From a High Tower

by Mercedes Lackey

  When she got inside, it looked like nothing so much as a stable for humans. Which, now that she thought about it, was a very good way to organize things. Most of the showfolk were used to sleeping either out in the open or several to a tent, and really didn’t have much thought for privacy. This was a good way to give them each a little room to themselves, while at the same time making the most of the space available.

  It was a single large room with a fine—huge!—iron stove at one end. At the other, of course, was the stone wall of the tunnel that went beneath the second floor. Presumably the second floor looked just like this one, but twice as big. Along each wall and down the middle were something like rows of wooden horse-stalls: plain wood reaching about seven feet high, seven feet long, and five feet wide. Each of the “stalls” contained a wooden “box” bed full of hay attached to one side, and a small table with a holder for a candle on it at the back of the stall. Some of the beds already had bedrolls and packs on them. It seemed like a very good plan for housing a lot of men in rough comfort. The stove would heat the entire room efficiently, and if the fellows didn’t like the loose hay-beds, they could always sew up their own straw or hay mattresses. And meanwhile the hay certainly made a better bed than the cold, hard ground.

  She decided to forego any further inspection until after she had gotten back into her own room to see if any changes had been made there. She could see a doorway at the end of this room, but rather than get in anyone’s way, she decided to use the courtyard to reach the tower instead.

  She was relieved to see that nothing important in the tower had changed. There was still the small kitchen on the first floor and the library on the second, although there seemed to be some changes to the kitchen she didn’t trouble to examine for now. Rosa had made only the minimal addition of her own bed and some chests with her belongings on the third floor. It looked as if there was an iron stove on the hearth instead of the inefficient fireplace And on the fourth floor . . .

  Everything was exactly as she had left it. With a single exception. There was another of those marvelous iron stoves. Someone had started a fire in it, and the room was delightfully warm.

  I am going get some hot water very soon and have a real bath. There had been plenty of opportunities to get a good all-over wash in streams and springs when they had camped, of course, and she had taken them. And of course she could do a basin-wash in her vardo. But it had been . . . well, far too long since she had had a real, long, hot, soaking bath. And she had a wonderful old bathtub down there in the kitchen.

  I’ll bet that Rosa’s used it too.

  Someone had made up her bed with fresh sheets and blankets; the faint scent of lavender hung all about the bed. She tossed her new eiderdown on it, put her bags down beside it and decided to first go see about some food.

  She went straight to the west wing, where Rosa had told her the kitchen was; this was when she noticed that with the exception of the east wing, which had two ground floor doors in it, all the wings had one door into the courtyard, set right into the middle of the wing. And sure enough, when she walked in the west wing door, there it was, a kitchen big enough and efficient enough to gladden the heart of the most exacting cook, in the north half of it, and benches and tables already full of hungry show folk in the south half. Presiding over it all was . . . a woman she didn’t recognize. She had grey hair braided and wrapped on the top of her head and wore a black dirndl, white blouse and apron, and a black shawl cross-wrapped and tied at her waist. Her face was round, with merry eyes and a tip-tilted nose. Her cheeks were pink with the heat from the kitchen.

  But as soon as the woman—who appeared to be Tante Gretchen’s younger sister—turned around, it was clear that she recognized Giselle. The woman’s face lit up, and she gestured to Giselle to come properly into the kitchen itself.

  “You’ll be Giselle,” the woman said. “I’m Elfrida. Fraulein Rosamund engaged me to come take charge of the housekeeping here, since it was unlikely anyone in your company had ever done such a thing before. Also, Herr Kellermann sent many food items I do not think your cooks know how to prepare. Beets, mangel-wurzels, common things of that sort. I will show them how to deal with German food.” She lowered her voice. “I, too, am an Earth Magician, although a minor one. A kitchen-witch, Fraulein Rosa calls me, since my powers have always been domestic. I was most impressed with your Mother’s preservation rooms. I was able to extend them into the entire cellar, and copy them in the storage room above us. I do not think I would have been able to concoct such a work on my own.”

  “You sound like the answer to all prayers, Frau Elfrida,” Giselle said warmly, “Since my talents are most decidedly not in the kitchen.”

  Elfrida’s round face lit up with a smile, and her blue eyes shone with pleasure. “Well, you must, like the others, be starving and cold. Come get a plate and fill it up, and take care of both needs at once!”

  Giselle hadn’t known what to expect. It was wonderful to find that supper was to be chicken and dumplings, with a pickled beet and onion salad, fresh bread and butter, and plenty of hot coffee. She got her plate full, and went to join the others—who might not have recognized what they were about to eat, but had already tried enough native Bavarian food that they were not inclined to turn up their noses at anything that looked and smelled as good as this did. Giselle ate slowly, very glad that there would be no more performances, no more long drives in the cold, no more rising at dawn. No more rushed meals. Tonight, she would sleep as long as she liked. Then she would get the rest of her belongings from the vardo, move the spices to the kitchen, and . . .

  I don’t know. But whatever I do will have nothing to do with performing.

