“Well . . . we always say that shifters won’t share a territory because they won’t, not with a stranger,” she pointed out, her unease not easing even a little bit. “But we’ve never seen a family of the sorcerous kind of shifter before! And shifters do share a territory, don’t they, Markos?” She gazed at him, willing him to say something. “Your family shares a territory, just like a wolf pack shares!”
He grimaced. “Well . . . that’s true enough. But . . . we’re a family, and I have never heard of a family of sorcerers. . . .”
She sighed gustily. “And just what is Dominik’s family, then? Or mine? Or the Count’s? Maybe not sorcerers, but magicians, certainly. The magic runs in the bloodline. Maybe sorcerous magic can run in the bloodline too!”
“But where was the evidence that there was more than one of these fiends?” Dominik countered. “Markos?”
“I only scented the one,” Markos admitted.
“And none of us saw any sign back at that cave that there was more than one,” Dominik said firmly. “Rosa, seriously, the work here is done. And if you are looking for an excuse to stay around us for a while longer, you don’t need to make—”
She stood up, red-faced. “Excuse?” she retorted angrily. “You think I’m some sort of lovesick village idiot? You flatter yourself!”
“He does that quite a lot, actually,” Markos muttered. And when Dominik turned to glare at him with mingled astonishment and accusation, he shrugged. “You do. Every time a pretty girl looks at you, you’re certain she’s interested. And if all she does is say a single kind word, you’re certain she’s in love with you.”
“Now look here—” Dominik began, heatedly.
“No, you look here,” Rosa interrupted, anger burning high enough to bury all the feelings of undoubted attraction she’d had to both of them. “You think I am being unreasonable. Fine. I’ll take one of the horses and the cart, and drive back to Sibiu. I can pick up all the gear we left, and head home. You can have the other horse to ride back to wherever you’re going. Markos can run on his own four legs. If you want to stay here a while and be the heroes, and have girls fawning all over you, you go right ahead and do that. Just make sure that Petrescu has a way to get word to you when more trouble surfaces!”
Markos looked extremely worried at that statement, but didn’t say anything. She pushed past them and headed for the inn. It was too late to leave today, but she could get a very early start tomorrow morning. As she entered the inn by way of the stable door, she heard Dominik and Markos. . . .
Well, they weren’t quarreling exactly, but their voices were certainly raised. And the word “women” was playing a prominent role.
She was met in the common room by the innkeeper’s wife, who looked worried. “It is not business of mine but—”
“It is a difference of long standing between my . . . brothers,” she said, making an effort not to snap. “About ladies.”
The innkeeper’s wife snorted. “Oh yes. Master Dominik. Doesn’t come over too strong, but it’s clear that he fancies himself the answer to a maiden’s prayer, and sadly, there are enough maidens who feel the same, which just confirms his notion.”
“Well, they are going to go on to visit some distant relations; we have enough tales for me to take them back to Father, and I really want to get there before autumn weather starts. So I am taking the wagon and leaving in the morning,” she said, making up the story on the spot.
“Meaning, now that the quarrel has broken out into the open, you had rather not be stuck in a wagon with the two of them fighting,” the innkeeper’s wife said shrewdly. “I don’t blame you. The chicken papricas‚ is done; I’ll fix you a dinner you can eat in your room, and in the morning you can be up and gone before those lazy louts think of stirring.”
She bustled off to the kitchen, and came back with a tray, following Rosa to her room and setting things up for her, before winking and closing the door.
Outside, through the tiny window at the end of the bed, the sound of voices raised in a real argument came floating. She got up and closed the window.
Fine, she thought, as she dug angrily into her meal. Now they’ll probably forget everything I told them and warned them about, arguing over this idiocy. As if it is more important than the idea that there might be more of those shifters out in the mountains!
And the idea that she might be so in love with one of them that she would actually jeopardize everything she had worked for—to be taken seriously, to be taken as an equal—to make up a story like that just to stay near them! It made her blood boil!
Men! She thought, stabbing at an inoffensive piece of chicken. Who needs them? Not me!
13
EITHER the liquor was even more potent than she had thought, or the long, hard ride and the fight with the shifter had taken a great deal out of her. Or the argument with the cousins had distressed and exhausted her far more than either.
Possibly all three, for she did not sleep well for what seemed like half the night, and when she finally did fall asleep, it was to be lost in vague and unpleasant dreams.
The long and the short of it was that Rosa slept much longer than she had intended. For the first time, her inborn sense of time had failed her, or perhaps the evil dreams had ensnared her so much she could not break free of them.
