The Ozark trilogy (13 page)

Now that’s a simple bit, you’ll agree. Your average Granny might not be quite so free with dung, but I saw no flaw in it all; and I cast my gold chain on the bed where I was kneeling at my work, fully expecting to see it fall in yet one more reassuring shape, after which I would call it a night and get some well-deserved sleep.

Then I took a look at what I’d got, and backed off to give it room, and backed off some more, and remembered Granny Golightly. What
was
that old woman’s range, anyway? Her and her plenty of adventures required ...

It loved me, that was clear. It licked my face, and it licked the velvet ribbon round my neck, and it slobbered down both the front and the back of my gown with pure affectionate delight, and rolled over on the Parsons’ good counterpane to have its stomach scratched, and even flat on its back it kept on licking every part of me it could reach.

This
the wards would never hold for, especially if it began to hum to me, which was likely if it got any happier. I scrambled off the bed, with it after me anxiously, licking and snuffling and falling over things at my heels, and I doubled the garlic and hung a ring of it on the doorknob. For good measure I took my shammybag of white sand and laid out a pentacle at the door, with the door itself serving as one of the five sides. Only then did I pause, doing it in the middle of the pentacle just to be extra safe, whereupon it knocked me over and devoted its tiny mind and heart and its enormous tongue to licking me
absolutely clean
.

It was called a Yallerhound, though it was nearer brown than yellow, and only by the most strained, courtesy a hound. Like the giant cavecats, it had six legs; tike the Mules, its tail dragged the ground; unlike the Mules, so did its ears and its body hair. It was seven feet long, not counting the tail, and about five feet high, and its aim in life was to love people and keep them
clean
. It had a purple tongue the size of a hand towel, from the eager attentions of which I was already soaking wet from head to foot. And it now had decided that my hair wasn’t clean enough, and would probably drown me before it was satisfied about
that
.

I couldn’t help myself, this was too much, and made twice as awful because it would of won me no sympathy from anybody—some part of me, somewhere inside, could still see that it was funny. But most of me was at the end of all its ropes. I lay down in the middle of the pentacle, making sure no part of me lopped over any borders, curled up in a ball to protect as much of me as possible from the damned Yallerhound, and I bawled and cried and carried on till I was limp. The poor stupid creature cried with me, keening high and thin.

When I woke up it was a quarter after two, and I was ashamed of myself. Women, after all, are expected to
cope
. There I lay, decked out all ladylike and delicate for magic, as was proper; and there
it
lay, curled round me and humming a tune in that thin little voice that went so badly with its size and made it obvious that the creature was mostly hair. And both of us soggy in a puddle of Yallerhound lick—and the sticky tears of two species. It was enough to rouse the last word I remembered being spanked for using—it was enough to make a person say “puke.” Ugh.

I felt better for the sleep, however and whatever I felt was all the Yallerhound cared about, especially if what I felt was something positive. Now that I’d had my conniption fit, I had to
think
.

To begin with, there was the source of this animal. No Granny on Ozark (and so far as I know we have all the Grannys there are) could teleport anything as big as either a giant cavecat or a Yallerhound. I knew Granny Golightly had had her signature on that cavecat back on Oklahomah, but it might of been she’d only had to encourage one that was already there. But I’d bet my velvet neckband it was on this Yallerhound as well, and that was a different matter altogether. Yallerhounds don’t just happen to turn up in bedrooms, popping out of empty air; and that had to mean she’d had some help. From a Magician of Rank, who, other than me, would be the only individual with enough skill and strength to bring this off. And I had a pretty good idea I knew
which
Magician of Rank.

Not Michael Stepforth Guthrie; I thought he’d had fun enough for a while. The one I had in mind was called Lincoln Parradyne Smith the 39
^th
, resident of that same Castle Smith that had so coolly disinvited me to visit. Magician of Rank to the continent of Oklahomah, and surely handy to good Granny Golightly.

