Magic by Daylight

by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

  On the field, Dominic and O’Hannon were circling each other. The slightest opening or negligence of attention brought a slashing swipe from the other. The sound of the two blades colliding in parry after parry carried over both armies. Clarice saw several Fay looking ill, but she hardly glanced at them as they sank down in faints. They were only a nuisance, getting in the way of her line of sight.

  One nearly fell right on top of her. Only the quick action of one of the fainting one’s friends prevented a collision of skin between Clarice and the Fay. Another one pointed to a clear spot farther away from any possibility of her enthralling one of the Fay to do her bidding. She moved reluctantly but found she had a much better view near the main group of stones than in the crowd. She could even hear her mother’s whispers of “Good show!” and “Nearly had him!” Forgall was silent.

  Clarice didn’t care what her mother was saying, but she could see Dominic’s lips moving. She wished she had her cloak of silence to enhance her hearing. Why didn’t O’Hannon take a jump through the portal of his own accord, since he wanted to go back so badly? Then she recalled that Dominic had said O’Hannon wanted to go back as he was now, fully grown and ready to do battle for whatever lord would fill his purse.

  Dominic was stronger, with a better reach, and, to her partially tutored eye, seemed to have a greater knowledge of sword-play. All this was countered by the smaller man’s incredible speed. Time and again, it would look as though Dominic had him at his mercy, only to find the Irishman was not where he’d been the instant before.

  Clarice found herself bobbing and weaving with every move Dominic made. She echoed in miniature his sword-play and arm work, felt the sweat forming in beads on her forehead, felt her heart pounding as though it were she in the ring. She knew she watched a fight between two unsurpassable masters of the art. Her father would have enjoyed it, but she could not admire the finer points when at every instant she expected to see her lover go beyond her reach forever.

  From Forgall’s ranks, someone cried out, “They’re too evenly matched!”

  Clarice heard her mother and Forgall conferring. She wondered at him speaking so warmly and even with a mild teasing note to a woman who was doing her very hest to unseat him. Matilda wanted a fresh challenger, while Forgall was determined to retain the same champion. Clarice couldn’t allow Dominic to face a different opposer, one who’d been resting all this while. Besides, it might be a troll or a fiend. All was fair in love and war.

  With that thought came the answer. It had been born of several things, but the final spark had been the look of fear on the faces of the Fay when it seemed she might touch them. These supposedly all-powerful creatures were afraid of the lightest press of her fingertip on their bare skin. In a way, she was more powerful than any of them.

  Very deliberately, Clarice circled around the stones, coming up on her mother’s right. Down the arena, Dominic fought for his life against a desperate opponent. All her hopes were pinned on the outcome, but she no longer watched. If she could stop it herself, stop it now...!

  Matilda’s attention was fixed on the circle. Her lips were loose, her eyes brilliant. She looked no more than a girl, caught up in excitement. Her fist was clenched, lightly pounding the stone beside her. “Come on,” she said softly but urgently under the breath. “Come... oh, my. Close with him, come on.”

  Clarice stood just slightly behind her, hoping that she did not reach the edge of Matilda’s peripheral vision. Matilda’s hand went flat on the stone as something exciting went forward in the circle. Fighting against her own need to discover if Dominic were hurt, Clarice sprang forward, covering her mother’s hand with her own.

  “Clarice?”

  She felt the shudder that passed through Matilda’s body and wanted to cry for having betrayed her. But then her mother’s hand twisted under her own and held on tightly. Clarice looked down into Matilda’s eyes and saw great happiness shining there.

  “Oh, my sweet love,” Matilda said, as she stood up and reached out to embrace her daughter with her free arm. Though she’d outstripped her in inches while still young, Clarice felt like a small child again as she rocked in the arms of the one, for all her faults, who had always loved in her a way no other person could. To hold her again seemed to wipe away all the pain and trouble between them. She felt her heart slip the bonds of bitterness that she herself had hardly known for what they were. She forgave Matilda in that instant for everything, even for abandoning her in exchange for immortality.

  Thus far, the only one who’d seen what had happened was Forgall. He smiled indulgently at mother and daughter, then rose to his feet. Throwing out his arms, he shouted, “Halt!”

