Daughter of Magic

by C. Dale Brittain

  III

  The others pressed into the doorway behind me. “Where,” said Theodora between gritted teeth, “have you taken my daughter?”

  “She’s fine,” said Cyrus with an expansive gesture. “You’ll see her very soon. But you have to come with me.”

  I spread my arms protectively, keeping the others back. Paul reached for his knife again, but I distracted him with an elbow in his ribs. “We’re not going anywhere with you, Cyrus,” I said defiantly. “You’ve already tried to kill me twice, and you’re working with a demon. You denied it to the bishop, but your ‘miracles’ owe more to the supernatural power of evil than to the saints. And you’d need a demon’s power to break Vlad’s lock.”

  He shrugged. “Well, the demon might have helped me there. But he’s not with me—he’s somewhere else,” he added vaguely. “And this is the last spell on which I’ll need his help!”

  “Why hast thou come to unlock our door?” said Justinia fiercely. “Didst thou not think we would recognize such a trick?”

  “No trick! I am here to save your lives. Vlad wants to kill you all, but I don’t.”

  How did he, Vlad’s accomplice, expect us to believe that he would save us from Vlad? The candle light glittered in his dark eyes. He was, I thought, completely mad.

  “Dost thou intend instead to obtain all for thyself the reward from the Thieves’ Guild?” demanded Justinia.

  Cyrus shook his head. “I know nothing of the Thieves’ Guild. Come at once! All of you! You have to trust me if you want to escape. Do you not wish to preserve your lives?”

  “Well, I do,” said Justinia with sudden decision. “I am dead if I stay in Vlad’s captivity.”

  “And if you have my daughter,” said Theodora, intense and low, “I don’t care how many demons you’re working with.”

  “Then follow me!” said Cyrus and turned to walk briskly down the corridor. Justinia and Theodora followed as surely as if he had been playing his enchanted pipes, and the rest of us, after only a second’s hesitation, hurried behind. At least we were no longer locked in, I thought grimly.

  “Vlad told me he sensed you arriving at his castle, Daimbert,” said Cyrus over his shoulder. Thunder continued to rumble loudly over our heads. “He says he’s wanted to see you again for fifteen years! But I was fairly sure his intention was evil. That’s why I knew I had to provide a distraction in order to rescue you.”

  “You mean the lightning is due to you?”

  Cyrus chuckled. “You can do a lot when you’ve got a demon on your side! The thunderstorm shouldn’t let up before morning. Of course,” he added, “that was the next-to-last spell on which I had the demon help me. Breaking the lock was the last.”

  Somebody who had sold his soul to the devil, I thought, didn’t stop asking a demon for favors. There was always just one more thing. The demon would happily provide him all the favors wanted as long as he asked—or until the demon became bored and decided to play tricks of his own on the man who had summoned him.

  We darted down a maze of corridors, several times coming out from under shelter into a roofless area where the driving rain soaked us again. I didn’t dare use a spell to shelter us against the wet for fear of attracting Vlad’s attention, and Cyrus seemed neither to notice nor to care. In a few minutes we reached a wide staircase. “You’ll be safe here,” said Cyrus confidently, leading the way up.

  “I think the chambers up here were built for a visiting dignitary,” said Paul as we climbed. “It’s some of the newest construction in the castle, and it’s rather separate from the rest. The roof is still intact.”

  “You know the castle too?” asked Cyrus, pleased. Paul bit his lip, but Cyrus did not ask more. Instead he seemed eager to show us into the chambers.

  We all stopped and stared. The large room beyond the door at the top of the stairs was furnished with soft couches and tapestries, and a fire crackled in the fireplace. I blinked and tried the two words that would end an illusion, but this was no illusion.

  “It should be nice and comfortable for you here,” Cyrus said, watching our reaction. He was hoping, I thought, for more praise and adulation. “Aren’t you pleased? Aren’t you impressed? And Vlad won’t find you. It will be for him as though this part of the castle didn’t even exist.”

