Tyrant Trouble (Mudflat Magic) (8 page)

“Nance,
even in his tent Tarvik had servants to serve meals. How come you're alone in
the temple?”

“I
could have slaves. I hate slaves. They never talk and are more depressing than
being alone.” Her voice faded in and out as she moved around the horses,
tending them. She added, “What about you, Stargazer? You cannot cook, you
cannot ride, and you cannot dress your hair.”

“I'm
not a cook. I know how to ride a bus but don't ask what that is. As for hair, I
can wash and comb it,” I grumbled as I tried to stir the pot with the stick she
had handed me. “Be glad I do wash my hair and the rest of myself.”

Nance
squatted by the fire and dished up our portions. “What do you do in your land
besides wash?”

“Eat
and sleep and mind my own business,” I snapped.

She
laughed. “I mean, what do you do while someone else prepares your meals for
you?”

“I
am a Stargazer.”

“I
thought that was your name.”

“Umm,
well, it is also my job.”

“And
what is a job?”

Get
me off the horse and fill me with hot food and I turn cheerful. Achy but
cheerful.

How
much should I tell her? And if I told her, would she tell Tarvik and would
Tarvik in turn tell others? Would I be less safe if anyone knew I was something
other than the new priest? There was no way to explain my world to her. But
perhaps I could explain astrology. “I study the stars. I know where they are in
the sky and how that tells the future, the best choice of career, when to
marry, that kind of thing.”

Nance
squealed with delight. “You read the future? So do the magicians, but they do
not use stars. They build a fire and in the flame they see answers.”

“What
magicians?”

“The
magicians of Thunder, a crazy lot. They don't come here any more. Kovat locks
them in prison cells and forgets them.”

“Prison
cells? Where do you have prison cells?”

“Under
the castle, holes in the ground, cold and dark.”

Whoa.
Didn't like the sound of that.

Nance
pulled sheepskins from the sack she had carried on Pacer. We smoothed them and
settled for the night.

I
lay on my back staring at the familiar stars. Nance was a friendly girl and I
liked her company but she could not replace my own world. What were they doing
now, my friends in Seattle? Oh, right. Probably telling Darryl I had
disappeared to who knew where.

Ah,
if they only knew I was now a god. One friend once said that carved on my
tombstone would be the words, “She was always late.” Quite true. I didn't do it
intentionally, but I did tend to be late. But imagine adding the words,
“Nonetheless, she was a god.”

From
her bed roll Nance said, “They read the future poorly, those magicians. If you
can truly read the future, this will give you much power. I think even Kovat the
Slayer will accept you if you do that.”

And
if a ruler called Slayer decided not to accept me, what then?

CHAPTER
5

In
the morning we rode into the foothills to a grassy plateau. After Nance tied
the horses near a clump of trees at a stream's edge, she led me to a cave-like
shelter above the bank. Beyond the trees leaning out to shade the stream the
land sloped upward, and in some distant past the stream must have been a river.
Nance pushed aside a cover of broken tree limbs, and pulled out a long, peculiar
bundle.

Picking
up one end, she said, “Catch the other end. Help me carry it.”

The
bundle was lighter than it looked. It was longer than I was tall by several
times, and as large around as my arms could reach. After we hauled it from the cave
and set it down on the grasslands, Nance knelt beside it to undo the
fastenings. Her fingers plucked at the cords that bound the blanket wrapping.
When she peeled away the dark outer layer, a mound of pale cloth shimmered in
the sunlight. There was enough cloth to cover a tent but of a weight that
rippled in the light breeze.

Nance
drew out a number of long thin poles that formed the core of the bundle and
tied them together. They made an odd shaped frame, triangular, with one side
much longer than the other two. As she worked, she chattered orders at me to
“hold down that corner, there,” and “look out” and “grab that” and “hand me
those.”

“What
is it?”

“Cannot
you see, daughter of a god? When Tarvik told me you flew over a mountain, I
thought perhaps you knew my secret.”

I
knelt beside her and stared first at her, then at the frame. “What are you
saying?”

