Song of Sorcery Read online

  Just as he was accepting the Minstrel’s Medal of Merit from Master Minstrel Peter, he tripped and fell sprawling, face first, catching himself hard on his left side to avoid damage to his fiddle.

  “Sorry,” mumbled the person over whom he had tripped, languidly drawing her feet closer to her and covering them with a full blue skirt. Her mood appeared to match her attire. Ignoring him as completely as though he were a ghost, she sat with her head resting against the splintery rough wood of the wagon, the pretty head drooping as though her neck were inadequate to support it. Though the neck was long and graceful, it appeared to Colin to be in no way insubstantial, however. It was draped with beads and coins that jangled distractingly as the girl heaved a desolate sigh. Her chin pointed up but her mouth pointed most emphatically down, and he watched a tear balance, glistening, on the end of her nose before skipping over her lips to slide down her chin and trail off behind her ear.

  “It was my fault. I ought to look where I’m going,” he said, feeling embarrassed to be relatively tragedy-free in the face of such evident misery. “Beg your pardon, but could you tell me where the musicians are? I play the fiddle,” he held it up, his credentials, “I thought, you know, they might let another fiddler sit in.”

  She jerked her head to the left. The children who had been following him had joined a group of people, liberally sprinkled with dogs, who leaned, sat, or lay in a loose cluster around five men, and around one man in particular.

  Having had more than what he felt was his just portion of moody women lately, Colin stifled his sympathy, and in three strides joined an ale keg of a man who was seated on the ground. The man in the middle was telling a story, and telling it very well. His tone was ringing and true and carried so well Colin wondered that he had not heard him earlier. The fellow’s whole attitude was a parody of the love, grief, hate, sorrow, and anger that motivated his audience. His was the voice of life taken lightly, and it was a soft voice, sibilant, caressing the ears of his listeners. He had a gift for timing, drama, and imitation that made him the best natural storyteller Colin had ever heard, aside from Master Minstrel Peter.

  Though certainly dark, the gypsy was neither tall nor particularly handsome, having a beakish nose not uncommon on other faces in the crowd. But his black eyes sparkled with wit, his mouth was always ready to laugh, and his hands were in constant motion, making a play of his words.

  They were large, thin-fingered hands and they drew, as Colin watched diagrams of battles, became firing cannon, or horses so fast as to elude all pursuit. They described with gestures to match his voice his conquests of the most beautiful women in more countries than he cared to count. Colin believed every word.

  Watching the gypsy, Colin wished that he had as large a nose so that he could flare it dramatically, as though at the scent of blood or perfume—it was, on the gypsy, an excellent tool of expression. Colin also thought that his own visage slighted him when it came to flashing a dashing smile. Even with brown edges, white teeth flashed so much more effectively in a dark face. The gypsy drew answering grins from the men and sighs from the prepubescent girls and the few crones.

  The only physical resemblance between himself and the gypsy was that they both had dirt under their fingernails—but Colin wondered if he could move his hands so flexibly describing the curve of a lover’s breast, waist, and hip that his audience would fail to notice his poor grooming habits. Probably not.

  For all his talent and training, he began to despair of ever having such a manipulative narrative skill as the gypsy. Perhaps if he questioned the gypsy, who seemed to have accomplished the thing the older fellows had hinted was part of the trade of the minstrel, that of having the audience in the palm of his hand and, not incidentally, of having female persons unplatonically impressed with him, Colin would find out how it was done. It could be, of course, that practice made perfect, as it did with getting a consistently perfect high drone from his fiddle or clear barred chords on the guitar. Probably not, but he could hope so.

  When the gypsies began to play once more, this tune a non-gypsy song, a bawdy ballad, in fact, that Colin knew, he put his fiddle to his shoulder and unlimbered his bow. The other fiddler in the group, a one-eyed man whose big nose had such large pores in its skin it looked like a bit of aged cheese, stopped playing. Colin played for a moment or two longer before he realized he was carrying the tune alone.

  The man who spat in his general direction was as skinny as one of the camp dogs, but lacked their teeth or any of his own. “We do business with you people, but who asked you to play, eh?”

  “I am the violinist in this camp,” said cheese-nose.

  The air had a lot the same mouth-drying heaviness it had had in Sir William’s tavern just before Colin had flown off into it. He hoped the witchy gypsy woman, Xenobia, was not within earshot, as he remembered his training in dissembling class. Dissembling class had been excellent training for him. Basically much too forthright for his own good, Colin realized that every competent entertainer must be at least in part a liar. “What do you mean, you people?” he asked in the best imitation of their speech pattern he could muster.

  “Outsiders get entertained tonight, when they pay,” said the skinny man. “Isn’t that right, Davey? Only gypsies now.”

