Tarbaby Trouble [Mudflat 1]

by Phoebe Matthews

  "What's tar?” he asked.

  "Hot sticky black stuff used to pave roads. It gets hard when it cools. So anyhow, the rabbit saw the tarbaby and he asked its name. It didn't answer. It couldn't, but the rabbit didn't know that, so he hit the tarbaby and his paw stuck. That made him so mad, he hit it with his other paw, then kicked it and kicked again, and when all four feet were stuck, he butted it with his head.

  "The tarbaby was bait to catch the rabbit and it worked, because that's how cute the tarbaby was. So, then the fox popped out of the bushes and caught the rabbit."

  "Are you sure this story has a happy ending?” he asked.

  "Listen up, stop interrupting. The rabbit was sneaky, told the fox ‘please don't throw me in the briar patch’ and so that's what the fox did, tossed him into the patch. That patch was home ground for the rabbit and so he escaped laughing."

  "And what happened to the tarbaby?"

  "Hmm. Never thought about that."

  "Your stories have strange endings,” he said. “Now I want to try this dance of yours."

  "Okay, where's the music?"

  He hummed softly.

  I caught his free hand in mine and put my other hand on the back of his neck and relaxed so that our bodies pressed together, my face touching his cheek. He stopped and started to turn his face to me.

  "No, fella, keep humming or the dancing lesson is over,” I said firmly, then guided him through some slow steps.

  Had to admit to myself that I really enjoyed dancing with a guy who was the same height. He knew where our feet were, both his and mine, and I wasn't in danger of squashed toes. Or of getting a crick in my neck from looking up. Did I mention we fit together very comfortably?

  Tarvik was a natural, sensed the rhythm and followed the instructions I whispered in his ear.

  "Okay, step forward, now the other foot, turn slowly, pause. Again."

  And again and again, him in his fur boots and dark red velvet, me barefoot in a plain linen tunic, and although I've never been much of a dancer, he picked up on what we were doing and did it so easily that he made me believe I danced well. Whether that was true or not, the dancing plus the guy kept me warm in the cold night.

  As I made a turn under his raised arm, our faces almost touched and he said, “Where is your home, Stargazer?"

  Startled, I said, “Seattle."

  "What is a Seattle?"

  "A big city."

  "And this is how you dance in Seattle,” he said, and he began dancing again, but from the look on his face I thought he was thinking more about Seattle than about dance steps.

  We circled the fire going through any number of steps, until I was breathless and laughing and finally stumbled. He caught my elbows, held me upright, then realized how cold my skin was and rubbed his hands lightly over my arms.

  Picking up my blanket from the ground where he had dropped it, he wrapped it around me, saying, “Where's your cloak? Go get it, I'll wait."

  He looked wide awake and ready to dance until dawn. I said, “I need to sleep now. There is some sort of procession in the morning. I think Nance and I are supposed to lead."

  "Yes, my father and uncle will be starting off on their new campaign,” he said.

  "You should leave now,” I said.

  "Oh. But you haven't told me about this city you live in. Do you live in a castle?"

  "Um, no, I live in a house.” A nice warm little house with soft beds and hot water, I thought, but didn't want to try to explain that.

  "Tell me what a house is and what does it look like."

  "Tarvik.” Catching his face between my hands to hold his attention, the way one does with a small child, and looking directly into his eyes, I said in my firmest voice, “I will tell you a story about my house some other time. Right now it is late and I am tired and I need to sleep."

  "Oh! Yes.” He turned his face so quickly that, before I could pull my hands away, he pressed his mouth against my palm.

  I stared stupidly at my hand, where he had kissed it.

  "Goodnight, Stargazer.” He opened the gate, stepped out, pulled it almost closed behind him, stuck his head back through the opening and said, “Perhaps it is as much fun to dance as to fight. I will think about that."

  I couldn't see his face in the darkness, but I knew he was laughing at me.

