Wizard's Daughter (Sherbrooke Brides 10)

"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 tied to 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.

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, grinning shamelessly at him. "An engagement with the lovely Lorelei? Will her father be hanging over your shoulder the whole time? Perhaps her four sisters will giggle in a circle around you?"

"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."