Song of Sorcery (10 page)

Colin, having no idea what she meant, nodded and kept quiet, and hoped she’d elucidate so that he wouldn’t have to seem ignorant.

“Ellender was pregnant at the time, poor thing, and her people, the foreign faery folk I was telling you about? They’d sent her some special elixir for labor pain. Faeries intermarrying with mortals had caused some difficulties with the birthings, but this elixir was to make it all seem like a walk in the garden. Bron’d been having a hard time of it, you could hear her hollering all about, I would imagine. Clear to the castle, probably, which must have been what brought Ellender down.” Tears began to gather in her eyes. “Do you know—um—in spite of what Maudie could do, none of her medicines were of any help to Bron, and she could give her nothing more without harming the babe and—do you—” she stopped for a moment to compose herself. “Do you know that that silly faery lass gave Bronwyn her elixir? Just a bit at first, but as it only helped some, she gave her more and more, till it all was gone.”

“That was certainly a very kind thing to do.”

“It was kinder than that. Her own folk never got more elixir to her before little Amberwine was born, and she died herself giving birth. That was when Bron moved into the castle to care for little Winnie along with Maggie, and when a decent time of mourning passed, Willie married my niece and acknowledged Maggie as well.” The old lady was quiet for a time. Maggie had disappeared into the house, which caught the last pink rays of sundown on its soundly wafered roof, as tight and neat and pretty a cottage as any made of more conventional building materials.

“In East Headpenney, people would have said Bronwyn personally saw to it that the lady would die in childbirth so she could take over and be a wicked stepmother and…”

“If anybody had said such a thing, they’d have had the whole clan down on them, particularly young Winnie, for Bronwyn was the only mother she knew. Funny, you know. I myself wouldn’t think being a crow would be such an awful thing, but—”

“I take your point.”

* * *

“Oh, Auntie, that was so good,” Maggie sighed, leaning back in her chair.

“Your voice is a bit crackly, dear,” said her aunt. “Care for some honey in your tea?”

“Don’t mind if I do, at that.” She cleared her throat and rubbed her arms with the opposing hands. “I’m so hoarse and weary from all that spell-casting, I couldn’t boil water for tea right now.”

“Well, it certainly looks lovely, darling. I appreciate it so much. Under normal circumstances it’s an enormous chore to keep this old place up, but with all this rain I was quite sure I’d finally be forced to move.”

“Just don’t let the children eat at it any more, Auntie. You’ll have to keep a conventional cookie jar for that I’m afraid. I put such a strong preservative spell on it, it will be quite inedible.”

“Don’t worry about it, dear. It was a wicked idea to begin with, that has deteriorated into being merely frivolous. I’ll be glad to have a roof over my head that won’t turn to goo. When mother and Fearchar lived here the two of them could keep it up—he was rather handy as a boy.”

“Tell me about Uncle Fearchar, Auntie,” Maggie said. “None of the villagers seem to know much about him, and Gran never speaks of him at all.”

The old lady didn’t say anything for a moment as she cleared the table and poured the tea. Ching was stretched full length in front of the embrous hearth fire, dying now that it was not needed for cooking. The evening sky had been clearing as the three people and Ching had come into the cottage for dinner, and the night was warmer than it had been at any time on their journey.

“I was going to mention Fearchar anyway, Maggie. Colin and I were having a talk while you were working and, as I told him, I wanted to tell you one or two family things that might be—painful—for Maudie. You may think that I’m an interfering old woman—” she held up her hand to ward off Maggie’s protestations. “Yes, you well may. Quite a few do. But someone with my talent—to see so much denied the rest of you—it may be arrogant of me, but I feel that I have an obligation to give you some advice, to make things easier. And I’ll do a sighting, as well, of course, but we can do that later.”

She stared for a moment into her earthenware cup. “You see, dear, there was a quarrel, years ago, before you girls were born, and Fearchar left, and we haven’t heard from or seen him since.”

“Not even you?”

“Well, I did for a while, actually, but it wasn’t a very good contact—a lot of static, you know, interference—till finally I could scarce see him at all.”

