From a High Tower

by Mercedes Lackey

  As usual, as soon as she took her hair down and began to unbraid it, the little Air creatures turned up, showing none of Linnet’s listlessness. She was very glad for their help, because when it got to its current length, it was practically impossible to comb and braid without their help. Today they made a game out of it, as if her locks were the ribbons of a Maypole, and did most of the work for her.

  They had gone, and she was pinning up the coiled braids on the top of her head, when she heard a melodious whistle that sounded nothing like a bird just outside the west window.

  Hastily she stabbed the last hairpin in place and practically flew to the opening, and laughed with delight to see Johann Schmidt standing there below. He looked even handsomer in the sunlight, and his eyes were, as she had suspected, a vivid blue.

  He swept off his hat to her as he had last night, and now she could see he was dressed in hunting gear of loden green wool, just like the men of the Bruderschaft wore. She wondered for a moment if he might be one of their number—

  But he wasn’t wearing the silver Saint Hubert badge they all wore on their hats. Instead, it was a fanned cluster of pheasant feathers in a silver holder.

  “Good morning, fair maiden!” he said, cheerfully.

  “It’s nearly afternoon,” she corrected, perhaps more sharply than she had intended, but she was vexed with him. Hadn’t he promised to be here? And how long had she waited for him? Hours and hours!

  “So it is. I don’t suppose you could spare a bite to eat?” he replied, without seeming to take any notice of her temper. “I looked about, but there doesn’t seem to be a friendly inn hereabouts.”

  She relented immediately. “We’ve plenty to spare,” she said truthfully. “I shall bring you something.”

  He was still calling his thanks as she turned and made for the stairs.

  When she came back up, she had a small basket with a sausage, some cheese, an onion, and a couple of boiled eggs in it. Bread was something they didn’t have a lot to spare of, since flour was one of those things that Mother had to go a long way to get. And she wasn’t certain how to get milk down to him; they had cups and pitchers of course, but she was going to have to lower the basket down to him from the window, and she was afraid that the cord she had would break, or the milk would spill.

  But he didn’t seem to be discontented with her offerings; he took them out of the basket and placed them on his handkerchief, which he spread out on the grass, then sat down and took a flask out of his pocket. She pulled up the basket as he waved at her.

  “Shall you dine in your window while I dine below, fair one?” he asked, taking a swig. Since that seemed like a good enough idea to her, she got milk and bread and butter and ate that while he cut off chunks of sausage, cheese and onion and washed them down with whatever was in his flask. As he ate, he regaled her with tales of his hunting, and she listened raptly. The men of the Bruderschaft who had visited had never talked about hunting ordinary creatures, only things like werewolves and other malignant or cursed spirits. Stalking bears, wolves, and stags certainly sounded just as exciting, at least as Johann told it!

  They spent the entire afternoon in that way, him telling her story after story of his life—which seemed much more interesting to her than her own was—and her listening. Time seemed to pass far too swiftly, and when he began to hint that his luncheon had been several hours ago, she hurried down to the little kitchen and came back again with a hot dinner of bratwurst and sauerkraut, since that was something she could heat quickly, with strawberries from the garden for dessert. He thanked her handsomely, and when he was finished, sent up the plate and fork in the basket. “And now again, I will take my leave of you, fair Giselle,” he said with a bow. “There are dangers that only come out of the forest by night, and since I am alone and do not have the eyes of a cat, I had best seek the protection of my shelter. It would be different, of course, if you could offer me your roof as well as your food—”

  “I can’t,” she interrupted him mournfully, thinking of how pleasant it would be if only he could stay, and continue to regale her with tales at the fireside. “I told you, Mother has locked the doors. I can’t let you in.”

  “Then I shall bid you good night, and return on the morrow.” He bowed to her, and strode off around the side of the tower. She ran to the other window, but he must have been walking close to the wall of the abbey where she couldn’t see him. So frustrating!

  But it had been a wonderful day, and he had promised to come back. She could hardly wait for morning!

