“I could help you train the dragons,” she said as she chucked her napkin into the broth on her plate. “You're more powerful. Couldn't you teach me instead?”
“You really don't like her, do you?”
“Not one bit.”
“Well. I'm afraid we simply need this, my dear,” he said with a wide-eyed nod. “She's willing to teach you now, and she might refuse any time, later on. Besides, she's mastered endless things altogether unique to her. Once you've learnt them, I can add to them. And surely, in time you'll be glad that you were taught by your own mother.”
“I suppose...”
“Then we should take you to Head in the morning, don't you think?”
***
The mockingbird leaped into the air under the bright half moon and circled back to his perch in the apple tree, singing out his purple martin medley, as Minuet and Hebraun strolled arm in arm through the rose garden.
“This is my favorite part of the entire palace,” said Minuet as she patted his arm. “I could spend hours here.”
“With me, I hope,” said Hebraun. “You've made it my favorite, too.”
“Oh!” she said with a happy bounce. “You'll always be invited along.”
“But with the trial over, I reckon it'll be some time before our next walk,” he said with a sigh. “You and Razzmorten are still going home to Peach Knob until the plague is over, aye?”
“Yea,” she said. “Bethan and I wanted to return to Fates Hospital to continue nursing, but both our fathers fear for our safety. And I wanted some time to say farewell to Peach Knob while I look forward to our wedding. I expect I'll be helping with the still.”
Hebraun stopped short. “You and Bethan have done more to fight the plague than anyone but Razzmorten himself,” he said, taking her by both hands. “And you'd be safe at Peach Knob, but it'll be terribly lonely here without you, selfish as I may sound.”
“Oh Hebraun, I'll miss you too,” she said, putting her arms around him.
“You reckon I could come courting?”
“It would be awful if you didn't.”
Without warning, they were kissing.
“Oh, I'm sorry!” he said, drawing back wide eyed. “This is much too soon. I didn't think.”
“I was doing it too, and it was wonderful,” she said, giving him a tight squeeze.
“Just think about what we look forward to.”
“I'd best take you back to the tower before Razzmorten comes looking...”
“He wouldn't,” she said, taking his hands again. “He's very impressed with you. But we do need to leave for Peach Knob at daylight.” The mockingbird suddenly changed from whip-poor-will to a long spell of jay. “He's soon to be my husband!” she thought. “Only yesterday he was a stranger, but now he seems like I've been close to him to all my life.”
They started down the path, crunching gravel, as the mockingbird made a sortie into the air with the calls of a quail.
Minuet and Hebraun found Razzmorten and Bethan sitting at a table by the open window, studying large sheets of printed paper in the light of a dozen candles, sending shadows waving and dancing up the walls with each delicate gust of breeze.
“These broadsheets are tacked up all over Niarg,” said Razzmorten, standing up with one of them. “Captain Strong brought them up here.”
“What are they about?” said Minuet.
“Oh, speculation on when the plague will end, the death toll, who's fallen ill and who's recovered,” he said. “And the trial. And the upcoming hanging.” He paused, watching her pick up one of the broadsheets. “And that one's about you.”
“'With Princess Branwen from the Plague be Dead, Prince Hebraun Engageth a Mistress to Wed!'“ said Minuet, reading aloud. “'With the princess just lately in her coffin and cold, and while the plague still rageth, the Throne on this very eve hath celebrated with a banquet announcing the Prince's betrothal to a commoner, Mistress Minuet Dewin, daughter of the Wizard Razzmorten Dewin of Peach Knob Manor, who, at the very same banquet was appointed Wizard to the Crown!'“ She looked up wide eyed. “I scarcely know what to make of this.”
“Had I only thought about it, I would have braced you for this kind of thing,” said Hebraun as he looked over her shoulder. “They print papers like this about the House of Niarg all the time. It's only the printer's version. You learn to ignore it.”
“I see,” she said, carefully spreading out the paper on the table and picking up another. “Nothing's ever been done to curb this?”
