A Wizard in a Feud

9

The outlaws all stared, astounded. Then Rowena found her voice. “Kerlew, are you sure?”

“Don’t pretend you’re sorry to see me go!” he said scornfully. “You’ve made it clear enough what you thought of me…” He looked around at the throng. “All of you.”

“But we didn’t know you were a seer,” Rowena protested. “Oh yes, that has made a difference!” Kerlew snapped. “Now instead of deriding me for cowardice, everyone shies away from me as though the Second Sight were catching! No, none of you will regret my going. That is…” he turned to Gar “…if you’ll have me for a road companion.”

“Gladly.” Gar’s thoughts hummed with plans for training the boy’s psi talents. “I warn you, though, I’m not the most congenial company.”

“Really! And I suppose you think I am?”

“No, I think I know you well enough for that.” Gar grinned. “Fetch your pack, then, and let’s be off.”

Kerlew brought his backpack out from behind him. “It’s here.”

“Are you sure of this?” Rowena frowned. “We may give you cold welcome here, Kerlew, but at least it’s shelter.”

“One companion will be enough.” Kerlew gave her a harsh smile. “After all, is there any clan we could meet that will know me for what I am? No, I think I’ll fare better as a trader.”

“Then we’ll send you with something to trade,” Rowena said with sudden resolution, and turned to her band. “Everyone bring one thing, some small object that will do for a peddler! We can’t let him go with empty hands!”

Fifteen minutes later, they strode into the forest. Kerlew carried a frame with two packs now, and the second held exquisite little carvings, polished semiprecious stones, and a few carefully wrapped porcelains.

“What songs do you know?” Gar asked.

“Songs?” Kerlew looked up in surprise. “Well, there’s one about a hunter who’s not very skilled.”

“That will do,” Gar said. “Let’s have it.”

Kerlew began to sing. After one verse, Gar recognized it and joined in on the chorus. Thus they strode off into the woodlands, roaring a song guaranteed to tell every outlaw and clan hunter for half a mile where they could find two wanderers.

Alea’s escort were in a holiday mood, laughing and joking as they strolled down the dirt road. They kept a sharp eye for an ambush, but they weren’t much worried; no clan would attack an escort party without asking their business. Seeing them prowl through the woods was one thing, but walking boldly down the road was entirely another; it generally meant that they were escorting someone, and anyone who would be escorted was sacrosanct. The Truce of Travel extended to return trips, too, so the Gregors weren’t terribly concerned about mistakes.

But they weren’t prepared for a single young woman, alone, who sat by the roadside on a boulder, watching and waiting. She rose as the party neared. Something about her struck Alea—perhaps the sense of stillness about her, or the intentness with which her gaze fastened on the traveler-woman. Alea held up a hand. “Let’s stop for a few minutes.”

Agreeably, the party halted. Hazel raised a palm in greeting. “Good day to you, Moira.”

“And to you, Hazel Gregor.” But the young woman still stared at Alea.

Her gaze made Alea uncomfortable, but before she could say anything, Hazel asked in a half joking manner, “Have you found these travelers whose coming you’ve been preaching about, the ones who will put an end to the feuding?”

“One of them,” Moira said, staring directly into Alea’s eyes. “One of them, yes.”

Alarm thrilled through Alea, and before any of the Gregors could think about Moira’s meaning, Alea said, “You’ve been foretelling the coming of peacemakers?”

“To all the clans,” Moira said, “or as many as I can find. Yes.”

“What are you, then,” Alea asked, “to tell the future?”

“Why, she’s a seer, of course,” Hazel said, “a seer and a Druid.”

Alea stared in astonishment. Moira wore only the same loose shirt, loose trousers, and short coat as everybody else, though her jacket was gray, not plaid. Where was the white robe? The sickle at the belt? The wreath of mistletoe?