  She awoke to the sound of her name being called from below, and flew to the window, her braids nearly tripping her, as she hurried to answer him. She stuck her head out of the window—she had left it open to the evening breeze last night, and one of her braids slithered over the sill and dangled down above his head.

  He laughed, and pretended to jump for it. She giggled—he couldn’t reach it, of course. As long as it was, the end was still a good twelve feet above his head, but he looked so funny, like a kitten with a string, trying to snatch the end out of the air.

  She pulled it back up and he mock-frowned at her. “Temptress! I hope you are prepared to feed me breakfast in exchange for teasing me with a way to climb up to you!”

  “Of course I am!” she promised, and ran down to the kitchen without bothering to change out of her nightdress first.

  She wanted to impress him, so she made a real breakfast: sliced ham, beef, tongue, three kinds of cheese, some of the precious bread (toasted over the fire, since it was getting a little stale), and generous dollops of butter and jam in a little bowl. His eyes lit up when he saw the feast in the basket. She tied the string to the shutter hinge so she could leave the basket down there with him until he was finished, and raced off to change and get her own meal.

  When she returned to the window, he looked up at her and snapped his fingers as if he had suddenly had an idea. “I know what we can do!” he said, and laughed. “If you cannot come down, I will come up!”

  She stared down at him, baffled. “How?” she replied. “The stones of this tower are like glass, they are so smooth. There isn’t enough of a chink between them for a bird to catch his claw.”

  “This!” he said, tugging on the string that was tied to the basket he had just put the plates back into. “I shall go back to my shelter and bring my rope. I can tie it to your string and you can pull it up. You needn’t even try to find something to tie it to that will bear my weight—just tie it to the middle of a fireplace poker.”

  She laughed at how clever he had been. Of course! The poker was made of stout metal, and was longer than the window was wide. Once his weight was on the rope, the poker and the stone of the tower itself would hold him. “Why didn’t we think of this before?” she said. “Oh, do run back to your things and bring the rope!”

  He saluted her and ran off. She pulled up the basket, let down the string again, and took the basket to the kitchen, then waited impatiently at the window for his return.

  It seemed an age, but eventually, Johann appeared around the bottom of the tower with a coil of stout rope over his shoulder. He tied one end to her string, and she hurried to pull it up and make it fast to the poker. She guided the poker in place as he pulled slowly on the rope, and once he was satisfied it was wedged properly, he scaled the side of the tower with all the skill of a practiced mountaineer. Before she was really prepared for it, he was perched on the sill, then jumping down into her room.

  “Well!” he said, smiling. “Here I am at last.”

  And then . . . the smile began to change. From cheerful, it turned . . . cruel. His eyes grew cold, and instinctively she began to shrink away from him. “Y-yes,” she faltered. “So you are.”

  With growing alarm, as she realized that she didn’t much care for the feral gaze he was bending on her, she realized he was much taller, and very much stronger than she was.

/>   “Now, I ask myself,” he said, advancing on her as she backed up a step at a time until her back was against the wall. “What kind of a girl meets a man in her nightdress? And what kind of a girl lets a man into her bedroom after only three days of acquaintance? I think it is the kind of girl who knows a great deal more about men than she lets on. And maybe that is why her Mother locks her in, to keep her from any more of them.”

  She stared at him in shock, the blood draining from her face, unable to move.

  “So I think that I will give her what she wants, yes?” And with that, he lunged for her. She was so transfixed with horror that she couldn’t even move, and he slammed her against the wall of her tower room.

  She screamed then, and tried to fight him, as he pinned her against the wall with one arm and ripped her blouse open with the other. She kicked at him as he stared at her breasts greedily, and with his free hand, groped up her skirts. As her boot connected with his shin, hard, he swore, and backhanded her so hard her head bounced off the wall and, for a moment, she knew only blackness.