  In the circle, dripping with sweat, Dominic and O’Hannon paused, still eyeing one another and not relinquishing their warlike crouches for an instant, Forgall pointed two fingers at them. Clarice, held out at arm’s length by her beaming mother, saw two figures come out of the crowd.

  They were taller than the rest of the Fay and bore bows and staves in their hands with a quiver of arrows on their backs. In their second set of hands, they carried . .. Clarice looked again, staring. These must be the four-armed guardians of the king’s person. They moved with stately grandeur through the crowd and ranged themselves between the combatants.

  Only then could Dominic look up and try to find Clarice. She could have laughed with joy when she saw his jaw fall as he found her. Releasing her mother’s hands, she waved to him. He dropped his sword and started up the hill.

  Then Matilda said, in an odd, muffled tone, “Command me.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Forgall said, “By our Ancient Law, when a mortal touches a Fay, the Fay must perform a task for the mortal. Throughout our history, there are many tales of foolish mortals throwing away their wish on some useless or ill-considered frivolity. Be thou cautious, my lady.”

  Dominic had reached her side. She saw that at some point he’d been injured. A cut over his ribs bled sluggishly. “Are you badly hurt?”

  “No. O’Hannon’s just faster than I expected. What have you decided to wish for, Clarice?”

  She searched his face. “What would you wish for?”

  “I have no desires left, but one. To be with you.” His eyes told her that he also wished to repeat the affections of the night before.

  It was with heightened color that she turned to Forgall. “And you?”

  “I? I have nothing in the two worlds to wish for. I am King of the Living Lands, Wielder of the Right, Keeper of the Immortal Wonders. There is nothing I want that I cannot have without a moment’s difficulty.”

  Clarice glanced at her mother, then back at the king. “Nothing?”

  Forgall frowned in his beard. “Some things are only valuable if they come of their own free will.”

  “True,” Clarice said. “I thought, you know, that I would wish for my mother’s happiness, but now I think that is not something that can be created through any wish of mine. What she believes she needs to make her happy would only make me miserable for I cannot stay here. I believe that one can find happiness with another person, but only if the happiness is in you to start with. I love Dominic and if we were not to be together, I should never love any other man who would come into my life. I would certainly never marry. But I could be happy with my family, my friends, and my existence.”

  She smiled at him, hoping she hadn’t hurt him. “You’ll be happier yet with me,” he promised.

  “As for you, sire, I cannot wish for her to love you. That is something you have to create between you. All I can do is make it possible for you to try,”

  Clarice looked deep into her mother’s eyes. “Mother, I wish for a lasting peace in the Living Lands.”

  Matilda bowed her head. “So shall it be.”

  A wailing scream arose from the nonhuman and the non-Fay troops mustered behind Matilda’s generals. The fog bank that had seemed to hover above them began to whirl and spin, creating a great funnel in the s
ky. Clarice saw Djinn, fat, fabulously jeweled and turbanned, rising into the sky, followed by all their retinues, some still carrying baskets of fruit or leading cheetahs on silken ribbons. Giants, trolls, and fiends were sucked up, bellowing, while strange monsters from fables tried to outrun or outfly the funnel, only to be scooped in with the rest.

  Even the amungasters, as Clarice was relieved to see, did not escape, despite being so gaunt that they blew this way and that before being drawn up. Clarice wondered what these creatures had done to be turned into something so horrible but decided she was better off not knowing.

  When all the creatures had been collected, the vast cloud collapsed in on itself until it was a puffy disk. Like a gyroscope, it began to rotate on a fine-drawn axis, faster and faster, compacting itself more and more until finally it winked out. “Are they all dead?” Clarice asked.

  “Certainly not,” her mother replied. “They’ve been returned home. Whether it’s a cave in the Augean mountains or a palace on the moon, they are all home now. I feel... I feel surprisingly good about that.” Matilda turned to Forgall. “What about you? Or shall the goodwill be all on my side?”

  The Fay-King crossed his arms. “What do you suggest, Matilda?”

  “Whatever Clarice thinks is best. This is her wish, after all. Besides, she has always been more than a pretty face. She has a good heart and a very level head.”

