Daughter of Magic

be mine but a demon’s?”

“But I have more experience-”

“And are much more likely,” commented Elerius dryly, “to throw away your life and soul together in a reckless effort to save your daughter. Now that I have seen the dangers, I shall attempt what other means might be found.”

“I want you to come, Wizard,” said Antonia to me, tugging harder.

Still I hesitated. “If I leave you here, Elerius,” I said slowly, “and I find that you’ve deluded yourself, like Cyrus, into thinking that you can use a demon’s help without it affecting your own judgment and will, then I shall have to kill you: quickly, immediately, before the powers of black magic make you invincible.”

Elerius’s face had slowly regained its color. “I don’t think I’ll be in any danger of death from you,” he said, managing a smile. I wondered if he meant it as equivocally as it sounded.

“Hurry up!” Antonia cried. “If you don’t hurry the people will be here, and if you make Elerius go instead I’ll stay here with you.”

That decided me. I scooped her up and found myself running flat out up the passage away from the ruined chapel, almost tripping over Cyrus, who was huddled by the door. A voice in the back of my mind asked if this urging from Antonia might be the first sign of the devil’s influence, taking me away from where I really ought to be.

It felt so good to be out of the demon’s influence, back in cool morning sunlight, seizing a startled Theodora and kissing her again when I thought I had done so for the last time, that I almost didn’t care.

Briefly I told her of our progress-or lack of progress-so far and looked out the window. A group of people had left their horses at the base of the cliffs and were climbing up the broken causeway toward the castle’s front gate. And with a far-seeing spell I recognized them: Celia and Hildegarde, their parents, and the bishop.

For a few minutes I could imagine that everything was going to be all right after all. I flew down and met them outside the gate, telling them immediately that all the children were safe but leaving out, for the moment, any mention of demons.

Prince Ascelin sheathed his sword and slapped me on the shoulder. His face was gray with exhaustion, and all the lines in it had deepened, but he still managed a laugh. “Thought you could slip away without my knowledge, Wizard? You may have wanted to protect me from what you would find here, but it’s not so easy when you’ve got the best tracker in a dozen kingdoms on your trail!”

I managed a smile in return. Let him think I had left him in Yurt out of concern for his safety. In fact, I hadn’t thought about him at all, only wanting to get to Caelrhon myself as fast as I could.

“I used to be able to hunt all day and all night-even on foot when everyone else was mounted-without getting this tired,” he said, shaking his head ruefully. “Age is the best tracker of all; he gets on your trail and you never lose him. But by now I presume you’ve captured this Dog-Man and have the children all ready to go home?” he added cheerfully, looking up at the jagged turrets of the castle. “Terrible place, I must say, for children; good thing the twins didn’t know about it when they were twelve. It looks like your man used a spell to hide their tracks a lot of the way, but he was going fast and must have had gaps in his spells-plenty there for me to follow.”

I looked past him and the duchess to their daughters. “Celia?”

She gave me a grin. She still had all her hair and looked happier and more at peace with herself than she had all summer. “When you abandoned me like that, before I even had a chance to make my maiden vows, what choice did I have but to chase after you?”

“And,” put in Hildegarde, “she wanted to help me find Antonia.” She, like Ascelin, was wearing a sword.

Joachim stood at the rear, not saying anything. The part of me that wanted to be optimistic thought that bishops dealt with the supernatural every day, so Elerius and I could safely turn the demon over to him.

The part of me that was realistic knew that the aura of the saints around the bishop would so terrify the demon that he would refuse to talk to him at all-maybe retreating back to hell, but if so taking Antonia’s soul irretrievably with him.

Before I could say anything to him, I saw past his shoulder a flying dark red shape approaching rapidly: the flying carpet. Justinia dipped it over our heads and Paul and Gwennie waved. “You’re just in time to help out!” called the king. “There are a lot of eager parents waiting back in Caelrhon.”

The carpet shot in through a broken window high above us. Everyone clattered through the gates and up the stairs to join them. It was much easier finding our way through the castle in daylight, and without having to worry about Vlad, than it had been at night, especially with the castle invisible around us.

But it had been, I thought, a cold sweat breaking out down my back, a very long time since Evrard had gone off in search of Vlad …

The duchess went straight up to Justinia. “A pigeon-message arrived in Yurt for you about half an hour after you and the wizard flew off. It looked like it had been transferred a number of times: it was from Xantium.”

“Didst thou mark who had sent it?” said Justinia eagerly.

“I did more than that,” said the duchess, slightly shame-faced, producing it from her pocket. “I’m afraid I read it. Well, everyone else who transferred it probably read it too, so why shouldn’t I? It’s from a mage-I can’t pronounce his name-and he says that your grandfather and the Guild have worked out their differences. He’s going to come to Yurt himself to accompany you home.”

“This is joy and gladness!” cried Justinia.

So, I thought, Vlad wouldn’t have gotten anything from the Thieves’ Guild for Justinia anyway. There were distinct disadvantages to traveling slowly and only by night: one’s information could be seriously out of date.

Antonia ran to greet the twins, and Hildegarde swung her high over her head. “You had everybody worried, you scamp!” she said with a great laugh.

“I know,” said Antonia seriously. “I didn’t want to leave town without telling Mother. But I couldn’t help it.”

“That even happens to grownups sometimes,” said Celia, smiling. She turned to Joachim. “Your Holiness, I have been thinking ever since yesterday, when we all left the nunnery so abruptly. I don’t really have the vocation to be a nun. What took me there, I now realize, was only despair. Don’t think-” she added hastily as though the bishop had been going to interrupt, which he hadn’t. “Don’t think that I look down on women who want to devote their days to prayer. But I want to help others, not just worry about my own little sins. I intend to serve God but I will have to do so actively in the world.”

“Are you certain this is your own decision, my daughter?”

Celia smiled again. “Well, it’s certainly not my parents’, if that’s what you’re wondering. You’ve been with us the whole time, so you know they haven’t said anything one way or the other.”

“Though I had to bite my tongue more than once,” said the duchess with a grin. “And the fact that you’re twenty-one now did nothing to stop me. Rather it was the memory of all the things that people used to tell me I couldn’t do.”

“I shall have to write to the abbess,” said Celia more seriously. “She was very kind to me. And, Mother, we really ought to give the nunnery something. It’s not their fault I changed my mind.”

Paul and Gwennie were getting a second load of children onto the carpet, with Hildegarde’s assistance. Justinia, delightedly reading and rereading the letter from Kaz-alrhun, was no help. Most of the children were awake now, and some of the boys suddenly decided it would be exciting to race off and explore the castle rather than traveling home again, even on a flying carpet. Hildegarde’s long reach and her offer to let children who did not run off hold her sword stifled an incipient break.

“Maybe I should rethink those dozen children,” said Paul to Gwennie, prying loose from his leg a sobbing girl who had been more terrified of the carpet than anything else until she saw Hildegarde’s sword. “Even aside from what my queen would think …” He looked at her silently a minute. “Though I don’t think I’ll be getting myself a queen for a while. It’s going to take me a very long time to find another woman who could be half as much my friend as you are.” He let it hang, still looking at her, then suddenly turned and shouted to some boys, “Sit down again! Don’t you know how dangerous it can be to stand up on a flying carpet?” This was a curious comment given that they had, for once, been sitting demurely.

“You realize,” the bishop said to Celia, “you still cannot be a priest.”

“I thought you would say that,” she said soberly. “How about visiting the sick as your representative? How about talking to women who are confused and want spiritual guidance but have good reason to feel uncomfortable around men? How about just sitting very quietly in the back of classes in the seminary?”