The Ozark trilogy (58 page)

Gilead was not a formidable woman, and she still bore the silent displeasure of the two Grannys; but she was no coward, and she was a true Six-her loyalty to her Family and her devotion to its members were her ruling qualities. She faced the Travellers, all nodding their solemn agreement, and she spoke up clear and confident.

“At least,” she said, looking them straight in the eyes, “this Kingdom will never have a
Pope!”

They drew back from her, white and furious; that had struck home, and it told her a few things worth passing along to the Grannys later. Jacob Jeremiah Traveller, all alone at Booneville on Tinaseeh with nobody to challenge his authority for thousands of miles, and no comset to grant anybody an occasional peek at his doings, must be busy demonstrating to the people of his Kingdom what a heavy yoke a burning faith could be.

“And how are we to address this . . . youngster?” spat Feebus Timothy.

“Try `Mister Wommack,”‘ she said pertly. “Or just `Lewis Motley’-he doesn’t suffer from delusions of grandeur, gentlemen:’ And she turned her back on the two groups before the tension could grow any worse, or her traitorous knees fail her, and led them after her, feeling ice between her shoulder blades at the idea of what those nine pairs of hands might be doing that she could not see. Just as
well
she could not see, if they were in fact about their mysterious flickering business; she wouldn’t see it coming, whatever it was, and she’d no desire to.

But nothing happened; and they were at the Meeting Room door, where one Senior Attendant stood casually with folded arms, waiting. “Here,” Gilead said to him, “are the nine Magicians of Rank of this planet, come to see Lewis Motley. Will you take them in, please?”

Lewis Motley Wommack sat at the head of the table, smiling at them as they came through the door. He wore the Wommack seagreen, a color that was as appropriate to his copper hair and beard as it was to the sands of the beach. The long narrow robe was of a soft woven stuff suitable for the summer heat; it had no collar and no cuffs, just the elegant sweep of a well-cut and well-sewn garment, and the Wommack crest on a heavy enameled pendant hung round his neck on a leather thong. On his right hand was a gold ring with the same crest, and his feet were clad in plain low boots of green-dyed leather, narrow-cuffed. He sat in a worn heavy chair at the head of a small round table, and that was all. And the sum of it was wholly regal.

It was not what the Magicians of Rank had expected.

“Should you lose your youthful figure, Lewis Motley Wommack,” said Sheridan Pike Farson the 25th to break the speculative silence, “that garment you wear will become something of an embarrassment.”

The young man gave him a long considering look, and Sheridan Pike was astonished to discover that he felt rebuked. He had not experienced those eyes before; Responsible of Brightwater could have told him something of the dangers they posed.

“Be seated, gentlemen,” said the Guardian, as if the remark had not been made. “Anywhere you like, please. There is wine there, and ale for those who prefer it. I thank you for your courtesy in responding so promptly to my invitation, and for taking time from the pressure of your duties to come to my aid.”

The Farsons glanced at each other, and Sheridan Pike touched his brother’s hand with his fingertips, like moths lighting, spelling out in the ancient alphabet of bones and knuckles the single message-”Beware his eyes.” And Luke Nathaniel Farson spelled back-”And his speech.”

You could tell a person’s station on Ozark by their speech. There was the formspeech of the Grannys, a carefully artificial register of exaggerated archaic vocabulary and intonation-especially intonation. There was the speech of the ordinary citizen, that had undergone all the normal processes of language change, but whose speakers prided themselves on its roughness and its lack of pretension; they spoke as boones, however crowded they might live. There was the flowing mellifluity of the Reverends, required of them only in the performance of their duties, but often taken up for all purposes as a man grew older in the profession. And then there was the speech of the Magicians of Rank, restricted to those nine, laboriously learned along with the Formalisms & Transformations, intended to force respect by its elegance and elaborate usage, as artificial in its way as the mode of the Grannys. Lewis Motley Wommack the 33rd had spoken only a few dozen words, and they might indicate nothing more than his excellent brain and even more excellent education; on the other hand, there was a suspicious ring to them. The mode of the Magicians of Rank, unlike that of the Grannys, ought not to be easy to assume; most citizens had no contact with a Magician of Rank in all their lives.

