by Tanya Huff
At the first house, Magdelene stopped the cart and sat quietly studying the scene. A few chickens scratched in the sandy dirt that served the village as a main street and a black sow sprawled in the only visible bit of shade, her litter suckling noisily. A lullaby, softly sung, drifted through one of the open windows, and from the beach came the shrieks and laughter of children at play. Just the sort of lazy ambiance she appreciated.
"Who are you?"
Languidly, for it was far too hot to be startled, Magdelene turned. A boy, nine or ten years old, naked except for a shell threaded on a frayed piece of gut, peered up at her from under a heavy shock of dusty black hair. Although he showed no signs of malnutrition or neglect, his left arm hung withered and useless by his side.
"My name is Magdelene." She pushed her hair back off her face. "Who are you?"
"Juan." He edged a little closer. "You a trader?"
"No. I'm a wizard." Over the years, she'd discovered life worked out better if she didn't try to hide that. It made explanations so much easier when things started happening. And things always did.
The boy looked her up and down and tossed his head. "Ha!" he scoffed. "Tell us another one. Wizards got grey hair and warts. You're not old enough to be a wizard."
"I'm twenty-nine," she told him a little indignantly. He was a fine one to talk about not old enough...
"Oh." Juan considered it and apparently decided twenty-nine was sufficiently ancient even without the grey hair and warts. "What about your clothes then? Wizards wear robes and stuff. Everyone knows that."
He had a point. Wizards did wear robes and stuff. Usually of a dark, heavy, and imposing fabric. Always hot, scratchy, and uncomfortable. Magdelene, who preferred to be comfortable, never bothered.
"I'm the most powerful wizard in the world," she explained as a rivulet of sweat ran under her bright blue breast-band. "I wear what I want."
"Yeah, sure," he snorted. "Prove it."
"All right." She gathered up the multicoloured folds of her skirt, jumped down off the cart, and held out her hand. "Give me your arm and I'll fix it."
"Oh no." He backed up a pace and turned, protecting the withered arm behind the rest of his body. "You ain't proving it on me. Find something else."
"Like what?"
Juan thought about it a moment. "Could you send my sister someplace far away?" he asked hopefully.
Magdelene thought about that in turn. It didn't seem worth antagonizing the village just to prove a point to one grubby child. "I could, but I don't think I should."
The boy sighed. The kind of sigh that said he knew what the answer would be but thought there could be no harm in asking.
They stood together in silence for a moment, Magdelene leaning against the back of her cart – perfectly content to do nothing – and Juan digging his toe into the sand. The donkey, who could smell water, decided enough was enough and started towards the centre of the village. He was hot, he was thirsty, and he was going to do something about it.
As her backrest jerked forward, Magdelene hit the ground with an unwizardlike thud. Closer proximity proved the sand was not as soft as it looked. "Lizard piss," she muttered, rubbing at a stone-bruise. When she looked up, Juan had disappeared.
She shrugged philosophically and, following along behind the donkey, amused herself by pulling back an image of Juan as an adult. Long and lean and sleekly muscled, it was a future worth sticking around for. At some point between now and then, she appeared to have convinced him to let her fix his arm. It looked like she'd be staying, at least for a while.
An impatient bray demanded her attention, and she allowed the image to slip back to its own time. They'd arrived at the well.
When the trough was full and the donkey had bent his head to drink, Magdelene slowly turned, pulled around by the realization she was no longer alone. All around the edges of the square stood the children of the village, staring at her with wide, dark eyes.
"Yes?" she asked.
The children continued to stare.
Demons, she decided, were easier to deal with. At least you always knew what demons wanted.
"Magdelene-lady!"
The children stared on as Magdelene gratefully noted Juan approaching with an adult in tow. The old man had been bent and twisted by the weight of his years, his fingers warped into shapes more like driftwood than flesh. His skin had been tanned by sun and wind and salt into creased leather, and any hair he'd had was long gone. He followed Juan with the rolling gait of a life spent at sea, and his jaws worked to the rhythm of his walking.
