“Ingenious,” exclaimed the bear. “What won’t they think of next?”
Maggie was running from one table to another, picking up things and putting them down again, turning them over and examining them. It was the most exciting room she’d ever been in.
“We’ll spend lots of time here together, you and I, my dear,” said Fearchar indulgently. “Right now, come along and see the rest of my diggings, and greet your sister.”
A second door led them to a dining hall, which was cozier than the study, but still enormous. “This was formerly a foyer leading from the great hall to the kitchen and the tower,” Fearchar explained, “but I needed the space in the great hall for my study, and the food arrives here much warmer without having to travel the extra distance.” For a foyer, it was an elegant dining hall, Maggie thought. The table was made of a massive slab of mirror-like wood, red as wine, and the legs were great beams of the same wood intricately carved and polished. Tapestries covered the walls and upholstered the matching chairs, which looked more like thrones with their high backs and arm rests. A heating stove, lavishly decorated with black and gold tiles, wrapped around one corner of the room and provided extra seating space beside itself, comfortably tiled to bring the warmth of the stove to the lounger on chilly days.
“The stove is my own addition. A suggestion of the wizard I was telling you of. Now then, Your Highness, Hugo will have a nice den prepared for you in the room next to my own, upstairs, where it’s warmer.” He indicated a flight of steps that led to a long, narrow landing forming a balcony high above them. “Maggie, dear, I presumed you would wish to share Lady Amberwine’s tower chamber. We live simply,” his sweeping arm took in the lavish room carpeted not with reeds but with the pelts of many different varieties of fur-bearing animals, “but I trust you’ll be comfortable here.”
“Thank you, Uncle,” she said, turning toward the staircase.
A clatter from the room beyond and Hugo came bustling out, carrying a tray full of candles. “I hadn’t time to put these in the rooms, master. Perhaps the prince and Miss Maggie would be so kind as to carry them up with them?”
Climbing the staircase, Maggie looked back down once to see her uncle waving her to go on up and Hugo lighting the first of the serpent-oil lamps in the huge fixture that hung from the lofty arched ceiling above the dining table. She set the bear’s candle in his chamber for him, as it was awkward for him to carry it in his front paws, and walked back down the landing to the doorway set into the rounded stonework, the tower entrance at the top of the staircase. There was another stairwell within the tower, and as Maggie climbed she lit the lamps that studded the wall to light the way.
She looked forward eagerly to seeing Winnie, and found her lying fully-dressed on top of the uncurtained bed, her hands clasped above the hillock of her abdomen.
Calling to her as she crossed the room, and eliciting no response, Maggie sat on the edge of the bed and shook her. “Winnie, do wake up. It’s Maggie. I’m here. I’ve come all this way to find you, the least you can do is postpone your nap.”
Lady Amberwine opened the startling long-lashed green eyes that matched the deep emerald of her gown. Her confusion changed to fright and she shrank from her sister’s touch. “Oh, Maggie. please don’t slay me! I know I’ve disgraced you all, and you’ve no reason to spare me or this gypsy child I bear, but for the sake of…”
“For the sake of sanity, what are you talking about?” asked Maggie, sitting sharply back. “Slay you? Box your ears, maybe, for talking such nonsense but—oh, no, now, stop that. Please stop being a goose and come back here. Of course I won’t box your ears, or slay you either. Why should I do that?”
“I—I don’t know, but I know that’s why you’re here.” Winnie’s hands twisted and pulled at the bedcovering as she clawed her way as far from Maggie as possible.
“Winnie, it’s me, your sister. I’ve ridden and walked a very long way, and risked great danger and more inconvenience to bring you home to Fort Iceworm, if you’ll come. If I wanted to be rid of you I’d hardly have gone to all that trouble, would I?”
Winnie looked at her skeptically, but edged a bit closer. “I suppose not. Still…”
Maggie reached forward to touch her again and Amberwine sprang back, whimpering no as though she’d slapped her.
