Chicks - The Chick Is In The Mail Part 8

Catherine had come to lend Marigold spiritual support, even though both girls understood that only Marigold would be summoned into the chamber. They awaited that summons now. Both wore full dress armor except for helmets, in honor of the solemnity of the occasion. Their fidgeting clanked on the stonefloor.

"What if he tells you totalk to the haunt?" Catherine breathed.

"Oh, he wouldn't! I couldn't!"

"But he might. You know how he is."

Marigold nodded. Her chin piece clinked against her gorget, which in turn rattled her breastplate, with its slipped emblem. "I don't-oh, what was that? Around the corner!"

"Not your aunt. Really! I saw the right hand. It wasthere ."

"Oh," Marigold said, visibly relaxing. "Who was it?"

"I didn't see. But I guess it was one of those snotty First Chamber girls."

Marigold looked puzzled. "Why would they be here?"

"Oh, Mar, you're so innocent. Don't you know they're all jealous of this?"

"Jealous? Of this? Ofwhat ?"

"Of all the attention you're getting from the loremaster! Any of them would die for a private conference with him!"

"Ooohhh," Marigold said. Her smooth brow creased. "But . . . Cathy, I don't think so. They don't like him any better than we do. He's just as mean to them, you know. Even to Anna."

"I know. But she's probably jealous anyway. That whole crowd sucks up to all the teachers."

"But, Cath . . . I don't think they-"

"You don't think it because you're so nice. But everybody else in our chamber can see it. That Anna-oh!"

The door opened to reveal the loremaster. Marigold and Catherine clutched hands harder (clink, rattle).

The loremaster frowned.

"You are not needed here, Tyro Catherine. Go away."

"Yes, sir."

"On second thought, stay."

"S-stay?"

"I said so, didn't I? G.o.d, you girls are a waste of air. Come in. Sit there. No, not there-there."

Marigold and Catherine settled their armor on the edge of the raised stone hearth, empty in the warm summer. They sounded like a tray of dropped kitchenware. Loremaster Gwillam studied them withdistaste.

Long miserable moments dragged by for the girls.

Just when they could bear it no longer, the loremaster barked, "Tyro Catherine, haveyou seen this haunting?"

"No, sir."

"Are you lying?"

"No, sir!"

"I think you're lying."

"I d-don't lie, sir."

"If you say that, you're lying now. Everybody lies. Isn't that true?"

"Yes . . . no . . . I-"

"Do you think I lie?"

"No, sir."

"You're wrong. I lie. Am I right?"

"Yes . . . no . . . I . . . "

"Stupid as I thought. Both of you. Tyro Marigold, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to go where you go, do what you do. Everywhere. I will see what you see, and thus gather information on this haunting. I will-"

"Everywhere?" Marigold gasped.

"Everywhere. I will sleep in the Third Bedchamber. The tyromistress has given her permission. Her watchravens will accompany me, for propriety's sake. But I will be with you, and I will get to the bottom of this."

The girls looked at each other, appalled. Catherine, the bolder, finally said, "But, sir . . . "

"But what?"

"What . . . what if the haunt doesn't appear again?"

"It will appear again."

Once more the girls stared at each other.

"However," Loremaster Gwillam said, "I will certainly not tell you what I expect. You are both too stupid to understand. You may go. I will join you as soon as the tyromistress's ravens are delivered tome."

Outside the loremaster's closed door, Marigold burst into tears. Catherine put an arm around her.

"To have him . . . " sob, clank " . . . watch me all the time . . . " clank, sob " . . .criticizing the way he does . . . oh, Cath!"

"I know," Catherine soothed. "Old sot!"

"Sshhhh! He'll hear you!"

"I don't care if he does!"

But at a sound behind them, they both scurried away, raw-nerved and rattling.

Tyro Marigold was not lying. The other girl believed her utterly; I examined Catherine specifically to be sure of this. The haunting is real, there is nothing like it in all the modern literature, and I am going to be renowned throughout the Twenty-four Kingdoms.

All I need is for Marigold either to lose her sword arm or to learn something significant from the haunt of her aunt.

For the next five days I stuck to Marigold like a spell on a frog. I watched intently as she jousted; no fall severed her arm. I peered over her shoulder at her lesson scrolls; no writing changed to haunted runes from a tutelary ghost. I sat on the sidelines as she worked out in the ring; no opponent's sword cut through her elbow. I knelt beside her at vigil; no haunt appeared, dressed in b.l.o.o.d.y armor.

I was not discouraged. But I may have become a touch impatient with the stupid tyros (it is my only fault). Unfortunately, they are all stupid. This is how I know I will have nothing to learn beyond the grave-I am being given all my trials now.

On the sixth day, however, it happened. Everybody saw it, even the watchravens.