“He was—somehow, do you think he was
blocking
you?”

Her aunt nodded sadly. “I think so. He was most upset when he left—it can’t have been easy for him, the first boy in our long line of females. And then, mother died just before.”

“Before what, Mistress Brown?” asked Colin, as the old lady was looking increasingly embarrassed. She looked, in fact, as though she wished she had not opened the subject and was reluctant to continue.

“Before Willie and Ellender.” They nodded at her encouragingly and she went on. “I told you, Colin, that folk in the village thought little and said less of Maggie’s mother being with child and her love wedding another. That was very true. Our brother was not so prudent.”

“Being family, of course…” Colin began.

“We realized that, and that it was hard on him, particularly since he had always rather looked up to Willie—tagged along, making a regular nuisance of himself when he visited us at Fort Iceworm, he did. But he took on so long and so loud and in such a temper, that it was all Bron and I could do to calm Maudie. See, Fearchar challenged Willie to a duel, of all the silly things, for the ‘ruin’ of his niece—and he no more than thirteen years old—when anybody could see she was not ruined, being a bit more than she was, rather than a bit less.” She turned to Maggie and smiled. “Your father made some mistakes when he was young, but he’s a good man, for all that. He just told Fearchar in front of the whole tavern that he wouldn’t fight him and that was that. Fearchar called him a coward and slapped him publicly, and Willie just nodded and went back to his brew. The men at the tavern said Fearchar would have jumped onto him anyway and give him a thrashing, but they held him off. Finally he had to go away. Then he starts in pestering Maud to change Willie to a hare, saying he was like a hare because he was scared, y’know, to fight Fearchar. Maudie wasn’t happy about the wedding, nor about Bron being so sad with missin’ Willie, but she weren’t daft.”

“Gran would never do anything to hurt my Dad!” Maggie said stoutly. “And she told me herself Mama wouldn’t elope with him so he wouldn’t have to marry Ellender. What was all the fuss?”

“Just as I said, darlin’. Your uncle didn’t see things that way. He kept pestering your Gran for that spell till she finally told him if he didn’t be still she’d turn him into a magpie. That was when he left.”

“Sounds like everybody should have been relieved, to me,” said Colin.

“It was quieter,” Sybil admitted. “But it was a shame too. He was a disappointed young man, not yet come to his powers, and mother only barely in the ground. He felt we’d all disgraced him and turned against him. I trust the years have shown him better.” She poured a little more tea and said. “So I was thinking, dearie, that if your travels looking for Winnie take you to Queenston or thereabouts, you might ask after him. That was where my last sighting of him was.”

“Of course,” Maggie stretched and yawned, and in her stretch her eyes fell on her pack, hanging from a nail on the wall. “Oh, Auntie, I brought you a present.” She got up and fetched the trap, setting it on the table before her aunt, who pounced on it.

“An iron trap!” her breath sucked in and she clicked her tongue, “Oh, child, where did you get such a wicked thing?”

“Colin took it off the foot of a rabbit. He said he thought it might have been set by the same man who shot at my dad last winter; the rabbit said so, I mean.”

Gingerly, Sybil carried it to a little cabinet next to the fireplace. Inside this were metal-working tools, a small anvil, hammer, and tongs among them, along with some others Colin didn’t recognize.

“I’d pity the bandit that thought to rob your life savings!” Colin said. “Who’d ever think you were a blacksmith, ma’am?”

Aunt Sybil dimpled with pleasure as she returned to the table. She carried a crystal globe with her, about the size of a small pumpkin. “Metalwork is a hobby, really. I don’t get to use my craft professionally as much as I would like—a body has to be scrupulous with a gift like mine or cause a lot of damage.”

Maggie laughed, a bit rudely, Colin thought. “Auntie, you must be the first one in our entire family to seriously worry about her magic causing damage!”

Aunt Sybil looked at her for a moment. “Not quite the first, child, nor the last, either.” She sat down and placed the crystal before them. “I suppose it comes of being able to live other people’s lives, second-hand though it is. It’s a hard thing to hurt someone you understand. Troubles the sleep. So I do my metalwork when I can get metal, and peek a bit for the fun of it between serious craftwork commissions, and with that and keeping this old cottage together, I do keep busy.”

