From a High Tower (39 page)

“Short story. He figgered I was a-gonna challenge him to a magic-fight once he figgered out I wasn't you . . .” Cody groaned as they lifted him to his feet. “Dammit, I think he cracked m'ribs. Anyways, instead, I jest waded straight on inter him. We pounded on each other fer a while, then we heerd that witch screamin' an' he reared back, an' I reckoned I was about t'get blasted, so I did th' on'y thing I could think of. I set m'hands on fire.” He shook his head. “What I didn' know was that there coat've his was oilcloth over wool. Reckon he thought he was purdy smart, bein' all waterproof in that storm. Turned out that weren't such a good ideer. He went up like a bonfire. Damndest thing I ever did see.”

“You go ahead of me for a moment,” Rosa ordered, looking at the forest. “I will see to cleaning up the bodies. I would rather they didn't remain here for more than another hour or so. Don't worry, it won't take me more than a few minutes to arrange. But those bodies are still reservoirs of dark magic, and we need to have them gone. Such things can spawn vengeful ghosts or turn innocent Elementals to the bad.”

Giselle started to ask how Rosa intended to do that . . . then saw the look on her face, and decided not to ask. At least, not then. Maybe not ever.

The three of them headed back to the abbey, with Cody leaning on Fox, and all of them stopping when he needed to catch his breath. Rosa caught up with them when they were almost there, and told them with a curt nod that whatever it was she was doing about the bodies had been taken care of.

Giselle noticed that the spot where the mound of snow had been building—which presumably would have become the Frost Giant—had collapsed in on itself, forming a sort of concave dish.
And there goes my last worry.

They found Kellermann waiting anxiously for them at the first floor window he and the other two men had gone out of. With much groaning and cursing, they got Cody inside, and there they left him with Giselle while they got a bench to carry him on, and a couple of the cowboys to do the carrying. Or rather, Fox and Rosa went to get the help. Kellermann vanished to get rid of his rather embarrassing “disguise.”

Giselle fervently blessed Elfrida's handiwork, as the two who arrived were entirely incurious about how Cody had managed to get damaged. He stammered something about one of the broncos acting up, and they just accepted it without asking why he was wearing a strange cloak and Giselle's braids around his neck. The skirt was long gone, probably in the fight, but Giselle counted that a small cost.

Elfrida managed to get the sheets off them relatively intact, then went to work on Cody. “I'm glad your healing skills are better than mine,” Rosa said, ruefully, as she divested herself of some of her layers of clothing. Unlike Giselle, she hadn't needed to borrow any. Evidently she used men's clothing quite often when she was hunting.

“That's all right, dearie. I wouldn't be of much use hunting down werewolves,” Elfrida said, quite as if she dealt with battles like the one they had just been through every day. “Now, if you could just lend me a nice bit of magic, I think we can have this young fellow all right in very little time.”

Giselle stripped off most of what she was wearing—it had been borrowed from Kellermann, who gathered it up and took it back to his quarters. That left her in one of her flannel shirts and the suede trousers she wore under her buckskin skirt She didn't feel at all right about leaving Cody alone, and evidently neither did Fox, so they both stayed while Elfrida and Rosa worked on him, magically and physically. When he was stripped to the waist, it was evident he had taken a wicked beating; he was black and blue from his neck to his stomach.

“I take back everything uncomplimentary I ever said about you, Captain,” Rosa said, on seeing that. “I don't know too many men who could have taken the punishment you just did and still finished the fight.”

“Pshaw!” Cody said, but behind his bruises, he looked pleased. “Point is, we each did what we was supposed to. An' it all ended all right.”

When Elfrida pronounced him “as fit as he was going to be without plenty of rest,” she released him to go “straight to bed, and no stopping on the way,” and handed Fox a bottle of brandy with instructions to “Put him into bed, put his hat on the bedpost, and have him drink until he sees two hats.”

On hearing that, Cody turned, took the old woman's face in both his hands, and gave her a hearty kiss right on the lips. “Frida, you are my kind of woman! Iffen I thought you'd migrate back to Texas with me, I'd marry ya here an' now!”

Elfrida went scarlet, and laughed, sounding pleased. “You wicked boy! You could never keep up with me! I've buried two husbands, and I've no patience for training up a third! Now get along to bed with you, and I'll be up with food. If the brandy doesn't put you to sleep, my good pancakes will!”

Cody was able to travel more or less under his own power now, though he limped heavily and kept one hand pressed to his bandaged side. Kellermann met them at the door to his rooms—once Mother's—and he and Fox put him to bed, then allowed the two women in.

Giselle sighed, as she settled down in “her” old chair at Mother's hearth—much improved with one of those stoves. “I just realized how incredibly
stupid
this all was.”

“How so?” Rosa asked, as Elfrida appeared with a tray of beautiful potato pancakes and applesauce. She set the tray down on Cody's lap, and he put his tumbler of brandy down beside the food, looking well pleased with himself.

“This all began because Johann and his brother heard some rumor about Mother's treasure, back when I was younger.” Giselle shook her head. “If they hadn't believed such a stupid story, they'd never have come here in the first place, and none of this ever would have happened.”

“Since we rid the world of four very nasty characters, I can't say I'm terribly displeased with the outcome,” Rosa pointed out, dryly. “Not to mention getting the pleasure of your company.
And
you would not have been there to help Captain Cody with the Wild West Show! But what do you mean, she didn't have any treasure? She had enough money to purchase and
abandon
that house where she lured your father. And she had enough money to support the two of you quite comfortably while she was alive. She was an Earth Master with extensive contacts with dwarves. Most of them have ways of winkling gold or gems out of the little fellows.”

