Daughter of Magic - Wizard of Yurt - 5 (6 page)

“Justinia, granddaughter of the governor of Xantium,” she said as though surprised that anyone should not know. She reached with a jangle of bracelets into a leather bag. “But here. This message is for thee.” The parchment was written al over in indecipherable characters. But I had seen something like this before. A few quick words in the Hidden Language, and the letters scurried across the page, changing their shapes and forming themselves into legible words.

It was from Kaz-alrhun, the greatest mage in the eastern city of Xantium. I had known him years ago; when our party from Yurt had been in the East he had saved al our lives. It seemed that he was now asking for the return of that favor.

“May God’s grace be on you, Daimbert,” the message ran. “This letter wil introduce to you the Lady Justinia of Xantium. She is the governor’s granddaughter and my own distant niece. Certain political events in Xantium have put her in line for assassination, so it seemed safest to remove her far from the city. I learn that the king of Yurt I knew is dead, but I am certain the court of Yurt wil welcome her for old friendship’s sake. Justinia is not a princess, as the governors rule only in the name of an Empire gone fifteen centuries, but she should be treated like a princess.” I looked up from the parchment. Justinia was gazing around her. “This castle is most fair!” she exclaimed. “It is like unto a child’s toy!” The arrival of a flying carpet in the courtyard, laden with an elephant, an eastern governor’s granddaughter, an automaton, and al their luggage, had naturaly attracted attention. The chaplain, short and fussy, scurried up beside me. “Do you think she can possibly be a Christian, looking like that?” he asked in a loud whisper, both shocked and intrigued.

Justinia overheard him. “Of a certainty I am a

Christian,” she said haughtily. “AH of Xantium s governors have always folowed the true faith.”

King Paul and Hildegarde came in across the drawbridge, practice swords in their hands. Paul stopped dead as Justinia turned with a swirl of her skirt. I wasn’t sure he even noticed the elephant. “Welcome, Lady,” he stammered as she favored him with a devastating smile. “I am the king of Yurt.”

His sword dangled unheeded and his mouth came partly open as she gave a deep, graceful curtsey, her head lowered but her eyes giving him a look of assessment. “I am honored to meet thee, most high king,” she said then, one eyebrow cocked and an amused twitch to her lips. “I was told the king of Yurt was a boy. Verily my uncle the mage has inadequate information.” I decided I didn’t have to worry after al that Paul might not find women romanticaly attractive.

“I desire to learn al the quaint customs of the West,” Justinia continued. “Now here is another wonder!” looking Hildegarde up and down. “Is the royal guard made up quite entire of such women? Are they perhaps bred for this purpose? This one is of a certainty a fine specimen! Or is she perhaps thy concubine?”

“No, she’s my cousin,” said Paul with an embarrassed laugh, not looking at Hildegarde. She hooked her thumbs into her belt and frowned, as if not entirely sure what about the Lady Justinia she found insulting.

Gwennie came hurrying up at this point, before Justinia could ask us further about our western customs. “This lady is a very important visitor to Yurt from the East,” I said hurriedly. “Her great-uncle once did al of us a great service. Could you find her some appropriate accommodations?”

“The stables should suffice for my elephant,” said Justinia. “He is stil quite young.”

“Welcome to Yurt!” said Gwennie, as polite as

Antonia in spite of her surprise. She gave the king a quick glance and looked away again. “What a lovely dress, my lady! And what a, wel, unusual way to arrive! Come right this way; the best guest chambers are in the south tower.”

The automaton stepped off the carpet with a jangling of joints to folow them. Gwennie gave a sharp gesture behind her back and several servants sprang forward, somewhat belatedly, to pick up the rest of the baggage. Paul remained stock-stil until Hildegarde took him rather firmly by the elbow.

I looked thoughtfuly after the Lady Justinia and Gwennie. As I recaled, in the East slaves were common, and even trusted servants might throw themselves on their faces to kiss the ground at a master’s foot.

But the lady did not seem to mind the relative informality of Yurt’s staff.

The automaton returned in a moment to unshackle the elephant. Highly dubious stable boys led it away, leaving the dark red carpet by itself in the courtyard. The elephant stopped at the watering trough, drank deeply, then shot a trunkful of water across its back and al over the stable boys.

“Maybe I can see a dragon some other time,” said Antonia, to reassure me in case I thought her disappointed. “But I’ve never seen an elephant before. Or a flying carpet either.”

“I rode on one once,” I said, “al the way, hundreds and thousands of miles, from the East back to Yurt.” Antonia looked at me with new respect.

Five minutes later, while I was examining the carpet and wondering if I might be able to keep it long enough to learn how the underlying spels worked that made it fly, Gwennie came racing back from the south tower. Paul and Hildegarde had gone outside again, although the king had appeared distracted enough that I thought the duchess’s daughter might have a chance to defeat him today.

“Do you know what she said?” Gwennie demanded. Her eyes were wide and voice high. “She said she thought it very ‘quaint’ that Yurt has a woman as vizier! And then she asked if I would ‘bid the slaves’

to come draw her bath!”

“And what did you tel her?”

“I don’t think we have slaves,” provided Antonia.

Gwennie smiled for a second and ruffled the girl’s hair. “We don’t. That’s what I told her. I did tel her I could assign her a lady’s maid for her stay. She started to pul herself up, as though about to tel me I was a worthless vizier who should throw herself into the moat at once, but then she relaxed and said she was sure she could cope with some ‘inconveniences’ while fleeing for her life, especialy since she also had her servant. Have you ever seen anything like that creature, Wizard?”

“The mage Kaz-alrhun makes automatons; I assume it’s one of his.”

Gwennie shook her head. “If 7 was fleeing for my life I wouldn’t be worried about a slave shortage! I’d better send her a maid before this fine lady has to resort to something as degrading as pumping the hot water herself. Now, let’s see, which of the girls would be both skiled and obsequious, and unlikely to be spooked by that thing. ...” The maids Gwennie referred to as “girls” were al 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’l tel 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.

“Al 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 stil 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. “Al right there?” I asked cheerfuly, 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 spel to examine al 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 folowed to Yurt. Since Kaz-alrhun had entrusted her safety to me, I had to make sure she wasn’t kiled 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 chiling 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 dols and dead dogs.

II

“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 actualy 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.”

“Wel, certainly no other wizard has said anything to us about a—what did you cal 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 wel 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 al 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 wal 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 usualy in fierce competition with each other, in this case I would have been wiling to admit to deficiencies in my own magic to get the help of another skiled wizard.

I thought briefly of Elerius, generaly 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 caled 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 al, the mage had sent her specificaly to me.

Out in the courtyard I was startled to see a smal blue-clad figure, carrying a dol, walking purposefuly 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 al 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 thoughtfuly, “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 wil help for anyone to talk to him.” A cold thought struck me. “You aren’t by any chance also friends with—with someone they cal Dog-Man?”

“No,” she said regretfuly. “Mother said I couldn’t play with him anymore. But my friend Jen got her dol burned al up,” she added with enthusiasm, “and he fixed it. That’s what I’l 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.

Her automaton answered the door, stared at me with its flat metalic eyes for a moment, then motioned us inside. Antonia, staring, squeezed me around the neck until it was hard to breathe.