Once Again Gar noticed people putting bits of metal in a collection box. This time, though, he was sure another one had put in a chip of something white.
Alea settled down to tell a story to the village children and their parents naturally stayed, tooonly to keep an eye on their little ones, of course.
"Once upon a time, long ago and far away, there lived a man whose wife had died, leaving him with only one daughter.. ."
Murmurs of sympathy.
"After a few years, the man married again . . ."
"What is `married'? " a young man asked.
Taken aback, Alea explained, "They lived together and reared a family."
"Oh, bonding." The man nodded; everyone else did, too, understanding. "'Married...' an odd word. How many children did the new wife have?"
"Two daughters."
"The poor woman-only two. She must have loved having a third."
"Well, she seemed to, until her husband died," Alea said. "Then she made her stepdaughter do all the cooking and sweeping and scrubbing, and throwing out the garbage and tending the kitchen garden, while her own two girls slept as late as they wanted and spent the day amusing themselves."
She hadn't been prepared for the loud and instant protest, and the adults were almost as vociferous as the children.
"Her own daughters? They were all three her own daughters!" a woman said indignantly.
"And doubly precious if her husband had died," said an older woman who looked as though she knew.
"She really made the poor lass do all the housekeeping?" one mother asked indignantly. "Well, I never! "
"And all the cooking, too," another woman said, shaking her head with a dark frown. "Shameful, I call it."
But both of them were glancing out of the corners of their eyes at another older woman who reddened with anger but stood her ground, tilting up her chin. Gar wondered which child she favored.
"Now, in that country, there lived a . . ." Alea paused, remembering what had happened the last time she had referred to a king. ". . . a duke whose son was twenty-five and hadn't married yet. . . ."
"What's a duke?" one of the children piped up. The parents nodded, equally puzzled.
"It's ... um ... a man who owns the land that the people of a hundred villages farm," Alea said, with a sinking feeling that already this was not going well.
"He tells them all what work to do, and when." There, that didn't sound quite so bad as ordering them about.
It was bad enough.
"The very idea!" one woman said indignantly. "That one man could dare to tell the people of a hundred villages what to do and not do!" a man said, equally indignant.
"Or even a dozen villages," another man chimed in. "What a villain!" a second woman said.
"Well, every good tale must have a villain, must it not?" Alea tried. not to look as nervous as she felt. That silenced them for a minute. Brows bent, faces frowned while they mulled it over, darting dark suspicious glances at Gar and Alea. Then an old woman pronounced, "No. I know tales about folk braving natural hazards, such as clashing rocks and arid deserts-or monsters such as one-eyed giants, or manticores with a thousand shark teeth and stingers in their tails."
"Then think of a duke as a monster," Alea said, and inspiration struck. "Think of him as a bully who lords it over other bullies."
Their faces cleared; that, they could understand. "Like this General Malachi we've heard of?" the first woman asked.
"The very thing!" Alea said with relief. "He's nothing but a bully who has herded a bunch of bandits together and made them fight for him."
The villagers looked around nervously, but nodded with energy.
Alea decided it was time to get back to the story. "Let's forget that the father was a duke just think of him as a very rich man."
The villagers turned to one another in consternation, exchanging questions and a lack of answers. Alea reined in exasperation and explained, "A rich man is one who has a great deal of . . ." No, they didn't seem to use money here. ". . . a great number of possessions."
"You mean he was the son of a priest?" a woman asked.
"Well . . . he lived with his family in a great house and wore beautiful clothes," Alea temporized, "and never had to plow or hoe."
"A priest indeed," the woman said, satisfied, and everyone else nodded, chorusing agreement.
"But he did learn to reap, of course," a man said. "Of course," Alea said, a little unnerved. "Doesn't everybody?"
They all nodded, agreeing with that.
"Anyway," Alea said, "the priest decided that his son was old enough to mar ... uh, to bond with a woman, past old enough, really, and told him that he must see to finding a wife, and sent messengers throughout the district for all the maidens to come to a grand feast he would give, so that his son might choose among them."
"Why would he do that?" one of the men asked, frowning.
"Aye!" said the woman by his side. "It's no good trying to find the right mate-these things simply happen."
"Or fail to," grunted one older man. He was rather ugly, and the woman's tone softened.
"Aye, some of us must wait longer than others, Holdar. But love comes to all someday."
"And it's worth the waiting for," said another man with a warm glance at the woman by his side. She returned the look, beaming, and took his hand.
"Um ... Well, it may have been silly, but there are always people who have to prove for themselves what everybody knows," Alea said.
"Well, that's so, I suppose," a man allowed, and the neighbors set up another chorus of agreement. Alea relaxed again, but not much, as she explained, "The son had been a bit wild, you see, and the priest wanted him tied to one woman, to settle him down."
"He what?" a man cried, aghast.
"You don't mean a priest would want a boy bonded to a girl for life!" a woman gasped.
"They might have fallen out of love!" another woman protested. "This priest wouldn't have them tied together when they didn't love one another, would he?"
Alea was stunned-here were ordinary villagers, most of them living as husband and wife with families, and they were frankly shocked at the idea of a man and woman bonding to live together for life.
