Ozark Fantasy - Twelve Fair Kingdoms Part 18

"Are you that afraid of a few tricks?" I taunted him. "From a girl of

fourteen?""Indeed I am," he said, "indeed I am! This is a respectable household, and the people within it not accustomed to scandal. We follow the old ways here, and we have a wholesome respect for the power of such as you, no matter how you come packaged. If you came into my house with a loaded gun, you'd have to give it up while you stayed here, as would you a flask of poison, or a laser, or any other such truck. And I'm a lot more afraid of magic unbridled

than I am of any of those."

He turned away from me then and spoke to the son that bore his name.

"I hope you see," he said gravely, "and I hope you will spread the word among our people, that this is what can be expected when the old ways are not observed. I'll count on you to go over it with considerable care when you speak to our households next-might could be that will tame a few of those not thinking in the proper wayof the Jubilee this young woman's been sent around to sponsor."

"As a matter of fact, sir," the answer came, "it seems to me it might be an excellent idea to discuss this whole thing at the Jubilee. It would perhaps be instructive for the other Families to hear about."

My gown was drenched with my own cold salt sweat, and my hair clung to my neck like wet weeds. I'd found my guilty, no doubt about that; it could hardly have been clearer if they'd had it branded on their foreheads. The venom from around that table, where almost no one had spoken one word, or more than stared at me, was as real as my two hands before me, and it battered at me in waves. I admired the cool control of this Granny-most would have been setting wards.

It was a tidy trap, grant them all that. If I accused them of using magic to wreck the Jubilee, or of turning it against Castle Bright.w.a.ter, as I surely could have, there were ten grown men and women in this room prepared to swear that they'd seen me carry out an illegal act of magic right before their eyes, under their own roof, and against one of their own. And they would be telling the truth. If

I'd been against the Confederation my own self, I could hardly have done it graver harm, and for sure I'd of been better off listening to my uncles, staying home, and ignoring the whole thing.

And if I gave them the oath they asked for-as I would have to do, no question about it, and their Granny there to see that I left no corners dangling-there'd be no pa.s.sing this night in undoing by magic the folly I'd wreaked. I'd lie in my bed and I'd pray, and I would maybe cry some; but I'd do no magic. Not even to look ahead and see just how much chance there was of any solution to the problem.

"Well, let's have your promise," said Jeremiah Thomas. "Our Granny a.s.sures us that your wickedness doesn't extend to violating your own word, and she's proved she knows your measure. No magic, Responsible of Bright.w.a.ter, for so long as you are within the continental borders of Tinaseeh. None."

He was very sure of himself; we'd gone from "under my roof" to the whole continent at remarkable speed. But then, he was in a position where he could afford to be sure of himself.

"I promise," I said. "Certainly."

"Put your hands on the table so we can see-"

"Oh, Jeremiah Thomas," said Granny Leeward pettishly, "that's not

needful! What do you think she's going to do, cross her fingers?

This one does not play games."

"That I do not," I agreed.

"Nor do we," said the Granny. "Bear that in mind."

"It does not seem to me," said Jeremiah Thomas slowly, "that just

saying she promises is enough, in this case. Have another look at those mushrooms there, making the table nasty with their rot, will you, Granny Leeward? She might-"

"She gave her word," said the Granny. "That's all that's required."

"Let her give it in full, then," said her stubborn offspring. "And I'll be satisfied."

I knew the sort of thing that would appeal to him, and having no

choice whatsoever, I gave it to him."For so long as I am within the continental borders of Tinaseeh," I intoned, "I will do no magic, of any sort or kind, at any level, for any reason whatever, no matter what may come to pa.s.s-not even to safeguard this house or those within it, not even to safeguard myself. My word on it, given in full." There.

I saw the Granny's eyebrows go up at the phrase about safeguarding

their house, but she didn't say a word. I knew then that there must be at least a couple of Magicians of Rank in this Castle at this moment-I knew of three that very well could be-and if there were one or two I didn't know about besides, it wouldn't be past believing. She was far too calm, knowing what she knew, not to have quite a backup behind her own legal skills.

"Well?" I asked him. "Will that do it?"

"If Granny Leeward approves."

"Oh, it's enough," said that one, "and a bit more."

"In that case," he said, "we can get on with the business of this

Council."

I had thought tricking me into my present position of total helplessness was the business of his Council; but it was apparently no more than item one on the agenda.