Where had they been on Versey? Why should a woman Druid dress in the robes of her order any more than a man? “You’ve found one of them?” Hazel asked in skeptical amusement. “Where, may I ask?”

“Here,” Moira said. “Right here.”

“Here? But there’s only…” Hazel caught her meaning and turned to Alea. “You?”

The other Gregors muttered to one another in consternation.

“You’re a peace-preacher?” Hazel asked, gawking.

“I’m a healer,” Alea said over her sinking heart, “and a trader. Healers hate the fighting that maims people, and, frankly, feuds are bad for the peddler’s business. I don’t preach peace, but I would find it awfully convenient.”

“How long a march is it from wanting peace, to preaching it?” someone asked, scowling.

Alea couldn’t tell who it was; they were all scowling now. She turned to them and said, “There’s no danger in preaching peace, if the preacher doesn’t belong to a clan!”

“There’s truth in that,” Hazel said grudgingly. “That’s half the reason we always welcome Moira, though we know we’ll have to endure her cant.”

“And the other half?” Alea asked. “She’s a Druid.”

It was nice to know the clergy were still honored a little. Alea turned back to Moira. “Perhaps I should become a Druid.”

“I’ll be glad to teach you,” the young woman said, “if I travel with you.”

The Gregors turned to exclaim to one another, almost in alarm.

“Peace, friends!” Alea called, smiling. “You’ll be passing me on to another clan soon enough. Surely you can’t object to escorting both of us for a few more miles.” Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Moira relaxing a little.

The Gregors didn’t look convinced.

“Of course, if you really don’t want to, we can always go on by ourselves.”

“No, we can’t have that,” Hazel said quickly. “If anything happened to you, our honor would be stained for years.” She turned to Moira. “None of your preaching, though, not while we’re with you! We’re enjoying the journey and we don’t want it to become a burden!”

“I’ll not talk peace while I’m with you,” Moira promised, smiling.

“Then come along.” Alea held out a hand. “Tell me what else you foresee.”

Gar nodded his approval. “Very good. A most charming conceit.”

“They’d have had a right to feel proud,” Kerlew said, “if they’d been alive to see it.” He looked around at the trees to either side of the road. “Can’t be much of anyone nearby, or they’d have challenged us an hour ago.”

“They certainly must have heard us,” Gar agreed, “but who would trouble two honest peddlers?”

“There are other outlaws besides Rowena’s band,” Kerlew told him.

“Why would they want to attack two madmen?”

Kerlew stared at him a moment, then grinned. “Who but a madman would sing at the top of his voice in the forest, eh?”

“Who but a madman would want to attract attention?” Gar returned. “Not that we…” He broke off, staring at Kerlew. Kerlew stared back.

“Ouch,” Gar said tentatively. “Your shin?” Kerlew asked. “How did you guess?”

“Because mine hurts, too.”

As one, they turned and looked down.

A score of people blocked their way—and they needed a score, for they were only two feet tall. The ones right next to the travelers held spears pressed just under the peddlers’ knees.

“Who are you,” one of them asked in a high, reedy voice, “to go singing so loudly in our woods?”

Gar stared; they were most amazing little people. Each brandished a spear and held a cocked crossbow too, for they had four arms. They wore kilts and garlands of flowers and leaves, and their heads were covered with fur, not hair, fur that was gray and tawny and orange and brown, but it stopped at forehead and cheeks, leaving eyes, noses, and mouths bare. Their ears were pointed, but high on the sides of their heads. Their button noses were triangular, the mouths lipless, and their eyes had vertical pupils. The resemblance to the fairies Gar had seen was striking, their descent from cats just as clear. “A cousin species,” he murmured.

“Cousin? To whom?” the leader demanded.

“To a hawk,” said the outlaw. “My name is Kerlew.”

The little man gave him a glare that should have bored a hole in his forehead. “Hawks quickly learn to beware of us.”

“I have learned it already,” Kerlew said with complete sincerity, and bowed. “I honor you, Old One. I would never hunt one of your kind.”

