The Spell-Bound Scholar (36 page)

Gregory rose and hurried after her, protesting, "Do not expect too much. We only knew the average height, after all. We may need to probe ten square yards to find it."

"Ten square yards instead of an acre?" Allouette called back over her shoulder. "A good bargain indeed!"

The widow followed with her children, wide-eyed and wondering.

Allouette whirled at the tree stump, setting the back of her heel against it, then paced off the distance and stopped, pointing at the ground. "There! Will you move the earth, wizard, or shall I?"

"You may have the honor of the first excavation," Gregory said with a smile. "If you tire, I shall take it up."

Allouette gave him a strange little frown as though wondering if he were mocking her, but turned to glare at the earth. It burst into a fountain of loam, dirt shooting up into the air in a tightly controlled spray that fell neatly to the north in a growing mound.

The children cried out in fear and clung to their mother, who, sadly, was in little better condition than they.

The last scatter of dirt fell on the heap, and Allouette scowled down. "Three feet. That should be enough."

"Should." Gregory looked down into a neat cylinder a foot in diameter. "Let us widen it to three feet."

She eyed him askance, wondering if that was really admiration in his voice. "It took small enough skill, you know."

"I know just the opposite. Nevertheless, stand away from the spray and let us see if I can perform in as tidy a fashion as yourself."

Allouette stepped back beside him and the earth erupted again, as though a giant mole were trying to claw his way back into his lightless home. It rose in a nearly solid column for minutes as Gregory stared at it with a knit brow, digging by telekinesis and trying to equal Allouette's skill. Abruptly he relaxed and the flow stopped. "Boy," he said to the widow's eldest, "go look in that hole and tell me what you see."

The lad glanced up at his mother for reassurance, but she took firm hold of his hand, took his sib's too, and went with him. All three of them peered down into the excavation—a very ragged circle, to Gregory's chagrin—and exclaimed with wonder.

"I see a chest, sir!" the lad cried. " 'Tis a wooden chest,

banded with brass and fastened with a huge lock."

Allouette gave a shriek of joy and threw her arms around Gregory in triumph. "We have found it!"

He stood rigid for a moment, wondering what Geoffrey would have done in this situation, then clasped his arms around her waist and whirled her about, grinning. "You have calculated marvelously."

"Liar!" She pushed away from him but looked up with glowing eyes. "It is you who did the calculations, but I shall be able to when next I need. ... Ho! Leave be! It is too heavy for you!"

Turning, Gregory saw the eldest boy standing in the hole, heaving at the little chest. He grinned and stepped over to the lad. "Is it so weighty, then? That is good news. Let me help."

The boy gave a shout of fright as the box floated upward in his grip. He let go as if it were hot metal, but it kept on rising of its own accord—or Gregory's.

He let it float to the ground. "Dame Musgrave, have you the key?"

"That, at least, my husband did leave me." The widow came forward, pulling out a key and fitting it to the lock. She tried to turn it and frowned with the effort. "It moves, but scarcely."

"It has lain long in the damp with no oil," Gregory explained, then turned to Allouette. "Will you aid?"

"Why not you?" Allouette retorted. "I have never seen a telekinetic warlock before. Surely you can manage!"

"My father seems to have had a skill Gramarye telepaths lack," Gregory acknowledged, "but you seem to have it in greater measure than I—or at least have it under greater control."

"Well, then, if I must." Allouette didn't really seem to be upset at the news. She glared at the lock, saying, "Turn, good dame."

The widow's lips pressed thin with effort and the lock groaned, then gave and fell open.

"Well done," Gregory said softly.

Allouette shrugged impatiently. "A bagatelle."

"Not to them."

Dame Musgrave yanked the lock loose from the hasp, opened the chest, and gasped.

"Is it gold, then?" Gregory asked. "I had thought that might be the reason for its weight."

"It is indeed gold, sir, and surely enough to pay our rent and pay for food till the children are grown." She turned to Allouette, tears in her eyes. "Oh, thank you, kind lady, a thousand times—and you, good sir."

Allouette stood stiff, staring with surprise at the elation the thanks gave her. Then she thawed and nodded. "It was our pleasure, good woman. Take the gold from the chest and hide it about you, all three of you, that you may take it to a safe place. Then have your children fill in the hole."

"We shall, we shall!" Dame Musgrave seized her hand and kissed it. "So much for they who say the witches are evil! Ever shall I sing your praises, sir and demoiselle."

Allouette managed to escape without too many more praises, though the children's did move her, especially since they were lisped through tears.

When she and Gregory were back in the greenwood, he said softly, "You need not be so surprised, you know. You are truly a good woman."

"Stuff and nonsense!" Allouette said angrily. "I am a wicked woman who has done one good deed, and you would be wise to remember that, sir!"

"I shall remember that you said it," Gregory temporized.

Allouette looked daggers at him but couldn't ignore the elation in her heart. "You have the advantage of me, sir— you know far more of mathematics than I. I shall require that you share that knowledge with me."

"Gladly," Gregory said, and began to explain the rest of plane geometry. She listened intently, drinking the concepts directly from his mind before he could put them into words and breathed, "Fascinating!"

Gregory broke off, realizing what she had done and staring in surprise. Then his eyes began to glow and he said, "You are truly the most wondrous of women, lustrous as a pearl and brilliant as a diamond."

Allouette turned away, feeling her face grow hot again. "I

was speaking not of my face and form, sir, but of things of the mind!"

"So was I," Gregory said.

She darted a puzzled glance at him. Surely he could not mean that mathematics meant more to him than the pleasures of the senses.

