Ozark Fantasy - Twelve Fair Kingdoms Part 14

"That makes no sense," she said. "I beg your pardon if I speak

sharply, but it makes no sense.""If," I said, "one thinks carefully of the Ozarkers-and no reason, the Twelve Corners granted, why your people should ever do anything of the kind-it does make sense. And no offense taken. First, no Ozarker lifts a hand against another, not since we left Earth; the only exception would be the occasional child, that must be taught it can't hit its playmate because there's a toy they both want at the same time, and the occasional drunken fool, that is promptly seen to and differs little from the child. I'd hazard that even among your people the young and the foolish must learn."

"Granted," she said.

"But what the dissenting Families want is not that one should be

superior to the rest, but that all should be equal, and no dominance. What they want, T'an K'ib, is isolation.""It is an absurdity.""No doubt," I said reluctantly, my loyalty giving me a bit of trouble around the edges. "Nevertheless-it is so."

"There must be community," she said, "and this is a small planet.

What you describe is anarchy."

I was reminded, a moment only, of Sharon of Clark... but there was

a difference. This was no child who faced me, prattling memorized cant from Granny School. This was a diplomat, high in the ranks of a people whose sophistication surpa.s.sed ours as Granny Gableframe's surpa.s.sed a babe's. She knew quite well what anarchy was, and she knew what went with it. No doubt her people had seen its effects a time or two in their long history. No doubt it meant, to her and to them, rape and pillage and murder, barbarian hordes pouring through the cavehomes and tearing out the ancient tunnels as they went She had no reason to believe an Ozarker un-governed would behave any differently.

"They want to go back to being boones," I said, wishing sadly that

there was some way to make her understand us-us aliens.

"It is not a concept that I know," said T'an K'ib. "The Teachers do not mention it"

"Nor is it a concept that will burden you unduly," I told her. "A very long time ago-by Earth reckoning-on the planet from which

my people came, there was a man whose name was Daniel Boone.

If he had a middle name, we have no record of it-I'm sorry. And it is written that whenever the time came that Daniel Boone could see the smoke of a neighbor's chimney from his own homeplace, those neighbors were too near, and he moved on."

The Gentles lived in chambers carved beneath the earth, and it was said that they observed a stringent privacy of manner. But they lived crowded close as twin babes in a womb, and their families were not small. I doubted she would see much sense to the story of Daniel Boone.

She was silent and small, sitting there thinking over what I had said, and possessed of a kind of presence that much larger creatures might have envied. I wished that we could have been friends. I wished that I could have visited her-but the Gentles saw to it that none but a very small Ozarker child could enter the doors they set up. I would never know, unless I looked in a way that the treaties forbid me, what it was like inside the caves of the Gentles. And, I reminded myself sternly, it was none of my business to know.

"Responsible of Bright.w.a.ter?" she asked, finally.

"Yes, dear friend?"

"It may be that what you say is true, though it does not seem

reasonable."

"To the best of my knowledge, it is true, however it sounds. And I believe my knowledge on this matter is reliable.""I see... I think I see."I thought she would leave me then, but she sat quietly, not even a shape any longer since the moonlight had waned. Evidently

whatever this was, it was not over.

"Friend T'an K'ib," I hazarded, "do you want something else of me? You have only to ask."

"Your guarantee."

"Of no war? Consider it given. Of an end to mining beneath your bedchambers and your streets? Of course, I guarantee it; that it ever

happened was due only to carelessness, not to malice. When I speak to the Families guilty of that, they will be deeply ashamed."

"No," she said. She shook her head, and I heard the crystals in her

ears sound, softly. Little bells in the darkness. "That is not all.""What, then?""Whatever it is that your people are about," she said, "however it may be, whether this desire to be a boone that you describe to me, or a feud, or a greater evil... Your guarantee, daughter of Bright.w.a.ter, that we Gentles will take no part in any of it! No part, however small! Not even by accident... as you say, by carelessness."

Well, I never liked lying. I liked lying to a Gentle even less than I liked ordinary lying; since they did not lie, they were as vulnerable to it as they would have been to the kick of a boot. More so; the kick they could at least have seen coming. However, there are times when a person does what she must. I gave her her guarantee, all solemn and sealed and packaged in phrases that made me feel silly even to use them, and she went away as unheralded as she had come, leaving me to toss fretfully through the rest of that night. My conscience was raw in me.

What I hadn't dared tell her was that there was only one way that I could make my guarantees real. What her myths said I had in the way of power I did not know; her people had royalty, and perhaps the ancient rights that went with that. I had none.

I could do what she asked of me, yes. But only in one way. Only by setting wards of the strongest (and from her point of view, the foulest and most barbaric) magic known to me, around every cave and every burrow and every smallest sc.r.a.p of Wilderness her people inhabited. It was a flagrant violation of the treaties she had mentioned with every other breath; it was also the only way that what had to be done could be done. And at that it would have to wait till I was back at Castle Bright.w.a.ter and had all my laboratories and my Magicians at my disposal-and I had not told her that, either. I supposed she would tell her people there was to be no delay.

