Wizard of the Grove (28 page)

“Yes.” He nodded, both with respect and relief that someone understood. “That's it exactly.” He took a deep breath, avoided Raulin's reaching hand, and walked to the bench. Then he sat, visibly unclenched his jaw, and smiled up at his brother. “What do you mean they never were much?” he demanded.

Below his mustache, Raulin's smile was identical. It was the one feature they held in common. “I meant in comparison, of course.”

“I think,” Nad turned a beaming face on Dorses, who watched from behind the bar, “this calls for a drink.”

“Not surprising,” the innkeeper said dryly, “you think everything calls for a drink.” But she filled five tankards with ale and joined the others at a table.

Crystal studied Jago's face while he drank, and when he lowered his tankard he caught her at it. He met her eyes as forthrightly as his brother had, his own holding neither fear nor suspicion, only a cautious reserve. Raulin had laid himself open for her taking; Jago only acknowledged that she could. His eyes were a very dark violet and he was among the handsomest men Crystal had ever met. She looked away first, found Raulin studying her, flushed, and ended up staring into her ale. This showed all the signs of becoming very complicated.

“. . . certainly the most excitin' night we've ever had at the
Nugget,” Nad was saying. “As if you three weren't enough, we found at closin' time old Timon had already left with Lord Death.”

“What”?

“Oh, nothing ta worry about,” the blacksmith hastened to explain, “he had ta be ninety if he was a day. Just his time.” He took another drink of his ale. “Still, the Nugget's not likely to see another night like that in a hurry.”

“Nor want to,” Dorses said emphatically.

“Now I don't know about that,” Raulin drawled, winking in Crystal's direction. “Everything turned out for the best.”

Jago raised his tankard to his brother. “Next time
you
distract the brindle.”

“Brindle tried to eat me, I'd choke him.”

“You've always been hard to swallow.” Jago's tone was light, but his face had tensed. It didn't take a wizard to see memories crowding up against the banter.

“Dorses?” Ivan stuck his head in from the kitchen. “It's near sunset and the biscuits aren't . . .”

“Near sunset? As late as that?” Dorses leaped to her feet and scooped the tankards from the table. “Put the dry ingredients together, I'll be there in a minute.”

Ivan's head disappeared.

“You lot can stay or go as you please,” Dorses told them, dumping the tankards behind the bar and heading for the kitchen. “But sunset's when I unbolt the doors. Crystal, if you don't mind, the fires, we've not much time . . .” And she was gone.

Crystal, if you don't mind, the fires . . .
She turned the words over in her mind, oblivious to the others in the room.
Crystal, if you don't mind, the fires . . .
Of all her many acquaintances, over all the years, only the old Duke of Belkar had treated her power as though it was a useful tool.

“Lady?” Jago's worried voice brought her back to the Nugget's common room. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” she turned the brilliance of her joy on him. “I've seldom been better.”
Crystal, if you don't mind, the fires . . .

She waved a hand at the new andirons and they disappeared beneath a load of wood. She turned to the other hearth, found the wood already laid, pointed a finger at each and said, “Burn.”

A flare of green and both hearths filled with flame.

“She's good with fires,” Nad confided to the brothers as the room began to warm.

“Ah,”
sighed the voice in her head.

It sounded pleased, but Crystal was too pleased herself to notice.

“Will you stay a while and enjoy the fruits of your labors?” Raulin asked, more than one invitation apparent in his voice. “Seems like a pity to waste such heat.”

Pleasure faded and Crystal headed for the stairs. “No,” she said without turning, “I can't.”

“Crystal . . .”

A murmur from Jago cut off Raulin's next words, and she escaped to her room.

*   *   *

“I have had it with this!”

Crystal glanced up from the potato she was dicing. “Had it with what?” she asked.

“This!” Dorses glared at the disassembled pieces of the water pump. “Nothing but trouble and Nad's off at the mine today.” She rubbed at her forehead, leaving a smudge of rust behind. “I don't suppose you could fix it.”

