On Wings of Magic (Witch World: The Turning) Read online

  The bearded one said gravely, “Lormt is a place where old scrolls are kept, and scholars go to learn of them. It is,” he peered at the mountains and idly sketched in the sand with his knife-tip, “roughly north and east of here. You leave these mountains and cross the valley of the river Es, of which your river is a tributary, and you'll see a small mountain range joining a great one. There where they join is Lormt, and there we go to sell the parchment you ask for. Why? Are you a scholar, too?”

  “An apprentice,” she confirmed, and began haggling with him over whatever parchment he could spare. Then she asked the trader woman, “Mistress, tell me of the customs of your land.” And soon, because her heart was sore and she was desperate for advice, she was asking the stranger woman how to deal with Egil. The other traders gathered round, full of advice.

  “Just don't let him bully you,” the trader advised, but didn't say how.

  “Have your kindred knock the fertilizing horse-dung out of him,” the bearded he-person suggested. Good idea. Pity she wasn't kin to the pugnacious Lennis!

  Come to think of it, Asta Lennisdaughter knew all about dealing with bullies. Arona looked around and didn't see her. Where was Asta? Not that the miller's daughter was any friend of hers. Oh, well, she was probably farther back in the pack train, talking to one of the trader friends she loved so.

  Arona led the mule back along the path, deep in thought. It was becoming clearer and clearer that Egil was making himself he-mistress over Records House with every deed he did. He was not above bullying if that would get him what he wanted. The trader and her he-people said this was very common outside, but not necessarily the rule. She returned the mule to Mistress Darann with suitable thanks and a small gift, and, still deep in thought, let herself in by way of the kitchen. Mistress Maris apparently still slept in the main room, and Egil was sitting by her. Relieved, she hung up her wraps and started to take her parchment to the loft. Before she was out of the kitchen, she heard Egil growl softly, “Die! Die, you useless old woman, and get out of my way!”

  With the greatest effort of her life, Arona stifled her cry of outrage and slipped out the back door again. Grabbing her cloak, she ran to Healing House. She stopped, took a deep breath, and composed herself. “My mistress is much worse,” she told Dame Floree with only a trace of agitation. “I begin to wonder if someone, god or woman, has ill-wished her.” As Dame Floree found her cloak and summoned her helper, the girl added, “I have parchment enough to copy your remedies for you, for your apprentice.”

  “Feeding my apprentice will be payment enough,” the healer said dryly, for Hanna Elyshabetsdaughter was at the hungry age.

  Arona shook her head. “She'll have to fight Egil for it.” For she had his measure completely now. I'll have to fight Egil for Records House, she thought, and he fights most foul. Jonkara, help me; I don't know how to fight one who fights so foul.

  Mistress Maris died as the first of the spring birds were starting to discuss nesting sites, when women were “talking about plowing the fields, a month after Asta Lennisdaughter disappeared with all her mother's trade goods, to the great scandal of the village.

  “It was lung-sickness,” Dame Floree said, as she had on the first visit. “The winter gave it to her, and no goddess.” She glanced at Witch House sideways and made a falcon-away sign, as if Dame Witch might have ill-wished Mistress Maris.

  “I'm sure you did all you could and more,” Egil reassured her. Arona wiped her streaming eyes and glared at him. How dare he pretend to mourn Maris when he had ill-wished her? All the village had come with food and gifts to mourn her passing. The hospitality had fallen entirely to Arona. She did not try to force Egil to take part; the less he had to do with the business of Records House, the better.

  “Arona!” Now he spoke sharply to her, as a mother to a daydreaming daughter. “We need more ale here.”

  “Then go get some,” she snapped back.

  He shook his head and murmured to their guest; she caught the word “distraught.” At last, with a martyred sigh, he fetched the pot; the guest turned to Arona. “Who's to be in charge of Records House now?” she asked.

  Arona's head jerked up. Giving it to Egil was intolerable; he conceding it to her, improbable; fighting him for it, unbearable. “We'll have to take it to the elders, Aunt Olwith,” she said.

  The beekeeper shook her head. “More division in the village,” she said sadly.

