From a High Tower

by Mercedes Lackey

  Giselle went to the cupboard and took out the honey for the tea, and the plate of cakes. “That’s why she had me living away from everyone, with her, at the abbey. Until I understood my magic and how to keep it under control and all.”

  “And are you doing that now?” Tante Gretchen asked, shrewdly. “Because this storm is stronger than I expected, and I can tell you’re all of a pother inside, even if you are trying not to show it.”

  Inwardly, she cursed herself for not thinking of that, and hastily read the currents of magic around her.

  “Yes, everything is fine,” she was able to report, with relief. “I might be all of a pother, but at least it’s not getting out.”

  “Well then, in that case, I shan’t worry.” Tante Gretchen took her at her word, which did a little to soothe her anger at having to go a-begging to the Bruderschaft. It still rankled, that was the right word for it. It was more . . . her pride was being rubbed raw that she couldn’t even manage a single year alone without having to go begging for help. She could just imagine the Foresters treating her like . . . like a child, when Mother had been treating her as an adult for years and years now. It wasn’t her fault she didn’t know about the military service rolls, or she’d have found some way to avoid towns with army garrisons in them! Why hadn’t someone warned her about this, when they advised her to go to shooting contests?

  Or worse . . . Joachim and Pieter had given her the respect that Mother gave her, but what about the rest of the Bruderschaft? What if all they wanted her to do was womanly things? All very well for Mother and Tante Gretchen to be adept at cooking and baking and tending gardens and all of that—but she wasn’t them! She was an Air Master, not an Earth Master. She could do those things, certainly, but she didn’t much like them and she wasn’t all that good at them.

  Just get your mind back in the book, she advised herself. What’s done is done. You can’t pour the broken eggs back into the shell. Best to just concentrate on salvaging what you can.

  All very good advice, of course. Now if only she could bring herself to take it. . . .

  With saddlebags packed with her new wardrobe, her rifle in a saddle holster, and Lebkuchen clearly impatient to be on the road, Giselle stood at her stirrup, waiting for Tante Gretchen to come out of her cottage. It was a beautiful day, and under any other circumstance, she’d have been overjoyed for the chance to ride out under cloudless skies, with balmy spring breezes lilting through the trees.

  But given that she was figuratively crawling to the Bruderschaft to beg for their help and hope she was forgiven for her part in killing a man . . . well . . . part of her wanted to stay hidden with Tante Gretchen, pretending to be her niece.

  That was impossible, of course. The cottage was cozy and pleasant while the two of them were getting along and while it was always possible to get away by tending the garden or hunting for mushrooms in the forest. But in winter . . . or if for some reason they had a quarrel . . . well, it wouldn’t be cozy, it would be claustrophobic. Even with all the space in the abbey and her tower, sometimes that had been claustrophobic in winter when she and Mother were at odds.

  Tante Gretchen finally came out with another, smaller bag she could fasten over the top of one of her bigger saddlebags. “Food for the journey, so you won’t have to waste as much money buying things to eat,” the old woman said, handing it to her. “Don’t fret. Something will turn up, I feel it in my bones.”

  “I hope so,” she replied, with less confidence. Earth Masters could be quite powerful, but they weren’t known for their predictive talents. Impulsively, she hugged the old woman. “I think you have literally saved my life, Tante Gretchen. I don’t know what I would have done without your help.”

  The Earth Master returned her embrace. “You would have managed. I have every confidence in you, even if you don’t have nearly as much in yourself,” she said firmly. “Now, just keep your eyes and ears open for opportunity, and if something turns up before you reach the Lodge, seize it! The Good God will put something in your path, but you have to be alert for the signs he is giving you something!”

  Again, Giselle was nothing like as sanguine as Tante Gretchen was, but, well, who knew? And anyway, that sounded like something Mother would have said. So she gave the old woman another hug, then mounted Lebkuchen and turned the mare’s head down the path leading to the cottage, as the Earth Master waved goodbye. In a few moments, the thick underbrush and the winding of the path had hidden her and her home from view.