  “This certainly didn’t exist before,” said Paul, entering slowly. Justinia, however, rushed straight to the fire and held out her hands. The flames seemed real enough.

  “The demon helped you out again?” I asked cautiously.

  “Of course! It was the second-to-last spell on which I had his help. You’ll all find some dry clothes on that couch over there. Vlad told me there were some people with you, Daimbert, but I wasn’t sure how many or what sizes you were, but something should fit.”

  He smiled, his eyes strangely bright. “And if you’re still worrying that I’m evil just because I occasionally have a demon help me, let me assure you that the saints help me as well. You implied that the miracles that made me famous in Caelrhon were all demonic, but I’ll have you know that rebuilding the burned street was due to the saints. I certainly prayed over it, and as I was walking home from the cathedral, thinking about it, an angelic messenger came and whispered in my ear.”

  I looked away, feeling sick. The demon had started to toy with him already.

  “Now!” Cyrus said cheerily. “I need to go show myself an obedient pupil to Vlad, appear to be helping him with his weather spells, so that he won’t be suspicious. But I’ll return soon. We’ll go see the children together when I do—the dear little things. You see how much I trust you? I’m not even locking you in!”

  He hurried away, leaving us staring at each other. None of us, not even Justinia, showed any interest in dry clothes conjured up by a demon. “At first I didn’t believe it,” said Gwennie in a small voice. “But how else could he … I’ve never known anyone who sold his soul before.”

  “Summoning a demon and asking for favors is certainly the surest way to damn yourself,” I said quietly. “I don’t think even the saints can help you then. But it’s still not the quickest or easiest way to damnation. If Vlad imagines his soul can still be saved just because he’s stayed clear of demons himself, he may have a nasty surprise on Judgment Day. At this point, a demon wouldn’t even be interested in him—no use making bargains for a soul that already belongs to the devil.”

  “If we really aren’t locked in,” said Paul, trying the door, “let’s get out of here.”

  “No,” said Theodora, short and hard. I noticed that, under the pressure we all felt, she too no longer treated Paul with the respect usually offered a king. “He said when he came back he would take us to the children. It may be our only chance to find Antonia, and we don’t dare make him angry. He and his demon will certainly be able to find us wherever we are in the castle, and if he’s telling the truth then at least for the moment we’re safe from Vlad.”

  I nodded glumly, although the last thing I wanted to do was to wait, in a room filled with comforts a demon had provided for us, for a madman: one who had imagined that a demon’s soft voice in his ear was an angel’s, or for that matter that there was any way he, with human power alone, could break free of the devil.

  The three women and I seated ourselves on the couch by the fire, our clothes steaming in the heat. The king remained standing, tapping his foot, ready for a fight that was not there. “I wonder if I’ll ever see my sword again,” he muttered, “and whether it’s still a snake.”

  “Steel won’t do any good against wizards like these,” I said resignedly, “much less a demon. This castle was ruined by armies during the Black Wars, but the same armies that were able to do this much destruction were stopped by wizards who had become sickened by the carnage—and that was only wizards like me, practicing white magic. Come sit down.”

  The storm continued unabated outside, but in this warm room it seemed far away. “I thought Cyrus was a preacher in Caelrhon,” said Paul, settling himself bet
ween Justinia and Gwennie. “Celia said he was studying in the seminary. What’s he doing practicing black magic?”

  “He was a seminary student, all right,” I said slowly. “It makes no sense whatsoever. It never has. It’s almost as if he were two different people, one of whom wants to be genuinely pious, and another who has learned magic from Vlad and relies on a demon’s help for his most spectacular effects.” I didn’t add that it looked to me as if the conflict between these two personalities had pushed him over the edge into madness.

  Theodora roused herself to tell the others about Cyrus’s first appearance in Caelrhon under the name of Dog-Man, his apparently miraculous healing of the children’s toys and pets, and his evolution, once he had been accepted into the seminary, into someone who preached Christian doctrine to large and reverent crowds.