"You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen," Gregory said frankly, "but the glory of your mind exceeds even that of your face and form."

Now she blushed indeed, blushed beet-red and lowered her gaze, feeling the thrill of his admiration warring against her old cynicism. "I had rather speak of geometry than of my beauty, sir."

"If you must," Gregory sighed, "but there is a beauty to mathematics, too. Contemplation of its orders can lift the mind to an elevation matched only by the finest music or the most excellent poetry. I have never met another who could share that delight."

"Nor have you now, I suspect," Allouette said tartly. She turned away, chin high as she rode the forest pathway—but found herself remembering his arms around her. Foolish girl! she scolded herself. His embrace had felt as good as any other man's, no more and no less. Wrenching her mind back to the poor and weak, she proclaimed, "Thus it begins."

"Thus indeed." Gregory's voice was a caress.

She steeled herself against it. "I meant aiding the weak and desperate, wizard."

"I understood that."

She cast him a doubtful glance, then quickly looked away from his beaming smile. "I shall do more to make amends, much more."

"I rejoice to hear it,' Gregory said, "but with whom must you make amends?"

"With myself, of course," Allouette snapped. "My victims are either dead or far too wary of me to accept any aid I might offer—and it was unkind of you to remind me of that, sir."

"My apologies, lady," Gregory said with contrition.

"Accepted," Allouette grumbled. "Who else needs assistance, wizard?"

"Why, I do not know," Gregory said. "Let us ride and seek
!"

They didn't find anyone else in need that day, of course they were in a forest, not a city. But after dinner, Allouette found time to practice meditation again and considered Gregory's advice first with contempt, then with growing seriousness. Trying to imagine the sound one hand would make trying to clap was nonsense, of course, but merely thinking about it did seem to be leading her deeper into her trance.

The next day, they came to a village whose well had gone dry. Allouette attempted dousing and pronounced the water table still full but lower than when the well had been dug. The villagers were ready to start digging on the instant, but Gregory asked them what they would do if the well went dry the next year. "Dig again," they answered, but Allouette watched Gregory's speculative gaze and told them, "There might be a better way."

Gregory showed the blacksmith how to build a giant auger, then set the villagers to building a stand for it. They ran a pole through the top of the earth auger and harnessed two mules to it, then sent them plodding around and around in a circle.

"Why not let me dig as I did yesterday?" Allouette demanded.

"Because you might not be here next year, when the well fails again," Gregory told her.

When the auger came up wet, the townsfolk cheered, then fell silent, frowning. The elders asked, "How are we to draw up the water? Your hole is too small for a bucket!"

But Gregory had already set the village smith to making the first brazen pipe the town had seen. They forced it into the hole, section by section, while Allouette showed the town potter how to make a stout earthenware spout. It was fired and ready by the time the pipe was in place and, remembering the basic physics she had learned in school, she harnessed a

plunger to it, clad in leather to make it airtight. Then she poured in a little water to prime it and began working the handle. The villagers began to growl about wasted labor as she pushed it up and down, up and down, then, wearied, turned it over to another woman. When the water began to flow, the villagers exclaimed in awe, as though they had witnessed magic—which, as far as they were concerned, they had.

"
It works!" Allouette said, pink with pleasure.

They accepted the villagers' profusive thanks, then rode off into the forest, discussing ways of calculating air pressure. They expanded the discussion into the peregrinations of air masses and weather. When the trees shielded them from the villagers' sight, though, Gregory added his own thanks, telling Allouette that to the villagers, she had been a fountain in the desert. "To myself, too," he told her. "I never understood what all this nonsense about love and beauty was. Now all the verses of the love-crazed poets seem only common sense to me, for I have met you."

Allouette turned away, blushing again. "Be not so effusive, sir! I know you well enough by now, well enough to see that you would have felt only kindliness toward me if I had not shown them how to craft a pump and wished to discuss with you how its partial vacuum brought water up."

"That is so," Gregory confessed.

He was the most maddening man she had ever met.

Another village was beset by invisible monsters; Allouette realized that it had to be something in their food. When Gregory found that their only bread was rye, he examined it closely and identified the little black specks as a fungus that, he said, induced hallucinations. Allouette saw to importing barley from the next county and, with Gregory's smiling but hard-eyed support, talked the baron into paying for it. As they rode away, the two discussed how the fungus had induced hallucinations, which led to a discussion of the nervous system. Gregory listened to her with shining eyes, then said, "So it is not only a matter of your working upon people's minds by manipulating images into symbols—you have actually understood how their brains worked."

"Well, as much as anyone can," Allouette demurred.

"You are the only esper in all the land who has done so by herself," Gregory told her. "Who else would care? Who else could guess? You are an empath as well as a telepath, and the brilliance of your mind is alloyed by tenderness!"

Allouette squirmed, eyes downcast. "You do me too much honor, sir."

"My words cannot do enough." For a moment Gregory dropped his mind shield and she caught a glimpse of herself as he saw her—a shining, ethereal vision. It lasted only a

moment before he raised his shield again, but that was enough to make her tremble. "Sir! You do me far too much credit! Besides, I am nowhere nearly as beautiful as you think."

"No, you are more beautiful than even my thoughts can show," Gregory said. "Still, does the fact of your beauty matter so much as my perception of it?"

"Does it exist at all, except in your perception?" Allouette retorted, but she rode on, shaken.

Understanding that, Gregory shrugged. "You might as well ask whether the falling of a tree would make a sound if it fell in the depths of the forest with no living creature near."

"Of course it would!" Allouette frowned at him, relieved to be back on safe ground. "A sound wave is a sound wave."