A Wizard In a Feud Read online

  Jeb took her towel and hung it on a nearby rack. "How about a slice of bread and a hunk of cheese, with some cider to wash it down?"

  Alea was suddenly aware that she was hungry. "That would be good, but isn't it nearly dinnertime? It smells wonderful."

  "Almost ready," Jeb agreed.

  "We'd just be in the way in the kitchen, then," Alea told him. "I think we're ready to meet Great Grandma-if she's ready for us."

  Jeb glanced questioningly at Gar, but he nodded, so Jeb said, "I reckon she's ready. Let's go."

  He led them out the door and down the length of the room. Alea saw that the table was fully set now, with a loaf of bread near each end. In the massive chair at the table's head sat an ancient woman, bony and spare of frame, face lined and cheeks sunken with age, but the eyes that met Alea's were bright with intelligence and lively with curiosity. She sat erect as a pine and wore a dark blue dress with a white lace collar and cuffs. Uncle Isaac stood near her, shifting his weight from side to side and frowning with concern.

  "Oh, quit hovering, Isaac!" the old woman told him. "I'm not about to kick off in the next minute or two. Cease your fluttering and introduce me to these nice people."

  "If you say so, Aunt Emily," Isaac said, not reassured. He came around to the guests and held out a hand. "Gar Pike and Alea Larsdatter, this is Emily Farland, Great Grandmother of our clan."

  "Please to meet you." Alea couldn't help curtsying, awed by the woman's age.

  Gar followed her example with a little bow. "It is an honor to make your acquaintance, Ms. Farland."

  "Say `missus' clear, lad," Great Grandmother Farland said severely. "None of this mumbling, now. I hope you insist your man treats you like a lady, Alea Larsdatter."

  "Oh, he does, ma'am," Alea said, "but he's not mine."

  "I am your friend, I hope," Gar said gravely.

  "Well, yes, and the closest I've ever had," Alea said, her gaze imploring his understanding.

  "But only a friend, hey?" Great Grandma asked. "Well, you'll learn the truth of it in time."

  Alea hid her exasperation. Why was it that even total strangers thought she and Gar were bonded? Not that she minded the idea, of course, but ...

  She froze, shocked at herself. When had that notion crept in? Gar was a friend, a good friend even, but nothing more! "Isaac tells me you've come a long way," the matriarch said, and to Alea, "My sympathies for your loss, lass."

  "Thank you," Alea mumbled, then remembered the old woman chastising Gar and said clearly, "It's been two years and more, though, so I'm past the worst of it."

  "Decided on living, have you? Well, it was the right choice." Great Grandma turned to Gar. "What set you on your travels, though, young man?"

  "Heartbreak, I suppose you'd have to say," Gar said slowly. "Heartbreak of a kind."

  Alea fought to keep her face impassive. That explained a good deal about him; but why had he never told her? Because she had never asked, of course-she had to admit that. He had said it so openly, so readily, that he would surely have answered her, but it was too personal a question for her to have said aloud.

  Not the way Great Grandma asked it, of course. "Heartbreak," the old lady said, musing. "And you have to find a way to mend it before you can go home, eh?"

  "That's ... one way to say it," Gar said, a bit disconcerted. Isaac laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. "That's why she's the clan chief, lad-'cause she can see right through you in an instant, man or woman."

  "See right through a problem, too," Aunt Martha said, coming up, "whether it be a fight between two of her folk or a Belinkun attack, she sees the way, to set it right in an instant."

  "You're shaping up pretty well yourselves," said Great Grandma. "Both of you. When I kick off, I won't be leaving the clan lorn." She gave Alea a bright, challenging glance. "What trouble would you have me see through, girl?"

  Alea stood stunned, then bit her tongue to keep from saying the first and most honest answer. Instead she said, "Why, the way for an orphan to find a home, Grandma Farland."

  "An orphan, is it?" Great Grandma asked. "Well, the way of it is to find yourself a man and make a family of your own, girl, for you'll never be an orphan then."