Maggie sat back up, folding her hands deliberately in her lap as she searched her sister’s face for some clue to explain the meaning of her strange behavior. Had her difficulties, as Uncle Fearchar suggested, succeeded in unhinging her reason? Could faery people even go insane? Maggie looked at herself in the mirror opposite the foot of the bed. No, she had not changed into some ogress or ravening beast. What, then, could make the sister for whom she had forsaken unicorns and braved dragons, floods, ravishment, and starvation treat her like the proverbial wicked stepsister? A tear trickled down each cheek. Maggie continued to stare at the cowering Amberwine, brushing the tears away impatiently until they soon were too many for a casual wipe and she had to give in to clutching her face in her hands to try to stem the flow.
For all that, she feared her sister for what she believed was good reason, Winnie loved her, too, and seeing her cry wrenched loose tears of Amberwine’s own. Now—long after she believed she had cried her life’s supply of them, the salty liquid flooded her eyes, nose, and mouth, and she gathered Maggie to her, both of them rocking and weeping copiously until at last Winnie dragged forth her handkerchief. She always had been the one who had the clean handkerchief and she applied one corner to Maggie’s face and one corner to her own, saying, “Do stop crying now. Come on, everything is all right and we’re together. Stop now. I really can’t bear it. If you don’t cease this minute I shall go right back to sleep.”
“It—it’s just,” Maggie began, her own teary purge slowly subsiding, “it’s just that I can’t stand it if you hate me. You’ve always been my best friend. How c-can you have changed so?”
“Hate you? Changed? Rubbish! Whatever are you going on about?” She recalled being startled on waking to see Maggie for some reason, the nerves of pregnancy probably. But she could hardly recall saying anything like that. “Of course I don’t hate you, Magpie. You’re my very own dear brave big sister and I love you, of course. I’m ever so glad you’ve come to fetch me away from here.”
“You are?”
Winnie nodded and jumped from the bed to a beautifully embroidered screen close to the door, thrust the screen aside and pulled out a dress. “We really must be changing for dinner now.” Maggie could see what Winnie, who never liked tears, was up to, but refused to be distracted.
“Winnie, if you’re so glad to see me, then whatever was all that stuff about slaying you?”
“Slay me? What stuff? I must have had a nightmare or something. I haven’t slept at all well since I left the castle, you know. I’ve been feeling so awful about what I said to Roari. I don’t know why I said that. Roari must be very put out with me for being so pert when he asked me not to ride off with that gypsy. He was right, of course, as usual. Davey was a dreadful person, and that mother of his! I can’t think why I went with him—something about that song—oh, well, I’m sure Roari won’t stay upset with me after the baby’s born, do you think?” She dragged from behind the screen a flame-colored dress. “Now this would look lovely on you. Try it on. We have to do our own toilette here. Hugo’s the only servant, and I’d hardly want him to help, would you?” she giggled.
Maggie was staring at her with a mixture of annoyance and perplexity, trying to make some sense of her babbling. Her manner now was more the one Maggie had expected, but her contradictory behavior was weird in the extreme. “Just a moment, Win. You distinctly said that the reason I was going to slay you was because you had disgraced us all and that your baby was going to be a gypsy.”
Amberwine had hung the flame-colored gown back behind the screen and extracted a pale gold one. “Not your color, I think. It would look better on me.” She patted her abdomen. “Fortuna
tely, these gowns were tailored by a brownie seamstress, and alter themselves to fit even me.
“Still—now then, I said—what did you say? Oh, yes? Now that’s astounding. I should hardly think I’d say that, Maggie. Really, dear, how could my baby be a gypsy? Unless something happened as I slept, and as I distinctly recall I was already becoming extremely plump around the middle and doing unladylike things in the morning before I left Castle Rowan. I just was on my way to consult Cook about it when I heard Davey singing. Lovely voice for such a slimy sort of boy. Don’t know what put me up to it, I’m sure.”