“Can
you fly or can't you?”

“Do
I look like a bird?”

“I
can,” she said smugly.

“You
can what?”

She
waved her hands toward the billowing cloud of cloth and raised her chin. Pride
glowed in her eyes. She said, “All those years in the temple, my life no freer
than a slave's, I would have died of boredom if I kept my thoughts inside the
walls. I stayed in that narrow courtyard and watched the only free things I
could see, the birds, and envied them. Then one day I dropped a scarf and
watched it blow about the yard in a gust of wind. And then I knew that I, too,
could be free if I could learn to ride the wind.”

“Only
sea birds ride the wind.” And balloons and kites, but I wasn’t about to try to
explain those things.

“Sea
birds and Nance. Come along.”

We
carried the cloth up an incline above the plateau. Nance shouted directions all
the way, warning me to “hold that corner, don't let it catch the wind, keep
down, take care,” until I was running out of patience.

When
she finally told me to stop and set it down carefully, I demanded, “What is
this thing?”

Her
eyebrows shot up in surprise. “My wings, of course.”

“Wings?”

“Yes,
let me show you.”

That
suited me very well. It was a vast relief that she intended to show me with her
own body and didn't grab my wrist and insist that now that I had learned to
ride a horse, if poorly, I could also learn to fly.

Her
wings were a canopy of cloth held by a frame of long poles, pretty in its
shimmering brightness as the breeze lifted and swayed it, reminding me of
ships' sails. Or maybe parachutes.

Nance
positioned her wings with the point of the triangle aimed forward, above and in
front of her, then wound her arms through a looped arrangement of straps hung
beneath the wings. She stood for a long time turning from one side to another,
feeling the wind fill and billow the cloth until it lifted one side into the
air, listening to the slight flapping of its edges. She slipped her arms
through the straps, her hands grasping a rod that crossed above her, and tilted
herself and her wings toward the wind.

I
settled back on the hillside to watch, not really believing the thing would
work. Nance pulled the front nose of her wing construction down slightly into
the wind and ran as fast as she was able down the hill. To my everlasting awe,
Nance and her wings rose slowly skyward and floated lazily out above the
plateau.

Damn!
The girl had built herself a hang glider.

And
she had figured out how to fly it. This child-sized girl could fly, her body
angled back now so that one of the straps pulled into a tight position like a
belt across her body and helped support her. Her flight was similar to sea
gulls, circling slowly on a breeze above a sea of grassland.

And
what could I do with a hang glider? Didn't want to consider it because I tend
to break out in a sweat if I have to climb a ladder. But Nance said flight made
her free. If she taught me to use her glider, could it carry me out of this
place?

Nance
circled slowly downward, the glider shining in the sunlight like a giant flower
petal floating on a breeze, until she reached the earth. She crumpled to the
grass and the glider collapsed above her. By the time I reached her, running, she
had untangled herself from the cloth and stood by the contraption, grinning.

“Now
do you believe?” she cried.

“I
believe! I believe! Teach me to fly, Nance!”

Her
eyes narrowed. “I thought you would be afraid.”

“Of
course I am afraid. But I want to learn.”

“You
must understand how the wings work before you can control them. I began with a
scarf, first limp, and then tied to a length of thread. That failed and I
almost despaired, but what else was there to do all day? I added sticks to hold
the cloth rigid in a frame, then cross-sticks to keep it from collapsing.”

“Brilliant!”

“I
am the first! I made my small wings fly by tying them to a long string and
pulling them rapidly across the courtyard, running until they caught the wind
and rose.”

Like
a kite. “And no one saw you?”

Nance
laughed. “Once. And what a commotion followed! They could not see the string,
only the wings, blue ones they were, and I had to think quickly of a tale of
sending an offering of a blue bird to the Daughter. After that, I worked on my
wings only when I was away from the temple, camping here alone. I found I could
lift a small bundle of twigs suspended beneath the wings and that is when I
began to think of lifting myself.”

“So
you needed only to make the, uh, wings larger?”