“Gentlemen?” The Guardian of the Castle was waiting, and they took their chairs, with a mild scuffle over who should be at the dividing line between the Travellers and the others, and that dubious honor falling at last to Lincoln Parradyne Smith. Lincoln Parradyne was uncomfortable; the contrast between the self-made King he had at home and the utter elegance of this youth was striking. When he returned to Castle Smith he thought he might try some fine-tuning . . . perhaps convince Delldon Mallard to remove some of the gems from the crowns and settle for less sumptuous robes at least around the Castle and on non-state occasions.

“I will not waste your time,” said Lewis Motley, “I am well aware that your duties call you, and that your leisure is limited. I call you here only because I have nowhere else to turn, and I have reached the outmost limits of my own endurance in this matter. The task of rendering assistance to me in my quandary is appropriate only to your group; therefore, I have called upon the nine of you for succor. You are the sovereign remedy, so to speak.”

That settled it, if what came before had not; he was using their register, the speechmode of the Magicians of Rank. It was a subtle declaration-but of what?

“Your manner of speech, sir-” began Feebus Timothy Traveller, ready to express the displeasure felt by all of them, but Lewis Motley cut them off.

“The `sir’ is not called for,” he said. “Nor will it ever be-I have no interest in such things. As for my manner of speech”-he smiled again, and looked all round the table-”it is said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

“And now,” he went on, “if you are all comfortable, I would be pleased to present my problem. It is, as I told you in the invitations, a matter regarding a woman-Responsible of Brightwater.”

That changed things. A moment before the only emotion in the room had been the chill of disapproval and angered pride; now the nine leaned forward as one man, their pique forgotten. If there was one thing that united them, other than their shared duties and privileges, it was their hatred of the woman he named; perhaps the most difficult task Veritas Truebreed Motley had to deal with, living as he did under her very nose, was hiding that hatred from everyone except her. He knew it was useless to try to fool Responsible, even if he had cared to. The Magicians of Rank were like preybeasts that have caught a scent; they had been nine, now they were one.

“You are not fond of the daughter of Brightwater,” mused the Guardian, watching them. “That is indeed curious; except for you, Veritas Truebreed, I should have thought you would of had no dealings with her to arouse your emotions. I am astonished, gentlemen, at the way in which one mystery often lies behind another, only to reveal a third and a fourth beyond.”

“You assume a great deal,” said Michael Stepforth Guthrie the 11th, he of Castle Guthrie itself, known planetwide for his skill and for his delight in elaborate mischief. There was no mischief in his voice now.

“Where there is knowledge, one need not make assumptions,” said Lewis Motley calmly. “Is that not a general maxim, gentlemen?”

He took the medallion bearing his crest in his fingers, stroking it lightly, smiling at them, that maddening constant smile, and waited; and Michael Stepforth Guthrie spoke again.

“What is your problem with Responsible of Brightwater?” he asked roughly. “She is Thorn of Guthrie’s daughter. The Mistress of my Castle, Myrrh of Guthrie, is her grandmother. I know her better than anyone here except perhaps Veritas Truebreed, who has the misfortune to share her roof-and I know no reason she should have drawn your notice. She is not even a pleasure to a man’s eye, Lewis Motley . . , and less by far to a man’s ear. What have you, an ocean and two continents away, to do with Responsible of Brightwater?”

The Guardian’s face hardened, and for a moment they saw not a youth of nineteen but a glimpse of the man he would one day be, when he had more years to his credit.

“You have said she is no pleasure to the eye or ear of a man,” he said grimly. “I am a good judge of women; I am in full accord with that judgment. She is an awkward, scrawny gawk of a girl; her face is too bony, and her breasts are too small. She runs when she should walk, interferes when she should refrain, and speaks when any decent female would keep silence. But I will take it a step farther than eyes and ears, gentlemen! A
large
step farther . . . Had I only the sight and sound of that accursed young woman to deal with, I would not have needed you. The distance of which Michael Stepforth speaks would of solved my problem.”

