Wizards Daughter

We were welcomed by a young man who greeted Taranis with great deference, almost reverence, I thought, and bowed low to me. He told me his name was Belenus-/ remembered that Belenus was the Celtic god of agriculture who also was the giver of the life force and brought the healing power of the sun to earth and to man. The Romans called him Apollo Belenus and named the great May first festival after him, Beltane. Another Celtic god? When Taranis left, Belenus invited me into a small room hung with rich crimson draperies and gave me a bronze cup of witmas tea. It tasted of strawberries stirred with garlic.

Belenus had a great red beard that covered his face, leaving only bright blue eyes showing beneath his shag of more fierce red hair. He had big square teeth and he seemed to grow younger even as I spoke to him and drank the witmas tea. I drank a great deal of witmas tea during our time together and the taste changed with every sip, from strawberries and garlic to harsh green tea to a sort of beef broth. I was a wizard, I thought, and so I tried to change the witmas tea, but it ended up filthy black mud. It was very humiliating, but Belenus only laughed.

I met another that day as well, Epona, and she wasn't a wizard, she was a witch, known to the Celts as the horse goddess because her father hated women and thus mated with a horse; she was the result. She represented, I knew, beauty, speed, bravery, and sexual vigor. It was a good thing that her father gave her his face, I thought, since her mother's would not have gained the same result at all. The Romans, naturally, adopted her and held a festival in her honor each year in December. Odd that she was fully human and yet her mother was a horse. As to her sexual vigor, never would I have guessed at that moment what would come to pass with the witch Epona.

Belenus told me the other wizards wished me to join them. I knew deep down that if I did not remain with them, perhaps my blood would join the wet streaks on the fortress's walls. And so I remained for close to a year. But one morning I thought hard that I wished to leave Blood Rock, where I seemed to forget as much as I was told, surely because of a spell they'd cast upon me. Soon, as I stood on the ramparts, hungrily searching the horizon through the eggplant clouds, I saw Taranis flying to Blood Rock to fetch me.

"That is why you remember so little," Taranis sang to me. "They knew you would not choose to remain with them. I had hoped you would, for all the Dragons worry about the future with that vicious crop of wizards up there."

On odd days I remembered the wizards had given me the name Lugh, pronounced "Loo," the Celtic "shining god" who was a fierce warrior, magician, and craftsman. It was a very important name-the Romans had Latinized it into Londinium, which later became London.

Rosalind paused and drank some water. She said, "The Celts. This is very odd. Why are there Celtic gods in the Pale?"

"Why not?" Grayson said. "If there are Tibers, surely we can accept Celtic gods." He shrugged. "We still didn't learn anything at all useful, but I will say that this is a powerful story. I can see the fortress of Blood Rock clearly in my mind."

Nicholas said, "You think it is a fiction, spun out of Sarimund's brain?"

Grayson shrugged. "Were there not so many odd things about how I came upon the book, I should say yes immediately. But there were odd things, more than odd, really. Magical things. I find myself enjoying it as I would any good tale."

Nicholas rose and prowled around the room, pausing here and there to pick up a cushion or a teacup or a book off a table. He said, "I don't like any of this. It is as if Sarimund is playing with us, perhaps mocking us, and perhaps this Blood Rock is something he created to ease the boredom of his time in the Bulgar."

Rosalind said, "There are only a few pages left. Shall I finish them today?"

Grayson consulted his watch and rose. "Let us finish it tomorrow. I must be off. I have an engagement."

"Aha," Rosalind said, gri

"I am not the one scandalizing my parents," he said. "Look at the two of you-engaged! I tell you, Rosalind, it fair to curdles my belly to think of you married, and you wore pigtails only weeks ago, I would swear it. Nicholas, I will tell you about her misspent childhood, how she was as bad as any demon I ever created, led all the children into mischief, always with a wicked smile, drove my parents and Jane-Jane is the directress of Brandon House-quite mad. Yes, Mother is right, you were a Devil's spawn, Rosalind."

Nicholas sat down on an embroidered green wing chair, stretched out his long legs in front of him, and crossed his hands over his belly. "Tell me one evil deed this Devil child executed, Grayson-only one, because I don't wish to be-come disillusioned."

Grayson struck a thoughtful pose and gri

"My father was even more surprised when at the stroke of midnight several of the gypsies appeared at our door leading the children, who'd all drunk some gypsy punch Rosalind had given them. The children were vilely ill for the remainder of the night. As I recall, my father spanked you good and proper, the one and only time, as I remember."

"Yes, he did, but it wasn't fair. There were so many other times when it would have been fair, but not that one. I intended us to have a marvelous lesson, perhaps sing songs with the gypsies, learn how to dance as they did, you know, twirling about the huge campfire, skirts swinging. Then I saw a little gypsy girl drinking punch out of a big barrel. When I told her we were thirsty, she gave us all some. How was I to know that it would make everyone so sick?"

"You were sick as well, Rosalind?"

Grayson said, "No, she was the only one who wasn't ill. I was certain you didn't drink any of the punch. You didn't, did you, Rosalind?"

"Yes. I drank at least three cups and it tasted so good. I don't know why I didn't get sick." She was aware Nicholas was giving her a brooding look. There was calculation in that look, she was sure of it, and what did that signify?

18

Tuesday afternoon, Nicholas, Rosalind, and Grayson were seated in Nicholas's small drawing room at Grillon's Hotel, cups of tea on a silver tray next to Rosalind's elbow, brought to them by Lee Po, Nicholas's man of all affairs. The two men had spoken quietly in what Nicholas told them was Mandarin Chinese. When Lee Po had bowed himself out, Grayson said to Nicholas he'd never before heard sounds like that coming from a human throat.

Nicholas laughed. "Lee Po says the same thing about English, though he speaks the King's English like a little Etonian." He shrugged. "Since I lived and traded in Macau, it was necessary that I learn Mandarin. Lee Po corrects me regularly. However, I'm not able to correct his English."

Rosalind laughed. "Why didn't he speak English to us?"

"He tells me no civilized tongue should sound like a knife chipping ice."

"Where did he learn English?" Grayson asked.

"He was married to an Englishwoman, ten years, he told me, before she died in childbirth with their only child. She'd been a missionary and a teacher."