  "What if the man won't be found?" Alea was very much aware of Gar's gaze on her, amused and sympathetic at the same time-and altogether too interested.

  "Then find out who your people are, even if you have to go all the way back to the Founders," Great Grandma said, "for surely no one comes to life alone, and every one of us is part of something greater. We all have kin, whether we know it or not. Distant they may be, but kin nonetheless."

  Pain lanced Alea's heart, for she couldn't help but think of the third and fourth cousins who had gleefully cast her down into slavery when her parents died and no man had come forward to ask her hand. Her voice had an edge as she asked, "What if they be kin but won't have you?"

  Great Grandma had already seen her pain, though, and her gaze had turned sympathetic. "Ah, then, poor child, you choose among the clans that will have you. Like will to like, as the poet says. Find them as are like to you and cleave unto them. Seek out the clan that will have you, and that you will have." One old wrinkled finger speared upward in caution. "But don't jump too fast. Bide with them a while and sound them out, for there be some as will have you only to use you, and only one or two that will have you because you're their kind."

  Alea glanced at Gar, she couldn't help herself, but as quickly glanced away. "You're saying that the clan that are my kind will take me in even if they don't like me?"

  "They will that, because, as the other poet says, when you have to go there, they have to take you in-that's what it means to be your kind. But unhappiness lies that way, child. Don't settle for half. Seek for likeness and liking both, and don't take less, though the searching takes you half your life. It will be worth it when you find it."

  Alea stared, confounded. "How could you know?"

  "Why," said Great Grandma with a warm and loving smile, "that was my own tale too, upon a time. I wasn't born to this clan, child. No woman is, for marrying cousins leads to madness or sickly children, or idiots who are children in bodies grown."

  "Marriage to third and fourth cousins is allowed," Isaac said stiffly.

  "Yes, and we all know your Dory is the love of your life and the life of your love, Isaac, though she be your third cousin once removed," Great Grandma said with a touch of exasperation, "but there aren't all of us that lucky." She turned back to Alea. "I went on wandertime with a band of my own clan, lass, and other bands joined us as we journeyed. My Tyler was among them, but I didn't say `yes' to him till I'd stayed a month with his family, that I didn't, and made sure they were my kind and I theirs."

  "No one could be more a Farland than you, Aunt Em," said Isaac.

  "Yes, well, that's because there's scarce a one of you that isn't as much my flesh and blood as Tyler's, now, isn't it?" Great Grandma said. "It's a wonder what age and time can do. But his people was as much like me as my own, maybe more." She nodded with satisfaction. "I was lucky, that's a fact." She cocked an eye at Alea. "You will be too, child-wait and see."

  "I'll wait." Alea gave Gar a very direct stare of her own. "You never have taken me to meet your people."

  "It's a long way home," Gar said apologetically.

  "Help him find the poultice that will heal his heart, child," Great Grandma advised. "Then follow him home and see if his kind are your kind, and one among them more than a friend."

  Alea suddenly realized which one of them she wanted to be more than a friend, but fear clamored up with desire and left her mute.

  Great Grandma turned toward the kitchen with a frown. "The body goes and the senses weaken, but I could swear I smell pork chops cooking."

  "So you do, and they're ready to serve," Aunt Martha said, coming up. "Sukey bade me call us all to table, Gran. You're there, I see, and the guests."

  "Go beat the triangle, then, Martha," Great Grandma said. "Just be
sure it's not the alarm bell."

  It looked like the great hall of a medieval castle, a double rank of tables made of plank tops set on sawhorses, covered with linen and set with wooden plates and bowls with whittled spoons and forks. The clansfolk cut with their belt knives and drank from pottery mugs. The great keeping room was alive with laughter and jesting, with here and there the wailing of a baby. Great Grandma sat through it all, eyes gleaming with pride, eating little but nodding with satisfaction.

  The conversation ranged widely; the great room was filled with a hum of talk. Very little of it involved Great Grandma, though. Now and again one or two of the clansfolk would come up to her with a disagreement and ask her for fact or opinion. She always told them the straight of it without hesitation; they always went away, satisfied.

