From a High Tower

by Mercedes Lackey

  And she knew what was coming next. He’d yank open her coat and vest, and tear open her shirt, expecting to prove she wasn’t a woman. And as soon as he saw she was—well, there she was, a woman in man’s clothing, who presumably had no men to protect her, and all alone with him. And what proper woman would be cavorting about in men’s clothing anyway? Only loose ones, like that notorious writer, George Sand! Even people who were illiterate knew about women like that!

  The devil take you, she snarled in her mind. I need no man to protect me!

  “Take his breath!” she shouted to the night-sylphs above her. There was a flash of puzzlement in his eyes—well, this was not the reaction he expected. But there was no time for him to do more than have that instant of puzzlement. Because the night-sylphs reacted immediately to her order.

  Quicker than the tick of a clock, they dove down on the captain and enveloped his head before he even had a chance to respond to what must have seemed to him like the cry of a mad person, wrapping their long hair about his face and neck. He couldn’t see them, of course, but he could most certainly feel what they were doing. They could not do much in the physical world, but they most certainly could make air move, and they made it all move out of his lungs.

  She could see his head through them. He clawed at his throat, trying to gasp, and unable to. His eyes bulged, and he staggered backward, tripped, and fell behind his desk. The padded carpet meant he didn’t make much of a noise, and it seemed he wasn’t thrashing. But then again, his ramming her into the wall hadn’t brought his men running into the office to see what the matter was, so perhaps they were used to violent sounds coming from within.

  Sadistic bastard. She felt her mouth forming a silent snarl. Well, he had just taken on an opponent that was going to give him a taste of his own back.

  But she didn’t want to kill him, after all, so she added, quickly, “Once he is unconscious, give him his breath back,” and turned her attention to getting herself out of those irons.

  She closed her eyes and concentrated all her attention on her hands and wrists. The irons had been made for a man’s bigger hands and thicker wrists and were very loose on her. Loose enough that she was certain she could get them off. She might lose some skin doing so, but she was sure she could get them off.

  It was all going to depend on relaxing her hands while at the same time trying to squeeze them into the smallest possible shape . . . which was not the easiest thing to do, when you were crushing them and scraping the skin off. . . .

  Painfully. And soon they were damp with blood.

  At least the bleeding is making them more slippery.

  She ruthlessly closed herself off from any distractions, the better to concentrate, and finally sensed the manacle on her left hand moving past the first knuckle of her thumb. By this time she was sweating freely, and unashamedly crying a little in pain, since by this time it felt more as if she was degloving the skin of her entire hand, not just scraping a little off.

  And then, after agonizing moments—her left hand popped free! Now able to bring her hands in front of her, she managed to keep herself from tearing at her right wrist by an act of pure will, and slowly forced the other manacle off as well. Her wrists were definitely scraped and bleeding, but to her relief the damage wasn’t as terrible as it had felt. Now she looked for her sylphs—and the captain.

  “Where are you?” she called softly, when silence and an apparently empty room met her searching gaze.

  “Master . . .” came a small voice from the other side of the desk. “The man fell down and we let him go, but he is not moving.”

  An ice-cold chill went down her spine at that. Surely not—

  But her luck was well and truly out, because as she hurried around the desk, it was obvious that the captain was quite dead. He was completely still, his face set in an expression of horror, and his eyes—

  Her first reaction was acute nausea, followed by terrible guilt, as the half-dozen sylphs looked up at her with solemn eyes. They might be a little malicious, but they never deliberately went past frightening their victims a bit. This was neither expected, nor welcome, to them either. What could have gone wrong? She had only intended for him to fall unconscious, long enough for her to escape! She hadn’t wanted to kill him!

  Too late for that . . . he was stone dead. And there was no bringing him back.

  Her mind went black for a moment, then restarted like a balky horse and galloped off at a manic pace. I was the last person with him. They’ll blame Gunther no matter what. She had to get out of there, and . . .

