A Wizard in a Feud

10

The Gregors stopped in their tracks, laughter dying on their lips, rifles rising.

“Good thing you’re under a peddler’s truce,” said the man in the middle of the line. “You Gregors track like bulls blundering through thickets. We heard you half a mile away.”

“We must be really bad if a Campbell can hear us,” Hazel said with an edge to her voice. “But if we hadn’t been escorting a peddler, you may be sure you wouldn’t even have guessed we were coming.”

The leader’s eyes sparked, but before he could dream up an insult, his gaze fell on Moira. He stared; then, affronted, he demanded, “What’re you doing back so soon, Moira?”

“Don’t worry, Jethro, I’m not,” Moira said, amused. “I’ve only joined this peddler for company on the road.”

“And she’s going to the Tossians,” Hazel snapped, “not to you Campbells.”

“Just like a Gregor—trying to tell everyone else what to do.” Alea thought there was something a little weary about the exchange of insults, as though it were a necessary ritual that nobody really enjoyed any more.

“Just like a Campbell, waylaying a peddler who might bypass their clan!”

“Well, as to that, we’d like to ask differently.” The clansman took off his hat as he turned to Alea. “We’ve one took bad sick, miz, and we’ve heard you’re a healer.”

Alea glanced left and right and was amazed that none of the Gregors even thought to ask how the Campbells had heard of her so soon. There was a chink in the armor of the clans, perhaps only one sentry calling out boasts to his enemy’s watchman, bragging about the healer who had chosen to honor his clan with her presence, and that watchman had told the whole clan, and another sentry had gone out to the far boundary and boasted to a third clan—the Campbells, in this instance.

Which meant they were talking to each other. That talk might be nothing but insults and braggings, but it was communication nonetheless. Alea would have to find out how to use that communication to lighten the feuds, not increase them, that was all.

All! But how? She shelved the question for another day. “I’ll heal whoever is ill,” Alea said, then remembered something else from Herkimer’s database. “The Oath of Hippocrates demands it.”

“Hippocrates?”

“What clan was he from?”

Campbell and Gregor were both instantly suspicious.

“He was the founder of medicine in a land far away,” Alea explained, “the first healer. He swore to heal anyone who was ill wherever he found them—stranger or neighbor, rich or poor, enemy or friend.”

Clansfolk were nodding slowly; the idea seemed to make sense to them. Healers and Druids, after all, were neutral. “Well, it’s your choice,” Hazel said, scowling, “but I hope you don’t expect much of Campbell hospitality.”

“Don’t worry, it will be better than a Gregor could manage,” Jethro said with a glare at Hazel, but it didn’t have much spirit behind it.

“I don’t heal for pay,” Alea said, “neither in kind nor in kindness. Simple food and a roof over my head is all I expect.” She turned back to Hazel. “Hospitality such as yours is a pleasant bonus.”

“Then you’ll have an even more pleasant surprise at the Campbell homestead,” Jethro averred. “If you’ll come with us, lady, you won’t regret it.”

“If I heal your sick ones, I won’t,” Alea told him, then to Hazel and her Gregors she said, “Good-bye, then. Thank you very much for good guesting and fine company on the march. I’m sorry to have taken you so far out of your way, but I did enjoy your presence.”

“As we enjoyed yours, and the trip together.” Hazel smiled and caught her hand. “Thank you for our kinswoman’s life, Alea. Our house is yours, whenever you wish it.”

“As is ours,” Jethro rumbled. “Lady, will you walk with us?”

“That I will,” Alea said, and strode away with the Campbells, but she turned back to wave at the Gregors before they were quite out of sight.

“Stop! Stop!” cried a dozen voices, and the elf leader called, “He only sought to protect his friend!”

The pains ceased as suddenly as they had come, and Gar sagged with relief.

“We thought the tall one might be a friend to us, too,” one of the fairies trilled, “but what does he seek to bring forth from that pack?”

Gar let go of the twist of paper that held a dozen needles and pulled out a knot of ribbons instead.

“Move slowly,” the bird-voice warned.

Gar winced at a reminder, a pain that twisted in his brain and was gone. “Only some pretty things that might delight the Wee Folk,” he protested.

“He may indeed be a friend,” the lead elf told the fairies. “Certainly he shows a friend’s interest.”

“A friend’s?” asked the fairy. “Or a hunter’s?”

The elf shrugged. “We have given him warning, but were only beginning to let him show good will.”

“I mean no harm,” Gar told them, then frowned. “But I will protect myself as well as I can, and my friend.” He stared meaningfully at the fairy and readied a mental bolt of his own.

