The Ozark trilogy (41 page)

“I intend to
make
them my business,” he told her. “I intend to find out why it is that a skimpy little female, not yet fifteen and homely to boot, is bowed to and scraped to like she is. I intend to find out what there is about her that is so special it sets her apart even for the Grannys-and I intend to find out why the Magicians of Rank speak of her the way they do.”

“Which is what way?”

“Like a pestilence,” said her brother. “Like a plague. Like an evil that goes far and beyond all other evils. That scrawny little piece! I intend to know why.”

“
Why
must you know that?” she shouted at him, no longer caring who heard; might could be if somebody heard they’d come along and object and he’d be ashamed to go prowling the halls in the middle of the night. “Even supposing it’s true-and I don’t see it, Lewis Motley, I don’t see it at all, I think it’s all your imagination and Responsible has just had the sorry luck to be born to a do-nothing mother and a scandalous sister and a pack of worthless men that leave everything to her to do, and have since she was old enough to talk-and the only difference between her and a couple dozen other girls I know is that the family as makes a slave of her happens to own the oldest Castle on Ozark instead of a poorscratch farm! But just suppose you’re right-why must you find out about it? What business is it of yours, that makes it your place to go prowling the Castle where we’re guests when decent people are in their beds; poking and prying-what gives you the right, Lewis Motley?”

“Ah, Jewel,” he laughed, “you can’t expect me to let a mystery like this go by me! I may never get another chance at it-I may well never get off Kintucky again, and Kintucky’s got not a single mystery to call its own. A
secret,
Jewel of Wommack, exists for but one reason-to be found out. And I’m off now to worry at this one.”

The heavy door closed behind him, but she wasn’t fooled; she knew him far too well. She let the minutes pass, let him stick his head back in and bid her a mocking goodnight with his apologies for forgetting, before she really let herself weep. He hadn’t caught her that way for over two years now, and she was proud of the record.

She looked up at the ceiling and found no answers written there, and announced to the Holy One that she had by the Twelve Gates and the Twelve Corners done her best, for all that she’d failed as usual, and then she lay down and cried herself to an exhausted sleep.

Lewis Motley was grateful to his sister in the long run; though he wouldn’t ever have admitted it to her, he found her a good deal superior to any Mule-or any female-he’d ever encountered, and he enjoyed her company even when she was at her most frantic. Jewel of Wommack was never dull, and there was no putting her down by any fair means; give her another year or two and she’d be a match for anybody, himself included. She had a way of finding the strands of an argument, laying out each one casual as if it were nothing at all-with all its subpropositions attached-and then tying the whole thing off, while everybody else was still muddling around in search of their opening remark. He admired that, if it did sometimes cause him inconvenience; and this time, with her futile protest, she had saved him a half hour’s boring wait at least. As it was, he’d no more than reached the narrow corridor running the length of the Castle, the one Responsible thought she used so discreetly, and found himself a narrow niche to hide in, when she came along. The timing couldn’t of been better.

She was wearing a long traveling cloak for which there could be no excuse in the warm May night if she’d nothing to hide, and she fairly flew along the corridor and out the door at the back of the Castle, with him right behind her. They crossed the Castle yard and took the path down to the stables, a parade of two; and he saw in the last fading light of Ozark’s three moons that she had a gathering basket over her arm. At one o’clock in the morning, whatever did she need with a gathering basket? He could feel himself warming to his task.

Not a Mule brayed as they came up to the stables, and that wasn’t natural. The Mules should of been raising the devil of a fuss. If not about her-he was willing to admit that it was just possible the Brightwater Mules had seen to it that all the others stabled there these nights knew who she was and that she had every right to be there, seeing as the fact they wouldn’t mindspeak a human didn’t mean they wouldn’t mindspeak one another-then about him. Any Mule worth the price its tail would fetch for a loomwarp would be braying to warn her he was behind her in the night, and the Mules in these stables were the very finest of their breeds. Something was all wrong, delightfully and fascinatingly wrong, in the Kingdom of Brightwater.

He waited by the stable corner, back pressed to the wall and only that smallest part of his face absolutely necessary to see her come out not hidden; and in three minutes flat there she was, without the awkward basket, mounted on a Mule with two sets of saddlebags over its back. He had barely time to throw himself bareback on one of the Mules that Brightwater had made available for its guests before hers had taken to the air and gone over the Castle wall into the darkness.

He followed her at a safe distance down a street where the flowering trees arched thick and met over the roadway, making it a tunnel of heavy scent-how the citizens of Brightwater stood it he couldn’t imagine, it was so sweet it turned his stomach. She was a tiny figure ahead of him, the street curving away down a hill and out of his sight, but her Mule had a white blaze to each ear, and he marked her by that. He’d have no trouble keeping up with her, and no chance of losing her, especially with the mysterious silence that had somehow been imposed on every living thing that could ordinarily have been expected to sound an alarm.

And then she was gone.

One moment she was there, the two little white spots in the darkness clear as two candles ahead of him, and the next there was no sign of her anywhere. Only the darkness and the absolute silence and the perfumed night air, and him alone like a fool and with no idea how to get back to the Castle. He’d been far too interested in where she was going to pay any attention to the route they’d followed.

But he’d learned something that would be worth the wandering around hunting he’d have to do to retrace his path. He went a bit farther, and he got down from the Mule and walked a few nooks and crannies to make certain sure, but he hadn’t really had any doubts. A Mule, a highclass and expensive and well-trained Mule, had a top speed of sixty miles an hour. But there was a way the Magicians of Rank had, called SNAPPING, that took those Mules from point to point as near instantly as made no difference.
Only
the Magicians of Rank could do that. The Grannys couldn’t. The plain Magicians couldn’t. Just the nine Magicians of Rank, and no other living creature.

