Aquamancer (mancer series Book 2)

by Don Callander

  They reached the stream bank at the near end of the rough earth dam that backed the mountain stream to form Coventown Pool. The water was high, spilling through widening cracks and between boulders. A treacherous-looking footpath crossed on the top of the dam.

  “Something’s shaken the dam up. Close to collapsing, I should think,” Marbleheart said, stroking his whiskers nervously. “Others crossed here, as late as yesterday evening. Watchmen, I would guess. But...”

  “We won’t take the chance,” Douglas decided. Taking the Otter’s paw firmly in hand, he sailed them over the stream with a short-hop Levitation Spell.

  “Hoo! Whee!” squealed the startled Marbleheart. He clapped a paw over his mouth and whispered, “You didn’t tell me we were going by air.”

  “Shush!” warned Douglas. “There are washerwomen ahead.”

  A silent crowd of women knelt on flat rocks at the lake’s edge, dousing their laundry in the scummy, opaque waters and beating each piece listlessly on the stones with sticks. They worked without joy—no gossip, no laughter, nor even bickering—as you might expect of folk doing a common household chore together.

  “Did you notice what they were washing?” asked Marbleheart once they had passed out of earshot. “Black gowns! Dead black, all of them, from top to toe, even the underneath things! Not a shred of pink or white or...”

  “Witches wear black,” Douglas observed with a shrug. “It’s part of their mystique. What’s this?”

  They had come to where the town’s sewers emptied, by way of a large open ditch, into the lake. All the stenches of Coventown were concentrated in the sludgy ooze. The travelers held their noses and tried not to breathe too deeply through their mouths until they were well past.

  “Depressing as a dying whimper,” muttered the Sea Otter, looking about with curiosity after they’d passed through the town gates. Although the sun shone brightly high above the mountain peaks, the very air here at street level was a gray-brown, eye-watering haze that filtered out most of the sunlight and gave a winter’s-dusk appearance to the scene.

  Lanterns flickered feebly at a few street corners, although it was midmorning. The people they saw in this dimness walked like old, blind men, canes tapping, slowly shuffling, eyes ever focused at their feet.

  These, Douglas guessed, were the ordinary folk Emaldar had enslaved, stolen from places like Pfantas, to do the hard, dirty work of her Coven. They were terrorized hewers of wood, carriers of water, washers of clothes, the servants who scrubbed the Witches’ floors and prepared their meals.

  The weirdest thing about Coventown, Marbleheart noted, was that no one spoke louder than the merest whimper. Not even the pinch-faced little children they saw spoke out loud. Nor did they smile or even play, but stood about, leaning on grimy walls, in the deepest shadows, staring away with haunted eyes at nothing at all.

  The travelers climbed the steep streets to the castle—it seemed to Douglas he had spent an inordinate amount of energy lately climbing up and down. When they reached the uneven stone paving of the castle foregate, they sheltered under a blind archway, away from a hot, sulfurous wind that whipped about them from the mountain heights.

  Marbleheart gazed with grave interest at the castle. He’d never seen a structure so large and lofty.

  “Carved right out of solid rock, it is! Not cut pieces of stone, like Summer Palace or Westongue Quay,” whispered the Otter. “Take some of your best fireworks to break them down.”

  “The place is big,” Douglas whispered back. “We can go in and explore as long as we avoid the Witches!”

  “How do I tell Witch from Witchpeople?”

  “That’s easy. Witches’ll be dressed all in black and they’ll wear tall, pointed hats. A Black Witch stores part of her witching powers in her hat.”

  “Well, let’s go in and see,” sighed the Otter. “Here comes a pack train. Supplies for the castle, I’d guess. If we walk along right behind them the clatter they make on the drawbridge will cover our own.”

  “You’re the expert stalker,” agreed the Journeyman, gesturing for him to lead the way.

  They hurriedly crossed the sagging, swaying draw-span over a noxious-smelling moat, in the wake of a gang of almost-naked men carrying huge bundles and heavy boxes.

  The slaves were driven by a brace of most villainous-looking Witchservers, as twisted and cruel as the long black-snake whips they flourished and cracked, applying them with wicked glee to the slaves’ backs, bottoms, and legs.

