Stolen Magic(45)

In less than an hour he found the stand of evergreens, the cottage with the blue stool next to the door, and the lunatic pacing and shouting outside. Fee fi! When the man saw His Lordship, he cowered and gibbered softly.

Pity won against the count’s anger at being feared. He hurried to the stand of trees and waited until the ranting began again, which he hoped meant he’d been forgotten. Before shape-shifting, he wished he’d left his clothes with Widow Fridda. There was nothing for it, however. Telling himself over and over what he had to do, hoping the strategy would succeed, he shifted.

A minute later a monkey, smiling an enormous merry smile, stepped out from behind the trees. The man laughed to see him, a happy, ordinary laugh. The monkey held out his hand. The man took it and exchanged his shouts for coos and soft babbling. They started down the mountain, the monkey comically raising his feet out of the snow with every step.





CHAPTER FORTY-TWO



Masteress Meenore flew laboriously above the southern slope of Zertrum. Without sleep last night and with little sleep the night before, IT feared nodding off and falling out of the sky.

Below lay farmland such as IT hadn’t seen before on Lahnt, which seemed impoverished everywhere else: neat fields fenced into squares, orchards, and a house, a large structure of stone and wood, surrounded by barns, sheds, and several wattle-and-daub cottages. A drift of pigs, dozens of them, wandered among the buildings, rooting through the snow. This must be Master Uwald’s Nockess Farm.

Curious, IT circled high enough not to be heard. At this height and with the sun near the horizon, ITs shadow became near invisible.

Supervised by a plump man with a pronounced limp, laborers brought goods out of the house and loaded two sledges that were hitched to oxen. What idiocy! The people should have been saving themselves. The limping man should already have ridden an ox or a horse out of danger.

Who was he, to be giving orders when the master and his steward were away?

On the mountain above the house, a dozen shepherds were driving flocks of geese, sheep, and goats slowly through the snow. More fools.

IT heard a deep groan. The entire slope undulated, then returned to solidity, but altered. A cottage collapsed. The pigs galloped here and there, squealing. A jagged crack divided the field that the herders had been crossing. Several sheep disappeared into the crack. The beasts ran in all directions. A goatherd lay trapped, his legs hidden beneath a boulder.

Zertrum’s peak glowed red as if it were the mouth of a fellow dragon.

IT stopped circling and flew south toward the Oase and Elodie and the villain Tuomo.

But the trapped man plagued IT. The other herders wouldn’t be able to lift the boulder. To dig him out would take time, if they’d stay to do it, and, meanwhile, there might be more tremors.

IT thought, I am no fairy god-dragon. The idiot herder should have fled at the first sign of the volcano. Elodie needs me.

But IT would blame ITself if the man died. IT turned and beat ITs way back to the mountain.





CHAPTER FORTY-THREE



“Oh my! I’m sorry! My hands were greasy.” Elodie stood. “Let me get you a clean bowl.”

Ludda-bee jumped up, too. “Look! A fellow oaf, Johan. Sit, girl. I’ll clean up.” She hurried into the kitchen, trailed by another bee.

Elodie sat.

“The girl isn’t awkward.” Mistress Sirka smiled her blazing, untamed smile at Elodie. “She contrived it. I was putting a love potion in your pottage, Dror, love.”

“What?” Dror-bee looked confused. “You did?”

“You want a sign.” She touched his cheek softly with the back of her hand. “It’s a sign I love you.”

Elodie looked away, turned back again, didn’t know where to fix her eyes.

Master Uwald said dryly, “We’d all have had the sign when he shared from his bowl.”

“I’d have liked to try it,” Master Robbie said.

Smiles around the table.

Albin whispered, “Lady El, you’ve made a conquest.”

She blushed.

Master Uwald said, “A love potion is dangerous, son, and who knows what was really in it.”

Sounding actually genial, Master Tuomo said, “I think you don’t need it, boy.”

Master Robbie blushed.

His big eyes shining, Dror-bee smiled at Mistress Sirka.

“Do you think you might love me again?” she asked.

“Again?” Master Tuomo roared. “He loved you before? You took the Replica! The two of you, to punish the family that spurned him. Where is it?”

Angry and prosperous, Elodie thought, unconvinced that Mistress Sirka was the thief.

“I would have taken it.” Mistress Sirka leaned across the table toward Master Tuomo. “Hair and teeth! If he wanted revenge, I would have taken the Replica if I could.”

“But I’ve had my sign.” Dror-bee turned to the high brunka. “Marya, I’m finished being a bee, now that I know a brunka can stop me from doing what pleases me: helping farmers.”

Mistress Sirka’s face was suffused with happiness.

Ludda-bee returned with a clean bowl and a cloth, which she spread over the stained patch of tablecloth.

“High Brunka,” Master Tuomo said, “what do you think of Sirka as the thief?”