Quiet Magic (4 page)

"The Bispham decides who enters and
who is a thief! Silence!"

Rather than silence there were
mutterings and complaints. The Bispham didn't notice the muttering,
so intent was he on Slate. Slate's eyes were still dazzled; he more
heard than saw the magician come close.

"How dare you attempt to command here?
You who captain a circus--an old crow, a trick-trained horse, and
hawks as heralds--think to bring your thieves into Lamonta
unchallenged? Rove Captain, Rove Captain!"

The magician waved his wand at Slate.
"I will let you and your men pass, Rove Captain, but I will keep
your saddle bags filled with gold and silver, and I will keep your
own trick horse, as well! These things are claimed as penalties!
This is my command!"

The magician strode toward Grayling
and the horse turned to face him straight on. The crow, now
clinging stubbornly to the saddle, stretched wings and cried out
"Braddack! Braddack!"

The magician warily slowed his
approach to the horse and began waving that wand. Grayling began
advancing and the magician said some magic words, raised the wand
over his head as if to strike the horse bodily.

As the wand reached the height of its
arc there was tremendous keening noise and a clatter of feather and
wind as the rod was snatched from the Bridgemaster's grasp in a
clean strike by a hawk. Just after came another hawk, screaming and
diving at the still outstretched hand, and then another.

The magician flung himself to the
ground, screaming, "Archers!"

Grayling was still advancing on the
heedless magician and Slate whistled sharply, diving past the man
and grabbing up trailing reins. The crow lifted suddenly from the
horse, screaming crow-complaints at the melee. Wands littered the
ground around the magician and as he scrabbled about trying to grab
them the hawks continued to strike at him. He tumbled again, losing
his gem-studded cap and exposing his half-bald head to the
torchlight--and to the attacks of the hawks.

There was a shout of "DaChauxma!" and
a barefooted Littlebrook came riding up to Slate, short lance to
hand, and then there was a strange cracking sound as the bridge
gate went down to a surging crowd.

Above all the noise was a sudden,
piercing shriek.

"My cap, the crow has stolen my
cap!"

Slate followed the magician's pointed
finger. The gray crow was climbing slowly into the night air,
circling the bridge....

"Gold, a dozen pieces to who recovers
my cap! Two dozen pieces of gold."

The magician stood with wand in hand,
pointing, waving, saying words...all to no effect.

"Troops, recover my cap!"

The crow glided majestically across
the river gorge, and, with all heads watching, turned very neatly,
and alighted on the roofed center section of the bridge, the fire
from torch and urn flames glinting off the cap.

The magician turned to Slate, now
astride Grayling.

"Captain, I demand your crow return my
cap, I demand!"

A rush of The Bispham's men ran onto
the bridge.

"Hah," came a familiar sound.
"Hah."

The herbman came abreast of Slate,
shaking his head sadly, leaning down to talk at the bare-headed
magician.

"Hard to catch that crow. Couldn't
with a thousand men. Kinzel couldn't catch him. Your men can't.
Humph. If he likes you, he'll bring you presents. If he don't, he
ignores you. Humph. Have to listen sometime, Bispham or not. That's
the crow made this bridge famous. Humph. Two hundred and fifty
years old, we figure. Smarter than you. Tried to tell you. Humph.
If your magic's in your cap you'll never get it back if you don't
let these folk travel on. Humph. Crow's a friend of theirs. Any
fool coulda seen that. I did. Humph."

On the bridge the crow had moved from
one side of the roof to the other as an enterprising solider made
it to the rooftop. The crowd watched, half from the shore and half
from the bridge, offering suggestions.

Seven archers came racing to The
Bispham, trying not to look at his bare head. "Bridgemaster, we are
here! Shall we shoot the crow? Or shall we try to catch
it?"

The magician looked hopeful for a
moment.

"Wouldn't," said the herb man."Humph.
Lose the cap forever. Long way to the river. Pretty deep, too.
Humph. My advice is good. Gotta be."