  And first she needed to lock the door. With luck, no one would try it for a long time, and when they did, they might think that the captain wanted privacy. That should buy her a few hours. Moving as quietly as she could, she flipped the lock, then went back to the corpse on the floor as the night-sylphs watched her, waiting for her next request.

  Part of her was appalled that she was thinking so clearly and quickly with a man lying dead near her. Part of her remembered the ugly look in his eyes, so like the man who had tried to rape her, and was not sorry at all for what had happened. And the third part of her ignored the guilty part and the part that was insisting he got what he deserved, and that was the part that was in charge.

  She tore her handkerchief in half and wrapped her wrists with the two pieces. She took back the purse of prize money that he had confiscated, but stole nothing else, although there was a powerful temptation to go through his pockets. . . .

  But if I am caught and I rob him now, they will say I killed him to rob him. But if I leave him untouched, there is a bare chance that someone will believe me if I say he became so angry with me that he dropped dead of apoplexy.

  “Go ahead of me and warn me of anyone in my path,” she whispered to the sylphs, who seemed just as eager to leave that room of death as she was. As they whisked through the little cracks in the walls around the window, she, who could do nothing like that, eased the window open and looked cautiously out of it. There was no one in sight, and the Maifest was still in full and joyous cry, judging by the light and the lively music in the direction of where the field would be. So she eased herself over the sill, made sure she had left nothing of herself or her property behind with a last glance around the room, and closed the window behind her.

  Then she bent over and ran for the inn’s stable, where her horse and all her belongings were. Ordinarily that would be a bad place to leave property, but Giselle’s wicked little mare was trained to let no one into her stall but Giselle herself. She was as good or better than a guard dog.

  Where did I leave my hat? She wondered irrelevantly, as she moved from one shadow to another, listening for the sounds of footsteps under the faraway music of the Maifest. It hadn’t been with her in the captain’s office. I must have left it at the beer stall. . . . If this had been a situation where she was likely to be tracked by another magician, that would have been a catastrophe, but there hadn’t been the least sign of another Elemental Master, not even an Elemental Magician, in the entire town. The hat could safely be left behind. She certainly wasn’t going to go back after it now.

  She was out of breath when she reached the stables and paused just outside. Her sylphs gathered around her, no longer mischievous. “Is there anyone in there but horses?” she murmured, pressed up against the wall, trying to squeeze every bit of herself into a particularly dark shadow.

  “No, Master,” said one. “We made the drunk have bad dreams and he went somewhere else to sleep.”

  She looked up at them, hovering above her head. “Well done. I’m going to get my horse and get out of here. Keep watch while I do, and scout ahead of me on the road.” She intended to lead the horse to the edge of town by the quietest ways before mounting him. A man leading his horse calmly would not attract any attention, but someone galloping as if the devil was after him certainly would. And the latter would be remembered
, which was not something she wanted.

  Lebkuchen—her mare—greeted her with a whicker, but tossed her head with displeasure when it became apparent that Giselle intended to saddle her and ride in the darkness. No horse liked being ridden in the dark; it was too easy for them to make a misstep and break a leg. But Giselle didn’t have any choice.

  Everything was still there, and it was not long before Giselle was leading the mare, laden down with packs and her hunting rifle and supplies, down a street she knew let out directly onto the road northward. She had chosen the direction deliberately, to lead away from the abbey and her tower, despite every instinct she had screaming at her to head straight for that shelter. Instinct might tell her to run for her den, but reason told her that was the last place she should go. Just in case . . . in case someone had recognized a landmark or a village in some story “Gunther” had told, and thought to look in that direction. There were such things as telegraphs in the world, and every police station had one. Word of a fugitive could travel far faster than she could, and she might find herself riding into an ambush.

