Song of Sorcery Read online

  “That’s certainly a personal question when we haven’t even been properly introduced,” she mumbled, a little taken aback. Then she stared back into the jeweled eyes and nodded, “Not tall, blonde, lily-like, or in any particular distress, but I believe I meet all the essential requirements.”

  Those requirements were apparently the unicorn’s only criteria for making the acquaintance of female persons, for he waded gracefully across the stream to stand before her, carefully dipping his beautiful head, horn averted, for his forelock to be petted. As she touched him, she understood him to say that she could call him Moonshine.

  “I’m Maggie,” she responded while administering the solicited attentions, “And really, Moonshine, you ought to be a little more discriminating than that. I know any number of maidens whose virginity is the only thing they’re at all scrupulous about. They wouldn’t hesitate to sell you out to the constabulary for the price your horn would bring.”

  “Will you stop lecturing that horny creature and find out if there are any ice poppies around here, before the rabbit croaks and his pal puts a curse on us that won’t quit?” asked Ching, impatient now that the unicorn’s spell was no longer binding him, the unicorn having little or no interest in cats.

  “Oh, of course,” she replied dreamily, a large besotted smile warming her face as she stroked the unicorn’s mane and fed him the core of her apple, which she had jammed in her pocket when Ching found the gnome’s home. “Only with Moonshine here we don’t need ice poppies. As soon as we take the bunny some of this water, after you’ve dipped your horn in it,” she said, speaking to the unicorn, not the cat, “the little rabbit will be good as new.” She lay her face against the pale, sleek neck of the enchanted beast, her arms a copper garland encircling him. “I never met a unicorn before. He really likes me.”

  “Will you get him to use his power so we can get back to that rabbit?” the cat demanded, switching his tail. “I thought we were out for sisters on this jaunt, not horseflesh.”

  Reluctantly, Maggie released Moonshine, who nuzzled her hand again before performing the necessary magical service. There was no need to ask him aloud. Once her credentials were established, unspoken rapport had linked them instantly, with no need for the cat to interpret. Her early admonitions had been absolutely useless, Moonshine told her. Regardless of her character, race, creed, color, or place of national origin, the first virgin maiden a unicorn met was it, the love of his life. He was only fortunate that his maiden, Maggie, was so kind, so understanding, so intelligent, so beautiful, so lovely in every possible way, far beyond his foalish dreams.

  “I’ll be back right away,” she promised, stumbling over a dead log as she pushed back through the willows, trying to look over her shoulder at the same time.

  “Watch it,” Ching hissed, “you almost stepped on my tail!”

  Maggie didn’t even apologize, and stumbled twice more, almost spilling the precious fluid out of the cup of birch bark she had fashioned to hold it.

  Colin was there when they got back to the gnome and rabbit. He stopped his sentry’s march when he saw them, and knelt beside Maggie as she bathed the rabbit’s leg with the healing water. “We have a problem,” he told her, as she sluiced more water on the back of the injured leg; the front was already showing signs of improvement. The gnome wrung his hands, but had stopped saying waly, waly altogether. “Our horses and provisions are gone.”

  “What?” she stopped bathing the wound, and the gnome took the bark container from her hand into both his arms, setting it awkwardly beside him, and continued to dribble water on the rapidly healing leg.

  “The horses, food, my musical instruments—everything, is gone.”

  “How can that be? The reins were tied well to that tree.”

  “Eureka!” cried the gnome. “He stirs! Rabbit, Rabbit, old friend, can you hear me?”

  “I don’t know, but they’re gone.”

  With the aid of the gnome, the rabbit was soon sitting upright. At first he eyed Ching with distinct reservations, and regarded the humans warily as well. When the gnome who introduced himself as Pop explained their role in his recovery, Rabbit declared himself boundlessly grateful and much in their debt.

  “And to your kind friend, the unicorn, as well, missus,” he added to Maggie, when she hastened to give most of the credit to Moonshine for the healing water his horn had provided.

