I peeked in a minute at my daughter: sleeping deeply, her cheeks flushed and her doll’s perky face next to hers. Celia sat reading her Bible nearby. A sweet scene, I thought, heading out of the castle for the flight to Caelrhon.

But Celia caught up with me. “You’re going to see the bishop?” she asked, low and intense. I was startled to see the change in her from the carefree young woman of just a short time earlier. Perhaps there were sides of her that did not come out when Hildegarde was there. “Take me with you, Wizard.”

It would mean going in the air cart rather than flying myself, which would have been faster, but I couldn’t very well refuse. Hildegarde could certainly watch over my daughter by herself-though I wondered if she might indeed have made her into a warrior by the time I came back. In ten minutes Celia and I were rising above the towers of the royal castle, and the air cart began the steady flapping of wings that would take us to Caelrhon.

I studied her as we flew. She sat in the skin of a purple flying beast, whipping along a quarter mile above the ground, the wind tugging her midnight hair free of its pins, with no more apparent wonder at the experience than if she had been taking a horse to the cathedral city. She wore a simple dark dress that accented her slimness and her ivory skin, and I thought that it didn’t seem right that someone so young and pretty should be so glum. Her eyes were focused inward, as though concentrating on something she needed to do or say.

When she spoke it was clear that whatever speech she was preparing was not intended for me. Instead she said, “I gather you and the bishop have always been friends, Wizard?”

“Most of the time for twenty-five years,” I agreed. “Institutionalized magic and institutionalized religion normally have no use for each other, but Joachim and I have managed to be friends in spite of each thinking that the other one is seriously misguided on certain important points.”