The Ozark trilogy (3 page)

The Twelve Families had seen, on Old Earth, what the centralization of a government could mean. They had seen war and waste and wickedness beyond description, though the descriptions handed down to us were enough to this day to keep children in Granny Schools awake in the long nights of winter, shivering more with nightmare than with the cold. Twelve Kingdoms, we had. And at least four of them ready to leap up every time a dirty puddle appeared on a street corner and shout that this was but the first sign, the first step, toward the wallowing in degradation that came when the individual allowed theirselves to be
swallowed up
(they always said “swallowed up,” playing on the hatred every Ozarker had for being closed in on any side, much less
all
of them) by a central government ... And several more were in honesty uncommitted, ready to move either way.

I ran them by in my mind, one by one. Castle Purdy, Castle Guthrie, Castle Parson, Castle Traveller—dead set against the Confederation and anxious to grab any opportunity to tear the poor frail thing apart and go to isolation for everything but trade and marriage. Castles Smith, Airy, Clark, and McDaniels, and Castles Lewis and Motley of Mizzurah, all with us—but perhaps only Castle Airy really ready, or able, to put any
strength
behind us. It was hard to know. When the Confederation met at Castle Brightwater, one month now in every four—to the bitter complaints of Purdy, Guthrie, Parson, and Traveller about the expense and vile waste and the frivolousness of it all—those six voted very carefully indeed. That is, when we could manage to bring anything to a vote. Only Castles Airy and Lewis had ever made a move that went three points past neutrality, and that rarely. As for Castle Wommack, who knew where they stood? One delegate they sent to the meetings, grudgingly, against the other Castles’ delegations of four each and full staff; and the Wommack delegate came without so much as a secretary or Attendant, and spent most of his time abstaining. We were seven to five for the Confederation—maybe. Maybe we were but two against ten, with six of the ten playing lip service but ready to bolt at the first sign of anything that smelled like real conflict.

My mother made a rare concession: she addressed me by term of kinship.

“Daughter,” she said, making me raise my eyebrows at the unexpected mode of address, “what do you think we ought to do?”

“Ask Jubal,” said foolish Emmalyn, and I suppose Patience kicked her, under the table. Patience always sat next to Emmalyn for that specific purpose. Ask Jubal, indeed.

“
Think
now before you speak,” said Ruth of Motley. “It won’t do to answer this carelessly and get caught out, Responsible. You give it careful thought.” She had finally forgotten about her embroidery and joined us, and I was glad of it.

“I think,” I said slowly, “that things are not so far out of hand that they cannot be stopped. Vine of Motley is crying herself into hiccups up in the guestchambers at this very moment, and no doubt feels herself mighty abused, but that baby is safer where he is than in her arms. Signs and mirrors and milk make no national catastrophe, and Mules that behave like they’d been drinking bad whiskey are not yet a disaster. The point is to stop it
now
, before it goes one step further. The next step might not be mischief.”

“What is called for,” said my grandmother; nodding her head, “is a show of competence; that would serve the purpose. Something that would demonstrate that the Brightwaters are capable of keeping the delegations, and all their kin, and all their staffs, safe here for the Jubilee.”

“I sometimes wonder if it’s worth it,” sighed Donald Patrick. “I sometimes think it might be best to let them go on and dissolve the Confederation and all
be
boones if that’s their determined mind! The energy we put into all this, the
time
, the
money
... Do you know what Brightwater spent in food and drink alone at the last quarterly meeting?”

“Donald Patrick Brightwater,” said Ruth of Motley in a voice like the back of a hand, “you sound like a Purdy.”

“I beg your pardon, Mother,” said my uncle. “I hadn’t any intention of doing so.”

Strictly speaking, it was not fair for him to be rebuked. As the ordinary citizen was ignorant of what kept the Mules flying in the absence even of
wings
, so was Donald Patrick ignorant of the peril every Ozarker faced if we could not establish once and for all a central government that could respond, and respond with speed, in an emergency. The decision to maintain that ignorance had been made deliberately, and for excellent reasons, hundreds of years ago, when first the menace of the Out-Cabal had been discovered by our Magicians. And that decision would stand, for so long as it was possible, and for so long as disputations in political science, and intercontinental philosophy, and planetary ecology, and the formidable theory of magic, could be substituted for a truth it had been sworn our people would never have to learn.

