Song of Sorcery (19 page)

“As for you, my merry minstrel,” Xenobia said sweetly, “You could prove less easy to handle than the girl.”

“A lot you know,” he mumbled under his breath, but replied more clearly. “Why are you treating us this way? Your son was bragging about your famous hospitality. Is this how you treat your distant kin?”

“MY kin?” She really did hiss now. “You’re MY kin? Say something to me, then, in our own secret tongue, relative.” She chucked him under the chin with her fingers so hard it made his eyes water. “Sing me a sweet gypsy lament in the old tongue. No? I thought not.” She turned to the shadows behind her. “Mateo, my boy, show this false gypsy what you found on his horse.”

Triumphantly, the boy dragged forth the second best family sword, House of Rowan crest and all.

“This sword, I am told, is the property of the enemy of a great sorcerer who is friend to my people. If you’re such a fine gypsy, how come you have it, eh?”

“I stole it.”

She shook her head. “No. And there are no gypsies in the world who look like you, as my son well knows. He only liked your singing and playing and thought, ‘ah well, he’s harmless enough.’ Then we found this. Too many of your kind mixing with my people is what
I
say.” She spat the last and turned from him to give a command to her guard. When her back was turned, Colin amazed himself with his own ruthless cunning as he snaked an arm around her throat, catching her neck in the crook of his elbow. “Nobody move,” he ordered. “Or I strangle the old witch.” He was snarling in the voice he used when singing the villain’s part in a murder ballad, and was gratified to see how effective it was. Xenobia clawed at his arm and he tightened his grip.

“Mateo, if you are fond of your present form of government, it would behoove you to replace that sword in its scabbard and put it back where you found it. Then you will bring my horse right here.”

How was he going to elude them long enough to free Maggie from the gypsy’s lustful clutches and ride away through the thick wood beyond danger of capture was quite beyond him. It was better than listening to Xenobia’s melodramatic threats, though.

The boy hastened to do his bidding, the sword thumping on the ground behind him as he scurried away.

Although he didn’t actually see them move, the other gypsies seemed to melt back into the shadows. He heard his heart in his ears and felt as though he had a chill. He couldn’t have held onto Xenobia much longer when the boy led the horse into the clearing.

He was just breathing a sigh of relief when a blow from behind knocked him down. Xenobia fell on top of him, wriggled away from his grip, and emerged to stand above him like a knight who had just vanquished a dragon. His focus swam as he concentrated on trying to stop the ringing in his ears.

“No, you fools. Not with daggers.” She halted the threatening jabs at him with a gesture, then scratched her chin. “For this offense to my person, something messier, I think. Let’s see if our friend the bear can improve this one’s singing voice, eh? Throw him in the cage!”

Colin’s only good fortune at this turn of events was that he was a minstrel, not a hero, and so felt free to kick and scream with no appreciable loss of self-respect as they dragged him to the bear’s wagon-cage, and shoved him at the opening. The smell alone nearly killed him before he was rudely kicked inside.

“Too bad it’s all closed up, like. I’d enjoy watching,” he heard someone say as he landed.

“We’ll hear, right enough,” said someone else.

A deafening roar was the first indication of the veracity of the statement.

10

The gypsy had his love nest all arranged. Since he shared his mother’s wagon, he found it convenient to prepare such trysting places wherever their band went. It made an interesting game, to find a suitable spot to woo, and, naturally, to win, his loves. The locations were varied enough to titillate his sense of adventure: a hay mow, an outbuilding, an open field, a deserted woodcutter’s hut, or, as it was tonight, a comfortable bed of fragrant spruce boughs and soft moss, all ready for him to lay the lady down beneath the rustling willows.

Leaves and laying down, however, appeared to be far from the lady’s mind. He was finally forced to give her a shove. Awkward, true, but effective.

“You louse-ridden, horse-dewed son-of-a-” she began before he caught her in his arms and hushed her with a hard kiss. The harshness of it became satisfyingly soft and melting and mutually nibbly and she surrendered sufficiently to allow him to go on to the next phase and locate a limb to caress. The nearest was a velvety thigh.

He murmured softly, as usual, “Your skin—oh, darling, it is so very soft.”

She broke his hold and looked at him with astonishment, then burst into a fit of laughter totally inappropriate for the mood of the moment and offensive to his sense of fitness.

“What is so funny?”

“Me—me and my soft skin. What did you expect, anyway?” she was so amused by her own joke she collapsed once more before she could continue. “I mean to say, did you imagine I would have scales, or what?”

For such a ravishing girl she clearly didn’t understand the first thing about being ravished. She was shockingly unaware of the protocol of such matters. That was a classic compliment! Offended, Davey decided that perhaps she preferred a more basic approach, which also happened to suit him at the moment.

He grabbed the front of her bodice and pulled. It ripped apart long enough for him to catch a moonglow swell of copper skin, then it wove itself primly back together again.

“Ching was right,” the girl muttered to herself, “a stitch in time would have indeed saved nine this time.”

Though her perfume was driving him mad, he thought it prudent to employ more circumspect tactics with young women who caused their clothing to automatically mend. “However you did that,” he grumbled, “you’re certainly a lot more modest than you were a while ago.” He had relinquished his embrace, but retained her wrists.

She glared at him.

“Of course,” he added quickly. “On you, my lovely, modesty and immodesty are equally becoming.”

Seeing that he was making no headway, he reverted to persuasion. “Come, now, my sweetheart. I won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do. Not until you’re ready. I’m sorry I tore your dress—I am too impatient to taste your charms. I can’t help myself, you know. Passionate gypsy blood, and all that.” He pulled her back into his arms, where she lay for a moment against him while he kissed her neck and munched her earlobes. He had found ninety-nine percent of the subjects tested responded favorably to such embraces.

