I SHOULD HAVE known that something was very wrong when the Mules started flying erratically. I was misled a bit, I suppose, because there were no actual crashes, just upset stomachs. The ordinary person on the street blamed it on turbulence; and considering what they understood of the way the system worked, that was as reasonable a conclusion as any other. However, I had full access to classified material, and I knew perfectly well that it was magic, not aerodynamics, that kept the Mules flying. And magic at the level of skill necessary to fly a bulky creature like a Mule was not likely to suffer any because of a little disturbance in the air. You take a look at a Mule sometime; it surely isn’t built for flight.
Even someone who’s gone no farther in magic than Common Sense Level knows that the harmony of the universe is a mighty frail and delicately balanced equilibrium, and that you can’t go tampering with any part of it without affecting everything else. A child knows that. So that when whatever-it-was started, with its first symptoms being Mules that made their riders throw up, I should of known that something sturdy was tugging hard at the Universal Web.
I was busy, let’s grant me that. I was occupied with the upcoming Grand Jubilee of the Confederation of Continents. Any meeting that it doesn’t happen but once every five hundred years—you tend to pay it considerable attention. One of our freighters had had engine trouble off the coast of Oklahomah, and that was interfering with our supply deliveries, I was trying to run a sizable Castle with a staff that bordered, that spring, on the mediocre, and trying to find fit replacements before the big to-do. And there were three Grannys taken to their beds in my kingdom, afflicted with what they claimed was epizootics and what I knew was congenital cantankerousness, and that was disrupting the regular conduct of everyday affairs more than was convenient.
So ... faced with a lot of little crises and one on the way to being a big one, what did I do?
Well, I went to some meetings. I went to half a dozen. I fussed at the Castle staff, and I managed to get me in an Economist who showed some promise of being able to make the rest of them shape up. I hired a new Fiddler, and I bought a whole team of speckledy Mules that I’d had my eye on for a while. I visited the “ailing” Grannys, with a box of hard candy for each, and paid them elaborate compliments that they saw right through but enjoyed just the same. And I went to church.
I was in church the morning that Terrence Merryweather McDaniels the 6th, firstborn son of Vine of Motley and Halliday Joseph McDaniels the 14th, was kidnapped, right in broad daylight ... when the man came through me church door on a scruffy rented Mule, right in the middle of a Solemn Service—right in the middle, mind you, of a prayer!— and rode that Mule straight down the aisle. He snatched Terrence Merryweather in his sleeping basket from between his parents, and be flew right up over the Reverend’s head and out through the only stained glass window he could count on to iris—Mule, basket, blankets, baby, and all, before any of us could do more than gape. February the 21st, that was; I was there, and it was that humiliating, I’m not likely to forget it. The McDaniels were guests of Castle Brightwalei; and under our protection, and for sure should of been safe in our church. And now here was their baby kidnapped!
Although it is possible that kidnapping may not be precisely the word in this particular instance. You have a kidnapping, generally there’s somebody missing, and a ransom note, and whatnot. In this case, the Reverend shouted an AAAAmen! and we all rushed out the church door; and there, hanging from the highest of the three cedar trees in the churchyard in a life-support bubble, was Terrence Merryweather McDaniels the 6th, sucking on his toe to show how undisturbed he was by it all. And the Rent-a-Mule chewing on the crossclover against the church wall, under the overhang. There was no sign of its rider, who could make a claim to speed if to nothing else.
We could see the baby just fine, though we couldn’t hear him. And we knew he was safe in the bubble, and all his needs attended to indefinitely. But he might as well of been in the Wilderness Lands of Tinaseeh for all the good that did us—we didn’t dare touch him.
Oh, we had Magicians there skilled enough to put an end to that bubble and float the baby down to his daddy’s arms without ruffling one bright red hair on his little head. If we hadn’t had them, we could of gotten them in a hurry. It wasn’t that; it was a matter of diagnosis.
