“So we’re probably walkin’ right into the biggest battle of the whole war?”
“Sounds like it,” Roberta nodded. “The birds are all avoidin’ that whole area if they can.”
Groaning, I started edging toward the road. “Lovely. Anything comin’ up ahead we have to worry about?”
Ernie climbed aboard the parrot’s back again. “Not that we saw, but we’ll keep an eye out. If somethin’ happens you need to be concerned about, we’ll buzz yer.”
“Good. Thanks. If everything stays quiet, meet us just outside of wherever we stop for the night.”
“Will do,” Roberta said with a wink, flapping into the sky. I watched them fly away for a moment, then broke out of the bushes. Tyrell looked anxious, but seemed reassured as he watched me fiddle with my overalls.
“I declare, women do take the longest time to do the simplest things.”
I wanted to explain to him that nature’s call was a lot simpler for him than for me, even if I wasn’t wearing a proper dress, but preferred to let the whole subject die. “You’re a rugged soldier, Cap’n,” I purred. “This is the first time I’ve lived in the out-of-doors.”
“True enough, ma’am,” he nodded, all chivalrous, just like I’d expected him to. “Would you care to ride up here for awhile and rest your feet?”
“No, thank you, I’m good for a while yet. The more I walk the tougher my feet’ll get.”
“Spoken like a true soldier. On we go, then.”
To tell the truth, my feet hurt something awful and I desperately wanted to sit on that horse. But it was time to talk to Jasper. Sitting with Tyrell wasn’t the best place for that conversation, since I sometimes forgot to think my words and would blurt things out. While we plodded along on the dusty back road, blessedly free of anybody else (the one good thing about sneaking through a war zone is that people don’t travel unless they absolutely have to), I decided that I needed to know once and for all what I was in for at midnight.
“Okay, boyo,” I told him, “let’s have it.”
“Have what?” asked Jasper, all pretend-innocent.
“Them ground rules I never seem to get. What happens come midnight and how do I deal with you after that?”
“No free shape-shifts, for starters.”
I shuddered at the thought of being turned into an animal, or worse, again. “Wow, what a burden. Anything else? Are you gonna disappear at the stroke of twelve in a puff of purple smoke?”
“Ooh, that’d be nifty! Maybe throw in a sulphurous whirlwind, too.”
“Spare me. Those muck monsters smell bad enough as it is. Spill it. What exactly changes tonight?”
“Not as much as you think. I’ll still be in your head as long as you hold the Stone and Morphageus. I can still defend you from imminent peril. But the magick will have to be earned for everything else.”
“Earned? What you mean?”
“I mean that magick is never free. The Stone increases whatever magick you add to it, just like it increases your speed, strength, and senses.”
“Will that change?” I hoped not. I was powerful happy being able to see in the dark.
“No. The Stone runs off of your own life-force. As long as you’re breathin’ and in contact with it, the Stone will help you.”
“But…?”
“But it can’t create magick on its own, beyond that. You have to make bank deposits, sort of. That’s how all magick works.”
Images of me handing an eye-shaded teller a bulging bag of magick flashed through my head. “Deposits?”
“The Stone can help you store magick energy inside you, once you learn how. There are a couple of ways to do that. Songlines are the most powerful, but also the hardest. You’ll need a teacher for that. We’ll have to find you a mage one of these days.”
Songlines?I’m doomed. Can’t sing to save my life. “Go ahead. I know you’re dyin’ to show that you’re smarter than me.”
“The world is full of places where magick energy flows, like rivers. There are also places where it pools, like lakes. Those are called songswirls. In fact, they’re usually near water. Enormous power there. If you know how, you can suck up that energy like a sponge. If you don’t know how, one of two things happens.”
“And they would be…?”
“Nothing, which’d be really embarrassin’ in the middle of a bully assault, or…”
“Yeah? What?”
“Or the magick flares up and runs around inside you like an out-of-control fire.”
“Somehow I just know that can’t be good.”
“Well, your brain explodin’ like a keg of powder usually makes a mess, yeah.”
“Great. So that’s out for now. What else?”
“There’s the black magick that the Bullies use. But you don’t want to do that.”
