Ozark Trilogy 1: Twelve Fair Kingdoms (22 page)

And there sat a Magician of Rank, in full regalia, with Granny Scrabble of Castle Motley seated before him on his Mule, right in the front hall on the clean-scrubbed flagstone floor.

“Mercy!” I said, and decided to stay where I was. They could get down off that animal’s back, and call for an Attendant to take it away, all by themselves. I was duly impressed.

“Shawn Menyweather Lewis the 7
^th
,” said the man, “and Granny Scrabble. Both of Castle Motley, at your service.”

“It’s all upstairs,” I told him, “and there’s enough of it to last you. Fifty-odd sick of Anderson’s Disease. And two of them Grannys—you might see to those two first, so they can help.”

I watched them up the stairs with a feeling of relief as wide as the Castle front; it was a pure pleasure to put some of this in other hands and know they were capable. I could tell by the set of his shoulders, and the way he wasted not one second—not to mention the fact that the Granny had not opened her mouth either to fuss or to oppose him—that Shawn Merryweather Lewis the 7
^th
could handle all of this without any further attention from me.

“Responsible of Brightwater;” Gilead’s voice came softly, then, “let me see you to your room. We’re not completely without breeding here, though it may look some like it at this moment.”

“No,” I said, “you’ve shown breeding and to spare, Gilead of Wommack. I give you my word—
no
where on Ozark, in no Kingdom of the Twelve Families, have I been treated with the ceremony I was treated with here. And I can’t really say as I expect Castle Traveller to top you. It just wasn’t the best way to handle things ... us down here celebrating while your people were in that pitiful state upstairs.”

“We weren’t thinking clearly ... or maybe we don’t know
how
to think clearly,” she said in a voice both dull and bitter.

“Gilead,” I said, “it’s not lack of breeding you’ve shown this day, but lack of proportion. Lack of
balance
, Gilead. And I lay it to just one place—you are sick yourself; of course you can’t think clearly. Now I’ll take you up on the offer of the room, because I’m worn out, and I intend to sleep the rest of the day, unless I’m needed. But you’ll take me nowhere—I want every one of you to your
own
beds, and that right smartly—and I’ll see to myself. Just give me instructions. So many flights of stairs, so many halls, so many doors—I’ll find it, you just number them off.”

Gilead ofWommack stood there, rubbing the end of her nose with one finger and frowning, all of them looking like they’d drop around her, and me doing my best to be patient. And then she said, “I know!” and put her arm around Thomas Lincoln. “Thomas Lincoln? You go holler at your uncle to see Miss Responsible to her room! Move, now!”

His uncle. I thought a bit; who would that be? I kept good enough reckoning of the Families near Marktwain, and could give you the names of all direct lines on Ozark, but I hadn’t every aunt, uncle, and cousin at the tip of my tongue.

And I had forgotten this one. I had forgotten all about him, or I would have run like a baby that’s pulled a Mule’s tail by mistake. I’d heard about him, more than enough to warn me off and make me careful, especially since my experience with Michael Stepforth Guthrie’d provided me with some new data on my current state of vulnerability to manly charms ... but I had purely forgotten all about him.

When he stood before me, 1 looked into his eyes, and him smiling, and
knowing
: and I saw that I could fall forever into those eyes, and drown for all of time, and still not get to the bottom of what lay behind them. I was not ready for that yet, not by any number of long shots.

I HAD BEEN warned about him, most certainly—I’d been properly raised—but I had only been five years and one month old. Me and fourteen other little girls, all at Granny School together All listening to the Teaching Stories and getting them by heart, like any other little girls. And my own beloved Granny Hazelbide, holding me tight between her bony knees, and pinching my chin between her first finger and her thumb until it hurt, so I couldn’t look away.

“Pay heed, now,” she had said, scaring me as well as the others sitting in a circle on the floor of the schoolroom watching. “This has come to Responsible of Brightwater; as it happens, but it might of been any of you,
any one
of you! Might could be it still will ... you pay heed.”

