Daughter of Magic - Wizard of Yurt - 5 (23 page)

“I’m sorry,” I came to myself to hear my own voice mumbling. “Won’t you forgive me? I thought priests were supposed to forgive people. I just wanted information, and I know he’s evil. You can tel because he tried to kil me.”

Whom was I addressing? It sounded as though I thought I was talking to the bishop. I got my eyes open and saw not Joachim but a man over seven feet tal, whose blond beard was streaked with white.

“Good,” I told him confidently. I knew who this was. No more nightmare ilusions for me, I thought with assurance. “You can go hunt the wolf.” It was Prince Ascehn, Hildegarde and Celia’s father and a noted hunter. He bent over the bed, paying more attention to what I was saying than anyone else seemed to have lately, his blue eyes dark with concern. “The wolf poisoned me when it tried to bite me, but if you kil it I’l recover. Just don’t let the doctor in. He doesn’t know anything about infection.”

I sank back beneath the surface of consciousness, but not as far or as long this time. They seemed to be doing something with my arms. Probably cutting them off, I concluded. The wounds must have become so infected that the doctor had decided to amputate before gangrene spread to the rest of my body. Little did anyone realize that this was al part of Vlad’s plot against me.

Wel, I wasn’t going to let them do it. With a roar of anger, I forced myself to sit up and awake, jerking my arms back.

But it wasn’t the doctor who had taken hold of me. It was Prince Ascehn, and, this time, truly and not in a dream, Theodora.

“That sounded like a fairly healthy yel,” said Ascehn. “And it looks as if the wounds are healing at last.”

“His forehead doesn’t feel as feverish,” said Theodora, putting a cool palm against my head.

“Don’t talk about me as though I’m not there,” I said pettishly. “Who said you could cut off my arms?”

“I already tried to tel you,” said Ascehn patiently. “I have no intention of cutting off your arms. But nothing the doctor had seemed to be working, so I’ve been attempting a little of your own herbal magic.

Don’t you remember that blue-flowered plant you found on our trip to the East? It’s hard to find around here, let me tel you, and I don’t think it works as wel without a wizard to mumble magic words over it, but I think it’s drawing the infection out at last.”

“I tried to tel the doctor,” I said, sinking back against the pilows, “but he wouldn’t listen.”

“Either that,” said Ascehn with a quick smile, “or you weren’t making a lot of sense. You haven’t the last few weeks, you realize.”

“Few weeks?”

Theodora pushed me back into bed again with a hand on my shoulder. “Lie stil and I’l try you on the soup.”

I let her spoon chicken soup into my mouth, trying to sort out what was reality and what nightmare. My head felt strangely light, which I decided was the absence of headache. The wolf, it seemed quite clear, realy was dead, and Ascehn and Theodora assured me that nothing else had attacked the castle.

“I tried to get some help in herbal magic from the wizard of Caelrhon,” said Ascehn, “but he told me nobody teaches it at your school anymore.” He was right I only knew what I did from my long-dead predecessor’s rather grudging lessons. “So let’s hope I remembered that plant correctly!”

Something else was nagging at me. I identified it at last. “What are you doing here?” I asked Theodora, swalowing soup. “And where’s Antonia?”

“She’s staying with her friend Jen. And I’m here because your queen sent me for me when—when she thought you were dying.”

“Was I?” I asked, interested. “Am I stil?”

“Considering that this is the first time you’ve been coherent in a very long time,” said Ascehn with his quick smile, “I trust you aren’t.” After a moment he added soberly, “But the bishop came last week and gave you the last rites.”

So I hadn’t entirely imagined Joachim being here. I wondered if he’d actualy heard anything I tried to say to him. And if he’d forgiven me, would I stay forgiven even if I didn’t stay dead? “But Celia should have given me last rites,” I said, remembering my daughter’s plan to give everyone a chance to do what they most wanted.

A shadow passed across Ascelin’s face at his own daughter’s name. “She nursed you as assiduously as anyone, but—” He stood up abruptly. “You need to sleep. Come on,” to Theodora. “We can talk to him more in the morning.”

That night I slept deeply, without the nightmare of fever chasing me, and when I awoke toward dawn I almost felt like myself, though very weak. I took a quick glance at my arms—stil there—and then looked across tibe room to see Theodora dozing in a chair.

She awoke when I stirred and came to sit beside me. Her amethyst eyes were gentle. I took her hand, an action which seemed to require an enormous amount of effort. “I’m so glad you’re here,” I whispered. “But how did you know?”

