Christopher Stasheff: The Warlock's Companion

"I know, I know. I'm just a worrywart." But Rod gazed at the little house a moment longer, smiling ever so slightly. Gwen looked up at his face, then turned to gaze at the cottage with him, letting her head rest against his shoulder.

Finally, Rod turned to smile down at her. "We haven't done badly, have we?"

Her eyes glowed up at him, and she nodded. "Yet 'twill bide, and await our return. Come away, husband, and let the poor house rest."

"Thou art silent, my lord," Gwen noted.

"Is it all that unusual?" Rod looked up in surprise.

"Well, nay," Gwen said carefully, "yet it doth usually betoken…"

"You mean the only time I shut up is when I'm surly."

"Nay, I had not said…"

"Actually, I thought I was a pretty good listener."

"Oh, thou art, thou ever art!" Gwen clasped his hand, where it held the reins in front of her. "When I have need, thou art ever ready to hearken! Yet I do feel lorn, when thou dost lose thyself in thoughts I ken not."

"Silly goose! Come, share my silence awhile!" And his arms tightened around her.

So she was quiet, leaning back against him, watching the children as they swooped and soared over the fields along the roadside; their laughter came to her like the chiming of wind-bells on the breeze. Then she looked up at the forest looming before them and said, "I do, my lord—yet I know thy thoughts are not of me."

It took a second before she heard his gentle laugh. "Are you so selfish, then, that you can never spare my mind for other matters?"

She heard the humor, and relaxed a bit. "Ever, though I do rejoice to hear them—yet there's thought, and there's brooding. Where do thy dark thoughts stray, my lord?"

Rod sighed. "To the past, my dear. Just trying to reckon how long it's been since I had a real, genuine vacation. Of course, while I was a bachelor, I wound up with a lot of free time between jobs—but those weren't vacations, they were bouts of periodic unemployment. Does our honeymoon count?"

Gwen smiled, and nestled back against him more snugly. "Mayhap, though we had great tasks indeed before us that fortnight, coming to know one another in a new and wondrous way. Yet there was the score of months thereafter, when thou wert estranged from the King and Queen, whiles I did carry Magnus and thou didst build our cottage…"

"Yeah, and the elves showed me how. I still think they did more of the building…"

Gwen hurried past that part; no point in telling him what had really held the stones up while the elves finished setting them. "… And that first year of his infant life, 'til Their Majesties had need of thee again, and sought to heal the breach."

" I'm the one who did the healing, as I remember it; they just found a job for me. And it seems as though they've kept it up; even when the big fights are over, they find these little informational trips for me to make, or need my advice about so-and-so's new idea…"

"Mayhap a part of it is that we do abide close by them."

Rod sighed. "Yeah, maybe we do need a change of scenery to really relax." He looked up about himself, somewhat surprised. "And it looks as though we've had one. When did we come into the forest?"

Broad branches spread a canopy above them, stemming from tall old trees, foot-thick and rough-barked, with here and there a yard-wide veteran soaring up into the dim, dark greenery above—a murmuring roof, lanced by shafts of light so pale as to be almost silver. They gazed up, exalted, feeling their souls expand in the openness…

Until a four-foot body shot through a beam, laughing in delight while a half-grown juggernaut speared after him on a broomstick, shouting happy predictions of dire doom.

"Children!" Gwen cried, and Geoffrey jerked to a halt in midair, then swerved over to the nearest tree. Cordelia dropped to the ground, trying to hide her broomstick behind her back, while the elm next to her brother seemed to waver, then solidified again, a bit wider than it had been—and Geoffrey was nowhere to be seen.

"Nay, then, I ken thy presence," Gwen said in tones that evoked dread, "and thou knowest thou hast gone against the rule. Come out from that elm where thou dost hide."

"He could not help it, Mama!" Cordelia cried. "I did spring upon him and…" She hushed and bit her lip at a glare from Gwen.

"Thy sister's intercession will not save thee," Gwen informed the elm, "for thou hadst no need to fly an thou didst wish to flee. Come out!"

The silence stretched to the point of snapping, and Rod was just opening his mouth to point out that, after all, nobody had been hurt, and it wasn't really all that great an infraction (though he knew he shouldn't), when Geoffrey saved him by stepping out from the tree. His head was down and his shoulders hunched, but he was there, and the tree was slender again. Rod swung down from Fess's back, bracing himself for a shouting match—then decided to let Gwen start it. He was tired.

Gwen sat on her high horse, glaring down.

Geoffrey glowered back up at her.

Gwen's face was stone.

Geoffrey held his glare, but began to fidget.

Gwen waited.

"Well, then, I did wrongly!" Geoffrey burst out. "Thou hast told us time and again not to fly in a forest, and I disobeyed!"

"A good beginning," Gwen said, with an air of finality.

Geoffrey glowered up again, slowly wilting. Finally, he dropped his gaze and muttered, "I am sorry, Mama."

"Better," Gwen pronounced. "And wilt thou do it again?"

"Nay, Mama."

"Wherefore?"

"For that thou hast said so."

" Nay ! Though 'twould be good, 'tis not enough! Wherefore have I forbade thee to fly in a wood?"

"For that I might dash out my brains 'gainst a tree trunk," Geoffrey muttered. Then he glared up at her again. "Yet I never have!"

Gwen only stared.

"Oh, aye, there was that time two years agone, when I did knock myself senseless." Geoffrey dropped his eyes again. "And three years agone, when I came home quite dazed—yet I was little then!"

"And hast better aim now, surely. Nay, now thou'lt strike squarely on the center of thy crown."

"I'll not strike at all!" Geoffrey's jaw jutted. "I am more practiced now, Mama!"

"Yes," Rod agreed, "he's gotten so good at it that now he can flatten his head completely."

"I shall not! I shall slip 'twixt the trees like a sky-borne eel!"

"Quite a vision, that." Rod imagined a flock of flying eels, wriggling their way across the heavens. "But with all those eels, wouldn't it be a little dangerous for you?"

Geoffrey rolled his eyes in exasperation. "Canst thou never be serious, Papa?"

"Thou wouldst not wish him to be," Gwen assured the boy.

But Rod shrugged. "I'm willing." He pointed a finger at Geoffrey. "Just for that, you can walk all the way to the castle."

Geoffrey glared at him, and Rod felt a surge upward. In the split second before it could happen, though, he thought downward . Geoffrey frowned as though something were wrong; his face tightened with effort. Rod felt the boy's power of levitation pushing against his own telekinetic force, and pressed harder. Then Gwen dismounted, and he felt her effort join his. He eased up.

But Geoffrey didn't. His face reddened; his shoulders hunched with the effort.

Gwen leaned back against Rod, showing not the slightest sign of strain.

Geoffrey abandoned the effort, foreboding shadowing his gaze. "Thou dost conspire against me!"

"No, we just agree on the rules and the punishments."

" 'Tis even as I've said." Geoffrey gave them his best glower, or tried to. He couldn't simply capitulate, of course. Rod understood that, and allowed him his face-saver.

"It is indeed—but it does let you know what happens if you disobey."

"Didst thou never disobey when thou wast small?" Geoffrey squalled.