Rosamund reached across the distance between them and put her hand on the top of the book. “Are you sure you want a copy of this now?” she said, warningly. “It is definitely nightmare fodder.”
“I druther not be able t’sleep an’ at least know what’s out there,” Cody replied.
Rosamund allowed a tiny little smile to cross her lips. “Very well, then. I’ll copy the book tonight, and you’ll have your own version in the morning.”
“I think that’s ’bout all I wanta look at tonight, thenkee,” Cody said, giving the book to her. “An’ I’m thinkin’ a strong drink afore bed’s in order.” He stood up, and so did they.
“In that case, think about another successful pair of shows tomorrow, because that should chase away the shivers and the nightmares,” Rosamund said cheerfully. “And we’ll be on our way.”
She strolled off, heading for the vardos, and Giselle caught up with her. “Why do you plague him?” she asked, quietly.
Rosamund did not pretend that she didn’t understand. “I’m testing him,” Rosamund replied. “I want to know what he is made of. You, I know. I know who you are, I know who your blood parents are, I know all about your Mother. I know nothing about Captain Cody.”
Giselle started to say something, then paused. “It is true that all I know of him directly is that my Elementals told me to trust him, and that he promised me, and pays me, a very handsome wage. Kellermann gives it to me in full at the end of every week. Everything else I know is what he told me.”
Rosamund paused at the door to her vardo. “I am not saying not to trust him. Our Elementals are very good at reading people. But I am saying that he might not be as simple as he appears, and that is why I am testing him. I am a Hunt Master of the Brotherhood, and he is in my house. I would be foolish not to test him.”
“Yes,” Giselle agreed. “So you would. And he would be very wise to admit what he does not know, and to understand that he cannot take command of situations in which he is ignorant, no matter what his sex or what he used to do back in his homeland. But . . .”
“But?” Rosamund prompted.
“But if you were . . . if you had any notion of . . . a romantical attachment . . .” Giselle felt herself blushing. “This is not . . .”
Rosamund threw back her head and laughed aloud. “With Cody Lee? Oh, that’s absurd! He suffers from that ridiculous masculine notion that as the man he is always to be deferred to, in all things. That he is the toughest, strongest creature in any battle. That it is his place to defend us, and our place to defer to that. He dares not attempt that attitude openly with you because he is in too much need of your skills and talent. And he is too much the businessman to take the risk that extending things outside of the show—such as a romance—might ruin things altogether. I have a suspicion that he might have done so with your predecessor, and the need to put some distance between them prompted her departure.”
“That, and the precarious financial state of the show when she left,” Giselle mused.
“Taken together, a shrewd woman would have left before her would-be paramour tried to persuade her to do without a salary, ‘for his sake,’ especially if she was not too attached and she had far better prospects elsewhere,” Rosamund replied with a nod. “But no. I have no interest in that direction. Once the show is gone from the Schwarzwald, neither will the Brotherhood care where he goes, or what he does. He will become some other Hunt Master’s responsibility.”
Giselle sat for a moment on the wagon tongue. “I have no intention of leaving with it,” she offered. “The show, I mean. I am only trying to make enough money to take care of the supplies I need to go live in the abbey.”
“Well, both the Graf and Hunt Master Gunther wish me to remain with the show for now, to help with your training and make sure nothing gets stirred up that cannot be put down again,” Rosamund told her, which relieved her. “If there is a dreadful emergency that requires my services, I might leave for a time, but I will return.” She patted the side of the vardo. “I think, however, I shall keep this. Small enough compensation for saving the Captain from those rapacious Vili, don’t you think?”
Giselle laughed. “I think he would be a very stupid man not to give it to you with a smile when you ask for it. And if there is one thing I know about Captain Cody Lee, he might be, on occasion, a little reckless, and he might have a somewhat inflated notion of his own importance, but he is definitely not stupid.”
“And that is good to hear. So, good night to you, my friend. I have an hour or two of magic ahead of me, and morning comes far too early with this show!” Rosamund laughed, and swung herself up into her wagon. After a moment sitting there chuckling, Giselle did the same.
Because Rosamund was right, again. Morning came far, far too early with the show.
11
THIS . . . is perfect.
The show had moved to Bad Schoensee, where they had set up in a beautiful Alpine meadow. It was a very welcome change from the gloomy, depressing, deep forest they had been moving through, and everyone in the company felt the better for the change. The moment they had come into the wide, open valley, it had felt as if a great weight had come off of Giselle’s shoulders, and she had stopped feeling as if things were watching her. The animals were basking in the sun, especially the buffalo, who had seemed particularly oppressed by the forest gloom.
And now Giselle knew what Rosamund had meant when she had said “You’ll know it when you see it,” in regards to where she was going to undertake her next phase of training in her Air Mastery. She had known where they would be going as soon as she had set her eyes on the mountains above Bad Schoensee. And now she was currently standing on the top of one of those mountains, surrounded by no vegetation taller than her knees, with nothing between her and the sky but a few clouds. Below her was Bad Schoensee, a tidy little village of white-walled, red-roofed houses, Gasthauses, and a lovely Kirche. And she, Rosa and Fox were fundamentally alone up here, which made it perfect for working magic in the daylight. Right now the only person any nearer to her than Rosamund and Leading Fox was a shepherd halfway down the mountain with his flock of goats.