“Oh we wouldn't. Rhyddid Llais is who he is, He's only printing the truth as he sees it. He goes astray all the time, but you can't imagine how the ordinary man would hate us if we did anything to silence him. He gladly prints things for us all the time. We just learn to pay no heed to his tasteless embarrassments.”
“Then that's just what we'll do,” she said.
“In spite of how the paper might be taken, your betrothal seems very popular with the people of Niarg, according to Captain Strong,” said Razzmorten, smiling at each of them. “There's already talk that Hebraun will be the 'people's king' someday.”
“Well,” said Hebraun. “High expectations. But with the help of my beautiful queen, I might actually manage to live up to them.”
Minuet squeezed his arm and leant her head against his shoulder.
***
Minuet closed her bag and paused to listen to the wrens down in the inner ward and to the bawling of cattle just outside town, just as the great bell of Argentowre rang out. “Five o' clock,” she said, “and it's still dark. I guess the summer's slipping away.” She thought of Hebraun. “Too bad I already told him goodbye...”
At a knock, Bethan hurried to open the door.
“Ready?” said Razzmorten as he stepped in.
“I just now closed my bag,” said Minuet.
“Here. I'll take it,” he said, grabbing it off her bed. “My. I see that you've lived here long enough to acquire possessions.”
“Hebraun's given me a whole string of keepsakes to treasure.”
“This has turned out as well as anyone would ever imagine, hasn't it?” he said as he looked about for something to carry with his other hand.
“Oh, it has. “Way better, actually. Hebraun is simply wonderful. Though, to be buried in this windfall of good fortune while everyone else is suffering makes me feel guilty.”
“You've had your share of grief, dear. How about no mother and then Demonica for a step mother? And you had to live through the plague itself...”
“Yea? But thanks to you I did live through it,” she said, “so I'm actually lucky. In fact thanks to you and Bethan, none of those terrible things you mention were really so terrible after all. And speaking of Bethan, Hebraun's going to see that she's invited to our wedding. He says that since she's been a mother to me, that's how she'll be treated. Isn't that wonderful?”
Bethan dropped her folded clothes onto the bed and looked up in stunned disbelief as Minuet ran to her with a hug.
Razzmorten smiled as the old lady returned the hug with red watery eyes. “Hebraun's right,” he thought. “With Minuet as queen, he just might be the people's king.”
***
Peredur stood on the front step with Hubba Hubba, watching Minuet's coach come up the lane under the midmorning sun. When Minuet stepped out, Hubba Hubba flew right up to her.
“Father! Bethan!” she cried as she held our her wrist. “Hubba Hubba's flying!”
Hubba Hubba gave a shrill two note whistle and strutted right up to her shoulder. “I know what you're talking about!” he said.
Chapter 16
Minuet slid the loop up the polished picket on the gate to the chicken lot and paused to see the sun rising through the trees beyond the clouds of fog in the meadow, laced over with spider gossamer sparkling with dew. It was going to be a hot day. Pewees called. She stepped around the pigweed, hooked open the door of the chicken house and watched the hens hop off the step in pairs to scurry away and scratc
h at things in the grass. “Now where's old Biddy-Butt?” she said. “She's usually the first one out.” She stepped in and found her without her head, stretched out by the water crock. “Oh no! Poor old Biddy-Butt.” She picked up her carcass, cold and flat on one side and stepped outside.
“What got your hen?” came a voice.
Minuet looked up with a start to see a gangling young man smiling at the end of his long neck. “I'm not sure,” she said, holding up Biddy Butt for him to see.
“Polecat I'd say,” he said. “They eat off the head the first night. Hit'll be back tonight to eat some more. Have 'ee any traps?”
“I was going to tie her to that post by the door of the hen house and put three traquenards all about her.”
“That might do hit,” he said. “Would you happen to be Wizard Razzmorten's daughter?”
“Yes,” she said. “I'm Minuet Dewin.”
“Gastro at your service,” he said, bowing his head. “My father was Gastron.”
“The great wizard?”
“Yea, except he's dead.”