  Eleven

  Judgment Day

  The elders of Riveredge Village convened in the village hall, with The Dissident among them, since the case concerned a stranger. Among them, but not with them; the elders sat slightly apart from the Witch, and gave her the uneasy looks they had given the strangers when they first came. Egil and Arona sat before them, well apart. The glance Egil gave Arona as they entered promised her he'd be well revenged for this when he had the chance.

  Arona spoke first. “I come as apprentice to Maris Guidasdaughter, now dead, to take her place. I have served her faithfully since childhood. She brought Egil, Elyshabet's he-daughter, to help me when the strangers came, for she was busy on Elders’ business, and there was more work than one woman can do. Then she was sick, and needed both of us to tend her. That time is now past, though,” she said graciously, “I thank you for your help, Egil.”

  Egil smiled indulgently. “The records do show you were overworked,” he conceded, “with the large number of errors and corrections in your hand.” He nodded to the Elders. “Don't worry. I corrected all that, and will keep it from happening again. But why,” he turned back to Arona, “could we not live together as one, as our mistress expected?”

  Arona trembled and took a deep breath. “If you had helped me with our mistress and with the other chores at Records House, I would have been glad to have you as my apprentice and assistant once,” she said. “Elder Mothers, he did only the work that he liked, and tried to keep me from my own work. He admits to me that in any partnership between us, he expects to be the elder. He enforces this with pranks and bullying where need be. He often did this behind our Mistress's back when she lived.”

  She glanced at The Dissident. “On one occasion he acted as a rutbeast, and Dame Witch said he had misunderstood us and thought that by his customs this was right. Dame Witch, you understand their customs. If he was made my helper, would he expect to play the rutbeast again?”

  Egil's hand flew up. “That's not fair!” The women turned around, and The Dissident nodded. “I made a vow from the beginning to love Arona, and cherish her, and treat her kindly. It is true, I want her as a man does a woman, but unless she is one of those,” his voice took on a note of distaste, “who think that all men are beasts, and the act of generation a thing to be endured—for which I do not blame her,” he said gently, with kindness spread like butter in his purring voice, “since the Falconers have made it so. I would not be as a beast to her.”

  “Then why,” Arona rebutted, “have you bullied me? Ordered me about as a mother to a small child? Dame Floree has heard this and so has Mistress Olwith and many others. Why have you laid hands on me to keep me from my business? Kept my tablets from me in public and locked up the records?” Briefly she summarized every incident. “Dame Witch,” she appealed, “you understand their customs. Is this conduct accepted among them?”

  The Dissident raised her hands for silence. “To your first question. If you were partners, he would expect to, as you say, play the rutbeast, at his will and not yours. This is their custom, and he is one to stand on what he accounts his rights. He would also expect, as you said, to be the senior partner in all things. He would consider himself to be the recorder and you his assistant, and would take any steps he counted necessary to make this happen. Those pranks you both speak of had one end: that you must come to him in order to ply your trade.”

  Arona sat down, stunned. So it was. She had not thought of that. The Witch continued “Would you accept that?”

  “Certainly not!”

  Egil was rec
ognized. “You could give it to me freely,” he suggested. “Do you doubt that I love you and would cherish and protect you?”

  “Only when it was your will to do so. Not if my will crossed yours. Elders,” Arona said flatly, “we cannot be co-recorders. He has admitted this with his own lips. Unless,” she said as a sudden idea came to her, “he recorded the tales and doings of his own people, and I of ours, and both of us, those that are in common.”

  The Elders conferred together. Eldest Mother Raula Mylenesdaughter said then, “If you cannot live together, why should we choose you above Egil Elyshabetsdaughter? By all accounts, Egil is the better recorder, more diligent, with a neater hand, making fewer errors, and as you said, elder than you are.”

  “More diligent!” Arona exploded. “Honored elders, while he locked himself in the records room writing Jonkara knows what, my mistress lay ailing, and I must tend her. He never offered! I could have fought him for use of the records room and bid him tend her, but—” she looked around at them. Then she said, tears welling from her eyes, “He wished her ill and not well. I heard this with my own ears. I had been out, and came back quietly, and he was saying ‘Die! Die, you useless old woman, and get out of my way.’”

