“Absolutely, dear.”
“Well why couldn't you, or we, just give them some to try? Just at first, don't you know.”
Razzorbauch went wide eyed. “My dear, you're a thundering prodigy. I believe you've just launched our little business venture. I knew having you along was going to work well.”
“Thank you, Uncle Razzorbauch,” she said with another bounce. It's wonderful having someone who actually likes my ideas for once.”
“I know what you mean, dear. I've always been the bane of the family, just as you seem to be, don't you know.”
“We do have that in common, don't we?”
“Without a doubt, dear,” said Razzorbauch, suddenly looking about. “But just now, if you don't mind, we need to return to my keep so that I can be off for a spell to attend to a thing or two.”
“I don't mind,” she said. “In fact, I usually don't get up so early in the mornings and I'd like to catch a nap.”
Razzorbauch already had out his scrying ball.
Chapter 9
Ocker rolled his scrying marble around in the in the leaves in the tile gutter, pecking at it here and there as he stared into it. “Well tordes in the very feathers ye sit on!” he rattled. “Meri Greenwood's clean to the mountains, just this side of the Valley of
Illusions. This'll take all day just to get there.” He grabbed up his marble and sprang into the heavens. He could see Urr-Urr below as he rose, tugging eagerly at the roast rat. He gave four great rasping awks.
She looked up at once and tick-tocked loudly before leaping into the air to join him in a spiraling climb to the clouds. “The rat is wonderful,” she said, arriving at his wing-tip. “Can't you come down for a bite with me?”
“I've got 'way too far to go,” he said.
“Did you find Dyn Gwyrdd in your little ball?”
“Yea. And he's in the Illusion Mountains, almost to the Valley of Illusions. I won't get back until tomorrow evening. I sure wish you could come with me.”
“Eggs, dear.”
“I know,” he said, suddenly flying upside down beneath her and grabbing one of her feet. For a moment they dropped into a plummeting tumble, clasping beaks. And just as suddenly they parted ways as Ocker winged away to find the green haired Fairy.
The cloudless sky made good flying, but it was unusually warm. Just after noon he spied a pair of ravens in a clearing below, feeding on a deer with some wolves. He circled widely for some time until the ravens left. “Hit's their deer,” he said as they flew out of sight. “And those can't be anything but their stupid wolves.” He swooped to the ground, hid his scrying marble under a leaf and skipped along in the grass, just out of reach, as he nipped at first one wolf tail then another. Soon he was perched on an antler amongst them, warily pecking and twisting as he removed an eye. Presently, he flew off with it and ate it well away from them, beside his marble. He wiped his beak in the grass and uncovered the marble. “Show me Meri Greenwood,” he said. At once, he was back in the air.
“Damn his swyving toute!” he said. “This is one long way to have to fly. I sure wish I could use Demonica's spell.” It was indeed a very long way to fly, so that by the end of the afternoon, when he first saw the peaks of the Illusion Mountains, he knew that he was going to ask Meri Greenwood to alter her spell.
As the shadows were growing long, Ocker buried his marble before flying to the whispering branches of a tall spruce to study a green haired man picking up sticks on the ground below. Titmice and chickadees called nearby, hidden by the boughs. Ocker shook himself and sorted through the feathers of each wing while he kept an eye on the man. “That's Greenwood, all right,” he thought.
Without warning, Meri Greenwood stood up and looked straight at him. “Hoy, Ocker!” he hollered. “Ain't eighteen rod a pretty far piece for to visit?”
Ocker was so startled by this that he had to flap his way into the air to hide his having lost his grip on his perch. “Damn him!” he rattled as he swooped down to a tree much closer.
“Do you not trust me?” said Meri.
“Not much,” said Ocker. “Do you trust me?”
“I trust you to be the shrewdest thing I know of with feathers, but if you want to do business, you are going to have to come down here with me,” said Meri as he squatted at once and patted the ground.
“Business hit is,” said Ocker, landing on the carpet of needles before him, “but your flattery won't lessen my price. I have information dear to you.”
“Celeste!” cried Meri. “Where is she? She my whole life do be.”