“I'm sorry to hear...”
“Oh, that was ages ago, but hit is why I happen to be here.”
“Oh?”
“Well I'd be studying under him right now, if he were around. So do you reckon Razzmorten would consider me?”
“Consider you what?”
“Oh to be his assistant, or especially his apprentice. I could help with the plague right now, don't you know.”
Minuet heaved the dead hen up onto the chicken house roof for the time being, so the other hens would not eat her. “Well then,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron. “He's right yonder. I'll show you.”
Razzmorten stood up from scrubbing the cover of one of the stills to watch them approach as nearby swallows swooped and dove after flies. He rubbed his forehead with his wrist, plunked his sponge into a bucket and rinsed off his hands.
“Father,” said Minuet. “This is Gastro, son of the late Wizard Gastron and he's come all the way from Ashmore to see you.”
“Well I'll declare,” said Razzmorten as he shook his hand. “I can see that he is, dear. You're pretty much how I remember Gastron himself, way back, Gastro. He used to live right on the edge of Ashfork in a big old house overlooking the countryside.
Ashwind, wasn't it?”
“I still have the house.”
“Well I was getting ready for some tea. Why don't we go inside and you can tell me what brings you all this long way from Ashmore.”
Soon they were sitting down at the board as Bethan brought in a pot from the summer kitchen. “Y'all want some grits?” she said. “It's still breakfast as far as I can tell.”
Gastro and Razzmorten shook their heads.
“Hit's nice here, sir,” said Gastro, reaching for the milk.
“Thank you. It's home. I grew up here. It's been a good place to raise the girls.”
“You have another daughter, then?”
“I have, but she's away at the moment,” said Razzmorten, looking him up and down. “So, what brings you to Peach Knob?”
“I wondered if you needed help curing the plague. I mean, word's gotten all over the whole countryside about you and the plague...”
“What? That I'm curing folks in exchange for their souls?”
“That's not the word in Ashfork,” said Gastro with a fleeting look of alarm.
“Oh, I beg your pardon. We've just been drug through a bit of that sort of talk going around Niarg.”
“There's a lot of work to making the oil, right? Well, I'd like to offer my services, and once the pestilence is past, perhaps you'd take me as an apprentice. That's what I'm really after.”
Razzmorten set down his cup and froze with his tongue in his cheek as he studied something across the room from under his hoary brows.
“Sir? Did I say something...?”
“What? Oh, not at all. I was merely thrown off by your request.”
“How's that?”
“Well I'd expect you to work under my brother Razzorbauch, since he was your father's apprentice.”
“Then I don't know how to begin to discuss this with you,” said Gastro. “With me wanting to be your apprentice, I'd never just come here and tell you...”
“Tell me what? That my brother's a stinker? Did he steal Gastron's staff? Is that how he came by it?”
Gastro was on his feet at once, pacing in tight circles. “There's nothing for hit,” he said, stopping short to plant his hands on the table, “I have to tell you...”
“I'm listening.”
“Razzorbauch did indeed steal my father's staff. I knew about hit the day hit happened,” he said, pacing another circle. “But hit's worse than that because that day was the very day he also poisoned him.”
“You know that for a fact? Did you tell the authorities?”
“I tried time and again, but I was six years old, and no one would take me seriously. The constabulary was convinced that I was too young to give any sort of credible testimony.”
“So what happened?”
“I always wanted to grow up to be a wizard, so Father used to let me watch what he did all the time. I was there when he mixed potions and cast spells. And I spent hours watching him training Razzorbauch. When Razzorbauch reached the end of his training, he gave Father a bottle of some kind of wine in appreciation. Could have been mead for all I know. He poured out two glasses. I watched him do hit. I asked for some and was sent outside instead. And that was the very last time I ever saw my father alive.
“When I came back in, I found him dead on the floor. Razzorbauch was gone, and so was the bottle of wine and the goblets and the Great Staff. Indeed, he vanished altogether that day. The last I ever saw him was when I was sent out of the room. And since he was almost continually around from the time he became Father's apprentice, his absence seems remarkable. But since I never saw the wine being poisoned and since there was no trace of either the goblets or the wine, I was dismissed out of hand and that was that.
