"What?" Gregory asked, staring. "To stretch? But you know that already."
So he had noticed. With a little self-satisfied smile, she said, "Yes, but I do not know your trick of waking sleep. How do you do it?"
Gregory sat down and began to tell her. She frowned with skepticism but attempted the first stage of meditation, sitting cross-legged with back straight and hands in her lap. She was amazed to find a feeling of tranquillity stealing over her as her breathing slowed and her pulse began to beat in her ears. The forest before her eyes began to seem removed, as though it were something seen through a thick pane of glass.
"Rise, now," Gregory said softly. "A step a day is enough. It is best learned slowly."
Her heart began to beat more quickly, her breathing grew deeper and faster, and the world became closer, more immediate. She felt the transition back to her ordinary state very clearly and turned to stare at Gregory. "Amazing!"
Gregory nodded, smiling, eyes glowing. "It is no mere trick."
"No, I can see that." Allouette turned away, a little shaken because she realized the implication: The trance could increase the effectiveness of her psi powers amazingly. Even more remarkably, she realized that she could still be totally aware and prepared to defend herself. "Will I remain cognizant of the real world if I learn the deeper trance?''
"You will," Gregory assured her, "but it must be learned slowly, for it requires skill as well as knowledge. Also, there are dangers on that road; you must learn it from someone who has travelled it already."
She gave him an arch glance. "Whom did you have in mind?"
Gregory only smiled in answer and explained, "You shall have to practice."
She did. As the days passed and her trances deepened, she was amazed to discover how much she noticed that she had never registered before, even beginning to understand ecological interactions—then began to see parallels between them and the ways in which people related to one another. Little by little she began to suspect the existence of something greater than individual human beings, perhaps even greater than political organizations.
But that came slowly, over weeks. For the rest of that day she helped break camp and rode on into the forest with Gregory.
They spoke with one another now and then as they rode, until Allouette grew bored, gave in to habit and temptation, and began to work double entendres into the conversation in hopes of seeing Gregory blush. Instead, he turned the topic to the ribald deeds of the old Greek gods and soon had her laughing at the variety of their liaisons with mortals.
Thus in high good humor, they rode out of the forest to see a large house before them, and behind it, a castle on a hill. As they came closer, though, they saw two mounted men come riding around the side of the house, driving a woman and children before them.
Chapter 24
"How dare they!" Allouette exploded. "Will the government never cease exploiting the weak?"
"If that woman lived in that house, I think she may be more a member of what you call the government than one of the downtrodden," Gregory said. "See—her gown is damask, and her children wear good leather boots, not peasants' buskins."
"No matter what they wear, she is oppressed at this moment! What, sir, will you see her suffer and not raise a hand to defend her?"
One of the soldiers swung his arm up for a backhanded slap at the woman. Allouette cried out in anger and kicked her horse into a canter, shouting, "Now I bid you hold!"
The man's arm froze in midair. He looked up at it in alarm; then his face twisted with effort, but his arm stayed high.
Smiling, eyes glowing, Gregory rode after Allouette. If this were not a test of her newfound love of virtue, nothing would be.
Allouette cantered past the soldier, snatching his pike from his nerveless hand. "Flee, woman!" Then she turned her horse and walked it in until the point touched the man's throat.
His comrade shouted and spurred his horse, reaching out to yank Allouette off her mount—but a fat blue spark jumped from her shoulder to his hand. He shrieked and reined in, blowing on his fingers.
Allouette gave Gregory an angry glance. "I shall fight my own battles, thank you." Only a glance; she kept her gaze fixed on the first soldier.
"Witch!" the second soldier howled.
"Aye, and one too hot for you."
With a yell, a third soldier came riding around the corner of the house, lowering his pike. Allouette spared him one disgusted glance, and the pike wilted. He swerved wide around her, staring at the limp pole.
"You had best begone ere other staves turn incapable of stiffness," Allouette told him.
All three soldiers stared at her in horror, then turned their horses and rode. A hundred feet away, the one with the elevated arm pulled up and turned to call, "We shall be back with a dozen more behind us!"
"It had better be a score," Allouette informed him, and his arm jerked straight up in the air. He shouted with pain, then the limb went limp. He raised his hand, staring in amazement as he rippled his fingers.
"Aye, as good as ever," Allouette called. "If you wish to keep it that way, wait till I have gone before you come this way again."
The soldier blanched and kicked his horse into a gallop, riding hard after his mates.
Allouette watched them go with a curled lip, then turned back to Gregory. "Where went our wounded bird?"
Gregory nodded toward the forest. "In among the leaves. That was quite well done, beauteous lady."
"It was not," Allouette said, riding past him toward the woods. "I have had too much practice at that sort of thing." She wondered at his compliment, though.
She drew up near the underbrush. "Come forth, dame. None shall hurt you now. Come forth, and tell us the reason for this bullying."
She heard a child crying and the mother's lulling voice; then the woman came out, clutching a child against each leg, and Allouette saw that Gregory had been right: Her clothing marked her as a gentlewoman, the wife of a squire at least and perhaps of a knight.
"I thank you for your protection, kind lady." But the woman looked rather nervous, knowing she was addressing a witch.
"It is gladly given," Allouette told her. "I have many debts to pay, and this is a beginning."
"Debts!" the woman's face crumpled. "I, too, have many debts and cannot pay them! Alas, if my Herschel had only lived!"
"Your husband?" Allouette frowned. "That is why you lost this house?"
"Indeed," the woman acknowledged. "I am Nora—Nora Musgrave, kind lady."
"Then your husband was Squire Musgrave."
"Indeed. He left us a little money, but it lasted only a month. Sir Hector was patient, he allowed us six months, but when we could not pay the rent, he appointed a new squire and sent his soldiers to rid the house of us."
"Poor dame!" Allouette said, and was about to launch into a diatribe against the wealthy when Gregory came up beside her, saying, "Then if you could pay, he might let you have back your house?"
"What matter?" the mother lamented. "We have no money, nor any prospect of it! My husband's father hid a small fortune somewhere on the land and on his deathbed told Herschel where to find it, but what use is that?"
"Did not your husband tell you where it was?" Allouette demanded, seething.
"Aye—that it is buried at the top of the shadow the old oak cast on Midsummer's Eve." She turned, pointing to a broad, low stump. "There it stands, or what is left of it. Since we had no need of money at the time, Herschel thought it best to let the treasure lie—but lightning struck that tree a month later and he despaired of discovering where its shadow might have fallen. Mind you, he probed the earth all about the stump, but found nothing."