Tyrant Trouble (Mudflat Magic) (11 page)

So
his Sun was at the midheaven in the constellation of Aries. No surprise there.
Only his age surprised me. From his scarred and wrinkled countenance I should
have thought him much older. Still, knowing he was born under the sign of Aries
warned me how to speak to him. Children of this fire sign are new souls,
strong-willed and often rash, sometimes too trusting. He looked willful and
daring, but trusting?

Midheaven.
Right. Driven to succeed on one side, superstitious as hell on the other. I'd
try the ambition thing first.

“Your
stars signify power and bravery.”

“Do
they?” His lips curled back from his broken teeth. “My son was born halfway
between the midday and the eventide, one moon and seven days past the Longest
Day, nineteen years ago. Tell me what I may expect of him, you who know
everything.”

So
the little beggar hadn't lied to me about his age. Yeah, he looked nineteen but
sometimes he acted more like nine. With no time to draw Tarvik's chart or place
the planets within it, all I knew was that his birth sun was in the
constellation of Leo which is also ruled by the sun, a glaring place at
midafternoon. The placement seemed familiar. Oh, I thought, the moon in my own
birth chart was at almost the same degree.

Maybe
I never remember where I put the car keys, but I have an exceptional memory of
the approximate placement of the slower planets for many years past. The
placement of the sun or moon or planets in a constellation depends on the day
of birth. The placement of the House cusps depends on the hour. Knowing the
minute is even better, but not too dependable in our society where approximate
birth times are the norm on records.

Ah.
If I remembered correctly, Saturn was in Scorpio in Tarvik's birth chart and
from there it did a rotten aspect on his sun.

I
said, “His constellation is Leo, the second fire constellation. He must journey
through shadows alone.”

And
he won't like that, I thought, because a Leo is a person who likes company.

“What
is a constellation?”

“A
pattern of stars in the sky.”

“Draw
it for me.”

Okay.
Right. Sure. And how do I do that? I had no idea how this man reacted to
questions and was trying to think of what to say when Tarvik moved past his
father's chair and held out his hand to me. I almost reached out because wow,
did I ever need a hand to hold, and then I saw that he held something that
looked like a bit of charcoal.

So
much for dignity. If taking a pebble out of my shoe was not allowed, was it
okay to draw on the floor and what other choice did I have? Should I draw a
lion? Or should I draw the star formation? I made a quick guess that people who
lived so far from electric lights probably had more first hand knowledge of the
night sky than I did and so I drew the pattern of the stars on the stone floor.

Kovat
stared at the scattered dots.

“That's
the Warrior,” he said.

A
sword-carrying, hand-holding warrior, yes, that was Tarvik.

I
also should have guessed that these people would have their own names for the
constellations. If I lived through tonight, I would have to drag Nance out into
the courtyard to identify the constellations and planets for me and tell me her
names for them.

“You
speak like the magicians, girl. Empty words of many meanings or none at all.”

“I
don't know your history, so I don't know the direction of Tarvik's journey.
Give me time to place more of the stars in his chart, maybe learn more about
your country, and then I can tell you about your son's future.”

Kovat
rose slowly from his chair and stepped down from the platform. It was the first
time I had seen him standing. He was the same height and nearly the same build
as Tarvik but with bulkier muscles and a thicker body. Even his hands were the
same square shape. Scars covered his bare limbs and one arm was oddly bent, as
though it had been badly broken and poorly healed. Had he once been a handsome
boy and what had he done with his life to fill his face and form with so much
distortion?

The
smell of his unwashed body so close to me was a bummer. His eyes, on a level
with mine, stared intently. I tried not to let a muscle twitch to give away my
thoughts. One thick jeweled hand rose and reached toward my face, then dropped,
and I saw in his face a darting memory.

“She
drew me back from death,” he said.

