Daughter of Magic

a man more handsome?”

Since this so completely contradicted everything she had said before, I decided to remain silent.

In a moment I heard the faint sound of a suppressed sob next to me. Gwennie rose abruptly. “Good-night, Wizard,” she said unsteadily. “Thank you for listening.”

“Good-night, Gwendolyn,” I said as her room door shut. I had always liked to think that as a wizard I was enough at the fringes of society’s strictures that they did not affect me. But I was affected if the young people I loved and served, whether children of king, duchess, or castle constable, could not become the individuals they wanted to be because of the expectations and silent rules that hedged them in. And in Antonia it touched me even more deeply and personally.

III

I woke up all at once, staring around in the dark. It was only a dream, I tried to reassure myself, nothing but a dream, but the scene was still more vivid than my own moonlit chambers. I had been in the bishop’s bedchamber only once, years before, back when the former bishop was still alive though very ill. But as I forced myself to settle back down and close my eyes again I could see that room clearly, the candles shining on the wood-paneled walls and on the brilliant red coverlets on the bed.

Emerging from the coverlets in the image before me were two heads above two sets of naked shoulders. Their faces were hidden, their mouths and chests pressed close together. One head had black hair streaked with gray, the other tumbled nut-brown curls. I didn’t need to see their faces.

A dream meant nothing, I tried to reassure myself, but found myself unwilling to be reassured. Absolute conviction did not respond well to reason. Suppose the dream did have meaning? Suppose my sleeping mind had provided me with an explanation my conscious mind rejected?

I kicked back the blankets, groped for some clothes, and banged the door shut on Elerius’s sleepy questions as I went out to fly furiously through the night toward the cathedral city.

I pushed past the bishop’s startled servants into his study and slammed the door behind me. He had been reading at his desk after breakfast, but he put his book down at once and looked up.

He’s pretending he doesn’t even realize there’s something wrong, I thought with the fury that had been building all during the long flight from Yurt. I supported myself with a hand against the wall and glared at him. He would learn now that even a bishop cannot trifle with a wizard.

“Joachim, you have been my friend for twenty-five years. We’ve both saved each other’s lives. I love you as the brother I never had. But now I must kill you.”

It sounded ridiculous as soon as I said it, but to his eternal credit he did not laugh, which would have been my own reaction. Nor did he do any of the other things I had expected. He did not shout for help, or leap for the door or the window, or drop to his knees to beg for his life.

Instead he turned his enormous dark eyes toward me, but disconcertingly not quite toward me. In a second I realized he was looking at the crucifix on the wall past my shoulder.

Murderous jealousy, I thought with a belated return of the good sense that had eluded me for hours, would have been more appropriate in a boy thirty years younger. Wizards are bound by iron oaths to help mankind, not to kill them, not even false friends who hide their philandering under a cloak of religion. But I had gone too far to back down now, I thought, clenching my jaw. Nothing the bishop could say or do would stop me now.

But then his eyes calmly met mine. He took a deep breath and turned empty hands palms up. “If you must, then you must. I forgive you and shall bless you as I die.”

Dear God. My knees were suddenly so weak I could scarcely stand. I leaned back against the wall and put a hand over my eyes. If he had tried to run, I would have paralyzed him with a quick spell. If he had tried desperately to plead for mercy, I would have mocked him to his face. If he had screamed for his attendants, I would have blasted them with magic fire. But by doing none of these things, by surrendering at once, he had unmanned me completely.

He reached past me to turn the key in the door, locking us in together. “Before you kill me,” he asked mildly, “could you tell me why?”

Even the wall would no longer support me. Exhaustion and failure hit me together. I found myself on my knees, my face resting on the polished wood of the bishop’s desk, unable to speak and scarcely to breathe for fear I would start sobbing. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do anything-not because I had finally remembered the responsibilities that come with wizardry’s power, but because my will to act was gone. He had taken Theodora from me and I could not get revenge, could not demand her return, could not even threaten him. In a minute I felt a hand stroking my hair.

Murder victims are not supposed to reassure their murderers. I took a deep, shuddering breath, wiped my eyes with a sleeve, and sat back on my heels to look at him.

“Why do you need to kill me, Daimbert?” he asked again.

Any other man in the twin kingdoms he would have called, “My son.” If he had, I might have worked up enough indignation to try again. But it was now too late.

“Don’t worry,” I said wearily, although he did not look worried. “I’m not going to kill you after all.” We looked at each other in silence for a minute. “I would have thought you’d be terrified,” I said then. “Did you think I was joking?”

He shook his head, continuing to hold my eyes. “I’ve known you too long. I still do not always understand your sense of humor, but at least I think I know when you’re not joking.” He paused, then continued thoughtfully, “Maybe I should have been terrified. But as bishop, I need to keep life and death constantly in my thoughts.”

I wondered briefly and irrelevantly how terrified another bishop would have been.

“I know my sins,” he continued, “and am filled with remorse and the knowledge that I do not deserve salvation. But I also know the mercy and loving kindness of God, Who may save even a sinner like me.”

Fury slowly built in me again, but I was too weak to do anything about it, and, besides, I had already said I would not kill him. “Don’t be complacent,” I said in a low voice. “God may not forgive you quite as readily as you like to think. I should have realized how deeply you were sunk in sin when I heard a demon had boldly entered your cathedral. And this time you haven’t merely sinned against God. You’ve sinned against me.”

His dark eyes were genuinely puzzled. “Then I must beg your forgiveness, Daimbert. But you still haven’t said why you have to kill me.”

I started to speak and changed my mind. How could I have been so wrong?

A short time ago I had been absolutely certain. I had not just thought, not just decided, but known. Now that knowledge was gone so thoroughly it was hard to believe it had ever existed. And the bishop was still waiting for me to say something.

I’ve noticed this before. The earth never opens and swallows you up when you need it. But someone who had just been threatened with murder deserved an answer, especially someone who had been my best friend for twenty-five years.

I tried to say it and couldn’t. The silence became long and uncomfortable. At last I was able to force it out euphemistically: “You’ve made Theodora stop loving me.”

He immediately knew exactly what I meant and was immediately furious. His dark eyes blazed, and he half rose from his chair.

This was a new experience. I could only ever remember Joachim truly angry with me once before in all the years I’d known him. He might take my threat to kill him very calmly, but not the suggestion that he had broken his vows of chastity-especially with the woman his oldest friend loved.

“How do you dare-” He stopped and took a deep breath then, and I could see him fighting back his anger as though it were a physical presence. “No,” he said, quietly and icily.

“I know that now,” I said quickly.

He gave me a long, burning look. “I swear to you, by the blood Christ shed for us, that I have never touched her.”