Daughter of Magic

Paul had stared off toward the other end of the empty room as I started speaking, but he now turned back and grinned again. “So I’m not the only person in the castle who has others planning for him if and whom he’s going to marry, with or without his consent!”

It slowly dawned on me that Paul had been asking me about Theodora not as a prelude to requesting my resignation but to avoid talking about what was really on his mind.

He took a deep breath, planted his boots on the throne’s footrest, and faced me squarely. “How would you like to be Celia’s spiritual sponsor?”

“Her what?!”

“I knew you’d react like this,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s why I agreed to talk to you myself. I tried to tell her that wizards have never had much respect for the Church, but she insisted she wanted you. I wish you would at least consider it. It would mean a lot to her.”

“Excuse me, sire, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Celia comes of age in two weeks,” said Paul gravely. “She has told her parents that on her birthday she will ride over to the Nunnery of Yurt and make her maiden vocation. The chaplain and I have checked into the requirements for her. They won’t, of course, let her take her final vows until after a year as a novice, but there’s a ceremony when she enters, and she needs a sponsor. Preferably a man, the abbess told me, someone of mature authority. Prince Ascelin won’t do it because he’s still not reconciled to his daughter becoming a nun. I offered, of course, but Celia said she would rather have you.”

“But if she’s going to be a nun, Paul, she doesn’t want a wizard! Especially me. The abbess won’t want me either. I don’t know what Celia told you, and she hasn’t talked to me herself for weeks, but …”

“She told me you’d raise these objections. But listen, Wizard. This is very hard on Celia. First she decided to become a priest, but no one would take her seriously-not her parents, not her own sister, and not even the bishop. Then she met that miracle-worker over in Caelrhon-Cyrus, isn’t that his name? Studying with him was the first thing I think she felt she’d ever done that she chose for herself, rather than having others choose it for her. Then somehow that didn’t work out. I’m still not sure what happened, but at some point while trying to learn from him she decided to give up her plan for an active spiritual career and become a nun instead.”

She had run straight into a spell of madness, but I wasn’t going to mention that now.

“Then she found out-excuse me, Wizard-that you weren’t always as pure as a priest yourself, which only confirmed her desire to retreat from anything worldly, in spite of increased opposition from her parents. So you see,” he finished somewhat shamefacedly, “that she considers it a suitable act of forgiveness and penitence to begin her life in the cloister with you beside her.”

It sounded to me as though King Paul was going out of his way not to say anything judgmental about my conduct. Of course, it was rather irritating that people here in the castle seemed to be trying to demonstrate how broad-minded they were by overlooking something which, in fact, had not happened for years.

But if I was not dismissed then I should be able to stay on in Yurt, I thought with a flood of relief that surprised me by its intensity. Perhaps the Golden Yurt award really did mean that Paul respected me and my service to the kingdom, no matter what. But I had to concentrate on Celia. “So what does a spiritual sponsor do?”

Paul turned his emerald eyes fully on me. “Then you’ll do it? This is wonderful, Wizard.” He jumped down from the throne and clapped me on the shoulder. “I knew you’d agree if I explained it all to you. I’ll go tell Celia. She’ll be delighted.”

As he hurried out I found myself wondering which would be harder to explain to Zahlfast at the wizards’ school: that I had a daughter or that I had agreed to sponsor a novice nun.

“You realize,” commented Joachim, “that you’re probably the only wizard in the western kingdoms who worries about seminary students.” His face in the glass telephone looked unworried, even amused. I wished I felt the same.

“But what is Cyrus doing?” I demanded again. It had been two weeks since I returned to Yurt, and I had heard nothing from Caelrhon beyond a few pigeon-messages from Theodora, saying little more than that she and Antonia were fine and sent their love. I had tried again to get help from Zahlfast, but he had said even more frostily than before that if there was indeed a renegade eastern wizard holed up in Caelrhon’s seminary, then the wizard of Caelrhon and I would just have to keep an eye on him.

“Cyrus is attending seminary classes,” said Joachim, “studying, praying, the same as any other student.”

“I hope you’ve made him give up those meetings of his where people come and revere him.” I knew as I spoke that the bishop would think this one more example of my not trusting him to carry out his own duties, but I had to know. “The Lady Maria’s returned to Yurt now, but she won’t say anything about him-just tells me my mind isn’t pure enough to understand true holiness.”

Maria had come back looking pleased with herself but was surprisingly untalkative, except to say that the Princess Margareta had decided to stay on in Caelrhon for a few weeks. The princess, finding her own royal castle, Yurt, and the city all filled with ennui or embarrassment for one reason or another, seemed to have decided that, overall, the city offered the most possibilities.

Joachim hesitated for a moment, as though wondering himself if the topic of a seminary student’s behavior was fit for a wizard’s ears, but then continued as though there had been no pause.

“After the incident with the rats, of course, I ordered him to stop preaching or even speaking on spiritual issues to anyone but a priest. He could not deny that was magic, and he understood why I could not allow someone practicing wizardry to pass as the Church’s representative. I suspect he is irritated with me, in spite of his penitent attitude, as well as with you for detecting his spells.” Joachim seemed remarkably unconcerned about it. “But he is studying hard and making good progress, I hear. Many seminary students come in these days with the impression that they are already spiritually advanced, scarcely needing our guidance, so if he’s had a few rough spots in his early training he has company.”

“We’re not talking about rough spots. We’re talking about someone who works with a demon.”

“I know you believe that, Daimbert,” said the bishop good-naturedly, “but I have yet to see the slightest sign of anything of the sort. If there is black magic in his background, he has struggled hard to overcome it.”

“Has the mayor made him any more presentations?”

“No-why should he?” Joachim looked amused again. “Cyrus already has the key to the city, something the council has granted no other seminary student or priest-not even me.”

I thought but did not say that I would find menace rather than humor in someone trained in eastern magic, someone who had had demonic help with at least some of his spells, whatever the bishop might think, and who was doubtless now furious with the organized Church, with the mayor and council of Caelrhon, and with me. Even if he were trying to break away, through prayer and study in the seminary, from a demon he had unwisely summoned, he had set himself a very difficult task. The demon would haunt him whenever he was not actually in church, magnifying his sense of wrongs done to him, and tempting him with spectacular ways to get even.

“I hear you will be Celia’s spiritual sponsor at the nunnery,” Joachim continued, having put concerns about Cyrus behind him. “I plan to ride over myself for the ceremony, so I shall see you tomorrow.”

Celia, Hildegarde, and I rode down to the Nunnery of Yurt together. Given the circumstances, I had decided not to wish the twins a Happy Birthday. Their parents had announced at the last minute that they would accompany us. Celia, looking at the resignation and reluctance on their faces, which they made no effort to hide, took them away for a few minutes’ private conversation and returned without them, silent but with red eyes. She did not speak the whole journey.

The nunnery was only a few miles from the royal castle, but it could have been located in another kingdom for all the contact we had with it. One could see its church spire, rising above some trees, from the road, but I had never gone any closer. It was a hot day of midsummer, and the sun beat down on us and our black clothing, so I was relieved when we turned down the lane, bright with asters, that led to the nunnery.

The lane took us around the shoulder of a hill and into the nuns’ valley. A low wall, its gate open, circled the nunnery complex. The church itself, surrounded by its claustral edifices and farm buildings, looked peaceful and prosaic. In the surrounding fields the nuns’ tenants, stripped to the waist in the sun, were bringing in the hay. They waved to us cheerfully as we rode past.