Ozark Fantasy - Twelve Fair Kingdoms Part 13

liked my knots well tied, and this was a man of strong opinions."Responsible of Bright.w.a.ter," said the Master of Castle Lewis, in a voice like the thud of an iron bell-clapper, "if every last turntail Kingdom on this planet votes against us, Castle Lewis stands for the Confederation. We'll be at the Jubilee, never you fear, and our votes where they belong." "Hurrah!" shouted Boy Salem. Unfortunately. An Attendant scooped him out of his chair like a sea creature out of its sh.e.l.l, and off he went-reasonably quietly-under the young man's st.u.r.dy arm. There was apparently a standard procedure in these cases.

I rested easy that night at Castle Lewis. Granny Twinsorrel warded my room double, and my nose had grown dulled to the garlic by the time I finally found myself in one of the high hard narrow beds the Lewises considered regulation. Not even a dream to disturb me. But the sun that came flooding through my windows in the morning woke me early enough; and when Tambrey of Motley knocked at my door with my wake-up tea she found me already in my traveling dress, sitting sedately in a cedar rocker waiting for her, and only my bare feet to show I'd not been up long.

I drank the tea slowly, enjoying the peacefulness of the morning, and the well-run propriety-a tad constraining, but well-run-of this Castle, and gave over my thinking to how I'd doll Sterling up for this parade. It had to be elegant, and it needed to be memorable, but I must not overdo it or I'd offend my host. It was a neat little problem, and the kind of thing I liked to ponder over, a good way to begin a morning.

I settled finally on something a bit beyond what Salem Sheridan Lewis would of liked, and a bit less than what Sterling would have -she was vain, even for a Mule. Rosettes in her ears in the Bright.w.a.ter colors, and streamers braided in her tail-which I could triple-loop, for good measure-and me in my splendiferous traveling garb.

We went three times round the Castle, and three times round the town, as specified, the people lining the streets in Sundy best and cheering us on our way, holding up the babies to gawk at the glitter going by. Salem Sheridan even unbent so far as to put a single

Attendant at the head of the parade with a silver horn, and allowed him to blow one long note at every third corner.

But I did not get to hear Rozasharn of McDaniels sing even one

ballad, not even one hymn, though I asked politely enough as we returned from our three times round. That would have been too much like frivolity to suit either Rozasharn's husband, or Granny Twinsorrel, or, for that matter, Eben Nathaniel Lewis the 17th.

"She sings in church," said Salem Sheridan, "and does a very good

job of it. And that's sufficient."

It was days like this that I could see the advantages of the single state most clearly.

CHAPTER NINE.

The party the Purdys gave for me went very well-I threw in a little something here and there of my own, to make sure it would. The pies that would of gotten salt in place of sugaring didn't after all- that got noticed in time. And the beer that had gone flat because somebody left it sitting out overnight acquired some new bubbles in a way that wasn't strictly natural. And when Donovan Elihu Purdy the 40th got his boot toe under a rough spot in the rug and was headed for a broken hip sure as an egg's got no right angles, he managed to land-without doing her any harm, and in fact she looked as if she rather enjoyed it-in the lap of a woman of fine substantial size. Instead of flat out on the floor.

What I was doing was known as meddling, and it was not looked on with any special favor. One of the first things a girl learned in Granny School, right there at the beginning with keeping your legs crossed and how not to scorch milk, was "Mind your own business and leave other people be," I hadn't forgotten.

Howsomever, I was fed up to here by that time with listening to every clattering tongue on Ozark meanmouthing the Purdys. My tolerance had been first reached and then exceeded. I had even realized, a lot more belatedly than did me any credit, that I was guilty of the same thing myself. Taking that silly Ivy of Wommack for a Purdy, for instance, for no other reason than that she was silly and looked like she didn't eat right. There was a name for it all, and not a very nice name either-Prejudice, that was its ugly name.

And I'd had time to muse some on the essential meanness of human beings. Isolated as they were, the Twelve Families had had no people of black skin among them, nor any of brown or yellow, either. Probably there was a smidgen of Cherokee blood someplace, from the long-ago days, but it had hundreds of years since disappeared in the inundation of Scotch, Welsh, and Irish genes that the Ozarkers carried. Only the brown eyes here and there had survived our outrageous whiteness. And so, lacking anybody colored differently than ourselves to make our scapegoat, we'd picked the Purdys out for the role.

And of course they filled it, once elected, which encouraged everybody to go on with it. Naturally they did. Nothing is more sure to make you spill the tray you're carrying than knowing for certain and certain that everybody's just watching you and waiting for you to do that. Waiting so they can look at each other, and all of them be thinking, even if they scruple to say it: "Purdys! Really, they beat all!"

