“Oh, aye, it’s that,” Maggie said, making a face. “That’s what Gran says too—but I’m afraid useful doesn’t really do me all that much credit in our line of work. It takes passion and power, Gran says, to be a really first-class witch, though I think at times she only says that to justify her beastly temper. No one has ever accused me of lacking that sort of passion either—but Aunt Sybil’s got a lot stronger magic than I do, and she’s a far more placid person than Gran or I either one—I suppose it comes of knowing what to expect. You’ll probably really like her.” She looked at the tortuous track ahead of them. “It’s still quite a ways though, I reckon. I don’t suppose you’d know that song about the silly nobleman who died of indigestion from eating eels, would you?”
Colin did know the song about the nobleman, a fellow named Lord Randall, and the song about the fiddle and the wind, which was one of his own personal favorites, and the one about the laddie-cut-down-in-his-prime. Maggie sang along in a voice low and rough for a woman, but with a lot of power and vitality, and she was even very often on key. She expressed a strong preference for murder ballads and the popular songs women sang over the loom or field hands sang while doing whatever there was to do in the field. When Colin tried to introduce an occasional romantic air, she interrupted him with a request for a work song sung by bandits as they plundered helpless villages. If he tried to ignore her long enough to finish a chorus of one of the charming love ballads he preferred, the black and white cat made it a point to rouse himself long enough to produce a terrible yowling. It seemed that any tender emotions the lady had were addressed exclusively to unicorns, and other expressions thereof were not to be tolerated.
By the time they camped that night, the minstrel had exhausted his repertoire of murder ballads and was considering applying for a teaching position at the Minstrel Academy, where he would present a course on the musical proclivities of the Northern Sorceress Personality, a subject he now felt he possessed more expertise in than he really cared to.
A technically impossible evening meal of Queenston Quiche, artichokes in almond sauce, and chocolate fudge layer cake, served with a blue wine equally correct with meat or fish, and equally delicious with either, helped to alleviate some of Colin’s artistic aggravation, not to mention his empty stomach and dry throat. As he was hoarse from singing, he limited his musical endeavors that night to a soft lament played on his fiddle while Maggie, arms clasped about her knees, stared into the fire, rocking a little in time with his playing. Ching sprawled at her feet as comfortably as though on his favorite rug beneath his mistress’s loom at Fort Iceworm.
The morning again just missed being rainy, the sky the color and texture of raw wool, with the sun invisible except as a light patch stifled by bales of clouds. Damp and subdued and tired of being threatened by the weather, neither Colin nor Maggie felt like singing or talking or doing anything but sitting half-slumped in their saddles, absorbing bumps and uneven jarrings as their horses plodded down the mushy trail. It took Colin a few minutes to notice when his horse stopped.
“Oh, no,” Maggie said, drooping wearily forward on her mount’s neck. Stretching out before them was a vast sea of swirling, frothing water. Debris, natural and manmade, swept along in the churning muddy flood, and trees caught up in it genuflected at its perimeters. How they could have dozed without hearing the roar and rumble of those waters was amazing.
“It wasn’t like this when I came north,” Colin said. “It doesn’t look the same at all.”
“This IS the Troutroute River, then?” Maggie asked.
Colin nodded. “According to the maps—and I remember the path this far too, but the bridge that was here is gone.”
“How are we going to get across, then?”
Ching growled low in his throat and hopped down from his perch, stalking forward to crouch low on the path ahead of them. Except for his growl, his total green-eyed concentration was fixed on the flood. With a whip of his tail he stood up and turned to Maggie. “Well. If that doesn’t beat all. This is the first time I EVER saw a dragon climb a tree.”
“What?” she asked, a little snappish at being interrupted while she was trying to plot how they were going to cross. She personally was not overly fond of large bodies of water, and Ching was even less enamored of it than she. There were far too many trees on and just beneath the surface, and the water was far too fast to make swimming even a fleeting consideration.
