A Wizard in a Feud

12

An elf rose from the mold of the forest floor, fists clenched, glaring straight into Evanescent’s eyes. “There now!” the alien said with a smile. She kept her lips closed and her shark teeth hidden, though. “Am I so horrible as all that?”

“You’re large,” the elf temporized.

“You can tell your friend behind that bush that his dart is far too small to pierce my fur.” It wasn’t, but Evanescent had to take a chance somewhere, didn’t she? “And your colleague on the tree limb above me will find my ear a far smaller target than she thinks.”

“We know where you are, too, you know,” a counter tenor called down to her.

“Of course,” Evanescent said. “I’m right out here where you can see me. Why don’t you step out, too?”

“There really isn’t much point in cover, when she can tell our whereabouts by our thoughts,” a bell-like voice admitted. “No, and it will give us better aim,” the first elf pointed out. “Enough, then! Out one and all!”

They were there so suddenly that even Evanescent missed seeing them step out from behind trunks and stones, leaves and bushes. A dozen fairies hovered six feet over her head, just beneath the lowest branches, each with a slender bow bent and an arrow nocked. Elves clustered below her on the forest floor or sat on the limbs above, each with a crossbow and spear leveled at her.

“That’s better, now,” Evanescent purred. “We can talk as spirits should.”

“Spirit!” said an elf with a laugh. “You’re no more a spirit than we are!”

“No less either, though,” Evanescent pointed out, “and the New Folk don’t know we’re only flesh and blood, like them.”

“New Folk yourself!” cried a fairy. “We saw you climb down that golden ramp!”

“I only meant to hide from the ship itself,” Evanescent protested, “and from its passengers, of course.”

“Of course?” asked an elf. “They don’t know about you, then?”

“I try to be certain they don’t,” the alien answered.

“But they’re yours clear as spring water,” a fairy retorted. “Don’t try to say they’re not.”

“Well, I don’t own them.”

“And don’t run them, either, I suppose,” an elf said with sarcasm.

“No, that I don’t,” Evanescent said primly. “I only watch their antics and do the best I can to let them keep on.”

“ ‘The best you can?’ ” Another elf scowled. “You mean you help them?”

“Once I understand what they’re trying to do, yes,” Evanescent answered. “After all, they only have the good of their own silly kind of people at heart.”

“But not the good of ours,” a fairy snapped.

“That’s so.” Evanescent looked up at her. “Though there are some matters that benefit all people, Old and New alike.”

“Such as?” an elf challenged.

“Peace,” Evanescent answered.

Peace there was, or silence at least, while elves and fairies alike digested the fact that this strange creature wanted peace, too. Then an elf said, “Your pet male claims to be trying to bring peace to all the clans.”

“He’s his own man,” Evanescent protested, “or at least not mine. Bringing peace is his idea, but I think it will be very amusing to watch him try.”

“Then your pleasure is apt to be short-lived,” an elf said darkly. “These New Folk tend to take a dim view of peacemakers.”

“Yes, well, that’s why I’m doing what I can to keep him alive,” Evanescent said, “and why I’m going to ask you to do the same.”

“Us protect him?” a fairy demanded. “Why should we?”

“Because peace would be good for us as well as the New Folk,” an elf answered. “One of our troops has already promised him aid in it.”

“You don’t think he really can make them stop shooting one another, do you?” the fairy asked.

“Who knows?” The elf shrugged. “Why not let him try? After all, he might succeed.”

“Even if he doesn’t, it’s delightful watching him,” Evanescent told them.

“You’ve a strange idea of fun.” The elf looked at her with a jaundiced eye. “Remind me not to play with you.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Evanescent assured him. “I let others do my playing for me.”

“Lazy wight, aren’t you?” a fairy said with scorn.

“I earn my pleasure,” Evanescent told her, “earn it by helping my toys play their games—and the longer they live, the longer they keep away boredom for me. That gives me reason to help them while I can.”

“I suppose we will, too,” a fairy said grudgingly. “You’ll want us to protect your female, too, of course.”

“Chances are double with two working,” Evanescent replied. “Of course,” the elf said with a withering look. “Any other little thing you’d like to ask of us? Shall we move a mountain for you? Make a river flow upstream?”