  The elders gasped and conferred again. Dame Floree gave Egil a severe look. Only Arona and the Witch noticed that Egil looked not at all surprised.

  The stranger sighed. “I should have prayed for a miraculous recovery rather than a merciful death,” he admitted, hanging his head. “My grandmother,” his voice trembled, “died after a long illness, wasted and in pain, until I could no longer bear her suffering, and prayed the Gods to save her. My old hound Beller,” and now a true tear came to his eyes, “was savaged by a wild boar when I was a boy. I could not help him, but had to put him out of his misery, and remember thinking later that men are more merciful towards their dogs than the Gods are towards men. That's all.”

  What an actress! Arona thought indignantly. The Witch glanced back at her in full agreement. Several of the elders had tears in their own eyes, and were nodding agreement. One of them looked reproachfully at Arona.

  The Dissident raised her hand. “It seems to me,” she said calmly, “that the question is, who would be the better recorder?”

  Arona raised hers. “Egil Elyshabet's he-daughter is a stranger, not reared to our tales and customs. He has often told me he wants to rewrite the scrolls to accord with his notions and customs, which his own mother tells me are like those of Huana Guntirsdaughter. I say we examine the writings each of us has made, even the ones we have made privately, and you can also see how he stores and cares for them. I will give you all mine for inspection, even those I did as a child.”

  “Agreed,” Dame Floree said at once. “Those among us who are lettered, come down to Records House with me.” Then, to the visible dismay of many of the others, she added, “Dame Witch, will you join us? You have your letters, and you know the minds of women.”

  “Gladly,” said The Dissident, wrapping her cloak about her.

  The inspection was a long and tiring business. Several of Egil's scrolls were the records of his own people, and Arona wondered again, why not make him recorder for his own kind and leave the village records to her? She spoke her thought again.

  Then the Eldest Mother Raula demanded, “Where is the record that Asta Lennisdaughter vanished with the traders and all her mother's goods?”

  Arona gulped and had to admit, to her own horror, that with their mistress sick and Egil doing all the scribes labor, she had not thought to record this major scandal herself. She hadn't even remembered it! Her stomach turned over and her head slowly started to ache again.

  Dame Floree unrolled one of Egil's private writings. “This seems to be a retelling of the tale you told in the cave, but from the viewpoint of Tsengan the Madman,” she remarked.

  Arona wiped her eyes and nodded. “He has often said the tale should read that way.” She let that sink in with the elders, then led them upstairs.

  Arona's scrolls were the accounts of her experiments and others, most of them made as a child. As she unrolled one, her eye fell on the last line. “This has been altered!” she cried in outrage.’

  The elders hurried over. She pointed an indignant finger at the last word. “These I did myself, and on each one wrote, ‘I know this because I have done it with my own hands and seen it with my own eyes.’ But look! This now reads, ‘This is a farrago of utter nonsense.’ “ A choked sound came from Egil, who covered his mouth hastily, but the hairs on his upper lip still quivered. “Egil, this goes beyond a prank!” she raged. “You altered a scroll!”

  “How do you know it was not your mistress, expressing her just opinion of what was within?” he asked innocently.

  “What other scrolls have you altered?” Arona demanded. .”Oh, Respected Elders, now we will have to look at them all!”

  The Eldest Mother sighed and found a place to sit down, for her back and her feet ailed her, and her legs grew numb and ached after too much standing. Egil, solicitously, fetched her a cup of hot herb tea. Arona glanced at the Witch, who shook her head gently. Dame Floree sent Hanna to Mistress Gondrin's for food and ale. Another thought occurred to Arona and she glanced at the Witch in terror. The Dissident nodded.

  “Elders,” she remarked in her cool, pleasant voice, “this will last more than one day. Since there is a question of the scrolls being altered, I think Egil and Arona should each return to her mother's house to live until we have finished, and a guard be set on the records room.”

  “Agreed,” said the Eldest Mother, with a sour look at Arona.

