided to come after me as he threatened to do. Cyrus seemed to know who I was, but …”

  “Would Vlad have summoned a demon?”

  This was the same problem I was having. Just when I thought it all made sense, it stopped doing so. “I don’t think so, Joachim, not if he’s coming by night. There was nothing demonic about the warriors. If Vlad had gotten supernatural assistance in rebuilding his body, he would no longer have to fear sunlight or anything else—except of course hell …”

  “Too many wizards have no respect for either heaven or hell,” said the bishop in disapproval.

  “Well, that’s probably true from the Church’s point of view,” I said slowly. “But wizards still try to avoid black magic: supplementing their powers with those of a demon. If nothing else, it’s considered a sign of weakness not to be able to gain results with unaided magic. Vlad wouldn’t be hiding in darkness if he had a demon working with him, so he must be relying on natural magic.” I stared into the candle flame, disturbingly reminded of Cyrus’s face in the market. “So I don’t know what this has to do with your cathedral, Joachim, or for that matter with the Lady Justinia. But if a bishop can ever listen to a wizard, listen to me and make Cyrus stop.”

  Before he could answer we were interrupted by a rising murmur of voices. It seemed to be coming from the square in front of the cathedral.

  The bishop and I looked at each other. “I’ve got them!” came a man’s voice, loud and harsh, over the general murmur. “I’ve got the sinners! Let’s put them to death now!”

  Joachim and I raced out into the night. I hadn’t moved this fast since the wolf attack. Many of the same people who had been with Cyrus at the covered market now milled around in the building site before the cathedral, carrying torches. Cyrus himself stood halfway up the church steps. He turned smoothly, as though acting a part, his eyes coming to rest on a heavy-set man at the back of the crowd.

  “I’ve got them, Your Holiness!” the man called triumphantly. His voice was harsh and a little slurred, but it made up for it in volume. My heart gave a hard thump when I realized that by “Your Holiness” he meant not the bishop but Cyrus.

  Each of the man’s big fists clutched a Romney by the collar. One was a gray-haired old man, the other the woman who had told my fortune. They hung limply, their feet dragging the ground, and their black eyes wide with fear. There was a faint squeaking from the piled building materials that might have been rats. The torch light glinted incongruously on the bristle on the old woman’s upper lip as the two captives were dragged forward.

  “They’re sinners, all right,” the burly man continued. The two Romneys seemed to be putting up little resistance, but he had a bruise coming up across his forehead and her dress was half ripped off under the shawl she clutched around her. Joachim beside me drew in his breath sharply.

  “Sin, sin, drive out sin,” murmured the crowd together. The mayor reappeared at the back of the crowd, as though drawn against his will.

  I could have paralyzed the heavy-set man with magic and snatched the Romneys from him, but with the crowd in a potentially ugly mood, acting too quickly could make the situation even worse. Panting from sudden exertion while still weak, I silently started putting the first words of a spell together.

  “These are the ones who brought all those rats to town!” the man shouted. “They confessed it themselves when I applied a little, shall we say, persuasion. Let’s hang them at once! It’s the Christian thing to do. Then we’ll go set fire to all their caravans!”

  At that the bishop strode forward through the crowd, his dark eyes ablaze. The people stepped aside for him with surprised faces. What had started to be general sounds of loud agreement were abruptly cut off. Maybe I wouldn’t have to use my spell after all.

  Joachim, reaching the front, did not hesitate. He put his own hands on the heads of the Romneys and met the man’s gaze. “Let them go, in God’s name,” he said quietly but very firmly.

  The man was taken aback. Joachim was as tall as he was even if only about half as bulky. But after a second the man tightened his grip again. “Why do you care about these people, Father?” he sneered, giving them a shake. “They’re not even Christians! Killing them would be like killing an animal—a rat!”

  There was a murmur of assent from the crowd but with the slightest note of uncertainty.

  “All men and women are God’s children,” replied Joachim clearly. “Rats do not have immortal souls; humans do. No one, Christian or not, can be put to death without a legal judgment, and no one but yourself believes that the Romneys have anything to do with the ve
rmin in our city.”

  The torches hissed in the sudden stillness, and the sky above lowered heavy and black. The people stood motionless, watching the burly man and the bishop stare at each other. A few rats darted out into the crowd but immediately disappeared again.