  Having communicated for so long with Pop, who spoke Argonian, even if some of his expressions were a little dated, the rabbit was perfectly able to make himself understood by Maggie and Colin without an interpreter. Ching was the one who needed a translator if he wished to address Rabbit. The cat was unable to speak to or understand the language of any animals who might normally provide him a meal. Although he could talk with any non-human animal of his own or greater stature, and certain magically enabled humans as well, Ching’s particular familiar’s magic was mindful enough of his sensitivities to free him from the necessity of making dinner conversation with any creature who might normally be his prey.

  Reassured about the rabbit’s recovery, the travelers fell to brooding on their horseless state, Colin resuming his pacing off the deer path, Maggie nibbling her knuckles, Ching attacking and retreating from various leaves and twigs. “It’s too bad unicorns don’t care for anyone but maidens,” Maggie said, “or Moonshine could take us to Rowan’s estates, I’m sure, or at least as far as Aunt Sybil’s cottage.”

  “Even if he would,” Colin reminded her, “we could hardly embark on such a long journey with no provisions and only one mount. Besides, I’d like to get my hands on whoever’s made off with my fiddle and guitar!” He slammed one fist angrily into the palm of the other hand and looked very fierce for one of a normally cherubic appearance.

  “Perhaps,” suggested Rabbit, “it was the trap-setter.”

  “You know who set the trap, Rabbit?” Pop asked.

  Rabbit twiddled his front paws somewhat diffidently before answering, “Well, I suspect it was the same bowman who shot the horse of the great knight after the first snowfall. He has been lurking about since; my cousins who dwell close to the castle have been made nervous by his lurkings and furtive movements hither and yon.”

  “The Great Knight?” Colin asked, “Do you mean Maggie’s father, Sir William? He was crippled up for some reason or other…”

  “Thanks, Colin,” Maggie said, wincing at what a rabbit’s opinion would be of her father, to whom hunting was an occupation done with more regularity than breathing, “I hadn’t really thought I’d mention the relationship at this point—”

  “Do not fret yourself, maiden,” said Pop, “’tis well known the sins of the father are visited on the son, not the daughter.”

  “With a little work, that could be a rhyme,” Colin said.

  Rabbit thumped gently the paw which had been injured and was now soft and glossy as new. “The Great Knight is not the killer of our kind that this bowman is. My cousins warned me of snares, but I thought not to look for such an engine of destruction as this.” His eyes showed a little more white as he sniffed the trap, involuntarily taking a half a hop back.

  “We don’t see iron used like this often,” Maggie agreed. “It’s too difficult to get, and expensive. Even wolves are usually killed with deadfall or arrow or lance. Except for horse’s shoes, and kettles and pokers the peddler brings, I hardly see an iron implement this far north from one season to the next.”

  Colin snorted and said with some bitterness, for he was sorely injured by the loss of his instruments, the best of his efforts as a luthier, “I suppose there’s some satisfaction in knowing that we were probably all harmed by the same party.”

  Pop interrupted him by leaping to his feet and pointing skyward with a thick index finger.

  “What’s that?” asked Colin.

  “Sounds like trumpeter swans,” Maggie replied, rising to her feet and scanning the skies. “But so much louder—oh, look up there! They’re enormous!”

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sp; “And black,” said Pop. The cacophonous calling died away long after the seven ebony giants had flown beyond the horizon, lost among the treetops. Maggie watched the sky, however, ’til the last note faded, then looked back to her companions. Ching was again swelled to double his normal size.

  Maggie chuckled and kneeled to stroke the spiky fur of the familiar’s spine. “Don’t expect you’ll be hunting those birds, eh, old boy?”

  For an answer he sat down and began to wash the area beneath his tail.

  “I suppose we had better start back for your father’s place, Maggie, Colin said. “Too bad we’ll lose a whole day, not to mention my favorite instruments.”

  “Wait a bit,” she said, rising slowly and walking toward the trees. It was not until she reached out and stroked the unicorn’s nose that Colin actually saw him. Knowing through legend and song of the magical creature’s exclusive preference for virgin maidens, the minstrel prudently refrained from making any sound or gesture that might cause Maggie’s new acquaintance to take flight.

