A Meeting at Corvallis (77 page)

“Yes, my lady d'Ath. I'd never disobey my overlord, your worship.”

“No, I don't suppose you would,” Tiphaine said.

She lifted her voice slightly to take in the other workers, who stood staring at her wide-eyed. “Now listen to me; I'm your overlord, not your mother, or a priest. But I intend that the law shall be followed—to the inch. Tattletales who waste my time will go away sorry and sore, but whoever has a legitimate grievance can come and tell me about it. Understood?”

There was a mutter of agreement and bobbing nods. Rudi thought a few of the smiles were even genuine this time.

The party moved on; two crossbowmen riding well ahead, then Lady Tiphaine, then the two men-at-arms, Bors and Fayard—Association people tended to have strange names, he'd found, something about an old Society custom—then him and Matti and Delia, and then the varlet with the packhorses, and two more crossbowmen bringing up the rear.

Delia was beaming—she rode with the children, of course, and was theoretically there to serve them, for propriety's sake by local custom. She called out: “My lady!” Tiphaine turned in the saddle. “I thought you said you were evil?”

“I didn't say I was
stupid,
girl,” she replied, grinning for a moment before she turned back to the front again; it made her rather stern face light up and look younger than her twenty-four years.

“When my lady said she'd give us good lordship, she meant it, your highness!” Delia said happily to Mathilda, who liked her. “Things are going to be a lot better here now! We needed a real lord, one who could keep people like Keith and his father and the steward honest.”

Mathilda nodded agreement. “My mom and dad can pick them,” she said proudly. “My mom raised Lady Tiphaine in her own Household, you know.”

When the others looked at him, Rudi said carefully: “She's certainly very smart. She knows what she's doing.”

Which had the advantage of being truth that wouldn't hurt anyone's feelings, particularly not people he liked like Matti, and Delia was nice too, and a Witch here where it was a hard and dangerous thing to be. But…

Who's going to keep a
lord
honest if they don't want to be? People shouldn't have to cringe like that. It's not right,
he thought, remembering the raucous assemblies of the Clan.
Nobody's scared when Mom talks to them…not like
that,
at least. And they shouldn't have to lick someone's hand like a frightened dog just for not being treated badly. Tiphaine isn't as bad as she could be, but she shouldn't be able to do that. The Law should be above everyone.

Tiphaine looked over her shoulder again and gave him a raised eyebrow and a quirking smile. She'd heard, even two horses away and with all the clatter, and she'd known what he meant. Rudi made a small thumb-to-nose gesture and she shook an admonishing finger at him, then turned back.

The plowed field gave way to a meadow with forested hills rising on either side, like lobes stretching down towards the creek; he shook off gloom as he and Mathilda and Delia laughed at the antics of the lambs. Then they turned southward—left—onto the forest tracks. At first there were abundant signs of humankind, stumps and woodchips, the tracks of oxcarts and horses, an old gravel-pit overgrown with brush and half-full of water green with algae, and a four-by-four light truck abandoned ten years ago, overgrown. Birds exploded out of the rusted hulk's broken windows as they passed, small and blue-headed with mauve underparts.

Nobody was there right now, and soon the scented green twilight glow of untouched deep woods closed around them, mostly tall second-growth Douglas fir, grand fir and western hemlock in rough-barked brown columns seventy feet high and better, their branches meeting overhead. He could see off a fair distance, though there was undergrowth; yew with its orange sapwood showing through gaps in the loose purplish bark, the delicately contorted branches of vine maple, nodding sword fern taller than he was; bushy Indian plum with its bunches of hanging white flowers, yellow violets and fawn lily with its golden core and rose pink blossoms. Insects darted through, their wings catching in an occasional slanting ray of sunlight, dragonflies soaring among them like glittering cobalt blue flying wolves; a squirrel ran like a streak of living silver-gray up a tree trunk and around it, then peered back at him, chattering anger.

Sorry, little brother, just passing through,
he thought.
Peace between us now.

Aloud to Mathilda, he went on: “You know, it's odd how you can tell morning sunlight from afternoon even in thick forest. Even if you don't know which way east or west is.”

“Yeah,” Mathilda answered. “It's sort of…
newer,
somehow, in the morning. Brighter even when it isn't.”

Delia was simply clinging to her saddle—she rode badly, and had been put on a contented old plug that would walk obediently with the other horses—and looked around in awe. He'd been shocked to learn she'd seldom been beyond the edge of the forest, though she'd lived near here since she was his age.

And her a member of a coven!
he thought.
Of course, we haven't had much chance to talk about that. And she has to keep it
real
secret. I bet she can't even tell Tiphaine. That must hurt.

He'd always found people in love a bit ridiculous—even Mom and Sir Nigel, who were more sensible about it than most, got all spoony.

But then, I'm too young to really know about it. Never make fun of the Lady's gifts! Bad luck, bad luck, three times three, bad luck. Mock them now, lose them later!

He made a gesture of aversion, the Horns pointed down. They broke out of the tall forest, into what had been a clear-cut before the Change and had burned in a wildfire since; now it was spring meadow like a living carpet before the horses' feet. Tiphaine whistled and pointed for them to turn, and they rode upward, through grass high enough to brush the horsemen's stirrups, full of tall blue lupine and yellow western buttercup. The wind was in their faces, strong with the scent of the forests that rolled from here to the Pacific, when they came over the sharp crest of the hill and into the path of a herd of elk walking the other way.