  Rosa brought in the company cooks at just that moment and took them straight to Frau Elfrida. They gave her the respect any good cook does when he or she steps into the kitchen of another. In her turn, she welcomed them warmly, showed them about the place, and presumably explained where everything was and how things were done in “her” kitchen. Giselle had never had much to do with the three cooks from the show, but it appeared they were all good-tempered, and were going to get along famously with Elfrida, and that was all that mattered.

  When Rosa was sure that everyone was going to get along, she cast her eyes over the tables full of hungry, tired show folk, spotted Giselle, and smiled. Since Giselle had finished eating at this point, she got up, left her dishes in the big tub of soapy water standing ready for the purpose, and joined Rosa.

  “I am no mind reader, but I would risk a bet that you want a hot bath,” Rosa said, chuckling. “It was the first thing I wanted when I got here.”

  “Oh, sweet Virgin, yes!” Giselle exclaimed. “And you can answer some of my questions while I soak.”

  “I started the copper warming in the little tower kitchen this morning. You should have all the water you want. And wait until you see the clever things the . . . builders . . . did in that kitchen!”

  By now, the sun had set, and they hurried around the courtyard in the cold as more snow began to fall. It looked as if the wooden doors had been closed on the entrance, although Giselle couldn’t tell if the portcullis was down. She wondered what Cody and the others had made of that particular facet of the abbey.

  Probably they think this is a castle, and there are always iron portcullises on buildings in Germany. Certainly they had seen plenty of such things in the towns they’d played at. Almost all of them had been defensively walled towns, and most of them still had their gates and portcullises.

  Now that she had the time to really look, it was evident that the dwarves had made some very important changes to the little kitchen. There was yet another iron stove, and a bread oven. There was a big copper boiler for heating water, and a real stone sink with a pump and drain, and the wooden bathtub had been given a drain in the bottom that let out into a grating in the floor. Giselle stared at that, and the drain from the sink. “They add
ed plumbing?” she gasped.

  Rosa laughed. “Yes, they did. They dug a proper cesspit for each building, including one for the stable, and built very nice conveniences for each building that don’t stink at all! They aren’t water-flushing, like the ones that the Graf has had put in, but just pour a pitcher of water down when you finish and it all goes . . . somewhere. I didn’t ask for the details. I am just happy we are not having to use latrines or garderobes.” She nodded at a little door off the kitchen that hadn’t been there before. “It’s in there, if you need it.”

  “Not now. What I need is a bath. I haven’t had one since Freiburg. And I’m cutting my hair back, too. It’s not as if it isn’t going to grow again.”

  The bath was an old-fashioned one that allowed you to have hot water right up to your chin, and that was exactly what Giselle got, soaking away the bruises of the last day’s travel and the grime of not having had a proper bath for two weeks. Once she had cut her hair to chest length, she washed it, setting the braids aside, since now she wouldn’t have to worry about it falling into the wrong hands. Meanwhile, Rosa filled her in on all the details of what had been done to the abbey. “Elfrida will tell the cooks about their quarters, which are in the second floor next to the storage, so it’s convenient for them,” Rosa concluded. “I told Cody and Kellermann everything yesterday. Kellermann is taking care of informing the fellows who’ll be living in the common quarters in the east wing, and Cody is giving the couples and families and the Pawnee the tour of their spaces. I hope the Pawnee like theirs . . . I told the dwarves to give them a stone-walled room with stone floors, so that it was as like to one of their earth-houses as we could get. It seems strange to me that people who live on the open plains would choose to make underground houses.”

  “Well, their homeland is not the plains, at least not for the winter,” Giselle explained. “Their real home is forested hills. They’ve been driven out, and forced to relocate in a dry prairie area that none of them like in the least. That’s why Fox wants to get a lot of money, so they can buy farm lots back where they used to live.”

  “Oh.” Rosa shook her head. “Well, in that case, I think they will be able to make it comfortable for the winter.”

  “Fox, at least, is used to living with the Army in one of their forts,” Giselle pointed out. “And I do not think any of them would care to sleep in a hide teepee in the snow!”

  It was wonderful to be able to turn the spigot at the bottom of the tub and let it all run out, rather than having to bail the thing out a pail at a time until it was empty enough to turn on its side. It was wonderful to be able to change into one of her clean, warm, flannel nightgowns, bundle her damp hair under a nightcap, and climb into her own bed. Flitter had already found her way into the room, and was sitting up on a beam, dozing in the heat from the stove.

  It was also oddly wonderful to hear Rosa puttering about on the floor beneath her. In fact, it was the sound of Rosa turning pages in a book that was the last thing she heard as she drifted off to sleep.

  The next day was devoted to everyone getting everything they wanted for the winter out of the wagons, and then moving the wagons into the positions they’d hold until Spring, chained together. Moving her things was her problem; moving the wagons was the problem of the men, and she had been told so in no uncertain terms when she tried to help. For once, she wasn’t inclined to argue; they were using four teams of the heaviest horses and clearly had a defined plan. Cody and the head wrangler had decided that since the wagons could not be got in under cover for the winter, the best thing to do with them would be to protect them as best as possible and use them and some lumber and tree branches to make a corral so the animals could get some time every day out in the sun.