He’d have been delighted to help her; I rather expected that almost any one of the Magicians of Rank on this planet would of been. I’d been twelve years old the first time a sign from the Out-Cabal had obliged me to convene a Colloquium of the Magicians of Rank (and what a difference two years makes ... I hadn’t even noticed the attractions of Michael Stepforth Guthrie). And I’d been warned to be prepared for their hostility, but it hadn’t been warning enough. It was like sitting too close to a wall of fire to be shut in a room with them. I flamed inside with the waves of hatred beating against me from that crew of arcane males, and I’d been sick for days afterward.

A strange sickness. I lay in my bed, so weak I could not lift my head from my pillow even to drink, and perpetually thirsty, and the skin of my body cold as mountain river water while I burned and burned within. I had not known that so much pain could be.

“They consumed your energies, child,” our Granny Hazelbide had said, sitting beside me and holding my icy hands in her warm ones, and every now and then letting a spoonful of water trickle one drop at a time down my throat. “Sucked ‘em right up like a pack of babies at the teat; and they’ll do it every time.”

I’d asked her with my eyes, because I couldn’t talk—how long? And she’d shaken her head.

“This first time, sweet Responsible, sweet child? No way of telling, just no way atall. What you’re doing, lying there on a cross of ice and fire mingled ... oh yes, child. I know! I’ve never been through what you’re bearing, praise the Twelve Corners, but I do
know
! … what you’re doing there is renewing yourself. It may take days and it may take weeks and there’s not a blessed thing anyone can do to help you. But there’s one good thing—each time it will be shorter. As you get older, and stronger, and more experienced at this yourself ... why, you’ll get to where you don’t
mind
them any more man a pack of babes!”

A spasm had racked me, all my muscles nickering under my skin, and she’d sat there calm as a boulder; it not being one of the times when she felt expected to cluck and fuss and dither. She’d sat there eleven days, and when it was over she told me I’d done well.

“A short time, for your first time,” Granny had said, “That speaks well for the future, child.”

They hated me, one and all, did the Magicians of Rank— though they no more understood why than the Yallerhound would have. Nor why they should have felt compelled to come at my call, me no more than a little pigtailed girl; nor why they couldn’t get up and go home, but had to sit and listen to my pronouncements, as if I had a rank and they had none; nor why their voices left them if they tried to speak upon the subject, ever It was a mystery, and one that they weren’t privy to, and there weren’t supposed to be any mysteries they weren’t privy to. They were, after all, the Magicians of
Rank
.

So, if one of them could do me a little hurt ... just a small hurt, you understand, just a plaster for their aching egos ... I was in fact surprised that they’d chanced the cavecat, it might have
really
hurt me; and I could be sure I’d been watched every minute in the crystal that Lincoln Panadyne Smith kept in his magic-chest. He must of been very confident he could reach me in time if I couldn’t manage by myself, or he never would of risked it. The Yallerhound, on the other hand, was just funny. It couldn’t hurt me even if it wanted to. Which it didn’t, short of falling on me by accident off a Castle roof, or something of the kind.

“The Yallerhound,” I said aloud, which delighted it and set it humming up and down a nineteen-tone scale that was awful beyond all imagining, “is a harmless creature. However, it weighs almost one hundred pounds and a bit, and it eats more than a half-grown Mule, and it will never, never stop licking you.”

We would of made a pretty sight. Sterling and me and my saddlebags, and the Yallerhound riding behind me licking my neck and my hair as we flew by. Not to mention the fact that, given the magic I was supposed to be able to perform, we would of had to drop like a stone. A Mule couldn’t carry that much weight, even if it was precious cargo instead of stupid beast. I had to make up my mind what to do with the thing.

I could simply leave it here, a “gift” to the Castle, and claim I had no idea where it had come from—which was, in a sense, true. They’d never forgive me, and they’d probably shut it up in the stables to die of heartbreak and the conviction that it had done something wrong—but I could do that.

I could claim that
their
Magicians had sicced the silly thing on me, and gain a few points that way, since they wouldn’t be able to prove that they hadn’t. But the results for the innocent Yallerhound would be the same, if I left it behind.