We had no way, you see, of knowing just what kind of magic was on the forcefield holding that bubble up in the tree and keeping it active. Might of been no problem at all, just a bit of Granny Magic. Ought to of been, if the man doing it couldn’t afford but a Rent-a-Mule. And then it might of been that the mangy thing was meant to make us think that, and it might of been that if we so much as jiggled that baby we’d blow the whole churchyard—AND the baby—across the county line. We’re not much for taking chances with babies, I’m proud to say, and we weren’t about to be hasty. The way to do it was to find the Magician that’d set the Spell, or whatever it was, and make it clear that we intended to know, come hell or high water, and keep on making it clear till we got told. Until then, that baby would just have to stay in the cedar tree with the squirrels and the chitterbirds and the yellowjays.
Vine of Motley carried on a good deal, doing her family no credit at all, but she was only thirteen and it her first baby, and allowances were made. Besides, I wasn’t all that proud of my own self and my own family at that moment.
Five suspicious continental delegations I had coming to Castle Brightwater in less than three months, to celebrate the Grand Jubilee of a confederation they didn’t trust much more now than they had two hundred years ago. Every one of them suspecting a plot behind every door and under every bedstead and seeing Spells in the coffee cups and underneath their saddles and, for all I knew, in their armpits. And I was proposing that they’d all be safe here—when I couldn’t keep one little innocent pointy-headed baby safe in my own church on a Solemn Day?
It strained the limits of my imagination somewhat more than somewhat, and there was no way of keeping it quiet. They’d be having picnics under the tree where that baby hung in his pretty bubble and beaming the festivities out on the comsets before suppertime, or my name wasn’t Responsible of Brightwater
In the excitement we left the Solemn Service unfinished, and it took three Spells and a Charm to clear that up later on, not to mention the poor Reverend going through the service again to an empty church reeking mightily of garlic and asafetida. But the clear imperative right then was a family meeting; and we moved in as orderly a fashion as was possible (given the behavior of Vine of Motley) back to the Castle, where I turned all the out-family over to the staff to feed and cosset and called everyone else at once to the Meetingroom.
The table in the Meetingroom was dusty, and I distinctly saw a spiderweb in a far window, giving me yet another clue to the competency of my staff and strongly tempting me to waste a Housekeeping Spell or two—which would of been most unbecoming, but I never could abide dirt, even loose dirt—and I waved everybody to their chairs. Which they took after brushing more dust with great ostentation off the chair seats, drat them all for their eagerness to dot every “i” and cross every “t” when it was my competence in question, and I called the roll.
My mother was there, Thom of Guthrie, forty-four years old and not looking more than thirty of those, which wasn’t even decent; I do not approve of my mother. I said “Thom of Guthrie” and she said “Here” and we left it at that. My uncles, Donald Patrick Brightwater the 133rd—time we dropped that name awhile, we’d wear it out—and Jubal Brooks Brightwater the 31st. Jubal’s wife, Emmalyn of Clark, poor puny thing, she was there; and Donald’s wife. Patience of Clark, Emmalyn’s sister. And my grandmother, Ruth of Motley, not yet a Granny, since Jonathan Cardwell Brightwater the 12th showed no signs of leaving this world for all he was 109 years old ... and it was said that he still troubled Ruth of Motley in the nights and scandalized the servingmaids in the chamber next to theirs. And I could believe it. We could of used him that day, since his head was as clear as his body was said to be hearty, but he was off somewhere trying to trade a set of Charms he’d worked out for a single Spell he’d been wanting to get hold of at least the last five years ... and the lady that Spell belonged to not about to pass it on to him, if he spent five more.
As it was, that meant only seven of us in Meeting, not nearly enough for proper discussion or voting, and you would of thought that on a Solemn Day, and with guests in the Castle, there’d of been more of us in our proper places. I was put out about the whole thing, and my mother did not scruple to point that out.