  Clarice honestly thought she would have fallen down in a dead faint if Dominic had not been there to take her arm. “What should Forgall do, Clarice?”

  She said, after taking a deep breath, “I think you should have no more werroeur in the Living Lands. You will just have to manage without a standing army.”

  Forgall stroked his beard. “I don’t know that we can do without them entirely—there will be disgruntled goblins and such after today—but perhaps a greatly reduced force?”

  “Only if they are free to go if they wish it. No one should be kept against their will to fight another’s battles.”

  “Is that what I’ve done?” He looked at Dominic, who nodded with great reluctance.

  “I am grateful to the Fay for saving my life and for prolonging it until I could meet Clarice. But I long for the life of an ordinary man.”

  Clarice laughed. “You’ll never have that! You’d have to be an ordinary man.”

  Forgall laughed. “I have done you a favor, my son. Very well. Let Matilda and me discuss terms, and then we shall see.”

  Several hours later, while the Fay armies feasted and toasted one another on the new-christened field of Clarity Tor, Forgall and Matilda were still arguing the terms of her surrender. Though perhaps she had not entirely accepted the fact that Clarice did not want to be immortal, she was willing to waive that demand. Without it, her reason for fighting Forgall ended.

  Clarice and Dominic strolled arm in arm through the torch-lit encampment. The night was scented with the thousands of flowers that had sprung up on die barren ground the moment Matilda’s surrender had been formally announced. The two sides had rushed together in what had looked like a violent battle-charge but had turned into a splendid party. Even the sourest of Matilda’s supporters seemed to be having a wonderful time.

  They passed Condigne and Miship arguing about the quality of the beer. “It’s not what it was ten thousand years ago,” Condigne said, sighing as he shook his head.

  “No, that’s true. But there’s so much more of it,” Mi-ship said, nodding to the Wyrcan maid who was pouring out refills.

  They both bowed to Clarice when they saw her. Everyone did, from either side. Some of that, she thought, might have to do with Dominic striding along beside her. He had put on clean clothes such as he’d worn when they’d first met and she thought him by far the best-looking man there. “I wonder how many of them are really pleased the war is over.”

  “Most of them. Even if the cause is just, war is a dreadful thing to inflict on a peaceful land. I hope there’ll never be another, either here or in our own place.”

  “If only it were so easy among mortals.”

  They turned around for they were being called. O’Hannon, clean, neat, but with miserable eyes, came up to them. He left waiting for him a group of soldiers. They wore a variety of bits and pieces of uniforms, from Russian white with braid on the sleeves to the buckskin and blue of the American experiment. “What is happening? Have ‘they’ up there said anything about us?”

  “Not yet, Corporal O’Hannon,” Clarice said. “It won’t be too much longer, I’m sure. Would you like me to go find out?”

  “That’s right; they’d tell you. Speaking for the fellows, we’d be forever in your debt, my lady.” He spoke more softly. “It’s been terrible difficult keepin’ their spirits alive. Some of the wilder ones want to go down to the circle and toss over the guardians that are wailin’ for orders, then step through the portal on their own. I’d let ‘em try it, too, were it not for the fact they’d be slaughtered like flies. Nobody dares to quarrel with a guardian.”

  One of the four-armed ones was waiting outside the White Pavilion. Clarice felt strangely shy about approaching him, for she’d never come close to anything like him before. She didn’t know how to act without being accidentally insulting.

  As it turned out, she did not need to embarrass herself. When she approached, the guardian bowed low. He used one hand to sweep open the front flap of the tent, another one made a graceful gesture of welcome, and the third and fourth kept the ever-present bow and stone-tipped arrow at the ready. Dominic too was permitted to enter. But the curtain fell and all four of the arms assumed a defensive position when O’Hannon and his friends tried to enter. Clarice could hear him at intervals trying to bully, bribe, and beg his way in.

  The moment Matilda saw her, she came toward her, smiling softly. “My dearest...”

  “Mother,” Clarice said, rather shocked, “were you sitting on his knee?”

  Matilda’s cheeks were suffused with rose. “Well... and why not?”