  Giselle spent the day getting all of her things out of the vardo, then in the small tower kitchen doing laundry. Finally she was able to get all of her things really clean again. Most of them she planned to pack away until spring, but this was an excellent chance to get everything that had only been dealt with sketchily properly washed. Soon drying laundry was strung back and forth across the kitchen, just as it used to be on laundry days when it had only been her and Mother here.

  It was a very relaxed group that assembled for a supper of sausages, kale cooked with bacon, and fried potatoes. Rosa and Giselle went back to the tower afterward as they had last night, but tonight they were joined by Leading Fox, Cody, and Kellermann for some conversation and an impromptu game of cards. Anticipating visits of this sort, Giselle had laid in supplies in the little kitchen.

  But after everyone had gone to their beds and it was long past midnight, Giselle was awakened by the wind, howling around the tower. The sounds it was making against the thick glass windows told her from long experience that this was not just wind. This was a blizzard. But there was something about it that was not quite right, something that made her come all the way awake.

  She fumbled for the matches and oil lamp next to her bed and lit it. When she had turned the light up, she looked up into the rafters and saw that all of her sylph friends were up there, huddled together, looking down at her with frightened eyes.

  In the next moment, she knew why they were there. This was no natural blizzard. It might have begun as one, but it certainly was not natural now. She sensed the magic outside, magnifying everything the storm was doing. Air Magic . . . but other things too, things she couldn’t identify. The defenses that she, Rosa, Mother and the dwarves had put on this place turned it into a fortress against magic as well as against more physical attacks, but this storm was going to completely isolate them from the outside world. And from the feeling she was getting . . . that was exactly what the people steering the storm had in mind.

  A light sprang up on the floor below, coming up through the stairwell. “Rosa?” she called.

  “You feel it too?” Rosa replied, and her voice had steel in it. She, too, knew what this meant and she was not amused.

  “Of course. I think . . . I think that watcher followed us somehow. He’s not alone.” She did her best to keep her voice steady.

  “I’m coming up,” Rosa said, and a moment later, she padded up the stairs, wrapped in a huge woolen shawl. She joined Giselle in her bed, and the two of them pulled the eiderdown around themselves. “This is an attack,” she said, flatly.

  “I get Air Magic, and something else,” Giselle said. “The Air Magic has a bitter scent if that means anything to you.”

  “It means it’s stolen,” Rosa replied, staring at the shuttered window as if she could somehow see through it. “And I told you how magic can be stolen.”

  Giselle shivered.

  “There’s Fire Magic there too, but it’s been turned to its opposite—cold. That can only be done by making a bargain with an Elemental of Cold, and none of the ones I know of are good. There’s also some other magic, but it’s not from an Elemental Master or even a mage. So it has to be a sorcerer or a witch. By the dark feel of it, it’s all fueled by blood.”

  Three different kinds of magic? What had brought all this down on her head? “What do we do?” Giselle asked. “You’re the one who hunts out things and destroys them, not I!”

  Rosa patted her hand. “First, I promise you, whoever it is cannot get in here. Your Mother wrought even better than you thought she ever did, I put my own protections on the abbey, you already had your own in place, and you can bet that Fox is awake and reinforcing everything with his protections, and I very much doubt whoever is out there will be familiar with anything Fox can do. Add to that what the dwarves built in while they were rebuilding everything. The dwarves are very clever: every single opening into the walls has a warded grate of pure iron. No magic, no matter how strong, can get past magic-forged iron. It would take more than a handful of Masters to get their magic in here, it would take an army, if it could be done at all.”

  Giselle couldn’t help it, though, she shivered. The sound of the wind
outside—it was as if there were voices in it, voices howling their determination to tear down the walls and rip everything inside to bits.

  “As for what we do, we wait until morning, when everyone is awake. We’ll gather in the second-floor room of the tower, and we’ll find a way to see who is out there, how many of them there are, and what they have to bring against us.” Rosa clenched her jaw. “One thing I know for certain, there is no Earth Magic out there. So whoever is out there won’t have wardings against Earth scrying.”

  “I thought you said you couldn’t scry?” Giselle ventured.

  “I said that I didn’t usually do so,” Rosa corrected. “I don’t have the best tool for it. My obsidian plaque isn’t as . . . finished . . . as I would like. But I would bet any amount of money that your Mother did have the tools we need, and that they will still be in the rooms that Cody is in now. The dwarves and I just locked up the cabinet that her tools and supplies were in and left it there, as it was too big to move.”

  “And when we find out, what will we do then?” Giselle persisted. “I—”

  “It would be foolish to make plans we are only going to have to change,” Rosa told her. “Now, just remember, they cannot get magic inside these walls. We have enough food to last the winter, if we need to. We have water from a well they cannot cut off. We need to find out how many of them there are, how powerful they are, and what their plans are. The most important thing will be to make sure that our friends in the show are not panicked by all this.” At this Rosa showed her first sign of stress, rubbing her hand across her eyes. “That is the one thing that might be our undoing. I cannot do anything about that now, but as soon as Elfrida is awake—”