Heart of the Staff - Complete Series Read online

“You swyving hole! If that was a smug remark, you can find your own Fairies...”

  “Look, Ocker. If giant rat is your requirement, I can fix you up. It just won't be a Fairy. What do you say?”

  “Here I stand.”

  “Do we have a deal?”

  “Let me see this rat you're talking about.”

  Razzorbauch sighed and closed his eyes, slowly turning this way and that toward the palace proper. Suddenly, he lashed out with a furious fling of his arm, and a rat came flying over the wall, squealing in terror to land at their feet, instantly tethered to the balustrade.

  “No deal!” croaked Ocker. “I could catch rats like that all day long,” He crouched, ready to spring into flight.

  “I'm not done,” said Razzorbauch as he picked up his staff from the nearby stone bench. He pointed it at the rat, shooting out a brilliant lavender discharge. Instantly the rat was twice as big as before.

  “You pissen me, Razzorbauch,” rattled Ocker. “That's 'way smaller than the rat I want, and you know it. Last week Urr-Urr and I shared a muskrat bigger than that with some wolves.”

  “And you insult me, O patient one,” said Razzorbauch as he reached inside his robe and withdrew a fine leather pouch.

  “What's that?” said Ocker, studying him with one eye.

  “I don't pull this out in front of just anyone,” he said as he slipped out a brilliant red crystal in the shape of a heart. He picked up his Staff and snapped the crystal into the end of it. At once it began throbbing with a ruby light. When he shook it at the rat, the blinding flash engulfed the rat and made Ocker jump into the air and settle back onto the balustrade. At once they made out an enormous rat amongst the red spots before their eyes, frantically snuffling, scratching and jerking this way and that against its tether.

  “Well now,” said Razzorbauch, cradling in his hands the Staff with the still glowing Heart. “You say roasted. With or without hair?”

  “I've not had anything cooked with hair. Everything else we eat has it. Let's try that.”

  “With hair it is, then. Gutted?”

  “I always wondered why humans throw away the good part.”

  “Cooked innards it is,” said Razzorbauch as he shook his Heart at the rat. The rat collapsed sizzling onto the balcony.

  “You want us dining down here?” said Ocker.

  “Razzorbauch rolled his eyes, nodded and fixed a ruby beam on the steaming rat for a moment before wheeling about with a heave, shining the beam up the bluff face to deposit the carcass right beside a very startled Urr-Urr on her nest. “There. How's that?”

  “Well,” said Ocker, giving himself a shake and sleeking down. “Your Fairies are on their way to the Jutwoods to take up sanctuary with the Elves. And Ratman has some sort of curse he wants them to remove...”

  “Yea. I know about it.”

  “Well, the queintes think he deserves it, and... Oh yea. They're only traveling by night and they're afraid to use any magic except for shields to keep you from scrying them.”

  “Good. Where did you see them?”

  “Maybe ten league south-east of here.”

  “That close, aye? When?”

  “Two days ago.”

  “Two days ago! That rat was a lot of trouble.”

  “Hey!” said Ocker, bristling at once. “I was busy. I have a lot of clients to take care of. I went to a lot of trouble of my own, here. If you weren't such a stinking hole, you'd be grateful.”

  “I'm grateful, all right. But if I don't find the Fairies...”

  “Then up your hairy erse, swyver!” cried Ocker, springing into the air. “I've always made good for you. You're the one who can't keep track of your Fairies.” And with that, he flew up and out of sight.

  When Razzorbauch left, he swooped down to get his scrying marble and to have a look in it for Meri Greenwood.

  ***

  Ugleeuh was thrilled with the guest quarters her uncle Razzorbauch had given her. Instead of a mere room such as hers at Peach Knob, she had an apartment, a whole suite of opulently appointed rooms, as if she were some sort of royalty. She threw back her covers and sat up. “The looking glass,” she said, staring at the full length Gothic mirror which stood near a wardrobe across the room. She had never in her life seen a flat piece of glass larger than a saucer, let alone something so huge that she could stand in front of it and see herself from head to toe. She sprang from the bed, dropping her nightgown and flinging it aside with her toe as she rushed to the wardrobe to try on a crimson kirtle with a plastron fronted surcoat in front of the mirror. She scurried over to the casket on the nearby dressing table, took out her new rubies and dashed back to the mirror, holding them up to her neck to see. “Much too-too.”

