Aquamancer (mancer series Book 2)

by Don Callander

  “He’s that bad off? I’ve sorely neglected my duty to him!” cried Thornwood. “I should have given more attention to the reports I heard of the poor man! I forgot how young he really is.”

  He would not hear of having Captain Pargeot brought to Sea House, but decided to go to him, instead. Myrn followed, although for a moment Thornwood doubted it would be a fitting sight for a proper young lady.

  “Nonsense!” Myrn exclaimed stoutly. “I’m the daughter of a sailor and a sailor myself. I’m no stranger to this sort of thing, Lord Duke.”

  Thornwood apologized and with no further demur, led the way down the bustling beach to a three-story, square, brown-shingled building at the far end, the Westongue Seamen’s Hostel.

  The manager, a retired sailor himself, met the Duke and the Apprentice at the door with a respectful bow and tug at her forelock.

  “Captain Pargeot? Yes, he’s within. Second floor rear, Lord Duke and Lady! Comes in this morning very much the worse for...er, for hard spirits, begging your pardons. I’ll have him rousted out, hosed down, and brought to you, I shall, if you but say the word.” He looked extremely worried, fearing the Duke might blame him for the Captain’s binge.

  “Belay that!” said Thornwood, sharply. “Take us to him, immediately.”

  They found Pargeot in the dim back room, lying on a simple cot among tangled blankets, looking wretched, very ill, and very pale. Recognizing Thornwood through a slowly clearing alcoholic fog, he struggled to rise, but Thornwood pushed him down again with rough gentleness, saying, “Stay where you are, Pargeot! I would have come sooner, had I known you were taking your losses so hard.”

  “I...I...I,” stammered Pargeot, acutely embarrassed, “I am so ashamed, my Lord Duke. It was just too much, so close after my Malta’s passing. I though I could handle it, but I...I...I just fell to pieces!”

  He sank back down on his pallet sobbing, tears running down his unshaven cheeks.

  “Self-pity will do none of us any good,” said Thornwood, sternly. “And even good grog can’t wash away bad memories, for what that’s worth. Are you over it now? Or will I see you thus again?”

  “Never!” promised the very contrite Seaman. “Who’s this? A young lady seeing me in this awful state? Beauty has no place in this miserable, stinking rat’s nest!”

  “No ordinary young lady,” Thornwood told him. “This is the Lady Myrn Manstar, Douglas Brightglade’s betrothed. She’s Apprentice to the Water Adept, Augurian of Waterand.”

  “Oh, oh! And I lost him for you, my poor, poor Lady! I’m not worth your forgiving.” And he tried to turn his face to the wall.

  “Stow it, man!” snapped Myrn, purposely harsh. “Douglas did not die in the wreck of Pitchfork, after all, but is far inland in Old Kingdom, doing his duty when last I heard from him.”

  The news cheered Pargeot considerably, although he was guilt ridden still by the thought of forty crewmen lost at Sea and stout Pitchfork, too.

  “Ships are living persons to Seamen,” Thornwood said sympathetically. “But deaths of Men, ships, or family members are part of the price we living have to pay. As you yet live, you owe it to them to go on living and working and playing and loving, as a tribute to them. Do you see?”

  “I never th-th-thought of it that way,” said Pargeot, sitting up slowly and very painfully, for his head was about to split down the middle. “I really must stop this...this...nonsense. I really will!”

  “If you let me,” said Myrn, more sympathetically, “I can help.”

  Pargeot made no objection while the Apprentice stood before him, closed her eyes to help concentration, and murmured a certain spell to drive the fumes from his brain and heart.

  Watching, Thornwood was amazed to see an immediate improvement in the Captain’s appearance. His eyes focused and his head came up. The pallor of his skin was infused with a healthy glow.

  Myrn opened her eyes and smiled at Pargeot.

  “Now, don’t let this happen, ever again! I command it of you!”

  They left him feeling well enough to eat for the first time in days and nights and then to bathe, shave, and get a haircut, at Thornwood’s strong recommendation.

  “Come to me at Sea House when you look, feel, and smell better,” he ordered. “Lady Myrn needs to ask you where Douglas would have gone ashore. She goes to join him.”