They planned to be here in Bad Schoensee for two weeks. It was a spa town on the Schoensee, and as such, they could expect to fill the tent every day for that long thanks to the changeover of visitors. So Captain Cody had decided that the company should have the Sunday in the middle off.
That gave Rosa and Giselle a full day and the perfect setting for Rosa’s plan. Giselle had known from the moment she arrived here and looked up at these mountains that a spot up here would be ideal for any sort of Air Magic, especially summoning. Her only concern had been that between the shows and everything else they simply might not have the time. Thanks to this Sunday off, they had the time.
It had not been a particularly difficult climb up here. In fact, Giselle could see most of the path that had brought them. And here was Rosamund’s cunning; the path was too difficult for a casual hiker, or one of the ladies who might be here at the spa for the sake of her health, but it was nowhere near challenging enough for the athletic. The mountain had a pleasant view of the valley, but there were much better views from other peaks. There were goats grazing on it, which might give pause to the timid city dweller. They could expect to be left alone. There were much higher mountains around the lake and valley, some of which were barren rock, or nearly, but this was certainly tall enough for their purposes.
Although she gazed just behind her at those scoured rocks of a much higher peak a little wistfully. She had not realized until they had come out of the forest just how much she had craved height and free air. This mountain was good, but that one was so much better. The view from there would have been wonderful . . . even if the climb would have required ropes and rock picks.
Maybe someday. Rosa had told her of a wicked Air Master who had contrived a way to be carried where he willed by dual u
se of a hot-air balloon and his Elementals to push him where he wanted to go. She had thought about that quite a lot, after Rosa had told her the story. Of course in the story Rosa had told, the Master in question had been coercing his Elementals, and if she were to try that . . . well, first of all, she’d have to find a way to persuade the Elementals in question to help her without coercion, and secondly she’d have to have the help of much more powerful Elementals than mere sylphs. Until now, she hadn’t dared even try to contact the sort that managed winds and whirlwinds.
Today, that would change.
“All right, remember what I told you,” Rosa said calmly, from where she was seated on a round boulder nearby. “Make sure you are calm. Call in the magic of the Air to you. Bring in as much as you can—as much as you can hold, if there is enough here. Then tell me what you see.”
She was calm, although she was also excited; it was a peculiar sort of excitement, not one that made her nervous, but one that gave her energy. Air Magic was all around her, and there was more than enough up here, in the heights, that she could fill herself with it to overflowing. It sparkled in the air, all the colors of blue that there were, swirling and dancing in the sunlight. Air Magic had been abundant back at the abbey, but here . . . here it was as thick as the scent hanging over a field of flowers.
She gathered it to her, breathing it in, watching it swirl slowly around her, absorbing it until she, at least, could literally see the glow of it just under her skin. She filled herself, far beyond the point where she had ever dared to before, until she fairly hummed with it and she was sure she could not take in one bit more.
And that was when she raised her eyes to the sky, and saw them, as she had seen them only a few times before.
The Winds. . . .
Not the traditional “Four Winds” of folklore, but the greater Elementals that moved the winds, and moved with the winds.
“What do you see?” Rosa asked calmly.
“The Elementals of the wind,” she whispered, her eyes still on them. “I have seen them as a child, but far off up in the clouds. These are so close!”
“We’re nearer to them,” Fox pointed out.
Unlike the sylphs, these creatures had no one form. They shifted from a kind of stylized human, to a flowing birdlike shape, to just wavy shapes in the air, to something vaguely serpentine . . . well, they didn’t stay the same from one moment to the next. Yet somehow she was able to tell individuals apart: tell that one might be shyer than the others, one friendlier, one cold, one very emotional. Personalities. She could tell what personalities they had, although she could not have said how. It was more something she knew, on the level of instinct.
“Do they see you now?” Rosa asked.
They were indeed looking at her, not steadily, but regularly glancing down at her as if they were curious about what she intended to do next. Giselle nodded.
“All right then. The Greater Elementals, you don’t call. You invite.” Rosamund’s voice brooked no argument, not that Giselle disagreed with her! She was the Master here, after all.
“Exactly so,” Leading Fox agreed, who was standing behind her. “Reach up to them, make yourself known to them and ask them if they would care to come meet you.”
Silently, she “reached” for them as she did when she was trying to call sylphs, but the “feeling” was different. As if she was speaking in a higher pitched tone, or singing soprano instead of contralto. And she saw the effect immediately: those nearest her suddenly stilled, and she felt their attention riveted on her.
I am a new Air Master, she said in her mind, trying to keep her thoughts humble. Would any of you care to meet with me?
They took their attention off her and transferred it to each other. A knot of them swirled lazily up there, apart from the rest. There was a silent colloquy going on above her, and finally, they seemed to come to some decision. Then several of them—it was hard to tell how many, because of the way they swirled and twisted around each other—plunged down out of the heights and headed directly for her. The wind picked up around the three humans as they arrived, sending their clothing flapping and billowing as the Elementals circled, examining her.
