Song of Sorcery (34 page)

“Never,” said Cook, standing at the window with her hands fisted at the waist of her apron, “will I get used to seeing dragons land in
my
courtyard.”

Maggie’s eyes raked the kitchen. “Where’s Ching?”

“There he is, coming from the stables. I suspect he went to say farewell to the stable cats,” said Winnie.

“It’s good-bye then, I suppose, till after the coronation,” Maggie said, shouldering the pack that contained the magic mirror her Aunt Sybil had given her, a new hand spindle carved for her by Colin, a dress, formerly underwear, which she planned to wear while in the company of the gypsies, her medicine pouch, a few staples for her magic to transform into meals, plus a small bag of gold from Rowan—she had had to insist on small. The amount he had tried to lavish on her would have been far too heavy for her to carry. There was also, carefully wrapped in velvet, a miniature portrait of the infant Princess Bronwyn, a gift for her maternal grandfather from the new king and queen, plus a few dried herbs and flowers peculiar to the area around Castle Rowan. Winnie, in the last stages of her pregnancy, had picked these for Granny Brown while Maggie was occupied with repairing the Rowan family tapestry showing Rowan the Rampaging single-handedly defeating the entire Brazorian army.

Rowan and Amberwine saw Maggie out to where Grizel sat waiting. They knew good-byes had to be quick, for even though the rowan trees in the courtyard had been transplanted to save Maggie the discomfort of her witch’s allergy to them, still their essence wafted up from the groves that surrounded the castle.

She hugged Winnie again, and kissed baby Bronwyn. Then Rowan, too, stepped forward to embrace her. “Take care of our loved ones, my liege,” she mumbled into his massive chest, “and your reign be blest.”

He backed away from her with a sweeping bow and, before she could mount, snatched up her hand and kissed it soundly. “I can hardly fail with a mighty sorceress in the family, now can I?” he teased.

“Shall we get ON with it?” Ching said, “I’d rather not hear the minstrel’s bitter complaints ringing in my ears the first five miles of our journey about how we made him stand a night and a day holding your horses.”

Maggie mounted quickly and Ching sprang to her shoulders. Grizel spread her wings and puffed up a take-off.

For a long time Maggie made a point of not looking down. Ching butted his head against her cheek. “I know how you feel, witch. I will certainly be glad to be home riding nothing more spirited than my hearthrug. Dragons, whales, and horses are all very well in themselves, but hardly suitable cat accommodations.”

“Hush, you’ll hurt Grizel’s feelings,” scolded Maggie, looking down and quickly back up again. The trees were passing below them in a dizzying dazzle of green, and the road whipped along like a dusty brown serpent. Perhaps she ought to have risked the trees after all.

“She doesn’t understand our conversations unless I choose for her to,” said Ching. “Since I am your temporary familiar, we share privileged communication.”

“That’s nice,” said Maggie. “Will you still talk to me sometimes back at Fort Iceworm?” The cat said nothing. “Well, will you?” she repeated.

“There will be no need, will there?” he asked, not at all in his usual bantering tone. “And Granny must be very lonely—she’s causing all that trouble again too. She needs my help again—I suspect I shall be very busy with one witch. Sorry. I shall say cat remarks to you occasionally, and rub against you to be petted, and listen to you when I have nothing better to do, but our relationship will have to be pretty much as it was before.”

Maggie said nothing else, as Grizel was circling in for a landing, and the witch was busy keeping her stomach in order.

Colin rode a dapple gray mare and held a pretty chestnut for Maggie. He had ridden out from the castle the afternoon before, to be on the path beyond the rowans when Grizel arrived.

Seeing that all was in order, Grizel made her good-byes and flew off to meet Grimley to discuss her new rear firewall for their lair.

“That’s quite a dragon,” said Colin. He looked rather undressed without his guitar slung over his shoulder, Maggie thought.

“Yes, she is.”

“I trust her reconciliation with Grimley went well? In all the excitement of the coronation preparations and the tribunals and all you never told me what the cat said about that. I’ve meant all these months to get around to asking. He wasn’t angry or anything, because she went off in a huff—or I suppose you could say a puff?”