  “Don’t you believe in overcoming sin, Your Holiness?” the man said after a moment. His voice was not so loud or so assured, and I noted he had returned Joachim’s title to him. “Don’t you think—like Cyrus! —that God wants us to root out evil?”

  “To kill the defenseless,” replied the bishop, his hands still resting protectively on the Romneys’ heads, “is to embrace evil, not drive it out.”

  “Are you so sure, then,” said the man doggedly, “that you always recognize evil yourself when you see it?”

  Joachim winced at that. Before he could answer, another voice came from the crowd, a woman’s voice.

  It was the Lady Maria. “Oh, let them go!” she called. “Of course we have to overcome sin! But rats aren’t sin. And aren’t you just the tiniest bit ashamed of yourself for dragging an old man and woman out of their homes? I am not, of course, nearly as old myself as they are, but I can imagine how frightening it must be!”

  Cyrus had been standing silently, without moving, as though waiting to see the crowd’s mood before reacting. His expression had been very strange, one moment distant and ethereal, but the next alert and almost cunning. At the Lady Maria’s words he resolutely stepped forward, hands held high. “Praise God!” he shouted. “For He has spoken through His humble handmaiden!”

  “I’m no handmaiden!” the Lady Maria snapped back, her voice loud and clear. “I was born the daughter of a castellan lord and am the aunt of the queen of Yurt!”

  After a second’s startled silence, there came a new note to the sound of the crowd, a note of surprise, almost a giggle. Although it passed away again almost immediately, the tension was broken. Cyrus looked as though he wanted to stare Maria down. “Well, if you want to use the term in the Biblical sense,” she said defensively, giving her skirt an indignant flounce. “But I’m glad you have the wit to realize I’m talking sense.”

  “See how the devil tempts us all!” Cyrus cried, raising his eyes from the Lady Maria to the black sky above. “God’s daughter has spoken truly! Sin comes masquerading as goodness, luring even the most righteous into error! Repent, my children! Repent!”

  “You mean I have to let them go?” the burly man asked truculently.

  “Yes!” said Joachim and Cyrus together.

  He thrust the Romneys from him with disgust. “All right, Holy Father,” he said, and it was not clear which man he was addressing. “But don’t blame me if the rats get worse!”

  The Romneys stumbled and would have fallen if the bishop had not caught them. He put an arm around each and, sweaty and grimy as they were, gave them the kiss of peace on both cheeks. “Let me apologize to you on behalf of all the priests of Caelrhon,” he said, loudly enough that everyone could hear. “I see the mayor is here, and I am sure he expresses the same sentiment on behalf of Caelrhon’s citizens.” The mayor made an incoherent sound that was more assent than anything. “One misguided and overzealous Christian is not representative. Would you like some assistance returning to your caravans?”

  But the Romneys, their eyes still wide, wanted no assistance. The crowd, shamefaced, parted for them as they hurried away.

  I turned from watching them go to see the bishop standing sternly in front of his newest seminary student, his left hand extended at waist level. After only a moment’s hesitation Cyrus knelt and kissed the episcopal ring reverently.

  “Praise God!” he shouted then as he rose to his feet, as though wanting to reassert his authority over the crowd. “For He has given us a truly holy bishop to lead us!”

  “Cyrus,” said Joachim, not at all mollified, “I shall speak to you in the cathedral office first thing in the morning.”

  The bishop strode away with a swirl of vestments. “I see,” said Cyrus behind him, uncowed, “that before any other Christians are tempted into sin I shall have to do something about those rats.”

  II

  It was just before dawn when a sound woke me. I lifted my head from Theodora’s couch to listen, unsure at first if it was dream or reality.

  It was reality, all right. Faint but clear, from the direction of the docks, came the sound of piping.

  As I listened the music grew louder, as though the piper was coming this way. The notes rose and rose again, wild and compelling, a music that entered the brain and called the body. That piping had me swaying on my feet with my hand on the doorknob before I even realized what I was doing. It tugged at the magic within me with a call that overcame all feeling, all will, nearly all thought.

  “No,” I gasped, and the sound of my own voice gave me back a little of my senses. I made a desperate effort and pushed away from the door. No magic I knew could oppose this. Theodora emerged from the bedroom in a long white nightgown, her eyes only slightly open, and brushed past me, reaching for the knob.

