by Неизвестный
"A bit of folly in you, hadn't you, master?" he muttered. "Aye, and a wench or two under your belt, I'll warrant."
"Wake me at the lighting of the candle," Rod mumbled into his pillow. "I'm to wait on the Queen at breakfast."
"Aye, master." Big Tom worried loose the other boot and lay down, chuckling.
Rod waited till Tom began to snore again, then propped himself up on his elbows and looked back over his shoulder. Generally, the big oaf seemed thoroughly loyal and superbly stupid; but there were times when Rod wondered…
He let his head slump down onto the pillow, closed his eyes, and willed himself to sleep.
Unfortunately, the mind-over-matter bit wasn't working tonight. All his senses seemed boosted past maximum. He would've sworn he could feel every thread in the pillow under his cheek, could hear the mouse gnawing at the baseboard, the frog croaking in the moat, the festive laughter wafted on the breeze.
His eyelids snapped open. Festive laughter?
He rolled out of bed and went to the high slit window. Who the hell was partying at this hour of the night?
The moon stood behind the castellated north tower; silhouettes flitted across its face, youthful figures in a three-dimensional dance; and some of them seemed to be riding on broomsticks.
Witches. In the north tower…
Rod climbed the worn stone steps of the tower, toiling up the spiral. The granite walls seemed to crowd closer and closer the higher he went. He reminded himself that, having been declared a warlock by the elves—unreasonable little bastards!—he qualified for membership in this group.
But his stomach didn't get the message; it was still suing for a Dramamine. His mouth was bone-dry. Sure, the elves approved of him; but had they gotten the word to the witches?
All the old tales of his childhood came flooding back, liberally interspersed with chunks of the witch scenes from Macbeth. Now that he stopped to think about it, he couldn't remember one single instance of a philanthropic witch, except Glinda the Good, and you couldn't really call her a witch.
One thing in his favor: these witches seemed happy enough. The music floating down the stairwell was an old Irish jig, and it was salted with laughter, buoyant and youthful.
The wall glowed with torchlight ahead of him. He turned the last curve of the spiral and came into the great tower room.
A round, or rather globular, dance was in progress, a sort of three-dimensional hora. Through the clouds of torchsmoke he could make out couples dancing on the walls, the ceiling, in mid-air, and occasionally on the floor. Here and there were knots of chattering, giggling people. Their clothes were bright to the point of—well, hell, they were downright gaudy. Most of them held mugs, filled from a great cask near the stairwell.
They were all young, teenagers. He couldn't spot a single face that looked old enough to vote.
He paused on the threshold, possessed of a distinct feeling that he didn't belong. He felt like the chaperon at a high school prom—a necessary evil.
The youngster tapping the keg saw Rod and grinned. "Hail!" he cried. "You are laggard in coming." A full tankard slapped into Rod's hand.
"I didn't know I was coming," Rod muttered.
"Be assured that we did." The youth grinned. "Molly foresaw it; but she said you would be here half an hour agone."
"Sorry." Rod's eyes were a trifle glazed. "Ran into a couple delays…"
"Eh, think naught of it. 'Twas her miscalling, not yours; the wine, no doubt. Yet we have expected you since you set foot in the castle; the elves told us last night you were a warlock."
Rod's mind snapped clear. "Baloney! I'm no more a warlock than you… I mean…"
"Oh, thou art a warlock." The boy nodded sagely. "A warlock, and a most puissant one. Did you not come in a falling star?"
"That's science, not magic! And I'm not a warlock!"
The youth smiled roguishly. "Knowing or not, thou'rt most surely a warlock." He saluted Rod with the mug. "And therefore one of us."
"Uh… well, thanks." Rod returned the salute and took a draft from the mug. It was mulled wine, hot and spicy.
He looked around the room, trying to grow accustomed to the constant clamor and the flagrant violations of Newton's Laws.
His eyes lit on a couple seated under one of the windows, deep in conversation, which is to say, she was talking and he was listening. She was a looker, fairly bursting her bodice; he was thin and intent, eyes burning as he watched her.
Rod smiled cynically and wondered about the boy's motives for such steadfast devotion.