“Nor would it do you any good,” the little one retorted, “for we are expert at hiding.”

“You certainly must be,” Gar said, “for you appeared from nowhere.”

“And will disappear as quickly, when we have done with you.” But the little one was clearly flattered, fairly preening.

“Done with us?” Kerlew’s eyes were wide, and a drop of sweat trickled across his brow.

Gar could feel his fear and read the flashes of gruesome scenes from old folktales that flickered through his mind—and Gar noticed that the Wee Folks’ spears and arrows may have been tipped with flint and copper, but looked very sharp nonetheless. “Why, what will you do?”

“Let you go your way, if we decide you are unlikely to harm us or the forest,” the leader answered. “The first of your kind hunted us down one by one, and chopped down the trees to plant your silly crops!”

So, then. They were a native species who had been solitary, as most cats are, but who had learned to band together to survive in the face of human settlement. “And if you decide we are not?”

The leader didn’t answer, only smiled, revealing rows of pointed cat teeth.

Kerlew swallowed thickly. “There are tales. Those who offend the Wee Folk see their cows go dry, their chickens lose their feathers, their hogs go loose to lose themselves in the woods.”

“Those are mere punishments,” the elf said disdainfully, “warnings that the farmer has offended us, and can yet mend his ways.”

“What if he cannot mend his ways?” Gar asked. “Or comes to the forest to hunt?”

The little one dismissed the question with a gesture. “A buck or two we do not mind, if all its meat is eaten. But wholesale slaughter, now, that offends us.”

“Or injuring your own kind,” Kerlew muttered.

The whole band set up a yowling complaint, and the leader, hissed, “It were better for such a hunter to have died on the horns of his prey!”

Gar could see that half their power was simply the superstitious fear that generations of Wee Folk had built up in the humans, but he was very curious as to the other half. “If you can make cows go dry and chickens lose their feathers, you must be masters of herb lore.”

“We are that,” the leader snapped, “and can make humans break out in boils and shingles, too!”

“Or worse.” Kerlew licked his lips and confided to Gar, “There are tales of people who have fallen in their tracks, then wakened to find they had lost the use of one whole side of the body—or even dropped dead!”

So the Wee Folk had spread rumors exploiting strokes and heart attacks—or could their herbs really have caused them? Gar realized that a whole planetful of alien plants might well have produced chemicals that could maim or kill Earth folk.

But that cut two ways; Terran spices and substances could be lethal to the natives. “That may be true, but you dare not go into a house or barn that is protected by Cold Iron.”

Most of the elves hissed and shrank away, but the leader stood its ground and grinned again. “Of course we dare! Cold Iron does not taint the air beneath it, after all.”

“Very true,” Gar said thoughtfully, “but what happens if it touches you?”

More hissing, and the elves who didn’t, spat curses in their own language instead. “We sicken, it is true…”

“Or die, if the iron pierces you?”

The band howled and surged forward, spears jabbing upward.

“Peace, peace!” Gar stepped backward quickly. “I only ask! I didn’t draw my own blade!”

“Why ask if you know the answer?” the leader demanded. “I only guess,” Gar said. “I don’t know. Cold Iron poisons you, doesn’t it?”

“As our shards and points poison your kind, when we have dipped them in the blood of the forest!”

Poisoned arrowheads, then, coated with sap or extracts of plants humanity’s forebearers never knew.

The elves howled approval, shaking their weapons.

“There is no defense against them,” Kerlew said to Gar under cover of the noise. “They shoot tiny darts from hiding that melt in the wounds. No one can ever see their ambush before the point stings.”

Gar could believe it; the Wee Folk must have been adept at hiding and at camouflage. “We can always duck.”

“Do you truly think so?” The leader grinned, raising its spear. “Try it, mortal man! You shall even see when I throw—much good may it do you!”