“And it does not?”

“She is not bound by distances,” said the Guardian flatly. “Not in space; not in time. So far as I know, unless you nine have the skill to restrain her, she is bound by nothing in this universe but her own whim. And her whim is to make of my life an unspeakable hell.”

A stir went round the table; they were more than interested, they hung on his words.

“Explain yourself!” ordered Michael Desirard McDaniels the 17th, Magician of Rank in residence at Castle Farson. “We cannot help with riddles-save those for the Grannys, and do us the favor of plain speech.”

“And promptly,” said another. “Enough of this dawdling.”

“Responsible of Brightwater,” said Lewis Motley, “offends the eye and the ear; in my case, she does not scruple to offend the mind as well.”

“The mind . . .
how
does she offend your mind?”

“I thought a long time before I called you,” said Lewis Motley slowly. “It is not pleasant to be telling tales on a female not much more than a child-for a long time I was determined I would not. But she has gone far beyond that limit at which the scruples of ordinary decency and honor apply to her; she no longer merits any of those scruples, and my conscience is clear. To betray evilmonstrous evil-I owe her no hesitation. Not any longer.”

“What in the world,” breathed Veritas Truebreed, “has she
done
to you?”

“Done? Not only done, but
does!
Every day of my life.”

“Lewis Motley-”

“She will not leave me in peace,” he said simply. “As another female might tag after you day and night in the ordinary world, forever after your attention, always there wherever you look, her voice always in your ear, Responsible of Brightwater tags constantly after my mind.
I want it stopped.”

The last four words fell like four stones into a pool of silence. “Well?” demanded the Guardian. “Can you or can you not control her? Do you or do you not command this world of Ozark and all that moves upon it? Is this a simple matter for you, a mere child’s trick-as I have been led to believe-or are you a pack of
frauds?”

The Magicians of Rank were in a state that did not inspire confidence, all trying to speak at once, and their fingers flying under the table like frantic insects. It was a discomfiting sight, and Lewis Motley shoved back his chair from the table and stared at them with frank wonder.

“Answer me, gentlemen,” he said, and still he did not raise his voice. “I am surprised--I admit that frankly. Your behavior is . . . bewildering.” And he added, “If the people of the six continents could see you now, they would never be in awe of you again, not if you sailed a thousand golden ships with silver sails, not if you SNAPPED from here to the stars and back! They would laugh at you, as they laugh at Lincoln Parradyne’s puppet of a King-and they would be fully justified in their disrespect. Be glad, gentlemen, that there is no one here to see you but myself!”

Nathan Overholt Traveller was the oldest of the nine; Lewis Motley’s words brought him instantly out of his disarray. He had not been spoken to in that way since he donned the garments of his profession, and he didn’t care for it.

“That will do!” he declared. “You may be of some importance in this backwater, you may be Guardian of this Castle-whatever that means-but know that we can make you a
dead
Guardian, without moving from these chairs! Guard your
tongue,
Guardian; or you will find your tenure short, I promise you.”

Lewis Motley sighed and pulled his chair back into its proper place.

“Now that,” he said with satisfaction, “is the sort of thing I expected. Thank you, Nathan Overholt; you have restored some portion of my confidence.”

Veritas Truebreed cleared his throat. “Lewis Motley Wommack,” he said carefully, “do we understand you to mean that Responsible of Brightwater uses mindspeech with you? Is that your claim, or do we misunderstand? Be careful, now-you realize that it’s a grave charge you are making. That goes beyond mere illegality, for a woman; you charge her with blasphemy. Be certain!”

“Mindspeech. . .”

“Well? Is that your claim?”

“Almost,” said Lewis Motley. “Almost. It would be more accurate to say that she uses it
at
me than with me . . . I certainly have no means of making reply. And she does not confine herself to speech; she does not scuple to-” He caught himself, and a muscle twitched, suddenly, in his cheek. “I will not speak of that,” he said, with a determination that had all the finality of a Castle gate swinging shut and its bars falling into place. “There are obscenities that a man keeps to himself. Just see that she respects the privacy of my mind; I ask nothing more than that. You can do that?”