  Once out of the dark gate tunnel through the thick outer wall, the invisible companions emerged into a cramped, crowded, flagged courtyard surrounded by twenty-foot walls. The interior was broken only by the heavy doors and tiny arrow-slit windows in the gray stone inner keep itself. The keep seemed to lean backward and merged into the cliff behind. Cornices under frowning, overhanging eaves were evilly decorated with ugly, wicked-looking serpents, scowling demons, and long-fanged gargoyles.

  Douglas stopped to study these and saw that they weren’t stone at all, but living monsters the same dark color of the surrounding stone. They clung, perfectly still to the edges of the castle’s roofs, their tiny, dull eyes alone moving, restlessly scanning the courtyard and everything in it in slow, sweeping glances.

  “‘Ware the Griffins,” he breathed in the Otter’s ear. “They’re Watchworms.”

  “Can they see us?”

  “No, I think. They’re stone deaf, fortunately. But let’s get under cover somewhere. That small door—there, next to the stable archway.”

  They slipped quickly but quietly across the rough and stained flags, until they could edge through the half-ajar door and plunge into the welcome darkness of the passage on the other side.

  “So far, so good!” breathed the Journeyman Wizard. “Look for a way leading down.”

  After several minutes of exploring, they found a stairway at the far end of a side corridor, blocked by a massive fence of tarnished brass bars.

  “Why brass?” wondered Marbleheart.

  “Witches fear the touch of iron,” the Journeyman murmured back.

  As Douglas started a subtle unlocking spell that would spring the lock without calling the magic to anyone’s attention, the heavily burdened slaves and their whip-cracking overseers burst noisily into the corridor. Stepping right past the invisible pair, one of the Witchservers coiled his whip about his forearm and fumbled a large key from his belt. He unlocked the brass gate, flung it wide, and growled to the panting slaves to carry their heavy burdens down the steep, uneven stairs.

  The Wizard and the Otter followed, again letting the sounds of the shuffling and groaning captives cover their own footsteps.

  “Move it along, damn you!” growled both guards in bored monotones. They were as thick as they were tall, which wasn’t very tall, and wore wide, spiked collars like those given hunting dogs to protect them from wild bears’ bites. “No talking, there! Faster, faster, faster!”

  Urged by the whips and the words, the slaves rushed headlong down the steps. One stumbled and fell. Several tripped over his sprawled body before they could stop, their burdens tumbling ahead of them down the stairs.

  The guards roared in anger and raged impatiently, lashing out at bare backs, until the poor bearers sorted themselves painfully out, gathered their burdens once more, and fled on.

  “Good thing for you there’s naught breakable in these bales,” screamed one of the Witchservers. He cracked his twelve-foot whip viciously after the last of them.

  The train descended into a vast, low-arched cellar at the very bottom of the castle. Here were stacked, binned, hung, and piled all sizes of boxes, barrels, and bales, some spilling over with half-rotten carrots, spoiled, reeking cabbages, and limp, blackened greens. The cellar had the heavy stench of a rotting compost heap.

  Bales were loosely wrapped in dirty sacking, banded with rusty metal strips and stamped with lead seals. Great bunches of garlic hung in braids from the rafters. In a separate, barred enclosure were stored
enormous casks and kegs of wine, beer, and brandy.

  Guttering torches lit the cavern just enough to show the slaves where to lay down their loads. Without allowing their panting charges any rest, the overseers drove them back up the stairs at a run.

  “Radishes!” exclaimed Marbleheart softly as he examined the newly arrived stores. “Fresh, too! I didn’t realize that Witches ate good stuff like this!”

  He nibbled hungrily at the peppery red roots, offering several to Douglas. Fresh produce was welcome after weeks of camp fare, even with the occasional meals magically imported from Wizards’ High.

  “What did you think Witches ate?” Douglas asked, taking a bite out of a radish. It burned his tongue pleasantly.

  “Don’t have the slightest idea,” sniffed the Sea Otter. “Nasty, slimy things, I suppose, like roasted lizards and toasted toads. Have some new cabbage.”

  Douglas ate a quarter head of raw cabbage while he carefully roved back and forth across the storeroom floor. Was the stair the only access to the room? Behind a stack of barrels oozing sticky black-strap molasses he discovered a trapdoor.

