Over The Sea (10 page)

“Urgh.”

“That's what I think. Find me ever learning magic? I'd rather jump off a thousand cliffs! Here, down this street is the dressmaker.”

“Is this place related to Clair's family? She told me about her great-grandmother being a seamstress.”

Irene laughed. “No. From all I could tell, Mearsieanne — she was our age, did you know? — threw down her needle and thread and never went back, and she was in turn thrown off by her family. When she managed to hold the throne, I guess they moved away. Clair can show you the records! Anyway, this dressmaker is related to Janil somehow. Everyone in the white palace is related to Janil,” she added with cheer. “The fellow who does the steward job if Clair has audiences is her nephew, only he's doing it just until he finishes his master's work and then he'll be a glazier. Then probably some cousin will come along and take the steward job over.”

We walked up a short, curving street lined with houses with little gardens. It kind of reminded me of beach communities, back on Earth — smallish houses with lots of windows, and tiny garden plots. Making use of very little space. Everything was clean, and prosperous. But I was to learn that there weren't any impoverished people in Clair's kingdom, not any more, anyway.

It also smelled good. Clean air, and flowers, and the yummy smells of baking, and braised onions, drifting from an inn.

Flower boxes lined every window and the tiny porch. The lower door was closed, but the upper one open. We peeked inside, saw people. Stepped, into a small room filled with bolts of cloth. It smelled different from fabric stores on Earth, which I'd been in once or twice. None of the chemicals that made the cloth stiff, I guess. It was a nice smell, hard to define.

“Ah, look at this,” Irene said, holding out a length of rose-colored satin. “But that's not very practical to run around in. How I love pretty clothes! I mean, since a person has to dress, why not in something pretty, and not ugly?”

“I like pretty dresses too,” I admitted.

“Well, you can get what you like here. They get paid somehow.” Irene shrugged.

A girl about our age came forward, asking if she could help us, and pretty soon I was surrounded by all different kinds of fabric. Irene kept distracting me at first, offering this or that color or ribbon, but when I refused to have anything yellow at all, and decided against a gown festooned with bunches of ribbons, she lost interest, and started designing a new one for herself.

So that made things go quicker. The girl briskly took my measurements, I ordered my dream dress — midnight blue velvet, square neck, wide skirt, different colors of silken sashes for different times — and then we left.

“Shoes next,” Irene said, one finger to her chin. “The cobbler is right over this way.”

“No shoes,” I said firmly.

“But what about royal functions? And winter?”

“Winter?”

She mimed astonishment. “You know. Snow? Or didn't they have it where you lived?” Her tone was sarcastic, but when I shook my head, she forgot pretense and did look amazed. “Really? What was it, desert?”

“Pretty much. Hot most of the time, and this kind of smoky, smelly air. It was nice at the beach, though. And I've never seen snow, except in pictures.”

“Huh. Actually — except for the hot part — it sounds nice. I don't even care about the smoke, if it doesn't put black spots on your clothes. I hate mud and sleet and freezing cold, truth to tell,” Irene said cheerily.

“Maybe I'd better get one pair of nice shoes, then. And worry about winter when it comes.” I was wondering how long I could go without ever having to wear shoes when we went inside the cobbler shop, and I looked around in surprise, for instead of leather and other skins, there were long hanging strings of stiff, vaguely shiny stuff.

“What's this?” I said.

Irene looked at me in blank surprise. “It's weave. Um, I forget what it's called — leddas, I think. Grows by rivers, mostly, and marshes. We just call it weave. For shoes and boots and belts and the like. You can also have slippers of satin, if you want, but those won't last outdoors.”

“No leather?” the word didn't translate.

“What's leather?”

“Don't you use cow skin?”

“Euw! No!”

It turned out that cows gave milk and cheese, and oxen pulled carts, and I already knew that pigs ate garbage and acted as watch critters. When they died, they were Disappeared — like people. In the wild there were still carnivores, but humans mostly ate chicken, turkey, and fish. Some didn't eat any meat at all.

The stuff called weave was thick and supple and had a dull sheen from its natural waxy covering; the excess wax was boiled down for candles after leddas was picked. The weave got dyed, and the expensive stuff worked so it was smooth and supple. Thin weave was for fine shoes, thick for heavy shoes. The weave could be woven in complicated, even multi-colored patterns, soled with the same stuff, or with wooden heels. The heels were reinforced with various things, including metal, if you wanted heavy boots.

I got a pair of plain blackweave shoes ordered for winter wear, and then we left, me brooding about that CJ/PJ business, and how to solve it.

Clair greeted me with a somewhat distracted smile. “Too many things to be done today, but everything is finished. I think! So once we do a couple of things here, we can go exploring, or anything you like.” She was smiling, but I was beginning to read her a little. She was anxious about something.

“Exploring!” I repeated. “So whatcha got there?”

We were in her magic chambers, the room she'd first brought me to when she performed that extraordinary enchantment that enabled me to become me.

Now she held out two golden objects. “Here's your medallion.” She handed me a little golden disk with six stylized flowers carved down at a slant. Those same stylized lilies that were on the silver crown. “I hope you don't mind wearing jewelry. Diana had trouble with it, at first. But until I know more magic, this is the only way I can protect you girls from what happened to Jennet, and make it so you can get down to the ground and up here when you want to. There is a location ward on it, so if I have to, I can find you. And also, there is a transport spell, so if the Yxubarecs get you, somehow, and try to push you off their cloud, you'll just transfer here.”

