“The doctor claims she’ll be all right. But I’m not so sure.” I seized him by the arm. “Please, will you pray for her?”
He opened his mouth to say something but stopped. Instead he nodded.
“I know what you’re thinking,” I said desperately. “You heard Sengrim call her a witch. You think a witch is something evil, but it’s not-it’s only what wizards call women who know a little magic. She
He took a deep breath and eased his arm out of my grip. He looked at her for a moment, then turned his enormous dark eyes on me. “I realized all along that she knew magic,” he said quietly. “I told you she reminded me of you. All I had been going to say was that I was already praying for her.”
I sat down on the bed next to her. “Will you stay with us?” I asked timidly.
“I can’t. Your royal chaplain has just told me that Paul’s up in the chapel, lying sobbing on the floor in front of the altar. I’ve got to go talk to him.” He was gone before I had a chance to answer.
The queen sat with me later that day, watching Theodora. It was still daylight, though it felt like the middle of the night. The rest of the festivities had been cancelled. The castle around us seemed silent as a tomb.
“Her color looks a little better,” said the queen, though I hadn’t noticed any change myself.
“Suppose she never wakes up?”
“She will,” said the queen positively, though she had no basis on which to be so positive. But I appreciated the gesture and tried to smile. “Thank you for saving us all again-especially me,” she continued. But then she remembered that in saving her I had let Theodora tumble down the crevice. She became silent, rubbing absently at a bruised arm.
“How’s Paul?” I asked after a moment, because staring at my clasped hands seemed fairly fruitless. “Have you talked to him?”
“Only very briefly. The bishop spoke with him at some length. He’s never killed anyone before, of course-and as a mother I’d hoped he’d never have to. When I talked to him, he was both horrified that he’d killed the wizard and deeply distressed at the blow he thought he’d done to his honor by attacking him from the rear. He’s asleep now-sleep can do a lot when someone is eighteen.”
I spared Paul some sympathy. I had never had to kill anyone either, although I had come extremely close to my own death a few times. I wondered if the latter might even be preferable. Whatever Joachim had told Paul, it was unlikely to be that the sixth commandment did not apply in cases where a wizard had lost his mind.
Neither the queen nor I said anything more for a few minutes. I took one of Theodora’s hands. It was warm and completely unresponsive.
“She is very dear to you,” said the queen then. It was a statement, not a question, but I could hear the intense curiosity behind it.
“I met her in the cathedral city this summer,” I said in answer to the question she had not asked. “It was after I’d briefly stopped off here, after teaching at the wizards’ school-the visit when you told me you were marrying Prince Vincent.”
She nodded, understanding what I had not explicitly said.
“Yes,” I said, “she is very dear to me.”
What had once been an elegant silk dress was now stained and tattered. I thought inconsequentially that if Theodora woke up she would find this highly irritating.
“I understand that your wizards’ school doesn’t want its graduates to marry,” said the queen after a moment.
“That’s right,” I said. I saw the sympathy in her emerald eyes and considered sobbing with my head in her lap. “And not just the school. It’s a tradition that goes back to the beginning of history. Wizards are supposed to be wedded to magic.” I stroked Theodora’s hand for a moment in silence. “Besides,” I said at last, “she doesn’t want to marry me.”
The queen took my other hand in hers. She started to say something and changed her mind. But I knew what it would have been. She, like Theodora, had been going to say, with great sympathy and absolutely no offer of help out of my sorrow, that no one should have to be refused twice in one summer.
The queen was too tactful to ask more, but talking to her was better than sitting silently, watching Theodora’s face for nonexistent signs of returning consciousness. “She told me she would miss her independence if she was tied to someone else, but that’s not the only reason. The other reason, and I think the real reason, is that she knows that I couldn’t be a professional wizard if I was married to her, and that I wouldn’t be happy working illusions at fairs. She’s right, but I’d be delighted to sacrifice all that to be with her. The problem is that she decided to sacrifice herself before giving me a chance to do so first.”
“It sounds like she loves you,” commented the queen.
I nodded. “She does, almost as much as I love her. But I know that if she recovers, she’ll want to go back to the cathedral city and leave me here. I still refuse to accept this arrangement.” I glanced toward the queen and wondered if what I was saying was a speech of resignation.
“She may give you no choice,” said the queen, which might have been an unwillingness to accept my resignation.
She stood up suddenly to turn on the lamp. Daylight was fading at last behind the drawn curtains. The magic globe of light made what had been a dim, sad room almost bright and cozy. I could even imagine that a little pink had returned to Theodora’s pallid cheeks.
“Even if she won’t marry me,” I said, to make sure the queen knew that I would not renew my proposals to
The queen looked at me, blinking in the bright lamplight. She realized there was more and waited to see if I would tell her.
I knew this was the final conversation like this I would ever have with the queen. If I was indeed going to stay on as wizard of Yurt we needed to have everything open between us, so that we could be comfortable and natural with each other and never have to discuss it again.
“There’s one more thing you should know,” I said at last. “She’s carrying my child.”
The queen went completely still, not even breathing for five seconds. Then she gave my hand a final squeeze and reached over to stroke Theodora’s brow.
What had been one of the happiest and most private moments of my life, I thought, that afternoon in the grove outside the cathedral city, now threatened to become public knowledge. I reminded myself that having the queen and the bishop know about it was not the same as having it known to everyone in the twin kingdoms. I just hoped Theodora would see it that way.
This topic seemed to have run its course. “You started to ask me earlier,” I said into a silence that threatened to stretch out indefinitely, “about my conversation with Prince Vincent.” The queen looked up in surprise, then remembered. “I hope he told you I don’t suspect him any more.”
“Yes,” she answered slowly. “He did feel he’d answered all your concerns. But to suggest that he planned to murder Paul!”
I looked away. “Maybe I just have a suspicious nature. I know now I was highly mistaken. But when I learned that the wizard of Caelrhon was planning an attack here”-I felt no necessity to explain that I had not realized the elusive renegade wizard was Sengrim until he actually appeared before me-”I thought that the prince of Caelrhon might well be implicated. After all, wouldn’t it make sense for someone who would otherwise never be king to want to gain a wife and a kingdom at the same time? I know now how wrong I was!” I added hastily.
“You do realize, Wizard,” she said after a minute, “that I am going to marry Vincent tomorrow, and we intend to live in Yurt.”
“I know,” I said. “And therefore I feel I must offer you my resignation.”
There, I had done it at last. This time there was no ambiguity. When Theodora learned I was no longer wizard of Yurt, she would have no choice but to marry me.
“You can’t offer me your resignation,” she said with the faintest trace of a smile. “I’m not regent anymore.”
“Then I’ll tell Paul I’m resigning.”
“He would never accept your resignation. He thinks much too highly of you.”