I knew perfectly well that she would rather have died, and all her kin with her, than be protected by the magic they so abhorred -by "sorceries." For sure, it would not be judged dyst'al. And I did not intend to be the person that shattered illusions that had lasted tens of thousands of years, or the person that ended up with the lives of such a people and their blood on her hands. It might be there was some other way out, something I should have thought of, but it did not come to my mind, and I was colder than I had ever been in my life; and I gathered what little of my wits I had left about me, and I lied.

CHAPTER TEN.

Castle Wommack sat high at the northwest corner of Kintucky, in a landscape of tangled trees and thick ground cover, steep hills and ragged cliffs and crags; only Tinaseeh was wilder, and not by much. The Castle was bigger than it needed to be, rambling along the edge of a bluff above a ravine at the bottom of which there surely flowed a river, though I couldn't see it from the air. I would of guessed it to be at least twice the size of Castle Bright.w.a.ter, and larger than any castle on Arkansaw, the Parsons' included. And I could understand why, though I might privately question the use of so much time and energy for a single structure. The natural stone it was built of was abundant-if they hadn't used it to build the Castle they'd of had to cart the stuff away and fill up ravines with it, after all. Every time I flew low to get a look at the land I saw stretches where boulders big as squawker coops were strewn around like so much carelessly flung salt, leaving the vegetation to grow over and around and in between the jutting stones as best it could... and I was not looking at the Wilderness Lands, mind you. This was the "cleared" area of Kintucky.

Furthermore, even the size it was, Castle Wommack was dwarfed by the country round it, and looked like a doll's castle more than a proper human dwelling. No doubt they drew some comfort from its size through the long winters when the winds howled down those ravines and ripped up huge trees by the roots, to pile them in heaps against the bald faces of the bluffs. I could see the point to it It was four days' hard flying at regulation speed from Castle Purdy to Castle Wommack, and except for a brief stretch over the Ocean of Storms between the two continents I had not done any distance by SNAPPING. I was running out of anything to read, for one thing. And then this country was new to me, the Twelve Corners only knew when I might get back this way again, and I felt it behooved me to see all I could and note it well.

Once I left the coast of Arkansaw and was beyond the shipping lanes, all the way over that vast country up almost to the edge of the town built around Castle Wommack, I saw nary a soul. There were farms-clearly very large farms, and why not?-spread out over the surface of the land. And every now and again I would see the telltale white line of a fence built of that same stone, running along the edge of a cleared field, or catch sight maybe of light glancing off solar collectors on a roof. But not until I actually neared Booneville, the capital (and only) city of Kintucky, not till I saw the Castle ahead of me, did I begin to see people. Kintucky had only been settled in 2339, just ten years before Tinaseeh, and the latest figures I had for the whole kingdom showed under seven thousand citizens living here. More than a third of those lived in or near Booneville itself.

They met me properly at the Castle, and made me welcome; Jacob Donahue Wommack the 23rd, a widower these past two years, and his five sons and seven daughters, and numerous wives and husbands. There was a band playing as I brought Sterling down on the roadway winding up to the Castle gates, and people lining both sides throwing flowers and waving bright banners. Seven Attendants in green and silver Wommack livery followed me up the ramp and through the gates. And where I could catch glimpses of the streets and buildings of the town I saw that they'd hung garlands everywhere there was something to hang a garland on. Booneville was decked out for full festival in my honor, and I was surprised; I supposed it must come of the loneliness out here, and so few occasions for any kind of partying. Considering the hasty excuses for celebrations thrown together along my way so far, it made me smile; I tried, without any success, to imagine my cousin Anne at Castle McDaniels going to all this trouble for me, or the stern Lewises even countenancing such a fuss.

The inner court of Castle Wommack, inside the gates, was the size of a respectable playing field; you could have raced Mules there without much inconvenience. And they had it set up for a fair, with long tables of food and drink, and strolling singers and dancers, and a whole play being put on on a stage that fit neatly into a far corner, and crowds of young people milling in their Sundy best. They led Sterling away to their stables and then turned their energies to entertaining me, with a dogged determination that was at first highly flattering. And then, after a while, it began to make me uneasy.

I was sitting on a low bench with Jacob Donahue and three of his daughters, watching twelve couples move through an elaborate circle dance done to the tune of dulcimer, guitar, and fiddle, finishing my fourth mug of excellent dark ale and much too full from the food they'd been plying me with, when I finally realized that things were genuinely odd. True-they were celebrating my visit as no other Castle had even considered celebrating it, so far as I could tell. True-the sounds in the inner court, and those that floated in over the walls from the town, were all laughter and song and merrymaking and pleasure. But there was something strange... and then, all at once, I knew what it was.

The broad front of Castle Wommack, five stories high of pearly white stone, forming a great muleshoe shape around that court, had windows everywhere. I took time to count those on the first story alone, and there were forty of them; multiply that by five and you got roughly two hundred windows facing on this court, give or take a dozen for variations.