“Don’t tell them you’ve seen me, of course,” Evanescent answered, “let alone talked to me.”

The elf gave her a long, narrow look. “Somehow I don’t think I’ll want to admit that, to them or any of the New Folk. All right, creature, we’ll aid them and you’ll aid them, and perhaps somehow they’ll bring peace to this sick and death-loving people.”

“Of course,” Evanescent agreed. “After all, we spirits must stick together.”

Leaves rustled behind them, and Gar knew there were more hard-faced people in floppy hats, loose trousers, and oversized jackets stepping out of the woods behind himself and Kerlew.

“Drop your packs and step aside,” a woman in the center directed. She was raw-boned and grizzle-haired, the lines of experience marking her face.

“Of course.” Gar slipped out of the straps and let the pack fall. Reluctantly, Kerlew did the same.

“Well, if we’ve got the goods, we don’t need the peddlers anymore,” a young man grunted and laid his cheek to his rifle’s stock, sighting at Gar.

Gar stepped back and swung his staff up, knocking the outlaw’s rifle high. It went off, the bullet clipping twigs from a tree, and the young outlaw shouted in anger.

Behind him, another rifle blasted and a man howled. “None of that!” a woman cried. “We’ll hit each other! Club them!”

A rifle butt came whistling overhand at Gar’s head. He pivoted and kicked; the man cried out as he fell.

“None of that!” the woman cried again, and Gar looked up to see an arrow pointed straight at him.

Kerlew gave a cry of defeat and held up both hands.

Gar sidestepped; the archer tracked him. Gar leaped in and the woman loosed. Gar spun aside; the arrow shot past him into another outlaw, who cried out in pain as Gar swung full-armed at the archer’s bow. She howled as it jolted against her hand, then fell loose.

Kerlew stared in disbelief. Another outlaw leaped up to hold a dagger to his throat, but Kerlew struck it up as he pulled his own knife.

“Hold!” the woman cried, and the band froze but stayed poised for action.

“Why, Regan?” the young man demanded.

“Don’t you see the young one’s coat, Jase?” Regan demanded. “It’s faded nearly to gray, like ours! That’s no clansman, but an outlaw like us!”

The bandits took a closer look, frowning. One or two nodded. “But the big one, his coat’s near new!” the young bandit protested.

“Are you blind?” Regan demanded. “New it may be, but it’s no plaid I’ve ever seen.”

“All right, so he’s a peddler!” Jase snapped. “That makes him fair game, doesn’t it?”

“Not when he has an outcast for a partner.” A burly older man shouldered up beside the young one. “How come you be keeping such company, boy?”

Kerlew shrugged. “Two are safer on the road than one, mister, and the peddler, he was good enough to welcome my company.”

“There’s sense in that.” Regan turned to Gar “We won’t steal from you, peddler, but we’ll trade—if we’ve anything you want, that is.”

“Fair enough, and a good deal for both,” Gar answered. “First, though, what do you say to breaking bread together?”

“You carry bread?” Jase asked, wide-eyed.

“Joumeybread,” Gar clarified, “but if we soak it awhile, it’ll be soft enough to eat. Light a fire, somebody, and I’ll brew some tea.” He turned to rummage in his pack.

The door opened and three clansfolk came in with a fourth in their midst, a man who wore a jacket of a different tartan and carried a white flag on a three-foot staff. Alea turned to Moira with excitement and hope, but the seer only shook her head, mouth tight against disappointment. Alea turned back, disappointed herself, and saw that the flag was scrupulously made, the cloth stout and the edges serged, but also a bit worn, obviously washed many times. This flag of truce was no harbinger of peace; it was only a device, a convenience in the endless and deadly war of the feuds.

A pathway cleared between the doorway and Grandma, and the sentries marched down it, rifles still at the ready, the stranger holding his chin high and his flag upright. “We’ve a Cumber come to talk to you, Gram,” one of the sentries said.

The Cumber nodded in deference to Grandma’s years. “Good day to you, Helen Campbell.”

“And to you, Alan Cumber.” Grandma’s tone could have frozen the duck pond. “To what to we owe the pleasure of this visit?”

