“What in the world is that?” asked the miller, of no one in particular.
A ways off down the road, a three-story cloud of dust hung over the bare cornstalks. It was closing fast, and at the lead edge were two figures on horseback, the nearest of whom had spindly legs stuck out like a child’s.
“Pearleen, I take it all back,” said Petey. He pulled off his apron and cap and mustache and discarded them and cracked his knuckles as he walked down the ramp into the millyard and muttered to himself what was less a spell than a set of vows of what he planned to do, and how often, and to whom. But vows are like spells, too, Petey knew; they’re prayers to ourselves, and they work even better, if heeded. Petey continued to talk to himself as he began to run, straight toward the oncoming Devil.
“Fill your hands, you son of a bitch!” screamed the Devil, who was of course a big John Wayne fan, and he spurred Hallowed-Be-Thy-Name onward, his impulse to run Petey right over in the dirt, and keep going.
Seeing the Devil’s murderous intent, Petey did not turn tail and flee, did not try to dart out of the horse’s path. Instead, he ran even faster—impossibly fast—and jumped, like an enormous cricket, right over the Devil and his mount.
“Whoa!” cried the Devil. “Whoa, I said!”
By the time he got Low slowed down and wheeled around, Pearleen had slowed King enough for Petey to spring up and climb on behind her. He reached both arms around her, felt her stiffen, and said, “Don’t worry, this is nothing personal. Just to keep from falling off, y’understand.”
“Good luck,” said Pearleen, and whispered into King’s ear words he never had heard before, and was never likely to hear from his master, either. The horse reared and whinnied in triumph, and took off even faster than before, headed straight for the mill. The Devil on Low followed, eating dust in their wake.
“Damn you, Wheatstraw!” the Devil yelled, redundantly, as he choked and coughed amid a yellow cloud.
Head down, ears flattened, in a full-out gallop, King scattered farmers every which way as he streaked through the millyard, leaped the stone wall at the edge, and ran straight up the waterwheel. At the top, the horse ran in place, and the wheel spun ever faster beneath him, kicked up great sprays of water that gouted into the pursuing Devil’s face as from a fire hose. Blinded, half drowned, nearly knocked out of the saddle, he spluttered and flailed as Low turned tail and ran away. By the time the Devil regained control, King had leaped off the wheel and had galloped away through the corn, clearing a path of flattened stalks. Both the Devil and his mount were enraged now. They dashed down the new-made corn lane, all froth and fume, chasing Pearleen’s and Petey’s laughs and whoops up ahead.
And so it went—Petey and Pearleen in the lead, the Devil in hot pursuit—through the Indiana cornfield and down the middle aisle of a Massachusetts church and up the main stairway of a New Orleans mansion and along a rocky ridgeline in Colorado and into a cave in Utah that opened out in Tennessee, through dozens of locations across four centuries. They terrified and impressed hundreds of people as they went, and spawned legends, myths, ghost stories, and religious movements, in addition to countless outright lies and a number of jokes that weren’t half bad.
Finally, somewhere along South Mountain in Pennsylvania, Pearleen and Petey heard the Devil holler, way back behind:
“You win! You win!”
“He’s dismounted,” Petey reported, looking back.
“Just as well,” Pearleen said. “The horses need a rest.”
They trotted back to where Hallowed-Be-Thy-Name slurped water from a brook. Beside him, the Devil sat on a rock, mopped his face with an unexpectedly dainty lace handkerchief. It looked even as if it might be scented, though Pearleen had no desire to find out. Petey dismounted first, then reached up to help her. This pleased her so that she let him, but remembered once she alighted that she needed no help and had no use for Petey anyway. Thy-Kingdom-Come drank companionably from the brook alongside Hallowed-Be-Thy-Name, their brief rivalry forgotten.
“Pull up a rock,” the Devil said, “and set a spell.”
“There are quite a lot of rocks,” Pearleen said. “More rocks than anything else, really. What place is this?”