She had intended to be up at dawn, in order to avoid having to argue with Markos and Dominik. She didn’t want to go through it all over again—and when she had been tossing and turning last night, it had occurred to her that there was no reason why she could not stop in Bucharest, discover who the Master of the White Lodge there was, and lay it all at his feet. After all, it was one thing to ignore the deaths of mere peasants and gypsies with no clear witness to the fact that those deaths had been caused by a rogue sorcerer. It was quite another to ignore the word of a Hunt Master—
And she had a notion that she could shame the Bucharest Lodge into mounting a true Hunt out here, purely on the basis of the fact that she, a mere female Earth Master, had been the one that found the first shifter and dispatched him. They wouldn’t like that; they’d want to have some sort of triumph that rivaled hers.
If only she could be clever enough to figure out just how to manipulate them. . . .
As for Markos and Dominik, she figured that by the time they woke, she would have their gear unloaded from the wagon, the horse harnessed, and be ready to be on her way. All she needed to do would be to wake at her usual time.
Which, of course, she didn’t.
In fact, she only woke when someone was frantically pounding on her door, and, opening sticky eyes, she saw to her dismay that it was easily midmorning. There was bright sunlight outside the embroidered curtains of her little room, too bright for it to be anywhere near dawn. She flung the covers off herself, pulled a skirt over her night shift, and opened the door.
It was Dominik, and he nearly fell into the room as she pulled the door away just as his fist was about to strike it. “What on earth is the matter?” she asked crossly, and before he could answer, making sure no one was in the immediate vicinity, she pulled him in and closed the door after him. “What?” she repeated, putting her fists on her hips and glaring at him.
“It’s Markos!” he choked. “After you left, we kept arguing, only it was him and me, because he took your side. He kept on and on about how you had the better instincts of the three of us, as well as far more experience as a Hunt Master, and that even if we hadn’t found anything, you were probably right and there was more than one of those shifters. Finally he said that he was going to go back out as soon as the sun went down and give the hills a really good hunt, looking for more shifter scent.”
Well! So Markos was on her side? She forgave him for not supporting her in the first place when the argument had begun.
“And?” she prodded. If Markos had gone out, why had Dominik come pounding on her do
or? Had he found something?
“And he isn’t back yet!” Dominik said frantically, and her blood ran cold. “He said he’d be back by dawn!”
She opened her mouth to say something, but Dominik had the proverbial bit between his teeth and was rattling on.
“He had it all planned out! He was planning on us spending at least a couple more days here, and he finally argued me down, because, why not? The food is great here and the liquor is better, and the beds are comfortable—if he wanted to run around the hills like a wolf for a week, that was all right with me! I figured I would be staying here and kind of educating Petrescu and a couple of the others in some basic magic . . . find out what Element they were, then give them a way to get in touch with me or Markos if something turned up after we left. We agreed on that, and Markos went out . . . but Markos didn’t come back this morning!”
Her head had cleared as soon as she opened the door; she always was one to wake up instantly, or nearly so. The instant she had an opening when he took a deep breath, she snapped out her answer. “Then we’ll go look for him.”
He opened his mouth and she knew he was going to cry But how? and she forestalled that. “Magically, of course. But not here. I’ll find Petrescu and ask him if he has a space he can lock people out of for a while, otherwise we’ll ride out and find some place in the hills where we won’t be disturbed. Give me a moment to get ready.”
She opened the door and shoved him out, then closed the door behind him so she could change into proper clothing. No one was going to take her seriously if she started running about in a skirt over a night rail.
A few minutes later she opened the door again to find him still anxiously standing right outside her door, all but wringing his hands. “Follow me,” she said, “First we need the mayor,” and pushed passed him to check the open-air tables for Petrescu.
She was deliberately sitting on any emotional reaction, because emotions would not help the situation at all. There was absolutely no point in two people getting wrought up.
Besides, if there was one thing she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, it was that allowing her emotions to get the better of her was not going to help Markos in this situation. She knew what she needed to do first. Find him. Find out if he is in danger. If he wasn’t, well she would let his cousin yell at him when he came back. But if he was—
If he is in danger, we need to find out exactly what the danger is, and how to get him out of it.
And if he was dead—
If he is dead, I shall raise a Hunt the likes of which has never been seen since the days of Vlad the Impaler.
Petrescu was there at one of the outdoor tables with his two cronies from yesterday, all three of them discussing something intently. Without a doubt, they were still talking about the shifter Rosa had killed; that would probably remain the topic of their discussion for weeks. They looked up as she approached, and must have seen by her face that something very bad had happened.
“Markos went hunting out in the hills last night to make certain there were no more of those shifters out there,” she said, obviously not explaining how he went out. She had to tell the truth—but nothing compelled her to tell all of the truth. “He’s not what we call a Hunt Master, but he is as experienced at hunting game as I am hunting evil things—and he certainly does have some experience of his own at hunting evil things. I was—I am, as you know—not convinced that there was only one vârcolac. According to Dominik, Markos agreed with me. He felt that if there are more out there, they would probably come looking for the one we killed.” Not exactly a lie—it was what she would have said if she had thought of it instead of being angry. “So he went out to set up an ambush. He was supposed to come back at dawn and didn’t. There is no point in scouring the hills for him, since that would only waste time—but if I have a private space, I can look for him with magic.”