  Thornwood was silent as they walked together back up the beach, and Myrn let him go in silence. She knew he had to think, and so did she.

  “Will he be right, now?” wondered Thornwood, aloud. “For some men, rum is a sickness, a weakness that can take them unawares and threaten their crewmen’s lives and then-ships, too.”

  “I can give no guarantee,” said Myrn, “but I do believe Pargeot’s is a one-time kind of troubling. He’ll haul himself out if it, now he has finished punishing himself. And he’ll learn a great deal from this, do not doubt.”

  Thornwood turned to look at her gravely.

  “You have learned a lot in a year yourself,” he said. “I would always have said you were a lively and good-natured lass with a strong practical streak. Now I see you have wisdom, also. Aquamancy agrees with you.”

  “Thank you, sir Duke,” she said, and curtsied. “I’ll try to live up to your estimate.”

  A dozen men waited to capture his attention on his return to Sea House, so the girl went off to the room with the brass bed and brass telescope. Once settled in, she wrote a short note to Flarman and Augurian, telling her progress. A local Sea Gull was drafted into carrying it to them when she was finished.

  Thornwood had asked her to dine with him that evening, so she spent some time altering her basic wardrobe with a few useful housekeeping spells, starting with her traveling costume of a light blue blouse with long sleeves and pearl buttons, a darker blue, full skirt, and stylish yet sturdy shoes.

  When she came down to dinner she was at once the center of all the eyes of Thornwood’s masculine staff, gathered in the drawing room. She had swept her lustrous black hair up onto the top of her head and tied it with a blue ribbon sprinkled with tiny Flowring pearls. Her sensible travel dress had become a long, gracefully sweeping gown of white linen with tasteful navy blue piping at the collar, hem, and lapels.

  “Westongue has never seen such beauty,” Thornwood complimented her, offering his arm at the bottom of the stair. “My Lady Mother hasn’t had time to extend her benign influence to this part of Dukedom yet. You should see what she has done for Capital, however.”

  “Westongue is already a very attractive place,” said Myrn. “A woman’s touch could make it even more so, and that would bring wives and mothers, sweethearts and families, I believe.”

  “It’s part of my overall plan for the Port,” admitted Thornwood. “To that end, Mother is ever gently prodding me to give her an assistant by marriage. I think there’s still time for that. I haven’t found anyone like you to ask to be my Duchess, as yet.”

  “I’m highly flattered,” said the Apprentice Wizard, blushing more than a little. “I’ll keep my eyes open for a suitable Duchess-elect, if you wish.”

  “I’ll find her for myself, thank you anyway. You sound a lot like my mother, however,” he added with a boyish grin.

  “Most women share a desire to see good men wedded, bedded, and presented with sons and daughters,” Myrn told him, softening her words with a fond smile. “Duchess or sailor’s daughter, it makes little difference. She will be a very fortunate lady, whomever you choose, Thornwood.”

  “That is exactly what my Lady Mother says,” Thornwood exclaimed. “Ah! Here’s our young Seacaptain, dried out, shorn, shaved, and smelling much the better for a hot bath.”

  Pargeot bowed deeply before Thornwood and again gave him his thanks and apologies.

  “I vow I will never succumb to self-pity again,” he said.

  “In which case—and you can be sure life will test your resolve, again and again, Pargeot—I offer you command of my new Firefly, when she’s delivered up from Per
thside. She’s smaller than most of my new bottoms, but faster and much handier, Douglas of Perthside assures me. I have some great plans for her.”

  “I’ll earn and accept her when the time comes, Your Grace,” said the Captain, bowing deeply again. “Meanwhile, I offer to assist the Lady Myrn in her quest to find her betrothed. I consider him a close friend on even such short acquaintance. I wish to help settle this business of the Witches, and I’m determined to stay by Mistress Manstar’s side until it is accomplished, despite all dangers. Old Kay is no place for a woman to travel alone!”

  He gazed beseechingly at the beautiful Myrn as she offered him her hand.

  “I hope you’ll accept me as escort and aide,” he begged her. “It will make me whole again, if I can do this good deed for you and for Douglas and for World.”

  Myrn, somewhat uncomfortably, said she would think about it and let him know on the morrow.