“Well, I know what I saw, sir. But I didn't come here to make an issue of your brother. I'm very sorry hit came up. You can't imagine how I hope I haven't spoilt my chances of being your apprentice. I've been interested in you practically since Father's death. I'm determined to learn from the best, which would be you, sir, if you be willing.” Gastro took his seat with a sigh of resignation.
Razzmorten studied him for a moment. A phoebe called somewhere out by the summer kitchen. “Truth to tell,” he said as his eyes settled on a fly walking up to a drop of milk to rub its feet together before drinking, “I've not given the slightest thought to taking on an apprentice.” He glanced up at a flicker of despair in Gastro's face and returned to watching the fly before going on. “But if you've even a particle of your father's abilities, I'd be a fool not to teach you. I've no idea what we still face with this plague. You're welcome to help here until it's entirely gone, but until then I'd not be able to begin your training in earnest. Can you accept that?”
“My word, sir!” he said. “I'm at your service.”
***
Ocker and Urr-Urr's littlest chick closed her pink mouth over the last pinch of roast as Ocker hopped off the nest onto the rock ledge. “There's no more deer without us flying all the way back to the carcass,” he said as he wiped his beak and gave himself a thorough shake. “Even with my magic stick, this brood is the most work yet.”
“Wolf stick,” said Urr-Urr.
“Wolf stick?”
“Yea,” she said with a snap of each wing. “That stick makes you wolf and raven. But even with hit and both of us flying back and forth, hit's work.” She walked up to him and began nibbling his ear feathers. “You've just been at this too long. Go see Demonica.”
“You must have magic,” he said, fluffing up and sleeking down. “You always know just what I'm thinking or feeling.”
“Pooh! Years and years with you, that's all. No magic in that.”
“If I have magic
, why not you?”
“Not when you're the only raven I ever heard tell of having hit. Now, go see Demonica.”
Ocker preened her cheek feathers and held her by the beak for a moment before skipping a two footed trot all the way down the ledge to where he had hidden his stick and scrying marble. He pecked at the marble, rolling it about over the grey and orange lichens as it swirled with colors. At last he saw the image of Demonica's keep. He snatched up the marble and his stick and sprang off the ledge into the air, muttering the verses of the traveling spell.
He winced with the sudden change in light as he found himself soaring high above Demonica's keep on Forbidden Island, or Arabat Enez as she called it, just off the coast of Head. He swooped down through a twittering of chimney swifts to the roof to hide his things before dropping to the sill of the window below, where he usually found her. He pecked at the purple glass and waited. She was a very long time coming. Suddenly the sashes swung in with a rush that toppled him inside to glide to the back of a chair at the table. “You sure took your swyving time,” he said, running his beak down a flight feather.
“I was buttering my egg-in-a-hole,” she said, going back to her chair.
“What? This?” he said, hopping onto the table at once to spear out the yolk from the white in her bread.
“Hey!” she cried, swinging her arm out across the table top. “You not only interrupt my breakfast, you ruin it!”
“So what?” he said, flapping his wings enough times to settle back onto the chair. “I want you to...”
“Now look! You knocked my flowers into the syrup, fowl!”
“So? Stop waving your swyving arms, then. Besides, I want you to do something for me...”
“What, then?”
“I want you to make hit so that I can travel anywhere I want by spell, instead of just to here and back,” he said as he wiped off his beak and gave himself a thorough shake.
“For what? What's your news?”
“I already gave hit to you when you when you said you gave me the powers of a swyving hedge wizard...”
“So you suddenly think I should pay you twice, aye?”
“Listen, queinte!” he squawked, thrusting himself up to bristle like a pine cone. “I've learnt from a right true source that magic powers can't be given. You're either born with them, or you're not. And I was, so you knew hit when you tricked me.”
Heart of the Staff - Complete Series Page 17