“Maggie, look out there!” Colin pointed. “There’s a dragon in that tree.”
“Silly creature,” sniffed Ching, cocking his ears again for a moment. “She’s crying for help. Of course she’s stuck. Any dragon dumb enough to go out in THAT stuff.” He shuddered with revulsion. “And then climb a TREE it—well, she deserves to be stuck.”
“Can’t she fly out?” Maggie shielded her eyes with her hand to try to block out the sparkles of light bouncing off the water to obscure her vision.
Ching was still for a moment, listening, for he seemed to need to cock his black ears even to hear with his mind. “She’s moaning something about her wings being tangled.”
“Still don’t see why she doesn’t fly out, great beast like that…” Maggie said, riding a few paces up, then back, to get a better view of the dragon.
“At least we won’t have to worry about a dragon as well as a flood.” Colin shivered and dismounted. “Perhaps your sister would appreciate your visit more later, when she’s—you know—had more chance to adapt to the nomadic life.” He really didn’t expect her to insist that they sit to wait for the flood to subside, which would surely take at least days, if not weeks. And they definitely could not cross it, which would be at worst a sodden death, and at best a dreadful way to treat his instruments. “We could try again later—maybe in midsummer?”
Maggie only favored him with a venomous look and dismounted, first continuing her shoreline inspection of the stranded beast on foot, then plopping down onto a fallen tree trunk. Cupping her chin in one hand, she stared moodily out at the flood, plucking angrily at the tall grasses that grew around her with the hand unoccupied with chin.
Ching joined her, settling his white stomach onto the soft, mossy covering of the log. “Well, witch, what now?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen this sort of thing before. This is the first journey I’ve taken more than a day’s ride from home, after all, and I can hardly be prepared for everything.” She gnawed a grubby and already abused thumbnail. “Wish I had some of Gran’s good strong transformation magic, instead of just hearthcraft. I could change these horses into whales or something. As it is, we’re as stuck as that dragon.”
“I suggest we give up.” The cat closed his eyes and looked away.
“No, really, Ching, what can a hearthcrafter do in this kind of situation? I could spin a rope, but we’d never make it all the way across the river.” She reached out and snapped off one of the tall reeds at the edge of the torrent.
“Don’t be silly,” the cat scoffed. “What would I do with a rope anyway? Walk tippy-toe across it, or hang by my tail?”
“I don’t know,” Maggie snapped, nettled by the cat’s sarcasm, her inability to produce a solution, and the party’s generally negative attitude. “But I’m sure not going to carry you.” She curled her lip at the water. “I’m not all that fond of that stuff myself, you know. If my magic didn’t require extensive contact with scrubwater, I’d probably be as likely to melt of it as Great-Grandma Oonaugh.” She twined a second weed around the first and forced them into a rough coil in her hand.
The cat swatted at the end of the reed that protruded from her hand. “Going to make a bathing dress of these, witch?”
“Take a swim, Ching. Maybe I will,” she stared at the reeds, replying to the concept of constructing reed bathing dresses, not to the swim. “Minstrel?” she said.
Colin hoped she had decided after all that they would turn back, now that he had patiently given her time to reflect on the impossibility of their situatio
n. He expected she, as would any reasonable person, would reach the obvious conclusion. “Yes?”
“Help me pick some more of these rushes, please.”
“Uh—why?” A qualm made him pause before he picked the first of the reeds.
“Umm—just a little idea of mine,” she replied, as she energetically began to snatch up every reed in sight.
His qualm became an uneasy twinge as he dropped an armload of reeds on top of those she’d already gathered. She stopped gathering finally, but signaled him to continue, and sat down and began to weave the rushes into a large, flat coil.
“Funny time to make a rug,” Colin remarked, smiling at his own humor as he dumped more rushes on the pile.
“One does the best one can with the talents allotted one,” she replied with a suspicious expression of self-satisfied false humility.
