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She gri
Nigel Loring raised his brows; he knew how difficult it was to kill a large animal that quickly. "What did they do with the ox? The Society chappies, that is."
"Grilled it whole and ate it, but the other Society-the Humane Society- got on his case."
Lua
"Oh, I think he cares for the girl," Juniper said. "She wouldn't have been as: healthy as she was, otherwise. Even a bad man often loves his children; and he's invested a good deal of his ego in having one of his blood follow him, to be sure."
The scowl left Lua
"It's just hard not to see Arminger, looking at his kid," she went on a little defensively.
"Well, it's important that we don't see only that," Juniper said, pouring her more dark, frothy beer from a pitcher. "Since the Lord and Lady saw fit to put her in our hands: wait a moment."
She thought, looking inside herself, and then she sighed. "There's something I should have done some time ago, but I hoped it wouldn't be necessary to get formal about it. I hate throwing my weight around: oh, well, if it has to be done, it has to be done."
She sighed again, then rose to her feet and waited until the buzz of conversation died. A little way to her left Chuck Barstow was looking at her quizzically; beside him was his wife Judy, with dawning understanding in her dark eyes and handsome proud-nosed face. They'd been friends since they were teenagers, and they'd discovered the Craft together.
Of course she'd know, Juniper thought. Well, my old friend, that's why I'm doing it, you being so stubborn and all, and others taking their cue from you.
Aloud, she said: "You all know we've had a guest among us, a girl by the name of Mathilda."
Rudi was staring at her, delight in his dancing blue-green eyes. Mathilda was too, puzzled and a little apprehensive.
"Mathilda was captured through no fault of her own, in fighting against her folk that we of the Clan took on ourselves for reasons we thought good, and still do. And later her folk tried to take her back, and in that fight some were killed, and some were hurt-my own son Rudi among them. Now, some here have held that against her, and I was waiting for that to vanish through its own lack of sense and unkindliness, but it hasn't altogether. And that diminishes my honor, and the honor of Clan Mackenzie. So here and now, I say that while this girl is with us, she is fostern of mine, and is to be treated as if she were a child of my blood, necessary precautions aside, until I unsay this word, or she leaves us and so breaks it."
Juniper took a deep breath, and raised her hands in the V of power, palms out, closing her eyes and feeling the current of it ru
"And this I bind on every man and woman and child of this Clan, and I make it geasa to break it. I bind you all, by the Dagda and Angus Og and Lugh of the Long Spear; by Macha and Edain and the Threefold Morrigu; by the Maiden, the Mother and the Hag, and if any break it by word or deed may the Mother's Earth open and swallow you: the Mother's ocean rise up and drown you: and the heaven of stars which are the dust of Her feet fall and crush you and all that is yours. This is my geasa, which I, Juniper Mackenzie, Her priestess, and Chief of the Clan by the Clan's choice, lay upon you! So mote it be!"
An echoing silence fell, and lasted until she put her hands on her hips and spoke in a normal tone: "And that is that!"
She sat again and drank, conscious of eyes rolling white as they looked at her, and mouths gaping. It took a moment for the others to follow suit, but when the roar of conversation started up it was louder than ever.
"Whoa," Lua
Her husband had blanched and was clutching at a crucifix beneath his shirt; sweat darkened the fine linen a little, and gleamed on his forehead.
"Remind me never to piss you off that much, Juney!"
"I doubt you'll ever do it, so," Juniper said. "Now, where were we? Ah, yes, Mathilda, and her being Arminger's only heir."
"Ah," Lua
"And what did Ken have to say about it? And Will?" Juniper asked; she had a lively respect for Ke
"That we shouldn't build too much on the foundation of one little girl," Eric said. Then, elaborately casual: "You know, this dried-tomato-and-onion thing in vinegar is good."
"Ken has a good heart," Juniper said. Although he and Will have the advantage of being a ruler's advisors, not the ruler himself. "And a keen mind."
"Yup," Eric Larsson said, obviously glad to change the subject for a moment. "But Dad's also got a mind full of weird shit. The latest-" He rolled his eyes.
"What is it?" Juniper asked with interest.
Ke
"Asteroids," Lua
Juniper looked at her as blankly as the younger couple had at the reference to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Eric and his wife both laughed, and he took up the tale.
"You know how an asteroid was supposed to have killed off the dinosaurs?"
Juniper frowned. It had been so long:
"I think I read about it in a National Geographic once. Wouldn't it be better to worry about Mount Saint Helens blowing up? It started smoking again a few years ago, after all. Does Ken have some reason to believe we'll be hit by a big rock from above?"
Eric's grin grew wider. "No, but he says we're overdue for one, give or take a few million years. He gets worried about it because there's nothing we could do about it now."
Juniper blinked. Even for Ken, that's a bit eccentric. "Well, what could we have done about it before the Change?"
Lua
"I know every coven in the world would have been on the hilltops, spell-casting to beat the band," Juniper said. "But apart from that:
"
"Dad says they could at least have detected it," Eric explained. "And possibly have launched, ah, nuclear-tipped missiles"-he spoke the phrase as if he was repeating it verbatim, almost from another language-"or something. With another few decades or generations of technical progress, intercepting 'em would have been easy, he says. But now that's impossible."