“But I don’t come to hunt, I come to trade!” Gar dropped to one knee, just in case the elf did hurl the spear, and pulled his pack around as an excuse. He unbuckled the straps, saying,

“If you know so much of the powers of the plants, you should have potions that can cure as well as maim! Surely I have some goods that will delight you!”

“Beware!” cried an elf. “What will he draw from that pack?”

“Leave off!” cried a dozen voices, and an elf toward the back raised a crossbow, leveling it at Gar.

“Treachery!” Kerlew leaped in front of Gar, a knife with a foot long blade appearing in his hand.

Suddenly the air was full of gauzy wings and a crowd of fairies hovered all about them, crying, “Leave the Wee Folk alone!” and hurling tiny objects that winked in the sunlight as they shot toward the outlaw.

Kerlew cried out in horror, twisting and turning aside, but half a dozen of the bright shards buried themselves in his scalp and neck. He fell down as though dead, and a dozen hot needles seemed to pierce Gar’s brain. He clutched his head, screaming, “Chop it off! Chop it off to make the pain stop!”

The Gregor party camped in a sort of three-sided cabin, a trail shelter. There wasn’t room for the whole party, so half of them spread their blanket rolls on beds of evergreen boughs. Resolved to honor Moira’s promise not to preach, Alea asked her, “I’m from very far away, and though I’ve guested at homesteads, I’ve heard no stories save those about the feuds. Are there any others?”

“Oh, a host of them!” Moira smiled, dimpling prettily. “Most are told to lull children to sleep, though.”

“Well, I’m not sleepy yet.” Alea wrapped her arms around her knees and leaned her chin on them. “Tell me one.”

“Oh, I suppose my favorite is that of the two sisters who loved the same suitor.” Moira settled into the telling of the wicked sister who drowned the good sister, and of the minstrel who found the good sister’s breastbone, made a harp of it, and played it at the wicked sister’s wedding feast, whereupon the harp sang the truth of the murder.

The clansfolk fell silent as she talked until all were listening. When she finished, one said, “There’s not too much of peacepreaching in that.”

“There is, if you think about it,” Hazel said, frowning.

“Is there?” Moira asked in surprise, then frowned too. “Well, yes, I suppose there is, if you think of war as murder. I only thought of it as a tale of justice winning out, though.”

Hazel’s frown deepened. “Do you say that peace is justice?”

“Not I,” Moira said slowly, “but I think you just have. I’ll need to think about that awhile.”

A man groaned. “Oh no, Hazel! You’ve given her fuel for another sermon!”

“Quickly, tell another tale!” Hazel said.

“I know one of a miser who spied on the fairies at their dancing,” Alea offered.

An uneasy silence fell. The clansfolk looked at one another, then away, not quite meeting Alea’s eyes. “We’d just as soon have no tales of the fairies,” Hazel said, “nor of the Wee Folk, either.”

“Speaking of them might draw them to us,” Moira explained to Alea.

“Oh!” Alea knew enough to respect superstition—and having come from a planet where dwarves and giants were real, she wasn’t terribly certain what was superstition and what wasn’t. “Then you won’t want to hear tales of ghosts, either.”

“Oh no, ghosts are perfectly all right,” Hazel said, and the clansfolk leaned forward with relish.

Alea managed to shake off her surprise. “Well, then, I’ll tell you of a wise teacher who made a man of clay and brought him to life by magic.”

Several of the clansfolk shivered with delight, and Hazel said, “Aye! What was the teacher’s name?”

“MoHaRaL—well, that was his title,” Alea amended, remembering the tale as she had read it on Herkimer’s screen. “His people lived surrounded by others who didn’t like them, so they never knew when their enemies might attack…”

The crowd scowled and muttered, and Alea realized that this sounded far too much like their own lives. She hurried on. “So MoHaRaL went down to the river in the gray light before dawn and sculpted a huge man out of the mud of the bank, and recited magical spells that brought him to life—but since he had no soul, MoHaRaL called him by the word that meant ‘incomplete’ in his language—‘golem.’ ”

Then she was off, telling them how the golem chopped wood and carried water for everyone on the holy day when they weren’t supposed to work, and guarded the homestead at night. “Then the enemies attacked, and the golem fought them off.”