  After a brief exchange and one or two mutual nuzzlings, the unicorn melted back into the willows, and Maggie returned to her companions. “Moonshine says he’ll check a favorite watering-hole of his. If the horses aren’t actually stolen, but have only wandered off, or been driven away, he says there’s a good chance they’ll be there. Of course, I could always go on alone on Moonshine.” From her tone, Colin knew that the last was not an afterthought, but a fond wish that the theft of their horses had given her an excuse to voice. Colin had only to bow out of the quest, to return to his own concerns, and fashion new instruments, and she would be free to go with her new friend through the magic trails in the forest as far as they extended, however far that was.

  Pop the Gnome was apparently dubious about the last, for he looked disapproving.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Maggie, for even her charmed distraction was not impervious to a gnome’s disapproval.

  “How many mortals do your suppose would see you when you had been forced to take Moonshine onto the open road before they decided to slay you, unicorn, cat, maiden, and all, for the sake of the magic horn?” He was struggling, it was evident, to ask the question civilly, but his voice emerged harsh and stern. Maggie opened her mouth to protest, looked at him, at Colin, and Rabbit, and cat, then closed her mouth and nodded. Her eyes, when she lowered them, were oddly bright.

  “Come now, witch,” said Ching, rubbing at her ankles, “Don’t go clouding up. You’ve lived here near this wood nineteen years, and never knew ’til today there was a unicorn in two hundred miles of the place. Or a gnome, for that matter.”

  Maggie made a face, but said nothing, for the horses trotted up to them then, supplies and instruments still strapped to their saddles. Maggie glimpsed the unicorn winking through the leaves of the woods behind them, silently urging the horses back to their riders.

  Moonshine made no secret that he was as reluctant to part with Maggie as she was with him, and even allowed himself to come in full view of Colin as he followed them at the edge of the wood where it bordered the highway. He exerted no other spell to keep her near, however, and as the wood and road parted to make way for a stream, he left them with a last flourish of his tail, releasing her after an orchid-eyed good-bye to vanish into the forest.

  That night, as they camped far from that section of the Northern Woods, Colin had to occupy himself with his music and Ching with his toilet. They had a cold supper, for there were no comments, nor questions, nor answers, much less domestic magic from the witch who had belatedly found reason for homesickness.

  As she finally rolled herself in her goose down blanket, Ching came and lay in the crook of the arm that cradled her cheek, purring, “Poor Maggie. Why can’t you content yourself with a broom, like your foremothers?”

  4

  Colin woke to another muffled, mist-shrouded day, and to the smell of fresh-brewed herb tea and berry cakes. Maggie was sitting on a rock by the fire, a clay mug of tea warming one chapped hand while the other turned over the iron trap that had nearly ended the rabbit’s life. She looked up as he rolled over, and poured him a mug of tea.

  “What do you intend to do with that, anyway?” he asked, accepting the tea and indicating the trap.

  “My aunt, the one we’re supposed to see on the way, does a little metalwork. I thought I’d see what she makes of this. Berry cake?”

  “Please.” He got up and stretched, then hunkered down again to enliven his inner workings with the hot tea and fragrant cake. He was surprised, when he woke up enough to think about it, to find the warm breakfast fire. It had been such a wet spring he wondered that she was able to locate any dry wood. “Ummmm—these are delicious. A little early for berries, isn’t it?”

  “Not for me. I just dry them when they’re available and freshen them up when I need them. Same with the cream. Would you care for some?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  She poured a little white powder into his tea and it turned a soft toffee brown. He tasted it. “That’s amazing.”

  “Glad you like it.”

  They passed that day and the next pleasantly enough, once more reaching a village and scattered outlying houses by the middle of the third day. Colin remembered as much as he could of unicorn lore, and entertained Maggie with all the stories and songs he could think of concerning the mystical beasts. He even made up a unicorn song, on the spot, which delighted her so much that she managed from somewhere to produce an excellent meat pie for lunch and fresh peaches for dessert. Colin hadn’t eaten so well since he left East Headpenney, and fitted the long discourse he was delivering, on the difficulties of keeping the proper dramatic tension present in one’s lyric while doing an appropriate number of aesthetically correct doo-dahs in the music, in between appreciative slurps and gobbles of peach flesh and juice. He quite forgot to wonder where she found peaches six months before they would blossom and nine months after they should have rotted, or how she had dried them to include pits and all.