"Everyone knows that's courting disaster," one woman declared.
That gave Alea back her poise. She smiled and said, "I'm afraid stories are often started by the mistakes people make, good woman."
"Oh." The woman frowned, turning thoughtful. "I hadn't thought of that but now that you mention it, I suppose there's some truth in it."
Alea sighed with relief, ready to plough ahead. "Well, telling stories is her work in the world," another woman pointed out. "But it's so obvious a mistake, dearie! Didn't the rest of the villagers warn them and try to talk them out of it?"
"Well ... um ... they thought it was none of their business," Alea answered.
"There's some sense in that," a man allowed with an uneasy glance at another man. "Didn't the priestesses tell the father it was wrong?"
"Aye, and the other priests, too!" said an old man. It struck Gar as an odd but auspicious beginning-and an excellent distraction. As Alea talked, he shifted his weight, taking a step backward-then another and another, until he was at the back of the crowd. There he strolled away with the mildly bored look of one who has heard the tale too oftenstrolled to the collection box, managed to pick the lock and fish out the white scrap.
It was birch bark with a name scrawled on it in the rough, clumsy letters of someone just learning to read, or who had never troubled to practice writing much. Gar was interested to discover that these peasants could at least read and write one another's names. Beneath the name was the word "bully." Gar wondered if it was a title or an accusation. He slipped the bark back into the box, fastened the crude lock, then went back to listen to the end of Alea's story.
He was just in time to hear her say, "So the priest's son and Cinderella fell in love and bonded." The adults frowned at one another, obviously feeling
something was wrong, but the children burst into a dozen questions.
"Where did they live, though?"
"Did they have children?"
"How long did they stay bonded?"
"They didn't live in the temple, did they?" Several grim adult faces were nodding, agreeing with the children. Alea guessed at which comment they were nodding and hoped she was right. "Of course the prince called his friends together to build Cinderella her own house," she said.
The grim adult faces cleared as the children cheered.
Alea decided to quit while she was ahead. "So they went into their new house hand in hand-and what they did after that was nobody's business but their own."
The grown-ups laughed and applauded, but the children looked resentful, as though they'd had a sweet taken away.
Gar had to admit that Alea had done a masterful job of adaptation to a local culture.
On the way out of town the next morning, Gar stiffened and muttered, "Watch that man!"
Alea glanced out of the corner of her eye so she wouldn't seem to be staring. She saw a man in his doorway bending to pick up a scrap of something white that lay on his threshold. Straightening, he studied the scrap, then tore it up angrily and strode off toward the fields, his face flaming.
"What was that all about?" Alea asked out of the side of her mouth.
"I don't know," Gar answered, "but I'd love to find out." As they passed the cottage, he stooped and scooped up the pieces in a single deft motion. "When we're out of town," he muttered, "we'll see how we do with a jigsaw puzzle."
A mile past the town's fields, they stopped, laid out the pieces on a flat rock, and fitted them together.
Alea frowned. "What does it mean?"
"Well, for one thing, our peasant can't read or write very well." Gar pointed to the name that had been very crudely drawn. "I saw the man slip this into the postbox on the common yesterday. Somebody seems to have collected it. during the night and given him an answer." He indicated the second set of words, printed much more clearly. They read, "Not a bully. Give one bushel of wheat to the next feast."
"It's a fine," Alea said, frowning, "but for what?"
"False accusation, I'd say." Gar pursed his lips. "I think our peasant was trying to make trouble for an enemy by accusing him."
"He could have simply told the other villagers!"
"Yes, but they would have known if he was right or wrong," Gar said, "and might like the other man well enough to insist on really clear proof. I think our peasant tried to call in people who wouldn't know the facts and wouldn't take sides, but they outsmarted him and learned the truth-very quickly, too."
Alea frowned. "Then who was his judge?"
"The hidden government that I'm sure must be here somewhere!" Gar rose with a tight, intense smile, eyes gleaming. "Perhaps we'll find it at the next village. Let's go!"
Exasperated, Alea watched him stride away. Then she shook her head and started after him.
By midafternoon, they had come out of the flatlands into hilly terrain. The road wound between high banks that rose farther into small mountains.
Gar suddenly stiffened. "Patrol coming!"
Alea stopped, gazing off into space and opening her mind, trying to catch the- thoughts he was perceiving.
There they were, and how could she have missed them? They were talking and laughing, but their laughter had a cruel undertone, and they were discussing how they would beat the idiot and amuse themselves with his sister.
"You're getting a reputation," she told Gar.
"I've always wanted to be famous," he answered, "but not this way. It's time for the better part of valor."
"You mean run?" Alea looked about her, baffled. "Where? Those hills will make slow going, and they'll see us a mile away!"
"There are trees on that hillside." Gar pointed to the left.
"If you want to call them that," Alea said sourly. "They're big enough to hide us, if we bend low," Gar maintained. "It's better than waiting here to try to knock over a dozen well-armed riders with quarterstaves. Let's go while we can!"