  Colin huffed himself up indignantly. “Not a gypsy? I? Not a gypsy? What sort of people are you not to have heard of the fair gypsies of Kallanderry?” He warmed to his part. “You wound me. My violin weeps with pain—to be so ignominiously cast out by my own people—” seeing a glint of amusement in Davey’s eye and fearing he was laying it on a bit too thick, he left off talking and began playing again, which suited him much better. The fiddle did indeed cry a violin’s lament, a morbid throbbing tune, if to say tune was not to make it sound too lively. Before long the majority of the observers and participants looked a lot like the gypsy girl he had tripped over. It was too mournful for Colin to sustain without becoming seriously depressed, so he blended it into a sprightlier tune, one full of enough spirit and fire to convince them he had to be a gypsy.

  Nonetheless, up ’til the moment when Davey began to first clap time and then to improvise on his own guitar, Colin had expected to have his fiddle shoved down his throat at any second. Taking Davey’s lead, the others also chimed in and the hostility was forgotten. Behind his concentration on his music, Colin was finally able to exhale.

  As one good drink begat another, so did one lively tune lead to the whole group joining in on a second song. Soon everyone was laughing, crying, singing, shouting, and generally carousing in an altogether friendly fashion. All except Davey, Colin was surprised to notice. Among the unabashed tears and laughter, the storyteller had stopped participating, now that he was no longer the center of attention. He looked bored. A jug had been making the rounds of the group, and when Colin next passed it to Davey, the gypsy rose to his feet. “Come on, Cousin. I’ll show you around.” He picked up his bolero, on which he’d been seated, and flung it casually over one shoulder. His guitar dangled from the other hand. As they left the group, he said, “My people are preparing to entertain the townsmen with a little show tonight, while the children go into the town for supplies. Now, of course, that we know you’re one of us,” and a twitch of his eyebrow gave Colin to understand that he knew no such thing, “we hope to enlist you in our performance. We’d be honored, you understand.”

  “I understand, and I’ll be happy to do that, Cousin,” Colin replied. “Nothing I like better than a good show. Nothing like it for—er—gathering provisions either. Are you sure the town will be empty enough to make the shopping profitable?”

  “Oh, yes.” His smile was wolfish. “A group of our little black-eyed beauties, chaperoned by my mother, have gone to the town to do what you might call the advance publicity. A few of them,” he indicated the nongypsies still engaged in trying to trade horses, “came out this afternoon when a friend of ours who’s a peddler passed the word we were here. They hope to trade horses and buy and se
ll orphans.” He grinned broadly, apparently considering this last very humorous. Colin, orphaned since babyhood, was less amused, but nevertheless smiled his best shrewd ersatz-gypsy smile.

  “I saw one pretty girl who apparently didn’t go. I tripped over her when I joined your group—very nice-looking, but she seemed unhappy.”

  “You can only mean Zorah,” Davey snorted. “She thinks she owns me. She’s always hanging around me, crying. I think she believes if she cries hard enough I’ll drown in her tears. If you like her, take her with you, please. She’s nothing but trouble. One time when I was young and stupid I gave her a little thrill, and ever since she dogs my footsteps. Her father used to be a powerful man here, could train anything, trained our first bear, in fact, but then he was killed. If Zorah weren’t such a good trick rider my mother would get rid of her.”

  Colin felt ill at ease. This was not what he wanted to know about female admiration, its care and feeding. Infatuated girls undoubtedly must cause trouble to someone like Davey, he imagined. He knew he’d have to go right on imagining too, since few were infatuated with him, and it hardly seemed fair. Still, the gypsy seemed to have a history of such disappointed infatuations; he must be used to it by now. He seemed to make a habit of them. Hadn’t he ever been smitten himself? Even with the reportedly irresistible Amberwine?

  “I can’t take any girls with me,” Colin said aloud. “Maggie wouldn’t like that at all, I’m afraid.”

  “Who is this Maggie?” asked the gypsy, his irritation gone and his voice regaining its former silkiness.

  “Uh—one of our girls.”

  “Pretty?” Interest flickered in Davey’s dark eyes, replacing the sullenness he’d displayed discussing the unfortunate Zorah. Colin was reminded of the hunting hound with a scent, or songs about hunting hounds getting scents, anyway. No one hunted with dogs in East Headpenney.

  “Umm—so-so.” He remembered belatedly that his imaginary Kallanderry gypsy tribe was supposed to fair, and Maggie was nearly as dark as any of these people. “Actually, she’s the regular kind of gypsy—we—uh—adopted her.”

  “Oh, and you say she’s traveling with you?”

  Colin waggled his head deprecatingly. “She’s a really shy girl. She wanted to camp up farther in the meadow—doesn’t like crowds.”

  “What? And miss our legendary hospitality?” Davey clapped him on the back and speared a chunk of meat from the roasting lamb as they passed. “No, my friend, Cousin, we must insist you bring her down to our camp. Never must it be said that some of our own camped alone while we had a fire and music and plenty of food to share! It would be a deadly insult!”

