From a High Tower

by Mercedes Lackey

  The cooks had very little work to do, since any time one of the company wanted to eat, he could stroll out into the public areas outside the show, turn up at any of the food or drink tents, and be fed royally—either he would be treated to a meal by someone who wanted to pepper him with questions, or the stall or tent owner would give him a free meal as long as he sat there to be gazed at. This, too, was making Kellermann very happy; less spent on food meant more profit. He had, in fact, instituted a new rule, that if you intended to eat in the mess tent for a particular meal, you had to sign up on a sheet so the cooks would know how much to make. Most people attended breakfast, but when it came to luncheon and an after-show supper, well, why bother when you could get yourself stuffed at a beer hall?

  It was partly a matter of the simple fact that late fall was slaughtering time. Anything that could not be preserved had to be eaten. For instance, hens too old to lay eggs anymore and all the roosters but the chief of the flock were often killed at this time. Roasted chicken had been an uncommon treat for the show folks back in America, since flocks of chickens were uncommon on the plains, and each one precious; chickens were common in Germany, and at Oktoberfest chicken was standard fare.

  Then there were the sausages, using every scrap of every sort of meat available; without smokehouses, it was hard for the folk of the plains to make things like sausage, bacon and ham. For some of the cowboys, the many sorts and flavors of sausage had come as a revelation. And several of them had vowed to eat their way through every variety of sausage they could discover.

  And then there was Schwarzwald ham. Ham was a rich man’s meat, back in America, especially where these folks were from. Beef was everyday food for them, they were surrounded by cattle. Pig . . . no.

  But especially during Oktoberfest, pork was common, not only domestic pig but wild boar, and Black Forest Ham was a readily available specialty. The cowboys were . . . well, very happy.

  “Where are we going for supper?” Giselle asked Rosa, as she closed the cupboard under the bed on her latest gift. They had both returned to her vardo after breakfast. Rosa was perched on the little pull-down seat and tapped her lips with a finger thoughtfully.

  “Hmm, good question. We haven’t been to the Alpingarten yet, and the owners have come by several times asking me pointedly if you and I were going to visit.” Rosa licked her lips. “I’m told the spaetzel is as fluffy as a plate of clouds.”

  “Oh, not a biergarten then?” Giselle grinned.

  “Not one of the giant ones, no, a nice little tented version of their restaurant. I thought you might appreciate something other than sausages.” Rosa raised an eyebrow. “And appreciate eating with all the utensils, not just a knife and fork.”

  “But I like sausages,” Giselle retorted.

  “Sauerbraten mit spaetzel,” tempted Rosa, a little smile on her face.

  “Oh!” Giselle exclaimed, her mouth watering at the mere thought. “Yes, yes, yes!”

  “I’ll send word they can expect us then. You’ll have your sausages at luncheon. Kellermann just made an arrangement this morning with Stuck’s. They’re going to supply our luncheon from now on, on condition they can say so outside their tent and at their bierkeller when Oktoberfest is over.” Rosa laughed at Giselle’s expression of surprise. “Yes, yes, Kellermann has us endorsing restaurants now. I suspect if the show were to stay here instead of returning home, he’d have you endorsing soap and corsets. Honestly, Kellermann has taken to this sort of promotion as if he was born to . . . what’s the English word? Ah, ballyhoo.”

  “He certainly takes good care of the company,” Giselle said, standing up. She felt her head, frowned at the looseness of her hair, and began to unbraid her it. “Time to cut this again. Have I got coals in the stove?”

  Rosa checked. “All set. Shall we get this over with as quickly as we can?”

  It took nearly an hour to get Giselle’s hair unbraided, cut and braided up again, and every scrap of it burned in the little stove that heated her vardo. Burning the hair in the stove was the only way to keep the entire wagon from stinking of burned hair, but the smell still wasn’t pleasant until Rosa tossed a couple of pinecones on the coals to take the stench out. The oddest thing was, the sylphs and pixies and even the zephyrs that loved sweet smells would flock to the chimney and act like cats in catnip when she burned her hair. There truly is no accounting for taste.

