Song of Sorcery (20 page)

Maggie nodded sadly. Winnie had napped through a great deal of unpleasantness in their childhood. When Maggie’s mother had died, the only mother Winnie had known, her sister had slept steadily for almost two weeks.

“Finally, mother drove her out. Who needs another obstacle to walk over?”

“But why did you want her in the first place? Aside from your low-born lust, I mean. I’d think that all that would be a great deal of trouble for
just
that.”

“I
beg
your pardon. As a matter of fact, it
was
a practical arrangement. A friend of our people—the sorcerer I mentioned—has political ambitions. He wished to discredit Lord Rowan in some subtle way, as he cannot do him direct damage. The rowan trees that surround Rowan’s castle protect him from sorcerers. They are murderous to witches.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I was naturally happy to be of help in my modest way,” he shrugged his most charming humble shrug. “We are loyal friends, we gypsies.”

“Provided there’s enough gold and silver to sweeten the deal,” Maggie amended.

“You insult!” He made a jack-knife leap to his feet. “I try to act nicely to you, to make love to you, and you insult me. I shall leave you here, tied to this tree, to die.” He started to stalk off.

“Oh, Davey, don’t go being offended!” Maggie talked so fast she almost stumbled over her words. It would cost her a lot of valuable time to figure out which household spell to apply to loosen a leather rope. She could have simply unspun a hemp one, but the leather was difficult. “I didn’t mean to insult you, truly. I didn’t think I could, you being heartless and all.”

“I may not have a heart, but I’m a very sensitive man.” He fairly spat at her.

“I can see that now, and I was wrong, and I’m very sorry. You’re absolutely right, of course. You really are irresistible. It’s just that odd things are expected of us younger witches by our elders and there’s this unicorn at home and—well, you see, I can’t afford to get involved with
any
man right now.”

“That is your affair entirely, madam.” He turned once more to go.

“I can help you, you know.”

He stopped. “What did you say?”

“I said I can help you with your problem.”

“What problem is that? The one you caused or your concern for my lack of useless sentiment?”

“No, no, no—not that. Those are just small difficulties. Come on, prince. I can’t shout your worst problem all over the woods, can I? Do be patient with me a bit longer, and come back here and sit down.”

“Well,” he said, looking back through the trees to the camp where the embers of the evening’s fire still glowed in the darkness. “It
is
early yet. I think it would not look g—I think I would not like to go back so early.” He sank to the ground near her Now woman, tell me what it is that you have to help me

That girl you were with tonight”

“Lahara? What about her?”

“You’re—um lovers?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well, what if you get tired of her?”

“Then I find another one.”

“What about her? Doesn’t she make trouble?”

“
That
one? No!” He laughed “She wouldn’t dare. What trouble could she make?”

“How about the others?”

“How about them? Zorah, she just cries all the time. Dalia’s husband is afraid of me. And Runya…” he broke off thoughtfully.

“Runya the all-seeing?”

“Runya, yes. All-seeing, fortunately no. I admit, at times she has worried me. She is very capable with her knife, and she is my cousin, on my mother’s side.” He winced.

“You see, you do have a problem.”

“Mostly they do as I tell them, though.”

“Mostly. But as you say, you folks have all this passionate gypsy blood, and once in a while a little of it is bound to be spilled. What if some night you’re all snuggled down in the shrubbery with a new friend, and Runya decides to take up whittling?”

He shuddered.

“It can’t be much fun for you, either,” she pointed out. “It must be depressing having all those women crying over you all the time.”

“No. One can only do so much for them. It’s the price of manhood, I suppose.”

“Runya could take care of that too.”

He gulped. “What did you have to say, witch?”

“Just this. What if I were to give you a potion that just sort of de-ignites the passion of the ladies no longer in favor? A kind of anti-love serum?”

“You could give me such a thing?” He sounded tempted, then a troubled look crossed his handsome face. “But they would forget me then. What if I wanted to try again with one I had given this potion to?”

“Oh, Davey,” she smiled from beneath coyly lowered lashes. “Do you really think you’d have any trouble if you chose to overpower a little potion?”

“No, that is true.”

“And it could be so useful. Just a drop in food or drink.”

“You want only that I release you?”

“That, and get my friend loose, and tell me how to get to this sorcerer who’s plotting against my sister.”

“You ask a lot, witch. What’s to keep me from taking your potion and whatever else I wish?”

“I can change the potion into extract of skunk gland without batting an eyelash.”

He began to untie her.

11

Colin’s horrible screams and the bear’s ferocious growls made it difficult for even the most hard-hearted of the gypsies to get to sleep. Xenobia had thought the minstrel’s execution would be noisy, but was beginning to wish the bear would eat more daintily. Zorah cowered beneath her blanket and whimpered herself to sleep, all of her own hopes dying in agony with Colin. And in the woods, Maggie cut short Davey’s explanation of how to reach the sorcerer’s castle. Her heart sank as she shoved the potion at him and began to run through the edge of the woods to the part of the encampment closest to the commotion.

In the bear cage, Colin shook with genuine fright, and followed his first, authentic scream with a repertoire both blood-curdling and heart-rending. Ching, the cat, sat switching his tail, clearly promising to give him another taste of his claws if his performance was substandard. The bear, likewise under the influence of the cat, snuffed and whuffled, bellowed and bawled, growled and grumbled his most challenging, while finishing the remains of the meal his keeper had left in the cage before the bear-baiting began.

With a particularly satisfying chilling gurgle, Colin reached his finale. The bear ate more quietly as the cat sank down onto the floor of the cage to lick his front paws and wash his ears. Colin wiped the perspiration from his brow with the side of his arm. “That was close,” he whispered to the cat. “I don’t know how you talked him out of eating me, but thanks a lot, cat. I swear to you that none of your kind shall be mistreated or hungry as long as I’m about.”