No one seemed to notice the irony of the empty social formula. Then Alea glanced at the men and women to each side and realized that it might not have been so empty after all. Whether it was simply a break in the monotony or a genuine pleasure at seeing someone from outside the family, the Campbells really were glad to see Alan Cumber. One of the older women even had a gleam in her eye as she watched him, a gleam dulled by regret. Alea looked at the intruder again, looked beneath the grizzled hair and the lined and weather-beaten skin and saw that Alan Cumber had once been handsome—in fact, that he still was, if you had eyes to see it. A pang of grief shot through Alea, grief for a romance that might have been, grief for the poor woman who had wasted her life in yearning.

“A pleasure it is indeed to see you again,” Alan Cumber said gallantly. “I come to ask a favor, though.”

“And no little courage it took to come into the stronghold of your enemies.” Grandma returned compliment for compliment. “Don’t know as how we can do a favor for a Cumber, but some requests we can’t refuse out of simple human decency. Is this one of them?”

“It is that, ma’am,” Alan said, “for we hear you’ve a healer come to visit, and our Gram is took sorely ill.”

“What, Emily Farland ill?” For a moment, genuine concern and fright showed in Grandma’s face before the granite mask stiffened again. “We were girls together, played snap-out at barn dances and sang play-party songs with the others before she turned so addle-brained as to marry a Cumber.”

“Yes, you never have had a quarrel with the Farlands, and neither have we,” Alan returned equably.

Alea stared, shocked. The neighbors to either side were enemies, but the family one farm away were friends! When she stopped to think about it, it made sense—both Campbells and Cumbers were feuding with the Gregors, and the enemy of their enemy was their friend. But how did they get together to socialize? And how rarely did they see one another, with an enemy in the way? She suddenly realized the lives these people must lead, each clan beleaguered, with an enemy in every direction and no sight of a friend save at special occasions that couldn’t come more than a few times a year.

“No, Emily and I had no quarrel, till she married a Cumber,” Grandma said, and there were undertones of grief and anger at what she still perceived as a personal betrayal. “Still, I’d do what I can for her in the name of days gone by. Do you wish to ask the healer to come to her, then?”

“That I do.”

“There she stands.” Grandma gestured toward Alea. “Ask her with our blessing.”

Alan Cumber turned to Alea, hat in his hands, and asked gravely, “Ma’am, will you come heal our Grandma?”

Alea stared, confused by the undertones of friendship and caring—no, need, need of other people under the mask of the feud.

“Surely you will, won’t you Alea?” Moira asked. “You said you’ll heal anyone who’s ill, after all.”

“I said I’ll try,” Alea corrected her. “There are many sicknesses beyond my knowledge and skill.” She turned back to Alan Cumber. “But yes, I’ll come. I’ll see her and talk to her, and if I can, I’ll heal her.”

“She don’t talk so good any more, ma’am,” Alan Cumber said.

Stroke, Alea thought, but beyond Alan Cumber she saw the naked realization of tragedy in Grandma’s face.

Then the old lady recovered her composure and turned to look from one side of the great room to another at her children and grandchildren. “Who’ll go as escorts to see these ladies safely to Marsh Creek?” She turned back to Alan. “That’s where your kinfolk will meet her, isn’t it?”

“The boundary between your lands and ours. Yes, ma’am.” Grandma nodded and looked out over the throng. “Who wants to go?”

Half a dozen men and women stepped forward, all of them young. A second behind them, their parents stepped forward, too. Alea turned to Alan Cumber. “Will you swear by Belenos to bring me back here safely?”

“Or on to the next clan that needs you? Yes, ma’am. I swear it, and that binds all my kin, since I’m their messenger.” But Alan Cumber was clearly hiding amusement. Looking about her, Alea saw the same covert smiles on the faces of the Campbells, even Grandma’s.

She couldn’t ask Moira about it until they were on the road, when the young folks’ merriment drew their anxious parents’ attention enough so that the two women could speak with a certain measure of privacy. “Moira, why are they amused by taking an oath to Belenos?”

“Why, you know why—because nobody believes in the gods anymore,” Moira said with deep regret, “no one save the Druids and a few odd ones like myself, that is.”