The
Daughter? I'd kind of guessed she must have had some medicine in her backpack.
What would a camper carry? Maybe she had a prescription with her for herself,
probably antibiotics, and she made a lucky guess? Because she sure wouldn't
have been Doctors Without Borders, hiking with a complete doctor's bag, not on
the Olympic peninsula.

He
said, “Tomorrow you will come back and give me answers to all the questions I
ask. If the Daughter of the Sun guides you, you will know the correct answers.”

And
if I did not?

Tarvik
must have shared my doubt. He said softly, “My father, no one can know all the
answers to all questions. Even the gods must be puzzled sometimes.”

“You
think me unfair?” Kovat roared, spinning around on his heel to face his son.

To
Tarvik's credit, and so far I had seen little of him that I thought merited
credit, Tarvik didn't turn away. He stared in silence at his father, not
blinking.

Kovat
glared back at him. “No one can say Kovat is unfair, even to his enemies. On
this journey's return I have brought with me a magician of the followers of
Thunder, one of their mad priests. Tomorrow I shall bring him and this - this
-” He turned to me and waved his hand toward me and snapped, “Have you a name?”

“I
am called Stargazer.”

“Stargazer.
Tomorrow you and the mad magician will stand before me and I will give
questions about things neither of you know. Let him consult his false god while
you study your stars. We shall see who outguesses who.” To Tarvik he muttered,
“There, princeling, is that fair enough for you?”

Tarvik
nodded. It did seem to me they might have included me in the decision making,
and if I’d been alone with Tarvik I would have told him so, loudly, but in the
presence of Kovat I did not even twitch an eyelid.

Kovat
marched out of the room, leaving me alone to turn and meet Tarvik's look.

He
said softly, “Do you possess the same magic as the Daughter?”

“I
never knew the Daughter.”

“I
remember her. She knew magic.”

He
stepped down from the raised platform and walked over to me, then slowly
circled me, looking up and down in a way that made me rather uncomfortable. It
was one thing to have him staring openmouthed in the temple, where he would do
nothing more than stare. It was another here, where who knew what he had on his
mind.

“Who
winds it up like that?” He reached out and touched my hair. The guy really was
full of surprises.

“Nance,
of course.”

“Yes,
and so added to your lack of skill at cooking, you also cannot dress your own
hair.”

As
there was no way to answer that comment without starting an argument, and
raised voices in the castle with Kovat the Slayer present seemed unwise, I said
nothing.

“Then
we must hope that you are clever at this telling fortunes from the stars,
because my father has set great weight on it.”

His
fingers slid down the side of my face, touching me gently, before he hurried
away from me.

I
returned to the temple, once again with guards in front and behind me. There
were a few other guards standing around, and servants and slaves hurrying by,
usually with their hands filled with bundles or trays, but if they looked at
me, they did it quickly and secretly.

Nance
waited, her fingers twisting nervously, a foot tapping with impatience. I
reported the meeting to her while she removed the ornaments from my hair,
helped me out of the robes, brushed them down and hung them away. Then I asked
her for pen and paper.

She
answered with a blank stare.

For
a second I’d forgotten these people did not read or write. A face to face visit
with a slayer maybe dulled my memory? Nance had no paper, no pencils, nothing
to use to draw horoscopes.

“The
walls,” I said finally, thinking of the paintings, “how are those drawings
done?”

“With
paint or charcoal. I have neither.”

Only
later, after I had finally calmed Nance and sent her to bed, did I consider
Tarvik and decide he might mean well, but he couldn't save my neck. I had to do
that myself. With only a table top and Nance's face colors as tools, I drew a
horoscope for scary old Kovat. Next, I went out into the courtyard and picked
up pebbles until I had a handful. I brought them back inside and dabbed them
with colors from Nance's small pots of face paint to make each one represent a
planet.

And
there I was, reading a warlord's life and my own survival in the glitter of
face paint and a handful of pebbles.