Petey replied, “It’s the Devil’s Race Course. What did you expect?”
“I’ve heard of this place,” Pearleen said. She rummaged through her pack, produced a small hammer. “I’ve always wanted to try this. Listen.” She stood up, bit her lip in concentration, and brought down the hammer where she’d been sitting. On impact, the rock chimed, a high note that lingered for several seconds before it died away.
“Ringing rocks!” Petey said. “Let me try that.”
They all three took turns, for the next few minutes, making the rocks ring all around. Annoyed, the horses whickered and walked downstream to crop grass.
“I wonder what causes this,” Pearleen said. “I mean, what the rocks are made of.”
“Don’t ask me,” the Devil replied. “Geology ain’t my area.”
Petey opened his mouth to say something, but the Devil waved him off.
“Don’t even ask,” he said. “Your curse is lifted. You are officially off the Old Crooked Track, and free to go.” He shook his head. “I don’t know where my mind was, that I delegated it to you in the first place. Should’ve known you’d just ruin it.”
“Well, I thank you,” Petey said.
“Thank her,” the Devil said, and nodded toward Pearleen, who had lined up rocks of various sizes and rang them experimentally, like a xylophone. “She’s the one that pled your case.”
“But it was Petey that knew what to do, once we got here,” Pearleen said. “It was both of us.”
“But mostly me,” Petey and Pearleen added, in unison.
“Y’all make quite a team,” the Devil said. “I recommend that you go off in separate directions, and never see each other again.”
“We got a story to finish up first,” Pearleen said.
“Suit yourself,” said the Devil. He stood up, dusted the seat of his pants—which scarcely could have been made dirtier by his rock-sitting interval—and said, “I best get on back to the South Carolina district of Hell. Leave things in the hands of middle managers, next thing I know, they’ll lower the thermostat and hand out ice water.” He whistled. “Hee, yaw! Hallowed-Be-Thy-Name! Thy-Kingdom-Come!” He walked two paces toward the horses and vanished.
“I had wondered about that,” said Petey.
“Wondered what?” asked Pearleen.
“Well, he took me off the Old Crooked Track, but the track still exists, right? I mean, he didn’t dismantle it or anything. So it’s still there to be walked…if you’re unwary enough to step on it, that is. Who knows? The Devil right now may be in Devil’s Hole on the Eastern Shore, getting his ass kicked by Molly Horn.”
“Oh, come on. He ain’t that stupid, surely.”
“Well, if he was all that smart,” said Petey, “he wouldn’t be the Devil, now would he?”
Pearleen shook her head. “I don’t do theology,” she said. “Ain’t you heard? I’m a musician.” Grinning, hammer in hand, she pinged on her rock instrument an old, old song she just made up:
“Dah dah dah is a loconaut
She moves through dah dah dah.”
“It’s still my story, you know,” Petey said.
Pearleen sighed and said, “Whatever.”
◆ ◆ ◆
In a world where the power and prestige of the great mage houses are judged by the number and strength of their mages, recruitment of new magical blood becomes a matter of paramount importance. But magic can bloom in the most unlikely places—and in the most unlikely people, too.
Kate Elliott is the author of twenty-six fantasy and science fiction novels, including her New York Times bestselling YA fantasy, Court of Fives (and its sequels, Poisone
d Blade and Buried Heart). Her most recent epic fantasy is Black Wolves (winner of the RT Award for Best Epic Fantasy of 2015). She’s also written the alt-history Spiritwalker Trilogy (Cold Magic, Cold Fire, Cold Steel), an Afro-Celtic post-Roman gas-lamp fantasy adventure with well-dressed men, badass women, and lawyer dinosaurs (the world in which this story takes place). Other series include the Crossroads Trilogy, the seven-volume Crown of Stars epic fantasy, the science fiction Novels of the Jaran and The Highroad Trilogy, and a short-fiction collection, The Very Best of Kate Elliott. Her novels have been finalists for the Nebula, World Fantasy, and Norton Awards. Coming up is Unconquerable Sun, a gender-bent Alexander the Great as space opera. Born in Iowa and raised in farm country in Oregon, she currently lives in Hawaii, where she paddles outrigger canoes for fun and exercise. You can find her on Twitter at @KateElliottSFF. And she very much wants to thank Aliette de Bodard for beta-reading this story.