“Well,
I
never found any, and neither did Joachim, and we both looked,” Giselle protested. “Not a copper coin or a—”

She stopped short at the odd expression on Rosa's face. “What?”

“That chest next to the chair you're sitting on,” Rosa said. “What used to be in it?”

Giselle glanced at the old, beautifully carved chest of dark wood, decorated in typical Schwarzwald ornamentation. “Just my hair. Whenever mother cut it off, she'd put the braids in there. Why?”

“Because . . . when I went to pay the dwarves for their work on the abbey, the Head Workman told me that ‘he'd taken the pay already from the usual place' and that ‘he'd left payment for the surplus where I'd expect it.' I never looked in that chest until I went to move my things out of the room to make way for Cody. Then, it was empty.”

Now Giselle was truly puzzled. “You mean, he took the payment in my
hair?
But—”

“Hush,” said Rosa, and got up from her seat to run her hands around the fireplace surrounding the iron stove. And when she got to the hearthstone, she exclaimed “Aha!”

Her hands glowed a golden yellow for a moment. Then the crack around the hearthstone glowed an answering yellow.

And the hearthstone lifted up, all by itself, and shifted to one side. And there, lying in the cavity, was a stout iron box.

“I don't suppose you have a key to this, do you?” Rosa asked, as Giselle stared in astonishment.

“Mother didn't leave many keys to things, and I think they're all on the ring in my room,” she replied, and without waiting for an answer, she ran to the tower and up to her room. There in a keepsake box on her mantelpiece was the key ring Mother had always worn on her belt. Giselle took it and ran back down, handing it wordlessly to Rosa as the men watched in astonishment.

Or rather, Fox and Kellermann watched in astonishment. Cody was already well on the way to seeing two hats, and just blinked in amusement.

There was only one key on it small enough to fit the lock in the top of the strongbox. Rosa put it in, and then paused.

“I think you should be the one to open this,” she said. “If there is anything in there, your Mother left it to you. There might not be anything but air—but perhaps there will be a keepsake or—something.”

At this point Giselle was quite past any expectations of
anything.
She hadn't expected them to get off so lightly in this fight, she hadn't expected to get off
at all
for using her powers to take down Johann. So, without really thinking much of anything, except that perhaps Mother had some letters or special books in there, she knelt down beside Rosa, turned the key and lifted the lid.

And found her breath entirely taken away. “Oh dear Virgin Mother,” breathed Kellermann. Rosa could only gasp. And even Fox's eyes had gone big and round.

“What?” demanded Cody.
“What? What is it?”

Rosa and Giselle moved aside so he could see.

“Jumpin' Jehova!”
Cody gasped.
“Gold!”

There was . . . a lot of gold. And a lot of silver too. The strongbox was almost full. If one didn't know any better, one would have been
certain
these were genuine
thalers
and
goldmarks,
from the proper German mints. But they did know better, of course. These were dwarven counterfeits, made so that their bearers could easily spend dwarven silver and gold. They were absolutely the proper weight and the proper value of precious metal, and every one had been stamped with a perfect copy of the actual mold, probably taken from brand new coins; the dwarves never did anything having to do with gold and silver shoddily. They were meticulous craftsmen. But the only “mint” these coins had ever seen were . . . well, wherever it was that dwarves had their forges and workshops.

“How?” Giselle said, finally.
“Why?”

Rosa sucked on her lower lip. “Well, I would have to guess, but I think I'm right. Your Mother had bargains with the dwarves as many Earth Masters do, but before she brought
you
here, her bargains were nothing special. Very likely she supplied them with exceptional vegetables, and probably amazing cheese and butter, all things that dwarves do not make and cannot get enough of. The bargain was good enough to purchase an old house in a bad neighborhood and abandon it, certainly. But nothing like this. No, I think that bargain changed entirely after you came to live with her, and your hair started to grow.”

Giselle wondered if she had gone mad. “What has my hair got to do with this?” she demanded.

Rosa chuckled. “Giselle . . . where, and how, is a dwarf, who is wholly and completely of Earth, going to get his hands on something so full of Air Magic as your hair? You told me yourself: sylphs and pixies play in it, all the Air Elementals love to touch it. It's as imbued with Air Magic as anything material
can
be! She'd put the cut hair in that chest, call them when she needed money, and they'd leave payment in here. That's what that dwarf meant. He'd taken their payment for all the construction they did on the abbey in the hair that had built up in that chest over the years, and left what he considered to be proper overpayment in gold and silver.”

Giselle's mouth formed a silent “o.” She thought about that, about how careful Mother had been when she cut it, and how the sylphs had been like cats in catnip when she burned the bits in the
vardo.
“But—what would they
use
it for?” she asked.

“Probably the strings for stringed instruments,” Rosa replied, after a long moment of thought. “The dwarves are well known for their wonderful instruments, but using your hair for strings would make every instrument into a masterwork. Possibly bowstrings. Wrap it with real beaten gold and make embroidery thread? There are probably hundreds of things I can't think of because I'm not a dwarf.” She closed the lid on the strongbox, because they were one and all staring at the bounty. Giselle felt as if the closing of the lid woke her from what had almost become a spell of avarice.

Now she could think again, instead of stare.

“Well,” Rosa continued, still kneeling, and laying her hands in her lap. “You're rich. The treasure was real, after all. What are you going to do with it?”

All manner of ridiculous ideas flew through her head. But one stayed, lodged, and became a conviction. There was one wrong that had not yet been put right, and she actually had the power to do that.