“Mighty nervy of you. Responsible,” she said, in that voice of hers, “being cross with everybody else for what is plainly your own fault.” I could of said Yes-Mother; since she despises that, but I had more pressing matters to think of than annoying my mother. She’d never make a Granny; she was too quick with that tongue and not able to put it under rein when the circumstances called for it, and at her age she had no excuse. She’d be a flippant wench at eighty-five, still stuck in her magic at Common Sense Level, like a child. Lucky she was that she was beautiful, since men have no more sense than to be distracted by such things, and Thorn was that. She had the Guthrie hair; masses of it, exactly the color of bittersweet chocolate and so alive it clung to your fingers (and to everything else, so that you spent half your life picking Guthrie hair off of any surface you cared to examine, but we’ll let that pass). And she had the Guthrie bones ... a face shaped like a heart, and great green eyes in it over cheekbones high arched like the curve of a bird’s wing flying, and the long throat that melted into perfect shoulders ... And oh, those breasts of hers! Three children she’d suckled till they walked, and those breasts looked as maiden as mine. She was well named, was Thorn of Guthrie, and many of us had felt the sharp point of her since she stepped under the doorbeam of Castle Brightwater thirty-one years ago. I have always suspected that those Guthrie bones made her womb an uncomfortable place to lie, giving her a way to poke at you even before you first breathed the air of the world, but that’s a speculation I’ve kept to myself. I hope.
“Well, now that we’re thoroughly disgraced in front of the whole world,” sighed my grandmother, “what do we propose to do about it?”
“This is not the first manifestation of something cockeyed,” said Jubal Brooks. “You know that, Responsible.”
“There was the milk,” my grandmother agreed. “Four Mundy’s in a row now it’s been sour straight from the goat. I assume you don’t find that normal, granddaughter.”
“And there was the thing with the mirrors,” said Emmalyn. “It frightened me, my mirror shattering in my hand like that.”
I expect it did frighten her, too; everything else did. I was hoping she wouldn’t notice the spiderweb. She was a sorry excuse for a woman; on the other hand, we couldn’t of gotten Patience of Clark without taking the sister, too, and all in all it had been a bargain worth making.
Patience was sitting with her left little finger tapping her bottom lip, a gesture she made when she was waiting for a hole to come by in the conversation, and I turned to her and made the hole.
“Patience, you wanted to say something?”
“I was thinking of the streetsigns,” she said.
“The streetsigns?”
“Echo in here,” said my mother, always useful.
“I’m sorry. Patience,” I said. “I hadn’t heard that there was anything happening with streetsigns.”
“All over the city,” said my uncle Donald Patrick. “Don’t you pay any attention to anything?”
“Well? What’s been happening to them? Floating in the air? Whirling around? Exploding? What?”
Patience laughed softly, and the sun shone in through the windows and made the spattering of freckles over the bridge of her nose look like sprinkled brown sugar. I was very fond of Patience of Clark.
“They read backwards,” she said. “The sign that should say ‘River Street’ ... it says’Teerts Revir’” She spelled it out for me to make that deal; though the tongue does not bend too badly to “Teerts Revir”
“Well, that.” I said, “is downright silly.”
“It’s all silly,” said Patience, “and that is why I was laughing. It’s all ridiculous.”
Emmalyn, whose freckles just ran together and looked like she hadn’t bothered to wash, allowed as how she might very well have been cut when her mirror shattered, and that was not silly.
I looked at them all, and I waited. My uncles, pulling at their short black beards the way men always do in meetings. My mother, trying to keep her mind—such as it was—on the discussion. My grandmother, just biding her time till she could get back to her embroidery. And the sisters—Emmalyn watching Patience, and Patience watching some inner source of we-know-not-what that had served us very well in many a crisis.
Not a one of them mentioned the Mules, though I gave them two full minutes. And that meant one of three things: they had not noticed the phenomenon, or they did not realize that it was of any importance, or they had some reason for behaving as if one of the first two were the case. I wondered, but I didn’t have time for finding out in any roundabout fashion.
“I agree,” I said at once the two minutes were up, “it’s all silly. Even the minors. Not a soul was harmed by any one of the mirrors that broke—including you, Emmalyn. Anybody can smell soured milk quick enough not to drink it, and the other six days of the week it’s been fine. And as for the streetsigns, which I’m embarrassed I didn’t know about them but there it is—I didn’t—that’s silliest of all.”
“Just mischief,” said Jubal, putting on the period. “Until today.”
