Daughter of Magic - Wizard of Yurt - 5 (2 page)

‘When I grow up and become a wizard I’m going to be able to fly like this myself,” she said confidently. This had been something else I had been hoping to discuss with Theodora today—the question of when and how the daughter of a wizard and a witch should start learning magic. “Why do you think Mother always makes me wear blue?” she added.

“Because it looks so good with your eyes,” I suggested.

Antonia’s eyes had in fact never changed color, remaining a briliant sapphire blue.

“I don’t think so,” she said, thinking it over. “I think it’s only because Mother’s own favorite color is blue. My favorite color is yelow. What’s yours?”

“Blue,” I said, thinking I would have to buy Antonia something yelow to wear.

I had expected that she would sleep on the couch in the outer room of my chambers, but Gwennie would not hear of it. “A little girl alone with a wizard?” she said. “You’d probably have a nightmare and turn her into a frog by mistake. Of course, you’d be very sorry in the morning, but think how she’d feel!”

Antonia, holding my hand, looked up at me and laughed, but” with the slightest questioning look, as though wondering if Gwennie was right and she might unexpectedly find herself an amphibian.

I had the vague feeling that Royal Wizards in other kingdoms were treated with more awe and respect than to be accused by the castle staff of doing transformations by accident. “I wouldn’t do anything to harm her, Gwennie,” I tried to argue. This would have been easier if I had dared tel anyone Antonia was my daughter, but the queen was the only person in the castle who knew. “And you can’t very wel put a little girl like this in a room by herself.”

“I sleep in a room by myself at home,” Antonia piped up. Gwennie, daughter of the cook and the castle constable, had been destined for the kitchens by her mother, but herself had always intended to replace her father. Indeed, since her father had been so sick the past winter, she had taken over more and more of his duties, supervising the other servants, arranging accommodations for visitors to the castle, and keeping the accounts and the ledgers. Senior members of the staff had smiled indulgently, assuming it was only a temporary situation. Knowing Gwennie and her determination, I knew better.

“I’l put her in the suite with the duchess’s daughters,” she announced, forestaling further argument—besides, the duchess’s daughters probably knew al about hair brushing. “They’ve just arrived, and they were very interested to learn you had a niece. And I’ve already told you, Wizard,” she finished loftily, “that in carrying out my duties I prefer the name of Gwendolyn.” The duchess’s twin daughters, three years younger than King Paul, were delighted when I brought Antonia’s little bag to their suite—a dol’s smiling face poked out of the top of the bag. ‘We already said we could take care of the girl,” the twins told me. “So you don’t need to worry about your niece at al, Wizard. Oh, Gwennie, before you go, we’re going to need more towels.”

“Of course, my ladies,” she said with a respect she never showed me.

“We know an old man, set in his ways, doesn’t want youthful female companionship!” they added, going into giggles that I found highly inappropriate.

Antonia held on to my hand, looking up at them gravely. They had grown into handsome women in the last few years. Both the twins had inherited their father’s height, being very tal, but physicaly the resemblance between them stopped there. Hildegarde was blond like her father, whose principality she would someday inherit, and Celia was slim and dark-haired like her mother, after whom she would one day be duchess of Yurt. They had always shared a unanimity against outsiders, which when they were little had even taken the form of a secret language, but I had the feeling that as they grew up their personalities had begun to diverge.

“What an adorable little girl,” said Hildegarde. “It’s hard to believe she’s related to you, Wizard.”

“Where did you get those big blue eyes, sweetheart?”

asked Celia.

“I was born with them,” said Antonia very seriously, which made both the twins start laughing again.

“I’d better warn you, Wizard,” said Hildegarde with a grin for her sister, “that if you leave the girl with us too long Celia may make her into a nun, of much too pure a mind to want to associate with some magic-worker.”

“And who was it,” Celia shot back with an answering grin, “who was saying just today how much fun it would be to teach a little girl to use a sword?” Antonia looked up at me again. “I haven’t seen any swords yet,” she said in anticipation. “Wil I see a dragon too?”

“I’l keep the girl with me though dinner,” I said and escaped.

As we walked back across the courtyard, Antonia asked thoughtfuly, “Do you love other ladies besides my mother?”