"My sons have a few questions to ask of you, young woman," he said. "We'll need a bit more of your time." They wanted to know a lot of things. What arrangements I had made for seeing to it that the Families would be safe at Bright.w.a.ter during the Jubilee-from "malicious magic," to use their term, and their using it struck me as astonishing gall considering that they were its source. It amounted to saying, "If we come in with fifty vials of deadly poison to spread around, what have you got on hand that will be able to stop us?" They wanted to know details of the schedule for the Jubilee; if, presumably, I had ways to keep it going, then how much time would have to be "wasted" on frivolity before we could get down to the real purpose of the meeting? What the real purpose of the meeting was. Why I felt such an outlay of time and trouble and money was justified, when there were Wildernesses to be cleared and roads to be laid and wells to be dug and windmills and solar collectors to be built and crops to be planted and fish to be caught, and game to be hunted, and other serious work that went understaffed and underfunded and would grow more so while we fooled away time at Bright.w.a.ter. What did I a.s.sume would be accomplished by this "gaudy display" that couldn't have been taken care of at an ordinary meeting of the Confederation of Continents? How many were being invited from each Family, and how many had accepted? Where would they all be staying, and who'd see to their comfort? Did I give my guarantee that it would be not only safe for children, but an edifying experience-and if not, how did I propose to justify leaving them all behind? Would all the Magicians of Rank be present at the Jubilee, and all the Magicians, and for that matter, all the Grannys? And if so, why-who needed them there and for what? And if not, why not, and what would they be doing behind our backs instead?

It went on and on, and it was thorougher than could be excused by any motive except wearing me out and humiliating me, and rubbing my nose some more in my sudden position of servility to their will.

I had no trouble with any of the questions; they set them in turn, each son asking three, and then politely yielding to his brother.

Every word I said was information already available to them in the proceedings and proclamations of the Confederation over at least the last three years, and there'd not been a single Confederation meeting where one of those sons-and sometimes the father as well -had not sat as delegate. My throat got raw, and my back got tired, and they went on and on, learning nothing they didn't already know.

"That's enough," said Suzannah of Farson at last, long after I'd decided they intended to keep it up all night.

"Granny?" said Jeremiah Thomas."Been enough a long while," said Granny Leeward, "and you've made your point. I've heard nothing that made my ears stand up, and you'll not wear that one out just prattling at her-your sons are showing off, and they begin to irritate me some. You forget your own position on moderation, Jeremiah Thomas?"

He flushed, and the sons looked whiter and grimmer than ever, but he didn't cross her. He just pointed at the mushrooms, now, I'm

happy to say, a really stinking mess of putrid black on their table- top, and said, "What about those?"

"I'll see to them," said the Granny. "Never you mind."

"You wouldn't dare touch them," I said coldly.

"You think not, missy?""I know not!" As I did. I'd have handled them with a great deal of care my own self.

"I'll have them seen to, then," she told her son. "Comes to the same

thing."

Jeremiah Thomas Traveller stood up, then, and adjourned the Council, took his lady on his arm and led us all out of there, and sent me on to my room with another of his silent Attendants.

I was right about the Magicians of Rank. When I woke that night and felt the heat of my skin, I cursed myself bitterly for not taking precautions sooner, before I'd had my hands tied by my own oaths.

I could take the search for the source of the epidemic at Castle Wommack off my long list of postponed duties-I'd found it. And anybody that could bring themselves to lay innocent women and children low with Anderson's Disease, just for display, was unlikely to scruple at providing someone like me with the same unpleasant experience. And knowing that, I'd surely ought to of taken some steps to prevent it; like a lot of other things, it hadn't entered my mind.

I sent word to Granny Leeward by way of the guardmaid outside my door, and the Granny sent back a full crew. Four of them, all in

Traveller black, though two of them had no right to wear it. They stood around my bed and smiled down on me, hands behind their backs.

"Twenty-four hours from now, Responsible of Bright.w.a.ter," said one, "you'll be fit as a fiddle." I felt the terrible need to twist and writhe, and my breath burned in my chest as I drew it, but I'd encountered pain before that matched this and surpa.s.sed it, and I'd had some practice in dealing with the stuff. I'd not give them the satisfaction of seeing one of my smallest toes move while they watched; and I lay still as a pond while the spasms moved over my muscles like live snakes, and I smiled back.

"I didn't know you were all still in training," I said, forcing the words through a throat that threatened to shut tight on me. "A competent Magician of Rank could stop this in twenty-four seconds."

They went right on smiling, and allowed as how Granny Leeward had said that it would do my soul good to have the death-dance fever for twenty-four hours.

"The Granny gives you orders, does she? You don't mind that?" I was looking for a weak spot, but they knew what I was up to, of course, and they ignored me. A smugger quartet of elegant males I'd never laid eyes on, and they reminded me of my mushrooms- before the rot set in, of course. There I lay, forbidden to so much as wish on a star till I left Tinaseeh; and there they stood, able to add a notch or two to their accounts with Responsible of Bright.w.a.ter, in perfect safety. It would have been too much not to expect them to enjoy it

CHAPTER TWELVE.