  “Stand back,” he warned, and shook his fist at the hatch. Slowly it rose, making horrible creaking sounds. It wasn’t opened very often, he was certain.

  “Whew!” gagged Marbleheart, jumping backward. A rush of stale, damp air almost knocked them over, but after a moment it blew away, to be replaced by the dank odors of rotted wood and stagnant water. The sound of dripping echoed from far below. A wooden ladder allowed them to clamber slowly down, after Douglas had gestured the trap closed again, to a landing along the course of a narrow winding stairway.

  “At least we’re going in the right direction,” growled Marbleheart. “Down! Give us a light, Wizard!”

  Douglas floated a tiny, bright flame over their heads and by its light they could see the steps going down, down, to a wetly gleaming stone floor. As they neared the bottom, a swarm of large, black Rats with bare, pink tails rushed by.

  “On their way up to check out the fresh food,” guessed the Otter, watching them with distaste. The Rats paid them no heed at all, except the very last and least, who stopped long enough to peer up at them for a moment.

  “Follow our example and get out of this place, too,” it said, not unkindly. “It’s not food we run for. There’s great danger here!”

  It dropped to all fours and dashed off up the stair.

  “Hey,” called Marbleheart after it. “Wait up! We need some directions here.”

  “They won’t help you much,” said a squeaky voice near Douglas’s ear. “Rats are single-minded when it comes to desertion.”

  Looking up, the travelers saw a number of Bats hanging upside down from the ceiling.

  “I’m a Wizard,” Douglas told them. “Can you give us some information?”

  “Wizards...explains why we can’t see you, just hear you,” said the largest Bat. He blinked solemnly. “Name’s Tuckett, young Wizard. What’s yours?”

  “Douglas Brightglade,” Douglas answered, switching off the invisibility spell. “Pyromancer.”

  “Ah, yes. I’ve heard about your kind. A long time ago a friend of mine spent his days in a Fire Wizard’s cave.”

  “How’d you come to raise your family in this frightful place?” asked Marbleheart.

  “It seemed like the ideal place to hang out at first,” explained the Bat. “Damp and dark enough to be comfortable. Quick access to the outside. Swarms of tasty bugs everywhere. Witches’ castles are usually good places for bats, as they generally leave us alone. However...”

  “You regret moving here?” asked Douglas

  “We’re beginning to,” said the Bat’s wife, joining the conversation. “Hush, children! We’re talking, the nice Wizard and your mama and papa!”

  The Batlings peeped softly among themselves and stared, fascinated and horrified, at the huge, ugly Man and his terrifying companion-beast.

  “Better nor Hollowe‘en,” one whispered to his sisters.

  “This Witch’s castle is so noisy! Grumblings and rumblings and groans and rocks shattering all of a sudden,” confided the Bat wife with a shiver. “But worst of all, they shut a prisoner in the wettest part of the basement without even fixing the bad leaks. The poor man is knee deep in hot water and can hardly sit himself down.”

  “Wouldn’t be so bad, were he to hang by his toes like normal folk,” put in one of the Batlings with a sniff.

  “A prisoner, here?” asked Douglas. “I’m looking for a friend who is Emaldar’s prisoner.”

  “Pssssh! Don’t speak her name,” warned Tuckett, glancing about with sudden caution. “She comes down here much too often for our liking. Three or four times yestereve alone.”

  “But nonsense, my dear,” said his wife, nudging him affectionately, “this here’s a Wizard, and a Wizard can best a Witch any day—or night!”

  “All very true,” said Douglas, “but right now I want to rescue my friend. Have you seen him?”

  “Oh, most surely,” said Tuckett, nodding—a bit disconcerting as a Bat’s nod goes in the wrong direction, up and down, instead of down and up. “Last evening—”

  “We were going to bespeak him. Sort of buck up his spirits, that would be,” his wife interrupted again. “But we didn’t want to call ourselves to her attention. He’s there now, a-setting in water and trying not to fall over in his sleep and drown.”

  “He’s whipped up a bit of magic, I believe,” said Tuckett in admiration. “He’s managed to stay above water for a long spell. The problem—”

  “Is that the air in there is falling too fast. First it was at his ankles, then it fell to his shins, and now it’s down to his waist, as was said before. By tonight he’ll be setting in it down to his chin!”