"Whacha doing sitting around like a pile of fish guts?" he growled at the children as he stopped an arm's length from Magdelene and glared about. "Untie her beast, put him to pasture, and get that wagon in the shade."
The children hesitated.
"You are staying a bit?" he asked, his growl softening, his dark eyes meeting hers.
Magdelene smiled her second best smile – she couldn't be certain his heart would be up to her best – and said, "Yes." She wanted very much to stay for a bit. Maybe this time, things would work out.
The old man nodded and waved both twisted hands. "You heard her. Get!"
They got, Juan with the rest, and Magdelene watched bemused as her donkey was lead away and her cart was pulled carefully to rest under a stand of palm.
"Boy says you told him you're a wizard."
"That's right."
"Don't have much need for a wizard here. Wizards make you soft and then the sea takes you. We prefer to do things for ourselves."
"So do I," Magdelene told him, leaning back against the damp stone trough. "Prefer to have people do things for themselves, that is." She grinned. She liked this old man and sensed in him a kindred spirit. "To be honest, I like people to do things for me as well."
He returned the grin, and his eyes twinkled as he looked her up and down. "Ah, child," he cackled, "what I could do for you if I were only fifty years younger."
"Would you like to be?" she asked, rather hoping he would.
He laughed, then he realized she was serious. "You could do that?"
"Yes."
His gaze turned inward, and Magdelene could feel the strength of the memories he sifted. After a moment, he sighed and shook his head. "Foolish wishes, child. I've earned my age, and I'll wear it with honour.
Magdelene hid her disappointment. Personally, she couldn't see the honour in blurred eyesight, aching bones, and swollen, painful joints, but if that was his choice she'd respect it.
There were sixteen buildings in the village, eight goats, eleven pigs, twenty-one chickens, and fourteen boats. No one had ever managed an accurate count of the cats.
"Six families came here three generations ago," Carlos, the old man, explained as they stood on the beach watching boats made tiny by distance slide up and down the rolling waves. Through his eyes, Magdelene saw the harbour as it had been, sparkling untouched in the sun, never sailed, never fished, theirs. "I'm the last of the first. I've outlived two wives and most of my children as well."
"Do you mind?" Magdelene asked, knowing she was likely to see entire civilizations rise and fall in her lifetime and not entirely certain how she felt about it.
"Well..." He considered the question for a moment. "I'll live 'til I die. Nothing else I can do."
"You didn't answer my question."
He patted her cheek, his fingers dry and cool. "I know."
* * * *
That night, in the crowded main room of the headman's house, Carlos presented Magdelene to the adults of the village. "...and she'd like to stay on a bit."
"A wizard," the headman ruminated. "That's something we don't see every day."
Magdelene missed much of the discussion that followed as she was busy trying to make eye contact with a burly young man standing by one of the deep windows. She gave up when she realized that he was trying to make eye contact with an equally attractive young man standing by the door.
"...although frankly, we
'd rather you were a trader."
"The traders are late this year?" Magdelene guessed, hoping she hadn't missed anything important.
"Aye. They've always come to take advantage of the return of the kayle."
Just in time, she remembered that kayle were fish.
"Surely you saw them on the road?" a young woman asked hopefully.
"No." Magdelene frowned as she thought back over the last few weeks of travel. "I didn't." The emptiness of the trail hadn't seemed strange to her at the time. It did now.
"I don't suppose you can conjure one?" asked a middle-aged woman dryly, tamping down her pipe.
The room rippled with laughter.
"I could," Magdelene admitted.
The room fell silent.
Magdelene cleared her throat. She might as well get it over with. "I'm the most powerful wizard in the world," she began.
The middle-aged woman snorted. "Says who?"
"Well, uh..."
"Doesn't matter. Would this conjured trader do us any good?"
