From a High Tower (20 page)

As they stood in the doorway, one of the girls unloaded her tray at a table and turned toward them. “You're expected!” she said cheerfully. “Come this way!”

She moved off as Captain Cody eyed her swaying hips with approval. Then he seemed to come to himself and started off after her. Giselle rolled her eyes and followed, the others trailing after her.

The girl brought them to a private room, just off the main one; the door to this room was standing wide open. Like the main room, the walls were decorated with paintings of scrollwork and hunters and their game. It was just big enough to hold a table and benches, and Rosamund was waiting there for them, seated at the end of the table, with food and drink in front of her.

So were four more beer steins, two pitchers of beer, four place settings, and big platters of steaming sausages, potatoes, bread, butter, cheese, and kraut. The aromas made Giselle's mouth water; they'd had to leave without eating, and she had been hoping that since they were meeting at the inn, she might be able to get a sausage or two.

“I supposed you might have to hurry off without getting any dinner, so I took the liberty of ordering you some,” Rosamund said. She gestured at the food and drink. “Close the door behind you, sit, and eat. We have plenty of time for talk.”

Captain Cody did not hesitate for a moment, and as Kellermann closed the door he moved right along the table. He sat down at Rosamund's right hand as Giselle sat at her left, took a fork, and stabbed some bratwurst, transferring them to his plate. The other two sat down, and Giselle got sausage, potatoes, kraut and rye bread, unspeakably happy to be partaking of a meal that was homey and familiar.

“So,” Rosamund said, and suddenly switched to English. “First of all, let's conduct our discussion in
your
language. Just in case someone is listening. It would be very unlikely for anyone else in this inn to know it.”

“That is a wise precaution,” Giselle replied in the same tongue. She did not ask
how
Rosamund knew English; that was fairly self-explanatory. Unlike Leading Fox, Rosamund would have had no qualms whatsoever about getting one of her Elementals to extract a new tongue from Giselle, Fox, or even Captain Cody.

After all, she was a Hunt Master. . . .

“And while you are eating, you can tell me about yourselves,” she continued. And her eyes glinted. “Everything, if you please.”

But Captain Cody only laughed. “Sure thing, sheriff,” he said genially. He looked around the table, cut off a big bite of sausage and ate it, then took a pull from his beer. “Reckon I'll go first.”

“No, I will, I have less to tell,” said Kellermann. “You all eat, please.”

Well, that completely suited Giselle, who contentedly dug into the sausage and kraut and spicy mustard to her heart's content.

“I am liking this food and drink,” Fox said to her quietly in Pawnee. “This beer seems stronger. Should I be wary of the drink?”

“Somewhat,” Giselle cautioned, remembering from Karl May books that Indians had problems with alcohol. Evidently that part was true. “It is not as strong as . . .” She searched for the word. “. . . the water that tastes bitter and burns. But enough will act upon a man like loco weed upon a horse.”

“I shall take care, then.” He nodded, and had more sausage. “But this is most excellent, as are the sour strings. They are like the white man's
pickles.
Very good.”

“Sauerkraut,” she said, and turned her attention to Rosamund.

The Hunt Master did not betray anything as she listened to the others give their stories and summarize their abilities. Well . . . all but Fox, who went last.

The Indian sighed with content, and put down his knife and fork before taking up the narrative. “I am a Medicine Chief. I believe that is the same as your
Elemental Master.
However, my spirit creatures are not the same as yours. Mine are
nahurac
of the Air, but they are Spirit Animals like unto the natural ones.” He paused a moment. “I have had power of all of the
nahurac,
but the ones that speak most to me, and grant me the greatest power, are those of the Air, the birds and the insects.”

“Huh,” Rosamund said, surprised. “I don't believe I have ever seen that. Well, go on.”

“Some I can still summon in this land of yours. Some I cannot. Some I have not tried. Otherwise, I seem to be able to control the forces of the Air itself, as if I was at home.” He shrugged. “And that is all I can say.”

“It's enough, thank you, Leading Fox.” Rosamund took time for a drink of her beer. “Well, you all understand that you are entering an area that is under the protection of the Brotherhood of the Foresters. What you do
not
understand, I suspect, is why it is under our protection.”

“Well, 'cause you're the sheriff,” Cody said, as if that was obvious. “You're the law in these parts.”

“No,” Rosamund said sternly. “It is because this part of the world has seen four thousand years of continuous magic use . . . and I would say that at least half of that was magic in use by bad people. There are things living here. Bad things. Old things that were once gods, and half of those were gods of evil. There are pockets of bad magic. Elementals that, themselves, are evil. This is an ancient forest, it holds many things, and it is easy for them to hide here. Just by
being
here, you might attract them. Just by doing the wrong thing in the wrong place, you can awaken things that are sleeping. There are thousands of years of blood magic in this land. At least half of that was done purely for the purposes of raising power to harm and destroy, and I do not believe I need to tell you what that means . . .”

Giselle swallowed. Mother had warned her about such things. The forest around the abbey was full of dangerous creatures, made more dangerous by the practice of evil and blood magic in the distant past. Mother had speculated that this might have been why the abbey had been established there in the first place, as a bastion of light against the darkness.

The others, Kellermann and Cody, at least, nodded. Fox looked thoughtful. She wondered what he was thinking. Kellermann sat back in his chair and fired up a pipe; Cody poured himself another beer.

The serving girl came in then, and asked if they needed anything else. Rosamund paid for their feast and waited while she cleared things away, leaving behind only the beer.