My mother flared her perfect nostrils, like a high-bred Mule but a lot more attractive. “What makes you think, Jubal Brooks,” she demanded, “that today’s kidnapping—which is a matter of major importance—is connected in any way with all these baby tricks of milk and mirrors?”
“And streetsigns,” said Emmalyn of Clark. Naturally.
“Jubal’s quite right,” I said, before Thorn of Guthrie could turn on Emmalyn. “And I call for Council.”
There was a silence that told me I’d reached them, and Emmalyn looked thoroughly put out. Council meant there’d be no jokes, and no family bickering, and no pause in deliberation for coffee or cakes or ak or anything else till a conclusion was come to and a course agreed upon.
“Do you think that’s really called for, Responsible?” asked my grandmother. She was doing a large panel at that time, mourningdoves in a field of violets, as I recall. Not that she’d ever seen a moumingdove. “As Jubal said, it’s been mischief only so far. And pretty piddling mischief at that. And there’s no evidence I see of a connection between what happened in church today and all that other foolishness.”
“Responsible sees a connection,” said Patience, “or she would not have called Council. And the calling is her privilege by rule; I suggest we get on with it.”
I told them about the Mules then, and both the uncles left off their beard-pulling and gave me their attention. Tampering with goats was one thing, tampering with Mules was quite another: Not that they knew what it meant in terms of magic, of course—that would not of been suitable, since neither had ever shown the slightest talent for the profession, and I suppose they took flying Mules for granted as they did flying birds. But they had the male fondness for Mules, and they had anyone’s dislike for the idea of suddenly falling out of the air like a stone, which is where they could see it might well lead.
“It has to do, I believe,” said Patience slowly, “with the Jubilee. That’s coming up fast now, and anybody with the idea of putting it in bad odor would have to get at it fairly soon and move with some dispatch. I do believe that’s what this is all about.”
She was right, but they’d listen better if she was doing the talking, so I left it to her.
“Go on,” I said. “Please.”
“I’m telling you nothing you don’t know already,” she said. “The Confederation of Continents is not popular, nor likely to be, especially with the Kingdoms of Purdy, Guthrie, and Farson. And Tinaseeh is in worse state. The Travellers hate any kind of government; they are still so busy just hacking back the Wilderness that they don’t feel they can spare time for anything else, and they for sure don’t want the Jubilee. A Jubilee would give a kind of endorsement to the Confederation, and they are dead set against that. And then there’re all the wishy-washy ones waiting around to see which way the wind blows.”
“ ‘A thing celebrated is a thing vindicated,’” quoted Ruth of Motley. “They all know that as well as anybody.”
“The idea,” Patience went on, “would be to make it appear that there’s so much trouble on the continent of Marktwain ... so much trouble in the Kingdom of Brightwater specifically ... that it would not really be safe for the other Families to send their delegations to the Jubilee.”
My conscience jabbed me, for she was right; and it had been niggling at the back of my mind for some time. Though I’d managed to ignore it up to now by worrying about dust on the banisters and coffee for deliveries for Mizzurah.
Donald Patrick scooted his chair back and stared at me, and then scooted it up again, and said damnation to boot, and my grandmother went “Ttch,” with the tip of her tongue.
“Five years of work it’s cost us,” he said, glaring around the table. “Five years to convince them even to let us schedule the Jubilee! Surely all that work can’t be set aside by some spoiled milk and a few smashed mirrors!”
“Precisely,” I said, flat as pondwater. “And that is just the point. You see, youall, how it will look? First, parlor tricks. Then, a kind of tinkering—nothing serious, just tinkering— with the Mules. And then, to show that what goes four steps can go twelve, the baby-snatching. Again, you notice, without any harm done.”
“Aw,” said Jubal, “it’s just showing off. A display of power. Like throwing a dead goat into your well.”
“That it is,” I said. “ ‘See what we can do?’ it says ... ‘And think what we might do, if we cared to.’ That’s the message being spread here. Think the Wommacks will fly here from the coast knowing their Mules may drop out from under them any moment, to come to the support of our so-called Confederation?”
