From a High Tower (35 page)

“Well, their homeland is not the plains, at least not for the winter,” Giselle explained. “Their real home is forested hills. They've been driven out, and forced to relocate in a dry prairie area that none of them like in the least. That's why Fox wants to get a lot of money, so they can buy farm lots back where they used to live.”

“Oh.” Rosa shook her head. “Well, in that case, I think they will be able to make it comfortable for the winter.”

“Fox, at least, is used to living with the Army in one of their forts,” Giselle pointed out. “And I do
not
think any of them would care to sleep in a hide teepee in the snow!”

It was wonderful to be able to turn the spigot at the bottom of the tub and let it all run out, rather than having to bail the thing out a pail at a time until it was empty enough to turn on its side. It was wonderful to be able to change into one of her clean, warm, flannel nightgowns, bundle her damp hair under a nightcap, and climb into her own bed. Flitter had already found her way into the room, and was sitting up on a beam, dozing in the heat from the stove.

It was also oddly wonderful to hear Rosa puttering about on the floor beneath her. In fact, it was the sound of Rosa turning pages in a book that was the last thing she heard as she drifted off to sleep.

The next day was devoted to everyone getting everything they wanted for the winter out of the wagons, and then moving the wagons into the positions they'd hold until Spring, chained together. Moving her things was
her
problem; moving the wagons was the problem of the men, and she had been told so in no uncertain terms when she tried to help. For once, she wasn't inclined to argue; they were using four teams of the heaviest horses and clearly had a defined plan. Cody and the head wrangler had decided that since the wagons could not be got in under cover for the winter, the best thing to do with them would be to protect them as best as possible and use them and some lumber and tree branches to make a corral so the animals could get some time every day out in the sun.

Giselle spent the day getting all of her things out of the
vardo,
then in the small tower kitchen doing laundry.
Finally
she was able to get all of her things really clean again. Most of them she planned to pack away until spring, but this was an excellent chance to get everything that had only been dealt with sketchily properly washed. Soon drying laundry was strung back and forth across the kitchen, just as it used to be on laundry days when it had only been her and Mother here.

It was a very relaxed group that assembled for a supper of sausages, kale cooked with bacon, and fried potatoes. Rosa and Giselle went back to the tower afterward as they had last night, but tonight they were joined by Leading Fox, Cody, and Kellermann for some conversation and an impromptu game of cards. Anticipating visits of this sort, Giselle had laid in supplies in the little kitchen.

But after everyone had gone to their beds and it was long past midnight, Giselle was awakened by the wind, howling around the tower. The sounds it was making against the thick glass windows told her from long experience that this was not just wind. This was a blizzard. But there was something about it that was not quite right, something that made her come all the way awake.

She fumbled for the matches and oil lamp next to her bed and lit it. When she had turned the light up, she looked up into the rafters and saw that all of her sylph friends were up there, huddled together, looking down at her with frightened eyes.

In the next moment, she knew why they were there. This was no natural blizzard. It might have
begun
as one, but it certainly was not natural now. She sensed the magic outside, magnifying everything the storm was doing. Air Magic . . . but other things too, things she couldn't identify. The defenses that she, Rosa, Mother and the dwarves had put on this place turned it into a fortress against magic as well as against more physical attacks, but this storm was going to completely isolate them from the outside world. And from the feeling she was getting . . . that was exactly what the people steering the storm had in mind.

A light sprang up on the floor below, coming up through the stairwell. “Rosa?” she called.

“You feel it too?” Rosa replied, and her voice had steel in it. She, too, knew what this meant and she was not amused.

“Of course. I think . . . I think that watcher followed us somehow. He's not alone.” She did her best to keep her voice steady.

“I'm coming up,” Rosa said, and a moment later, she padded up the stairs, wrapped in a huge woolen shawl. She joined Giselle in her bed, and the two of them pulled the eiderdown around themselves. “This is an attack,” she said, flatly.

“I get Air Magic, and something else,” Giselle said. “The Air Magic has a bitter scent if that means anything to you.”

“It means it's stolen,” Rosa replied, staring at the shuttered window as if she could somehow see through it. “And I told you how magic can be stolen.”

Giselle shivered.

“There's Fire Magic there too, but it's been turned to its opposite—cold. That can only be done by making a bargain with an Elemental of Cold, and none of the ones I know of are good. There's also some other magic, but it's not from an Elemental Master or even a mage. So it has to be a sorcerer or a witch. By the dark feel of it, it's all fueled by blood.”

Three different kinds of magic? What had brought all this down on her head? “What do we do?” Giselle asked. “You're the one who hunts out things and destroys them, not I!”

Rosa patted her hand. “First, I promise you, whoever it is cannot get in here. Your Mother wrought even better than you thought she ever did, I put my own protections on the abbey, you already had your own in place, and you can bet that Fox is awake and reinforcing everything with
his
protections, and I very much doubt whoever is out there will be familiar with anything Fox can do. Add to that what the dwarves built in while they were rebuilding everything. The dwarves are very clever: every single opening into the walls has a warded grate of pure iron. No magic, no matter how strong, can get past magic-forged iron. It would take more than a handful of Masters to get their magic in here, it would take an army, if it could be done at all.”

Giselle couldn't help it, though, she shivered. The sound of the wind outside—it was as if there were voices in it, voices howling their determination to tear down the walls and rip everything inside to bits.

“As for what we do, we wait until morning, when everyone is awake. We'll gather in the second-floor room of the tower, and we'll find a way to see
who
is out there, how many of them there are, and what they have to bring against us.” Rosa clenched her jaw. “One thing I know for certain, there is
no
Earth Magic out there. So whoever is out there won't have wardings against Earth scrying.”