The clansfolk were listening, wide-eyed and fascinated now. “But MoHaRaL found blood on the golem’s hands and recited a spell that canceled the first, and the golem fell to the ground, lifeless once more.”

The clansfolk burst into cries of indignation.

“What? Killed the poor thing just for doing its duty?”

“How did the magician expect him to guard the homestead without fighting?”

“You can’t fight off an attack without bloodying your hands!” Alea stared at them, completely taken aback.

Hazel pointed a trembling finger at Moira. “It’s your doing! One day with you and she turns into a peace-preacher herself!”

“It’s only a story.” Alea objected.

“Yes, and what’s the moral of it?” another clanswoman countered. “That it’s wrong to fight back when your clan is attacked!”

“Aye!” said a man indignantly. “What did this magician think the golem was going to do—sing his enemies to sleep?”

“Throw them back over the wall,” Alea told him. “Knock them back with his fists! He didn’t mean for the golem to kill them!”

“Oh, aye,” said another with withering scorn. “How can you fight without killing? People always die in a battle, everyone knows that!”

Desperately, Alea said, “They’re much more likely to die when you fight with rifles!”

“And how long would we live if we put down our rifles and the Mahons kept theirs?” Hazel demanded.

“Much longer than you do by fighting, if you take their rifles away!”

The clansfolk fell silent, frowning at one another, uncertain, and Alea felt a glow of success. Even to make them stop to think about it was an achievement!

Only a small one, though. Hazel turned back to her and asked, “How do you get close enough to take away their guns?” That stopped Alea. She glanced at Moira, but the younger woman could only smile at her with sympathy. She turned back to Hazel and admitted, “I haven’t figured that out yet.”

“Well, let us know when you do.”

“Let me try another story.” Alea said quickly. “It’s about a gloomy old castle called the Tower of London. Duke Richard sent his nephews there to keep them safe, when his brother the king died. Then he had himself crowned, and no one ever saw the two boys again…”

She told them the first of the many tales of the Bloody Tower that she had read on Herkimer’s screens and was very relieved that no one saw it as an indictment of Richard III and Henry Tudor, for fighting over the crown. They could have called it a peace-sermon after all, no matter who won, the little princes lost—but they would have had to stretch.

Instead, the clansfolk seemed to have forgotten reality in place of stories for the moment. Hazel told a tale of a dragon hunter, and Ezra told of the man who saved Death from dying himself, when he’d been beaten sorely by a giant who refused to admit his time had come. The evening passed merrily until Hazel finally stood up and stretched. “While we’re waiting, I think I’ll sleep. Who wants first watch?”

The mood for storytelling was still with them when they woke up, but it shifted to tall tales. Around the campfire over their morning brew, the clansfolk rivaled to see who could invent the most impossible anecdote.

“So Marl the Smith made a rifle with ten barrels that went around and around as Geordie fired…”

“He’d still have to stop to reload some time! Besides, what would he hunt with a gun like that., Burley the Hunter, now, he noticed the branches of the trees were broken twenty feet high, but no lower, so he tracked the monster that had done it. Let me tell you, it had hoof-tracks the size of dinner plates…”

“So the farther along that pass Brandy went, the more boys there were coming out to follow her, until she brought them out of the gully and they found themselves looking at three packs of wolves, a whole fifty of them, and each one of them as big as a pony…”

They kept up the tale-telling even as they broke camp and drowned the fire, so they set off on the road in gusty high spirits that lasted a mile and a half, till they rounded a bend and found a score of clansfolk drawn up three deep across the road, rifles in their hands.