Song of Sorcery Read Free Page A

apron pockets. “I don’t know, Dad.”
    “You remember that nasty gypsy fella running off with Mullaly’s daughters and nearly emptying my wallet trying to save their foolish reputations?”
    “Yes, Dad, I remember. Betsy and Beatrice Mullaly are as bovine as their charges, though. Everybody knows that. Winnie’s got more sense.”
    “I think so. I don’t know. I wish I had my legs under me, so I could go see Rowan and talk to him myself.” He made an impatient attempt to rise. Maggie gently pushed him back onto the bed.
    “That’s no good, and you know it. I’ll go talk to Rowan.”
    The old man looked at her for a long time, then closed his eyes and sank back against his pillow. “Of course you will, lass. You’re the only one who can, I suppose.” Then opening one eye he looked at her again, more sharply. “You’re not thinking of going alone, of course?”
    She shrugged. “Why not? We can’t have it all over the territories what I’m up to if there’s nothing in it. I’ll be all right. I’ve got my magic to protect me, after all.”
    He snorted. “Hearthcraft, hmph. All very well for running the castle or tavern, but what are you going to do if you meet a bear, girl.”
    “Very well, then,” she conceded, trying not to allow their disagreement to tire her father any further. “I’ll take the mockingbird, here, with me.”
    The pronouncement came as a complete surprise to Colin.
    Sir William peered closely at him. “Oh, then if a bear comes along HE sings the creature sweetly to sleep with a bloody lullaby, and you turn it into a great bloody hearthrug?” He ran a hand through his thinning hair, grayer since the accident. “Ah, well, he’s responsible to his guild for his conduct, and if he’s with you I can at least be quite sure he won’t be spreading that song about. I suppose it wouldn’t be wise to have any of the local guard go. I doubt any of them would purposely slander your sister, but people don’t seem to be able to forego telling everything they know, nonetheless.” He sighed once more, deeply, and capitulated. “He’ll have to do, I guess.”
    “Good.” She kissed her father’s cheek again and rose to her feet. “I’ll just go put binding spells on the cleaning I’ve already done, and enlarge the larder a bit, before I talk to Gran about handling anything that comes up while I’m gone.”
    “That should be exciting,” Sir William mumbled to her back as she swept through the door ahead of Colin.
     
     
     

 
    2
     
    Maggie was unalarmed to hear the Territorial troops marching in close order drill, accompanied by professional mourners keening for the dead and wounded, as she entered her grandmother’s cottage. She recognized the tromping of the marchers as her gran’s heavy-handed double beat on the loom batten, which always sounded like an advancing army, complete with fife and drum corps, and the keening sound as the old lady chanted a song in the ancient tongue to make the work less tedious.
    “Maggie, darlin’!” Her grandmother exclaimed, raising her legs past the edge of the loom bench and twirling around on her behind to face her granddaughter. “I’m so glad you’re here! Now you can do this nettlesome chore and I can stir up that batch for Betsy Baker.”
    “Funny, I was just talking about her.” She picked up a shuttle, changed the shed with a tromp on the foot treadle, then clucked her tongue at her grandmother. “Really, Gran, look at all these broken warps you’ve left hanging. It’ll never hold up this way!”
    Gran regarded her through the measuring glass she held at eye-level, slowly pouring a smoking yellow fluid into it. “You, my dear, are the home economist. I am the alchemist. I’ll stick to my own field any day. All those itty-bitty threads—bah!”
    “Well, I’ve yet to see you turn tin into gold,” Maggie replied, her thumb and forefinger lightly spinning the broken ends together again. With the mending spell she was