Wizards Daughter

16

After di

"Excuse me a moment, Rosalind. You say your mother Was also a pirate?"

"Oh, yes, and she would wield her cutlass and wear a white shirt with flowing sleeves. Boots to her knees, of course. She and my father were the terror of the Caribbean. Yes, yes, I realize the odds of my speaking wonderful English are slim given that particular set of parents."

"No Italian counts in your scenarios?"

She frowned. "No, I've always shied away from anything Italian. Now that I think of it, that's odd, isn't it?"

Nicholas opened his mouth to reply, but closed it when he heard the countess's voice coming toward them. The private conversation he'd hoped for was not to be.

"Ah, dearest," Alexandra said, beaming a bright smile on the two of them, "how perfect to find you here in the music room. We have all decided to beg you to sing for us." The rest of the party followed her in.

Rosalind wanted to grab Nicholas and haul him away to some nice private nook or cra

"That would be quite nice," Nicholas said. "Do sit down at the pianoforte and sing me a love song. Perhaps one of the love songs sung by the Dragons of the Sallas Pond."

"Dragons of what?" Sophie asked.

Nicholas said calmly, "It's the name of beings in the Rules of the Pale, the book Grayson bought at the fair in Hyde Park."

Rosalind saw questions were ready to burst out of Aunt Sophie's mouth, questions she didn't want to address, so she quickly ran her fingers over the keys. She had intended to sing something Scottish and amusing, for her Scottish accent was quite decent, but what came out of her mouth was the song that had lived deep within her for as long as she could remember, never distant from her thoughts, a song she didn't understand, a song that made her feel both tranquil and unsettled at the same time. Of course she didn't remember how she had come to learn this particular song, but she knew it was from before. It was odd, but it felt as if it were drawn out of her, no choice for her at all. She sang:

I dream of beauty and sightless night

I dream of strength and fevered might

I dream I'm not alone again

But I know of his death and her grievous sin.

Sophie said quietly, "Every time I hear you sing that song, Rosalind, it makes me want to weep. Nicholas, if you did not know, those were the first words Rosalind spoke when she finally opened her mouth six months after Ryder found her."

"She didn't exactly say them," Ryder said, "she rather hummed them, not quite a song, but almost."

Nicholas said, "You have no memories from before you were eight years old, but this song was inside you. The words are curious. His death-whose death? And her -who is she? And what was her grievous sin? It seems to me the four lines are filled with clues about who and what you were, Rosalind."

Douglas nodded to the young man. "Yes, that is what we have all thought, but Rosalind has no memory at all of what the words could mean."

Rosalind shied away from thinking about the strange words. She began playing a Scottish reel, a clever tale about a bo

When Rosalind walked Nicholas to the front door after a lovely tea an hour later, Willicombe clearing his throat discreetly not six feet behind them, she said, "You know Uncle Ryder is standing not twelve feet away, back by the drawing room door, ever vigilant. I believe Willicombe is his forward guard."

He looked down into those blue, blue eyes of hers. "I don't doubt I'll be doing the same thing when our daughter is your age."

Her jaw dropped and she pressed her palms to her cheeks. "Oh, dear, that brings such a clear picture to my brain. It is appalling, Nicholas. I am only eighteen."

"I know," he said and smiled down at her. He lightly cupped her cheek with his own palm. "Only consider all the time you and I will spend bringing this about. Will you marry me, Rosalind? Will you let me be your Orlando?"

"A man who knows Shakespeare. It is a powerful temptation, Nicholas, but-"

"Perhaps it is I who am not worthy of you. Look at me, a merchant of Macau, an earl through an accident of birth, detested by his father. Not at all worthy of you."

She chewed on her bottom lip. Finally, she raised her face to his "Perhaps I would not lose all my nobility if I married you."

"You would not lose a whit. Indeed, you would gain in worthiness."

"Very well, then it is time you spoke to Uncle Ryder."

Nicholas raised his head and nodded first to Willicombe, then toward Ryder Sherbrooke, still standing against the door of the drawing room, his arms still crossed over his chest. "Excuse me, Rosalind."

She watched Nicholas walk back to her uncle and speak to him low, then he came back to her, lightly patted her cheek, and left.

Ryder merely nodded to her and went back into the drawing room, where she knew Uncle Douglas waited.

17

The following afternoon Nicholas emerged from the Sherbrooke estate room looking thoughtful. When he walked into the study, Grayson said, "It's about time you came. Rosalind wouldn't translate the Rules of the Pale until you got here."

Nicholas nodded toward Rosalind, smiling automatically when he saw her. Good, she thought, it was done. She was going to marry Nicholas Vail, a man she didn't know at all. She hoped she would have fifty years to learn all his bad habits. Her Aunt Sophie had once told her that Uncle Ryder still came up with a new crop of bad habits every single spring and it required great ingenuity to stamp them all out. Rosalind was smiling as "she lowered her eyes to the ancient book and read:

The most amazing thing has happened. The Dragons of the Sallas Pond have sung to me that they believe me ready to join the wizards. Because the Dragons can read a man's thoughts, they sang to me that the wizards were men like myself who maintained the balance of the different worlds tiedto the Pale. These men, the Dragons of the Sallas Pond sang, were only wizards, not gods. One Dragon told me his name was Taranis. I remembered quickly enough that Taranis was the Celtic god of thunder. The thunder god of the Celts and a Dragon of the Sallas Pond, also a god, both carried the same name?

Taranis told me to sit between his mighty scales and hold on. For the first time I saw the Pale from above, where clouds the color of eggplant rolled like mighty waves through the sky. On and on Taranis flew, his powerful wings nearly soundless in the still air. I looked down to see many rivers and lakes, all as thin as thread, but never ending, and so blue they looked like raised veins on a man's hands and arms, but it was the fortress of black stone I saw atop a huge mountain that froze my blood.

Taranis sang to me that this was the pride of the wizards, that the fear it engendered helped them to maintain their veil of power. The wizards' fortress, brooding like a black vulture atop Mount Olyvan, was called Blood Rock. I saw the reason for the name. Streaks of blood snaked down the black rock, like the rivers on the land below. The streaks were as red as blood just shed.