It has been a mad few weeks for me. I’m only just coming back up to breathe from a long period of heavy workload. I was hoping to post sometime over the weekend, but it turned out that drips and drabs of work kept coming after me, and so we’re back to a Monday post. Without too much further waffle… back to the story…
-oOo-
Cag-Mag let them both go, sighed, and murmured, “Fox catches pike.”
“Sorry? What?” said Caewen.
“Figure of speech. Like, bitten off more than one can chew.”
“Oh,” said Caewen. “I see. A fox would have trouble with a pike. But who do you mean: you or her?” Caewen waved a hand after the direction of the now retreating, clearly still angry young witch.
A shrug. “Maybe both of us. But now then…” She turned to peg Caewen with a hard stare, then turned a still more scrutinising look on Dapplegrim. “What was that about? You could have outed my little game, but you didn’t. If you’re expecting something in return–“
“Oh, no,” answered Caewen, hurriedly. “Nothing like that. It’s only that Moggie did me a good turn. And she seemed to want me to keep quiet about her. That’s all.”
“Who’s a moggy?” Puzzlement drew itself over Cag-Mag’s face, wrinkling up her brow and the corners of her eyes. “Is there a cat about?”
“No, no, the faer-thing. Moggie Moulach. But don’t you know her? Why were you protecting her from that other woman if you don’t even know her name?”
“No, of course I don’t know her. I wouldn’t know her from a burnt kettle. Why would I ever consort with faer-creatures? That’s madness, that is. Proper madness.” She huffed and shifted her shoulders. Caewen noticed that the old shadow-witch did not, however, offer any further explanation as to why she had been lying about Moggie. Instead she just hummed softly to herself, then said, “Seems you’ve been consorting with faer-creatures though. Funny. You don’t look half-baked to a burnt cinder.”
Allowing a touch of a frown, a small roll of her eyes, Caewen sighed, and held out the the bound stone object, proffering it back. But Cag-Mag shook her head, firmly.
“If you are on first names with faery creatures, you need that a great deal more than I do. A lot more. Very much more. And besides, I can make another one. Or, more exactly, I could find another family of looking stones tumbling about in some upland stream.” Another small shrug. A wafting wave of a hand. “I can find them and tie them all together. Give them wholeness. Which is not quite the same thing as making the thing, if you follow me?”
Caewen didn’t, but she said, “Oh. Um. Yes. Sure. I guess. Thank you.”.
“And,” added Cag-Mag with a a more wry look to her expression, it repays any debt I might have owed you, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. Ah. I see. Yes, it would, wouldn’t it?”
“Good.” She seemed satisfied.
“You could learn a thing or two from her,” said Dapplegrim, softly. “Hur. Hurm.”
“H’m–I suppose I could–but I never did get an answer to my question. Why were you pretending that Moggie was that other old woman? What was her name? The woman of ashes.”
“Old Lady of Embers.” She shook her head. “It’s complicated.”
“How complicated?”
“Too much so.”
“That much?” said Caewen, unconvinced.
The woman raised her eyebrows, staring, and her creased face heaped itself into yet more trenched lines. She hummed to herself. Her many dancing shadows leapt in a tighter circle around her feet, jittery for a moment, then settling into a calm, unnerving stillness. She held a long cool stare upon Caewen then, her dusk-blue eyes unblinking.
“I see,” she said at last. “I do not think you are owed an answer, nor deserve one. And yet my shadows whisper to me I ought give you one.” She held herself within a quietness for a long pause, as if holding her breath. As if she were a wolf watching a playing child from the dusky edges of a wood. Finally, she said, “So I will. I do my best to listen to my shadows, even when they speak nonsense. Even if they advise pigwiggenry and foolery. I wonder why they are so insistent upon this point? Odd. Still, it doesn’t matter to me–one way or the other.” She resettled her shoulders. “So and so: young Sorrateges has long desired a place on the Broadtable, and she is the next most potent of arts among the Fire-Magi, that is, after The Old Lady of Embers–who currently holds the chair of the flames. If and when the Old Lady of Embers passes, the position would likely fall to Sorra. Unfortunately, rumours have come to me that Sorrateges perhaps found herself tired of waiting for The Old Lady of Embers to meet a natural end.” She scrunched up her lip, wriggling her expression around.
“She killed the old woman?”
A sharp nod. “So it would seem. But it would be hard to prove, and a pointless waste of effort. Murdering another magician is frowned upon here–at the moot–certainly–but not so much outside the moot, afterward, beforehand, or otherwise.” She scuffed a toe against the ground and her shadows danced fluidly as she moved. “The Old Lady of Embers was supiciously late to arrive, and now it is more accurate to say she is suspiciously missing. Sorra wants her place on the table. But, frankly, to my mind, it is preferable to keep Sorra off the Broadtable. If some half-witted Faer wants to wander about impersonating Old Missus Embers, well, then that suits me just fine. It’ll be seven years before Sorra can make another bid to put herself on the table. That gives me time to prepare other options.”
“But why don’t you want her on–“
Cag-Mag cut her off. “Simple enough. Sorrateges would not be a suitable settler of disputes, nor maker or rules. Rather too cruel. Rather too unstable. A bit too arrogant, all told. And that is saying a lot. It takes quite a lot of arrogance to make a wizard or witch too much so. Arrogance is rather the currency of the profession, if you follow me.”
She didn’t, but nodded all the same. “Alright.” She stepped through the logic of this. “So Sorrateges murdered the Old Woman of Embers. She came to the moot expecting to get a seat on the Broadtable… but… in that case, why was Moggie pretending to be a dead witch? What would a faer-creature want out of it?”
Cag-Mag arched an eyebrow. “You know, I was hoping you might enlighten me on that point. But it seems you don’t know either?”
Caewen shook her head.
“I see,” said Cag-Mag. “It seems odd, though, does it not? One of the Faer-Folk, going about pretending to be a dead witching-lady. Not typical behaviour of one of those folk. You’re right to wonder. Why would the creature do that? Sport? A laugh? Something more sinister?” She shrugged. “They are capricious folk though, after all. Who knows. Maybe it is naught but whim? And you really have no idea?”
Caewen frowned more deeply now, turning over thoughts. At last, she muttered, “Unfortunately, no. We’re not exactly grand old friends, her and me. I only met her once in the maze. That’s all.”
Cag-Mag twisted her fragile old lips into a ponderous slant. “Ah, well, and ho, and hum then. I guess that is that. But what does it matter? After all, even owls don’t fly in strange fogs.” She gave Caewen and Dapplegrim a friendly half-smile, waved, saying, “I guess I shall be on my way. Things to do. People to meet. So long then.” She trotted off, heading downhill. “Nice to have met you,” she called back.
They watched her go.
After a while, Dapplegrim said, “What an odd person. Hurm.”
“Odd is a good description for everyone here.”
“Hur. Us included?”
“Us two at the top of the odd heap, I reckon. Come on. We should get ourselves to the speaker’s place. Quinnya’s going to be angry.”
“More angry,” corrected Dapplegrim. “She is going to be more angry than she was already. That’s what I think you were trying to say. Hur”
“Yes. More angry.”