“You are being inconsistent, you know.” Maggie was beginning to feel disoriented.
“Part of my charm, so I’ve been told. Oh, Magpie, I’m so very glad to see you. Do please stop being dreary about my silly nightmares and try on this topaz gown. I’ll fix your hair, and you fix mine, and there are even jewels to match—darling, I tell you, this is the first time. I’ve felt cheerful in MONTHS, and I’m absolutely giddy!”
“I can tell.”
“Master Brown is quite the gay blade, you know, really. There’s a siren who comes to visit—I’ve seen him talking to her from the battlements when I take my walks. Also, I have been informed by Hugo that we are privileged to be sharing the wardrobe your uncle provides Princess Pegeen when she comes to call. She brings her own entourage, of course, but she has them carrying so many scrolls and inkpots they don’t have room for dresses. Awfully careless of her appearance, I’ve been told, but frightfully clever.”
“I suspect she wouldn’t find it very grand here after the palace,” Maggie said, reluctantly allowing herself to be diverted.
“As long as she has her runes, she’s fine, so they say. She doesn’t live at the palace anymore. She has the best-attended hermitage in Argonia, from what I hear. Do you like your hair up like this, or with a little hanging down? Softer that way, do you think?
“I don’t care…” Certain that she was losing her mind, Maggie allowed her sister to help her prepare for dinner.
16
Colin and Boson Neddy Pinchpurse, the former pirate, were spending their off-duty time on deck, where they would not disturb the other crew members who slept. Backs propped against the foc’sle, they were engaged in swapping ditties. Neddy was teaching Colin variations on the chanteys he had learned in school, and Colin was teaching Neddy some new jigs to play on his hornpipe.
The evening was soft and pleasant, and the deck swayed beneath them only a little, in rhythm with the gentle swell of the silvery gulf waters. The cheerful twiddling of their music drifting across the fresh salt air made the men on duty step lightly at their work, each tune setting the pace for a shipboard task.
Colin was enjoying himself immensely on this voyage. The only way it could have possibly been better was if he were not bound to leave behind at Dragon Bay the new friends he had made, and the occupation he was learning to love. For the first time since he’d sung a song in his little-boy soprano, or used his aunt’s clay pots as a drum, he had discovered something that he was good at, something that came naturally to him. He had fully expected to disappoint the sailors he’d met at the waterfront tavern. He thought that when they were all sober, they’d see that he was no good at sailing, had had no experience. He had been sure he’d be unable to do anything properly. Although he had told them he knew nothing of sailing, he was sure they at least expected him to be able to do unskilled manual work on shipboard without falling over into the sea or becoming ill—and to his surprise, he discovered that he was. And not only that, he did what was required quickly and well, and didn’t need to be told twice. If not for his promises to help Zorah and Maggie, nothing would have made him happier than to stay there, learn to be a sailor, and specialize in songs of the sea.
Instead, he was sitting with Neddy now, sharing songs instead of adventures on foreign shores. He was due to leave them on the morrow, when the Snake’s Bane docked at Dragon Bay, delivering the last kegs of molasses and ale, the last bolts of linen, and the last of the metal farming implements imported from abroad. For over a week now the Bane had been making similar stops at the little towns and settlements that punctuated the arms, legs, nooks, and crannies of the Gulf of Gremlins like suckers on an octopus’s tentacles.
“Land ho!” the lookout cried.
“Ah, let’s see now. Must be the first of the Dragon Isles,” said Neddy, rising to his feet and unfolding the spyglass that hung around his neck. Colin had never seen such a wonderful thing, unless it was Sybil Brown’s crystal. Neddy could see almost as far as the lookout, who carried a similar object. The glasses were made, he had been told, by foreign wizards, and cost nearly as much as the ship’s entire cargo. Neddy had implied he had not had to pay the full exorbitant amount for his.