“I’d think not. I can just imagine what you have to do to earn that magick. Deals with demons and such?”
“Yep. Although it’s easier to just cause pain or death to an innocent living thing.”
“No, thank you.” That got me to thinking, though. “Wait! Haven’t I been doin’ that with all of this fightin’? What about last night?”
“The key is ‘innocent’. If someone has chosen freely to attack you, then they’ve abandoned innocence.”
Then who have the Bullies been tormentin’ to earn their power? I didn’t want to know. My imagination was creative enough. An awful lot of street kids went missing in Washington City, for starters.
“So every time I step on a bug or pull a weed…?”
“Or eat chicken.” Jasper had a wicked glee to his voice.
I sucked in a breath. “I’m gonna be sick.”
“Don’t fret. It’s a part of nature. You take in a tiny bit of magick all the time with just ordinary livin’. You lose some every time you’re mean to someone, lose your temper, and so on. That all balances out in the long run. It’s the big stuff—murder, torture, like that—that corrupts you. The mages who do such things can become horribly powerful, but that sort of magick feeds on itself and changes the user in ways you don’t want to think about.”
“Oh, don’t tease me.”
“Let’s just say that demons have to come from someplace.”
“Ick! What’s the other way, then? The other safe way?”
“You do me favors.”
I stopped dead in the middle of the road. Romulus almost ran me over. When he frowned at me I tapped my cup, then my head. He nodded and kept moving. “Such as?”
“I’ve been stuck inside this sword for ages and ages, since I was your age. No body, no feelin’s, no human interaction. It’s a prison. What do think has been powerin’ Morphageus the last three days, workin’ sundry miracles for you? My life-force, trapped in here by my original master. If you recharge me by makin’ me feel alive, I can do things for you. Otherwise, I’ll fade.”
“What sort of favors?” I didn’t much like the direction this was going, but it sounded better than the exploding brain or torturing kittens.
“Nothin’ much. Nothin’ black, anyhow. Just stuff to let me feel like a real person again.”
“Like eatin’ your favorite foods? Smellin’ a flower you haven’t seen since the old days? That type of thing?”
“Yeah. Also, lettin’ me into your mind.”
“Heck, you’re already there, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“No, I’m only privy to the thoughts on the surface, the ones you use to get around with. Your heartfelt emotions and secrets are closed unless you choose to let me in, or lose so much control that they come to the surface with the rest.”
Huh? “I don’t know that I want you tiptoein’ through my attic, rummagin’ through my feelin’s.”
“Who am I gonna tell?”
He had me there. Unless he had more ways to make mental links than I knew about. Would he tell the other magick swords about the holes in my underwear? Were they all going to laugh about my girlie worries? Still, it sounded bet
ter than the other options. Without Morphageus I couldn’t help Ma or Eddie. They’d be lost for sure.
OK,” I sighed, out loud. “It’s a deal.”
19/ A Cure for Sore Feet
“I ain’t gonna have to paint myself in colored rings and crawl around naked, am I?”
Hot, tired, dirty, bored, and overall miserable. That’s what soldiers say is their usual lot. Actually, I’ve heard them add lousy, cold, and wet to that, too, but we saw no rain in sight on this sweltering afternoon. As for the lice…well, you just had to get used to the idea that you carried passengers. Fleas, too, most likely courtesy of Alcibiades or the pallets we’d snoozed on in the refugee tunnel. Those I tried to pick off when I felt them crawling or biting. They were easier to find than the lice. Before falling into Ford’s basement I’d always smushed any fleas I’d found on me. Now I just flicked them away, figuring the odds were too high that the poor little guys were serving time for some indiscretion against the Merchantry. Indiscretion. Like wantin’ to be free, maybe, or just not dead in some Merchantry-sponsored war or plague. I also dwelled on Jasper telling me about getting black magick power from killing things, even plants. That gave me the shivers. Once I’d read about a religion in the Raj that revered life so much they wore masks so as to not accidentally inhale a bug that might be a reincarnated ancestor. If I have any more revelations I may be headed in that direction. Nevertheless, I looked forward to stopping for the night so I could boil my clothes. I’d been living in them for three days. My underwear felt like tree bark.