“Sorry.” Crystal shrugged. “But pump repairs were never something they taught me.”

Dorses sighed. “I didn't think so.”

After the incident with the nail, the strange and sudden twist, Crystal was hesitant to use her power on the pump, but neither did she want to let Dorses down. “Perhaps I could look at it anyway.”

“Couldn't hurt,” the innkeeper admitted standing aside. “I'm out of ideas.”

With her index finger, Crystal pushed a metal ring along the
counter. It clinked against a stubby cylinder. The wizard took a deep breath. There had to be almost twenty bits and pieces of metal spread out in front of her and she had no idea of what to do with any of them. She wanted desperately to repay some small part of Dorses' kindness.

Her left hand lifted a tiny bolt and fitted it into the plate in her right hand. Crystal bit back a scream. Her hand had moved; she hadn't moved it.

“Crystal? Are you all right?”

“Fine,” she managed, watching her fingers screw two totally incomprehensible things together. Dorses must not find out what was happening. Her right hand attached something to the pipe at the top of the pump. She couldn't bear it if this pushed Dorses away, as it must. Her left hand placed a second piece on the first. Her mind still seemed her own, but her hands moved at another's command. Strangest of all, behind her surface terror stood a wall of competence and calm.

“Relax,”
suggested a voice.

“React,”
sneered another.

The first voice was new, but the second she'd heard before.

With a sharp snick of metal against metal, her hands fixed the rebuilt cap onto the pump, tightened the collar, then fell limply to her sides. For a very long moment, they burned and itched with the not exactly unpleasant sensation of returning blood, then that faded and they were hers again. She raised them to her face, studied the palms, turned them over and studied the backs. Fortunately, the feeling of calm remained, distancing her still from what had just happened.

“You didn't cut yourself?” Dorses was a little worried; Crystal stood there so quietly, staring at her hands.

“Uh . . . no.”

“Let's see what . . .” The innkeeper moved around the wizard's motionless body. “Mother-creator, you've rebuilt it!” She grabbed the handle and began to pump vigorously. “Let's hope it wasn't in pieces long enough for the pipes to freeze.”

“Do they?” Crystal asked, only because she felt she must say something.

“Chaos, yes. Once the cold weather sets in, Ivan's up every couple hours in the night keeping the water moving.” A cough and a sputter and a splash of cold liquid shot out the mouth of the pump. Dorses smiled in satisfaction. “I hate having to melt snow,” she confided to Crystal. “I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

Crystal opened her mouth, unsure of what she was going to say but uneasy over taking credit for something she hadn't done. To her horror, words spilled out without her willing them. “Consider it a gift from the goddess.” And the calm disappeared.

“Think highly of yourself, don't you,” Dorses laughed, still facing the pump, not seeing the fear that robbed all power from the wizard's features. “I've a barrel of beer that could use a blessing then; it's going skunky.”

“Maybe later . . .” Crystal choked out, and fled. For one of the few times in her life, she thanked the centaurs for their insistence on emotional control—although for them control meant denial—drummed over and over into the child she had been until it became almost second nature to hide what she felt. Those lessons served her now, keeping all the terrified bits of her together and moving.

“Crystal?” Dorses turned, but the kitchen was empty. She wondered if she should follow. Had she said something wrong? But the soup boiled over on the stove, and once that was taken care of the pies needed finishing, and the moment for following passed.

Up in her room, Crystal lay in the center of the bed, knees drawn up to her chest, eyes squeezed shut, arms wrapped tightly around her head, and her hair a silver veil over all. Only her lips moved. Over and over they formed a denial, of the voices that whispered and roared and of the knowledge of what those voices meant. “No, no, no, no. . . .”

Unseen beside her, Lord Death reached out a hand. It hovered a moment close above a shoulder he couldn't touch and when he withdrew it, the fingers closed to form a fist.
The comfort of Death,
he thought,
is a cruel joke.

*   *   *

“Crystal?”

The banging on her door was persistent and loud.