Now it's true that when I proposed a Quest as the way to demonstrate Bright.w.a.ter's status, symbol returned in kind for symbol given, I was completely serious about the idea. I don't want that misunderstood. No Ozarker takes any formal construct of magic - and a Quest is one of the most rigorous of those-lightly. Like I said, you go tampering and tinkering with an equilibrium as delicate as the system of magic, you're going to cause radical distortions in places you never even considered would be touched. I was absolutely serious in my choice. And the choice I made had had solid motivations back of it Those that wanted to undermine the Confederation could have gone about their task in the most mundane way, you see. They could of simply boycotted meetings, straight out and without concern for who joined them at it. They could of started banging heads in the straightforward physical sense, though the public outrage at that would of backfired on them by the third blow landed -still, they could have. More reasonably, they could of used economic strategies of one kind or another, though for those on the wilder continents where self-sufficiency was a long way off yet that might of carried heavy penalties for their populations. But they had not chosen any of those measures, nor yet anything like them. They had made their decision to go at it on the level of magic- and the principle of fighting fire with fire is sufficiently venerable to make the idea of going back at them the same way look perfectly sound. Fighting magic with science has never been handy.

But let's grant it now and be done with it, the Quest was not all I had available to me, by a long shot. True, they'd flung a gauntlet and made a planetary display of a very special kind; not so much what they actually did-as had been made plain at that first Bright.w.a.ter Council-but their clear notice as to what they thought they could do if they took the notion. We couldn't of just let that pa.s.s, not and kept our place among the Families as the informal- but only actual-seat of central government for Ozark. It was a dare they'd made, and a contemptuous dare at that, right up to the baby-s.n.a.t.c.hing; and I'd figured that last move was made not so much because they weren't sure how far they should go, but because I kept dawdling around and not responding, and time was a-wasting. They'd meant to shake me loose from my dawdling, and hanging the baby up in the cedar tree did accomplish that.

But looking back... looking back and feeling a lot more than the six, seven weeks older I actually was when I at last left Castle Traveller behind me, I could see that I had gone b.u.t.ting my head where it was not necessarily called for. Now that it was all over but the dirty work I began with, and the dirty work I'd piled up along the way, I could see all the other alternatives I had censored right out of my head at the time.

I could have a.s.sembled the Magicians, from all three levels, by a full call-up at Bright.w.a.ter, and made some kind of spectacular display of my competence there; and then sent them all back home to think about that awhile. I could of delegated the whole process to the Magicians of Rank from Marktwain, Oklahomah, and Mizzurah, and let them demonstrate our magical strength to the others, with whatever judicious behind-the-scenes string-pulling that might of required on my part. I could, for the Twelve Corners' sakes, just of used the comset for a display of our abilities, planet-wide. Or I could of seen to it that one highborn baby in every Kingdom popped into a tree during a Solemn Service at the same identical instant- my Magicians of Rank could have managed that easily, and it would of put the rest on adequate notice that they'd best pull back.

I hadn't considered, hadn't even brought up, any of those things. It was clear to me, as I headed away from Tinaseeh with my ego as bruised as my body, that what I had really wanted had in far too many ways been just what the Grannys were claiming it was as I made my rounds. I had, I guess, wanted to show off, and to do it personally and get full credit; and I had been champing at the bit for an excuse to get away from Bright.w.a.ter and all the dull routine of my duties there, not to mention the preparations for the Jubilee that others had had to carry on with while I took my vacation. The speed with which I'd gotten underway was the speed of guilt-I had just grabbed at the Quest concept, all loaded with tradition and symbolic significance like it was, for an excuse. If there'd been any of the Marktwain Grannys present at that meeting in February, they might well have found a way to stop me; I wished mightily now that someone had. But neither my mother nor my grandmother had had a chance against my willfulness, and it was not the way of Patience of Clark to step in and take action

unasked.

No, I'd had a dandy idea for getting away from it all for a while, and had gone about it pigheaded as you please, and how it was all to be managed now or at the Jubilee, I surely did not know.

"Sterling," I said, looking down on the Ocean of Remembrances just before we SNAPPED over all that boring endless water, "I've been a blamed fool. And I only hope I've learned enough from it to pay me back."

She brayed at me twice, and slid sideways in a truly spectacular wobble that set me grabbing the straps and fighting for control of my stomach. They were still at it... and I smacked her hard on the shoulder, and held fast, and swallowed bile, and got out of there.

I had a better understanding now of the lay of things, Castle to Castle, there was that. I had a picture of sorts, thanks to the Gentle, of the trouble brewing on Arkansaw and where that might yet lead.

I'd had a first look at my own personal nemesis, foretold these nine years, and had gotten away from him intact but for my pride, this time. And every one of the Families, excepting the Smiths, had had a chance to deal with me directly on its own turf. I suppose that would do for a short list.

I was also tired, and ten pounds thinner, and had been mauled about pretty extensively, and had maybe ignored a Skerry sighting because I hadn't wanted to bother with it. I had allowed myself to be trapped by a pa.s.sel of Travellers, like a child, and had no way of knowing what action they might take against me at the Jubilee with