Rudi and Mathilda whooped to see them, thirty or so big fawn-and-brown animals, and Delia clapped her hands. The crossbowmen whooped on another note, and began to unship their weapons as the herd milled for an instant, then turned and flowed away like a torrent of water downhill, squealing and barking as they went and showing the yellowish patch on their rumps.

“No,” Tiphaine d'Ath said. “Not this time of year. They're mostly pregnant females, and skinny with winter. Wait until autumn, Alan, and I promise you some sport.”

“There were a couple of nice fat yearling bucks and does, my lady,” the corporal of the crossbowmen grumbled, but slung the weapon again. “There's nothing like fresh elk liver right out of the beast and onto a fire in the woods.”

Tiphaine began to neck-rein her horse around, then suddenly stopped with her clenched right fist thrown up for a halt.

“Quiet!” she said sharply.

Everyone fell silent, the loudest sound a wet crunch as a horse bent its neck to tear off a mouthful, and the wind through the trees. Rudi closed his eyes and let his mind go quiet, with nothing to get in the way of his senses…something…no.

“Alan, did you hear anything just then?” she asked, her voice crisp. “A horse, maybe?”

“No, my liege,” he said, shaking his head; he was an older man, a year or two past thirty, and a hunter in his spare time.

Tiphaine shrugged. “Maybe a cat walked over my grave.” She grinned. “In which case I should have sneezed, not shivered.”

They rode on through the meadow, and through more forest ranging from saplings to something near old growth, and then the glittering surface of the lake showed through the trees, hundreds of feet below. It was roughly a rectangle, running three miles from northwest to southeast, with tongues of water stretching into the hills that gave it the shape of a distorted gingerbread man. They had come seven miles at a gentle walk on the winding trails—Delia for one would have fallen off at anything faster—and it was a little before noon. Water glinted like hammered metal beneath them, save where the shadows of clouds drifted over the lake and turned the color intensely blue. They rode down to the water, where there was a recently repaired dock, a gazebo, and an aluminum canoe left upside-down beneath it. Mostly the shores were very steep, forested hills running straight into deep water.

“So, what'll we do first?” Rudi said happily. “Swim, fish?”

“Can I just
sit
for a while?” Delia said, rubbing her thighs in between unloading folding chairs and pillows. “Sit on something soft that doesn't move, that is. I don't see why you castle people like riding so much, my lady.”

The soldiers grinned, but didn't say the things they usually would. Rudi was glad. He didn't mind bawdy humor even when he didn't see the point, and there was plenty of it back home, but here it had an edge he didn't like at all, or fully understand.

Tiphaine smiled slightly. “If we're going to swim, we should have a fire ready for when we get out. The water's cold.”

They built one a little way up the shore—the soldiers and the varlet had to take turns going well away for their dip, and stand at a distance with their backs turned while Rudi and the others came up out of the water to warm themselves near the fire.

“Why?” Rudi asked, throwing off the towel and reaching for his clothes.

“Because they're men,” Mathilda said.

“Well, so am I,” Rudi said reasonably.

“No, you're a boy. It's all right until your voice breaks. And they're commoners, even if the warriors are Associates. We're nobles.”

“I'm not,” Rudi said. “Delia isn't either.”

“Well, you're
sorta
like a noble—I mean, your mom's the Chief of the Mackenzies, right? That's like being a count or something, so you're a viscount.”

“No, being Chief is
not
like being a count!” he said indignantly.

“I know. I
said
sorta like. And Delia can be here because she's a servant, and a girl.”

“Oh. Weird,” Rudi said. “You've got some really strange
geasa
here, Matti. And Delia's here to fish and swim and play with us, isn't she?”

“Oh, no, young lord,” Delia said—grinning as she came out of the water and wrapped herself in a towel. “I wouldn't dream of doing anything so presumptuous.”

“Insolent wench,” Tiphaine said calmly, following her to the fire.

Rudi finished dressing and galloped his horse up and down the shore with Mathilda by him, then came back to the pier; they hobbled the mounts and threw a Frisbee around for a while before they got out fishing rods and folding chairs. Tiphaine was already there, with a fair-sized trout hanging in the water with a sharpened twig through its gills. The two cast their fly-lures out, and settled down to watch the water as the last shreds of morning mist burned off it, enjoying the
plop
of occasional fish jumping, the flight of wildfowl over the water and up into the steep green trees…

“So, this is fly-fishing,” Delia said, after a few minutes. “When does something happen?”

“Something
is
happening,” Tiphaine said from her recliner, making another cast. “We're fishing.”

“It looks a lot like sitting staring at the water to me, my lady,” she said. “We could do
that
at the millpond.”

She got a book out of the picnic baskets and began reading aloud, pausing whenever anyone got a bite. Rudi pricked his ears with interest even though she stumbled over a word now and then; it was something like the older old-time stories, and there were even witches in it—though not good ones. And the names…

“Isn't that name a lot like yours, Lady d'Ath?”

“It's the same. When I was entered on the Association rolls I took a new one; a lot of people do that.”

“People in the Clan do, too, when they're Initiated.”

Tiphaine nodded. “And they had the same custom in the Society, I think, except that back then they kept the old name too. Mine was…Collette, originally. We picked the new ones out of a hat.”

“It's a pretty name, my lady,” Delia said.

“Yes, Lady Sandra thought so. But the character named that in the book is totally lame; all she does is get raped by a bandit named Joris, have a baby—who eventually
kills
Joris when it grows up—and then get massacred by some peasants. I would have picked Herudis or better still Lys, but in the book Lys is a witch and that wouldn't be…prudent. I think those books would be on the Index if they weren't favorites of the consort; she even had them reprinted. She named half the younger set in the Household out of them, it's quite a fad.”