“Crystal, open the door!”

Slowly she unfolded and still more slowly stood. She waved a hand and the door swung open.

Raulin, his hand raised to bang again, took a quick step into the room. “Are you all right?” he demanded anxiously. “Dorses says you've been up here since morning. She figured if you could keep the door closed you must be fine, but me, I wanted proof.” He moved forward and brushed her hair back off her face, leaving his hand resting gently against her cheek. He had to tilt his head slightly to meet her eyes. “What's wrong?”

Crystal wet her lips, She'd fought all day, banishing the voices, building and reinforcing shields in her mind. Her nerves hung balanced on the dagger's edge and she could not allow herself the luxury of hysterics, not inside, not where others could be hurt. “I think,” she said softly, “I don't want to be alone.” Then, as Raulin continued to meet her eyes, she blushed deeply.

His answering smile banished much of the day's terror.

“No,” she corrected hurriedly, not that. She moved her face against the warmth of his hand. “Not yet.”

“Then come down to the common room,” he suggested, marveling at the satin feel of her skin, daring to trace one finger down the curve of her throat. Not yet meant later. He could wait. “Jago's down there now, he's enough of a wonder to hold them. They won't even notice you.”

She cocked her head to listen and noticed for the first time the noise sifting through the floor. “Is it as late as that . . .”

As she obviously didn't require an answer, Raulin concentrated instead on coaxing her to the door. When she balked on the threshold, he slipped an arm around her waist. “You did say you didn't want to be alone,” he reminded her. He withdrew his arm as an emerald glow reminded him who he held. Cautioned but undaunted, he tucked her arm in his and, when that provoked no objection, kept her moving toward the stairs.

The common room was packed and, as Raulin had said, Jago stood in the center of an admiring court, the more vocal of whom were trying to get him out of his pants.

“Come on, laddie,” called an old woman with a voice like crushed stone, “let's see them legs!”

“Let's have some skin,” cried out a much younger one.

Most of the crowd had obviously been drinking heavily. Jago did not appear to be having a particularly good time.

“He hates being the center of attention,” Raulin confided to Crystal as he steered her to a table in the back, the same table she'd sat at the night it all began.

“And you'd have your pants off?”

“In a minute.” He grinned. “There's little I hate more than false modesty.”

Over the multitude of heads, Jago—boosted up on a table by Nad, partially to give everyone a good view, partially to keep him safe—met Crystal's eyes. She knew he saw her, it wasn't a mistake she could make, but in no way did he acknowledge her presence. It showed a sensitivity to her feelings she hadn't expected and she found herself warming to the younger man. With nothing to draw their attention, the crowd indeed didn't notice her and she sat unseen until Nad innocently gave it away, only wanting Crystal to share in the glory. “And there's the Lady,” he called, with a happy smile and a pointing finger. “The one who did the healin'.”

The crowd fell silent as they turned and the weight of their gaze pushed Crystal to her feet. She felt her power build in answer to theirs. A crowd could become a mob very quickly, she knew, and quicker still when drink had blurred the boundaries.

“Wizard?”

The sound rose in a questioning wave and could still break either way when a man with an eye patched pushed to the front of the pack and said, “Where's my son, wizard. Where's my boy?”

Crystal kept silent. No answer she could give would satisfy. It never had before. She felt the familiar tightness in her stomach.

A woman, with a steel hook where her right hand should be, stepped forward to stand by the one-eyed man and the mob took them as their center and formed about them. Some murmured names. Others rubbed scars. They all remembered the day, twelve years before, when the Wizard's Horde had come.

“Wizard.”

A growl now, an unpleasant rumble.

The funny thing was, if she actually was what they accused her of, they wouldn't dare accuse.

She saw Jago tense, his place on the table giving him an advantage in the fight that was sure to begin. Nad, his honest face puzzled, looked from one friend to another, unsure of what was happening. Beside her, she heard Raulin stand, and felt him ready for battle. She was very glad Ivan stayed safely in the kitchen.

“Wizard!”