It was about four in the afternoon. We’d been on the road since six in the morning, resting ten minutes out of every other hour. Tyrell set a ruthless pace, him being on a cavalry horse. He’d grown used to covering ground in a hurry. I imagined that having to stick with me at maybe three miles an hour galled him. All he talked about as we walked was how he didn’t want to miss the big battle for Richmond. Just dandy. All I wanted was to find a way to avoid it altogether.Men and their glory-hunting. The world would’ve been a lot nicer place to live in all these past untold thousands of years if they’d settled for less glory and more bedtime stories to their kids. I know that woulda suited this kid just fine. Never had a story from Pa, not that I remember.Ma did it, of course, but that’s not quite the same somehow. I hoped that when push came to shove Tyrell would choose me over martial fame.
Our little back road filled up with folks some as we got closer to Fredericksburg. Most headed north, away from the battle that was coming. There wasn’t much more conversation than “Good day”. People wanted to put as much distance between themselves and the war as they could. Once or twice young Confederate dispatch riders raced past us in choking clouds of dust, bound for the capital. They didn’t even favor us with a by-your-leave, just roared on south with their messages. The map in my head told me that Fredericksburg lay about halfway to Richmond. We’d get to it the next day, Tuesday the 24th, and push on through to Hanover Courthouse. Late Wednesday, if we kept up our brutal pace and I didn’t drop over from sheer exhaustion, we’d make it to Richmond. We aimed to stay on the road twelve hours, making around thirty miles a day. Romulus showed no signs of tiring, limping, or even breathing hard, despite being loaded down like a pack mule. Tyrell, fat and happy on the tireless Alcibiades, had no worries, except that his rear end might get sore. Unlikely for a veteran cavalry officer. Even though I was in good shape from lots of running and sword fighting with Eddie, I would’ve keeled over the first day if the captain hadn’t made me ride in front of him a lot of the time.
Once or twice I spied Roberta, high overhead and mimicking the hovering flight of a vulture to avoid notice. She never gave me any sign that trouble might lie ahead, which made me real happy after the past couple of days I’d had. Romulus didn’t say much, just kept staring ahead with his sharp Marshal’s eye, doggedly putting one big foot in front of the other. Jasper stayed just as quiet. Maybe he was taking a nap or whatever magick swords did on their own time. Tyrell stopped asking questions that seemed to be designed to catch me in a fib. He just sang patriotic songs in a quiet baritone, as if he were his sole audience. When he did “The Vacant Chair” he got a hitch in his voice that he tried to cover with a cough. Must’ve lost somebody close, then. Just like everyone else since this fool war started.
We moved off of the road around six-thirty in the evening and camped in a thicket next to a creek. After a cold supper of beans and hardtack we washed up and checked for damage. The captain tended to his horse like it was his best girl, of course. You’d expect no less. Romulus just shucked his boots, glanced at his perfectly-healthy feet, curled up like a hound, and started snoring. Boy, I wanted to whack him a good one out of pure envy. I had blisters on both feet, a hole in one sock, and a bruise on my backside from that diabolical McClellan saddle. To my mind, all the trouble that the Union commander had in taking Richmond could be put down to his having invented such a fiendish torture device.
On top of everything else, I had a surplus of livestock on my body. The lice and the fleas had to go. With Tyrell’s bemused permission I got a fire going a few yards from camp, behind a wall of briars. Having established as much privacy as I looked likely to get, I set our one small pot on the fire and boiled water. Then I stripped down to my near-black bare skin and scrubbed myself while my drawers and shirt bubbled away. It had been a darned lucky thing to have found that tunnel full of supplies. I’d pocketed a tiny piece of soap and an old towel along with the other goodies. They now gave me blessed relief. When I’d cleaned myself to where you could finally see the freckles again (Ma’s personal indicator of my cleanliness), I skimmed the indignant insects from the top of the water. Wringing everything out, I hung the clothes on a branch, wrapped myself in the towel as best I could, and tossed my overalls and socks into the pot. By the time they’d been de-bugged my short hair had dried and so had most of my under-layer. Pulling on the drawers and shirt, I stretched out on the towel in bliss. It seems a small thing, but being clean amidst untold grime is one of the great joys of living. That lesson would be re-taught to me quite a bit in the coming weeks.