The girl gasped and spun around to glare outraged at Rod.
Rod's mouth sagged open. Then he began to stammer an apology; but before it reached his lips, the girl smiled, mollified, bowed her head graciously at him, and turned back to her one-man audience.
Rod's mouth sagged again. Then he reached out, groping for the tapster's arm, his eyes fixed on the girl.
The boy threw an arm around his shoulders, his voice worried. "What troubles thee, friend?"
"That—that girl," Rod stammered. "Can she read my mind?"
"Oh, aye! We all can, somewhat; though she is better than most."
Rod put a hand to his head to stop it from spinning. Telepaths. A whole room full of them. There were supposed to be about ten proven telepaths in the whole of the known galaxy.
He looked up again. It was a mutation, or genetic drift, or something.
He drew himself up and cleared his throat. " Say, pal… uh, what's your name, anyway?"
"Ay de mi!" The boy struck his forehead with the heel of his hand. "A pox upon my lacking courtesy. I am Tobias, Master Gallowglass; and thou must needs meet us all."
He whirled Rod away toward the nearest group.
"But—but I just wanted to ask—"
"This is Nell, this is Andreyev, this Brian, this Dorothy…"
A half hour and fifty-three introductions later, Rod collapsed on a wooden bench. He swung his tankard up and swallowed the dregs. "Now," he said, slamming it down on his knee, "we're both drained."
"Ah, let me fetch you another!" Toby snatched the mug from his hand and flew away.
Literally.
Rod watched him drift across the room, ten feet off the floor, and shook his head. He was beyond astonishment now.
It seemed what he had on his hands was a budding colony of espers—levitative, precognitive, and telepathic.
But if they could all teleport, how come the girls all rode broomsticks?
Toby appeared at Rod's elbow, with a slight poof! of displaced air. Rod goggled at him, then accepted the refilled mug. "Uh, thanks. Say, you can, uh, levitate and teleport?"
"Pardon?" Toby frowned, not understanding.
"You can-uh-fly? And, uh-wish yourself from one place to another?"
"Oh, aye!" Toby grinned. "We all can do that."
"What? Fly?"
"Nay; we all can wish ourselves to places that we know. All the boys can fly; the girls cannot."
Sex-linked gene, Rod thought. Aloud, he said, "That's why they ride broomsticks?"
"Aye. Theirs is the power to make lifeless objects do their bidding. We males cannot."
Aha! Another linkage. Telekinesis went with the Y-chromosomes, levitation with theX.
But they could all teleport. And read minds.
A priceless colony of espers. And, if their lives were anything like those of the rare telepaths outside the planet…
"And the common people hate you for this?"
Toby's young face sobered to the point of gloom. "Aye, and the nobles too. They say we are leagued with the Devil. 'Twas the trial by water, or a most thorough roasting for us, till our good Queen Catharine came to reign." Turning away, he shouted, "Ho, Bridget!"
A young girl, thirteen at the most, spun away from her dance partner and appeared at Toby's side.
"Friend Gallowglass would know how the people do like us," Toby informed her.
All the joy went out of the child's face; her eyes
went wide and round; she caught her lower lip between her teeth.
She unbuttoned the back of her blouse from neck to bodice and turned away. Her back was a crisscross of scars, a webbing of welts—the sign of the cat-o'-ninetails.
She turned back to Rod as Toby buttoned her blouse again, her eyes still round and tragic. "That," she whispered, "for naught but suspicion; and I but a child of ten years at the time."
Rod's stomach tried to turn itself inside out and climb out through his esophagus. He reprimanded it sternly, and it sank back to its ordinary place in the alimentary tract. Bile soured the back of Rod's tongue.
Bridgett spun and disappeared; a nano-second later she was back with her partner, giddy and exuberant again.
Rod frowned after her, brooding.
"So you may see," said Toby, "that we are most truly grateful to our good Queen."
"She did away with the fire and/or water bit?"
"Oh, she revoked the law; but the witch-burnings went on, in secret. There was only one way'to protect us, and that she chose: to give sanctuary to any of us who would come here and claim it."
