The Warlock Heretical by Christopher Stasheff

Author:Christopher Stasheff
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy, sf_fantasy, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781612420516
Published: 2011-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Rod woke up to the sound of a bird trilling. He levered himself up onto one elbow, blinking around until things came into focus. The trilling, it turned out, was coming not from a bird, but from his daughter Cordelia.

She looked up brightly when she saw his head lift. "Good morn, Papa! Is't not a beautiful day?"

"If you say so," Rod grunted, pushing himself up to a sitting position. "But much as I like being away from it all, sweetheart, I must admit that I prefer a civilized mattress."

Of course, he could have had one easily; there were self-inflating mattresses cached inside his spacer—but he was apt enough to be in trouble for witchcraft, as it was. With the haunts running all around the countryside, the mood of the peasants wasn't exactly conciliatory. He heaved a martyred sigh and rolled off his pallet, lifting his cloak with him as he stood up, then shaking it out. "At least it's summer."

"Oh!" Cordelia looked up, eyes wide. "I should not have cared to have slept in the forest if 'twere winter, Papa."

"I wouldn't have, either," Rod agreed. "Get the fire going, would you? I'll be right back."

By the time he returned from a call of nature, Cordelia had assembled twigs and tinder into a little cone, point up, and was glaring at it. A wisp of smoke curled up; then it burst into

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flames. Cordelia relaxed, looking up at her father happily. "

"Pis lit, Papa. On what shall we dine?"

Well, it would be a good exercise. Rod frowned, his eyes losing focus as he concentrated on the thoughts all about him: worms, raccoons, deer… there! An escaped hen who had just laid two more eggs. He deepened his trance, feeling the flow of his esper powers, and thought of the eggs as being here, instead of there.

Something popped; he felt a sudden weight in his hands. He looked down and saw four smooth white ovoids in his cupped palms.

Somewhere in the forest a no-longer-domestic fowl looked up with a startled, and very indignant, squawk.

An hour later, the tinker and his daughter wandered into a circle of peasant huts glorified by the title of "hamlet." (The melancholy prince certainly would have objected, if he had known.) The two of them had faces bright and cheery, pots and pans clattering, and minds wide open for the slightest thought about flying cooking ware, hauntings, or other espers. But Rod didn't even have a chance to give his trade call; the peasants were already gathered together in the circle of beaten earth that served for a common, gossiping furiously. Cordelia's eyes widened. "Papa… ought not these men be in the fields?"

"By this time of day, they should." Rod frowned. "Something big must be going on. Maybe just the kind of haunting we're looking for?"

"Mayhap." Cordelia's eyes glazed, but she shook her head. "I cannot make out one separate thought. Papa, 'tis such a jumble."

"Well, then, we'll go back to the old-fashioned method." Rod stepped up and tapped a villager on the shoulder.

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