On the bridge the crow flew from the
rooftop to the railing and then swooped out into the night. As the
soldier who'd been on the roof got down to the bridge deck the gray
form swooped from beneath the bridge and landed back in the same
spot he been in.

Slate found himself with a troop--all
mounted and packed--as The Bispham's soldiers tried building a
human ladder. Gold if they could just get that bird....

The Bridgemaster looked disgustedly at
his archers and then up at Slate and his men, and spoke to a point
somewhere in between.

"Let the bird be. Let this troop pass.
Let everyone pass, until daybreak--free passage, in honor of the
crow--by order of The Bispham."

"Hah! Hah! Rove troop'll need a place
to sleep. Know one. Hah! Listen this time! Hah!"

Slate turned to look at his men, who
watched carefully, and heard the distant sound of hawks in the
night.

"Hah!" he said finally, and pointed
toward the herb man's retreating back. "I advise you to go that
way!"

First published in
Quiet Magic
, 1999

Master of the
Wind
s

Sharon Lee

HE DID NOT look a great deal like his
poster-portrait, but only Petrie noticed that--or cared, once she
had--and Petrie was odd by anyone's counting.

What mattered the most to everyone,
Petrie included, was that he had come at last. Three weeks after
his pictured announcements, here he was in town: the World Famous
Kitemaster, Warlock of the Clouds, Advisor to the Crowned Heads of
Exotic Realms (both earthbound and cloud rimmed), Master of the
Winds. To Petrie, this last title was by far the most important.
Oddly, not even she wondered why such an exalted personage should
waste his time and fabulous powers awebinding the residents of
Tailies Landing.

Home to Petrie was the Orphanage of
St. Dudley, and she sat now with her fellow orphans under the
watchful eyes of Sister Ignacia Marie, buying her continued
presence with rigid stillness, staring at the Master as if her huge
purple eyes were velvet-lined cages in which she would keep him for
herself, forever.

He was tall, though not as tall as his
picture had promised, and slender to the edge of emaciation. His
hair and beard were curly, but the red-brown curls of the poster
were, in reality, more than merely speckled with grey. He was
dressed in a blue-and-white pin-striped tuxedo. His shirt was only
three snowy ruffs: one at each wrist and a larger one, pinned with
a bluestone brooch, at his slender throat. The cape Petrie had
hoped for was not immediately in evidence.

He spread his arms wide and his
fingers below the lace were long, slim and callused by lightning.
On the third finger of the left hand--on the side where Petrie
sat--he wore a battered silver band.

Petrie held her breath as he
gestured--barely more than a whisper-ripple of outstretched
digits--and the lanterns dimmed. The slightest, most delicate of
breezes moved around the tent, cool on sweating bodies. Petrie
sniffed as it touched her; smelled vanilla and ozone.

He crooked a finger and the little
breeze, obedient as a puppy dog, ran to him, swirled about his
trouser legs for a moment, then stilled. Petrie imagined she could
see it--a creature rather like a dog, if dogs were made of white
feathers and ice--curled about the feet of the Kitemaster, grinning
at the audience with canine good humor. The suggestion of a
movement from the Master claimed Petrie's attention, so she left
the little breeze--unseen or not--to its own devices.

As the lantern light dimmed even
further, the audience drew in upon itself. The lantern to Petrie's
left winked out, then its partner across the tent. One by one, with
ritual solemnity, the lanterns extinguished themselves until the
tent was in total darkness.

The Kitemaster allowed the darkness to
remain only long enough for his audience to know fully that it was
dark. Then he called into being--by means Petrie would have given
much to have seen--a blaze of blue light. It hung in the air,
seemingly solid, a foot or so above the wooden planks of the rough
stage and three long arm-lengths in front of its
summoner.