  "Strange how it's so often the great grandmother who leads the clan," Gar said to Isaac, who sat across the table from him at Great Grandma's right hand. Gar even kept a straight face through Alea's mental jibe: So often? As though we'd visited a hundred clans?

  "That's because the women live longer than the men." Isaac nodded sagely.

  "Can we help it if our constitutions are stronger?" asked Martha. "We take our share of risks when the Belinkuns attack, you know!"

  "Oh, I know it well," Isaac assured her. "Still, I've heard of clans where it was the great grandfather who was clan chiefuntil he died, of course."

  "Well, you can't be surprised if the younger folk turn to his wife for comfort and guidance then, Isaac," Grandma Em said. "After all, we've lived so much longer than you that we're bound to know better what to do." She sighed, shaking her head. "I'm growing weary, though-weary and weak. I'll be taking to my rocker soon, and letting one of you younger folk take the lead."

  "As long as you're there to lead the leader, Gran," Martha said.

  "Only when you truly have need of me," Grandma Em said. "Old folks grow tired, you know, Martha-tired and weak."

  "But never dull," Isaac said. "You're still sharp as a razor, Gran." .

  Alea looked at his beard, glanced at the full bushes on the other men, and was surprised they even knew what a razor was.

  When the meal was over and the children set to clearing away the dishes, several teenagers pulled the corks from jugs and went from place to place, pouring two fingers' worth into each mug. Alea tasted hers and felt fire burn all the way down into her stomach. She glanced at Gar and from the roundness of his eyes knew he was feeling the same. He exhaled loudly and said, "What a delightful aftertaste!"

  Great Grandma nodded in pleasure. "That's my own recipe, that is-peaches in with the mash. The flavor grows as it goes through the still."

  At one of the tables, a man began to sing. Others joined in, higher voices harmonizing with lower, some even high enough to send a descant floating over the music during the choruses. Gar and Alea listened in pleased amazement as the voices sang,

  "On Springfield Mountain

  There did dwell

  A handsome youth,

  I knew him well.

  "Too-roo-li-yay,

  Too-roo-li- yoo,

  Too-roo-li-yay,

  Too-roo-li-yoo."

  The clansfolk told, with tongue in cheek, how the handsome youth had been bitten by a snake and how his true love had tried to save him by sucking out the poison but had finished by dying with him. When it was done, Gar and Alea sat amazed, partly by the beauty of the singing, but also by the spirit in which the story had been told-and by the spirits in their mugs, but they sipped sparingly at those.

  "What of yourselves, travelers?" Isaac asked. "Can you offer song in return?"

  "Time to sing for our suppers," Gar muttered to Alea.

  Alea bit her lip, trying furiously to remember the song of the Lorelei, but Gar turned to his hosts and said, "I'll be glad to sing, Goodman Isaac, if you'll suffer the cawing of a crow." Then he began to sing in a surprisingly rich baritone,

  "Now East is East and West is West,

  And never the twain shall meet. . . "

  Alea listened, amazed, to the tale of a horse thief and the young man who chased him, ending with the young man riding the stolen horse home with the thief's son beside him. She hadn't known Gar could sing so well and wondered why he never had before.

  She wasn't so caught up in his song, though, as to miss its effect on the clansfolk. They followed the tale of the chase with excitement, cheered the young man's defiance when the thief had him at his mercy, then turned thoughtful as the two declared their respect for one another and the young man pledged friendship with the thief's son. She decided Gar had chosen an interesting selection for a clan dedicated to a feud.

  They learned quickly, though. As he began to sing the first verse again, to end the song, several of the clansfolk joined in. When he finished, they applauded, and Great Grandma Em nodded. "A good song, young man, and one so long merits another in return. Tull, sing the `Lay of the Founders' for us." A young man rose, reddening, and said, "If you please, Gran, but I'll ask everyone else to join in when they should."

  "Of course, lad," said Isaac. "On with the song, then." Tull cleared his throat and began.