His suspicion was confirmed. His twinge became absolute fear as the rush rug became a basket large enough to hold, technically speaking, either a man or a woman. Colin had the distinctly uncomfortable feeling it was intended to hold a man.
“It’s a boat!” Maggie exclaimed proudly, as pleased as if she were announcing the sex of her first-born babe, when she floated the flimsy-looking thing on the edge of the flood.
“Uh-uh,” the minstrel said firmly.
“Oh, really. It’s quite strong. I’m sure it will hold you.” She looked up at him with an expression of purest concern for his safety and comfort.
“Hold me while I do what?” He stood very still as he waited for her answer.
“While you rescue that poor stranded beastie, of course.”
“That DRAGON!?” The stillness exploded into an orgy of pacing and wild gesticulation and he changed octaves several times as he spoke. “Look here, Maggie. I’m every bit as much an animal lover as you are, but why in the name of all that’s sane would I want to rescue that dragon? I like it exactly where it is!”
“We have to rescue her because she flies, of course, is why.” She used the sort of voice she might use to explain to a small child why the sky is blue. She didn’t stay within earshot of his indignant sputterings, either, but went to the packhorse and began to unstrap their belongings.
“Well, see here, Maggie. Now just stop. Just because I don’t agree with you doesn’t mean I’m about to leave you here alone! Put those things back, won’t you?” By the fury with which she was unwinding the bindings of their packs, throwing the bundles indiscriminately on the ground to fall where they may, he reckoned she was ready to remain behind if he insisted on sensibly returning to civilization. He perceived her bizarre unpacking methods to be a demonstration both of the sorcerous passion, if not power, she’d discussed earlier, and also any possible determination to remain at the river as a means to make him guilty enough that he’d stay and do as she demanded.
She ignored him, however, as he flapped around putting things that fell off the horse back on, whereupon they fell right back off again without the benefit of the length of braided leather rope that had bound them on. This rope Maggie was busying herself winding around her hand and elbow. After trying to replace the cat basket one more time to have it fall to his feet, spilling out the snug old piece of blanket intended to insure Ching’s comfort, Colin decided against trying to strap his fiddle back on and instead placed it gently on the ground, out of reach of the chestnut’s hooves, should it decide to take a stomp or two.
Maggie was looking pleased as she wound the rope. Fortunately, they’d brought far more gear than they really needed, and the rope was quite long. Rummaging in the pile of belongings, she removed the extra clothing she had brought from its sack, and stuffed it in with the foods. The sack she began to fill with mud from the banks of the swollen Troutroute, digging the stuff up in great gooey gobs, and depositing it in the sack with a sucking plop.
Colin had continued to pursue her progress with alarm and not a little personal interest. Perhaps she had not been entirely frank about the scope of her magical powers, and was capable of a great deal more than she’d admitted. Perhaps she was now concocting a gigantic, magical, enormously powerful, arcane—poultice—though whether its purpose might be for rescuing tangled dragons or chastising recalcitrant troubadours he was uncertain.
She lashed the muddy sack securely to the end of the rope and hefted it. Turning to him, she inquired sweetly. “I don’t suppose you’re a fantastic shot with a sling or anything like that?”
“Not particularly.”
“All right then, stand back.” She began to sail the muddy sack in circles above her head, bits of mud decorating her hair and spattering her face, arms, clothing and companions as well as the inanimate environment in the immediate vicinity. Colin ducked, and Ching took shelter behind a tree. When it seemed to her the proper impetus was reached, she let fly with the bag. It landed, splashing an upwardly exploding fountain of water a short distance from the dragon-inhabited tree.
Hauling the sopping bag back again, she inspected the rope and then the bag itself. The rope was braided for utility in a fashion that minimized its tendency to shrink. The bag was not in a condition ever to hold clothing again. By the time she finished her inspection, Maggie’s hands were so slippery with mud she had to wash them off in the river before resuming her sack-whirling stance. She let fly, and this time the bag snaked its way into the appropriate tree, and its weight wrapped it twice around a branch. Maggie leaned back on the rope, testing it with her entire weight. Satisfied, she took the end and tied it securely around the trunk of another tree.
