The Haunted Wizard - Wiz in Rhym-6 (12 page)

"Oh, yes! But—But the men of the staff. Will they not expect … expect me to…"

"If the queen is willing to take you into her service," Mama said firmly, "she will see that all her menservants know not to presume upon you. If I can arrange it, child, will you accept it?"

"Oh, yes!" Laetri cried, seizing Mama's hand in both her own. "I shall labor long and hard for the queen, milady, you shall see! I was born a serf's daughter, and learned to work hard at washing and baking and scrubbing as I grew! I wish I had never left that life, that I could go back to it!"

"Why did you leave it?" Mama said, frowning.

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"Because all the boys were brutish and foolish, and I longed for something more—but in the city, I have found less! Be sure that I shall scour and labor from dawn till dusk for Her Majesty, milady! I ask only enough food to stave off hunger, and a warm place to sleep—and that never, ever again shall I have to suffer the touch of a man!"

Dinner done and talk run out, the three men prepared to sleep. Matt offered to take first watch, and neither of his companions argued; in fact, they both looked relieved. But as Sergeant Brock opened his pack to draw out a whetstone, Matt noticed something gleaming. Looking more closely, he saw silver.

"A sickle?" he asked. "Silver, too! That's a curious thing for a soldier to be carrying!" Brock tensed, but forced a smile as he closed his pack. "Curious indeed, milord. It is a battle trophy from a band of perverts we broke up. Caught none of them alive, sad to say, but we slew a few and chased all the rest. I took that sickle off one of the dead ones."

"Perverts?" Matt frowned, ready to do battle for a misunderstood and oppressed minority. "What kind?"

"The kind that get their thrills from killing the innocent," Sergeant Brock said grimly. "They dressed up in robes and ivy crowns to do it, and set her out as a naked sacrifice to some pagan god under the full moon as an excuse, but they were going to kill her, right enough. Four of them were holding her down, one to each limb, and a fifth, their priest or whatever, was lifting his blade to do her, when we came upon the scene and routed them."

Matt struck the "oppressed minority" off his list. Even freedom of religion had its limits, and two of them were human life and pain. "That sickle's kind of odd as a sacrificial knife. The blade's too narrow for a murder weapon." But he thought it would make just the right kind of wound in a straw doll—right to match the cut in Prince Gaheris' back.

"That sickle is not what the priest wielded—he lifted high a knife with a stone blade. We found it afterward." Sergeant Brock sat down and began to sharpen his short sword. "You must do this every day, if you have no squire to do it for you— catch each speck of rust before it can grow."

"Yes, I know," Matt said. "Gives me something to do while I'm on watch. You take care of your weapon…"

"And your weapon will take care of you. Yes." But Sergeant Brock stopped stroking the blade with the stone, frowning off into the distance. "I suppose it would have been a different matter if the woman had been one of them, and going to the slaughter of her own will…"

"Not really," Matt said. "Hardly different at all. But she wasn't?"

"No; that's why the reeve called us in—because she'd disappeared, and his men alone couldn't find her, and there are some nasty bogs on the King's Own Lands." Brock started whetting again. "But we knew they'd kidnapped her, for we'd heard about other cases like this, and chased down three of them already, so we knew what we'd find before we went looking."

"Four cases?" Matt stared.

Sergeant Brock nodded. "They've sprung up all around the land this last year. Claim to be the Old Religion, and their-leaders Druids who've kept the old knowledge passed down from father to son, but the bishop set his monks to looking in old books, and they found a dozen ways these kidnappers differ
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from the Druids of old. No, I think they're just a very nasty bunch who like to dress up in outlandish robes so they can forget who they really are and have some excuse for their twisted pleasures." Matt shuddered. "Nice country we're going into."

"It is that." Sergeant Brock stopped whetting and lifted his head to look Matt straight in the eye. "It's a beautiful land of rolling downs and vasty old woods, of azure lakes and stonewalled fields, and the people are the salt of the earth, steady, hardworking, and always ready to help a stranger. Don't judge us by these bands of cultsmen, Lord Wizard. They're a sprinkling only, and the most of us are good folk indeed."

