In ten minutes he was knocking at Augurian’s laboratory door.
Myrn answered his knock, soaking wet from head to toe and looking as if she could bite the head off a dragon were the dragon foolish enough to comment on her appearance.
“Ah, the joys of Aquamancy!” chuckled Flarman.
“Watch yourself, Firemaster!” the petite Apprentice growled, a dangerous glint in her eye. “Remember, Water can quench Fire!”
Flarman ducked into the room, glancing up to make sure no black thunderclouds were gathering to pour a tropical shower upon his head. “Call it a draw!” he pleaded.
“Aptly punned.” The girl from Flowring Isle grinned. “Draw water and draw fire! I’m sorry, Magister! Things haven’t gone aright today at all.”
“Here’s a certain word I guarantee will bring a smile to your lips and lightness to your heart, my dear,” said Flarman, presenting the folded note. “It just arrived.”
“From Douglas!” the lass exclaimed gleefully. She snatched the fold of parchment and hastily opened it.
“I’ll be on my way, then,” said Flarman, but Myrn was already engrossed in her letter and didn’t even notice him leave.
Chapter Eleven
Cribblon Found
Grim, glum, and preoccupied Pfantasians showed no curiosity about the unusual pair when they walked about the next morning. Clambered about might be a better description, for most of the streets of Pfantas were actually steep stairways, slippery with scum and malodorous with piles of rotting garbage.
“What this place needs is a solid week of good, hard rain,” observed the Journeyman.
“What it needs,” Marbleheart sniffed in disgust, “is a good, old-fashioned Briney tidal wave.”
“I suppose one gets used to it,” said Douglas, trying not to breathe too deeply.
“Easier for you to say,” grunted the other. “Your nose is a lot further away from this mess than mine!”
They had spent the night in the town’s only inn and resolved before the first hour had passed to find a nice, quiet pine glade somewhere away from the town to camp during the rest of their stay. That was their first order of business this morning, which had dawned hot, humid, windless, noisy, and extremely overripe.
Circling the base of the conical hill, they passed through a postern gate on the side opposite the lake and dipped down into a trash-strewn valley through which rushed a muddy burn. They crossed a rickety two-plank bridge, which swayed and bucked under their weight, and climbed the opposite hill, upwind of the town. The way here was soft and fragrant with pine needles, through dense stands of dark pine accented here and there by white birch.
“This is far better!” exclaimed Marblehead, who had decided not to take a dip in the poor creek’s filthy waters. “How about this nice level clearing? It looks just what we need.”
Douglas pitched camp. He not only enlarged his best handkerchief into a colorful, roomy pavilion, but added a smooth bit of lawn, a small garden filled with the most fragrant flowers he could think of, and decorated the tent poles with cheerful red and orange banners emblazoned with his own “DB” monogram under the ancient flame symbol of Pyromancy.
“It pays to advertise, if you want someone to know who, what, and where you are,” said he. Marbleheart shook his head in doubt but said nothing.
“Where does one begin to look for an ex-Apprentice?” he asked instead.
“With any luck, Cribblon will find us,” replied Douglas. “It seems best. We don’t know where to look for him, nor even what he looks like. If he has eyes or ears, he can learn about us from just about anywhere on this side of Pfantas.”
They settled down in front of the comfortable pavilion to await results. To pass the time, Douglas taught the Sea Otter certain simple magic spells, as he had promised.
“First, a very useful spell to warm and dry yourself quickly after a wetting.”
“I’ve never had trouble drying without a spell,” objected the Otter. “My fur dries in a matter of minutes.”
“Hours,” corrected the Journeyman. He wrinkled his nose. “Besides, you don’t smell too good when you’re damp. This’ll be handy when you want to be dry in mere seconds because you have to meet important people who might not be used to wet Otter. And, of course, you can use it on other things if you wish them to dry quickly.”
Marbleheart grumbled but learned his first spell quickly, then tackled a few more difficult spells with growing eagerness.