“Then she's worth my price...”
“Well what is hit?”
“I've had some especially valuable tidings to sell, lately,” said Ocker as he ran his beak down a flight feather with a silky zip. “And one of my customers came to consider my services so indispensable that she gave me the powers of a hedge wizard and taught me a traveling spell to get me quickly to her castle to keep her up on matters of keen interest to her...”
“Demonica?”
Ocker stopped short, quite wide eyed at this. “How could you possibly figure that out?”
“Two and two make Demonica. But now, I interrupted your tale.”
Ocker felt very exposed. “Well, the traveling spell only takes me to her keep and back,” he said, bristling up like a pine cone and sleeking down. “And hit took me all day to fly here...”
“I can not never her spell for to change, nor can I change the magic of any Elf or Human,” said Meri, falling silent to eye him with his keen emerald eyes for so long that Ocker nearly sprang into the air in a panic. Suddenly Greenwood rose and went to his knapsack, pulling out a small polished stick. “But I this here do have...”
“A stick?” cried Ocker. “You must not think me as shrewd as you were saying.”
“Some of my trees the magic fire from any one can to store,” said Meri, holding out the stick. “This be one of Longbark's twigs. She be the eldest being in the Forest Ancient and has magic and she very wise do be. This here twig a good deal of fire does store. Maybe you can yourself a way to change Demonica's spell to divine, if you first a quantity of your magic fire in the twig to store. So will you take the twig?”
This was not nearly certain enough to suit Ocker, but there was an unmistakable desperation in Meri's tone that made him snatch away the twig at once and stand on it. “Celeste and her sisters and that swyving rat brother of theirs are seeking sanctuary with the Elves in the Jutwoods,” he said with a snap of first one wing and then the other. “They were camped about ten league south-east of my nest two days ago.”
“Rat brother? They a brother do have, but he's not no rat.”
“Yea? Well he is now. Somebody got him good. He's all rat except for his face, and he's counting on the Elves undoing his curse, though the three quientes... I mean three ladies, hope they don't manage.”
“How could you possibly know something like unto that?”
“I listen from the treetops,” said Ocker as he took a couple of careful pecks at his new stick. “I heard them say hit, that's how. Say. How about the hindquarters off one of those squirrels you have draped across that log?”
“They are both yours,” said Meri, grabbing up his bag. He set off at once into the timber and ran through the deepening shadows until he reached a mossy glade. Across the glade he came to a large ring of mushrooms. As a whip-poor-will gave its first call of the evening, he stepped into the ring and disappeared up to his knees in the moss before jogging down out of sight, vanishing altogether.
***
“The Pitmaster take you Ocker, if I don't find those Fairies soon!” cried Razzorbauch as he hurtled along over the tree tops, sitting astride his Great Staff. “I should've brought you with me. If I don't see them before dark, it's going to be hopeless with no moon.” Just as he circled back for a pass going the other way, he caught sight of something under an overhang at the bottom of a bluff face. “There!” he murmured into the rushing air. He halted at once an
d settled silently to the ground to tiptoe through the leaves until he was standing at their backs like a phantom as they busied themselves at placing kindling and tinder for a fire.
Rodon looked up and gasped at Razzorbauch pointing the Staff at them. “Alack!” he cried in time to be frozen mute, wide eyed and rigidly still with his sisters in a sparkling lavender light.
“Got ye now, haven't I?” said Razzorbauch between his teeth as he thrust himself at their motionless faces of terror. “Look at what you've made me do. I was merely going to keep you out of the woods by casting a ward, but you had to be fools and try to escape.” He paced about, flinging his arms as he rose to a shout. “Now, I have no choice but to put you in permanent exile, far away in the Pitmaster's Kettles. You're going to live forever as ugly hags, imprisoned by wards beneath the crater of Mount Bedd Chwiorydd
Tair!”
He fell silent as he withdrew his crystal Heart and fumbled with it, fitting it into its socket in the end of the Staff. At once it began flashing with a ruby light. “So Dyn Gwyrdd will never know you, Celeste,” he said with a chuckle, “even if he ever does find you. And you'll have your trees, too. I'm sending them right away, even if it kills them.” And with that, he thrust the end of the Staff at the Fairies like a pitchfork, making them vanish in its brilliant red light.