◆ ◆ ◆
KATE ELLIOTT
What was a respectable magister who had served Autumn House for all his adult life to do? The mansa called Titus to his study and gave him the order direct.
“Titus, I wish you to take my cousin’s granddaughter Serena with you.”
Of course he could not object straight out. “As it is said, the comfort of a woman is in her home.”
The mansa had looked old to Titus’s eyes when Titus had come to the mage House as a fifteen-year-old. Now, thirty-two years later, the mansa looked positively decrepit, a shell of a man with wrinkled skin and age-whitened hair. Yet those keen eyes did pin a man as if he were an insect on display in a museum of curiosities.
“It is the elder’s place to show the paths to the young. You are our House’s most experienced and powerful diviner. Thus you must train her in her calling now that it has so unexpectedly bloomed.”
The compliment lessened the sting a trifle, but the command still chafed. “It cannot be appropriate for me to travel with an unmarried girl who is not my daughter.”
“Have you traveled recently with your daughters?” the mansa asked drily.
Titus folded his hands tightly together, searching for a reply, but his thoughts tangled with a pressure in his chest, and he could not answer.
The mansa sighed and patiently went on. “Serena is young, yes, but a woman, not a girl. She was married.”
“That is right! I recall it now.” He was grateful for the change of subject. “She was married out to Twelve Horns House and sent back in disgrace.”
“In fact, she returned of her own choice.”
“Imprudence is the mark of a fickle woman! I have two diviners I am already training. The presence of a girl would disturb our travels and no doubt result in their being too distracted to learn.”
“Since you feel your apprentices are not man enough to control themselves, I will send along my sister Kankou and one of her women as chaperone. As for Serena, I have good reason to believe she will not be careless or flighty.”
“She will become sickly and cause a disaster. You know how girls are. Obviously she already has shown herself to be disobedient and selfish. Anyway, if she has the true diviner’s gift, which one must doubt because it is a rare calling, then she can confine it to the nursery and the schoolroom, as women properly do.”
“The flower cannot bloom without sunlight. She needs experience out in the world. You know we sail in desperate straits and are sinking. We are among the least of the mage Houses. Our lineage is weak. In the schoolroom we have only two budding mages, neither of whom can do more than quench a candle’s flame.”
“I have done my duty in this regard!”
“I do not fault you, Titus. We all regret your son’s passing.”
Even after eight years, the hideous memory rose of his bright, clever, robust son lying wasted and feverish as pus-filled blisters crowded the lad’s skin and his lungs slowly failed. But he had taught himself not to move or speak until the feelings subsided.
The mansa had a quill pen on his desk, which he picked up, examined with exaggerated care, and with the faintest tilt of a frown set back in its carved ivory holder. He cleared his throat. “For myself, Titus, I am grateful for your daughters, who have been good friends to my grandchildren.”
The mansa paused. Since there was no reason to comment on the frivolous dealings of girls, Titus merely nodded.
The mansa sighed again and went on.
“We have neither wealth nor prestige with which to interest the other mage Houses to make alliances with us. We need fresh blood. I believe Serena may be able to find new mages at the earliest unfurling of their first bloom.”
Titus respected his elders, but this was too much. “Do you not trust me to serve our House after all my years of loyalty?”
“I do trust you, Titus. But neither of your current apprentices seem to show much promise in finding newly bloomed cold mages before the diviners of richer Houses sense them and swoop down to snatch them from us.”
Since this was manifestly true, Titus said nothing.