  When the path came out on the road, there was no one in sight, which partially quieted Giselle’s fears that soldiers had been set to ambush her. It was a very silly fear, of course—the four who had been sent directly to Tante Gretchen to look for Gunther had not even considered that she might be the young man in disguise—but that didn’t keep it from being a very real fear.

  The first village she encountered made her tense up all over, but nobody paid any attention to her, except for the handful of women who looked startled and offended at the sight of a woman riding astride even though she was probably less prone to showing ankles, or even (gasp!) calves than someone riding sidesaddle.

  By the third village she felt as relaxed as she was ever likely to get, and then she could think. Lebkuchen was being very well behaved; she wondered if Tante Gretchen had had a “word” with her. It was Earth Magicians who were good with animals, and Earth Masters the best of all. Giselle had always found Lebkuchen a handful, but maybe that had been because the mare had belonged to Mother, not her. Perhaps Tante Gretchen had “explained” the situation to her in a way she understood.

  I have food for a few days, she considered, as Lebkuchen ambled along the quiet, narrow road. Water I can get from the rivers and streams. It’s probably not wise for a woman alone to take a room in an inn. So my biggest problem between here and there is where am I going to sleep? I can’t ride day and night; Lebkuchen needs the rest even if by some miracle I don’t.

  The easiest thing to do would be to make rough camps in the forest. It wouldn’t be hard; Joachim had taught her how to camp ages ago. But if she could find a farm that still had haystacks in the fields, that would be preferable. She had a distinct advantage over most travelers and gypsies and tramps; she could ask an Air Elemental to stand guard for her and wake her before sunrise so she could get out and away before the farmer could catch her.

  For that matter, she could ask her Elemental allies to scout ahead and find a field with haystacks. Then she could wait until dark, slip in before the moon rose, and have herself a cozy little roost without anyone the wiser.

  I’ll do it, she decided, and felt a good bit better. Lebkuchen would be taken care of too; the amount of hay the mare would eat overnight would be negligible to the farmer, but it would cost more than Giselle liked at a stable.

  She whistled the odd little spell-tune she used to summon the friendliest of Air Elementals—those were usually, though not always, sylphs. This time she got one that wasn’t; an odd little creature with the face of a girl and the everything else of a scarlet-feathered bird. She’d gotten Elementals like this one before, and they were a welcome sight when she needed a helper that was steady and not flighty. The bird-creature flew along beside her and listened as she explained what she needed: a farm near the road with haystacks still in the field, somewhere near where she and the horse would be at around sunset.

  The bird-girl listened intently and whistled her agreement when Giselle was finished. Off she flitted, leaving Giselle only concerned as to whether or not such a thing actually existed. Well, if it doesn’t, I’ll camp in the woods, she reminded herself. It wouldn’t be as nice a bed as a haystack . . .

  But it’s preferable to a gaol.

  By the third day she had finally relaxed some of her vigilance and begun to enjoy the journey. Even sleeping in haystacks wasn’t so bad; Mother had taught her how to chase away insects so she was able to burrow in and s
leep peacefully until a sylph or a sprite awoke her.

  And since she was, quite literally, seeing more people than she had ever seen in her entire life, even the most mundane things were entertaining. Sometimes it was all she could do to keep a straight face at some of the goings-on. Were the village beauties really so unaware of how absurd they looked, mincing about the way they did? Were the handsome lads not the least conscious that they acted just as absurdly? The prosperous also put on ridiculous airs, men and women both, when in fact they themselves might have done nothing to earn their prosperity, and had merely inherited it. Her sylphs were only too happy to flit about her, whispering tales of village life like the little gossips they were—and oh how chagrined those proud creatures would have been if they had known that the huntress riding through their town knew some of their embarrassing secrets!

  This was altogether a new development, at least as far as Giselle was concerned. Then again, the nearest village to the abbey was miles away, and probably the sylphs that hung about the abbey had little to no interest in its inhabitants. The sylphs that were turning up on her journey were all local, and sylphs went where the air went. They saw and heard everything.