  “And who kidnaps little children,” said Paul grimly. “Since they’re all from Caelrhon they aren’t my own subjects, but it doesn’t make any difference. It’s a good thing you didn’t try to leave me behind again, Wizard. I couldn’t consider myself a king if I didn’t go after someone who did that to a group of helpless kids.”

  I had no idea how Paul and Joachim managed to consider themselves fathers to entire kingdoms; I had enough trouble being the father of one five-year-old. “Just don’t kill Cyrus quite yet, sire,” I said. “For one thing, I don’t think you could. For another, at the moment he’s all we’ve got.”

  “You don’t trust him, do you, Wizard?” Gwennie said incredulously.

  “Of course not. Not even for a second. The third reason I don’t want Paul to kill him yet is that I want the pleasure of doing it myself. But in a ruined castle now harboring a wizard who is genuinely and unequivocally evil, a demon, and my daughter, I’ve got to use whatever fragile leads we may have to free her.”

  We sat in silence then, listening to the thunder and the fire’s crackle. I wondered how long we had been in the castle and how many hours there might still be of night—or if the clouds would ever lift at all. We may even have dozed a little, warm and exhausted, but all our heads came up abruptly when there were quick footsteps on the stairs and the door swung open again.

  “Good, I’m glad you didn’t try to slip away!” said Cyrus cheerfully. “Then I would have had the trouble of finding you all over again.”

  “To deliver us to Vlad?” I asked fiercely.

  “Of course not,” said Cyrus, coming to warm his own hands at the fire. “He still thinks you’re locked up where he left you. Weren’t you listening? I’m trying to protect you! I brought you to this nice room so you’d have a chance to start thinking better of me, but it doesn’t seem to be working. And you haven’t even put on the clothes I prepared just for you. You’ll have to learn to trust me.”

  The others looked at me as though expecting me to know what to say or do. “If you want us to trust you, Cyrus,” I said carefully, “then we’ll need to understand a little more clearly why you should want to rescue us from your master, the man who taught you magic, to whom you brought the children of Caelrhon.”

  “I told you all that back when we first met, Daimbert,” he said, flashing me a happy, crazed look from his deep-set eyes. “Vlad was my master once, it’s true, but when I entered the seminary at Caelrhon I decided to put all magic behind me.”

  “This,” I said accusingly, motioning at the comfortable room around us, “does not look to me like putting magic behind you. Nor does putting a summoning spell on children.” Keep him talking, I thought. Find out all I could about him: his reasoning, his motivation, his magic. So far I hadn’t seen anything that could help.

  “Are you just not paying attention, Daimbert?” he asked and shook his head in a scolding way. “I really have given up magic. Your bishop inspired me. So if I’ve worked just a few little spells since then … Have you ever worked with a demon yourself?” he added suddenly.

  “No.” It came out harsher than I intended; I was, after all, trying to seem friendly, at least until he took us to Antonia.

  “My, you sound dismissive. You’re as bad as Vlad. It’s quite a challenge, I’ll tell you! You find yourself doing things you hadn’t quite intended, like killing a frog and bringing it back to life to impress the little ones. That’s why I’ve decided not to do magic at all anymore.”

  “Are you sure the demon will be as willing to break away from you as you are from him?”

  “Willpower, that’s all it takes,” said Cyrus airily. “After all, while I was in Caelrhon I often went several weeks without practicing magic of any kind. But I remember well the arguments Vlad gave me when I first asked him about black magic. He tried to tell me that he’d never had demonic assistance with his spells, that it would be a sign of incompetence if he couldn’t get results with unaided magic, and that as well as taking your soul demons will often make your life miserable even while supposedly granting all your wishes. My guess,” and he gave a broad wink, “was that Vlad had tried himself to interest a demon in helping him and got turned down flat. Why should the devil offer anything valuable for a soul already on its way to hell? Mine, of course,” with a smug smile, “was different.”

  Something he’d said caught my attention. “Are you sure,” I asked cautiously, “that Vlad wasn’t trying to goad you into summoning a demon, either because none would work with him or he did still hope to shield himself from the effects of black magic? It sounds as though he was hoping to put all the burden on you but get the benefits himself.”