“Can you show me what’s happening to Winnie now?” Maggie asked, leaning forward and looking into the blank glass.

“To be sure, to be sure,” replied her aunt, turning the ball over in her hands and looking deeply into it. What at first appeared to be a stray flicker from the candle stirred in the center of the ball, to gradually grow into a bright glow that began suddenly to fragment, sending motes of colored light dancing about the room.

“Ah, yes,” said Aunt Sybil with satisfaction. “I believe that must be it.”

All they could see was the image of a dagger, glittering nastily through the rainbow lights. Slowly, that moved away, and a throat came into view, slender and pale, and above that and around it a swath of cornsilk hair. Long, tapering fingers with broken nails dragged the hair back, and a pair of sleep-dazed, startled green eyes peered out through the parted curtain of hair.

“Out, you hussy!” hissed a voice behind the dagger. “Leave this camp at once if you want to stay alive and pretty!”

Amberwine gulped. She was not used to threats. “I beg your pardon?” she said.

“Oh, I’m sure you do that, my fine fancy lady. But begging is for honest gypsies, not faithless false trollops such as yourself! Out with you!” The voice turned into a black-haired woman, who leaned into the range of the glass, the better to menace the shrinking Amberwine. Except for the color of her hair and the green of the dress she wore, the second woman’s image was indistinct.

Aunt Sybil frowned and put fingertips to her forehead. “Let me just see now if I can fine-tune this.”

“Ooooh, Auntie!” Maggie’s nose nearly touched the glass in her anxiety to see more. “You’ve got her! Poor Winnie, what an ugly customer that old bat is!”

Colin and Sybil each touched Maggie’s shoulder and she scooted back so they could see.

Sybil’s breath hissed out in surprise. “Well, I’ll be burned. If it isn’t that charlatan, Xenobia. I might have known she’d be behind this sort of thing.”

“Xenobia?” Maggie asked. “Who’s she?”

“She’s
beautiful
,” sighed Colin, evidently not referring to Xenobia, who was flashing her knife in glittering arcs at Amberwine, who finally had wakened to her danger and was reaching to pull on her boots before making an exit.

“Not so fast, my
lady
,” said Xenobia. “You can just leave those behind to pay for your keep.”

Amberwine complied, but said, “Quite a costly straw pile you have here, your highness. Four gold rings, a silk dress, a fine woolen cloak my sister wove for me, my moonstone necklace, and a good gray mare. Now my fine leather boots.” She stood up barefoot in her shift and Sybil gasped.

“Consider it your dowry for coming away with my son, girlie!” laughed the other woman. “Pity you couldn’t hold him, weren’t it?”

“Pity my husband didn’t kill him when he found us together on the moor,” Amberwine replied over her shoulder as she hurried out into the dimness beyond the glass. “And me along with him.”

The dagger flashed as Xenobia threw it and the glass went dark.

“Get it
back
, Aunt Sybil!” cried Maggie.

“I’m trying, child, but violence disrupts my concentration—ah, here,” the rainbow colors danced briefly to show Amberwine hurrying down a path. Still vibrating in a tree she had just passed was the gypsy dagger.

“Perhaps we should start tonight,” Maggie said. “She seems to be in terrible danger.”

“Yes,” Colin said. “Perhaps we should. For that lovely lady to be so mistreated by that AWFUL witch—oh, excuse me, I do beg your pardon!”

Aunt Sybil grinned at him. “The false part of your statement, lad, is that Xenobia is not a witch at all. Doesn’t even have the second sight a lot of her people have. She’s just a charlatan who calls herself Queen of the Gypsies.” She turned to Maggie. “How long has your sister been missing, now?”

Maggie shook her head and looked at Colin, who replied, “From the last full moon to this, from what Giles said, but I can’t be sure. Perhaps half again that time since I met him and Maggie and I started this journey.”

Sybil nodded. “Good. Then it could hardly be the gypsy’s child.”