  Giselle felt very sorry for Kellermann each time she had to do this—when he’d realized how fast her hair grew, he’d gotten a wild idea to sell locks of it as souvenirs, and the poor man had been jumped on by herself, Rosa, and Fox. “Put the hair of an Elemental Master out there for anyone to get his hands on?” Rosa had said, horrified at the very idea. “Why not just put Giselle up on an auction block and be done with it?”

  “Uh—would it be that risky?” Kellermann had gulped.

  “Yes!” all three of them had said, together. Then Giselle had explained how having her hair in his possession could allow any magician—particularly those practicing dark or blood magic—to quite literally control her. “From the moment I left the abbey,” she told him sternly. “I have made absolutely certain that every strand of my hair was accounted for and burned to ashes.”

  “Oh . . .” Kellermann said faintly. “But it is such a pity . . . are you sure?”

  “Yes,” they all three chorused, and that was that.

  At least it wasn’t growing quite as fast as it used to. I wonder what Mother intended to do with all those long braids of it she had. As far as she knew, they were all still locked up in a chest in Mother’s room, back at the abbey. She hadn’t been in there since Mother died.

  She cast the thoughts aside, and finished putting her hair in order. Once her hair was properly braided and coiled up, she was ready for the first show. “Ready?”

  “Lead on.” Rosa gestured to the door.

  The vardos, along with the living tents of those folks who were not amused by having their every move watched curiously by spectators, were behind a second wall of canvas just inside the first one. They hadn’t needed that particular arrangement elsewhere, but here, those ticket-holders who were allowed to roam the camp seemed to take that as liberty to go everywhere. Having that canvas wall there had been working so far, at least. Giselle had a sort of three-sided tent with a campfire and a little arrangement of camping equipment in the Cowboy Camp that she was supposed to be in when she was not performing or practicing. She sometimes wondered if these people actually believed she lived like that. She was beginning to get a very good idea of what an animal in a zoo must feel like.

  There were already people wandering through the camps as she took her place in “her” tent. She and Rosa exchanged a look, and Rosa shrugged. “I’ll go to the mess tent and get luncheon for both of us,” she offered.

  “Then I’ll start the coffee.” Giselle had managed to learn the trick of brewing the bitter drink, which she had become quite fond of, as had Rosa. It lent an air of verisimilitude to her campsite, to have a coffee pot on a grate over the fire. By now the days were cool enough that both the fire and the hot coffee were welcome, and she was glad of the heavier buckskin garments in her costume wardrobe.

  Rosa returned with a straw basket full of food. By this point, Giselle was surrounded by people asking questions about her presumed life in America, about her shooting, and so on. Giselle was about halfway into the narration she could have told in her sleep by this point, but interrupted it to put the sausages that Rosa had brought on the grate over the fire to rewarm while Rosa poured them both coffee and added sugar and cream. To facilitate eating while talking, Rosa wrapped a piece of dark rye bread around a bratwurst on a bed of sauerkraut, dabbed on some mustard, and handed it to her.

  At that point, Rosa got included in the questioning. She had decided on her own story. No one recognized her as one of the Indians when she wasn’t wearing the black wig, whic
h was all to the good as far as she was concerned. So when she was out in the camp with Giselle, she had decided that she was a horse-tamer. As an Earth Master that had been simple enough to pull off, and Cody had even added a couple of places in the show where she could demonstrate that. One, where she and a brown and white “Medicine Hat Pony” called Pitalesharo ran through a number of clever tricks, and one where she “tamed a Wild Stallion” that was one of the bucking horses. Both routines could easily be dropped from the show when she’d had to go off on mysterious errands on behalf of the Brotherhood—which she had done at least six or seven times over the course of the summer. She never explained where she went, or why, and no one ever had the temerity to demand she tell them. According to her story, she had learned her trade from her father and she had tamed Lebkuchen for Giselle, which was how they had met. Captain Cody had taken her on to be in charge of the company’s horses and buffalo.