As I say, I'd gotten a bellyful of that, and it was on my list of things to be tackled when I got some leisure again. High time we took some Purdy daughters in hand and taught them what a self-fulfilling prophecy was, and how to go about canceling one.

We had a fine party, therefore. The food was good, including those pies, and the drink was good, and the bouquet presented to me with a nice rhyme on the Castle bandstand by three little girls of just the sort I had in mind was fresh and beautiful. The one sprig of blisterweed I saw behind a red daisy I threw over the bandstand railing without anybody seeing me, and I had my leather gloves on at the time. No harm done, and an easy job later getting the poisonous oil off the glove.

The Purdys were plainly worried about how much the Farsons and the Guthries had seen fit to tell me of their recent doings, and I saw no harm in that. I dropped hints; and one by one they took me aside to confess some piece of foolishness and tell me how much they regretted it. Which is good for the soul, the stomach, and the disposition.

By the time it was all over, and me tucked up in my bed-an ample bed, for a welcome change, that a person could stretch out in it without falling off on the floor-the Purdys were fairly glowing. They'd done themselves proud, and done me honor, and nothing had Gone Wrong. And you could see what a new and delightsome feeling that was for them.

I lay there and reviewed it in my mind as I fell asleep, and I was well satisfied. It was a start, and I'd carry it further when I got home. As for treason... not the Purdys. They were doing well to just get through the ordinary day, without introducing any magical complications.

And then the Gentle came to me in the night, and woke me with full formality. I was not expecting that "Responsible of Bright.w.a.ter," it said at my bedside, "you who bear the keys and keystones, daughter of all the Grannys and mother of all the Magicians and all the Magicians of Rank-awaken and speak with me!" I can't say I was addressed like that often. It brought me bolt upright instantly, clutching the bedclothes. There'd been a Responsible of Bright.w.a.ter hundreds of years ago who'd perhaps been called all those things, and may have deserved them, for all I knew, but it was a new experience for me, and my teeth needed brushing, and I had not the first faintest notion what I was supposed to say. This const.i.tuted a kind of diplomatic exchange between two humanoid races, and for sure required all the formality there was going, but how exactly did you be formal in your nightgown and all mussed and grubby from sleep, and taken wholly and entirely by surprise?

I'm ashamed to say that I settled for, "Dear goodness, just a minute, please!" and added, "I shall return at once," for good measure, hoping that at least sounded hifalutin, and bolted for the dressing-room that went with my guestchamber in Castle Purdy. There wasn't time to change the nightdress, but I did add my shawl and tend to my hair and teeth and face, and I was back in my bed propped up on the pillows for audience before the Gentle could of counted to twenty-four. Nervous, but I was there.

This was a real Gentle, no baby trick like the Skerry on the well curb; and it was waiting for me patiently, standing there beside my bed in silence, till I should collect myself and respond in some sensible fashion. I saw that it was a female-she, then, was waiting for me patiently. I searched my memory for the old phrases, and prayed they'd be the right ones.

"I am happy to see you, dear friend of the Twelve Families," I began, "more happy than I can say." Was that right? I hoped so. "And may I know how you are called?"

She told me, and I found I could say it competently enough. Her name was T'an K'ib; not too difficult for an Ozarker tongue. It was for the sake of our rare speech with the Gentles that we had added the glottal stop to our Naming alphabet all those many years ago; for all the sounds of their language except that one the alphabet of Old Earth served well enough. (Not that the Gentles were interested in their name-totals, despising all magic and anything to do with magic as they did. But it delighted First Granny to put a twenty-seventh letter in the alphabet. Three nines, nine threes- much improved over the twenty-six we'd always had to make do with previously.) "Greetings, T'an K'ib," I said slowly, "and I beg your pardon if my words don't come easily... your people visit us rarely, and we have little chance for converse. You honor me; I thank you for coming and welcome you in the name of Castle Bright.w.a.ter."

It was an honor, and no mistake. The Gentles were a people so ancient we could scarcely bring the numbers to mind; their history was said to be a matter of formal record for more than thirty thousand years. By their reckoning we Ozarkers had only just popped up on this planet like mushrooms in a badly drained yard, and we merited about the same degree of attention. They considered us a backward and primitive race-and were probably right, from their perspective-and they saw us only when absolute necessity demanded. I had never seen a Gentle before, nor my mother either; I believe that Charity of Guthrie's mother claimed to have. T'an K'ib wore only a hooded cloak, and wore that out of deference to Ozarker morals, I a.s.sumed. A being that is covered head to foot with soft white fur has little need for clothing. She was not quite three feet tall, if my guess was right (and I was good at judging such things), and I knew she was female because she had no beard or neckruff. Her eyes, the pupils vertical like a cat's, were thick-lashed and the color of wood violets, the deepest purple I had ever seen in a living creature. We understood the Gentles, after a fashion; they were physically quite reasonable for the planet. The Skerrys, that were the only other intelligent species native to Ozark-unless you counted the Mules, and perhaps you'd better-we didn't understand at all. Not how their skeletons supported their height; not how their metabolisms functioned; not anything about them. No one had ever found or seen or (praise the Twelve Corners) stolen a Skerry bone, but whatever its substance was it had to be something different from what held us Ozarkers upright in our skins. The Gentles, on the other hand, could be looked upon as roughly equivalent to furred Little People without wings; and we'd been well acquainted with several Little Peoples before we ever left Old Earth. The Gentles did not alarm us; we alarmed them.

