C. Brittain - Daughter of Magic

The maids Gwennie referred to as “girls” were all older than she was. I smiled to myself as she turned on her heel, her mind apparently made up.

But she stopped for a second. “I’ll tell you one thing, Wizard,” she said in a low, intense voice. “That lady would make a terrible queen of Yurt.”

“How about a ride?” suggested Antonia, tugging at the tassels on the carpet. “I wasn’t scared in your air cart,” she added when I did not answer at once.

“All right,” I said, giving her a conspiratorial grin. “It’s not our flying carpet, but the Lady Justinia won’t be needing it for a while. And I think I still remember the magical commands to direct one of these things …”

I seated myself, Antonia in my lap, and gave the command to lift off. The carpet shot upward, far faster than the air cart, and headed rapidly south. The girl’s braids blew back into my face. “All right there?” I asked cheerfully, holding her closer.

“This is exciting, Wizard!” she shouted over the wind’s roar. Birds dodged out of our way. “Can we take Mother for a ride too?”

“We’d better not-it’s too far to get to Caelrhon and be back before anyone misses the carpet.” And besides, I was supposed to be spending time alone with Antonia this week. Was it my fault that I too would rather have been with Theodora?

“And I’m looking for something,” I added. I slowed the carpet’s flight with a few words in the Hidden Language, and we hovered while I put together a far-seeing spell to examine all the distant clouds in the sky before us.

If Justinia was the object of an assassination plot, I wanted to make sure she had not been followed to Yurt. Since Kaz-alrhun had entrusted her safety to me, I had to make sure she wasn’t killed in our best guest-room. The mage, I thought, had probably done his best to get her off unnoticed, and he might not have told even the governor himself where he was sending her, but I didn’t like to take chances.

“Nothing there,” I said to Antonia after a minute. “Just clouds.”

“No dragons?” she said, making it into a joke.

“No. Dragons would probably come from the north anyway. Let’s get back to the castle.”

As we shot back home a chilling thought struck me. Suppose the arrival of the miracle-worker in Caelrhon-and his abrupt disappearance yesterday-were somehow related to the Lady Justinia’s arrival in Yurt?

But I could not think of a plausible connection. He had already been in Caelrhon when Justinia left Xantium, and I could not imagine that anyone in the East would have learned where she was going and gotten an assassin here so far ahead of her arrival. And the lady herself was unlikely to have spent the last few weeks in hiding, disguised as someone who healed broken dolls and dead dogs.

“I hope you realize,” said Zahlfast testily, “that I can’t send a demonology expert from the faculty racing off to Yurt unless you’ve actually got a demon! We have classes here to teach.”

When Antonia had been whisked away by the twins to take a nap after lunch, I had gone to telephone the wizards’ school. So far I wasn’t having any luck getting help there. Zahlfast, second in command at the school, had long ago become my friend in spite of my disastrous transformations practical in his course. But the faintest suggestion that I was being drawn into the affairs of the Church had always riled him.

“Of course,” I said quickly. “I’m not asking for anyone to come here now. But since this magic-worker appeared suddenly and inexplicably in Caelrhon and then disappeared again just as inexplicably, I wanted to warn you in case he suddenly shows up again working his miracles or whatever they are-with or without a demon-in some other part of the western kingdoms.”

“Well, certainly no other wizard has said anything to us about a-what did you call him? A Cat-Man? And do you know what we would do,” Zahlfast continued, an edge to his voice, “if there was a strange magic-worker in your region, one there in fact as well as in rumor? We’d ask a nearby wizard to look into it, someone experienced: one, say, who’d had his degree twenty-five years or so….”

“Oh, I’m investigating all right,” I said lamely, though there wasn’t a lot I could do unless the Dog-Man came back. When Zahlfast rang off I stared gloomily at the stone wall before me, short of good ideas.

Part of my problem was that I felt too close to this situation. The irrational feeling kept nagging me that the Dog-Man had disappeared from Caelrhon in order to bring evil to Yurt. Zahlfast thought I was overreacting, and maybe I was, but I could not take any situation lightly when it could affect my daughter. Although wizards were usually in fierce competition with each other, in this case I would have been willing to admit to deficiencies in my own magic to get the help of another skilled wizard.

I thought briefly of Elerius, generally considered the best student the school had ever produced. He had learned or guessed quite a bit about Theodora and me, and he might even feel he owed me a favor since I had never told anyone several secrets I had learned or guessed about him. But on the other hand I had never quite trusted him, and when we last met our relationship could hardly have been called cordial.

This was my problem. Zahlfast didn’t want other wizards investigating purported miracles in Joachim’s cathedral city any more than the bishop did. As long as the man didn’t return-and as long as nothing touched Antonia-I could act as though I was on top of the situation.

In the meantime I intended to learn more about the plots against the Lady Justinia and how the decision had been made to send her to Yurt. After all, the mage had sent her specifically to me.

Out in the courtyard I was startled to see a small blue-clad figure, carrying a doll, walking purposefully toward my chambers. I ran out to meet her.

“There you are, Wizard,” Antonia said, looking up at me with pleased sapphire eyes. “I was just looking for you.”

I had to smile back, although all the dangers a child could get into wandering around a castle by herself flashed through my mind. “I thought you were with Hildegarde and Celia.” Theodora, I thought, must have to be constantly alert to what our daughter was doing; maybe having her away in Yurt was a welcome respite.

“I like them,” said Antonia as I hoisted her onto my shoulder. “But they wanted me to take a nap, and I didn’t want to. I came here to see you, Wizard, not some ladies.” So she had been regretting not spending more time with me while I was regretting the same thing! “Celia is sad,” she added as I walked toward the south tower. “She wants to be a priest and the bishop won’t let her.”

And Hildegarde wanted to be a knight and Gwennie the queen of Yurt, and it didn’t look as though any of them stood a chance. “What do you want to be, Antonia?”

“A wizard. I already told you that. Do you think,” she added thoughtfully, “that it would help if I talked to the bishop about Celia? He’s my friend.”

I gave her a bounce, tickled to hear such adult concern in a child’s high voice. “He’s my friend too, but I don’t think it will help for anyone to talk to him.” A cold thought struck me. “You aren’t by any chance also friends with-with someone they call Dog-Man?”

“No,” she said regretfully. “Mother said I couldn’t play with him any more. But my friend Jen got her doll burned all up,” she added with enthusiasm, “and he fixed it. That’s what I’ll do when I’m a wizard: fix toys for people.”

This was certainly a novel motivation for becoming a wizard. But I did not respond because we were now at the Lady Justinia’s door. Gwennie had put her in the finest rooms the castle had to offer guests, the suite where the king of Caelrhon stayed when he visited.