“And now for you, Longbark,” he said as he withdrew his scrying ball to stare into its swirling colors and to begin mumbling an incantation. Immediately he was half way across the twisted forest, standing before the wise old oak and her stand of offspring.
“You and your seed will mock me no more with your resistance,” he said, holding out the Heart as it sang out in a shrill hum from it's socket on the Staff (which happened to be one of Longbark's very branches). “You'll spend the rest of your days in the earth of Mt.
Bedd with your troublesome Fairies.” The Heart shot out a flood of ruby light, which he aimed at the trees. The trees creaked and groaned in the light, like the timbers of a ship in a gale. Razzorbauch suddenly yanked away the light from the trees to point it toward Mount Bedd beyond the horizon. With a pounding boom that shook the earth, Longbark and her trees shot out of sight into the heavens, throwing him flat onto his back to be pelted by a hail of dirt which fell from the sky for some moments. “By Fates!” he bellowed through the sod in his beard. “I must be a god!”
***
Minuet awoke to the sound of distant thunder and the roar of heavy rain, coming straight down. “Roses,” she murmured. She slowly turned this way and that and saw that the room was filled with vases of them. “Mmmm! I love roses.” At once, a warm hand smelling of lye soap and lardy pie dough was against her forehead.
“Oh, honey dew drop!” said Bethan, hugging her with her great flabby arms, soft as feathers. “Your fever's broke. We're going to have you with us, after all.” She gave a small quake that Minuet could tell was a sob, which she hid by clearing her throat.”
“All these roses...” said Minuet.
“I knew they were your favorite. And when your fever just hung on and hung on, and you didn't seem to know anything when we woke you to give you your drops...” Suddenly she gave a whoop of a sob and stood there sniffling and daubing at her eyes before going on: “I didn't know what to do but just keep fetching in roses. The bushes are just loaded.”
“They're wonderful, Bethan. Someday I'm going name a girl Rose.”
A stroke of lightning in the garden shook the house with a deafening tumble of thunder, making the rain suddenly fall harder. Here came something climbing and walking up the sheets. “Hubba Hubba!” said Minuet. “Where did you come from?”
Hubba Hubba paused here and there, giving her a good one eyed inspection.
“How long did I have a fever?”
“Oh, a good two days. There was a while we didn't think the drops were working with you, so your father doubled the dose. And that didn't seem to be doing it ether, so he tripled it. Did you know that you're a-taking three times what you're supposed to? And that Elf healer from the castle allowed that you'd be dead before the first morning without the oil. And your little popinjay here has been real sober, the whole time.”
“My. Well, I do feel better, but I don't quite feel like sitting up yet.”
“There's your father,” she said, nodding at the doorway. “Saves me from going to find him.” She was on her feet at once, meeting him as he came in. “Glorious news, sir. Her fever's broke.”
Razzmorten took off his dripping hat and went straight to Minuet's bedside, taking up her hand. “How do you feel?”
“Just shaky weak. I've not even tried to sit up.”
“Well don't,” he said, producing a bottle and a pipette. “You can't afford to tire and have this monster come back on you. Here. Eighteen drops under your tongue.”
“You move, my little knight,” she said, gently pushing aside Hubba Hubba.
“Oh, you've got him knighted, have you?” said Razzmorten as he leant over with a pipette full of oregano oil.
“Only knight I'll ever get.”
“Fiddlesticks! You'd be a prize for royalty, let alone some knight. I suppose you're too modest to notice how you turn young men's heads.”
“Ugleeuh's the one who worries about that,” she said, closing her eyes for a moment as Hubba Hubba settled himself on her pillow. “Say. How's the still? How's Castle Niarg?”