He allowed the audience to marvel a
moment, then gestured again. This time, a pillar of red light came
into being next to the blue one. Petrie leaned forward in her seat
as far as her wariness of Sister Ignacia allowed, then held her
breath so the act of breathing might not disturb her
sight.

The magician moved again--yes! The
light formed so--tiny particles of color, smaller than bumblebees,
but behaving very similarly, gathered in upon themselves until
there a third pillar of light manifested, this one butter yellow,
floating beside its fellows above the stage.

Lowering his hands, the Master slowly
moved back from his creations--Petrie thought that he moved
carefully so as not to tread on the breeze at his feet--and invited
the audience to examine his servants until they tired of the sight.
Petrie sighed. A long time would pass before she could look at the
scene before her without wonder, but free-floating pillars of color
were not what she had longed to see. Impatient, she leaned farther
forward, straining to see through the purple fog that filled the
space between the blue and red pillars, longing to know if the
puppybreeze was still in its place on the floor. A hand gripped the
back of her neck--a grip she knew all too well. Sister Ignacia, no
slave to wonder, snatched Petrie out of her chair and marched her
toward the back of the tent. Experience told Petrie it was useless
and worse to struggle; but as it became clear that the nun was
intent upon setting her outside the tent, the child began to fight.
Doom if sunlight entered this place now! Even the lingering rays of
sunset were a danger. She did not question how she knew it, but the
knowledge was plain in her, gilt-edged with truth.

Sister Ignacia simply exerted a bit
more pressure, added a little more push. Petrie planted her feet,
locked her knees, felt herself moved forward in spite of it, and
fell back on the often overlooked weapon of a naturally silent
child--she screamed.

Sister Ignacia recoiled as if stung
and Petrie dove back toward the depths of the audience, which was
on its feet and pushing, blind, toward the sides of the tent,
seeking escape from whatever unknown menaced them.

There were more screams as people
felled people and an exhaled, humid fear--then the lanterns flared
back to life. The crowd paused in its flight; and a flailing wind
rose from nowhere to assault and herd them and they ran from the
tent as if it were afire, eddying around the unmoving black bulk of
Sister Ignacia Marie, who was peering about for her
charges.

* * *

AWAY--AT LEAST she'd gotten away,
thought Petrie ruefully, nursing her torn palm. There'd be dutch to
pay if she tried to go back to the orphanage now, though. Sister
Ignacia would not be much amused by the consecutive shabby tricks
played on her, from scream to determined elusiveness to the
willfulness that had closed Petrie's ears to the calls of Sister
and her housemates, as they searched the town field and the
wood-edges for her.

Sister had given up, finally,
gathering together the rest of her charges and herding them back
across the moonlit field toward town. Petrie had slipped along the
shadow of the trees, following an instinct--or was it taste of
vanilla and ozone? She'd torn her palm going over the fence at the
edge of the town's field, but she kept on going until she'd found
the wagon.

Now, sitting behind a straggling bush,
Petrie shook her head and closed her eyes briefly. It was important
that she be here. She knew it. More important that she be here
tonight than safe in the only home she'd ever known.

A light came on in the window of the
wagon and she dropped flat behind the little bush.

The wagon door slid open, spilling
light onto the steps and the grass below, and the Master stepped
out and down. Purposefully, he strode forward, until he was halfway
between that square of light and Petrie's hiding place. He was
dressed as he had been at the tent show, and the hoped-for cloak
was now fastened about his throat, flung back behind his
shoulders.

Stopping, he placed his hands on his
hips and tipped his head to one side. "I am pleased that you were
able to come here this evening," he said, seeming to address the
entire clearing. "At least one of you has come at the risk of
losing her home." He turned once slowly around, and nodded as if
satisfied. "I would like to invite you inside, if I may. There are
refreshments." He tipped his head briefly to the other side, much
like the orphanage cat when it sensed a speech directed solely to
itself, nodded again and turned back toward the lighted square of
the wagon door.