Finally, they stopped, all of them in a knot, facing her, and the winds died. She held her breath, waiting to see what they would do.
“Greetings.” It was a chorus of many voices, breathtakingly beautiful, and like nothing so much as the wind passing over the strings of a perfectly tuned harp.
She bowed. Greetings, she thought. Thank you for meeting with me.
The reply was a chorus of pleased laughter. “You are courteous, and careful; well done. You are an Air Master. We accept you as our friend. You may call us at need and we will answer.”
How? she asked, both elated and bewildered. How do I call you?
“Like this.” And her mind filled with . . . a sound. It was like nothing she had ever heard before. She could not have described it if her life had depended on it. And yet, she knew she would be able to reproduce it perfectly if she needed to.
She also knew that doing so would require a tremendous amount of magic from her—rather as if she were to try and blow an Alphorn. In fact, that sound was something like an Alphorn. Or maybe, like an entire chorus of Alphörner. Hundreds of them, sounding a single chord in a great and noble harmony.
Thank you, she replied, and bowed again, feeling as if she ought to. She sensed their approval, and when she rose, it was to see something even more astonishing.
There was a bird flying toward the mountain, except that it was like no bird she had ever seen before. Eagle-like, except that the neck was too long, the tail was too long and forked, and there was a crest of feathers on its head. And as it drew nearer, and its shadow fell over the side of the mountain next to the one she was standing on, she suddenly realized just how far away it still was, and yet she could see every detail of it perfectly—the dark golden feathers, the golden eye, the way energy crackled along the shaft of every feather.
The Air Elementals moved aside for it and it glided in, then hovered just above them, as if it was hovering on the breast of a tremendous updraft that only it could feel. The sense of immense power and control so absolute it made her shiver fell over her.
“My brother,” said Fox, putting his hand to his heart. “You do me great honor to have come so far.”
She felt, rather than heard, the bird’s answer, even though she knew the answer was not meant for her ears. She felt as if she could not breathe, and yet, did not need to. If this creature was not a god, then it was very near to being godlike, and if her knees had not been locked, she thought she might have fallen to the turf, overwhelmed by its presence. And then the bird tilted sideways, circled up, and vanished into the sun, followed by the native Elementals. Then they were all gone, leaving her feeling exhausted and exhilarated at the same time.
The walk down the mountain had taken place in silence, as if none of them wanted to spoil what they had experienced by talking about it. And in Giselle’s mind, it was a very good thing that they had plenty of time to get themselves collected before they encountered their first people again. The walk was lovely; she was still full of Air energy, and every step felt buoyed by it. Fortunately the path they took down the mountain did not end in Bad Schoensee, but near a farmhouse, and from there, they could walk through the meadow grass to the camp without crossing so much as a beaten track.
By the time they got to camp, she felt almost normal, if a little breathless, a little giddy, and as if she held a wonderful, tremendous secret inside her.
And still, she had to act, and speak, as if nothing had happened, as if they had only taken a walk up the mountain and back down again for pleasure. But the rest of the company had matters of their own to think about; they were back from doing a little shopping or drinking in Bad Schoensee, from doing sightseeing on the Schoensee, or even from going to the Kirche.
Or they had taken the opportunity offered by the rare day off to take care of things they had long put off. The camp was full of lines strung with washing, for instance, and people were mending harness and saddles and the garments they called “chaps.” Some of the big canvas banners had been touched up, as were some of the pieces of the barriers. Wagons had been washed. Bedding was being aired out. And once they reached their vardos, she and Rosa followed that example, since there was still plenty of afternoon left to do it in. She was still so buoyed by her experience that none of it seemed like a chore, and she went about giving the vardo a complete cleaning in a cheerful sort of trance, humming the entire time.
As the sun began to wester and she put her vardo back to rights, the rest of the camp started to settle again too. Rosamund beckoned to her, and she followed her lead, joining everyone else in the mess tent for supper, letting the conversation just wash over her. She really didn’t want to eat, and yet, she was ravenous. The food tasted odd, but not in a bad way, but as if she was discovering nuances to it that had not been there before. Captain Cody joined them at their table and kept looking over at Giselle while he talked to Fox and Rosa. He had known what they were going to do, of course; Rosa had told him when he’d decreed the day off. And she suspected he could tell that it had worked.
Finally, he confirmed that. “Damnitall, I envy ya,” he said, shaking his head. “I wisht . . . well, if wishes was fishes ev’body would eat. But, hey, y’all wanta try somethin’? T’night, afore the sun goes down?”
“Like what?” Rosa asked, eyeing him curiously.
“All the shootin’ tricks. I got a suspicion they’re all a-gonna be better.” He shrugged. “Iffen they ain’t, no harm, an’ y’all jest got a good practice in.”
“I’d like to do that,” Giselle agreed. “I think it might settle me. I’m still feeling—” not giddy, not buoyant, not . . . merely happy . . . she groped for the right word, and gave up. “I’d like to see if I can manage the card-splitting trick at last.”
From a High Tower Page 22