“Disfederation,” murmured Patience of Clark. “A more accurate term at this point.”
“Patience,” I said, “you hurt me.”
“Howsomever and nevertheless,” she said, “it’s true. And anything but a sure hand now will wreck it all.”
We sat there silent, though Emmalyn fidgeted some, because it wasn’t anything to be serene about. Marktwain, Oklahomah, and probably Mizzurah, agreed on the need for the Confederation of Continents; and their Kingdoms were willing to back it as best they could. But the whole bulk of Aricansaw lay between Marktwain and Mizzurah, and the Ocean of Storms between all of us and either Kintucky or Tinaseeh; and the three loyal continents all put together were not the size of Tinaseeh. Since the day the Twelve Families first landed on this planet in 2021, since the moment foot was set on this land and it was named Ozark in the hope it would prove a homeworld to our people, those of us who preferred not to remain trapped forever in the twenty-first century had been in the minority.
The Twelve Families had seen, on Old Earth, what the centralization of a government could mean. They had seen war and waste and wickedness beyond description, though the descriptions handed down to us were enough to this day to keep children in Granny Schools awake in the long nights of winter, shivering more with nightmare than with the cold. Twelve Kingdoms, we had. And at least four of them ready to leap up every time a dirty puddle appeared on a street corner and shout that this was but the first sign, the first step, toward the wallowing in degradation that came when the individual allowed theirselves to be swallowed up (they always said “swallowed up,” playing on the hatred every Ozarker had for being closed in on any side, much less all of them) by a central government ... And several more were in honesty uncommitted, ready to move either way.
I ran them by in my mind, one by one. Castle Purdy, Castle Guthrie, Castle Parson, Castle Traveller—dead set against the Confederation and anxious to grab any opportunity to tear the poor frail thing apart and go to isolation for everything but trade and marriage. Castles Smith, Airy, Clark, and McDaniels, and Castles Lewis and Motley of Mizzurah, all with us—but perhaps only Castle Airy really ready, or able, to put any strength behind us. It was hard to know. When the Confederation met at Castle Brightwater, one month now in every four—to the bitter complaints of Purdy, Guthrie, Parson, and Traveller about the expense and vile waste and the frivolousness of it all—those six voted very carefully indeed. That is, when we could manage to bring anything to a vote. Only Castles Airy and Lewis had ever made a move that went three points past neutrality, and that rarely. As for Castle Wommack, who knew where they stood? One delegate they sent to the meetings, grudgingly, against the other Castles’ delegations of four each and full staff; and the Wommack delegate came without so much as a secretary or Attendant, and spent most of his time abstaining. We were seven to five for the Confederation—maybe. Maybe we were but two against ten, with six of the ten playing lip service but ready to bolt at the first sign of anything that smelled like real conflict.
My mother made a rare concession: she addressed me by term of kinship.
“Daughter,” she said, making me raise my eyebrows at the unexpected mode of address, “what do you think we ought to do?”
“Ask Jubal,” said foolish Emmalyn, and I suppose Patience kicked her, under the table. Patience always sat next to Emmalyn for that specific purpose. Ask Jubal, indeed.
“Think now before you speak,” said Ruth of Motley. “It won’t do to answer this carelessly and get caught out, Responsible. You give it careful thought.” She had finally forgotten about her embroidery and joined us, and I was glad of it.
“I think,” I said slowly, “that things are not so far out of hand that they cannot be stopped. Vine of Motley is crying herself into hiccups up in the guestchambers at this very moment, and no doubt feels herself mighty abused, but that baby is safer where he is than in her arms. Signs and mirrors and milk make no national catastrophe, and Mules that behave like they’d been drinking bad whiskey are not yet a disaster. The point is to stop it now, before it goes one step further. The next step might not be mischief.”
“What is called for,” said my grandmother; nodding her head, “is a show of competence; that would serve the purpose. Something that would demonstrate that the Brightwaters are capable of keeping the delegations, and all their kin, and all their staffs, safe here for the Jubilee.”