Ching’s eyes gazed greenly up at him in the darkness, his purr almost as loud as the bear’s growls. Colin scratched the cat’s ears and considered. “Still, I don’t imagine you’re magical enough to open this cage, are you? No, of course not. At least you’ve given me time to think.” Ching presented the side of his face for a whisker scratch. Colin regarded him thoughtfully.

“Yet you can understand me, can’t you? I mean, I know I can’t tell if you’re saying ‘meow’ or reciting poetry when you and Maggie chat, but you’re a clever fellow. You can understand everybody, right?” Ching said “mrrp” in a pleased sort of way, and continued to encourage caresses by rolling onto his back for his black-and-white belly to be rubbed.

“There’s one girl here who might help me. I don’t know if she’s actually a friend or not but she does dislike Xenobia. Maybe if you could get Zorah to come and get me out?” He was starting to think and talk faster, hoping there might be some way to escape in time to save Maggie.

Ching sat up, flicked his whiskers, looked about, and switched his tail so emphatically he fairly thumped it on the floor.

“No, I don’t suppose you’d know her, would you? She’s got on a blue dress, and she’s rather smallish—a bit shorter than Maggie. She looks sad. Actually, I don’t suppose she looks that sad while she’s sleeping but that’s the general idea.” The cat regarded him quizzically. “Um—I think perhaps she lives in that red wagon with the hideous purple stripes on—” He found himself talking to the end of a tail and cat back feet as Ching leaped down. “I want you to know,” Colin said to the tail tip before the cat was completely lost in the darkness. “This quite makes up for you trying to eat me.”

The cat tried two other wagons before he found the right one. Even for humans, colors looked different in the moonlight (as in Ching’s favorite words of wisdom from Granny Brown regarding feline camouflage—”all cats look gray in the dark.”). Ching’s magic operated efficiently enough, but his visual apparatus was such that Colin’s red and purple had no meaning for him.

So he tried a green wagon with orange stripes, and a blue wagon with gilt stripes, where he narrowly missed being skewered by the dagger of a fat gypsy man attempting to make love. The man apparently felt that Ching’s questioning mew added little to his efforts; only the cat’s agility kept him from becoming fish bait.

Finally, though, he found a striped wagon containing a woman who looked worn out even while she was sleeping, a girl of about Maggie’s age and size, and a boy child and a girl child of tail-pulling years. Colin was wrong, though, about the older girl. She did look sad, even in her sleep.

Being careful not to wake the others, who might not be so sympathetic to Colin’s and Maggie’s respective plights as the young woman he was sent to fetch, he hopped softly onto the girl’s chest and sang into her ear. She stirred. He sang a bit louder, but she mumbled, and her arms made brushing motions to rid herself of him.

He patted her half-open lips with a paw, his nose almost brushing her teeth. Her breath smelled pleasantly of homebrewed ale and spice-root. He patted again,
 
leaping sideways as she sat up, her elbow nearly striking him as she raised her hand to rub her eyes.

“What?” she asked.

Ching purred reassuringly, fixing her with a calm composed gaze. He hoped she wasn’t one of those silly hysterical people who couldn’t abide the presence of a cat.

Zorah liked cats, however, and found stroking Ching a soothing balm for her sadness, even though she was barely awake and afraid of waking her family. She had no idea how he’d come to her wagon, but welcomed his company anyway. When Ching was sure he had her attention, he backed off, chirruping for her to follow, advanced again to rub against her, and once more retreated when she tried to pet him. Soon she got the idea that she was being instructed to follow him when he hopped down from her wagon.

He led her to the bear’s cage, but when she saw the direction he was taking she turned again to go, protesting tearfully, “Oh, puss, I can’t go there. That poor man!” Ching sat thumping his tail on the ground, staring up at her until she began to realize he was not behaving in a naturally feline fashion. Most cats, if there was a great deal of blood around, would have been savagely excited. Such a description in no way fit Ching. Zorah’s curiosity led her on.

More to bolster her own courage than because she actually thought she would be understood, she said, taking a deep breath and pulling her frayed and muddied cloak close about her, “Very well. I will look, then. I am a gypsy woman, and not squeamish.”

A disembodied voice followed this outspoken proclamation of bravery, almost making lie of it by sending her screaming back to her wagon.

“Please, Zorah, do be quiet and get us out of this cage. The bear is sleeping now, and might wake up hungry.”

Making the sign against the evil eye, which also included ghosts and witches, she finally managed to peer into the wagon and through the bars. There sat the minstrel, appearing more bored and anxious than mauled. He was in one corner of the cage and the bear was piled like a used fur rug in the other corner. “Will you please get me out of here?”

“If you promise to do what I asked you earlier.” Not for nothing did she come from a long line of horse traders.

Colin reluctantly promised he would help her locate Gypsy Davey’s heart as she had asked, and she took the key ring from under the wagon seat and fit the great wooden key into the lock.

“Now hurry,” she said nervously as he jumped down beside her. “Some of my people will still be awake. We got to break camp soon and be out of here before dawn. Those town people are apt to get a little mad when they learn what our little shows really cost.”

“I have to find my horse and get Maggie. If only we could delay pursuit somehow…”

“I’ll drive away our horses. That should give you plenty of time. It may be a close thing with the townspeople while we gather them up, but it won’t take that long.”

“Good girl!”

The horse had to be saddled, but the saddle and bridle had fortunately been left on the ground near the animal. In the confusion, no one had taken the sword and scabbard from the ground where they’d tossed it while subduing Colin. But he missed his instruments immediately.

He followed the soft nickerings of the other horses to find Zorah again. She was busy loosening hobbles and smacking rumps to encourage them to wander off into the richer grasses of the upper meadow.