“The distilleries work wonderfully,” he said as he carefully inspected her neck and jaw before taking a seat beside her bed. “We have two now. The trouble is that we're completely out of oregano hay. There's nothing to do but wait for Captain Pryce to arrive with his shipload. Of course you got the very first bottle Neron and I produced. And I still don't know if we had to triple the dose for you because our stuff was weaker than Ngerrk-ga's, or whether you were hit unusually hard or were sick longer than typical before we noticed. Anyway, Neron took most of the first lot back to the Jutwoods. His other son and his entire family were down with the plague when he arrived. Thank the Fates that he got there when he did.”
“Thank the Fates and you, Father.”
“Me? Had it not been for Ngerrk-ga, we'd all be dead by now. And much as I hate to say it, Demonica actually saved us in spite of herself, since she was the one who told me about Ngerrk-ga.”
“Demonica? No wonder you didn't want Leeuh to know where you were going.”
“Well, not in the hurry I was in. Anyway, Neron will be back any time to help with Pryce's shipload.”
“How's it going at the castle?”
“Oh! I almost forgot,” he said as he shaped the brim of his wet hat. “Prince Hebraun was here and took the oil which didn't go to the Elves. He said the plague is out spreading like wildfire. So it probably has got well beyond us already.
There's already been one riot.”
For a long moment no one spoke as they listened to the steady downpour. From somewhere near the house a veery sang. Minuet studied the timbers in the ceiling. “So, Prince Hebraun came here himself, did he?” she said at last. “It's a good thing Lee-Lee wasn't here.”
“Why would that be good? I mean, other than her general behavior.”
“Oh, she's got designs on him now that his fiancé is dead, as if she had some kind of access to him. It might have been embarrassing. She really made me think she was serious about it.”
“I can't imagine it,” said Razzmorten.
“No, but apparently Leeuh can.”
“Well, good thing she wasn't here, indeed,” he said as he rose and kissed her on the forehead. “I could come back later with supper and we could eat together, if you like.”
“Oh, I'd like that, even if I just watch you eat.”
***
Ocker returned to his nest just before noon to find Urr-Urr asleep on the eggs. He quietly landed on the ledge nearby, nestled his marble in a crack and covered it with a rock before turning to his stick. “I wonder if this works anything like Razzorbauch's staff?” he thought as he pecked at
it here and there.
Down the ledge, a sunny yellow cabbage butterfly alighted at the edge of a puddle left by the rain to slowly pump its wings as it drank. Ocker spied it at once. He carefully scooted his stick this way and that until he had it pointed at the butterfly. “Turn red, you little torde,” he thought as he stepped back. Nothing happened. “That pissen me right smart!” he rattled as he hopped onto the stick. “That little swyver needs to turn red!”
Without warning, a crackle of lavender light shot from his beak to the butterfly, giving him a terrible start, as the butterfly went crimson and fluttered madly away into the air.
“Ocker?” said Urr-Urr, blinking awake in the bright light to find him still dancing about in alarm. “What on earth?”
“There it goes!” he cried.
“What goes?”
“That red butterfly! Never mind. Hit's gone. I used the twig but hit didn't turn the butterfly red, I did!”
“You're not red.”
“No! I stood on the twig and turned a butterfly red. Meri Greenwood traded me that stick which might work like Razzorbauch'e staff, but his staff shoots fire. When I stood on the stick, my beak shot fire. My ears still ring. He gave hit to me so that I could use Demonica's spell to go anywhere, but I have no idea whether I can make hit work for that or not.”
“Maybe you could ask Demonica or Razzorbauch,” she said, stretching her foot back under a wing.
“Fates forbid!” said Ocker as he ruffled up and gave himself a shake. “I don't want either one of them knowing that I have hit. I may have some real power here, and I don't want to risk what they might do. I just want to make my travels quicker to give me time for more deals.”
“And to help with the eggs when they hatch,” she said as she began nibbling at the feathers about his ear.
“That too.”
“So tell me more about Dyn Gwyrdd,” she said. “He gave you the stick. Didn't he tell you something about it?”
“Not much. Hit stores up magic fire and hit came off some tree called Longbark, but he was in a real hurry to go find his lover. But you know, I almost feel bad about telling Razzorbauch before I told him.”
Heart of the Staff - Complete Series Page 10