  "When Old Earth had sickened with surfeit,

  Her people with envy beset,

  All their needs satisfied, all their wants magnified,

  Buying baubles though burdened with debt.

  When character rotted with people besotted

  Their only watchword being `Get!'"

  "With envy corrupted and morals bankrupted,

  Caring only for pleasure and wealth,

  Their ambition self-seeking, with greed and lust reeking

  Devoted to nothing but Self."

  "Then rose up in alarm Jed and Laura the Farlands,

  Seeking clean air for family and brood.

  They called up their clan, every woman and man,

  And said, 'Let us go where we all know we should.'

  The clan answered. . ."

  "Aye!" all the clansfolk responded with a massed shout that shook the walls.

  Tull went on without missing a beat.

  "...and pledged to raise high,

  To alien breezes unfurled,

  Their clan flag on some other world."

  "They sold what they could,

  Labored all for clan's good,

  Earning cash to provision a ship..."

  The lay went on for half an hour. Alea was staggered not only by its length and the amount of detail, but also by the verve with which the clansfolk shouted their responses, by their total devotion to the goals of their ancestors-even when those goals became murderous.

  For the Farlands weren't the only people who had decided to give their unborn children a clean start. So had many other families, though the song implied that the Farlands had led the way in their own spaceship and the others had simply followed along to steal the clan's real estate. Alea had read enough about terraforming and genetics to know that couldn't be true, that it would have taken hundreds of thousands of people to tame an alien world and seed it with Terran plants and animals, even with the help of robots and automated farming equipment. Moreover, she knew that those hundreds of thousands of people would have had to raise millions in cash to be able to buy those machines, not to mention the seeds and the animal embryos to stock their farms.

  Apparently they had also brought along rifles.

  Whatever organization had remained on Terra to earn money and ship them supplies, was disbanded when a reactionary government came to power on the home world and cut off all the colony planets that weren't self-supporting. Claiming that the colonists were impoverishing Terra, the reactionaries only kept up relations with the older colony worlds, the ones that had been established so long that they were able to export raw materials to Terra for its orbital factories, and to buy the goods those factories produced.

  Suddenly tractors became fabulously precious. Shortly after, they became useless because there was no fuel. People began to plow with oxen again. T
he forgotten hay rakes and reapers were reconstructed from history books, farmers learned how to use scythes again, and people reinvented the wagon wheel. Agriculture staggered on, but without pesticides or fertilizers, save manure, and yields dropped dramatically.

  Livestock could graze the marginal lands that weren't fit for tilling, so sheep, goats, and especially cows became vital to survival-which meant that bulls also became important. Most were gelded to make draft animals or meat, of course; each clan kept only one or two of the strongest and most massive for breeding. Then the Belinkuns' bull died. Faced with no new calves and knowing the Farlands had prudently kept two bulls, they organized a midnight raid and stole a Farland bull.

  That, of course, was a life-threatening action, since there was no guarantee the remaining bull would prove potent in the spring. There was recourse, though, and Rogan, the clan chief, sent a dozen clansfolk to the High Druid to petition for justice. The party had a great deal of difficulty getting there; the roads had deteriorated sadly since the enchanted machines that built and repaired them had expired. The Farlands' magic chariot kept breaking down and needing new spells, but there were few wizards to re-enchant it and get it going again.

  Finally, though, they did come to the High Druid and laid their case before him. He gave them his judgment; the price of the bull must be a hundred cows and the first bull calf of the next season. He wrote that judgment on paper in magical runes and gave it to the Farlands to take and show to the Belinkuns, but he could send no guards to enforce the penalty; all his men had gone home to farm, since they could no longer be fed from the surplus that Homeworld magic had created.

  The enchantment on the Farlands' chariot had now worn off completely, so they had to walk home. The clan rejoiced at the judgment and went as a body to present the High Druid's letter to the Belinkuns.

  They brought their rifles, of course. No one ever, went anywhere without one in those days. There were snakes to kill, and always a chance of a rabbit or even a wild pig for dinner.