Rod nodded, slowly. "She's not without wisdom, after all."
His eyes wandered back to Bridgett where she danced on the ceiling.
"What troubles you, friend Gallowglass?"
"She doesn't hate them," Rod growled. "She has every reason in the world to hate the normal folk, but she doesn't."
Toby shook his head, smiling warmly. "Not she, nor any of us. All who come to shelter in the Queen's Coven swear first to live by Christ's Law."
Slowly, Rod turned to look at him. "I see," he said after a moment. "A coven of white witches."
Toby nodded.
"Are all the witches of Gramarye white?"
"Shame to say it, they are not. Some there are who, embittered through greater suffering than ours—the loss of an ear or an eye, or a loved one, or all—have hidden themselves away in the Wild Lands of the mountains, and there pursue their vengeance on all mankind."
Rod's mouth pulled back into a thin, grim line, turned down at the corners.
"They number scarce more than a score," Toby went on. "There are three in the prime of life; all the rest are withered crones and shrunken men."
"The fairy-tale witches," Rod growled.
"Of a truth, they are; and their works are noised about just sufficient to cover report of any good works that we may deal."
"So there are two kinds of witches in Gramarye: the old and evil ones, up in the mountains; and the young white ones in the Queen's castle."
Toby shook his head and smiled, his eyes lighting once again. "Nay, there are near threescore white witches beside us, who would not trust to the Queen's promise of sanctuary. They are thirty and forty years aged, good folk all, but slow indeed to be trusting."
Understanding struck with all the power of Revelation. Rod leaned back, his mouth forming a silent O; then nodding rapidly, he leaned forward and said, "That's why you're all so young! Only the witches who still had some trust and recklessness left in them took the Queen's invitation! So she got a flock of teenagers!"
Toby grinned from ear to ear, nodding quick with excitement.
"So the mature witches," Rod went on, "are very good people, but they're also very cautious!"
Toby nodded. His face sobered a trifle. "There are one or two among them who had daring enough to come here. There was the wisest witch of all, from the South. She grows old now. Why, she must be fair near to thirty!"
That line caught Rod right in the middle of a drink. He choked, swallowed, gagged, coughed, wheezed, and wiped at his eyes.
"Is aught wrong, friend Gallowglass?" Toby inquired with the kind of solicitousness usually reserved for the octogenarian.
"Oh, nothing," Rod gasped. "Just a little confusion between the esophagus and the trachea. Have to expect a few quirks in us old folk, you know. Why didn't this wise witch stay?"
Toby smiled, fairly oozing understanding and kindness. "Ah, she said that we made her feel too much her age, and went back to the South. If thou shouldst come to trouble there, but call out her name,Gwendylon, and thou'It right quick have more help than thou needst."
"I'll remember that," Rod promised, and immediately forgot as he had a sudden vision of himself calling a woman for help. He almost went into another coughing fit, but he didn't dare laugh; he remembered how sensitive he'd been in his teens.
He took another swig of the wine to wash down his laughter and pointed the mug at Toby. "Just one more question, now: why is the Queen protecting you?"
Toby stared. "Didst thou not know?"
"Know I didst not." Rod smiled sweetly.
"Why, she is herself a witch, good friend Gal-lowglass!"
Rod's smile faded. "Hum." He scratched the tip of his nose. "I'd heard rumors to that effect. They're true, eh?"
"Most true. A witch unschooled, but a witch nonetheless."
Rod raised an eyebrow. "Unschooled?"
"Aye. Our gifts need a stretching and exercising, a training and schooling, to come to their full. Catharine is a witch born, but unschooled. She can hear thoughts, but not at any time that she wishes, and not clearly."
"Hm. What else can she do?"
"Naught that we know of. She can but hear thoughts."
"So she's sort of got a minimum union requirement." Rod scratched in back of his ear. "Kind of handy talent for a Queen. She'd know everything that goes on in her castle."
Toby shook his head. "Canst hear five speak all at once, friend Gallowglass? And listen to them all the hours of the day? And still be able to speak what they spoke?"
Rod frowned and rubbed his chin.