“Do not fear for the young one,” another fairy said contemptuously. “He only sleeps—he is not dead.”

“We do not kill lightly,” explained another.

“Nor do I,” Gar assured them. He frowned from the one group to the other. “But how is this? Do fairies and elves league to protect this wood?”

“We league to protect one another,” a fairy said, scowling. “The New Folk think that we are spirits whom their ancestors feared,” an elf explained. “We do all we can to encourage that thought, and punishing their minor crimes, or rewarding their virtues, seems to strengthen it.”

“I can see that it would.” A dozen stories of elfin capriciousness cascaded through Gar’s mind—everything from Rip van Winkle’s twenty-year sleep to neat housekeepers finding six pences in their shoes. “Why only minor crimes, though?”

The elf made a face. “They will not leave off their great sins for any reason. They will murder one another no matter what punishments we visit.”

“Because you draw the line at killing them yourself,” Gar said slowly.

“Aye, unless they seek to slay us,” the elf said darkly. “But for slaughtering one another … Well!”

“We will hurt them sorely,” a fairy said, “but we will not slay.”

“I understand well.” Gar had a similar code. Then, daring, he said, “I am greatly honored by your telling me this, but how do you know you can trust me?”

“Oh, we have long ears,” the elf said, grinning. “We have heard you speak of seeking to end the continuous havoc these New Folk wreak upon one another.”

“I do seek peace,” Gar said slowly, “and of course that means peace with your peoples as well as among my own.”

“Are they truly yours?” a fairy said pointedly.

Gar felt a chill. “How could they be anything else? Do I not look like them?”

“Save for being taller, aye,” the fairy admitted. “Why then would you think I am not of them?”

“Chiefly because one of our number saw you descend from a golden egg.”

Well, Herkimer was more of a discus than an egg, but Gar took the point.

“You and your leman,” another fairy added.

“She is not my leman,” Gar said automatically, then added in explanation, “only my friend, and my companion in arms.” The fairies exchanged a glance that clearly said they knew his heart better than he did, but they were polite enough not to say it out loud. One turned back to Gar and said, “At least you will not deny that you are both of a kind with the New Folk who war upon one another continually.”

“I am of their kind, but not of their nation.”

“Not of their nation.” An elf nodded. “I like that. But certainly of their kind, for their ancestors, too, did come from the sky.”

Gar remembered his earlier encounter with the fairies, and his conjecture that they were native to the planet. “Did not your ancestors also come down from the heavens?”

“They did not,” the elf said firmly. “We are of the earth, and our oldest tales tell how the first elves sprang from forest mold.”

“And the first fairies from an eagle’s aerie,” a fairy added. Gar guessed that they were both right—that the common ancestor of their kind had been a catlike forest creature whose descendants had branched into a tree-living race and an earthbound race. The first had evolved into a bird’s worst nightmare—winged cats—which had evolved further into fairies. The second had evolved into the elves, and the extra two limbs that had been transformed into wings in the fairies had become extra arms in them.

Extra? Surely they only seemed superfluous from a Terran’s perspective! To the elves, he no doubt seemed maimed by only having two arms.

“We count you an ally,” the fairy said reluctantly, “because you seek peace.”

“And, too, because you come well recommended,” another fairy chipped in.

The first turned to give her a black look, and Gar found himself wondering who had recommended him—one of the first clansfolk with whom they had stayed? Still, it didn’t pay to be too inquisitive, so he asked, “Are you still wary of me?”

“Not at all,” an elf said, “for we hear your thoughts, and they are goodly—at least toward us.”

Gar froze. Then his brain thawed and kicked into overdrive, a dozen conclusions racing through it in an instant. No wonder both fairies and elves had been able to find him whenever they wanted! No wonder they knew he had come in a spaceship, and no wonder they were sure of his good intentions. They were telepaths!

Then was also the matter of his relationship with Alea, but he shoved that issue aside quickly. “You do not hesitate to read people’s minds, then, do you?”

“Why should we?” a fairy asked. “All your kind are like open books to us. Wherefore not read?”

“Do you think we break some sort of trust, fellow?” an elf asked, and laughed.

“The New Folk trust us not at all,” another elf explained, “nor should they.”

“As we should not trust them,” a fairy added. “If it were not for the fear we have inspired in them, I doubt not that they would shoot us out of the air for sport.”

“We would shoot back well enough.” An elf caressed his crossbow.

“Aye, if you could take aim while dodging their boots,” a fairy retorted.