10
The roadside brush gave way to low trees quickly. Fortunately, what they lacked in height, they made up in width and density. Gar and Alea had to crouch to stay under the canopy of needles and had to thread their way between gnarled and twisted trunks, but they were hidden.
Then, though, they had to cross an open space between two stands of yew, and heard a shout behind and below them. Alea took a quick glance back and was amazed to see how high they had come already. Below, though, she could see soldiers dismounting, leaving one of their number to hold the horses while the rest dashed into the underbrush to follow the fugitives.
"They're coming," she grated.
"I know." Gar panted. "But ... no faster than ... us." That wasn't much reassurance, but it was better than nothing. Alea forged ahead, breath rasping in her throat-this hillside was steep. Nonetheless, she tried to hurry-but needled branches and twisted roots conspired to slow her down.
Then the trees gave way to grass in a soil so hard underfoot that Alea was amazed anything could grow. There was a shout behind them but she didn't bother to look-she knew the soldiers had seen them.
"They're riders," Gar wheezed. "They're ... not in shape ... for climbing."
"Neither are you," Alea snapped, but had to admit she wasn't, either. She wondered if anyone could ever get used to plowing up hillsides this way. She listened to the patrol's thoughts and found them winded, having to force themselves to keep climbing. Then one said to the others, "That man ... with her ... he's old!"
"Not too ... old to ... climb," another man panted.
"These hillfolk ... hop uphill like ... mountain goats," a third soldier rasped.
"Halt," the sergeant said.
Alea didn't, but she could feel the relief from his men.
"We're chasing ... the wrong ... travelers," the sergeant gasped.
"There's a ... woman . . ." a soldier wheezed.
"Not ... worth it. . ." the sergeant told him. "Other women on ... the road. . ."
She could feel their silent agreement. "Back to . . . the horses," the sergeant said. His men were glad to start back down. "Keep going," Gar grunted.
"You didn't ... have to ... say it," Alea retorted. Then, suddenly, their feet struck level ground. Gar climbed up onto a mountain ledge and stood staring at it in disbelief. "It's a ... path!"
"You didn't think. .. we were the only ones ... ever come ... up here ... did you?" Alea was grateful to climb up onto the ledge, though.
"Frankly ... yes," Gar said. "At least ... I didn't expect ... anyone who wasn't ... born here."
"They need paths ... too." But Alea saw what he meant. The path was six feet wide at least and had clearly been hewn out of the rock; she could see the original track had only been three feet across. Someone had widened it-but why?
"Must be something ... worth seeing ... up there," Gar said. "Perhaps at least ... someplace to ... spend the night."
"Let's look," Alea agreed.
They set out, and since the path was flat and slanted upward across the curve of the hill, it was nowhere nearly as steep as clambering up the hillside would have been. The going was much easier, allowing them to catch their breath. They followed the track around the curve of the hill-and came upon a man sitting at the side of the road.
He sat cross-legged, back perfectly straight, hands on his knees. He had close-cropped gray hair, a lined and weatherbeaten face that was clean shaven, and wore a robe like a longer version of a peasant's tunic, made of the same homespun material.
Alea stopped, staring in amazement. The last thing she would have expected on this mountainside was an old man, and certainly not one who had come all this way up just to sit and admire the view.
On the other hand, any man of his age who came up this path must have to sit down and rest frequently-but looking more closely, she saw that his gaze was unfocused.
Even as she looked, t
hough, his eyes came into focus and his face tilted upward, smile widening. "Good afternoon, my friends. What brings you to this mountain?"
"Refuge," Gar replied.
"The roads aren't terribly safe just now," Alea explained.
"Not even on this mountain, alas." The old man sighed. "Still, if we wished only safety, we should never have been born, should we?"
It struck Alea as an odd thing to say and she could tell from the polite mask that slid over Gar's features that he thought so, too, but he only said, "Some of us didn't have all that much choice in the matter, sir."
"Indeed," the old man agreed. "We live because our parents insisted-or mistook. Still, before we were born, we might have had some choice in the matter."
Gar gave him a thin smile. "If so, good sir, I don't remember it."
"There are very few who do," the old man told him, "and it takes a lifetime's discipline to achieve that." He rose with a fluid grace, amazing in one who had been sitting cross-legged for a long period, and said, "You must not stay your journey for a silly old man, though. Come, let us ascend the mountain together." And he set off as, nimbly as a teenager, giving a stream of talk to which Gar listened bemused, and at which Alea marveled.
Then, suddenly, she realized that the old man was listening, nodding encouragement, while she and Gar did the talking. Little by little, he had led them into answering his questions. She tried to stop talking, but his eyes were somehow both compelling and inviting, and she found herself telling him of her parents' deaths and the confiscation of their, property, including herself. Near tears, she took refuge in bitterness.
The old man sensed it and turned the question to Gar. "You too have learned to harden your heart, my friend, as a wound develops the hardness of a scar. What cut so deep?"
Alea was suddenly very intent on his answer, not even stopping to wonder why.
"A witch," Gar said, "a woman who enticed me, then humiliated me."
A Wizard and a Warlord Page 10