She sighed deeply and almost snuggled against him for a moment. “You don’t intend to harm us, then?”

He looked down at her with annoyance. The little wench was trying to take advantage of the situation! “Well, I didn’t say THAT. You are spies, after all. But I wouldn’t want to have to force you, dear girl. Think how bad that would sound!” He considered that for a moment, while defining the contours of her bosom and experimenting with a couple of squeezes.

A lupine grin replaced his unaccustomed meditative air. “On the other hand, who would you tell? Not many more get-togethers with the girls for you, sweet.”

The breath was knocked out of him as he was flung backwards by the unexpected force of an enchanted shove. By the expedient of informing her magic that she wished to push the cow aside for milking, Maggie had employed it in her personal defense. “I cannot believe Amberwine’s incredible lack of taste.” She enunciated each word with finicky precision, and shook herself as though infested with spiders.

Davey, after inspecting himself for damage, was preparing to leap upon her and crush her into submission, in the course of which he was certain she would come around to her senses and enjoy it all tremendously. Her words, however, had given him pause.

“Amberwine? You mean Lady Rowan?”

“Yes, I mean Lady Rowan, you cad.” Her formerly voluptuous mouth was now set in a thin line, and her fiery eye reminded him uncomfortably of his mother.

“Must you bring up ancient history?” Sighing dramatically, he let his fingers crawl toward the leather rope at his left while he raised himself casually to his right elbow, as near to her as he dared.

“I certainly must,” she said.

“You haven’t got much sensitivity, have you, wench?” he asked critically.

“More than you have. I say, is it true you haven’t a heart?”

“You really are an insensitive little witch.”

“Precisely.”

“As a matter of fact, I don’t. Part of my puberty rite as a gypsy prince required its removal.”

“What a quaint folk custom! Oh, Mother!” she swore, catching sight of the rope in his hand. “You aren’t going to use that thing, are you?” She tried to scramble away, but he caught her by the foot and slammed her against the trunk of a tree before she was able to contemplate cows.

“I don’t see why not.” He yanked the knot tight. “You are a spy.”

“I am
not
a spy, and you
are
awful.”

“Not entirely. If you’d only have given me a chance I can be quite amusing, really.” His protestations were limp, however, as he had lost a good deal of his inspiration for the moment.

“Oh, to be sure. I think you’re funnier than a hanging, myself,” she said acidly. “Really, how do you keep walking around without a heart?”

“It was magically removed, silly girl. Not surgically.”

“I see. You have a blood-pumping apparatus, just no feelings.”

“You might put it that way Scientific turn of mind you’ve got, for a spy.”

“I told you I’m
not
a spy. I only wanted to find out how you managed to make off with my sister, and why you allowed your mother to drive her away later. As a matter of fact, now that we’re better acquainted, I’m amazed Winnie didn’t leave without being asked.”

“You don’t like me, do you?”

“No. You do have a certain superficial charm—” He cocked an eyebrow. “Alright then, a deep superficial charm. But though Winnie might occasionally do something batty, she’s very discerning about people generally, and men in particular.”

“Perhaps you’re not being discerning enough, my dear,” he suggested. “She, perhaps, saw some of my excellent qualities you insist on overlooking.”

She snorted in a most unladylike manner. “I’m very sure one of them is that you’re unbeatable in a horse trade.”

“True. But other things, as well.” He looked at her as longingly as though she were a jam tart and he suffering from both appetite and indigestion.

“Be a good fellow, prince. You really don’t fancy my berry-brown body any more, do you?”

“The night is young. A gag, perhaps…”

“Don’t be a toad. Let me go. I’m not really a spy. My sister didn’t do anything to you, and you know it.”

“She did.”

“She didn’t. She couldn’t—wouldn’t.”

“She did.”

“How? You can’t be hurt without a heart, can you?”

“I have my pride,” he said stiffly, then snarled so nastily at her that in her helpless condition she was quite alarmed. “There is something very wrong with the women of your family. I should have known you two were related by the way you act.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean your father will have no grandchildren, the way you and that lily-white sister of yours behave.”

“Nonsense. Winnie is pregnant already.”

“So I noticed, once mother confiscated her gown. It has to be a changeling.”

“Be reasonable. The baby has to be born for faeries to substitute a changeling, and Winnie’s part faerie herself. Nothing like that could possibly happen.” It occurred to her then to stop arguing long enough to understand what he had been telling her. “You don’t mean you—um—she—you mean there’s no disgrace to Rowan then?” That was as delicately as she could put it.

“Well, she did tell him to go mind his towers and battlements when he came riding after us, right enough!” He laughed. “You should have seen his face. Red as his hair!”

“I don’t think it’s funny,” she said severely. “But why would she go away with you and then not—you know…”

“Good question. Unless like you she’s nothing but a tease. The sorcerer personally told me she fancied me when she saw me perform at Fort Iceworm two years ago, before she married. He even taught me a special song he swore was her particular favorite. It had the same tune, in fact, as that ballad they sing about me now.”

He shrugged. “It worked very well at first. She fairly fell into my arms and couldn’t get her boots and cloak on fast enough. A damn sight faster than I was able to get her out of them. When she told her husband off I thought to myself, I thought ‘Davey, lad, you have by your side a lady good for hours of fine entertainment!’ Then—nothing. No sooner had we reached my camp than she turned cold. Wouldn’t let me touch her.” He glared at Maggie accusingly. “Never in my life has such a humiliating thing happened to me. What a lot of trouble for nothing! Oh, the sorcerer was pleased, I suppose, but what of me? She wouldn’t return to her husband—of course, we wouldn’t have allowed her to before the story was circulated enough to make it awkward for him, but she didn’t want to go when I gave her the chance. She wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t work, wouldn’t make love. She just slept.”