He had been there in my five-year-old palm, which was already hard from climbing trees and weeding with an Oldtime Hoe, and already quick with every kind of needle (some of them not very nice). And in the leaves at the bottom of seven cups of tea, made seven times on seven consecutive days. And in the swing of the golden ring on its long chain. They’d tried again and again to read a fartime that hadn’t him in it, but all in vain; he was always there.

It was called a Timecorner.

“I can’t see round it,” said Granny Hazelbide. “Nor can any Magician, or even Magician of Rank. Can’t anybody see round it, for it’s purely and wholly sealed off from
this
time.”

You see I had not exactly forgotten it. More accurately, I had just shut it away in that corner of my head where things that didn’t bear thinking about were stored. But I couldn’t recall it coming to my mind the past five years at least, which was doing a pretty good job of keeping it at the bottom of the heap. I had no trouble getting to it, when the time came. It had these parts:

FIRST;

For a Destroyer shall come out of the West; and he will know you, and you will know him, and we cannot see how that knowledge passes between you, but it is not of the body.

SECOND:

And if you stand against him, there will be great Trouble. And if you cannot stand against him, there will be great Trouble. But the two Troubles will be of different kinds. And we cannot see what either Trouble is, nor which course you should or will take, but only that both will be terrible and perhaps more than you can bear

THIRD:

And if you fail. Responsible of Brightwater; the penalty for your failure falls on the Twelve Families; and if you stand, it is the Twelve Families that you spare.

FOURTH:

And no matter what happens, it will be a long, hard time.

Well, you talk of your curses. I recall suggesting to Granny Hazelbide that the whole thing would be more suitable for my sister, Troublesome, and no doubt that was true. And I remember being told that things were far more often
un
suitable, and for sure
that
was true. And then I had put it away, and I believe I had expected it to be something I had to face along around the age of forty-nine or so. That would of seemed like giving me at least a running start.

Since it was thirty years and more before I had planned for it, and since I was certainly not ready either to stand
or
fall, and since I was in the middle of a Quest at the time, not to mention a Grand Jubilee dangling just ahead of me, I chose the most prudent course I saw before me. This was no time for theatrics. This was no time for flinging myself in the teeth of me winds to see what was at the very bottom of that teacup. I was
busy!

I knew him all right, and he knew me, and when I fled him like a squawker hen flees a carrion bird he was laughing fit to kill. I did not spend the night at Castle Wommack, nor so much as go to the room where they’d put my belongings. My weariness melted away like snow in the sun, a servingmaid brought me my packed bags right there where I sat on that bench against the wall, tapping my foot, and a stablemaid brought round my Mule; and I flung the saddlebags over Sterling’s back and took off from the middle of the fair still going on in the Castle court, while
he
stood on the steps with his hands on his hips, laughing. What Gilead of Wommack or any of the others thought, I had no idea, and I didn’t wait to see.

It was ten days’ travel, regulation speed, from Castle Wommack to Castle Traveller, most of it over Wilderness that had never even been walked through, from the far northwest tip of Kintucky to the far southern coast of Tinaseeh. And if there was one person any ten flown miles I’d be mighty surprised, which meant that I didn’t have to be careful. There’d be nobody around to appreciate it, and in my state just then that was a blessing.

I SNAPPED straight from the edge of Kintucky’s farming country to the exact center of the Tinaseeh Wilderness—a five-day journey in right on seven seconds—and headed Sterling down toward the treetops I saw below me. I camped in a cave that would have satisfied a human-size Gentle, and rested the full five days. I needed the rest. Then I waited two more days for good measure, putting them to sensible use gathering herbs ‘growing all around my camp; and I SNAPPED to the coast of Tinaseeh’s Midland Sea. I flew in to Castle Traveller in the ordinary way, right on time.

By then I’d acquired a certain new respect for the Family Traveller and a feeling that their name was a fitting one and well earned. Tinaseeh made Kintucky look like a kitchen garden.