"Probably not." A trader conjured suddenly into the village would be more likely to trade in strong hysterics than anything useful.
"I thought as much." The woman expertly lit her pipe with a spill from the lamp. "What in Neto's breath are we wasting our time here for, that's what I want to know? We've kayle to net at dawn, and I hear my bed calling."
"I thought you might like to know that a stranger, a wizard, has come to the village," Carlos told her tartly.
She snorted again. "All right. Now we know." She pointed the stem of her pipe at Magdelene and demanded, "You planning on causing any trouble?"
"Of course not," Magdelene declared. She never planned on causing any trouble.
"Will you keep your nose out of what doesn't concern you?"
She had to think about that for a moment, wondering how broad a definition could be put on what didn't concern her. "I'll try."
"See that you do."
"So I can stay for a while?"
"For a while." Her head wreathed in smoke, the woman rose. "That's that then," she said shortly, and left.
The headman sighed and raised both hands in a gesture of defeat. "You heard her. You can go."
As people began to leave, Magdelene leaned over and whispered to Carlos, "Why does he let her get away with that?"
Carlos snickered, his palm lying warm and damp on Magdelene's arm. "Force of habit," he said in his normal speaking voice. "She's his older sister, raised him after their mother drowned. Refused to be headwoman, said she didn't have the time, but she runs every meeting he calls."
The headman smiled, for Carlos' speech had risen clearly over the noise of the departing villagers. "Look at it this way, grandfather; the village gets two fish on one piece of bait. I do all the work and Yolanda does all the talking." He stood, stretched, and turned to Magdelene. "Have you got a bed, Wizard?"
Studying the muscles of his torso, still corded and firm for all his forty-odd years, Magdelene considered several replies. All of which she discarded after catching a speaking glance from the headman's wife.
"While the weather holds," she sighed, "I'm perfectly comfortable under my cart."
* * * *
"And I am perfectly comfortable," she sighed again a half hour later, plumping up the pillows on her huge feather bed, "but I wouldn't mind some company." As if in answer to her request, the canvas flaps hanging from the sides of the cart parted and Juan poked in his head. "I was thinking," she muttered to whatever gods were listening, "of company a little older."
Juan blinked, shook his head, and gazed around curiously. "How'd you get all this stuff under here?" he demanded.
"I told you," Magdelene poured herself a glass of chilled grape juice, "I'm the most powerful wizard in the world." She dabbed at the spreading purple stain on the front of her tunic. "Can I fix your arm now?"
He'd didn't answer, just crawled forward and found himself in a large room that held – besides the bed – a wardrobe, an overstuffed armchair, and a huge book bound in red leather lying closed on a wooden stand. "Where's the wagon?"
Magdelene pointed at the ceiling, impressed by his attitude. She'd had one or two supposed adults fall gibbering to the carpet.
Juan looked up. Dark red runes had been scrawled across the rough boards of the ceiling. "What's that writing on there?"
"The spell that allows this room to exist."
"Oh." He had little or no interest in spells. "Got any more juice?"
She handed him a full glass and watched him putter about, poking his nose into everything. Setting his glass down on the book, he pulled open the wardrobe door.
"What's that?"
"It's a demon trapped in a mirror, what's it look like?" She'd hung the mirror on the inside of the door that afternoon, figuring H'sak was safer there than in the wagon.
"How long's he been in there?"
"Twelve years."
"How long you gonna keep him in there?"
"Until I let him out."
An answer that would have infuriated an adult, suited Juan fine. He took one last admiring look at H'sak, finished his juice, and handed Magdelene the empty glass. "I better get home."
"Juan."
About to step through the canvas walls, he glanced back over his shoulder.
"You still haven't told me if I can fix your arm."
His gaze slid over to the demon and then back to the wizard. He shrugged. "Maybe later," he said, and left.