Alea turned back to the road. “What use is their oath; then?”

“None,” Moira said, “but their word is good. In fact, anyone caught breaking his word is liable to exile and outlawry.”

Alea stared at her. “Let me see if I understand you. They don’t believe in their own gods, but their promises are sacred?”

“Of course,” Moira said. “Something has to be.”

Gar pulled bread and cheese from his pack and was surprised that the outlaws didn’t stare and swallow; they were better fed than the last batch. Now that he noticed, they were better dressed, too; their jackets and trousers were of stout tan homespun cloth, clean and mended, not the ragtag worn-out plaids he’d seen before. The hunting must be better in this part of the forest.

One young man gathered some sticks and started a fire with sparks from his flintlock while the other members of the band slowly sat down. The leader took some strips of dried meat from a pocket and offered them to Gar. “It’s tasty, if you can chew.”

“I haven’t lost that many teeth yet.” Gar hadn’t, in fact, lost any, but he well knew that some of the clansfolk who appeared middle-aged weren’t really much older than he—a subsistence society could do that to people. He accepted a stick of jerky and took a bite in proof. It was indeed tasty, had been dried with some sort of spice. These people weren’t particularly hungry, but sharing food was a sign of mutual trust. Gar reminded himself that it wasn’t an alliance, just a beginning.

“I’m Regan,” the woman said. “What have you to trade?”

“Needles, pins, some spices, lace … that sort of thing,” Gar said.

“Lace?” Regan looked up in surprise. “Where did you get that?”

“Traded for it with an outlaw some miles from here.”

“Some miles?” Regan asked, bristling. “How many?” The bandits muttered darkly.

“Three days’ march,” Gar said, surprised.

The bandits relaxed, and Regan said, “Too far for us to worry about, then.”

“Worry about?” Gar frowned. “They wouldn’t be apt to set upon you. After all, you’re all outlaws together.”

“Not together, stranger,” a beefy man said. “A band gets big enough, it’s likely to run off the small bands around it—or kill them if they won’t run.”

Gar stared. “But why?”

“Keep ‘em out of the big band’s hunting grounds,” the man grunted, “keep ‘em from poaching.” He had the sound of one who knew from experience.

Gar was catching unpleasant echoes of medieval lords’ keeping the forests for their own private hunting reserves. “That’s wrong. The big bands are treating the small ones as they themselves were, and hated.”

“They think that gives them the right,” Regan explained, “so the small bands stay well clear of the big ones.”

“Water’s boiling,” the fire-maker reported.

Gar reached in his pack and pulled out a few spoonfuls of powder to sprinkle in the water. The bandits took wooden mugs from under their jackets and handed them over to be filled.

Gar poured and handed them back, then inhaled the steam from his own mug and said, “I would think that shared misery would draw all outlaws together, for company and protection.”

Regan shook her head. “Think, peddler. There isn’t a one of us who wasn’t kicked out of his clan for being untrustworthy. No one wanted to risk their lives depending on a man or woman who might decide it’s wrong to fire a gun in battle. How could any of us trust another outlaw, unless she’s part of our own band?”

“By respect,” Gar said.

Several of the outlaws gave snorts of laughter and Regan smiled. “You think any outlaw from a big band is going to respect some mangy, tattered loner who isn’t even a good enough shot to be welcomed by a large band?”

“Of course,” Gar said, “because she’s human.”

Now Regan snorted, too. “You don’t respect someone just for that, peddler.”

“You should,” Gar said, “because it’s a rare person indeed who doesn’t have some sort of talent—and the ones who are really that incompetent are too feeble to dare to talk back to their clansfolk, or to risk going to the woods alone. Just being an outlaw at all, in a clan world like this, means you have to have some talents worth respecting.”

“Or that you’re such a weakling that your own kin didn’t want to be lumbered with you!” Jase said hotly.

“How many of you have ever heard of someone being cast out for that?” Gar asked.

The outlaws frowned, exchanged glances, muttered to one another, but no one answered.