I could buy another Mule to carry it and take it with me— thus guaranteeing that I’d took like a fool and be greeted like one at every Castle left on my itinerary.

Or I could try to do something with more flair to it, and maybe some justice. Like send it back to its Granny, O! True, I shouldn’t be able to do that. True, she’d know that I had. But she couldn’t tell on me without telling what
she’d
done, and what she’d done was a pure disgrace.
Therefore
!

“My pretty Yallerhound,’* I said, frantically ducking the purple tongue and encountering it all the same, “do you know what I think? I think you should go right back to where you came from! Poor Granny Golightly has got no Yallerhound to love her, and I’ll bet she’s dirty as seven little boys dividing up syrup in August. She undoubtedly, indu
bit
ably needs a Yallerhound to look after her, don’t you think?”

Its eyes got wide and its tongue paused long enough for me to wipe my face off once. It had just enough brain to know I was talking about it, as well as to it. I tapped it on its nose, gently, and I scratched it on its hairy stomach, gently, and I set to work.

Crystals were not my style, but I didn’t need one. I had no trouble finding my lady Golightly in my mirror; She slept curled like a scrawny baby in a high bed on the third floor of Castle dark, under a thick red comforter stuffed with squawker feathers, and a smile of innocent bliss upon her face. I dumped the Yallerhound right on top of the smile.

I SAT IN THE LIBRARY at Castle Motley, drinking coffee so strong you could of stood a spoon up in it easy, still weak-kneed from the recent shenanigans but pleased that I’d arrived here without any unbecoming incidents. Sterling had flown across the narrow channel to Mizzurah with nary a wobble, no more creatures of any size or description had joined me as I flew, and if there was an adventure headed at me for this station on the Quest it had yet to arrive. And I was willing to wait.

We were even having a
pleasant
conversation—something I’d been missing for quite a while now. Me and my host, Halbreth Nicholas Smith the 12
^th
, and the lady of his Castle, Diamond of Motley. Just the three of us. There was a small informal supper planned for the evening, I’d been told, and a hunt breakfast the next morning, but no great to-do’s. That suited me; I had another slice of fresh hot bread with blazonberry jam, braced myself against the coffee, and relaxed.

Diamond of Motley was a placid woman, gone stout and not the least bothered by it, with her red hair wound around her head in a coronet of thick braids that was about as becoming as measles but otherwise perfectly suitable. She had eleven children and an unshakable serenity; just looking at her rested me. Hearing her say that she and hers were looking forward to the Jubilee
delighted
me.

“Diamond of Motley,” I said, “that does me good! It’s a great occasion for Ozark, and it
should
be looked forward to. I’ve not heard much talk along that line since I left Brightwater.”

“You’ve been where now, Responsible?” her husband asked me.

“McDaniels, Clark, Airy, Guthrie, and Farson.”

“A shame you had to miss Castle Smith,” said Diamond. “Who’d of thought there was still a cavecat left on Oklahomah?”

“
I
wouldn’t,” I told hec “But I learned.”

“Well, Smith’s gain is our loss,” said Halbreth Nicholas, gallant as you please, “you’re here the sooner. Think you missed anything in particular there?”

I looked at him, not sure what he meant, and he was tamping down his pipe and staring into it like he was looking for omens.

“According to a rumor as came this way,” he said carefully, still eyeing the tobacco, “Smith wasn’t expecting you anyhow ... it’s going round that there was a note sent asking you not to come.”

Ah, the close-mouthed Smiths; this would be their doing. Gabble, gabble, gabble, all the time.

“As it happened, that’s true,” I said. “They sent me a letter.”

“Signed by?”

“Dorothy of Smith—the oldest.”

Halbreth Nicholas lit his pipe and took a long draught. He was a Smith himself, and head of this Castle only because there’d been no Motley sons in the last generation. If my memory served me right, he’d be the second cousin of the blusterer that filled the same role at Castle Smith.