  In the morning before the sun's rising, and certainly before mine, the outer gate shook beneath heavy blows. I heard Nance squealing and rushing around, then calling out for the identity of our visitor. A moment later she returned to shake me.

  "Stargazer! It is Kovat himself! Quick, be up!"

  While I sat on my pile of blankets and sheepskins trying to recall where I was and why, Nance rubbed paint and powder on my face.

  "We've no time to pile your hair. Here, you comb it out while I fetch a robe,” she said.

  "Why is he here so early?” I mumbled.

  "Do you think I am going to ask Kovat why he comes to his own temple and demands to see you? Hold quiet, that sash is wrong, there, oh, where are your sandals?"

  "Never mind the sandals,” I said and left her hiding behind the door. The cold ground of the courtyard beneath my bare feet helped wake me up.

  To my amazement, Kovat waited alone by the gate, wrapped in a fur-lined cape against the winter morning. If there was some required greeting with which to hail a warlord who called at daybreak, no one had told me, and so I kept my mouth shut. Also, I was fighting back a yawn. Need I mention the deplorable lack of coffee in this place? That alone had convinced me I wasn't dreaming because even in nightmares, coffee exists.

  "Come near and listen carefully, woman,” Kovat said. “I will not speak with you again until my return."

  Remembering my manners, I managed to mumble the standard clerk phrase, “How may I help you?"

  "You say you are of the line of the Daughter."

  Had I said that? I didn't remember but I wasn't about to argue with the man.

  "She saved my life. She saved it when all the potions and prayers of the magicians of Thunder failed. And she stopped the fever spreading through the city. In the years that followed, I had no reason to regret discarding the false magicians and their god and building this temple for her. The Daughter's prayers protected me and my army from disease as well as defeat. Whether your powers are as great must still be proved. You have powers I have not encountered before. What I must ask is if your calling binds you to truth."

  "I can only read what the stars choose to show me,” I said, unsure what he wanted but not wishing to annoy him. His face was red with anger, I thought, but not at me, not yet.

  "What is true will prove itself. For now, I must trust your stars. I will give you the birth hours of my brother, his wife and his daughter. You must look at their futures."

  "That takes time,” I said, but I didn't want to annoy him and added, “maybe a day?"

  "I am leaving today. You will do this as quickly as you can. The women will winter here at the castle with my son. If there is anything in their stars of which he should be warned, you will do so. All else you will save for my return."

  He recited for me the birth hours of Erlan, Ober and Alakar. By this time I knew these people, with their lack of a written language, kept their family histories in their heads, and with a surprising amount of detail and accuracy. I repeated slowly the information he told to me, marking them in my mind.

  "Make no error. If you guide me well, I will repay you. Fail, and you will not have another chance."

  Sick of his threats, I blurted, “If the Daughter had made an error, would you have removed her head?"

  He scowled back at me. “Perhaps she was a god. Perhaps she was human. I do not know or care. What I know is that the god of the Sun shared his secrets with the Daughter. When you have saved my life, ask me again. Until then, you are in my debt for sparing you this long.” He started to turn away, then stopped, pivoted toward me on his heel and said, “The man who guards Ober, you have noticed him? Of
course you have. I knew him well once but he is changed. I do not know the hour of his birth but I know the day."

  I nodded, too angry to speak but intrigued by this additional request.

  "If you can explain him to me on my return, I will be impressed."

  And so would I, because my curiosity about the man who remained hidden in his cloak and hood was super sized. Nance thought Ober's guard was either a servant or a slave. Or death. What sort of chart would death have? Okay, death wouldn't have a birth date, but an executioner or an assassin would.

  After Kovat told me the man's day of birth, he hurried out of the gate, walking with that same swinging stride that reminded me of Tarvik, light-footed. The rising sun flamed his hair to gold.