Gar sensed that an old, old rivalry had surfaced. To shove it back under, he asked, “Can you not trust some New Folk simply by the good will you read in them?”

“We have done so now and again,” a fairy hummed. “We have become keen judges of character.”

Gar knew he shouldn’t, but couldn’t resist. “What is there about my character that lets you trust me, then?”

“Why, we have told you,” a fairy replied.

“No, you have told me of my circumstances—descending from a spaceship—and of my intentions, which are to forge a peace,” Gar corrected. “Have I no defects of character that make you mistrust me?”

He was astounded when the whole assemblage burst into laughter. He waited it out, somewhat numb, trying not to be resentful. As they quieted, he said sardonically, “I am glad I serve as such a source of mirth.”

“No, you are not, and you are highly indignant,” an elf said, “as indeed you should be.”

“We all can see your defects, New Man,” a fairy said, wiping tears from its eyes, “but they are not such as to lessen our trust in you.”

“Indeed!” Gar tried to quell his indignation. “May I ask what my defects are, then?”

“A dangerous question,” a fairy warned. “No matter how we answer, you will take offense.”

“I shall not, by my hand!” Gar held up a palm as though taking an oath.

“Well sworn.” An elf nodded approval. “But there is no creature who can fail to take offense when told his defects.”

“Why then, I shall strive to remember that I brought it upon myself.” Gar felt inspiration strike. “After all, you may have been adding me to the believers in your supernatural abilities, and your unwilling dupe in carrying them to the clans. You have not yet told me anything that you could not have learned by observation, and by a certain empathy born of centuries of watching my kind.”

“Oho! It’s proof you want, then, is it?” an elf hooted. “Learn, then, New Man, that we know you for the coward you are!”

“I am not a coward!”

“A coward of the heart,” a fairy explained, “and with good reason—for five women broke your trust and mangled your feelings.”

“Yet those five women were all one,” an elf amended. “One in various guises—and skilled indeed she was at disguising.” Gar felt a chill run through him. How could these creatures have peered so deeply into his memories so quickly?

But it hadn’t been quickly, of course. They had been tracking him for days, no doubt studying him in depth as he went. Nevertheless, how could they have discovered that all five women—the ugliest witch in the north country, the wild fey girl, and all the others—had been only one emotional assassin in several disguises? He hadn’t known that himself until … Until Gregory had told him the other night. The fairies no doubt had eavesdropped on that conversation.

Anger surged in him; he held himself rigid, waiting for it to pass. What right had these strangers to inspect his most intimate thoughts? Had they no ethics, no standards of telepathy?

No, of course not. They were faced with aliens much larger than themselves, and very violent in the bargain. They felt no compunction in using whatever weapons they had.

They were tense now, elves with crossbows raised, fairies with hands cupped (for what? telepathic beams?), knowing his anger, braced for his wrath—but as the rage began to subside, the Wee Folk began to relax.

“You are angry,” one said.

They still held their crossbows at the ready.

“Even as you said,” Gar answered in a level tone, “none can hear their detractions without resenting them.”

“True,” said a fairy “but it is not that which angers you—it is our invasion of what you perceive to be your privacy.”

“Even so.” Gar bent his head in acknowledgment. “It is a primitive reflex—but I asked for it. After all, how can I mend my faults if I do not know them?”

“He swallows the bitter pill,” an elf said, staring.

“He does indeed,” agreed a fairy. “It sticks in his craw, but he swallows it down.”

They were all gazing at him in surprise, almost in awe, and Gar realized they had been testing him. Anger boiled up again, but he stood still, waiting for it to crest and subside. If he had passed the test once, he wasn’t about to fail it now!

The Wee Folk had tensed again, reading his anger, but as it began to recede once more, they relaxed a little and stared at him with more awe than ever.

“Never have I seen self-control so thorough among one of the New Folk,” said a fairy.

“Aye, the more amazing because it stems from his beliefs of what is right and wrong,” an elf answered. She made a swirling motion with her hand, saying, “Yet how will he fare when he must stare his fears in the eye?”

The air seemed to thicken into a fog, out of which came the cry, “A rag, a bone!”

A chill coursed through Gar. He knew that voice.

The fog condensed further into a body, one that took on colors—and Gar found himself staring at a portly man dressed like the driver of a Victorian hackney cab in a threadbare taped coat, dented top hat, patched trousers, and Wellington boots, his nose and cheeks ruddy with the tiny broken veins of the chronic drinker, who gave Gar a boozy, cheerful grin. “What of your heart, ardent lover?” the apparition demanded. “Do you hear it knocking to leap free of its golden box yet?”