Thus is scholarly vigilance rewarded in the worthy.

"I can't stand it," Marigold moaned. "I can't, I can't!"

"Keep your voice down," Tyro Elizabeth said nervously from the pallet beside Marigold. Loremaster Gwillam slept on Marigold's other side. Three watchravens perched on the six-inch-high carved wooden fence between.

"Liz, it's awful. Today in Summa Logicales he screamed at me that I was horse dung. In front of everybody!"

"I know. But quieter, Mar. Shhhhh."

"What does he want from me?"

Elizabeth didn't answer. No one knew. From beyond the symbolic fence came the loremaster's softsnoring. The ravens' black eyes, wide open, gleamed in the moonlight from the open window.

"And tomorrow," Marigold moaned, but very quietly, "we have to-what was that?"

"I didn't hear any-oh!"

Both girls sat up, grabbed each other, and rose to their knees to look out the window. Then they shrieked to raise the dead, although in this case that was unnecessary.

The haunt of First Dame Cecilie of Castle Thlevin stood a hundred yards off, at the edge of the wood.

At such a distance she was a small armor-clad figure, but clearly one-armed. She keened despairingly, "Marigold! Marigold of West Riding!"

"Oh! Oh!" Marigold shrieked.

"What? What?" screamed the rest of the Third Bedchamber, now awake.

"Severed yore!" cried the watchravens.

"Go! Go to her, you stupid girl!" Loremaster Gwillam cried, bolt upright on his pallet, clutching the windowsill greedily. His striped nightcap fell over one eye and he shoved it away. "Go! Wait-go alone!"

"Alone?" cried Marigold, aghast.

"Yes, yes! How else can she cut . . . er, how else can she learn whatever she must know from you?

Go!"

Marigold was not the brightest young woman in the Twenty-four Kingdoms, but she did not lack bravery. At an order from a loremaster, she started to pull on her armor.

"No, wait-Iwill go with you!" the loremaster cried.

"You go with-no, no, I'll go alone!"

"Are you contradicting me, Tyro?" Loremaster Gwillam pulled himself up to his full height, plus slightly tilted nightcap.

"No," Marigold said miserably.

"Never sore," said a raven.

"Ever on the floor," said another.

But by the time they reached the edge of the wood, the haunt of Dame Cecilie had vanished.

The mistake was mine. I admit it; I am not one such as cannot admit when he is in error. I was impatient (it is my only fault). I should not have tried to go with Marigold the Stupid. I should have instead let her go alone, respecting the sacred privacy of a tuition haunting, and then spied on her with a spell pool. Next time, I will know better. Next time, I will be better prepared. Next time came two days later.

Although I thought, before those two days had elapsed, that I had my prize. Tyro Marigold fell at sword practice in the armory.

She was matched against Tyro Catherine, who was as inept as she. Oh, I will be glad when I shake the dust of this brackish excuse for a castle from my boots, and leave these stupid girls behind me! Living always among women is itself enough of a curse; living with tyros is a flagellation no loremaster should have to bear.

The practice was held indoors in the armory, a windowless building large enough to hold all thirty-three tyros, only because outside it rained. For an hour the tyros had been set at the pel-quintain, a stake driven upright into the ground, with which they "fenced" with double-weight sword and s.h.i.+eld. Each girl wielded forty pounds of metal, so that when it should be changed for regular weaponry, sword and s.h.i.+eld would seem light by comparison. Rain drummed steadily on the roof, just above the bannerettes and pennoncels stored in the rafters. A rack against the wall held more s.h.i.+elds, swords, and armor, most of it slung over nails and pegs.

"Change now!" called the training mistress. "Hut, hut!"

The weary girls staggered to the wall rack and switched their double-weight swords and s.h.i.+elds for standard-weight. Training Mistress Joan again paired them off, this time without regard for list ranking.

Perhaps it was a deliberate attempt to expose them to different competencies. Or perhaps Joan was weary, too, and paired whomever happened to stand beside each other.

Or perhaps-I thought then-it was fate.

Tyro Anna smiled, nastily, at Tyro Marigold, who smiled back, waveringly.

"Begin!"

The girls started whacking away. Tyros, of course, were not allowed to foin; a direct thrust of the point by such beginners might cause serious injury. So they slashed and feinted and whacked, most of them unbalanced by the sudden change in weapon weight, all of them looking as silly as flailing chickens thrown into a pond. And in the midst of the whacking and flailing and lurching, Tyro Marigold tripped.

She slashed at Anna, who moved easily out of the way. The too-hard slash unbalanced Marigold, carrying her sideways until she crashed into a pel-quintain. That caromed her into the wall rack of armor.

It was bolted to the wall, but the careless and stupid and exhausted tyros had slung their double-weight weapons on the pegs any which way, and many pieces fell.