Douglas avoided spells that called for complicated hand gestures, as these would prove difficult for a Sea Otter of short legs and webbed toes. He included the first Firemaking Spell Flarman had ever taught to his Apprentice so long ago—for lighting campfires, lamps, lanterns, braziers, sconces, flares, pipes, and candles.
“To be used with caution, of course,” warned the Journeyman, unconsciously mimicking Flarman’s words and best teaching manner. “It’s simple but powerful. You could set a whole town on fire if you aren’t careful.”
“Say, not a bad idea!” exclaimed Marbleheart, nodding his head toward Pfantas. “Well, perhaps not; at least not yet.”
The morning passed quickly but nobody approached them. No Pfantasian even looked up from daily tasks on the hillside opposite. The travelers ate a good lunch (pinecones and pine needles transformed into ham and sharp cheese sandwiches on rich, brown rye bread with cold potato salad). They bathed in a small pooling of the burn that ran below their camp—well upstream from Pfantas, where the water was clean, fresh, and cold. Afterward they basked in the warm spring afternoon sun on their square of lush greensward.
Marbleheart had practiced his first learned spell, alternately diving into the burn and coming out to dry himself by uttering the Drying Spell. Repeated soaking and drying made his coat rather too fluffy, and he then had to lick it back into shape.
“I’m going over to look at that castle at the top of town,” decided Douglas in midafternoon. “Just out of curiosity.”
“Remember what you told me about curiosity,” warned Marbleheart. “Better take me along.”
“You stay here in case Cribblon comes along while I’m gone. If he does and can’t wait for me, tell him to come back at suppertime. Anyone eating Pfantas’s food should jump at the chance to dine on pinecones and needles.”
Douglas crossed the creek, passed through the unguarded postern gate, and climbed the stair-step streets to the broken-down old structure at the very crown of the hill.
It was neither entirely ruined nor uninhabited. Dozens of ragged, half-clad men and women huddled in the hazy afternoon sun, under broken arches and in blind doorways, sullenly ignoring the young Wizard as he passed.
“Good fellow,” Douglas asked a young man with his arm in a dirty sling, “do you know anything of a person named Cribblon?”
“Do ye want to get me beaten or worse, asking me stupid questions?” snapped the young man. “Only Witchservers are allowed to question! Or maybe you are a Witchserver, eh? In which case I’m dead already, curse my bad temper!”
“You’re still alive,” said Douglas, not unkindly. “Does that prove I’m not a Witchserver?”
“It might,” stressed the other. “No, I’ve never heard of anyone named Cribblon.”
And he would say no more, fear as well as pain showing in his fever-dulled eyes. Douglas silently recited a healing incantation to set and knit the man’s bad fracture. It would be a time before the Pfantasian realized that he’d been cured.
The rains of the small castle were not particularly interesting, but they were at least cleaner—being more lightly populated—than other parts of town. Douglas spent an hour more, exploring and observing, trying to draw the poor derelicts into conversation, and failing completely. As the sun slipped behind the mountains he slithered and slid back down through the sweltering town, crossed the burn, and returned gratefully to the piny peace, fragrance, and neatness of their camp.
“No nibbles from this Cribblon person,” reported the Otter. “There ar
e lots of tasty little minnows and crayfish in the upper creek, however, so you won’t have to fix supper for me, tonight. How do you like my fire?” He gestured to a neat blaze before the pavilion. “I set it all by myself!”
“Well done!” Douglas praised him, choosing to ignore the five or six patches of scorched grass where the Otter had practiced. He set about getting his own supper.
After darkness fell, they sat talking about the constellations in the cold, clear sky above—Otters had some interesting names for the Big Bear, the Little Bear, and other major arrangements of stars. Douglas learned that Otters were expert celestial navigators and could find their way over great distances by the positions and elevations of the stars alone.
Marbleheart stopped in the middle of a description of his journey from Dukedom across the Broad to Kingdom. He raised his black button nose and sniffed.
“Someone’s just crossed the bum—and not by the bridge! He’s taking many pains to move unheard and unseen, but I can smell him. I believe it’s a him. Smells better than the usual Pfantasian, too.”