Superstitious fear seized Gar, though he knew the man for nothing but a projection of his own deepest drives. It wasn’t his heart that heaved against its restraints, but his anger, anger that built and built into rage as he realized that the elves had conjured the rag-and-bone man out of the recesses of Gar’s mind to test him. He trembled with the strength of the emotion but controlled it with an iron will, saying in a hard level tone, “It has not, praise Heaven! My heart lies quietly, content to rest in security.”

“You lie to yourself.” The ragpicker waved a finger. “You long to have it out of its prison, to be able to love again.”

“Love is a dream,” Gar said, his voice still level. “It will come when it comes—but when it does, my heart will swell till it bursts the lock of its own accord.”

“There is no breaking that lock,” the ragpicker jeered. “Only one with a key can open it.”

“Then I am forever safe, for you kept the key,” Gar said with a sardonic smile.

“Did I say I kept it?” the ragpicker asked with feigned surprise. “Dear me! If I did, why, I lied—for there is no key!” There was no surge of anger, only a wave of relief, and Gar was appalled, but he took advantage of the surprise and smiled. “Then I shall wait for a woman with a lock-pick, devious creature, or for one who can forge me a key.”

“Then you shall wait all your life,” the ragpicker warned. “So be it,” Gar said. “It will be worth the wait.”

“Worth it how? Passing your time flitting about the galaxy freeing nations of thankless people? Finishing alone in your old age? Will this make the wait worthwhile?”

“If a woman comes with a key, she will be worth it. If not?” Gar shrugged. “I may not have a gamesome spirit, but I can find many tasks that will amuse me. My life will not be wasted and at its end, I doubt not I will thank you.”

“So he speaks to the deepest part of himself,” the ragpicker said to the elves with deep disappointment. “Worse, he thinks he means it.” He turned back to Gar, shaking his head. “He will not rise to the bait.”

“What? To rant and rave at a figment of my own dreammind?” Gar gave him a thin smile. “That would be a waste of breath indeed.”

“It is not that purpose to which I would make you rise,” said the ragpicker, but shook his head at the elves. “Let me go, mindrakers. I can be of no use here.”

“As you wish it.” The elf held her hand up flat, moved it in a circle, and the ragpicker disappeared like steaming breath wiped from a cold window pane.

“We can trust him,” the elf said to the fairy. Then her tone took on a note of regret as she added, “Though he cannot trust himself.”

“I trust myself to keep my temper no matter what the temptation,” Gar said with a smile.

“Aye, more’s the pity,” a fairy answered, “but can you aim yourself to do what is best for you?”

“Best for me?” Gar asked with another sardonic smile. “Why bother? All my worth comes from making the world better for other people.”

“Do you deserve nothing for yourself?”

Gar frowned, thinking it over, then said, “It’s not a question of deserving. Making the world a better place makes my life worth living, that’s all.”

“Should you not also make it a better place for yourself?”

“What would such self-indulgence accomplish?”

“Perhaps a little more happiness.”

“Happiness?” Gar smiled. “Yes, I remember that from my childhood.” He shrugged. “It will come if it will come.”

“Do you not think you merit it?”

Again, Gar shrugged. “If I do, it will find me some day.” The fairy stared at him, eyes wide and tragic, then turned to the elves. “Can we mend him in that?”

“No,” said an elf, “nor can his own kind, not even a woman. He can only mend himself.”

“And he will not bother.” The fairy turned back to Gar, “Nonetheless, we can wish you well in your peace-seeking, wanderer, and will give you whatever aid we can.”

“Aye,” said an elf. “If ever you are in danger, flee to any the Keepers of the Mounds and they will give you sanctuary such that no mortal will dare violate.”

“I thank you.” Gar wondered what the Keepers of the Mounds were but thought it best not to ask; they would probably be self-evident.

“You are welcome, so long as your enemy is our enemy.” Gar frowned. “But I am of the New People! Are they not your enemies?”

“No,” said a fairy, “they are only a hazard of which we must be wary.”

“It is their warring that hurts us, for when many clansfolk go blasting leaden balls from rifles made of Cold Iron, elves and fairies alike are injured or slain.”

“Even the concussion of their firearms can maim us,” another fairy said.

Gar looked at the gossamer-winged, fine-boned body and found he could believe it easily. “So, then, we do have a common enemy—the feuds.”

