Daughter of Magic

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 tell 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 small, 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 still 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 still unclear. “Without my own magic, I don’t think the knights would have had a chance.”

“Well, 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 killed yourself,” she said accusingly. “Why should you be able to face death but no one else?”

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

“Well, maybe not,” she said reluctantly. “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 all the danger for yourselves.”

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

“All right, then, Wizard,” she said, as though she had been carefully constructing an argument and I had just conceded a key point, “are you going to let your daughter face death to save the lives 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 conversationally. “Celia is just being silly. 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 will be hard for Mother to stop her from entering the nunnery, because we will after all be of age this month.”

I was no longer listening, but Hildegarde didn’t seem to notice. “Theodora is a charming woman-intelligent, too, in spite of being unaccountably willing to be involved with you. Why don’t you just marry her, Wizard?”

“Did Celia tell the Dog-Man that Antonia is my daughter?” I interrupted, heaving up out of the chair and seizing Hildegarde by the arms. Several times during her visit Antonia had hinted that she had met him earlier, in spite of Theodora’s attempts to keep her away.

Hildegarde eased out of my grip, looking puzzled. “Celia hasn’t told Cyrus anything. Don’t you remember? My parents have forbidden her all contact with him, convinced that he’s the one who made her decide to be a nun.”

If someone had told me this, it must have been while I was delirious. I settled back slowly into my chair. But if Antonia went and played with Cyrus, maybe asking him to repair a broken toy-or, even worse, to take her to see a dragon-that strange, sharp-featured man would learn soon enough that she was my daughter. And what better way to get at me, now that his warriors of bone and hair and his fenris-wolf had failed, than through Antonia?

“Quick!” I cried. “Find Theodora and bring her here!”

“Well,” said Hildegarde, bemused, “you mean my little suggestion has made you abruptly decide to propose marriage at last?”

“No! I mean, of course I want to marry her, but she won’t marry me. She has to get back to Caelrhon right away.”

“I’m not sure it’s a good plan either,” commented Hildegarde, “to send her away just because she has too much sense to want to tie herself to a wizard. She did take very good care of you while you were sick. I would never fall in love with a crotchety old wizard myself, but she gives every sign of it.”

“Just get her!” Hildegarde shook her head with a grin and went. I pushed myself out of the chair to find my shoes. I should be able to fly the air cart, even in my weakened condition, and it would get Theodora home faster than a horse. I hated for her to go, leaving everything between us more unresolved than ever, but we had to make sure Antonia did not come into further contact with Cyrus.

Now that he had been accepted into the seminary, rather than living on the docks, he might have no more time to play with the children, I tried to reassure myself as I tied my shoes. I even took the time to wonder if I really had become a crotchety old wizard. Maybe I should have told Hildegarde that Justinia, for one, thought my face and figure youthful and my power highly attractive.

Antonia skipped down the street to meet us, braids bouncing on her back. “Guess what!” she called. “Jen and I caught a baby rat and we’re going to raise him and teach him tricks. We’ll make him a little house to live in and keep him in our bedroom at night. We named him Cyrus.”

Theodora caught the girl up and hugged her hard. “I’m afraid a rat won’t make a very good pet,” she said then. “Does Jen’s mother know about this?”

“Well, if Jen’s mother won’t let us have the rat at her house,” said Antonia slowly, as though the girls had already thought this through, “can we have him in our house?”

A rat named Cyrus? I thought. It seemed a good choice.

Antonia hugged me too. “I’m getting a new tooth,” she told me proudly. “Are you all better? Mother said you were sick. The bishop took me to church with him one day and we prayed for you. Did I make you better?”

“You might have,” I said, smiling just from the pleasure of seeing her.

Antonia paused in skipping down the street to look back. “I asked the bishop if he had any little girls or boys of his own,” she informed us, “and do you know what he said? He said he was the father of everybody in Yurt and Caelrhon, including the grownups. Doesn’t that sound strange? Is he really?”

We went to see Jen and her mother and to get Theodora’s things. The two women presented a united front against the concept of a rat as a pet.

“So have you come back for the ceremony?” Jen’s mother asked. “You mean you didn’t hear? Cyrus is going to receive the key to the city. They’re holding the ceremony at the covered market this evening.”

“Is that the Dog-Man?” asked Jen.

“That’s right,” said her mother. “The same man who fixed your doll this spring.” It chilled me to hear her speak so matter-of-factly about a supernatural event.

“I knew that,” said Antonia. “That’s why I wanted to name our rat for him.”

It didn’t sound then as though the girls had seen him recently. That was a relief. I wondered if receiving the key to the city was like getting the Golden Yurt. “I’d better go to this ceremony,” I told Theodora as we walked back to her house. “I want to see what’s been happening here.”

The Lady Maria had returned to the city from Yurt last week, once again bringing the Princess Margareta with her. I wasn’t sure of the details, but my guess was that the royal court of Caelrhon had decided that the chance that Paul would marry some foreign lady was preferable to the chance that their crown princess would be eaten by a wolf. I met the two at the castle and we went together to the covered market, me leaning on my old