  The moment the dress dropped to her ankles, she was back at the wardrobe pulling out a black silk kirtle with a low off the shoulder neckline. She stood in front of the mirror for a moment, shifting and tugging, at last looking up to see. “Ha! Blazing rubies over midnight black. Perfect.” She hurried to the window and unlatched the sash. She hesitated for a moment to study the shadow cast by the peg on the sill before returning to the mirror. “I hope Uncle Razzorbauch isn't as distracted as he seemed last night,” she said as she brushed out her raven tresses. “I wonder if he resents taking me to see Demonica.”

  Ugleeuh found him waiting for her on the balcony, staring out over his vast forest of twisted trees. He turned at once at a scuff of grit under her slipper and smiled grandly. “You are simply gorgeous, my dear,” he said with a bow of his head as he gestured to a table spread with linen. “Your mother will be stunned to see the woman you turned out to be.”

  “Do you really think so?” she said as she took her seat.

  “What else could I think?” he said, looking up at the sound of a door. “Here's breakfast. They're on their toes this morning.”

  Soon they were enjoying toad in a hole and tea in the glorious sunshine, as the breeze stirred their hair and rippled along the skirt of the tablecloth. Now and then a rock wren called far up the slopes.

  Ugleeuh wasn't listening. She was distracted by thoughts of a mother she had never seen, and she was just realizing that for all the trees, she had not heard any birds singing in this place other than the wren and a raven or two.

  Razzorbauch saw that she had finished eating. He licked his knife and put it away. He took out his scrying ball and stared into it for a moment. “You'll want to take my hand,” he said as he stood up. In the next instant they were hundreds of leagues away, steadying their balance in his library in the great tower of Demonica's keep, just off the shore of Head.

  “Mmmp!” said Ugleeuh as she blanched and clamped her hands over her mouth.

  “In time, it won't do that to you,” he said, reaching out to steady her. “I suppose the breakfast was a bit heavy for someone new to traveling spells.”

  “You sure read a lot,” she said, looking all about. At the sound of cooing, she glanced up to see a pigeon pouting and strutting over the droppings on the glass sky light in the roof.

  “I have a collection, you might say. In fact, I have collections everywhere I've been, though I don't have very many books at the forest yet.”

  “Are they all about magic?”

  “Some are. Let's find your mother,” he said, showing her to the triple doors.

  Demonica was not in her throne room, but they found her just behind it, in her “retiring room,” as she called it, a library in the castle's rambling solar. She looked up from her ledger and put down her pen. “Is the young woman who I reckon she be?” she said as if she were asking what routine thing was on a tray fetched in by a servant.

  “How could I possibly answer that?” said Razzorbauch. “I don't know what you're thinking, and you could even be playing some sort of game.”

  “So here we go,” she said, closing her inkwell and sitting back in her chair, “playing your game, if I'm not mistaken. Has he told you the rules of the game yet, dear?”

  Ugleeuh turned to
Razzorbauch and said nothing.

  “Surely you could put away your having been thwarted for your very daughter who has come all the way from Niarg to meet you,” he said.

  “She has no interest in me,” said Ugleeuh. “This was a mistake. Take me back.”

  “I'd rather you stayed, dear,” said Demonica, closing her ledger and standing up, “though I can't imagine why you'd ever go to the trouble to see me. However, he could leave right now, if it were up to me.”

  “Why would you think that?” said Ugleeuh.

  “I'm sure Razzmorten has quite poisoned your opinion of me after all these years.”

  “Well, he said you never wanted a child by him. Is that true?”

  “By itself. I certainly did not want his child, but when I saw you, I changed my mind.”

  “So why did you leave me when you left him?”

  “Because he wouldn't let me take you with me, dear.”

  “Yea? So why'd you name me Ugleeuh? That doesn't sound like wanting me very much.”

  “Ever wonder why he let you keep such a name? Guess who really named you.”