Gar nodded. “I thought not. Even a half-wit is put to work cleaning the barns—and doesn’t believe in himself enough to believe in his own ideas, if he comes up with any. If you keep an open mind about everyone you meet, if you’re careful not to condemn them without knowing anything about them, you’ll find you can respect them—and that respect is enough for the start of an alliance, at least. Then you take on small tasks together to find out how far you can trust one another—and if you find you can, you tackle bigger and bigger jobs together until you do trust one another.”

The outlaws exchanged frowns, uncertain, but Regan gave Gar a sardonic smile. “Sounds pretty, but you don’t for a moment think it could work, do you?”

“Aye,” said Jase, and turned to Kerlew. “What talent have you, single man?”

Kerlew flushed at the tone of insult, but before he could answer, Gar said, “Look at it this way, then. Think of a boy you knew when you were a lad, the one who could never catch a ball or shoot straight, the one who was always last to be chosen for a game.”

Most of the outlaws grunted, smiles tight with assurance of their own superiority.

“Sometimes those boys grow up to become…” Gar tried to think what this culture would call a wizard—“conjure men. Would you want him to have a score to settle with you if he did?”

The outlaws lost their smiles at that, but Regan gave him a skeptical and scornful look. “Conjure men? You don’t really believe in such, do you?”

But she spoke too easily, with too much mockery—all bravado. She was whistling in the dark, trying to assure herself that such things didn’t exist, and Gar could hear the undertone in her voice, the echo in her thoughts, the fear of the unknown. “You never know,” he said. “You never know.”

“Enough of such stuff.” Regan dashed the dregs of her tea into the fire, then stood and began kicking dirt onto the flames. “The day’s far enough gone already, and us with no game to show for it. Let’s head back to camp and find what meat we can on the way.” She looked down at Gar. “You can come along, peddler—both of you. We were too quick to jump you, so let us make it up a little, at least, with dinner and a bed for the night.”

Alarm stiffened Kerlew’s back. “I don’t know—it’s not on our way…”

“But if they’ve furs or amber to trade, it’s worth the trip.” Gar stood too, shouldering his pack. “I’ll be glad of your hospitality, Regan.” He turned back to Kerlew. “You don’t have to come along, Kerlew. You’re your own man, you know.”

“Oh, I know that right enough.” Kerlew stood, too. “But I’ve few enough friends left in the world, and I’m not about to desert a new one. Let’s go.”

The keeping room in the Cumbers’ great house was darkened and gloomy, only the fire and a few candles lit. The clansfolk sat around the walls on handmade straight chairs and the few pieces of padded furniture, anxious or, in some cases, already resigned to Grandma’s passing. The younger children were in bed, but a few of the older ones sat up with their parents, nodding with weariness but fighting sleep.

A woman whose auburn hair was streaked with silver came up to them, proffering a hand. “I’m Achalla Cumber. Will you come to my mother now?”

“Gladly,” said Alea. “Lead us, please.”

Achalla turned away, and Alea followed, slipping through the gloom with Moira, stepping as softly as they might, following the older woman through a doorway to the side of the fireplace. They came info a room lit only by a candle on a bedstand, illuminating the pale, wrinkled face of Emily Cumber. Her cheeks seemed sunken, her whole face drawn, the eyes staring feverbright, looking at the ceiling.

The clanswoman stepped up to her bedside, saying softly, “There’s a healer come to see you, Gram.”

The old woman’s eyes swiveled to Alea—or one of them did. The other tried, but barely moved. Alea sat down on the bed, taking the old woman’s hand. Shriveled and wrinkled, it felt more like a claw. Emily Cumber tried to speak to her, but all that came out was a sort of cawing.

Alea’s heart sank; she knew the signs of stroke when she saw them. Grandma wouldn’t die of this one episode, of course, but Alea felt certain there were other blood clots waiting to break free into her bloodstream and hit her brain. For a moment, Alea yearned for the new and wonderful medicines she’d read of in Herkimer’s databanks—blood thinners, sonic beams to destroy the clots, nerve regeneration serum—but knew she’d never have them.

Grandma gabbled at her again. Alea couldn’t understand the words, but she read the old woman’s thoughts: Don’t waste your time, child. My days are numbered, and there’s only hours left.

Alea passed her hands over the woman’s body and felt signs of sickness and decay there. Was it her imagination, or was this really a psi power she hadn’t known she had?