  When she could see and think again, she found that she was pinned in her bed, her hands tied to the bedpost, and her skirts up around her neck. He was kneeling between her legs, and she screamed again, and kicked and kicked—she was, at least, keeping him from doing anything more than trying to pin her legs down, but she knew that once he managed that—

  Her mind was on fire with terror, so much so that every part of her that was still free had new strength and she writhed and screamed and kicked like a creature possessed by a demon.

  Her sylphs were flying around and around him, trying futilely to pull him off or beat him with their tiny fists. But he ignored them as if they weren’t there—because, of course, to him they were not. She kept screaming and kicking—he kept cursing and trying to secure her legs.

  The sylphs were screaming too, and then, suddenly, outside the tower, the sky darkened, plunging the room into gloom. A moment later, lightning lit the room in flashes and thunder shook the tower. He glanced up, startled, and she redoubled her efforts. As if echoing her actions, more lightning crashed down around the tower, and a great wind tore through the windows and whipped violently through the room.

  And then, with no warning, and out of nowhere, a staff hit him in the side of the head, knocking him away from Giselle and off the bed.

  In the light of near-continuous lightning, skirts and cloak billowing in the wind, a veritable Valkyrie armed with a staff that she wielded expertly stepped between Giselle and her attacker. Johann scrambled to his feet, pulling a knife from a sheath at his waist, snarling.

  “Get away from her, you bastard!” shouted Mother, her face a mask of fury in the lightning flashes, her hair loose and whipping around her. “Get him, boys!”

  It was Johann’s turn to shriek as Mother’s three black shepherd dogs avalanched up the stairs, leapt on him and attacked him, tearing gashes in his arms, savaging his legs. The knife fell from his hand. Blindly he threw himself toward the window, arms reaching for the rope he had left there—

  The rope that wasn’t there anymore.

  With a howl of terror he balanced for a moment in the window, when a single thrust of Mother’s staff sent him tumbling into the storm.

  The dogs howled their victory as Mother turned to Giselle, who was still reeling from the shock of her sudden rescue.

  Mother didn’t bother with trying to untie Giselle; she picked up Johann’s abandoned knife from the floor, slashed the cords holding her wrists and gathered Giselle into her arms. Giselle sobbed with relief and hysteria as Mother soothed her, stroking her hair, saying words Giselle barely heard.

  “Oh, my little rampion, my little darling, I meant for you to never, ever be hurt. That is why I kept you here, to keep you safe. When the gnomes told me there was a strange man here, I started back as fast as I could,” Mother sobbed, almost as wrought up as Giselle. “I nearly killed the horse getting here. There was no one nearer than me to help.”

  Giselle sobbed in Mother’s arms as the storm outside abated until, as the last of the thunder faded away and light returned to the room, she fell asleep, exhausted.

  When she awoke, she heard voices below. Her face ached, and the back of her head had a huge, painful lump on it. As she pushed back the covers, she could see that Mother had put her into her nightgown, but that there were scratches and bruises all over her arms and legs, and her wrists were raw with rope-burns. She felt her eyes grow hot with tears and dashed them away, reminding herself that Johann might have beaten her, but Mother had saved her before he had done—that—to her. Or murdered her. As narrow as her escape had been, it had still been an escape.

  There were definitely three voices down below, and all three of them were familiar. Mother, and two of the Bruderschaft—Pieter Meinhoff and Joachim Beretz. Resolutely swallowing down sobs, determined to fight through all the horrible feelings coursing through her, she slowly dressed, grateful that the clothing she had been wearing was nowhere to be seen. She never wanted to wear that blouse and dirndl again.

  She made her way slowly down the stairs, ending at last in the kitchen, where Mother and her guests were sitting at the table, talking and drinking. Old Pieter was facing the stairs and was the first to see her; he stood up, and the others turned and saw her standing hesitantly halfway down the last flight.

  “Come join us, Liebchen,” said Pieter. “We were just speaking of your future.”

  Pulling her shawl tightly around her, she descended the rest of the stairs and perched on the empty stool at the fourth side of the table.