By the time everything had dried out as much as I could expect, darkness had arrived. We were just a couple of days past the summer solstice, so day gave up with a grumble. I packed up my stuff, doused the fire, and returned to the main camp. Tyrell had set up a dog tent in my absence and rolled out a bedroll in it. He told me to crawl in and sleep for at least six hours straight, as I had the most aches and pains. He and Romulus would keep first watch in three-hour shifts. I didn’t argue with his logic. It was sweet innocent Mary Williams he was caring for, after all. Had to keep playing my part. After whispering to Romulus that Roberta and Ernie might show up, I went out like a drenched candle.
My new dream returned as clear and sharp as it had been the first night I’d had it. It being the third time through, I could start to think about what things might mean even while I floated in the dream. Romulus had to be the black dog, that seemed obvious. Tyrell might be the angel in cavalry boots, but who the other angels could be I had no idea. Marshals, maybe? If so, why no parrot feathers or mouse whiskers? And why did the Romulus-dog have a leash? I still couldn’t understand what the words in the sky were. Some might have been Iberion and Gaulle, though it was hard to tell because most of the time I couldn’t see the whole word. A few of them were in different alphabets. Hebraic, maybe? Arabe? Muscovite? What’s that all about?
The people in foreign duds reminded me of the stories told about Washington’s Monument. Merchantry spies? Or Merchantry refugees? Or maybe they were people I would meet in the future. No telling how this dream thing worked. My first dream had been a taste of my future, but that didn’t mean that all dreams worked that way. If it warned of things to come then those Bullies were worrisome. I had a sick feeling that word would spread about how we’d treated them Saturday night. The next time we met they’d come loaded for bear.
That ship could be Roberta’s, the Penelope’s Kiss, my
way to the Sceptr’d Isle. Eddie’s ambulance. Or his hearse. Maybe mine, too. The skulls on the beach worried me. So did those three armed strangers. I saw now that they wore dark-green clothes that were almost black, and masks covered their faces. All of them moved like dancers. Or cobras. Who the lady fighting them might be was vague. Me, all grown up? Ma? Someone I had yet to meet? Probably not Ma, since she came in a second later to toss me onto the ship. And what did the whale mean? I knew precious little about them, but this one didn’t seem like your normal harpoon-him-for-his-oil beastie. More like a god than a mere animal.
Afterwards I slept like the dead. No other dreams passed through my tired head. It bothered me a little that I didn’t have nightmares about what Venoma might be doing to Eddie, or what peril Ma could be in. Maybe the Stone protected me from the worst of that sort of thing, just like it made me stronger in my body and let me stay calm in a fight. Too bad it couldn’t prevent blisters or darn my socks. Now that’d be a magick rock to write home about.
It turned out I didn’t need a magick stone for the socks, just a Marshal of the Equity. A gentle touch on my shoulder woke me. For a moment I stayed fuzzy like you do when pulled from a sound sleep. Blinking, I saw Romulus, getting me ready for my sentry shift. He held out my socks, the hole repaired.
“Time to get up, Miss,” he whispered. “All’s been quiet so far.”
“You fixed my socks? That Marshals’ school’s real thorough, huh?” It embarrassed me a bit that he could do that and I couldn’t. In fact, I wasn’t much good at anything girlie. Ma would sigh sometimes and call me her firstborn son. That usually happened when I came home with a bullfrog, covered in Potomac mud, after winning three arm-wrestling matches with the local fellows.
“’Tweren’t nothin’. I always carry this with me for ‘mergencies.” I noticed that he held one of the tiny portable sewing kits that the soldiers called ‘housewives’.
“Thanks.” Pulling on my socks and boots, I crawled out of the tent. When I stood up and put weight on my feet, everything screamed in protest, from my blistered feet and achy butt to my back and arms. The last two must’ve been from all of the fighting. Twelve years old and I felt like somebody’s grandpa. This shaped up to be a long ugly quest. Maybe I’d save the world and then just fall apart like last year’s scarecrow in the middle of my victory ceremony.
Brimstone and Lily (Legacy Stone Adventures) Page 19