His thoughts turned back to Elaine. He shifted his chair toward the window. A soft amber glow filled the hut. It took a moment for Jonathan to realize it was fire-healthy, normal fire gleaming against the windows and open door. Flickering shadows caressed the snow outside the door.
The piles of debris were gone. The snow looked as if some great broom had brushed it clean. Where had all the broken pottery, the warped furniture, the dirt, the rotten cloth, gone? He shook his head. He was not sure he wanted to know. He hoped Lilian, their maid, had not been watching. If she saw how quickly magic could clean, she might be tempted.
Of course, as far as Jonathan knew, a person had to be cursed with the magic from birth. She could not simply choose it.
Gersalius came to the shed's open door. Firelight bathed him in warm colors. He had a broom in his hands.
Jonathan sat up straighter in his chair. If the old wizard was going to take to the air on the broom, Jonathan wanted to see it. He had heard of such things, but never been witness.
The wizard bent over the broom, hands a foot apart on the stick. Orange fire shadows turned the ordinary broom to gold, or perhaps that was its true color. The wizard breathed a great fog into the air-a word of command?
Jonathan stood, leaning close to the cold glass.
Gersalius propped the broom against his body, rubbing his hands against the cold. When the broom was once more firmly grasped, he began to sweep the stone stoop.
Jonathan stepped back with a snort of laughter. Perhaps the wizard heard him, for he looked up. He must have, for he waved, then went back to sweeping the snow. It had not been some giant hand that had cleaned the snow, but one old man with a broom.
Gersalius stooped and picked up a small bit of cloth. He shook it out, frowned, then made a sharp flicking motion with his hand. The cloth vanished. No light display, no wind, no tricks; it simply was no more.
Jonathan stepped back from the window so he could no longer see the disturbing old man. Perhaps Gersalius could not fly on a broom, but what he could do was bothersome enough.
There was a solid knock on the door. "Enter," Jonathan called.
The door swung inward. Thordin entered. His square shoulders filled the doorway. His round face looked too small atop his powerful shoulders. Both the roundness and the size was heightened because he was totally bald. His head gleamed softly in the lamplight. The bones of his skull seemed thick under his skin. Thordin held the door while Blaine limped in behind him.
"Blaine, you should be in bed, resting," Jonathan said.
"I haven't made my report on what happened in the forest."
"Thordin can report for both of you."
"I tried to tell him that." Thordin's voice was painfully deep. A jagged edge of scar curled under his jaw to show why his voice sounded like rough sandpaper. "The boy would not listen to me."
The younger man shook his head. "The man was under our protection, and now he's dead. I owe him at least this much: to report in person."
"The dead do not care about grand gestures," Thordin said. "They are just as dead."
"His name was Pegin Tallyrand, and he'd never traveled more than a few miles from his home. He traveled for days in the dead of winter to find us; then we let him get killed."
"We did no such thing, boy. You nearly died trying to save him."
"And you, Thordin-did you take no wounds? You are not one to let a fight pass you by."
Thordin grinned. "Ah, that is a fact." His face sobered as if a hand had wiped it clean. "I fought, but it was a great, bloody tree. You can hack at it, but you can't rightly wound it. And I thought the lightning had killed it already."
"It was dead," Blaine said, "nothing of life inhabited what we fought."
Jonathan stared up at the younger man. He had never really questioned that Blaine had a feel for the land. He knew things about what grew or crawled or flew, knowledge observation could not account for. Like Elaine's visions, Elaine's intuition was something they had relied on without questioning its source. Was it magic, too? Was Blaine a budding mage?
Jonathan searched the familiar face. The gleaming lamplight showed the same earnest eyes, the handsome, if somewhat delicate, face. Nothing had changed, but suddenly Jonathan was looking with fresh eyes.
"How did you know the tree was not inhabited by some life-force?"
Blaine shifted on his crutch, frowning. "I don't know." He tried to shrug but couldn't quite manage it with only one good arm.
"For pity's sake, Blaine, pull up a chair and sit down."
Thordin drew two straight-backed chairs from the corner of the room. He steadied one chair for Blaine to ease into. When the boy was settled, he sat on his own chair. Thordin looked too large for the thin chair.
Blaine let out a shaky breath. Lines showed at his eyes and mouth. The candlelight gleamed on the sweat on his forehead and upper lip. He was hurt, only staying upright through sheer determination. Tonight was not the time to question his abilities, magical or not.
"Make your report, Blaine, before you collapse and we have to carry you off to bed."
"I'm not…"
Jonathan waved the protestations aside. "Tell me what happened."
Blaine drew a deep breath, nodded. "We were in Chebney."
"Was the report of a monster just fancy, or true?"
"All too true," Thordin said.
Jonathan did not prompt him. He knew Thordin would continue in his own good time.
"A ghost walked the corridors of the meister-singer's house. A phantom beast with poisonous breath that had stolen the meistersinger's voice. He was said to have a lovely voice, but we heard it not, at least not from the man. The ghost stalked the halls, singing in beautiful, mournful tones, like a great ringing bell that tolled the hours of darkness. With daylight, it vanished, and the meistersinger could speak with us. But he could not sing."
"A meistersinger that cannot sing cannot defend his seat."
Thordin nodded. "That was why he was so frantic for us to come, I think. It was only a matter of time before some young upstart challenged him. Without his voice, he was lost."
"The beast had a spark of life to it," Blaine said.
"Thordin said it was a ghost. Ghosts are shades of the dead."
"The ghost had once been part of a living being," Blaine continued, finishing Thordin's story for him. "I could feel its life-force, faint, but there. It wasn't just some evil conjuration."
"Had an evil conjurer died recently?"
Thordin grinned again. "Not exactly. You might say it was the evil person who lived."
Jonathan shook his head. "It grows too late for riddles, Thordin. Just tell me." He did not like Blaine's talk of living ghosts and conjurations.
"It seems the meistersinger had poisoned his last rival, not to kill him, but to steal his voice, to close off his throat on the day of the challenge. It worked. He became leader of the city soon after the old meistersinger died of apparently natural causes. The poison had worked too well. Soon after his death, the beast appeared."
"Justice beyond the grave," Jonathan said.