  They probably would have told her a lot more, if she encouraged them. As it was, it was like reading a gossipy book every time she passed through a town or village.

  Today, she was about to pass through her first large town, or rather, city, and she was definitely looking forward to it. There were things in a large town that she had never seen, only read about. Theaters, coffeehouses, street players . . . ladies in the sort of fashions she only saw in magazines . . .

  Sadly, of course, things like theaters and coffeehouses cost money she was loath to spend. But street players were free, and so was watching fashionable ladies. And there were other things, like great cathedrals, and perhaps museums. . . .

  Also, in a big town, she would no longer be an object of scorn or curiosity with her split skirt and riding astride. People saw much more scandalous things every day in a large enough town, and took them for granted.

  It was easy enough to see her goal, the town of Schopfheim, as she rounded a curve in the road and a valley stretched out before her. Too many red-roofed houses to count, and she took a swift intake of breath at the mere thought of all those people. But it was exciting rather than daunting.

  Lebkuchen’s ears pricked up, as if she had sensed Giselle’s excitement. Then again, she had come through big towns with Mother, and perhaps she was anticipating a nice inn, comfortable stable, and perhaps, apples.

  Not this time, I’m afraid, she thought a little ruefully, as Lebkuchen picked up her feet and moved into a faster pace. It’s going to be another hayfield for us, I fear.

  4

  WHAT Giselle had not expected was that just outside of town, there would be a great deal of commotion, with tents and some sort of display going on. Not the Maifest she had expected, but something else entirely.

  Just on the outskirts of most towns and cities, and even some villages, there was a generally a sort of common field which had any number of uses, but which was always used to hold the Maifests and Oktoberfests. As it happened, her approach to Schopfheim brought her by this field. This was no collection of little beer tents and vendors, there were no games going on, and no Maypole. Whatever this was, it was completely enclosed in a wall of canvas. The wall was painted with huge banner-like scrolls with something written inside and equally huge pictures. Since the road was fairly clear, she urged Lebkuchen into a trot to get her there faster. She was nearly on fire with curiosity when she was able to get close enough to read one of the banners.

  And then . . . then she was nearly on fire with pure desire. For the banner read, Captain Cody’s Wild West Show.

  A Wild West Show! Her heart raced as she craned her neck hoping for a glimpse of . . . something, anything! Alas, it was all hidden behind those canvas curtains that fenced off the area. There was not so much as a feather or a spur to be seen, nothing but the painted banners displaying the wonders to be seen within. Indian attacks! Bandits! The stampede! Captain Cody, the famous sharpshooter! Texas Tom, the trick-roper! Buffalo! All things she had read about in Karl May’s books, and tried to imagine, and they were here, and . . .

  And the reality of the situation brought her spirits crashing to the ground, even as the people of Schopfheim streamed toward the entrance in the center of that canvas wall. She couldn’t afford a ticket. Not if she expected to get to the Bruderschaft Lodge without resorting to theft. It was dismaying, how much things cost when you couldn’t make them for yourself. Food, for instance. Her prize money was slowly trickling through her fingers, and what had seemed like bounty as she collected it didn’t seem like so much when you found out just how much an innkeeper was prepared to charge you for food you could have cooked yourself at a quarter of the cost.

  Lebkuchen’s head came up as she scented other horses behind those canvas walls, and she whickered, her ears pointed forward. With a sigh, Giselle turned her away from the tempting venue. I can’t. I’ve run out of Tante Gretchen’s food. Things are more expensive in towns. I can’t keep counting on finding hayfields to sleep in. Lebkuchen would need stabling too, while I went in there, and I can’t possibly afford—

  “Do you want to see the wild people?”

  That voice, as much inside her head as out of it, told her that one of her Elementals was nearby. She looked up. One of the sylphs—this one with white and silver butterfly wings—had just swooped in to hover above Giselle’s head, eyes sparkling with excitement. She didn’t know this one, but as always, the sylphs seemed to recognize her and what she was immediately. “It is wonderful! You will like it so very much!”