"Canst repeat even one conversation?" Toby smiled indulgently and shook his head. "Of course thou can'st not—and neither can our Queen."
"She could write them down…"
"Aye; but remember, she is unschooled; and it needs high training of an excellent good gift to make words of thoughts."
"Hold on." Rod's hand went up, palm out. "You mean you don't hear thoughts as words?"
"Nay, nay. An instant's thought suffices for a book of words, friend Gallowglass. Must you needs put words to your thoughts in order to have them?"
Rod nodded. "I see. Quantum thought mechanics."
"Strange…" murmured a voice. Looking up, Rod found himself the center of a fair-sized group of young witches and warlocks who had apparently drifted over to get in on an ineresting conversation.
He looked at the one who had spoken, a burly young warlock, and smiled with a touch of sarcasm. "What's strange?" He wondered what the kid's name was.
The boy grinned. "Martin is my name." He paused to chuckle at Rod's startled look; he still hadn't gotten used to the mind-reading. "And what is strange is that you, a warlock, should not know the ins and outs of hearing thoughts.
"Aye." Toby nodded. "You are the only warlock we have known, friend Gallowglass, that cannot hear thoughts."
"Uh, yes." Rod ran a hand over the stubble on his cheek. "Well, as I mentioned a little earlier, I'm not really a warlock. You see…"
He was cut off by a unanimous burst of laughter. He sighed, and resigned himself to his reputation.
He reverted to his former line of questioning. "I take it some of you can hear thoughts as words."
"Oh, aye," said Toby, wiping his eyes. "We have one." He turned to the ring of listeners. "Is Aldis here?"
A buxom, pretty sweet-sixteen elbowed her way through to the front rank. "Who shall I listen to for you, sir?"
A spark arced across a gap in Rod's mind. A malici-ous gleam came into his eyes. "Durer. The councillor to Milord Loguire."
Aldis folded her hands in her lap, settled herelf, sitting very straight. She stared at Rod; her eyes lost focus. Then she began to speak in a high-pitched nasal monotone.
"As you will, milord. Yet I cannot help but wonder, are you truly loyal?"
Her voice dropped two octaves in pitch but kept the monotonous quality. "Knav
e! Have you the gall to insult me to me face?"
"Nay, milord!" the high voice answered hurriedly. "I do not insult you; I do but question the wisdom of your actions."
Durer, Rod thought. The high voice was Durer, practicing his vocation—the care and manipulation of the Duke Loguire.
"Remember, milord, she is but a child. Is it kindness to a child to let her have her willful way? Or is it kindness to spank her when she needs it?"
There was a silence for a moment; then the deeper voice of the Lord Loguire answered, "There is some measure of truth in what you say. Certain, there is something of the wanton child in her taking up the power to appoint the priests."
"Why," murmured the high voice, " 'tis an act against tradition, milord, and against the wisdom of men far older than herself. Tis in bitter truth the act of a rebellious child."
"Mayhap," Loguire rumbled. "Yet she is the Queen, and the Queen's Law shall be obeyed."
"Even should the Queen make evil laws, milord?"
"Her actions are not evil, Durer." The deep voice took on an ominous quality. "Reckless, perhaps, and thoughtless, and ill-considered; for the good they bring today may bring havoc down upon our heads tomorrow. Foolish laws, perhaps; but evil, no."
The high voice sighed. "Mayhap, milord. Yet she threatens the honor of her noblemen. Is that not evil?"
"Why," rumbled Loguire, "how is this? She has been haughty, aye, taking to herself greater airs than ever a Queen may own to, mayhap; but she has never yet done aught that could be construed as insult."
"Aye, milord, not yet."
"Why, what do you mean?"
"The day shall come, milord."
"What day is that, Durer?"
"When she shall put the peasants before the noblemen, milord."
"Have done with your treasonous words!" Loguire roared. "On your knees, slight man, and thank your God that I leave you with your head!"
Rod stared at Aldis' face, still not recovered from the shock of hearing two disembodied male voices coming from the mouth of a pretty girl.
Slowly, her eyes focused again. She let out a long breath and smiled up at him. "Did you hear, friend Gallowglass?"