The Ozark trilogy (63 page)

“No, no ... that was not my question! And you know it, don’t you?”

“Of course I know it!”

“Then stop playing the fool!”

“He is not playing the fool,” said Luke Nathaniel wearily, “he is just cross, like the rest of us. And we have considered that question so many times already.”

“Magic,” said Nathan Overholt, “is a great web, a great web in always changing equilibrium. Touch it anywhere, change it anyhow, and you affect the whole. When we removed Responsible of Brightwater from that web— “

“We haven’t removed her. She’s in better health than any of us. In pseudocoma you don’t
need
to eat.”

“In a sense,” Nathan Overholt went on, “we removed her. We changed her from an active principle to a passive one ... and yet she is a female. How can a female represent an active principle?”

“Granny Leeward is exceedingly ‘active’ with the Long Whip,” observed Luke Nathaniel. “And she is female.”

“She is not a
principle
—she is only an item.”

Feebus Timothy longed to lay his head, still aching from the screams or Avalon of Wommack, down on the table, right then and there, and go to sleep. They had been over it. And over it. The difference between an item and a principle. The difference between substitution of a null term and substitution of a specified term. The degree of shift in an equation sufficient to destroy its reversibility—or restore it. And over and over ... what role had Responsible of Brightwater, a girt of fifteen like any other girl of fifteen to the eye, played in that equation, such that the cancellation of
her
input had been enough to destroy the entire system?

There were never any answers. That she had known a little magic, some of it more advanced than was suitable for a female or even legal, they all knew. The four of them had been present when Responsible fell into Granny Leeward’s trap and changed the old woman’s black fan into a handful of rotting jet-black mushrooms before their astonished eyes. Jeremiah Thomas Traveller had been mightily impressed by that, as the Granny had intended him to be.

But
they
were Magicians of Rank. It was a Transformation, certainly, and the girl should not have been able to do it, but it was trivial. It was a baby trick, such as any one of them might have done—in a less ugly way—to entertain guests at a celebration of some kind. It was probable that it had been as much blind luck as skill, and mostly the product of the girl’s rage; for she had lain in torment while they watched her and mocked her misery, suffering from the gift of Andersen’s Disease, that deathdance fever that Granny Leeward had ordered them to impose as punishment for her scandalous behavior. And she’d shown no sign of any talent for things magical but that one ... nor had she been able to stand against them when the nine Magicians of Rank had chosen to impose pseudocoma upon her or during the months that had dragged by since. If there was something special about her, why had she not leaped up from that bed and laughed at them and put all of
them
into pseudocoma?

It was hopeless.

“It’s hopeless,” he said aloud. “Hopeless.”

The others looked at him, suddenly caught by the nuance of his voice. He was young, and he was inexperienced, but he had been a skilled Magician of Rank. Now they detected something ... a note of petulance. Petulance?

Nathan Overholt Traveller reached over abruptly and laid his hand on the younger man’s forehead and swore a broad word.

“He’s burning up with fever!” he said. “One of you get the Granny, and tell her to lose no time coming down here!”

It had been bound to happen sooner or later. Sickness, the Master of this Castle had been telling everyone, sickness and death, were nothing more than the marks of wickedness and sin made visible in the flesh. Only the Holy One culling the rotten fruit from the crop and leaving the sound and the wholesome behind. It made an entertaining sermon, and perhaps dulled grief for some ... after all, if those that suffered and died deserved their fate, then what was there to grieve over?

But the Magicians of Rank had been uneasy, listening. For if one of them, one of the Magicians of Rank, one of the Family, were to fall sick or, the Twelve Gates forbid, to die—how was that to be explained? The urgency of preventing that had provided them with a shaky justification for the extra rations they shared in secret in the Castle, while tadlings cried with hunger in the houses of the town.
Eggs
, they had been eating ... it was safe to assume that no one else on Tinaseeh had seen an egg in six months or more, much less eaten one. And now this? It must not happen.