“I sometimes wonder if it’s worth it,” sighed Donald Patrick. “I sometimes think it might be best to let them go on and dissolve the Confederation and all be boones if that’s their determined mind! The energy we put into all this, the time, the money ... Do you know what Brightwater spent in food and drink alone at the last quarterly meeting?”
“Donald Patrick Brightwater,” said Ruth of Motley in a voice like the back of a hand, “you sound like a Purdy.”
“I beg your pardon, Mother,” said my uncle. “I hadn’t any intention of doing so.”
Strictly speaking, it was not fair for him to be rebuked. As the ordinary citizen was ignorant of what kept the Mules flying in the absence even of wings, so was Donald Patrick ignorant of the peril every Ozarker faced if we could not establish once and for all a central government that could respond, and respond with speed, in an emergency. The decision to maintain that ignorance had been made deliberately, and for excellent reasons, hundreds of years ago, when first the menace of the Out-Cabal had been discovered by our Magicians. And that decision would stand, for so long as it was possible, and for so long as disputations in political science, and intercontinental philosophy, and planetary ecology, and the formidable theory of magic, could be substituted for a truth it had been sworn our people would never have to learn.
“First,” I said quickly, “there’s finding out where this attack is coming from. That’s the easy part.”
My mother crossed her long white hands over her breasts to indicate her shock and informed us that first we had to get that baby down out of that tree.
“Mother, dear Mother,” I said, “you know that’s not so— that baby is all right. Unlike the rest of us, that baby is protected from every known danger this planet can muster up. Not so much as a bacterium can get through that bubble to harm Terrence Merryweather McDaniels, and he will be tended more carefully there than a king’s son.”
It was only a figure of speech; there were no kings in our kingdoms and never had been, and therefore no king’s sons. When First Granny had stood on Ozark for the first time, her feet to solid ground after all those weary years on The Ship, she had looked around her; drawn a long breath, and said, “Well, the Kingdom’s come at last, praise be!” and we’d had “kingdoms” ever since for that reason alone. But it had the necessary effect. Thorn of Guthrie made a pretense of thinking it over, but she knew I was right, and she nodded her lovely head and agreed with me that the baby probably represented the least of our problems. Except insofar as it stood for an insult to our Family and our faith, of course (and it was at that point that I realized the Solemn Service had been left unfinished).
“I say call in the Magicians of Rank, then,” said Jubal Brooks, “and have them to find out which one of our eleven loving groups of kindred has set itself to bring the Confederation down about our heads. Literally about our heads.”
“No,” I told him, hoping he was right that it was only one. “No, Jubal Brooks, that’s all wrong. It would maybe be fastest, depending on the strength and number of the Magicians ranged against ours, but it’s all wrong as to form.”
“I don’t see it,” he said.
“A symbol,” said Ruth of Motley, spelling it all out for him, “is best answered by a symbol. Not by a ... meat cleaver.”
“And what symbol do we propose to offer up for this motley collection—no offense meant. Mother—of shenanigans? Cross our hearts and spit in the ocean under a full moon?”
“A Quest, I expect, Jubal,” I said, straight out. I had been thinking while they were talking, and level for level, that seemed right to me. And the women nodded all around the table.
“In this day and age?” sputtered Donald Patrick, and threw up his hands. “Do you realize the antiquated set of hidebound conditions that go with mounting up a Quest? Responsible, you can’t be serious about this.”
“Well, it is fitting,” said his mother saving me the trouble. “As Responsible and Patience have pointed out, the entire campaign against us to this- time has been a single symbol, what would be referred to in classical terms as a Challenge. OUR MAGIC IS BETTER THAN YOUR MAGIC, you see. No harm has been done, where obviously it could have been, had they been so minded. Very well, then—for an old-fashioned Challenge we shall offer an old-fashioned Quest. It is appropriate; it has the right ring to it.”
“Foof.” said Donald Patrick. “It’s absurd.”
“Indeed it is,” I agreed, “and that’s the whole point.”
“We might should ignore the whole thing,” he said. “For all we know.”