Petrescu’s eyes lit up at that. And before he could ask the inevitable question, she answered it for him. “Yes, you can watch. You ought to, you do have Earth Magic enough to see the spirits, so in fact, it might be something you can learn to find missing villagers. I don’t know that you can, for sure—” she cautioned, as he looked even more eager. “It might be like the difference between someone with good vision, and the sort of woman who has such extraordinary vision that she can embroider designs with single hairs. But you can watch me now, and when we have found Markos and gotten him back safely, I will help you and we will see if you can do this too. But finding Markos is more important right now.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Petrescu said, and as his two companions remained quiet, he thought very hard for a moment, his brows creasing and his formidable moustache quivering. Then his face brightened. “Ah! I know! My hay barn. It has nothing in it at the moment, we have just cleared all of last year’s hay out before we put in this year’s. Will that do?”
“Beautifully,” she said. “Let me get my things from the wagon.”
Now I am so glad Gunther always drilled organization into me, she thought, as she ran around the side of the inn and hopped into the back of the wagon. She knew exactly where the bag of items she needed for various magics was stored, and she knew where every item in that bag was. It was just a moment to unlock the chest, seize what looked for all the world like a black leather doctor’s bag (because it was) and lock the chest again.
She was back before Dominik could even start wringing his hands again.
“I have everything I need in here,” she said, lifting the bag. “Let’s go.”
“We’ll be off, mayor,” Vasile said, looking more than a bit uncomfortable with all this open talk of magic. “If you need us, you know where to find us.”
Petrescu just nodded as his two cronies walked off, clearly trying to look as if they were strolling away and not escaping from a situation they really didn’t want to get involved with.
Petrescu waved them out into the street. “There won’t be any fire, will there?” Petrescu asked anxiously, his moustache bristling with sudden anxiety at the thought. “You don’t want a fire in a hay barn, even if it is cleaned out.”
“No, no fire,” she promised, and then, as they trotted down the village street to his home, she explained, briefly, the four sorts of Elemental powers. “Just like the old Greeks said. Air, Water, Fire, and Earth. Each one has its own Elemental creatures, and depending, you might be able to see all of them, or might not. And the magic of each Element has its own particular strengths and weaknesses. I’m Earth, and so are Markos and Dominik,” she said, just as they came to Petrescu’s home and left the main street, going to a path around the side of the house that would lead them to the paddock where he would winter his cattle and sheep and where his hay barn would be. “Everything that I do, everything that I use, is of the Earth. So no, I won’t be using any fire.”
She knew that Dominik must be thinking she was mad—or not taking this seriously enough—because she was talking so much. But she had a reason here; she didn’t want Dominik talking, for fear he would blurt out that Markos was a shifter too. And she didn’t want Petrescu asking questions. So far as Petrescu was concerned, Markos was just the “other young stranger lad” who had helped kill the vârcolac. He didn’t know Markos; he wasn’t all that concerned about Markos. Her chatter about magic would interest him more than enough to keep him quiet.
As befitted the mayor of the village, Petrescu’s house was larger than many, and had two stories; it had a fine tiled roof rather than thatch, and unlike some of the other houses in the village, the wood had been stained a dark brown rather than painted in a pastel color. The lower story was walled in stone and had a wooden door in the front of it, and very tiny windows, currently shuttered. The upper story was wood, and was reached by two staircases framing the door of the lower story. That lower story would probably have a dirt floor, be used for food storage, and possibly to shelter delicate or sickly animals during the
winter, while the upper story was for the people.
They rounded the back of the house, passed a beautifully built bread oven and outdoor kitchen, and Petrescu opened a gate in a proper, tall fence and let them into the barnyard.
Petrescu had both a very impressive animal barn, strong and well built, and an equally well-built hay barn, both built of heavy wood with a stone foundation. It was to the latter they headed.
The hay barn had no windows at all in the walls, but it didn’t need any, for the upper part of it was open, allowing air and light in. Petrescu opened the plank door for them, and when they were all inside, closed it and dropped a bar into supports to keep it shut—and to keep nosy people out.
Rosa took a long look around, breathing in the slightly dusty scent of old hay. There were still little piles of it here and there, and wisps caught on every splinter. No one bothered to plane the planks smooth for a hay barn.
This would a good place to work. Growing things (like hay) were of Earth, the floor was Earth, the plank walls were wood, which was of Earth. The only things lacking for properly shielded Earth Magic were things she had brought herself. The Earth Master in Rosa approved. The upper part of the walls of the barn were open, so that the hay stored in here could breathe and would not rot. That gave them plenty of light to see by.
“This is good,” she said aloud. “This is perfect. Come, and sit where I show you.” She led them all to the center of the barn, indicated to Dominik and Petrescu where they were to sit. Dominik just dropped down where she pointed; Petrescu considered, went out, and came back in again with a little three-legged wooden milking stool.
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