Daughter of Magic

children. Maybe not a hundred. Say, a dozen or so. Wouldn’t that be great, to have a dozen little princes and princesses running around the castle?”

“You’d better consult your queen on that.” Gwennie managed to say it as a joke. Margareta, looking startled, rose on her elbows.

Paul laughed without seeming to notice either’s reaction. For him, all our troubles were over rather than just beginning. “All right. Maybe I’ll settle for three or four. Too bad I don’t have any brothers or sisters of my own, or I could have nieces and nephews. And if the duchess’s daughters aren’t going to marry-” He stopped. “That reminds me, Wizard. Is Celia a novice nun now?”

I had completely forgotten about the twins since leaving them at the nunnery. “I suppose so. They would have had to finish the ceremony without a spiritual sponsor.”

“I’ll ride down there in a few days,” said Paul lazily. “They probably won’t let me see her, but at least I can find out if everything is going smoothly. I was looking through some old ledgers-thanks again, Gwennie, by the way, for helping me find them-and it looks as though previous kings of Yurt sometimes made gifts to the nunnery, so maybe I should too.”

Suddenly, unexpectedly, a voice floated through the window. “Hello!” It sounded magically amplified. “Is anyone there?”

I knew that voice. I jumped up so fast I almost slipped and leaped to the window. Outside, hovering somewhat tentatively in mid-air, were two wizards, one black-bearded and one with a red bandit’s beard: Elerius and Evrard.

Paul joined me at the window and waved enthusiastically. “What’s that older wizard’s name, Elerius, is that right?” he asked me with a low chuckle. “It seems like he’s always showing up just a few minutes too late, just after you’ve finished disposing of the enemy. You’re going to make him jealous at this rate, Wizard!”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him how wrong he was.

“We’d been combing Caelrhon almost inch by inch for any sign of you and the children,” said Evrard. “At first Elerius”-with a nod toward the other wizard-“was able to pick up the remnants of the tracer spell you’d put on the flying carpet earlier this summer, but the spell disappeared as we came upriver. And we could have sworn this castle wasn’t even here!”

Elerius meanwhile was introducing himself to Theodora. They had spoken on the telephone but never actually met. “So this is the witch of Caelrhon,” said Elerius pleasantly, regarding her from under peaked eyebrows, “for whom Daimbert has been willing to flount all the traditions of wizardry.”

“But about half an hour ago,” said Evrard, continuing his story, “Elerius said he could sense a major spell breaking up somewhere in this direction. And as we approached a ruined castle suddenly materialized before us, towers, battlements, and all!” His cheerful blue eyes looked concerned for a moment. “And there wasn’t much question about the presence of the supernatural….”

I flew down to the base of the cliffs to retrieve the carpet, and Paul and Gwennie began loading children. Justinia, with no desire whatsoever to stay in this castle, agreed to pilot it back to Caelrhon. “We should be able to take them all in three or four trips,” said Paul. “Princess Margareta had better be in the first group, or it could provoke an international incident!” He laughed at his own humor. “Yes, that’s right,” to one of the children. “You’ll be back with your mother very soon.”

“So the demon’s already trapped in a pentagram, I gather,” said Elerius, looking at me thoughtfully. “That certainly saves the hard magic of chasing it around the castle. We won’t need the demonology experts from the school; the person who summoned it can just send it back.” He waited expectantly.

The first carpet-load of children took off, awake and laughing now. The king and Gwennie accompanied them, while Theodora stayed with the rest. Antonia was still asleep, curled up on the hard stone floor with her chestnut hair loose across her face.

I turned back to see Elerius still looking at me. I realized slowly that he was wondering just how desperate I had been to rescue her. Evrard himself was just working out that I even had a daughter and seemed shocked-at least in part, I thought, because everyone here but he seemed to know about it.

I took a deep breath. This was going to take all the wizardry we knew between us. “I didn’t summon the demon myself,” I said, not mentioning that in only slightly different circumstances I might have. I went on to tell them how Cyrus had long been working with a demon, ever since his apprenticeship days in the eastern kingdoms with Vlad-who I still hadn’t found-and how Antonia had decided the easiest way to save him from it and to get all the children rescued was to summon a demon herself.

“What did you say she was, five?” said Evrard. “Too young to have to worry about her soul, then. Pretty sharp move, Daimbert!” giving me a punch on the shoulder as though it had all been my idea. “Let’s wake her up and have her return it to hell. If she could lisp out the words to call it she should be able to send it back all right.”

Elerius had known Antonia; Evrard had not. The former had the good taste not to take for granted that there was no problem. He gave me a long, sober look from his tawny hazel eyes. “I swear on all the powers of magic, Daimbert,” he said quietly, “I did not teach her any demonology.”

Evrard looked back and forth between us, realizing there was more going on than he realized. I shook my head. “I didn’t think you had. That’s not what’s bothering me.”

Elerius nodded slowly. “If someone has sold his or her soul, the only chance to get it back is through negotiation, before rather than after the demon returns to hell.”

Evrard wrinkled his forehead in surprise. “Aren’t the two of you getting a little overexcited here? Wizardry doesn’t worry about people’s souls. And even if she didn’t get off for being so young, she’d still have seventy years or so to worry about it. And-”

Before he had a chance to tell me reassuringly that she would probably damn herself a dozen different ways in the next seventy years anyway, Evrard found himself propelled backwards hard and fast through the air. He hit the wall and subsided slowly.

“All right, all right, I get the hint,” he said good-naturedly.

“Daimbert!” said Theodora, who had been following our conversation from a little distance away.

But that hadn’t been my magic. That had been Elerius.

We sat quietly, close together, our eyes locked. “Why are you doing this?” I asked. “Why are you trying to help me?” In part I realized I was stalling; as long as Antonia was asleep, as long as the demon down in the ruined chapel was imprisoned in the pentagram, things could not get any worse than they already were. But in part I wanted to understand.

“We all take oaths to help humanity,” he said slowly. “A little girl is part of humanity. But there is of course more, Daimbert, as you and I know. If we called the school, the demonology experts would doubtless tell us that the theoretical danger to a girl’s soul, a danger they would have to discuss with the priests to assess properly- which they have no intention of doing-is nothing compared to the very real danger of a demon loose in the world. Back to hell with it at once, the school’s masters would tell us, before it breaks out of the pentagram, and if one girl is sacrificed it’s still worth it.”

The castle was quiet around us. The children dozed again while waiting, and the only sounds came from Cyrus, who sat a short distance from us, his head in his hands and muttering. Evrard and Theodora were listening but could have been miles away. “That sounds like the kind of logic that would appeal to you, Elerius,” I said. “You always claim to be working for the greater good of humanity, even if a few standards or a few people have to be sacrificed along the way.”

He was not insulted. “I am speaking openly, Daimbert. I know perfectly well that in trying to help Antonia- and she is a delightful little girl, one that anyone of any sensitivity would want to help-I am not following the school’s standards. But there is a higher good here. I have spoken to you of this before. Someday, probably sooner than they think, the masters of the school will have to step aside for younger leadership. It’s no secret that everyone assumes-including me-that I shall be part of that leadership. And when that time comes I will want your help.”

I looked away, not able to meet his calculating gaze any longer. “You said all this once before, but I would have thought it would be clear now that I could never join the school faculty. They don’t want wizards who have families.”

“Because such a wizard would let his judgment be swayed by personal considerations?” said Elerius with half