  “You didn't?”

  “Of course not. It was your contemptible half-sister.”

  “No! You told Minuet I was ugly. And when she insisted that I was beautiful, you gave me my name and refused to nurse me.”

  “He raised you with that story?” said Demonica in wide-eyed indignation. “I named you Leeuh. Minuet kept calling you 'Ugly Leeuh.' It seems that it got contracted once I was gone.”

  Ugleeuh turned to Razzorbauch.

  “I wasn't there,” he said, raising his hands, “but it does indeed sound like the very things you were telling me about them when you came to work with me.”

  “It's always hard for children to reject the stories that they've been raised with,” said Demonica. “There was a midwife. Maybe you should ask her.”

  “Marie Allen?”

  “That might have been it. If you know her, ask her.”

  “She died strangely the night I was born, but I never paid attention to the stories.”

  “Well then, you'll just have to choose whose story you want to believe, dear.”

  “Yes,” said Ugleeuh. “So it seems.”

  Razzorbauch and Demonica shared a look.

  “So,” he said, suddenly turning to Ugleeuh. “Shall we go on to the plantation? It looks like you and Demonica have reached an impasse.”

  “Oh I think the plantation would be grand,” she said, smiling at the sudden vexed look in Demonica's eyes.

  “Very good,” he said, catching every bit of this as he took her hand. “Farewell, Demonica.” And with that, they were gone.

  ***

  Sergeant Hensnape beat the shank of the last rivet into a shiny mushroom and stood up with his hammer and punch. “There's your lid, sir,” he said with a nod of proper completion. “I think that lip makes a snug fit on your kettle all the way around. I'd allow that you'll have to pack it with oakum before you put it on and clamp it down.” He squatted again and turned the lid right side up. “Now, I've made an elbow here in the top which makes a tight fit on this ten foot tin pipe. And with the lid on, the pipe will slope down as it goes away from the kettle.”

  “Do you have oakum?” said Razzmorten, pushing back his hat to scratch his head.

  “Got all you need in a box on my wagon. And I got four screw clamps.”

  “Good. Then there's no reason why I can't set up my kettle right now, is there?”

  “I don't see why not. And once you get started, I'm going to make a run to the armory for more tin. I took the liberty of sending Thump to the foundry before light. He's to try to come back with two more kettles like these two and two that are four times the size. I don't see any reason why I can't make lids just as tight for ones that big.”

  “Excellent,” said Razzmorten, suddenly turning aside to find Minuet standing quietly at his elbow.

  “Good morning Father. The tinsmith sure knows how to make racket. I don't think there's one bird left singing on Peach Knob.”

  “Begging your pardon, Miss Dewin,” said Hensnape, grandly sweeping off his leather cap with a bow, “but I'm not a tinsmith. I'm Sergeant Hensnape, Royal Armourer at your service. Now thunder's heavenly, if ye know what I mean, and I'd reckon it's the birds' reverence as gets them quiet.”

  “Pleased to meet you and your providential hammer, Sergeant Hensnape,” said Minuet with a curtsey before turning to Razzmorten. “I'm sorry I wasn't out here earlier to help.”

  “I peeped in when you didn't answer my knock, right before light, but you were quite sound asleep.”

  “I think I must be sleeping more soundly with Leeuh gone.”

  Razzmorten looked up from under his hoary eyebrows with a wide eyed nod and turned aside to help Hensnape heave an iron kettle into a ring stand.

  “Is there anything I can do, now that I'm here?” she said.

  “Well, I'm going to need a good fire going under each of these two kettles,” he said, standing up to look about. “But first, maybe you could put twenty gallon of water from the well by the summer kitchen into this one. I'll put an armload or two of the Elven hyssop in the water and make a good strong tea. Then, I'll have you dip out the tea into this other kettle and we'll fasten on the lid the good sergeant here was making his heavenly sounds on. When it starts to boil, we hope the oregano oil is driven off as a vapor that will form droplets in the pipe and run off into some kind of collection vessel which I've yet to find.” At the unexpected sight of Minuet making a deep curtsey, he turned square about to find a courtly Elf standing behind him. “Why Prince Neron! Good morning.”