He might have said more, but the moonlight suddenly dimmed, and Sergeant Brock looked up in alarm. Sir Orizhan shouted an oath, then froze, staring up at the huge dark mass outside the doorway, sword in hand.

"The stray cow was near," the huge voice rumbled out of the darkness. "You owe the farmer who dwells in the cottage with two tall pines beside it, Matthew."

"I'll pay it." Matt grinned. "I've claimed first watch, Stegoman."

"Wherefore?" the dragon asked. "I have no lids to my eyes; even in sleep, I shall see what occurs."

"Dragons don't really sleep," Matt explained to his companions. "They just sort of slow down their systems and go into a trance."

"How reassuring," Sir Orizhan said in a hollow tone, and the two men slowly went back to what they were doing. Matt went to get out his own whetstone, feeling much safer knowing that Stegoman would be watching when he went to sleep. It wasn't that he didn't trust the two men, really—it was just that he couldn't trust anyone who hadn't proved his loyalty by saving his life a few times, the way the dragon had. Both knight and sergeant rolled out their pallets and lay down to sleep. Matt rolled his out on the other side of the firepit, but sat up on his blanket, on watch. He let his mind wander, sorting through the various possibilities of who gained by Gaheris' death, and wondering where the Man Who Went Out the Window fit in. It all came down to him, of course. For a moment he had the crazy irrational notion that if the man hadn't gone out the window, none of this would have happened. Then that thought vanished from his mind, because he saw the eyes watching him from the shadows. They were perfectly nice eyes, seemed almost like those of a deer, large and brown, but what were they doing there? Sir Orizhan lay parallel to the hearth, Sergeant Brock lay at right angles with Mart's pallet opposite him, but the corners of the room lay in shadow, deepest opposite the fire and farmer away from it, on the wall with the doorway. Matt was close to the hearth, and the eyes were watching him from the corner farthest away, where the darkness was most complete.

No, not perfectly nice after all, Matt decided—there was definitely a malicious cast to those eyes, or at least a mischievous one, and they didn't blink, they just stared, wide-open and calculating, staring right at him!

Matt didn't use his captured magic wand very often, so he never carried it, but he had found that any long, straight object would do reasonably well for focusing and directing a magic spell, so he rested his hand on the hilt of his dagger and waited, watching. After all, the eyes might be those of a sheep who had
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wandered in out of the cold while he wasn't looking. Not likely, he had to admit, but he hoped the only problem here was his own lack of vigilance.

Then the eyes turned away with studied nonchalance and moved toward the fire. They brought the whole creature along with the grace and silence of a prowling cat, and Matt stopped breathing for a moment.

It was humanoid, he could say that at least, though its legs were shorter than a man's and bowed; Matt couldn't see what shape they were, because the creature wore a ragged pair of trousers that came down to mid-calf—trousers, in a land where peasants wore leggins! Its arms were longer than a man's, almost to the proportion of a gorilla's—and it was just as hairy as a gorilla. But it walked with the upright posture of a human being, and its face was almost completely human. The ears were larger, and the head was very round, almost a perfect globe, covered with hair except for the face—but it grinned with a very human delight in its own mischief as it settled down near the fire, holding its hands out to the flames. Matt was appalled, more than he would have been if it were so severely deformed as to be an outright monster. He could have accepted a different species more easily than a creature that was as much animal as human.

The creature sat on its heels, its legs folding like jack-knives, and rubbed its hands in the warmth of the fire, but its eyes stayed on Matt, and its grin widened.

Matt stared back, feeling the atmosphere grow tense and more tense, waiting, waiting. He was bound and determined that he wouldn't speak first, or take any hostile action—but a defense spell ran through his head again and again, ready to be shouted at the slightest false move on the creature's part. Apparently the creature realized his resolve, because it finally said, "Ye might as well speak up, man. I know you're watching."

Matt only nodded.