“Of course not!” I replied, shocked.

“Those ladies are very pretty,” she said in explanation.

I had tried to tidy my chambers for her arrival, but she immediately clambered onto my desk and started leafing through papers, teling me she was looking for good magic spels. When I lifted her down and threw the papers into a drawer she crossed straight to my bookshelves and started to climb, working the toes of her smal shoes in between the volumes.

“Here, I want to show you something interesting,” I said quickly, taking hold of her again and planting her in a chair. “And, Antonia, I don’t want you on my shelves.”

“But Mother likes to climb,” she objected.

“Not on shelves. It’s very dangerous. She’l be angry at me if you hurt yourself.”

“What are you going to show me?”

“A unicorn,” I said, throwing the spel together as quickly as I could.

II

And so I spent much of the afternoon working a series of magical ilusions that I hoped would amuse a girl. She watched very seriously without commenting at al, but she did snuggle up next to me while I told her a few stories from my experiences in the fabled East and in the borderlands of the wild northern land of magic. However, she kept being disappointed at the absence of dragons in my stories.

“We’ve only ever once had a dragon here in Yurt,” I said, “years and years ago, before the king was even born. It almost kiled me.” For a number of reasons, I did not think the details appropriate for her.

But instead of asking me more, she jumped up, listening with an eager expression. “I hear a swordfight!”

My heart gave an abrupt thump, but the faint sound of swords during the day, carried into the castle from outside, was perfectly normal. “Someone’s practicing,” I said. “Do you want to go see?” Antonia ran ahead, chestnut-colored braids bouncing against the back of her blue dress. On the grass outside we found King Paul and Hildegarde, fencing with swords and light shields.

In a leather tunic and men’s leggings, her long blond hair tied back and eyes flashing, Hildegarde had a magnificent figure. She was as tal as the king, wel muscled but not the least bit unfeminine. I would have found the sight of her before me highly distracting, but Paul apparently did not. He concentrated on his fighting, moving lightly, landing al his blows on her shield while deftly parrying the strokes she rained less discriminately on him. For ten minutes they circled each other, fighting while more and more of the staff came out of the castle to watch.

“Very good,” the king said as Hildegarde got an unexpected advantage for a moment and forced him to retreat a few steps. “But don’t drop your defense,” he continued, his sword moving constantly as he spoke. “Because if you do—” and with a sudden twist he jerked the blade from her hand.

Antonia was watching openmouthed. I doubted a seamstress’s house in town offered anything like this much excitement. Hildegarde dipped her head and lowered her shield. “That stung,” she said, flexing the fingers of her sword hand. “I think you got in a lucky blow.”

“In part, of course, I did,” said Paul, pushing back sweaty hair and ignoring his audience. “I’ve had a lot more experience. But in part I’m just stronger than you are. Your footwork is fine, your stamina is fine, and your reach is longer than a lot of men, but you just don’t have the upper-body strength you’d need.”

“Father keeps teling me the same thing,” she said glumly, retrieving her sword.

Paul smiled and put an arm casualy across her shoulders, as though she had been a youth in knighthood training rather than a stunningly wel constructed young woman. “I think it’s time we got cleaned up for dinner. I’l try to drink of some exercises for you to build your muscles.”

At dinner my daughter demonstrated excelent manners, sitting beside me with a copy of Thaumaturgy A to Z bringing her up to table level. Afterwards I took her to the twins’ suite—Hildegarde had been transformed back into a modestly attired aristocratic lady for dinner— and told them to make sure Antonia got to bed soon.

King Paul was waiting at the door of my chambers when I returned. “I’d like to talk to you, Wizard,” he said, frowning.

Good. This was my opportunity to impart some wisdom—if I could only think how to tel my liege lord diplomaticaly that he had been behaving like a fool. Acting in front of the staff as if he did not notice that Hildegarde was not a boy was perhaps insufficient cause for comment by itself, but I hadn’t forgotten him alowing the watchman to attack him in good earnest. I pressed my palm against the magic door lock and let him in, leaving the door open since it was such a pleasant June evening.

Paul flopped down on my couch and stretched long legs out before him. “You know, Wizard,” he said, “sometimes it seems that you’re almost the only person in the castle not trying to get me married.”