She wiped her still far-from-immaculate hands on her skirt, and glared triumphantly at the minstrel, who had arranged himself in a nonchalant position against a tree that lent itself to lounging. Applauding slowly, he complimented her feat with mock graciousness. “Very ingenious, Mistress Brown. And nobly done. Nobly done, indeed. Now the only problem that remains, I suppose, is for person or persons unknown (unless, of course, and I can’t discount the possibility, you mean for that very remarkable cat of yours to do it) to surrender his or herself to the doubtfully enormous strength of your oversized poultry basket, haul themselves across that charming laundry line you’ve so cleverly employed, and reach the tree, where the dragon trapped therein will meekly cooperate in having its appendages broken and its wings mangled while its benefactor frees it, after which it will follow us all over Argonia in unending and everlasting gratitude. Providing, of course, one doesn’t overbalance that silly-looking boat, providing, too, that the clothesline doesn’t work its way loose from its moorings, and providing the dragon doesn’t immediately roast one well done before it learns of one’s beneficent intentions, just in case it’s interested in them.”
It was Maggie’s turn to applaud. “From your pretty words, minstrel, I gather you appreciate the possible difficulties of my scheme. However, I would like to point out that those things may just as well NOT go wrong, and, as they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
“Whereas if I should venture in this case, I might stand to gain a charring?”
“As I was saying before you gave me the benefit of your immense wisdom, I do intend to get across this river and to the other shore, and I don’t intend to go the whole width by means of rope and basket. So if dragons frighten you, my faint-hearted friend, I suggest you stand back.”
“I still don’t see how you propose that that dragon will be of any benefit to us once you acquire it.”
“Once you have helped me rescue her, she will fly us across the river, naturally.”
“Oh, she’s agreed to that, has she?” He raised a questioning brow to the cat, who had sauntered over from behind his tree and was sniffing without interest at the spilled contents of the packs. Looking up, he met the minstrel’s eye, flipped his tail, and stalked off. He had better things to do than talk to tree-climbing aquatic dragons or, for that matter, to so-called musicians who talked to cats.
“Maggie, I know you want to see your sister, but this is rather extreme, isn’t it? I mean, t
he river is dangerously flooded, and the dragon and all—” He could hardly believe she meant to go on with it, and kept waiting for her to say that of course he was right and she would naturally go back to her father’s hall and wait like a good witch for conditions to improve.
“Have you another suggestion?” she asked with iciness that warned him he was likely to wait a long time for her to say what he wished. He coached her a little.
“We ought to wait a few days, perhaps, for the flood to subside, and then cross it the usual way.”
“No!”
“Why not? Oh, Maggie, what difference could a few days possibly make?”
“I don’t know—it all depends—it could make all sorts of difference. Abandoned lords have been known to do all sorts of awful things to wives who run off from them, and that gypsy is no gallant protector, believe me. He ran off with two of the dairy maids and then just left them to their—er—fate. What if he leaves Winnie stranded in the woods, or something? Even if Rowan doesn’t murder her, there’s robbers and wild animals and—”
“Dragons?” Colin suggested helpfully.
He received a glare for his trouble, but she continued, “Of course, dragons. She’s quite alone, actually. Maybe hungry and cold, and most certainly confused and lonely. If the gypsy should run true to type and abandon her, she would simply not understand it. People are just never unkind to her—she wouldn’t know what to think. She’d be brooding about what she might have said that vexed him, and not be on the lookout for murderers or dragons at all…”
“If all of that’s true, she’ll probably be far beyond your help by the time we get there, anyway.”
Maggie’s eyes ate caustic holes in him. “She certainly will be, if we sit tamely by and wait for the river to go down—or I waste all my time debating the matter with craven minstrels.”
Song of Sorcery Page 5