“I like jewelry,” I said, putting the necklace on. “At least, I never actually had any, but I think it's pretty.”

“And this ring also has magic. If you're going to be leading the girls, there's a chance you might do things without me along. You can also summon Hreealdar with it. If you need me to come to you, you twist the stone, like this — and say words I'll teach you — and it activates a transport spell. Later we'll talk about what that means,” she added. “But not all at once.”

“Oh, good.” I slipped the ring onto various fingers to see which it fit best.

“So, would you be willing to learn magic?”

“Can I?” I asked, amazed. “I mean, I'd love to!”

Her smile was quick and a little relieved. “Then we'll begin whenever you're ready. But take time to get used to things first, and have fun,” she added, now looking at me earnestly.

“Um, question. Seshe said something about audiences in the mornings. Should I be there for those?” I asked, feeling a little conscience-stricken.

“Not until you get used to being here,” she stated firmly. “You'll know when you're ready. When you are, maybe together we'll go meet the mayors.”

“You mean city leaders?”

“No ... I guess you would define them as provincial governors. They are all left from my grandfather's time.” (At least, the word translated into my head as
mayors
. Later on I'd discover that there was only one major city in each province, which was probably where the words mixed up.)

I nodded, wondering what she'd meant to say.

“Two things for today. First, you should meet Hreealdar, and the second, I think you should see the Shadow.”

She taught me the easy spell that, working with a much more complicated spell on the medallion, would enable me to transfer myself down to the forest floor. “We'll go down now, and I want you to fix a place in your mind. It's important to remember that when you transfer, you have to see in your mind where you are going, unless you are transferring to someone, or to something marked with a tracer ward.”

“Tracer ward?”

“Later. Argh! I've been learning magic for so long, I've forgotten what I learned first! I keep trying to think of ways to make it simple, but no matter what I do, I seem to be starting in the middle.”

“It's all right,” I said quickly. “I never read the instructions on games, back on Earth. I always tried to learn by playing.”

Clair grinned. “It sounds as if you learn the way I teach. Just as well, then. Anyway, if you don't fix in your mind clearly where you are going, you could just vanish forever — not come out anywhere.”

“Ugh!”

“That's why a lot of people won't transfer. Now, some places will have Destinations. Those are places you can safely transfer to, once you memorize the pattern of their tiles or bricks or whatever the floor is made of.” She waited for my nod of understanding, then said, “Here we go.”

We transferred — and found ourselves in the underground Junkyard, in the main room, on the bright rug, which was what Clair used as a Destination. Dhana and Sherry were there. The others either gone or on patrol. “Cherene Jennet wants to meet Hreealdar,” Clair said. “Anyone else want to come?”

“Oh yes!” Dhana exclaimed.

We left from there, this time going out the back entrance, which was in a crooked crack of rock above a bend in one of the woodland streams. Thick creepers hung down, which everyone was careful not to break or damage as they squeezed past.

At the bottom I stopped, looked up, and fixed the place in my memory. To make certain I was doing it, I closed my eyes, tried to picture it, opened my eyes, looked for more things to memorize, and so forth.

After half-a-dozen or so peeks, I turned to Clair, and she gave a little nod. Dhana was dancing from rock to rock, and once — as I watched — she flickered into a kind of rainbow streak of light, vanished into the water, and then reappeared the same way, taking human form again in an eye blink. Drops flew off her like crystals, and she wasn't even wet.

Nobody said anything, so I didn't either.

Instead, we walked up the stream a ways, to another clearing. Then Clair touched a ring on her hand and said some soft words.

Flash! A blue-white glare of light made me squint. The after-reflection lit up the faces of the girls, and glowed in their eyes. My own were bleary with tears, and I realized that I ought to keep them shut, because Hreealdar really was lightning — at least part of the time. The light resolved into the shape of a horse, one with blue-white hair and tail, and blue eyes. A
horse
?

“Wow,” I said. “What — where — how?”

Clair laughed.

“We don't know,” Sherry exclaimed. “One day Clair and I were playing at the Magic Lake, and Hreealdar came out of the jewel cave, right to us.”

“I can't find any reference at all to horses that turn into light, or with blue eyes,” Clair said. “Now, supposedly in the north there are pure white horses, and they supposedly have all these abilities. What I think is that Hreealdar is another sort of being who takes this form here, for choice.”

And the horse pranced, nodding its head up and down, the light, almost spider-webby mane hair (not stiff like other horses' manes at all) floating. I noticed that Hreealdar didn't have horseshoes, either.

“You can ride him if you like,” Clair offered, pointing to a big rock on which to climb.

I moved cautiously over to the rock, feeling deep misgivings. I had been no closer to any horse than TV, and this one was so tall!

But he (not that Hreealdar was really a he, or a she, for that matter, but the girls had gotten into the habit of saying ‘he' since Hreealdar was so large a creature) moved to the rock, and waited, and so I climbed up and eased myself onto the broad back.

He did feel like a live creature — warm, and solid, and when he took a step I jolted alarmingly from side to side. Clair motioned for me to hold the mane, so I did, and Hreealdar pranced around in a circle, with me flopping and hooting in fear on his back.

I thought I was doing all right until I looked down and saw both Sherry and Dhana convulsed. All right, then, I resolved. When the laughing gallery wasn't around gawking, I was going to practice this horse business. I'd show them how a princess can ride — and not for my sake, but for Clair's.

“He will change to light when you want to,” Clair said. “But you might wait and try that another time.” I could see she was fighting not to grin.