Douglas said, “I sense him, also. Whoever it is has some small magics about him.”
A dark figure appeared below their campsite, lying prone in the deep shadows under low-drooping pine boughs.
“Come on up and join us,” Douglas called. “Others have not seen you but we’ve been watching you since you waded across the stream.”
The man rolled out from under the pines, stood, and walked stiffly up to the fire, throwing back a deep hood to show a young-old, deeply tanned face, a mouth drawn taut in apprehension.
He said simply, “I am Cribblon.”
“And I am Douglas Brightglade, Journeyman Fire Wizard taught by someone who remembers you of old, Cribblon.”
“Yes, good old Flarman Firemaster! Or Flowerstalk, as I now hear he is calling himself. The change in name is why it took me so long to find where he’d settled after Last Battle.”
“Aside from Flarman, Augurian, Marget of Faerie, and of course Frigeon, you are one of the few I’ve met who remember that time.”
“Yes, Frigeon,” said the other, sourly, accepting a seat by the fire and a plateful of supper leftovers. “The less we say about that Wizard gone bad, the better.”
“You’ll be happy to know he has reformed, or so we believe,” Douglas told him. “This is my Familiar, Marbleheart Sea Otter.”
The young-old man shook the Otter’s paw solemnly.
“Pleased to have you find us,” said Marbleheart. “Although I’m still not convinced standing on a hilltop and waving flags is the best way to avoid detection by your enemies.”
“It worked,” Douglas pointed out with a shrug. “Probably much faster than any other way.”
“It poses dangers,” agreed Cribblon, nodding to the Otter. “Which is why I chose to wait until deep darkness to leave town. The Witchservers are everywhere in Pfantas. They watch everyone and everything. Including you, Journeyman, when you visited the center this afternoon. Very little goes unnoticed by those Witch-Men. Their punishments for minor infractions are swift and cruel, too.”
“Do they watch you?” asked Marbleheart.
“Oh, yes,” said Cribblon with a tight smile, “but I try to blend into the scenery. I disguised myself as an itinerant bellows mender. It allows me to move about the countryside and assures me, if not a welcome, at least a reason for being here, close to the Coven.”
“Where is Coven, then?” asked Douglas.
“Two days’ walk to the northwest, on the east-facing slope of Blueye in the Tiger’s Teeth. You could see her tip plainly from the other side of this hill if you knew where to look.”
“Have some more supper and a mug of good brown Valley ale, transported direct from Blue Teakettle’s cellar at Wizards’ High,” Douglas urged him. “We have the whole night to talk and decide what to do next.”
Cribblon proved to be a good-natured, if rather high-strung man who looked younger than his two hundred years. His memory went back to the very beginnings of the war.
“I was apprenticed to... an Aeromancer,” he said once he’d satisfied a voracious hunger for decent food and slaked his thirst on the Oak ‘n’ Bucket’s best ale.
“Not Frigeon!” exclaimed Douglas.
“As it happens, yes,” said the other, nodding. “You who knew him later may find it hard to believe, but he was quite a good Master when we both were a lot younger, before the war. He taught me carefully and treated me fairly. We never actually liked each other, but I certainly respected his skills as a Wizard.”
“I’ve spent some time with him since he was captured and his power destroyed,” Douglas assured him. “I’ve seen the good side of him restored. I, for one, don’t think he’s trying to fool World with pretended remorse. As Serenit of New Land, he’s already doing a splendid job of righting what he did wrong. We keep an eye on him, of course.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” sighed Cribblon. “I would be relieved to forgive him what he did to me, toward the end.”
“Witches first,” said Douglas. “Tell us all you know about this Coven.”
Cribblon took a deep breath and shook his head.
“There is definitely no safe place to talk of the Coven, especially here.”
“I’ve protected us with some useful spells. You may feel them, if you try.”
The former Apprentice Wizard closed his eyes and appeared to be listening. A faint smile quirked his lips, and he relaxed slightly.
“Very powerful, yet very, very subtle! Stronger than anything I could do in the old days, believe me! Worthy of Flarman Flowerstalk, I’d say. It should keep the Witches from detecting our meeting—for a while, at any rate.”