“Who will follow you as diviner for our House, when you are too old to travel? Answer me that.”
Since there was no answer, Titus said nothing.
“I am not asking, Titus. You will take her along. That is all.”
* * *
—
Since the death of his son he had spent as little time as possible in the wing of the House where women walked freely and spoke as much as they wished. So on the day of departure he had no idea which of the callow girls Serena might be as a flood of chattering, excited females surged into the outer courtyard to see her off.
Of course his daughters walked among them, laughing in the capricious manner of heedless girls. Fabia was a tall, lanky eighteen-year-old, and Cassia, at thirteen, seemed to be more filled out every month. When they saw him standing by the carriage, their smiles flattened. Fabia took hold of her younger sister’s hand. With wary gazes they approached, halting at a respectful distance.
“Honored Father, may you have a peaceful and successful journey,” said Fabia in a toneless voice.
Cassia leaned against her sister and murmured the same words with eyes lowered rather than Fabia’s impudent stare.
“Is all well with you, Daughters?” he replied in the same formal way.
“Of course all is well, Honored Father.” Fabia’s gaze flickered sideways as if she meant to say something more and restrained herself. “And with you, is all well with you?”
He said what was proper in reply. Every time he looked at them he thought of how the evil sickness that had killed the boy had caught the girls first. Their pockmarked faces were a visible reminder of what they had survived, and he had lost.
Cassia tugged on her sister’s arm. “Here is Serena,” she said in a low voice, as if the appearance of this distraction was a relief.
There the young woman came, accompanied by the terrifying Kankou. To his disgust Serena was no awkward, gap-toothed heifer but a young woman of perhaps twenty years of age in the full bloom of fresh beauty. Indeed, had any Europan painter been asked to illustrate the epitome of youthful womanly beauty, the artist would have chosen her as the subject, for she was everything most pleasing in a woman. She had strong shoulders and an ample posterior. Her complexion was suitably black and flawless, her lips full of promise, her gaze as serene as her name. She wore modern dress, it was true, the skirt fitted over her full hips, and her waist emphasized by the tight cut of her fashionable jacket. He could not approve such frivolity. What would these women do next? Expose their thighs?
But she had tied her headwrap in a complicated structure of knots that made him think of difficult questions that could be puzzled over for hours. And she greeted him with scrupulous respect and a generous smile. The women and girls embraced and kissed her with enthusiasm before singing her, Kankou, and Kankou’s woman Leontia into the
carriage. His apprentices, Anwell and Bala, wore glowers as they followed. He made his farewells to the assembly and allowed the coachman to help him in.
* * *
—
By the second week of their travels he had become so accustomed to Serena’s accommodating presence that he was shocked beyond measure when she spoke one chilly morning without him having addressed her first.
“Magister, I beg your pardon, but I wonder if we might turn north.”
They had reached the Rhenus River and were waiting for the ferry at the front of a line of vehicles. The sound of the streaming river had led his thoughts into a bittersweet memory of how he and his son used to play chess in the fountain garden with its constant gurgle of falling water. So it was with a tincture of asperity that he opened his mouth to dismiss her comment as the frivolous nonsense it was. But another voice broke in first.
“Magister, we just came through that region and divined nothing,” said Anwell, casting a hostile glance toward the girl.
Bala added, “It’s probably just overexcitement and a desire for attention.”
“Why does the jack bray its foolishness before the elder speaks?” Titus snapped.
As irritated as he had been at having her foisted on him, still he did not like to allow young men to believe they could be disrespectful whenever they wished. First they would start with this girl, who treated them with a reserved politeness that did not at all encourage their efforts to impress her, and next they would think it bold and manly to show insolence to their elders.
“Why north?” he asked her, hoping to use this as a teaching experience. “We traveled that route three days ago.”
“I am not an experienced diviner, Magister, but I sensed…something unusual.”
The Book of Magic Page 52