“May I see?” Colin asked. Pinchpurse held it up to him and, awkwardly, he hunched down to peer into it over the boson’s shoulder. At length he was able to spy the rough rock silhouetted against the sea and twilight.
“What d’ye see, lad?” joked one of the men who had been at the tavern in Queenston. “Was the lookout right or no?”
“Right enough, Liam,” Colin grinned back.
“Then we’re almost done paddling about in the bath, and it’s time to go for the open sea. One more stop and we’re seamen again! Calls for a celebration, if you ask me.”
“Journeyman Minstrel Apprentice Seaman Songsmith here and I might just be able to oblige you, boys!” cried Neddy, blowing a note on his hornpipe.
What they lacked in wine and women they made up for in song. Some of those who had been sleeping below decks came up to join them, and the captain emerged from his chartroom to demonstrate his dance style to Neddy’s hornpipe. The lookout’s relief stood his watch a bit early, as the man sighted the first island was also the concertina player. Ching came up from the galley, where he had been serving as ship’s cat, switching his tail at first as though annoyed to be awakened from his catnap. He soon settled, purring, at Colin’s feet as the minstrel and his fiddle led the crewmen in one song after another.
Looking out across the water, Colin watched the waves roll as he sang, and noticed a few fine fingers of mist were beginning to drift across the surface, and also that the island they had sighted with the glass was now quite visible to the naked eye.
As he sang the second chorus, he thought they must be either drifting slowly into a cloud hanging low on the water, or else the mist was advancing, a great deal more of it than he’d first thought.
By the twelfth verse of the song, the mist had become a fog, sending soft smoky tendrils dancing up the hull and onto the deck, caressing men and mast alike until, by the end of the song, Colin could scarcely see Neddy, seated right beside him. Also, Neddy wasn’t playing or singing anymore. Neither was anyone else. Colin had finished the chorus solo. No one now suggested another, or said anything, or moved, for that matter.
After a few minutes of listening to his own breathing and watching the mist, Colin asked, “Unusual weather we’re having, isn’t it, mates?”
“Quiet, boy,” said Ned. “We’re listening.”
“Listening to what?” He strained his own excellent ear, and perhaps it was from wanting to hear what they did, but he thought he just might be catching something…
“To her, of course.”
“Her who? Where?”
Neddy turned to him viciously. “Are you going to shut your gob, or must I shut it for you?” Colin suddenly remembered that the older man had once been a pirate and gulped, flushing hotly. Whatever they were hearing, he certainly couldn’t make it…
He heard her then, at first softly, and then as her voice grew louder and he recognized it, his pulse began to race with hope. Maggie! The same husky alto, singing so low he had to exert his full attention to make out the words.
And everyone was listening. He really had never thought her voice all that fine, himself, but as the mist swirled and parted and joined and parted again in flying diaphanous banners, he cou
ld see the other men, still where they should be working, spellbound gray-blurred ghosts listening so intently that even the steersman had abandoned the steering, leaning over the wheel, ears straining.
“How sweet she sings!” whispered Neddy.
“Ah, there never was one to sing sweeter,” sighed the second officer.
“I’d no idea you all knew her,” Colin said with amazement. “You certainly didn’t mention it when I was telling you about her.”
“Quiet! Can’t you hear Mother singing me favorite nursery rhyme?”
The conversation was violently shushed by the rest of the crew.
Colin’s curiosity finally was able to overpower his desire to hear the song with which Maggie called to him. “Your MOTHER? She’s young enough to be your grandchild!” They were about to pitch him overboard when he finally made out the words Maggie sang. It was a tender love song, personally addressed to him.
“There’s something funny going on here, lads,” he said, and for the first time realized how dangerous their posture was to them all. Snatching up his fiddle, he ducked around them and made for the rigging, climbing high enough that they would be unable to interfere with him right away. Maggie’s voice continued to cajole in a tone more alluring than even her dance for the gypsy had been.
Song of Sorcery Page 20