“Why call the Granny?” demanded one of the others, and Nathan Overholt took time from rubbing the temples of his brother’s head to give him a look of contempt.

“We have no magic now, you benastied fool,” he spat, beside himself with worry, and his elegant manners and speech forgotten for once, “and no medicine either. We have
nothing
—except what the Grannys know. The ancient simples. The herbs and teas and potions and plasters of the times
before
magic, the Holy One have mercy on us all! Now get her!”

“Nathan Overholt— “

“You think,” shouted Nathan, “you think that if one of us falls to a fever we will be able to stand on the whipping ground and convince the people of Tinaseeh that we order that Whip laid on out of our own innocence of all sin? You think that Granny Leeward would scruple to set that Long Whip to your back, or to mine, if that seemed necessary to further the cause of the Chosen People? Dozens, man, don’t you realize that if Feebus Timothy has it we may
all
be in the same fix, whatever it is—and it could be
anything?
Now go!”

He went around behind his brother and clasped the young man’s head in his hands, closing his eyes, concentrating fiercely. It was an act he knew to be only superstition. But perhaps. Perhaps there was still some fragment of healing in it. He could not do nothing at all. He had no desire to die like Avalon of Wommack had died; nor did he want to learn how many strokes of the Long Whip it would take to kill a strong man in reasonably good condition.

Mount Troublesome was not much, as mountains go; it peaked at a tad past four thousand feet, and it hadn’t a glacier or a crevasse to its name. On the other hand, though it didn’t live up to the “Mount” part, it more than made up for that in its fidelity to the “Troublesome” part. It missed no smallest opportunity for ravines to get stuck in and caves to get lost in and vast thickets to be scratched ragged in; and it was abundantly generous in poisonous ivies and creepers winding along the ground and up around the trees to hang down and smack you in the face. Springs were everywhere, trickling along under matted undergrowth that looked solid as a stable roof, till you set foot on it and sank in icy water up to your knees. There were waterfalls’ enough to go around, pretty white water gushing over sheer rock faces into pools circled by ferns and nearwillows. The pools were tempting to the eye, and might of been pleasant-feeling, but you waded them at your peril and the pleasure of dozens of small ferocious yellow snakes with ingeniously notched teeth. It did happen to be a fact that Mount Troublesome was the tallest thing on the entire continent of Marktwain.

The seven old women toiling their way up its tangled sides were more than satisfied with the obstacles it presented. If it had been any worse, there was considerable doubt in their minds that they could of made it to the top at all.

“Drat the ornery female!” Granny Sherryjake had declared after the second time a whole hour had to be wasted finding a way round a berry thicket as impenetrable as solid rock and twice as unpleasant. And she went on to expand on that, and elaborate on it, and weave variations on it, as the hours went by and it became obvious that there was no way they could reach the top before nightfall. They’d be overnighting out on the mountain.

But Granny Hazelbide, that was in residence along with Granny Gableframe at Castle Brightwater, had taken exception to that. It was
fully
appropriate, she’d said, slapping back at a branch that had slapped her first, for a woman named Troublesome to choose a mountain named Troublesome when she went into exile.

“Fully appropriate, and seemly,” said Granny Hazelbide. “I’d of done the same exact thing, in her place.”

“Well,” grumbled Sherryjake, “there may be something to what you say.”

“I should hope and declare there is. Naming is
naming!
”

“But,” went on the other doggedly, “I do
not
see that there was any special merit to be gained from her establishing herself at the very most tip
top
of this accursed hump of dirt and rock. She was not named
Peak
of Troublesome, you know. Halfway up would of done it, seems to me. Quarterways up.”

“Troublesome of Brightwater was instructed to take herself as far away from the rest of the population of Brightwater as it was possible for her to get,” said Granny Frostfall firmly. “I hold with Hazelbide; she did what was proper. But I surely do not find that it makes for a pleasant little stroll.”

“Time was,” fussed Granny Gableframe, “this would of been no more than that, for any of us.”