  “If so, it didn’t work,” Cyrus replied, still smug. “He did hint that I should ask the demon to repair his body for him, but I refused, of course. I knew already that I planned to save my soul, and helping such an evil old man couldn’t do any good!”

  “Have you,” I asked in amazement, “said any of this to the bishop?”

  “Not yet. I intend to surprise him once the saints assure me that I’m truly saved.”

  If this wasn’t the only man who could take us to Antonia I would have fled. Horror and revulsion filled me—both at him, with his self-absorption, complacency, and pathetic belief that he could save his soul through willpower, and especially at the demon, who had allowed him to believe he still had the slightest chance.

  Cyrus became serious suddenly. “I know you’ve studied magic a lot longer than I have, Daimbert, but haven’t you sometimes felt its inadequacies?”

  “Magic,” I said carefully, “is part of the same natural forces that shaped the world, but even the best wizards can do no more than tug at its edges.”

  Cyrus looked at me a long moment, and for once his eyes looked both sober and sane. “You’ve put it better than I could. Though I might add, magic’s other limitation is that it only works in this world. To transcend material limitations, you need religion. That’s the message I learned in Caelrhon’s seminary. The bishop will be very happy when he hears I’ve rescued you.”

  “What about kidnapping the children?” demanded Theodora. “The bishop wasn’t happy about that! And you told me you’d take us to them.”

  “Soon, very soon,” he replied, his expression once again wild. “Piping them out of town was actually the demon’s idea, not mine. It was a good one, though!” with a chuckle. “I certainly taught a lesson to all those citizens of Caelrhon who couldn’t even say thank-you politely after I’d cleared up their rat problem for them. But you see, that’s the beauty of Christianity. You can sin, but it’s all right if you’re penitent and make restitution afterwards.”

  It sounded to me as though he had not been paying very close attention to basic concepts in seminary.

  “So I’ll make restitution by letting them all go again! I have to tell you, Daimbert,” with almost a giggle, “that I was especially pleased to get revenge on you. It was your meddling that made the bishop distrust me in the first place, when my ultimate purpose was always so pure! Once I found out you had a daughter in Caelrhon, I knew my piping would bring her along with the rest. Vlad especially thought that was a good idea�
��he’s planning his own revenge, of course. It did occur to me that she might know a spell or two, so I was on guard. Good thing I was, too! Do you know, Daimbert, she tried to put a transformations spell on me?”

  “What have you done with Antonia?” cried Theodora.

  “Nothing at all,” said Cyrus, turning to look at her. “I haven’t even pointed her out to Vlad. I just broke her spell before it took effect. Pretty good spell for one so small!”

  So Antonia did know at least the elements of transformation—could Elerius have taught her?

  “And of course,” Cyrus continued, “I told her very sternly not to try anything again with a man who was friends with a demon. Are you then this girl’s mother? Curious, Daimbert. I had assumed the blonde”—with a nod toward Gwennie—“was your sweetheart.”

  Gwennie blushed pink, but Cyrus wasn’t paying attention. “We should go see the children now. Vlad is still occupied with the lightning storm I settled over the castle. This has been a fascinating discussion, Daimbert, but I sense your sweetheart is growing impatient. Come, and I will take you to where the children are hidden.”

  IV

  Again we hurried down stairs, corridors, and twisting passageways, scrambling through narrow openings mostly blocked by fallen stone, at one point descending a staircase set within a wall: probably once a secret stair before the wall that concealed it had fallen. In the damper passages our hands brushed against mold-encrusted stones, in dryer ones the sharp, sticky threads of giant cobwebs. A distant moaning could have been the wind or could have been the calls of evil apparitions of men long dead. At least we never seemed to approach the cellars where the demon lurked.

  There had to be an easier way, I thought, to get where we were going. Either Cyrus was deliberately confusing us or else he was staying out of Vlad’s part of the castle. I tried to keep track of our many turnings and, looking at Paul, thought he was doing the same. It must be easier for him—after all, he had explored this castle by daylight.