  Giselle took a quick look around to be certain no one was near enough to hear her talking to thin air. Traffic on the road was nonexistent for the moment; it was all one-way, heading for those enticing tents. Narrow strips of meadow bordered the road here, with trees beyond. “I don’t have the money,” she said, sadly. “I’d need to pay for a ticket, and pay for a place to put my horse while I watched the show. You know that humans need money for—”

  “Wait!” The sylph dashed off. Blinking with confusion, Giselle moved her mare over to the side of the road, under a lovely green beech tree, and waited as she had been asked. What on earth could the sylph be—

  “Here!” The sylph was back, waving two scraps of paper, one in each hand, as she sped toward Giselle. For anyone else, it would just look like two bits of paper, swirling about on the wind. “Here!” The sylph dropped them, and hovered expectantly, as Giselle snatched them out of the air.

  To her astonishment, they were tickets. One was for stabling on the show grounds, and the other—admission to all attractions and the show itself!

  “But—how—” She gaped up at the sylph.

  “Oh, people lose things, drop things, and are very careless.” The sylph danced about in glee. “It was easy! Let’s go!”

  She flew off, heading for the entrance, and it was obvious that she expected Giselle to follow. Not that Giselle had any hesitation about doing so! And Lebkuchen seemed eager enough to be with her own kind, too. Once they were within about a hundred feet of the entrance, Giselle dismounted and led her horse into the loosely packed crowd that was slowly making its way toward the entrance. There was a lot of excited chatter. She seemed to be among several family groups that knew each other and were rhapsodizing about how lucky they were for a Wild West Show to be here, at little Schopfheim. “I wouldn’t care if the Maifest was put off until June!” one teenage boy proclaimed. “Think of it! Think of what we’ll see!” He could hardly contain his excitement, and Giselle knew exactly how he felt.

  She presented herself and her tickets to the ticket-taker at the front entrance, who, to her disappointment, was not an Indian or cowboy or frontiersman like Old Shatterhand, but was dressed in a perfectly normal suit. Well, normal for a t
ownsman, anyway; so far on her journey, men were far more likely to wear the dress of their villages than a town-suit. He directed her to a tent immediately inside, where she surrendered Lebkuchen to a young boy in exchange for a tin tag with a number on it. Horses were tethered inside to posts with identical numbers; each post had a pile of hay and a bucket of water at it, so it looked as if Lebkuchen was going to be in good hands. She got into her saddlebags and changed out Lebkuchen’s bridle for her halter so she could eat comfortably, then put her in the boy’s confident hands. There were only three horses besides Lebkuchen; it appeared most people had walked here. The boy was a local lad and told her to hurry along to the main tent, as the show was just about to start.

  This was . . . well, entirely new territory, so far as the size of the crowd was concerned. Villages, she was used to; she had gone with Mother on occasion to the nearest one, once Mother had deemed her powers safely in check. A town, well, that was just a very big village, and she had steeled herself to deal with them as they came along. But this . . . nothing in her experience prepared her for this.

  She let the crowd carry her along the side of the biggest tent to the entrance. To her right was the canvas of the tent, to her left was a row of . . . canvas booths, she thought. They looked a little like the vendor booths she had seen at the Maifest. She smelled food, some aromas familiar, some not. She definitely heard men calling out to the crowd, though she couldn’t see what they were hawking, as she was a great deal shorter than most of the people between her and the booths. But in any event, now was not the time to be distracted by minor diversions when what she really wanted was to get a good seat inside.

  The side flaps of the entrance were drawn wide apart and held in place by big canvas straps; a ticket-taker eyed her ticket, but did not take it from her, as he did with some others. It smelled of animals—not strongly, but definitely the scent was there. It smelled of dust, and trampled grass. And some faint whiffs of perfume and tobacco from the crowd. She wondered why the ticket-taker had not asked her to surrender hers.