“Married?” This was certainly a different topic.

“My Aunt Maria and half the ladies in court seem to bring the topic up every day. Mother’s the worst, of course.” Even his frown could not obscure the fact that Paul was extremely handsome, golden-haired, superbly muscled, with his mother’s emerald eyes and ready smile and his own grace and confidence in everything he did. “For the longest time she was trying to marry me to the daughter of King Lucas of Caelrhon. Not that Mother—unlike Aunt Maria!—ever said anything explicitly. But have you noticed how many times in the last year the little princess has been invited to the castle? And there were always hints, suggestions that now that I was king it was time to start giving some thought to the heir who would one day be king after me.”

“And you don’t like the princess?” I asked.

“There’s nothing to like! I’m sure she’l be fine when she grows up, but it’s quite a stretch caling her a woman rather than a child. How could I possibly be interested in someone like that?”

“It would certainly make sense to your mother,” I suggested, “forging anew a dynastic tie between the twin kingdoms of Yurt and Caelrhon. After al, her own husband is the younger brother of King Lucas.” Paul puled a jeweled-handled knife from his belt and flipped it into the air, caught it, flipped it up and caught it again. I had never been quite sure how much he approved of his mothers second marriage, but that was not what was bothering him now. “I thought a king was supposed to be able to do whatever he wanted,” he said gloomily. But then he abruptly smiled for the first time since entering my chambers. “But I can keep on with my horses. I’ve got a dozen foals sired by Bonfire now, and I’m going to backbreed some of the filies to him. The stables of Yurt wil one day be famous.”

“And you’ve been able to do a lot for educating the children of Yurt.” I knew that Paul had, from his own resources, laid out a great deal in addition to the amount the royal treasury had always expended on books and teachers’ salaries in the schools scattered across the kingdom.

He waved this away as barely worth mentioning. “I guess I just don’t want to feel that everyone considers me a stalion myself, interesting only if I’m fathering the heir to the throne.” The topic of fatherhood always made me feel as though my ears were burning. Traditionaly wizards neither marry nor have children, being considered wedded to institutionalized magic. Although I had managed to carry on as Royal Wizard of Yurt in the five years since Antonia was born without either Paul or the wizards’ school learning she was my daughter, this was a charade I could not continue indefinitely.

Part of my decision to bring Antonia to Yurt was a vague feeling that once she was here I might find a way to resolve the issue.

The king did not seem to notice my confusion. “I think I finaly made Mother understand that I’m not about to marry a thirteen-year-old girl, but rather than giving me a little peace she invited the duchess’s daughters to come visit! I’m sure she thought she was very subtle, being away with her husband at the royal court of Caelrhon while the twins were here, so as not to appear to be putting any pressure on me, but it’s stil obvious why she invited them. I thought the three of us, the twins and I, had made it clear years ago that none of us wanted to marry each other, but apparently we’re going to have to do it al over again.”

“Are you quite so sure they wouldn’t want to marry you?” I asked.

Paul crossed his booted legs and smiled. “Of course not. We’ve known each other al our lives. Neither one of them wants to marry anyone. Celia just wants to study her Bible, and Hildegarde intends to become a knight.”

This was news to me, though maybe it shouldn’t have been. “But women can’t be knights!” Or, for that matter, wizards, I added to myself But Antonia had said she was going to be a wizard.

Paul laughed. “Try teling that to Hildegarde. I’ve never had any luck changing her mind.”

So far I hadn’t been able to work in any discussion of the fact that a king without an heir should not imperil himself for a joke. But fathers, I told myself, had to act responsibly even if no one else did. “Aren’t there any adult princesses who would consider marrying you, even if the twins won’t?” I asked. “After al—”

He didn’t give me a chance to finish. “Of course there are, Wizard,” he said, looking at me levely “Last winter, when I spent several months in the great City by the sea with those relatives of Mother’s, there were ladies enough who would have been more than wiling to marry me or, for that matter, do anything else I wanted.” He shook his head in disapproval—or a good imitation. “Incomprehensible, of course,” which I thought showed a remarkable lack of insight. “Not a few of them even had royal blood! I expect wizards don’t get proposals like that, so you won’t know how startling it can be.” I prudently kept silent.