“I thought you said you couldn't scry?” Giselle ventured.

“I said that I didn't usually do so,” Rosa corrected. “I don't have the best tool for it. My obsidian plaque isn't as . . . finished . . . as I would like. But I would bet any amount of money that your Mother
did
have the tools we need
,
and that they will still be in the rooms that Cody is in now. The dwarves and I just locked up the cabinet that her tools and supplies were in and left it there, as it was too big to move.”

“And when we find out, what will we do then?” Giselle persisted. “I—”

“It would be foolish to make plans we are only going to have to change,” Rosa told her. “Now, just remember, they
cannot
get magic inside these walls. We have enough food to last the winter, if we need to. We have water from a well they cannot cut off. We need to find out how many of them there are, how powerful they are, and what their plans are. The most important thing will be to make sure that our friends in the show are not panicked by all this.” At this Rosa showed her first sign of stress, rubbing her hand across her eyes. “That is the one thing that might be our undoing. I cannot do anything about that now, but as soon as Elfrida is awake—”

“Elfrida is awake now, deary,” came a voice from below. “If you think anyone with magic could sleep through
this,
you are very much mistaken.”

Now
Elfrida
came up the stairs, wrapped up in a woolen shawl even more voluminous than Rosa's, hair entirely covered by a frilly nightcap of monumental proportions. “Move over and give me some bed room, girls, my old bones cannot take this cold.”

Giselle did more than that, she got up and stoked the stove, then came back to bed, glad that her bed was a very old one that could probably have held an entire family.

“We need to keep the others—the ones that are not the Indians, the Captain, or Herr Kellermann—from getting the notion that this is anything other than a normal storm for this part of the world, and panicking,” said Rosa, once Elfrida was under the eiderdown with both of them. The sylphs were paying very close attention to what the three of them were saying; glancing up from time to time, Giselle saw their eyes shining down solemnly in the light from the lamp.

“Bless you, that will be the matter of two spells at most,” the “kitchen-witch” said with conviction. “One on the oven, and the other on the salt. I'll bless the salt to drive out evil influences, so even if the bastards out there manage to get something past our defenses, anything cooked with holy salt will keep a body safe, and the Good God knows you can't bake bread without salt. And the other spell, the one I intend to put on the oven, will handle anything that's baked in it; that's all the bread, of course, and we all eat bread three times a day or more, plus all the sweets. Your friends do like their pies. I have never seen pies vanish so fast.”

“Yes, but what does this other spell
do?”
Rosa said, a little impatiently.

“Keep them . . . well . . . tranquil. It'll make them a bit slow, and it isn't something I'd set under any circumstances but this, but better that the chores be done slowly, and that they maybe fall asleep over them, than that they panic.” Elfrida nodded as Rosa's eyes widened. “They won't notice anything that they aren't
expecting
to see, either. I use it when I need to do something, and I don't want those who I am keeping house for to get a notion I'm unnatural.”

“That must be very handy,” Rosa said, envy in her voice.

“It's also dangerous. Other people outside the family will notice if the family is acting oddly, especially the man of the house, and next thing you know, people are looking for a witch in the kitchen,” Elfrida replied with a frown. “I wouldn't use it now if I weren't sure no one's going to escape it. If you're worried about the beasts taking fright, we can feed them a bit of bread once a day—”

“No, I can handle the beasts. They trust me,” Rosa said, and sighed. “All right. I expect that the Captain and the Indians are—”

“—are violatin' your privacy an' comin' up. Kellermann's with us,” called Captain Cody from below. “Iff'n yer afraid t'be seen—”

“Oh don't be an idiot, get up here!” Rosa snapped, and soon enough, the sound of boots on the stairs heralded two of the three. Fox's footsteps could scarcely be heard, of course, because he was wearing his usual soft moccasins. They were all in pants pulled hastily over their nightshirts, and wrapped in blankets, including Fox. It seemed that when it came to sleeping in Bavarian cold, he had decided to do as the white men did, and bundle into a warm, thick, red flannel nightshirt. They all pulled chairs up to the side of the bed and huddled in them.

Rosa and Giselle took it in turns to tell them what they knew, and Elfrida added how she intended to keep the rest of the company from taking fright. When they finished, Cody and Fox exchanged a look and a wry smile. “See, now, Fox, I tol' ye the ladies woulda figgered out a short plan afore we got up here,” Cody said. “Here's th' thing, though. Fox an' me, we've seen a good bit'a fightin, an' we figger this storm ain't but the beginnin'. It's got a evil feel to't. That kinda matches up with you tellin' me there's some Fire Magic mixed up with it, on'y turned t'cold. I ain't never seen that, but I heerd 'bout it, from a feller in England what recognized me as a mage.” He shook his head. “That feller allowed as how he ain't
never
heerd of a Cold Elemental critter that weren't all bad, clear through. You go makin' a deal with one'a them, an' it freezes all the heart right outa ye.”

“That . . . doesn't sound good,” ventured Giselle.

“Yep. An' it gets worse. 'Cause I kin tell whoever's out there, if he ain't a Master, he's damn close.” He picked at the edge of his blanket. “Still, Rosie, yer right. We cain't go makin' no plans without knowin' who's behind all this, how strong they are, an' maybe, iff'n we're lucky, what their plans are. An' the good news is I bet they might go guardin' 'gainst Fire, Air or Water scryin', but they ain't gonna 'gainst Earth.”