  Giselle had finished her luncheon and was deep in explaining to a group that was about three deep around her that no, she had never met Old Shatterhand, and no, she had never seen the mysterious gunsmith “Mr. Henry” who had supposedly made his amazing rifle when . . . she got the oddest, and most unpleasant sensation of being watched.

  She couldn’t exactly break off what she was doing to look around. And she couldn’t summon one of the sylphs to see if her feeling was correct, either. All she could do was glance at Rosa to see if she was exhibiting similar unease. For all she could tell, all was well with Rosa, which did nothing to make her feel any better.

  It made her skin crawl, actually. It was nothing like the feeling she got when someone was gazing at her with rather too much admiration. No, this was as if someone was measuring her, sizing her up, judging her. It was the feeling she would have associated with being weighed by a predator she couldn’t see.

  The feeling did not go away. In fact, if anything, it got slightly stronger, right up until the moment when the visitors were chased off so the first show of the day could begin.

  And at last, as she and Rosa hurried toward the staging area, she got the chance to say something. “I had the most awful feeling that someone was watching me, and it wasn’t friendly!” she said, as the two of them lined up for the Grand Entrance Parade. “Did you?”

  “Not at all,” Rosa replied, and frowned. “I know better than to ask another Master if that was just her imagination, so it must have been concentrated only on you. Do you have any idea why anyone would be spying on you from a distance? I assume it was at a distance.”

  “Not at all,” Giselle said, mounting Lebkuchen. “I couldn’t catch anyone nearby at it, and I felt as if I shouldn’t give away the fact that I knew it was happening by looking around. But I don’t like it, not one bit!”

  “Try and give me a signal if it happens again,” Rosa replied, bringing her pony up beside Giselle. “I’ll try and slip off and see if it’s being done magically. I might not be able to tell if it’s Air Magic, though,” she added warningly.

  Giselle tried not to feel a little sick. “Ugh! It makes me feel unclean, or somehow naked. And if it’s being done magically, there’s no telling what whoever it is might try to see. I suppose if I don’t want to be spied on in my vardo I’m going to have to ward it, but wards aren’t going to do me any good at all when I’m outside. I mean, I can ward myself, but all that would do is make a blank me-shaped spot in the scrying bowl or whatever he’s using, and that’s not much better.”

  Rosa nodded, but they didn’t get to say anything more. The entrance curtains opened, and the Grand Parade began.

  Twice more that day, Giselle got that feeling of being watched, and each time, the sensation wasn’t as if the distant voyeur was the friendly sort. The opposite, rather. The second time, she managed to signal Rosa, but as her friend had warned, the Earth Master wasn’t able to detect anything. It happened a third time as they left the show enclosure to go to the Alpingarten for supper, but it appeared that once they were moving, the crush of the crowds made it harder for the watcher to find her, and he never managed to catch up with her again. So Giselle was able to relax and enjoy a rather delightful dinner, sitting at a huge table and entertaining an enraptured, and thankfully quiet, group with her manufactured tales of life on the frontier.

  It was very dark by the time they finished and returned, and it seemed that the watcher had either given up for the night or wasn’t able to find them. The grounds of the Oktoberfest were astonishing. There were electric lights strung down the main thoroughfare—an innovation Giselle had never actually seen for herself until now—and the effect was quite startling to someone used to the light of candles, lamps and fires all her life. Of course, most of the grounds were still lit by lamps and even torches, but seeing those glass bulbs glowing steadily without so much as a flicker seemed more magical than the use of her own powers.

  “Do you want me to help ward your vardo?” Rosa asked, as they entered the now-quiet grounds of the show. It looked as if the visitors had just been cleared out; people were relaxing at their tents, rather than being “on show,” and people were eating various delectables they had gotten out in the grounds and brought back to share. Pastries and pretzels mostly; Giselle spotted a lot of decorated gingerbread and jelly-filled donuts being devoured, as well as both hard and soft pretzels.