  “Quite the romantic sort, he thinks he is,” exclaimed Myrn to Thornwood, later. “I’m not at all sure he wouldn’t be a nuisance on my journey.”

  “He is, nevertheless, a most capable young man and an undoubtedly brave and skilled mariner,” Thornwood pointed out. “I must admit I would feel much better about you going on alone if I knew you had him with you. It’s up to you, of course.”

  Myrn shook her head resignedly.

  “Now I have a very unladylike appetite to assuage,” she said, merry once again. “What’s for dinner?”

  ****

  “I don’t need a ship,” Myrn said. “I have other means to reach Old Kay. Much safer, and faster, too.”

  “Safer!” exclaimed Thornwood. “How can you say that?”

  “Safer than enduring a storm at Sea,” she said, pointedly. “Safer because there are fewer ways danger can reach me when I fly.”

  “Except for accidentally falling to earth,” Thornwood said with a sour grimace.

  “I’ve more control over my flying,” explained Myrn, who had flown with the Feather Pin from Dwelmland, over Parch, the wasteland between the Dwarf Prince’s domain and Valley, and then across Dukedom to Westongue—without incident, “than over, say, a murderous troll in a forest, or a desperate goblin deserter from some evil army, bent on stealing... whatever I have to steal.”

  “Well, it’s not my choice of danger,” said Thornwood, shaking his head, “but, I must accept your decision. You’re the Wizard, after all.”

  They were seated in the Duke’s busy office at Sea House early the next morning. Myrn announced she was ready to continue her journey. As they talked, Pargeot was announced. He looked much healthier and heartier than he had the evening before, smiling brightly, bowing to them deeply when he stood before them.

  “I’ve come ready to accompany you, mistress, if you’ll accept me to share your quest.”

  Myrn nodded. “I have decided to take you along, Captain Pargeot, both for my sake and for your own. However...”

  “I sense there are conditions to be met,” said Thornwood with a deep chuckle.

  “Yes, of course,” Myrn exclaimed. “As you’ve said, I am a Wizard and this is a matter more of magic and spells, and possibly wicked Witches, than it is of courage and skill facing natural dangers.”

  She turned to Pargeot.

  “You’ll be most welcome, Captain, to come and help me with the latter, if they do arise. But you must understand that in matters concerning magic, Witches, Wizards, and the supernatural, I must practice my craft and art unhindered. In other words—”

  “In other words,” said Pargeot with a quick nod, “dear Lady, you are to be in command.”

  “Exactly!” she replied. “Do you not agree, Lord Duke?”

  “I long ago learned to leave wizarding to Wizards,” said Thornwood. “If you’re not completely willing and able to follow this young Lady Wizard as you would any good commander, you’d better not go, Pargeot.”

  “I’m entirely willing,” promised the Seacaptain. “When do we leave?”

  “Right now, if you’ve had a good breaking of fast and have brought your traveling kit,” said Myrn, rising. She was this morning again dressed in her traveling outfit. Her personal effects were stowed in the large canvas bag she now slung over her shoulder.

  “I have my ditty kit,” said Pargeot, hefting a smaller canvas bag tied with a rope long enough to loop over his shoulder. “What ship takes us?”

  Said Thornwood, grinning, “Just follow your leader, my boy.”

  They led the puzzled young Seacaptain out of Sea House and down to the pebbly shore. The sun was bright and warm with early spring. A brisk breeze blew from the Broad, scudding puffy, white clouds away to the east in long north-south ranks.

  “I need to know the position Pitchfork had reached when the storm hit her,” said Myrn to Pargeot, all business.

  “We were almost within sight of the Old Kay coast where Bloody Brook flows into Sea. When that blue Sea Light plucked me from the bottom, I believe we were in onshore shallows. Poor Pitchfork would have made landfall in a few hours at most if the storm hadn’t struck her.”

  “When we arrive, I’ll need you to point out the estuary.”

  “I’ve been there several times, but never have landed,” explained Pargeot. “There is no trade to be picked up on Kingdom’s coast these days. There’s much trouble from wild men, bloodthirsty beasts, and evil Beings, my father-in-law tells me. Things like brainless Goblins and malicious Sprites.”