  “Is Em—er, the Witch drowning him on purpose?” asked Marbleheart; the thought of deep water didn’t bother him all that much, but he could see how it might bother Cribblon.

  “Oh, no! It’s springtime on the high slopes, you see,” explained the Bat wife. “The snows are a-melting and the river is a-rising quite fast. We always have some flooding around about now—although, come to admit it, this year it seems greater than usual.”

  Douglas smacked his fist in the palm of his other hand. “We’d better go get him out!”

  The Bat family obligingly led them to the far end of the right-hand corridor, past a row of empty cells hacked roughly out of solid bedrock, each less than six feet cubed and all heavily barred.

  The floor here was six inches underwater. The Witchserver guards had earlier been playing cards on an empty barrel’s head and shouting vile-sounding insults at their prisoner, said Mistress Bat. They’d abandoned this corridor for a higher level when the hot water reached over their boot tops.

  As they neared the end cell they heard a voice softly singing in a pleasant tenor:

  “O Castle Doom!

  Thy towers glower o’er me.

  And from afar

  I hear the roar of raging fires!

  When will he come,

  My bonny, bravest warrior?

  His lonely friend of so few su-uh-mers

  To Save?”

  “The poor man!” choked the little Batlings. “He’s suffering great pain!”

  Douglas put his face near the cell door grille and called out, “Is that a folksong of your western country, Cribblon, or are you making it up as you go along?”

  The song stopped in midverse and the Journeyman heard a frantic splashing approaching the door.

  “Is that you, Douglas, old Journeyman? Are you a prisoner like me or are you ‘my bonny, bravest warrior’?”

  “Just your friendly neighborhood Pyromancer,” chuckled Douglas. “Stand to one side, old air blower. There isn’t time to pick the lock. I’m going to blast the door open.”

  He stood tall and suddenly severe—or so Marbleheart described it to his grandchildren under a gravel bank on the Briney, years later—and, rolling up his wide, Wizardry sleeves, he threw
a solid, right-handed blow at the door, shouting a single powerful word. “Champianawirir.”

  His fist hardly touched wood when, it seemed to Marbleheart and the Bat family, a great blue bolt of lightning cracked. When the smoke cleared, the door lay in splinters too small even for kindling, floating on the surface of the slowly rising seep water.

  “So that’s how it’s pronounced!” cried Cribblon. “I’ve been sitting here for hours trying to remember how to say that dratted word. I did manage to talk the chains into rusting through, hours ago.”

  He waded quickly through the smoldering wood chips and joined them in the higher, if not much drier, corridor. Douglas shook his hand and Marbleheart thumped him gleefully on the back, proudly performing his warming and drying spell on the bedraggled former Apprentice. The Bats twittered excitedly about their heads.

  “I managed to dredge up a few helpful old spells,” said Cribblon, proudly. “I was trying to remember something that would float me on the water when it got too high. Not much success on that, however. Thank you all! You arrived just in time.”

  “Thank the Bats,” said Douglas. “Right now, I’d better get us elsewhere. That blast must have been heard all over the place.”

  In fact, sounds of shouts and thuds of running boots came from above them as the Witchserver guards pounded toward the stair to see what had happened.

  “Where does the corridor go in the other direction?” Marbleheart asked Tuckett.

  “Under the mountain, a long, hot way,” answered Tuckett. “Calm down, children! The fireworks are over. There are ways to the outside, however, that we use.”

  “Now, we should let them make all the noise they can and we should help,” said the practical Mama Bat. “To cover the sound of our friends’ retreat, you see.”

  And they did so, acting just like Bats disturbed by all the racket. Waving a hurried good-bye to them, Douglas lead the ex-Apprentice and the Otter past the foot of the stair and down the narrow dungeon passageway in the opposite direction.

  They ducked around the first bend. The floor was suddenly dry underfoot. They heard the dungeon guards hit the bottom of the stair and start cursing the Bats, who flew in frantic circles about their heads, screeching at the bottom of their Bat voices. One of the little Batlings flew boldly against their torch, plunging the corridor into sudden darkness.