  I seized her and held her to me. She struggled but as though only dimly aware of my presence. Faint light from the curtained window fell on pallid cheeks and tumbled hair. “Theodora. Wait. Stop. Don’t follow it,” I managed to choke out.

  But it was Antonia, clutching Dolly and stretching to unlock the door, who seemed to make Theodora aware of where she was. She shook herself, gave me a quick look, and pulled our daughter back into the middle of the room. The three of us clung together desperately as the piping came closer.

  “It’s a spell,” I said in a low voice, hoping that the sound of a human voice would keep us anchored here in this room. The notes were mixed with another sound now, almost a squeaking. Antonia had ceased struggling but was crying silently. “Someone is working a summoning spell. I don’t recognize his magic at all, but I think—I hope—it’s not for us.”

  Summoning was specifically forbidden by the masters of the wizards’ school as the greatest sin a wizard could commit.

  “It’s only because we all know magic that we’re more susceptible than most people to spells,” I tried to continue in a calm, explanatory tone.

  But now the piper was directly outside Theodora’s door. I stopped speaking as it took all my effort just to keep myself from abandoning my family and all my reason to follow that music.

  There was a moment in which I must have squeezed Theodora’s arms painfully, because she had purple bruises later, but with my eyes tight shut I was unaware of her, only of my desperate need to follow and equally desperate determination not to. But after what seemed an endless time, though it could only have been a few seconds, the piper passed by. I took a deep breath that was almost a sob as the power of his spell diminished.

  Antonia plopped down in the middle of the floor, crying hard, and Theodora tried to comfort her. I lifted the curtain to look out. The piper was gone, and I did not see any of Theodora’s neighbors following.

  “It looks like that was only a spell for magic-workers,” I started to say, trying to make it a joke.

  But then I saw the rats. Hundreds of them, thousands of them, brown rats poured like a river down the middle of the street, their hairless tails arched over their backs. More came scampering out of cellars and alleys to join the stream. Theodora joined me at the window and stared in amazement. I had not realized how thoroughly the city had been overrun with rodents until I now saw them all together.

  “Well,” I said when I could speak again. “It looks like Cyrus really has done something about the rats.”

  We bathed, dressed, and had breakfast to give ourselves time to calm down. “It wouldn’t have to be a demonic spell,” I said to Theodora as we went out two hours later. I leaned again on my predecessor’s silver-topped staff.

  There was a narrow crevice at the center of the cobbled street where rainwater drained. The thin layer of mud on the bottom was marked with the prints of thousands of rat feet.

  “The schoo
l doesn’t teach summoning any more,” I continued, “in part because such spells are almost impossible to resist, even for a skilled wizard, and they don’t want the students practicing on each other. I wouldn’t even recognize an eastern summoning spell, especially one designed for rats, but it still almost captured us.”

  “Where did all the rats go?” asked Antonia with interest. She had cheered up quickly once the music of the piper had passed. “Will they come back? Do you think our pet Cyrus was with them?”

  “I thought Jen’s mother and I told you to let him go,” said Theodora reprovingly.

  “Well, he probably got out of his box anyway,” said Antonia, skipping ahead.

  Everyone in the city seemed out in the streets, talking excitedly about the rats’ disappearance. I caught snatches of conversation as we headed toward the cathedral, and it appeared that, according to the bargemen, an enormous number of rats had appeared downstream from the city this morning, many drowned in the river, the rest looking confused but showing no sign of returning. Although quite a few people had heard the piping, no one had actually seen the piper. That did not keep everyone from assuming it had been Cyrus.

  “He tried to tell me he’d given up magic,” I told Theodora. “But it looks like his purportedly religious desire to put his past behind him is less important than his desire for acclaim—especially with Joachim reasserting his spiritual authority.”

  No one else seemed to have been lured by the magic. The question flashed through my mind whether it might be not Cyrus but Vlad who had come into Caelrhon with the magic to summon rats. But I could imagine no reason why that dark wizard would care about the city’s rodent population, and piping at dawn would be too dangerous for someone liable to disintegrate in daylight.

  We found Joachim in the cathedral office. The acolyte outside the door at first feigned ignorance whether the bishop was even there, then claimed he wouldn’t want to see us—most of the cathedral attendants had looked at me dubiously ever since I burst in on him last month, and that was not even knowing that I had intended to kill him—but I pushed past.