He sat back, considering his words very carefully.
“Where to begin? Briefly, when Last Battle was over—nobody really won, you know—chaos descended on us all. The various bands, armies, tribes, nations, troops mustered to fight for—or against—the Dark Forces were widely scattered ... just as our Fellowship was dispersed to the four winds.”
“Yes, Flarman fled east and settled in Dukedom and Augurian went to an island in Warm Seas,” Douglas said, to show he knew the broad outlines of their history.
“Yes, well, as they did scatter, so did the Beings and dire Beasts on the other side, the Warlocks and Black Witches as well as the Red Sorcerers and Turned Wizards, Ogres, Goblins, Trolls, evil spirits, banshees and so on.
“Many were hunted down by our allies, destroyed or driven far away. The most powerful and luckiest survived, however, hiding deep in tangled black forests, in the western desert, the northern wastes, or under mountains and under Sea.
“They hoped that, in time, Mortals, and Near Immortals would become so concerned with their own problems and pleasures they’d entirely forget the Wicked who remained out of sight.”
“Their waiting might have paid off in the long run, except that Frigeon lost his patience and showed his reviving powers too soon,” the Journeyman observed. Cribblon nodded soberly and continued.
“In those days during the Chaos there arose terrible Beings we called Searchers, looking for revenge on Men. To avoid them, I fled west and south and settled in Farflung, as far away as I could get, to the very edge of Emptylands.
“I settled there, under a new face and new name, growing grapes for wine and raising goats. Five years ago a wanderer appeared at my door, emaciated, exhausted, in rags, only half-sane. He’d been horribly burned by magic fire and begged me to put him out of the unending pain.
“I’d not practiced any sort of magic for a century and a half—except a little here and there to earn a scant living among the farmers of that distant place. Cures for diseases among the cattle, broken arms, things like that. Nothing that would give me away.
“I thought I’d forgotten the air-curing spells for dire burns Frigeon taught me. Air is a great curer, you know.”
“I remember my lessons well,” said Douglas, chuckling to soften the implied rebuke. �
��Go on!”
“I treated him for almost a year. As his burns healed, his mind cleared and he slowly told me his story. He’d been a royal herald at Bloody Brook, had fled to the Far North when it was over. He hired himself out as a court musician. The proud Yarls of Northmost, not having joined Last Battle on either side, remained prosperous and able to pay well for good things like music and heroic poetry, which they love.
“But the Yarls began to war among themselves ... great bloody battles with much looting and cruel slayings, he told me. My musician fled south again at the first chance, coming down into what had been Kingdom along the unbroken chain of Tiger’s Teeth Mountains.
“His wanderings, filled with mischances, adventures, and narrow escapes enough to make a great saga-song all his own, brought him at last to the barren slopes of Blueye.
“Here he begged shelter from a terrible winter storm at the hut of an ancient woman, sightless and nearly deaf. The crone grudgingly took him in, more to hear his news than any kind of hospitality. He stayed two years slaving for her, cooking her meals, tending her half-wild cattle and cutting her firewood.
“She claimed she was wife of a herdsman who, with their sons, had perished in some obscure skirmish long before the Last Battle of Kingdom. Each night she prepared for the musician a tasty draught. After drinking, he always slept ten dreamless hours before awakening.
“At first the posset was welcome. He’d suffered from insomnia, fearing terrible nightmares ever since Last Battle, as so many did. After a time it began to worry him, however. He’d been a light sleeper all his life. Now he barely put head to pillow at dusk and suddenly it was morning!
“One night he pretended to drink but poured it out in the snow when he went to throw down hay for her three-legged cow. Then he went to his bed in the loft over the byre and lay fully awake.
“Not long before midnight he heard singing, shouting, and wild laughter. Creeping to the hay hatch, he peered through a crack and saw six women and a handful of men, some old, some young, some ugly, some comely, all dancing in wild abandon, completely naked despite the midwinter cold, about a furious fire in the old woman’s dooryard.
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