  “Morning it be,” said Neron, bowing his head as a wren began singing, “but I've yet to see the good in it. When I returned to Oilean Gairdin with the cure Minuet so graciously gave me, my dear Nessa was dead and gone forever...” His eyes brimmed over at once. Suddenly he squeezed them shut as he struggled to silence an unexpected sob. “Forgive me,” he said as Razzmorten and Minuet took up his hands. “It's the first I've ever had to make that announcement. I never expected that it would be so horribly hard to do.” He fell silent again as he drew in a great shuddering breath. “Well,” he said at last. “When I left her bedside, I realized that I had a fever. I wanted to lie down beside her and go with her, but Faragher turned the crown over to me, would you believe? The realm is really going to need me with all this happening, so I started taking Minuet's cure. It makes me feel guilty and lonely, but I did.”

  “You bear too much grief to look well,” said Razzmorten, “but you don't look sick in the least.”

  “I'm not. I'm simply astounded by how fast the cure works. Our physician and Ori, my eldest, are already dead and the entire royal family has been exposed. It's so fast. We have no idea yet about how many others have fallen ill. There's going to be utter pandemonium. Would you let me help you with your work here so that we might save all our people?”

  “I can use all the help I can get,” said Razzmorten without hesitation. “and you can have two thirds of the first batch of oil we get.”

  “Splendid! But what about Niarg?”

  “The plague is confined entirely to the castle for the moment, so far as I know. And since your numbers are unknown, your getting more oil is probably the best way for us to protect ourselves. We'll divide up subsequent batches according to how it goes.”

  Suddenly Minuet gave way and collapsed. Neron grabbed her just in time to ease her onto the ground. Razzmorten knelt beside her at once. “Oh no!” he said as he felt her forehead. “She's burning up. And look at these swellings on her neck.”

  ***

  Ugleeuh looked down at her ash blackened shoes and at the greyed skirts of her black silk kirtle. Ash and the smell of fire were everywhere, particularly with it having not rained since Razzorbauch set fire to the forest on his plantation land. “I should have worn a wimple,” she thought as she held her hair away from her face in the breeze. “I hate wimples. The on
ly one I have goes with that awful dress back at Peach Knob.” She gazed out at the burnt off land, rolling away in gentle swags and swells, practically as far as the eye could see in all directions. There were no insects, frogs nor birds to be heard at all except for some ravens in the air, a good distance off, croaking before circling down to a charred and bloated deer.

  “So Leeuh,” said Razzorbauch as he took in a grand breath of air. “What do you think of our little venture, so far?”

  “It's so vast,” she said, turning to him with a bounce. “Thousands upon thousands of acres, hidden entirely in these forbidding woods.”

  “Yes. I've put out quite a bit of effort on the forbidding part. I want this plantation to be protected. The most common tree here now has an irresistibly attractive fruit that should cause certain death. And I've transformed the great indigo lyoth of the jungles of the Dark Continent into a tribe of beings who hunt people. In time, no one will ever blunder onto our land. But my dear, what do you make of the project?”

  “Well...if there's really a market, how would we not make a fortune?”

  “You have doubts about a market?”

  “Arguments rage in Niarg, Uncle Razzorbauch. Some amongst the young and well to do think it's marvelous, but there are a lot who call it the sweet of the very Pitmaster himself. I'm not sure that merchants there will even consider buying it.”

  “Fools. Honey trader lies. They call sukere a swindle in place of honey because it threatens their trade. They tell everyone that those eating it become obsessed with the Pitmaster's wiles because they fear for their purses.”

  “It causes no obsessions, then? Those who eat it don't become thralls?”

  “There's not a shred of proof that it's harmful in any way, dear. In fact, sukere gives one a sense of well-being. The more you use, the better you feel. Why, you've only to stop eating it to be reminded of how unhealthy you must have been before you first used it.”

  “More of Father's being an old fool. I've never tasted it.”

  “Oh, but you have. Remember the cherry tarts at supper?”

  “They were wonderful, Uncle Razzorbauch. It sounds like people need to give sukere a fair trial before making up their minds.”