“Even so,” the fairy agreed. “Labor to end them, mortal, and you shall have the thanks of all the Old People! Farewell.” Wing beats exploded, and the fairies were gone so quickly that if Gar had blinked, he would have thought they had simply disappeared.

“Farewell indeed,” an elf seconded, “and be sure that so long as you work for peace, you shall have the aid of the Wee Folk. Good fortune attend you.”

“Good fortune,” the elves chorused. Then each stepped behind a leaf or tree or sank down into underbrush, and were gone from view as though they had never been.

Gar stared, then opened his mind cautiously and felt the presence of a score of other minds so alien he could scarcely distinguish any of their thoughts. “Au revoir,” he said softly, then turned to waken Kerlew, thinking all the while that he would have to work at deciphering the thoughts of the Old Folk until it could become automatic.

He shook the lad’s shoulder and Kerlew groaned, but it was only the sort of groan issuing from anyone who sleeps deeply and is reluctant to waken. “Rise, bold woodsman,” Gar said softly, “and hunt the sun, or it will be up and away before you can catch it.”

The boy rolled over to squint up at Gar, frowning. “What nonsense is this? Who could hunt the sun—and why should he? It will come to us all sooner or later.”

“It will indeed,” Gar agreed, “and you’ll want to be awake to see it. Come now, rise and take some breakfast, for we’ve a long day’s journey ahead.”

Kerlew levered himself up, then put a hand to his head, puzzled. “I seem to have slept well…” He looked up at Gar. “If sunrise is nearly upon us, then you must have watched all night by yourself! Why did you not wake me for my turn?”

“I was preoccupied.” Gar took a quick inventory of his body and said with surprise, “I’m not tired, though. I suppose I will be halfway through the morning. Then I’ll trouble you to keep watch while I nap.”

“Surely, but I would gladly have done so last…” Kerlew’s eyes widened as memory caught up with him. “The Wee Folk! We came upon them last night, and they felled me!”

“So they did,” Gar agreed, “though they assured me you would only sleep very deeply and were not hurt in any way.”

“No wonder you did not wake me.” Kerlew looked up at Gar anxiously. “Did they keep you talking all night?”

“I suppose they did,” Gar said with surprise, “though it seemed to be less than an hour.”

“That is their way.” Kerlew rose, dusting himself off. “They can make an instant seem to be a day, or a day pass in an instant. Come, let’s breakfast, and we can tell each other what we know of them while we walk.”

Over journey rations and a hot herbal brew, Kerlew explained that the clans called the elves the Wee Folk or the Old Ones. “Legend has it that they were on this world when our ancestors came from the stars,” he said with a sardonic smile, “but who could believe such an old wives’ tale?”

“Who indeed?” Gar reflected wryly that fairies and elves were quite real to the clansfolk, but space travel was a fantasy. “It was rather difficult to know to whom I was talking. I can accept that they all look alike to us, but I couldn’t even tell males from females.”

“None can,” Kerlew told him. “Indeed, no one is even certain that there are two sexes.”

“They aren’t that different from us, surely!” Gar couldn’t be certain, but the natives did look rather mammalian, though he hadn’t seen any mammaries. “How else would they reproduce?”

Kerlew spread his hands. “None knows. Some think they may lay eggs, others that they split in half so that each half grows into a new being.”

“Now that I would call a fairy tale.” Gar knew that fission only worked on the microscopic level.

Kerlew shrugged. “Others guess that elves are male and fairies female, but few place much faith in the notion. The elves are too much larger than the fairies.”

“Well, male or female, it matters not,” Gar said. “All that matters is that they’ve said they’ll help us, if we seek to bring peace to the clans.”

“That can never happen!” Kerlew exclaimed wide-eyed, then immediately corrected himself. “Though mayhap, with the help of the Old Ones…” His eyes filled with longing. “It would be pleasant to be able to go home again.”

If he did, Gar thought, he would go as a hero, hailed as one of the peacemakers—the very crime for which he had been exiled. He drank the dregs of his tea and stood, kicking dirt on the campfire. “Then let’s go find a way to make it happen.” Kerlew rose, too. “Which way lies peace?”

“Everywhere and nowhere.” Gar tucked the camping gear back in his pack. “It might lie down any road, so the direction doesn’t matter, only the journey.”

They left their campsite in considerably better spirits than they had come to it and set off down the road singing. After all, anyone really wanting to ambush travelers would have set sentries on the trackway, so what did it matter if they made some noise?

The argument seemed to lose its logic when the roadside leaves parted and half a dozen people stepped out into the road before them, rifles leveled.