  “It would?” Colin certainly didn’t want to offend local custom. He suspected Davey knew that and was counting on it. “That’s very gypsy of you, I must say,” Colin replied finally, feeling trapped.

  Davey waved expansively. “Of course it is.”

  Colin was shoved forward suddenly as a small black-haired missile slammed into his back. “Davey! Queen Xenobia wants to see you now.” A buxom gypsy lass disentangled herself from Colin and tugged at the hand of Davey, who was already following her back toward the campfire.

  “Your pardon, Cousin. My mother has returned.”

  “Perfectly all right, old man. I’ll just go along and—uh—command Maggie to pull up stakes and come back here with me to your camp and—er—no nonsense.”

  “Good!” hollered the gypsy, flashing one more dazzling grin as he was dragged off. Colin sighed to notice that the gypsy didn’t allow himself to be dragged for long, but neatly turned the situation by catching up with the girl in two strides and encircling her waist with his arm. Colin shook his head slowly, and walked back toward where he had left his horse.

  “Psst! You, Blondie!” He thought at first from the language that Ching had followed, finally deciding to talk to him.

  “What?” he asked, looking around.

  “Over here! Yes, you!” From behind a wagon wheel the girl who had been crying, the one Davey had called Zorah and had said such uncomplimentary things about, beckoned him. He wondered what she could possibly be doing under the wagon. Feeling a little foolish, he looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching before he hunkered down to talk to her.

  Her expression was perhaps a little nervous, but no longer so soggy. “Yes, ma’am?” he asked.

  “You make friends fast, eh, Blondie?”

  “If you mean Davey, we just met of course, but…”

  “But you like him. Fine fellow, yes?”

  “Well—”

  “Sure, you do. Everybody likes him. Me, especially,” a rueful shrug punctuated that remark, “but it’s you who’s got to help him.”

  “Me? Help him? He looks as though he’s doing just fine without my help, actually.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Can’t say as I do, in fact. Say, tell me, what’s a nice girl like you doing lurking about behind wagon wheels anyway?”

  “Come down here and sit by me, and I’ll explain it all to you, little fiddler.”

  “Thank you, but you see, I’d actually promised Davey that I’d…”

  “Come.”

  He went.

  9

  As he had never seen Maggie do much more than produce something tasty for mealtimes, Colin would have been a trifle shocked if he had beheld her activity in the meadow above the gypsy camp since he had been absent.

  The longest chore was the gathering of lichens for dyes, but even that took only a few minutes with the aid of Rowan’s knife and Maggie’s magic, for the gathering of plants was a legitimate household pastime at Fort Iceworm. Tree lichens next had to be separated from rock lichens. These were then divided into their respective varieties, which would produce divers colors according to their properties. Rock lichens were the best, but the most tedious to gather.

  Then there was the dye pot to be fashioned. This was made of clay from the banks of the little stream that kept the meadow green and provided the gypsy camp with a water supply.

  Setting the magically fired pot on another magic fire to boil with some of the dye plants and a bit of salt, Maggie repaired to the woods. There she removed her white shift from under her brown woolen skirt and tunic. One of these days she would have to conjure an anti-scratchy spell for wool, she promised herself, as she returned to her horse and dyepot, and took her extra shift from her pack. She wove a spell and the shifts unwove themselves and rolled themselves into neat balls of cotton. It was simple then, with the use of a rapid production spell and an extra-fine enchantment placed on the hand spindle she also carried in her pack, to spin out the thread from her underwear to something finer and softer and much, much longer than it had been before.

  Back to the woods she went with this thread, and from the boughs of two trees that grew close together she made a loom. Powered by her magic, the crude loom warped itself and wove the ex-lingerie into a gossamer white cloth.

  Maggie draped the cloth over her arms and carried it back to the dye pot. Cutting some of it off, she dipped the shorter piece in. It came out a saffron and she held it up to herself. “What do you think, cat?” she asked Ching, who had had time for a short nap during all this activity. “Do I look nice in yellow or maybe a little sallow?”

  Ching growled at the herby smell of boiled lichen on the cloth, but it was a token growl only. He had smelled far more obnoxious brews than stewed vegetation in his life as Granny Brown’s familiar. “What in the name of the Mother are you doing with THAT?” he asked.

  Snipping at his tail with her fingers, Maggie laughed mysteriously and cut off another piece of cloth, added something from her medicine pouch to the dye pot, and withdrew a bright emerald piece of cloth. “Making a party dress, kitty dear. The gypsies are obviously planning a do of some sort, and I won’t want to look shabby, will I?”

  “Kitty dear?” Ching flipped his tail with a gesture of profound disgust and trotted off toward the woods. “On that note I think I’ll
go have a bit of a scratch in the dirt.”

  When the cat returned, Maggie had put the last stitch into the dress and had emptied the dye pots. With only a little water and a bit of soap root her grandmother had smuggled into the country at considerable cost to Sir William’s purse, she managed to bathe her skin and hair.