“And in such a time,” snorted Granny Frostfall, “we’d none of us of crossed a city
street
to pay a call on Troublesome of Brightwater. Can’t say as how I see that it applies, Gableframe.”

Granny Gableframe didn’t bother to argue, but sighed a long sigh and took a firmer grip on her walking stick with her thin old fingers. It wouldn’t do to lose it.

Grannys had always been thin, that went with the territory; but these seven were thin to the bone, and those bones pained them. Grannys had always been old; but up till recently they’d been protected from the usual miseries of old age by their own Granny Magic, and from its more unusual miseries by the skills of the Magicians and the Magicians of Rank. Without that protection, things had changed for them. Angina and arthritis, gall-bladder colic and kidney trouble, ulcers and headaches and high blood pressure, all the bodily discomforts taken for granted as the lot of any aged woman on Old Earth, had struck the Grannys of Ozark. It was even said that at Castle Clark—though she denied it fiercely—Granny Golightly was developing a cataract in her right eye.

Under the circumstances, when Granny Gableframe first proposed that the seven of them should go up to the mountaintop and talk to Troublesome of Brightwater, the hilarity had been like a squawkercoop with a serpent inside, and two servingmaids had come running to find out what the commotion was.

“You are daft, Gableframe,” the other Grannys had said with a single voice, and they’d sat in their rockers and cackled and held their aching sides at the very idea. Seven creaking old ladies, half blind and half deaf, feet too swollen to go in their shoes and bones so brittle they barely dared move them—and they were to trek up the meanest mountain on Marktwain in the middle of the autumn? It was a fool idea to top all fool ideas.

“That does take the rag off the bush, Gableframe,” they’d said, and it was unanimous.

“And what
do
you propose to do, ladies?” Gableframe had challenged them, standing there arms akimbo and her sharp chin stuck out ahead of her. “You propose to just sit here, do you? While the crops all die and the animals sicken and the people do the same, and Responsible of Brightwater lies month after weary month on that white counterpane, so still the only reason I can believe she’s alive is that her body has yet to
mortify?
Well, ladies? You laugh right prompt, real quick to make fun,
you
are! But I don’t hear you offering any plans of your own.”

They did know two things, there was that. In the first months after Responsible had been struck down, while the power of magic was waning but not yet exhausted, the Grannys had managed to learn two small pieces of information. They’d read tea leaves, they’d swung their golden rings on long black threads, they’d stared into springwater till their eyes were red and weeping, night after night. And back at them had come two scraps.

The reason behind the trouble, the reason behind Responsible’s deathlike interminable sleep, was “an important man.” That had come first, and after much labor, and had irritated them considerably. Then there had been the search for that man’s location in this world, holding the golden rings over the maps, holding their breaths as well, waiting for one ring to begin its telltale swinging and circling. All atremble like they were, it took a sharp eye to tell when the movement was of its own self and when it was just the doings of a Granny that’s hand was no longer steady.

And then there’d been argument. The Spells were so little use by then, the movement of the rings so near no movement at all, and so ambiguous—was it Tinaseeh or was it Kintucky? All of a week they’d nattered over that, half for one and half for the other, knowing that if they made the wrong choice there’d be no second chance. There weren’t resources enough for trying twice, for one thing. And for another, if anything was to be done it had to be done swiftly; there was nothing in the way of extra resources of
time
, either.

Grannys Gableframe, Whifflebee, and Edging had been strong for Tinaseeh, swearing it was Jeremiah Thomas Traveller that was the “important man.” Did he not, after all, rule that continent with a fist of iron, and hadn’t he always? And hadn’t he always hated Responsible of Brightwater and everything she stood for?

“Hmmph,” said Granny Cobbledrayke of Castle McDaniels, “it’s not Jeremiah Thomas as rules Tinsaseeh, it’s his mother, her that took Leeward as her Granny Name and is about as much like a leeward side in a storm as a lizard’s like a bellybutton. Don’t give
me
Jeremiah Thomas Traveller for an ‘important man’—he’s a mama’s boy, and always was.”