After
long hours spent stretching my mind to recall the memorized positions of the
slower planets in the sky for the day of Kovat's birth, information I would
have found in an ephemeris if I were home, I lay my head in my arms and closed
my eyes. My memory of planet positions had always been exceptional but seldom
burdened to this extent. If Tarvik's gods were watching, I hoped they would
give me a little guidance.

I
could place the slower planets, Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, who spend
several years in each of the constellations.

Like
it or not, astronomers, Pluto swings a lot of weight in a horoscope. Oh right,
astronomers don't approve of horoscopes either, so scratch that and plow on.

Even
the quicker Jupiter, who moves through a constellation in a year or less, was
fairly easy to figure out. Although I could not recall the exact degree for
each, I remembered approximately where they would have been. But the constantly
changing locations of Mars, Venus, and Mercury as they sped through the sky
were impossible to recall for years long past.

Might
have been able to come close with a calculator, but while close is useful for a
planet, forget it with the moon. As the moon moves a degree every night, no way
to guess. I knew well enough where it was tonight, but thirty-nine years ago?
No, Kovat's horoscope was filled with blanks.

Perhaps
having one's head removed from one's body by a very quick and very sharp sword
was not the most painful death, I told myself.

At
this thought, I remembered Tarvik. The kid had watched me from the moment I
entered Kovat's room, with that foolish look he wore too often, his eyelids
heavy, his mouth partly open, his tongue against his upper lip. It was
something Nance did, too. They did not resemble each other much but they did
often use the same facial expressions.

Later
his face reflected shock when I spoke a bit quickly to his father. Did they
have some form of address that he and Nance forgot to mention? Was I supposed
to call Kovat “my lord” or “sir” or some such thing? I was perfectly willing to
add any old title the guy preferred. Was Tarvik's terror for me? Did it matter
to him, then, what became of me? Hmm. Maybe I was his first prisoner and that
pumped his ego, made him possessive proud.

As
I pulled a lamp closer to the chart and turned my study to Kovat's destiny, I
wondered if Tarvik had it in his power to keep me alive no matter what happened
tomorrow. Didn't think he did, yet I suspected he would try. My opinion of
Tarvik continued to edge very slightly toward something milder than fury.

Think
of the boy and there he was, like an unlucky charm. As I worried over the
charts, he pounded on the gates. I rose, went out into the courtyard where
embers still flickered from our evening fire, and said the ritual who-is-there
knowing perfectly well who was there.

When
he was inside and the gate closed again, I went back to the center of the
courtyard and held out my hands to the warmth of the dying fire.

“What
is it now?” I said.

“I
know who you are. Beyond what you told my father today, beyond being from the
land of the Daughter.”

“Not
a templekeeper and not a god.” I looked him in the eyes. His face reflected the
firelight, and it turned his yellow hair to red.

“More
than that. I thought about the story you told me that did not have an ending.”

“Umm,
did you?”

“Stargazer,
you really are from outside.”

I
nodded.

“So
were they, but they were gods.”

“And
your question is?”

“People,
not gods, live here. Gods live outside, and when we die our souls go outside
and join them.”

He
thought anything beyond the boundaries of their land was heaven?

“Are
you saying no one has ever gone away and then come back?”

“How
could they? Only the dead can leave.”

I
mulled that one over. “Can you go up in the mountains?”

“Of
course. But we don't because that's elf land and it's better to leave them
alone.”

Elves
in the mountains? Pointy-eared, pointy-toed ballet type folk in flowing gowns
and straight out of the Tolkien films? Or maybe they were really little
bitties, like fairies. And was my brain imploding? Skip that thought and get
back to important stuff. I didn't want to go mountain-climbing, I don't even
like those climbing rock things in the sporting goods stores.

“Have
you ever tried to walk out of here?”

“Yes,
everyone does that, goes exploring. And then we reach a place where we are
turned around and return.”

Like
what happened to me when I tried to follow the deer. “Why is that?” I asked,
not expecting any answer.

But
he surprised me. “Because the gods protect us. They surround us with magic that
keeps us in and keeps death out.”