C. Brittain - Daughter of Magic

“It may not be true,” he continued. “There seem to have been only a few witnesses, and the stories that filtered up to the cathedral do not agree on all points. But in essence- A boy brought a frog, a live frog, to the miracle-worker and asked if he could kill it and then bring it back to life. And the man did so.”

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.

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.