“Making
wings that fly when towed on a thread is quite different from making wings that
fly when aimed at wind currents by my running body. It took me two years to go
from one point to the next. But what else have I to do with my time? Come
along, you may as well try.”

Nance
dragged the wings up the hill, walked around them and showed me how to check
for any damage. She taught me to position them, grasp the bar properly, throw
my weight to control their soar, and oh, a thousand other rules, all confusing
and terrifying. Gliding was way down on the bottom of my to-do list, probably
not there at all until now, but, damn, it might be a way out. At last she let
me go and I ran down the hill. I felt the wind catch the contraption, lift a
side, drop the other side. I hung on, not sure what to do, and then the whole
contraption flipped and tossed me backwards, hard, onto the ground.

Nance
picked me up, brushed me off, ignored my cries of protest, and dragged me and
the glider up the hill to try again. I had indeed found a way to end my days in
these lands. I would be battered to death on a hillside. Nance laughed at me
and continued to pick me up and send me running down the slope. Finally, I
floated above the grasslands. My flight lasted only a few moments. Torn between
fear and delight I was suspended in the sky.

If
for a few breaths I fancied myself a bird, the crash to earth ended that.

“Landing
is the hardest part,” Nance agreed as she untangled me and helped me to stand.

She
brushed me off, fussed over my cut knees, chattered bits of sympathy, but it
was clear her real concern was for the contraption. When she was satisfied that
my body was only bruised, not broken, she turned to her wings and carefully
inspected every handspan of material.

“Once
I tried to fly with a small tear and the wind ripped it wide open. Now I check
and mend everything each time I fly.”

The
cloth was cloud-light, impossibly fragile, felt like silk. “Where did this come
from? Is it used for clothing?”

“No,
it is altar cloth brought back by Kovat himself from his wars with the tribes
beyond the lands of Thunder. He gives it as a gift to the Daughter of the Sun.”

“Feels
like silk. Silk, right. The Air Force used to make parachutes of silk. Does
Kovat know you use it to make your wings?”

Horror
widened her eyes. “You must never tell him, Stargazer, or I swear, I will see
you dead.”

“Girlfriend,
stop threatening me. Why should I want to harm you?”

Her
eyes brimmed with tears and her small chin quivered. “I - I am sorry, it is
only - if my uncle knew -”

“Doesn't
anyone notice so many altar cloths are missing?”

As
quickly as the tears had come, they were gone and she was laughing. “I tell
them that once the cloths are used on the altar, they become sacred. Sacred cloth
cannot be washed. Therefore, when they become soiled from the candle drippings,
they must be burned. They think I do the burning in the altar fire. And as
often as I ask, Kovat provides me with new cloth.”

“And
he never suspects? Huh.”

I
tried a couple more runs, got a few feet off the ground, and maybe could have
jumped that far, but Nance was a good kid. She did her best to build my ego
after I collapsed in a heap beneath the billowing cloth.

“Much
better,” she cried, as she uncovered me. “We must roll them up now. See where
the sun falls? We will camp tonight and fly again in the morning. But tomorrow,
when the sun is halfway down, we must start back. We need to return to the city
after darkness.”

We
made camp in the woods by the stream. Although we had cooked our noon meal, we
ate our evening meal cold. Nance feared wandering hunters might see the light
of our fire at night.

“The
shepherds do not come onto this plateau,” she explained. “They are afraid that
the monsters and the lifedrainers will come down from the mountains. Still,
hunters are less careful. They might follow game here.”

“What
monsters? What are lifedrainers?”

The
only monster I knew was Darryl.

Lifedrainers,
Nance said, were great hairy monsters with huge black wings, and they stole people
and sucked the life out of them. In between appearances, they made themselves
invisible. Worse yet, she assured me, they carried with them the seeds of fever
that wiped out whole cities.

“You
have as much power as the ruler, if you can make shepherds and hunters believe
those tales.”

She
shuddered. “They aren't my tales. I came to the plateau before I heard of them.
I have seen no monsters, so I hope the tales are wrong, that there are none
near here.”