"And I greet you in the name of all the Gentles," she said to me. "We are troubled, Responsible of Bright.w.a.ter, sorely troubled. I come to you on behalf of all my people to ask that you put an end to that trouble."

I wondered what sort of power she thought I had, to word her request like that, and doubted she would of known what to make of me peeling pans of potatoes at Bright.w.a.ter because the Granny needed all the servingmaids to gather herbs, and had set me to make certain of that day's mashed potatoes. We had myths aplenty of the Gentles, and tales among the Teaching Stories; it looked as though they might also have myths of us. The idea that I figured in those myths, and maybe prominently, made me uneasy.

"I will do whatever I can do," I said.

"You can do whatever is necessary," she said at once. "And whatever is dyst'al." Dyst'al. One of the few words of the Gentle speech that we understood, and fortunate for us that they had not had the same trouble learning our Panglish. Dyst'al meant something like "unforbidden and permitted and not beyond the bounds," and something like "good for all the people," and something like "characteristic of the actions of a reasonable and wholesome person having power," and something like "well mannered." She was telling me, clear enough, what she expected. Whether I could fulfill those expectations remained to be seen.

There was only a sliver of moonlight; she stood in the feeble ray that fell through the near window. I would have liked some light myself, because it was hard enough to judge the voice of a non-Terran even when you could see the features of the face clearly. I had learned that early, watching the threedy films again and again. But the Gentle preferred the dark, would not care for the exposure, and would be greatly offended if I were to set a glow about her; I would have to strain my ears and hope for the best.

"Be comfortable, friend T'an K'ib," I said, "and tell me what it is you want of me. Will you sit here near me, so that I may hear you more easily?"

She went to the foot of my bed and stepped handily up to sit on its turned rail, using the blanket chest placed there as a kind of step to climb on. She settled her cloak around her and let the hood fall back, and by the feeble moonlight I saw that her ears had been pierced five times-in each there hung five separate tiny crystals. Five crystals; this was no mere messenger, and I bowed my head slightly to acknowledge her rank.

"May I begin?" she asked.

"Please do."

"We are the Gentles," she said, "or so you call us; we are the

Ltlancanithf'al. We have been on this planet for fifty thousand years. In our caves the inscriptions name our ancestors for more than thirty thousand of those years... we go far, far back into time. My people, daughter of Bright.w.a.ter, were here long before yours."

"That is certainly true," I said carefully.

"Our claims are prior."

"That, too," I said. "Of course."

"And when your people came here, and your vessel fell into the

Outward Deeps, and only by the grace of the G.o.ddess did any one of you escape to set foot on our land, your people made treaties, Responsible of Bright.w.a.ter. Solemn treaties. We ask that they be honored."

Oh, dear. Never mind the slight conflict in the myths of the

Landing, this was no time to compare tales and quibble over the ident.i.ty of rescuers. The question was, what did she mean-they asked that the treaties be honored? That any Ozarker would have violated the treaties was beyond conception, I would have staked my life on that. We do not break our word.

"My friend T'an K'ib," I asked, "do you come here to tell me that my people have violated their sworn oaths? A Gentle does not lie- but I find that hard to believe."

And if I was wrong, and they had? I thought of bl.u.s.tering Delldon Mallard Smith, the ugly man of the ugly name... and I thought of the easy malicious ways of Michael Stepforth Guthrie, and I cast around in my mind for other possibilities. No Granny would of tampered, but the men were another matter. And if they had-what was I to do? I felt four years old on the outside and four hundred years old on the inside, and I hoped my brain was not as cold as the rest of me. I longed for a pentacle, and my own Granny Hazelbide, and the safe walls of my own Castle around me. And here I was, of all unhandy places, at Castle Purdy.

"Responsible of Bright.w.a.ter," she said, "I would not tell you that we are certain; I would not go so far. It may be that there has as yet been no violation. It is to forestall such a thing that I am come to you this night."