"Fear not for them." The creature dismissed Sir Orizhan and Sergeant Brock with a glance. "They'll not wake till dawn. I've seen to that."

So it had magical powers, too. Matt nodded again, still holding the creature's eyes with his own. Its lip curled in derision. "What's the matter, then? Have ye never seen a bauchan before?" It pronounced the word "buckawn."

Name magic thawed Matt; it was irrational, but having a word for the species reassured him. "No, I haven't. Are you a male?"

"That I am, and it's long since I've seen a female of my kind, I tell you. Centuries. Don't fear, though—I've no yen for human women. No yen for any kind of coupling, if no female bauchan is by me and in heat." It paused, but Matt didn't comment, so it said, "We do get lonely, though." Suddenly, Matt felt sorry for the creature. To be the only one of his kind—as he must have been, if it had been hundreds of years since he'd seen a female—must have been very lonely indeed. "I can see that you would. But aren't there any other bauchans around?"

"There is one some four miles distant." The bauchan pointed north. "And one some ten miles east." He
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pointed another finger, looking like a semaphore. "But we have little biking for each other." He dropped his hands.

"Oh, great!" Matt said. "Two more near enough to do some good, and they're both grouches."

"Oh, nay." The bauchan grinned. "They're no worse than I am—but no better, either. Bauchans do not like other bauchans, you see."

Matt had read his share of folklore in his studies of comparative literature. "You mean you're solitary fairies?"

"Fairies!" The bauchan sniffed. "Why do ye mortal folk always lump all us magical folk together as fairies? We're spirits or spirks or pooks, nothing else! But solitary, aye, at least as regards our own kind. We'd much rather have mortal folk for company."

"Oh?" Matt felt the first tendrils of dread reaching out for him. "Tell me, why is that?"

"Because we've no wish to suffer one another's tricks and whims."

"Yes, I can see that would be a problem." Mentally, Matt tried to fight off the dread; he was a wizard, he could handle one country spirit! "But if you're so sociable, why are you hanging around this abandoned hut?"

"Because it belonged to my last family." The bauchan wiped away a tear. "They were good folk, grandfather and father and daughter, but none came to marry her, and she dwelled alone in this cottage until she died, a good old woman of three score years and ten." That was the Bible's allotted life span. Matt wondered if she'd forced herself to hang on until she turned seventy. "Rough life."

"Aye. She had few friends, fewer who came to visit her."

The vagrant thought drifted through Matt's mind that the bauchan might have had something to do with that.

"She did try to slay herself once or twice," the bauchan said, his eyes glittering, "but of course I could not allow that."

"Sure, you wouldn't want to be lonely." Matt shivered. "What happened to the rest of her family?"

"Oh, they died, too. They were a very nervous lot."

"I'm beginning to see why. No one else has ever tried to stay the night here, huh?"

"Nay, they have not. The place has a bad name among me villagers."

"Gee, imagine that." But Matt and his friends had flown over the village, not ridden through it and heard the warning. "How long ago did she die?"

"Thirty years."

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"Yes, that's a considerable length of time. Why have you stayed?"

"Why, because I'd adopted her family, do you see. There was no point in leaving without another family to go to."

"Very loyal of you, I'm sure." But Matt's doubt sounded in his voice. "How does a bauchan find a new family?"

"He waits until someone stays the night in his old family's house, men adopts that person and stays with him and his family."

The tendrils of dread whipped tight around Matt. Ever the optimist, he said, "And you've chosen the sergeant here."

Grinning, the bauchan turned its head from side to side.

"The knight, then."

Again the bauchan slowly shook its head.

"You can't be thinking of—" Matt swallowed. "—me." The bauchan lifted its head up and down, eyes glowing.

Matt stared, frozen, while a chill passed over him. He gave himself a shake, cleared his throat and said,

"I'm afraid that's not possible."

"Oh, but it is," the bauchan assured him. "I've adopted you, you see."

"I'm not up for adoption," Matt said firmly.

"Ah, but you've no choice there." The bauchan's teeth glinted in the firelight. "I've adopted you, and there's no more to say."