And every last blessed one of them was not only empty of the people I would of expected to see looking down on the fair and taking part from above us; it was closed tight as a tick, and shuttered.

I clapped politely for the circle dance as it drew to its close, and clapped again for the musicians, and took time to smile at a small boy that had decided he was a juggler and was doing three pieces of fruit considerable harm right under my nose. And then I stood up, brushed off my skirts, and said: "I'll be going in now, ladies; Jacob Donahue Wommack."

A daughter named Gilead, freckled and slender and twenty-odd, stood up with me. "It's much pleasanter out here," she said, "and I can recommend the cake they're setting out down beside the stage; it's extra good lightcake, and you haven't had any of it yet, I don't believe."

"The reason it's pleasanter out here," I said, measuring my words to make them fall with proper force, "is because whoever is in there"-I pointed to the front of the Castle proper-"is suffocating."

"Daddy," said Gilead of Wommack, "I believe she's noticed."

"That I have," I snapped.

"My dear young woman," Jacob Donahue began, but I cut him off

short.

"I'll be going in now," I said. "If you care to come with me, you're welcome; if you prefer to stay out here while your faces crack, pretending to be having fun, that's your privilege. Youall do just as

you like-but I am going inside and see what's back of your shutters."

I looked at them again, row on row of heavy wooden eyes all shut

tight and black against the stone, and I shuddered. A good job they'd done of keeping me distracted, that I'd sat out here for near two hours and not seen that!

"We'll go with you, Responsible," said Gilead, and the other two stood to join us. "But most of these people are having fun, and I'm pleased that they are. It's a hard life here, and not much in the way of party times-don't let's spoil it for them."

The false cheer dropped off Jacob Donahue like a scarf off a sloped shoulder as he stood up, slowly, and I could see that he was in fact wholly miserable.

"Like Gilead says," he told me, "we'll come along... but I'd be grateful if we do it without drawing any attention. I've no more

mind to spoil the others' day than my daughters have. You, girls, you see to it that Responsible is sort of tucked away among the rest of you, and don't act as if we were in any hurry to get anywhere."

We strolled, therefore, over to the Castle and in through its front door. My feet were itching to run, as much from annoyance at my own thick head as anything else, but I did as Jacob Donahue bid, and -eventually-we were inside.

Inside, and the door closed behind us, and the silence of an empty church. Not one laugh, not one note of music, came through those shutters, which was no doubt the intention. The fair might as well of been back on Marktwain; it did not exist inside this Castle.

"Well, well, well," I said, "this is a pretty pa.s.s! What's happening here at Castle Wommack to account for this?" From the top of a stairway ahead of me a woman's voice called down, and I peered up in the dimness to see if I knew the face that went with it, but it was a stranger. She wore plain enough dress to suit even the Lewises, her hair was pulled back and tucked into a kerchief, and she carried a basin of steaming liquid in her hands.

"We've sickness here, young miss of Bright.w.a.ter," she said in a bitter voice. "That's what's 'happening' here! Mr. Wommack, there's another three taken with it just since you went out this morning, and I'm truly scared at the way Granny Goodweather looks... I don't know what to do for her, and the Magician says he doesn't either-what next, I ask you, Mr. Wommack? I'm at the end of my wits!"

"Your Granny is sick?" I asked. I was astonished. A Granny was human, of course, but it was their job to tend the sick, not lie among them. It was obligatory for a Granny to suffer from "rheumatism," that went with the territory, but I couldn't remember any Granny ever being really sick for more than an hour or two, or dying any other way than peacefully in her bed at an age well beyond one hundred years.

"Both of them, miss," said the woman on the stairs. "Granny Goodweather was taken first two days ago; and then yesterday Granny Copperdell as well... and they'd both been poorly, I'd remarked on that."

I turned on the Wommacks behind me to demand of them exactly what they'd been doing about this-sick Grannys, indeed!- but one look was enough to close my mouth. They were Wommacks, that was all that was wrong with them; they'd of done nothing, or as near to nothing as couldn't be noticed.

The Purdys, now, were forever in some sort of mess, and usually by their own stupidity. But they did put some effort into their actions. (They would in fact have been better off if they'd learned to put in less; usually they got themselves so entangled and benastied that it took more effort to extricate them than it would of just keeping them out of it all from the beginning.) With the Wommacks, it was different They were capable people, and intelligent, and sensible. About most things, that is. So long as whatever obstacle faced the Wommacks couldn't be laid at the door of the famous Wommack bad luck, they just turned to and took care of things. Bad luck, though, the Wommack curse, the long burden of paying and paying for the Granny that had laid out the Improper Name... anything that seemed due to that, they just gave up on, on the principle that it was no use trying in such a situation. This, I gathered, was one of those situations.

I tucked up my skirts then and ran up the stairs toward the woman that still stood there, the water in her basin getting colder by the pa.s.sing minute, if it was water, and paid the family behind me no more mind.

"You're Castle staff?" I asked the laggard nurse, and she nodded.

"Your name, please."

"Violet," she said. "Violet of Smith."

"Very well, Violet of Smith-take me this instant to the sickroom,