“I told you,” she said gently and bent to brush her lips across my forehead. “Your queen sent for me. She knows about you and me.”

“It’s a secret,” I said, trying to open my eyes enough to look at her properly. “Nobody else knows.”

Theodora shook her head slowly and kissed me again. “I think just about everyone in the castle has worked it out. After al, when a mysterious woman is sent for as a wizard lies dying, and everyone recals that he very recendy produced a ‘niece’ no one knew he had, one who seems remarkably adept at magic for a little girl, a secret is hidden no longer.”

“I’m sorry, Theodora,” I murmured. So much for the privacy she had worked so hard to maintain! “I didn’t want to have them al get to know you thinking of you as some—”

“As some falen woman?” she said with a smile tugging the corners of her mouth. “Since they do, at least nobody has questioned whether it’s suitable for me to spend the night watching you alone in your chambers.”

“What does King Paul think about it?” I asked as though casualy. Inwardly I was thinking gleefuly that now Theodora would have to marry me. It would be the only way to restore her reputation, and although this wasn’t the best way to have told Paul about her, now that the secret was out he would have to agree that I could stay on as Royal Wizard once we were married. This should take care of Theodora’s final objections.

But from her reply she hadn’t looked at it quite the same way. “I’m not sure what your king thinks about me,” she said slowly. “He has gone out of his way to talk to me, almost as though wanting to demonstrate that he is not passing judgment on a falen woman. In the same way, he has been struggling to act as though he considers you no differently than he ever did—which suggests of course that at some level he must be.” Theodora, I thought, had always had a quick insight into other people’s thoughts—due to being a witch, or maybe only to being herself.

“King Paul has been extremely concerned about you, of course,” she continued, “and has been at some pains to tel me al the wonderful things you’ve done for the kingdom over the years, going back to when his father was stil alive. He’s even grateful for the times you’ve kept Yurt’s knights—and him—from fighting as they were trained to do! It was touching, Daimbert: as though he hoped that by talking about you he could keep you alive. Since I don’t live here in Yurt, maybe he thought I was the best person to tel, the one least likely to know al the stories already. And I must say some of the events sounded better in his teling than when you’ve told me about them!” She squeezed my hand. “He was very happy last night to hear that you were improved—nearly as glad as I.” I blinked against the early light coming through the window. Maybe I would try tea and cinnamon crulers this morning, I thought—my mouth tasted like old chicken soup. Wel, even if Theodora and Paul hadn’t realized yet that she would have to marry me and come live in Yurt, they would soon.

“The chaplain is planning a thanksgiving service for when you’re a little better.”

“I don’t want the chaplain to have anything to do with it,” I said peevishly. “I want the bishop.”

Theodora smiled. “I’m sure he’l be offering his own thanks to God in Caelrhon. You don’t want to act as though you thought only one priest had access to God and His saints!” Actualy that was exacdy what I thought, but I kept quiet. “I know he’s been your friend for years, Daimbert,” she continued, “but he’s even busier than usual with his duties this summer.” It sounded then as if Joachim had given up his plans to resign, I was pleased to hear. “Especialy with the rats in the cathedral—”

“What rats?”

I had been lying comfortably, holding Theodora’s hand, but now I tried to sit up with a great deal of thrashing.

She pushed me down again easily. “It’s just that the river rats seem to be fairly numerous this summer,” she said in a casual voice that immediately made me suspect this was much more serious than she wanted me to think. “They’ve always lived along the docks, but now they’re getting into houses and a whole swarm seem to have settled in the cathedral. An acolyte even found one chewing on the altar cloth!

So you can understand why the bishop is concerned.”

“It’s Cyrus,” I said darkly. “He summoned the rats.”

“The Dog-Man?” said Theodora in surprise. “After his prayers restored the burned buildings, I doubt if anyone in Caelrhon would suspect him of such a thing.

There are some who have blamed the Romneys— But I’m sure everyone realizes it’s just a result of higher water along the river this year,” she finished briskly.

“It’s Cyrus al right,” I repeated obstinately. “But the bishop won’t believe any evil of him, and neither wil Celia. Maybe if I tel her that he’s behind the rats she’l give up this notion of being a nun. She never wanted to be one anyway.”