“So, here is the situation I find myself in,” Rosamund continued, when she had gone. “I'm satisfied that your intentions are good, but intentions are just not enough to safeguard you or anyone else in the Schwarzwald. The problem that I have is, can I let you go on, deeper into the Schwarzwald without supervision, when you have no idea what you are likely to encounter? Or, more importantly, stir up?”

They all looked at each other, nonplussed. “We haven't had any trouble so far,” Cody finally pointed out. “None of us have done much magic, other than that odd bit of Air stuff that Fox and Ellie do, an' that's only in the shows.”

Hmm, that's a lie, Cody, and it's not a good idea to lie when you are a magician,
Giselle thought, her brows creasing.
You know very well that all of us use our magic all the time. What's more, she's a Master, so she knows it too.

“Anyways, I don' see any reason why anybody needs t'fret 'bout us,” Cody continued. “We'll jest go on our tour, an' take care not t'rile anything up, an' that'll be fine.”

Rosamund frowned at him. “Just from my point of view, I don't think that is a good idea. I have only your word for it that what you do will have no effect on what's already here.” She gave Cody a stern look, and to Giselle's feeling of satisfaction, she saw Cody cringe just a little. “Moreover,
you
have no way of predicting what might decide to come at you, regardless of how careful you are. So I have a plan. I am coming with you.”

Giselle blinked.
Well, that's certainly . . . unexpected.
The Captain stared. Kellermann shook his head, and Fox chuckled under his breath.

She wasn't at all displeased by this demand. She already liked Rosamund, and she missed the company of another female who was also her countryman
and
a magician. And Rosamund might be able to teach her more about her own powers than Mother had been able to.

“This is a joke, right?” Cody said, after a moment.

“I have never been more serious,” the Hunt Master replied. “You might encounter nothing. But given how luck plays out . . . it is not that I am averse to having your rotting bodies discovered some time next spring. It is that I am averse to finding myself forced to call a Hunting Party together to clean up what you awoke. I greatly dislike having to clean up other people's disasters.” The look on her face should have warned Cody that she was not joking.

Evidently it did. “. . . oh,” Cody said, weakly. “Well . . . all right, I guess.”

“So you don't object?” Rosamund smiled. “Good. Because I wasn't going to give you any choice. Now . . . what choice of housing do you have?”

They all looked at Kellermann, who put his head in his hands and sighed. “Would you prefer a tent?” he asked. “Or a
vardo?”

Rosamund smiled broadly. “A
vardo
would be perfect, thank you.”

Rosamund turned up in the morning with two horses and cart. The handsome bay horse tied to the tail of the cart was hers; the other and the cart were borrowed. And the cart itself was laden with three heavy trunks.

Kellermann had a
vardo
cleaned out and waiting for her, parked next to Giselle's. It was not as nice as the one they had given Giselle, since this one had been stripped of the comforts that had made Giselle's
vardo
such a pleasure to move into, but it was clean and it had all the basic requirements of bed and storage built in. Cody had asked Giselle to help the Hunt Master move in.

“I dunno how she'll take t'this, seein' as this here is pretty bare,” he said, for the first time in Giselle's knowledge showing some signs of nervousness. “But it's about all we got, an' a tent wouldn' be much better.”

But the Hunt Master seemed pleased enough with what she found. “As soon as my gear is stowed, I'll go back into town and get whatever else I need,” she said, and winked at Giselle. “I have a Graf for a patron. I can afford a cushion or two and some sheets.”

Giselle bit back a surge of envy. On the one hand, if
she'd
had such an exalted and wealthy person to rely on, she'd still be snug at the abbey!
A Count. A Count for a patron. I wish I had such a thing . . .

On the other hand, she had the suspicion that, whatever good things Rosamund was getting from this patron, she was
earning
every bit of it. And perhaps . . .
from the little she said last night, I do not believe Fraulein Rosamund has much spare time. And her work sounds . . . rather dangerous.
“Well, you get yourself settled,” she replied. “The rest of us have two shows to put on.”

Rosamund waved Kellermann off, accepted her help, and began taking items out of the trunks, examining them, and putting them back to stow them in the under-bed compartment of her new
vardo
. After a glimpse into the wide variety of weaponry that was
in
that first trunk, Giselle no longer had any doubt that Rosamund had more than earned her position as a Hunt Master . . . and that this position was probably a
lot
more dangerous than she could guess.

And she made up her mind that the next time she sat down and talked seriously to Rosamund,
she
was going to be asking a great many questions.

“Do you . . . really need all of this?” she asked, surveying what looked like a full suit of leather
armor
,
a pair of swords, several daggers, a hand-crossbow, a coach gun, a pair of pistols, an axe, a mace, a morning star, and many boxes of ammunition.

“All at once?” Rosamund asked, picking up, counting, and replacing a box of quarrels for the crossbow. “Not generally. But you never know what you might need, and we are rather too far from a Brotherhood Lodge for me to be comfortable without having
everything
I might need with me.” She looked a little sideways at Giselle. “Something you should keep in mind is this: when you are fighting against something or someone that is powerful in magic, and they know that you, too, are a magician, more often than not they completely forget to guard themselves against a purely physical attack. That has saved my life, and more than once.”

The second trunk, to Giselle's relief, contained nothing more lethal than clothing. That all went straight into the under-bed storage, still in the trunk, after just a cursory look.

The third trunk held . . . well, some interesting things. Some of the sort of equipment that Giselle remembered Mother using for various bits of minor magic. Books, quite a few of them. Some items that were clearly personal. Something not unlike a mirror, except it seemed to be made of black glass. Some of that stayed in the trunk, and some got stowed in various drawers and on shelves about the
vardo
.