  “Yes, please,” Giselle said gratefully. “And . . . I think I ought to start refusing presents of food. Or at least we should start testing it somehow. I didn’t like the way that watching felt, if you know what I mean. It . . . it seemed cold, measuring. Not at all friendly.”

  “I completely agree, and it will be easy enough to for me to make sure anything you are given is safe to eat,” Rosa replied, waiting to mount the stairs of the vardo behind Giselle. “Earth Magic is good for that sort of thing.”

  “I’m glad you don’t think I’m being silly.” Giselle lit a paper spill at the coals in her stove, and lit her two hanging lanterns with it.

  Rosa snorted. “I’ve been stalked by werewolves, hunted by other Elemental Magicians and by a ghost, threatened by vampir, and . . . well, I am the last person to think you are being silly if you feel as if you are being watched by something or someone unfriendly. I don’t know what enemies you could possibly have, but who knows what enemies your Mother collected! And for all we know, that wretched Blood Witch has an ally here, and that’s what’s watching you!”

  “Or it might be an Elemental of some sort. I don’t know enough about what’s likely to be around a city,” Giselle said doubtfully.

  “Or it might be one of the Greater Air Elementals that has been coerced in the past and is not pleased to see an Air Master about that might think about coercing it again.” Rosa set about gathering the few things she would need for her warding. Giselle didn’t need anything more than a bit of incense, which she got out of a little box and started burning.

  “I hadn’t thought of that. I hope that is what it is,” she said, sitting herself down at the table and composing herself so that she could concentrate on building her wards. “If it is, well, it will see I am no threat eventually, and go away.”

  Building the wards was one of the first things that Mother had taught her once they had really started in on her lessons, but Mother had warned her not to use them unless she actually needed to. “Merely putting up wards signals to other Air Masters and all Air Elementals that there is an Air Mage there,” she had said. “Not putting them up is often safer than doing so, if you are not planning on working any magic. Doing nothing at all keeps you invisible unless something is looking for you.”

  Well, something had not only been looking for her, it had found her. So, wards it is. She breathed in the scent of the incense, and pulled in the energy of the Air and infused the incense with it, willing it to protect her from every sort of magical attack. Once the air was saturated with scent and magic, she gently compacted it all, “pushing” it away from herself and infusi
ng it into the porous walls and floor and ceiling of the vardo, and creating invisible walls of scent and power over the windows and across the chimney vent. She left nothing to chance, and when she was absolutely sure she had every possible entrance blocked, she set it all in place with a final burst of power and opened her eyes.

  Rosa had her eyes closed, and Giselle felt the pulsing of golden Earth Magic about her still. So she remained quiet, to keep from disturbing Rosa’s concentration, until her friend exhaled and sent a final pulse of magic of her own radiating out into the vardo walls.

  “Well!” Rosa said, opening her eyes with a smile. “That’s that. If anything manages to see past what we’ve done, I will catch it and eat it.”

  Giselle chuckled. “And speaking of eating . . .” She reached over her head and brought out a box of marzipan formed and colored into the most delightful shapes of fruits. “Look what I have!”

  “Oh . . . marzipan . . .” Rosa licked her lips. “I really think though, just to be sure, I should test it first. You know. Just to be safe.”

  “Of course!” Giselle chuckled. “Just to be safe. I’ll make some tea while you test it. Just make sure you don’t test it until there is none left for me.”

  15

  WITH the visitors shooed out for the night, all of the chief members of the company had gathered around a table in the mess tent. There was just a little more than three weeks before they needed to be in winter quarters at the abbey, and plans to get there needed to be finalized. And it was not enough for just Kellermann to make those plans; anyone who might need to have a say needed to be here to speak up . . . just in case. There was a big map spread out over the table, and Kellermann had his ever-present notebook out.