Wizards Daughter

"Even a dumb beast like the Tiber keeps abreast of things. His English is halting, but the grammar is well nigh perfect, which surprises me since he has the brain of a fig.

"You have met Bifrost, known as the Scholar. He was hollowed out when his mate was killed in a moon storm so long ago. Everything lasts for a very long time in the Pale, affections included."

"Where is the Pale?" Nicholas asked.

Sarimund studied Nicholas's face. "The Pale is as close as those three bloodred moons above our heads, yet it is apart, a study in contrasts. But it is as real as an eternal dream. Am I not real? Am I not standing here before you? Do you not see me? Am I not speaking to you?"

"You could be another specter like Captain Jared," Nicholas said.

"His is not idle curiosity, Sarimund," Rosalind said, lightly touching his arm, a very real arm, the muscles rippling beneath her fingers. Whatever he was, he was no specter. "Listen, we are here because you brought us here. You set this all into motion almost three hundred years ago when you convinced Captain Jared that he owed the little girl the debt, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"Did you really bring a storm to destroy Captain Jared's ship, or was it all an elaborate illusion?"

He made a choked noise in his throat and his golden hair lifted, very nearly standing on end. "The little girl had no bite to her, no impertinent questions for a wizard, but you, the woman, do," he said, now visibly calming himself. "I am more powerful than you can begin to imagine, I can whip the skies into a froth of madness, I can-"

"Yes, yes," she said. "Then you wrote the Rules of the Pale and prayed I would find it, somehow, so everything would be in motion."

"No, I did not pray; a wizard casts his spells, and waits to see them unfold. And waits. And watches. And guides. Of course you found it."

"Well, yes, I suppose you did that right, though you were a bit on the late side. And you finally released the final pages for me to read, but still that last page was stark white and perfectly blank. I only realized a little while ago that you had written Prince Egan's name on that page."

Nicholas said, "You pla

Sarimund said, "I know. It has driven me quite mad to know I was so very wrong in my calculations."

Nicholas said, "How could this be? Why did you want her in the first place?"

"After I left the Pale, wondering if Epona had indeed birthed my son, Taranis visited me in my dreams one night. He dreamed to me that Epona would kill our son-Prince Egan-because she'd somehow divined what he, the man, would become. Taranis said I had to stop her or the Pale would be thrown into incredible chaos, and he didn't know if he would be able to fix it. He said there was no wizard, no witch, no creature here in the Pale to help me so I must rely on humans. What could a human do, I asked in my dream back to him. He puffed out a whiff of flame and I swear to you I felt a sting of heat. He told me I was a wizard and a human, wasn't I, and I awoke. He was right, and so I settled into my wizard's brain and cast about for other witches and wizards on earth as strong as I. I found two separate, very powerful wizard lines that stretched back into time, meeting at one point back in the times of the Crusades. One was the Vail line. In my time your powerful line was represented by Jared Vail, a ship captain then, but not simple. He was brave, many times too brave. Ah, he was filled with strength, but being human, living in your constricted civilized world, he did not realize what he really was. I knew then that Jared Vail was the one. And you were there in my mind, Isabella, in the same time, representing your powerful line, and you were so clear, so strong, so very magic. I knew that both of you would be successful."

She said, "You saw the little girl. Why would you believe a little girl would have a better chance of saving Prince Egan than a grown woman, namely me?"

"The little girl was a light so bright no evil could touch her. She saw everything clearly, she could not be deceived by either magic or evil. But now? Is your light still as bright, your eyes as clear? Is the little girl still burning bright inside you? We will see."

"What does that mean- we will see!" Nicholas asked. "You're telling us you do not know?"

"Now is now, even though in the Pale, the present can bleed into the future or shrink into the past, though time itself is not really a factor, and thus I ca

Nicholas looked angry enough to strike Sarimund.

Rosalind said, "When the child didn't come, why didn't Epona kill your son?"

"The point of the spell was to stay her hand until you arrived, Isabella, until you could come to the Pale to save him."

Nicholas said slowly, "You froze time?"

"That is a crude way of saying it, but yes, Egan has remained a little boy. When you save him, Isabella, he will become the man, the great wizard ruler he was meant to be."

Rosalind said quickly, "There is a problem, however. I don't know who I am so I ca

"And your name is the same as it was then in Captain Jared Vail's time," Sarimund said, then leaned forward and kissed her forehead.

48

Sarimund gave her a graceful bow. "Yes, your birth was greeted with great celebration, Isabella. You already had an older brother, you see, so the heir to the duchy was secure."

"Duchy?" Nicholas asked, an eyebrow raised.

Rosalind gri

"Tell him who you are, my dear," Sarimund said.

"I was born to Duca Gabriele and Duchessa Elizabeth Contadini. My mother is English, daughter of the Duke of Wrothbridge, and she married my father when she was seventeen years old-my father was visiting London as a young man, saw her riding in Hyde Park, and wanted to marry her, and so they married two months later. I loved hearing that story, nearly every night I asked my mother to tell me of it after she had shooed away my na

She whispered, terrified of the answer, "Are my parents still alive?"

Sarimund nodded. "Yes, both of them are in fine health." "And my brother?" "Raffaello as well."

She wanted to shout, to leap about. She had a mother who had loved her, petted her, who wasn't afraid of her because she was magic. Magic? But it was true, she remembered it well. And her father, standing beside her mother, tail, his thick black hair brushed back from his face, a perfect man who'd once let her sit beneath his chair while he conferred with an ambassador from Austria. She'd been so excited she'd vomited on the ambassador's boots. Her father, she remembered now, had laughed-once the ambassador had left. She frowned. Her father's eyes, had she seen them somewhere? She said slowly, "My grandfather died while my father was visiting England and so he became the Duke of San Savaro after his return to Italy."