  When the sun topped the courtyard wall, Nance and I led the procession. We walked in front, followed by a small group of guards and then Kovat and Erlan and their captains seated high on their horses. At the edge of the hill, where the path dropped away to the valley, we stepped to the side of the road and watched them head off to battle, still chanting, our arms raised, our hands pointed toward the sky. From his tall horse Kovat looked down and my glance met his stare. His eyelids were oddly twisted and narrowed, and between them his eyes were a pale icy blue.

  I worked at keeping a stiff upper lip while my mind shrieked, “Help!"

  Nance and I remained at the ridge and chanted Kovat and Erlan down the hill and across and out of the valley, trailed by their armies. We both drooped beneath our layers of paint and fur and jewels, dead on our feet from loss of sleep. We kept our bodies and faces rigid as our temple guards escorted us back to our courtyard. The clatter of the bolt on the gate after our return to the temple was the last sound I wished to hear until evening mealtime.

  And if wishes were horses etc., right? Before the brothers and their armies were out of sight, the guard knocked on the gate. And before I could shout, “Go away, Tarvik,” Nance hurried across the courtyard to call, “Who is there?"

  The guard spoke clearly in a loud formal tone, which meant he was not at ease with our visitor. “The lady Ober waits here and requests an audience with the templekeeper.” He was our friend for life, that guard. Don't know if he suspected Ober's man of attacking him, but his announcement sounded like a warning.

  Nance's mouth opened in a wide “o". We looked at each other, speechless, and then she slid the bolt and peered through the crack.

  As she was still in temple dress, she said, “My lady, did you wish to enter the temple?"

  I heard Ober's voice say, “No, I would like to speak with the templekeeper who assists you. Your courtyard will do."

  She could not see me standing behind the gate at Nance's side, and so I mouthed, “Let her enter,” to Nance, then stepped back to the center of the yard.

  Nance slowly opened the gate to a width no greater than needed for one person.

  With that amazing calm she could draw around herself when she needed it, Nance said in her temple voice, “This place is sacred and forbidden to men. Your guards must wait outside but you may enter, my lady."

  Ober, wearing an embroidered cape of green velvet, walked slowly through the gate, saw me and came toward me without so much as a nod to Nance. Nance closed the gate behind her. Ober's copper hair was piled on her head beneath her hood, so only a few stray tendrils curled around her face. The colorless eyes stared at me from that spooky white face and I hadn't a clue what she wanted.

  She said, “What is your name, templekeeper?"

  I said, “Stargazer."

  "And you came from the outlands,” she said. Her eyes never left my face as she added, “And what is it Kovat wants of you?"

  As I had no idea what she was talking about, I kept my mouth shut. He had expected me to be in the procession, he accepted me as a templekeeper, he hoped I knew magic, and he humored his son by letting me live. Which of these facts mattered to the wife of Kovat's younger brother?

  When I didn't answer her, she said, “He spoke with you early this day, before leaving on his journey. I though perhaps he left a message for me."

  Ah, so that was what she wanted to know. What would she think if I told her he gave me her time of birth so I could read her destiny? I said, “He came to remind myself and the priest of the Daughter that he required our blessings for his army."

  She did not believe me, which showed in the narrowing of those weird eyes. No smile, no frown. No trace of a line on her white skin. “Nothing more? No message for his son?"

  "His son is at the castle, right? Where Kovat could speak directly to him?"

  Still ignoring Nance, Ober turned and walked back to the gate. She stood facing it as though she had no ability to open a gate, and so I went around her to open it for her. I was perfectly willing to wait on her like a servant if it hastened her departure. Inviting her to join us for tea never crossed my thoughts.

  We were closer to each other than I cared to be. She turned, spent a moment staring at my temple garb, my paints that were by now smeared on my face, then said, “Stargazer. I know that word. Kovat spoke of magic circles in which the stars were drawn. Is that what you do?"

  That question hit too close, and I replied, “I know nothing much about magic."

  Which was not quite true. However, I knew everything about circles and stars, and I could imagine Tarvik raising his eyebrows and saying, Liar.

  She thought so, too, it was clear in her expression, but she said nothing, only walked slowly through the gate and toward the castle.