Maggie knew they were making conversation to keep from facing the moment when they’d part, and she strove for a light touch. “Oh, no, Ching said Grimley admired her spirit. Called her his ‘little spitfire’.”

“Oh no. He didn’t?”

“That’s what she told Ching. I—I imagine as soon as you get to Queenston you’ll be sailing off on the
Bane?
” Maggie put her hand upon her saddle horn with deliberate precision, put her foot in the stirrup, then took it out again to stand waiting for his reply.

Colin had squatted down and was mauling some clover. “No—not right away, at least. Actually, the king asked me to delay that for a while. As soon as he’s taken office and the coronation’s over, he’s planning a little voyage to Ablemarle.”

“Round the horn?”

“Yes, and he wants me there to record the whole event and make a song of it so the taxpayers will know what he’s doing with their funds.”

“You’ll be coming up for the christening, then?”

“I suppose so, if you promise me I can keep my own shape.”

Maggie grinned. “I can promise that, I think.”

“Good. I say, your basket is making noises.” It was too, squeaking, odd noises. Maggie lifted the lid. A tiny kitten replica of Ching put a white paw on the edge of the basket and tried to scramble out.

“I can’t talk to you, Maggie, but you’ll have your hands full with Sonnyboy, when he learns to talk,” said Ching, the fur on his snow-white chest puffing with fatherly pride. “Rowan thought a powerful witch like you ought to have your own familiar. He told me to tell you that, and you can’t know what it cost him. You ought to have seen him, down there in the hayloft, not knowing if I understood or not while he talked to me and that charming calico mother of Sonny’s, and us mewing back ever so innocently.”

“Well, he won’t have as interesting a job, being my familiar, as you did,” she said, chucking Ching under the chin while stroking the kitten with one finger between his ears. “No more dragons or wizards for us now, kitty, just scrubbing that year’s worth of pots Gran won’t have done, and finding another one hundred and one ways to prepare ground venison.”

“I wish you wouldn’t talk that way about your magic,” said Colin. “It’s demeaning. It’s absolutely wonderful the way you can control fire and food supply and all,
I
think.”

She looked at him curiously. “You really think so?”

“I do—it may not seem like much when you’re safe and sound in your own castle, but Rowan says it’s an enormous tactical asset.”

“Rowan—the king—said that?”

Colin nodded. “He called you our secret weapon. Of course, from him, being called a weapon is a compliment. He said a siege would never take a castle with you in it. And look how you provided for us on the road and kept us comfortable in all that bad weather, not to mention holding off Grimley till Rowan could arrive with Neddy.”

“I had a little help,” she reminded him.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It’s just that it’s so everlastingly dull up there, Colin, with the winters so long and everyone at me to do this and that.”

“Well,” Colin said slyly. “You’ll have help with all that at least.”

“He’s a bit small. We can’t even talk together yet.”

“But we can, dear Maggie,” said a familiar voice in the back of her mind.

“Moonshine?” she asked.

Colin smiled. “He’s been waiting here outside the rowan trees for six months, ever since he followed us back from Dragon Bay. He’s followed everywhere you’ve gone, always within the woods. But he can’t stand the rowans either, bewitching creature that he is. The shepherdesses saw him and…”

He broke off, for she was no longer there. She was running to the edge of the woods, where the brush parted to show what seemed to be a bit of pearly morning sky.

Colin thought that nothing would be quite ordinary, ever again, for any of them.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ELIZABETH SCARBOROUGH was born in Kansas City, KS. She served as a nurse in the U.S. Army for five years, including a year in Viet Nam. THE HEALER’S WAR, her novel of Viet Nam, won the 1989 Nebula award for best novel. SONG OF SORCERY is her first novel. In the same series are THE UNICORN CREED, BRONWYN’S BANE
 
and THE CHRISTENING QUEST. Altogether, Scarborough has written 36 novels, including 14 in collaboration with Anne McCaffrey. Her hobbies include beadwork, folk music, and playing with her cats. She lived in Alaska for 18 years but now resides on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state.