“There it is, Sterling,” I said as we came in. “Castle Traveller, just as described.” First, an outer keep of upright Tinaseeh ironwood logs, standing side by side with their wicked points an exact twelve feet tall—not an inch deviation allowed anywhere. Then two inner keeps, made exactly the same way, one within the other. At the heart of the third keep, the Castle itself, not much bigger than Castle Lewis. And there was no town, though it had the name of one and one was planned—Roebuck. The buildings of “Roebuck” hugged in orderly rows to the walls of the Castle keeps. There’d been no time yet on Tinaseeh for such a thing as a separate town.

According to the computers, there were exactly eleven hundred and thirteen people on this continent, and all but a half-dozen were Travellers, Farsons, Guthries, and a stray Wommack or two. And every structure here was built of Tinaseeh ironwood, which would not bum, and could only be cut with a lasersaw, and which could—with sufficient patience—be tooled by laser to an edge that a person could shave with. I had seen friendlier-looking places.

I was met at the gates of the outer keep by an Attendant, who sent me under escort to the gate of the next keep beyond, where they passed me on to a third to take me up to the Castle gates, and not a word said the whole time beyond regulations.

“Greetings, Responsible of Brightwater; follow me.”

I followed.

I had not expected parties here, or parades, or fairs. I knew better. A formal dinner—for twelve—I had expected. And I was prepared for one Solemn Service after another; that would strike the Travellers as entertainment enough. Ordinary Solemn Service on Tinaseeh began on Sundy at 7:00 of the morning and lasted past noon, to be followed by another session after a two-hour break for dinner. I had anticipated that a
company
Solemn Service might well provide me with preaching enough to fortify me against all the evil I’d have to contend with for the next year or two. I’d expected a
substantial
edification of my soul.

But I was not prepared for what actually did take place, which was that ten minutes after I’d freshened up—with an Attendant standing in my door waiting with an eloquent back to me, seeing that I didn’t tarry over it—I was taken without further ado to a formal Family Council. Hospitable, it wasn’t. And I felt a sudden steadying in my stomach. This—which was glorified sass, by the look of it—was more in my line of experience than what I’d just been through at Wommack. If it turned out sufficiently extravagant it would even give me something I needed badly ... something to keep my unruly mind in order yet a while.

The Meetingroom had walls of varnished ironwood, and it held a group of people that appeared to be put together of the same unappealing substance, seated in straight chairs around a long narrow table. They reminded me of the side-by-side upright logs that fenced their keeps, and my traveling costume stood out in the grim and the gloom like a carnival garb.

“Young woman,” said the man at the head of the table, “I am Jeremiah Thomas Traveller the 26
^th
; be seated.”

I sat, and he named them off. His wife, Suzannah of Parson. His three oldest sons: Jeremiah Thomas the 27
^th
, Nahum Micah the 4
^th
, and Stephen Phillip the 30
^th
... why he wasn’t Obadiah Jonas I couldn’t imagine; perhaps Suzannah had pleaded for some relief. His three oldest daughters still at home—Rosemary, Chastity, and Miranda, every one of them a six. His brother, Valen Marion Traveller the 9
^th
. And his own mother, now a Granny in this Castle, Granny Leeward. Not another wife, not a husband, not a child; just the in-Family.

“And I,” I said, “am Responsible of Brightwater As you are aware.”

“We are that,” said Suzannah of Farson. “It could hardly be missed.” Her reference was to my outfit, which was in marked contrast to her own dress of dark gray belted with black. I smiled at her, sweet as cinnamon sugar, and waited the move.

“We have called this Council in your honor,” she said, “and would like to begin. But you’ve had a long journey—are you hungry? Or thirsty? We can have coffee brought, and some food, if you need it.”

“Thank you,” I said, “I had breakfast before I left.”

“Considerate of you,” said Suzannah. “We have little time to waste here on Tinaseeh. It’s a hard land, and not meant for the shiftless.”

“Proceed, then,” I told her “You’ve no need to coddle
me
, I assure you; I’m perfectly comfortable. And I’ve been in Council a time or two before. I expect you’ll find me able to tolerate yours.”