  For a while, they talked around her, and she learned that Pieter and Joachim had brought the wagon and the supplies Mother had been forced to leave behind. She learned she had been asleep around the clock. And that there was a reason why Mother had kept her all alone here.

  An Air Master—and it had been plain to Mother that Giselle was going to grow into Mastery—was at her most dangerous and unpredictable in the years of adolescence. Strong emotions, which could call up powerful magic, were not matched by equally strong control, as evidenced by the terrible storm she had summoned while Johann was assaulting her, a storm so powerful that lightning and wind had felled nearly a hundred trees in the forest around the tower, and that storm had barely been at half its full strength when it died. So Mother had kept her isolated and happy, while she learned control.

  “I should have also taught you how to defend yourself,” Mother said mournfully, speaking to her directly at last. “But I was so sure this place was so far away from everywhere, and had such an evil reputation for haunting, that no one would venture near. . . .”

  Pieter reached out to pat her hand. “Never mind, Annaliese. We can’t change the past. We can fix things now.” Now he turned to Giselle. “That is why Joachim and I are here now. We are going to teach you these things. Not only how to use your powers to defend yourself, but also weapons, or anything that can be used as a weapon.” His expression turned fierce. “No man will dare try to touch you, for you will have his guts on the floor before he can take a step.”

  “Pieter—” Mother said, looking at him with wide eyes.

  “Well? It’s how we taught you, Annaliese,” Pieter said, unrepentant. “And it’s easier to explain to the constable how a blackguard ended up with a cracked skull from a broom handle or a knife in his liver than it is to explain how he was lightning-struck inside a building! The first is understandable. The second is witchcraft.”

  Slowly, as they talked, and told her what they were going to teach her, the terrible, fear-filled tightness inside her ebbed. There were no remonstrations, no accusations that she had brought the attack on herself. Or rather, the only remonstrations were from Mother, who accused herself of failing to prepare Giselle adequately for the dangers of the world.

  They talked for hours and hours . . . through two meals that Giselle had been sure
she would never be able to eat, yet managed to devour once she got the first bite past the lump in her throat. She told them everything that had happened. They assured her again and again that nothing was her fault, until at last, she finally believed it. They talked until she was yawning and couldn’t keep her eyes open.

  She took her leave of them then, and slowly climbed the stairs to her bedroom. But as she reached the second floor, she heard something that made her heart nearly stop.

  “Do we tell her the bastard disappeared?” Pieter asked.

  “What would be the point?” Mother replied, and said a bad word that Giselle had never heard her say before. “He won’t be back. My Elementals will see to that. Why make her live in fear?”

  “Good point,” said Joachim. “I just—wish we knew where he’d gone.”

  2

  THE small church was simple, very dark, and very quiet. The altar had been decorated for St. Walburga’s Day, but of course it was the far less Christian celebration of Maifest had the attention of the citizens of Mittelsdorf and the surroundings, and who could blame them? Food, drink, dancing and music and contests were far more attractive than a Mass.

  She put a pfennig in the charity box, took a candle, and lit it for Mother. Not that Mother had been in any sense religious—in fact, Giselle didn’t know if Mother had even been Christian, let alone Catholic—but Pieter and Joachim, and many of the Bruderschaft were, and some of that had rubbed off on their student.

  Besides, she doubted that Mother would have objected to having candles lit for her.

  She knelt for a moment in a prayer, although she was altogether certain that, whatever her beliefs had been, Mother was certainly in some sort of Heaven. The loss of her still ached, even though she had been stricken with pneumonia and carried off within days a year and a half ago. Pieter and Joachim had been with her, or she was not sure how she would have borne the grief. One of the last acts of Mother’s Earth Elementals had been to make her a grave in the abbey yard and cover her over; when that was done it was only the brownies that tended the house, garden and chickens, and the faun that watched over the goats that remained. It was only at that graveside farewell that Giselle had learned how old Mother really was—at least a century, according to Pieter. That had been almost as much of a shock as Mother’s death.