  “We’re ready then,” said the Water Wizard’s Apprentice. “Thank you, Thornwood Duke, for your help and your hospitality. Give my love to your Lady Mother when you return to Capital. I’m sure we’ll see you both when we return from this task, Douglas and I.”

  She kissed the Duke on the cheek and, without further ado, grasped Pargeot firmly by the arm, twisted her shoulder bag to a more comfortable position, and said, “Cumulo Nimbus.”

  The two rose smoothly into the clear morning air, Myrn waving to the Duke below, Pargeot clutching his kit bag and looking both amazed and disconcerted.

  “Relax, Captain,” Myrn advised in the amused voice of an experienced flier. “I’ll handle the flying. Your job is to be a good passenger for now and, when we get there, to tell me which way to go. Have you a compass? We’ll very shortly pass out of the sight of land.”

  Wordless, the Seacaptain produced a pocket compass and directed her out to Sea, away from the rising sun. In a very few minutes the coast of Dukedom, the bustle of Westongue, and the green-and-gold offshore shallows slid from sight behind them and they flew in a perfect dome of sky over a perfectly round shield of deep blue Broad.

  “We’re going quite fast,” Mrn said to her passenger. “I judge it’ll be perhaps eight hours before we sight Old Kay.”

  Pargeot swallowed mightily but, to his credit, within a very few minutes he’d accustomed himself to the idea of flying and began to enjoy it. They overtook swift-flying Seabirds as if they were standing still in midair. The surface of Sea far beneath them looked like watered blue silk, strangely and intricately patterned, and constantly changing.

  After two hours of flight, the pair saw approaching them from the northwest a towering line of black-bottomed clouds trailing diagonal curtains of rain. The cloud bank reached from horizon to horizon and high up into the sky.

  “Pretty strong storm, that,” warned Pargeot. “We’ll get buffeted about, I’m afraid.”

  “I’ve found it’s better to avoid passing through such clouds by flying over them,” Myrn told him matter-of-factly. “There we have the advantage over sailing ships. The clouds hide very turbulent airs, I’ve found the hard way, sometimes hail, and of course lightning. Any one of those can make it as dangerous for the flyer as for the Seaman.”

  She reached her arm upward, directing the Feather Pin to gain altitude. The cloud tops proved too high to overfly—the air at the cloud tops was bitterly cold and difficult to breathe, she said—but she guided their flight smoothly through a gap between two splendid glittering and grumbling
thunderheads. They shot safely through to clear air on the western side of the squall line before the gap could close again.

  The cloudscape was spectacularly magnificent. The Feather Pin kept them aloft and moving swiftly with no effort on Myrn’s part except to indicate the way, right or left, up or down, or straight on.

  She’d experimented on her flight from Dwelmland to Westongue and felt entirely comfortable with the dynamics of flying now—although she admitted to herself that a flight of eight hours over open, empty Sea was more than a bit daunting. A daughter of Seafarers, she knew better than any landlubber the sudden surprises Sea often hid behind a calm surface and a bland, blue sky.

  They were so busy enjoying the scenery and the sensation of flight that at first there was no conversation between them. When the first exhilaration subsided, however, Myrn asked her new companion to describe everything he remembered about the last hours of Pitchfork.

  Although it was still painful to recall, Pargeot strove to give her a clear and complete picture of the foundering, especially when he found she knew the most technical Seafaring terms. He neither blamed others nor took too much on himself. He knew, as Myrn did, that Sea can be a harsh and unforgiving mistress. He’d accepted that when he had first decided to become a sailor.

  “I was swept overboard,” he told her, “so I’ve no clear idea what happened to the ship after that. When I realized that the Asrai had saved me from a watery grave and that we could speak with each other, I asked it to retrace the path to look for Pitchfork, who, when I had left her, was safely breasting the storm waves.

  “We searched above and beneath the waves for some hours, saw...terrible wreckage everywhere and bodies...we were too late to save anyone!”

  He paused to regain his composure. Myrn patted his arm, sympathetically. She found that, as long as she touched him, even very lightly, he remained aloft under the magic of Finesgold pin. They flew, therefore, arm in arm, upright but canting slightly forward, like strollers in a strong gale.

  “My ship must have been battered to pieces in a very few minutes. All hands had gone down with her; no boats had been launched. They had no chance to escape.