“First,” I said quickly, “there’s finding out where this attack is coming from. That’s the easy part.”

My mother crossed her long white hands over her breasts to indicate her shock and informed us that
first
we had to get that baby down out of that tree.

“Mother, dear Mother,” I said, “you know that’s not so— that baby is all right. Unlike the rest of us, that baby is protected from every known danger this planet can muster up. Not so much as a bacterium can get through that bubble to harm Terrence Merryweather McDaniels, and he will be tended more carefully there than a king’s son.”

It was only a figure of speech; there were no kings in our kingdoms and never had been, and therefore no king’s sons. When First Granny had stood on Ozark for the first time, her feet to solid ground after all those weary years on The Ship, she had looked around her; drawn a long breath, and said, “Well, the Kingdom’s come at last, praise be!” and we’d had “kingdoms” ever since for that reason alone. But it had the necessary effect. Thorn of Guthrie made a pretense of thinking it over, but she knew I was right, and she nodded her lovely head and agreed with me that the baby probably represented the least of our problems. Except insofar as it stood for an insult to our Family and our faith, of course (and it was at that point that I realized the Solemn Service had been left unfinished).

“I say call in the Magicians of Rank, then,” said Jubal Brooks, “and have them to find out which one of our eleven loving groups of kindred has set itself to bring the Confederation down about our heads.
Literally
about our heads.”

“No,” I told him, hoping he was right that it was only one. “No, Jubal Brooks, that’s all wrong. It would maybe be
fastest
, depending on the strength and number of the Magicians ranged against ours, but it’s all wrong as to
form
.”

“I don’t see it,” he said.

“A symbol,” said Ruth of Motley, spelling it all out for him, “is best answered by a symbol. Not by a ... meat cleaver.”

“And what symbol do we propose to offer up for this motley collection—no offense meant. Mother—of shenanigans? Cross our hearts and spit in the ocean under a full moon?”

“A Quest, I expect, Jubal,” I said, straight out. I had been thinking while they were talking, and level for level, that seemed right to me. And the women nodded all around the table.

“In this day and age?” sputtered Donald Patrick, and threw up his hands. “Do you realize the antiquated set of hidebound conditions that go with mounting up a
Quest
? Responsible, you can’t be serious about this.”

“Well, it
is
fitting,” said his mother saving me the trouble. “As Responsible and Patience have pointed out, the entire campaign against us to this- time has been a single symbol, what would be referred to in classical terms as a Challenge. OUR MAGIC IS BETTER THAN YOUR MAGIC, you see. No harm has been done, where obviously it
could
have been, had they been so minded. Very well, then—for an old-fashioned Challenge we shall offer an old-fashioned Quest. It is appropriate; it has the right ring to it.”

“Foof.” said Donald Patrick. “It’s absurd.”

“Indeed it is,” I agreed, “and that’s the whole point.”

“We might should ignore the whole thing,” he said. “For all we know.”

“We do, and there will be no Grand Jubilee of the Confederation of Continents of Ozark, Donald Patrick Brightwater—and yes, I
do
know, down to the penny, what all this has been costing us. Nor will we have another
meeting
of the Confederation, I daresay, for a very long time. Whoever is doing this, they would be
delighted
to have us ignore it all, and everybody snickering behind their hands at us for cowards and weaklings ... and it is in the hope that we will be fools enough to do that that they’ve kept every move to pestering only and not gone forward to injury. If they can bring us down for two cents, why spend two dollars?” I was completely out of breath.

“They have overplayed their hand,” said Patience, “with this matter of the McDaniels baby.”

“I believe so,” I said. “It was a mistake of judgment. They should of kidnapped one of Jubal’s Mules instead.”

“And hung it in a cedar tree? In a life-support bubble?” Her brown eyes dancing. Patience of Clark was clearly trying not to imagine Jubal’s favorite Mule being cleaned and fed and curried up in the cedar tree; and losing the battle.