  Every nerve was screaming with stress by the time she got across the bridge and onto the highway, where she could mount. Lebkuchen seemed to have picked up on her nerves. Despite her profound distaste for traveling at night, she transitioned almost directly into a trot, her hooves thudding briskly into the dust of the highway.

  Finally on the move, Giselle hunched over in the saddle, her insides knotted with fear and guilt, her mind awash with so many emotions she couldn’t keep track of them. What have I done? was uppermost, most of the time. Odious as that captain was, and sadistic, she had never meant to kill him—she hadn’t really meant to harm him. All she had wanted to do was incapacitate him long enough for her to escape. In her mind, she’d planned on making him unconscious until she got out of the irons, then she would lock the door, tie him up, gag him, and leave him in his bed. Probably the humiliation of being left that way by a girl would have kept him quiet. She tried to remember the things that Pieter and Joachim had taught her, had said to her, about situations like this, but she couldn’t recall a single word.

  I killed a man. Not directly, and not on purpose, but a man was dead, and she had been the cause. What possible justification was there for that? That he had intended to harm her? That doesn’t make it right. . . .

  Her thoughts were interrupted by one of the sylphs coming to fly beside her. “Master, there is no one on the road. Where do you wish to go?”

  She passed her hand over her sweat-damp face. “Find me another Master to shelter with,” she said, finally, because she would rather trust her judgment and punishment to one of her own than to those with no magic. And she would have to give herself up to that sort of judgment, of that she was certain. She had used magic to kill, and anyone who did that and did not give herself up would find herself hunted down by the Bruderschaft in short order. That was, at least in part, what they did.

  As Lebkuchen sped on through the night—a night lit by a bright, full moon—and she continued to wrestle with her guilt, she scarcely paid any attention to where they were going. She only knew it was well past midnight by the moon when the sylphs chivvied her off the highway and down a narrow little path through what looked—at least in the darkness—like near-virgin forest. Lebkuchen slowed to a hesitant walk immediately; deciding that her mare’s safety was of more importance than her own comfort, Giselle dismounted and followed the sylphs, leading the mare carefully around the worst of obstacles, doing her best to clear the path of things like fallen branches that could trip her up.

  At least concentrating on that left her unable to think about anything else but relief when she finally saw a dim, warm light shining through the trunks of the trees ahead.

  But it wasn’t until she saw the old woman waiting with a lantern held over her head to guide Giselle to what looked like a hermit’s cottage that Giselle suddenly felt the full effect of the evening hit her with a hammer-blow of exhaustion. As she came in through the open gate of a little yard, Lebkuchen whickering eagerly at the sight of a little shed with three goats tethered in it, Giselle stumbled and might have fallen if the old woman hadn’t been there in a trice, with a steadying hand on her elbow.

  “Not a word, Liebchen,” the old woman said in a firm voice that brooked absolutely no argument. “Your sylphs have told me everything. What you need now is a safe place to rest, and old Tante Gretchen is here to give it to you.”

  “But—” Giselle began, her tongue feeling oddly thick with fatigue.

  “But me no buts,” Tante Gretchen said, and took Lebkuchen’s reins from her nerveless fingers. “You go in that door and take the cot by the fire. I’ll see to your mare.”

  Giselle did not even bother to argue. She stumbled across the threshold into a warm cottage, sweet with the scent of woodsmoke and herbs, spotted a cot at the hearthside and all but fell into it. She didn’t even bother to take off her boots, and was dreamlessly asleep before she had even pulled the blanket over herself.

  3

  GISELLE woke to the smell of sizzling bacon, and her empty stomach reminded her that she hadn’t had anything but beer and a sausage and bread the entire previous day. Tante Gretchen was sitting at a stool on the hearth, turning over strips of bacon with a fork on a flat griddle atop some coals. She looked over at Giselle and smiled. “There’s sausages and flatcakes already done. Go help yourself while I finish these.”