  Back at Bethiah's carpentry, Arona could not sleep. Her bed was narrow and unfamiliar, and now belonged to one of Aunt Natha's little girls. There was no small red cat to curl up at her feet, and walk back and forth on her chest in the morning, nudging her to get up. The sisters and cousins had noisily begged to hear every detail about the case and life with Egil. Karmont Yelensdaughter, who showed signs of growing into a he-maiden, asked why she didn't just find out what Egil wanted and give it to him, in exchange for what she wanted?

  “Because we want the same things,” she said crisply, “Or in some cases, we want opposite things.”

  She pushed her chair back and excused herself from the supper table. “Mother, Aunt Natha, Aunt Yelen, I'm really not hungry.” She fled to the porch and began to cry, for Maris, for herself, for the records, and for all that had happened since Egil Elyshabetsdaughter had come to the village.

  If Egil won this case, what could she do then?

  She could live here and go to Records House each day to keep an eye on the records. Egil would not allow that, but could he stop her?

  Suppose he did. Then she could steal the records and put them away somewhere for safekeeping. But where? And if the elders made him recorder to begin with, they might—they would—make her give them back.

  Suppose she hid them some place they'd never find them, and refused to give them back? The worst they could do was exile her. Mad Bethiah the Murderer had been exiled. Grandmother Anghard had exiled herself, and Peliel Laelsdaughter, and Cousin Jommy. Asta Lennisdaughter had run away with the traders. That was one way to get away from a bully.

  If only she'd had the chance to talk to Jommy! The records said he'd found exile lonely and scary, but not terrible. He was a weaver and had made his living without any trouble. Where could an exiled scribe make a living?

  Suddenly she sat up in bed. The he-trader had told her where a scribe could live, and where the records would be safe from all meddling. Lormt. He had even shown her the way. Had the trader sensed she was up for exile? That was even more scary.

  It wouldn't happen. The elders would never give the records to a stranger, to someone who changed them, to a liar and a bully who had wished the old recorder dead. Or they'd give him his and her theirs. That made so much sense, why didn't everybody agree to it at once? Why didn't they see it?

  She turned over in her bed again. The b
lankets felt twisted and the pillow lumpy. Her hair itched; she got up and brushed it, slowly. They had to see it her way. If they didn't, the consequences were just too terrible to think about.

  The days wore on, and the elders began to grumble. Reading the scrolls was a laborious job, and they began blaming Arona for the inconvenience. Full moon went by, and someone else took provisions to Jommy the Wise. Egil brought in one of the dogs Eina Parrasdaughter, and Parra Lorinsdaughter after her, was so famous for raising, and played with her by the hour, happily. He called her Fang. Arona's nerves were ragged.

  Then Dame Birka called, “Arona! Come here and tell me if this has been altered?”

  The girl ran to the priestess's side. One long, gnarled finger pointed to the last word on the last scroll of the Tale of Myrrha Foxlady, as written by her sisterfriend Warina Falconlady. One small accent mark had been changed. It was enough to change the meaning from, “I count this true because I had it from somebody trustworthy,” to, “I count this false because I had it from somebody untrustworthy.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, her eyes filling with tears at the thought of this sacrilege. “It's been altered, and by one who would invalidate the tale. See?”

  Egil, confronted, smiled confidently. “Are you sure? When did you last read this scroll?” he asked Arona.

  “Over a year ago. What of it? I have memorized them all,” she said indignantly. “Alter my writings for a jest, yes. Rewrite an old tale for your own amusement, yes. But alter what was written long ago? Oh, Egil, how could you?” she raged. “And what else have you done?”

  “Found our mistress's private writings,” he said, producing a parchment scrap with a flourish.

  On it was written, “I am gravely disappointed in the flighty conduct of Arona Bethiahsdaughter, and henceforth name Egil Elyshabetsdaughter my true successor in Records House.” It was formally signed “Maris Guidasdaughter, Recorder,” and ended with the scrawled initial that was her mark. The hand was shaky, as befitted an invalid. Arona studied the writing closely, stunned.