“It would of been safer,” I said. “
I
might of been busy enough not to take it for anything more than a prank; and
they
would of had still more time to make nuisances of themselves—and undercut the confidence in our security staff— before the Jubilee.”

“Responsible, that’s but eleven weeks away!” Patience broke in, the laughter in her eyes fading. “That’s mighty little time.”

“All the more reason to talk less and do more,” I said. “Here’s what I propose.”

I would take our best Mule, from Brightwater’s champion line, called Sterling and deserving of her name. I would make a brief and obvious fuss around the city in the way of putting together suitable outfitting for a journey of a special kind. I would let the word of the Quest be “leaked” to the comset networks. And then, I would do each Castle in turn, staying only just long enough at each to make the point that had to be made. Responsible of Brightwater; touring the Castles on a Quest after the source of magic put to mischief and to wickedness—just the thing.
Just
the thing!

“Even Tinaseeh?” asked Jubal dubiously.

“Even Tinaseeh. Certainly.”

“It’s a nine-day flight by Mule from here to Tinaseeh,” he said. “At least. And you do a Quest, you do it by foot or by Mule, Responsible, no getting out of
that
. Nine days, just that one leg of the trip.”

“As the crow flies,” I acknowledged. Not that it would of taken
me
nine days, but there was no reason to let Jubal Brooks know more than he needed to know. “I will not head straight for Tinaseeh across the Oceans of Remembrances and of Storms, dear Uncle. I am touring the Twelve Kingdoms on solemn Quest, please remember. First I will go to Castle McDaniels. Then a short flight to Arkansaw, a mere hop across the channel to Mizzurah, on over to Kintucky, and then—and
only
then—to Tinaseeh. Then Oklahomah, quick around
it
, and back home.”

“But, my dear
niece
,” he said—Jubal Brooks was stubborn, grant him that—”though it’s but one day from Kintucky’s southernmost coast to the coast of Tinaseeh, that one day will set you down not at Castle Traveller but on the edge of the largest Wilderness Lands on Ozark. Larger than the entire land area of this continent, for example; I strongly doubt you’ll do the trip over
that
in less than three days. And you’d
still
have two days ahead of you before you reached the Castle gates!”

My grandmother stepped in then; the man was getting above himself, but tact, of course, was necessary. Men are a great deal of trouble, I must say.

“Jubal Brooks,” she said, firmly but courteously, “Responsible was properly named. I suggest we do her the courtesy of trusting her in this.”

“Distances,” he began—the man was ranting!—”are distances. Name or no name—”

We might of wasted a lot more time on that kind of thing, if there hadn’t of been a knock on the door just as he was hitting his stride. For all that we were in Council, we could spare time to answer the door; and we did. Nobody was there, of course, leading Emmalyn to look puzzled and Patience to look innocent, but it served its purpose.

I dismissed Council with thanks, letting Jubal run down naturally as we all filed out, paid a visit to the guestchambers only to be told that the baby’s parents had gone with full ceremonial tent to camp in the bed of needles beneath their son and her taking along the infant daughter of a servingmaid to see to the problem of Vine of Motley’s milk—a practical solution, if a bit hard on the servingmaid—and then I ran for the stables.

So far as I was concerned, we were late already,

SO CLOSE TO HOME I didn’t dare take chances, and so I let my Mule fool about and waste hours in the air on the first stage of my journey, to Castle McDaniels. I wore an elaborate gown of emerald green; under it I had on flared trousers of a deeper green, tucked into trim high boots of scarlet leather with silver bells about the bootcuffs and silver spurs all cunningly worked. And I had over
that
a tight-laced corselet of black velvet embroidered in gold and silver, and it was all topped with a hooded traveling cloak of six layers black velvet quilted together with silver thread in a pattern of wild roses and star-in- the-sky-vine and friendly ivy. My scarlet gloves matched my boots and my riding crop matched my spurs, and around my throat on a golden chain was a talisman almost not fit for the sight of decent people, except that decent people could be counted on not to know what it meant and anybody that knew what it meant would sure not mention it. All in all it was a purely disgusting sight. When I flew I preferred honest denims, and over them a cloak of brown wool. And spurs and riding crop to fly a Mule were about as sensible as four wheels and a clutch to sail a ship—but none of that was relevant.