  “It’s something of a sudden change, is it not?”

  “I’ll tell you.” She glanced over her shoulder at Forgall, who pretended not to be listening. “It was never the king himself I had any objection to. From the moment I first saw him, I thought...” Matilda looked prim. “Well, it’s not really very unusual. Rather banal and vulgar. Persons of our order do not believe in such a thing as love at first sight.”

  “Why not?” Clarice asked. “It’s magic, isn’t it? You must believe in that.”

  Matilda smiled again, revealing a hitherto undiscovered dimple. “Perhaps I do, even that kind of magic. After all, creating a diamond out of nothing is really much easier than falling in love.”

  “What will happen?”

  “I can’t say. We’ve been discussing that.”

  “I thought you were talking about creating peace.”

  “Oh, that we did in the first ten minutes.” Matilda’s blush deepened. “Since then, we have been... talking about other things.”

  “You’ll marry him?”

  “I shall certainly give it some thought. A hundred years or so,” she said roguishly, tossing a teasing glance at Forgall. But when she looked at Clarice, sorrow filled her eyes. “A hundred years... you’ll be ... you’ll be...”

  “I’ll be where I belong, Mother. With my ancestors in Hamdry churchyard, letting the grass grow green. I hope to delay that day as long as I can—I have much living that I want to do. But I’m not afraid of it. It’s right for me, as this is right for you. Don’t cry. You can come to see me sometimes, can’t you?”

  Matilda could only nod, as she dabbed her eyes with the silken handkerchief that appeared between her fingers. “And I shall give you a trousseau such has never been seen in the history of mankind!”

  Clarice said, “He hasn’t proposed yet, Mother.”

  “What!” Her eyes dried as if by magic. “I shall have Forgall speak to him at once! The gall of the ...”

  “No, Mother.”

  �
��But you have no one to protect you, no one to look out for your interests. He may be trifling with you!”

  Clarice caught Dominic’s eyes across the richly carpeted Pavilion. He was discussing the matter of the other werroeur with Forgall, but still had an instant to flash her a loving smile. “He’s serious. As serious as I myself. But there are other things that must come first. He will not abandon his cadre, nor even O’Hannon, until they all have what they want.”

  “Men! Though I live ten million years, I will never understand them!”

  “Think how I feel.”

  When Forgall, Matilda, and Dominic went out to talk to the soldiers, they found that every one of them had a slightly different idea about what should be done and they were not backward in expressing their feelings. Dominic took Clarice aside after a while and said, “This will take forever!”

  “What’s amiss?”

  “Some want to return to their homes just before they were orphaned to warn their parents. Others want to go back as grown men, like O’Hannon, with money in their purse and a sword in hand. Others want to pursue dreams of wealth, or knowledge, and at least a few want women. Every one of them will have to be sounded separately, dealt with individually, and then some kind of plan developed for each man. And this group isn’t an eighth of all the werroeur. Some will have to be recalled from every corner of the Living Lands.”

  “Dominic,” Clarice said, gazing down at the circle, “I want to go home.”

  “I know it. I will try to hurry matters along as quickly as I can but it’s not easy hurrying immortals. But I can’t just walk away...”

  She put her arms around his waist and stepped close, putting her head on his shoulder. “I know it. I don’t want you to. But I want to go home. There’s so much to be done, so many explanations I’ll have to make. I’ll go now; you follow me when you are free.”

  “No. I don’t want you going back alone.”

  ‘There’s nothing there you need to protect me from. I shall be waiting.”

  * * * *

  Thinking of that parting, Clarice walked on the snow-covered grass of the moor. The first snowfall of winter had come late, dusting all Hamdry with white. Down at the Manor, Christmas preparations were going forward, with much singing and merriment. The orphans had come from Tally ford and had promptly set the rafters ringing with their escapades, while Camber, Rose, and Cook tried to keep up with their demands for refreshments. Blaic and Felicia were there, still marveling over how much Morgain had grown in just the few months since they’d seen him off to school. Doctor Danby, scowling with vibrating eyebrows, argued philosophy with Mr. Hales and Mr. Henry while Mrs. Danby quizzed Melissa about every detail of her pregnancy.