  “About that song you don’t like, for instance, Maggie,” he said as an example. “There is something about it that bothers me.”

  Maggie, who could only stand so much jargon about someone else’s specialty, shot her peach pit into a puddle of water. “There’s a great deal about that song that bothers ME, minstrel,” she said.

  Ching was giving his full attention to his lunch of reconstituted trout heads and had not so much as a glance to spare them. Cat music tended to consist of one pleasant long hum of lyric and he saw no need at all for any other kind.

  “Well, I know that, of course, but what I mean is, there’s no proper ending at all. It’s anticlimactic, don’t you think?”

  “I certainly hope so,” she replied. She would hate to think it would all end like that—with Winnie riding off for no good reason with some grubby gypsy while her bewildered husband rode home scratching his head. She began to see what Colin was talking about.

  “Just so. Well, I’m actually very glad, indeed, you had me come along to protect you on this journey. Perhaps our investigations will suggest a more poetic conclusion.”

  “Oh, please,” Maggie groaned. “Not one of those where he cuts out her true love’s heart and hands it to her in a cup of gold, following which she either dies of despair or he cuts her in half and then throws himself upon his own sword in remorse. I’m ever so tired of that one. It’s Gran’s favorite.”

  “Hardly surprising,” Colin mumbled, dousing the fire with a cup of water from the puddle and commencing to pack things back onto the horse. “Your grandmother is a—er—temperamental lady, isn’t she?”

  Maggie grinned evilly. “You think she’s bad, you should hear her and Aunt Sybil go on about the REST of the family! I believe Aunt Sybil’s cottage is supposed to be an inheritance from a great-great-granddam who was fond of luring children up to the house to snack on a bit of roofing. Then there was Great Grandma Oonaugh. Now there was an old horror!” But she said it, Colin thought, w
ith the same pride others might display in royal ancestors.

  “You hardly ever hear of any really wicked witches anymore,.” Colin said. “Since under King Finbar’s rule, criminal offenses are prosecuted equally, whether of magical or nonmagical nature, and are tried by a group of the offender’s peers, I suppose there’s not much percentage in doing anything really awful. Your ancestors may have been a bad lot, but you’re really very nice, now that we’re better acquainted.” She gave him a sharp look, as though she were about to take offense and he hastened to explain. “I mean, even UNICORNS like you, and I guess one has to be pretty pure of heart for that…”

  “Hearts apparently have little to do with it,” she said with more objectivity regarding unicorns than she’d shown since just before Moonshine had declared himself smitten.

  “And then you did catch your cat and stop him from—you know—”

  “Oh, that. Well, I suppose Gran must be right. She says our bloodline has become increasingly impure in the last few generations. She likes Dad well enough, you understand, thinks he’s wonderful and all that.” She swung up into the saddle after settling Ching in his basket on the pack horse. “Probably because he was such a raffish sort in what the two of them refer to as his misspent youth.” She smiled. “I suppose it just wasn’t misspent enough, and I got tainted by his decent side.”

  “What sort of witch are you then, exactly, if you don’t consider it impertinent to ask?”

  “You hadn’t noticed?” She gave him a queer sidelong look, and clucked to her horse, kicking its sides with her soft-soled boots as they clopped back out into the muddy road again.

  “No.” Colin followed behind her, leading the pack horse.

  “I’m a hearthcrafter. Where do you suppose the warm fires and fresh fruit have been coming from?”

  “I wondered,” he admitted, digesting this new information as they rode off downhill again, the muddy road little more than a track through spreading marshy meadows and newly lush hillocks that gradually gave way to a few sparse slim trees flush with new green leaves. “It seems very useful then if you can do all of that.”