  I closed the gate, slumped against it, made a face at Nance who looked about to shriek. We dragged our weary selves to our chamber. For once I was too exhausted to wash away the face colors and dust before sinking into my pile of skins and blankets. Yet after I closed my eyes, thoughts battled sleep for my attention. And the loudest question was this:

  What did Kovat expect me to find in the star signatures of Erlan, Ober and Alakar?

  I asked Nance, “What do you think of Ober?"

  I had expected a reply about false pride or greed or dishonestly, perhaps, but not what I got. Nance rubbed her eyes and said in a weary voice, “She must be a sorcerer."

  "What kind of a sorcerer?"

  "One with magic, but not a magician. More powerful, I think. Remember what I told you about lifedrainers? Sorcerers can call them."

  "Call them from where?” Now I was awake and alert.

  "From the mountains where they live, if there really are such things."

  "Why would anyone want to call them?"

  "Oh, I don't know.” Nance sat up and looked at me. “Rulers can raise armies and go to battle for what they want. Others cannot. And so they call on evil magic to aid them. The lifedrainers are evil magic."

  I didn't find any lifedrainers in any of the charts when I was finally able to draw them. Perhaps that's because I didn't actually know what a lifedrainer would look like in a chart.

  But I certainly did find evil.

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  Chapter 10

  When Uranus and Saturn have a negative aspect on the Twelfth House of Death, all the strengths of Aries cannot assure protection. Kovat was powerful, ruthless, and probably clever, but Aries is a young soul. And now the Aries warlord marched to battle leaving his son and his city unguarded against the darkest signature I had ever read.

  If I had seen Ober's horoscope before advising Kovat that victory lay in the waxing of the moon, I should have had a different tale to tell him. What I saw now was what he must have guessed. When I read his brother's wife's horoscope, I knew this was the danger he suspected, although he had not been sure of its source. I think his suspicions were with his brother or one of his brother's men, left behind with us.

  He was wrong.

  "If you see what I suspect is there, you will know it,” he had said, adding, “and you will warn my son."

  To be an astrologer is simple. All one needs is a talent for mathematics and a dependable memory. To give advice is immeasurably more
difficult. How come no one told me this when I first started out? Time before and now again I found my mind in disagreement with my emotions. Oh, to be able to fling myself headlong among the sheepskins and weep and kick, as Nance occasionally did, and then remind myself that other people's fates were not my fault.

  The big deal was this. Within that evil horoscope lay threats against Nance and myself. And tangled in these threats was a chance of a split in castle loyalties through which I might escape. But I could not be sure. Again, with no knowledge of the positions of the faster planets for the birth times, there was a whole lot of info missing.

  Plus, even if I got myself out of temple and hilltop and city, I wasn't sure I knew the way to that stream where I had entered. Was it a couple of days journey?

  Back home I could get lost between the bus stop and my house. Oh right, it was that dead-on sense of direction that landed me here in the first place.

  So if what I saw was true, and in the coming battle attention turned away from me, would I be smart to let the battles rage? Damn, a combination of aspects hinted that all these other conflicts could give me the way out, show me how to cross over into the outlands.

  It was a hint, nothing specific, nothing that said something as simple as “walk north at sunset and you'll find the crossover point."

  Still, it looked as though the treachery of others could help conceal my escape if I timed things. And I did know this, no matter how badly I was lost, I would never find my way out until I started to search.

  Was Tarvik my responsibility? Because he had spared my life and protected me, did I owe him the same? All stupid questions, the sort of things my astrologer friends and I used to argue around a pitcher of beer and a pizza in the evenings, with the answers ignored. No matter who owed what to whom, or where the moral obligations lay, I could not ignore the threats of a horoscope. I had told Kovat I would warn his son, and even though Tarvik drove me nuts at times, I had to keep my word.

  "You frown, Stargazer,” Nance said as she hurried by the table on which I sketched the signatures. She touched her fingertip to the spot between my eyes. “Stop or your brow will age early."