"Tell me, then," I said. "I will listen until you have told me everything that disturbs you; and I will not interrupt." And she began to talk, in the faintly foreign archaic Panglish the First Granny had taught her people, and that I had learned from many boring hours listening to the microtapes while I begged to be let go out and play instead. I blessed every one of those hours now, seeing as I understood her with ease, and I supposed she'd spent fully as many hours herself listening to the Teachers of her people, who pa.s.sed down the knowledge of Panglish without benefit of tapes or any other thing but their wondrous memories and their supple throats.

There was trouble, she told me. Much trouble on Arkansaw, where the Guthries and the Farsons were even more openly feuding than had been admitted to me, by her acount. Where the Purdys were frantic, trying desperately to play both sides of the feud, but faced with an eventual choice made under great pressure. There were, she told me, strange comings and goings in the nights.

"There was a meeting in what you choose to call the Wilderness Lands of Arkansaw," she said, "not three nights ago. The men there were not all of Arkansaw, some had come very far... some wore the crests of Kintucky and Tinaseeh, the Families known as Wommack and Traveller. It went on all the night long-our children had no sleep-and then, as thieves comport themselves, all stole away at first light. A Gentle does not spy, I remind you; thus, I cannot tell you what they spoke of. What we heard we heard only because a loud voice in the night carries far in an ill-mannered throat... but they were not telling each other pleasant tales to while away the hours. That much was clear."

She stopped for a moment, and I waited, and then she went on. "It was sworn, Responsible of Bright.w.a.ter, sworn and sealed- the Gentles were to be left alone. And none of your magic was to touch our people, for all of time. Nor were we ever to be part of your... feuding. If you have forgotten, I am here to remind you -so readthe treaties."

I let my breath out, slowly, wondering where in me the knowledge was that I supposely could put to use in circ.u.mstances such as these.

I felt no revelations bubbling within me, no sealed-off memories with their locks dropping away.

"Has a hand been raised against you?" I asked T'an K'ib. "Any hand? Any weapon?"

"Not as of this night."

"Has any sharp word been spoken? Any threat made? Has any Ozarker actually breached the privacy of your homes, T'an K'ib?"

"Not as of this night."

"None?"

"You must understand," she said, no edge to her voice, but firm,

"that what you consider a hand raised, or a sharp word, or privacy breached, may not be the same as what a Gentle would so judge. There are many, many thousands of us in the caves of the Wilderness Lands of Ozark, daughter of Bright.w.a.ter, and we live in peace, and our lives are not tainted by sorcery. We have made adjustments unasked, when the mines of your people cut well beyond the limits given them, and we have not begrudged those adjustments, though no law held us to them."

I could imagine, thinking of the Farsons and Guthries and Purdys, always wanting to cut just a little deeper into a vein, probably shaking the Gentles in their sleep and filling their homes with

gemdust, or worse. And I was ashamed."When I return to Castle Bright.w.a.ter," I said, my voice harsh in my throat, "I will see that that is put right. That I can do. There will be no more encroachments on your territory, and where such has taken place, your 'adjustments' will be readjusted. My word on it, and my apologies."

She made an easy gesture with her head, as if to show how little this

mattered; I, the Ozarker, felt bigger and greedier, as I was no doubt

meant to feel."If it can be done, so be it," she said, "if not-what is past is past But if the three Families of the continent of Arkansaw go to open war among themselves, and if the Families of Kintucky and Tinaseeh join them, blood will flow in the Wildernesses and it may well be our blood. That we cannot allow, daughter of Bright.w.a.ter. That would be in violation of all treaties."

"War, T'an K'ib? Your people fear war?"I suppose I sounded foolish; she sounded indulgent."It is not an exotic word," she said. "Think of guns and lasers and bombs and gases and missiles. All very small and simple Panglish

words, and well known to you.""Dear friend, dear T'an K'ib," I protested, "Ozarkers do not go to war-it was the violence of one human hand raised against another, much of it part of war and much of it without any explanation but madness, that drove us here in The Ship one thousand years ago. As a Gentle does not lie, T'an K'ib-an Ozarker does not war!"

"You yourself," she pointed out, "have let pa.s.s the word 'feud'

without protest. Our Teachers are quite clear on the meaning of that

word, and it is violent."

"Ah, T'an K'ib," I said, almost weak with relief, "it is not what it appears to be atall. This is a misunderstanding."

"Explain, please."

"You know of the Confederation of Continents of Ozark?"

"Your government," she said flatly.

"As much government as we have," I said, "and hard won. We are

at a tricky political crossroads, we of the Confederation. And the Families you name, the ones that have so disgracefully disturbed the harmony of your homes, they are not plotting violence. They are plotting against the Confederation... they are plotting the casting of votes, not the launching of missiles! Nothing more, T'an K'ib; nothing less. There is not even a question of dominance among them."