  Giselle’s stomach growled loudly, and she pushed off the blanket to get up—

  And discovered that she also had to quickly comb her fingers through her hair and shove it back over her shoulders—because, as it always did when she was under stress, her hair had grown.

  Tante Gretchen blinked a little at that. “Does it always do that?” she asked, with keen interest. “Your hair, that is.”

  Giselle made a face. “When things are not going well, it can grow as much as a foot in a day. I don’t know why. Mother said she had never heard of anything like it, and the only thing she could think of was that the sylphs like to play in my hair, and when they do, they leave magic energy behind. So she thought that perhaps my hair grew fast when I was under stress to make sure I had extra power.”

  Tante Gretchen nodded. “That seems a reasonable explanation to me. Go get a plate of breakfast, Liebchen, and we can talk about your problems.”

  The thought of her problems—and the terrible thing she had done—almost killed her appetite. It probably would have succeeded if she hadn’t been nearly starving.

  The cottage was tiny. There was a loft, but it looked as if it wasn’t used for anything, which made perfect sense for someone Tante Gretchen’s age; she wouldn’t be wanting to scramble up and down ladders. Beneath the loft was a cupboard bed where Tante Gretchen obviously slept. There was a table with four chairs under a little window framed with white, starched curtains, two cupboards and a wardrobe against the walls, a counter with a porcelain bowl for a sink, the stool that Tante Gretchen was using and the cot Giselle had slept it. The floor was old, worn wood, and the walls were whitewashed plaster that had some small, dark pictures hanging on them. It was very pretty, if a bit claustrophobic for Giselle.

  There was a covered plate and an uncovered plate on the table, and another pair of plates stacked beside them. Since she was still dressed, Giselle just took the few steps to the table where she found that the plate covered by an immaculate towel held the flatcakes; a little bowl she hadn’t noticed at first had butter in it, a pot held honey, and the uncovered plate held the sausages. In no time, Giselle had a plate full of food, including the bacon her hostess lifted directly to her plate from the griddle and a cup of chamomile tea. Tante Gretchen quickly made up her own breakfast from the rest, and they settled down at the table to eat.

  The old woman did not permit her to say anything until they were both finished and the plates were cleaned and put away. Then she poured them both
another cup of tea, and said, “Now. Tell me everything that happened, and leave nothing out.”

  Taking her at her word, Giselle began a lengthy recitation, starting from the shooting contest and how she had won it with the help of her Elementals. Tante Gretchen nodded when she described the abrupt arrival of the captain.

  “Hauptmann Erich Von Eisenhertz,” she said, sourly. “He was a bully as a little boy, and being in the Army did not change him for the better. Now he is a bully and a sadist. He has his men put on punishment detail, forces them to run until their feet bleed, or has them beaten on the smallest of causes, and people hereabouts have wondered how long it would be before one of them snapped and murdered him. But go on.”

  Giselle blinked a little. This, she had not expected. She went on, ending with her escape from the village. “The rest, you know,” she said, unhappily. “And I am to blame for the Hauptmann’s death—”

  “Nothing of the sort.” Tante Gretchen shook her spoon at Giselle’s nose. “I am the nearest thing to a doctor hereabouts, and I can tell you that it was his own apoplexy that killed him, not you.”

  “But—”

  “Which of us is the Earth Master?” she demanded. “Between all the food he stuffed into himself and his temper, it was only a matter of time—and probably a race between his heart and his brain as to which would kill him faster. All your sylphs did was accidentally frighten him enough that a vessel in his head burst—a vessel that was just waiting for something to make it rupture.” Tante Gretchen snorted. “I am the nearest Master, and one of the oldest around here. So, it is my judgment that you are not guilty of murder-by-magic. At worst, it would be ‘misadventure.’ Frankly, I’d call it ‘a stupid accident that befell someone who well deserved it.’ And I won’t brook any arguments.”

  Giselle slowly let her breath out in a sigh. “But, I’ll still be hunted. I was the last person with him.”