“We do, and there will be no Grand Jubilee of the Confederation of Continents of Ozark, Donald Patrick Brightwater—and yes, I do know, down to the penny, what all this has been costing us. Nor will we have another meeting of the Confederation, I daresay, for a very long time. Whoever is doing this, they would be delighted to have us ignore it all, and everybody snickering behind their hands at us for cowards and weaklings ... and it is in the hope that we will be fools enough to do that that they’ve kept every move to pestering only and not gone forward to injury. If they can bring us down for two cents, why spend two dollars?” I was completely out of breath.
“They have overplayed their hand,” said Patience, “with this matter of the McDaniels baby.”
“I believe so,” I said. “It was a mistake of judgment. They should of kidnapped one of Jubal’s Mules instead.”
“And hung it in a cedar tree? In a life-support bubble?” Her brown eyes dancing. Patience of Clark was clearly trying not to imagine Jubal’s favorite Mule being cleaned and fed and curried up in the cedar tree; and losing the battle.
“It would of been safer,” I said. “I might of been busy enough not to take it for anything more than a prank; and they would of had still more time to make nuisances of themselves—and undercut the confidence in our security staff— before the Jubilee.”
“Responsible, that’s but eleven weeks away!” Patience broke in, the laughter in her eyes fading. “That’s mighty little time.”
“All the more reason to talk less and do more,” I said. “Here’s what I propose.”
I would take our best Mule, from Brightwater’s champion line, called Sterling and deserving of her name. I would make a brief and obvious fuss around the city in the way of putting together suitable outfitting for a journey of a special kind. I would let the word of the Quest be “leaked” to the comset networks. And then, I would do each Castle in turn, staying only just long enough at each to make the point that had to be made. Responsible of Brightwater; touring the Castles on a Quest after the source of magic put to mischief and to wickedness—just the thing. Just the thing!
“Even Tinaseeh?” asked Jubal dubiously.
“Even Tinaseeh. Certainly.”
“It’s a nine-day flight by Mule from here to Tinaseeh,” he said. “At least. And you do a Quest, you do it by foot or by Mule, Responsible, no getting out of that. Nine days, just that one leg of the trip.”
“As the crow flies,” I acknowledged. Not that it would of taken me nine days, but there was no reason to let Jubal Brooks know more than he needed to know. “I will not head straight for Tinaseeh across the Oceans of Remembrances and of Storms, dear Uncle. I am touring the Twelve Kingdoms on solemn Quest, please remember. First I will go to Castle McDaniels. Then a short flight to Arkansaw, a mere hop across the channel to Mizzurah, on over to Kintucky, and then—and only then—to Tinaseeh. Then Oklahomah, quick around it, and back home.”
“But, my dear niece,” he said—Jubal Brooks was stubborn, grant him that—”though it’s but one day from Kintucky’s southernmost coast to the coast of Tinaseeh, that one day will set you down not at Castle Traveller but on the edge of the largest Wilderness Lands on Ozark. Larger than the entire land area of this continent, for example; I strongly doubt you’ll do the trip over that in less than three days. And you’d still have two days ahead of you before you reached the Castle gates!”
My grandmother stepped in then; the man was getting above himself, but tact, of course, was necessary. Men are a great deal of trouble, I must say.
“Jubal Brooks,” she said, firmly but courteously, “Responsible was properly named. I suggest we do her the courtesy of trusting her in this.”
“Distances,” he began—the man was ranting!—”are distances. Name or no name—”
We might of wasted a lot more time on that kind of thing, if there hadn’t of been a knock on the door just as he was hitting his stride. For all that we were in Council, we could spare time to answer the door; and we did. Nobody was there, of course, leading Emmalyn to look puzzled and Patience to look innocent, but it served its purpose.
I dismissed Council with thanks, letting Jubal run down naturally as we all filed out, paid a visit to the guestchambers only to be told that the baby’s parents had gone with full ceremonial tent to camp in the bed of needles beneath their son and her taking along the infant daughter of a servingmaid to see to the problem of Vine of Motley’s milk—a practical solution, if a bit hard on the servingmaid—and then I ran for the stables.
So far as I was concerned, we were late already,