Except Responsible of Brightwater. That she had SNAPPED somewhere, and would get herself back the same way, he had not the least doubt. Lying in her bed, feeling not just their bodies mingling but somehow their minds as well, so that he was her and felt her deep within him, and she was no longer a maiden on her way to being a woman but was
him,
taking her own maidenhead, he had known there was more to her than just the knot of political intrigue he’d suspected. And for the sake of knowing what it was he’d fought back the gorge that rose in him at the sensation of being female, at having the privacy of
his
body invaded-let alone the privacy of his mind! He felt cold sweat on his forehead, remembering; it had been like having something you would never put your hand to, something you’d carry out of an old barn wiggling at the end of a rake and at arm’s length, with your head turned aside, and having it moving in your head, somewhere back of your eyes . . . Lewis Motley shuddered, for all the warmth of the night air.

Oh, he was not surprised that she could SNAP a Mule. He would not of been that surprised if he’d seen her SNAP without the Mule beneath her; and the word “witch” came to him all unbidden. It would be a good question to ask the Grannys: what happens to a man that takes the virginity of a witch?

He turned his own Mule and took it back through Capital City, watching for the towers above the trees till he found the Castle, flew over the high stone wall and down to the stable door, and put the Mule away in its stall with a ration of grain for its trouble. Then he found himself a place to sit against the stable wall, hidden behind a rack of hanging bridles and gear, and settled in to wait for Responsible’s return. And still, not a Mule brayed.

It was almost three when she came back, and he had fallen asleep in spite of himself. Bad enough trying to stay awake all day while the men in the Hall droned on and on with their everlasting nonsense; to make a nightwatch of it as well, two nights in a row now, was beginning to tell on him. Jewel would of been pleased to know that, no doubt. What woke him was the sound Responsible made transferring something-a number of somethings, and it frustrated him mightily that he couldn’t see what they were-from the Mule’s saddlebags into the gathering basket.

The Mule was lathered, and she set the basket aside, hung the saddlebags on a hook in a corner of the stall, and began to rub it down . . . He could hear the rough hiss of the stable blanket against its hair. He sat bolt upright against the wall, doing his best not to breathe, and was pondering what to do next when she spoke up.

“Lewis Motley,” she said briskly, right along with the rubdown, “you’d be a good deal more comfortable in your bed than you are against that wall. We pride ourselves here at Brightwater on making our guests comfortable . . . but then we’ve never had to allow for them sneaking up and down the halls and through the stableyards and roaming all around the town half the night. Might could be our arrangements’ll need to be changed. Tea, maybe, served for the guest with a sudden urge to go riding after midnight. And a sofa in the stable instead of that hard floor.”

The idea that she’d known he was here all along, let him follow her down the garden path, and expected him to be waiting-the humiliation of it left him without a word to say.

“Well?” she said. “No answer, Lewis Motley? You Wommacks have curious manners, if I do say so myself, and I surely do. Only person I’ve ever known with more gall than you is my sister Troublesome, and she has her reasons. You have your reasons, young man?”

He cleared his throat, took a deep breath, and launched into an ordinarily reliable account of the manner in which he ached for her fair white body and was willing to spend any number of waking nights on hard floors for an opportunity to clasp it to him once again. It wasn’t his very best version, but it was the one that came quickest to his otherwise vacant mind, and she listened to it all the way through politely enough.

“Do tell,” she said, at the end of it, and he wasn’t all that surprised. It had had its uses with any number of young females, the ones Jewel expected him to worry about their crying and puling through their days and their nights. But it was not all that likely to prove effective with the daughter of Brightwater-he’d heard the
welcoming speech she gave the delegations, and noted the easy way she lulled them.

“Shall I try a different one?” he asked her. “I have an assortment.”

“Never mind,” she said. “Considering you spent most of last night sitting out in my hall and got nothing for your trouble, and then most of this one in the company of our Mules, I’ll settle for the piece you just recited. Now I suggest we go to bed, or you’ll be late back to your room and the whole Castle will be scandalized.”

He followed her warily, feeling no more lust for her than he’d felt for the borrowed Mule. It had been far too easy, and he’d gotten off much too lightly; he might have been led round the barn, but he wasn’t so addled he didn’t realize
that
. Not to mention that she must know he’d seen her disappearing act, seeing as how she knew everything else he’d done this past forty-eight hours or so. And he tread the halls softly, knowing they had barely an hour before the Castle staff roused to start this day. To say nothing of the Grannys, that felt anybody abed after five in the morning wasn’t worth spitting over, and tended to set even that hour back once they passed the century mark. Might could be that with the press of time and the number of curious circumstances he’d not be called upon to muster up even a pretense of that absent lust; which would be just as well.

But he needn’t have worried. Responsible of Brightwater had him naked in her arms with a speed that made him wonder if she was still using witchcraft, and in ten frantic minutes it was all over, tangle of bodies, tangle of minds, and all. He lay there drenched with sweat beside her, trying to get his breath, and complimented her on her efficiency.

“I’d of preferred a more leisurely course to things,” she said, “
if
I’d had my druthers, but there are times when every second must be made to count. This was one of those times.”

“Well, I thank you for your hospitality,” he said lamely; he hoped he had strength enough to get back down the corridors and up the stairs to his room. Maybe he could claim he’d broken a leg and buy himself a few hours’ sleep-for a few hours’ sleep, at that moment, he would of been more than willing to break a leg.

Tired, Lewis Motley Wommack?” she asked him.

“Oh, no,” he said. “I can hardly wait to get to the Independence Room and sit through today’s round of speeches on the cursed
Confed
-er
a
tion.”

“Law, how you lie!”

“Right enough. And I wish you’d tell me, before I rush off to my important affairs of the day, how you
do
that.”