Theodora looked somewhat pained. “I think Celia is taking this hard,” she said quietly. She tried then to smile and added, “It feels so strange to be meeting al these people properly at last. You’ve told me about them, of course, and some of them I saw at King Paul’s coronation, but the twins were just overgrown girls then, not young women.” But I wasn’t going to let her change the subject. “What is Celia taking hard? The rats?”

Theodora shook her head fractionaly, looking somewhere over my head. “Finding out that Antonia is your daughter. I think she’d gotten the notion that wizards should be as pure as priests. And she had trusted you, Daimbert, with her religious vocation. . . . She won’t speak to me at al, though her sister does al the time, as though to make up for it. Hildegarde told me she’s afraid that Celia is talking herself into realy wanting to be a nun, in part to avoid having any more unpleasant discoveries in the secular world.”

Feeling irritable because I was so weak, I said, ‘Then if she can’t handle a glimpse of a little sin—and six years ago at that, I hope you told her!—then it’s a good thing she won’t be a priest. See if the cook made any crulers this morning.”

As I ate my breakfast, deciding that I would have improved much faster if they had spooned tea into my mouth these last few weeks along with the chicken soup, I had the vague feeling that I had discovered something important shortly before the wolf attacked me. And something Theodora had told me about our daughter was worrisome. I wondered what it was.

V

I was able to recal enough herbal magic to assist the natural properties of Ascelin’s healing herbs, and within a few days fresh, pink skin was growing on my arms where the wolf had bitten. The Lady Justinia, to my relief, showed no sign of trying to win my love by assisting in nursing me. The bishop telephoned from the cathedral office to tel me how grateful he was that I was alive, his voice and face giving no hint that he had ever been angry with me. He said nothing about Cyrus, and I decided it was most diplomatic not to ask.

Hildegarde came to my chambers to talk to me. I was out of bed now and spent part of each day sitting by the window, enjoying the warm air and leafing through my predecessor’s books. Since I seemed to owe my life to the old magic, I thought I ought to learn a little more. It was startling to find in the margins in several places annotations in Elerius s smal, neat hand.

“It looks to me, Wizard,” said Hildegarde, “as though you and the knights overcame that wolf through raw strength, not wizardry.”

“Not quite,” I said slowly. A lot that had happened in the days before the incident was stil confused in my mind, but my memories of the wolf were crystal clear. “He was bigger and faster and stronger than any ordinary wolf, and that was wizardry.” Cyrus’s magic, I thought. Or someone else’s? This was one of the points on which I was stil unclear. “Without my own magic, I don’t think the knights would have had a chance.”

“Wel, it died just like any beast once they got their swords into it,” said Hildegarde. “And that’s what I wanted to ask you. Why didn’t you take more knights with you?”

“Including you?” I asked good-naturedly. “I took enough to overcome the wolf, I hoped—and it turned out I was right—but no more, because one death this summer, the night watchman’s, was already too many.”

“But you might have been kiled yourself,” she said accusingly. “Why should you be able to face death but no one else?”

“Do you think it’s actualy good to be kiled?” I asked, startled. “Has it been so long since knights in the western kingdoms were involved in wars that horrible pain and raw terror are actualy appealing?”

“Wel, maybe not,” she said reluctandy. “But it is what knights are trained to face. I think I could be brave in the face of mortal danger. But now you wizards have taken al the danger for yourselves.”

“Of course. That’s because we’re pledged to serve humanity.”

“Al right, then, Wizard,” she said, as though she had been carefuly constructing an argument and I had just conceded a key point, “are you going to let your daughter face death to save the fives of some knights?”

“Antonia?” I was horrified. “Certainly not!”

“Then what are you doing,” she continued, bending closer, “teaching her magic?”

That was a very good question. But I didn’t have time to consider it. The point that had been nagging me for several days came to me at last. Antonia was staying with her friend Jen while Theodora was here in Yurt. And Jen’s mother let her play with the Dog-Man.

“Antonia is a delightful little girl,” said Hildegarde conversationaly. “Celia is just being sily. Because you’re good friends with the bishop, she had somehow convinced herself that you should be almost a priest yourself. I know she won’t be happy as a nun—she’s got the same desire for action as I do. Saying she wanted to be the West’s first woman priest was bad enough, but to go into the cloister! She’s overreacting, of course, but it wil be hard for Mother to stop her from entering the nunnery, because we wil after al be of age this month.” I was no longer listening, but Hildegarde didn’t seem to notice. Theodora is a charming woman—inteligent, too, in spite of being unaccountably wiling to be involved with you. Why don’t you just marry her, Wizard?”