* * * *
Magdelene spent most of the next three days with Carlos. The children treated her like an exotic curiosity, and she tried to live up to their expectations. The adults treated her with a wary suspicion, and she tried not to live up to theirs. Carlos treated her like a friend.
The oldest in the village by a good twenty years, his eyes sometimes twinkled and sparkled and looked no older than Juan's. Sometimes, they burned with more mature fires and she longed to give him back his youth, if only for a few hours behind the dunes. Sometimes, they appeared deeper and blacker and wiser than the night sky. Sometimes, they just looked old. Marvelling, she realized that he remembered all the ages he had been, and more, that they were with him still, making a home, not a prison, of his age. This was his strength, and Magdelene placed the lesson it taught her carefully away with her other precious things.
She began to hope the village had a place for her.
On the morning of the fourth day, they'd gathered about the well – the wizard and the few adults who remained ashore due to age or disability – when the high pitched-shriek of a child jerked all heads around.
"Riders!"
Screaming out the news of their discovery, Juan and three of the other children burst into the centre of the village. The chickens panicked, screeched, and scattered. The adults tried to make sense out of the cacophony.
"One at a time!" The baker finally managed to make himself heard. "Juan, what happened?"
"Riders, Uncle!" Juan told him, bouncing in his excitement. "Five of them. On horses. Coming here!"
"Are you sure?"
"Yes! We were going up the track to look for gooseberries..." The other three children nodded vigorously in agreement. "...and we met them coming down."
"They aren't traders?"
Juan sighed in exaggerated exasperation. "Uncle, I seen traders before. And these aren't..." He noticed the baker was no longer looking at him, noticed no one was looking at him, so he let the last word trail off, and he turned.
They rode slowly, with a ponderous certainty more threatening than a wild charge. Voluminous robes in tans and browns hid all but their eyes, and over their left shoulders rose the hilts of long, slightly curved swords. They stopped, the line of horses reflecting the line of the well, and the rider in the centre let the fabric drop from his face.
Nice, thought Magdelene, continuing to stroke the black and white cat sprawled across her lap. High cheek bones, pretty blue eyes, lovely red beard, and, she realized, shoulders droopin
g a little in disappointment, about as congenial as H'sak.
"We have come," said the rider, "for the kayle."
Carlos stepped forward, his hand on Juan's shoulder – both to support himself and to keep the boy from doing anything rash. "What do you have to trade?" he asked levelly.
"Your lives," replied the rider, and his hand rose to the hilt of his sword.
Magdelene rolled her eyes. She'd never much cared for melodrama.
"If you take the kayle, we will have nothing when the traders come."
"The traders will not come. The Warlord rules here."
"I don't recall being conquered," Carlos snapped, temper showing at last.
The rider smiled, showing perfect teeth and no sense of humour. "You are being conquered now." The line of horses took a single step in intimidating unison.
Juan's one hand curled into a fist.
Magdelene stood, dumping the indignant cat to the ground.
"Just one minute," she began.
"Silence, woman!" the rider thundered.
"Get over yourself." She brushed cat hair off her skirt. "You're not impressing anyone."
For just an instant, acute puzzlement replaced the rider's belligerent expression. A people in the process of being terrorized simply did not behave in this fashion. With a perceivable effort, he regained his scowl and drew his sword. To either side, his men did the same.
"Kill them all," he said.
The horses leapt forward and vanished.
The saddles and the riders hung in the air for one long moment then crashed to the ground, raising great clouds of dust and more panicked squawking from the chickens.
"And as you want the kayle so badly," Magdelene said.
Steel swords became silver fish writhing and flopping in a desperate attempt to get free of the grip on their tails.
The children laughed and pointed.
When they found they couldn't release the fish, the riders began to panic.
"When you get back to your warlord," Magdelene told them, smiling pleasantly, "you'll be able to let go. If I can make a suggestion, don't waste any time. Very shortly those fish are not going to be the best of travelling companions."